With Hade out of the game, I can see my way through." "But--" "Now I'll finish the yarn you were so gradually leading up to with those schoolboy questions of yours.

French statesmen claimed, last year, that something over a million dollars of the Louisiana purchase money was never paid to France.

That was money, in the form of silver dollars, which went by sea.
In skirting the Florida coast--probably on the way from some mint or treasury in the South--one or more of the treasure ships parted from their man-o'-war escorts in a hurricane, and went aground on the southeastern Florida reefs.

The black pirate, Caesar, and his cutthroats did the rest.
"This was no petty haul, such as Caesar was accustomed to, and it seems to have taken his breath away.

He and his crew carried it into Caesar's Estuary--not Caesar's Creek--an inlet, among the mangrove swamps.