, after he had heard Barnaby's story, had been very
uncertain as to the ownership of the chest of treasure that had been
left by those men for Barnaby, but the news of the death of Sir John
Malyoe made the matter very easy for him to decide. For surely if
that treasure did not belong to Barnaby, there could be no doubt that
it must belong to his wife, she being Sir John Malyoe's legal heir.
And so it was that that great fortune (in actual computation amounting
to upward of sixty-three thousand pounds) came to Barnaby True, the
grandson of that famous pirate, William Brand; the English estate in
Devonshire, in default of male issue of Sir John Malyoe, descended to
Captain Malyoe, whom the young lady was to have married.

As for the other case of treasure, it was never heard of again, nor
could Barnaby ever guess whether it was divided as booty among the
pirates, or whether they had carried it away with them to some strange
and foreign land, there to share it among themselves.

And so the ending of the story, with only this to observe, that
whether that strange appearance of Captain Brand's face by the light
of the pistol was a ghostly and spiritual appearance, or whether he
was present in flesh and blood, there is only to say that he was never
heard of again; nor had he ever been heard of till that time since the
day he was so shot from behind by Capt. John Malyoe on the banks of
the Rio Cobra River in the year 1733.

Chapter III

WITH THE BUCCANEERS

_Being an Account of Certain Adventures that Befell Henry Mostyn Under
Capt. H. Morgan in the Year 1665-66_

[Illustration]

I

Although this narration has more particularly to do with the taking of
the Spanish vice admiral in the harbor of Porto Bello, and of the
rescue therefrom of Le Sieur Simon, his wife and daughter (the
adventure of which was successfully achieved by Captain Morgan, the
famous buccaneer), we shall, nevertheless, premise something of the
earlier history of Master Harry Mostyn, whom you may, if you please,
consider as the hero of the several circumstances recounted in these
pages.

In the year 1664 our hero's father embarked from Portsmouth, in
England, for the Barbados, where he owned a considerable sugar
plantation. Thither to those parts of America he transported with
himself his whole family, of whom our Master Harry was the fifth of
eight children--a great lusty fellow as little fitted for the Church
(for which he was designed)