hulk, and he
wondered whether perchance it might be his good fortune to find another
such fleet in the harbour upon his arrival there. If so--well, Admiral
Hawkins had spared the treasure which he found there, for the best of
all reasons, namely, that his own ships were in no condition to engage
in a fight with the shore batteries, which it would be necessary to
silence before he could seize the plate ships, while, on the other hand,
it was imperative that he should enter the harbour to refit, and he
could not do so without the consent of the Spanish authorities;
therefore he had been obliged to sign a convention whereby in
consideration of his receiving permission to refit in peace and without
hindrance, he was to leave the plate ships unmolested. Hawkins had
scrupulously adhered to his part of the agreement, but the Spaniards had
deliberately broken theirs; and George was determined that now they
should dearly pay for their treachery, if Dame Fortune would but favour
him. He talked the matter over, first with Dyer, and then they together
discussed it with Basset, the captain of the soldiers, and Heard, the
purser; with the result that it was unanimously agreed among them that
they would make a determined attempt upon the fleet, if it should happen
to be in harbour upon their arrival.

But, in order to insure the success of their daring project, it was
necessary that they should be possessed of the fullest information
possible; therefore when Martinez came on deck that evening, after
several hours of refreshing sleep, George informed the unfortunate man,
in a perfectly friendly way, that he and the survivors of his crew were
prisoners; and demanded to know what had become of the despatches with
which he had been entrusted. Martinez, who proved to be quite a simple
straightforward sailor, at once replied that he had them in his pocket;
and upon Saint Leger demanding them he handed them over with merely a
formal protest; whereupon George found himself possessed of a small
packet carefully enveloped in several folds of oiled silk in which the
honest skipper had wrapped them prior to jumping overboard, when
escaping from his wrecked ship.

Of course George opened the despatches forthwith, to find that they
consisted, for the most part, of documents which possessed no interest
at all for him; but there was one letter which furnished him with
precisely the information that it was most important for him to possess.
It w