marks of great age and rough handling.  "That belonged to Manuel Gomez, dead ten year since. He went down in the Nancy Boardman when she was rounding the Cape. Big, dark, upstanding man he was, an' one of the best bo'suns that ever piped a watch to quarters in a living gale. 

 "An' he was as good a fighting man as he was sailor. Nobody I'd rather have at my side in a scrap. He was right up in front with me when those Malay pirates boarded us off the Borneo coast. Those brown devils came over the side like a tidal wave, an' no matter how many we downed, they still kep' coming on. 

 "It was nip an' tuck for a while, but we were fighting for our lives, an' we beat 'em off at last an' sent what was left of 'em tumbling into their praus. As it was, they sliced off two of my fingers, an' one fellow would have buried that crooked kriss of his in my neck if Manuel hadn't cut him down jest in time. 

 "Of course, I was grateful to him for saving my life, an' he sailed with me for several voyages after that. That scrap with the pirates never seemed to do him an awful lot of good. He had pirates on the brain anyway. You see, he come from Trinidad on the Spanish Main, where the old pirates used to do their plundering an' butchering, an' I s'pose he'd heard talk about their doings ever since he was a boy. 

 "He used to talk about 'em whenever he got a chance. Of course, discipline being what it is on board ship, he couldn't talk as free with me as I s'pose he did with his mates. But once in a while he'd reel off a yarn, an' then he'd hint kind of mysterious like that he knew where some of the old Pirates' doubloons were buried an' that some day, if luck was with him, he'd be a rich man. 

 "I'd heard so much of that kind o' stuff in my time that I used to laugh at him, an' then he'd get peeved—that is, as peeved as he dared to be, me being skipper. But that wouldn't last long, and after a while he'd be at it again. Jest seemed as though he couldn't get away from the thought of it." 

 "Perhaps there was something in it after all," said Drew, to whom just now anything that savored of adventure appealed more strongly than usual. 

 "More likely his brain was a bit touched," replied Grimshaw carelessly. "I lost sight of him for several years when I quit the sea. But just before he went on his last voyage, he wanted me to take charge of this chest of his until he returned. Said he didn't dare trust it with any one else. 

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