Captain Dance and I rode hard until we drew up before Dr. Livesey's door.
The house was dark, but I jumped down and knocked anyway.
A maid opened the door.
"Is Dr. Livesey home?" I asked.
"No, he's dining at Squire Trelawney's house," she said.
"So much the better," said the captain.
"We'll find them both at one location."
The distance was short, so I ran alongside the horse up the moonlit avenue to the gleaming white buildings and grand old gardens.
Here, Captain Dance dismounted, and the squire's servant led us into the library.
Squire Trelawney and Dr. Livesey sat on either side of a bright fire, smoking their pipes.
I'd never seen the squire up close before.
Over six feet tall, with broad shoulders, he had a friendly face, reddened and lined from his long travels.
The natural movement of his very black eyebrows gave him a look of a quick, but not a bad, temper.
"Come in," he said, sounding very stately and condescending.
"Good evening, Dance," the doctor said with a nod.
"And good evening to you, Jim. What brings you here?"
Captain Dance told his story, and the two gentlemen leaned forward, forgetting to smoke in their surprise and interest.
Squire Trelawney rose and started to pace, and the doctor, as if to hear better, took off his powdered wig and sat there,
looking odd with his close-cropped black hair.
When they heard how my mother had bravely gone back to the inn, Dr. Livesey slapped his thigh and Trelawney cried, "Bravo!"
"And that's the whole story," Captain Dance said at last.
"Trampling that wicked scoundrel was an act of virtue," the squire said, "like stamping on a cockroach."
"Do you have what they were after, Jim?" the doctor asked.
"Here it is, sir." I gave him the bundle of papers.
The doctor looked excited, as if his fingers were itching to open the bundle right away, but he put it quietly in his coat pocket instead.
"Thank you again, Captain Dance," the squire said.
"Jim can sleep here tonight. Dance, you are dismissed."
The captain bowed and left the room, and I sat down at a side table to eat a pigeon pie a maid had brought me.
"Have you heard of this Flint?" the doctor asked the squire.
"Have I heard of him!" the squire cried.
"Flint was the most bloodthirsty pirate that ever sailed!"
"Suppose I have here in my coat pocket some clue as to where Flint buried his treasure," said the doctor.
"How much treasure do you think might be involved?"
"If we had a clue like that," Trelawney cried, "I'd hire a ship to take us there immediately, and I'd have that treasure in a year."
The doctor took out the papers and said, "If Jim agrees, let's open this."
I nodded and got up from the side table as the doctor opened the bundle.
Inside was a book and a sealed paper.
"First, let's inspect the book," the doctor said.
The squire and I peered over the doctor's shoulder, and we saw that the first ten pages were filled with a curious series of entries.
At one end of each line was a date, and at the other end, a sum of money.
Between the two were a varying number of crosses.
"I don't understand it," Dr. Livesey said.
"It's an account book," Trelawney cried.
"The crosses stand for ships or towns that they sank or plundered, and the sums are the scoundrel's share.
God help the poor souls who crossed paths with Flint!"
"And look!" the doctor said. "The amounts increase as the years pass."
"As he rose in the ranks of pirates, his share got bigger," explained Trelawney.
Then the squire noticed something else in the book.
"Look, Flint even had a table to figure out the different values of foreign coins."
"No one was going to cheat him!" laughed the doctor.
"And now," Trelawney said, "for the other item."
The doctor carefully opened the sealed paper, and a map of an island fell out, with latitude and longitude, and every inlet, hill, and bay marked—
everything that would be needed to safely anchor a ship upon its shores.
Nine miles long and five across, the island had two landlocked harbors and a hill marked "The Spyglass."
Below a red cross, in small, neat handwriting, "Bulk of treasure here" was written, and on the back of the map, these notes:
Tall tree, Spyglass shoulder bearing N. of N.N.E.
Skeleton Island E.S.E. and by E.
Ten feet.
The bar silver is in the north cache; by the east hill,
ten fathoms south of black crag with a face on it.
The arms are in the sand hill, N. point of north inlet cape, bearing E. and a quarter N.
J.F.
"It's incomprehensible to me," I said as the squire and Dr. Livesey laughed.
"I'll start for Bristol tomorrow," Trelawney said.
"We'll have the best ship and crew in England, and Hawkins will be our cabin boy.
Livesey will be ship's doctor, I'll be the admiral, and we'll take my men Tom Redruth, Richard Joyce, and John Hunter.
We'll have no trouble finding the spot, and we'll have plenty of money to enjoy forever after."
"I'll go," the doctor said, "and Jim will be a credit to the undertaking, but there's only one man I'm afraid of."
"Who's that?" Trelawney cried. "Name him, sir!"
"You," the doctor said. "You can't hold your tongue.
We're not the only men who want that money.
The pirates who attacked the inn tonight are bold and desperate men, and they're not far off.
We must not breathe a word of what we've found."
"I'll be as silent as the grave," Trelawney vowed.