“Because,” said I, “the Spaniards know that there is treasure on board. They also know it is Spanish treasure and how got by us. Suppose you tranship them; they arrive at a port and state what they know. The news that we have salved the treasure reaches the ears of the owner of it, who thereupon makes application for restitution. Our business is to keep clear of difficulties.” “Yaw, dot do I see. But hark you, Mr. Fielding, ve keep der Spaniards und ve arrive home, und der Spaniards go ashore, und den? I ox, und den? Vill dey not shpeak all der same as dey vould shpoke in von of der own ports down here?” “I have considered that; so, too, has Captain Greaves. There is a remedy, but it does not lie in transferring them in these seas.” He shrugged his shoulders and the subject dropped. But the long and short of Greaves’s policy in this particular matter was; get the money home in safety first, bring off the treasure clear of the fifty sea risks and perils of the age--the gale, the shoal, the leak, the pirate, the enemy’s ships of the State. It will be time enough to trouble yourself with what the Spaniards and others of the crew may whisper ashore when the money has been landed, divided, exchanged into gold of the realm, with plenty of leisure for a disappearance that might run into time should the news of the salving of the treasure of the _Casada_ ever reach the ears of the owners of the silver. We carried good strong winds to the southward. The days grew shorter, there was an edge in the weather let the breeze blow whence it would; the swell of the sea was long and dark. We bent strong canvas for rounding the Horn, and in other ways prepared for a conflict which in those days had a significance that has departed from that wrestle. The seamen put on warm clothes; there was never a need now for the small awning aft; the sun shone white, as though the dazzle of his disk was the reflection of his beam on snow. I say his light was white and often cold when we had yet to swim many hundreds of miles to fetch the parallel of the Horn. In all the weeks we occupied in measuring our way from the island ere rounding the headland for the Atlantic we fell in with but one ship. It was our good luck, and there was nothing surprising in it either. In this present year of my writing my story it may be your chance to sail over a thousand leagues of Pacific water and meet with nothing. It was a lonelier ocean in my time than it is now. Northward, on the equatorial parallel, there was, indeed, some life, but southward the great liquid highway that now every year foams to the shearing stems of half a thousand stately ships, was, in the year of the _Black Watch_, scarce less barren as a breast of sea than when it was swept for the galleon by the perspective glasses of Dampier and Woodes Rogers.