and adroit steering that saves them now, but not far away lie the long shadows of the shelving coast and its black-bearded forest.  The swing of the oars became bold, open and exciting, and angry challenges passed.  But the burden of the heavy gold fought against them, like the giant’s harp calling Master!  Master! on the shoulders of flying Jack of the Bean-stalk.  The light, trim craft of the pursuers edged upon them, and the shadow of an angry struggle in the pitchy, reeking night gloomed over them.  “No, no,” said the leader:  “no bloodshed for the cursed stuff!  Here, give me a lift;” and with a heave and plunge the massy rouleaux splashed into the water, and the boat rose lighter with an easier conscience.  The sea shut close-fisted over its own, while the pursuing boat paused and eddied about it, as if held to the treasure by invisible, impalpable strands.  The pursuit was abandoned, and the betrayed or treacherous diver escaped.  But busy rumor reports that he returned at leisure to the spot, and that the bullion of the Golden Gate went to replenish the forfeited fortune of the bold ex-rebel.  Believe as you like, good reader.

The sea-sand, in its industrious zeal in covering up memorials of man’s art and industry, is often curiously assisted by the zoophytes and vegetation of the ocean, as well as guarded in its labor by abnormal monsters of piscine creation.  An example of this occurred in an amusing venture after Lafitte’s gold.  While the Gulf coast of Western Louisiana is fortified, in its immature terre tremblante, by the coral reefs and islets, it has the appearance of having been torn into ragged edges by the hydrostatic pressure of the Gulf Stream.  On one of these little islets or keys, hard by Caillon Bay, the rumor went that the buccaneer had sunk a Spanish galleon laden with pieces of eight and ingots of despoiled Mexico.  The people thereabout are a simple, credulous race of Spanish Creoles, speaking no English, keeping the saints’ days, and watching the salt-pans of the more energetic but scarcely more thrifty Americans with curious wonder.  They chanced in their broken tongue to commit the story of the treasure to a diver of an equally simple faith, who set about putting it to more practical use than to gild an hour with an old legend.  They told how the spook of the Spanish captain haunted the wreck, and that the gold was guarded by a dragon in the shape of a monstrous horned and mottled frog, or some other devil of the sea, to which the diver did seriously incline, but not to make him give up the undertaking.  He prudently, however, consulted with an old Indian witch, and so received the devil’s good word, and piously got a bottle of holy water from the priest, and thus was well fenced in above and below.