FIRACY, LOVE, AND BURIED TREASURE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9184, 13 October 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

FIRACY, LOVE, AND BURIED TREASURE.

A ROMANCE OF THE CORAL ISLANDS. A lifltiAKTio story of flight, piracy, rejected love, buried treasure, and treachery is told in the columns of the Japan Weekly Mail :— AN ENGLISH TTRATE AND HIS PERUVIAN LADY LOVE. In ]523, during a revolution in Peru, a number of wealthy residents of Lima chartered a brig of JJOO tons to carry to Spain their property in money and jewellery and a largo quantity of monastic plate. It is said that there were doubloons to the value of two millions sterling, and a vast sum in plate. But after the treasure was on board, and when its owners came down to the beach, they found the vessel gone. An Englishman, a lieutenant in the Peruvian Navy, hearing of the intended flight, had gone on board with a chosen band, and had cut out the brig within hail of a Peruvian man-of-war. He steered right across the Pacific, and in course of time reached the Marianne Islands, in the Pacific Ocean, where the treasure was buried. A course was then made for Honolulu. But before reaching this port quarrels broke out among the pirates, and the lieutenant, with his two officers and a cabin boy, having set lire to the vessel, got into a boat and left the crew. One of the oHicers was murdered and thrown overboard before the boat reached Honolulu. There the party represented themselves as the survivors of a shipping disaster. The lieutenant, before leaving Lima, had been in love with a lady, the wife of a Peruvian ollicer who was slain in the revolution, and before taking any further steps with regard to the treasure, decided to " nd for her. The cabin boy was despatched as his emissary to Lima, but on his arrival there he was seized and imprisoned, and the lady refused to have anything further to do with a man whom she styled a detestable pirate. QUITE IN' THE OLD Tr.AXSrOKTIN'E STYLE. The lieutenant and his sole remaining companion thereupon chartered a small fore-and-aft schooner, the .Swallow, commanded by one Captain Thompson, and proceeded to the Mariannes for his treasure. Thompson tried hard to get a charter for a specified port or ports, but the lieutenant insisted on a broad charter, including any or all the Mariannes. One evening when they were in sight of the islands, the lieutenant, who was sitting on the lee-rail chatting with his companion, was, it is conjectured, tipped overboard by the latter and disappeared. The usual alarm was raised, but the lieutenant's body was never recovered. Thompson, from sundry scraps of conversation which he had overheard, having suspected the object of the voyage, overhauled the dead lieutenant's effects, and among them found a chart, of the island on which the treasure was hidden, but with the name omitted. Soon afterwards he sighted another brig, with the master of which he was acquainted, and they arranged to search for the treasure and divide it between them, giving the surviving pirate a share on condition that he consented to point out the spot, but with a threat if lie did not do so he would be forthwith handed over to the Spanish authorities. At a concerted moment the pirate was seized by both captains, ami the conditions named. He nodded. They asked him if ho would indicate the situation of the treasure. He nodded. They asked if this was the island, pointing to the nearest of the group. He again nodded. They invited him to step into a boat which had been lowered and guide them to the treasure. He nodded once more. Afterwards he went below and filled his pockets with lead and iron. Then, going down the ladder, he pushed off the boat with one foot from the side of the schooner, and ciropped feet first into the sea. Until within two years ago there was alive one of the boat's crew, who, snatching at the suicide's hair, to save him as he sank, plucked from his head a handful of hair, but could not raise the heavily-weighted body. This put an end to the treasure hunting. The chart went into the possession of the Spanish authorities. THE SEARCHING SHIP SEIZKD IX TDRN. The British schooner Nereid recently sailed from Japan as far as Guam, a small island belonging to the .Marianne group, in search of the buried treasure. But while the captain, who intended to sail for Yap, in the Carolines, was onshore, it was carried oil' either by his mate or two Japanese, or by all three, these being the only persons 0:1 board. As no trace of the vessel has been found, there is still some mystery about the affair. Meanwhile the captain of the Ncroid, who holds, or believes he holds, the clue to the secret of all this wealth, has lost everything. Whatever may be thought of this extraordinary story, what is beyond any question, says the Japan Mail, is that, an English shipmaster in Yokohama, at the commencement of the present, year, sent out in a schooner, built under his own supervision and belonging to himself, to search for the treasure supposed to be hidden more than sixty years ago among the coral islands of the North Pacific, and that his crew ran away with his vessel and ! have not since been heard of. Possibly they, too, having some suspicion of the object of the voyage, determined to recover the treasure on their own account. The story above summarised was taken down from the mouth of the captain himself.