“Would they consent to go unarmed?”

“Yes.”

And all these facts being communicated to some of our people, and agreed to, a small schooner was chartered—­the Napoleon, of ninety tons; Captain John Sawyer was put in master, and Watts, who had followed the sea forty years, and is now the keeper of Portland light, supercargo.

Not less than five, and it may be six, different voyages followed, one after the other, as fast as a vessel could be engaged and a crew got together; and, though nothing was “realized” but vexation, disappointment, and self-reproach, till the parties who had ventured upon the undertaking were almost ashamed to show their faces, there is not one of the whole to this hour, I verily believe, who does not stick to the faith and swear it was no bubble; and they are men of character and experience—­men of business habits, cool and cautious in their calculations, and by no means given to chasing will-o’-the-wisps anywhere.

And now let me give the particulars that have since come to my knowledge, on the authority of those who were actually parties in the strange enterprise from first to last.

Before they sailed on their first voyage, they consulted a fortune teller by the name of Tarbox, who, without knowing their purpose, and while in a magnetic sleep, described the place, and the marks, and the treasure, even to the cross of gold, just as they had been described by Greenleaf himself.  But she chilled their very blood at the time by whispering that, within two or three weeks at furthest, there would be a death among their number.  Greenleaf made very light of the prediction at first, but grew serious, and, after a few days, gloomy, and refused to go.  At last, however, he consented, and they had a very pleasant run to the edge of the Gulf Stream, latitude 38 deg. and longitude 67 deg., when—­but I must give this part of the story in the very language of Watts himself, a man still living, and worthy of entire confidence.

“We had been talking together pleasantly enough, and he seemed rather chippur.  Only the night before, he had given me all the marks and bearings, and everything but the distance.  He had never trusted anybody else in the same way, he said, but had rather taken a liking to me, and he kept back that one thing only that he might be safe, happen what must on the voyage.  Well, we had been talking pleasantly together—­it was about nine A.M., and the sea was running pretty high, and I had just turned to go aft, when something made me look round again, and I saw the poor fellow pitching head foremost over the side.  He touched the water eight or ten feet from the vessel, but came up handsomely and struck out.  He was a capital swimmer, and not at all frightened, so far as I could judge; for, if you’ll believe me, squire, he never opened his mouth, but swum head and shoulders out of the water.  At first, I thought he had jumped overboard; but afterwards,