bits and sunk them. Sometimes Marah would tell us tales of the
smugglers and pirates of long ago, especially about a pirate named Van
Horn, who was burned in his ship off Mugeres Island, near Campeachy,
more than a hundred years back.

"His ship was full of gold and silver," said Marah. "You can see her
at a very low tide even now. I've seen her myself. She is all burnt to
a black coal, a great Spanish galleon, with all her guns in her. I was
out fishing in the boat, and a mate said, 'Look there. There she is!'
and I saw her as plain as plain among all the weeds in the sea. The
water's very clear there, and there she was, with the fishes dubbing
their noses on her. And she's as full of gold as the Bank of
England. The seas'll have washed Van Horn's bones white, and the bones
of his crew too; eaten white by the fish and washed white, lying there
in all that gold under the sea, with the weeds growing over them. It
gives you a turn to think of it, don't it?"

"Why don't they send down divers to get the gold?" asked Hugh.

"Why!" said Marah. "There's many has tried after all that gold. But
some the shacks took and some the Spaniards took, and then there was
storms and fighting. None ever got a doubloon from her. But
somebody'll have a go for it again. I tried once, long ago. That was
an unlucky try, though. Many poor men died along of that one. They
died on the decks," he added. "It was like old Van Horn cursing
us. They died in my arms, some of 'em. Seven and twenty seamen, and
one of them was my mate, Charlie!"

I have wandered away from my story, I'm afraid, remembering these
scraps of the past; but it all comes back to me now, so clearly that