CHAPTER X.
_In Which Tom and I Seriously Start in Treasure Hunting._ Tom and Sailor and I were now, to the best of our belief, alone on the island, and a lonesomer spot it would be hard to imagine, or one touched at certain hours with a fairer beauty--a beauty wraith-like and, like a sea-shell, haunted with the marvel of the sea.

But we, alas!--or let me speak for myself--were sinful, misguided men, to whom the gleam and glitter of God's making spoke all too seldom, and whose hearts were given to the baser shining of such treasure as that of which I for one still dreamed--with an obstinacy all the more hardened by the opposition we had encountered, and by the menace of danger the enterprise now held beyond peradventure--a menace, indeed, to which Tobias's words had given the form of a precise challenge.

Perhaps but for that, remembering the count of so many dead men--men who had lost their lives in the prosecution of my probably vain desire--I would have given the whole thing up, and sailed the boat back to less-haunted regions, which Tom and I might easily have done, and as Tom, I could plainly see, would himself have preferred.
But Tobias's challenge made such a course impossible for any man worthy of the name, and I never gave the alternative a moment's consideration.
But I did give Tom his choice of staying or going--a choice made possible that day by a schooner sailing close in shore and easy to signal.

Yet Tom, while making no secret of his real feelings, would not hear of quitting.
"I sha'n't think a cent worse of you, Tom," I assured him.

"Indeed, I won't.