fter but money? What do they care for but money? For what
would they risk their rascal carcasses but money?"

"That we shall soon know," replied the doctor. "But you are so
confoundedly hot-headed and exclamatory that I cannot get a word in.
What I want to know is this: Supposing that I have here in my pocket
some clue to where Flint buried his treasure, will that treasure amount
to much?"

"Amount, sir!" cried the squire. "It will amount to this: If we have the
clue you talk about, I fit out a ship in Bristol dock, and take you and
Hawkins here along, and I'll have that treasure if I search a year."

"Very well," said the doctor. "Now, then, if Jim is agreeable, we'll
open the packet"; and he laid it before him on the table.

The bundle was sewn together, and the doctor had to get out his
instrument case and cut the stitches with his medical scissors. It
contained two things--a book and a sealed paper.

"First of all we'll try the book," observed the doctor.

The squire and I were both peering over his shoulder as he opened
it, for Dr. Livesey had kindly motioned me to come round from the
side-table, where I had been eating, to enjoy the sport of the search.
On the first page there were only some scraps of writing, such as a man
with a pen in his hand might make for idleness or practice. One was the
same as the tattoo mark, "Billy Bones his fancy"; then there was "Mr. W.
Bones, mate," "No more rum," "Off Palm Key he got itt," and some other
snatches, mostly single words and unintelligible. I could not help
wondering who it was that had "got itt," and what "itt" was that he got.
A knife in his back as like as not.

"Not much instruction there," said Dr. Livesey as he passed on.

The next ten or twelve pages were filled with a curious series of
entries. There was a date at one end of the line and at the other a
sum of money, as in common account-books, but instead of explanatory
writing, only a varying number of crosses between the two. On the 12th
of June, 1745, for instance, a sum of seventy pounds had plainly become
due to someone, and there was nothing but six crosses to explain the
cause. In a few cases, to be sure, the name of a place would be added,
as "Offe Caraccas," or a mere entry of latitude and longitude, as "62o
17' 20", 19o 2' 40"."

The record lasted over nearly twenty years, the amount of the separate
entries growing larger as time went on, and at the end a grand total
had been made out after f