Cursed be the treasure

Looking right back to the days of my childhood, the first beginnings of things are blurred and confused, but I must disentangle them as well as I may if I am to tell my story cl...

What I expected to see I hardly know. I think probably I expected nothing visible, but merely that the hut would suddenly fill with wailings and demoniac cries, for the Mad Capt...

I suppose it's natural enough that the events of that night should stand out in my memory with vivid distinctness, while the six or seven years that followed have only left a ge...

If I hadn't been so eager I should have paused long before I did to reflect that I should be most unlikely to find my father at the inn if Dirk and his fellows were in the neigh...

My father always tried to meet a surprise with calm acceptance as though it was a thing which he had been anticipating. This was part of his "technique of philosophy", as he ter...

I sprang out of bed feeling very much ashamed of myself for my stupid terror of the night. Daylight makes our fears seem so foolish that we wonder how we could ever have been af...

We must have been wandering for a week or more, bearing northwards all the while, before we halted for a few days at a village inn: the _Snow Man_ I believe it was called. It se...

Running downstairs I was aware of an unaccustomed music in the house. A high, vibrating voice was trilling and quavering to some twanging instrument; and breaking into the kitch...

We must have lain low for a long while, or the summer must have broken very suddenly, for when one late afternoon we set out for our new home, my father telling me we should be...

Christmas was soon upon us; and waking in the morning I felt eagerly in my stocking, and was delighted beyond measure to find a bright new pistol, a long-coveted treasure. I was...

When my father lit the lamp for the second time there was more than one white face; for the story had been told with such a creepy emphasis that we had been lifted away from fam...

I soon found that life had changed for me. I was under an authority now, rigorous and uncompromising, which didn't seem to understand in the least the natural instincts for free...

Accordingly, when I set out again, well provided with a coil of rope concealed around me under my cloak, a stout steel hook for grappling, a lantern, and my pistol, I didn't inv...

I was too frightened even to turn about, and stood petrified to the spot. I felt I must have been seen and followed, and something of the fear a trapped spy must experience laid...

Girls were creatures outside my circle of experience. Indeed, so little did I know of them that I wasn't even bashful at this sudden apparition. I returned stare for stare, taki...

For a few days I was so happy that I believe I had even forgotten my father. The Captain was immensely amused at the decided way in which I had established myself as one of the...

I was left alone with Jenny, and found her glaring at me white with anger. I was startled and fell back from her, for it seemed for a moment as though her father's madness had d...

I don't wish to dwell on the suffering and despair of the next few days. The mere physical distress was bad enough, but looking back I hardly seem to remember the daily flogging...

I opened the window and looked out into the night, glad to see the sky veiled in thick clouds which didn't let a single star through. For the darkness would befriend me better t...

It was still dark when I awoke to feel rough hands about me, and the tightening grip of ropes around my arms and legs. I shouted, and a huge hand was promptly clapped across my...

For a while I sat there in a delicious waking dream. The shadows of the past fell away from me, and the future held no visible menace. Indeed I didn't think of the future. The p...

My memory is too blurred for me to write in any kind of consistent sequence of what followed. I know it was Worthing who found me lying stunned by the jetty and brought me back...

For a few days my troubles were forgotten, for immediately on my return to the _Dolphin_ Dirk marched me away to the shore. At Ebb-Tide Pool we found his boat in waiting, and it...

It was in London itself where I next set foot on land. Dirk marched me away to a riverside lodging where he seemed well known, and handing me some money gave me my freedom for t...

My affairs were hardly settled before I was whirled away to sea again. One day when I reached my lodging a minute before the stroke of six, puffing, for I had been running so as...

At first I thought I was merely the victim of some common cutthroats who were after my money. It wasn't a pleasing thought. I felt indignant rather than afraid; for after the ad...

As soon as we clambered on board, dripping from our swim, Dirk dismissed me below without a word except a rough good night. I didn't know how he had come to play the part he had...

It was still early in the summer when I stood at last before the Captain's house in London, with the knocker raised in my hand, but half fearing to strike from bashfulness; for...

To say that the news stunned me would merely be to use an empty conventional phrase. Not even the shock of my father's death had so dislocated my whole power of thought and asso...

The sight of the familiar scene where I had spent so many happy summers, and where I had received one desolating blow, seemed to clear and steady my mind. Sometimes I would reme...

My sudden interruption might have been fatal, for Dirk in his surprise loosened his hold, and his antagonist nearly slipped free, and stooping had his fingers within an inch of...

I saw a smile of greeting change into a grimace of stupefied dismay. My mind went back to the morning when in the kitchen just beneath us I had blurted out, "The smugglers!" I s...