There was a long silence. "Father caught the prison fever an' died just afterwards. My mother, she gave me the paper ... joined the Navy: an' I never went to des Reines but the once ... then I went to the wrong cemetery to dig: ship was under sailin' orders—I hadn't time. Afterwards I heard there was two cemeteries: priest at Martinique told me. I was never there but the once.... Seventy thousand pounds: an' me slippin' me cable...."
Selby sat by the bed in the darkening room holding the soiled sheet of paper in his hand, piecing together bit by bit the fragments of this remarkable narrative, until he had a fairly connected story in his head.
Summed up, it appeared to amount to this: A pirate or murderer had been captured by a man-of-war, taken to Trinidad prison to be tried, and there sentenced to death. "Time the old Calypso was out on the Station." ... That would be in the 'forties or thereabouts. The old man's father had been a warder in Trinidad prison at the time, and had performed some service or kindness to the prisoner, in exchange for which the condemned felon had given him a clue to the whereabouts of his plunder. It was apparently buried in a grave in Port des Reines cemetery, but the warder had died before he could verify this valuable piece of information. His son, the ex-Gunner, had actually been to a cemetery at Port des Reines, but had gone to the wrong one, and did not find out his mistake till after the ship had sailed. The plunder was valued at £70,000.
Selby turned the paper over and folded it up. "What do you wish me to do with this, Mr Tyelake? Have you any relations or next-of-kin? It seems to me——"
The old man shook his head faintly. "I've got no relatives alive—nor friends. They're all dead ... an' I'm dyin'. That's for you, that there bit of paper. Keep it, it's to your advantage.... Some day, maybe, you'll go to Port des Reines, an' it's the old cemetery furthest from the sea. I went to the wrong one time I was there."
"But," said Selby, half-amused, half-incredulous, "I—I'm a total stranger to you.... If all this was true——"
"You keep it," said the old man. His voice was very spent and scarcely raised above a whisper. "I meant it for the first Navy-man that came along. You came, an' you were kind to me. It's yours—an' to your advantage...."
There was silence again in the little room, and Selby sat on in the dusk, wondering how much of the story was true, or whether it was all the hallucination of a failing mind; but the old man had given him the paper, and he would keep it as a memento, ... and the fact of its being a prison-form seemed to bear out some of the details; anyhow, the story was very interesting. He rose and lit the lamp; the old man had slipped off into an easy doze, with his pathetic collection of treasures still lying in a heap on the quilt; Selby replaced them in the ditty-box, and put the box back where he had found it; the piece of paper that had been a prison-form he put in his pocket-book. As he was leaving, the woman who had been there earlier in the day made her appearance.
Selby wished her good evening, told her the old man was dozing, and passed down the path. "I'll come again to-morrow," he added at the gate. But that night the old man died, and the next morning, having ascertained from the vicar that there was nothing he could do to help, Selby shouldered his knapsack and struck out once more along the road that led up on to the moor.
II.