ces of eight! This
divided among the one hundred and eighty survivors of the original crew
meant affluence for even the meanest cabin boy. It was wealth such as
they had not even dreamed of. It was a prize the value of which had
scarcely ever been paralleled.

They were assembled forward of the quarter-deck when the announcement
was made. When they understood the news the men became drunk with joy.
It would seem as if they had been suddenly stricken mad. Some of them
stared in paralyzed silence, others broke into frantic cheers and yells,
some reeled and shuddered like drunken men. The one person who preserved
his imperturbable calmness was Morgan himself. The gratitude of these
men toward him was overwhelming. Even those who had good cause to hate
him forgot for the time being their animosity--all except Hornigold,
whose hatred was beyond all price. Under his leadership they had
achieved such a triumph as had scarcely ever befallen them in the
palmiest days of their career, and with little or no loss they had been
put in possession of a prodigious treasure. They crowded about him
presently with enthusiastic cheers of affection and extravagant vows of
loving service. All, that is, except Hornigold, whose sense of injury,
whose thirst for vengeance, was so deep that all the treasure of Potosi
itself would not have abated one jot or one tittle of it.

The general joy, however, was not shared by the rescued buccaneers.
Although they had but a few hours before despaired of life in the
loathsome depths of the vile hold, and they had been properly grateful
for the sudden and unexpected release which had given them their liberty
and saved them from the gibbet, yet it was not in any human man,
especially a buccaneer, to view with equanimity the distribution--or the
proposed distribution--of so vast a treasure and feel that he could not
share in it. The fresh air and the food and drink had already done much
for those hardy ruffians. They were beginning to regain, if not all
their strength, at least some of their courage and assurance. They
congregated in little groups here and there among Morgan's original men
and stared with lowering brows and flushed faces at the frantic revel in
which they could not participate. Not even the cask of rum which Morgan
ordered broached to celebrate the capture, and of which all hands
partook with indiscriminate voracity, could bring joy to their hearts.
After matters had quieted down somewhat--