no
farther. For this true tale runs red with the primal emotions of the old
buccaneers. It is a story of love and hate, of heroism and cowardice, of
treasure-trove and piracy on the high seas, of gaping wounds and foul
murder. If this is not to your taste, fall out. My story is not for
you.

CHAPTER III

CONCERNING DOUBLOON SPIT

Robert Wallace, the father of Evelyn, was not one of the forty-niners,
but he had come to California by way of the Isthmus not very many years
later. Always of an adventurous turn, it was on his fourteenth birthday
that he ran away from his home in Baltimore to become a stowaway on
board a south-bound vessel.

It was a day of privations, and the boy endured more than his share of
them without complaint. Somehow he got along, knocking about from one
point to another, now at the gold diggings, now on the San Francisco
wharfs, and again as a deck hand on the coasters that plied from port to
port.

When he was eighteen, but well grown for his age, he fell in with an old
salt named Nat Quinn. Quinn was an old man, close to seventy, a survival
of a type of sailor which even then had all but passed away.

The sea and the wind had given Quinn a face of wrinkled leather. It was
his custom to wear rings in his ears, to carry a murderous dirk, and to
wrap around his bald head a red bandanna after the fashion of the
buccaneers of old.

He was a surly old ruffian, quick to take offense, and absolutely
fearless. When the old fellow was in drink it was as much as one's life
was worth to cross his whim.

Nat Quinn was second mate of the _Porto Rico_ when young Wallace shipped
before the mast at San Francisco for a cruise to Lima. The crew were
probably rough specimens, but there can be no doubt that Quinn hazed
them mercilessly.

Soon the whole forecastle was simmering with talk about revenge. Off
Guayaquil one night three of the crew found him alone on the deck and
rushed him overboard. The old man was no swimmer. No doubt this would
have been the end of him if young Wallace, hearing his cry for help, had
not dived from the rail and kept him afloat until a boat reached them.

From that night Nat Quinn took a great fancy to the young man and often
hinted that he was going to make his fortune. He told of hidden
treasure, but never definitely; spoke of a great fortune to be had for
the lifting, and promised Wallace that he should go halves.

No doubt he trusted the boy, but the habit of se