The Treasure in the Forest

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.

The 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.

And 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, for