The Pirate's Gold by Gordon Stables

"Strange -- that where Nature loved to trace, / As if for gods, a dwelling-place, / And every charm and grace hath mixed / Within the paradise she fixed, / There man, enamoured of distress, / Should mar it into wilderness, / And trample, brute-like, o'er each flower, / That tasks not one laborious hour. " -- BYRON.

It was one bright, beautiful afternoon, when we were alone together, far away on a lonesome, heather-clad hill-top. It was a hill that, south of the silvery Tweed, would have been called a mountain, yet as regards height was nowhere amid the chaos of giants with which it was everywhere surrounded.

This hill, however, was beautifully encrimsoned with heath and heather. The former floated over the rocks in vast red sheets: the latter, more sturdy and strong, looked boldly upwards to face the sunlit sky.

Far down beneath us we could see many a loch, and around each were the everlasting banks of silvery-stemmed, drooping birch-trees.

The sun himself was already declining in the west, and a gentle breeze was stirring the heather. It had been a hot day, and somewhat uneventful as regards sport, and as we lay here on a patch of moss, we conversed somewhat languidly; albeit Reeves had lit that wondrous meerschaum of his, and -- just for once in a way -- I had "bent" a cigar.

"Gordon," said the captain at last, taking the pipe from his lips for a moment and glancing towards me -- "Gordon, in you I think I have found a friend."

"I am certain," I answered, "that if I can be of service to you, you have only to ask me."

"And a man," he added, "that can be trusted with a secret."

I laughed lightly.

"Am I not like yourself, a sailor? " I said. "I have never, however, gone secret-hunting; yet when such a thing came my way, I have always cherished and respected it. A secret belongs to the other fellow, not to you, and if you happen to have it in your possession, you have no more right to give it away than you would have to sell his watch, if he had lent you that."

"My own sentiments to a ‘t. ' Well, that which I am about to tell you no one at present knows anything about, except Miguel. He is in the swim, and will join me, and I trust that you too will when you have heard all."

"It is," he added, "a story of buried treasure. " He glanced half uneasily around him as he spoke, as if afraid that even the curlews had ears, and could understand his story.

"Buried treasure? " I said, somewhat astonished, but probably doubtingly; "why, that sounds interesting. But -- "

"If we can only find it," he went on, as he gazed dreamily away over the landscape of hill and dell, of crimson and green. "If we could but find it, we -- I and Mina and my sister -- should be no longer poor, while brave young Miguel should be able to continue and finish his studies without further toil, or the terrible hardship of the herring fishery and harvesting."

He seemed speaking just then more to himself or to Dash, on whose beautiful head his hand was placed, than to me. Then after a few moments' silence and a sigh or two, he turned once more round.

"Pardon me," he said, "but for the moment I believe, so absorbed was I in my own thoughts, that I forgot your presence. But now I shall speak.

"You are doubtless sceptical concerning this buried treasure," he continued.

"I fear so," I replied, smiling.

"Well, but you will not be so when you hear my yarn. Moreover, you will agree with me that it is not any one else's gold we -- and the ‘we' must include you, my valued friend -- are going in search of. No, it is my own and that of Miguel -- in other words, that of our dead-and-gone forbears, or ancestors."

"And you don't think it will be a wild-goose chase?"