s fetching
the coal and dressing the dinner my imagination was on fire with fancies
of the treasure in this ship. The Frenchman had told me that they had
been well enough pleased with their hauls in the South Sea to resolve
them upon heading round the Horn for their haunt, wherever it might be,
in the Spanish main; and I had too good an understanding of the
character of pirates to believe that they would have quitted a rich
hunting-field before they had handsomely lined their pockets. What,
then, was the treasure in the run, if indeed it were there? I recalled a
dozen stories of the doings of the buccaneers, not to speak of the
famous Acapulco ship taken by Anson a little before the year in which
the _Boca del Dragon_ was fishing in those waters; and I feasted my
fancy with all sorts of sparkling dreams of gold and silver and precious
stones, of the costly ecclesiastical furniture of New Spain, of which
methought I found a hint in that silver crucifix in the cabin, of rings,
sword-hilts, watches, buckles, snuff-boxes, and the like. Lord! thought
I, that this island were of good honest mother earth instead of ice,
that we might bury the pirate's booty if we could not save the ship, and
make a princely mine of its grave, ready for the mattock should we
survive to fetch it!

I was mechanically stirring the saucepan full of broth I had prepared,
lost in these golden thoughts, when the Frenchman suddenly sat up on his
mattress.

"Ha!" cried he, sniffing vigorously, "I smell something good--something
I am ready for. There is no physic like sleep," and with that he
stretched out his arms with a great yawn, then rose very agilely,
kicking the clothes and mattress on one side and bringing a bench close
to the furnace. "What time is it, sir?"

"Something after twelve by the captain's watch," said I, pulling it out
and looking at it. "But 'tis guesswork time."

"The _captain's watch_?" cried he, with a short loud laugh. "You are
modest, Mr. ----"

"Paul Rodney," said I, seeing he stopped for my name.

"Yes, modest, Mr. Paul Rodney. That watch is yours, sir; and you mean it
shall be yours."

"Well, Mr. Tassard," said I, colouring in spite of myself, though he
could not witness the change in such a light as that, "I felt this, that
if I left the watch in the captain's pocket it was bound to go to the
bottom ultimately, and----"

"Bah!" he interrupted, with a violent flourish of the hand. "Let us save
the schooner, if poss