"That we made in the Grampus. Captain Josh Safford and Captain Bill Drinkwater went with us. We found two Spaniards upon the island. Their boats had gone to Porto Rico after provisions, they said. So Captain Safford, he gave them two muskets, with powder and ball, and they went off hunting goats. After this, I didn't consider myself justified in going ashore; and Captain Drinkwater complained a good deal of the liberty Safford took in supplying strangers with firearms. They might pop a fellow off at any time, you know, and nobody thereabouts would a ben the wiser."
"Do you happen to know anything about the other two?"
"Yes--for though I didn't go in the vessel, I knew pretty much all that happened. You see, Colonel Jones he went to work with the fortin-teller again; and he jest puts her to sleep, and tries her out and out, on Jewell's Island, where she found a skeleton fixed between two trees, and the walls of a hut, all grown over with large trees, and all the things he'd buried there; and then too, while we was at sea, she told him what we were doing, day by day, and they logged it all down: and when we got back and compared notes, we found it all true. Ah! he was a sharp one, I tell you! At last, he got her upon the track of Taylor. She found him in the East Indies, under another name, and shipped aboard one of our national ships. And so, what does he do but go to work and petition the Navy Department for Taylor's discharge, upon the ground that a grand estate had been left him--or, that he had large expectations, I forget which. He was very shy at first, and wouldn't acknowledge that he had ever gone by the name of Thomas Taylor. I dare say he had his reasons. But, after hunting him through hospitals, and navy yards, and sailor boarding-houses, and from ship to ship, the colonel he cornered him, and got him to say he would go with them. He told exactly the same story that Greenleaf did: I was taken sick, and couldn't go, and---stop--I'm before my story, I believe--they made their voyage without him. They landed, dug trenches, and blistered their hands, and spent over two days in the search, while the schooner lay off and on, waiting for them: but they found nothing. After they got back, however, the colonel he had a meeting with the owners, and satisfied them all, in some way--I never knew how--that they had just reversed the bearings, and hadn't been near the place. How he knew, I can't say, for he had never been there, to my knowledge, and I happen to know that they must have been pretty near the spot, for they found a sort of a hillock that I remembered, and they told me all about the bearings, and they agreed with my chart."