I knew it myself, and put it to me that I couldn’t do better than to marry her.  The woman, being asked, was willing.  She had lost two husbands already, she told me, but the third time was luck.  Her father read the service over us, out of a Testament he always carried in his pocket.  As for me, since my poor wife’s death I had thoroughly given myself over to the devil, and did not care.  Old Klootz was first-rate company, too; though living in that forsaken place he seemed to be a dictionary about every ship that had sailed the seas for forty years past, and to know every scandal about her.  He listened, too, though he seemed to be talking in his full-hearted way all the time.  And the end was that I told him about Melhuish, and showed him the map.

He had heard about Melhuish, as about everything else; but the map did truly—­I think—­surprise him.  We studied it together, and he wound up by saying—­

“There’s a clever fellow somewhere at the bottom of this, and I should like to make his acquaintance.”

Said I:  “Then you believe there is such a treasure hidden?”

“Lord love you,” said he, “I know all about that!  It happened in the year ’86 at Puerto Bello.  A Spaniard, Bartholomew Diaz, that had been flogged for some trouble in the mines, stirred up a revolt among the niggers and half-breeds, and came marching down upon the coast at the head of fourteen thousand or fifteen thousand men, sacking the convents and looting the mines on his way.  He gave himself out to be some sort of religious prophet, and this brought the blacks like flies round a honey-pot.  The news of it caught Puerto Bello at a moment when there was not a single Royal ship in the harbour.  The Governor lost his head and the priests likewise.  Getting word that Diaz was marching straight on the place, and not five leagues distant, they fell to emptying the banks in a panic, stripping the churches, and fetching up treasure from the vaults of the religious houses.  There happened to be a schooner lying in the harbour—­the Rosaway, built at Marblehead—­lately taken by the Spaniards off Campeachy, with her crew, that were under lock and key ashore, waiting trial for cutting logwood without licence.  The priests commandeered this Vessel and piled her up with gold, the Governor sending down a guard of soldiers to protect it; but in the middle of the night, on an alarm that Diaz had come within a mile of the gates, the dunderhead drew off half of this guard to strengthen the garrison.  On their way back to the citadel these soldiers were met and passed in the dark by the Rosaway’s crew, that had managed to break prison, and in the confusion had somehow picked up the password.  Sparke was the name of Rosaway’s skipper, a Marblehead man; the mate, Griffiths, came from somewhere in Wales; the rest, five in number, being likewise mixed English and Americans.  They picked up a shore-boat down by the harbour, rowed off to the ship,