214 WHALING 



many another boy who went whaling long ago, he industriously 

 dug for the buried treasure of the pirate brig Relampago. 



The treasure of Cocos Island is famous in stories of the sea. 

 For more than three years Bolivar, waging against Spain his 

 war for independence, besieged the castle of Callao, at the port 

 of Lima, which held out longer than any other fort on the Pacific. 

 Finally, when the defending force had become an army of walk- 

 ing skeletons, the wealthy Spaniards of the town assembled their 

 gold and plate and precious stones, and set sail in the Relampago 

 for Spain; but the crew, learning that treasure was on board, 

 walked the passengers over the plank in the most approved 

 piratical fashion, and laid a course for Cocos Island, to divide 

 their plunder. 



There they quarrelled murderously among themselves; and 

 the survivors buried the treasure, burned the brig, and sailed 

 for the mainland in small boats. 



Some the authorities caught and executed. Others escaped 

 and scattered the world over. Periodically, for half a century 

 thereafter, members of the crew, real or pretended, kept turning 

 up with projects for recovering the treasure. 



Dying men have confessed in their last moments that they 

 had a part in the robbery, and have told where to find the gold. 

 Ancient seamen have produced old charts to show the hiding 

 place. Within a month of the day these words are v^ritten, an 

 aged man has arrived in Boston from a Caribbean port, who 

 says he is the only survivor of those who have had the key that 

 makes it possible to find the treasure. He tells of helping to re- 

 move the gold and jewels from Cocos Island, where they were 

 first hidden, to an uncharted island, where they have since re- 

 mained; and he is trying to organize an expedition to go back 

 and recover them. 



It gives one a strange feeling of being actually in touch with 

 old whaling days, to come upon this paragraph in the shipping 

 news of 1922; but although different records place the value of 

 the treasure at from $5,000,000 to $6,000,000, and although 

 the story was well known in Len Sanford's day, the island is so 

 rough that it would take a regiment of men and many years of 



