n-wool.

For a long moment we held our breath, gazing at each other with
eyes which asked the same question. Then Dugald lifted a corner of
the sheet of cotton and plucked it away.

At once all the hues of the rainbow seemed to be flashing and
sparkling before us. Rubies were there like great drops of the
blood that the chest and its treasure had wrung from the hearts of
men; sapphires, mirroring the blue of the tropic sky; emeralds,
green as the island verdure; pearls, white as the milk of the
cocoanuts and softly luminous as the phosphorescent foam which
broke on the beach in the darkness. And there were diamonds that
caught gleams of all the others' beauty, and then mocked them with
a matchless splendor.

Some of the stones lay loose upon their bed of cotton; others were
in massive settings of curious old-time workmanship. Every gem was
of exceptional size and beauty, the pearls, I knew at once, were
the rarest I had ever looked upon. They were strung in a necklace,
and had a very beautiful pendant of mingled pearls and diamonds.

There were nine heavy bracelets, all jewel-set; twenty-three rings,
eight of them for the hand of a man. Some of these rings contained
the finest of the diamonds, except for three splendid unset stones.
There were numbers of elaborate old-fashioned earrings, two
rope-like chains of gold adorned with jewels at intervals, and
several jeweled lockets. There was a solid gold snuff-box,
engraved with a coat of arms and ornamented with seventeen fine
emeralds. There were, besides the three diamonds, eighty-two unset
stones, among them, wrapped by itself in cotton, a ruby of
extraordinary size and luster. And there was a sort of coronet or
tiara, sown all over with clear white brilliants.

There is the inventory, not entirely complete, of the treasure
which we found hidden under the false bottom of the chest, a
treasure whose existence none of those who had striven and slain
and perished for the sake of the Spanish doubloons can have
suspected. The secret of it died with the first guardian of the
chest, the merchant of Lima who went overboard from the _Bonny
Lass_ on that stormy night ninety years ago. Now sea and sun and
sand had done their work and warped the wood of the chest enough to
make us masters of its mystery. And we sat in the sand-heaped
cock-pit of the wrecked sloop, playing like children with our
sparkling toys.

Ours? Yes, for whether or not there were an infec