They fought hard for
their money--they gave body and soul for it; and wherever it lies
buried, depend upon it he must have a tug with the devil who gets
it!
This sudden explosion was succeeded by a blank silence throughout
the room. Peechy Prauw shrunk within himself, and even the one-
eyed officer turned pale. Wolfert, who from a dark corner of the
room had listened with intense eagerness to all this talk about
buried treasure, looked with mingled awe and reverence at this bold
buccaneer, for such he really suspected him to be. There was a
chinking of gold and a sparkling of jewels in all his stories about
the Spanish Main that gave a value to every period, and Wolfert
would have given anything for the rummaging of the ponderous sea
chest, which his imagination crammed full of golden chalices,
crucifixes, and jolly round bags of doubloons.
The dead stillness that had fallen upon the company was at length
interrupted by the stranger, who pulled out a prodigious watch of
curious and ancient workmanship, and which in Wolfert's eyes had a
decidedly Spanish look. On touching a spring, it struck ten
o'clock, upon which the sailor called for his reckoning, and having
paid it out of a handful of outlandish coin, he drank off the
remainder of his beverage, and without taking leave of anyone,
rolled out of the room, muttering to himself as he stamped upstairs
to his chamber.
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