stirring past.

"Not a friend of yours, I hope?" said Mr. Chalk, at last.

"Who?" inquired the captain, starting from his reverie.

"The dead man atop of the treasure," replied the other.

"No," said the captain, briefly.

"Is it worth much?" asked Mr. Chalk.

"Roughly speaking, about half a million," responded the captain, calmly.

Mr. Chalk rose and walked up and down the room. His eyes were bright and
his face pinker than usual.

"Why don't you get it?" he demanded, at last, pausing in front of his
host.

"Why, it ain't mine," said the captain, staring. "D'ye think I'm a
thief?"

Mr. Chalk stared in his turn. "But who does it belong to, then?" he
inquired.

"I don't know," replied the captain. "All I know is, it isn't mine, and
that's enough for me. Whether it was rightly come by I don't know.
There it is, and there it'll stay till the crack of doom."

"Don't you know any of his relations or friends?" persisted the other.

"I know nothing of him except his name," said the captain, "and I doubt
if even that was his right one. Don Silvio he called himself--a
Spaniard. It's over ten years ago since it happened. My ship had been
bought by a firm in Sydney, and while I was waiting out there I went for
a little run on a schooner among the islands. This Don Silvio was aboard
of her as a passenger. She went to pieces in a gale, and we were the
only two saved. The others were washed overboard, but we got ashore in
the boat, and I thought from the trouble he was taking over his bag that
the danger had turned his brain."

"Ah!" said the keenly interested Mr. Chalk.

"He was a sick man aboard ship," continued the captain, "and I soon saw
that he hadn't saved his life for long. He saw it, too, and before he
died he made me promise that the bag should be buried with him and never
disturbed. After I'd promised, he opened the bag and showed me what was
in it. It was full of precious stones--diamonds, rubies, and the like;
some of them as large as birds' eggs. I can see him now, propped up
against the boat and playing with them in the sunlight. They blazed like
stars. Half a million he put them at, or more."

"What good could they be to him when he was dead?" inquired the listener.

Captain Bowers shook his head. "That was his business, not mine," he
replied. "It was nothing to do with me. When he died I dug a grave for
him, as I told you, with a bit of a broken oar, and laid him and the bag