who called all the saints to witness that the food he had on
board would not suffice to feed so many men more than a couple of days
at most. This objection I met by pointing out to him that he could bear
up for Tolu, on the Gulf of Morrosquillo, which he could easily fetch in
twenty-four hours, and so left him to settle the matter in whichever way
seemed best to him.

As soon as we had parted company with the felucca, and were fairly under
way again, I set to work to search for the treasure, of the actual
presence of which on board I had as yet had no time to satisfy myself.
Hoard was of opinion that it would be found stowed away in a strong-room
beneath the cabin deck, in the position usually occupied by the
lazarette, and there, sure enough, I found such a room--a solidly built
structure of hard timber, fully six inches thick, plated with iron, the
door being secured by three massive iron bars passed through thick iron
bands, and secured at either end by heavy iron padlocks, six in all, the
keyholes of which were sealed with great seals the size of the palm of
my hand. These seals I broke without a particle of hesitation or
reverence for the great personage who had caused them to be placed
there, and then instituted a hunt for the keys, which resulted, as I had
feared it would, in failure. The keys were doubtless at that moment at
Cartagena, in the possession of the unfortunate captain of the ship, or
in the hands of the official to whose custody the treasure had been
confided. There was nothing for it, therefore, but to set the armourer
to work upon the padlocks, and by dint of hard work he managed to get
them off and the door open by eight bells in the afternoon watch.

The room, when opened, proved to be an apartment measuring about five
feet each way, and it was lined inside as well as outside, with thick
sheets of iron. But it was more than half full of gold ingots; that is
to say the ingots were packed in rows of twenty each athwart the room.
There were five rows of twenty each, constituting a tier, and the ingots
were stored eight tiers high; so that, if the lower tiers contained the
same number of ingots as the top tier, as was pretty certain to be the
case, there were eight hundred ingots of solid gold, each weighing
approximately half a hundredweight! the ingots being made uniformly of
this size and weight in order that they might be conveniently
transported from the mines to the coast by means of train