s in different kinds of money, taken
from different ships of different nations--it is all good money._

"_Now friends, I have told you all that is necessary for you to know, to
recover these treasures and I leave it in your hands and it is my
request that when you read this, you will at once take steps to recover
it, and when you get it, it is my wish that you use it in a way most
good for yourself and others. This is all I ask._

"_Now thanking you for your kindness and care and with my best wishes
for your prosperity and happiness, I will close, as I am so weak I can
hardly hold the pen._

"_I am, truly your friend,_

HENRY P. TOBIAS.

"Henry P. Tobias?" said Charlie Webster. "Never heard of him. Did you,
John?"

"Never!"

And then there was a stir in the outer office. Some one was asking for
the Secretary of the Treasury. So John rose.

"I must get to work now, boys. We can talk it over to-night." And then,
handing me the manuscript: "Take it home with you, if you like, and
look it over at your leisure."

As Charlie Webster and I passed out into the street, I noticed the
fellow of the sinister pock-marked visage standing near the window of
the inner office. The window was open, and any one standing outside,
could easily have heard everything that passed inside. As the fellow
caught my eye, he smiled unpleasantly, and slunk off down the street.

"Who is that fellow?" I asked Charlie. "He's a queer looking specimen."

"Yes! he's no good. Yet he's more half-witted than bad, perhaps. His
face is against him, poor devil."

And we went our ways, till the evening, I to post home to the further
study of the narrative. There seated on the pleasant veranda, I went
over it carefully, sentence by sentence. While I was reading, some one
called me indoors. I put down the manuscript on the little bamboo table
at my side, and went in. When I returned, a few moments afterward, the
manuscript was gone!

CHAPTER III

_In Which I Charter the "Maggie Darling."_

As luck would have it, the loss, or rather the theft, of Henry P.
Tobias's narrative, was not so serious as it at first seemed, for it
fortunately chanced that John Saunders had had it copied; but the theft
remained none the less mysterious. What could be the motive of the thief
with whom--quite unreasonably and doubtless unjustly--my fancy persisted
in connecting that unprepossessing face so