A few days before the Alerte was ready to sail from Southampton an elderly naval officer boarded the cutter and was kind enough to inform Mr. Knight of another buried treasure which he might look for on his route to Trinidad. The story had been hidden for many years among the documents of the Admiralty, and as a matter of government record, it is, of course, perfectly authentic. In 1813, the Secretary of the Admiralty instructed Sir Richard Bickerton, commanding at Portsmouth, to send in the first King's ship touching at Madeira a seaman who had given information concerning a hidden treasure, in order that the truth of his story might be tested.
The Admiralty order was entrusted to Captain Hercules Robinson of the Prometheus and in his report he states that "after being introduced to the foreign seaman referred to in the above letter, and reading the notes which had been taken of his information, he charged him to tell no person what he knew or what was his business, that he was to mess with the captain's coxswain, and that no duty would be required of him. To this the man replied that that was all he desired, that he was willing to give his time, and would ask no remuneration for his intelligence."
While the Prometheus was anchored at Funchal, Madeira, Captain Robinson closely questioned the mysterious seaman whose name was Christian Cruse. He declared that he had been in a hospital ill of yellow fever, several years before, and with him was a shipmate, a Spaniard, who died of the same malady. Before his death he told Cruse that in 1804 he had been in a Spanish ship, from South America to Cadiz, with two millions of silver in chests. When nearing the coast of Spain, they were signaled by a neutral vessel that England had declared war and that Cadiz was blockaded. Rather than risk capture by the British fleet, and unwilling to run all the way back to South America, the captain resolved to try to gain the nearest of the West Indies and save his treasure.
Passing to the southward of Madeira, a cluster of small, uninhabited islands, called the Salvages, was sighted. Thereupon the crew decided that it was foolishness to continue the voyage. The captain was accordingly stabbed to death with a dirk, and the ship steered to an anchorage. The chests of Spanish dollars were landed in a small bay, a deep trench dug in the sand above highwater mark, and the treasure snugly buried, the body of the captain deposited in a box on top of it. The mutineers then sought the Spanish Main where they intended to burn their ship, buy a small vessel under British colors, and return to carry off the two million dollars.
Near Tobago they suffered shipwreck because of poor navigation and only two were saved. One died ashore, and the other was the Spanish seaman who made the dying declaration to Christian Cruse in the hospital at Vera Cruz.
Captain Hercules Robinson was a seasoned officer of His Majesty's navy, used to taking sailors' yarns with a grain of salt, but that he was convinced of the good faith of Christian Cruse and of the truth of the narrative is shown by his interesting comments, as he wrote them down a century ago:
"May Cruse not have had some interested object in fabricating this story? Why did he not tell it before? Is not the cold-blooded murder inconceivable barbarity, and the burying the body over the treasure too dramatic and buccaneer-like? Or might not the Spaniard have lied from love of lying and mystifying his simple shipmate, or might he not have been raving?
"As to the first difficulty, I have the strongest conviction of the honesty of Christian Cruse, and I think I could hardly be grossly deceived as to his character, and his disclaiming any reward unless the discovery was made, went to confirm my belief that he was an honest man. And then as to his withholding the information for four or five years, be it remembered that the war with Denmark might have truly shut him out from any intercourse with England. Next as to the wantonness and indifference with which the murder was perpetrated, I am afraid there is no great improbability in this. I have witnessed a disregard of human life in matters of promotion in our service, etc., which makes the conduct of these Spaniards under vehement temptation, and when they could do as they pleased, sufficiently intelligible.
"But certainly the coffin over the treasure looked somewhat theatrical and gave it the air of Sadler's Wells, or a novel, rather than matter of fact. I enquired, therefore, from Christian Cruse why the body of the captain was thus buried, and he replied that he understood the object was, that in case any person should find the marks of their proceedings and dig to discover what they had been about, they might come to the body and go no further."
After further reflection, Captain Robinson convinced himself that the Spanish seaman had been clear-headed when he made his confession to Cruse, and that it would have been beyond him deliberately to invent the statement as fiction. The Prometheus was headed for the Salvages, and arriving off the largest of these islands, a bay was found and a level white patch of beach above high water mark situated as had been described to Christian Cruse. Fifty sailors were sent ashore to dig with shovels and boarding pikes, making the sand fly in the hope of winning the reward of a hundred dollars offered to the man who found the murdered captain's coffin.