eared
to be a rock. An Indian was sent down to fetch it as a souvenir of the
bootless quest, that they might, however, carry home something with
them. This diver presently bobbed up with the sea feather, and
therewithal a surprising story "that he perceived a number of great
guns in the watery world, where he had found the feather; the report of
which great guns exceedingly astonished the whole company; and at once
turned their despondencies for their ill success into assurances that
they had now lit upon the true spot of ground which they had been
looking for; and they were further confirmed in these assurances when
upon further diving, the Indian fetched up a _Sow_ as they styled it,
or a lump of silver worth perhaps two or three hundred pounds. Upon
this they prudently buoyed the place, that they might readily find it
again; and they went back unto their Captain whom for some while they
distressed with nothing but such bad news as they formerly thought they
must have carried him. Nevertheless, they so slipped the Sow of silver
on one side under the table (where they were now sitting with the
Captain, and hearing him express his resolutions to wait still
patiently upon the Providence of God under these disappointments), that
when he should look on one side, he might see that Odd Thing before
him. At last he saw it and cried out with some agony:

"'_What is this? Whence comes this?_' And then with changed
countenance they told him how and where they got it. Then said he,
'_Thanks be to God! We are made!_' And so away they went, all hands
to work; wherein they had this further piece of remarkable prosperity,
that whereas if they had first fallen upon that part of the Spanish
wreck where the Pieces of Eight had been stowed in bags among the
ballast, they had seen more laborious and less enriching times of it.
Now, most happily, they first fell upon that room in the wreck where
the Bullion had been stored up, and then so prospered in this new
fishery that in a little while they had without the loss of any man's
life, brought up _Thirty Two Tons_ of silver, for it was now come to
measuring silver by tons."

While these jolly treasure seekers were hauling up the silver hand over
fist, one Adderley, a seaman of the New Providence in the Bahamas, was
hired with his vessel to help in the gorgeous salvage operations.
Alas, after Adderley had recovered six tons of bullion, the sight of so
much treasure was too much f