Moreover I was to meet men, and find adventures, that made my treasure hunt for the time being a secondary interest. I intended before I quitted the Barbary coast to make the search; meanwhile I was content to take what experiences navy life brought me, awaiting my opportunity to enter the desert in search of the riches. The Egyptian, I had reason to believe, had been killed in the hurricane. The secret of the treasure was safe with me. Time would unfold my opportunity. As for those who are following this chronicle, let us hope that the thrilling naval activities these pages will now mirror will be more absorbing even than the personal experiences I have told about; yet if any wonder as to the result of my quest for treasure, let me encourage them by saying that it was the historic events I am now about to relate that placed me at last in a position to reach the spot where the jewels and trinkets described by the rector were buried. My good friend Samuel Childs found an old comrade on board the _George Washington_--one Reuben James. The two had been shipmates in the merchant service. Reuben, though now scarcely more than a boy, was a veteran sailor. He had gone to sea at the age of thirteen, had sailed around the world, and had every sort of experience that comes to a seaman. All of us became members of the frigate's crew, and Samuel and I were chosen for Reuben's watch, so that the three of us had many a chance to talk things over. From Reuben I drew forth an account of the release of Alexander and the other American captives. It was not until Samuel told him that I was a brother to one of the captives that he displayed interest in me; after he had discovered this fact, however, he went out of his way to be kind to me. ALEXANDER FREE "Well do I remember Alexander Forsyth," Reuben said, "and I'll swear that when I met him at Marseilles, where he was awaiting a passage home after his release from bloody Algiers, he was the nearest thing to a dead man that I have ever seen alive! He looked like a skeleton with a beating heart! Mark my word, he'll never go to sea again! What can you expect--after years of cruelty, starvation, sickness, chain-dragging!" "You see," Reuben said in excuse for our statesmen, "our Congressmen had other important things to worry about: Indian uprisings, trouble at sea with England and France; a union to form between the bickering commonwealths, finances to raise for running the government, and what not? A few sailors imprisoned in an out-of-the-way part of the world were apt to be forgotten!" The fresh captures by the pirates that brought about the settlement had, I was informed, happened in this manner: