“Who are you?” said the master of the schooner, when the man stood upon the deck.
“Christian Hawke, carpenter of the _Morning Star_,” he answered.
“What’s become of your ship?” said the other.
“Why,” answered Hawke, speaking in a hoarse level growling voice, “we was becalmed, and the captain told me to get into a boat and nail a piece of copper, which had worked loose, on the rudder. We was flying-light.”
“Where from?” said the captain, suspiciously.
“From New Orleans to Havannah, for orders.”
“Well,” continued Hawke, “I was hammering away all right, and doing my bit, when a squall came along, and the ship, with a kick-up of her stern, let go the painter of her own accord and bolted into the thickness; ’twas like muck when that squall bursted, with me a-hollering; I lost sight of the vessel, and should have been a dead man if it hadn’t been for that there island.” After a pause. “What island is it, sir?” he asked.
“An island fifteen mile east of Rum Cay,” answered the captain.
Hawke had got it into his head that the paper in the snuff-box was the record of a treasure secret, but he was afraid to exhibit it and ask questions. He did not know in what language it was written, whether, in fact, it might not be in good English, and he thought if he showed the paper and it proved a confession of money-burial, or something of that sort, the man who read it, knowing where the island was, would forestall him.
On the arrival of the schooner at Kingston, Jamaica, Christian Hawke went ashore. He was without money or clothes, and at once sold the skeleton’s watch and hair guard, for which he received thirty dollars. The purchaser of the watch looked at Hawke curiously across the counter after paying down the money, and said—
“It’s a family hairloom,” answered Hawke, pointing to the watchguard with a singular grin.
“This here vatch,” said Mr. Solomons, “is a hundred year old, and a vast curiosity in her vurks. Have you more of this sort of thing to sell? If so, I was the most liberal dealer of any man in Jamaica.”
Hawke gave him a nod and walked out. He found a ship next morning and signed articles as carpenter and second mate. She was sailing for England in a week from that date, and was a plump, old-fashioned barque of four hundred tons. At the sailors’ lodging-house he had put up at he fell into conversation one evening, a day or two before he sailed, with a dark, black-eyed, handsome, intelligent foreign seaman, who called himself simply Pedro. This fellow did not scruple to hint at experiences gained both as a contrabandist and piccaroon.