they had been on a Spanish treasure ship, transporting gold and silver bars from the Spanish settlements in Central America when the hurricane wrecked their ship. Captain Kidd said he had looked for the treasure but there was no sign of any, and so he thought they were telling falsehoods.”

“Then why did he draw a map—if that was what the map was about!” Cliff interrupted.

“The man he had saved—one of the survivors—gave him the map when he was injured by a sabre wound and was dying. He said the men had managed to swim ashore to some of the smaller Keys when the ship ran onto some needle-like coral and began to break up. But they got a couple of boats overside too, and when it was calmer, and the ship was breaking apart and falling away into the water, they got many chests of the treasure into the boats and rowed along into the keys and hid the chests on an island that was in the map.”

“I see,” said Mr. Neale. “Probably, by that time, some of the other members of the crew had gone back and found the chests.”

“Maybe,” Nicky said. “You see, when the ancestor was given the map, he took a passage on a ship to come and find the Jamaica governor, but his ship was besieged by pirates and he was taken by them—and it was years before he got off their ship and back to civilization—that’s a story by itself, but I can’t stop to tell it to you now. Anyhow, he got back, but he had no more taste for the sea and when he died he passed on his map and the story, but nobody else ever tried until my uncle got the paper. He made a trip down here and found out just what Sam told us—that the governor’s paper had been stolen. So, of course, he gave it up.”

“Now, what do you propose to do?” asked Clarence Neale.

“Mr. Gray thinks we ought to talk to Sam and offer to share with him fairly for the use of his part of the map. He’s on his way here, or ought to be. I left word with Ma’am Sib to tell him to come.”

“Perhaps he hasn’t returned to get the message,” Mr. Gray said.

“Or,” said Nicky, unable to resist a little malicious prod at Tom’s fears, “or maybe the ghost got him!”

Before Tom could make a reply they heard the patter of swift feet racing along the path to the house; a voice cried out, shrill and excited, “Help—masters—help! De ghost——!”

With a common impulse they all leaped to their feet. In their 

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