"Here!" he said, and extended it to Selby. It was a printed form, discoloured with age, printed in old-fashioned type, and appeared to relate to details of prison routine and the number of prisoners victualled. Selby turned it over: on the back, drawn in ink that was now faded and rusty, was a clumsy arrow showing the points of the compass; beneath that a number of oblong figures arranged haphazard and enclosed by a line. One of the figures was marked with a cross.
"That's a cemetery," said the old man; "cemetery at a place called Port des Reines." He lay silent for a while, as if trying to arrange his scattered ideas; presently the weak voice started again.
"There's a prison at Trinidad, and my father was a warder there ... long time ago: time the old _Calypso_ was out on the station...." He talked slowly, with long pauses. "They was sent to catch a murderer who was hidin' among the islands--a half-breed: pirate he must ha' been ... murderer an' I don't know what not.... They caught him an' they brought him to Trinidad where my father was warder in the prison ... when I was little...." The old man broke off into disconnected, rambling whispers, and the shadows began gathering in the corners of the room. A thrush in the orchard outside sang a few long, sweet notes of its Angelus and was silent. Selby waited with his chin resting in his hand. The old man suddenly turned his head: "She ain't comin'----? She an' her fussin'...? I've got something important----"
"No, no," said Selby soothingly, "there's no one here but me. And you wanted to tell me about your father----"
"Warder in the prison at Trinidad," said the old man, "my father was, an' a kind-hearted man. There was a prisoner there, a pirate an' murderer he was, what the _Calypso_ caught ... an' father was kind to him before he was hanged ... I can't say what he did, but bein' kind-hearted naturally, it might have been anything ... not takin' into account of him being a pirate an' murderer. Jewels he had, an' rings an' such things hidden away somewhere; an' before he was hanged he told my father where they was buried, 'cos father was kind to him before he was hanged.... Port des Reines cemetery ... in the grave what's marked on that chart, he'd buried the whole lot. Seventy thousand pounds, he said...."