bles to Harry, who took them in
his nerveless hand and fingers that he could hardly close upon what
they held.

The papers Captain Morgan found in a wallet in an inner breast-pocket
of the Spaniard's waistcoat. These he examined one by one, and finding
them to his satisfaction, tied them up again, and slipped the wallet
and its contents into his own pocket.

Then for the first time he appeared to observe Master Harry, who,
indeed, must have been standing the perfect picture of horror and
dismay. Whereupon, bursting out a-laughing, and slipping the pistol he
had used back into its sling again, he fetched poor Harry a great slap
upon the back, bidding him be a man, for that he would see many such
sights as this.

But, indeed, it was no laughing matter for poor Master Harry, for it
was many a day before his imagination could rid itself of the image of
the dead Spaniard's face; and as he walked away down the street with
his companions, leaving the crowd behind them, and the dead body where
it lay for its friends to look after, his ears humming and ringing from
the deafening noise of the pistol-shots fired in the close room, and
the sweat trickling down his face in drops, he knew not whether all
that had passed had been real, or whether it was a dream from which he
might presently awaken.

IV

The papers Captain Morgan had thus seized upon as the fruit of the
murder he had committed must have been as perfectly satisfactory to him
as could be, for having paid a second visit that evening to Governor
Modiford, the pirate lifted anchor the next morning and made sail
towards the Gulf of Darien. There, after cruising about in those waters
for about a fortnight without falling in with a vessel of any sort, at
the end of that time they overhauled a caravel bound from Puerto Bello
to Cartagena, which vessel they took, and finding her loaded with
nothing better than raw hides, scuttled and sunk her, being then about
twenty leagues from the main of Cartagena. From the captain of this
vessel they learned that the plate fleet was then lying in the harbor
of Puerto Bello, not yet having set sail thence, but waiting for the
change of the winds before embarking for Spain. Besides this, which was
a good deal more to their purpose, the Spaniards told the pirates that
the Sieur Simon, his wife, and daughter were confined aboard the
vice-admiral of that fleet, and that the name of the vice-admiral was the
_Santa Maria y Valladolid_.

S