A silent, voiceless, mouldering wreck is an object that excites melancholy thoughts at all times; but in the situation in which I was then placed, there was something also exciting and solemnizing in the discovery; and for a time I forgot even to look for a passing ship in the new and strange interest this old and weedy hull of antique form roused within me.
I remembered the brass cannon which was lying on the shore inscribed La Lima, and one or two guns that could be seen lying on the layers of shells beside the wreck, were exactly of the same form and size.
"La Lima?" I pondered; this was no doubt the name of the ship, and, as if to corroborate my ideas, she was evidently built in the old Spanish fashion, with those elaborate carvings on her poop and quarters, which survived even the times of Trafalgar and Cape St. Vincent.
I came hither day after day to gaze on this new object—new at least to me; till its gaping stern-windows became like the features of an old friend, and I loved to fancy the story of the wreck—to people her deck and cabins with the life which had once been instinct there; the Spaniards, with their slashed doublets, their mantles, ruffs, and rapiers, their long and solemn Don-Quixote-like visages; and then the fury of the storm, amid which they and their ship had perished—all perchance save the two—one whose grave I had seen, and the other whose bones I had so inadvertently scattered.
On the adjacent ledges of rock were several rings, bolts, and shapeless pieces of iron, from which the wood had long since decayed, and which were mere masses of rust. Among these I found a circular plate of brass, or some base metal, which had evidently covered the tompion of a cannon. The substance of which it was composed had resisted the process of decay, and a thick coat of verdigris encrusted it. On removing this, I discovered letters and a date; and by a little industry traced—
"LA LIMA, 1647."
"Sixteen hundred and forty seven!" I exclaimed, while memory came to my aid.
In an old book, over which I had often pored when at home in my mother's cottage—a book which was given to me by little Amy Lee, and entitled "The Buccaneers of America"*—I remembered to have read of a great ship of Lima, which bore the name of that wealthy province of Peru. She had on board a vast treasure, subscribed by the merchants of Mexico and Panama, for the use and service of the unfortunate King Charles I., then at the close of his futile struggle with Cromwell and the Scots.
* "The Buccaneers of America, written by Mr. Basil Ringrose, Gent., and printed for William Crooke, at the Green Dragon, without Temple Bar, 1684."
This stately caravel was said to have been mounted with seventy great and small brass guns, and to have had in treasure thirty millions of dollars, or pieces of eight; but after leaving the coast of Peru for England was never heard of again. One rumour said that she had been last seen, in the bay of Manta, twenty miles south from the equator; another that she had foundered on Los Ahorcados, two solitary rocks which lie a few leagues from the shore of the Spanish Main. At all events, she perished when King Charles was a captive in the castle of Carisbrooke, and the gold she contained never reached him, or the cavaliers who stood by his fallen fortunes.