Dunn discovered a long bar of iron, and the four men, using it as a lever, managed to wrench the lid of the first box off its hinges. To our utter disgust, however, we found it empty.

The second chest did not take quite so long as the first to force open, and as the lid was raised loud cries of joy broke from all our lips.

It was filled to the brim with golden coin!

I examined some and found them to be old Italian, Spanish, and English pieces—the latter mostly bearing the effigies of Queen Elizabeth and King Edward VI.

The excitement had now risen to fever heat. The men would have filled their pockets with the gold, there and then, had not Job Seal drawn a revolver and in a roaring voice threatened to shoot the first man dead who touched a coin.

But the gluttony of gold was upon them, and they attacked the third box with such violence that it was open in a jiffy.

No gold was, however, within—only a big bag of thick hide heavily riveted with copper, and securely fastened with bolt and lock.

“Bank-notes in that, perhaps!” remarked the skipper excitedly, ignorant of the fact that there were no bank-notes in the days when that curious craft had sailed the ocean. “Break it open, boys. Look alive!”

“Be-low!” cried old Dicky Dunn, and as his shipmates drew aside he raised his axe and with one well-directed blow broke off the rusted bolt and in an instant half-a-dozen hands were plunged into the leathern sack.

What they brought forth was certainly disappointing—merely two folded pieces of yellow, time-stained parchment, one having a big seal of lead hanging to it by a cord, and the other a small seal of yellow wax attached to a strip of the parchment itself.

The skipper glanced at them in disgust, and then handed them to me, as a man of some book-learning, to decipher.

I had steadied myself with my back fixed to the panelling and was examining the first of the documents, when of a sudden we were all of us startled by hearing a weird sound which sent through us a thrill of alarm.

It was plain and unmistakable—a deep, cavernous human voice!

Every man of us stood silent, looked at each other, and held his breath.

“Hark! Why, that’s the ghost wot Dicky Dunn 

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