So we left the little store, with its door unlocked as I had found it, and a few steps brought us to a little house I had not before noticed, with a neat garden in front of it, all the garden beds symmetrically bordered with conch-shells. Shells were evidently the simple-hearted fellow's mania, his revelation of the beauty of the world. Here in a neat parlour, also much decorated with shells, tea was served to us by the little girl I had first seen and an elder sister, who, I gathered, made all the lonely dreamer's family. Then, shyly pressing on me a cigar, he turned to show me the promised treasures. He also told me more of his manner of finding them, and of the long trips which he had to take in seeking them, to out-of-the-way cays and in dangerous waters.
All this I really believe the reader would find as attractive as I did; still, as I am under an implied contract to tell him a story, I am not going to palm off on him merely descriptive or informative matter, except in so far as such matter is necessary, and I have only introduced him to my dreamer in "marine curiosities" for a very pertinent reason, which will immediately appear.
He was showing me the last and rarest of his specimens. He had kept, he said, the best to the last. To me, as a layman, it was not nearly so attractive as other things he had shown me—little more to my eye than a rather commonplace though pretty shell; but he explained—and he gave me its learned name, which I confess has escaped me, owing, doubtless, to what he was next to say—that it was found, or had so far been found, only in one spot in the islands, a lovely, seldom-visited cay several miles to the north-east of Andros Island.
"What is it called?" I asked, for it was part of our plan for Charlie to do a little duck-shooting on Andros, before we tackled the business of Tobias and the treasure.
"It's called —— Cay nowadays," he answered, "but it used to be called Short Shrift Island."
"Short Shrift Island!" I cried, in spite of myself, immediately annoyed at my lack of presence of mind.
"Certainly," he rejoined, looking a little surprised, but evidently without suspicion. He was too simple, and too taken up with his shell.
"It is such an odd name," I said, trying to recover myself.
"Yes! those old pirate chaps certainly did think up some of the rummiest names."
"One of the pirate haunts, was it?" I queried with assumed indifference.