"They fell out," he said, "after I had brought him ashore. There was nothing else. The knife you speak of must have sunk to the bottom; perhaps he even tried to defend himself against the shark with it in his last moments. We shall never know!"
Nor did he ever know how that long Uruguay knife had once been nearly thrust into his breast as he lay sleeping; nor that with the knife, which had, indeed, sunk to the bottom of the river, had also sunk the auger with which he had bored half-a-dozen holes (each of the circumference of an ordinary cork) in the bottom of the Pompeia. One thing did, however, strike him as strange as he meditated over it all, namely, that from the time when Alderly must have bored those holes in the yacht to the time when she sank a considerable period had undoubtedly elapsed. And he wondered if it was during that period that he had managed to get on board and close the cabin door. Then, as he was burying him, he knew; he found out that his would-be murderer had indeed visited the Pompeia.
For he was mistaken when he told Barbara earlier that there was nothing else on her brother's body. As he prepared to put the trunk into the hole he had dug for it--while still the fixed open eyes stared up at him, this time in the morning's sunlight, and still the beautifully white teeth gleamed in that light--he observed that, besides the papers which had dropped from his shirt, there were still some others that had remained within the pocket.
And drawing them out he saw that, all soaked as they were like the others, they were the narrative of Nicholas Crafer.
"So," he thought, while he felt faint and sick as he mused--"so he was in the cabin, after all! Heavens! he must have crept in while I slept, have rifled my pockets in the dark when the lamp had gone out, have--faugh!--had his foul hands all about me! Thank God! he must have come when the light had burnt out, otherwise he would have seen the pistol."
He never knew that the ruffian had, in truth, known the pistol was there, but had forgotten, or feared to use, it when in the cabin later on.
He tossed the remains into the hole he had dug, touching them with the greatest disgust and loathing, and then covered the spot up hurriedly and stamped the earth down over it, and took his way back to Barbara. And, as he went, he determined that he would not tell her of this further instance of villainy on her brother's part. Henceforth she should learn no more of the workings of that wicked heart and brain.
When he reached the hut he saw her on the verandah, seated in the usual chair and with tears in her eyes. The papers he had given her were stretched out on a table before her, and, as he mounted the steps, she held out one to him and bade him read it. A glance showed that it was a will made by her father, a will properly drawn up and attested at some lawyer's office in Tortola; a will by which everything was left to her, including the island and the treasure if ever found--indeed, all that he possessed.
"Because," he read, in the cramped legal hand of the person who had drawn it out, "of the cruelty, the greed and the evil temper of my son to me, as well as his ill-treatment of me and my dear daughter, Barbara, I give and bequeath to her all and everything of which I may die possessed, including Coffin Island, any buried treasure that may chance to be found," etc., etc., etc.
"Great heavens!" Reginald thought to himself, as he handed her back the will, "there was no end to the scoundrel's wickedness. How could this villain be Barbara's brother?"