The small boats were used to explore the reefs, and served as platforms from which the best swimmers in the crew would dive into the channels between the walls of coral on the lee side of the island, endeavoring to locate the spot where the galleon had been carried before she struck. As the water in these places seldom exceeded twenty feet in depth, the bottom would have been plainly visible from the boat had it not been for the continuous rippling and foaming of the surface water. Several weeks were passed in a vain pursuit, and at last, worn out and discouraged, the men positively refused to continue the work. By agreeing to abandon the enterprise and set sail for England at the end of another week, unless some success was met with, the Captain prevailed upon several of his seamen to aid him for that length of time.
Day after day went by, and the seventh and last day specified in the agreement arrived. Two of the divers had broken down under the strain, and now when the final trial was to be made the Captain called for two men to go in their stead, but no one responded. He then appealed to their manhood, asked them if he had not shared all their labors, and asked them to give him but one day more. The dispirited sailors made no response to the appeal, but the cook volunteered to go if some one would take his place in the galley. This man was a negro about thirty years of age, and had been shipped in England to act as a cabin servant on the Algier Rose, but the ship’s cook having died on the passage out, he had been sent into the caboose to take the former’s place. Possessing a powerful physique and being an excellent swimmer, he stood by his Captain that day, the sole remaining hope, and seemed tireless in his efforts to find for the disheartened commander some evidence of the treasure, which the seamen swore existed only in the capsized brain of the man whom they could see out yonder under the broiling sun guiding the boat in and out of the channels, while the laughing, leaping waters tinkled against the bows and ran in gurgling, mocking glee along the side. The negro would dive into the sea, and a few moments later reappear; then, as he swam towards the boat, he would shake his head in answer to the anxious, questioning look in the Captain’s eyes. The boat would move on again a short distance, and while the rowers held it stationary a dark form would part the water and sink down and down among the startled fishes, that flashed away in affright from the strange creature whose darting arms seemed to grasp at them as they shot for safety among the branches of coral underbush.
The morning has passed gloomily away, and the negro plunges over the side for the last time before the men row back to the ship for dinner. Suddenly a black face in which is set two wildly rolling eyes bobs up alongside the boat, and a voice choking for breath and broken with excitement manages to gasp, “Him down thar, Massa Cap’n; him down thar!”
The great treasure is discovered!
No more despondency now. No more aching limbs. Splash, splash, splash! The rowers have torn off their scanty clothing, and jumped over the side to prove with their own eyes the story brought up to them from the bottom of the sea. One by one men reappear, and their recovered breath is used to send such a glad shout across the reefs that their shipmates hear it over a mile away, tumble into the boats alongside, and pull madly out to them; then learning the joyful news, they break into cheers, kick off their garments, and overboard they also go to see the ingots of silver scattered over the white sand amid the torn and broken remnants of the wreck.
During the two weeks that followed the crew of the Algier Rose worked zealously at recovering the wealth that the Spaniards had taken such pains to garner from the mountain range just back of the coast. A shallow net-work bag was hitched together by the seamen for the purpose of holding the bars of silver that the divers would throw into it. Those manning the float that had been constructed would lower the rope cradle until it rested on the bottom; then the diver would thrust his feet into a pair of heavy lead slippers and drop through the hole in the centre of the raft which was anchored above the wreck. An instant later, when the bed of sand was reached, the diver would quickly select and throw a brick of metal into the basket, drop his clumsy foot-gear into the same receptacle, and then, relieved of the weight which had held him down, he would shoot up to the surface of the water. Accepting his reappearance as a signal, the men on the float would haul up the net, lift out the treasure, and pass it into the small boats to be carried to the ship. At the end of a fortnight, when the divers reported that the last bar had been gathered, the Captain calculated that he had recovered fully thirty tons of pure silver.
The stone in the lower hold was thrown overboard to make room for the noble ballast, which was carefully stowed and wedged in its mean and gloomy quarters under the decks. The Algier Rose now sailed for England, where she arrived safely five weeks from the day that her anchor had been hove up from its resting-place on the white coral bed off the treasure island.
Captain Phipps’s share of the profits was very large, but the exact amount is unknown. In addition to a princely revenue, the King was so much pleased with him for bringing such wealth into the country that he conferred on him the honor of knighthood, and to reward him still further for having beaten off the Spanish man-of-war, his Majesty was pleased to grant him a commission as Captain in the Royal Navy.
Sir William soon sailed for Boston in command of a fine frigate, and a reunion with the now-envied Charity was speedily followed by the tying of a true-lover’s knot before the altar of the old meeting-house near the fort. A few months later the former blacksmith’s boy redeemed his promise by presenting to my lady “a fair brick house in one of the green lanes of Boston.” This residence, which was erected on Salem Street, stood until a few years ago, being last used as an orphan asylum for boys. In 1690 Sir William was named by the King, Captain-General and Commander-in-Chief of Massachusetts Bay, and several years later received a royal patent as Governor of Massachusetts.