CHAPTER XVII.
THE TREASURE.
When his pipe was out he rose and made several strides about thecook-room, then took the lanthorn, and entering the cabin stood awhilesurveying the place.
"So this would have been my coffin but for you, Mr. Rodney?" said he. "Iwas in good company, though," pointing over his shoulder at the crucifixwith his thumb. "Lord, how the rogues prayed and cursed in this samecabin! In fine weather, and when all was well, the sharks in our wakehad more religion than they; but the instant they were in danger, downthey tumbled upon their quivering knees, and if heaven was twice as bigas it is, it could not have held saints enough for those varlets topetition."
"You were nearly all Spaniards?"
"Ay; the worst class of men a ship could enter these seas with. But forour calling they are the fittest of all the nations in the world; bettereven than the Portuguese, and with truer trade instincts than thetrained mulatto--nimbler artists in roguery than ever a one of them. Idespise their superstition, but they are the better pirates for it. Theycarry it as a man might a feather bed; it enables them to fall soft.D'ye take me?" He gave one of his short loud laughs, and said, "I hopethis slope won't increase. The angle's stiff enough as it is. 'Twill belike living on the roof of a house. I have a mind to see how she lies.What d'ye say, Mr. Rodney? shall I venture into the open?"
"Why not?" said I. "You can move briskly. You have as much life as everyou had."
"Let's go, then," he exclaimed, and climbing the ladder he pushed openthe companion-door and stepped on to the deck. I followed with butlittle solicitude, as you may suppose, as to what might attend hisexposure. The blast of the gale though it was broken into downwardseddying dartings by the rocks, made him bawl out with the sting of it,and for some moments he could think of nothing but the cold, stampingthe deck, and beating his hands.
"Ha!" cried he, grinning to the smart of his cheeks, "this is not thecook-room, eh? Great thunder, you will not have it that this ice hasbeen drifting north? Why, man, 'tis icier by twenty degrees than when wewere first locked up."
"I hope not," said I; "and I think not. Your blood doesn't course strongyet, and you are fresh from the furnace. Besides, it is blowing a bittercold gale. Look at that sky and listen to the thunder of the sea!"
The commotion was indeed terribly uproarious. The spume as before wasblowing in clouds of snow over the ice, and fled in very startlingflashes of whiteness under the livid drapery of the sky. The wind itselfsounded like the prolonged echo of a discharge of monster ordnance, andit screeched and whistled hideously where it struck the peaks and edgesof the cliffs and swept through the schooner's masts. The rending noisesof the ice in all directions were distinct and fearful. The Frenchmanlooked about him with consternation, and to my surprise crossedhimself.
"May the blessed Virgin preserve us!" he said. "Do you say we havedrifted north? If this is not the very heart of the south pole you shallpersuade me we are on the equator."
"It cannot storm too terribly for us, as you just now said," I replied."I want this island to go to pieces."
As I said this a solid pillar of ice just beyond the brow of the hill onthe starboard side was dislodged or blown down; it fell with a mightycrash, and filled the air with crystal splinters. Tassard started backwith a faint cry of "Bon Dieu!"
"Judge for yourself how the ship lies," said I; "this is freezing work."
He went aft and looked over the stern, then walked to the larboard railand peered over the side.
"Is there ice beyond that opening?" he asked, pointing over thetaffrail.
"No," I answered; "that goes to the sea. There is a low cliff beyond.Mark that cloud of white; it is the spray hurled athwart the mouth ofthis hollow."
"Good," he mumbled with his teeth chattering. "The change is marvellous.There was ice for a quarter of a mile where that slope ends. 'Tis toocold to converse here."
"_There_ are your companions," said I, pointing to the two bodies lyinga little distance before the mainmast.
He marched up to them, and exclaimed, "Yes, this is Trentanove and thatis Barros. Both were blind, but they are blinder now. Would they thankyou to arouse them out of their comfortable sleep and force them to feelas I do, this cold to which they are now as insensible as I was? Byheaven, for my part, I can stand it no longer;" and with that he ranbriskly to the hatch.
I followed him to the cook-room and he crept so close to the furnacethat I thought he had a mind to roast himself. No doubt, newly come tolife as he was, the cold hurt him more than me, and maybe the tide ofthose animal spirits which had in his former existence furnished himwith a brute courage had not yet flowed full to his mind; still Iquestioned even in his heydey if there had ever been much more than theswashbuckler in him, which opinion, however, could only increase theanxiety his companionship was like to cause me by obliging me tounderstand that I must prepare myself for treachery, and on no accountwhatever to suppose for a moment that he was capable of the least degreeof gratitude or was to be swerved from any design he might form byconsiderations of my claim upon him as his preserver.
It is among the wonders of human nature that antagonisms should be foundto flourish under such conditions of hopelessness, misery, and anguishas make those who languish under them the most pitiful wretches underGod's eye. But so it has been, so it is, so it will ever be. Two men inan open boat at sea, their lips frothing with thirst, their eyes burningwith famine, shall fall upon each other and fight to the death. Two menon an island, two miserable castaways whose dismal end can only be amatter of a week or two, eye each other morosely, give each otherinjurious words, break away and sullenly live, each man by himself, onopposite sides of their desert prison. Beasts do not act thus, norbirds, nor reptiles--only man. What was in the Frenchman Tassard's mindI do not know; in mine was fear, dislike, profound distrust, a greatuneasiness, albeit we were alone, we were brothers in affliction anddistress, as completely sundered from the world to which we belonged asif we lay stranded in the icy moon, speaking in the same tongue andbelieving in the same God!
The heat comforted him presently, and he put a lump of wine into theoven to melt, and this comforted him also.
"I can converse now," said he. "Perhaps after all the danger lies morein the imagination than in the fact. But it is a hideous naked scene,and needs no such colouring as the roaring of wind, the rushing of seas,and the crashing falls of masses of ice to render it frightful."
"You tell me," said I, "that when you fell asleep"--I would sometimesexpress his frozen state thus--"there was a quarter of a mile of icebeyond the schooner's stern."
"At least a quarter of a mile," he answered. "Day after day it would bebuilt up till it came to a face of that extent."
I thought to myself if it has taken forty-eight years of the wear andtear of storm and surge to extinguish a quarter of a mile, how long atime must elapse before this island splits up? But then I reflected thatduring the greater part of those years this seat of ice had been stuckvery low south where the cold was so extreme as to make it defydissolution; that since then, it was come away from the main andstealing north, so that what might have taken thirty years to accomplishin seventy degrees of south latitude, might be performed in a day on theparallel of sixty degrees in the summer season in these seas.
Tassard continued speaking with the pannikin in his hand, and his eyesshut as if to get the picture of the schooner's position fair before hismind's vision: "There was a quarter of a mile of ice beyond the ship: Ihave it very plain in my sight: it was a great muddle of hillocks, forthe ice pressed thick and hard, and raised us and vomited up peaks androcks to the squeeze. Suppose I have been asleep a week?" Here he openedhis eyes and gazed at me.
"Well?" said I.
"I say," he continued in the tone of one easily excited into passion, "aweek. It will not have been more. It is impossible. Never mind aboutyour eighteen hundred and one," showing his fangs in a sarcastic grin;"a week is long enough, friend. Then this is what I mean to say: thatthe break
ing away of a quarter of a mile of ice in a week is fine work,full of grand promise: the next wrench--which might come now as I speak,or to-morrow, or in a week--the next wrench may bring away the rock onwhich we are lodged, and the rest is a matter of patience--which we canafford, hey? for we are but two--there is plenty of meat and liquor andthe reward afterwards is a princely independence, Mr. Paul Rodney."
I was struck with the notion of the bed of ice on which the schooner laygoing afloat, and said, "Are sea and wind to be helped, think you? Ifthe block on which we lie could be detached, it might beat a bit againstits parent stock, but would not unite again. The schooner's canvas mightbe made to help it along--though suppose it capsized!"
"We must consider," said he; "there is no need to hurry. When the windfalls we will survey the ice."
He warmed himself afresh, and after remaining silent with the air of oneturning many thoughts over in his mind, he suddenly cried, "D'ye know Ihave a mind to view the plate and money below. What say you?"
His little eyes seemed to sparkle with suspicion as he directed them atme. I was confident he suspected I had lied in saying I knew nothing ofthis treasure and that he wanted to see if I had meddled with thosechests. One of the penalties attached to a man being forced to keep thecompany of liars is, he himself is never believed by them. I answeredinstantly, "Certainly; I should like to see this wonderful booty. It isright that we should find out at once if it is there; for supposing itvanished we should be no better than madmen to sit talking here of thefine lives we shall live if ever we get home."
He picked up the lanthorn and said, "I must go to your cabin: it was thecaptain's. The keys of the chests should be in one of his boxes."
He marched off, and was so long gone that I was almost of belief he hadtumbled down in a fit. However, I had made up my mind to act a very warypart; and particularly never to let him think I distrusted him, and so Iwould not go to see what he was about. But what I did was this: thearms-room was next door: I lighted a candle, entered it, and swiftlyarmed myself with a sort of dagger, a kind of boarding-knife, a verymurderous little two-edged sword, the blade about seven inches long, andthe haft of brass. There were some fifty of these weapons, and I tookthe first that came to my hand and dropped it into the deep side pocketof my coat and returned to the cook-room. It was not that I was afraidof going unarmed with this man into the hold: there was no more dangerto me there than here: should he ever design to despatch me, one placewas the same as another, for the dead above could not testify: therewere no witnesses in this white and desolate kingdom. What resolved meto go armed was the fear that should the treasure be missing--and whowas to swear that the schooner had never been visited once ineight-and-forty years?--the Frenchman, who was persuaded his stupor hadnot lasted above a week, and who was doubtless satisfied the chests werein the hold down to the period when he lost recollection, would suspectme of foul play, and in the barbarous rage of a pirate fall upon andendeavour to kill me. Thus you will see that I had no very high opinionof the morals and character of the man I had given life to; and indeed,after I had armed myself and was seated again before the furnace, I feltextremely melancholy, and underwent the severest dejection of spiritsthat had yet visited me, fearing that my humanity had achieved nothingmore than to bring me into the society of a devil, who would prove afixed source of anxiety and misery to me. Was it conceivable that theothers should be worse than, or even as bad as, this creature? His hairshowed him hoary in vice. The Italian was a handsome man, and let himhave been as profligate as he would, as cruel and fierce a pirate asTassard had painted him, he would at all events have proved a sightlycompanion, and harmless as being blind, though to be sure for thatreason of no use to me. Yet though his blindness would have made him aburden, I had rather have thawed him into life than the Frenchman.
The mere thought of feeling under an obligation to arm myself filled mewith such vindictive passions that I protest as I sat alone waiting forhim. I felt as if it were a duty I owed myself to return him to thecondition in which I found him, which was to be easily contrived by mybinding him in his sleep and dragging him to the deck and leaving him tostupefy alongside the body of the giant Joam Barros. "Peace!" cried I tomyself with a shiver; "villain that thou art to harbour such thoughts!Thou art a hundred-fold worse than the wretch against whom Satan issetting thee plotting to think thus vilely." I gulped down this bolusof conscience with the help of a draught of wine, and it did me good.Lord, how dangerous is loneliness to a man! Depend upon it, your seekerafter solitude is only hunting for the road that leads to Bedlam.
It might be that he was long because of having to seek for the keys; butmy own conviction was that he found the keys easily and stayed torummage the boxes for such jewels and articles of value as he mightthere find. I think he was gone near half an hour; he then returned tothe cook-house, saying briefly, "I have the keys," and jingling them,and after warming himself, said, "Let us go."
I was moving towards the forecastle.
"Not that way for the run," cried he.
"Is there a hatch aft?" I asked.
"Certainly; in the lazarette."
"I wish I had known that," said I; "I should have been spared a stiflingscramble over the casks and raffle forwards."
He led the way, and coming to the trap hatch that conducted to thelazarette, he pulled it open and we descended. He held the lanthorn andthrew the light around him and said, "Ay, there are plenty of storeshere. We reckoned upon provisions for twelve months, and we were seventyof a crew."
A strange figure he looked, just touched by the yellow candle-light, andstanding out upon the blackness like some vision of a distempered fancy,in his hair-cap and flaps, and with his long nose and beard and littleeyes shining as he rolled them here and there. We made our way over thecasks, bales, and the like, till we were right aft, and here there was asmall clear space of deck in which lay a hatch. This he lifted by itsring, and down through the aperture did he drop, I following. Thelazarette deck came so low that we had to squat when still or move uponour knees. At the foremost end of this division of the ship, so far asit was possible for my eyes to pierce the darkness--for it seems thatthis run went clear to the fore-hold bulkhead, that is to say, under thepowder-room, to where the fore-hold began--were stowed the spare sails,ropes for gear, and a great variety of furniture for the equipment of aship's yards and masts. But immediately under the hatch stood severalsmall chests and cases, painted black, stowed side by side so that theycould not shift.
Tassard ran his eye over them, counting. "Right!" cried he; "hold thelanthorn, Mr. Rodney."
I took the light from him, and, pulling the keys from his pocket, hefell to trying them at the lock of the first chest. One fitted; the boltshot with a hard click, like cocking a trigger, and he raised the lid.The chest was full of silver money. I picked up a couple of the coins,and, bringing them to the candle, perceived them to be Spanish pieces ofeight. The money was tarnished, yet it reflected a sort of dull metalliclight. The Frenchman grasped a handful and dropped them, as though, likea child, he loved to hear the chink the pieces made as they fell.
"There's a brave pocketful there," said I.
"Tut!" cried he, scornfully. "'Tis a mere show of money; resolve it intogold and it becomes a lean bit of plunder. This we got from the_Conquistador_; it was all she had in this way; destined for somemonastery, I recollect; but disappointment is good for holy fathers; itmakes them more earnest in their devotions and keeps their paunches fromswelling."
He let fall the lid of the chest, which locked itself, and then, after ashort trial of the keys, opened the one beside it. This was stored tothe top with what I took to be pigs of lead, and when he pulled out oneand bade me feel the weight of it I still thought it was lead, until hetold me it was virgin silver.
"This was good booty!" cried he, taking the lanthorn and swinging itover the blocks of metal. "It would have been missed but for me. Our menhad found it in the hold of the buccaneer in a chest half as deep againas this, and though
t it to be a case of marmalade, for there were twolayers of boxes of marmalade stowed on top. I routed them out and foundthose pretty bricks of ore snug beneath. I believe Mendoza made thevalue of the two chests--silver though it be--to be equal to sixthousand pounds of your money."
The next chest he opened was filled with jewellery of various kinds, thefruits, I daresay, of a dozen pillages, for not only had this piraterobbed honest traders but a picaroon as well that had also plundered inher turn another of her own kidney; so that, as I say, this chest ofjewellery might represent the property of the passengers of as many asa dozen vessels. It was as if the contents of the shop of a jeweller whowas at once a goldsmith and a silversmith had been emptied into thischest; you could scarce name an ornament that was not here--watches,snuff-boxes, buckles, bracelets, pounce-boxes, vinaigrettes, earrings,crucifixes, stars for the hair, necklaces--but the list grows tiresome;in silver and gold, but chiefly in gold; all shot together and lyingscramble fashion, as if they had been potatoes.
"This is a fine sight," said Tassard, poring upon the sparkling masswith falcon nose and ravenous eyes. "Here is a dainty little watch.Fifty guineas would not purchase it in London or Paris. Where is thewhite breast upon which that cross there once glittered? Ha! the perfumehas faded," bringing a vinaigrette to his hawk's bill; "the soul isgone; the body is the immortal part in this case. Now, my friend, talkto me of the patient drudgery of honourable life after this," collectingthe chests, so to say, to my view with a sweep of the hand; "men willbreak their hearts for a hundred livres ashore and be hanged for theprice of a pinchbeck dial. When I was in London I saw five men carted tothe gallows; one had forged, one was a highwayman--I forget the others'businesses; but I recollect on inquiring the value of theirbaggings--that for which they were hanged--it did not amount to fourguineas a man. Look at this!" He swept his great hand again over thechests. "Is not here something worth going to the scaffold for?"
His bosom swelled, his eyes sparkled, and he made as if to strike aheroic posture, but this he could not contrive on his hams.
I was thunder-struck, as you will suppose, by the sight of all thistreasure, and looked and stared like a fool, as if I was in a dream. Ihad never seen so many fine things before, and indulged in the mostextravagant fancies of their worth. Here and there in the glitteringhuddle my eye lighted on an object that was a hundred, perhaps twohundred, years old: a cup very choicely wrought, that may have been in afamily for several generations; a watch of a curious figure, and thelike. There might have been the pickings of the cabins, trunks, andportmanteaux of a hundred opulent men and women in this chest, and, sofar as I could judge from what lay atop, the people plunderedrepresented several nationalities.
But there were other chests and cases to explore--ten in all: two ofthese were filled with silver money, a third with plate, a fourth withEnglish, French, Spanish, and Portugal coins in gold; but the one overwhich Tassard hung longest in a transport that held him dumb, was thesmallest of all, and this was packed with gold in bars. The stuff hadthe appearance of mouldy yellow soap, and having no sparkle nor varietydid not affect me as the jewellery had, though in value this chest camenear to being worth as much as all the others put together. The fixedtransported posture of the pirate, his little shining eyes intent uponthe bars, his form in the candle-light looking like a sketch of astrange, wildly-apparelled man done in phosphorus, coupled with the loomof the black chests, the sense of our desolation, the folly of ourenjoyment of the sight of the treasure in the face of our pitiable anddismal plight, the melancholy storming of the wind, moaning like therumble of thunder heard in a vault, and above all the feeling ofunreality inspired by the thought of my companion having lain foreight-and-forty years as good as dead, combined to render the scene sostartlingly impressive that it remains at this hour painted as vividlyupon the eye of memory as if I had come from it five minutes ago.
"So!" cried the Frenchman suddenly, slamming the lid of the chest. "Tisall here! Now then to the business of considering how to come off withit."
He thrust the keys in his pocket, and we returned to the cook-room.