"
And this proposal was received with acclamations, as was a second
from the same source, devoting a certain percentage of each share
to Cookie, to whom the news of his good fortune was to come later
as a great surprise.
As an earnest of our riches, we had the two bags of doubloons which
the pirates had recovered from the fleshless fingers of the dead
man. They were old worn coins, most of them, many dating from the
seventeenth century, and bearing the effigies of successive kings
of Spain. Each disk of rich, yellow Peruvian gold, dug from the
earth by wretched sweating slaves and bearing the name of a narrow
rigid tyrant, had a history, doubtless, more wild and bloody than
even that we knew. The merchant of Lima and his servant, Bill
Halliwell, and afterward poor Peter had died for them. For their
sake we had been captives in fear of death, and for their sake now
four wretched beings were prisoners in the treasure-cave and two
more cursed, fate and their bonds within hearing of our outraged
ears. And who knew how much more of crime and blood and violence
we should send forth into the world with the long-buried treasure?
Who knew--and, ah, me, who cared? So riotous was the gold-lust in
my veins that I think if I had known the chest to be another
Pandora's box I should still have cried out to open it.
Shortly before sundown Cuthbert and Cookie were despatched by
Dugald Shaw to the cliff above the cave with supplies for the
inhumed pirates.
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