man called Evans came swaying along the canoe until he could look
over his companion's shoulder.

The paper had the appearance of a rough map. By much folding it was
creased and worn to the pitch of separation, and the second man held
the discoloured fragments together where they had parted. On it one
could dimly make out, in almost obliterated pencil, the outline of the
bay.

"Here," said Evans, "is the reef and here is the gap." He ran his
thumb-nail over the chart.

"This curved and twisting line is the river--I could do with a drink
now!--and this star is the place."

"You see this dotted line," said the man with the map; "it is a
straight line, and runs from the opening of the reef to a clump of
palm-trees. The star comes just where it cuts the river. We must mark
the place as we go into the lagoon."

"It's queer," said Evans, after a pause, "what these little marks down
here are for. It looks like the plan of a house or something; but what
all these little dashes, pointing this way and that, may mean I can't
get a notion. And what's the writing?"

"Chinese," said the man with the map.

"Of course! _He_ was a Chinee," said Evans.

"They all were," said the man with the map.

They both sat for some minutes staring at the land, while the canoe
drifted slowly. Then Evans looked towards the paddle.

"Your turn with the paddle now, Hooker," said he.

And his companion quietly folded up his map, put it in his pocket,
passed Evans carefully, and began to paddle. His movements were
languid, like those of a man whose strength was nearly exhausted.
Evans sat with his eyes half closed, watching the frothy breakwater of
the coral creep nearer and nearer. The sky was like a furnace now, for
the sun was near the zenith. Though they were so near the Treasure he
did not feel the exaltation he had anticipated. The intense excitement
of the struggle for the plan, and the long night voyage from the
mainland in the unprovisioned canoe had, to use his own expression,
"taken it out of him." He tried to arouse himself by directing his
mind to the ingots the Chinamen had spoken of, but it would not rest
there; it came back headlong to the thought of sweet water rippling
in the river, and to the almost unendurable dryness of his lips and
throat. The rhythmic wash of the sea upon the reef was becoming
audible now, and it had a pleasant sound in his ears; the water washed
along the side of the canoe, and the paddle dripped betw