Away sailed the Bonny Lass, sailing once for all out of the story.  As for Captain Sampson, there is a long gap in his history, hazily filled by the story of his having been lieutenant to Benito Bonito, and one of the two survivors when Bonito’s black flag was brought down by the British frigate Espiegle.  But sober history knows nothing of him until he reappears years later, an aged and broken man, in a back street of Bristol.  Here was living a certain Hopperdown, who had been boatswain on the Bonny Lass at the time that she so regrettably lost her passengers overboard.  He too had been at Leeward Island, and may have somewhat wondered and questioned as to the happenings during the brig’s brief stay there.  He saw and recognized his old skipper hobbling along the Bristol quays, and perhaps from pity took the shabby creature home with him.  Hopperdown dealt in sailors’ slops, and had a snug room or two behind the shop.  Here for a while the former Captain Sampson dwelt, and after a swift illness here he died.  With the hand of death upon him, his grim lips at last gave up their secret.  With stiffening fingers he traced a rough map, to refresh Hopperdown’s memory after the lapse of time since either had seen the wave-beaten cliffs of Leeward Island.  For Captain Sampson had never been able to return to claim the treasure which he had left to Bill Halliwell’s silent guardianship.  Somehow he had lost his own vessel, and there would be rumors about, no doubt, which would make it difficult for him to get another.  If he had, indeed, sailed with Bonito, he had kept his secret from his formidable commander.  Even as he had dealt with Bill Halliwell, so might Bonito deal by him—­or at least the lion’s share must be yielded to the pirate captain.  And the passion of Captain Sampson’s life had come to be his gold—­his hidden hoard on far-off Leeward Island.  It was his, now, all his.  The only other who knew its hiding-place, his former mate, had been killed in Havana in a tavern brawl.  The secret of the bright unattainable treasure was all the captain’s own.  He dreamed of the doubloons, gloated over them, longed for them with a ceaseless gnawing passion of desire.  And in the end he died, in Hopperdown’s little shop in the narrow Bristol by-street.

Hopperdown, an aging man himself, and in his humble way contented, fell straightway victim to the gold-virus.  He sold all he had, and bought passage in a sailing ship for Valparaiso, trusting that once so far on the way he would find means to accomplish the rest.  But the raging of the fever in his thin old blood brought him to his bed, and the ship sailed without him.  Before she was midway in the Atlantic Hopperdown was dead.