In January a pale stranger with two fingers missing came looking for Bill, and when the captain saw him he turned white. They fought in the parlour with cutlasses, the stranger ran away wounded, and the captain fell down in a fit. The doctor said one more glass of rum would kill him. That evening the captain told me his secret: the old crew wanted his sea-chest, and Flint's men would send him the black spot. Three days later a blind man tapped up the road with a stick, took the captain's hand, and put something into it. When he had gone the captain looked at the paper, cried out, and fell on his face on the floor. He was dead of apoplexy, and my father had died the week before, so my mother and I were alone in the house with a dead pirate and a chest we dared not open.