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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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search a year.” “Very well,” said the doctor. “Now, then, if Jim is agreeable, we’ll open the packet”; and he laid it before him on the table. The bundle was sewn together, and the doctor had to get out his instrument case and cut the stitches with his medical scissors. It contained two things--a book and a sealed paper. “First of all we’ll try the book,” observed the doctor. The squire and I were both peering over his shoulder as he opened it, for Dr. Livesey had kindly motioned me to come round from the side-table, where I had been eating, to enjoy the sport of the search. On the first page there were only some scraps of writing, such as a man with a pen in his hand might make for idleness or practice. One was the same as the tattoo mark, “Billy Bones his fancy”; then there was “Mr. W. Bones, mate,” “No more rum,” “Off Palm Key he got itt,” and some other snatches, mostly single words and unintelligible. I could not help wondering who it was that had “got itt,” and what “itt” was that he got. A knife in his back as like as not. “Not much instruction there,” said Dr. Livesey as he passed on. The next ten or twelve pages were filled with a curious series of entries. There was a date at one end of the line and at the other a sum of money, as in common account-books, but instead of explanatory writing, only a varying number of crosses between the two. On the 12th of June, 1745, for instance, a sum of seventy pounds had plainly become due to someone, and there was nothing but six crosses to explain the cause. In a few cases, to be sure, the name of a place would be added, as “Offe Caraccas,” or a mere entry of latitude and longitude, as “62o 17’ 20”, 19o 2’ 40”.” The record lasted over nearly twenty years, the amount of the |
