and cabin to enable me to pass easily to and fro; I then
emptied one of the chests in my cabin and carried it to where the
treasure was. The chest I filled nearly three-parts full with money,
jewellery, &c., which sank the contents of the other chests to the depth
I wanted. I then fetched a quantity of small arms, such as pistols and
hangers and cutlasses, and filled up the chests with them, first placing
a thickness of canvas over the money and jewellery, that no glitter
might show through. To improve the deception I brought another chest to
the run, and wholly filled it with cutlasses, powder-horns, pistols, and
the like, and so fixed it that it must be the first to come to hand. My
cunning amounted to this: that, suppose the run to be rummaged, the
contents of the first chest were sure to be turned out, but, on the
other chests being opened, and what they appeared to contain observed,
it was as likely as not that the rummagers would be satisfied they were
arms-chests, and quit meddling with them.

Herenow might I indulge in a string of reflections on the troubles and
anxieties which money brings, quote from Juvenal and other poets, and
hold myself up to your merriment by a contemptuous exhibition of myself,
a lonely sailor, labouring to conceal his gold from imaginary knaves,
toiling in the dark depth of the vessel, and never heeding that, even
whilst he so worked, his ship might split upon some half-tide rock of
ice, and founder with him and his treasure too, and so on, and so on.
But the fact is I was not a fool. Here was money enough to set me up as
a fine gentleman for life, and I meant to save it and keep it too, if I
could. A man on his deathbed, a man in such peril that his end is
certain, can afford to be sentimental. He is going where money is dross
indeed, and he is in a posture when to moralize upon human greed and the
vanity of wishes and riches becomes him. But would not a man whose
health is hearty, and who hopes to save his life, be worse off than a
sheep in the matter of brains not to keep a firm grip of Fortune's hand
when she extended it? I know I was very well pleased with my morning's
work when I had accomplished it, and had no mind to qualify my
satisfaction by melancholy and romantic musings on my condition and the
uncertainty of the future. This was possibly owing to the fineness of
the weather; a heavy black gale from the north would doubtless have
given a very different turn to my humours.