The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Wrecker by Stevenson & Osbourne: handsome chest of camphor-wood bound with brass, such as
Chinamen and sailors love, and indeed all of mankind that
plies in the Pacific. From its outside view I could thus make no
deduction; and, strange to say, the interior was concealed. All
the other chests, as I have said already, we had found gaping
open, and their contents scattered abroad; the same remark we
found to apply afterwards in the quarters of the seamen; only
this camphor-wood chest, a singular exception, was both closed
and locked.
I took an axe to it, readily forced the paltry Chinese fastening,
and, like a Custom-House officer, plunged my hands among
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