and with her he lived, keeping ye sheep in Ye Wilderness until he
was eighteen years old." Then he apprenticed himself to a
neighboring shipwright who was building sloops and pinnaces and,
having learned the trade, set out for Boston. As a ship-carpenter
he plied his trade, spent his wages in the taverns of the
waterside and there picked up wondrous yarns of the silver-laden
galleons of Spain which had shivered their timbers on the reefs
of the Bahama Passage or gone down in the hurricanes that beset
those southerly seas. Meantime he had married a wealthy widow
whose property enabled him to go treasure-hunting on the Spanish
main. From his first voyage thither in a small vessel he escaped
with his life and barely enough treasure to pay the cost of the
expedition.

In no wise daunted he laid his plans to search for a richly
ladened galleon which was said to have been wrecked half a
century before off the coast of Hispaniola. Since his own funds
were not sufficient for this exploit, he betook himself to
England to enlist the aid of the Government. With bulldog
persistence he besieged the court of James II for a whole year,
this rough-and-ready New England shipmaster, until he was given a
royal frigate for his purpose. He failed to fish up more silver
from the sands but, nothing daunted, he persuaded other patrons
to outfit him with a small merchantman, the James and Mary, in
which he sailed for the coast of Hispaniola. This time he found
his galleon and thirty-two tons of silver. "Besides that
incredible treasure of plate, thus fetched up from seven or eight
fathoms under water, there were vast riches of Gold, and Pearls,
and Jewels . . . . All that a Spanish frigot was to be enriched
withal."