Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1894-10-18

the pursuers and safe location Of the
plumber up to the moment of transfer
on the other. The betrayal of that
transfer depended on the twenty-five
men whom he had still in his service
and upon whom he believed he could
depend.
Hendricks was too shrewd man not
to see that his scheme however cum
ming would only hold for a time. He
knew perfectly well that the sailors
whom he had got rid of, would proceed
Immediately to get drunk and in their
recklessness expose the plot up to a
certain point. But he believed their
stories under whatever promise of
pardon or compulsion of punishment
could get no farther than the state
ment that the San Pedro had sailed for
Panama or Venezuela. The knowledge
of the transfer to the pirogues was
locked up in his own immediate con-
federates. This fact he reasoned
would not prevent the ultimate discov-
cry of the real truth, but it would de-
lay it sufficiently for him to get safely
to his subterranean retreat with his
plumber. Common piracy was not an
No steam vessel could keep afoat and
coaled up over week without rum
ming across a cruiser. The special
conspiracy and the abandonment of
the San Pedro were therefore newt
able deductions. The purchase of the
use of the San Pedro, the shipment Of
the men at New Orleans, the landing
of the men on the southern coast must
all sooner or later focus the search at
New Orleans. But by that time he
would be out of sight.
Two facts were of special import:
The officer and boats crew that had
boarded the Corinthian had been pho
tographed by one of the passengers on
the steamship, but while this fact had
been communicated to New York, the
photographs had been carried to Eng
land. The other fact was that the
passengers all had the impression that
the vessel and crew were Spanish and
had gone eastward
Two days had not elapsed before the
two pirogues with their masts cut of
were taken in tow by a small side
wheeler and pulled up the river. They
were loaded with derricks and heavy
timber. Hendricks had inserted an
advertisement in the papers and it was
known he was purchasing material for
his improvements somewhere on the
Mississippi.
On the morning that the little side
wheeler went slowly up the river in
plain view of New Orleans, the United
States cruiser Dakota picked up and
identified some of the upper works of
the San Pedro in the gulf, and a sensa.
tional story appeared in New York
paper which stated that the conspiracy
to rob the English steamship had been
in the United States treasury
and that the San Pedro
had transferred her cargo in the bay
of Campeachy and the treasure was
Sisal. off Yucatan.
Everything now depended on the !
pirogues reaching the Wash bayou be- i
fore the true clew led to New Orleans. |
1t was a seven-hundred-mile journey,
and the -essels crawled along at a pace |
Of only eight miles an hour. Hen
bricks himself went direct to Memphis |
by rail, and after several days of intol- |
cradle anxiety and constant expecta-
ton of meeting with the news that the |
plunder had been tracked to the river,
he had the satisfaction of see
ing his cargo from the hotel win |
dow slowly and 1aboriously crawling |
up the stream undisturbed.
He got aboard the steamboat about |
ten miles above Memphis, and. finding