ly answered his appeal for spiritual consolation. I then retired,
leaving them alone to engage in the most solemn rite appertaining to
their religion.

After we had reverently laid the Spaniard to rest in his alien grave, I
gave my friend Bob a full and accurate account of all that had passed,
showing him at the same time the copious notes I had, at the earliest
opportunity, jotted down to assist and refresh my memory in case I
should ever find myself in a position to seek the hidden treasure.

CHAPTER THREE.

BOB'S PROPOSITION.

I was at this time just turned twenty-one, and had received my education
at the Royal Naval School at Greenwich, with the understanding that I
was to join my father on its completion, when he would continue and
finish what is there so well begun, thus making me "every inch a
sailor."

On leaving school I joined my father (who was master and part owner of a
fine dashing clipper), in the capacity of midshipman, and went some six
or seven voyages with him: on the last of which, or rather, a few days
after its termination, I was seized with a violent attack of rheumatic
fever, from which I had not recovered sufficiently to rejoin the ship by
the time that she was once more ready for sea. I was consequently left
at home under Ada's care (my dear mother had been dead some years), to
recover at leisure, and amuse myself as well as I could until another
voyage should be accomplished, and an opportunity once more offered for
me to repossess myself of my quarters in the old familiar berth. That
opportunity never arrived, for at the time my story opens, my father had
been two years "missing." He sailed from Canton with the first cargo of
the new season's teas, and from the moment that the good ship
disappeared seaward she had never been heard of; not the faintest trace
of a clue to the mystery of her fate having, so far, been discovered.

Bob Trunnion was a middle-aged man, of medium stature, great personal
strength, and no very marked pretensions to beauty; but he was as
thorough an old sea-dog as ever looked upon salt water. His visage was
burnt to a deep brick-red by years of exposure to all sorts of weather;
and his hair and beard, which had once been brown, were now changed to
the hue of old oakum by the same process, except where, here and there,
a slight sprinkling of grey discovered itself. He had been a sailor
almost all his life, having "crept in through the hawse-pipe" when he