re you
spoke; and there he can get fourscore feet, and twice and thrice
fourscore, if he list, and none to stop him. 'Tis Carisbrooke. I have
heard of that well from childhood, and once saw it when a boy. It is dug
in the Castle Keep, and goes down fifty fathoms or more into the bowels
of the chalk below. It is so deep no man can draw the buckets on a winch,
but they must have an ass inside a tread-wheel to hoist them up. Now,
why this Colonel John Mohune, whom we call Blackbeard, should have chosen
a well at all to hide his jewel in, I cannot say; but given he chose a
well, 'twas odds he would choose Carisbrooke. 'Tis a known place, and I
have heard that people come as far as from London to see the castle and
this well.'

He spoke quick and with more fire than I had known him use before, and I
felt he was right. It seemed indeed natural enough that if Blackbeard was
to hide the diamond in a well, it would be in the well of that very
castle where he had earned it so evilly.

'When he says the "well north",' continued Elzevir, ''tis clear he means
to take a compass and mark north by needle, and at eighty feet in the
well-side below that point will lie the treasure. I fixed yesterday with
the _Bonaventure's_ men that they should lie underneath this ledge
tomorrow sennight, if the sea be smooth, and take us off on the
spring-tide. At midnight is their hour, and I said eight days on, to give
thy leg a week wherewith to strengthen. I thought to make for St. Malo,
and leave thee at the _Eperon d'Or_ with old Chauvelais, where thou
couldst learn to patter French until these evil times have blown by. But
now, if thou art set to hunt this treasure up, and hast a mind to run thy
head into a noose; why, I am not so old but that I too can play the fool,
and we will let St. Malo be, and make for Carisbrooke. I know the castle;
it is not two miles distant from Newport, and at Newport we can lie at
the Bugle, which is an inn addicted to the contraband. The king's writ
runs but lamely in the Channel Isles and Wight, and if we wear some other
kit than this, maybe we shall find Newport as safe as St. Malo.'

This was just what I wanted, and so we settled there and then that we
would get the _Bonaventure_ to land us in the Isle of Wight instead of at
St. Malo. Since man first walked upon this earth, a tale of buried
treasure must have had a master-power to stir his blood, and mine was
hotly stirred. Even Elzevir, though he did not show