For the next month we passed all our afternoons with Marah. In the mornings the Rector gave us our lessons at Strete; then we walked home to dinner; then we played with our gun and cutter, or at the sailing of our home-made boats, till about six, when we went home for tea. After tea we prepared our lessons for the next day and went upstairs to bed, where we talked of smugglers and pirates till we fell asleep. Marah soon taught us how to sail the cutter; and, what was more, he taught us how to rig her. For an hour of each fine afternoon he would give us a lesson in the quarry office, showing us how to rig model boats, which we made out of old boxes and packing-cases. In the sunny evenings of April we used to sail our fleets, ship against ship, upon the great freshwater lake into which the trout-brook passes on its way to the sea. Sometimes we would have a fleet of ships of the line anchored close to the shore, and then we would fire at them with the gun and with one of Marah's pistols till we had shattered them to 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!"