Black Bartlemys Treasure

Thus sang the unknown who, all unwitting, was coming to his death; sudden as it came the voice was hushed and nought to hear save the hiss and murmur of the surge, and I saw the man Andy stir restlessly as minute after minute dragged by.

The rock where he crouched lay at the mouth of this cove towards Deliverance, it being one of many that lay piled thereabout. Now chancing to look towards these scattered rocks (and for no reason in the world) I saw a thing that held me as it were spellbound, and this a small enough thing in itself, a sharp, glittering thing that seemed fast caught in a fissure of one of those rocks, and I knew it for a steel hook; but even as I stared at it, the thing was gone and so noiselessly that I half-doubted if I had seen it or no. But, out from the shadow of this rock flashed something that whirled, glittering as it flew, and Red Andy, starting up from his knees was shaken by a fit of strange and awful coughing and came stumbling forward so that I could see his chin and breast bedabbled with the blood that spurted from his gaping mouth. All at once he sank to his knees and thence to his face, spreading his arms wide like one very weary, but with the moonlight flashing back from that which stood upright betwixt his shoulder-blades. And thus I saw again the silver haft of the dagger that was shaped like to a woman, saw this silver woman dance and leap, glittering, ere it grew terribly still.

Then came Roger Tressady from the shadows and stooping, turned up the dead face to the moon, and tapped it gently with his shining hook. And now, whipping out his dagger, he bent to wipe it on the dead man's shirt, but checked suddenly as a pebble started beneath my foot, and, stooped thus, he glared up beneath thick brows as I rose up with pistol levelled and the moon bright upon my face, whereupon he leaped backwards, uttering a choking cry: "Black Bartlemy--by God!" he gasped and let fall his reeking dagger upon the sand; and so we stood staring on each other and with the dead man sprawling betwixt us.