At the time of reading this report, it was to me a matter of idle wonder, to conjecture whether the noble galleon still held together at the bottom of the sea, and if the treasure was still there; to picture the many curious things that possibly lived and grew near the blackened and corroded silver and the untarnishable gold, the monsters of the sea that swam and crept over and about it, the seaweed, the sponge and the coral, the tides and the currents which swept by it, and the drowned sailors and cavaliers whose spirits possibly guarded it through the slow ages of decay and change.
Although I had looked up the island of Trebucino on the old charts, and had identified it as the bit of land now marked “Key Seven” on modern maps, yet at that time I had no thought of the possibility of recovering the treasure, much less of engaging in such a hair-brained enterprise myself. It was not until long afterward that the idea entered my mind of seeking the treasure, and then it was suggested by a serious misfortune that befell me.
Both my parents were dead, and I had no living relatives nearer than an uncle, my mother’s brother, who was my guardian, and who from time to time sent me money as I needed it. When my father died he left his estate, consisting of valuable farming lands in the beautiful Mohawk valley, heavily encumbered with debt. The money sent me for expenses at college came from a small property that had belonged to my mother. I had always looked forward to the day when, free from school life, I could undertake the management and control of my father’s farms, and return to live at the home farm, where I was born and where my early boyhood days were passed. The old Dutch-built brick house with its noble elms, the brook that ran through the meadow, so near that its murmur could be heard on still summer nights from my open bedroom window, the broad fields stretching up and down the valley as far as the eye could reach, the thousand acres under cultivation, and the thousand more of woodland and pasture, the sleek herds, the dairy, and all the joys of a farmer’s life, made up the picture which was ever in my mind. To live this life had been my ambition, and I had tolerated school only because I was told it would better fit me for the work.