CHAPTER XXVI.
I AM TROUBLED BY THOUGHTS OF THE TREASURE.
The weight of the wind in the rigging steadied the schooner somewhat,and prevented her from rolling too heavily to starboard, whilst herlist corrected her larboard rolls. So as I sat below she seemed to meto be making tolerably good weather of it. Not much water came aboard;now and again I would hear the clatter of a fall forwards, but atcomfortably long intervals.
I sat against the dresser with my back upon it, and being dead tiredmust have dropped asleep on a sudden--indeed, before I had half smokedmy pipe out, and I do not believe I gave a thought to my situationbefore I slumbered, so wearied was I. The cold awoke me. The fire wasout and so was the candle in the lanthorn, and I was in coffin darkness.This the tinder-box speedily remedied. I looked at my watch--seveno'clock, as I was a sinner! so that my sleep had lasted between threeand four hours.
I went on deck and found the night still black upon the sea, the windthe same brisk gale that was blowing when I quitted the helm, the sea noheavier, and the schooner tumbling in true Dutch fashion upon it. Ilooked very earnestly around but could see no signs of ice. There wouldbe daylight presently, so I went below, lighted the fire, and got mybreakfast, and when I returned the sun was up and the sea visible to itsfurthest reaches.
It was a fine wintry piece; the sea green and running in ridges withfrothing heads, the sky very pale among the dark snow-laden clouds, thesun darting a ray now and again, which was swung into the north by theshadows of the clouds until they extinguished it. Remote in thenorth-west hung the gleam of an iceberg; there was nothing else insight. Yes--something that comforted me exceedingly, though it was notvery many days ago that a like object had heavily scared me--analbatross, a noble bird, sailing on the windward close enough to beshot. The sight of this living thing was inexpressibly cheering; it putinto my head a fancy of ships being at hand, thoughts of help and ofhuman companions. In truth, my imagination was willing to accept it asthe same bird that I had frightened away when in the boat, now returnedto silently reproach me for my treatment of it. Nay, my lonely eye, mysubdued and suffering heart might even have witnessed the good angel ofmy life in that solitary shape of ocean beauty, and have deemed that,though unseen, it had been with me throughout, and was now made visibleto my gaze by the light of hope that had broken into the darkness of myadventure.
Well, supposing it so, I should not have been the only man who everscared his good angel away and found it faithful afterwards.
I unlashed the tiller and got the schooner before the wind and steereduntil a little before noon, letting her drive dead before the sea, whichcarried her north-east. Then securing the helm amidships I ran for thequadrant, and whilst waiting for the sun to show himself I observed thatthe vessel held herself very steadily before the wind, which might havebeen owing to her high stern and the great swell of her sides and herround bottom; but be the cause what it might, she ran as fairly with herhelm amidships as if I had been at the tiller to check her, a mostfortunate condition of my navigation, for it privileged me to get aboutother work, whilst, at the same time, every hour was conveying me nearerto the track of ships and further from the bitter regions of the south.
I got an observation and made out that the vessel had driven aboutfifteen leagues during the night. She must do better than that, thoughtI; and when I had eaten some dinner I took a chopper, and, going on tothe forecastle, lay out upon the bowsprit, and after beating thespritsail-yard block clear of the ice, cut away the gaskets thatconfined the sail to the yard, heartily beating the canvas, that waslike iron, till a clew of it fell. I then came in and braced the yardsquare, and the wind, presently catching the exposed part of the sail,blew more of it out, and yet more, until there was a good surfaceshowing; then to a sudden hard blast of wind the whole sail flew openwith a mighty crackling, as though indeed it was formed of ice; but torender it useful I had to haul the sheets aft, which I could not managewithout the help of the tackles we had used in slinging the powder overthe side; so that, what with one hindrance and another, the setting ofthat sail took me an hour and a half.
But had it occupied me all day it would have been worth doing. Triflingas it was as a cloth, its effect upon the schooner was like that of acordial upon a fainting man. It was not that she sensibly showed nimblerheels to it; its lifting tendency enabled her to ride the under-runningseas more buoyantly, and if it increased her speed by half a knot anhour it was worth a million to me, whose business it was to take theutmost possible advantage of the southerly gale.
I returned to the helm, warm with the exercise, and gazed forward not alittle proud of my work. Though the sail was eight-and-forty years oldand perhaps older, it offered as tough and stout a surface to the windas if it was fresh from the sailmaker's hands, so great are thepreserving qualities of ice. I looked wistfully at the topsail, but onreflecting that if it should come on to blow hard enough to compel me toheave the brig to she would never hull with that canvas abroad, Iresolved to let it lie, for I could cut away the spritsail if thenecessity arose and not greatly regret its loss; but to lose the topsailwould be a serious matter, though if I did not cut it adrift it mightcarry away the mast for me; so, as I say, I would not meddle with it.
Finding that the ship continued to steer herself very well, and thebetter for the spritsail, I thought I would get the body of the oldFrenchman overboard and so obtain a clear hold for myself so far ascorpses went. I carried the lanthorn into the forecastle, but when Ipulled the hammock off him I confess it was not without a stupid fearthat I should find him alive. Recollection of his astounding vitalityfound something imperishable in that ugly anatomy, and though he laybefore me as dead and cold as stone, I yet had a fancy that the seeds oflife were still in him, that 'twas only the current of his being thathad frozen, that if I were to thaw him afresh he might recover, andthat if I buried him I should actually be despatching him.
But though these fancies possessed, they did not control me. I took hiswatch and whatever else he had in that way, carried him on deck anddropped him over the side, using as little ceremony as he had employedin the disposal of his shipmates, but affected by very differentemotions; for there was not only the idea that the vital spark was stillin him; I could not but handle with awe the most mysterious corpse theeye had ever viewed, one who had lived through a stupor or death-sleep,for eight-and-forty years, in whom in a few hours Time had compressedthe wizardry he stretches in others over half a century; who in a nighthad shrunk from the aspect of his prime into the lean, puckered,bleared-eyed, deaf, and tottering expression of a hundred years.
But now he was gone! The bubbles which rose to the plunge of his bodywere his epitaph; had they risen blood-red they would have bettersymbolized his life. The albatross stooped to the spot where he hadvanished with a hoarse salt scream like the laugh of a delirious woman,and the wind, freshening momentarily in a squall, made one think of thespirit of Nature as eager to purify the air of heaven from the taint ofthe dead pirate's passage from the bulwarks to the water's surface.
All that day and through the night that followed the schooner drove,rolling and plunging before the seas, into the north-east, to thepulling of the spritsail. I made several excursions into the fore-hold,but never could hear the sound of water in the vessel. Her sides inplaces were still sheathed in ice, but this crystal armour was graduallydropping off her to the working of her frame in the seas, so that, sinceshe was proving herself tight, it was certain her staunchness owednothing to the glassy plating. I had seen some strange craft in my day;but nothing to beat the appearance this old tub of a hooker submitted tomy gaze as I viewed her from the helm. How so uncouth a structure, withher tall stern, flairing bows, fat buttocks, sloping masts,forecastle-well, and massive head-timbers ever managed to pursue andoverhaul a chase was only to be unriddled by supposing all that she tookto be more unwieldy and clumsy than herself. What would a pirate ofthese days, in his clean-lined polacca or arrowy schooner, have thoughtof such an instrument as this for the p
ractice of his pretty trade? Theice aloft still held for her spars and rigging the resemblance of glass,and to every sunbeam that flashed upon her from between the sweepingclouds she would sparkle out into many-coloured twinklings, marvellouslydelicate in colour, and changing their tints twenty times over in abreath through the swiftness of the reeling of the spars.
I should but fatigue you to follow the several little stories of thesehours one by one; how I got my food, snatched at sleep, stood at thehelm, gazed around the sea-line and the like. Just before sundown I sawa large iceberg in the north, two leagues distant; no others were insight, but one was enough to make me uneasy, and I spent a very troublednight, repeatedly coming on deck to look about me. The schooner steeredherself as if a man stood at the helm. The spritsail further helped herin this, for, if the curl of a sea under her forefoot brought her tolarboard or starboard, the sail forced her back again. Still, it was avery surprising happy quality in her, the next best thing to my having ashipmate, and a wonderful relief to me who must otherwise have broughther to, under a lashed helm, every time I had occasion to leave thedeck.
The seaworthiness of the craft, coupled with the reasonable assurance ofpresently falling in with a ship, rendered me so far easy in my mind asto enable me to think very frequently of the treasure and how I was tosecure it. If I fell in with an enemy's cruiser or a privateer I mustexpect to be stripped. This would be the fortune of war, and I must takemy chance. My concern did not lie that way; how was I to protect thisproperty, that was justly mine, against my own countrymen, suppose I hadthe good fortune to carry the schooner safely into English waters? I hada brother-in-law, Jeremiah Mason, Esq., a Turkey merchant in a small wayof business, whose office was in the City of London, and, if I couldmanage to convey the treasure secretly to him, he would, I knew, find mea handsome account in his settlement of this affair. But it wasimpossible to strike out a plan. I must wait and attend the course ofevents. Yet riches being things which fever the coldest imaginations, Icould not look ahead without excitement and irritability of fancy, Ishould reckon it a hard fate indeed after my cruel experiences, myfreeing the vessel from the ice, my sailing her through some thousand ofmiles of perilous seas, and arriving finally in safety, to bedispossessed of what was strictly mine--as much mine as if I had fishedit up from the bottom of the sea, where it must otherwise have lain tillthe crack of doom.
I remember that, among other ideas, it entered my head to tell themaster of the first ship I met, if she were British, the whole story ofmy adventure, to acquaint him with the treasure, to offer to tranship itand myself to his vessel and abandon the schooner, and to propose ahandsome reward for his offices. But I could not bring my mind to trustany stranger with so great a secret. The mere circumstance of thetreasure not being mine, in the sense of my having earned it, of itsbeing piratical plunder, and as much one's as another's, might dull theedge even of a fair-dealing conscience and expose me to the machinationsof a heavily tempted mind.
Therefore, though I had no plan, I was resolved at all hazards to stickto the schooner, and, with a view to providing against the curiosity orrummaging of any persons who should come aboard I fell to the followingwork after getting my breakfast. I hung lanthorns in the run andhatchways and cabin to enable me to pass easily to and fro; I thenemptied one of the chests in my cabin and carried it to where thetreasure was. The chest I filled nearly three-parts full with money,jewellery, &c., which sank the contents of the other chests to the depthI wanted. I then fetched a quantity of small arms, such as pistols andhangers and cutlasses, and filled up the chests with them, first placinga thickness of canvas over the money and jewellery, that no glittermight show through. To improve the deception I brought another chest tothe run, and wholly filled it with cutlasses, powder-horns, pistols, andthe like, and so fixed it that it must be the first to come to hand. Mycunning amounted to this: that, suppose the run to be rummaged, thecontents of the first chest were sure to be turned out, but, on theother chests being opened, and what they appeared to contain observed,it was as likely as not that the rummagers would be satisfied they werearms-chests, and quit meddling with them.
Herenow might I indulge in a string of reflections on the troubles andanxieties which money brings, quote from Juvenal and other poets, andhold myself up to your merriment by a contemptuous exhibition of myself,a lonely sailor, labouring to conceal his gold from imaginary knaves,toiling in the dark depth of the vessel, and never heeding that, evenwhilst he so worked, his ship might split upon some half-tide rock ofice, and founder with him and his treasure too, and so on, and so on.But the fact is I was not a fool. Here was money enough to set me up asa fine gentleman for life, and I meant to save it and keep it too, if Icould. A man on his deathbed, a man in such peril that his end iscertain, can afford to be sentimental. He is going where money is drossindeed, and he is in a posture when to moralize upon human greed and thevanity of wishes and riches becomes him. But would not a man whosehealth is hearty, and who hopes to save his life, be worse off than asheep in the matter of brains not to keep a firm grip of Fortune's handwhen she extended it? I know I was very well pleased with my morning'swork when I had accomplished it, and had no mind to qualify mysatisfaction by melancholy and romantic musings on my condition and theuncertainty of the future. This was possibly owing to the fineness ofthe weather; a heavy black gale from the north would doubtless havegiven a very different turn to my humours.
The wind at dawn had weakened and come into the west. There was a strongswell--indeed there always is in this ocean--but the seas ran small. Thesky looked like marble, with its broad spreadings of high white cloudsand the veins of blue sky between. I wished to make all the northingthat was possible, but there was nothing to be done in that way with thespritsail alone. Had not the capstan been frozen I should have tried toget the mainsail upon the ship, but without the aid of machinery I washelpless. So, with helm amidships, the schooner drove languidly alongwith her head due east, lifting as ponderously as a line-of-battle shipto the floating launches of the high swell, and the albatross hung assteadfastly in the wake of my lonely ocean path as though it had beensome messenger sent by God to watch me into safety.