The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1897-05-15

gether under the shadow of petty
porphyritic tor that overhangs the
green valley of Bovey Tracy. Beside
the bare rocks that mark the site, a
perfectly distinct pathway is worn by
footsteps into the granite platform
underfoot; and that path, little Cecil
Milford had heard with childish awe
and wonder, was cut out by the pac.
ing up and down of old John Cam
himself, mounting guard in the dark
ness and solitude over the countless
treasure that he had hidden away in
the recesses of the pixies hole be-
reath.
As young Milford grewu to mans
estate, this story of John Cams
treasure haunted his quick magma
ton for many years with wonderful
vividness. When he first came up
to London, after his fathers death,
and took his paltry clerkship in the
Colonial Office-how he hated the
place, with it's monotonous drudgery,
while John Cams wealth was only
waiting for him to take it and float
ing visibly before his prophetic
eyes!-the story began for while to
fade out under the disillusioning re-
alities of respectable poverty and
petty Government post. But before
he had been many months in the
West India department Che had
small room on the third floor, over
looking Downing Street,, casual
discovery made in overhauling the
archives of the office suddenly re-
vived the boyish dream with all the
added realism and cool intensity of
maturer years. He came across a
letter from John Cam himself to the
Protector Oliver, detailing the par
ticulars of fierce, irregular engage
ment with a Spanish privateer, in
which the Spaniard had been cap
tured with much booty, and his YES
sci duly sold to the highest bidder in
Port Royal harbor. This curious
coincidence gave great shock of
surprise to young Milford. John
Cam, then, was no mythical prehis-
toric hero, no fairy-king or pixy or
barrow-haunter of the popular fancy,
but an actual genuine historical fig
ure, who correspondent about his dar-
ing exploits with no less parsonage
than Oliver himself! From that mo-
ment forth, Cecil Milford gave him
self up almost entirely to tracing out
the forgotten history of the old buc-
cancer. He allowed no peace to the
learned persons who took care of the
State Papers of the Commonwealth
at the Record Office, and he estab-
lished private relations, by letter,
with two or three clerks in the Colo
NAL Secretary's Office at Kingston,
Jamaica, whom he induced to help
him in reconstructing the lost story
of John Cams life.
Bit by bit Cecil Milford had SLOW
ly pieced together wonderful mass
of information, buried under piles of
ragged manuscript and weary reams
of dusty documents, about the days
and doings of that ancient terror of
the Spanish Main. John Cam was a
Devonshire lad, of the rollicking, row.
ing seventeenth century, born and
bred at Bovey Tracy, on the TANKS of
Dartmoor, the last survivor of those
sea-dogs of Devon who had sailed
forth to conquer and explore a new
Continent under the guidance of
Drake, and Raleigh, and Frobisher,
and Hawkins. AS boy, he had
sailed with his father in ship that
bore the Queens letters of marque
and reprisal against the Spanish gall
Icons; in his middle life, he had lived
strange roaming existence-half
pirate and half privateer, intent upon
securing the Protestant religion and
furnishing the Kings enemies by
robbing wealthy Spanish shippers
and cutting off the recusant noses of
vile Papistical Cuban slave traders;
in his latter days, the fierce, half
savage old mariner had relapsed
into sheer robbery, and had been
hunted down as public enemy by
the Lord Protectors servants, or
later still, by the Captains General
and Governors in Chief of his Most
Sacred Majesty's Dominions in the
West Indies. For what was legiti-
mate warfare in the spacious days of
great Elizabeth, had come to be re-
garded in the degenerate reign of
Charles ii. as rank piracy.
One other thing Cecil Milford had
discovered, with absolute certainty;
and that was, that in the summer of
1860, "the year of his Mates most
happy restoration" as John Cam
himself phrased it, the prosecuted
and much misunderstood old bucca-
neer had paid a secret visit to Eng
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