For the next few minutes after the discovery of the bar of gold I think no one of the three of us was wholly sane. Van Dyck and I fell over each other in our eagerness to find out if there were more of them, and as we dug deep in the treasure grave Madeleine knelt at the edge of it and was to the full as daft as either of us.

Digging and groping by turns, we flung out bar after bar of the precious metal until there was a heap of forty of them piled up in the little glade. Forty was the exact number. When it was complete we found that we had penetrated to the under-layer of humus which told us that we had come to the rotted bottom of the chest in which the treasure had been buried.

I think Madeleine was the first to break the spell of breathless silence that had fallen upon us while we were digging and dog-scratching in the soft sand.

"It can't be true! I can't believe it!" she said, over and over again. "We are dreaming; we must be dreaming—all of us!"

Bonteck had hoisted himself out of the pit and was poising one of the gold bars in his hands.

"It is a gloriously substantial dream, Madeleine, dear," he said gravely, ignoring me as if I were deaf and dumb and blind, or altogether of no account. "For a rough guess, I should say that these bars will weigh thirty-five or forty pounds apiece, if not more—say a quarter of a million, in round numbers, for the lot. It isn't a fortune, dear, but it will serve to—to buy you——"

She broke in with a frantic little cry of protest.

"But it isn't mine, Bonteck! It's—it's——"

It was at this crisis that Van Dyck deigned to take notice of me as being present and able to answer to my name.

"She says it isn't hers, Preble. Tell her; make her understand."

"It is most unquestionably yours, Madeleine," I assured her. "You will remember that Bonteck told you there was one chance in a hundred million. That chance has won out, and it has fallen to you, incredible as it may seem. By all the laws of the treasure seekers, the find is yours."

"But it must have belonged to some one, at some time!" she objected, honest to the core.

I nodded. "It really belonged to the poor Peruvians from whom the Spaniards looted it. We are three or four centuries too late to restore it to the unfortunate Incas. I'm afraid you'll have to take it and keep it for your own."

"Of course she will keep it!" Bonteck thrust in. "The only question is, what shall be done with it now?"

At this we held a hurried consultation over the disposition of the discovery, with Madeleine insisting that we two ought at least to share the miraculous treasure with her.

"Dick hates money, and I have too much of it, as it is," was the manner in which Bonteck disposed of the sharing suggestion; and then we decided hastily upon two reasonable immediacies; we would rebury the gold, replace the coral boulder, and leave things as nearly as might be as we had found them. And for the second reasonable conclusion it was agreed that we should say nothing to any of the other castaways at present. It could do no good to tell them; and, as Bonteck sagely argued, it might do a good bit of harm by stirring up things at a time when we all needed to sit tight in the boat.

We were working by starlight by the time we got the hole filled up and the chunk of coral rolled back into place, and we could hardly see well enough to be certain that we had removed all traces of our late activities. Hoping that we had, and promising ourselves that we would return in daylight to make sure, we set out upon the shortest way back to the camp, which was along the north beach.

Madeleine hadn't said anything more about the ownership of the treasure while we were reinterring it, but now she began again.

"I hope you're not sweeping me off my feet—you two," she said. "I still can't make myself believe that I have any better right to that gold than you have—or as much."

"Of course you have," Bonteck insisted. "Didn't you point out the stone to us, I'd like to know?"

"But I should never have been there to point it out if you hadn't shown the way," she asserted.

"We needn't split hairs over that part of it," I put in. "And your argument doesn't hold, at that. It was your suggestion that we follow the trail, or the imaginary trail, from the old wreck to the—also imaginary—place where the Spaniards would be likely to hide their gold. Don't you remember?"

"Oh," she laughed; "if I'm to be held accountable for every silly thing I say——"

Once more Bonteck went over the equities patiently and painstakingly. We, he and I, were only bystanders. In no possible viewing of the circumstances could either of us lay claim to any essential part in the miraculous discovery. Waxing eloquently argumentative, he made the establishment of her right and title to the gold fill up the entire time of our return, and if he didn't succeed in fully convincing her, he was at least able to talk her down and silence her.

At the camp under the palms at the western extremity of our kingdom we found wild excitement in the saddle, and our delayed return passed unremarked. Just at sunset, Billy Grisdale and Edith Van Tromp, who had been on watch at the western signal fire, had seen the smoke of a steamer. They had lost the hopeful sight in the gathering dusk, and had raced in to spread the good news; racing back again almost immediately, with a snatched supper in their hands, to build the signal fire higher.

With this announcement to upset monotonous routine, the meal, which, for the sake of preserving the most foolish of the civilized conventions, we were still calling "dinner," was late, and it was eaten by the more sanguine as the children of Israel ate their first Passover, in haste and with staff in hand. Both Billy and Edith had been hopefully positive that the ship they had seen was headed toward the island, and the bare prospect of an early rescue was enough to key excitement to the unnerving pitch.

But as time passed and nothing happened, the inevitable reaction set in, and I think we all sank deeper into the pit of depression for the sudden awakening of hope. While Annette and Alicia and Beatrice Van Tromp were clearing away the remains of the belated meal, Grey drew me aside.

"You've kept your head better than any of us, Preble," he began, "and there is a thing that ought to be threshed out before it gets any older. They are saying now that Bonteck is either crazy in his head, or else he is the greatest villain unhung."

"Who is saying it?" I demanded.

"I don't know where it started, but with Ingerson and the major and Barclay to reckon with, it wouldn't be very hard to trace it back to its source. The charge is that Van Dyck has been robbing the commissary—spiriting the provisions away a little at a time and hiding them out."

I knew that this was true, so far as the liquors were concerned, but I kept my mouth shut about that.

"What motive is assigned?" I asked.

"It is only hinted at, but the hint is gruesome enough, the Lord knows. They say we are coming to the end; to a time when there will be nothing left but a survival of the strongest. And they say, also, that if Bonteck isn't a bit off his head, he is cold-bloodedly fixing things so that he will be able to outlive the remainder of us."

I thrust an arm through Grey's and led him off up the beach in the direction of the bay of the Spaniards.

"You're not trying to tell me that you believe any such hideous rot as that, are you?" I exploded, after we had left the camp well to the rear.

"God knows, I don't want to believe it, Preble; I pointedly don't believe the villainy charge. But the other hint—that Bonteck may be losing his grip on himself: we've all noticed it; you must have noticed it. And it is scaring the women no end. It is bad enough to have Ingerson around, licking his lips and wolfing every drop of liquor he can get his hands on; to have Barclay whining, and Miss Gilmore showing her claws, and the major grabbing for a little more than his share when he thinks nobody is looking. I have been trying hard to keep Annette from seeing and hearing. She has a perfectly childish horror of crazy people, Preble, and I—and we——" he broke down and choked over the thing that he was afraid to say, and I tightened my grip on his arm.

"Brace up!" I broke out harshly. "We don't have to say die until we're dead! You've got to brace up for Annette's sake. If she sees you crumbling it'll be all up with her—you know that much. Past that, you kill off this idiotic blether about Van Dyck every time you hear it. It's rot—the wildest tommyrot! Bonteck has his load to carry, and it's a good bit heavier than yours—or than mine, for that matter. He isn't losing his mind, and he hasn't been raiding the commissary. Say those two things over to yourself and to Annette until they sound real to you!"

Grey pulled his arm free, and I could fancy him swallowing hard once or twice.

"I want to be a man, in—in your sense of the word, Preble," he blurted out. "I used to be, I think, before—before Annette came and snuggled down into the empty place in my heart and made me see that it was up to me to carry the full cup of her sweet life without spilling a drop of it. But now—now when I look into her eyes and see the awful thing lying at the back of them—the thing that she's trying every minute of the day to keep me from seeing——"

He got this far before he choked up again, and now I couldn't be savage with him—which was what he was most needing.

"I know," I said, with a far keener sympathy than he suspected, for I, too, was seeing things in a pair of slate-blue eyes—eyes that were braver than Annette Grey's. "But we mustn't let down, John; we can't let down, you and I. When the pinches come, it's the man's privilege to buck up and carry the double load. That is one of the things we were made for." Then I tried to turn him aside from the most intimate of the threatenings. "About this smoke trail that the children saw: could they really tell which way it was heading?"

He shook his head.

"I am afraid not. They didn't see the ship; only the smoke. It was just at dusk, you know, and they wouldn't have seen anything at all but for the sunset glow in the west. It was quite dark when they came running back to the camp, and they were both so excited they couldn't talk straight."

"But they did see a smoke?"

"I don't know. No doubt they thought they did. But we've all been straining our eyes and stirring up the little hope blazes until I think none of us can be really certain of anything any more. I guess there wasn't any ship."

"We needn't be too sure of that," I qualified. "There was a ship of some sort on the southern offing no longer ago than last Friday." And I told him what Conetta and I had seen.

"And you never told us!" he said reproachfully.

"It was only a disappointment, as it turned out, and sharing disappointments doesn't make them any lighter. But you may tell Annette, if you think it will help."

"It will help; I'll go back to camp and do it now. Are you coming along?"

At first I thought I would. Then the remembrance of what Grey had told me—about Van Dyck's newest trouble—came to oppress me, asking for solitude and some better chance of clarifying itself.

"I think I'll stay here and smoke a pipe," I said; and so we parted.

The pipe smoking had progressed no farther than the lighting of the match when I saw some one coming along the beach. I thought it was Grey returning to say something that he had forgotten to say, but when Billy Grisdale's dog came to sniff in friendly fashion at me, I knew that the approaching figure must be Billy.

"Jack Grey told me where I'd be likely to find you," said the infant, coming up to cast himself down upon the sand at my side. "Don't happen to have another pinch of tobacco in your inside pocket, do you?"

I had, and when his need was supplied he rolled a cigarette in a bit of brown paper saved from some of the provision wrappings and lighted it at the glowing dottel of my pipe.

"Tough old world, isn't it?" he mourned, stretching himself out luxuriously with his hands locked under his head. "Edie and I thought we were sittin' on top of it when we saw that smoke trail just after sunset, but it was only a false alarm."

"You are sure you saw a smoke?"

"Oh, yes; there was no doubt about that. We could see it as long as we could see anything. But I guess we just joshed ourselves into thinking that it was coming our way." He sat up to nurse his knees and was silent for a little time. When he began again it was to say: "You know these seas better than any of us; is there any chance at all that we'll ever be taken off?... Lie down, Tige, old boy, and take it easy. There's nothing to bite in these diggings—more's the pity."

I answered Billy's question cheerfully as a duty incumbent upon me, and I fancied he took the forced optimism for exactly what it was worth. While I was expatiating upon the law of lucky chances, the bull pup was refusing to lie down and take it easy; he was standing stiffly with his crooked forelegs braced and his cropped ears cocked as if at the approach of an enemy.

"What is the matter with the dog, Billy?" I asked, and as I spoke, we both thought we saw the answer in the lagoon at our feet. A triangular black fin split the mirror-like surface for a brief instant, and a twist of some huge under-sea body turned the darkling water into lambent phosphorescent flames. It was not the first shark we had seen, but they seldom penetrated this far into the lagoon.

"Ah!" said Billy, stroking down the rising hackles on the dog's back, "there's a quick way out of it for you, little doggie, when the clock strikes thirteen. One jump, and you'll never know what hurt you. You won't jump, eh? You're foolish, in your brain, old boy. It'll be much easier than starving to death."

"Still in the doldrums, Billy?" I asked.

"Who wouldn't be? But I didn't chase out here to swap glooms with you, Uncle Dick. I wanted to ask you if you believe in this wild tale of the Spaniards' buried treasure."

"I'll believe anything that will help to pass the time," I replied evasively.

"Huh!" he said; "that is what you might call the retort meaningless. Supposing there was a treasure, and supposing you should stumble across it: would it be yours?"

"Why not?"

"I didn't know. I was just asking for information. You wouldn't feel obliged to chop it up into eighteen separate pieces and pass it around—like a watermelon at a picnic?"

"Why should I?"

"Oh, just on general principles, I thought maybe; all for one and one for all, and that sort."

With the miraculous discovery of the day—and Madeleine's rights—fresh in mind, it seemed a moment in which to tread carefully.

"Finders are keepers, the world over, Billy," I said. "I am a poor man, and I should probably hog the treasure if I should find it."

"That's better," he returned. "We're all growing so desperately inhuman that a fellow can't tell where to draw the line any more. If I find the Spaniards' gold, you needn't expect me to whack up with you. I'm going to put my feet in the trough and keep 'em there. Come on, old doggie; let's go and hunt us a hole to burrow in. There's another day coming, or if there isn't, we shan't have anything more to worry about."

He got up to go back to the camp, whistling to the dog as he moved off. For the second time the bull pup braced himself, showing his teeth and growling a bit, and this time there was no disturbance in the lagoon to account for it. But Billy whistled again and the dog started to follow his master, looking back from time to time, as if he went reluctantly; and once more I wondered what he saw or heard or smelled.

As it fell out, the answer to this wondering query did not keep me waiting. Billy Grisdale's shadowy figure had barely disappeared in the down-shore distance when another and much more substantial one broke out of the jungle just behind me, and I got upon my feet to find Ingerson confronting me.

"What's all this talk about things being buried?" he demanded morosely.

"Listening, were you?" said I, taking small pains to keep the contempt out of my voice.

He threw himself down on the sand and sat with his arms resting on his knees and his hands locked together.

"I'm in hell, Preble," he muttered. Then he unclasped his hands and held one of them up. "Look at that."

Dark as it was I could see the upheld hand shaking like a leaf in the wind.

"What is the matter with you?" I asked.

"You know well enough; I'm over the edge. Van Dyck's killing me by inches. He wants to kill me."

"Liquor, you mean?"

His answer was a groan. "I haven't had one good drink in three days—not enough to make one good drink. It's got me, Preble. I didn't know. I've always had it when I wanted it. If you've got a heart in you, you'll show me where he's hiding the stuff. I'll go mad if you don't."

I wanted to tell him that it would be small loss to the rest of us if he should, but I didn't. As a person who is strictly the architect of his own misery, a drink maniac may command little commiseration, but his sufferings are none the less real, for all that. Sitting there on the sands, with the fires of the drunkard's Gehenna burning inside of him, Ingerson was a pitiable object. Still, remembering some of the brutal things that had been charged up to his account, and not less the cold-blooded bargain he was seeking to drive with Holly Barclay, I didn't waste much sympathy upon him.

"It is a good time in which to show that you are a human being, and not a beast, Ingerson," I said. "Thus far, you've been merely a clog on the wheels, and the day is coming, if, indeed, it isn't already here, when those of us who are men will have to remember that there are nine helpless women on this island whose wants must be supplied before ours are."

He looked up at me. "You mean that the food's going—or gone?"

"Yes."

He was silent for a moment, and then he laughed. It was the cracked laugh of a man on the brink.

"Eighteen mouths to fill, and nothing to fill 'em with. You've said it, Preble; I'm nothing but a dead weight in the boat—a bump on a log. I'll remove one of the hungry mouths," and before I had the slightest idea of what he meant, he sprang up and hurled himself into the lagoon.

Thinking that the plunge was only the mad impulse of a half-crazed drunkard denied, and hoping that a salt-water soaking would bring him to his senses, I made no move at first. But when I saw him deliberately wade out over his depth and strike out with strong swimming strokes for the reef over which the ground swell was breaking, I remembered the black fin Grisdale and I had seen and shouted a warning.

"Come back here, you fool!" I called. "There's a man-eater in there! Come back, I say!"

I don't suppose he heard me; if he did, he paid no attention. I confess, with decent shame, that I hesitated when it became evident that he meant to carry out his threat of effacing himself. His life was of little benefit, to himself or to others, and if he lived, it would only be to add the care of a madman to our other calamities. I have been glad a thousand times since that this was merely a passing thought. The real motivating impulse came from the sight of a V-shaped ripple racing diagonally across the lagoon to intercept the swimmer; a ripple plainly discernible on the starlit surface of the reef-bound inlet. It was the shark again.

What happened after that will remain a nightmare to me as long as memory serves. I was stripping my coat and kicking off my shoes when Van Dyck came bursting out of the wood behind me.

"Who is that out there?" he gasped.

"Ingerson—he's gone off his head!"

Without another word Van Dyck ran down to the shore and took the water in a clean dive. When he came up he was within arm's reach of the dipsomaniac. There was a fierce grapple and both men went under. My heart was in my mouth. I made sure the shark had taken one or the other of them. But the end was not yet. As I waded out armpit deep, splashing and making all the noise I could in the hope of scaring the great fish, two heads bobbed up a few yards away, and I saw that Bonteck had either choked or drowned the would-be suicide into submission and was swimming in with him.

A few quick strokes gave me my chance to help, and together we dragged Ingerson ashore. He was half-drowned and was otherwise little more than a bedraggled wreck of a man. While we were working over him, Van Dyck explained—briefly. Edith Van Tromp had told him that she had seen Ingerson creeping into the wood on all fours, with a knife in his hand, and he—Bonteck—had followed. All day he had been suspecting that Ingerson was on the edge of delirium.

"You'll have to give him some of the hair of the dog that bit him, or we'll have a frantic maniac in our midst," I said. "Is there any liquor left?"

"A little. Stay with him and I'll go and get it."

He was gone only a few minutes, and by the time he came back, Ingerson was able to sit up. We fed him brandy in small doses, and as the fiery stuff got in its work some degree of sanity returned. Apparently he knew quite well what he had tried to do, and was surlily regretful that the attempt had failed.

"You made a bonehead play, Van Dyck," he shivered. "I was trying to do a decent thing to wind up with, and you blocked it. You'd better have let me alone."

Van Dyck did not reply, and the drink maniac went on monotonously:

"I wanted to wind it up. Old John B.'s got me. I didn't believe it, but the last three days have shown me where I was heading in. As long as you can keep me half lit up ... but you can't do that forever."

"No," said Bonteck gravely; "this is the last bottle."

Ingerson's head had fallen forward upon his breast.

"One more—little nip, and then—perhaps—I—can—go—to—sleep," he mumbled; and at this we gave him the sleeping potion and in another half-minute he was dead to the world.

Hard-hearted as it may seem, we made short work of disposing of him. We were a long quarter of a mile from the camp, and, short of carrying him, there was no way to get him there. So we merely dragged his limp and sodden bulk up to a little open space under the trees and left it.

"I'm beginning to think he was more than half right about the bonehead play," said Van Dyck sourly as he carefully hid the last of the brandy bottles. "It is only a question of a little time—and his swigging of the last thimbleful of the stuff—when we'll have to hog-tie him in self-defense. Let's do a sentry-go around to the far end of things. We may as well dry out tramping as any other way."

And it was not until he said this that I realized that we, too, were as sodden as the limp figure we had hauled up under the palms.