E-text prepared by Sam W.
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from page images generously made available by
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| Note: | Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive/American Libraries. See http://www.archive.org/details/priategold00stimrich |
Transcriber's note:
The author consistently used a convention in which a long dash, used toindicate trailed off speech, follows the closing speech mark, rather thanbeing enclosed within the speech mark. This convention has been retainedthroughout.
PIRATE GOLD
BY
F. J. STIMSON
(J. S. OF DALE)
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1896
Copyright, 1895 and 1896,
By HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.
Copyright, 1896,
By F. J. STIMSON.
All rights reserved.
The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A.
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.
CONTENTS.
PIRATE GOLD
PART ONE: DISCOVERY.
I.
It consisted of a few hundred new Americaneagles and a few times as many Spanishdoubloons; for pirates like good broad pieces,fit to skim flat-spun across the waves, or playpitch-and-toss with for men's lives or women'sloves; they give five-dollar pieces or thinBritish guineas to the boy who brings themdrink, and silver to their bootblacks, priests,or beggars.
It was contained—the gold—in an oldcanvas bag, a little rotten and very brown andmouldy, but tied at the neck by a piece ofstout and tarnished braid of gold. It had noname or card upon it nor letters on its side,and it lay for nearly thirty years high on ashelf, in an old chest, behind three