Page:A Mainsail Haul - Masefield - 1913.djvu/13

 A MAINSAIL HAUL DON ALFONSO'S TREASURE HUNT

OW in the old days, before steam, there was a young Spanish buck who lived in Trinidad, and his name was Don Alfonso. Now Trinidad is known, in a way of speaking, among sailormen, as Hell's Lid, or Number One Hatch, by reason of its being very hot there. They've a great place there, which they show to folk, where it's like a cauldron of pitch. It bubbles pitch out of the earth, all black and hot, and you see great slimy workings, all across, like ropes being coiled inside. And talk about smell there!—talk of brimstone!—why, it's like a cattle-ship gone derelict, that's what that place is like.

Now by reason of the heat there, the folk of those parts—a lot of Spaniards mostly, Dagoes B