The Cruise of the 'Alerte'. E. F. Knight
such a voyage as the one contemplated the presence of a surgeon was advisable. A young doctor was therefore included among the gentlemen-adventurers—Mr. Cloete-Smith, who also occupied the post of mate after the desertion of the officers at Bahia.
Of the four paid hands one, the boatswain, only accompanied us as far as Teneriffe.
Our cook, John Wright, had been with me on three previous voyages as sole hand. One of our A.B.'s was Arthur Cotton, who, as a boy nine years before, had been the only paid hand on the 'Falcon' when we sailed from Southampton to South America. In the course of that voyage he had visited Trinidad with me, and was now able to spin to his shipmates long and more or less fantastic yarns concerning the place we were bound to. The strange island had evidently made a great impression on his imagination. Our other A.B. was Ted Milner, a lad from the North Sea fishing-smacks.
CHAPTER IV.
A ROMANCE OF THE SALVAGES.
The article in the St. James's Gazette attracted a considerable amount of attention, as was proved by the bewildering mass of correspondence with reference to the expedition which I received during the weeks preceding our departure. Many of these letters were prompted evidently by mere curiosity, others contained suggestions—of which some were sensible enough; a few, whimsical in the extreme. Cranks wrote to me who professed to be acquainted with certain methods for discovering treasure by means of divining rods, or charms, or other uncanny tricks. Others had dreamt dreams, in which they had seen the exact position of the wealth; but most curious of all were the letters from individuals in all parts of Europe and America who were acquainted with the existence of other treasures, which they proposed I should search for in the course of my voyage. To have sought them all would have meant to sail every navigable sea on the face of the earth, and to have travelled into the heart of continents; in short, to have undertaken a voyage which would have extended over a century or so. To have found them all would have necessitated my chartering all the merchant fleets of Europe to carry them home; and then gold would have become a valueless drug on the markets, and my labours would have been all in vain.
One individual modestly asked for 1,000l. down before he would give the slightest hint as to the nature of his treasure or its locality; but, according to him, there could not be the slightest doubt as to my finding it, and as one item alone of this pile consisted of ten million pounds' worth of golden bars, it would be the height of folly on my part not to send him a cheque for the comparatively ridiculous sum of 1,000l. in return for such information.
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