“I fear we must think no more of that,” I replied. “When the story was first told to me, it seemed an easy matter to sail direct to the spot, but the fact that some mistake has occurred somewhere with regard to its position has quite thrown us out, and to look for it among the numerous islands which constitute this archipelago would be somewhat like searching for a needle in a bundle of hay, and the chances of finding either the one or the other would be about equal, I should say. If I only held a sufficient clue to warrant the slightest hope of success, I would willingly prosecute a search, but I do not.”
“Are you quite sure that you do not?” she returned, still very nervously. “Tell us the story all over again; perhaps some useful idea may suggest itself to one or other of us, if it is all gone carefully over once more.”
“Certainly I will,” said I, “if it be only to gratify you, little one; I anticipate no further result. You must know, then, Ella and gentlemen, that the Spaniard who told me this story was on his death-bed when he confided it to me. He asserted that a treasure-ship lay buried in the sandy beach of a certain island here in the Pacific, and he not only gave me the latitude and longitude of the island, but he minutely described it, so that I might recognise it at once, and he also described certain marks whereby I might be able to fix upon the exact spot in the beach where the buried treasure-ship lay.”
“And I suppose you have fixed upon your mind a kind of mental picture of this island, drawn from the description given you,” said Ella; “and I presume you are of opinion that you would recognise the island in a moment, if you saw it?”
“Exactly so,” I answered. “I can see it before me at this moment,”—shutting my eyes—“as distinctly as possible. There it lies, about three miles away, with the surf beating all round it; and there, in bold relief against the clear blue sky, stands the isolated clump of seven cocoa-nut trees on the extreme northernmost point of the island.”
“Somewhat like these that we are sitting under at this moment?” interrupted Ella excitedly.
“Ye–es,” said I, “certainly; somewhat like these. It is curious now, but I never noticed until this moment that these trees are seven in number. If, now, any two of them were marked in any way—”
“Somewhat like this?” again interrupted Ella, as she started to her feet and placed her hand upon a very perceptible scar in the trunk of the central tree.
We sprang to our feet as one man, infinitely more excited even than Ella was, and walked up to the tree and carefully examined the mark. There was no mistake about it, the bark had been deeply cut away with a knife, and I cannot, for the life of me, say how it was that it had never attracted my attention, unless it be that the wound was now weather-stained, and by no means so conspicuous as I had pictured it in my mind; perhaps it was in a great measure due, too, to the fact that the island we were on, though answering accurately to the description given of the treasure-island, was quite unlike the picture my imagination had conjured up.
“Now for the other mark,” I exclaimed; “it is on one or other of the remaining six trees, if this really be—”