got on board by means of the password, and within twenty minutes had knocked all the Spaniards on the head, themselves losing only one man.  Thereupon, of course, they slipped cable and stood out to sea.  Next morning the Rosaway hadn’t been three hours out of sight before two Spanish gun-ships came sailing in from Cartagena, having been sent over in a hurry to protect the place; and one of them started in chase.  The Rosaway, being speedy, got away for the time, and it was not till three weeks later that the Spaniards ran down on her, snug and tight at anchor in a creek of this same island of Mortallone.  She was empty as a drum, and her crew ashore in a pretty state of fever and mutiny.  The Spaniards landed and took the lot, all but the mate Griffiths, that was supposed to have been knifed by Sparke, but two of the prisoners declared that he was alive and hiding.  They hanged four, saving only Sparke, keeping him to show where the treasure was hidden.  He led them halfway across the island, lured them into a swamp, and made a bolt to escape, and the tale is he was getting clear off when one of the Spanish seamen let fly with his musket into the bushes and bowled him over like a rabbit.  It was a chance shot, and of course it put an end to all hope of finding the treasure.  They ransacked the island for a week or more, but found never a dollar; and before giving it up some inclined to believe what one of the prisoners had said, that the treasure had never been buried in Mortallone at all, but in the island of Roatan, some leagues to the eastward.  But, if you ask my opinion, the stranger that took lodgings with Melhuish was the mate Griffiths, and no other.  There has always been rumours that he got away with the secret.  Know about it?” said old Klootz.  “Why, there was even a song made up about it—­

    “’O, we threw the bodies over, and forth we did stand
      Till the tenth day we sighted what seemed a pleasant land,
      And alongst the Kays of Mortallone!’”

From the first the old man had no doubt but we had struck the secret.  All the way home he was scheming, and the very night we reached Whydah again he came out with a plan.

“Have you ever read your Bible?” said he.

“A little,” I said, “between whiles; but latterly not much.”

“The more shame to you,” said he, “for it is a good book.  But you ought to have heard of Noah, if you ever read the Book at all, for he comes almost at the beginning.  Well, I’ve a notion almost as good as Noah’s and not so very different.  We will take the Mary Pynsent and put all the family on board, for we must take A. G. (naming the Englishman, his other son-in-law), and I don’t like to leave the women alone, here in this wicked place.  We will pack her up with slaves and sail her across to Barbadoes.  ’Tis an undertaking for a man of my years, but a man is not old until he feels old; and I have been wanting for a long time to see if trade in the Barbadoes is so bad as the skippers pretend, cutting down my profits.  At Barbadoes we can hire a pinnace.  Daniel Coffin, you and me will go into this business in partnership,” says he.