A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

In the Sargasso Sea

T >> Thomas A. Janvier >> In the Sargasso Sea




From where I was seated I could see nearly the whole of it; and what I
first noted was that a little hatch in the middle of the floor was
open, and that dangling down into it from one of the roof-beams was a
double-purchase--as though an attempt to haul up some heavy thing from
that place had come to a short end. For the rest, there was little to
see: only a clumsy table set fast between fixed benches close under
the stern windows; a locker in which I found, when I looked into it, a
sodden thing that very likely had been the ship's log-book along with
a queer old Jacob's staff (as they were called) such as mariners took
their observations with before quadrants were known; and against the
wall were hanging a couple of long old rusty swords and a rusty thing
that I took at first to be a wash-basin, but made out was a
deep-curved breast-plate that must have belonged to a very
round-bellied little man.

The floor of the cabin, as I found when I went in there, was so firm
and solid--being laid in teak, very likely, and having been sheltered
by the roof over it from the rains--that I had no fear, as I had on
the open deck, that the planks would give way under me and let me
through. And when I was come inside I found resting on a wooden rack
set against the front wall a couple of old bell-mouthed brass
fire-locks, coated thick with verdigris, and with them three smaller
bell-mouthed pieces which were neither guns nor pistols but something
between the two. As for the log-book, if it were the log-book, I could
make nothing of it. It was so soaked and swelled by the dampness, and
so rotten, that my fingers sank into it when I tried to pick it up as
they would have sunk into porridge; and the slimy stuff left a horrid
smell upon my hand. Therefore I cannot tell what was the name of this
old ship, nor to what country she belonged, nor whither she was
sailing on her last voyage; but that she was Spanish--or perhaps
Portuguese--and was wrecked while on her way homeward from some port
in the Indies, I do not doubt at all.

When I had made my round of the cabin, finding so little, I came to
the open hatch in the middle of it and gazed down into the dusky depth
curiously: wondering a good deal that in what must have been almost
the moment when death was setting its clutch upon the galleon, and
when all aboard of her assuredly were in peril of their lives, her
people should have tried to rouse out a part of her cargo--as I had
proof that they had tried to do in the tackle still hanging there from
the beam. And the only reasonable way to account for this strange
endeavor, it seemed to me--since provisions were not likely to be
carried in that part of the vessel--was that something so precious was
down there in the blackness as to make the risk of death worth taking
in order to try to save it from the sea.

With that there came over me an itching curiosity to find out what the
treasure was which the crew of the galleon--in such stress of some
sort that they had been forced to give up the job suddenly--had tried
to get out of their ship and carry off with them; and along with my
curiosity came an eager pounding of my heart as I thought to
myself--without ever stopping to think also how useless riches of any
sort were to me--that by right of discovery their treasure, whatever
it might be, had become mine.

With my breath coming and going quickly, I got down upon my hands and
knees and stooped my head well into the opening that I might get rid
of the light in my eyes from the cabin windows; and being that way I
made out dimly that the lower block of the purchase was whipped fast
to a little wooden box, and that other small boxes were stowed in
regular tiers under it so that they filled snugly a little chamber
about a dozen feet square. That there were several layers of these
boxes seemed probable, for those in sight were only six feet or so
below the level of the cabin floor, and that they held either gold or
silver I considered to be beyond a doubt; and as I raised my head up
out of the hatch, my eyes blinking as the light struck them, and
thought of the wealth that must be stored there in that little
chamber, and that it was mine because I had found it, I gave a long
great sigh.

For a minute or two I was quite dazed by my discovery; and then as I
got steadier--or got crazier, perhaps I ought to say--nothing would
serve me but that I must get down to where my treasure was, so that my
eyes might see it and that I might touch it with my hands. And with
that I caught at the tackle and gave a tug on the ropes to test them,
and as they held I swung to them to slide down--and the moment that my
full weight was on them they snapped like punk, and down I went feet
foremost and struck on the tiers of boxes with a bang. As I fell only
a little way, and upon a level surface--for I went clear of the box
to which the tackle was made fast--no harm came to me; but under my
feet I felt the rotten wood going squashily, and then beneath it
something firm and hard. And when I got back my balance and looked
down eagerly my eyes caught a dull gleam in the semi-darkness, and
then made out beneath my feet a mass of yellow ingots: and I gave a
great shout--that seemed to be forced out of me to keep my heart from
bursting--for I knew that I was standing on bars of gold!





XXV

I AM THE MASTER OF A GREAT TREASURE


For a while, down in that black little place, I was quite a crazy
creature; being so stirred by my finding this great store of riches
that I went to dancing and singing there--and was not a bit bothered
by the vile stench rising from the rotten wood that my feet sent
flying, nor by the still viler stench rising from the reeking mass of
rottenness below me in the galleon's hold.

And then, that I might see my treasure the more clearly, I fell to
tossing the ingots up through the hatch into the cabin--where I could
have a good light upon them, and could gloat upon the yellow gleam of
them, and could make some sort of a guess at how much each of them
represented in golden coin. From that I went on to calculating how
much the whole of them were worth together; and when I got to the end
of my figuring I fairly was dazed.

In a rough way I estimated that each ingot weighed at least five
pounds, and as each of the little boxes contained ten of them the
value of every single box stored there was not less than fifteen
thousand dollars. As well as I could make out, the boxes were in rows
of ten and there were ten rows of them--which gave over a million and
a half of dollars for the top tier alone; and as there certainly was
an under-tier the value of my treasure at the least was three
millions. But actually, as I found by digging down through the ingots
until I came to the solid flooring, there were in all five tiers of
boxes; and what made the whole of them worth close upon eight millions
of our American money, or well on toward two millions of English
pounds. My brain reeled as I thought about it. The treasure that I had
possession of was a fortune fit for a king!

I had swung myself up from the little chamber and was standing in the
cabin while I made these calculations, and when at last I got to my
sum total I felt so light-headed that it seemed as though I were
walking on air. Indeed, I fairly was stunned by my tremendous good
fortune and could not think clearly: and it was because my mind thus
was turned all topsy-turvy, I suppose, that the odd thought popped
into it that in the matter of weight my gold ingots were pretty much
the same as the tins of beans to get which I was about to return to
the barque--a foolish notion which so tickled my fancy that I burst
out into a loud laugh.

The jarring sound of my laughter, which rang out with a ghastly
impropriety in that deathly place, brought me to my senses a little
and made me calmer. But my mind ran on for a moment or so upon the odd
notion that had provoked it, and in that time certain other thoughts
flashed into my head which had only to get there to spill out of me
every bit of my crazy joy. For first I realized that since I could
carry only the same weight of gold that I could carry of food my
actual wealth was but a single back-load, which brought my millions
down to a few beggarly thousands; and on top of that I realized--and
this came like a douse of ice-water--that for every ingot that I
carried away with me I must leave a like weight of food behind: which
meant neither more nor less than that my great treasure, for all the
good that ever it would be to me--so little could I venture to take of
it on these terms--might as well be already at the bottom of the sea.

And then, being utterly dispirited and broken, I fell to thinking how
little difference it made one way or the other--how even a single
ingot would be a vain lading--since I had no ground for hoping that
ever again would I get to a region where I would have use for gold.
And with that--though I kept on staring in a dull way at the ingots
scattered over the floor of the cabin--I thought of the treasure no
longer: my heart being filled with a great sorrowing pity for myself,
because of the doom upon me to live out whatever life might be left
me in the most horrid solitude into which ever a man was cast.

For a long while I stood despairing there; and then at last the hope
of life began to rise in me again--as it always must rise, no matter
how desperate are the odds against it, in the mind of a sound and
vigorous man. And with this saner feeling came again my desire to push
on in the direction that offered me a chance of deliverance--leaving
all my treasure behind me, since it was worth less to me than food;
and presently came the farther hope that when I had succeeded in
finding a way out of my sea-prison, and so was sure of my life once
more, I might be able to return to the galleon and take away with me
at least some portion of the great riches that I had found.

Because of this foolish hope, and the very human comfort that I found
in knowing myself to be the possessor of such prodigious wealth, I
needs must jump down again to where it was and take another survey of
it before I left it behind. And then, being cooler and looking more
carefully, I noticed that the box to which the tackle had been made
fast was not like the other boxes--though about the same size with
them--but was a little coffer that seemed once to have been locked and
that still had around it the rusty remnants of iron bands. This
difference in the make of it put into my head the notion that its
contents were more precious than the contents of the other
boxes--though how that could be I did not well see; and my notion
seemed the more reasonable as I reflected that if the coffer really
were of an extraordinary value there would have been sense in trying
to save it even in a time of great peril--which was more than could be
said of trying to load down boats launched in the midst of some final
disaster with any of those heavy boxes of gold.

My mind became excited by another mirage of riches as these thoughts
went through it, and to settle the matter I stooped down and got a
grip on the coffer--which was made of a tougher wood than the boxes
and held together--and managed by a good deal of straining to lift it
up through the hatch into the cabin, where I could examine it at
my ease.

When it was new an axe would not have made much impression upon it, so
strongly had it been put together; but there were left only black
stains to show where the iron had bound it, and the wood had rotted
until it was softer than the softest bit of pine. Indeed, I had only
to give a little jerk to the lid to open it: both the lock and the
hinges being gone with rust, and the lid held in place only by a sort
of sticky slime.

But when I did get it open the first thing that came out of it was a
stench so vile that I had to jump up in a hurry and rush to the open
deck until the worst of it had ebbed away; and this exceeding evil
odor was given off by a slimy ooze of rotted leather--as I knew a
little later by finding still unmelted some bits of small leather bags
in which what was stored there had been tied. But even as I jumped up
and left the cabin my eyes caught a gleam of brightness in the horrid
slimy mess that set my heart to beating hard again; and it pounded
away in my breast still harder when I came back and made out clearly
what I had found.

For there in the rotten ooze, strewn thickly, was such a collection of
glittering jewels that my eyes fairly were dazzled by them; and when I
had turned the coffer upside down on the deck so that the slime flowed
away stickily--giving off the most dreadful stench that ever I have
encountered--I saw a heap of precious stones such as for size and
beauty has not been gathered into one place, I suppose--unless it may
have been in the treasury of some Eastern sovereign--since the very
beginning of the world. At a single glance I knew that the great
treasure of gold, which had seemed to me overwhelming because of its
immensity, was as nothing in comparison with this other treasure
wherein riches were so concentrate and sublimate that I had the very
essence of them: and I reeled and trembled again as I hugged the
thought to me that by my finding of it I was made master of it all.





XXVI

OF A STRANGE SIGHT THAT I SAW IN THE NIGHT-TIME


I was pretty much mooning mad for a while, I suppose: sometimes
walking about the cabin and thrusting with my feet contemptuously at
the gold ingots strewn over the floor of it, and sometimes standing
still in a sort of rapt wonder over my heap of jewels--and anything
like sensible thinking was quite beyond the power of my unbalanced
mind. But at last I was aroused, and so brought to myself a little, by
the daylight waning suddenly: as it did in that region when the sun
dropped down into the thick layer of mist lying close upon the
water--making at first a strange purplish dusk, and then a rich
crimson after-glow that deepened into purple again, and so turning
slowly into blackness as night came on.

When I had come aboard the galleon, about noon-time, and had found her
so sodden with wet and so reeking with foul odors--as, indeed, were
all of the very ancient ships which made the mid-part of that sea
graveyard--I had made my mind up to a forced march in the afternoon
that I hoped would carry me through the worst of all that rottenness,
and so to a ship partly dry and less ill-smelling for the night. But
when I came out from the cabin and looked about me, and saw how thick
and black were the shadows in the clefts between the wrecks, I knew
that I could not venture onward, but must pass the night where I was.
And this was a prospect not at all to my mind.

The cabin, of course, was the only place for me, the soaked deck with
the soaked moss on top of it being quite out of the question; but even
the cabin was not fit for a dog to lie in, so chill and damp was it
and so foul with the stench rising and spreading from the slime of
rotted leather that I had emptied from the coffer and that made a
little vile pool upon the floor. And through the open hatch there came
up a dismal heavy odor of all the rotten stuff down there that almost
turned my stomach, and that made the air laden with it hard to
breathe--though in my hot excitement I had not noticed it at all. But
this last I got the better of in part by covering again the opening,
though I had to move the hatch very gently and carefully to keep it
from falling into rotten fragments in my hands. Yet because it was so
dense with moisture, when I did get it set in place, it pretty well
kept the stench down. And then I kicked away some of the ingots into a
corner, and so cleared a space on the floor where I could stretch
myself just within the cabin door.

These matters being attended to, I seated myself in the same place
where I had eaten my dinner--just outside the door, under the little
sort of porch overhanging it--and ate the short ration that I allowed
myself for my supper, and found it very much less than my lively
hunger required. When I had finished I sat on there for a good while
longer, being very loath to go into the cabin; but at last, by finding
myself nodding with weary drowsiness, I knew that sleep would come
quickly, and so went inside and laid myself down upon the floor. There
still was a faint glimmer of dying daylight outside, and this little
glow somehow comforted me as I lay there facing the doorway and
blinking now and then before my eyes were tight closed; but I did not
lie long that way half-waking, being so utterly fagged in both mind
and body that I dropped off into deep slumber before the
darkness fell.

I suppose that even in my sleep I had an uneasy sense of my bleak
surroundings; and that this, in the course of three or four hours--by
which time I was a good deal rested and so slept less soundly--got the
better of my weariness and roused me awake again. But when I first
woke I was sure that I had slept the night through and that early
morning was come--for there was so much light in the cabin that I
never thought to account for it save by the return of day. Yet the
light was not like daylight, as I realized when I had a little more
shaken off my sleepiness, being curiously white and soft.

I turned over--for I had rolled in my uneasy sleep and got my back
toward the doorway--and raised myself a little on my elbow so that I
might see out clearly; and what I saw was so unearthly strange, and in
a way so awe-compelling, that in another moment I was on my feet and
staring with all my eyes. Over the whole deck of the galleon a soft
lambent light was playing, and this went along her bulwarks and up
over her high fore-castle so that all the lines of her structure were
defined sharply by it; and pale through the mist against the
blackness, out over her low waist, I could catch glimpses of the other
tall old ships lying near her all likewise shining everywhere with the
same soft flames--which yet were not flames exactly, but rather a
flickering glow.

In a moment or so I realized that this luminous wonder, which at the
first look had so strong a touch of the supernatural in it, was no
more than the manifestation of a natural phenomenon: being the shimmer
of phosphorescent light upon the soaking rotten woodwork of the
galleon and of the ships about her, as rotten and as old. But making
this explanation to myself did not lessen the frightening strangeness
of the spectacle, nor do much to stop the cold creeps which ran over
me as I looked at it: I being there solitary in that marvellous
brightness--that I knew was in a way a death-glow--the one
thing alive.

But presently my unreasoning shivering dread began to yield a little,
as my curiosity bred in me an eager desire to see the whole of this
wondrous soft splendor; for I made sure from my glimpses over the
galleon's bulwarks that it was about me on every side. And so I
stepped out from the cabin upon the deck, where my feet sank into the
short mossy growth that coated the rotten planks and I was fairly
walking in what seemed like a lake of wavering pale flame; and from
there, that I might see the better, I climbed cautiously up the rotten
stair leading to the roof of the cabin, and thence to the little
over-topping gallery where the stern-lantern was. And from that height
I could gaze about me as far as ever the mist would let me see.

Everywhere within the circle that my eyes covered--which was not a
very big one, for in the night the mist was thick and low-lying--the
old wrecks wedged together there were lighted with the same lambent
flames: which came and went over their dead carcasses as though they
all suddenly were lighted and then as suddenly were put out again; and
farther away the glow of them in the mist was like a silvery
shimmering haze. By this ebbing and flowing light--which seemed to
me, for all that I knew the natural cause of it, so outside of nature
that I thrilled with a creeping fear as I looked at it--I could see
clearly the shapes of the strange ancient ships around me: their great
poops and fore-castles rising high above their shallow waists, and
here and there among them the remnant of a mast making a line of light
rising higher still--like a huge corpse-candle shining against the
blackness beyond. And the ruin of them--the breaks in their lines, and
the black gaps where bits of their frames had rotted away
completely--gave to them all a ghastly death-like look; while their
wild tangling together made strange ragged lines of brightness
wavering under the veil of mist, as though a desolate sea-city were
lying there dead before me lit up with lanterns of despair.

Yet that which most keenly thrilled me with a cold dread was my strong
conviction that I could see living men moving hither and thither over
those pale-lit decks, where my reason told me that only ancient death
could be; for the play of the flickering light made such a commotion
of fleeting flames and dancing shadows, going and coming in all manner
of fantastic shapes, that every shattered hulk around me seemed to
have her old crew alive and on board of her again--all hurrying in
bustling crowds fore and aft, and up and down the heights of her, as
though under orderly command. And at times these shapes were so real
and so distinct to me that I was for crying out to them--and would
check myself suddenly, shivering with a fright which I knew was out of
all reason but which for the life of me I could not keep down.

And so the night wore away: while I stood there on the galleon's poop
with the soft pale flames flickering around me in the mist, and my
fears rising and falling as I lost and regained control of myself; and
I think that it is a wonder that I did not go mad.





XXVII

I SET MYSELF TO A HEAVY TASK


At last, after what seemed to me an age of waiting for it, a little
pinkish tone began to glow in the mist to the eastward; and as that
honest light got stronger the death-fires on the old galleon and on
the wrecks around her paled quickly until they were snuffed out
altogether--and then came the customary morning down-pour of rain.

With the return of the blessed daylight, and with the enlivening douse
of cool fresh water upon me, I got to be myself again: my fanciful
fears of the night-time leaving me, and my mind coming back soberly to
a consideration of my actual needs. Of these the most pressing, as my
stomach told me, was to get my breakfast; and when that matter, in a
very poor way, had been attended to, and I had drunk what water I
needed--without much relishing it--from a pool that had formed on the
deck where the timbers sagged down a little, I was in better heart to
lay out for myself a plan of campaign.

In one way planning was not necessary. By holding to a northerly
course I believed that I had got at least half way across my
continent, and my determination was fixed to keep on by the
north--rather than risk a fresh departure that might only carry me by
a fresh way again into the depths of the tangle--until I should come
once more to the open sea: if I may call open sea that far outlying
expanse of ocean covered with thick-grown weed. But it was needful
that I should plan for my supply of food as I went onward, that was to
be got only by returning to the far-away barque; and also I felt an
itching desire--as strong as at first blush it was unreasonable--to
carry away with me some part of the treasure that I had found. That I
ever should get out into the world again, and so have the good of my
riches, seemed likely to me only in my most sanguine moments; but even
on the slimmest chance of accomplishing my own deliverance I had a
very natural human objection to leaving behind me the wealth that I
had found through such peril--only to lie there for a while longer
idly, and then to be lost forever when the galleon sank to the bottom
of the sea.

As to the gold, it was plain that I could carry off so little of it
that I might as well resign myself--having that which was better worth
working for--to losing it all. But my treasure of jewels was another
matter. This was so very much more valuable than the gold--for the
stones for the most part were of a prodigious size and a rare
fineness--that between the two there really was no comparison; and at
the same time it was so compact in bulk and so petty in weight that I
might easily carry the whole of it with me and a good store of food
too. And so, to make a beginning, I picked the stones out of the slimy
and stinking ooze in which they were lying and washed them clean in
the pool of water on the deck; and then I packed them snugly into the
shirt-sleeve in which my beans had been stored--and tickled myself the
while with the fancy that most men would be willing for the sake of
stuffing a shirt-sleeve that way to cut off the arm to which
it belonged.

My packing being finished, and my precious bag laid away in a corner
of the cabin until I should come to fetch it again, I was in a better
mood for facing my long march back to the barque: for I had come to
have fortune as well as life to work for, and those two strong
stimulants to endeavor working together gave my spirits a great upward
pull. And, fortunately, my cheerfulness staid by me through my long
scrambling struggle backward along my blazed path; nor was it, in
reality, as hard a journey as I had expected it to be--for I had but a
light load of food to carry, barely enough to last me through, and the
marks which I had left upon the wrecks in passing made my way plain.
And so, at last, I got back to the barque one evening about sunset,
and had almost a feeling of homecoming in boarding her again; and I
was thankful enough to be able to eat all the supper I wanted, and
then to lie down comfortably in her clean cabin and to rest myself in
sound slumber after my many restless nights on rotten old ships
reeking with a chill dampness that struck into my very bones.

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