The man was gripping his left arm as if in pain, and a thin trickle of

red was running down the back of his big hand.

"Sit down, my jolly old mariner," said Bones anxiously. "What's the

matter with you? What's the trouble, dear old sea-dog?"

The man looked up at him with a grimace.

"They nearly got it, the swine!" he growled.

He rolled up his sleeve and, deftly tying a handkerchief around a red

patch, chuckled: "It is only a scratch," he said. "They've been after me for two days,

Harry Weatherall and Jim Curtis. But right's right all the world over.

I've suffered enough to get what I've got--starved on the high seas,

and starved on Lomo Island. Is it likely that I'm going to let them

share?"

Bones shook his head.

"You sit down, my dear old fellow," he said sympathetically.

The man thrust his hands laboriously into his inside pocket and pulled

out a flat oilskin case. From this he extracted a folded and faded

chart.

"I was coming up to see a gentleman in these buildings," he said, "a

gentleman named Tibbetts."

Bones opened his mouth to speak, but stopped himself.

"Me and Jim Curtis and young Harry, we were together in the Serpent

Queen--my name's Dibbs. That's where we got hold of the yarn about

Lomo Island, though we didn't believe there was anything in it. But

when this Dago died----"

"Which Dago?" asked Bones.

"The Dago that knew all about it," said Mr. Dibbs impatiently, "and we

come to split up his kit in his mess-bag, I found this." He shook the

oilskin case in Bones's face. "Well, the first thing I did, when I got

to Sydney, was to desert, and I got a chap from Wellington to put up

the money to hire a boat to take me to Lomo. We were wrecked on Lomo."

"So you got there?" said Bones sympathetically.

"Six weeks I was on Lomo. Ate nothing but crabs, drank nothing but

rain-water. But the stuff was there all right, only"--he was very

emphatic, was this simple old sea-dog--"it wasn't under the third tree,

but the fourth tree. I got down to the first of the boxes, and it was

as much as I could do to lift it out. I couldn't trust any of the

Kanaka boys who were with me."

"Naturally," said Bones. "An' I'll bet they didn't trust you, the

naughty old Kanakas."

"Look here," said Mr. Dibbs, and he pulled out of his pocket a handful

of gold coins which bore busts of a foreign-looking lady and gentleman.

"Spanish gold, that is," he said. "There was four thousand in the

little box. I filled both my pockets, and took 'em back to Sydney when

we were picked up. I didn't dare try in Australia. 'That gold will

keep,' I says to myself. 'I'll get back to England and find a man who

will put up the money for an expedition'--a gentleman, you understand?"




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