in and dirty
weather. Yesterday about 3 in the afternoon we anchored before Vigo
Town in 15 fathoms water. This morning Vice Admiral Hopson hoisted the
red flag at our fore-topmast head in order to go ahead of the fleet to
defeat the French and Spanish galleons which lay up the river. About
noon we weighed, having sent our soldiers on there to engage the forts
which opposed our coming. We being come near, the forts fired at us.

"About one o'clock, coming across the forts which were on each side the
harbor, they fired smartly at us, and we fired our guns at both sides
of them again, and went past and broke the boom which crossed the river
to hinder our passage so that 4 and 5 men-of-war engaged us at once,
but soon deserted, firing and burnt their ships. They sent a fireship
which set us on fire."

It was a very simple business, to hear the captain of the _Torbay_ tell
it, but the golden empire of Spain was shaken from Cadiz to Panama, and
gouty, dauntless Sir George Rooke helped mightily to hasten the end
which was finally brought about by another admiral, George Dewey by
name, in that Manila Bay whence the treasure galleons of the East
Indies _flota_ had crossed the Pacific to add their wealth to the
glittering cargoes gathered by the Viceroys of Mexico and Peru.

CHAPTER IX

THE PIRATES' HOARD OF TRINIDAD

Of all the freebooters' treasure for which search is still made by
means of curious information having to do with charts and other
plausible records, the most famous are those buried on Cocos Islands in
the Pacific and on the rocky islet of Trinidad in the South Atlantic.
These places are thousands of miles apart, the former off the coast of
Costa Rica, the latter several hundred miles from the nearest land of
Brazil and not to be confused with the better known British colony of
Trinidad in the Leeward Islands group of the West Indies.

Each of these treasures is of immense value, to be reckoned in millions
of dollars, and their stories are closely interwoven because the
plunder came from the same source at about the same time. Both
narratives are colored by piracy, bloodshed and mystery, that of Cocos
Island perhaps the more luridly romantic of the two by reason of an
earlier association with the English buccaneers of Dampier's crew.
Each island has been dug over and ransacked at frequent intervals
during the last century, and it is safe to predict that expeditions
will be fitting out for Cocos