n return for these welcome supplies, the captain of the whaler gladly
agreed to give us all a free passage to `'Frisco'; although as I need
hardly tell, he would have willingly done this without any such
consideration at all, after hearing our story and being made acquainted
with the strange and awful catastrophe that had befallen our ill-fated
ship.

But we were not altogether destitute.

Our good fortune, if long in coming, smiled on us at the last; for, the
very morning of our departure from the island, a week after the whaler's
arrival, the captain remaining a few days longer than he first intended
in order to allow his sick hands to recover, Hiram, while routing out a
few traps left in the cave to take on board with us, found, much to Jan
Steenbock's regret,--the second-mate saying it would bring us ill-luck
again--one of the little chests containing the buccaneers' treasure,
which Captain Snaggs had left unwittingly behind him when he and Mr
Flinders cleared off with the rest, which they thought the entire lot.

The box contained a number of gold ingots and silver dollars, which the
whaler captain said were worth `a heap of money,' as he expressed it,
though he would not take a penny of it for himself.

The whaler skipper was an honest man, for he told Hiram Bangs and Tom,
who tried to press a certain portion of the treasure on him as his due,
that it all rightfully belonged to us, and that he should consider
himself a pitiful scoundrel if he took advantage of our misfortunes!

There--could anything be nobler than that?

"Guess not," said Hiram; and, so we all agreed!

We had a capital voyage to San Francisco from the island, which we were
glad enough to lose sight of, with its lava cliffs and cactus plants,
and other strange belongings in the animal and vegetable world, and,
above all, its sad memories and associations in other ways to us; and no
more happy sailors ever landed from board ship than we five did who set
foot ashore in the `Golden State,' as California is called, some three
odd summers ago.

The whaler captain sold our treasure for us; and the share of each of us
came to a good round sum--I, though only a boy, being given by the
others a fourth share, just as if I had been a man, for Jan Steenbock
refused to touch any.

My portion, when realised, amounted to over 400 pounds, a sum which, if
not quite enough to set one up in life and enable one to stop working,
was still `not to be sneezed a