When they saw they could not get me mad, they talked about other things. That was how I learned that Veracruz was a treasure port. A galleon would be coming to take the treasure back to Spain, and we were going to wait for it and sail back with it.
'To have the kindness of fifty guns' was how Senor said it. I wanted to hear more about the treasure house and find out where it was. I knew nobody would tell me if I asked, so I just kept quiet and kept my ears open.
A few more sailors came back, all pretty drunk. Senor let them sleep on deck or go into the forecastle, which was fine with me. After a while, I just lay down on the deck myself, and went to sleep listening to them talk.
Way too soon, the bosun shook me awake. I remember I did not feel like I had slept long at all, but the moon was up and pretty high, too. The captain had come back, there were more sailors sitting around talking, and Senor, the bosun, old Zavala, and I were going ashore to round up as many as we could.
So I ended up going to all the cantinas and talking with a few girls there, too. Some of them were pretty nice, and some were the pits. And just about all of them kidded me more and worse than Senor and the bosun had. 'You come back alone, and we'll show you things you've never seen.' 'Sit with me and I'll straighten out that crooked nose.'
'Yes! It will stand tall and proud.' With a whole lot more, some of it pretty dirty. Italian is a real good language to talk dirty in, but sometimes I think Spanish must be the best in the whole world. Those girls had a great time teasing me, laughing at me and anything I happened to say, and enjoyed themselves so much that I told them, 'Listen up! You owe me, all of you, and one of these days I'm coming to collect.'
The next day the captain put me back on starboard watch. We worked until it got hot, cleaning up the ship and replacing some of the rigging that was getting worn, and then we got to go ashore again. This time I knew that most of the men who promised they would come back did not mean a word of it and would not come back until somebody came and got them.
Which I was not about to do again. At first I thought I would just find a place on shore where I could get some sleep, maybe in the church where I had gotten to know the priest. Then I decided that the thing for me to do was to sneak back on board without Senor's seeing me. If I could do that, I could come back early, sling my hammock in the forecastle the way I always did, and crash. That would be a lot better than sleeping in a hiding place in some alley-I had done that a lot before I joined the crew-and I would not be breaking my word. I had not promised to report back to Senor, or any such thing. Just that I would come back to the ship that night.
The first thing I did, though, was to strike up a conversation with somebody in the market and find out where the treasure house was. It turned out it was behind where the fort was being built, and I had been pretty close to it without knowing when I had watched the slaves work there.
I went there to see it and hung around looking at it, and pretty soon I had a real piece of luck. Mules and soldiers came-there must have been a hundred mules-and the big doors were opened. Those mules had been carrying silver bars, each bar heavy enough to make a pretty good load for one man, and I got to see the soldiers unload them and carry them inside.
The treasure house was not very big, or very high either-not even as high as our little chapel at the monastery. The walls were thick just the same, the doors were big and heavy and bound with iron, and the top of it looked like the top of a castle, with openings between the big stones for soldiers to shoot through. I was not thinking of getting the silver or anything like that then. But I saw right away that if somebody was, the thing to do was to get it while it was still on the mules.
After that, I went back to the harbor for a look at the Santa Charita before sunset. There I got lucky again. A big galleon was making port, and I got to watch the whole thing. It was about five times the size of our ship, with crosses on all the sails and a lot of carving and gilding on the stern.
It tied up at a different pier, and I went over there for a closer look and so I could see who got off. It was a pretty good show, too, with trumpets blowing and soldiers with red pants and polished armor escorting the captain. I jumped up and touched my forehead the way you are supposed to, and nobody said a word to me.
Walking back to the quay, I could see the starboard side of the Santa Charita, and I got an idea. If I could get something that would float that I could stand on, I could reach up and grab the edge of the anchor hawse, pull myself up, and climb in through the hawsepipe. That would put me on the weather deck, where the capstan was, forward of the foremast and right over the forecastle. Senor and whoever he had with him would be in the waist where they could watch the gangplank. If I stayed low, I could keep an eye on them over the edge of the weather deck. When they were busy with something, I could hold the edge of the deck and swing myself down into the forecastle. All I had to do was wait until it was good and dark, and borrow a boat to climb up from. I found a nice shady spot to sit in, and dozed off for a couple of hours. When I woke up I went looking for the kind of boat I needed, one small enough that I could manage it by myself but big enough that it would not capsize when I stood up in it. Of course it had to be a boat nobody was watching. Once I got into the hawsepipe, I would let it drift away. The owner would probably be able to find it without too much trouble unless the tide carried it out to sea. Still, he would not like what I was going to do, and I knew it.
That was a pretty tall order, and I had hardly started prowling through the hot, dark night when I spotted a boat in the harbor with two men rowing and another in the stern who seemed to be looking for something too. I thought they were probably soldiers or night watchmen or something, so I strolled along like I did not have a care in the world when they seemed to be looking my way. Out toward the end of one of the piers, I stepped on a round piece of something-probably a boat pole-that rolled under my foot. I just about went into the water, and I yelled, 'Oh, shit!'
As soon as I said that, the man in the back of the boat sang out, 'Ahoy there! You speak English?'
He had a British accent and was a little hard for me to understand, but I waved and yelled, 'Sure!'
The other two rowed him over and he jumped up on the pier. I am taller than most people-my father told me once he got me engineered that way-and I was taller than he was by quite a bit. It was too dark to see a lot, but it seemed to me that he had more hair on his face, even though he did not seem like he was a whole lot older than I was.
'Say, this's luck! We've been hours tryin' to get our bearin's. None of us speaks the lingo, you see.' He held out his hand. 'Bram Burt's my name. Midshipman Burt that was, late of His Majesty's Lion and these days skipper of the Macerer.'
He had a good handshake. I could tell the name of his ship was French from the way he said it, but I did not know what the word meant. I gave him my name, called him sir, and explained that I was just an ordinary seaman from the Santa Charita.
'Bit of an accent there, eh? You're a Day-You're Spanish?'
I said, 'I'm from Jersey, but I speak Spanish.'
'That explains it. Have to, on a Dago ship. Parlez-vous francais?'
I told him I did, a little, saying it in French. Then I started trying to tell him about the monastery.
'Belay that. Bit too quick for me, eh? You'd be a handy sort to have 'round, though. Half my bloody crew's French. See here now, the dear old Macerer's markin' time out there, eh? Outside the roadstead. They goin' to get huffy if we make port tonight?'
I explained that some of the guns were up in the fort already, said I would not try it, and showed him where he could find the harbor master in the morning.
'What do you think our chances are of gettin' a cargo here? Sold every-thin' in Port Royal, eh? No cargo for us there, so we're lookin' about. Saint Charity havin' much luck?'
I shrugged. 'They say we'll load tomorrow, Captain, but I don't know what it is.'
'That's interestin'.' It was too dark for me to be sure, but I believe he winked. 'Gold doubloons, hid away ever so snug. Put it in kegs marked BEER, eh? They're shippin' gold back to the Spanish king like 'twas sand, we hear.'
I shook my head. 'I'm sure it's not that, sir.'
' 'Cause of that big lad?' He pointed to the galleon.
'Yes, sir, the Santa Lucia there. She'll carry the treasure.'
After that he asked me what treasure I meant, and I told him about the treasure house and seeing the mules unloaded there. I offered to take him to see it, and he thanked me.
'Interestin', I'll be bound, but my duty's to my ship, eh? Got to get back to her. I'll go sightseein' tomorrow, it may be.'
'In that case, could you run me by the Santa Charita? It won't take you much out of your way, and I'd like to
