One of the negroes, working amidst the bushes, gave a cry, stooped, picked up something, and held it aloft. It was a skull.

“Ma foi!” said Sagesse, taking the arm of Gaspard and leading him towards the spot where the negro stood with the skull still raised in air. “Skeleton Island, as you once called this place, does not seem amiss as a name.”

Gaspard, pale to the lips, did not answer. He advanced alongside of Sagesse; he dared not draw back or shew emotion, as the whole of the landing party were trooping around to see what was amidst the bushes. Besides, he had killed Yves accidentally, so he told himself. Why should he falter at the sight of his bones?

But no logic could veil the horror of the thing. To see before you the skull of a man to whom you have talked, with whom you have worked side by side, with whom you have jested, and to know that the skull is your handiwork, your terrible chef-d’oeuvre, that but for you it would be clothed in flesh and filled with soul; that is the most tragic sight on which the gaze of man can fall.

“Mon Dieu!” said Sagesse, taking the thing from the hands of the negro. “This must then be the skull of the man who landed here with you and whom you left dead—what was his name, do you say?”

“Yves.”

237 “Ah, oui, Yves—” He stirred amidst the bushes with his foot. “And here are Monsieur Yves’ bones. He has soon become a skeleton, Monsieur Yves, but I have seen a man become a skeleton in the tropics in a week. The crabs, the larvae, the sun, all help in the work.” He stooped down and picked up a tobacco-box and a seaman’s belt with knife attached.

“Why, what is this? He had not drawn his knife!”

“He had drawn it,” said Gaspard, “but I picked it up and put it back in its sheath.”

The onlookers knew nothing of the tragedy under these words, or of the veiled accusation in the words of Sagesse; but they noticed that Gaspard was shivering like a man with ague.

“Well,” said Sagesse, “we will keep the belt and knife as mementoes of Monsieur Yves. Here, Jules, take them back to the ship with you when you go, and get a spade and dig a hole in the sand for these bones.”

He turned away, and the men resumed the work of unlading and storing the provisions and gear. By eight bells, noon, everything was completed; the quarterboat was dragged up high on the beach and ready for carting across the islet, and the hands knocked off for dinner. Sagesse and Gaspard ate apart from the others, under the shade of a sail that had been especially rigged for them and would form their tent at night. The white sand near the bushes shewed traces of having been turned over with a spade where the bones of Yves had been buried. Gaspard saw the place, but he did not mind—the treasure-fever had cast everything else to a distance; things seemed strange that were familiar; he had forgotten Sagesse’s disheartening words; his imag............