writer,
and set forth at some length the story of Barber's destitute condition,
and what the writer did to ameliorate it. Then followed, in full
detail, Barber's story of his adventure culminating in the discovery of
the stranded wreck and the chests of treasure stowed down in her run,
with the expression of Barber's conviction that the ship had been a
pirate. It also recorded at length the steps which Barber had taken to
obtain the necessary data from which to calculate the latitude of the
wreck; and it was the ingenuity of the man's methods that at last began
to impress upon me the conviction that the story might possibly be true,
especially as it was illustrated by a sketch--drawn from memory, it is
true--showing the appearance of the land from the entrance of the river,
very much in the same way that charts are occasionally illustrated for
the guidance of the seaman.

This story was succeeded by a record of the successive stages by which
the negotiations between the writer and Barber advanced, winding up with
a final statement that on such and such a date an agreement had been
drawn up in duplicate and signed by the contracting parties, whereby
Stenson was to bear the entire cost of the expedition--recouping
himself, so far as might be, by securing freights along the route,
Barber undertaking to discharge the duties of mate during the voyage,
without pay; the proceeds of such treasure as might be found to be
equally divided between the two men.

The perusal of the diary fully occupied me right up to the moment when
the steward entered to lay the table for supper; and when I had finished
it I found myself regarding the adventure with very different eyes from
those which I had turned upon it to start with. To be perfectly frank,
when I first heard the yarn I had not a particle of faith in the
existence of the treasure, and quite set down the late skipper as a
credulous fool for risking his hard-earned money in such a hare-brained
speculation; but after reading the story as set out _in extenso_ and
with a very great wealth of detail, I felt by no means sure that skipper
Stenson, very far from being the credulous fool that I had originally
supposed him to be, might not prove to have been an exceedingly shrewd
and wide-awake person. In a word, I had begun to believe in the truth
of the story of the treasure, strange and incredible as it had seemed at
first hearing.

And this change of view on my part involved a c