Valentine Williams

“ Daylight was coming now with great strides. The morning mists clung sluggishly about the lower part of the steep incline leading up from the hollow where the camp was situated. As we topped the path, we came into view of the shores of a little cove and glimpsed a long, grey motor-launch that lay at anchor. This, as Marjorie told me afterwards, was Sturt Bay, which, I remembered, the “Sailing Directions” had mentioned as the only practicable landing-place other than Horseshoe Bay on the island. In that deep hollow the sheds must have been invisible both from the land and the sea side. ”

“ Suddenly, from a clump of rich green ferns, not a pace away from me, a man's head arose. I did not require to see the heavily bruised features to recognize Custrin. If ever the intent to kill peered out of a man's face, it did from the quick, black eyes of the doctor of the Naomi. ”

“ I'm ... afraid of being left behind...”
Hand in hand, like the Babes in the Wood, we set off again through the forest, pelting headlong down the track. Unmolested we reached the lip of the clearing and dropped down into the hollow where the grave lay bathed in the lemon-coloured light of the new day. In front of us towered the rugged mass of rock for which we were making, and my eye sought on the topmost terrace that pillar of dressed stone which held, as I firmly hoped, the secret of the treasure. ”