I related all that I had read about the great ship of Lima, and the corroborations I had discovered. On the conclusion of my surmises, Master Richard Knuckleduster uttered a series of imprecations upon himself, by which he meant to illustrate his own extreme astonishment and satisfaction, adding:
"Smite me, if it don't sound mighty like a galley yarn! Thirty millions of dollars, say you, skipper, lying in that hole? I can't overtake the sum, nohow; but it will rig our mainstays for life, and we may drink and smoke and die in our hammocks yet. But it is like what I have often heard. These seas and shores are full of buried treasure and craft, sunk in the days when the old buccaneers prowled after the plate fleets. Why, the very sharks have rings and doubloons in their greedy bellies at times!"
We repaired to the scene of the wreck together, and with frantic vigour Knuckleduster at once assaulted the old hull with the end of the topsail-yard, and our united efforts brought up huge pieces of old wood covered with shells and white coral branches. In one of these, after careful investigation, I found two coins, which proved to be silver duros, bearing the effigy of Philip IV of Spain.
Our operations, and the noise made by Knuckleduster, "yo-heave-o-ing," scared the sea-birds from their nests in the clefts of the rock, and they screamed and wheeled in and out of the cavern, as if in anger at our intrusion, or contempt of our efforts.
On beholding the two coins, Knuckleduster nearly went mad with joy, and as I could too readily perceive, jealousy of me. He swore, whooped, and danced, and rushed to suck his beloved toddy-tree, at the foot of which I found him lying insensible, and then took the opportunity of appropriating to myself the clasped knife, of which I felt such dread, for with a companion so lawless by nature, so powerful in form, and entrusted with such a secret, I now felt that my life was no longer safe.
On recovering, Knuckleduster immediately missed his knife, and after searching all his pockets, closely and suspiciously questioned me on the subject of its disappearance. I suggested that in some of his frantic gyrations round the toddy-tree, he had dropped it among the dwarf mangroves or long grass. He was forced to content himself with this surmise, and to relinquish all hope of recovering it, after a long and of course fruitless search.
Evening came on, and brought with it the usual buzz of countless insects; the red fire-flies began to glance about under the branches, the tree-toads, as large as tortoises, were croaking and squattering in the swamps.
As we sat together at the foot of the everlasting toddy-tree (the juice of which he could not prevail upon me to imbibe, lest it should stupefy me), we revolved innumerable plans for making signals to ships by day or by night—for sleeping and watching by turns on the summit of the high cliff—for escaping from the island by a canoe, if we could make it, and for returning to raise, break up, or explore, the old Spanish wreck. When these were all viewed over and discussed, I pressed Knuckleduster to relate to me, how he came to be marooned by the crew of a privateer, when I had last seen him at Los Santos, a seaman on board of the Boyne frigate.
After some delay, and not until he had sucked a score of times at the intoxicating and manna-like distillations from the tree, did he tell me the following story, the oaths and imprecations with which he most freely interlarded it, being alone omitted.