At this, John laughed his funny little quiet laugh, his eyes twinkling out of his wrinkles, for all the world like mischievous mice looking out of a cupboard, took a sip of his port, a pull at his cigar, and then: 

“Buried treasure!” he said, “well, I have little doubt that the islands are full of it—­if one only knew how to get at it.”

“Seriously?” I asked.

“Certainly.  Why not?  When you come to think of it, it stands to reason.  Weren’t these islands for nearly three centuries the stamping ground of all the pirates of the Spanish Main?  Morgan was here.  Blackbeard was here.  The very governors themselves were little better than pirates.  This room we are sitting in was the den of one of the biggest rogues of them all—­John Tinker—­the governor when Bruce was here building Fort Montague, at the east end yonder; building it against pirates, and little else but pirates at the Government House all the time.  A great old time Tinker gave the poor fellow.  You can read all about it in his ‘Memoirs.’  You should read them.  Great stuff.  There they are,” pointing to an old quarto on some well lined shelves, for John is something of a scholar too; “borrow them some time.”

“Yes, but I want to hear more about the treasure,” interrupted I, bringing him back to the point.

“Well, as I was saying, Nassau was the rendezvous for all the cut-throats of the Caribbean Sea.  Here they came in with their loot, their doubloons and pieces of eight”; and John’s eyes twinkled with enjoyment of the rich old romantic words, as though they were old port.

“Here they squandered much of it, no doubt, but they couldn’t squander it all.  Some of them were thrifty knaves too, and these, looking around for some place of safety, would naturally think of the bush.  The niggers keep their little hoards there to this day.  Fawcett, over at Andros, was saying the other night, that he estimates that they have something like a quarter of a million dollars buried in tin cans among the brush over there now—­”

“It is their form of stocking,” put in Charlie Webster.

“Precisely.  Well, as I was saying, those old fellows would bury their hoards in some cave or other, and then go off—­and get hanged.  Their ghosts perhaps came back.  The darkies have lots of ghost-tales about them.  But their money is still here, lots of it, you bet your life.”

“Do they ever make any finds?” I asked.

“Nothing big that I know of.  A jug full of old coins now and then.  I found one a year or two ago in my garden here—­buried down among the roots of that old fig tree.”

“Then,” put in Charlie, “there was that mysterious stranger over at North Cay.  He’s supposed to have got away with quite a pile.”

“Tell me about him,” said I.

“Well, there used to be an old eccentric character in the town here—­a half-breed by the name of Andrews.  John will remember him—­”