The tale went that the priests at
Panama or Chagres, or one of those places, on fright of Morgan's
coming, clapped all their treasure aboard ship under a guard of
militia--soldiers of some sort, anyway--and that the seamen cut the
soldiers' throats, slipped cable, and away-to-go. But Morgan!
He must have died before Queen Anne was born--well, not so far back
as that maybe, but then or thenabouts. I tell you, ma'am, this story
hangs around every port and every room where seamen gather and drink
and take their ways again. 'Tis for all the world like the smell of
tobacco-smoke, that tells you some one has come and gone, but leaves
you nothing to get hold of. Hallo!--"
As the exclamation escaped him, Captain Branscome, who had casually
picked up a corner of the parchment between finger and thumb, with a
nervous jerk drew the whole chart from under my outspread palms and
turned it over face-downwards.
"Eh? But see here!"
He fumbled with his glasses, while Miss Belcher and I, snatching at
the chart, almost knocked our heads together as we bent over a corner
of it--the left-hand upper corner--and a dozen lines of writing
scrawled there in faded ink. They ran thus--
1. Landed by cuttar when wee saw a sail.
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