r could be depended
on by her, they would find him, under another name, in a national ship on
the East India station.

Here the Colonel began rubbing his hands again.

It appeared, moreover, that Taylor and Greenleaf had met more than once,
and consulted together, and made two or three attempts to charter a vessel;
but, being poor and among strangers, and afraid of trusting to other
people--no matter why--they finally agreed to lie by till they were better
off, and not be seen together till they should be able to undertake the
enterprise without help from anybody.

"But," said Greenleaf. "I am tired of waiting. He may be dead for all I
know He was an old man. At any rate, he is beyond my reach, out of hail;
and so, d'ye see, if you'll rig us out a small schooner, of not more than
seventy-five or eighty tons, I will go with you, and ask for no wages; and
here's the landlord'll go, too, on the same lay; and, if you'll give me a
third of what we find, I'll answer for Taylor, dead or alive, and you shall
be welcome to the rest, and may do what you like with it."

"Would they consent to go _unarmed_?"

"Yes."

And all these facts being communicated to some of our people, and agreed
to, a small schooner was chartered--the Napoleon, of ninety tons; Captain
John Sawyer was put in master, and Watts, who had followed the sea forty
years, and is now the keeper of Portland light, supercargo.

Not less than five, and it may be six, different voyages followed, one
after the other, as fast as a vessel could be engaged and a crew got
together; and, though nothing was "_realized_" but vexation,
disappointment, and self-reproach, till the parties who had ventured upon
the undertaking were almost ashamed to show their faces, there is not one
of the whole to this hour, I verily believe, who does not stick to the
faith and swear _it_ was no _bubble_; and they are men of character and
experience--men of business habits, cool and cautious in their
calculations, and by no means given to chasing will-o'-the-wisps anywhere.

And now let me give the particulars that have since come to my knowledge,
on the authority of those who were actually parties in the strange
enterprise from first to last.

Before they sailed on their first voyage, they consulted a fortune teller
by the name of Tarbox, who, without knowing their purpose, and while in a
magnetic sleep, described the place, and the marks, and the treasure, even
to the cross of gold,