rease our terrors till, to our huge relief, the door of
the "Admiral Benbow" had closed behind us.

I slipped the bolt at once, and we stood and panted for a moment in the
dark, alone in the house with the dead captain's body. Then my mother
got a candle in the bar, and, holding each other's hands, we advanced
into the parlor. He lay as we had left him, on his back, with his eyes
open, and one arm stretched out.

"Draw down the blind, Jim," whispered my mother; "they might come and
watch outside. And now," said she, when I had done so, "we have to get
the key off _that_; and who's to touch it, I should like to know!" and
she gave a kind of sob as she said the words.

I went down on my knees at once. On the floor close to his hand there
was a little round of paper, blackened on one side. I could not doubt
that this was the _black spot_; and, taking it up, I found written on
the other side, in a very good, clear hand, this short message, "You
have till ten to-night."

"He had till ten, mother," said I; and, just as I said it, our old clock
began striking. This sudden noise startled us shockingly; but the news
was good, for it was only six.

"Now, Jim," she said, "that key!"

I felt in his pockets, one after another. A few small coins, a thimble,
and some thread and big needles, a piece of pig-tail tobacco bitten away
at the end, his gully with the crooked handle, a pocket compass, and a
tinder-box, were all that they contained, and I began to despair.

"Perhaps it's round his neck," suggested my mother.

Overcoming a strong repugnance, I tore open his shirt at the neck, and
there, sure enough, hanging to a bit of tarry string, which I cut with
his own gully, we found the key. At this triumph we were filled with
hope, and hurried upstairs, without delay, to the little room where he
had slept so long, and where his box had stood since the day of his
arrival.

It was like any other seaman's chest on the outside, the initial "B"
burned on the top of it with a hot iron, and the corners somewhat
smashed and broken as by long, rough usage.

"Give me the key," said my mother, and though the lock was very stiff,
she had turned it and thrown back the lid in a twinkling.

A strong smell of tobacco and tar arose from the interior, but nothing
was to be seen on the top except a suit of very good clothes, carefully
brushed and folded. They had never been worn, my mother said. Under that
the miscellany began--a quadrant, a