ir almost as
they rise, it is a great danger to mariners.

A little farther to the eastward is Lanzarote, which is very
mountainous, possessing a volcano of its own, where a violent eruption
took place not very long ago, when a stream of lava from two hundred to
three hundred yards broad spread out into the sea like a river, the
floating pumice-stone being picked up by passing vessels miles away.

For this piece of information I am indebted to the navigating officer,
who happened to be telling one of the young midshipmen all about the
place as I was attending to a job the boatswain had set me to aft.

I also heard him tell the same young gentleman a queer yarn about a
buried treasure which is supposed to be concealed near a little cove on
the southern extremity of the island, called `Janubio.' The story goes
that, in the beginning of the century--I think the navigator said it was
in the year 1804, but I am not quite certain--the crew of a South
American Spanish treasure ship, bound to Cadiz from Lima with produce
and which had besides over two millions of dollars in chests aboard,
mutinied, and murdered their captain and officers; the rascals then
making off in the long boat with this treasure towards an island, which,
from the description given, must have been either Lanzarote or one of
the Salvages.

On this island, whichever it was, the dollars were carried ashore and
buried above high-water mark in a snug little bay to the south; the
mutineers, according to the prevailing superstition of such gentry,
burying the body of their murdered captain on top of the treasure, so
that his ghost might prevent any unprivileged intruders from meddling
with their cache.

The navigator said, just as I was going down below after finishing my
job, that this tale was told to an English sailor by one of the
surviving mutineers; and he added that the Admiralty were so much
impressed by its appearance of truth that Admiral Hercules Robinson, the
grandfather, I believe, of our present High Commissioner at the Cape of
Good Hope, was actually sent out to make a search for the treasure when
in command of HMS _Prometheus_, in 1813.

We coaled at Teneriffe, putting into the harbour of Santa Cruz for this
purpose; and Mick and I were much struck by the fact of the black ladies
who carried the baskets of coal on their heads along the jetty from the
shore to the ship, doing the job, too, in first-rate style and as good
as any gang of whar