“‘Well,’ says one of the men—it were Bill Longman—‘if you thinks as it concerns us, why don’t you up and tell us what it is, instead of hangin’ in the wind like a ship in irons?’ says he.
“So then the steward he tells us as how, that mornin’ whilst you was all at breakfast in the saloon, he’d heard you tellin’ about a dream you’d had the night before; and how you started up in the middle of the meal and rushed off to your state-room, and stayed there a goodish while, and then went up on deck and told Sir Edgar as you’d discovered the meanin’ of the paper, which was all about how to find a treasure that was buried on a desert island somewhere; and that you intended to go on to Sydney and discharge your cargo, and then take in ballast and sail for the Pacific to find this here island and get the treasure.
“Of course when he’d finished tellin’ us about it there was a great palaver about buried treasure, and pretty nigh every man in the fo’c’s’le pretended to have heard of a similar case; and we all agreed as you was a lucky man, and we hoped as how you’d find the island, and the treasure too. And by-and-by, after there had been a good deal of talk of that sort, Bill Longman up and says, ‘But, George,’ he says to the steward, ‘you haven’t told us yet how this here affair concarns us?’
“‘Oh, well,’ says George, with a curious kind of a laugh, ‘if you don’t see as how it concarns us, why of course there ain’t no more to be said.’ And that was all we could get out of the steward that night.
“But a night or two afterwards, Master George brings up the subject again by sayin’ that he don’t suppose it’s likely as you’ll offer to share this here treasure with all hands, supposin’ that you find it. And then he goes on to say that, for his part, he don’t see as the treasure is yours any more than it’s anybody else’s, and that, in his opinion, if it’s ever found, all hands ought to share and share alike. And some of the chaps seemed to think he was right, and others they didn’t, and Bill up and says—
“‘Look here, George,’ he says, ‘supposin’ when we gets ashore at Sydney you was to find a bag of sovereigns in the street, would you share ’em with us?’
“George said that ’d be a different thing altogether from findin’ a treasure on a desert island; and we all had a long argyment about it, and couldn’t agree; and, after that, the steward talked a good deal more about all sharin’ alike in the treasure, and that if we was all of one mind it could be done, and a lot more stuff of the same kind. But we all laughed at him; and then came the arrival of the ship in Sydney, and George bein’ paid off, and after that I heard nothin’ more about the treasure.”
“And what makes you imagine that the new men have got hold of the story?” I asked.
“Well, sir,” said Joe, “it’s just one or two little things I’ve overheard said. The first thing as ever made me suspect that there was somethin’ up was the mention of the word ‘treasure.’ Cookie is the man as seems to know most about it—he’s everlastin’ly talkin’ about it—and I fancy he must have fallen in with the steward somewheres ashore and heard the whole story from him.”
“And what has the cook to say about it?” I inquired.