"Good!" returned George. "Then our first fight promises to be one of fair play and no favour--that is to say, if the fellow means to fight and not to attempt to slip away, which we must take care that he does not do. Mr Dyer, you may come down as soon as the Spaniard is fairly under way, for I shall want you to help me fight the ship. Now, men of Devon," he continued, turning to the crew, who had of their own accord and without waiting for orders gone to their stations, "we shall soon be fighting our first fight. Show these haughty Spaniards what you can do, in such fashion that the _Nonsuch_ shall soon become a name of fear throughout the length and breadth of the Spanish Main. Stand to your ordnance, lads; keep cool; and take good aim."
The _Nonsuch_ had tacked twice, working to windward up the narrow channel, when Dyer shouted the news that the Spanish ship had apparently slipped her cable, and was under way, running down toward them; and he followed up the news by descending the fore-rigging and making his way aft, where he stationed himself on the p.o.o.p beside George, in readiness to supervise the working of the ship while the latter fought her.
The two men had only time to exchange a few hurried words together when the Spanish ship was seen to windward, coming down toward them under full sail. And a gallant sight she looked, with her brightly-painted hull, her big gilded figure-head and head rails flashing in the sun, her mastheads and yard-arms bedizened with banner and pennons streaming in the breeze, and her painted sails bellying and straining at yard and stay with the warm breathing of the trade-wind. She was still some two miles distant, and it would be at least ten minutes before she arrived within gun-shot.
"Pilot," said George, turning to Dyer, after he had eyed the stranger carefully, "let the mariners clew up and furl our topgallants. I believe we can do without them, by the look of yonder ship, which seems to be not nearly so fast as ourselves, and there will be the less tackle for the men to handle when it comes to manoeuvring, and consequently the more men free to fight."
The order was given; the men sprang to the topgallant halliards and sheets, cast them off, manned the clewlines and buntlines, and clewed up the topgallants. Then a dozen of them--six forward and six aft--leapt into the rigging, clambered it with the alacrity of squirrels, neatly furled the sails, and were on their way down again from aloft when the first gun from the Spaniard boomed out across the still waters of the channel, to be echoed a little later by the distant hills. The shot flew wide, striking the water nearly a hundred fathoms away on the _Nonsuch"s_ lee bow.
"_Now_," cried George, turning to a man who had for some time been standing by the ensign staff, "you may hoist away and let the Dons see with whom they are about to fight." And in obedience to his command the glorious Red Cross on its white field floated out over the taffrail and went soaring majestically to the head of the staff, to be greeted with cheer after cheer by the crew.
The _Nonsuch_ was now on the starboard tack, heading to the northward, and it looked as though the Spaniard meditated crossing her stern and raking her at close quarters as she crossed. To counter this manoeuvre, therefore, Dyer gave the order "Ready about!" and as the sail-trimmers sprang to their stations, George shouted an order to the gunners of the starboard battery to be ready to fire at the word of command. The men accordingly blew their smouldering matches vigorously, again looked to the priming of their ordnance, and held themselves ready to discharge at the word. Up swept the _Nonsuch_ into the wind, with all her sails ashiver in the brisk breeze, and, watching carefully, George gave the order to fire at the exact moment when the Spanish ship was square abeam. The Spaniard discharged her broadside at the same instant, and immediately succeeding the thunder of the two broadsides those on board the _Nonsuch_ heard the distant thud of their pounding shot and the crackling crash of splintering spars; and, looking eagerly in the direction of the Spanish ship, they saw that they had shot away her foremast and bowsprit, both of which were in the very act of falling.
So they raised three joyous cheers and fell to loading their pieces again, while their comrades, who had not yet fired, looked to see where the Spanish shot had gone. But, with the exception of two holes in the _Nonsuch"s_ mainsail, and a severed brace dangling from the fore-topsail yardarm, no damage was discoverable, whereat they cheered again.
The Spanish ship continued to forge ahead on her original course for a distance of a few fathoms, and then the wreck of her foremast and bowsprit, towing alongside and still attached to her hull by the standing and running rigging, dragged her head round to starboard, whereupon she instantly broached to. Meanwhile the _Nonsuch_, having stayed, was paying off on the larboard tack, the relative positions of the two ships being such that a collision seemed imminent. George saw that the situation was such as to demand instant decision, and he immediately made up his mind what to do.
"Keep her away, Mr Dyer," he commanded, "and run alongside the enemy to leeward. Keep your head sail aback to deaden our way, or we shall never get the grapnels to hold. Stand by there to larboard to heave your grappling irons. Archers and musketeers, discharge me a volley upon the decks of yonder ship; and, gunners of the larboard battery, be ready to fire a broadside of ordnance, great and small, into her at the moment when you feel us touch. Then, boarders, be ready to follow me." And he drew his sword.
The next moment a shower of arrows and musket b.a.l.l.s swept the decks of the stranger with devastating effect, as might be gathered from the chorus of shrieks and yells of anguish that arose from the deck of the Spaniard. An answering volley was instantly returned by the enemy, but it was wild, straggling, and feeble, bearing eloquent testimony to the state of confusion that already prevailed on board her, and which did little harm; and this state of confusion was further demonstrated by the sight of an officer on her p.o.o.p waving his sword violently and shouting orders to which n.o.body seemed to pay the slightest attention. A minute later the hulls of the two ships crashed together, the grappling irons were thrown at the precise instant that the _Nonsuch_ poured a destructive broadside into her antagonist, and before the ships had time to recoil from the impact, George, at the head of some fifty boarders, leapt from the one ship to the other, and the party proceeded to lay about them with sword, pike, and musket b.u.t.t with such fell determination that after a few seconds" resistance on the part of the Spaniards the latter flung down their weapons and called for quarter.
George turned to the officer, who had now descended from the p.o.o.p to the main deck and was valiantly fighting, single-handed, with his back to the front of the p.o.o.p cabins, and cried to him:
"Do you surrender, senor?"
"I will, if you will promise me good _guerra_, senor," replied the Spaniard, dexterously parrying the thrust of a pikeman and running his antagonist neatly through the shoulder.
"Then stop, men; hold your hands, and leave this cavalier to me," cried George, dashing in and striking up the points of the English weapons that still threatened the Spaniard. Then, as the men drew sullenly and unwillingly back, the young captain advanced, with lowered point, and his left hand held out. "Your sword, senor," he demanded. "On the word of an Englishman, I promise you _buena guerra_."
Whereupon the Don, taking his sword by the point, tendered it, hilt first, with a bow, to George, who tucked it under his left arm, bowing in turn as he received it. And so the _Santa Maria_, fifty tons bigger than the _Nonsuch_, and carrying even more guns, with a crew which, at the beginning of the action, had numbered one hundred and thirty, became the first prize of George"s prowess and that of the Devon mastiffs.
CHAPTER SIX.
HOW THEY CAME TO A DESERT ISLAND AND BURIED THEIR TREASURE.
The ships being still held fast together by the chains of the grappling irons, and driving slowly down the channel before the wind, George first ordered the _Nonsuch_ to be brought to an anchor; and when this was done he further instructed Dyer to take steps for the effectual securing of the unwounded prisoners, and the tending of the wounded on both sides.
Then, inviting the officer who had surrendered to him--and whom he rightly a.s.sumed to be the captain of the prize--to accompany him into the state cabin of the captured ship, he formally introduced himself as Senor Don George Saint Leger, an Englishman, and captain of the ship _Nonsuch_; the stranger returning the compliment by explaining that he was Senor Don Pasquale Alfonso Maria Francisco of Albuquerque, a servant of his Most Catholic Majesty, Philip of Spain, and commander of the ship _Santa Maria_, dispatched from Cadiz by his Majesty to convey munitions of various descriptions to his Majesty"s possessions in the Western Indies. And when requested to specify more particularly of what those munitions consisted, Don Pasquale, etcetera, etcetera, mentioned wines, cloths, silk, and brocades of various descriptions, salt, leather, articles of furniture, arms and ammunition, and--he hesitated, whereupon George gently invited him to complete his enumeration.
"Before I do so, senor," remarked Don Pasquale, "I should like to ask what you intend to do with my ship, now that you have captured her."
"a.s.suredly," answered George. "I had quite intended to tell you, even if you had not asked for the information. My purpose in coming to this part of the world is to seek my brother, who was last year captured by your countrymen at San Juan de Ulua, when, by order of Don Martin Enriquez, they treacherously attacked the squadron of the English admiral, John Hawkins, while he was peacefully refitting his ships, under an agreement whereby they were to be permitted to do so without let, hindrance, or interference of any kind. My brother, Don Hubert Saint Leger, is still a prisoner in the hands of your countrymen. My intention is to secure his release, if he is still alive; and to exact heavy compensation for his detention--and any discomfort or suffering to which he may have been subjected; or, if he is dead, to wreak my vengeance upon his slayers. Therefore, senor, you will be rendering your countrymen a service--when I have released you--by informing them of my purpose, and saying, further, that as soon as I have found my brother, or had him restored to me, I will hold my hand and leave these sh.o.r.es; but until then I will ravage the Spanish Main from end to end.
Thus, you--and your countrymen also, I hope--will see that it is to the interest of every Spaniard in the Indies to find my brother and restore him to me, alive and unhurt, as quickly as possible. And do not forget to lay full emphasis upon the words "alive and unhurt," senor, because if he has been slain, or even injured in any way, I will exact such terrible reparation as shall linger in the memory of Spaniards for many a long year. It is in pursuance of my policy of exacting reparation for my brother"s detention that I have captured your ship. I shall take from her whatever I may find aboard her that will be of use to me; and, that done, I shall land you all here on the island of Margarita, and either sink or burn the _Santa Maria_."
"I presume, senor, from what you say, that you hold a commission from the Queen of England, and that it is she who has dispatched you upon your mission of retribution, in revenge for the attack upon her ships at San Juan de Ulua. Is that so?" demanded Don Pasquale.
"No, senor, it is not so," answered George. "The Queen of England knows nothing of this expedition, which is entirely a private venture of my own."
"And the senor holds no commission?" continued the Don.
"No commission save what is conferred by this," answered George, touching his sword.
"Then it would appear that I have fallen into the hands of a common pirate, senor," remarked Don Pasquale through his teeth.
"If you choose to so regard me," answered George.
"_Bueno_!" remarked the Spaniard. "Then I shall know what to do. There is no question of how I choose to regard you, senor. You hold no commission from your Queen, yet you have dared to make war upon the lieges of his Most Catholic Majesty. Therefore you are a pirate, neither more nor less. And as soon as it pleases you to release me I shall make the best of my way to the Main, there to warn my countrymen of your presence upon the coast, and your alleged object. And you may rest a.s.sured, senor, that within a month from this time every Spanish ship in these seas will be on the look-out for you. Your career of piracy will then soon be cut short; and I shall live in the hope of seeing you hanged as a warning and example to all other pirates."
"That is as may be," retorted George. "You may be a.s.sured, Don Pasquale, that I did not enter upon this expedition without a full realisation of all the risks which it involved. Let me again impress upon you the urgency of remembering the words _alive and unhurt_ in relation to my brother, when you make your report; for if anything has been allowed to happen to him, I will hold responsible every Spaniard who falls into my hands. By the way, was there not something that you were about to add when you were enumerating the items of your ship"s cargo?"
"There was, senor," answered Don Pasquale, "but I was then under the impression that I had fallen into the hands of a fellow soldier. But now that I find my captor to be merely a common pirate, it is not consonant with my honour to afford you any further information."
"As you please, senor," answered George, in nowise ruffled by the Don"s reiteration of the term "pirate," which in those days carried nothing like the opprobrious signification that it bears to-day. "It matters not; for I shall cause your ship to be thoroughly searched from stem to stern before I destroy her. But as you seem to be imbued with so very strong an animus against me, I must put you in confinement while your ship is being searched, lest you should feel tempted to do something which you would afterwards be sorry for." So saying, young Saint Leger threw open the door of a state-room in the lock of which he observed a key and, signing to the Spaniard to enter, closed the door and locked the man in, much to the haughty Don"s undisguised disgust. Then, having first called in a man from the deck to stand sentry over the door, he went out on deck to see how matters were proceeding there.
He found that the task of separating the wounded from the dead and the disposal of the former as comfortably as might be on board the ships to which they respectively belonged, was upon the eve of completion, whereupon, after giving Dyer certain further orders, George called to Heard, the purser, and a couple of seamen, to accompany him, and again entering the cabin of the prize, proceeded to subject it to a thorough systematic search, beginning with the captain"s own private state-room.
Here, as George quite expected, they found, in a locked desk, a large number of doc.u.ments, including bills of lading, official instructions, and so on; and among the latter a paper authorising Don Pasquale to deliver over to Don Martin Enriquez, the Viceroy of Mexico, at San Juan de Ulua, the sum of one hundred thousand gold pezos, to be used for payment of the troops and the expenses connected with the government of the country. This was a prize indeed worth having, and George at once proceeded to the cabin in which the Don was confined, and apprising him of the discovery of the doc.u.ment, demanded to be informed where the money was to be found. But the Don flatly refused to supply the information, admitting indeed that the treasure was aboard the ship, but a.s.suring George that it was so carefully concealed that no one but himself would ever be able to lay hands upon it. Whereupon George locked the door again, slipped the key in his pocket, and sent for the carpenter and carpenter"s mate of the _Nonsuch_, with instructions to come aboard the prize forthwith, bringing with them their tools.
George had a very shrewd suspicion that the money was concealed somewhere down in the run of the ship, that being the part of a vessel where treasure was usually stored, because there it would be under the immediate care of the officers and quite out of reach of the crew; as soon, therefore, as the carpenter and his mate joined them, the search party entered the ship"s lazarette and completely cleared it, sending all the stores up on deck. Then, not finding any traces of the money, they tore up the temporary decking, and not to dwell unduly upon this incident, at length found the treasure, in ten stout, iron-bound cases, very cunningly stowed away in a secret chamber constructed right down alongside the ship"s keelson. It was a difficult job to get the cases on deck, they being heavy, and the s.p.a.ce in which they were stowed very confined; but, of course, they managed it at last, and late in the afternoon the whole was transferred to the _Nonsuch_ and safely stowed away in her treasure-room. Meanwhile, Dyer had not been idle; and when the transfer of the treasure had been effected, and George was free to attend to other matters, the pilot reported that all the arms, ammunition, and certain pieces of ordnance, had been removed from the _Santa Maria_, as well as the large quant.i.ty of wine, provisions, rope, canvas, and other matters that might possibly prove useful in the future, and that--subject of course to George"s approval--the prize might now be abandoned. Whereupon, after carefully perusing Dyer"s detailed list of the matters transferred, George issued orders that the boats of both ships were to be lowered and the prisoners, wounded and unwounded, sent down into them, after which the flotilla proceeded, under a flag of truce, to the settlement, some two miles to windward, where the Spaniards were landed. There was a tense moment when, as the flotilla approached the wharf, a body of armed men, numbering about a hundred, suddenly swung into view from behind a cl.u.s.ter of buildings and marched down toward the wharf as though intending to dispute the landing. But when George, in his gig, pulled fearlessly ahead until he arrived within hail--and within musket-shot--and announced the object of his coming, adding that, if any treachery were attempted, his ship would bombard and utterly destroy the settlement, the armed men were hurriedly marched back again out of sight, and the landing of the prisoners was accomplished without difficulty or interference.
By the time that the boats got alongside again, after landing the prisoners, the sun was within an hour of setting, and if the adventurers desired to reach the open sea again before nightfall--as they most a.s.suredly did--it was time to bestir themselves. George, therefore, issued his orders, and while one party of his now pretty well exhausted crew manned the capstan and proceeded to get the _Nonsuch"s_ anchor, a second were set to work to pa.s.s a towing hawser aboard the prize and make it fast; after which the ships got under way, the _Santa Maria_ being in tow of the _Nonsuch_, and safely accomplished the pa.s.sage of the reef just as the sun"s upper rim was disappearing beneath the western horizon in a flaming glory of gold and crimson. Then, as soon as the ships had secured an offing of some three miles, rendering it exceedingly unlikely that the prize would drive ash.o.r.e and again fall into the hands of her former crew, she was effectually set fire to and abandoned. This done, the exhausted crew were sent below to get a good substantial meal, and the deck was left practically in charge of the officers, the helmsman and a couple of hands to keep a look-out being air of the crew who were required to keep the deck until the regular night watches should be resumed.
This opportunity was seized by George to explain to the officers his more immediate plans. He reminded them that the primary object of the expedition was to rescue his brother from the Spaniards, and pointed out to them that since the stroke of good fortune which had fallen to their lot, that day, had made them masters of enough booty to ensure the financial success of the expedition, there was now no reason why the great object of the voyage should be further delayed, and intimated his intention of heading the ship directly for San Juan de Ulua. And this was at once agreed to, if not exactly cheerfully, at least with a fairly good grace; for there were some on board the _Nonsuch_ who, having seen how apparently easy it was to obtain rich booty, would fain have had the ship proceed leisurely along the coast, touching at La Guaira, Porto Cabello, La Hacha, Santa Marta, Cartagena--in fact at every spot along the Main where the Spaniards had established themselves, holding the towns to ransom and acquiring all the booty possible while working their way westward. But George would have none of it, he had already acquired quite as much booty as he desired to possess at that moment; for he wanted to keep his men keen, and he knew that nothing saps a man"s courage more, and makes him less willing to engage in a desperate enterprise, than the possession of ample means, and he feared that if he acquired too much treasure before he had succeeded in finding and rescuing his brother, the crew might insist upon abandoning the quest and returning home to enjoy the fruit of their spoils. Therefore, as soon as the south-western extremity of Margarita was cleared, the ship"s head was hauled up to west-north-west for the northern extremity of the peninsula of Yucatan.
On the following forenoon a small island, the northern extremity of which was studded with numerous outlying rocks, was sighted ahead, and pa.s.sed, close to the northward, about an hour before noon; and late on in the afternoon another and somewhat larger island, grouped about with innumerable rocky satellites, was sighted and pa.s.sed to larboard. Then nothing more was seen until, on the fifth day out from Margarita, about an hour before midnight, the alarm was suddenly raised that broken water appeared ahead, and the ship was quickly brought to the wind, on the starboard tack, just in time to avoid plunging headlong upon a reef projecting from the northern extremity of a small island, of the existence of which Dyer declared himself to be utterly ignorant.
Luckily for the adventurers, there was a half-moon riding high in the sky, which, together with the highly phosph.o.r.escent state of the sea, and the admirable look-out which was being maintained by George"s orders, enabled them to detect the danger in time to avoid it.
Hastily summoned from his bunk, upon the occurrence of the emergency, George ascended to the p.o.o.p, and carefully surveyed the situation. To the northward there appeared what looked like the loom of high land, but if it was what it appeared to be, it was sufficiently distant to be of no immediate consequence, and the young commander scarcely favoured it with a second glance; it was his immediate surroundings that most insistently claimed his immediate attention, for as a matter of fact the ship had blundered up against what is now known as the Pedro Bank and its cays, and there the latter lay, not more than a mile to leeward of the ship, which was already in discoloured water, with the sea breaking heavily at no great distance to the north of her and all round four small islets within easy distance of each other. Fortunately, the weather was fine, and a very brief study of the situation sufficed to convince Saint Leger that the ship was not in any danger, now that the islands had been seen and timely measures taken to avoid running upon them. But the sight of them had crystallised in his mind an idea that had been floating there during the last few days, ever since they had left Margarita, indeed, and he issued orders for sail to be reduced, and for the ship to dodge to and fro to windward of the islets, keeping them in sight until the morning. For he had suddenly made up his mind to devote a few hours to the examination of these islets by daylight, with the object of determining their suitability as a hiding-place for the treasure which he now had on board. He regarded it as altogether too valuable to be risked in a fight with its accompanying possibilities of capture, and he felt convinced, from occasional remarks which had reached his ears, that all hands would fight with greater freedom, and much easier minds, if they felt that, in the event of a reverse, their loss would be confined to that of the ship, and possibly their own freedom--strange to say, they were quite willing to risk the latter, convinced that if they fell into the hands of the enemy their loss of freedom would be but temporary, but if they chanced to lose the treasure it would be gone for ever.
Accordingly the ship dodged off and on during the remaining hours of the night, and at daybreak George was called, and at once proceeded into the foretop, accompanied by Dyer, where the pair again carefully reconnoitred their surroundings. From this elevation it was seen that the four islets occupied the south-eastern extremity of a shoal, or bank, of somewhat irregular shape, widening out from a point at its eastern extremity, to a width of some twenty-five miles at the spot occupied by the islets, and stretching away in a westerly direction to the very verge of the horizon, and possibly farther still. The four islets lay in a group, about four miles apart, nearly equidistant from each other, and ran in a direction approximately North-North-East, and South-South-West, the most southerly islet standing quite close to the edge of the shoal. The one next it to the northward, which was the largest of them all, was only a very small affair, being about half a mile long by about a quarter of a mile broad. But it was the northernmost islet that chiefly appealed to George. All of them were low and s.h.a.ggy with stunted bush, but this one stood higher out of the water than any of the others, being some twelve or fifteen feet high at its highest part; moreover it had a few coconut trees upon it, which the others had not, and the young captain was quick to see how usefully these might be employed as landmarks in the event of his determining to bury the treasure there. Accordingly, as soon as he and his companion had familiarised themselves with the features of the place, George descended to the deck and took command of the ship, leaving Dyer perched aloft to act as pilot and con the ship to her anchorage. Half an hour later the _Nonsuch_, having slid round the tail of a reef that jutted out about half a mile from the southern extremity of the island, clewed up her canvas and came to an anchor at a distance of less than a quarter of a mile from the beautifully smooth, sandy beach, and all hands went below to breakfast.
As George more than half-expected, there was a very marked disposition to murmur and to betray strong dissatisfaction when it came to be known that the captain had called a halt at this little group of desolate, uninteresting islets with the express object of burying the rich booty that had been so easily acquired, some of the malcontents going so far as to express aloud their firm conviction that when once the islets had been lost sight of it would be impossible to ever find them again. And such a fear was by no means ill-founded, for it must be remembered that when George Saint Leger embarked upon his great adventure the science of navigation was in a very different condition from what it now is.
Lat.i.tude was only determinable very roughly by means of one or another of two crude instruments, one of which was called the _astrolabe_ and the other the _cross staff_, while there was no method of determining the longitude at all, save by what is now known as the "dead reckoning,"
that is to say, a more or less careful record of the courses steered and the distances sailed; hence when mariners ventured out of sight of land their only means of reaching any desired point was to sail north or south until they reached the lat.i.tude of their port, and then steer east or west, as the case might be, until they arrived at their destination, this plan being further complicated by the intrusion of obstacles in the shape of headlands and what not in the way. But George Saint Leger happened to be better equipped in this respect than perhaps any other man of his time; for as has already been mentioned, he was a lad of ideas, and one of those ideas was that there ought to be some way of ascertaining the longitude of a ship, if one could but hit upon it; and further, that such a way having been found, a mariner might fearlessly venture out of sight of land, remain out of sight of it as long as he pleased, and go whither he pleased, with the certainty of being able to find his way back again. Then, with this postulate firmly fixed in his mind, he had set himself to work in his leisure time to thrash out the question of accurately determining the longitude of an unknown place in relation to a known place. He was convinced that the world was round, globular in shape, although there were many learned men who disputed this a.s.sertion, and he also knew that the world revolved on its own axis once in twenty-four hours. Also he knew that when the sun, in the course of its apparent pa.s.sage round the earth, attained its highest point in the heavens, it was noon at that place, and his astrolabe afforded him the means of determining that moment. Then, still following the train of thought connected with the earth"s diurnal revolution upon its axis whereby the sun was brought to the meridian every day at noon, he had not much difficulty in reasoning out the fact that it cannot possibly be noon at any two or more places at the same moment unless they happen to be situated on the same meridian, or, in other words, are of the same longitude. From this to the a.s.surance that the difference in time between any two places was equivalent to the difference in longitude between them was an easy step, and led naturally enough to the next, which was that, if he happened to possess a time- piece showing, say, the time at Plymouth, he could, by comparing this with the moment of noon somewhere else, as ascertained by his astrolabe, determine the exact distance of that place east or west of Plymouth.
The rest was easy; he went to a certain watchmaker in London and ordered the best watch that could be made for money, the cost of it absorbing most of his savings; and this watch, carefully regulated and rated, showing Plymouth time, he took with him when he embarked upon his great adventure in the _Nonsuch_, and by means of it he had succeeded in ascertaining pretty accurately the longitude of Barbados, Trinidad, and Margarita, and intended also to ascertain the longitude of the islet upon which he proposed to bury his treasure. All this he explained to his crew as well as he could drive so abstruse a matter into their thick heads, and although it is more than doubtful whether any of them understood his explanation, they understood at least that "the Cap"n"
was a.s.suring them that he possessed some occult means of finding the islets again, and with that they were fain to be satisfied. It never occurred to them, poor souls, that if the captain lost his watch, or allowed it to run down, his means of finding the islets again would be gone, otherwise it is exceedingly unlikely that they would ever have agreed to his taking the risk.
As soon as breakfast was over, one of the boats was lowered, and George, accompanied by half a dozen men provided with pickaxes and shovels, went ash.o.r.e, to prepare a suitable hiding-place for the treasure, while Dyer, and Heard, the purser, a.s.sisted by the sailmaker, swathed the chest containing the pearls in several folds of tarred canvas, the outer coat of all being thickly smeared with pitch, in order to preserve the delicate gems from injury through being buried in more or less damp earth. The sh.o.r.e party had no difficulty in selecting a suitable spot for the burial, the precise point being determinable again at any time by a series of carefully taken and equally carefully recorded cross bearings; and by the time that a hole of suitable dimensions and depth had been excavated, a signal was flying on board the _Nonsuch_ that all the preparations there had been completed and that the treasure was ready for removal, with the result that before the arrival of mid-day the whole of the treasure was safely deposited in its hiding-place, the soil shovelled back into the hole and well rammed down, and all traces of the excavation carefully obliterated. Then all hands returned to the ship just in time for George to make his noontide observations for the determination of the position of the islets. The anchor was then hove up and the _Nonsuch_ stood out to sea again, while, despite their captain"s a.s.surances to the contrary, most of the crew were more than half convinced that they would never again set eyes upon the treasure which they had taken so much trouble to put out of sight.
Three uneventful days later land was sighted on the larboard bow, and late in the afternoon the headland at the north-eastern extremity of Yucatan peninsula was pa.s.sed at a distance of some twelve miles, and the course was altered to due west for the run along the northern coast of the peninsula. It was near this spot that, just a year earlier, the squadron under Captain Hawkins" command had encountered the two successive hurricanes which had played such havoc with them as to compel them to run to San Juan de Ulua to refit, with the result that irremediable disaster had overtaken them; and Dyer, who had looked forward with considerable trepidation to the time when he would again be called upon to sail those treacherous seas, was loud in his thanksgivings for the good fortune which had thus far attended them, for nothing could be more satisfactory and delightful than the weather which the voyagers were now experiencing, the only drawback to their content being an unaccountably heavy sea into which they ran about midnight, and which Dyer was inclined to regard as the forerunner of the much dreaded hurricane. With the pa.s.sage of the hours, however, the violence of the sea manifested a tendency to moderate, which caused the more experienced ones among the crew to arrive at the conclusion that, instead of being the forerunner of a hurricane, the turbulent sea was merely the aftermath of one which had very recently blown itself out.
And this conclusion was abundantly verified on the following day, for about mid-morning a floating object was sighted on the starboard bow which, as the _Nonsuch_ drew nearer, proved to be the hull of a small ship, dismasted, floating low in the water, and rolling horribly in the trough of the sea. Then, as now, the sight of a ship in distress always appeals irresistibly to the humanity of the British seaman and no sooner was the character of the floating object identified than the helm of the _Nonsuch_ was shifted and she was headed for the wreck. Shortly afterwards the Spanish ensign was hoisted half-way up the ensign staff of the stranger, thus declaring not only her nationality but also that she was in distress, a fact which was sufficiently obvious to all with eyes to see.
When the _Nonsuch_ had arrived within about a mile of the heavily labouring craft, George ordered sail to be shortened, and announced to his officers his intention to stand by the wreck until the sea should moderate sufficiently to enable boats to be lowered, when he would take off the crew, and every preparation was made accordingly. The English ship was so manoeuvred as to enable her to pa.s.s athwart the stranger"s stern and heave-to close under the lee of the latter; and presently, as the s.p.a.ce between the two craft rapidly narrowed, George was enabled to distinguish, painted in large letters, the name _Dona Catalina_.
Springing into the weather main rigging of his own ship, the young commander waited until but a few fathoms separated the two vessels, and he was able to clearly distinguish the features of the three men who were clinging desperately to the shattered p.o.o.p bulwark rail of the wreck, and then, with his hand placed trumpet-wise to his mouth as he stood with his back supported by the rigging, he hailed in Spanish:
"Ho! the _Catalina_, ahoy! Do you wish to be taken off?"
"_Si, Senor, si, si_," answered a short, stout, black-bearded individual who formed one of the trio on the stranger"s p.o.o.p, "we are full of water and sinking. Take us off, for the love of G.o.d! We have pumped until we can pump no more, our strength being completely exhausted, and the leak is gaining on us rapidly."