“Strange that you, who have been dreaming of galleons all your life, as I remember you told me, should have lighted upon what is much the same as a galleon—not, indeed, worth Candish’s or Anson’s treasure ships, but all the same a very pretty little haul.”
“It is quite true,” said he, smiling gravely, “that I have been dreaming all my life of galleons. I read about the Spanish plate and treasure ships when I was a boy; about the cargoes of gold and silver, of precious gems, of massive and splendid commodities which the Pacific breezes used to solemnly blow over the seas, betwixt Acapulco and the Philippines. I used to read of the buccaneers and their marvelous doings on the western American seaboard, north and south of Panama, wherever there was a town to sack, a village to plunder. It was a sort of reading to fire my spirits. It sent me to sea. Yes, truly I believe I went to sea through reading about the old rovers. It is strange, as you say, that I should have lighted upon something locked up in a cave—something that comes as near to my notion of a galleon now as it would have been remote to me when I was a boy, had I heard of her with her half a million of silver dollars only; for then nothing could have satisfied me under a couple of millions in gold!”
He eyed me somewhat dreamily as he spoke. We were smoking; I chipped at my tinder-box for a light.
“What do you think of the crew?” said he suddenly.
“I can find no fault.”
“D’ye think they are trustworthy?”
“Are they to be trusted on board a ship with half-a-million of dollars in her hold?”
He nodded.
“I don’t see why they are not to be trusted,” said I. “You must trust a crew of some sort; you can’t work this brig without men. Should you doubt these fellows, what’s to be done?”
“Done!” cried he, with his eyes sparkling; “you don’t suppose that I would carry them to a shipload of silver if I didn’t trust them? I’d visit port after port, ay, if it had to come to my going away for New Holland, until I had collected such a crew as I felt I could trust.”