k them in his nerveless hand and fingers that
he could hardly close upon what they held.

The papers Captain Morgan found in a wallet in an inner breast pocket of
the Spaniard's waistcoat. These he examined one by one, and finding them
to his satisfaction, tied them up again, and slipped the wallet and its
contents into his own pocket.

Then for the first time he appeared to observe Master Harry, who,
indeed, must have been standing, the perfect picture of horror and
dismay. Whereupon, bursting out a-laughing, and slipping the pistol he
had used back into its sling again, he fetched poor Harry a great slap
upon the back, bidding him be a man, for that he would see many such
sights as this.

But indeed, it was no laughing matter for poor Master Harry, for it was
many a day before his imagination could rid itself of the image of the
dead Spaniard's face; and as he walked away down the street with his
companions, leaving the crowd behind them, and the dead body where it
lay for its friends to look after, his ears humming and ringing from
the deafening noise of the pistol shots fired in the close room, and the
sweat trickling down his face in drops, he knew not whether all that
had passed had been real, or whether it was a dream from which he might
presently awaken.

IV

The papers Captain Morgan had thus seized upon as the fruit of the
murder he had committed must have been as perfectly satisfactory to him
as could be, for having paid a second visit that evening to Governor
Modiford, the pirate lifted anchor the next morning and made sail toward
the Gulf of Darien. There, after cruising about in those waters for
about a fortnight without falling in with a vessel of any sort, at the
end of that time they overhauled a caravel bound from Porto Bello to
Cartagena, which vessel they took, and finding her loaded with nothing
better than raw hides, scuttled and sank her, being then about twenty
leagues from the main of Cartagena. From the captain of this vessel
they learned that the plate fleet was then lying in the harbor of Porto
Bello, not yet having set sail thence, but waiting for the change of the
winds before embarking for Spain. Besides this, which was a good deal
more to their purpose, the Spaniards told the pirates that the Sieur
Simon, his wife, and daughter were confined aboard the vice admiral of
that fleet, and that the name of the vice admiral was the Santa Maria y
Valladolid.

So soon as Captain Morgan h