ne missing except Roger
and Harry.

These two were great favourites with the ship's company, and many
willing hands had gone back to bring them out of the smoking edifice;
but no traces of them could be found. It was then thought that they
might have missed their way on the road down from the fort, and search
was made in that direction, but without success.

The town was then thoroughly searched, yet the two friends still
remained missing. Eventually, therefore, Cavendish was most reluctantly
compelled to sail without them, and many were the conjectures as to what
fate could possibly have befallen them.

Since that time Cavendish had taken his fleet round the Horn, and sailed
up the western coast of Spanish South America, arriving eventually off
the coast of Peru. At Callao he had received news that a plate ship was
expected to arrive shortly from Manila on her way to Acapulco, in
Mexico, and he had determined to waylay and capture her. And, at the
date to which this history has now arrived, he had just intercepted and
captured her off the Mexican coast, and taken out of her all her vast
treasure--the finest, richest prize that has ever been taken either
before or since. And at this point the exigencies of the narrative
demand that he must be left.

Meanwhile, our former acquaintance, Alvarez, whom we lost sight of at
the Careenage, had successfully made his way through the Cuban jungle,
and, arriving at the port of Matanzas, with the remainder of the men,
had sailed thence to Vera Cruz, in Mexico, where he had received a high
appointment from the viceroy, which he now held.

De Soto had travelled with him to Mexico, and, for so gallant a
gentleman, had been singularly unfortunate. Alvarez had found it
impossible to disabuse his mind of the idea that de Soto had the
cryptogram in his possession, and, remembering what had been said by him
about the Holy Office, had brought the fact before the notice of that
body, repeating de Soto's remarks and denouncing him as a heretic. The
unfortunate man was thereupon seized, thrown into prison, and, under the
direction of the villain Alvarez, dreadfully tortured, ostensibly to
compel him to retract his words against the Inquisition, but really to
enable Alvarez to wring from de Soto the cipher, as the price of his
release from prison and torture.

The persistent and unwavering assertions of de Soto that he had not the
paper, and knew naught of its whereabouts, were re