The canoe was now approaching the land. The bay opened out, and a gap in the white surf of the reef marked where the little river ran out to the sea; the thicker and   
deeper green of the virgin forest showed its course down the distant hill-slope. The forest here came close to the beach. Far beyond, dim and almost cloudlike in 
 
texture, rose the mountains, like suddenly frozen waves. The sea was still save for an almost imperceptible swell. The sky blazed.
The man with the carved paddle stopped. “It should be somewhere here,” he said. He shipped the paddle and held his arms out straight before him.
The other man had been in the fore part of the canoe, closely scrutinising the land. He had a sheet of yellow paper on his knee.
“Come and look at this, Evans,” he said.
Both men spoke in low tones, and their lips were hard and dry.
The man called Evans came swaying along the canoe until he could look over his companion’s shoulder.
492The paper had the appearance of a rough map. By much folding it was creased and worn to the pitch of separation, and the second man held the discoloured fragments 
 
together where they had parted. On it one could dimly make out, in almost obliterated pencil, the outline of the bay.
“Here,” said Evans, “is the reef and here is the gap.” He ran his thumb-nail over the chart.
“This curved and twisting line is the river—I could do with a drink now!—and this star is the place.”
“You see this dotted line,” said the man with the map; “it is a straight line, and runs from the opening of the reef to a clump of palm-trees. The star comes just 
 
where it cuts the river. We must mark the place as we go into the lagoon.”
“It’s queer,” said Evans, after a pause, “what these little marks down here are for. It looks like the plan of a house or something; but what all these little 
 
dashes, pointing this way and that, may mean I can’t get a notion. And what’s the writing?”
“Chinese,” said the man with the map.
“Of course! He was a Chinee,” said Evans.
“They all were,” said the man with the map.
They both sat for some minutes staring at the land, while the canoe drifted slowly. Then Evans looked towards the paddle.
“Your turn with the paddle now, Hooker,” said he.
493And his companion quietly folded up his map, put it in his pocket, passed Evans carefully, and began to paddle. His movements were languid, like those of a man 
 
whose strength was nearly exhausted.
Evans sat with his eyes half closed, watching the frothy breakwater of the coral creep nearer and nearer. The sky was like a furnace now, for the sun was near the 
 
zenith. Though they were so near the Treasure he did not feel the exaltation he had anticipated. The intense excitement of the struggle for the plan, and the long 
 
night voyage from the mainland in the unprovisioned canoe had, to use his own expression, “taken it out of him.” He tried to arouse himself by directing his mind to 
 
the ingots the Chinamen had spoken of, but it would not rest there; it came back headlong to the thought of sweet water rippling in the river, and to the almost 
 
unendurable dryness of his lips and throat. The rhythmic wash of the sea upon the reef was becoming audible now, and it had a pleasant sound in his ears; the water 
 
washed along the side of the canoe, and the paddle dripped between each stroke. Presently he began to doze.
He was still dimly conscious of the island, but a queer dream texture interwove with his sensations. Once again it was the night when he and Hooker had hit upon the 
 
Chinamen’s secret; he saw the moonlit trees, the little fire burning, and 494the black figures of the three Chinamen—silvered on one side by moonlight, and on the 
 
other glowing from the firelight—and heard them talking together in pigeon-English—for they came from different provinces. Hooker had caught the drift of their talk 
 
first, and had motioned to him to listen. Fragments of the conversation were inaudible and fragments incomprehensible. A Spanish galleon from the Philippines 
 
hopelessly aground, and its treasure buried against the day of return, lay in the background of the story; a shipwrecked crew thinned by disease, a quarrel or so, and 
 
the needs of discipline, and at last taking to their boats never to be heard of again. Then Chang-hi, only a year since, wandering ashore, had happened upon the ingots 
 
hidden for two hundred years, had deserted his junk, and reburied them with infinite toil, single-handed but very safe. He laid great stress on the safety—it was a 
 
secret of his. Now he wanted help to return and exhume them. Presently the little map fluttered and the voices sank. A fine story for two stranded British wastrels to 
 
hear! Evans’ dream shifted to the moment when he had Chang-hi’s pigtail in his hand. The life of a Chinaman is scarcely sacred like a European’s. The cunning little 
 
face of Chang-hi, first keen and furious like a startled snake, and then fearful, treacherous, and pitiful, became overwhelmingly prominent in the dream. At the end 
 
Chang-hi had grinned, a most incomprehensible and startling 495grin. Abruptly things became very unpleasant, as they will do at times in dreams. Chang-hi gibbered and 
 
threatened him. He saw in his dream heaps and heaps of gold, and Chang-hi intervening and struggling to hold him back from it. He took Chang-hi by the pigtail—how big 
 
the yellow brute was, and how he struggled and grinned! He kept growing bigger, too. Then the bright heaps of gold turned to a roaring furnace, and a vast devil, 
 
surprisingly like Chang-hi, but with a huge black tail, began to feed him with coals. They burnt his mouth horribly. Another devil was shouting his name: “Evans, 
 
Evans, you sleepy fool!”—or was it Hooker?
He woke up. They were in the mouth of the lagoon.
“There are the three palm-trees. It must be in a line with that clump of bushes,” said his companion. “Mark that. If we go to those bushes and then strike into the 
 
bush in a straight line from here, we shall come to it when we come to the stream.”
They could see now where the mouth of the stream opened out. At the sight of it Evans revived. “Hurry up, man,” he said, “or, by heaven, I shall have to drink sea-
 
water!” He gnawed his hand and stared at the gleam of silver among the rocks and green tangle.
Presently he turned almost fiercely upon Hooker. “Give me the paddle,” he said.
496So they reached the river mouth. A little way up Hooker took some water in the hollow of his hand, tasted it, and spat it out. A little further he tried again. 
 
“This will do,” he said, and they began drinking eagerly.
“Curse this!” said Evans, suddenly. “It’s too slow.” And, leaning dangerously over the fore part of the canoe, he began to suck up the water with his lips.
Presently they made an end of drinking, and, running the canoe into a little creek, were about to land among the thick growth that overhung the water.
“We shall have to scramble through this to the beach to find our bushes and get the line to the place,” said Evans.
“We had better paddle round,” said Hooker.
So they pushed out again into the river and paddled back down it to the sea, and along the shore to the place where the clump of bushes grew. Here they landed, pulled 
 
the light canoe far up the beach, and then went up towards the edge of the jungle until they could see the opening of the reef and the bushes in a straight line. Evans 
 
had taken a native implement out of the canoe. It was L-shaped, and the transverse piece was armed with polished stone. Hooker carried the paddle. “It is straight now 
 
in this direction,” said he; “we must push through this till we strike the stream. Then we must prospect.”
497They pushed through a close tangle of reeds, broad fronds, and young trees, and at first it was toilsome going; but very speedily the trees became larger and the 
 
ground beneath them opened out. The blaze of the sunlight was replaced by insensible degrees by cool shadow. The trees became at last vast pillars that rose up to a 
 
canopy of greenery far overhead. Dim white flowers hung from their stems, and ropy creepers swung from tree to tree. The shadow deepened. On the ground, blotched fungi 
 
and a red-brown incrustation became frequent.
Evans shivered. “It seems almost cold here after the blaze outside.”
“I hope we are k............