inez, without the pretentious prefix of "Don" or anything
else. Him, George took under his own wing, ordering a cot to be slung
for him down on the half-deck, with a screen of canvas triced up round
it to insure privacy. The poor fellow, like all the rest of the rescued
Spaniards, had, of course, only the clothes that he stood up in, and
they were dripping wet; but, fortunately, the _Nonsuch_ was well
provided in the matter of slop chests, and Captain Martinez, together
with the other survivors of the _Dona Catalina_, was soon rigged afresh.

It transpired that the Spanish vessel was on her way from Cartagena to
San Juan de Ulua, with despatches to the Viceroy of Mexico, when she
encountered the hurricane that had overwhelmed her, and that, before
being rescued, her crew had been exposed to the full fury of the
elements for twenty-six hours, in momentary expectation that the vessel
would founder under their feet; they were therefore given a warm meal,
and then dispatched below to make up their arrears of rest and recover
from the exhaustion induced by prolonged exposure.

But the conjunction of the names Cartagena and San Juan de Ulua,
casually mentioned by Martinez in his brief conversation with George
before retiring below, set the young Englishman thinking hard. The
conjunction was suggestive, to say the least of it; for Cartagena was
the city from which the plate fleet convoy started upon its annual long
ocean voyage to Spain, accompanied by the Cartagena contingent of plate
ships, with which it proceeded to Nombre de Dios--regarded as "The
Treasure-House of the World"--to take charge of the ships which
proceeded thence annually, loaded with treasure of incalculable value
for the replenishment of the Spanish coffers; while from thence the
combined fleet was wont to proceed to San Juan, there to be joined by
the ships carrying the Mexican contribution of treasure, of scarcely
less value than that shipped from Nombre. George Saint Leger had not
been for so many months intimately associated with Dyer, the pilot of
the expedition, and a survivor of the disaster which had overtaken
Admiral John Hawkins at San Juan de Ulua only a year previously, without
hearing all about the twelve large treasure galleons which the Devonians
had found lying defenceless in the harbour of that city when they
arrived there, torn and shattered by such a hurricane as that which had
reduced the _Dona Catalina_ to a waterlogged and sinking