There was a solid gold snuff-box,
engraved with a coat of arms and ornamented with seventeen fine
emeralds. There were, besides the three diamonds, eighty-two unset
stones, among them, wrapped by itself in cotton, a ruby of
extraordinary size and luster. And there was a sort of coronet or
tiara, sown all over with clear white brilliants.
There is the inventory, not entirely complete, of the treasure
which we found hidden under the false bottom of the chest, a
treasure whose existence none of those who had striven and slain
and perished for the sake of the Spanish doubloons can have
suspected. The secret of it died with the first guardian of the
chest, the merchant of Lima who went overboard from the _Bonny
Lass_ on that stormy night ninety years ago. Now sea and sun and
sand had done their work and warped the wood of the chest enough to
make us masters of its mystery. And we sat in the sand-heaped
cock-pit of the wrecked sloop, playing like children with our
sparkling toys.
Ours? Yes, for whether or not there were an infection of piracy in
the very air of the island, so that to seize with the high hand, to
hold with the iron grasp, seemed the law of life, we decided
without a qualm against the surrender of our treasure-trove to its
technical owners. Technical only; for one felt that, in essence,
all talk of ownership by this man or that had long ago become idle.
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