he shoulders of flying Jack of the Bean-stalk. The light,
trim craft of the pursuers edged upon them, and the shadow of an angry
struggle in the pitchy, reeking night gloomed over them. "No, no,"
said the leader: "no bloodshed for the cursed stuff! Here, give me a
lift;" and with a heave and plunge the massy rouleaux splashed into
the water, and the boat rose lighter with an easier conscience. The
sea shut close-fisted over its own, while the pursuing boat paused and
eddied about it, as if held to the treasure by invisible, impalpable
strands. The pursuit was abandoned, and the betrayed or treacherous
diver escaped. But busy rumor reports that he returned at leisure to
the spot, and that the bullion of the Golden Gate went to replenish
the forfeited fortune of the bold ex-rebel. Believe as you like, good
reader.

The sea-sand, in its industrious zeal in covering up memorials of
man's art and industry, is often curiously assisted by the zoophytes
and vegetation of the ocean, as well as guarded in its labor by
abnormal monsters of piscine creation. An example of this occurred
in an amusing venture after Lafitte's gold. While the Gulf coast of
Western Louisiana is fortified, in its immature _terre tremblante_, by
the coral reefs and islets, it has the appearance of having been torn
into ragged edges by the hydrostatic pressure of the Gulf Stream. On
one of these little islets or keys, hard by Caillon Bay, the rumor
went that the buccaneer had sunk a Spanish galleon laden with pieces
of eight and ingots of despoiled Mexico. The people thereabout are
a simple, credulous race of Spanish Creoles, speaking no English,
keeping the saints' days, and watching the salt-pans of the more
energetic but scarcely more thrifty Americans with curious wonder.
They chanced in their broken tongue to commit the story of the
treasure to a diver of an equally simple faith, who set about
putting it to more practical use than to gild an hour with an old
legend. They told how the spook of the Spanish captain haunted the
wreck, and that the gold was guarded by a dragon in the shape of a
monstrous horned and mottled frog, or some other devil of the sea,
to which the diver did seriously incline, but not to make him give
up the undertaking. He prudently, however, consulted with an old
Indian witch, and so received the devil's good word, and piously
got a bottle of holy water from the priest, and thus was well fenced
in above and below.

But his coa