“That we shall soon know,” replied the doctor. “But you are so confoundedly hotheaded and exclamatory that I cannot get a word in. What I want to know is this: Supposing that I have here in my pocket some clue to where Flint buried his treasure, will that treasure amount to much?”
“Amount, sir!” cried the squire. “It will amount to this: If we have the clue you talk about, I’ll fit out a ship in Bristol dock, and take you and Hawkins here along, and I’ll have that treasure if I search a year.”
“Very well,” said the doctor. “Now, then, if Jim is agreeable, we’ll open the packet,” and he laid it before him on the table.
The bundle was sewn together, and the doctor had to get out his instrument case and cut the stitches with his medical scissors. It contained two things—a book and a sealed paper.
“First of all we’ll try the book,” observed the doctor.
The squire and I were both peering over his shoulder as he opened it, for Doctor Livesey had kindly motioned me to come round from the side-table, where I had been eating, to enjoy the sport of the search.
On the first page there were only some scraps of writing, such as a man with a pen in his hand might make for idleness or practice. One was the same as the tattoo mark, “Billy Bones his fancy”; then there was “ Mr. W. Bones, mate,” “No more rum,” “Off Palm Key he got itt,” and some other snatches, mostly single words and unintelligible.
I could not help wondering who it was that had “got itt,” and what “itt” was that he got. A knife in his back as like as not.
“Not much instruction there,” said Doctor Livesey, as he passed on.
The next ten or twelve pages were filled with a curious series of entries. There was a date at one end of the line and at the other a sum of money,