y, the cost of it absorbing
most of his savings; and this watch, carefully regulated and rated,
showing Plymouth time, he took with him when he embarked upon his great
adventure in the _Nonsuch_, and by means of it he had succeeded in
ascertaining pretty accurately the longitude of Barbados, Trinidad, and
Margarita, and intended also to ascertain the longitude of the islet
upon which he proposed to bury his treasure. All this he explained to
his crew as well as he could drive so abstruse a matter into their thick
heads, and although it is more than doubtful whether any of them
understood his explanation, they understood at least that "the Cap'n"
was assuring them that he possessed some occult means of finding the
islets again, and with that they were fain to be satisfied. It never
occurred to them, poor souls, that if the captain lost his watch, or
allowed it to run down, his means of finding the islets again would be
gone, otherwise it is exceedingly unlikely that they would ever have
agreed to his taking the risk.

As soon as breakfast was over, one of the boats was lowered, and George,
accompanied by half a dozen men provided with pickaxes and shovels, went
ashore, to prepare a suitable hiding-place for the treasure, while Dyer,
and Heard, the purser, assisted by the sailmaker, swathed the chest
containing the pearls in several folds of tarred canvas, the outer coat
of all being thickly smeared with pitch, in order to preserve the
delicate gems from injury through being buried in more or less damp
earth. The shore party had no difficulty in selecting a suitable spot
for the burial, the precise point being determinable again at any time
by a series of carefully taken and equally carefully recorded cross
bearings; and by the time that a hole of suitable dimensions and depth
had been excavated, a signal was flying on board the _Nonsuch_ that all
the preparations there had been completed and that the treasure was
ready for removal, with the result that before the arrival of mid-day
the whole of the treasure was safely deposited in its hiding-place, the
soil shovelled back into the hole and well rammed down, and all traces
of the excavation carefully obliterated. Then all hands returned to the
ship just in time for George to make his noontide observations for the
determination of the position of the islets. The anchor was then hove
up and the _Nonsuch_ stood out to sea again, while, despite their
captain's assurances