Spaniards under vehement temptation, and when they
could do as they pleased, sufficiently intelligible.

"But certainly the coffin over the treasure looked somewhat theatrical
and gave it the air of Sadler's Wells, or a novel, rather than matter
of fact. I enquired, therefore, from Christian Cruse why the body of
the captain was thus buried, and he replied that he understood the
object was, that in case any person should find the marks of their
proceedings and dig to discover what they had been about, they might
come to the body and go no further."

After further reflection, Captain Robinson convinced himself that the
Spanish seaman had been clear-headed when he made his confession to
Cruse, and that it would have been beyond him deliberately to invent
the statement as fiction. The _Prometheus_ was headed for the
Salvages, and arriving off the largest of these islands, a bay was
found and a level white patch of beach above high water mark situated
as had been described to Christian Cruse. Fifty sailors were sent
ashore to dig with shovels and boarding pikes, making the sand fly in
the hope of winning the reward of a hundred dollars offered to the man
who found the murdered captain's coffin.

The search lasted only one day because the anchorage was unsafe and
Captain Robinson was under orders to return to Madeira. Arriving
there, other orders recalled his ship to England for emergency duty and
the treasure hunt was abandoned. So far as known, no other attempt had
been made to find the chests of dollars until Mr. Knight decided to act
on the information and explore the Salvages in passing.

Of this little group of islands it was decided by the company of the
_Alerte_ that the one called the Great Piton most closely answered the
description given Christian Cruse by the Spanish pirate. A bay was
found with a strip of white sand above high-water mark, and Mr. Knight
and his shipmates pitched a camp nearby and had the most sanguine
expectations of bringing to light the rude coffin of the murdered
captain.

A series of trenches was opened up after a systematic plan, and some
crumbling bones discovered, but the ship's surgeon refused to swear
that they had belonged to a human being. The trouble was that the
surface of the place had been considerably changed by the action of
waves and weather, which made the Admiralty charts of a century before
very misleading. The destination of the _Alerte_ was Trinidad, after
al