with a curious series of entries
The next ten or twelve pages were filled with a curious series of entries. There was a date at one end of the line and at the other a sum of money, as in common account-books; but instead of explanatory writing, only a varying number of crosses between the two. On the 12th of June, 1745, for instance, a sum of seventy pounds had plainly become due to someone, and there was nothing but six crosses to explain the cause. In a few cases, to be sure, the name of a place would be added, as `Offe Caraccas;’ or a mere entry of latitude and longitude, as `62 degrees 17′ 20″, 19 degrees 2′ 40″.’
The record lasted over nearly twenty years, the amount of the separate entries growing larger as time went on, and at the end a grand total had been made out after five or six wrong additions, and these words appended, `Bones, his pile.’
`I can’t make head or tail of this,’ said Dr Livesey.
`The thing is as clear as noonday,’ cried the squire. `This is the black-hearted hound’s account-book. These crosses stand for the names of ships or towns that they sank or plundered. The sums are the scoundrel’s share, and where he feared an ambiguity, you see he added something clearer. “Offe Caraccas,” now; you see, here was some unhappy vessel boarded off that coast. God help the poor souls that manned her – coral long ago.’
`Right!’ said the doctor. `See what it is to be a traveller. Right! And the amounts increase, you see, as he rose in rank.’
There was little else in the volume but a few bearings of places noted in the blank leaves towards the end, and a table for reducing French, English, and Spanish moneys to a common value.
`Thrifty man!’ cried the doctor. `He wasn’t the one to be cheated.’
`And now,’ said the squire, `for the other.’
The paper had been sealed in several places with a thimble by way of seal; the very thimble, perhaps, that I had found in the captain’s pocket. The doctor opened the seals with great care, and there fell out the map of an island, with latitude and longitude, soundings, names of hills, and bays and inlets, and every particular that would be needed to bring a ship to a safe anchorage upon its shores. It was about nine miles long and five across, shaped, you might say, like a fat drag’ standing up, and had two fine land – locked harbours, and hill in the centre part marked `The Spy-glass.’ There we several additions of a later date; but, above all, three cross of red ink – two on the north part of the island, one in the south- west, and, beside this last, in the same red ink, and a small, neat hand, very different from the captain’s tottery characters, these words: – `Bulk of treasure here.’
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