"The captain took a liking to him, and showed him kindness on various occasions. This man was attacked by dysentery on the voyage from China to Bombay, and by the time the vessel reached port he was so ill, in spite of the captain's nursing, that he had to be taken to the hospital. He gradually sank, and when he found that he was dying he told the captain, who frequently visited him, that he felt very grateful for the kind treatment given him, and that he would prove his gratitude by revealing a secret which might make his captain one of the richest men in England. He then asked the skipper to go to his chest and take out from it a parcel. This contained a piece of old tarpaulin with a plan of an island of Trinidad upon it.
"The dying soldier told him that at the spot indicated, that is at the base of the mountain known as Sugar Loaf, there was an immense treasure buried, consisting principally of gold and silver plate and ornaments, the plunder of Peruvian churches which certain pirates had concealed there in the year 1821. Much of this plate, he said, came from the cathedral of Lima, having been carried away from there during the war of independence, when the Spaniards were escaping the country and that among other riches were several massive gold candle-sticks.
"He further stated that he was the only survivor of the pirates, as all the others had been captured by the Spaniards and executed in Cuba some years before, and consequently it was probable that no one but himself knew the secret. He then gave the captain instructions as to the exact position of the treasure in the bay under the Sugar Loaf, and enjoined him to go there and search for it, as it was almost certain that it had not been removed."
Mr. Knight, who was a young barrister of London, investigated this story with much diligence, and discovered that the captain aforesaid had sent his son to Trinidad in 1880 to try to identify the marks shown on the old pirate's tarpaulin chart. He landed from a sailing ship, did no digging for lack of equipment, but reported that the place tallied exactly with the description, although a great landslide of reddish earth had covered the place where the treasure was hid. This evidence was so convincing that in 1885 an expedition was organized among several adventurous gentlemen of South Shields who chartered a bark of six hundred tons, the Aurea, and fitted her at a large outlay with surf boats, picks, shovels, timber, blasting powder, and other stores. This party found the island almost inaccessible because of the wild, rock-bound coast, the huge breakers which beat about it from all sides, and the lack of harbors and safe anchorage. After immense difficulty, eight men were landed, with a slender store of provisions and a few of the tools. The dismal aspect of the island, the armies of huge land crabs which tried to devour them, the burning heat, and the hard labor without enough food or water, soon disheartened this band of treasure seekers, and they dug no more than a small trench before courage and strength forsook them. Signaling to their ships, they were taken off, worn out and ill, and thus ended the efforts of the expedition.
In the same year, an American skipper chartered a French sailing vessel in Rio Janeiro, and sailed for Trinidad with four Portuguese sailors to do his digging for him. They were ashore several days, but found no treasure, and vanished from the story after this brief fling with the dice of fortune. Now, Knight was of different stuff from these other explorers. He was a first-class amateur seaman who had sailed his yacht Falcon to South America in 1880, and was both experienced and capable afloat and ashore. While bound from Montevideo to Bahia he had touched at Trinidad, curious to see this remote islet so seldom visited. This was before he heard the buried treasure story. Therefore when he became acquainted, several years later, with the chart and information left by the old pirate, he was able to verify the details of his own knowledge, and he roundly affirmed:
"In the first place, his carefully prepared plan of the island, the minute directions he gave as to the best landing, and his description of the features of the bay on whose shores the treasure was concealed, prove beyond doubt to myself and others who know Trinidad, that he, or if not himself some informant of his, had landed on this so rarely visited islet; and not only landed but passed some time on it, and carefully surveyed the approaches to the bay, so as to be able to point out the dangers and show the safest passage through the reefs. This information could not have been obtained from any pilot-book. The landing recommended by previous visitors is at the other side of the island. This bay is described by them as inaccessible, and the indications on the Admiralty chart are completely erroneous.
"And beyond this, the quartermaster must have been acquainted with what was taking place in two other distant portions of the world during the year of his professed landing on the desert island. He knew of the escape of pirates with the cathedral plate of Lima. He was also aware that, shortly afterwards, there were hanged in Cuba the crew of a vessel that had committed acts of piracy on the Peruvian coast.
"It is scarcely credible that an ordinary seaman,—even allowing that he was superior in education to the average of his fellows,—could have pieced these facts together so ingeniously into this plausible story."
This argument has merit and it was persuasive enough to cause Knight to buy the staunch cutter Alerte, muster a company of gentlemen volunteers, ship a crew, and up anchor from Southampton for Trinidad.
There was never a better found treasure expedition than this in the Alerte. The nine partners, each of whom put up one hundred pounds toward the expenses, were chosen from one hundred and fifty eager applicants. Articles of agreement provided that one-twentieth of the treasure recovered was to be received by each adventurer and he in turn bound himself to work hard and obey orders. In the equipment was a drilling apparatus for boring through earth and rock, an hydraulic jack for lifting huge bowlders, portable forge and anvil, iron wheel-barrows, crow-bars, shovels and picks galore, a water distilling plant, a rapid fire gun, and a full complement of repeating rifles and revolvers.