YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

On the Track
of a Treasure

On the Track
of a Treasure

THE STORY OF AN ADVENTUROUS EXPEDITION
TO THE PACIFIC ISLAND OF COCOS IN SEARCH
OF TREASURE OF UNTOLD VALUE HIDDEN BY
PIRATES

By Hervey de Montmorency

WITH ILLUSTR<AT103^S ASHD A CHA'^T

LONDON
Hurst and Blackett, Limited,
1904
e4U Sights SeserUd

EcK
303j>

To
L. D.
Whose friendship is the only treasure
I have ever found,
5 BeMcate tbis IDolume

CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE
I. — Tells of Revolutions in General and
A Particular Mutiny . . . . i
II. — The Career of a Great Pirate . . 12
III. — Tells How a Naval Officer Failed to
Find a Treasure  37
IV. — Fitzgerald's Story (continued) ... 42
V. — Disentangling the Threads . . -67
VI. — Westward Ho !  97
VII. — The Dust of Forgotten Civilization . no
VIII. — Across the Mining District . . .129
IX. — Through the Mexican Forest . . 143
X. — Hastening on Towards the Pacific . 160
XI. — ^Treasure Island at Last . . -173
XII. — Hot on the Clue  192
XIII. — Disappointment  211
XIV. — A Monarch of All he Surveys . . 230
XV. — Homeward Bound  247
XVI. — Past the Foot-prints of the Avenger
to Our Journey's End .... 269

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

' With a pocket-compass in the hand, measure seventy

paces west by south ! " .
The old fort at Callao ....
Dead men tell no tales ....
Thompson showing Keating chart
Keating teUing Fitzgerald of the treasure .
" You have my secret ! " .
Zacatecas, the oldest mining town in the
New World ......
The Patron Saint of Agriculture
A breakdown at Perrez, Vera Cruz and
Pacific Railway, Mexico
Breakfast Island, a rock like a squatting
lion .......
Mexican cottage in Tierra Caliente .
"The temporary wharf, where the giant
crane stands swinging its arms " .
' In the midst of the broken ground "

Frontispiece
Facing p. 4
8
3963
69
130
130
163
170
209

List of Illustrations.

" Surely, no pirate ever minded wetting his
boots!" 
First camp on the beach .
" They spent some hours digging " .
"Huts peeping from behind the trees of
the plantation " . . . .
A modern Robinson Crusoe
A clearing in the forest, Cocos Island
Disused water-wheel, Cocos Island .
The Governor of Cocos Island comes
ashore 
Panama ......

Facing p.

213
220
225 228229
244244
246
246

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loaf

Caicara Island

ColndtPr

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\} T*/anc'

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TerQ

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WaUr/ng Place

P\au

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Under8roi%rlh
vife Highest Peak
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600ft.

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Nautical Miles

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 1 

ON THE TRACK OF A TREASURE.

CHAPTER I.
TELLS OF REVOLUTIONS IN GENERAL AND A
PARTICULAR MUTINY.
The heavy war-clouds which for a quarter
of a century had hung over Europe were
swept, by the final abdication of Napoleon,
from the Old to the New World, and, long
before the prisoner of Saint Helena had
ceased to be a living terror to European
statesmen, all Spanish America was ablaze

2 On the Track of a Treasure.
with wars and revolutions. First one and
then another republic was proclaimed. Lord
Cochrane — that romantic child of adventure —
lending his stalwart presence to further
many a revolutionary cause.
Among those who rehed on the ships of
the intrepid Scottish peer to hold com
mand of the sea was General San Martin,
who, in the spring of 1820, succeeded in
landing upon the coast of Peru, at the head
of some Chilian and Argentine troops. So
great was the success of his arms that, by
July of the following year, he was able to
proclaim the independence of the land
which, since the days of the conqueror
Pizarro, had remained a Spanish Colony.
But, if their crowning victory at Ayacucho
dehvered the Peruvians from the weight

On the Track of a Treasure. 3
of the Spanish fetters, the same stirring
event kindled effectually the torch of civil
war ; so from 1825 until the closing days
of 1839 the former kingdom of the Incas
was a seething cauldron of bloodshed and
strife. Salaverry, Andre de Santa Cruz, and
Gamarra, were presidents of the young Re-
pubUc during this period. Salaverry was
a Basque, a poet, and a boy-warrior ; Andre
de Santa Cruz, who claimed descent from
the Incas, was less a general than a states
man ; Gamarra had been at one time in
the service of the Spanish Viceroy : but he
was a brave patriot, though he hated con
stitutions, and once cleared Congress with
the bayonets of his devoted soldiers.
It was probably during Gamarra's term
I*

4 On the Track of a Treasure.
of office, after some bloody battle in the
neighbourhood of Lima, that, warned by
the exultant shouts of Chihan auxiUaries
and Peruvian revolutionaries, the trembling
citizens, reaUsing how feeble was the pro
tection afforded by the vaults of their banks
and the altars of their churches, resolved
to confide their treasures and sacred orna
ments to the garrison of the old fort at
Callao. The anxious watchers in the fort
observed a brig floating at anchor in the
harbour ; from her peak fluttered a British
flag, and her name was the Mary Dear.
Perhaps the recollection of Cochrane's brave
deeds inspired the hope that behind the
bulwarks of a British ship a safer sanc
tuary might be found than within the
ramparts of the Callao fort. In any case.

The old fort at Callao.

[See page 4.

View on N.E. Coast of Cocos Island.

[See page 6.

To face page 4]

On the Track of a Treasure. 5
it was decided to crave the protection of
Captain Thompson, master of the Enghsh
brig ; and so it came about that, in an
evil moment, jewels, coin, and specie, to
the value of twelve miUion dollars, were
stowed in the hold of the Mary Dear.
To Thompson and his crew, men accus
tomed to a life of hardship, whose hveli-
hood depended upon the precarious com
merce of those waters, the presence of
twelve million dollars of treasure in the
hold was irresistible temptation. The tur
moil of revolution provoked the hope that
their crime might escape detection ; that
some chance, born of revolutionary times,
might cover up the traces of their fiight.
Under the veil of darkness, Thompson and
his men cut the throats of the guardians

6 On the Track of a Treasure.
of the treasure, slipped their cable, and
put to sea.
In latitude 5° 33' N. longitude 86° 59' W.
(that part of the Pacific where prevailing
calms render it difficult of access to saihng
ships), there hes a deserted, rocky island
known by the name of Cocos ; this was
the mark of Thompson and his piratical
crew. The Mary Dear, built perhaps with the
sinister design of showing a clean pair of
heels to any too inquisitive revenue cutter,
successfully evaded her pursuers — for pur
suers there were — bore up for this lonely
resort of pirates, and cast anchor in Wafer
Bay at Cocos Island. As she swung to her
cable and dipped her prow to the heavy
rollers of the Pacific, we may hope that

On the Track of a Treasure. 7
she had struck her British Ensign, and
had hoisted the " Jolly Roger "—true symbol
of her trade.
The Admiralty chart of to-day shows
two inlets on the north of the island, the
rest of the coast-line being unsurveyed.
These are Chatham and Wafer Bays. In
the latter, a modern battle-ship might ride
at anchor ; while the former apj^ears full
of shallows ; the shore is rocky, and many
creeks give outlet to the sea for the streams
of fresh water which flow down the steep
hills of the island.
Some portion of his spoil was distributed
by Thompson amongst the crew, whilst
the rest was carried in eleven boat-loads
round the headland which separates Wafer
from Chatham Bay, and there landed upon

8 On the Track of a Treasure.
the beach. Thompson had been to Cocos
Island before ; he knew how well this desert
rock lent itself to his purpose ; and, in
particular, he had learnt of a cave cut by
some cunning Peruvian cave-dweller of
old-time where he meant to conceal the
harvest of his crime. It is said that he
shot the two men who had helped him in
the work of concealment ; for " dead men
tell no tales."
The Mary Dear spread her white wings
to wind and ran from the land ; the tramp-
hng surf in Wafer Bay may have sounded
in Thompson's ears hke the warning tread
of inexorable justice ; as, before the lofty
peaks of Cocos had disappeared below the
horizon, a Peruvian gun-boat hove in sight.
Betrayed by the calms and threatened by

Dead men tell no tales.

To face page 8]

On the Track of a Treasure. g
the guns of the war-ship, the pirate captain
surrendered, seemingly without a fight :
perhaps the cunning, selfish brain of the
scoundrel foresaw the inevitable safe-pass
which must be granted to the sole pos
sessor of the key to twelve miihon dollars.
The master and the mate were spared that
they might show the treasure-cave to the
Peruvians, but the crew of the Mary Dear
were mercilessly shot or hanged. The war
ship stood on her way to Cocos Island,
where Thompson and his companion, the
two survivors of twelve, were landed under
an armed escort. But the desperate out
law was a man of resource, and he and the
mate contrived to escape from their guard,
hiding themselves amongst the caves and
under-growth. For four days armed par-

10 On the Track of a Treasure.
ties roamed on the island, searching for
Thompson and his mate, and pouring vol
leys into every piece of thick scrub or hkely
shadow. At the end of this time, the war
ship hoisted her anchor and stood away;
leaving to the hideous fate of starvation,
as was supposed, the survivors of the Mary
Dear. Thompson and the mate, however,
contrived to support life on berries and
eggs and such produce as the island could
provide, until they were rescued by a vessel
which had caUed for water at Cocos. Pass
ing themselves off as ship-wrecked sailors,
the late captain and mate of the Mary
Dear were landed on the mainland, Thomp
son to disappear for a while, the mate to
die at Puentos Arenas in Costa Rica by
the hand of that perennially successful pirate,

On the Track of a Treasure. ii
" Yellow Jack " — who is no respecter of
persons, but would just as soon strangle
the possessor of a clue to twelve millions
as an ordinary able-bodied sailor before the
mast !

12

CHAPTER II.
THE CAREER OF A GREAT PIRATE.
Benito Bonito, who flourished between
1816 and 1820, was the last of the Greater
Pirates. Piracy in these days of steam and elec
tricity is an impossibihty ; and it was
growing difficult even one hundred years
ago. With the waning of the seventeenth
century, buccaneering became a discredited
profession ; though, in Good Queen Bess's
time, every navigator was a pirate and

On the Track of a. Treasure. 13
every buccaneer was a navigator, and so
it continued through the days of the Stuarts.
Our " Merrie Monarch " made Morgan gover
nor of Jamaica— Morgan, who, with four
hundred cut-throats, had sacked Panama
in the sight of three thousand Spanish
soldiers! Dampier was a pirate, too,
and so was Sir Francis Drake — the
latter the greatest and most cunning
of all ! For did he not waylay the
bearers of government treasure on the
Isthmus of Panama, and share the spoil
with our Virgin Queen ? — thus protecting
himself from all unpleasant consequences,
and from any unfavourable verdict which
might be given by the Commission appointed
by his Royal Mistress to enquire into his
conduct, with the laudable object of main-

14 On the Track of a Treasure.
taining peace and appeasing the indignation
of the Spanish Government.
Benito Bonito (which is the Spanish
equivalent of Burns's " Holy Wilhe " and
may be translated Beau Benito) was the
name assumed by a broken-down Spanish
or Portuguese gentleman of good family :
he was born at Pomaron, a town which
stands on a river of the same name separating
Portugal from Spain. He spoke both French
and Enghsh fluently ; accomphshments of
much" value to him in later years when he
commanded crews of mixed nationahties,
such as usually sail under the " JoUy
Roger." Up to the Peace of 1814, Benito was first-
lieutenant of a Spanish privateer, haunting
the West Indies ; but when the end of the

On the Track of a Treasure. 15
war deprived him of a profession, he became
the mate of a Portuguese trading brig. In
1816 he quarrelled with his Captain ; and,
having murdered him, seized the vessel, and
began his career of crime. As his ship was
no swift sailer, his success at the outset
was Hmited ; but chance soon flung in his
way an English slaver, the Lightning, whose
name did not belie her powers. Having
cut her out of Matanzas, where she was
lying at anchor one night, he burned his
own brig, transferred his flag to the British
vessel, and re-named her the Relampago,
which is Spanish for chain hghtning.
Most of the crew of the British ship were
made to " walk the plank " ; but two
men— Chapelle, a Frenchman, and Thomp
son, an Enghshman — pleaded for their hves.

i6 On the Track of a Treasure.
volunteering to join Benito and follow him
loyally in his nefarious career. The Captain
of the Relampago soon gathered together a
strong crew of competent cut-throats, and
managed to arm them well. He ruled his
men with a rod of iron, and instilled disci-
phne into them through fear and by his
strong will and determination. He always
wore a Spanish cavalry sword slung to his
belt, nor did he scruple to use it on re
calcitrant followers, irrespective of rank.
The French and Spanish fleets had been
swept from the seas by the briUiant victories
of Nelson ; and so Benito was able to do an
immense amount of damage in the Western
Atlantic : from New York to Rio de Janeiro
he was a veritable scourge, and he col
lected an immense amount of spoil which

On the Track of a Treasure. 17
he concealed in one of the French West
Indies. So great a terror did he become,
that in 1818 the British Government decided
to send two frigates and a sloop of war to
effect his capture ; and so it was that, in
the Spring of 1818, the redoubtable pirate,
deciding to seek fresh woods and pastures
new, doubled Cape Horn and commenced
playing havoc along the Pacific shore of
America as far north as Acapulco in Mexico.
There was only one Spanish man-o'-war
on this coast, and the skill of Benito was
more than enough to baffle his countrymen.
The wealth of the Churches of Spanish
America is, even in these days, consider
able ; but, before Chili, Peru, and Equador
had proclaimed their independence, the rich
ness of the plate and church-ornaments 2

i8 On the Track of a Treasure.
collected by the priests was very great ;
and Benito, by sacking the sacred places
along the coast, gathered a golden harvest of
treasure. He sought for a spot to bury his
spoU, and found, lying in latitude five degrees
north of the Line, a lovely tropical island
where the forest grows luxuriously and
gushing streams sparkle down the moun
tains' sides — where there is good anchorage
and httle fear of molestation. The island,
which is situated at a distance of three
hundred miles from the coast of Costa
Rica, is caUed Cocos.
After leaving the island, the pirate set
sail for the south, and feU in with a Spanish
galleon carrying money to pay the troops
in Peru. He made it his prize — this was
a very large haul. Benito's escapade brought

On the Track of a Treasure. 19
the Spanish man-o'-war in chase of the
Relampago ; so northward she sped again,
contriving to sUp away from her pursuers,
who were becalmed in the Doldrums.
There were troublesome times for Mexico
in the early days of the nineteenth century !
Hidalgo, the warrior priest, had toUed his
beU — the same bell which now hangs in
the Cathedral square — had summoned his
excited flock to fight for hberty, pro
claiming to the world the newly estab
hshed independence of the eldest and richest
chUd of the New World Empire of Spain.
Yturbide had arisen, and with him counter
revolution. But troublesome times made
Benito's opportunities ; so he shaped his
course for the fair harbour of Acapulco,
anticipating rich booty. Much gold was

20 On the Track of a Treasure.
being removed in 1819 from Mexico City
to the coast, the Mexicans thinking to
secure their treasures far from the spot
where the turmoil of civil war was raging
its fiercest. Benito hearing of the removal,
disguised himself as a n\uleteer, and con
trived to discover aU particulars of the
plan for transporting the precious store,
which he resolved to make his prize. With
some of his crew, he seized the peons and
troops who were detaUed to convoy the
loads on mule-back to the coast, and,
putting to death such of them as could
not be trusted to throw in their lot with
the pirates, passed himself off as the person
to whom the transport of the valuables had
been confided. The rest of the task was
easy ; it is said that he made several jour-

On the Track of a Treasure. 21
neys disguised as a muleteer ; and the entire
treasure was carried on board the Relampago.
No idle scruples touched the conscience
of the savage-hearted buccaneer : any
wretched peon or fisherman who might
chance to be in a position to give infor
mation of this daring escapade was ruth
lessly shot ; and Benito set sail for his old
haven of retreat, Cocos Island.
The booty which by this time had been
accumulated was extremely large — tradition
declares it to have amounted to upwards
of eleven million doUars ! So pleased was
Benito at the security from capture afforded
by the rough, inhospitable shores of Cocos
Island, that he suggested to his men that
they should return to the West Indies,
recover the treasure which they had buried

22 On the Track of a Treasure.
there, and bring it back to this new hiding
place which might henceforth be their head
quarters. But many of the pirates were
sick of the rough hfe which they had been
leading ; and the constant dread of capture,
backed by the encouragement of the mate
of the Relampago, instigated some of them
to break into open mutiny.
" No ! " said they, " let us rather divide
the spoil now ; and let each, taking his
share, secure himself as best he may from
detection, and Uve in luxury for the rest
of his days."
Benito, drawing his sword, struck down
the mate; and a desperate fight ensued.
" There were fifteen dead bodies on the
beach next morning, besides those taken
by the sharks," were the words of an old

On the Track of a Treasure. 23
seaman, who Uved to teU the tale forty
years later.
Benito suppressed the mutiny ; but a
compromise was made, and the treasure was
divided into three portions. Benito took
his share and concealed it in a cave, while
the crew and of&cers of the Relampago
buried theirs in different parts of the
island. The pirates then set sail for the West
Indies. But the mutinous spirit was stiU
simmering, and Benito longed to be rid
of the discontents ; whUe they, in their
turn, dreaded the blood-thirsty pirate-chief,
with his cynical manner and veneer of old-
world courtesy.
Off Valparaiso, someone suggested a two
days' carouse ashore, and Benito fell in

24 On the Track of a Treasure.
with the idea. Seventeen men were landed,
accordingly, on the coast, not far from
the town ; and the Relampago' s skipper
promised to Ue off the land and await their
return. With the seventeen who had gone
ashore were many of the dissatisfied pirates ;
among others, Thompson and ChapeUe ; so
Benito held on his course for Cape Hom,
heedless of his promise to his ship-mates.
From the Horn, the Relampago was steered
for Brazil, where a descent was made on
Santos, and for nearly a year the coast was
kept in terror by the buccaneers.
British men-o'-war were summoned from
HaUfax, and chase was given to the pirates ;
but so great was Benito's skill and seaman
ship, that for a time he escaped capture.
In the meantime, the seventeen who had

On the Track of a Treasure. 25
landed at Valparaiso had been recognised
as pirates, brought to trial, and condemned
to death. All were executed, with the ex
ception of ChapeUe and Thompson ; who,
representing that they had been forced into
Benito's service, volunteered to give such
evidence as might lead to the capture of
the famous buccaneer. These two pirates
were handed over to the British Govern
ment accordingly, their lives having been
spared. It was under the guidance of Thompson
and ChapeUe that the British corvette,
Espi^gle, in the year 1821, was able to
capture the redoubtable Benito in one of
his haunts in the West Indies. This was
not effected without a desperate fight.
Nor did Benito receive his deserts ; for

26 On the Track of a Treasure.
though conflicting statements describe him
as committing suicide, or dying on his own
quarter-deck sword in hand, when he found
retreat hopeless, it is certain that he escaped
the gallows.
Of the subsequent fate of Thompson and
ChapeUe Uttle is known ; but the former is
said to have changed his name to McComber
and to have taken up his residence in Samoa,
while the latter was heard of in San Francisco
in about the year 1841.

27

CHAPTER III.
TELLS HOW A NAVAL OFFICER FAILED TO
FIND A TREASURE.
It was during the year 1896 that Cap
tain Shrapnel, R.N., commanded a vessel in
the Pacific ; his ship was H.M.S. Haughty ;
and he knew the Western coast of the Great
American Continent as some West-End
clubmen know Pall Mall. The Captain had
once been the guest of the President of the
Peruvian Republic ; and he had heard, con
sequently, the tales of lost specie and of
pirate treasure hidden on Cocos Island.

28 On the Track of a Treasure.
These tales were confirmed in every port
of the Pacific coast ; the Governor of the
Lima Bank treasures the traditions of
twelve miUion dollars lost through the piracy
of the captain of the Mary Dear ; while
the records of Peru relate the facts of the
capture, trial, and sentence of Thompson
and his companions.
Captain Shrapnel is an Irishman, with
all the Irishman's love of adventure, and it
required little to inspire him with the reso
lution to try to win the prize which so many
had sought in vain.
After mess, one night, in the ward-room
of the Haughty, the conversation turned
on the subject of the Cocos treasure, and
excitement ran high when an American
guest declared that he was confident of

On the Track of a Treasure. 29
being able to lay his hands upon the lost
Peruvian millions if he could but set foot
upon the island.
The officers begged Captain Shrapnel to
allow them to steam the flag-ship to Cocos
and to prosecute a search. The Captain
consented, and in less than three days the
Haughty had cast anchor off the island.
The tradition current in Pacific ports, ran
that Thompson had beached eleven boat
loads of treasure in Wafer Bay, and had
buried his booty in the sand. Three hun
dred sailors and marines were accordingly
landed; and for two days they dug and
tunnelled, and blasted the rocks with dyna
mite, under the direction of their American
guest ; but their search was fruitless. So
energetic had been their efforts, however,

30 On the Track of a Treasure.
that their excavations wiU remain a mark
for aU time; and subsequent disappointed
treasure-seekers maintain that the Captain
has spoilt the chances of future expedi
tions, by obliterating aU traces, thus ren
dering any clue valueless. The blasting of
some rocks by dynamite let loose a stream
which, some declare, effectually guards the
secret hiding place of Thompson's Ul-gotten
gains. UnUke other departments of British ad
ministration, the Admiralty is Uttle given
to encourage romantic expeditions, even of
so harmless a nature as treasure-searching
on a desert island ; or it may be that only
those unprovoked descents on foreign coun
tries are sanctified which are under the
aegis of aUen financiers and the Colonial

On the Track of a Treasure. 31
Office. In any case, on the return of Cap
tain Shrapnel the sea-lords of Whitehall
cabled a sharp rebuke to him : the Haughty
was to be the last British war-ship to visit
the island ; henceforth Cocos was tabooed.
After Captain Shrapnel had regained the
mainland, accounts of his expedition ap
peared in the American press. The Ameri
can journalist resembles Sheridan's poU
tical opponent, and reUes on his imagination
for his facts and on his memory for his
witticisms. Some papers declared that the
Captain had been successful ; and gave de
tailed accounts of the hoisting of bar-gold,
silver-bricks, and solid golden statues over
the side of the flag-ship. These wild tales
spread into the British-Columbian and Cana
dian press. An account of the Haughty's

32 On the Track of a Treasure.
expedition found its way to the little town
of Harbour Grace in Newfoundland, and
fell into the hands of an old sailor of the
name of Nicholas Fitzgerald.

Nicholas Fitzgerald had been a seaman
before the mast for years, and in his old
age had become entitled, through his good
conduct, to preferment. He had obtained
a post of trust, under the Government, in
connection with the Newfoundland fisheries,
and he was held in esteem by the Judge
of the High Court, who had known him for
a long time.
After reading the story of the cruise of
the Haughty, Nicholas Fitzgerald addressed
a letter to Captain Shrapnel, begging that

On the Track of a Treasure. 33
officer to give him some particulars as
to the natural features of Cocos Island,
and as to the position of certain creeks
and bays. So searching were his questions,
though he never had been to Cocos, and,
so far as was known, never had obtained
access to an Admiralty chart, that the
curiosity of Captain Shrapnel was aroused
and a long correspondence ensued. The
confidence of Fitzgerald was gained, and
he related the following extraordinary tale :
In the year 1844 a brig saihng from
England on her return voyage to St. John's,
Newfoundland, carried a single passenger ;
a man of middle age, handsome in ap
pearance, and having about him some
thing of that air of mystery which has an
attraction of its own. Among the sailors

34 On the Track of a Treasure.
serving on board the brig was a Newfound
lander named Keating, with whom the pas
senger became on friendly terms. Keating
was a rough and ignorant man, unable
even to write his own name ; but he showed
a good-natured wish to help the stranger,
who mentioned his desire to obtain lodging
at some private house, when the brig should
reach Newfoundland. It was evident that
the mysterious passenger had some strong
reason for wishing to avoid pubhc places;
and he gladly accepted an offer made by
the sailor that he should lodge at Keating's
house, paying a modest rent for his room.
On the arrival of the brig at St. John's,
Keating took the stranger to his home>
where he lived quietly, showing increasing
confidence in his humble host.

On the Track of a Treasure. 35
One day, in the winter-time, he called
Keating into his room, and lookiiig search-
ingly at the sailor, said :
" Keating, I have something to tell you
which wiU astonish you, though it is quite
true. If you can get one of the St. John's
merchants to fit out a vessel for us, I know
where you and I can find more gold and
silver treasure than would buy Newfound
land." Keating, naturally, was slow to credit
the stranger's statement ; but he was
worked upon graduaUy by a will stronger
than his own, and agreed at length to apply
to some capitalist who might be wiUing
to engage on a romantic venture.
Romance and Capital seldom go hand-
in-hand ; but Keating succeeded in finding
3*

36 On the Track of a Treasure.
a merchant who was ready at least to hear
what the stranger had to say. The sailor
had noticed that his guest objected to
leave the house during the day-time ; so
he persuaded the merchant to come to
his cottage, which stood outside the town.
Romance and Capital met, accordingly ;
and their two representatives talked to
gether far on into the winter night. The
merchant appeared to be convinced of the
stranger's veracity, and he agreed to pro
vide a vessel, under the command of a
captain named Bogue, which would enable
Keating and his guest to bring away the
" gold and sUver treasure " from its hiding
place. While the project was stiU taking shape,
the stranger used to resort to the mer-

On the Track of a Treasure. 37
chant's house. There he met a lady who
seemed to find in him some fascination
which made her listen to him for hours,
enthralled, while he talked of wild adven
tures in which he might have borne a part.
One stormy December evening, Keating
and his guest were seated before a blazing
fire in the sailor's cottage. Suddenly the
door opened, and the lady whom the mer
chant had introduced to the mysterious
adventurer rushed into the room. She
was evidently in a state of extreme excite
ment and terror, as she cried out to the
stranger :
" Fly for your life ! I do not know what
crime you have committed ; but you are
to be arrested immediately, and the men
are on your track ! "

38 On the Track of a Treasure.
The stranger's terror seemed as great as
her own ; and after bidding her a kind fare-
weU, he persuaded her to leave at once,
so that her coming might not serve as a
guide to his pursuers. He then turned
to the wondering sailor, and said :
" Keating, my life is nearly over ; and
as you have been true to me, you shaU
become the richest man in the world. My
real name is Thompson. Many years ago,
I hid gold and silver treasure on Cocos Island
in the Pacific, and with this clue you can
find it."
He then drew from under the fining of
his coat a parchment map, which he laid
upon the table. The map was a chart
of a lonely island, known as Cocos, situated
some three hundred miles from the wes-

On the Track of a Treasure. 39
tern shores of South America. The parch
ment was worn and soiled as if it had been
examined often, and the stranger's hands
trembled with excitement. Thompson
clutched at the table upon which he was
leaning, and with one of his finger-nails
caught and prized up a splinter of wood,
long and thin like a needle.
Keating drew close to the table, and,
resting his elbows on it, bent forward, sup
porting his chin with his hands. He watched
intently the movements of the stranger,
who, using the splinter as a pointer, traced
on the parchment the illustration of his
instructions :
" You must go to the north-east part
of the island, and follow the coast Une of
this bay, until you find a creek — this is

40 On the Track of a Treasure.
the creek," he explained, pressing the sharp
point of the spUnter into a sUght inlet
shewn on the chart. " From the high-
water mark of this creek, you must chmb
along the bed of the stream which flows
from the inland, measuring seventy paces
in a direction west-by-south. You can
not mistake the spot, for, from there, you
can see, standing clear against the sky
line and quite close, a gap in the hiUs ;
from anywhere else the gap is invisible.
Turn to the north and walk untU you cross
a stream. You wiU then see a rock with
a smooth face, like a wall ; examine it
carefully — it rises sheer up Uke a cUff.
But, at the height of a man's shoulder from
the ground, you will see a crevice or hole,
in which a man might insert his thumb.

On the Track of a treasure. 41
Thrust an iron bar into this hole, and lever
outwards; you will then open a cave in
which are bars of gold and silver, coins,
church-images, and golden crucifixes."
The stranger's explanations were hurried
out between his dry lips ; and no sooner were
they ended than the speaker, with a gesture
of farewell, turned to the door and fled
from the cottage into the gloomy night.
Keating never saw his weird visitor again,
aUve. Some days later, a frozen corpse was
found in a snow-drift, and the sailor re
cognized the body as that of the stranger.

CHAPTER IV.
FITZGERALD'S STORY {continued).
Keating had been deeply impressed by
the tragic conclusion to his brief acquaintance
with Thompson. He pored over the chart,
and recalled again and again the stranger's
parting words, until to his excited fancy
some golden lure seemed to draw him to
the lonely tropical island, whose rocky caves
and fertile soil concealed such rich store of
stolen booty.
The sailor, if ignorant, was not unin-

On the Track of a Treasure. 43
teUigent, and he knew it was impossible
that he could keep entirely to himself the
secret of Thompson's legacy. He took the
chart, therefore, to the merchant who had
been preparing the vessel that Captain Bogue
was to command on the intended expe
dition, and told the adventurous capitalist
that his outlay need not be in vain, for that,
aided by Thompson's chart and the instruc -
tions which had been given with it, he felt
confident of being able to find the cave that
harboured the lost treasures of the duped
Peruvians. The merchant proved wiUing to fulfil
his share of the project, and it was speedily
decided that Keating and Captain Bogue
should go to Cocos Island. Some trouble
arose at the last moment. The merchant's

44 On the Track of a Treasure.
vessel was already in charge of a captain
who had been engaged in England. This
man refused to be superseded in order that
Captain Bogue might take over the command
for the purposes of a special enterprise.
He therefore insisted on accompanying
the expedition, but, as the two captains could
not agree, much iU-feeUng resulted.
The voyage around the southern part of
the American continent was long and weari
some in the old sailing days, and contrary
winds, encountered on the west coast, pro
longed the journey over three months.
Nevertheless, the adventurers from New
foundland succeeded in reaching the island
at a favourable time of the year. The rainy
season lasts from May until November on
Cocos; thus, through some caprice of Nature,

On the Track of a Treasure. 45
compensating for months and months of
drought which trouble the western fringe of
Central and South America.
Keating and Captain Bogue — the latter
representing the merchant capitalist — rowed
themselves ashore in the gig, leaving the
EngUsh master in charge of the vessel.
Jealous of his rival, whom he knew to be
engaged in some confidential business, the
EngUshman endeavoured to stir up among
the crew a suspicious and mutinous feeling.
MeanwhUe, the gig had been beached,
and the two treasure-hunters had left her
and started inland. Fortune favoured them,
and, by foUowing closely the instructions
given by Thompson, they managed with
out much difficulty to find the cave. This
they estimated to be from twelve to fifteen

46 On the Track of a Treasure.
feet square. It contained bars of gold and
silver, and sacks of coin. The sacks were
stamped with the official mark of the bank
of Lima, and bound up at the mouth with
strips of hide ; some had burst, or had
worn through, and a stream of gold coins
issued from the canvas. There were many
beautiful Church ornaments, such as golden
crucifixes and chaUces ; among the rest
was a soUd statue of the Madonna in
gold, so heavy that Keating and Bogue
together could not Uft it, but could only
push it along the floor of the cave. The
gUtter of the scattered gold was intoxicat
ing to the two men, and Bogue, for the
moment losing command over himself, vowed
that the cave gleamed with a strange and
terrifying hght.

On the Track of a Treasure. 47
The treasure-finders rowed back to the
ship, taking with them a few coins tied
up in their handkerchiefs. Some of these
Bogue — foolishly enough — showed to the
crew, telling them, at the same time, of
the discovery made by himself and his
partner. The wildest excitement prevailed immedi
ately on board, the English captain leading
the uproar.
" Lads ! " he cried to the crew, " we are
going to share this stuff with these fellows ! "
It was useless for Bogue to protest that
the merchant, who had fitted out the expe
dition at great cost, ought to reap the chief
part of the golden harvest ; but that aU
helpers would receive a substantial reward.
" We want no reward ! " shouted the

48 On the Track of a Treasure.
sailors. " The stuff is ours, and we are
going to have it ! "
Maddened by avarice, the EngUsh captain
and the crew rowed ashore without Bogue
and Keating, who refused to act as guides,
Keating began to reproach Bogue for his
indiscretion, but the latter declared it
was better that the sailors should mutiny
before they knew the position of the hiding-
place than after the treasure had been
brought on board. This was obviously true ;
so Keating aUowed himself to be mollified,
and joined Bogue in trying to think out a
plan by which they might outwit the cove
tous crew.
The whale-boat had been left under the
stern of the ship, secured by a rope to the
taffrail. Bogue threw some salt-junk and

On the Track of a Treasure. 49
biscuits, and a keg or two of fresh water,
into the whale-boat, and concealed them
under her sailing-gear.
At sunset, the rival captain and his crew
returned oh board, furious with disappoint
ment because they had failed to find the
treasure-cave. Surrounding Bogue and
Keating, they threatened to kill the possessors
of the secret, if they would not divulge it
to aU who had taken part in the expedition.
Keating, reahzing the peril of his position,
pretended to give way, and promised to guide
the men to the cave on the following day.
This undertaking appeased the sailors,
and, worn out by their exertions and heavy
with drink (for the EngUsh captain had
bestowed rum without stint), they soon feU
into a drunken sleep. 4

50 On the Track of a Treasure.
Shortly after midnight, when the moon
had set, Bogue and Keating crawled along
the deck, picking their way warily between
the sleeping figures. They scrambled over
the stern of the ship, sUd down into the
whale-boat, cut the painter, and aUowed
the tide to carry them for half-a-nule up
the bay. They beached their boat in a
creek, and, in spite of the darkness, found
their way to the cave. There they filled
their pockets with as many gold coins as
they could carry ; and Bogue, not satisfied,
stuffed gold bars into his boots, so that
he could hardly walk for the weight.
Keating declared afterwards that Bogue's
anxiety to load himself with treasure cost
him his life. " There was a bit of \ surf
breaking," the sailor told his questioners,

On the Track of a Treasure. 51
" so that, to launch the boat, we had to
wade to our arm-pits. Bogue had such a
lot of stuff about him — 'twas more than he
could do to fight his way. It took me all
my strength to save the boat from being
stove in, and I could not lend him a hand.
He grabbed for the gunwale, but missed,
and went under the surf. I never saw
him afterwards."
Keating put out to sea alone, and three
days later was picked up by a Spanish
trading schooner. He was lying in the
bottom of the boat, terribly exhausted.
Not being able to speak Spanish, he was
unable to make himself understood, but he
managed to convey to the men on the
schooner the idea that he had been cast
away. The Spaniards treated him very
A*

52 On the Track of a Treasure.
kindly, and landed him at Puentos Arenas.
From that place, he managed to cross to
the Atlantic coast, sometimes by walking,
sometimes by riding a donkey ; and he
contrived at length to work his way back to
Newfoundland on a coasting vessel,
Keating made hsiste to change the gold
which he had secured after so many perils,
and found himself the possessor of nearly
two thousand five hundred pounds.
UnUke many smaU capitaUsts, Keating
did not fling away his gains ; and Uke many
big capitalists, he desired greatly to add
to them.
For the next two years he remained at
St. John's. He made the acquaintance of a
merchant named Stuart, who had prospered
in a shipping business which consisted

On the Track of a Treasure. 53
chiefly in carrjdng provisions up the coast
and returning with cargoes of seals. Keating
made several proposals to this man, and
one day suggested that Stuart should join
him in purchasing a lugger or schooner at
Panama, and that they should try their
fortune at pearl-fishing round the islands
of the Gulf.
Stuart liked the plan, and an agreement
between them was signed by both.
Keating left Newfoundland for Aspinwall,
making the greater part of the voyage in
one of Stuart's coasting-ships. At Panama,
he bought a schooner of one hundred and
twenty tons, giving everyone he met to
understand that he intended to fish for
pearls. Unfortunately for his wish to pre
serve his true object from detection, a

54 On the Track of a Treasure.
Canadian recognised him as the man who
was said to have brought treasure from
Cocos Island ; so several of the cosmo
politan adventurers hanging about the town
pressed on him their services as volunteers.
Keating was enraged at the betrayal of his
secret, and he hastened to secure a crew
chosen from men who seemed entirely un
suspicious of his plans.
His arrangements having been completed,
he set sail for Cocos Island. Unfavourable
winds and persistent calms delayed the
vessel, and, after fifteen days at sea, Keating
was obliged to put into Puentos Arenas for
water and fresh provisions. In the mean
time, the motley crew had become very
insubordinate, and they were on the verge
of mutiny when, as the result of a second

On the Track of a Treasure. 55
attempt (after beating about and tacking
for eight days), Keating at last reached
Cocos Island. His experiences there he de
scribed later as foUows :
"The story of the Cocos Island treasure
was so well known on the Pacific coast,
that none of the sailors had any doubt as
to my reasons for anchoring off the place.
One of the crew, a rough old sea-dog of
over forty years' experience, suddenly re
membered, in his cups, what his memory
failed to recall in his soberer moments,
that the one man who had ever succeeded
in bringing away gold from the treasure
island was named Keating. A deputation
of sailors (the least drunken of the crew)
came aft, and asked me point-blank if I
were not in search of treasure. A dispute

56 On the Track of a Treasure.
foUowed, and one of the mutineers, holding
a pistol to my head, demanded that I should
take them ashore at once, that night, and
show them the treasure. I managed to
pacify the men by giving them more rum.
Night was made hideous by songs and
drinking, and, in the morning, the whole
crew went ashore. I persuaded the men to
beUeve that the treasure was hidden in
Wafer Bay, and the boats were, accordingly,
rowed to the northrwest part of the island,
where the whole party landed upon the
beach. I managed to shp away, and
swarming up the rocky slopes of the island,
was soon lost amongst the thick under
growth. For four days the mutineers hunted
for me, mad with fury at having been baffled.
They seized aU the liquor on board the

On the Track of a Treasure. 57
schooner and kept up a hideous orgie, which
lasted without interruption for twenty-four
hours. At the end of this time, thoroughly
depressed — the stimulating effects of the
spirit having worn off — the crew hoisted
anchor and set sail for the mainland, leaving
me marooned.
" Some three weeks passed before a vessel
came to the island. I had brought ashore
as much as I could carry from the schooner,
and I was provided with a flint and steel and
some tinder ; with these I was able to light
a fire, and I continued to support life on
eggs and sheU-fish. On the third day I
was fortunate enough to capture a turtle,
and this provided me with food for some
time. With a needle and thread, I sewed
coins, which I recovered from the cave, into

58 On the Track of a Treasure.
my clothes, thus securing gold to the value
of about two thousand eight hundred pounds
sterling. " A whaling vessel came into Chatham Bay
for water, after I had been eighteen days
upon the island. I was becoming very
depressed and weak from the want of proper
food ; indeed, I was quite Ught-headed,
and the crew of the whaler were almost
afraid to approach me, for I was raving
and shouting. Sometimes, the saUors said,
I appeared to be mad with fury, at other
times wild with terror. I was taken on
board, and a few days later transhipped to
a passing vessel bound for Panama."
Keating's second hoard was either put
to less romantic purposes than the first, or
was laid away safely to wait for an oppor-

On the Track of a Treasure. 59
tunity which never came. At all events,
it did not provide its owner with the means
of recovering the hidden treasure of Cocos
Island. The story of his second expedi
tion to the cave leaked out, as such stories
usuaUy do, and the unpleasantly close watch
kept on his movements by friends and rela
tives made him uneasy, suspicious and
vacillating. There were many who affirmed that it
was not the Weight of gold, alone, which had
dragged Captain Bogue to his death beneath
the Pacific breakers ; and Keating no doubt
felt himself to be, in spite of lacking evidence,
a marked man, and, as such, bound to go
warily. Had he, or had he not, lured Bogue to his
end in the hope of remaining sole possessor

6o On the Track of a Treasure.
of the secret whose meaning had been made
clear to the two dazzled adventurers when
they had probed the mystery of the Cocos
cave ?
Twenty years shpped by. One day, a
fishing-smack, sailing in the Gulf of St.
Lawrence, off the west coast of Newfound
land, was broken by the ice-floes and became
water-logged. Many other ships were
wrecked at the same time, and the crews
of most of them succeeded in making their
way across the ice to the shore, at a place
called Codroy, near Cape Bay. There was
scanty welcome at that spot for the ship
wrecked sailors. The coast was blocked by
ice to a degree which prevented the approach
of vessels with provisions, and the dweUers
in the village were almost destitute of food.

On the Track of a Treasure. 6i
The owner of the fishing-smack was Nicho
las Fitzgerald, and he had heard of the
condition of the villagers, and consequently
held on desperately to his wreck, though
at the time of the disaster she was twenty
miles from land. After driving about amidst
the ice for a fortnight, Fitzgerald and his
crew were picked up by a barque, saving all
their provisions ; and the barque, having
fortunately discovered an opening in the
ice-floes which carried her straight to Codroy,
landed them there, and disembarked most
of her stores for the rehef of the inhabi
tants and their shipwrecked guests.
Fitzgerald was generous in distributing
food and comforts, and while going about
the place attending to the wants of the
shipwrecked crews, he came upon a broken-

62 On the Track of a Treasure.
down house or shed. The floor was
caked with ice, and the cracks in the roof
allowed the wind and the snow to drive
in. Some of the castaways were lying on
the ground in a miserable condition.
Among these was an old man who was
enveloped in a piece of rough saU-canvas;
and as he appeared to be dying, Fitz
gerald took pity on him, and had him
carried to a room which he had engaged for
himself in the viUage. Putting the stranger
in his bed, Fitzgerald attended to him kindly,
and watched over him with such success that
he brought him through his iUness ; but
while its issue was stiU doubtful, the stranger
showed that he was not ungrateful.
One day, while Fitzgerald was waiting on
him, he said, suddenly :

On the Track of a Treasure. 63
"What are you doing this for ? Do you
know who I am ? "
" I don't know you at all, mate," answered
Fitzgerald quietly, " and I'm not doing
anything out of the common, as far as I
can see. One doesn't leave a chap to
die Uke a rat in a hole — lerastways, I reckon
not ! "
The castaway continued earnestly :
"Well, I don't know your name, but I
do know you are a humane fellow. I've
Uved long, and I've never met real kindness
before. In return for what you've done
for me, I'll put you in the way of becoming
a rich man, if you'll accept my offer. I am
Keating — the man folks call Keating of
the Cocos Island Treasure. It's true that
I've been to the island twice and brought

64 On the Track of a Treasure.
treasure away with me. I can go again, and
I can take you with me, if I recover. In case
I do not, I will give you my secret now.
Only you must promise me first that if I
live you wiU not reveal to anyone what
I'm going to teU you, and that you'U go
with me to Cocos Island and help me to
remove the treasure you shaU share."
The name of Keating, and the romance
— picturesque and sinister — attaching to it,
were not unknown to Fitzgerald. A
rough agreement was drawn up between
the two men and signed by both. Fitz
gerald then Ustened to a fuU account of
the other's adventures, which began from
the date of his return from England to
Newfoundland, in 1844, and which com
prised the confession of the stranger, Thomp-

On the Track of a Treasure. 65
son, the pirate of the Relampago and the
leader of the mutineers of the Mary Dear.
Keating's story was not told all at once,
but in fragments, as the teller's strength
permitted. His health returned gradually,
and the day came when he pressed his
preserver to carry out their contract and go
with him to Cocos Island.
But Fitzgerald drew back. The closer
his acquaintance with Keating, the less in
cUned was the old sailor to venture on
any undertaking in which he might share
the fate of Captain Bogue. He was, how
ever, an honest man, and he respected
his part of the bargain with Keating,
which compeUed him to preserve the
latter's secret during his lifetime.
Keating died in 1882. It was not, there-
. 5

66 On the Track of a Treasure.
fore, till fourteen years later that the chance
publication in a Canadian journal of an
account of Captain Shrapnel's visit to Cocos
aroused in Fitzgerald's mind a wonder whether
the knowledge he possessed might not prove
of use.

67

CHAPTER V.
DISENTANGLING THE THREADS.
The romantic narrative disclosed in Fitz
gerald's letters formed a fitting sequel to
the legends of the treasure hidden on Cocos
Island by the mutineers of the Mary Dear
or by the pirate, Benito. It was clear that
the stranger mentioned by Keating must
have been either on board the Relampago
or the Mary Dear. Perhaps he had been
on both vessels, as the name, Thompson,
occurs in the records of the trial and execu-
5*

68 On the Track of a Treasure.
tion of the mutineers deposited in the
national library at Lima, where they can be
seen to this day, and the same name is
found in some old letters which teU of
Benito's career. Thus Keating's story dove
tailed with the Peruvian records and the
traditions repeated in aU Pacific ports
sufficiently to arouse Captain Shrapnel's
keenest interest. In further correspondence,
Fitzgerald explained that Keating had been
suspected of the murder of Bogue, and
that the prosecution had been dropped from
want of evidence. The ravings of the fever-
stricken seaman in the frozen hut in Codroy
seemed to reveal the burdened state of
Keating's conscience ; nor was it diflScult
to suspect the grim significance of his
reluctance to revisit alone the treasure-cave.

' Vou have my secret ! ' '

To face pdgc 60]

On the Track of a Treasure. 69
Fitzgerald admitted that, fearing he might
share the fate of Bogue, he had refused to
accompany Keating on a contemplated ex
pedition, and that this refusal had thrown
Keating into a passion. " You have my
secret," the latter had said, " and I was
a fool to give it to you ; but if you do not
find the cave, no man ever will. You are
now the only one alive who can do so ! "
" He reaUy hissed these words with
clenched teeth," wrote Fitzgerald, "and I
was glad to get away from him."
Keating's feeble brain was saturated with
suspicion and dread ; he went in fear of his
life, expecting to be murdered when at home,
because of the secret he would not divulge
to his relatives. Subsequently to Keating's
death in 1882, Fitzgerald visited them at

70 On the Track of a Treasure.
Sydney, Cape Breton, and considered the
charts and plans which they possessed
valueless. In any case, they did not corres
pond with his information ; as Keating always
swore to his family that he had found the
treasure in Wafer Bay. His second wife,
who afterwards became Mrs. Brennan, spent
her life trying to worm the secret out of
him : she first had conceived the idea of
marrying him after peeping through the
window of his cottage to watch him counting
the gold coins upon his bed. Keating left
a dying statement and a chart vrith Mrs.
Brennan, both marked vrith his mark (as
he could not write), but neither has an
appearance of being genuine. In his narra
tive a paragraph has been inserted in a
different handwriting : " My vrife is not

On the Track of a Treasure. 71
to show this paper to anyone without first
receiving one hundred pounds." The chart
or map of the island is a wretched scrawl,
and the instructions bid the searcher, " go
round Morgan's point "—Morgan's point
corresponds to Cascara Island in the Admi
ralty Chart — " into Wafer Bay, keep on
the north side until you are hid from the
open water."
Fitzgerald maintained that this was a
false clue left about by Keating to mislead
his wife, and that the old sailor had gone
to his grave with the secret locked in his
bosom — for he had destroyed the parch
ment chart given him by Thompson.
Mrs. Brennan accompanied Captain
Hackett on an expedition to Cocos Island
on the Aurora, in 1894, but their search

72 On the Track of a Treasure.
was in vain. Hackett would not Usten to
the old woman, and, when she protested
that the men were not working in the right
spot, retorted : " Shut up, you old fool, you
know nothing ! " The Aurora expedition
suffered great hardships, as the vessel was
very small and took forty-three days to
reach the island from Vancouver ; she was
manned by six ex-captains of vessels, all
bent on treasure-seeking, and, as may be
imagined, harmony seldom reigned. They
were a rough lot, and when they found
nothing, in a fury of disappointment they
stripped the old woman and searched her
clothes, and broke open her boxes, con
vinced that she possessed some information
which she was holding back. Mrs. Brennan,
who was bent double with age, contrived

On the Track of a Treasure. 73
to cUmb to the top of the high ground above
Wafer Bay, where she stood contemplating
the outlook. " This is not the place, boys,"
she kept repeating, " it ought to be a bay
with a small beach shaped like a crescent,
with black rocks on either side, where you
are hid from the open water."
On their return journey the Aurora ex
pedition ran short of provisions, and the
adventurers nearly starved.
In 1892, a man of the name of Von
Bremer spent several thousands of dollars
in making excavations and drove some
tunnels for upwards of a hundred yards
under ground, but he found nothing. His
clue — in which he evidently reposed great
confidence, for he spent the larger part
of his fortune upon it — instructed him to

74 On the Track of a Treasure.
find a spot from which the bearings of the
points or lugs of Wafer Bay formed an angle
of thirty-five degrees with one another;
but no one can make anything of this
information. In 1888, a German, by name
Gissler, obtained a concession and grant of
land from the Costa Rican government,
and was made governor of the island. He
has spent sixteen years at Cocos ; no one
can possibly find the treasure without his
assistance, for he knows every marked
rock on the island, every bearing and every
clue. No one, moreover, can search for
treasure legally without his sanction. His
story vrill be told later on.
Of all the expeditions which ever have
tried their fortunes, none came so near
to success, according to Keating, as one

On the Track of a Treasure. 75
led by a man named Roland. When the
latter described where he had dug, Keating
leapt to his feet excitedly and exclaimed :
" By God, you were within ten feet of the
treasure ! "
Finally, in 1902, the Blakeley, a British
Columbian brigantine, carried a crew of
sanguine treasure-hunters to the lonely
Pacific island. They were commanded by
the indefatigable Hackett, who had accom
panied the Aurora in 1894, but the Blakeley
shared the ill-fortune of her predecessors.
Captain Shrapnel made exhaustive en
quiries as to Fitzgerald's antecedents, and
everywhere received confirmation of the good
opinion of the old sailor held by the Judge
of the Supreme Court of Newfoundland.
He also checked many of Fitzgerald's state-

76 On the Track of a Treasure.
ments and cross-examined him minutely on
several points, all repUes being satisfactory.
The Captain, having given an under
taking that he would not reveal the secret
of the clue to the treasure-cave to anyone
save those accompanying him on an ex
pedition, and having further guaranteed
that Fitzgerald should receive five per cent.
of whatever might be found, the latter,
on the 23rd of May, 1898, wrote to the
Captain giving him precise information as
to how to find the hiding place. He further
stated :
" The cave, if found vrithout the door
being damaged or blown up, vrill surprise
all who see it, on account of the ingenious
contrivance and workmanship, possibly
done by Peruvian workers in stone, whose

On the Track of a Treasure. yy
skiU was noted. In Keating's words, the
cave is between twelve and fifteen feet
square, with sufficient standing room. The
entrance to it is closed by a stone made
to move round in such a pecuhar manner
that it sets into the rock when you turn
it, leaving a passage through which one
man can crawl into the cave at a time,
and when the stone is turned back in its
place, the human eye cannot detect it ;
it fits Uke a paper on a wall. You have to
find a hole into which a man's thumb can
fit ; when you find that mark, insert into
it an iron bar, one man can easily turn it.
In that cave are gold and silver and images
enough to load a vessel. I have thought
this matter over for years, and decided
that a man-o'-war was the only safe way to

78 On the Track of a Treasure.
secure the treasure — that I would be best
protected under our national flag. I was
afraid to write to the commanding officers
of the Navy, fearing that they would laugh
at my romantic story ; until one day I
heard the petty officers of Captain Watt
extolling him for his kindly disposition.
I then took courage and wrote to him ;
he has not moved in the matter, but he
gave me his word that he would keep my
secret. Keating told me that the first time
he went to the island he had no trouble
in finding the cave ; but the second time,
there had been a disturbance or eruption
which changed the features of the place,
but he found it all the same. I beg to
state that I thought I had the whole thing
well committed to memory, until I began to

On the Track of a Treasure. 79
write to Captain Watt, when for the first
time I found that I had forgotten the exact
number of paces told me by Keating —
that is, from the last bearing ; but I am
confident that it is either seventy or one
hundred and seventy paces, and this would
not be much for sailors with jack-knives
to search."
According to Fitzgerald, the reason for
the failure of so many expeditions arose
clearly from the fact that they landed and
searched in Wafer Bay ; whereas the treasure
was carried in boatloads to a certain creek
in Chatham Bay — a creek which can be
identified by Fitzgerald's clue. The borings
and diggings of disappointed searchers in
Wafer Bay must remain for all time monu
ments of their vain pursuit of wealth.

8o On the Track of a Treasure.
Captain Shrapnel set to work to make
enquiries and gather evidence from other
sources ; so that, in the event of an expedi
tion being undertaken, no stone might be
left unturned which might have treasure
under it.
For some time, no Ught whatever could
be thrown upon the puzzle ; but at last
a Swedish gentleman who had spent many
years in investigating aU the clues, and
who had on several occasions visited Cocos
Island, was discovered. In his opinion,
however, Uttle reUance should be placed on
Keating's statement. After his death in
1882, Mrs. Brennan and a man of the name
of Young professed to have received from
Keating precise and accurate infon^ation ;
but these particulars contained neither

On the Track of a Treasure. 8i
measurements nor bearings. To Mrs.
Brennan, her husband had always declared
that the treasure was deposited in the
north-west bay of the island ; now, this
statement was in direct contradiction to
his confession to Fitzgerald. But the old
Newfoundlander stoutly declared that there
could have been no reason for Keating to
mislead him, whereas there were many
reasons for him to deceive Mrs. Brennan.
Yet there exists very strong evidence to
suggest that, during the last years of his life,
Keating told the truth to his wife.
His one great friend in the world was a
man of the name of Hackett. Now the
elder of Hackett's two sons was employed
in a factory, where he was earning a good
salary ; while the younger was the captain

82 On the Track of a Treasure.
of a saihng schooner. On the strength of
information furnished by Keating, an ex
pedition was arranged by Young, Keating's
son-in-law, and, as Captain Hackett was
absent, it w£is decided to give the command
to the elder brother. DisUking the whole
affair, Hackett wrote to Keating imploring
him not to encourage his son in so wild
an enterprise (whereby he might lose his
excellent position in the factory), unless
the information were genume. Keating in
reply gave Hackett the very strongest
assurance that the information with which
Young's expedition was armed was com
plete and accurate. This expedition, never
theless, did not start from want of funds.
It thus appeared certain that a confusion
existed in Keating's mind between the

On the']Track of a Treasure. 83
north-east and north-west bays of the
island. Much confusion does exist in the minds
of some sailors ; in sea parlance, every
seaman who says " si " for yes is a Dago,
everyone who says " ja," is a Dutchman.
Now a Dutchman writes " O " for " Oest "
or East, while a Dago writes " O " for
" Guest " or West, thus, when it comes
to reading a rough chart, mistakes fre
quently arise.
Some further papers obtained by the
Swedish gentleman from a man who had
known ChapeUe in San Francisco, and to
whom the old pirate had confided his docu
ments before starting on a voyage from
which he was never to return, threw con
siderable light on the enigma. Amongst
6*

84 On the Track of a Treasure.
these documents were extracts from the
log of the Relampago, written in French—
ChapeUe was a French-Canadian. From
these it appeared that the pirate-ship
anchored in a bay between a rock shaped
like a cone and an islet that looked hke a
squatting lion. Then came the foUowing
terse notes : "A large sand-stone boulder
in the south-east of the bay : one hundred
and forty fathoms, north-west-by-west:
thirty-five fathoms, west-by-south ; eighty
feet north and thirty feet from the black
crag." The log described further that the
Relampago had lost an anchor in trying
to fix moorings opposite a natural tunnel
cut through the headland.
This \ information of ChapeUe's was of
considerable value. ChapeUe was evidently

On the Track of a Treasure. 85
a man of education and intelligence, and,
aided by this clue, it appeared impossible
to mistake the bay. When the first threads
of a mystery have been gathered, others
speedily accumulate ; and stories reached
Captain Shrapnel's ears from aU quarters
of the "globe. From Samoa the news came
that an old fellow, who was generally known
by the name of " Mac," was popularly
supposed to know where a great treasure
was buried, and many suspected him of
having been a pirate. On all sides and
through every channel of information it
appeared to be generaUy believed that
Keating had brought money from Cocos
Island ; but the Swedish gentleman em
phatically declared that the hiding-place
of the treasure never had been found by

86 On the Track of a Treasure.
Keating. On one of his visits to the island,
a rusty hook had been discovered by him
in the hollow of an old tree, hard by was a
rock, on which was rudely cut the letter
" K" and a broad-arrow : on felling this
tree, a gold coin had been found, a doubloon
or ten-doUar gold piece of the time of Charles
III., King of Spain and the Indies, and
dated 1788.
The Swedish gentleman interpreted the
enigma as foUows : Keating, being an
ignorant man, who could neither read nor
write, was quite incapable of understanding
a bearing or measurement, nor could he
be expected to lay out survey hues. When
Thompson and Bogue met in St. John's,
Bogue quickly grasped the idea of the clue,
while Keating, present at the interview.

On the Track of a Treasure. 87
merely seized such portions of the informa
tion as his memory was capable of retaining.
On landing at Cocos Island, it was Bogue
who found the treasure, while "Keating kept
watch by the boat so that no damage might
be done by the surf. When Bogue returned
to the beach loaded with treasure, Keating
asked him to show him the hiding-place,
but on Bogue refusing, Keating murdered
him and concealed in the hollow of a tree
such part of the treasure, taken from
Bogue's dead body, as he could not himself
carry. When Keating returned to the
island in 1848, he merely recovered the gold
which he had hidden four years previously.
This would account for the confusion which
exists in Keating's narratives, and for the
measure of truth which pervades them all.

88 On the Track of a Treasure.
It would also explain Keating's strange re
luctance to accompany any expedition, and
the fact that he never made a third attempt
to recover the treasure, though he had
ample means to do so.
The Swedish gentleman pooh-poohed the
idea of a revolving rock and a thumb-hole,
but his opinion, after aU, rests on no positive
information. The last piece of news which Captain
Shrapnel was fortunate enough to obtain
came from Buenos Aires. Mr. Alexander,
the station-master at San Patricio station,
on the Buenos Aires and Pacific Railway,
had, in his young days, been an officer
on a steamer which had borne a party
of treasure-hunters to Cocos Island, under a
contract which bound the owners of the

On the Track of a Treasure. 89
vessel to return in three, months for the
party. Mr. Alexander was then, in 1873,
a young man of an adventurous turn of
mind, and he frequently discussed the
possibilities of recovering the Cocos Island
miUions with his shipmate. Bob Flower.
The latter returned two or three times to
Cocos Island, accompanying different ex
peditions. On the last occasion when he
landed upon the island, in 1875, he was in
the company of a very rough lot of adven
turers ; while walking one day on the high
ground above a certain creek, he slipped
and feU some fifteen feet down the bank
which overhung a stream ; on recovering
himself, he discovered a pile of stones heaped
pyramid-vrise in front of a crevice — " a fox's
hole," as he described it. By withdrawing

90 On the Track of a Treasure.
these stones, he was able to climb into a
grotto, in which were piles of gold ingots
and kegs of coins. He brought away as
many coins as he could conveniently carry,
and crawled out of the cave, replacing the
rocks as he had found them. On cUmbing
back to day-light, he had taken his watch
from his pocket and had found his bearings
roughly. The runlet below him lay to the
south, and thirty fathoms or so from there
the brook ran into the sea in a direction
east-north-east ; from the mouth of the
runlet, the eastern lug of Chatham Bay
bore due east. Such was the statement of
Bob Flower.
Now, the remarkable part of this evidence
was that it fitted in, to a great extent, vrith
the clue found amongst ChapeUe's papers.

On the Track of a Treasure. 91
East-north-east (if one allow for the differ
ence between a true bearing, as would be
given by a watch, and a magnetic bearing,
as made by a compass) is nearly the exact
opposite of west-by-south ; so Captain
Shrapnel reckoned that, if ChapeUe's
bearing, one hundred and forty fathoms
north-west-by-west, took him to the mouth
of a brook from which the eastern lug of
Chatham Bay bore true east, he would
be then very close to the hidden miUions.
Bob Flower was drowned some years ago
in the wreck of one of the Pacific Steam
Navigation Company's Steamers ; but Mr.
Alexander's integrity was vouched for by
his employers, and he declared that he had
seen the coins found by his shipmate.
By 1898, Captain Shrapnel had com-

92 On the Track of a Treasure.
pleted his term of command in the Pacific,
but he nevertheless determined to think
out some plan whereby he might put to the
test the clue given to him by Nicholas
Fitzgerald. He had satisfied himself as to
the trustworthiness of the old sailor and
he had confirmative evidence of the sudden
acquisition of money by Keating, who,
previous to his voyages in the Pacific, had
been a poor and ignorant sailor before the
mast. Captain Shrapnel and Mr. Grant,
a friend of his, first conceived the plan of
dispatching, at a smaU cost, a reUable man,
who was to endeavour to reach Cocos Island
on a sailing boat, hired at Panama, the
distance from that port being only 520
miles. The land marks were to be verified
and the cave located ; it was determined,

On the Track of a Treasure. 93
however, not to touch the treasure, on
account of the difficulties of dealing with
" treasure-trove," and of the probability
that the crew manning the hired vessel
might prove untrustworthy. This expedi
tion was. a complete failure, owing to calms,
unfavourable winds, and the mutinous con
duct of the sailors on the hired boat ;
moreover, the gentleman who had been
trusted with the execution of the attempt
fell ill with fever, and was compelled to
return to England.
Mr. Grant himself then went to Costa
Rica, and realised for the first time the
enormous difficulties which stood in his
path. It was quite impossible to obtain
a steamer upon the Western Coast of Central
America. The Costa Rican gun-boat, which

94 On the Track of a Treasure.
might have been procured by Mr. Grant
on payment of the coal-bill, was employed
on sterner business than treasure searching ;
there being a revolution at that time in the
republic's territory, she was not avaUable.
Finally, in the autumn of 1902, after many
disappointments, a party of gentlemen agreed
to subscribe sufl&cient money to charter
a vessel which would meet aU the require
ments of a treasure-searching expedition.
It is a difficult task to procure subscriptions
to a syndicate whose object is of such an
abnormal and romantic nature ; the pro
moter has to vrithstand a heavy bombard
ment of chaff ; is often denounced as a fool
for his pains, while not seldom he is written
dovni as a knave. He has, moreover, to
select his subscribers with much judgment;

On the Track of a Treasure. 95
the City-man has not sufl&cient imagination
and enterprise, while the West-ender has
Httle money to disburse on such a problem
atic source of wealth. Besides, from the
subscribers must be selected the members
of the expedition itself ; and these must
be endowed with more patience and grit
than is to be found in the average man of
means. The treasure-searcher should be one
who reserves in some dark cell of his re-
coUections the memory of his school-boy
days, when he read his Captain Marryat
with relish, and followed with sparkling
enthusiasm the fates of Mayne Reid's heroes.
The treasure-searcher should be a man who
can be a boy again when he reads Robert
Louis Stevenson. He must be able to hear,
in imagination, the clink of the glasses,

96 On the Track of a Treasure.
and the gruff voices of " Silver " and his
shipmates — " With a yo, ho, ho, and a
bottle of rum ! " — as they plan the mutiny
in " Treasure Island " : he must smell
the salt sea, and hear the creaking of the
timbers and the squeaking of the tackle,
as the sails of the Hispaniola fiU, and she
furrows her way to the South Sea and into
the hearts of fiction-readers of aU time.

97

CHAPTER VI.
WESTWARD HO!
Such was the spirit in which we, the sub
scribers to the treasure-hunting syndicate,
entered upon our undertaking. The most
exhaustive discussions and enquiries re
vealed the difficulties of procuring a suitable
vessel at any port on the Western Coast
of Central America, and the untrustworthi-
ness of local crews. A Liverpool firm of
shipowners was approached therefore, and
an agreement was sketched out, which
7

98 On the Track of a Treasure.
finally crystallised into the foUowing arrange
ment with them : — The firm had entered
into a contract with Messrs. Pearsons to
carry cement to Sahna Cruz in the Bay of
Tehauntepec, where a harbour is being con
structed at the western terminus of the new
Trans-Mexican railway. It was impossible,
of course, to carry a cargo profitably for
such a distance by steamship, but a subsidy
paid by the treasure-seekers might absorb
the loss to the owners, leaving them a margin
of profit. In consideration of this advan
tage, the vessel was to be placed at the dis
posal of the adventurers for one month
after she had discharged her cargo at SaUna
Cruz, a point within five days' steaming of
Cocos Island. To further this plan, the
steamship Scotia of the Anchor Une was

On the Track of a Treasure. 99
purchased, and rechristened the Lytton. The
means to reach Cocos were thus provided
at a smaller cost than would have been
entailed had it been necessary to charter
a vessel for that purpose alone.
It was suggested at first that no permission
should be asked of the Costa Rican govern
ment, to whom Cocos belongs. But en
quiries disclosed two difficulties ; firstly,
the impossibility of disposing of the gold,
if found, without the sanction of the
sovereign state ; and secondly, the enormous
expense of insuring the vessel against loss
if she embarked on what would be a piratical
enterprise were the acquiescence of Costa
Rica not obtained. An ambassador was
accordingly, appointed by the treasure-
hunters. He journeyed to Paris and inter-
7*

100 On the Track of a Treasure.
viewed the Minister, who, like aU repre
sentatives of Central American States, has
the good sense to make his home in the
gay capital. At the Costa Rican Legation,
the utmost interest was taken in the venture,
and every assistance was given ; the tales
of the hidden treasure were verified, while
several cables passed between Paris and
San Jose to accelerate the preHminary steps
towards the granting of a concession.
Finally, on the ist of May, 1903, an agree
ment was signed between the treasure-
seekers and the Repubhc, whereby the former
obtained permission to search for the period
of one year on Cocos Island, to the exclusion
of aU rival expeditions, and the latter stipu
lated that they should receive one half
of the profits of the Lytton's cruise.

On the Track of a Treasure. loi
The fitting out of the Lytton was a heavy
task. She had to take in coals at Swansea
and cement at Antwerp, while stores for
the adventurers, implements for digging,
and weapons for defence, had to be placed
on board with the utmost secrecy. The"
firms patronised, and the railway companies,
seemed to plot with one another to place
every difl&culty in our way, and the most
ingenious schemes were devised to pre
vent the whole affair from becoming known
to the Press. A Chinese crew was con
sidered the most suitable for the enter
prise, as Chinamen are more amenable to
discipHne than Europeans ; besides, they
are cheaper, more hard-working, and soberer
than the generaUty of merchant-sailors
Unfortunately, it was impossible to pro-

102 On the Track of a Treasure.
cure the men we required ; and such was
our impatience to be off, that we engaged
the first crew available in Liverpool. The
owners of the Lytton promised to secure
for us their best officers, and at last, on the
9th of May, the Lytton left Antwerp, and
by the i6th she had passed Madeira, well
on her way to Southern Seas.
With a view to preserving the secrecy
of our venture, it was decided that we should
meet in the City of Mexico during the second
week of July, by which date, it was antici
pated, the Lytton would be at Sahna Cruz
ready to receive us on board. Some of
our party took the route via New York,
while others determined to start from St.
Nazaire in the Transatlantique Company's
steamer. La Normandie.

On the Track of a Treasure. 103
Captain Shrapnel, the present writer, and
two others, selected the French steamer,
and, on the 21st June, said good-bye to
Europe and their friends — or to such of
them as were in the secret.
The wretched weather which prevailed
in the early summer of 1903 pursued us
for five days, and it was not until the 26th
that we ran into the dancing blue of summer
seas. Those who dislike the ceaseless annoyance
to which the traveller is subjected on many
mail-steamers : the bad food ; the steward
who is sometimes sober but never polite ;
the importunate passenger with his eternal
list of childish games — and consequent sub
scriptions — the company-promoter, on his
way to seek fresh snares for his victims.

104 On the Track of a Treasure.
or to view the gold-mine which can never
show profit save in the sanguine hopes of
his dupes : those who long for a fortnight
of rest : those who like good fare — should
never look beyond a French steamer. Food
and wine, similar to those which were pro
vided for us free of charge upon La Nor
mandie, would have absorbed the greater
part of our passage money, if enjoyed in
the precincts of a fashionable London
restaurant. On the 22nd we caUed at Santander,
and on the 23rd at Coruna ; the ram, the
early hour, and the position of our anchor
age, combined to make landing unattrac
tive, so we stayed upon our comfortable
ship and gazed at the red-tiled houses of
the latter place, thinkmg of the brave days

On the Track of a Treasure. 105
when the British army won more victories
than decorations, and wondering where the
gallant John Moore was lying.
Save when, on the 29th of June, a Yankee
whaler signaUed and stopped us, under
the pretence of being in distress, and begged
our Captain to post a letter on arrival in
harbour, the days before the 4th July
passed uneventfully. We would spend hours
in the bow of La Normandie discussing our
prospects of success, and gazing out to the
westward — far away to where the sun sleeps,
beyond an ocean and across the New World,
hoping that there might lie the prize which
so many had sought for in vain.
On the anniversary of American inde
pendence we first saw Florida, and, on the
following morning, touched at Havana.

io6 On the Track of a Treasure.
The wreck of the Maine stiU lay in the
harbour, and from the broken stump of
her mast fluttered the flag of the United
States. There is nothing of interest to be seen
at Havana, except the cigar-factories. The
finest cure for cigar-smoking is to risit
one of these estabUshments ; so disgustmg
and uncleanly is the method of roUing
and shaping the best Havana cigars that
none of us who witnessed the process will
ever smoke one again. Neither heat nor
the noise of coahng a steamer is conducive
to sleep, nor could the most vivid imagin
ation of the tortures of nine-circled hell
exceed the sufferings of those on board
La Normandie, while her bunkers were bemg
refilled in Cuba. The heat on the 5th

On the Track of a Treasure. loy
.and 6th was appalUng ; the smoke from
the funnels of our ship standing up stiff
Hke a column above us, a breeze from the
stern compensating for our sixteen knots'
speed ahead and creating an intolerable
stillness. With the inferior coal purchased
at Havana, our steamer's daily runs were
reduced, and it was not until the afternoon
of the 7th that we reached Vera Cruz.
The general appearance of the coast is so
unattractive that the traveller ceases to
wonder at the tale of Cortez burning his
ships to prevent his men from fleeing from
this inhospitable shore ; no method less
drastic could have stayed even his dauntless
followers from beating a retreat. The town
is excessively dirty ; the spaces between
the houses are " contrived a double debt

io8 On the Track of a Treasure.
to pay " — drains and streets. Owing to the
latter function being in abeyance during
our visit, sixty-seven cases of yeUow fever
were admitted in one day to the hospital.
In the bar of the principal hotel in the
town, we made the acquaintance of an
American doctor. He began by telHng us
that he was immune from " YeUow Jack,"
and that he formed part of a commission
which was making enquiries into the causes
of the hideous disease.
" You can do nothing to secure your
selves," said he. " Once bitten by the
poison-mosquito, which conveys the germs,
you are as good as dead, for only about
fifteen per cent, ever recover. Strangers
coming into the fever-district are more Hable
to catch the fever than residents, and,"

On the Track of a Treasure. 109
he added, vrith a sly glance at the deck shoes
we were all wearing, "it is very dangerous
to wear low-quarter shoes, for the mosquito
usually attacks the ankles ! " On our way
to the station, he stopped us near a foetid
hole in the middle of the road, and called
our attention to it. " Now this," he ob
served, " is a fruitful source of the evil.
Do you see that dead rat ? "  But none
of us saw it, we were all hurrying on to the
railway, picking out the driest parts of the
street, and flicking madly with our hand
kerchiefs at every innocent insect that buzzed
within a yard of us !

IIO

CHAPTER VII.
THE DUST OF FORGOTTEN CIVILIZATION.
Between Vera Cruz and Mexico the railway
passes through some of the most beautiful
scenery in the world. The town of Ori
zaba, which is four hours by train from
Vera Cruz, stands 3,500 feet above the
sea-level, and from Orizaba to Esparanza,
a distance of only thirty-one miles, the
train climbs a further 4,500 feet. The
tropical growth is luxuriant ; roses, orchids,
and flowers of every colour can be seen

On the Track of a Treasure. iii
in profusion. Here and there the " Sun-
man " has coaxed a graceful pine-tree
from the proud bosom of the " Earth-
mother " ; but, speaking generaUy, there
is Httle timber on the steep slopes. The
train winds along a narrow ledge cut in
the mountain-side, and the traveller can
peer from the car-windows into a dizzy
chasm beneath him. Or he may scan, from
an altitude of 2,000 feet, the roof of
some tiny church, whose imposing archi
tecture he has admired on the heights above
him, less than two hours before, as his train
grunted and toiled up the slippery track.
On arriving in Mexico City we heard
that, during our voyage, the Lytton had met
with foul weather in the southern seas ;
and that she had been compelled to double

112 On the Track of a Treasure.
Cape Horn instead of venturing through
the intricacies of the Straits of Magellan.
Her arrival at Sahna Cruz was delayed
in consequence. Some weeks had to be
spent by us before we could embark, and
we decided to pass the time in seeing the
country, the theatre of an old-time ciri-
Uzation. Nearly four centuries have passed since
a famous treasure-seeker landed on the same
spot which we had chosen as our port of
arrival in America. Pedantic historians have
pointed the finger of scorn at him because
he was a mere treasure-seeker. He cer
tainly never pretended to be anything else ;
and in that respect, was less of a hypocrite
than most empire-buUders have been. In
any case, he was as brave a man as ever

On the Track of a Treasure. 113
Hved; nor shaU we, his imitators in trea
sure seeking, judge him harshly.
It was at Vera Cruz that Cortez landed
in 1519, on his way to conquer Mexico.
The legend says that Montezuma feared
and expected the coming of Quetzalcohuatl,
the Sun-man, a beneficent god of the Toltecs,
who, hating human sacrifices, had been
deposed and driven into exile by Tezcat-
hpoca, whom the cannibals worshipped.
Further than Yucatan he refused to retire,
but, breaking his feathered serpent-staff,
vowed that he would one day return to
vindicate his honour. Cortez, with his
cavaHers, appeared to the trembhng Monte
zuma as the incarnation of the Sun-man,
surrounded by centaurs.
The Indians of America, vrith their raven-
8

114 ^^ ^^^ Track of a Treasure.
black hair, and strong features, pre
sent an agreeable appearance. Ethnolo
gists trace their descent from Tartars of
North-Eastern Asia, and certainly they bear
the stamp of some such origin. In any case,
their state of civilization at the tune of
the Conquest of Mexico has been exag
gerated. In spite of the wholesale de
struction of records by the Conquistadores,
enough remains to show that, apart from
their skill in stone carving, paintmg, and
feather ornamentation — talents common to
all savage tribes — the Mexicans hngered far
behind the civihzed races of the Old World.
They were unacquainted vrith the useful
metals, and vrith such ordinary mechanical
contrivances as the wheel or the balance;
in writing they lagged some thousands of

On the Track of a Treasure. 115
years behind the most advanced people of
Asia, and the construction of their calendar
displays only such astronomical knowledge
as is necessary for reckoning the seasons
for sovring and reaping. Their religion was
a depraved and sordid idolatry, sullied by
those most hideous of aU savage taints,
human-sacrifice and cannibalism. It is pos
sible that, without the intervention of the
Spanish Missionary, the comparatively pure
and logical worship of the Sun might have
been evolved from the chaotic superstitions
which surrounded the symbols of their
beliefs ; but centuries must have elapsed
before some lofty spiritual conception — such
as that of a Confucius or a Zoroaster — could
have piloted the Mexican mind to a haven
of moral truth. Sixteenth-century bigotry
8*

ii6 On the Track of a Treasure.
appealed to the imagination of the idolatrous
Indians. Inquisitors and human-sacrificers
met on common ground, the former denying
to God that obvious attribute of every
omnipotent deity, the power to vindicate
his own honour ; the latter fearing that
the omniscience of their gods might not
be sufl&cient to furnish them vrith the means
of subsistence. In Mexico, the traveUer
stands amazed at the inharmonious mixture
of Christianity with the most barbarous
superstitions, whUe the philosopher might
recognise renewed proofs that, beneath the
shadow of the Cross and under the sacri
ficial tomahawk ahke, the suffering human
race has been ever the dupe of the priest.
Every device was employed by the early
missionaries to win the Indians from their

On the Track of a Treasure. iiy
idolatrous behefs ; the figure of the suffering
Founder of Christianity may still be seen
represented as a black man upon the cross,
and so tenacious of a certain cult were
the Mexicans, that fearful of never up
rooting it, the Spanish monks, to create
confusion in the minds of votaries of the
"Earth-Mother," elevated the Virgin of
Holy Writ to a position of divinity to which
she never had aspired even in the canonical
gospels. The pueblos, or settlements, of the abor
iginal Mexicans were continuaUy at war
with one another, and won ascendency in
turn. It was against their policy to extend
victories into conquests, for the source of
supply of human victims for sacrifice was
a wound no one wished to staunch. A

ii8 On the Track of a Treasure.
modern writer, Payne, has hkened the
weaker pueblos to human game-preserves.
Their cultivation of maize, and their
advanced, if cruel, method of administrating
law, raised them above the level of savagery.
Tlacochalcatl was the name enjoyed by a
chief of the warrior-class. It corresponded,
one may say, to that of the statesman who,
in our own country, reforms our army
by giving German caps to the soldiers. AU
Montezuma's poUtical advisers wore feathers
in their caps.
Mexico City has too much in common
vrith many European cities to possess at
tractions. But for the presence of the
Indians (vrith their picturesque hats), and
of the romantic figures of the Mexican
horsemen (vrith silver-mounted saddles.

On the Track of a Treasure. 119
heavy spurs, and gorgeous stirrups inlaid
with gold), one might be in Belgium.
The Mexicans are fond of their history,
and cherish the memory of the brave men
who won the independence of the land.
The Avenue de la Reforma is flanked by
rows of statues of patriots ; at the end
of this splendid boulevard, which some day
may rival the Avenue du Bois in Paris,
can be seen the monument of Cuatemoc.
Cuatemoc is the hero who, bolder than the
obsequious Montezuma, defied Cortez and
drove him from Mexico on the " dreadful
night," in a battle disastrous for the
Spaniards. On his return to the city,
the conqueror, Cortez, put the brave Indian
to the torture and to death, in a fruitless
endeavour to force him to reveal the hiding

120 On the Track of a Treasure.
place of aU the Aztec treasures. With
tomahawk raised high above his shoulder,
and the graceful plumes of his head-dress
sweeping back from his lofty noble brow,
the brave Cuatemoc seems stiU to bid
Mexicans to be of good cheer and to hurl
defiance at their foes. At the other end of
the Avenue de la Reforma is the statue
of Charles IV., King of Spain, vrith his
Bourbon nose and narrow forehead : an
inscription states that Mexicans preserve
the statue as a work of art, not out of respect
to the person represented.
"II y a ceux qui font les revolutions, il
y a ceux qui en profitent," were the C5mical
words of Fouche. Mexico is fuU of men
of the latter category. By choosing the
right side, the mule-driver of the days of

-»

On the Track of a Treasure. 121
MaximiUan is, to-day, the respected ofl&cial
with banking accounts in every European
capital. The atmosphere of the New World
is unwholesome for Emperors and Kings;
but President Diaz, by methods of Govern
ment more autocratic than those of the Czar
of AU the Russias, has kept his flag flying
for thirty years or more. Consequently,
the gentlemen who profited by the dis
turbances of Maximihan's days are of an
older generation — almost an aristocracy has
grown up. Diaz must be as able as a
politician as he was brave as a soldier, for
he has had to steer his ship through stormy
waters, and many stories tell how he has
circumvented or crushed incipient revolu
tions. His long term of office has worked
wonders for his country. One is impressed

122 On the Track of a Treasure.
by the wealth and prosperity of the land
and by the solid merit of the army. The
Mexicans are excellent rifle-shots and good
horse-men, and they possess, in the lasso,
a formidable weapon. They are possibly
the finest mounted infantrymen in the
world, especially as they are very hardy,
and can march for tremendous distances
on Uttle or no food. They have been armed
recently vrith the Mauser rifle, a weapon
which caused such comparatively Httle
damage to British troops in South Africa
that it was pronounced a faUure by many
experts. Their artiUery has also been
equipped vrith a new French field-gun which
satisfied exhaustive tests and competed suc
cessfully with those of German manu
facture. With regard to these tests, an

On the Track of a Treasure. 123
amusing incident is told in Mexico : On
the lofty plateau, eight thousand feet above
the sea, the time fuzes of the Krupp shells,
not having been regulated to meet the altered
atmospheric conditions, gave unsatisfactory
results. A Mexican artillery ofl&cer pointed
put the causes of the trouble, but the ex-
captain of Prussian artillery, in charge of
the Krupp guns, declined to be advised, and
insisted on sending all the ammunition back
to Europe. Hence the French gun was ac
cepted—" Pride goeth before destruction."
The Mej^icans once repulsed the French
in a battle before Puebla, and the Americans
found them a tough nut to crack in a war
described as the most unjust ever waged.
The cadets at the Castle of Chipultepec
held the United States' army in check for

124 ^^ ^^^ Track of a Treasure.
a very considerable time, but were com
peUed to surrender at last.
" Where is your ammunition ? " said the
American general,
" You cannot suppose I should have sur
rendered," said the brave chief of the cadets,
" had there been any ammunition left to
hand over to you ! "
A beautiful stone carving of the coiled
feathered serpent can be seen m the Museum
in Mexico City, and it remains a record of
the vandaUsm of the Spanish monk who
hoUowed it out and used it as a baptismal
font. In the same gallery can be seen
the sacrificial stone, vrith skUfuUy cut bowl
and channels for catching the blood of
human victims. The stone idols generaUy
bear a starthng resemblance to Egyptian

On the Track of a Treasure. 125
and Assyrian gods. Egyptologists can renew
acquaintance with Horus of the hawk's
head, or his twin-brother, and human forms
with the heads of birds and beasts abound.
It was against the pohcy of the mis
sionaries to aUow that no opportunity had
been given to the Indians of embracing the
true Faith, so they strained their imagin
ations to prove that Christianity had, in
some unaccountable fashion, been revealed
to the aboriginal inhabitants of Mexico. In
substantiation of this theory the famous
cross of Palenqu6 was produced. Palenqu6
was a forgotten city, a sort of New World
Babylon, when Cortez was marching to his
conquests ; just as the victor of Arbela is
said to have trodden the dust of the crumbled
towns of Babylonia, so the Alexander of

126 On the Track of a Treasure.
America may have marched heedlessly over
the ruins of Palenqu6. The stone bas-reUef
of a bird, perched on a tree the two out
stretched branches of which give it the
form of a cross, was found amidst the buried
walls, and on the strength of this pre
carious evidence, the Inquisition declared
the Mexicans to be a stiff-necked race who
had dehberately rejected the true Faith,
and marked them dovsm for persecution.
The unhappy Indians were accordingly
burned and racked into accepting behefs
beyond their poor understanding. In
Spanish America, it is easier to find a monk
than a reason !
A few miles from the City of Mexico
is the Cathedral of Our Lady of Guadelupe.
Legend teUs that the Holy Virgin appeared

On the Track of a Treasure. 127
to an Indian convert and imprinted on his
cloak a coloured representation of herself ;
the picture is enshrined upon an altar at
the Cathedral, and the colouring, if faded,
is peculiar, for experts declare it to be
unknown to any human art. The Mexican
ladies have vied with one another in offering
their most precious jewels at the shrine
of the Mother of the Man of Sorrows, since
she, if forbidden to interfere for the pre
vention of the many crimes which have
stained four centuries of Mexican history,
was, nevertheless, capable of manifesting
herself for the purpose of founding a tawdry
temple, a vehicle for the display of ex
travagance and superstition.
Chipultepec, on the opposite side of the
City, is a castle surrounded by the most

128 On the Track of a Treasure.
glorious gardens, which carpet the rock on
which it is built. President Diaz's visitors
can be carried to his drawing-room by a
lift which runs up a queer tunnel or shaft
cut through the rock. In the old days,
Montezuma used this same passage in
climbing from the foot to the crest of the
rock — unknown to the credulous Aztecs,
who credited him vrith miraculous power
in consequence.

129

CHAPTER VIII.
ACROSS THE MINING DISTRICT.
The delay in the arrival of the Lytton
enabled us to go further afield, so some
of us decided to visit the mining districts.
The words, " Mexican Central Railway,"
convey to many people the idea of a
vehicle for Stock Exchange speculation, and
nothing else ; they meant to us a more or
less uncomfortable means of access to the
North of Mexico. As the two great twin
volcanoes, which overshadow the capital
9

130 On the Track of a Treasure.
of the Repubhc, disappear from the view
of the North-bound traveUer, the country
grows more and more Uke Rhodesia. Ben
Viljoen is said to be about to form a Boer
settlement in this part of the world.
Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, some
early morning, the grim old Dopper— as
he gazes across the mimosa thorns of the
rolling Uanos and Ustens to the chirrup
of the crickets and the coo-coo-coo of the
wild doves — may think himself back in
his home on the veld, the pages of his
country's history unscored by the red marks
of Vaal Kranz or Paardeberg.
Zacatecas, the oldest mining camp in the
New World, from wliich Philip the Second
drew many a gaUeon-load of treasure, Hes
on the highest ground crossed by the rail-

Zacatecas, the oldest mining town in the New World. [See page 1 30.

The Patron Saint of Agriculture.

[Seepage 139.

To face page 130]

On the Track of a Treasure. 131
way : a deserted monastery, standing high
on a cliff-like rock, shields the town from
East winds. In the midst of the flat-
roofed houses, the tiled dome of a cathedral
appears ; while the overladen donkeys,
toiling and scrambling up the narrow,
crooked streets, recaU Bible pictures. As
Mexican trains approach the frontier of the
United States, corrugated iron, in all its
hideousness, takes the place of stones and
tiles. Throughout the world this inar
tistic tin-sheeting follows Anglo-Saxon civil
ization, and the Gibbon of a thousand
years hence may trace the extent of our
Empire by its presence. At Jimenez our
train was seven hours late, and so we
missed what might have been our one
chance in twenty-four hours of leaving a
9*

132 On the Track of a Treasure.
dirty, inhospitable railway siding. Sitting
in the hot shadow of a corrugated-iron
refreshment-room, we watched the train
which had served us so iU slipping away
to Chihuahua. An American train is a
veritable engine of discomfort, vrith its
cars, hateful in their want of privacy, and
its crew of insolent ofl&cials ; two days of
travelling in a " Pullman " provoke the
sentiment that, in leaving the New World
undiscovered, Christopher Columbus might
have shut the Gates of Mercy on Mankind,
Fortune, however, suddenly spun her wheel
round in our favour ; for a chance acquaint
ance, a handsome bribe, and a large measure
of tact, secured us seats in the van of a
freight-train, summoned unexpectedly vrith
mining material to Parral. During our

On the Track of a Treasure. 133
passage through sidings and stations, we
were compeUed to hide ourselves under the
shelves of the caboose ; but, through the
open country, we might sit upon the piles
of merchandise, smoking Mexican cigars and
snifl&ng the fresh air of the llanos.
Parral seems to step out from Bret Harte's
pages : the truculent horseman, with heavy
spurs, silver stirrups, and an enormous sun-
hat, canters through the stony streets,
a glittering revolver handle peeping out from
his hip-pocket, and a raw-hide thong flicking
his pony's flanks. There, too, is the
gambling saloon, where the player solemnly
lays his pistol across his money before
staking. Parral was a mining town in the days
when England was ruled by a " Merrie

134 On the Track of a Treasure.
Monarch," and bars of gold and bricks
of silver from Parral may be lying, fathoms
deep, in the hold of some shot-riddled
galleon sent by stem old Blake to eternity !
The road from Parral to our destination,
a ranch some ten miles distant, is about
the worst in the world ; and, though our
Mexican ponies found no difficulty in
dragging the cart through the sand and
shingle of the river-beds, across which it is
necessary to pass, the Parral carriage-
builder's ignorance of springs rendered our
drive across the rough hills not unhke so
many hours spent in a torture chamber.
There are compensations, however, for the
country is beautiful ; rich plots of cultiva
tion and meadow-like grass redeem it from
its barren likeness to the African veld.

On the Track of a Treasure. 135
Indeed, the resemblance is nowhere deep-
seated, for none of the plagues of disease
or insects which curse the Dark Continent
trouble the Mexican farmer. The ranch,
or hacienda de Santiago, was formed by
a miner who, by his industry and through
the wealth of the mines, has acquired a
fortune. The house, built in the Spanish
style, surrounds a court-yard or garden
with a fountain ; swallows glance in and
out through the colonnades and dip in the
water ; butterflies and humming birds flit
between the flowers, while sometimes a
big, green beetle booms round and round
the charming sanctuary.
Here, for a week, we saw real, un
adulterated Mexican life ; rode on Mexican
saddles, ate Mexican food, and viewed

136 On the Track of a Treasure.
creation altogether in the unbusthng Mexican
manner. In the yard beyond the out
building can be seen, at any time, by the
wish of the master, a show of horse-breaking
as good as Buffalo Bill's ; the garden is
a tangle of fruit and flowers, bespangled
with gorgeous butterfhes, and everywhere,
it seems, there are Indians and Indian
huts. Outside their mud-houses the women
sit, combing and plaiting their beautiful
hair, black like a raven's vring. Indian
children scream and play vrith the curly-
haired pigs, the dogs, and the poultry,
which all live in a jumble vrith the famUy.
The working man, who is somewhat mis-
leadingly called a peon, is the finest labourer
in the world : his food consists of thin
maize-flour cakes and stewed beans, nothing

On the Track of a Treasure. 137
else. On this poor fare he will carry the
heaviest weight from morning till night.
His day's work is gauged by so severe a
standard that he is expected to carry
twenty loads of three hundred pounds each
to the surface of a mine, and the surface
may be two hundred feet above.
The mines in this neighbourhood are as
profitable as any in the world ; the ore,
picked by hand and carted or carried on
donkeys' backs, is sold in Parral at a hand
some profit. A claim, purchased in recent
years for five pounds and worked by a
Spaniard, is now yielding £300,000 a year.
Fortunately, the parasite race have not
yet clutched hold of the financing of
Mexican mines, hence there is no " market "
to correspond with the " Kaflfir circus,"

138 On the Track of a Treasure.
and the profits come out of the ground
and not out of the pockets of the promoters'
dupes. There is a heavy tax on dynamite,
and this is likely to be increased to foster
a local industry ; but there are no
" Reformers " — for the exceUent reason that
President Diaz rewards troublesome folk
with a short shrift and a long rope. To
visit the shafts of a mine it is necessary
to ride up the zigzag paths cut in the
mouiitain-side, where sometimes the " off "-
stirrup clinks against the rock, whUe the
left foot is dangling over a precipice. In
the San Francisco del oro mine the reef
is sometimes forty feet in vridth, and
standing at the bottom of the great stope
and looking upwards is Uke gazing into
the vaulted dome of a mighty cathedral.

On the Track of a Treasure. 139
The peons are a courteous people ; it is
not unusual for a working man to offer
the cloak off his back to the consulting
engineer's wife, if she be overtaken by a
rain-shower. They get very drunk on pay
days, but they are always devout, and
their religion means very much to them,
though it might puzzle them to say how
much they retain of the old idol-worship
of the days before the coming of Cortez.
At the hacienda the boys will carry round
the farm-yard a waxen figure of the patron
Saint of agriculture ; they will chant to
it, and worship it, and make offerings of
maize garlands ; precisely as Torquemada
describes the festival of the Toxcatl or
sacrifice to the Rain-God during the dry-
season in the bad old days.

140 On the Track of a Treasure.
On our return to Mexico City from the
North the worst of news greeted us ; a
strong northerly wind at SaUna Cruz was
blowing up such terrific seas that there
was no possibility of the Lytton discharging
her cargo. It was decided, consequently,
to obtain permission to put to sea with two
thousand tons of cement in the hold of
our ship, and, through the civihty of Sir
W. Pearson's firm, no objection to this
plan was offered. To add to our troubles,
which seemed to pile themselves on our
backs, railway communication between
Mexico City and Salina Cruz was seriously
disturbed. The alternative route (through
Vera Cruz, by steamer, to Coatzacoalcos)
was quite impracticable, for the captain
of the only steamboat was dying of yeUow

On the Track of a Treasure. 141
fever, and it was not possible to free his
ship from quarantine for ten weeks. How
ever, we strengthened our determination
with the thought that Cortez would not have
been baffled by such trifles as broken rail
ways ; so, vrith the fine example of that
intrepid treasure-seeker before us, we
turned our minds to the making of plans for
our advance. The isthmus of Tehauntepec
is a hot-bed of yellow-fever germs ; one
bite from the poison-mosquito can bowl
over the halest and strongest man in six
hours. As though we had been men
having to pass through a nest of cobras,
some of us suggested picking our way
gingerly ; others were for making a dash —
with a hop, skip, and jump ! At last, on
the 30th July, we started, intending to

142 On the Track of a Treasure.
advance as far as possible upon the rail
road ; and at nine o'clock that night, with
the characteristic deep-noted whistle of a
Mexican engine (which sounds hke the
" Waw waw " of a red-skin's language),
our train was off, dragging its string of
jolting, shaking cars and their precious
freight of treasure-seekers — aU agog to look
into their treasure cupboard ; perhaps to
come back as miUionaires, perhaps to
return like so many disappointed Old
Mother Hubbards.

143

CHAPTER IX.
THROUGH THE MEXICAN FOREST.
Delays are of rare occurrence upon the
railway which connects the City of Mexico
with its chief Atlantic port, for it boasts
the finest track in Central America. We
were nevertheless four hours late on ar
riving at Cordoba, and thus missed the
one train leaving that town daily on the
Vera Cruz and Pacific road, a hne which
binds the Mexican plateau, and all its com
merce and industry, to the Tierra Cahente,
hot country, or lazy land . This check, coming

144 ^^ ^^^ Track of a Treasure.
soon after our departure, was a grievous dis
appointment to us ; and the inconvenience
was all the more annoying as the secretary
to the company had promised to arrange
by telegraph for this train to be held back
until our arrival. But before we had
half completed our expedition, we reahsed
that the promises of our countrymen settled
in Central America were of a pie-crust order :
indeed, all English-speaking men south of
the Rio del Norte appear to weigh with
more care the possibility of having to per
form five minutes of extra work than the
consequences of uttering a dozen falsehoods.
Cordoba is an old Spamsh town, hiding
itself in the thick tropical growth which
covers the slopes of the Orizaba Volcano.
Winding its way up the hill from the sta-

On the Track of a Treasure. 145
tion, our tramcar brushed aside branches,
bending under the weight of their foliage,
and dived beneath a canopy of impenetrable
creepers, whose blossoms dangled bell-
shaped overhead, or threatened us with
spiky petals, purple, yellow and red — red
dest of all the red things in the world. The
plaza is a glorious garden. Here, in the
evening, the band plays, a cool breeze blows,
and the air is heavy with the scents of
flowers. Like all Mexican churches, the
cathedral possesses a cupola and two bel
fries ; the beUs coloured green by time
and exposure to the air : the interiors of
aU Spanish American cathedrals are gor
geous in direct proportion to the squalor
of the streets ; the more squalid the street
of a town, the more gaudy the temple of
10

146 On the Track of a Treasure.
worship. In Notre Dame de Cordoba the
waxen figures of virgins and saints jostle
one another in tawdry finery ; the altar
rails and baptismal font are of Italian mar
ble, and the pillars and doors are of cedar;
the vaulted roof is so arranged that the
sun's rays, refracted through orange-coloured
windows, strike upon the gilding, and dazzle
the upturned eyes of worshippers. Years
ago, the widow of one of Hidalgo's foUowers
purchased, with the proceeds of the sale
of all her worldly goods, a sohd gold cross-
so heavy that a man can hardly Hft it-
ornamented with fifteen hundred pearls,
and many precious stones. Homeless and
penniless, she then went into the streets
to beg for her daily bread, rejoicing at having
won salvation by selling all she had in order

On the Track of a Treasure. 147
to give to the rich — for, assuredly, there
is no richer institution in Catholic America
than the Church.
Cordoba possesses two hotels ; one is kept
by a Frenchman, who looks Uke a cook,
but whose cuisine belies his appearance.
The host of the other is a Yankee, whose
rough exterior disguises the kind heart
which prompted him to befriend us, when
we were much in need of a friend : around
the bullet-wound in his cheek one might
weave a library of exciting romances. He
could not refrain from spitting less than
a hundred and forty-four times between
dawn and sunset, if you were to offer him
a thousand pounds, and he only loves two
things in the world, his wife and cock-
fighting ! 10*

148 On the Track of a Treasure.
At seven o'clock on the ist of August
we left Cordoba. " Morn flattered the
mountain-top with sovereign eye," for Ori
zaba's snow-cap was glittering Uke a great
jewel, catching and throvring back the
gleams of the rising sun, a thousand feet
above the heavy rain-clouds, roUing and
tumbUng beneath the summit. Few tra
vellers have seen from the windows of a
railway-carriage such glorious scenery as met
our eyes ; here and there, openings in the
jungle spread out for a square mile or so
like English pasture-land, vrith sleek, brows
ing cattle. But for the most part, the
track is flanked by the thickest tropical
forests ; graceful palms sway and curtsey
above the under-growth ; giant trees dangle
ropes of creepers like broken shrouds from

On the Track of a Treasure. 149
the stumps of a derelict, and peering under
the branches is like gazing into some dark
cavern. Now the train clanks over a
girder-bridge spanning a chasm, now skirts
a sandy hollow, where, to the music no
man can hear, goes on the merry dance
of the butterflies, steel-blue, orange, and
brown. Some of these have wings so
large, one might almost hear them flutter
ing; some are quite small and insignifi
cant ; but between them and the flowers,
in all their beauty, a fierce and jealous rivalry
is waged through a two days' journey to
the coast.
The heavy rains of July had made swamps
of the hollows on either side of our route,
and the sandy, unballasted foundations of
the track, unable to withstand the inun-

150 On the Track of a Treasure.
dations, had suffered the sleepers to shift
and the rails to sink, so that, at times, our
train careened like a ship in a gale. Twenty
miles from Perrez, the floods had wrecked
the railway, and a capsized engine on its
back, like some helpless, overturned turtle,
was lying at the foot of the embankment.
Beyond this wreckage was pitched a camp
for Chinamen, who had been coaxed with
many promises and a little cash to leave
the land of the Celestials on a matter of
cotton-planting, but, despite the protests
of their contractor, the cotton-planter, had
been summarily pressed into the service
of the Vera Cruz and Pacific Railway Com
pany to repair the road. Perrez was not
reached until 10 p.m., although the dis
tance covered by our train since seven

A breakdown at Perrez, \'era Cruz and Pacific Railway, Mexico.
[See page 151.

Breakfast Island, a rock like a squatting lion. [See page 2i,l.
To face page 151]

On the Track of a Treasure. 151
o'clock in the morning had been only one
hundred and twelve miles — the seediest
London " growler " might have rivalled our
speed. At Perrez, conflicting rumours
as to the running of trains to Santa Lu
crezia warned us that we might not with
impunity leave our luggage aboard the
apology for a train, which had brought us
so far, and so we had to " hump " our bag
gage on our backs and crawl like so many
unwilling snails along the way, which only
by the vrildest stretch of imagination could
be called " permanent." Now splashing
ankle-deep between the rails, now balanc
ing ourselves, terrified and perspiring upon
the sleepers which creaked and yawned
over some inky-black chasm. For half a
mile or more we held the tenor of our

152 On the Track of a Treasure.
way until we came to a Chinese lodging-
house, where a child of the sun welcomed
us and offered his hospitality for the night,
at the price of one Mexican doUar. The
train for Santa Lucrezia was due to start
at 4 a.m. We felt sure that it would not
leave before eight or nine o'clock in the
morning, but, as aU the officials evidently
regarded us as " tender feet," and appeared
to long for the opportunity of leaving us
behind, we decided that it would be dan
gerous to trust to chance. Worn out as
we were, the task of waking at 4 a.m. might
have appeared impossible but for the hideous
combination of circumstances and noises
which seemed to plot for the destruction
of sleep. A frog has four times the vocal
power and a quarter of the harmony of

On the Track of a Treasure. 153
a duck ; and surely all the frogs in the world
were croaking as if to shout one another
down. A black, hungry cloud of mosqui
toes had followed us all the way from Cor
doba, being reinforced by battalions of a
smaller species at each turn of the road,
and these thronged to our bedsides, and
sang, and bit, and rejoiced in our discomfort.
At 3 a.m. all the engines at the station
whistled and frightened us into losing faith
in our time-keepers ; so again the miser
able procession started back to the station,
splashing and swearing through the inky
darkness. The French soldier who, at Sedan,
cursed the sun for not setting to stop the
slaughter of his countrymen, could not have
been more in earnest than we who longed
¦ for his rising ; till nine o'clock we sat upon

154 ^^ ^^^ Track of a Treasure.
our trunks in the station, drenched by the
rain, and straining our arithmetical powers
to calculate the amount of treasure trove
which might compensate us for our peep
into purgatory. If the road from Cordoba
to Perrez was bad, that from Perrez to Santa
Lucrezia (the junction of the Tehauntepec
railway) was infinitely worse, and it took
us fourteen hours to travel seventy-five
miles. Three times the train left the metals,
and ofl&cials and passengers alike had to
work to dig away the sand, which covered
the rails in places to the depth of many
inches. At each stage of our journey we had to
launch ourselves, so to speak, into space,
clutching as a blindfold acrobat clutches
at a swinging trapeze, dangling sixty feet

On the Track of a Treasure. 155
in the air, whose ropes may hold taut and
true or kink and twist him into disaster.
Between Perrez and Santa Lucrezia, the
breakdown of an engine would have left
us, castaways, in the midst of swamps,
infested with mosquitoes and fever-germs,
where food is unprocurable.
Viewed from a platform of a car at 11
o'clock at night by the uncertain light of
the moon, Santa Lucrezia presents a sight
to freeze the courage of the boldest traveller.
In the distance, the railway offices loom
through the fog like islands, inhospitable
and dreary, in the midst of a sea of mud.
We had telegraphed, however, for a special
train to carry us across the isthmus of
Tehauntepec, and it was of the utmost
importance to find out if it were available ;

156 On the Track of a Treasure.
so two of our party had to scramble and
hoist themselves along the rails to the
oflfices, a half mile distant. The night was
dark, and the space between the spot where
our train had been stabled and the dis
tant station looked uninviting ; except for
the gleaming rails and the sleepers between
them, nothing appeared capable of affording
a foothold ; everywhere else there was mud
and water which might, in the uncertain
light, be as shallow as a puddle or as deep
as a river. Forward, nevertheless, went
Captain Shrapnel and another bold treasure-
hunter, balancing themselves upright, in
spite of an hereditary instinct of caution,
which prompted them to revert to the un
dignified position of their quadrumanous an
cestors, for a hundred yards or so they

On the Track of a Treasure. 157
advanced ; then the report of a rifle and the
whizz of a buUet persuaded them more
efficaciously than any hereditary instinct
to drop flat on their stomachs.
" Let's give 'em one," said the Captain,
fingering his revolver and cocking it, while
aU the sailor's fighting passions arose.
" No, we may get the worst of that,"
repHed his more cautious companion. " Let's
try swearing ! "
A parley was accordingly opened with a
group of shadowy forms gathered on the
platform, peering out at our adventurers.
Santa Lucrezia was under arms on the
night of the second of August. During
the previous day, a raid had been made
upon the goods dep6t by some Indians,
who killed the man in charge, cutting him

158 On the Track of a Treasure.
to pieces with their machettes. The poor
fellow had made a gallant stand against
tremendous odds, but had at last been
killed, and the Indians, striking off his
head, had mutilated his body in a terrible
fashion. Twenty-five prisoners had been
taken during this affair, and these were
secured in a cattle truck in the station.
The word had gone round that there was
to be a rescue by the natives, who were
expected to storm the station ; so armed
men and soldiers were drafted into Santa
Lucrezia to defend the depot. The shadowy
forms of our two friends, advancing along the
railway, having been mistaken for those
of Indians, the garrison had opened fire.
A New World measure of Old Scotch Whis
key and the gratifying news that an engine

On the Track of a Treasure. 159
would be ready to convey them all to Salina
Cruz on the following morning was suf
ficient compensation to the treasure-seekers,
so back they climbed and scrambled to the
train.

i6o

CHAPTER X.
HASTENING ON TOWARDS THE PACIFIC.
Santa Lucrezia, by the bright hght of
the morning, appeared less attractive than
ever to us — cramped and sore after a
hideous night spent squatting between the
narrow benches of our railway-car. Sleep
had been impossible, ovring to the torture
wrought by the mosquitoes and to the
shrill croaking of the frogs, which seemed to
shriek our names in reproach vrith a regu
larity and a ceaseless rapidity which must

On the Track of a Treasure. i6i
have left breathless any living thing but
a frog. Twenty yards away from our
train stood the truck-load of prisoners.
They had been shunted down the line at
dawn, for President Diaz had sent forth
his decree by telegraph ; seven of the
prisoners were to be shot, and the rest in
corporated in rogues' battalions which serve
in the interminable wars in Yucatan and
Guerrero — a fate more to be dreaded than
death. In the language of " Long John
Silver "—" them that die 'U be the lucky
ones " !
The truck-load of Indians, shivering with
fear and clamouring for water, was a
depressing sight ; but worse was beyond :
on the platform here and there lay a native
in the last stages of yeUow fever. A just
II

i62 On the Track of a Treasure.
and all-powerful Providence had suffered
one poor soul to sob out the last breath of a
life which could have held neither much
evil nor many compensations ; his head
piUowed upon the iron ledge of a weighing
machine, his face distorted into a grin as
though mocking the belief which can identify
a beneficent God vrith the author of the
miihon daily crimes of Nature, the accessory
to all the sins of mankind.
That ugly spectre, YeUow Jack, dogs the
traveller's footsteps through the Tierra
Caliente ; at each station some conductor
or official has just died, or wiU die to
morrow. Sometimes the train stops oppo
site the eternal carpenter's shop which
forms part of each station in Central
America.

Mexican cottage in Tierra Caliente.

On the Track of a Treasure. 163
" What are you doing, Sam ? " asks some
inquisitive traveller of the negro who is
finishing off a long deal box and singing,
while his plane chirrups and throws off
fluttering, curling shavings.
" I, boss ? — I make coffin ! " This with a
smile — aU negroes are cheery and ready
to grin, just as aU American Indians are
gloomy and dignified.
" Oh ! " says the traveller, withdrawing
hurriedly into his carriage, and wishing he
were in a fast train — or a slow train for
that matter— on the London and North
Western Railway !
Santa Lucrezia has a restaurant kept by
an EngUshman, who vrill give you a worse
meal than can be produced in any Chinese
"Hash House" in the New World. He

II

*

164 On the Track of a Treasure.
can, moreover, charge more for it than the
most impertinent, exorbitant restaurateur
in Paris : every Anglo-Saxon in Santa
Lucrezia looks forward to the day when
" the major " will have made sufficient
fortune to retire. The Tehauntepec RaUway
Company charged us two hundred and
ninety-seven doUars for a special train,
and for this money provided an engme and
a shabby caboose, with standing-room only.
At Rincon — half-way to Sahna Cruz— we
were ordered to leave the train, being told
that, unless we paid a further one hundred
and seventeen doUars, we should have to
continue our journey by the next passenger
train which might happen to pass. We
had been sufficiently vrise, however, on
paying our money at Santa Lucrezia to

On the Track of a Treasure. 165
demand a receipt for a special train to
SaHna Cruz ; consequently this bare-faced
attempt at thieving was a failure. The
apologetic secretary (to whom we referred)
speedily produced a fresh engine, a first-
class saloon, and — triumph of triumphs —
half the money we had paid originally, to
, compensate us for having had no proper
accommodation from Santa Lucrezia, and for
" other things ! "
Our new engine was in charge of an
American who might well have filled the
r6le of hero in the latest New York novel.
He wore gauntlets and a revolver — the
latter very handily slung — and he was a
most persuasive man vrith a locomotive ;
it was a puzzle to know what he, an engine-
driver and a gentleman, could be doing

i66 On the Track of a Treasure.
there amongst the least gentle of all drivers
that ever drove engines. The conductor of
our train, a Leeds man, attributed his own
" Irish rise " to an affair in which a Yankee
had fumbled in dravring his " gun " — the
most fatal of aU mistakes according to
Bret Harte, conductors from Leeds, and
all the best authorities. Our friend took
us across the Isthmus at a speed which
must have startled butterfUes, Indians, and
other wayside residents : he dashed through
the streets of Tehauntepec, svrishing past
the houses, and fluttering even the musHn
curtains of the bed-rooms. An interesting
town, Tehauntepec, to all except impatient
treasure-hunters, giddy and expectant on
the brink of success or failure. An hour
before sunset, the mountains seemed to faU

On the Track of a Treasure. 167
apart, and to show us Salina Cruz, the
Pacific, and — at last ! — the Lytton.
The rain began to pour in torrents as
our train glided on to the wharf. Outside
Messrs. Pearson's offices a funeral party
was drawn up to escort the latest victim
of the stern old buccaneer, " Yellow Jack,"
on his last journey. A tropical deluge was
drenching seven hungry, dirty treasure-
hunters, who, during the previous forty-
eight hours had eaten but one meal, and,
since their departure from Cordoba, had
not been able to enjoy a wash. Yet they
were seven light-hearted, triumphant men ;
for were they not the first travellers who had
succeeded in pushing through from Mexico
City to SaHna Cruz since the second week
in June, and was not a boat, manned by

i68 On the Track of a Treasure.
some of the Lytton's crew, pulUng towards
the shore to take them aboard ?
In wishing us good-bye, our friend the
engine-driver said :
" I hope you may find treasure : do you
think you wiU ? "
" I cannot say," replied the most sanguine
of our party ; "I am not a prophet.
Besides, even Isaiah made some shockingly
bad guesses. But how did you know we
were treasure-seeking ? "
" Oh ! we aU know the Lytton is bound
for Cocos Island, and no one goes there
for any other purpose. Anyhow, good luck
to you ! " And so this strange character
slipped behind us, as so many other cha
racters and things wiU sUp behind, into
mere recoUections.

On the Track of a Treasure. 169
SaHna Cruz is at the Pacific terminus of
the trans-continental railway crossing the
Isthmus of Tehauntepec. With a suitable
harbour at each end of their line, this
company could compete with the Panama
railroad, and goods sent from the Atlantic
to the Pacific coasts of the United States
would be carried by a route which is more
than a thousand miles shorter. Messrs.
Pearson have, accordingly, entered into a
contract to buUd a breakwater at SaHna
Cruz, and for some considerable time its
construction has been proceeding. Little
progress has been made, as the anchorage is
bad, not to say dangerous ; and, ovring to
the tremendous sweU which sets in from the
Pacific, the discharging of cargo is a slow
and difficult operation, which can only be

170 On the Track of a Treasure.
carried on by hghters. There are few
places in the world where the surf is as
heavy as it is in this bay, and many wrecks
are strewn along the coast ; the foam
climbs high up the rocks, while the breakers,
vrith a million claws, clutch and tear at
the fresh-laid stones of the breakwater,
undoing the work of man as fast as it is
completed. The transfer of ourselves and our
belongings from the temporary wharf, where
the giant crane stands, svringing its arms
over the breakwater, to the Lytton, a mUe
away from the shore, was a somewhat
unpleasant task, as the ship's boat would
be lifted on the bosom of some tremendous
roUer almost to the level of the raUway,
and then suddenly dropped down to the

" The temporary wharf, where the giant crane stands swinging its arms.'

To face page 170]

On the Track of a Treasure. 171
lowest rungs of a rusty iron ladder, where
a green, feathery sea-weed makes a slippery
foot-hold. It took two journeys to embark
us, with aU our luggage. We had upwards
of forty trunks and valises between us.
Why must an Englishman carry more
baggage than anyone else ? An American
can travel round the world with a single
bag— a " grip " he caUs it. When he
wishes to ride, he tucks his trousers into
his long boots, when he wishes to walk,
he tucks his long boots into his trousers ;
but an EngUshman must always carry the
whole paraphernalia ready and to hand,
so that, at any moment, he can " caper
nimbly in a lady's chamber," or " mount a
barbed steed." Perhaps that is why it is
impossible to imagine an English army

172 On the Track of a Treasure.
arriving in time to lose a Pultowa or win
an Austerhtz. Possibly, English armies were
only bovring to tradition when, m South
Africa, they wandered about encumbered
vrith pianos, quoits, cricket apparatus, and
everything ridiculous.

173

CHAPTER XI.
TREASURE ISLAND AT LAST.
As every school-boy knows, the proper
drink for buccaneers and treasure-hunters
is rum. But King WUHam the Fourth's
Very Oldest Whiskey is not a bad sub
stitute, and for the first five minutes after
we had boarded the Lytton, whiskey, strong
and neat, was the most important con
sideration. Other matters, such as baths
and dry flannels, came next.

174 ^^ ^^^ Track of a Treasure.
In order to protect ourselves from the
necessity of having to find our way back
to England from the most inaccessible spot
in the world, Salina Cruz, we had to bring
some pressure to bear on the captain of
our ship, whose orders were, in the event
of our not finding treasure, to return forth-
vrith and resume the discharging of Messrs.
Pearson's cement. But the owners of the
Lytton had broken their contract with us,
so we were able to refuse to accept, on the
2nd August, the delivery of the vessel which
should have been made on the 2ist July —
unless, over and above any further claims
we might establish, the captain consented
to grant us the option of landing at Panama.
This arrangement was completed speedUy,
and we settled down to the first night's

On the Track of a Treasure. 175
rest we had enjoyed since leaving the City
of Mexico.
The Lytton is not fitted with the accommo
dation for seven first-class passengers, five
smaU berths being divided amongst three
smaU cabins ; hence it became necessary
for two " buccaneers " to sleep upon the
narrow sofa in the saloon. At first it was
thought right to allow chance and a spinning
coin to decide which of us should be the
victims ; but a further careful examination
of the sofa revealed the fact that it measured
only eleven feet six inches in length —
the whole breadth of the saloon. Now,
though aU of us had big hearts, only two
of us had sufficiently small bodies to fit
the accommodation, toes to toes, without
over-lapping,, and, as the width of the im-

176 On the Track of a Treasure.
provised bed did not exceed twenty-two
inches, no other method of packing human
beings was possible.
Tuesday, the 4th of August, was occu
pied by the commander of the Lytton in
securing his saihng papers. This is pos
sibly an easy task m most countries ; but
in Mexico it is real hard work. Every
Mexican starts the morning with a firm
intention to do nothing to-day which can
possibly be deferred untU to-morrow ; and
the Anglo-Saxons settled in that part of
the world tumble over one another in their
anxiety to emulate this noble resolution
of the natives. By five o'clock in the
evening, however, everything was ready for
our departure — everything, that is to say,
except the anchors ; and two of these.

On the Track of a Treasure. lyy
which were too foul for our miserable wind
lass to Hft, we left behind.
The owners of the Lytton cannot be
compHmented on having made a good
bargain when they bought the Scotia from
the Anchor line. From the truck of her
mast to her k,eel she was probably the
rottenest ship afloat ; her windlass would
break into Httle pieces at any time when the
smallest strain was put upon it ; and only
two or three of her boats were seaworthy.
Every piece of iron in her was eaten
through and through with rust, and her
engines were incapable of driving her at
sufficient speed to have kept her within
haU of the University crews, had she been
permitted to follow the Oxford and Cam
bridge boat race. These were matters

12

178 On the Track of a Treasure.
which did not concern us much, but there
were others which did. The Lytton carried
a heavy passenger hst of fUes, and these
became a terrible plague ; she was also
filthy beyond conception. Perhaps our
recent experience of the Normandie, with
her pohshed decks and smart, cheery Breton
crew, made us a Httle fastidious ; but two
of our party who had been employed in
escorting horses and mules to South Africa
during the war, and had had experience of
ocean " tramps," agreed that they never
had seen so many fhes or so dirty a ship.
At 5.30 p.m. her cables having been
slipped, the Lytton's engine gong was
sounded, her screw began to revolve, and
her bows were turned south-east-and-by-
south, straight for Cocos Island, while

On the Track of a Treasure. 179
Salina Cruz vrith its thundering surf dis
appeared into the mist and into an un
pleasant memory.
During aU this time I have forgotten to
mention " Man Friday." " Man Friday "
is a coloured gentleman from British
Honduras, and a vrilling and intelligent
worker. He first made his appearance
wading through the mud at Santa Lucrezia,
in the darkest hour of our travels, and he
actuaUy asked for work. It is to be
doubted whether any man, black or white,
between the frontier of the United States
and the Isthmus of Panama ever has asked
for work before or ever vrill do so again ;
perhaps it was this, perhaps it was his
stammering (which affliction saved him from
being as garrulous as most negroes), that
12*

i8o On the Track of a Treasure.
attracted us ; anyhow, we engaged him
as our servant, and he is, in a measure,
our servant still, for one of our party
brought him home to England. He can
row, dig, swim, box, wait at table, or clean
boots ; and he is the only treasure we
found during aU our wanderings. Left
behind at Rincon (by some mistake, for
which he was not responsible), he never
theless managed, by the aid of some
sorcery, to arrive at SaUna Cruz. His
instinct alone led him to look for us on
board the Lytton, and he either swam from
the wharf to the ship or performed some
minor act of piracy to secure transport
on a rowing-boat from the shore. Not
only did he appear in person before us on
the deck of the Lytton, within a few hours

On the Track of a Treasure. i8i
of our saUing for Cocos Island, but he
brought some of the goods and chattels
which the most absent-minded of our party
had left behind.
It was not until the third day after we
had left Salina Cruz that the complete
clues for locating the treasure were laid
before the assembled conclave of " bucca
neers " ; up to that time the secret had
been kept rehgiously. It may be as well
to repeat here the different informations
which led us to hope for the success of our
enterprise. I. Fitzgerald's (Keating's) clue.— From
the mouth of a creek in the N.E. Bay
seventy paces west by south; then walk
to the north untU a rock hke a chff is seen.
2. ChapeUe's clue. — From a sand-stone

i82 On the Track of a Treasure.
boulder in the south-east of the bay, be
tween a conical rock and an islet which
looks like a squatting Hon, 140 fathoms
north-west-by-west ; thirty-five fathoms west-
by-south ; eighty feet north, and thirty
feet from a black-faced crag.
3. Flower's clue (measured backwards).
True west from Pitt Head hes the mouth
of a creek ; west-south-west thirty fathoms
from the sea, and face to the north.
It wiU be observed that if Unes be traced,
in accordance with these instructions, upon
the chart of Chatham Bay, they vriU con
verge to almost the same spot ; and when
it is remembered that the three sources of
our information were independent of one
another, the sanguine hopes of the
adventurers may be excused.

On the Track of a Treasure. 183
Repeated warnings had reached us that
we should be molested on arriving at Cocos
Island— indeed, those of our party who
had chosen the New York route to Mexico
had received, on their arrival in America,
two cables from England, warning them
that we should find an expedition on the
island prepared to contest our advance.
It was decided, therefore, to give Wafer
Bay a wide berth, and to arrive at Chatham
Bay under cover of darkness ; the high
ground in the north of the island would
prevent anyone in Wafer Bay from being
aware of our presence, when we had cast
anchor. On Sunday, the 9th of August, at 4
a.m. every treasure-hunter — from Captain
Shrapnel, the guide and director of our

184 On the Track of a Treasure.
search, to " Man Friday " — was on deck,
straining his eyes to penetrate the darkness
and mist ; at 5 a.m. a duU mass of land
was distinguishable right ahead. As the
sun rose, the mass turned from grey to
purple, from purple to green ; and Cocos
Island, with lofty peak, abrupt cHff-Hke
shores, and thick tropical vegetation, was
displaying its beauty to our admiring eyes.
So thick are the trees that from a smaU
distance they appear Hke moss upon a
stone, while here and there cascades of
fresh water shoot off the high ground from
amongst the undergrowth right into the
sea, falhng from a height of over a hundred
feet. We dropped our anchor into thirty
fathoms of water as clear as crystal, and.

On the Track of a Treasure. 185
startled by the splash of the anchor, flocks
of birds arose screaming from the land,
circling and hovering overhead — boobies,
gannets, guUs ; smaU birds, which, but for
their webbed feet, might have been doves ;
frigate-birds, vrith wings stretched stiff like
the " royals " of a scudding " clipper."
It is typical of Cocos Island that it should
be a home of the frigate-bird, for she is
indeed a pirate ; soaring aloft, she awaits
her chance to seize from some smaller
member of the feathered tribe the hard-
earned proceeds of a morning's fishing.
Beneath the surface of the water could
be seen the strangest, the most beautiful
fish, darting by the thousand from the dark
caverns of coral and sponge. Dull green
sharks, with impertinent tameness, poked

i86 On the Track of a Treasure.
their snouts inquisitively at the' Lytton's
sides, as though challenging us to offer
them a meal. Now and again a giant
skate, as big as two ordinary blankets,
and more evil in appearance than the
sharks, would flap for a minute on the
surface of the bay.
To the north of the island is a detached
rock known as Breakfast Island ; seen
from the westward, it bears an extra
ordinary resemblance to the Sphinx.
Between Breakfast Island and another smaU
islet, off the north-east point of Cocos,
the water is thirty fathoms in depth, and
Chatham Bay runs in, narrovring itself
into a creek vrith a sandy beach, between
these two rocks. Far out to sea is another
rock, marked in some charts as "the

On the Track of a Treasure. 187
Boat " ; in the early morning we were
aU convinced this was a ship, but the
rising sun dispelled the illusion. At 8 a.m.
seven impatient treasure-hunters clambered
down the companion ; and five minutes
later the cutter was heading for the sandy
beach at the bottom of the bay, her crew
bending to their work ; while astonished
birds, so unaccustomed to man as to be
fearless, wheeled screaming around our
heads, or actually perched on the handles
of the oars. We had gone hardly half
way, when some one called out : " Why,
we are thirteen ! " And so we were —
including " Man Friday." Then hke a
flash, all the bad omens which had shewn
themselves since our departure passed
through our minds — the changing of our

i88 On the Track of a Treasure.
ship's name from the Scotia to the Lytton ;
the disappearance of the black cat on board
La Normandie, and the shooting of a
pehcan by one of our party. But if
buccaneers be superstitious, they have
neither long memories nor low spirits ;
and, as the keel grated upon the coral and
sand of the shore, we vaulted over the
gunwale of the cutter and waded or were
carried to the beach, as merry as crickets.
The sandy beach on which we landed
is strewn with enormous boulders ; on each
of these is carved the name and business
of a vessel which has caUed at Cocos Island.
Some of the dates carry one back to Nelson's
days ; and men-o'-war, whalers, and pirates
alike, appear to have made this deserted
spot a watering place. The high water-

On the Track of a Treasure. 189
mark is sharply defined by the cessation
of growing shrubs and trees, and by a line
of rotting vegetation cast up by the rising
tide ; vrith a north-easterly wind, the spray
must splash the leaves of the cocoa-nut
palms, which nodded solemnly to us, perhaps
in welcome, perhaps in mockery.
The pelican of the wilderness was cooling
herself in the surf, within five yards of our
boat as we landed ; undisturbed by our
appearance, she bobbed up and down in
the breakers, spreading her wings and
puffing out her feathers for all the world as
does any old " Martha " of the bathing
machines at Margate, whose skirts, when
she wades out to sea, are inflated like a
balloon. Within ten minutes of our setting foot

190 On the Track of a Treasure.
on shore, " Man Friday " had pitched our
tent and spread out our stores and instru
ments, while the crew of the cutter were
busy climbing trees and smashing open
cocoa-nuts. Our clues directed us to the north-east
part of the island ; it was first of aU
necessary to locate the creek : — a stream
of fresh water, flowing from the south
west, and passing through a steep gorge
some two hundred yards from its mouth,
might enable the searcher to identify . the
landing place. Our instructions further
directed us to go to the high-water mark,
and, with a pocket-compass in the hand,
to measure seventy paces in a direction
west-by-south. We were here to check our
position, by observing if the aforesaid gorge

On the Track of a Treasure. 191
were open. From almost every other spot
near the sea, its waUs, overlapping, would
give the idea that there was no gorge ;
from this place, seventy paces from the
mark of high tide, we were to take a fresh
bearing, due north, and to walk until we
crosseii a stream. Then would become
visible a bare-faced cliff-like rock, in which
would be the cave which could be opened
by inserting a crow-bar in a crevice and
levering the stone outwards.

192

CHAPTER XII.

HOT ON THE CLUE.

Now, the locating of the creek was the
first task which confronted us. The spot
on which we had landed appeared unhkely,
as it had been so much frequented by sea
men that some of them could hardly have
failed to come across the treasure, if only by
chance, during the course of their wan
derings in search of a suitable stone or
rock-surface on which to carve their vessels'
names. We had decided, however, to ex-

On the Track of a Treasure. 193
amine the whole of Chatham Bay ; so off
we started, spread out like a pack of hounds,
and cutting and hacking with our bill
hooks to clear a passage through the thick
undergrowth, as tough and impenetrable
as a wire entanglement. The only way
to force a passage inland is to follow the
course of some stream, wading through
shallows, and clambering from one slippery
boulder to another wherever the water
flows through deep pools. It appeared
from the story on which the whole of our
expedition was founded that, once on the
right track, we should not have much diffi
culty in putting our hands upon the treasure,
for Keating had found his way to the spot
on a pitch-dark night. It could not be
far from the sea-shore, as the rough nature
13

194 On the Track of a Treasure.
of the ground and the thick vegetation
must have prevented the carriage of
a heavy weight for any considerable dis
tance. A brook, flowing from the hiUs,
had worn out a vaUey down to the sea,
and the mouth of the creek formed by the
outlet of this stream of fresh water was
our first starting-point. Climbing along
the bed of this Uttle river, we searched
inland, but nowhere could we see the sHghtest
indications of the expected gorge or rocky
formation. Nor, judging by the nature of
the features of the ground, did it appear
possible that such could exist — ^indeed, one
might as weU expect to find a field of barley
in the midst of PiccadiUy. Everywhere
there was a rich red soU and a tangle of
creepers and bushes, except for the pebbles

On the Track of a Treasure. 195
and sHppery boulders in the bed of the
stream. Once, a member of our party, who had
trusted himself to the rotting log of a tree
faUen across the brook, was precipitated,
yelhng, into a chasm. For a moment, the
thought of broken bones came into our
minds ; but his cheery shout of " Why didn't
you 'kodak' me?" speedily reassured us.
Half an hour after our starting a treasure-
hunter was seen balancing himself on the
steep bank, holding up his hand, and signal
ling to us to " come on ! " We all scrambled
forward, and, when he called out : " You
feUows, I hardly dare say so, but I believe
I have found something " — we all gasped
and tried our best to restrain our feeUngs.
Had it not been that a certain instinct
13*

196 On the Track of a Treasure.
seemed to tell us that he was wrong, I think
we must have burst into a cheer. He
was l5dng on his face when we came up,
peering under a great rock which half-
covered the entrance to a smaU cavity ;
every one of us in turn took a peep,
and each declared that he could distinguish
sacks some ten or twelve feet inside the
hole. For five minutes we stood round
the rock, consulting what to do.
Captain Shrapnel declared, " If they be
sacks, it is certainly not the treasure ; for
sacks would have rotted years ago." An
other " buccaneer," mopping his brow and
panting, refused to beheve that anyone
could have hauled treasure up that rough
path, or dragged himself there by night
in the darkness. Nevertheless, an investi-

On the Track of a Treasure. 197
gation was necessary : there could be no
doubt, we all declared, that the white masses
dimly visible in the cave under the shadow
of the overhanging rock were canvas
sacks — the seam on one of them could
even be distinguished, while the corner of
the nearest was wrinkled and folded over
in the most natural fashion.
The task of wriggUng on all fours into
the cave was not a pleasant one : so ro
mantic a discovery as a treasure-cave might
have some Minotaur to guard it ; and the
general appearance of the hole conjured
up thoughts of snakes and reptiles. The
least evils to be expected were a thorough
wetting in the mud, and the bite or sting of
some insect, little or big. We all, instinc
tively, turned to the smallest of the party ;

198 On the Track of a Treasure.
he was certainly the man for the job ; be
sides, as we assured him, " the best goods
are made up in Uttle parcels," and the
bravest and the wisest in the world are al
ways the smaUest.
Down on his face he went, and wUling
hands thrust him in ; but he soon returned,
smothered in mud and vrith a disgusted
expression. " No," said he, " they are only lumps
of clay ; but I could have sworn they were
sacks until I touched them."
After this disappointment a councU of
war was held. Captain Shrapnel was for
continuing up the stream, but the rest
of us were very much against this course.
We pointed out that we had wandered far
beyond the measurements as given by the

On the Track of a Treasure. 199
clue, and that the winding of the brook
had carried us outside the compass-bearings ;
in point of fact, we might as well have had
no clue, as for the whole morning we
had worked haphazard. It was, neverthe
less, thought right to support our leader ;
and so we kept on for another hundred
yards, but with no results. On our return
to the sea-shore, we followed the high-
water mark, striking inland when possible ;
and there were few parts where the abrupt
rocks, which rose perpendicularly from the
sea, allowed us to pace in any direction.
After a bathe, we lunched on sardines
and biscuits, and amused ourselves spelUng
out the quaint carvings on the boulders
and in watching the swarms of crabs scutt-
Hng across the rocks to the sea.

200 On the Track of a Treasure.
In the afternoon, we cleared some ground
of creepers and soil, as it appeared possible
that there might be rocks under a certain
earth-bank whose position accorded with
the directions of the clue ; but our expec
tations were not reahsed. At 3 p.m. the
rain came down in a deluge, drenching us
to the skin ; so we returned on board,
somewhat discouraged. We had had a
hard day's work, and had been bitten
all over by the red ants, which swarm on
the island. But — worst of aU — we felt
thoroughly convinced that the information
given by our clues was quite insufficient ;
and we also realised that the extraordinary
richness of the tropical vegetation, and
the network of fresh water streams, con
tinually carrying earth and ddbris from the

On the Track of a Treasure. 201
steep hills of the interior, in sixty years,
must have altered the features of the island
beyond recognition.
On the following day a steady downpour
of rain in the early morning further damped
our ardour. We decided, however, to row in
a boat from the north to the east point ;
and to examine, by the aid of bearings
and measurements, every landing-spot in
this part of the island. We thought that,
haring done this, we should have exhausted
aU possibilities.
There is no doubt that the hot, damp
weather of the tropics is very enervating,
and that the climate of Cocos is particularly
so. Our party, recollecting the disappoint
ment of the first day's search, and now
face to face with a depressing drizzle, which

202 On the Track of a Treasure.
gave no promise of abating, were very
loath to go ashore. At lo a.m., having
waited two hours for the rain to cease,
we decided to ignore the discomforts of
a wetting, and started our search round
Chatham Bay.
Both the mainland and the " Sphinx "
present a noble appearance viewed from
the channel between them ; for the
surf, breaking against their steep shores,
has worn enormous caves in the rocks.
So vast are some of these caverns that the
island gives the appearance of being sup
ported upon archways ; here and there,
out of some crevice in the steep chffs, grows
a tree which serves as a roosting place for
birds. As we approached, the penguins perched

On the Track of a Treasure. 203
along the rocks seemed to quiz us with
their ridiculous expressions. Landing on
this part of the island is utterly impossible ;
for the shore might be the vertical side
of some slippery iceberg. It is dangerous
to approach the cliffs in a boat ; since the
breakers, on the calmest day, lash them
selves into a foam as white as snow upon
rocks as sharp as needles.
Rowing from the north point towards the
bottom of Chatham Bay, we passed several
indentations — they can hardly be caUed
creeks — in the coast-line. None of them
were practicable as landing-places at high-
water ; though, in one part, it was possible
by wading — almost svrimming — to reach the
shore at low tide. One smaU bay has been
filled up entirely by the fall of an overhang-

204 On the Track of a Treasure.
ing cliff, whose crest, broken off by some dis
turbance, has precipitated itself into the
sea. Beyond this, the coast runs abruptly
to the south-west almost at right angles
to the general line of Chatham Bay, forming
a creek which is overshadowed, on the right
of a boat rowing shore-wards, by a beetHng
cliff-like rock. Along this great waU runs
a ledge, which might have been cut by
the hand of man for a landing stage ; and
as such it served us at low water, though,
at full-tide, we were obUged to guide our boat
through the many boulders vrith a boat
hook, beach her upon the shingle, and wade
ashore. A stream flows into this creek,
the bed of which is so uneven that the
water in some places was scarcely deep
enough to wet our ankles, while in others

On the Track of a Treasure. 205
it gurgled and bubbled into great black
pools, ten or twelve feet in depth. Floods
and torrents have swept down trees and
boulders, damming the stream in places
most effectually. For a hundred yards or
more we clambered along the water-course ;
but so thick and high was the undergrowth,
and so steep were the banks, that it was
hardly possible to observe the general
features of the land. We had given up the
search, and were returning, when one of
our party, in trying to find a better foot
hold, swarmed up the left bank, and, stumb
ling over the rotting trunk of a tree, fell
into an old bed of the stream which some
tremendous land slide must have forced
from its original course. The first thing
which caught the eye of the somewhat

2o6 On the Track of a Treasure.
enraged " buccaneer," as, recovering himself,
he rubbed the bruises on his knees, was
precisely the sort of rocky foundation for
which we had been looking during two
days. Stepping back towards the stream,
he turned his eyes to the south-west, and,
to his delight, saw a great cleft in the hiUs
as though they were cut by a caiion, through
which a river flowed from inland.
Some of us returned then to the sea-shore
while others remained to mark the place.
The roughness of the ground made it al
most impossible to measure the distance
accurately ; but we reckoned it to be, as
nearly as possible, seventy yards, whUe
the bearing from the mouth of the creek
was exactly west-by-south. From the spot
where the gorge was visible, we took the

On the Track of a Treasure. 207
second bearing and advanced due north ;
but in this attempt we were not so fortunate.
The ground was simply a network of streams,
and it was at once evident that there had
been recent and considerable disturbances
of the land ; while it puzzled us a good
deal to be confronted by a bank, which rose
suddenly as we advanced. At last, after
clearing the undergrowth for some acres,
we discovered a reef of rock, some thirty
yards in length, protruding for a height
of five or six feet from the ground. We
examined the place carefully, hacked away
the vegetation, and broke with our picks
the whole face of the stone. After checking
our measurements and bearings for a second
time, we came to the conclusion that we
had found the place indicated by Fitzgerald's

2o8 On the Track of a Treasure.
clue — though the immense amount of soU
swept down the vaUey by the stream had
evidently altered the appearance of the
ground. We next thought it best to check
the position by the aid of Flower's informa
tion. Flower had found the cave after he
had slipped accidentaUy ; about this, there
was nothing improbable ; we " buccaneers "
were continually faUing ; no living thing
can walk on Cocos Island without risking
his neck — except perhaps the wild pigs,
which are as sure-footed as goats. Right
many a time did they terrify us, as we
clung to the ledge of a precipice by our
eye-lids. Leaping from some thicket, they
would dash past us with tremendous bounds,
like some red and hairy avalanche.
Thirty fathoms measured by the log-Hne

On the Track of a Treasure. 209
brought us in the midst of the broken
ground where we thought we had located
the barefaced rock of Fitzgerald's clue.
At least, the exercise of a very small
measure of imagination made the distance
sixty yards ; but, owing to the change in
the watercourses, it was impossible to
identify the runlet or stream mentioned
by Flower. Besides, the knowledge that
Flower could not have gone for a walk
with a log line in his pocket was flatter
ing unction for our souls. From the mouth
of the stream, Pitt Head, the eastern lug
of Chatham Bay, bears east-north-east ;
now true east is nearly east-by-north, mag
netic, but it certainly is not east-north
east; so that bearing was found to be
some fifteen degrees in excess of our hopes.
14

210 On the Track of a Treasure.
We again soothed our disappointment with
the thought that a bearing taken by the
watch is never accurate !
There was stiU time before sunset to
test our place by ChapeUe's clue ; so we
decided to walk along the beach and hunt
for the sandstone boulder. In the south
east corner of Chatham Bay boulders by
scores greet the eye ; but none seemed
very conspicious. So we went on board,
disheartened, hungry, and drenched to the
skin.

211

CHAPTER XIII.

DISAPPOINTMENT,

On Tuesday, the nth day of August,
the sun rose on a clear sky ; the heavy,
impenetrable rain-clouds of the previous
evening having vanished as if by magic,
the lofty peak of Mount Iglesias could be
seen sharp and clear against the sky from
the deck of the Lytton.
On our starboard quarter lay Nuez or
Breakfast Island. It has been explained
how this rock resembles a Sphinx — the
squatting Hon of ChapeUe's clue. To our
14*

212 On the Track of a Treasure.
port side was a conical rock, looking as
though it had toppled over from the steep
cliffs of Pitt Head; thus there could be no
doubt we were in the right bay. To
confirm us in our opinion, we observed a
tunnel, worn by the action of the waves
through the rocky headland which faces
Breakfast Island, through which at low
tide (when no swell is setting in from the
northward) a boat may be rowed. Here
was evidently the tunnel abreast of which
the Relampago lost her anchor in the foul
ground. At an early hour, two enthusiastic
" buccaneers " started in the dinghy and
rowed from the treasure-creek round Chat
ham Bay, foUovring the coast-Une as far as
the easternmost point of the island. It was
impossible to land at any place. Indeed,

" Surely, no pirate ever minded welting his boots ! '

y'o /atc pnoc 213]

On the Track of a Treasure. 213
except where two or three streams empty
themselves into the sea, the shore cannot
be approached vrithout danger ; for reefs
of coral rise to within a few inches of
the surface, threatening, with their sharp
edges, to rip open the bottom of a boat.
Heavy weights could only have been landed
at the point where we first beached the
cutter and in treasure-creek ; even there
it was necessary to wade ashore ; but
what pirate ever minded wetting his boots ?
Wandering on the beach at low tide.
Captain Shrapnel came on a large rock or
boulder, with many strange marks upon it ;
amongst others "Charles B" and "West
XX North " were carved in fairly clear
characters. Now, the latter inscription
might have meant west, twenty degrees

214 On the Track of a Treasure.
north, if the two crosses were intended
for Roman numerals ; in any case, this
discovery raised our spirits.
Great was the dehght of the adventurers
when it was observed that the treasure-
creek, found by us on the foUovring day,
bore nearly west-north-west from the
boulder. Less satisfactory, however, was
the measurement of one hundred and forty
fathoms. The mouth of the creek which
seemed to satisfy Fitzgerald's clue, lay
some seven hundred feet from the boulder ;
whereas the fuU one hundred and forty
fathoms, or eight hundred and forty feet,
carried the end of our log-Une to an im
passable precipice.
After dinner that evening many things
were discussed, and Captain Shrapnel

On the Track of a Treasure. 215
declared his opinion that the search was
hopeless, owing to the change wrought by
time in the features of the ground. It
was determined, however, to make some
excavations in the creek where the gap
in the hiUs indicated that we had come
within the neighbourhood of the object
of our search. The conversation having
changed to talk about saihng ships, the
mate of the Lytton described the old method
of heaving the log, the knots on the line
being paid out freely while the sands of a
half-minute glass were running.
" Sometimes we used a twenty-eight
seconds' glass," said the mate ; " sometimes
a thirty seconds' glass."
"That must have involved a compli
cated calculation," remarked a " buccaneer."

2i6 On the Track of a Treasure.
" I mean, using a twenty-eight seconds'
glass." " Not at all," said the mate ; " we
reckoned it half a minute, and placed
the knots on the line closer together ! "
" That means," continued our friend, " that
a fathom was not always six feet in length."
" Of course not," pursued the mate.
" In the old ships, where a twenty-eight
seconds' glass was used, the fathoms on
the log-line were only five feet in length,
or five feet and an inch or two."
These chance words were very cheering
to the "buccaneers," who woidd, then and
there, have gone ashore to re-measure the
distance from the boulder to the creek,
had it not been pitch dark. That morning
the distance had been estimated at about

On the Track of a Treasure. 217
seven hundred and five feet, which is only
seven feet less than one hundred and forty
fathoms of five feet one inch each. We
were soon of opinion that the pirates had
a twenty-eight seconds' glass for their log-
hearing; and by the time that we had
aU turned in for the night, some of us in
hammocks on deck, some of us in our stuffy
cabins, most of the treasure-seekers had a
hazy sort of idea that no pirate ever was
aUowed to possess a thirty seconds' glass.
More flattering unction !
On the following day, the " buccaneers,"
to a man, were ashore by 6.30 a.m. re-
measuring their distances and re-laying their
bearings ; but, alas ! the measures required
elasticity, and the compass-bearings fudging !
In the meantime, the stokers and some

2i8 On the Track of a Treasure.
of the crew of the Lytton being vriUing to
work, a gang of men was organized vrith
picks, shovels and machettes to clear the
soil and undergrowth from the slope which,
we thought, covered the entrance to the
cave. By the i6th of August consider
able work had been done, several trenches
having been dug from the edge of the
stream towards the reef of rock which we
supposed to be the bare-faced rock of Fitz
gerald's clue, buried beneath a landsHp ;
but our expectations were not reahsed, for
the excavations proved that nothing but
boulders and red soil were piled on the
slope to the north of the stream. Only
sixteen days of the month for which we
had engaged the Lytton remained unexpired,
allowing for the time necessary for her to

On the Track of a Treasure. 219
return to SaHna Cruz, after dropping us at
Panama ; and a further fifteen hundred
pounds became due to the owners if we
detained their ship beyond the month. It
was unanimously agreed, therefore, that we
should abandon aU idea of further excava
tions, and simply satisfy ourselves that
no other place in the island could fulfil the
conditions of the clue.
On the following day, some of the party
went ashore, while others remained on
board and devoted themselves to the exciting
sport of catching sharks. Unfortunately we
were unprovided with fishing tackle strong
enough for the purpose, so it had to be
improvised out of the hook on which the
meat was hung in the galley, a length of
steel wire, and a coil of rope. Much to

220 On the Track of a Treasure.
our surprise, the sharks would not take
the salt pork — they sniffed at the bait and
swam away, evidently disappointed ; but
the beef -junk was very much to their fancy
and they swarmed and fought over it. It
was a wonderful sight to see a ten-foot
fish, with a hook embedded in his jaw,
shaking the bait, as a terrier shakes a rat,
twisting and leaping out of the water, his
beUy gleaming silver-white in the sunshine.
We killed seven of the monsters ; and had
we been provided vrith barbed hooks, we
could have taken seventy. The first shark
which we dragged on board bit and
snapped and showed signs of hfe long after
the sailors had hacked him to pieces, his
vitality being extraordinary. Another
magnificent specimen slipped off the hook

To face page 220J

First camp on the beach.

On the Track of a Treasure. 221
while being hauled up the side of the ship.
As he fell back into the sea, we poured
bullets into him from our revolvers and
rifles and he turned over and over, lashing
the water into foam. Again and again
he flung himself into the air, his whole
length clear of the surface. The blood
from his wounds attracted his comrades,
and, with savage fury, they dashed at
him, tearing him to pieces and playing tug-
o'-war with strips of his flesh.
So absorbed were we in our fascinating
sport, that we had forgotten our friends
on shore until the reports of a volley of
revolver7shots from the land called our
attention to them. The " buccaneers " were
lined up on the beach, gesticulating and
waving to us. As they had a boat with

222 On the Track of a Treasure.
them, we were driven to the conclusion
that something was in the vrind ; so the
cutter was quickly launched and manned,
and, within less than twenty minutes, we
were vaulting over the gunwale and wading
ashore. Our friends seemed very much
excited, and one of them was holding some
thing in his hand. " What is it ? " we
cried, and when the answer came back :
" We have found a piece of silver ! " we
aU stood stock-stiU, and our hearts beat
like sledge hammers. Sure enough, a piece
of silver it was ; the broken arm of a cross
or some church ornament, as far as we
could judge. It had once been gilt, pro
bably ; but it was terribly battered and bent.
While most of the party, in the morning,
were stalking pig with a view to a fresh-

On the Track of a Treasure. 223
meat dinner, one, more persistent than the
rest, had returned to the treasure-creek.
Wading up the stream that flows through
the gorge and runs past the banks of earth
piled up by the landslips, he had come
upon the decaying trunk of a tree, which,
in falHng across the watercourse, had
effectually dammed the stream. Levering
the log out of position, he had released the
pool of water which had accumulated,
leaving dry the sand and shingle sUted
down from under the rocks. In the midst
of this he had caught sight of a ghttering
object ; this, when drawn out, proved to
be a portion of a crucifix which might once
have adorned the altar of a Peruvian church.
Excitement was at fever-point, and off
we started with picks, shovels, and crow-

224 0^ i^^ Track of a Treasure.
bars, burning with ambition to flatten out
the whole mountain. We first of aU
attacked the spot where the silver had been
found, but it was evident speedUy that
nothing could be there ; our discovery
must have been swept down by the torrents
for some twenty or thirty yards at least :
so we crawled along the bed of the stream
on hands and knees, finding nothing but a
sheet of corrugated iron nailed to a length
of timber. We were quite unable to
account for this. It might have been the
remains of a hut put up by Gissler, the
German ; or it might have been forgotten
and left there by the crew of the Blakeley :
in any case it meant that some one had
been in the creek before. According to
an account of the cruise of the Blakeley,

" They spent some hours digging. '•¦

'J'o face pa^e 225]

On the Track of a Treasure. 225
that expedition took a gold-finding appa
ratus with them, and, though most of their
search was conducted in Wafer Bay, it
was recorded that once, when they operated
with the machine in Chatham Bay, so
strong were the indications of gold that
they spent some hours in digging at a spot
Where the instrument had detected the
presence of precious metal. If this story
were true, the rains and tropical growth
of one summer had been sufficient to
obliterate aU traces of their work. We
cleared the ground of the creepers and
undergrowth, uprooting the stumps and
detaching heavy rocks ; but with no success.
AU that afternoon and evening we toiled
with pick and shovel, and on the following
morning repeated the task untU, perspiring 15

226 On the Track of a Treasure.
and disappointed, we gave up the work.
At a council of war held at midday, we
confirmed our plans made on the i6th,
so, on the i8th, we gave orders to the
captain of the Lytton to weigh anchor
and sail for Panama. Again our vrindlass
stood in the way of departure. In an
excess of caution, the anchor had been
dropped in nearly forty fathoms of water ;
our navigator having mistrusted the
Admiralty chart, and having been some
what too self-reUant to care to accept
instructions from a naval officer, who, on
a former visit to Cocos, had anchored his
battleship a half-mile nearer the shore.
All this length of cable was too heavy a
task for our poor windlass, but our last
anchor was at the bottom of Chatham Bay,

On the Track of a Treasure. 227
so it was of vital importance to recover it.
While the first mate, with many tackles,
wire hawsers, and other hfting contrivances,
commenced a ten hours' job, some of us
went ashore to shoot a wild pig, and others
turned their attention to shark-fishing.
The cunning and skill of the first mate
were too much for the anchor ; and so,
on the 19th of August, we steamed out
of Chatham Bay.
With a view to paying a visit to Wafer
Bay, our course was set round the north
point of the island, where the great Sphinx
rock keeps guard over the treasure —
wherever it may be.
As the Lytton steamed slowly to the west
ward. Wafer Bay displayed all its beauty
to our eyes. Opposite Cascara Island, a
15*

228 On the Track of a Treasure.
great cascade, five hundred feet in height,
tumbles over the cliff ; at the foot of this
waterfaU is a lovely grove of cocoa-nut
palms and trees of great height, entwined
in whose forked branches are red and
golden orchids. The cascade roars and
boils into a great basin of rock, which has
been worn so smooth by the action of the
water that its sides are hke poHshed marble.
As the Lytton rounded the point, and
the whole of Wafer Bay was opened to
our view, we became aware of people
moving about on the beach in front of
corrugated iron huts, which we could see
peeping from behind the trees of the
plantation. Within ten minutes of drop
ping anchor we were in the gig ; and, as
we rowed towards the shore, we observed

¦ H!uts peeping from behind the trees of the plantalipn.'

To face page 228]

<

%, S
¦^

¦s.

On the Track of a Treasure. 229
the Costa Rican colours fluttering up a
flagstaff in the centre of the little settle
ment. A quarter of an hour's pulling
brought us within hail of the beach, where a
man, wading out into the sea, signalled
to us with his arms, directing us to keep
to the southern shore of the bay, where
a strong stream of fresh water flnds its
way into the sea.
One of the " buccaneers" vaulted over the
side of the gig as soon as her keel grated
upon the sand, and, wading forward, the
water nearly up to the tops of his sea-boots,
grasped the hand of a tall man, whose long
beard flowed below his Waist.
"My name is Gissler," said the stranger.
" I suppose you have come to look for
treasure ! "

230

CHAPTER XIV.
A MONARCH OF ALL HE SURVEYS.
August Gissler, with his vrife and a peon,
had lived upon Cocos Island for eighteen
months without seeing a feUow-creature ;
and, had not curiosity prompted us to
visit Wafer Bay before sailing for Panama,
he might have remained for eighteen years
in his lonely home vrithout setting eyes
on a human face. Gissler is the Governor
of Cocos, duly appointed and salaried by
the Costa Rican Government, who promise
to send their one steamer once in every

On the Track of a Treasure. 231
six months to visit the island ; but their
one steamer is in repair only on occasion
of revolutions and never is serviceable
when a promise has to be kept. In the
old days of sailing vessels, ships frequently
caUed for water ; but nowadays steamers
never approach the place.
The monarch of all he surveys is Governor
Gissler ; and he has made for himself
fairly comfortable quarters. He has cap
tured some of the vrild pigs and domesti
cated them ; and he ovms a horse, a mule,
and a bull. Some years ago, he brought
hve stock to the island ; but the goats up
rooted his plantations, doing more harm
than good, and the Blakeley expedition,
with Jieartless selfishness, slaughtered his
three cows. Taking advantage of the

232 On the Track of a Treasure.
fertile soil of Cocos Island, this latter-day
Robinson Crusoe has cultivated every sort
of vegetable and fruit which the tropics
produce. On the uplands, he grows coffee ;
in the vaUeys, tobacco, cocoa, maniocs,
vines, sweet potatoes, Hmes, oranges,
bananas and pine-apples ; but at the time
we arrived, he had not tasted bread or
biscuit for three months, having run out
of flour. Gissler is a man of resource and
invention, and he has turned aU the products
of Cocos Island to his uses. The rubber-
plant, the iron-wood, and a particularly
useful tree, the bombax fera, furrush him
vrith many useful substances ; from the
fibre of the last mentioned he makes
brushes, brooms and ropes, from its juice
he procures tannic acid and ink. Thus he

On the Track of a Treasure. 233
can tan the pigs' hides to make leather for
the repa;ir of his boots, or he can write the
records of his life with a quill plucked from
the wing of a frigate-bird, independent of
cobblers and stationers aUke. He is never
in want of oil, for cocoa-nuts abound on
the island, and from these he extracts
sufficient to furnish him with Ught. On
two occasions, this remarkable man has
built himself from the timbers of trees
which he has felled a boat in which to sail
to the mainland, her sails improvised
from the sheets of his bed, and her ropes
woven ' from the fibres of banana trees.
It is impossible to think of the courageous
adventurer upon his frail bark, fighting
the elements night after night — his fingers
cramped upon the tiller and his eyes

234 ^^ ^^^ Track of a Treasure.
straining to pierce the darkness — without
feeling the romance of his career. The
grip of his strong hand, and the sharp,
suspicious glance from his deep-set eyes,
reveal at once his determination and his
independence. He teUs a tale of how he shipped on
board a saihng vessel, as an able-bodied
seaman, before he ever had been to sea
(except to cross the English Channel as a
passenger), of how his first task was to go
aloft and loosen the main royal, and of
how he accompHshed this, vrith a strong
breeze blovring, so ill that tvrice after
returning to the deck he was sent aloft
again by the bully of a captain to secure
the gaskets, though a hail from the deck
might have saved him this labour.

On the Track of a Treasure. 235
For sixteen years Gissler has been upon
the island. Having run away from his
comfortable home in Germany as an im
provident, venturesome youth, he cannot
bear to return as a failure to his own
country. It was in the Sandwich ^ Islands
that he first heard of the Cocos treasure.
A man who passed by the name of " Old
Mack " used to throw dice with him for
drinks at the local store. Some said " Old
Mack " knew where there was hidden
treasure, while others declared that he had
himself been a pirate. During the bad
times in Hawaii, when the sugar-planters
faUed by the dozen, Gissler and the son-in-
law of " Old Mack " agreed to make an
attempt for the prize, and selling all they
had went to Puentos Arenas in Costa Rica.

236 On the Track of a Treasure.
On the first day after their arrival they
were sitting in the hotel near the beach,
when they were accosted by two EngHsh
men, who begged for employment.
" Where have you been ? " said Gissler.
"On an expedition," rephed the strangers.
" What, smuggUng ? "
" No, worse than that ; treasure-hunting
on Cocos Island ! "
This strange coincidence appears to have
been an important factor in binding the
Governor of Cocos to his task, and
bound he is by as strong fetters as hold
any gaUey slave.
" Drink of the Nile water, and you v^iU
drink of it again." He has returned again
and again, fascinated by the fatal speU.
Gissler, who, vrith his strong vriU and many

On the Track of a Treasure. 237
abihties, might have attained almost any
success in Ufe, is stUl to-day seeking for
the robbed treasures of Mexico and Peru.
The many expeditions which have been
to Cocos Island' in search of treasure have
treated him with scant courtesy ; his plants
have been uprooted, his home has been
desecrated, and his stock destroyed ; so
there is little wonder that he looks with
eyes of suspicion on visitors to his land.
Once, a British man-o'-war landed sixty
marines, who threatened his wife and tore
up his crops, during his absence, while
they were excavating the side of a hill in
search of gold.
How we gained his confidence would
take much patience to tell, and perhaps
more patience to understand ; neverthe-

238 On the Track of a Treasure.
less, we did so, and he told us the
tale of his hfe for sixteen years on the
island. Emerson says that no nation can be
great which has not stood in the jaws of
need ; and so it may be vrith individuals.
On the first occasion when this modem
Robinson Crusoe arrived at Cocos Island,
he had neither food nor shelter from the
rain. While his gun remained serviceable
he was able to secure an occasional pig,
but unfortunately the spring of his Win
chester became damaged, and so he was
dependent on his dog for hunting. By-
and-bye, his faithful hound was killed by
a boar ; then he was reduced to knocking
down sea-birds with a stick in order to
procure food ; and on these, crayfish, and

On the Track of a Treasure. 239
berries he and his comrade, " the Boat
swain," contrived to- keep alive.
The " Boatswain " lies buried on the
bold headland in Chatham Bay, which
throws its shadow in the afternoon across
the stream which we had christened
Treasure-Creek at the sanguine beginning
of our search. Nobody possesses as much
information about the treasure as Gissler.
He has collected every piece of evidence,
and has sifted it with patience and care ;
he feels convinced that with the neces
sary capital he could recover the precious
hoard. No man can find the treasure, even with
Gissler's aid, who is not prepared to devote
at least one year of his hfe to working on
Cocos Island. There is something correct

240 On the Track of a Treasure.
in all the clues ; but there is always some
thing missing,
" The Relampago anchored off the tunnel
in the rock " — so says Gissler's information —
" and whUe several boat-loads of treasure
were being rowed ashore, she lost her
anchor in the foul ground, and drifted on
the tide round the north point near Break
fast Island. Those unloading the treasure
on the beach immediately returned to the
boats, hurriedly replacing the treasure,
and ro vring after their ship " — the dread of
being marooned was ever present to the
thoughts of pirates — " once aboard again,
the crew set to work to make saU ; putting
enough canvas on her to give their vessel
steerage way ; then they lay-to off the
rough coast between Wafer and Chat-

On the Track of a Treasure. 241
ham Bays. There there is no anchorage
for a ship, but a boat can be rowed
ashore and, protected from the heavy
rollers by a line of detached rocks, ma
terial can with safety be disembarked on
the shingle. The pirates rowed the trea
sure ashore in eleven boat-loads at high
tide ; they dropped their precious cargo
into the sea, inside the line of breakers,
and, landing, waited for the tide to fall
—for at low tide the shore cannot be ap
proached, ovring to the coral reefs. The
gold and valuables were then hauled to
the foot of a cliff which rises abruptly
from the beach like a wall ; a ' Spanish
Burton ' was rigged by the aid of a hold
fast, made by chiselling a hole in the rock
and sinking an eye-bolt into it at the crest
16

242 On the Track of a Treasure.
of the cliff. Thus the treasure was hoisted
up and deposited on a ledge. The land
rises somewhat graduaUy for thirty or
forty yards beyond the crest towards a
ridge of rock. Behind this ridge is an open
space or hoUow, some two acres in extent,
on which a few trees are growing. The
treasure was further whipped up this slope
and over the ridge by a runiung tackle,
and the precious store, having been thrown
into a natural hole or crack in the ground,
was covered up by the pirates vrith earth
and stones."
To one of the " buccaneers " Gissler con
fided this story, an agreement having been
signed between them, binding our friend
never to work for treasure without the
permission of the Governor of Cocos Island.

On the Track of a Treasure. 243
On the foUovring day the two went overland
to the spot, cutting their way through
the undergrowth and clambering over the
rough ground for six hours in preference
to rowing for half an hour, for fear of
divulging the secret to the boat's crew.
The rusty eye-bolts are stiU in the rocks
which formed the hold-fasts for the tackles ;
and, amidst the tangle of undergrowth,
can still be seen, rusty iron pots, a broken
, sword, and the breast-bone of a man.
From the ledge to which the treasure was
first hoisted our " treasure-seeker " contem
plated the bay : on the right was Nuez
Island, a squatting Hon, to the left a coni
cal rock ; north-west-by-west of him lay a
sandstone boulder, whose base was just
washed by the tide commencing to flow ;
16*

244 ^^ ^^^ Track of a Treasure.
from behind him, a stream of water poured
down the slope and tumbled over the chff
in a cataract to the sea.
For three days longer we remained at our
anchorage in Wafer Bay, enjoying the
bathing and fishing in the creek behind
the settlement, any further search for
treasure being out of the question for those
who respected the rights of Gissler. He
would not sanction excavations being made
in the spot which he had located by any
party unprepared to carry the work through
to the end, and this would involve a six
months' task.
The Governor showed us the disused
water-wheel which he constructed to drive
his saw-mill in the days when he was ship
building ; and took us for rambles through

A clearing in the forest, Cocos Island.

[See page 244.

Disused water-wheel, Cocos Island.

[Seepage 245.

To face pa«e' 2i,/^\

On the Track of a Treasure. 245
the island amidst the dense, tropical forest,
where the birds are so tame that they
will flutter around a stranger's head and
peck at his hat. There are small birds,
coal-black in colour, and yellow birds re
sembling canaries in plumage and in song ;
but the tamest are the white birds with
webbed feet, which have the appearance
of doves and are always courting ; the
sailors called them Holy Ghost birds, for
they would drop right down from the skies
and settle on the hat of anyone moving in
the forest.
It was on the 23rd of August that
we heaved up our anchor and said a
final good-bye to the most romantic
spot in the world, Cocos Island. Gissler,
his wife and his peon, having decided to

246 On the Track of a Treasure.
return to the mainland with us, came
aboard with their dogs and such of their
household gods as they most prized at
three o'clock in the afternoon ; and by
four we were shaping our course for
Panama. There must be a subtle attraction
in this sohtary home ; for, as the lofty peak
of Mount Iglesias became lost to view in
the mists of sunset, the tears weUed up
into the eyes of the Governor's vrife.

The Governor of Cocos Island comes aboard. [See page 24

To face page 246]

Panam.a

[See tage 249.

247

CHAPTER XV.
homeward bound.
The land lies so low around the Bay of
Panama that ships approaching from the
westward can run close to the shore without
perceiving it ; there are no light-houses
to warn the sailor of his danger or to guide
him to his anchorage ; except for an oc
casional pearHng schooner or a Pacific Mail
steamer, vessels are rarely to be seen.
On the 27th of August, we arrived off
the town, and found the Columbians
enjoying a holiday ; so our yellow flag.

248 On the Track of a Treasure.
calling for the health officer, was disre
garded by the port-officials, and we slum
bered until six o'clock on Tuesday morning.
Not far from our moorings, lay the Colum
bian gun-boat — a wicked-looking craft — and,
within a stone's throw, the wreck of one
of her victims, torpedoed by night and
sent to the bottom vrith a General and
many hundred soldiers. The rim of the
sunken ship's funnel marks the top of the
tide ; and her masts, which once spread
their canvas to the breeze or bore the
standard of some rebel leader, now serve
as a resting place for birds.
Panama was in a state of unrest when
we arrived, the Columbian Parhament
having just rejected the canal treaty— an
agreement which, giving as it did the

On the Track of a Treasure. 249
suzerainty of much territory to the United
States, was not generally popular with
the Columbians. But the canal would
bring wealth to Panama, a consideration
carrying more weight with the inhabitants
of the Isthmus than any based on patriotic
pride. Panama is not unaccustomed to
disturbances : two years ago the streets
were strewn with unburied and rotting
corpses : that was during the last revolution
but one!
Once or twice in its history, Panama
has been sacked by pirates. Morgan, the
famous buccaneer, on one occasion, carried
off everything of value in the town. Had
his adventures taken place while we were
there, he might, nevertheless, have gone
away a poor man. The streets are nar-

250 On the Track of a Treasure.
row and crooked, the waUs of the houses
giving the appearance of being quite in
capable of supporting the roofs ; every
building except the cathedral is a shanty,
and most of the shanties belong to the
Chinese. Indeed, the Celestials hold aU
the wealth of the town. We wished with
all our hearts that they owned aU the Con
tinent of America ; as, during aU our
travels, they were the only civil, honest,
and sober people vrith whom we had tran
sactions. When Nature has worked out to
completion her inexorable scheme of the
survival of the fittest, there is Uttle doubt
that the world vriU be peopled vrith nothing
but Chinamen !
TravelHng from France to Mexico and
through Central America, one can fathom

On the Track of a Treasure. 251
aU the depths and shoals of monetary ex
change. It might be thought that, after
the blockade of Venezuela, the money in
that country would rank very low, but the
contrary is the case : the Puerto Cabello
or Carcas merchant will allow only three
bolivars for four shillings, and a bolivar in
Paris is worth about sixpence. In Panama,
however, there is a premium on all the monies
of the world ; and any coin is gladly taken.
Cock-fighting is the great Sunday amuse
ment ; and as Englishmen always love
cock-fighting — except when they have to
pose as humanitarians — we went to witness
the sport. The birds seemed to enjoy it
more than anyone : to bold chanticleer,
nothing is finer than a battle lost, except
a battle won !

252 On the Track of a Treasure.
The drive along the railway to La Boca,
the Pacific entrance to the famous canal,
is through the most beautiful scenery ; and
a cranky cab, drawn by a lean, miserable
horse, will take one there and back in less
than two hours for a Columbian dollar.
A stranger, driving along some narrow street,
might think himself in the middle of the
town (but for the tropical vegetation, burst
ing through the cracks in the waUs on either
side, and the mightily busy dragon-ffies
and insects), when, with a lurch, his cab
skids round a turn in the road and the loveli
ness of the country bursts upon him. On
the left, is the European cemetery ; on
the right, the Chinese burial-ground ; where
a forest of wooden-crosses, marked with
simple numbers, implore the passing tribute

On the Track of a Treasure. 253
of a sigh. Here and there, between the
tangle of ferns and bushes, some rusting
mass of machinery can be seen — overgrown
and forgotten ; and many a quaint insect
or timid bird has built her nest in the silent
valves and unused tubes of an abandoned
locomotive, which will never perform the
busy functions for which it left its European
workshop, nor thunder along the metals
across the sleepers, each of which cost
three human lives to lay!
Everyone in Panama is civil and anxious
to please — except the croupiers of the rou
lette tables, who are content to take a
profit born of two zeros and a ball whose
bias is towards losing numbers ! The most
popular bar in the town is kept by a genial
host, who admitted, somewhat reluctantly,

254 ^*^ ^^^ Track of a Treasure.
to being a Boer, but whose appearance
certainly belied his confession ; for he was
fat and clean shaven, and, in point of fact,
resembled Coquelin, when he aUowed him
self to be carried away into spouting his
political opinions. And, mark you, reader,
he had the rights and wrongs of aU the
most poignant issues of the New World or
the Old at his fmger-tips I One might half
close one's eyes and slumber — the fiendish
damp heat and the exceUence of the Boer's
cock-tails and oratory being soporific — and
dream oneself at the Theatre Sarah Bern
hardt, hstening to the Cadet de Gascogne
or Le Vieux Grognard, Flambeau !
On Tuesday, the twenty-eighth, the
" buccaneers " broke their ranks, and four
of our party left for England, taking the

On the Track of a Treasure. 255
New York route. On Wednesday, we,
three remaining treasure-hunters, left for
Colon to inspect the Royal MaU steamer
and weigh its advantages against those of
Le Canada of the Transatlantique Com
pany. The journey across the Isthmus is a ser
mon on the vanity of human wishes, the
sad sights seen on the drive to La Boca,
being repeated and magnified an hundred
fold; ranks of silent engines stand amongst
the tropical weeds and rusting rails and
machinery, forming a reproachful memorial
of betrayed trusts. Colon has the ap
pearance of being the most unwholesome
spot in the world, all the huts being built
on piles ; and beneath these hovels sim
mers a filthy liquid mud, which gives off a

256 On the Track of a Treasure.
revolting smell. Fortunately, things are not
as bad as they appear, and the death-rate
is not so high as in Salina Cruz. A rumour
reached us in Colon that the bubonic plague
had broken out at Salina Cruz a week after
our departure ; under the double lash of
yellow fever and pest, the poor builders
of the breakwater are indeed scourged.
Every Chinaman hving in a shanty — balan
cing himself, as one might say, day and
night, at the end of a pole over a fever bath
— is a cultivator of orchids — he also has a
keen appreciation of their value in Euro
pean eyes, to judge by the prices he asks.
An evening stroU in the dark at Colon
is not without dangers—" Hi, sar, don't
you walk along that street ! " screams some
West-Indian negress. " Guess you'U faU in

On the Track of a Treasure. 257
the swamp. Not that way neither ; that's
a swamp, too — and you'll get ' awful '
muddy if you go that road. ' S'pec I'd
better come and walk along wi' you, sar,
and keep yo' feet dry ! Say ? "
A careful inspection of the French and
EngHsh steamers did not leave us long
in doubt. It may have been the warm
welcome given us by the captain of Le
Canada ; but I think it was the sound
of the stewards' band, practising on the
Royal Mail Steamer, which really decided
us to go on the French boat ; and we never
regretted it ; the captain and officers
spared no pains to make the voyage pass
agreeably, and there were boats placed at
our disposal to land us at every port of call.
A fortnight on the Lytton was enough
' ' 17

258 On the Track of a Treasure.
to cure us of ever wishing to see an Enghsh
ship or crew again. Something must be
rotten in the EngUsh merchant-service ;
there is not one of its captains who vriU
not declare that the worst in the world is
an Enghsh crew. " Give me Swedes, China
men, Lascars, anything but EngHshmen ! "
said the captain of the Lytton. Both her
firemen and her deck hands disappeared
for days at Antwerp, not one of them being
sober while the first instalment of their wages
lasted ; and when we went aboard, every man
was head over ears in debt to the owners
for stoppages and advances. It was imder
stood, as far as we could make out, that,
at the first convenient port, by an arrrange-
ment of mutual benefit to owners and
men, the latter were to desert and be re-

On the Track of a Treasure. 259
placed by foreigners. Whenever a boat
went ashore at an inhabited port, its crew
deserted for an hour and got drunk. It
is to be doubted whether five per cent.
of the men who serve before the mast on
British " tramps " have one solitary
thought beyond drink ; while their filth
and indiscipline are beyond description.
Most of them are surly, sodden, unwilUng
brutes, cumbering God's diligent creation
for a while. The owners are chiefly to
blame, for they are regardless of the com
fort or welfare of the sailors they employ ;
the food they give is simply offal : it is a
fact that sharks would not take the salt
pork which was the ordinary food of the
Lytton's crew.
On French ships, each sailor receives a
17*

26o On the Track of a Treasure.
quart of good Bordeaux wine and a " tot "
of rum daily, besides the most exceUent
meat, bread and vegetables in abundance ;
thus a better class of men is obtained, and
they are clean, hard-working, and cheery.
Le Canada, on her way home, encountered
two cyclones, and touched at nine ports,
yet there was never any accident, hitch,
or delay. When the stewards or crew
went ashore on leave, they would return
punctually, and in a sober condition, to
the ship.
Le Canada's first port of caU was Port
Limon in Costa Rica, quite a charming
town. There we saw more bananas than
anyone, surely, has seen before. For hours
and hours, troUies, on an endless moving
platform, carry bales of the fruit on board

On the Track of a Treasure. 261
fast steamers, which leave as soon as loaded
for New Orleans, in an almost intermin
able game of " follow my leader."
Costa Ricans appear to have escaped
the two Central American endemics, yellow
fever and politics, and this has raised them
in health and civilization above their neigh
bours. Venezuelans, on the contrary, are
most unattractive, and, as far as fighting
is concerned, are almost savages. During
the summer of 1902 the Transatlantique
Company agreed to convey a number of
Venezuelan soldiers to a certain port, stipu
lating, however, that all arms should be
handed over to the captain of the ship
during the voyage. The older Venezuelans
gave up their rifles with more or less reluc
tance ; but the children of ten or twelve

262 On the Track of a Treasure.
years — for there are soldiers of that age in
Venezuela — fought like mad cats to retain
their arms, and wept tears of rage at
having to part with their weapons, even
during the peaceful days of a voyage.
The Half-breeds can be induced to fight
for any political party, heedless of the rights
or wrongs of the cause ; and vriU change
sides on the suggestion of their leader for
the time being, unswayed by any considera
tions of loyalty.
At BoUvar in July, 1903, was fought
one of the toughest fights of modem times.
The events which led to this battle are
so enveloped in romance that the tale is
worth telUng.
After Castro had seized the presidency
in 1 90 1, a counter-revolution was started.

On the Track of a Treasure. 263
financed and led by Manuel Antonio Mattos.
Castro, fearing the strength of the move
ment, formed a sort of " Kilmainham
treaty " with Hernandez (known as "El
Mocho " — the maimed — ) who, as a Na-
tionahst, is loved throughout Venezuela as
Parnell was loved by all Irishmen, and who
was at that time in gaol for a httle revolu
tionary affair of his own. Being released
from- his confinement, Hernandez declared
for Castro. While Mattos was marching on
Caracas, discord was hatched amongst the
leaders of his force ; and they suffered
defeat at the pass of Vittoria.
In the meanwhile, stirring events had
taken place in the state of Guiana, where
Evidio Salas was commander-in-chief. A
young lieutenant, Ferreras, was the com-

264 On the Track of a Treasure.
mander's rival for the hand of the beautiful
daughter of President Sarria, the Governor
of the State ; and having, though gaUant
and handsome, no quahfications which
might be expected to commend him to
the father of the girl he loved, while so
powerful a rival as Evidio Salas was
pressing his suit, he resolved to make
a bold bid for fame. CoUecting a handful
of desperate and ambitious foUowers, he
seized the citadel of Bohvar, raised the
standard of revolt, and sustained a siege
in his place of arms. The number of his
followers grovring from day to day, he was
able gradually to make sorties, and to ex
tend the zone of his influence, until, in
May, 1902, he finaUy overthrew Salas and
made himself master of the tovm. The

On the Track of a Treasure. 265
news of this extraordinary feat was carried
to the pass of Vittoria, where Mattos, having
just sustained a reverse, had determined
to fall back on Bolivar vrith the remnants
of his army, some 3,000 men — a gang
of ragged and demoralised Half-breeds.
Inspired by Ferreras' success, Rolando, one
of Mattos' lieutenants, resolved to march to
the assistance of the Rebels. At the head
of a thousand men, he moved on Bolivar
with surprising swiftness, and arrived in
time to put the finishing touch to Ferreras'
exploits. Hearing of the critical state of
affairs on the Orinoco, Castro despatched
Juan Gomez with an army to attack the
rebel stronghold, while he himself devoted
his attention to the destruction of Mattos'
weakened army.

266 On the Track of a Treasure.
Bohvar is secured from attack on the
north by the river, which at this place
flows through a rocky pass known as the
Angostura, or narrows ; on the south, two
commanding hiUs, held by loyal officers
and steady troops, prevent any possibihty
of the town being captured by assault.
The efforts of Castro's General must have
been in vain but for the treachery of an
Andino officer (Andinos always favour
Castro), who, vrith the cry of " Viva
Castro " and " NacionaUsta," cut dov^m his
senior officer and took the troops over to
the side of Gomez. The hiUs lost to Ferreras,
the inevitable result followed ; but Castro's
troops had to fight their way inch by inch
into the town, which Ferreras had cap
tured and held for a year. A surgeon

On the Track of a Treasure. 267
from the French gun-boat, which lies at
Puerto Cabello, happening to be in the
neighbourhood of the Orinoco at the time,
was asked to lend his assistance to the
wounded, and at once proceeded to the
spot ; his description of the battle-ground
is horrifying. The troops on both sides,
having been served out with arms and
ammunition in a haphazard fashion, it
often came about that a soldier would
have nothing but Mauser cartridges for his
Lee-Metford rifle, or vice versd ; conse
quently the bayonet was their favourite
weapon. The Government soldiers and the
rebels fought hand-to-hand from house to
house, and the walls were splashed with
blood ; their courage was phenomenal,
each man fighting hke ten tigers. The

268 On the Track of a Treasure.
two armies together numbered only seven
thousand ; but, of these, two thousand
were slain, and, in the opinion of the sur
geon, quite eight hundred of the wounded
could not possibly live, while scarcely a
man was unscathed. Another extra
ordinary characteristic of these Venezuelan
Indians was described by the French sur
geon. They appeared to have some psychic
power which could enable them to hold
their illness in abeyance pending a battle ;
men, who, five minutes before, were UteraUy
on their death-beds from fever, could sub
due their sufferings and recaU their physical
strength in the anticipation of action.

26g

CHAPTER XVI.
past the foot-prints of the avenger to
OUR journey's end.
Puerto Cabello, which has been in the
vortex of war, is an exceptionally interesting
place to visit ; here, years ago, the Indian
women used to sell their beautiful hair to
the Europeans, and it was as a market for
this peculiar traffic that the town earned
its name. The Cathedral and all the build
ings are puckered vrith bullet marks. The
two batteries which command the bay were
bombarded by the Germans, and excellent

270 On the Track of a Treasure.
practice they made, for Fort Alexandra,
which stands a thousand feet above the
sea, has now the appearance of the Hd of
a pepper-pot — though this is hardly aston
ishing, as a better artiUery-target could
hardly be found. Around the other fort
on the sea-level is clustered a jumble of
discordant historical traditions. To the
south, hes the wreck of an old blockade-
runner of the American war, and the wall
to the north-west marks the spot where
a famous British cutting-out expedition, a
hundred years ago, succeeded in vrinning
from the Spaniards a ship which was bound
with double chains to the pier. The fort
of the Liberator, as it is miscaUed, has
always been used as a dungeon, and, now
that the damage done by the Panther's

On the Track of a Treasure. 271
sheUs has been repaired, this hideous func
tion has been resumed. At the present
moment, prisoners captured in the Civil
War are suffering unspeakable torture in
this little hell, for the Venezuelan gaoler is
pitiless. As we walked up and down the deck of
Le Canada, soon after dropping anchor at
dawn in Puerto Cabello, we watched vrith
some indifference a few soldiers apparently
drilHng on the flat ground near a tree to
the west of the fort. Suddenly the roll of
a drum broke on our ears, followed quickly
by the sharper roll of musketry, and the
soldiers dispersed immediately. From the
foot of the tree stretched two dark, diverging
fines ; one, the longer one, was the shadow
of the tree cast by the rising sun ; the

272 On the Track of a Treasure.
other was the lifeless body of a man,- a
white bandage across his eyes, and that
aggressive appearance about his boots which
only a dead man's can have — a revolutionist
had gone to pay the debt which every un
successful revolutionist owes.
Judged by a certain standard for gauging
foreign policy. President Castro must be
considered a strong and able pohtician ;
for he has made himself thoroughly un
popular with the Powers. CaUed by the
mihtary party in Caracas to assist against
the troops of President Andrade, he started
from the Andine provinces, of which he
was President, at the head of eighty men ;
he fought vrith surprising valour whenever
he had a chance of vrinning by force of
arms ; and, when outnumbered, he sue-

On the Track of a Treasure. 273
ceeded usually in persuading the opposing
General to throw in his lot with the Andinos.
He thus gathered a considerable army of
cut-throats and blackguards. At the head
of this force, he marched to the Vittoria
pass near Caracas, where he entered into
negotiations vrith Don Luciano, who is a
modem edition of Warvrick, the King
maker. The result of these negotiations led
to Castro beihg proclaimed President, and,
thanks to the Monroe Doctrine, he is Presi
dent still. But he has turned out of office
aU the men of position in the country to
replace them by his old comrades and
cronies (some of whom have been mule-
drivers and most of whom are disreputable),
and, not content vrith this, he has kicked
the judges off the bench of the Supreme
18

274 On the Track of a Treasure.
Court of Venezuela in order that those
who interpret the law of the land may be
subservient to his vriU, and it may be that
his position is less secure than he supposes
it to be. He aspires to the conquest of
Columbia, and caUs himself the " Little
Corporal " ; he is barely five feet high,
and he loves and is loved by the ladies,
many of whom have borne arms in his
cause — and there are recruits of the gentler
sex no older than some of his boy-warriors
of twelve years. He is very hke Cecil
Rhodes, and he is very Uke Napoleon ;
for he has the same vices, and the same
ambitions. A general rule throughout the world
dictates that the less hkely is a soldier
to be kiUed, the more gaudy his uniform

On the Track of a Treasure. 275
shaU be. The Venezuelan soldier is so
certain to be slain during his career that his
uniform is shabbier than the clothing of
the ordinary civiUan of his country. On
leaving Puerto CabeUo we witnessed an
amusing sight. The rain was falling
heavily, but the garrison of the fort of the
Liberator had turned out to do honour to
the lowering of their flag at sunset ; the
haUiards had somehow become tvristed
and the flag refused to be hauled down ;
the soldiers were kept, nevertheless, with
soaking uniforms and aching arms at the
" salute " ; while the regimental band con
tinued to repeat the regulation bars of the
National Anthem again and again until
they disappeared, ahke from our sight and
hearing. This comedy was truly symbolical 18*

276 On the Track of a Treasure.
of the staunch loyalty to their flag- of the
soldiers of the Venezuelan Repubhc, whose
short history is adorned vrith the tales of
over five-score revolutions.
La Martinique, our next place of caU,
is one of the French AntiUes — one of
France's burdens, the French tax-payer
having to contribute considerably to its
support. The burning desire of France to
extend the benefits of her revolutionary
theories to every comer of the earth
resulted in the Repubhc of Hayii ; and
Martinique is not many years further from
barbarism than Hayti.
Those who have lived amongst the negroes
in Africa and thoroughly understand them,
maintain that they should be treated vrith
strict impartial justice, tempered vrith the

On the Track of a Treasure. 277
cat-o' -nine-tails, and a visit to the French
West Indies can furnish the very finest
evidence to support this view. The idea
that the negro can attain the intellectual
or moral development of the white man
is born of ignorance or of a desire to obtain
dishonestly some advantage in the game of
poHtics. Since slavery has been abohshed
in the United States the black man has
retrograded, and, in those few places in
the world where he has been brought to a
stage of civihzation and left to his own
resources, unfettered by the discipline
of the white man, he has tumbled headlong
into the savagery of his ancestors. Spain
went too far in persecution, France too far
in emancipation ; consequently, both nations
fafled miserably in dealing with primitive

278 On the Track of a Treasure.
races. The only lasting influence is that of
the priest — the negro dearly loves Mumbo
Jumbo ; and, of course, aU reUgions,
Christianity included, are mere Mumbo
Jumbo to him, who cannot see behind the
symbols of a cult and to whom ethics and
morals are enigmas.
The negroes of Martinique, having been
raised by Act of ParUament to the position
of citizens of France, vrith votes and a
representative in the Chamber, have pro
ceeded to lay hands on aU the administrative
positions in the island, to exercise their
functions with the maximum of corruption
and the minimum of justice, and vrith
bitter and childish jealousy to force aU the
white men to leave the country.
Martinique and Guadeloupe are, con-

On the Track of a Treasure. 279
sequently, sinking fast into the position
of Hayti — that is to say, savagery.
Fort de France is the capital and chief
port of the island, and it is the birthplace
of the beautiful Empress Josephine, a statue
of whom stands in the square, vrith a
significant inscription showing her to have
been four years the senior» of Napoleon.
A Martinique prophetess told her as a child
that she would one day be more than a
queen. Poor thing ! she lived to learn
that " kind hearts are more than coronets "
from one who was " a little more than kin
and less than kind."
Up till ten minutes past eight o'clock
on the morning of the Sth of May, 1902,
forty thousand people lived, moved and
had their being in the pretty town of St.

28o On the Track of a Treasure.
Pierre, on the western side of the island.
At that hour every soul ceased to exist ;
it is said that one minute and a half were
sufficient to complete the work. La
Montague Pelee, which had not been in
eruption for fifty years, showed signs of
activity in the spring of 1902, and on the
4th of May a torrent of boihng mud
swept away a factory and plantation,
nestling in a wrinkle of the green face of
the mountain. On the morning of the
eighth several terrific explosions were
heard, and Mont Pele coughed up a baU
or mass of reddish-brov^m cloud which,
spreading and roUing down the slopes,
killed instantaneously every one it touched,
scorched and shrivelled aU organic sub
stances, and melted the metals in its path.

On the Track of a Treasure. 281
The ruins of St. Pierre are the most
mournful sight in the world ; the visitor
scrambUng amongst the piles of broken
stones and bricks may often kick up the
skuU or bones of one of the victims of the
eruption. On the day after the catastrophe,
bodies were found in the most extraordinary
positions ; the butcher, with his horse and
cart, struck dead while delivering his wares,
and the servant at the door with hands
outstretched to receive them. The northern
part of the town nearest to the mountain
was simply leveUed to the ground by the
stones and boiling mud which followed in
the track of the gas-cloud ; the southern
part, less exposed, was only scorched and
burnt by the death-squaU — so the walls
paraUel to the hne of advance of the blast

282 On the Track of a Treasure.
are still standing. Neither lava, stones,
nor ashes wrought much havoc in
Martinique, only the one great gas-cloud,
and that only down one face of Mont Pele.
It appears as though a mighty dragon
had crouched on the mountain and blown
flames with aU his might on to the devoted
town ; beyond a clearly marked zone the
country is smihng and green.
La Montague Pelee was smoking and
coughing when we steamed past on Le
Canada. The eruption has had a most
extraordinary effect on the shape of the
mountain, for the peak has been raised
a thousand feet, and a great cone, as sharp
as a tooth, has grown out of the crater.
Looked at from the sea, the volcano seems
to justify its name, for it bears the appear-

On the Track of a Treasure. 283
ance of having been peeled or stripped from
top to bottom ; nor can one help thinking
that the day when the mountain was
christened must have been soon after an
eruption. St. Pierre de Martinique remains a
memorial of one of the most senseless and
cruel crimes ever committed by Nature,
a crime which has never been rivalled by
the hand of man ; the combined swords of
Joshua, Zinghis Khan, Tamerlane, and
Attila would have been powerless to effect
so much suffering in so short a time.
A poor old man of seventy-five years, a
passenger on Le Canada, told me that he
had lost everything he possessed in the
world, every soul he loved ; and that it
was a bitter regret to him that he had

284 On the Track of a Treasure.
been absent from St. Pierre, as he would
have preferred to die vrith his family.
Another passenger who had also lost most
of his relations, including both parents,
his vrife and his son, informed me that
nearly all the insurance companies refused
to pay, aUeging the act of God. For forty
years he and his father had paid the
premiums vrith punctuahty ; and he com
plained, with much justice, that the non
payment was a dishonest shirking of their
liabihties on the part of the companies.
Surely, either everything or nothing is in
the hand of God ? Why should not His
instrument be a carelessly discarded match
as much as a flaming volcano ?
Martinique had just passed through
another and more recent trial. Barely a

On the Track of a Treasure. 285
year after the destruction of St. Pierre, the
island was visited by a cyclone which left
a track of poverty and distress behind it.
In spite of their beauty and the in
teresting traditions which cling to them,
the West Indies leave a nasty taste in the
mouth. The French are ashamed of their
islands ; for, notvrithstanding the money
France has spent, and the kindness she
has lavished, Martinique and Guadeloupe
remain her ungrateful children ; while in
Hayti, the aspirations which she holds of
guiding mankind towards civihzation must
have received a rude check. Our islands,
bound by stronger ties of disciphne, are not
so disappointing ; but the Yankees are
always teUing them that Codlin's their
friend, not Short ; the West Indians are

286 On the Track of a Treasure.
beginning to beheve them, and their dis
content is ill-disguised.
In Trinidad, the feehng is very bitter
against the Government, for, in the recent
riots, the chief constable ordered his black
police to fire upon the crowd, and so httle
control was exercised over the dangerous
machine which had been set in motion,
that no less than sixteen persons were
killed and forty-five were wounded. It is
knovm that the Venezuelan President has
vowed vengeance against Trimdad and
Curagoa ; nor can one help detecting a
flavour of Castro in the same riots.
Throughout the West Indies, Central and
South America, the commercial interests
of the United States clash vrith those of
Germany and England ; and, as the

On the Track of a Treasure. 287
Yankees say, the effete monarchies of the
Old World are getting the worst of it. The
last time America went to war, it was
against a fleet without coal or ammunition,
and whose torpedoes were dummies. So
unprepared for battle was Admiral Cervera's
squadron, that he even had to beg for hnt
and bandages for his wounded : — this should
be a warning to us, according to West
Indians, to keep our powder dry for the
approaching struggles.
On the night of September the fourteenth,
two days after leaving Guadeloupe, the
air was oppressive and heavy ; at four
o'clock on the morning of the fifteenth, the
horizon appeared overclouded, and a thick
pall of clouds, scratched and torn vrith
lightning-flashes, was racing up the sky

288 On the Track of a Treasure.
from the north-east. At seven a.m. a
tempest was blovring, and by nine, the
wind had swung round through two quarters
of the compass, from ahead to right astern,
passing by our port-side ; we were in a
hurricane, and, thanks to the pecuhar
behaviour of these whirhng storms, our
captain recognised that we were driving
straight for its centre. Our course was
consequently turned due south, and for
two hours we ran through a screaming
storm, the sea boiUng and the spray hissing,
while we trembled and roUed tiU the waves
broke on our sloping decks. By eleven
we were on our course again, having skil
fully sUpped round the cyclone, which was
driving to the north-west to spread and
svring back towards the EngUsh coast.

On the Track of a Treasure. 289
perhaps to swoop on us again in the last
stride of our homeward journey from
Calais to Dover.
The reflection of Villamo' Ught in the
eastem <sky was the first sight we had seen
of Europe for four months. In that time
we had accompHshed a' joumey which,
less than a generation ago, would have
been impossible. The land of ^the six
repubUcs visited by us must always seem,
in pur recoUections, Uke some kaleidoscopic
scene : in the foreground, the lurid after
glow of a volcano's fires ; , in the back
ground, a sohtary island. It may be that
some heedless bird, in quest of^jprecious
morsels for her young, flits daUy past the
crevice in the rocks which conceals from
man's eyes miUions of gold and treasure,
19

290 On the Track of a Treasure.
subtle instmments of pleasure and pain ;
so guarded from human reach as to be
powerless, tiU the end of time, to cause the
flow of blood or tears.

the end.

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