pass, and indicated, by
means of two long slender rods stuck upright into the sand, a line that
would take them straight into the bush where it was thickest and most
impenetrable, and told them to cut a straight line in that direction,
exactly two thousand yards in length from a peg which I had driven at
the margin of the bush.

This task I entrusted to Rogers and the six other men, who struck me as
being the blackest sheep of the flock; while, with Forbes, Joe Martin,
Barr, Mckinley, Christianssen, and San Domingo, I took the boat, with a
sufficient supply of axes and shovels, and made the best of my way to
the southern side of the small islet upon which the treasure was said to
be hidden.

Upon our arrival at the desired spot, my impression of the preceding
evening that it was entirely overgrown was fully confirmed, it proving
to be literally impossible to find a place where a landing could be
effected without first clearing away the scrub. There was this
difference, however, between the growth on the islet and that at the
spot where I had left the boatswain and his party at work, that whereas
the latter consisted almost exclusively of huge trees, the former was
composed largely of scrub, with only a few trees here and there, so that
it would not be nearly so difficult to penetrate as the other. It was
evident indeed to me at a glance, now that I had the full light of day
to aid me in my inspection, that the growth upon the islet was of much
more recent date than that upon any part of the main island in sight
from that spot; a fact which tended to confirm my previous suspicion
that at the time of the burial of the treasure the soil of the islet had
been bare, or nearly so, of arboreal growth.

The growth, however, was there now, and it constituted a very formidable
difficulty, for how was I to identify a point exactly one thousand feet
south of the obelisk rock, unless I could move freely over the ground
for the purpose of obtaining my precise bearing and distance?

Suddenly a brilliant idea struck me. Immediately opposite the point on
the islet at which I wished to land, there was a broad strip of sandy
beach, constituting indeed part of the margin of the basin, of which the
islet formed the centre. Would it be possible to make my measurements
from that point? There could be no harm in trying, at all events, and
we accordingly pulled across the water, landing at a part of the beach
that looked eminently prom