Page:A Mainsail Haul - Masefield - 1913.djvu/16

 Oh, he was getting gay about that buried treasure. Gold there was, and silver dollars and golden jewels, and I don't know what all. "And I knows the place," he says, "where it's all lying," and out he pulls a chart with a red crost on it, like in them Deadwood Dicky books. And what with the vino and that there licker, he got them Dagoes strung on a line. So the end of it was that Don Alfonso he came down with the blunt. And that gang of Dagoes they charters a brigantine—she'd a Bible name to her, as is these Dagoes' way—and off they sails a galley-vaunting looking for gold with a skellinton on the top. Now one dusk, just as they was getting out the lamps and going forward with the kettle, they spies a land ahead and sings out "Land, O!" By dark they was within a mile of shore, hove-to off of a light-house that was burning a red flare. Now the old man he comes to Alfonso, and he says, "I dunno what land this may be. There's no land due to us this week by my account. And that red flare there; there's no light burning a flare nearer here than Sydney." "Let go your anchor," says Don Alfonso, "for land there is, and where there's land there's