tain Marshall take it with him?"

"I have it," answered Dick, "and here it is," producing the sketch.
"Fortunately the Captain left it with me, not needing it himself, since
all the information required to enable him to make his way to Cartagena
he could carry in his head."

The four who were sitting on the opposite side of the table bent over
the document, examining it closely for several minutes. At length
Bascomb looked up and said:

"My masters, if this chart be reliable--and it should be, judging from
the pains taken by our Captain and Mr Chichester--it should suffice to
enable us to take the ship right up to Cartagena and lay her alongside
the galleon. And if that ship can be taken by surprise and without loss
on our part, as I think she may, what is to hinder us from taking the
town and demanding a good heavy ransom for it, part of which ransom
shall consist in the return to us, sound and unhurt, of our Captain?
And if they refuse, or are unable to return our Captain to us in the
condition specified, what say you to sacking the place and giving it to
the flames? Depend upon it, by so doing we shall soon learn the fate of
Captain Marshall, and where he is to be found, for there will be a
hundred who will be only too ready to curry favour with us by telling us
all that they know, in the hope that thereby we may be induced to spare
their property."

"Ay, that will they, I warrant," answered Winter. "And woe betide the
city and all in it if aught of evil has been done to our Captain! We
will find every man who has been in anywise responsible for that evil,
and will hang him before his own door for all men to see how dangerous a
thing it is for a Spaniard to lay violent hands upon an Englishman!
Now, what say ye, gentles, shall we go in at once and do the work while
our blood is hot within us?"

"Nay, sirs," answered Dick; "that may scarcely be. For if our Captain
be indeed taken, as I greatly fear me he is, depend upon it the
authorities will have identified him as an Englishman, in despite of any
tale that he may have told them, and will, in consequence, suspect the
presence of an English ship somewhere in the neighbourhood. And,
following that suspicion, their first act would be to warn those in the
forts on Tierra Bomba to be on the watch for that ship's appearance.
And once seen it will, according to the Captain's own account, be
impossible for us to force our way into the harbour unless the guns in