sented to do.
Accordingly, the canvas was loosed, the anchor hove up to the bows; and,
the alcalde and his friends having been transferred to the ship
alongside, the fasts were cast off, the topsails sheeted home, and under
the impulse of a gentle off-shore breeze the _Nonsuch_ stood out of the
harbour of San Juan de Ulua, after a sojourn of a full week pregnant
with events of great and far-reaching importance. It afterwards
transpired that the English had only got away from the port by the bare
skin of their teeth; for within twenty-four hours of their departure the
belated convoy arrived with the plate ships from Cartagena and Nombre de
Dios; and when the Spanish Admiral was made acquainted with the details
of George's daring raid--which was within an hour of his arrival--he was
so convulsed with rage that in the height of his passion he ordered the
entire convoy to weigh and put to sea again--leaving the newly-arrived
plate ships to take care of themselves and their precious cargoes as
best they might--with instructions to the captains that they were on no
account to return without the English ship. The result of this mad
order was that the convoy was absent for three full weeks, during which
George, had he only known it, might have returned and filled the
_Nonsuch_ with treasure until she would hold no more. But while the
Spanish captains were straining their ships to pieces by threshing to
the northward under a heavy press of sail, under the conviction that the
English were homeward bound and were heading north to avail themselves
of the assistance of the Gulf Stream, the heavily-laden _Nonsuch_ was
steadily working to windward across the Gulf of Campeche, making for the
northern coast of Yucatan, on her way back to the little desert island
off the southern coast of Jamaica, where the adventurers had buried
their first haul of treasure.

For now that the _Nonsuch_ was loaded down with so fabulously rich a
freight, the first consideration of its new owners was to temporarily
deposit it in some place of safety while they pursued their quest of the
missing Hubert Saint Leger, lest haply misfortune should befall them
and, losing their ship, they should lose their treasure also. And now
it was that George had his eyes opened, for the first time, to one at
least of the disadvantages of so stupendous a stroke of good fortune as
had been his and his companions'. For their haul of treasure had been
so enormous that the