[Illustration: One fell dead, and another was shot through the
shoulder.]
THE
PIRATE’S GOLD
BY
GORDON STABLES, M.D., C.M.
THOMAS NELSON AND SONS, LTD.
LONDON, EDINBURGH, AND NEW YORK
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN AT
THE PRESS OF THE PUBLISHERS
PREFATORY NOTE.
A preface to a story like the following is hardly needed; yet it is well
the reader should know that the tale is not merely founded on fact, but
nearly all fact.
The buried treasure was found in Amelia, an island off the coast of
Florida, about the beginning of the present year; and I daresay that,
although the first, I shall not be the last to weave a bit of romance
around the strange, strange narrative.
GORDON-STABLES, M.D., R.N.
_CONTENTS_
_I._ _Far over the Hills_ 9
_II._ _A Hero in Humble Life_ 22
_III._ _The Isles of the Beautiful West_ 35
_IV._ _The Arch-Pirates Morgan and Mansvelt_ 48
_V._ _Fighting on Land and at Sea_ 62
_VI._ _Fever’s Dreams--Strange Adventure on Shore_ 75
_VII._ _Aileen O’More--Hiding the Treasure_ 87
_VIII._ _“A Deed of Dreadful Note”--All Sail for
the Island of Gold_ 100
_IX._ _In Search of Gold_ 112
_X._ _An Anxious Time--The Chase and Battle--How
all Ended_ 125
_LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS_
_One fell dead, and another was shot through the
shoulder_ Frontispiece
_After we had left there was a terrible explosion_ 48
_The fellow went down like a shot, and lay there
stunned and insensible_ 128
THE PIRATE’S GOLD.
CHAPTER I.
FAR OVER THE HILLS.
“Oh, would I were a boy again,
When life seemed formed of sunny years,
And all the heart then knew of pain
Was wept away in transient tears.”
SAM. F. SMITH.
It was autumn--autumn, that is, as we reckon the seasons in the Scottish
Highlands. For August was wellnigh at a close. The heather, it is true,
still bloomed crimson and red on the mountain sides and the beautiful
braes, but the days were now appreciably shorter, and hot though they
might be during the day, soon after the sun went down,
“And left the red clouds to preside o’er the scene,”
the winds felt chilly, and sometimes a little raw.
This particular evening was no exception, and darkness came on a full
hour sooner, with no moon and never a star to light me from the hill
where I had lingered, with my beautiful Gordon setter Dash, longer than
usual. I did not care to return without a fairly good bag, and the birds
on the bit of shooting I called mine were getting a little wild.
I was living with the minister of Glen T---- in Ross-shire. He was an
old man, and did not care to go to the hill much himself. “The scenery
all around,” he used to say smiling, “is good enough for me, and I mean
to live and die here without ever leaving the glen again.”
Well might he have said the scenery was good enough for him. I have
never seen wilder or more beautiful in any part of the world. Had you
climbed a high hill, you would have said it was a chaos of mountains;
but all between these were braes clad in silver drooping birch, with
here and there a patch of dark and solemn pine wood, the abode of hawks
and crows, with many a bird of prey besides. Higher up was the crimson
heather, while patches of snow were to be seen in clefts and hollows
highest of all, and this snow never left.
But it was the multitude of small lochs or lakes that would have struck
you as most marvellous of all. Not a glen that had not two or three of
these, with perhaps silver streams between, and torrents or cataracts
roaring down the mountain sides--the marvel being where the water came
from. At times, indeed, it appeared to roll out of the very sky itself.
Well, it was late before I fired my final cartridge, and by a fluke, for
I had not aimed, bagged my last bird.
Then Dash and I started on our long journey to the manse. Ten miles if a
foot; but I knew the road well, and had known it from boyhood. I had
been since then all over the world, and had more wild adventures than I
may ever be able to describe in print; still I remembered the road,
or--I believed I did. English fields and meadows may change in a few
years into towns and streets, but the everlasting hills are the same for
ages.
“Well, Dash, my boy,” I said, “I’m very hungry, whatever you may be.”
Dash wagged his flag of a tail to intimate that he too could do with a
pick of something.
I petted and smoothed him.
“Dash,” I said, “there is a short cut across the hills and along the
edge of cliff Eurna--a thousand feet perpendicular it is, Dash. It was
here where a shepherd fell over after a sheep. But I’ve often skirted
it in the dark, so don’t be afraid. Let us try. This will save us four
miles, doggie.”
On we went now merrily enough, I singing to make the road seem shorter.
But it was getting darker and darker every minute. By the time we--that
is, Dash and I, for I ever look upon a dog as a companion second only to
a human being, and often far before one--reached Ault na Geoul, a wild,
dark mountain stream that came roaring through a gorge not five hundred
yards above, forming many a white and chafing rapid, and many a deep,
dark pool, in which they said the kelpies[A] dwelt, night had so far
fallen that scarcely could I see to gather a pocketful of round stones,
the need for which will be seen presently.
It was just here where the short cut commenced, and once safely over the
hill skirting one of the most dangerous cliffs in the Highlands, we
should only have two miles further to walk.
We forded the stream, which was low at present, and soon after I found
the little winding path, and we commenced the ascent.
The brae, and indeed all the hill, was covered with drooping birch.
There was not a star to be seen to-night, and clouds which must have
been half a mile through hung low over the mountains. Not that we could
see them. Oh no; so dangerously dark was it that if I stretched my gun
straight out in front of me I could not see the muzzle.
You will now find out what was to be the use of the stones I had
collected. You must know, then, that the little path through the birch
wood led almost directly up a hill or brae fully one thousand feet high,
and directly on to and at right angles to the edge of the fearful
precipice I have already mentioned. It then turned off to the right. The
capital letter =T= will represent a plan of the situation. The shaft of
the letter is the pathway leading upwards from the glen and the stream
below, the upper or cross-bar is the edge of the perpendicular cliff,
and close to this we must get before turning off to the right, and
descending as near to the precipice edge as possible.
So long as the path led upwards I was safe enough, but by-and-by we were
on level ground, and now the real danger commenced. We might walk
straight over that black and fearful cliff.
In my boyhood’s days, myself and my companions, on many a dark, “mirk”
night, had done as I was about to do now, and we never had an accident.
I could not have been more than from forty to sixty yards from the cliff
edge, when I ordered Dash to keep close behind me. Then bending low to
the ground, I threw a stone a few yards ahead of me, listening intently.
I heard it fall on solid ground.
We cautiously advanced some distance, and I threw out another. That too
I heard fall, and so did the third and fourth.
_But the fifth made no sound._
We were close to the cliff, and it had gone over. I tried the experiment
again and again to make sure; then turning directly off to the right,
was overjoyed at finding the foot-way. In no part of the way down could
we have been farther from this black, wet precipice than four or five
yards. But the stones I threw kept us safe, and we were soon down and in
a bonnie, bosky dell at the foot.
* * * * *
It has been my lot and luck in life, all through so far, to get every
now and then mixed up with strange adventures. People who do me the
honour to read my books often give me credit for an inventive faculty
when no such credit is deserved. My drawers are filled with piles of
old log-books detailing scenes and incidents that I have been mixed up
in, so that I really have not to depend on imagination for my facts, as
many other writers have. This is the advantage of having been a sailor,
and of being still a wanderer and a rover. But little did I think
to-night that my having taken that short cut would give me
subject-matter for so strange--because true--a story as that which I am
now writing.
Let me call the wooded dingle in which I now stood with dog and gun Glen
Foogle, because that is not its name. It was a bonnie wee glen when I
knew it before, and that was long, long ago. There were some green,
cultivated fields here that were then let as a farm to old Donal’ Graat,
who kept a few cows and a sheepie or two, and was content to live and
die in that long, low, thatched hut, as his fathers had done before him.
The fields bordered a beautiful little loch of water, so brown that even
the fish caught here were as red in flesh as a salmon, and many a dozen
I had lifted out of it.
Clumps of dark pine trees and weeping birches were everywhere.
I had no idea that any great change had been made in this wee glen. I
had heard that old Donal’ was dead, and that his son had grown up from a
tow-haired, bare-headed, kilted laddie, to a tall and stalwart young
man, and had enlisted into the “gallant Forty-twa;” but that was all.
In Tam o’ Shanter’s memorable ride
“As he frae Ayr ae nicht did canter,”
he was brought up with a round turn, as sailors would say, on nearing an
old ruined church.
He was by this time
“Past the birks[B] and meikle[C] stane
Whare drunken Charlie brak’s neck-bane:
And thro’ the whins, and by the cairn
Whare hunters fand the murder’d bairn;
And near the thorn, aboon the well,
Whare Mungo’s mither hang’d hersel.
Before him Doon pours all his floods;
The doubling storm roars thro’ the woods;
The lightnings flash from pole to pole,
Near and more near the thunders roll;--
When, glimmering thro’ the groaning trees,
Kirk-Alloway seem’d in a bleeze;
Thro’ ilka bore [hole] the beams were glancing,
And loud resounded mirth and dancing.”
Well, Tam o’ Shanter was in a state of very great astonishment indeed,
and so was I as soon as I turned a corner and opened out the terrace or
green platform on which Donal’ Graat’s old-fashioned Highland hut was
wont to stand.
For a few moments I thought I must be dreaming. The little table-land
above the loch had been transformed into terraced gardens, and these, at
this moment, were all brilliantly lit up with coloured lights and pretty
Chinese lanterns, that hung from the shrubs and trees, and waved gently
too and fro on the soft summer’s air.
Above all was the broad and well-lit balcony of a villa, and from this
resounded not mirth and dancing, but mirth and music.
I did just as Tam o’ Shanter did--and had it been a crime to have done
so, I believe I should have done it just the same--
“I ventur’d forward on the licht.”
Yes, I opened the gateway near a little pier that jutted out into the
loch, and went up one flight of broad steps after another till I stood
close beneath the veranda, dog at heel and gun under my arm. Not until I
felt the glare of the lamp-light on my face, and knew that every eye was
bent upon me, did I recognize the fact that my presence here was really
an unwarrantable intrusion.
Those on the veranda may be briefly described as follows, for they were
not numerous:--There were first two or three ladies of uncertain age,
one seated on a footstool, the rest on light chairs; there was a
brown-faced, good-looking man of probably fifty years of age, evidently
a sailor every inch, leaning back in an easy arm-chair, and with a very
large meerschaum in his hand and mouth. Not far off stood a most
beautiful young girl, of probably fourteen or fifteen, holding a violin
which she had been playing; and near her feet, reclining on a Highland
plaid, was a young fellow, certainly not twenty, fondling a guitar.
I felt, of course, that an apology was needed, and proceeded to make
one, lame though it doubtless appeared.
“My friends,” I said, “when I tell you that I really have no excuse for
intruding on your privacy, you will wonder why I am here. I shall retire
at once when I inform you that long ago, before I went to sea, I used to
reside with the minister of the strath beyond here. I have come back to
pay him a visit. I was shooting to-day, and being overtaken by night,
took the short cut home by the precipice side.”
“What!” exclaimed the gentleman, “you skirted that fearful precipice in
the pitchy darkness that others are afraid to go near by day?”
“I’m an old mountaineer,” I said, and then described how I had managed
safely and well.
“There used to be no house here,” I continued, “only an old hut; and
when I came suddenly on a scene of light and loveliness, I just came up
through the garden to see whether or not I was dreaming. And now
good-night, friends.”
“Nay, nay,” cried the gentleman. “Even if you had not told me, I could
have seen you were a sailor. We are just going to dine; you must join
us.”
“I am dusty and not dressed.”
“The Highland dress is always dress.”
“But the minister! he will think I have met with an accident.”
“Mungo, our ghillie, shall run over to the manse and explain all.”
I laughed now pleasantly enough and consented to stay, for indeed I was
both faint and hungry.
That was as nice a little dinner as ever I remember partaking of. The
mountain trout from the loch beneath were far better than salmon. There
was mountain mutton, too, that had been fed in the glen. The vegetables
were delicious, and so too was the fruit.
I felt certain before an hour was over that I was in a fair way to
become very friendly, not only with Captain Reeves himself, but with
pretty little Mina Reeves and young Don Miguel M‘Lean.
A strange name, I must admit, but the lad himself was somewhat strange.
His father--dead--was half a Spaniard; his mother--at this time living
in the “Granite City”--was sister to Captain Reeves.
I will tell you, reader, more about Mina and Don Miguel in my next
chapter.
Here let me say that I spent a most enjoyable evening. I am a very poor
smoker, but my host’s cigars were so exceedingly mild that I could not
help indulging in one at least.
This would not hurt a fully-developed man. It is to boys or young men
that the too seductive weed proves so very harmful, weakening the nerves
and rendering the heart as soft and flabby as that of a rabbit.
Many a story of his wild life at sea did the captain tell me, and
naturally enough I was not far behind in spinning a yarn (true). Not
only did Miguel himself and Mina sit near us, seemingly entranced, but
the old maids of uncertain age as well.
Just once or twice did we break up to listen to the Don’s guitar and
the sweet, sad strains of Mina’s violin; then the instruments were laid
aside for the night, and we were ordered to commence again.
“Why,” I cried at last, “it is long past ten!”
“Yes,” said Reeves, smiling; “but just keep your seat, for I sent word
that you would not be home to-night.”
And really, reader, as I reseated myself I felt that I was not a bit
sorry.