fore the _Truxillo_ had appeared, had been beached on the spit and the
chests dragged ashore. Evans was burying the boxes when the first shot
of the _Truxillo_ fell upon his ears. Naturally he concluded that it was
from the _Santa Theresa_ as a warning of what he might expect.

Bully Evans showed his yellow teeth in a grin.

"Compliments of the old man," he said, no whit disturbed at his double
treachery.

But at the sound of the final explosion the desperadoes looked at each
other.

They ran to the nearest hill and saw the destruction of their
companions.

The Portuguese boatswain was the first to recover.

"There ees now fewer to share," he said with a shrug of his shoulders.

Evans looked at Quinn and gave a signal. The double murder was done with
knives. Where there had been four, now only two remained.

Evans and Quinn finished burying the treasure and removed all trace of
their work. A map was drawn by Quinn, showing the exact location of the
cache. The murderers slipped back to their boat and, under cover of
darkness, crept up the harbor till they came to the mouth of a large
river. Up this they pulled and disappeared into the interior. Neither of
them was aware that Bucks had seen the treacherous killing and the
disposal of the treasure.

Six weeks later a living skeleton crawled out of the fever-laden swamps
of Panama and staggered down to a little village on the Gulf of Uraba.
The man was Nat Quinn. He had followed the Rio Tuyra, zigzagged across
the Isthmus, and reached the northern coast.

Somewhere in the dark tangle of forest behind him, where daylight never
penetrates the thick tropical growth, lay the body of Bully Evans. It
was lying face down in the underbrush, a little round hole in the back
of the head. Quinn's treachery had anticipated that of the mate.

As the survivor lurched down to the settlement his voice rose in a high
cackle of delirious song. These were the words of his chant:

It's bully boys, ho! and a deck splashed red--
The devil is paid, quo' he, quo' he,
A knife in the back and a mate swift sped!
Heave yo ho! and away with me.

CHAPTER IV

THE MAN WITH THE SECRET

This was the terrible story old Cap Nat, as he was commonly called, told
to Robert Wallace one night in a grog shop at San Francisco nearly forty
years after the events had taken place. Only one point he omitted--the
fact that Bucks had escaped from the long boat and witnessed