For three weeks and better did the ‘Will-o’-the-Wisp’ lie off and on by the shoals. For three weeks the launch and shallop were day by day employed searching and dragging the reefs, but we found no treasure-wreck. The remains of the ship to which Bedloe had conducted us were thoroughly searched, indeed the deck was altogether torn up, and some trifling amount of Dutch coin, with two good iron guns, and the small brass cannon were recovered, but we gained no richer prize. Day after day, even when the glare of the sun was at its fiercest, might our boats be seen floating along the channels of the reef, two men at either bow, leaning over the gunwale, so that their eyes were removed only an inch or so from the water: but, save coral and sand, they saw nought besides. Still I felt certain that the treasure lay upon the reefs, and we had many disputes as to the possibility of the dwarf having managed, by flinging certain fragments of rock, which we found upon the eastern edge of the shoal, and each of which was the nucleus of immense masses of clustering sea-weed, to hide the precious deposit from strange eyes. We all agreed that little or nothing of the ship could possibly be remaining; but, as it was likely that the treasure was shipped in strong boxes either of iron, or secured with that metal, it was quite possible that these lay in crevices of the rocks, their great weight mooring them, and that the dwarf employed his leisure time before our arrival in covering them with the sea-weed grown stones of which I spoke. But all these opinions were but idle wind. We knew not the truth. Some of the elder seamen would have it that the whole was the work of the devil; that the dwarf was a demon who haunted those lonely shelves to disturb and perplex poor mariners; and in the evening, when we sat upon deck smoking and drinking in the grateful twilight, many a dismal tale was rehearsed of phantoms of the sea, and particularly of the unearthly creatures whom many of the crew believed to dwell upon islands as yet unvisited by mariners, and who try to scare away the human intruders upon their domains.