-hilted swords, inlaid with jewels. On a bit of land in the
little river, he buried several iron kettles filled with gold coin."

Lord Fitzwilliam and his yacht arrived at Cocos in December of 1904,
and the party of laborers fell to with prodigious zest. While they
were making the dirt fly, another English expedition, commanded by
Arnold Gray, hove in sight, and proceeded to begin excavating at
inconveniently close range. In fact, both parties were cocksure that
the lost cave was located in one spot beneath a great mass of debris
that had tumbled down from the overhanging height. The inevitable
result was that a pretty quarrel arose. Neither force would yield its
ground. Inasmuch as both were using dynamite rather lavishly, treasure
hunting became as dangerous as war. When the rival expeditions were
not dodging the rocks that were sent hurtling by the blasting, they
were using bad language, the one accusing the other of effacing its
landmarks and playing hob with its clues.

The climax was a pitched battle in which heads were broken and
considerable blood spilt. It is almost needless to observe that no
treasure was found. Lord Fitzwilliam sailed home in his yacht and
found that the news of his escapade had aroused the displeasure of the
naval authorities, after which he lost all zest for finding buried
treasure.

Since then, hardly a year has passed but an expedition or two for Cocos
Island has been in the wind. In 1906, a company organized in Seattle
issued an elaborate printed prospectus, offering shares in a venture to
sail in a retired pilot schooner, and recounting all the old tales of
Captain Thompson, Benito Bonito, and Keating. At about the same time,
a wealthy woman of Boston, after a summer visit to Newfoundland, was
seized with enthusiasm for a romantic speculation and talked of finding
a ship and crew. San Francisco has beheld more than one schooner slide
out through the Golden Gate in quest of Cocos Island.

To enumerate these ventures and describe them in detail would make a
tiresome catalogue of the names of vessels and adventurous men with the
treasure bee in their bonnets. Charts and genuine information are no
longer necessary to one of these expeditions. Cocos Island is under
such a spell as has set a multitude to digging for the treasure of
Captain Kidd. The gold is there, this is taken for granted, and no
questions are asked. The island was long a haunt of buccaneers and
pirates,