ause I would
not abandon my duty to my officers and crew, or separate my interests
from theirs, and place myself and them at the mercy of the
Underwriters, therefore the enterprise and the services of fourteen
months, besides the rescue of nearly six hundred thousand dollars, are
to be considered as utterly unworthy of mention. Can it be necessary,
in order to entitle a British officer to honorable mention in Lloyd's
Coffee House that he should abandon a right, and succumbing to the feet
of its mighty Committee, accept a donation, doled out with all the
ostentation of a gratuitous liberality, in place of that reward which
legally took precedence even of the ownership of the property rescued!!"

[1] The matter quoted in this chapter is from the privately printed
account by Captain Dickinson (London, 1836), entitled, "A Narrative of
the Operations for the Recovery of the Public Stores and Treasure sunk
in H.M.S. _Thetis_, at Cape Frio on the coast of Brazil, on the Fifth
December, 1830, to which is prefixed a Concise Account of the Loss of
that Ship."

[2] Dredged.

[3] Portable machines used as capstans.

[4] Strong pieces of timber placed vertically in the ground for
fastening ropes to.

[5] Wrappings. Captain Kidd uses this old word in his own narrative.
See page 109. [Transcriber's note: the words "woolding" or "wooldings"
appear nowhere else in this text.]

[6] Midshipmen.

CHAPTER XIII

THE QUEST OF EL DORADO

In our time the golden word _Eldorado_ has come to mean the goal of
unattained desires, the magic country of dreams that forever lies just
beyond the horizon. Its literal significance has been lost in the
mists of the centuries since when one deluded band of adventurers after
another was exploring unknown regions of the New World in quest of the
treasure city hidden somewhere in the remote interior of South America.
Thousands of lives and millions of money were vainly squandered in
these pilgrimages, but they left behind them one of the most singularly
romantic chapters in the whole history of conquest and discovery.

The legend of El Dorado was at first inspired by the tales of a
wonderful and veritable _dorado_, or gilded man, king of a tribe of
Indians dwelling, at the time of the Spanish conquest, upon the lofty
tableland of Bogota, in what is now the republic of Colombia. Later
investigations have accepted it as true that such a personage existed
and that the ceremonies concer