Chapter Eleven.
How they emptied the strong rooms of the twelve plate ships.
The first thing done aboard the Nonsuch, as soon as she and the other ships had come to an anchor, was to ascertain the amount of loss and damage attendant upon this fresh display of Spanish treachery, and this proved, upon examination, to be very much less than might reasonably have been expected. The most serious were the casualties resulting from musketry fire, but even these were by no means considerable, the loss amounting only to three killed and seven wounded—two of the latter, however, being reported by Chichester as serious cases. The ship herself had escaped damage in a manner that was little short of miraculous, a few shots through her canvas and two in her hull covering the full extent of her injuries; but this was probably due to ignorance on the part of the artillerymen in the batteries, who, unused to distinguishing one ship from another, had failed to identify the Nonsuch in the uncertain starlight, and had expended most of their ammunition upon their friends, with disastrous results to the latter, as subsequently appeared.
Meanwhile, the hostages, startled out of a light and troubled sleep upon the first alarm that the plate ships were attempting to escape, had sat huddled together in the great state cabin throughout the succeeding hour and a half, quaking at every command which reached their ears from the deck above, quaking still more when the firing began, roundly denouncing and execrating the criminal folly of those, whoever they might be, who were responsible for this fresh breach of faith, and anxiously debating the question as to whether the young English Captain would hang the whole of them in reprisal, or whether he would spare a certain number, and if so, how many, and who. The alcalde had not returned to the ship after leaving her in company with the Captain and his armed guard on the previous day, having parted with George outside the Government building when the Englishmen set out to visit the Inquisition, which circumstance had been duly communicated to the hostages by Saint Leger upon his return; and some of his fellow townsmen now manifested a disposition to lay the blame for the affair upon his shoulders; the majority, however, were of the contrary opinion, and it was this opinion upon which they grounded the hope which ultimately arose that some of them at least might be spared. For, they argued, if he were not guilty, he would take immediate steps to discover who was, and having found the guilty party, would cause his prompt arrest, after which they might hope for his return to the ship to surrender the guilty one. But everything was most horribly uncertain; and the more they debated the matter the worse complexion did it assume; so that by the time that the ship was back at the anchorage and the anchor let go, they were all in a most pitiable state of distress and fright. And this state was in nowise relieved when, as day was on the point of breaking, George entered the cabin, and they noted the stern, set expression of his features.
He gazed slowly round at the quaking company for some moments in silence, and then said:
“Well, señores, you were yesterday convinced of the ability of your countrymen to keep faith with an honourable enemy, or I suppose you would not have consented to guarantee their fidelity with your lives. What think you of them now?”
“Ah, noble señor,” exclaimed one of them—a certain Don Martin de Sylva—“be merciful, I pray you, and do not hastily wreak upon us, who are innocent, the vengeance so justly provoked by the act of another. This is not the treachery of a whole community, señor, believe me, but is the deed of some mad zealot—and, by all the Saints! I believe I can name him, too,” he suddenly broke out, wheeling eagerly round upon his fellow hostages and excitedly addressing them. “What say you, señores; does not the whole complexion of this unforgivable outrage point your suspicions almost irresistibly toward one particular man? Are we to believe that our worthy alcalde is capable of imperilling the lives of his fellow townsmen, as ours have been imperilled this night, by an act of such base, wanton betrayal as all this amounts to? I say no, most emphatically; for, apart from every other consideration, what would he gain by it? No; this is the deed of a man anxious to curry favour at any cost with the Viceroy—who, we know, hates the English, and justly fears them, too, after his atrocious act of last year; and what man so anxious to win favour in that direction as—I say it with deliberation, señores—Don Manuel Rebiera, the acting Commandant of the military forces? That, in my humble opinion, noble Capitan, is the man whom we have to thank for this latest outrage; and I think—nay, I hope—that—Heavens! I wonder whether the alcalde will have the courage—or, rather, the power—to arrest him, Don Manuel having the soldiery at his back.”
“I had an interview with Don Manuel Rebiera, yesterday,” remarked George; “and I feel bound to admit that I observed a certain something in his manner which to some extent justifies your suspicion of him. But whoever may be the person responsible for last night’s—or, rather, this morning’s—proceedings, I most fervently hope, for your sakes, señores, that he will be speedily found and delivered into my hands; for I tell you that somebody will have to pay very dearly indeed for them. I shall do nothing rashly or hastily, señores—you may reassure yourselves upon that point—but an act of basest, foulest treachery has been perpetrated, and retribution must follow. If you can in any way, whether by suggestion or otherwise, assist me to lay my hands upon the culprit, or culprits, I strongly advise you to do so, for your own sakes; for, failing the actual guilty parties, you, señores, are the persons who will have to pay the penalty.” And, so saying, George passed on and into his own cabin, leaving the hostages almost as profoundly perturbed as before.
Meanwhile, Basset, acting under Saint Leger’s instructions, had caused a boat to be lowered and manned by a strong crew, fully armed, and in her had proceeded to board the plate ships, one after the other, with the view of ascertaining who had been in command during the futile effort to take them to sea, also to arrest those persons, whoever they might be, and bring them aboard the Nonsuch. This task occupied fully two hours; so that it was drawing well on toward breakfast time when at length the boat returned, bringing with her seven men—the remainder having somehow contrived to effect their escape to the shore—who admitted having been in temporary command of the ships during the night. These men George questioned immediately upon their arrival; when the suspicion given expression to by one of the hostages an hour or two earlier, was fully confirmed; the prisoners asserting that their written orders—which they produced in confirmation of their story—had been given them on the previous afternoon by Don Manuel Rebiera, the acting Military Commandant of the town and the representative of the Spanish Government; those orders being to get the ships under way at a certain hour, with the twofold object of escaping to sea, if possible, and of enticing the English ship to follow them into the open, where she would be exposed to the fire of the batteries, when it was hoped that she would be destroyed, and the remnant of her crew captured. Upon receiving this information George at once sat down and wrote a letter to the alcalde, informing him of what had transpired, and demanding the immediate arrest and surrender of the acting Commandant, the penalty for non-compliance with the command before noon, being the bombardment and sack of the town. This letter he entrusted to one of the hostages—chosen by lot—who forthwith left the ship in a shore boat which had been called alongside, promising that he would leave no stone unturned to secure submission to the English Captain’s demands. Then all hands went to breakfast.
Meanwhile, with the strengthening of daylight it was discovered that the Nonsuch, upon returning to the roadstead after her pursuit of the plate ships, had brought up so close to the spot where she had slipped her buoyed anchor, that the cable could be recovered by the simple process of running out a warp to it; and this was therefore the first job undertaken when breakfast was over, the second anchor being at the same time weighed and secured; after which there was nothing to be done but to wait until noon—or the arrival of a reply from the alcalde.
It was, however, not necessary to wait for noon; for about half-past ten o’clock a boat was seen approaching the Nonsuch from the shore; and when she presently drew near enough to permit recognition of the faces of those in her it was seen that the alcalde was her solitary passenger; and very shortly afterwards she ranged up alongside the English ship, and Don Juan Alvarez climbed the side ladder in an evident state of profound trepidation. He brought momentous news, to the effect that it had indeed been Don Manuel Rebiera who had taken upon himself to arrange the whole affair of the preceding night; and that when at daylight he had discovered how completely his scheme for the destruction of the English ship had failed—and had also realised, it is to be presumed, all that his failure involved, the terrible retribution that the English would be certain to exact, and the whole responsibility for which must rest upon his shoulders—the unhappy man had retired to his private office in the Government building, and, after writing and signing a document acknowledging himself to be the sole culprit, had shot himself through the head. To this piece of news the alcalde added the further information that the soldiers, some eight hundred in number, infuriated at the suicide of their chief, and the terrible affair of the previous day at the Inquisition, for both of which occurrences they held the English equally responsible, were practically in a state of mutiny, and were parading the streets, fully armed, loudly announcing their intention to kill any Englishman who dared to leave the shelter of his ship and venture ashore. Further, it appeared that the citizens, about equally alarmed at the violence of feeling displayed by the soldiers, and the fear that the town would be bombarded in reprisal for the outrage perpetrated by Don Manuel, had taken refuge in the cathedral and the various churches, where, under the leadership of the priests, they were offering up especial prayers for protection and deliverance.
“Very well, señor alcalde,” said George, when that official had completed his report; “you have made the state of affairs ashore sufficiently clear for all practical purposes. Now, touching the matter of the indemnity which I have demanded, what has been done with regard to that?”
“Nothing—definite—so far—I regret to say,” answered the alcalde, haltingly. “Of course,” he continued, “I have discussed the matter with Don Manuel Rebiera, the late acting Commandant; but I found him exceedingly difficult and untractable to deal with. When I first broached the subject to him, I regret to say that he immediately fell into a most violent rage, and declared, with quite unnecessary vigour, that he would have nothing whatever to do with the payment of any indemnity, however small; and when I pointed out to him that the lives of twelve of our most important and valued citizens hung in the balance, and might very possibly be sacrificed unless he displayed a very much larger measure of pliability—well—I will not offend your ears, most illustrious Capitan, by repeating his exact words, but I may tell you they were to the effect that he would rather every hostage were hanged, and the town itself laid in ruins, than suffer the humiliation of being compelled to pay an indemnity for an action which he, personally, regarded as perfectly righteous and justifiable. On the whole, señor, I am inclined to think that it is just as well for all concerned that Don Manuel is dead; for I am convinced that, had he continued to live, he would have proved an insuperable bar to every kind of negotiation, and, quite possibly, have precipitated a further catastrophe. For he was a Government official, and was possessed, in a very marked degree, of all the arrogance, the tyrannical, overbearing manner, the blind, intolerable pride, and the immeasurable contempt for everybody and everything not official, that so strongly characterises the representatives of Government in these territories. Yet, on the other hand, his death places me in a dilemma from which I can see no way of extricating myself; for the Commandant is so ill that it is impossible for me to discuss business with him; I dare not act upon my sole, unsupported authority; and if I have understood you aright, illustrissimo, you will not give the time necessary to communicate with the Viceroy. So what am I to do?”
“I quite recognise the difficulty of your position, Don Juan,” answered George; “and perhaps the simplest way will be for us to act entirely upon our own initiative, and so relieve you of all responsibility in the matter. Therefore, if you will kindly excuse me, I will leave you for a little while, and will discuss the situation with my officers. And while I am absent, you will have an opportunity to talk matters over with these worthy gentlemen, your fellow-citizens, who are in the unfortunate position of being hostages for a good faith that has been wantonly broken. Perhaps when I return you may find yourselves able to make a proposal, or at least offer a suggestion.”
Having said which, the young Englishman bowed to his involuntary guests, and went out on deck, where he invited Basset and Heard to accompany him to the poop for the purposes of a consultation. That same consultation proved to be but a very brief affair; for George opened it by clearly explaining to his fellow adventurers the distinctive features of the situation, as it then existed, and giving his own views as to the manner in which it might best be met; whereupon his companions at once agreed to his suggested course of procedure, daring though this was, and the conference, if such it might be called, broke up, having lasted less than a quarter of an hour. Then, while Basset and the purser resumed the duties upon which they had previously been engaged, Saint Leger returned to the state cabin to announce to the anxious alcalde and his companions the decision which had been arrived at.
“Well, señores,” he remarked cheerfully, glancing round at the expectant faces so eagerly raised to his, as he entered the cabin, “I have discussed with my officers the difficulty which confronts us all, and we have resolved upon a course of action which I trust will be acceptable to you. We have come to the conclusion that it is not the inhabitants of San Juan who are responsible for the occurrences of last night; and therefore it would be unjust for us to punish them, through you, for what happened. Therefore if nothing further of an untoward character occurs during the stay of the Nonsuch in your harbour, your own lives are safe, and your town will be spared by us—.” Here a sigh of profound relief floated round the cabin, accompanied by a little stir as the hostages’ tense attitudes relaxed and they settled themselves into more comfortable positions. “But,” continued George, “the fact remains that a daring and treacherous attempt to effect our destruction was made last night, as of course you are all fully aware; and that attempt must be very severely punished, and ample compensation exacted.
“Now, it is perfectly clear, from what your respected alcalde has told us, that the outrage—for I can call it nothing less—was instigated by, and carried out under the direction of, an official representative of the Spanish Government; therefore, since that official has placed himself beyond the reach of punishment, the Government of which he was a representative, and on behalf of which we are to assume he acted, must pay the penalty. Fortunately for you and us, who are the parties most intimately concerned, the means whereby your Government can be most severely punished, and an ample penalty paid, lie close to hand, in the plate ships at present in your harbour; and it is our intention to avail ourselves of that circumstance by confiscating the whole of the treasure now on board them; and I have accordingly issued orders that they are to be brought alongside this ship, one after another, and the treasure removed with all expedition from their strong rooms to our own. In this way your Government will be the only loser, your own lives and property will be spared; and we trust that the plan will consequently commend itself to you. The only feature of the plan which may perhaps be distasteful to any of you is that I shall feel myself compelled to keep Don Juan Alvarez, your worthy alcalde, as well as yourselves, a prisoner until the transfer has been effected; and I do this solely because he happens to be the only person among you who wields any authority, and it may possibly be necessary for him to exercise that authority from time to time, in order to restrain the crews of the various ships from causing trouble. Now, señores, what think you of my plan?”
For a few moments dead silence reigned in the cabin, the fact being that the Dons were literally smitten speechless by the paralysing enormity of the proposed insult and injury to the dignity of that Government which, in their eyes, was only a shade less sacred than the Church, and their first emotion was one of overwhelming indignation against those whose colossal insolence and audacity rendered them capable of such an overwhelmingly humiliating proposal. But the offence to their national pride was quickly swamped by considerations of their own personal safety, and as one man they soon came to the conclusion that anything—yes, anything, even the humiliation of their king, was better than the sacrifice of their own lives and the destruction of their own property which would be involved in a retaliatory bombardment and sack of the town. If the Government chose to leave San Juan de Ulua in so defenceless a condition as to render such an outrage possible, then let Government suffer the humiliation and the loss! Such were, in substance, the dominant thoughts in the minds of the alcalde and his fellow prisoners; and at length, perceiving that none of the others were willing to speak, one, Don Martin de Sylva, the oldest as well as the most prominent and important of the hostages, rose to his feet and said, slowly and impressively:
“Señor Capitan, you have asked for our opinion of your most astounding proposal; and I will give you mine, which I put forward as my own exclusively, and which I do not pretend to advance as in the slightest degree representative of those of my companions. In the first place, I must be permitted to remind you that, although one of the avowed purposes of your visit to our city is to avenge and exact compensation for an attack upon your countrymen in our harbour, last year, which we all deplore and deprecate, you have as yet offered us no proof of your authority for such action, which, for all that we know, may have been taken actually without the knowledge of those who are legitimately entitled to regard themselves as the injured parties; therefore I think you must acknowledge that it is not surprising if we and our Government have been slow to recognise your claims. You may have been duly accredited by Her Majesty the Queen of England to exact the reparation which you demand; but, if so, I think you ought to have submitted your credentials when you made your claim, and that claim, I venture to suggest, should have been made in proper diplomatic form, instead of being, as it was, a mere threat. But if you hold no credentials from Her Majesty, and your authority is self-imposed, the conduct of which I complain is quite comprehensible, and although it may be in the highest degree irregular I am prepared to admit that it is not altogether unjustifiable, since I understand that your own brother was, and indeed still is, a sufferer from the attack upon Admiral Hawkins’ fleet. Your claim on his behalf I am willing to admit is not outrageously unreasonable, and I deeply regret that it was not immediately met and promptly discharged. The most unfortunate feature of the whole affair is of course the action which that misguided and over-zealous fool, Rebiera, took during the early hours of this morning. That action completely disarms us and perhaps—I only say perhaps—justifies you, in a measure, in the stupendous demand which you are now making. For my own part, I have no hesitation in expressing the opinion that, as reparation only, your demands are excessive and far beyond all reasonable bounds. But if they are intended—as I gather they are—to be regarded also as a wholesome chastisement of our Government for an act of treachery on the part of one of its officials, then I have nothing further to say. You have the power to exact what terms you please, and if you choose to exercise that power, we have not the means to prevent you. For myself, all I can say is that I am very grateful to you that you have been so fair-minded as to admit the innocence of myself and my fellow hostages in connection with an affair over which we have had no control, yet for which you might, had you so chosen, have exacted our lives as a penalty.” Having thus delivered himself, the old Don bowed gravely and resumed his seat.
“Thank you, Don Martin,” answered George, good-humouredly. “I asked for an opinion, and you have given me yours, frankly and fearlessly; and I imagine, from the expression of approval which I seem to read upon your compatriots’ faces, that their opinion coincides with your own pretty closely. Well, be it so; naturally, you and I regard this whole matter from two very different points of view. Now, what says your worthy alcalde? Is he willing to exercise his authority over the crews of the ships, if necessary, in order to avert further trouble and complications?”
The alcalde rose to his feet and bowing, with the native grace of the high-bred Spaniard, to George, replied:
“Assuredly I will, señor; for the power is in your hands, and you can enforce obedience if you see fit. And anything will be preferable to the useless slaughter which I foresee would inevitably result from ineffective and ill-advised action on the part of our mariners. To avoid that deplorable waste of life, therefore, I am prepared to intervene, should the necessity unhappily arise. At the same time, señor, I feel it due to myself to join my protest to that of my friend, Don Martin de Sylva, and, I think I may add, the rest of us here present, against what I cannot avoid regarding as the tremendously excessive penalty which you are about to impose in retaliation for the ill-judged action of one man, who has already paid with his life for his mistake.” And therewith Don Juan resumed his seat, to the accompaniment of approving murmurs from his companions.
“Very well, then,” said George, composedly; “that matter is also settled. And now, señor, I think it will be advisable that you should accompany me out on deck, and hold yourself ready to act, if required; for, from the sounds which reach me, it would seem that the first of your ships is being hauled alongside; and your intervention may therefore be needed at any moment.”
As it happened, however, no intervention on the part of the alcalde was required; possibly his presence on the poop of the Nonsuch beside George, where he could be distinctly seen by everybody, may have exercised a wholesome restraint upon the Spanish crew; or the sight of the entire crew of the English ship, mustered on deck, armed to the teeth, the gunners standing by their ordnance with lighted matches, may have had something to do with it; be that as it may, the Spanish seamen offered no resistance when it became apparent that the English were about to transfer the treasure from the plate ships’ strong rooms to their own; nay more, they even assisted in the transfer, when commanded to do so, although it must be confessed that they worked with sullen countenances, and many muttered threats and grumblings.
There were twelve plate ships in the harbour, of which number ten were fully loaded; but when it came to inspecting the strong rooms of these ships it was found that all twelve of them had received their full complement of treasure, consisting of silver bars, gold bricks—each separately sewn up in its casing of hide, as transported from the mines—and one large chest of pearls, the proceeds of the whole previous year’s fishing in the adjacent waters. The gold and silver also represented a whole year’s produce of the mines; and so enormous was the quantity of the precious metals that its transfer to the Nonsuch occupied six entire days; while, when at length the task was completed, the Nonsuch, stout ship as she was, floated the deeper by a good five strakes!
The work was completed on a certain day, about an hour after sunset; and at the very urgent request of the alcalde and his friends the hostages, George arranged to leave the port forthwith; for although no actual demonstration had been made against the ship, news had come off from the shore, from time to time, to the effect that the whole town was seething with indignation at the sight of such an enormous amount of treasure being seized by the hated English, while the soldiery were going about the streets breathing fire and slaughter and doing their utmost to incite the town folk to unite with them in a determined effort to recapture the treasure and annihilate the English pirates; while, as the time went on, it became perfectly evident that only the fear of bombardment restrained the civilians from entertaining the proposal; and, even so, the alcalde was in a perfect agony of fear lest, despite all the efforts of his friends ashore, some rash act on the part of the soldiery and the rougher element among the civilians, should yet precipitate a catastrophe. Therefore, no sooner was the last gold brick transferred than the alcalde and his fellow prisoners overwhelmed George with most urgent solicitations that, having now accomplished all he had planned, he would proceed to sea forthwith; which, there being no reason to the contrary, the young captain willingly consented to do. Accordingly, the canvas was loosed, the anchor hove up to the bows; and, the alcalde and his friends having been transferred to the ship alongside, the fasts were cast off, the topsails sheeted home, and under the impulse of a gentle off-shore breeze the Nonsuch stood out of the harbour of San Juan de Ulua, after a sojourn of a full week pregnant with events of great and far-reaching importance. It afterwards transpired that the English had only got away from the port by the bare skin of their teeth; for within twenty-four hours of their departure the belated convoy arrived with the plate ships from Cartagena and Nombre de Dios; and when the Spanish Admiral was made acquainted with the details of George’s daring raid—which was within an hour of his arrival—he was so convulsed with rage that in the height of his passion he ordered the entire convoy to weigh and put to sea again—leaving the newly-arrived plate ships to take care of themselves and their precious cargoes as best they might—with instructions to the captains that they were on no account to return without the English ship. The result of this mad order was that the convoy was absent for three full weeks, during which George, had he only known it, might have returned and filled the Nonsuch with treasure until she would hold no more. But while the Spanish captains were straining their ships to pieces by threshing to the northward under a heavy press of sail, under the conviction that the English were homeward bound and were heading north to avail themselves of the assistance of the Gulf Stream, the heavily-laden Nonsuch was steadily working to windward across the Gulf of Campeche, making for the northern coast of Yucatan, on her way back to the little desert island off the southern coast of Jamaica, where the adventurers had buried their first haul of treasure.
For now that the Nonsuch was loaded down with so fabulously rich a freight, the first consideration of its new owners was to temporarily deposit it in some place of safety while they pursued their quest of the missing Hubert Saint Leger, lest haply misfortune should befall them and, losing their ship, they should lose their treasure also. And now it was that George had his eyes opened, for the first time, to one at least of the disadvantages of so stupendous a stroke of good fortune as had been his and his companions’. For their haul of treasure had been so enormous that the men had got tired of handling it before its transfer had been completed; nay more, they were actually satisfied with the amount of their wealth; and when George first announced his intention of burying it with the rest, prior to pursuing his search for his lost brother, there were those among his crew who loudly protested that they were now rich enough to return at once to England with what they had; that it would simply be a tempting of Providence to pursue the adventure further, and that, for their part, they had had quite enough of the Indies. But Saint Leger speedily quelled these murmurs by mustering the crew and reading to them the Articles of Agreement which all had signed, and which clearly set forth the objects with which the voyage had been undertaken, among which was distinctly specified the finding and deliverance of Mr Hubert Saint Leger. And having read these Articles, George proceeded to inform the crew of his determination to hold all hands to their bargain, reminded them of the pains and penalties provided by way of punishment for breaches, or even attempted breaches, of any Article of the covenant, and wound up by declaring that, rather than abandon his search for his brother, he would maroon the malcontents and leave them to find their way back home as best they could. And, as the malcontents proved after all to be but a small proportion of the crew, this threat quietened them, at least for the time being, and no further murmurs were heard.
On the morning of the ninth day after their departure from the harbour of San Juan de Ulua the adventurers sighted Cape Catoche, the most northerly point of the Peninsula of Yucatan, broad on the lee bow, tacked two hours later and made a stretch off the land until sunset, when they tacked again to the southward; and on the following day at noon their reckoning showed that they had accomplished their passage through the Strait of Yucatan and were once more in the Caribbean Sea. Eight days later the treasure island was sighted from aloft at sunrise; and by noon the Nonsuch with her cargo of treasure was safely at anchor under the lee of the island, and as close to the beach as it was prudent to take her. As soon as the canvas was furled and everything made snug aloft, all hands were piped to dinner; and at the conclusion of the meal two boats were lowered and manned, their crews well provided with mattocks, shovels, and other implements for digging, and were dispatched to the shore under the command of Dyer, who had by this time sufficiently recovered from his hurts to be able to sit in a chair and supervise the operations of the working party. And while these were busily engaged in the excavation of a pit capacious enough to receive the enormous amount of treasure in the hold of the Nonsuch, George with the remainder of the crew was as busily employed in getting the treasure up on deck in readiness for its transfer to the shore, and making such preparations as they deemed necessary for its adequate protection.
The particular part of the treasure about which Saint Leger was most anxious was the chest of pearls. He had not the most remote idea as to its value, but he knew that it must be almost fabulous; and he knew also how easily the delicate gems might be injured by damp penetrating to them from the surrounding earth; he therefore took the most elaborate precautions for their protection, those precautions being initiated immediately after the departure of the ship from San Juan. His first step was to have the junction of the lid with the box carefully and effectively caulked with cotton; and when this was done to his satisfaction he caused the exterior of the box to be painted several coats of thick paint, with the object of rendering the wood damp-proof. But, not content with this, he further caused the sailmaker to make two canvas coats to fit tightly over the chest, one coat over the other, and each coat securely fastened by a lacing. Then, when the paint on the chest itself was quite dry, the first canvas coat was slipped on, carefully laced, and then painted four coats, each coat of paint being allowed to dry before the next was applied. Then the second canvas coat was put on, the reverse way of the first, and secured. This was then coated several times with Stockholm tar, to preserve it from decay; and finally, when the last coat of tar was quite dry, the exterior was thickly coated with boiling pitch, as a culminating precaution, after which George decided that he had done everything possible for the preservation of the pearls and that they must now be left to take their chance.
It took the crew a full fortnight to transfer to the shore, bury, and cover up the treasure in such a manner as effectually to obliterate all traces of their operations; and on the morning of the fifteenth day after their arrival they hove up the anchor and made sail southward for Nombre de Dios, where George hoped to obtain some clue to the whereabouts of his brother Hubert.