A Queer Race: The Story of a Strange People — page 107: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

104 | A QUEER RACE. “Do you happen to have that document with you, Tom?” J asked him. ‘‘No; it isin my locker aboard the Diana.” ‘© Weil, I have read it so carefully and so often that [ know it nearly as well as I know Lloyd’s Register. So to begin at the beginning.” And then I to!d them of the elder Bolsover finding the ~ tin case at the Azores, and gave almost as full an account of Mr. Hare’s diary as if I had read it aloud. Out of eonsideration for ‘l’om’s feelings I said no more about his eraze than was necessary, only that he was fully per- suaded that he should see the Santa Anna, before he died, and find the treasure which he believed she contained. This remark concluded my second narrative, to which all - had listened with bated breath. ‘‘Myr. Bolsover has been cherishing an illusion, I am sorry to say,” said the queen, after a short silence, which she had obviously spent in deep thought. ‘‘ He will not see the Santa Anna. She perished more than a century ago; and as for the gold and silver she had on board— well, the plates off which you have just dined, the gob- lets out of which you have drunk, are part of the gal- leon’s treasure; but the bulk of it is still intact and in our possession.” Tom stared at her with a dazed look; his face turned ashen gray, and his lips twitched convulsively. “You don’t mean to say,” he said, hoarsely—‘* you don’t mean to tell me as—-as the Santa Anna foundered hereabouts and somebody else got the treasure? I won’t believe it! It can’t be true! God! it would be too hard —too hard—after all these years. No; I won’t believe it!’ “Tf the Santa Anna you mean isthe Santa Anna of which Mr. Hare speaks in his diary,” said Mab, wonder- ingly and pityingly, ‘‘and which was captured by the Hecate in 1744, there can be no question that she struck on the Painted Rocks in the same year; that all the ef- forts of the crew to get her off failed; and that she went to pieces a few weeks afterward—not, however, before all her stores and all the treasure were taken out of her and landed on this island.” ‘7 don’t believe it! I don’t believe it!” reiterated the (e(o aalye eyoye) <S7com