While we sat on the fantail nursing our cocktails before dinner, Esau Drexel explained: "The waters around these islands have got more rocks in them than the Democrats have in their heads. So we've got to have a local man to keep us from running into them."
"Well," I said, "how about Ronnie's great secret?'
When Tudor looked doubtful, Drexel said: "You can trust him as far as you can anybody, Ronnie. He's worked for me for over twenty years."
"Okay," said Tudor. "Wait a minute."
He went out and came back with a folder containing sheets of paper. In a lowered voice, he said: "Be careful; don't let water from your glass drip on these. They're only photostats, but we need 'em."
I examined the sheets. They were reproductions of three pages from an old manuscript, written in a large, clear longhand. The English had many obsolete usages, which put the document back two or three centuries. The sheets read as follow:
and so departed yt Hand.
On June ye 6th, Capt. Eaton anchored in a Cove on ye NW Side of ye Hand, ye which Mr. Cowley hath named ye Duke of York's Hand. This Cove, which Mr. Cowley calls Albany Bay, is sheltered by a small, rocky Hand over against it. This little Hand hath a rocky Pinnacle, like unto a pointing Finger. Mr. Dampier assured us, yf Water was to be found on ye larger Hands, like unto ys One, even during ye long Drought of Summer. Whiles yeMen went ashoar to seek for Springs or Brooks, Capt. Eaton privily took me aside and said: Mr. Henderson, ye Time hath come to bury yt which lies in ye Chest. Sith I know you for a true Man, I will yt ye and I, alone, shall undertake ye ticklish Task, saying Nought to Any. But Captain, I said, be ye determined upon ys Course? For by God's sir, it seems to me yt ye Contents of ye Chest would, if used with Sense and Prudence, furnish us with a handsome Living back in England for ye Rest of our mortal Dayes. If we ever get home, said Capt. Eaton; but with ys accursed Thing aboard, I doubt me we ever shall. A Curse lies upon it; witness our Failure to take ye Spanish Ship whilst she had 800,000 Pieces of Eight aboard; so yt all we gat for our Trouble was a Load of Flower, a Mule for the President of Panama, a wooden Image of ye Virgin, and 8 Tuns of Quince Marmalade. Well, saith he, verily, our Men have a Plenty of Flower wherewhith to make Bread and of Jam to eat thereon, but we had liefer have ye Money. The Men also be in Fear of what it may bring upon us and will be happy to see ye Last of it.
So we went ashoar in ye Pinnace with ye Chest. Capt. Eaton and I carried ye Chest inland from ye Shoar and thence up ye Slope towards ye SW to ye Top of ye Cliff, which overlooks ye Cove. At ye Tip of ye Point, which marks ye western Limit of ye Bay, we buried ye Chest, and not without much hard Labour, for it was heavy to bear and ye rocky Soil hard to dig withal. When we returned to ye Ship
"Where did this come from?" I asked. "Picked up the originals at an auction in London," said Tudor. "They're in a safe at home, naturally."
"Well, what does it mean?"
"Good God, don't you see, man?" Tudor exploded. "It's as plain as the nose on your face. This Henderson must have been one of the officers of Captain Eaton's Nicholas— the boatswain or the gunner, maybe—which stopped here in June, 1684."
"How do you know the year?"
"Because he mentions Dampier and Cowley, who were here with him in the Batchelor's Delight at that time. The buccaneer Ambrose Cowley gave the islands their first set of individual names, although the Spaniards later rechristed them, and then the Ecuadorians gave them a third set. Gets confusing. Cowley called his island the Duke of York's Island. Then Charles Second died, and the Duke of York became James Second, so the island became James. The Spanish called it Santiago, and then the Ecuadorians decided on San Salvador."
" 'Santiago' ought to please everybody, since it means 'Saint James'," I said, "although I don't believe James the Second was very saintly."
"Most English-speakers still use 'James'," said Tudor.
"Is this all there is to the manuscript?"
"That's all. Did some sleuthing—British Museum and such—to try and locate the rest, but no dice. Probably somebody used it to light a fire. Couldn't find any other record of Henderson, either. But this is the important part, so what the hell."
"All right, assuming the document refers to the present James or Santiago Island, do you think you can find this chest from these scanty directions? I thought James was a large island."
"It is, but the directions are as plain as a Michelin guidebook. This bay is what we call Buccaneer Cove. All we have to do is land there and follow Henderson's directions. With a metal detector, it ought to be a breeze."
I thought. "One more thing, Ronnie. The paper doesn't say what was in the chest. How do you know it's worth going after?"
"It wasn't money, or it would have been divided in the shareout. It was something of value, as you can tell by Henderson's comment. Evidently one single thing, not divisible. Must have been something of religious or supernatural significance, or the crew wouldn't have gotten spooked. My guess is, some fancy religious gewgaw—a jeweled crown for a statue of the Virgin, or maybe a golden religious statuette, which the buccaneers stole from one of the Catholic churches along the coast. But what the hell, we'll see when we dig it up. It's worth the chance."
Esau Drexel glanced over his shoulder and spoke in a low voice. "We need your help, Willy. I don't want to let the crew in on it, for obvious reasons, but this takes a bit of muscle. You remember how Henderson found the chest hefty to carry. Now, I'm too old and fat for hauling a couple of hundred pounds around rough country, and Ronnie's too old and small. There'll be some digging, too. But you're an athletic type, and your boy has pretty good muscles.
"Ronnie and I have agreed to go halves on whatever we find. If you'll come in with us, I'll give you half of my half, or a quarter of the total."
"Fair enough," I said. Drexel had his faults, but stinginess with his considerable wealth was not one of them.
At this time, the Galapagos Parque Nacional had been established only a few years, and things were not so tightly organized as they became later. Nowadays, I understand, the wardens would be down on you like a ton of gravel if you tried anything like treasure-hunting.
The next week we spent in cruising the southern islands. We saw the frigate birds and the blue-footed boobies on North Seymour. We were chased along the beach on Loberia by a big bull sea lion who thought we had designs on his harem. On Hood, we watched a pair of waved albatross go through their courtship dance, waddling around each other and clattering their bills together. We gauped at swarms of marine iguanas, clinging to the black rocks and sneezing at us when we came close. We admired the flamingoes in the muddy lagoon on Floreana.
On Plaza, Priscille, the strongest wild-life buff in the family, had the thrill of feeding some greenery to a big land iguana. That would not be allowed nowadays. On Santa Cruz (or Indefatigable) we visited the Charles Darwin Research Station. They told us of breeding tortoises in captivity, to reintroduce them on islands whence they had been exterminated.
We dropped anchor in Buccaneer Cove on James, behind the islet with the rocky pinnacle of which Henderson had written. The four treasure-hunters went ashore in the launch, leaving young Priscille furious at not being taken along. Denise was more philosophical.