He laid his disengaged hand across lightly on Rosey’s, as if to assure himself that she was listening.

“I was at that time a sailor.  I had been fool enough to run away from college, thinking it a fine romantic thing to ship before the mast for a voyage round the world.  I was a little disappointed, perhaps, but I made the best of it, and in two years I was the second mate of a whaler lying in a little harbor of one of the uncivilized islands of the Pacific.  While we were at anchor there a French trading vessel put in, apparently for water.  She had the dregs of a mixed crew of Lascars and Portuguese, who said they had lost the rest of their men by desertion, and that the captain and mate had been carried off by fever.  There was something so queer in their story that our skipper took the law in his own hands, and put me on board of her with a salvage crew.  But that night the French crew mutinied, cut the cables, and would have got to sea if we had not been armed and prepared, and managed to drive them below.  When we had got them under hatches for a few hours they parleyed, and offered to go quietly ashore.  As we were short of hands and unable to take them with us, and as we had no evidence against them, we let them go, took the ship to Callao, turned her over to the authorities, lodged a claim for salvage, and continued our voyage.  When we returned we found the truth of the story was known.  She had been a French trader from Marseilles, owned by her captain; her crew had mutinied in the Pacific, killed their officers and the only passenger—­the owner of the cargo.  They had made away with the cargo and a treasure of nearly half a million of Spanish gold for trading purposes which belonged to the passenger.  In course of time the ship was sold for salvage and put into the South American trade until the breaking out of the Californian gold excitement, when she was sent with a cargo to San Francisco.  That ship was the Pontiac which your father bought.”

A slight shudder ran through the girl’s frame.  “I wish—­I wish you hadn’t told me,” she said.  I shall never close my eyes again comfortably on board of her, I know.”

“I would say that you had purified her of all stains of her past—­but there may be one that remains.  And that in most people’s eyes would be no detraction.  You look puzzled, Miss Nott—­but I am coming to the explanation and the end of my story.  A ship of war was sent to the island to punish the mutineers and pirates, for such they were, but they could not be found.  A private expedition was sent to discover the treasure which they were supposed to have buried, but in vain.  About two months ago Mr. Sleight told me one of his shipmasters had sent him a Lascar sailor who had to dispose of a valuable secret regarding the Pontiac for a percentage.  That secret was that the treasure was never taken by the mutineers out of the Pontiac!  They were about to land and bury it when we boarded