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“The deck and rail were a foot thick with mud, and the small, spar-deck guns could hardly be distinguished. I saw at once that I would need help, and signaled to be hauled up. On deck I told the news and all hands, even the Jap, went crazy over it. We got out two more diving suits, rigged a bulb for each, and Pango, Peters, and myself went down again.

“Now, this isn’t a yarn of the finding of that treasure. Anyone can invent such yarns, and I’ve read dozens of them. They all wind up successfully, with each man wealthy and happy. This is a yarn of the men who found that treasure, and what happened to them. So, I’ll just say that we didn’t find a skeleton or a ghost when we got below decks. All hands were up, I suppose, when that ship went down, and the rush of water as she plunged, washed them off. We found seven big chests in the ‘tween-decks forward of the cabin, and in them all were coins, and jewelry, and here and there in the mess, what might have been an opal, or some kind of jewel. All the stuff was black from the action of the salt water; but we knew we had the real thing, and hooked on tackles. We had to come up to help each time we lifted a chest, for, after the chest was out of water, it was too heavy for the crowd above; but at last they were all up, and stowed snugly on the floor of the cabin. Then, after final search for other loot worth taking, we picked up our anchor and cleared out, not yet having decided where we were going.

“We were pirates under the law, and didn’t know but what all the revenue cutters on the coast were looking for us, for the theft of that schooner. But with seven millions of bullion and jewels, melted down, counted up, and translated into cash in some bank, we didn’t care for the charge of piracy. The real trouble was to get that stuff translated, and while we argued we sailed due east, out into the broad Atlantic. Peters, the young enthusiast, had been a jeweler, and he told us that nothing short of a blast of air in conjunction with the heat of a fire would melt gold and silver. Well, where could we set up a blast furnace with not a dollar in the party? My suggestion–and I was backed by Gleason, Peters, and old man Sullivan–was that we count out the loot, separate every salable jewel, and make some big port like New York, Liverpool, or Rio Janeiro, sell the jewels and get ready money with which to plan for the disposal of the rest; but we had to deal with men like Pango, Christo, Pedro, and the three Dutchmen, who didn’t know what they were up against. They wanted an immediate count up and division; then, each man to go his way. The nonsense of it did not strike them; thirteen men to divide up seven heavy chests–each one shouldering seven-thirteenths of a load that took the whole thirteen to lift with a four-fold tackle. We asked the Jap cook what he thought, but he had no opinion.

“It’s somewhat curious how the different men of that bunch had different ideas of what they wanted. Young Peters wanted to go back to his native town and win the girl that had soured on him because he was poor. Pango, Pedro, and the two Sou’wegians only wanted a big drunk. Old man Sullivan wanted a course in a Nautical School and a first mate’s certificate. The three Germans wanted to get to New York and set up in the saloon business. Gleason wanted to study law, and I wanted to study medicine and be a doctor, a gentleman who could enter any society in the world. The Jap didn’t give out his aspirations.