'Twas so short, I could read it at once: The days of our age are threescore years and ten; And though men be so strong that they come To fourscore years, yet is their strength then But labour and sorrow, so soon passeth it Away, and we are gone.
-- Psalm 90, 21 And as for me, my feet are almost gone; My treadings are wellnigh slipped.
-- 73, 6 But let not the waterflood drown me; neither let The deep swallow me up.
-- 69, 11 So, going through the vale of misery, I shall Use it for a well, till the pools are filled With water.
-- 84, 14 For thou hast made the North and the South: Tabor and Hermon shall rejoice in thy name.
-- 89, 6 So here was an end to great hopes, and I was after all to leave the vault no richer than I had entered it.

For look at it as I might, I could not see that these verses could ever lead to any diamond; and though I might otherwise have thought of ciphers or secret writing, yet, remembering what Mr.Glennie had said, that Blackbeard after his wicked life desired to make a good end, and sent for a parson to confess him, I guessed that such pious words had been hung round his neck as a charm to keep the spirits of evil away from his tomb.

I was disappointed enough, but before I left picked up the beard from the floor, though it sent a shiver through me to touch it, and put it back in its place on the dead man's breast.

I restored also such pieces of the coffin as I could get at, but could not make much of it; so left things as they were, trusting that those who came there next would think the wood had fallen to pieces by natural decay.

But the locket I kept, and hung about my neck under my shirt; both as being a curious thing in itself, and because I thought that if the good words inside it were strong enough to keep off bad spirits from Blackbeard, they would be also strong enough to keep Blackbeard from me.
When this was done the candle had burnt so low, that I could no longer hold it in my fingers, and was forced to stick it on a piece of the broken wood, and so carry it before me.