n than this in the
_Alerte_. The nine partners, each of whom put up one hundred pounds
toward the expenses, were chosen from one hundred and fifty eager
applicants. Articles of agreement provided that one-twentieth of the
treasure recovered was to be received by each adventurer and he in turn
bound himself to work hard and obey orders. In the equipment was a
drilling apparatus for boring through earth and rock, an hydraulic jack
for lifting huge bowlders, portable forge and anvil, iron
wheel-barrows, crow-bars, shovels and picks galore, a water distilling
plant, a rapid fire gun, and a full complement of repeating rifles and
revolvers.

A few days before the _Alerte_ was ready to sail from Southampton an
elderly naval officer boarded the cutter and was kind enough to inform
Mr. Knight of another buried treasure which he might look for on his
route to Trinidad. The story had been hidden for many years among the
documents of the Admiralty, and as a matter of government record, it
is, of course, perfectly authentic. In 1813, the Secretary of the
Admiralty instructed Sir Richard Bickerton, commanding at Portsmouth,
to send in the first King's ship touching at Madeira a seaman who had
given information concerning a hidden treasure, in order that the truth
of his story might be tested.

The Admiralty order was entrusted to Captain Hercules Robinson of the
_Prometheus_ and in his report he states that "after being introduced
to the foreign seaman referred to in the above letter, and reading the
notes which had been taken of his information, he charged him to tell
no person what he knew or what was his business, that he was to mess
with the captain's coxswain, and that no duty would be required of him.
To this the man replied that that was all he desired, that he was
willing to give his time, and would ask no remuneration for his
intelligence."

While the _Prometheus_ was anchored at Funchal, Madeira, Captain
Robinson closely questioned the mysterious seaman whose name was
Christian Cruse. He declared that he had been in a hospital ill of
yellow fever, several years before, and with him was a shipmate, a
Spaniard, who died of the same malady. Before his death he told Cruse
that in 1804 he had been in a Spanish ship, from South America to
Cadiz, with two millions of silver in chests. When nearing the coast
of Spain, they were signaled by a neutral vessel that England had
declared war and that Cadiz was blockaded. Ra