CHAPTER VIII
THE SCOURGES OF THE SEA
Tyke's eyes were staring and his face was so apoplectic that Drew wasalarmed.
"Make out of it?" Tyke spluttered, getting up and nearly overturninghis chair. "I make out of it that Manuel was right when he said thatthe old chest held something worth more'n diamonds."
Grimshaw was so shaken out of his usual calm that Captain Hamilton,too, shared Drew's alarm.
"I tell you what we'd better do," he suggested. "We're all too muchexcited to discuss this thing intelligently now. We've got a whole lotto digest, and it will take time. This thing will keep. Suppose wehave our young friend here take this rough draft home with him andpiece out the missing parts as well as he can. In the meantime we'llall mull it over in our minds, look at it from every angle, and meethere fresh and rested to-morrow morning to decide on what we'd betterdo."
"I guess you're right," assented Tyke, mopping his forehead. "This oldhead of mine is whirling around like a top."
Tyke locked the map carefully in his safe and committed the other paperand the captain's partial transcription to his chief clerk with solemninjunctions to take the utmost care of them.
But the latter stood in no need of the admonition. He would havedefended those papers with his life. They meant for him--what did theynot mean?
Romance, adventure, wealth! Now at last he would have something tojustify his search for Ruth Adams and his suit for her hand. Now hecould frame his jewel, when he found it, in a proper setting.
The three men prepared to leave the private office. Captain Hamiltonwas first at the door, and he unlocked it. The instant he pulled thedoor open, Drew heard him ejaculate:
"Thunderation! Mr. Ditty! What are you doing here?"
"You told me to follow you here, Captain Hamilton," said a respectfulvoice. "They told me you were inside, and so I waited for you."
"Humph! quite right, Mr. Ditty," Captain Hamilton said hastily. Thenhe thrust his, head back into the office. "My mate's come for me,Tyke. We've got an errand on Whitehall Street. See you to-morrow.Good night, Mr. Drew."
Both the captain and the other man had gone when Drew went out into thelarger room. The remainder of that afternoon he spent in a dream.
When the day's work was over, Drew dined hastily and then shut himselfin his room where he worked busily until midnight, filling in thevacant spaces in the rough draft of the confession. He was critical ofhis efforts, recasting and revising again and again until he wassatisfied that he had caught the full meaning of the old document asfar as it was humanly possible. Only then did he lay it aside--todream of Ruth.
Drew was at the shop before his usual time the next morning, and Tykeand Captain Hamilton came in soon afterward. The three went at onceinto secret session, leaving the entire conduct of the chandlerybusiness to Winters, much to the mystification of that youth.
All three were fresh and cool this morning as they buckled down to theproblem they had to solve, and the wisdom of the previous night'sadjournment was clearly evident.
"I got to talking this thing over with my daughter last night," saidCaptain Hamilton. "You'd forgotten I had a daughter, Tyke? Wait tillyou see her! Well, she was aboard the schooner for dinner with me, andshe said: 'Daddy, if there is a real pirate's treasure, please go afterit. Then you can stay ashore and not go sailing away from me anymore.' So, I've a double incentive for pursuing this thing," and thecaptain laughed.
"Yes, that's like the women-folk," observed Grimshaw. "They're alwaysfor a man's leaving the sea."
"That isn't what made you leave it, Tyke," Captain Hamilton said slyly.
"An' it won't be women-folk that sends me back to it, neither," growledthe older man. "An' now, Allen," he added, as they settled comfortablyinto their chairs, "how did you git along with the paper? Have you gotit so that it makes sense?"
"I'll let you judge of that for yourselves," replied Drew, taking therevised draft from his pocket. "Of course, I can't say that it'sexactly right. Some of the missing words and sentences I had to guessat. But it's as nearly right as I know how to make it."
He waited while Grimshaw and Captain Hamilton lighted their cigars, andthen proceeded to read:
"Trinidad, March 18, 17 .....
"In the name of God, amen.
"I, Ramon Alvarez, unworthy sinner that I am and not fit to take thename of God upon my lips, and well knowing that I deserve no mercy whohave ever shown none, expecting to be plunged into the deepest hell,yet basing my only hope on the Virgin Mary and the blessed saints andthe shriving of Holy Church, do hereby confess the misdeeds of my life.
"From my youth up I was wild. I was with the buccaneers who, off theTortugas, captured the French ship, _Reine Marguerite_, all of whosecrew and passengers we put to death. From there we ran to Port auSpain, ravaging and plundering. We captured the city, killing most ofthe men and boys and carrying off the women and girls. Off one of theBahama Cays we took a Spanish galleon, and although her people foughtstoutly, we made them finally walk the plank. Other ships we capturedwhose names I have forgotten. We took great spoils, but the money wasaccursed and was soon spent in wild living.
"I myself soon became a captain. Down in the Caribbean Sea we won acaravel and killed all on board, one hundred and twenty. I lost myship in a tornado, but soon got another.
"Many more evil deeds we did that would make me weary with the telling.We feared neither God nor man.
"At last, after ten years or more of butchery, the nations sent manyfrigates in chase of us. I fled to one of the islands and careened myship. Tired, knowing I would be taken sooner or later, I made up mymind that I would capture one more rich prize and then be done with mywickedness.
"We captured the ship _Guadalquiver_. The fight was desperate and thedecks ran with blood. We took ...... thousand doubloons, many pearlsand jewels of price.
"I knew of an island off the beaten track where there was good hidingto be found. I took the cutter one night and went ashore to burytreasure. Two men with me mutinied and I killed them both. And therethe booty is still, unless it has been taken away, which God forbid.
"Now, standing mayhap on the very brink of hell, I have made thisdrawing of the island where the treasure is buried. I give it freelyto Holy Mother Church, and beg that part be spent for candles to beburned before the altar and for masses to be said for my unworthy soul.
his
_"Ramon_ (X) _Alvarez_.
mark
"Attest, _Pablo Ximenes_, notary."
"Good work, Allen," commended Tyke, as the reader stopped.
"Very cleverly done," added Captain Hamilton.
Drew flushed with pleasure.
"Those old fellows were well called 'the scourges of the sea,' weren'tthey?" he said. "Now here! There are just two things missing that itwould be the merest guess-work to supply," he added. "One is the date.We know the century, but the year is absolutely rubbed out. The otheris the number of doubloons captured with his last prize. That was in acrease of the paper and had crumbled away."
"Yes," replied Captain Hamilton; "but neither is so very important. Ofcourse, the later the date, the less time there has been for any one tofind the doubloons and take them away. We have the names of some ofthe ships that were captured though, and we might look the matter up insome French or Spanish history and so get a clue to the date.
"As to the extent of the treasure, we'll find that out for ourselveswhen we get it, if we ever do. And if we don't get it, the amountdoesn't matter."
"It seems to be a pretty good-sized one, from the way the rascal speaksabout it," remarked Tyke.
"Plenty big enough to pay for the trouble of getting it," agreedCaptain Hamilton.
"Well, now that we know what the paper says, let's git right down tobrass tacks," suggested Grimshaw. "In the first place, this particularpirate, Alvarez, was evidently a Spaniard. The language the paper iswritten in proves that."
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"Not necessarily," objected the captain. "Spanish is the languagespoken in Trinidad, and even if the dying man were a Frenchman or anEnglishman, the notary would probably translate what he said intoSpanish. Still, the first name, and probably the last, indicateSpanish birth. I guess we're pretty safe in considering that pointsettled."
"But I thought most of the pirates, the leaders anyway, were French orEnglish," persisted Tyke.
"So they were," answered the captain; "but the Portuguese and Spaniardsran them a close second. As a matter of fact, those fellowsacknowledged no nationality and cut the throats of their own countrymenas readily as any others. The only flag they owed any allegiance towas the skull and crossbones."
"But how comes it that this confession was made before a notary?" askedDrew. "I should think it would have been made verbally to a priest."
"Well," said the captain thoughtfully, "there are various ways ofaccounting for that. Alvarez may have been taken sick suddenly, andthe notary may have been nearest at hand. Even if the priest had beensummoned, the sick man might have feared that he would die before thepriest got there and wanted to get it off his mind. He didn't seem tohave much hope of heaven, from the way the paper reads."
"I don't wonder," put in Tyke, dryly.
"But whatever chance there was, he wanted to take it," finished thecaptain.
"I wonder how the paper ever got into Manuel's hands," pondered Tyke.
"The churches and convents seemed to suffer most in those wild days,"said the captain. "They were sacked and plundered again and again. Itmight very well be that this paper was stolen by ignorant adventurers,and in some way got into the hands of one of Manuel's ancestors and socame down to him. Probably most of them couldn't read and had no ideaof what the paper contained. Could Manuel read?" he asked, turning toGrimshaw.
"Why, yes; but rather poorly," answered Tyke.
"I've seen him sometimes in port looking over a Spanish newspaper,moving his finger slowly along each line."
"That explains it then," said the captain. "He was able to make outjust enough to guess that the paper and map referred to hiddentreasure, but he wasn't able to make good sense of it."
"I s'pose that was the reason he was always trying to git me interestedin his pirate stories," put in Tyke. "He was kind o' feeling me out,an' if I'd showed any interest or belief in it, he'd have probablytried to git me to take a ship and go after it with him."
"Not a doubt in the world," agreed Captain Hamilton.
"Well, now we've looked at the matter of the paper from most everyside," remarked Tyke; "an' I guess we're all agreed that it looks likea _bona fide_ confession. We've seen, too, how it was possible for itto git into the hands of Manuel. Now let's see if we can make head ortail of the map."
He brought out the paper from his safe and the three men crowded aroundit. Here, after all, was the crux of the whole matter. By this theywere to stand or fall. It booted little to know merely that thedoubloons were buried somewhere in the West Indies. They might as wellbe at the North Pole, unless they could locate their hiding place withsome degree of precision.
The dark, heavily shaded part in the center of the map was evidentlymeant to mark the position of the island itself. Quite as surely, thelight, undulating lines surrounding it were intended to show the water.
"There seems to be just one inlet," said Captain Hamilton, pointing toan indentation that bit deeply into the dark mass of the island.
"Lucky there's even one," grunted Tyke. "I've known many of thosepicayune islands where there was no safe anchorage at all."
The island was irregular in shape and seemed to have an elevation inthe center. But what most attracted their attention were three smallcircles some distance in from the shore that seemed to indicate somespecial spot.
"There's some writing alongside of these," announced Drew, after asharp scrutiny. "If you'll hand me the reading glass I think I canmake it out."
The glass was quickly brought into use, and Drew stared at the writinghard and long.
"'The Witch's Head.' 'The Three Sisters'," he translated.
"Sounds like a suffragette colony," muttered Tyke.
But Drew was too deeply engrossed with his task to notice the play offancy.
"Thirty-seven long paces due north from the Witch's Head.''Eighty-nine long paces due east from The Three Sisters,'" he went on.
"Now we're getting down to something definite!" exclaimed CaptainHamilton.
"That's all," announced Drew. "What do you suppose it means?"
"It can mean only one thing, it seems to me," said Tyke excitedly."It's pointing to the spot where the doubloons are buried."
"Yes," agreed the captain, "I should take it to mean that if you markoff thirty-seven long paces north from the Witch's Head and eighty-ninelong paces east from The Three Sisters, the spot where those pathscross would be the place to dig."
"Do you see anything on the map that would give a hint as to thelatitude and longitude?" asked Grimshaw anxiously.
"No," answered Drew. "Wait a minute though," he added hastily."Here's something that looks like figures down in the lower left handcorner. Fifty-seven .... No! Sixty-seven-three is one, andthirteen-ten is the other."
"That can only stand for longitude and latitude!" cried Tyke. "Quick,Allen, git down that Hydrographic Office chart. That'll cover it."