XXI

MY THIRST IS QUENCHED, AND I FIND A COMPASS

It was a long while before the pale pink gleam to the eastward spread up into the sky far enough to thin the shadows which hung over my dead fleet heavily, and longer still before I had light enough to venture to begin my scrambling walk from ship to ship again. It seemed to me, indeed, that the mist lay lower and was a good deal thicker than on the preceding evening; and this, with the fiery glow that was in it when the sunrise came, gave me hope that a douse of rain might be coming—which chance of getting the water that I longed for heartened me even more than did the up-coming of the sun.

My throat was hurting me a good deal because of its dryness, and my itching thirst was all the stronger because the last food I had eaten—being the mess left in the pan by the two men who had killed each other—had been a salt-meat stew. Of hunger I did not feel much, save for gripes in my inside now and then; but I was weak because of my emptiness—as I discovered when I got on my legs, and found myself staggering a little and the things around me swimming before my eyes. And what was worse than that was a dull stupidity which so possessed me that I could not think clearly; and so for a while kept me wandering about the deck of the brig aimlessly, while my wits went wool-gathering instead of trying to work out some plan—even a foolish plan—which would cheer me up with hopes of pulling through.

I might have gone on all day that way, very likely, if I had not been aroused suddenly by feeling a big drop of rain on my face; and only a moment later—the thick mist, I suppose, being surcharged with water, and some little waft of wind in its upper region having loosened its vent-peg—I was in the thick of a dashing shower. So violent was the downpour that in less than a minute the deck was streaming, and I had only to plug with my shirt one of the scuppers amidships to have in another minute or two a little lake of fresh sweet water from which—lying on my belly, with the rain pelting down on me—I drank and drank until at last I was full. And the feel of the rain on my body was almost as good as the drinking of it, for it was deliciously cool and yet not chill.

When I got at last to my legs again, with the dryness gone from my throat and only a little pain there because of the swollen glands, I found that I walked steadily and that my head was clear too; and for the moment I was so entirely filled with water that I was not hungry at all. Presently the rain stopped, and that set me to thinking of finding some better way to keep a store of water by me than leaving it in a pool on the open deck; where, indeed, it would not stay long, but would ooze out through the scupper and be sopped up by the rotten planks.

And so, though I did not at all fancy going below on the old brig, I went down the companion-way into the cabin to search for a vessel of some sort that would be water-tight; and shivered a little as I entered that dusky place, and did not venture to move about there until my eyes got accustomed to the half darkness for fear that I should go stumbling over dead men's bones.

As it turned out, the cabin was bare enough of dead people, and of pretty much everything else; from which I inferred that in the long past time when the brig had been wrecked her crew had got safe away from her, and had been able in part to strip her before they left her alone upon the sea. What I wanted, however, they had not taken away. In a locker I found a case made to hold six big bottles, in which the skipper had carried his private stock of liquors very likely; and two of the bottles, no doubt being empty when the cabin was cleared, had been left behind. They served my turn exactly, and I brought them on deck and filled them from my pool of rain-water—and so was safe against thirst for at least another day.

Being thus freshened by my good drink, and cheered by the certainty of having water by me, I sat down for a while on the cabin-scuttle that I might puzzle out a plan for getting to some ship so recently storm-slain that aboard of her still would be eatable food. As for rummaging in the hold of the brig, I knew that no good could come of it—she having lain there, as I judged, for a good deal more than half a century; and for the same reason I knew that I only would waste time in searching the other old wrecks about me for stores. All that was open to me was to press toward the edge of the wreck-pack, for there alone could I hope to find what I was after—and there it pretty certainly would be. But after my miserable experience of the preceding day it was plain that before I started on my hunting expedition I must hit upon some way of laying a course and holding it; or else, most likely, go rambling from wreck to wreck until I grew so weak from starvation that on one or another of them I should fall down at last and die.

Close beside me, as I sat on the hatch, was the brig's binnacle, and in it I could see the shrivelled remnant of what had been the compass-card; and the sight of this put into my head presently the thought—that might have got there sooner had my wits been sharper—to look for a compass still in working order and by means of it to steer some sort of a steady course. The argument against this plan was plain enough, and it was a strong one: that in holding as well as I could to any straight line I might only get deeper and deeper into my maze—for I was turned around completely, and while I knew that I could not be very far from the edge of my island of flotsam I had not the faintest notion in which direction that near edge lay.

For some minutes longer I sat on the hatch thinking the matter over and trying to hit on something that would open to me a better prospect of success; and all the while I had a hungry pain in my stomach that made clear thinking difficult, and that at the same time urged me to do quickly anything that gave even the least promise of getting food. And so the upshot of the matter was that I slung my two bottles of water over my shoulders with a bit of line that I found in the brig's cabin—making the slings short, that the bottles might hang close under my arms and be pretty safe against breaking—and then away I went on my cruise after a compass still on speaking terms with the north pole.

That I would find one seemed for a good while unlikely; for I searched a score and more of wrecks, and on every one of them the binnacle either was empty or the needle entirely rusted away. But at last I came to a barque that had a newer look about her than that of the craft amidst which she was lying, and that also had her binnacle covered with a tarred canvas hood such as is used when vessels are lying in port. How the hood came to be where it was on that broken wreck was more than I could account for; but by reason of its being in place the binnacle had been well protected from the weather, and I found to my delight that the compass inside was in working trim.

It was an awkward thing to carry, being an old-fashioned big square box heavily and clumsily made; but I was so glad to get it that I was not for quarrelling with it, though it did for a little put me to a puzzle as to how I should pack it along. What I came to was to sling it on my back knapsack-fashion, which was a poor way to have it, since every time that I looked at it I had to unsling it and then to sling it again; yet there was no other way for me to manage it, because in my scrambling from one wreck to another I needs must have both hands free. But what with this big box strapped to my shoulders, and the two big bottles dangling close up under my arm-pits, I must have looked—only there was nobody to look at me—nothing less than a figure of fun.

As I knew not which way I ought to go, and so had all ways open to me, I laid my course for the head of the compass; and was the more disposed thus to go due north because that way, as far as I could see for the mist and the mast-tangle, the wrecks lay packed so close together that passing from one to another would be easy for me—which was a matter to be considered in view of the load that I had to carry along.

But just as I was ready to start another notion struck me. I had noticed the modern look of the barque, as compared with the ancient build of the hulks amidst which she was lying, when I first came aboard of her; and as I was about to leave her—my eye being caught by the soundness of a bit of line made fast to a belaying-pin on her rail—the thought occurred to me that I might find on her something or other still fit to be called food. And when this thought came to me I unslung my compass and my water-bottles in a hurry—for I was as ravenous as a man well could be.

XXII

I GET SOME FOOD IN ME AND FORM A CRAZY PLAN

The sun by that time being risen so high that the mist was changing again to a golden haze, and the cabin of the barque well lighted through the skylight over it, I felt less creepy and uncomfortable as I went down the companion-way than I had felt when I went below into the old brig's dusky cabin in the early dawn. But for all that I walked gingerly, and stopped to sniff at every step that I took downward; for I could not by any means get rid of my dread of coming upon some grewsome thing. However, the air was sweet enough—the slide of the hatch being closed, but the doors open and the cabin well ventilated—and when I got to the foot of the stair I saw nothing horrible in my first sharp look around.

It was a small cabin, but comfortably fitted; and almost the first thing that caught my eye was a work-basket spilled down into a corner and some spools and a pair of rusty scissors lying on the floor, and then in another corner I saw a little chair. And the sight of these things, which told that the barque's captain had had his wife and his child along with him, gave me a heavy sorrowful feeling—for all that if death had come to this sea-family the pain of it must have been over quickly a long while back in the past.

Two of the state-room doors, both on the starboard side, were open; and both rooms were empty, save for the mouldy bedding in the bunks and in one of them a canvas bed-bag such as seamen use. The doors of the other two rooms, there being four in all, were closed, and I opened them hesitatingly; and felt a good deal easier in my mind when I found that in neither of them was what I dreaded might be there. In one of them the bunk had been left in disorder, as though some one had risen from it hurriedly, and a frock and a bonnet were hanging against the wall; but the other one seemed to have been used only as a sort of storeroom—there being in it a pair of rubber boots and a suit of oil-skins, and a locker in which were some pretty trifles in shell-work such as might have been picked up in a West Indian port, and a little rack of books gone mouldy with the damp. One of these books I opened, and found written on the flyleaf: "Mary Woodbridge, with Aunt Jane's love. For the coming Christmas of 1879"—and this date, though it did not settle certainly when the barque had started on the voyage that had come to so bad an ending, at least proved that she had not been lying where I found her for a very great many years.

As to how the barque had got so deep into the wreck-pack, she being so lately added to it, I could not determine; but my conjecture was that some storm had broken the pack and had driven her down into it, and then that the opening had closed again, leaving her fast a good way in its inside. But about the way of her getting there I did not much bother myself, my one strong thought being that I had a chance of finding on board of her something that I could eat; and so—being by that time pretty well satisfied that I was safe not to come upon anything horrid hid away in a dark corner of her—I went at my farther explorations with a will. Indeed, I was so desperately hungry by that time that even had I made some nasty discoveries I doubt if they would have held me back from my eager search for food.

Luckily I had not far to look before I found what I was after, the very first door that I tried—a door in the forward side of the cabin—opening into a pantry in which were stowed what had been, as I judged from the nature of them and the place where I found them, the captain's private stores. The door was not locked, and a good many empty boxes were lying around on the floor with splintered lids, as though they had been smashed open in a hurry—which looked as though the pantry had been levied on suddenly to provision the boats after the wreck occurred, and so made me hope that the captain and his wife and baby had got away from the barque alive.

But the stock of stores had been a big one, and I saw that I was safe enough against starvation if only a part of what was left still were sound—and that uncertainty I settled in no time by picking up a hatchet that was lying among the broken boxes and splitting open the first tin on which I laid my hands. The tin had beans in it, and when I cracked it open that way more than half of them went flying over the floor; and they looked so good, those blessed beans, that without stopping to smell at them critically, or otherwise to test their soundness, I fell to feeding myself out of the open tin with my hand—and never stopped until all that remained of them were in my inside. I don't suppose that they were the better for having lain there so long, but they certainly were not much the worse for it—as I proved more conclusively, having by that time taken off the sharp edge of my hunger, by eating a part of another tin of them and finding them very good indeed. After that I opened a tin of meat—but on the instant that the hatchet split into it there came bouncing out such a dreadful smell that I had to rush on deck in a hurry with it and heave it over the side.

But even without the meat my food supply was secure to me for a good while onward, there being no less than ten boxes with two dozen tins of beans in each of them—quite enough to keep life in me for more than half a year. I rummaged through the place thoroughly, but found nothing more that was fit to eat there. Some boxes of biscuit and a barrel of flour had gone musty until they fairly were rotten; and all the other things that I came across were spoiled utterly by damp and mould. As for the stores for the crew, when I went forward to have a look at them, they were spoiled too—the flour and biscuit rotten, and the pickled meat a mouldy mass of tough fibre encrusted thickly with salt.

One other thing I did find in the captain's pantry that was as good, save for the mould that coated the outside of it, as when it came aboard—and because of its excellent condition was all the more tantalizing. This was a case of plug tobacco—a bit of which shredded and filled into one of the pipes that I found with it, could I have got it lighted, would have made me for the moment almost a happy man. But as I could think of no way of lighting it I was worse off than if I had not found it at all.

Having made my tour of inspection and taken a general inventory of my new possessions, I came on deck again and seated myself on the roof of the cabin that I might do some quiet thinking about what should be my next move; for I realized that only by a stroke of rare good fortune had I come upon this supply of food far away from, the coast of my continent, and that should I leave it and keep on the course northward that I had set for myself I very likely might starve before another such store fell in my way. And yet, on the other hand, to stay on where I was merely because I was able to keep alive there—with no outlook of hope to stay me—was but making a bid for that madness which comes of despair.

As to carrying any great quantity of food on with me, it was a sheer impossibility. The tins of beans weighed each of them more than five pounds, and a score of them would make as much of a load as I well could carry on level ground—and far more of a load than I could manage in the scramble that was before me if I decided to go on. Indeed, I had found my two bottles of water a serious inconvenience; and yet I would have them to carry also, and the big compass too. As to water, however, since the shower of the morning. I felt less anxiety: and the event proved that my confidence in the rainfall was justified—for the showers came regularly a little after dawn, and only once or twice after that first sharp experience did I feel more than passing pain from thirst.

I sat there on the roof of the cabin for a good part of the morning cogitating the matter; and in the end I could think of no better plan than one which promised certainly a world of hard labor, and only promised uncertainly to serve my turn. This was to stick to my project of going steadily northward—carrying with me as much food as I could stagger under—until I came again to the outer edge of the wreck—pack; but to safeguard my return to the barque, should my food give out before my journey was accomplished, by blazing my path: that is to say, by making a mark on each wreck that I crossed so that I could retrace my steps easily and without fear of losing my way. What I would gain in the end I did not try very clearly to tell myself—having only a vague feeling that in getting again to the coast of my great dead continent I would be that much the nearer to the living world once more; and having a clearer feeling that only by sticking at some sort of hard work that had a little hopefulness in it could I save myself from going mad. And I cannot but think now, looking back at it, that a touch of madness already was upon me; for no man ever set himself to a crazier undertaking than that to which I set myself then.

XXIII

HOW I STARTED ON A JOURNEY DUE NORTH

The morning was well spent by the time that I had made my mind up, and I was growing hungry again. I made a good meal on what was left in the second tin of beans that I had opened for my breakfast; and when I was done I tried to get a light for my pipe by rubbing bits of wood together, but made nothing of it at all. I had read about castaways on desert islands getting fire that way—but they went at it with dry wood, I fancy, and in my mist-sodden desert all the wood was soaked with damp.

For that afternoon I decided to go forward only as far as I could fetch it to be back on board the barque again by sunset, taking with me as many tins of beans as I could carry and leaving them where I made my turn: by which arrangement I would save the carriage of my supper and my breakfast, and would have a little store of victuals to fall back upon—when I should be fairly started on my journey—without coming all the way again to the barque.

I got the bed-bag that I had seen in the stateroom, and managed with the rusty scissors to cut it down to half its size. Into this I packed ten tins of beans, and made them snug by whipping around the bag one end of a longish line—which served when coiled as a handle for it; and, being uncoiled, enabled me to haul it up a ship's side after me, or to let it down ahead of me, or to sway it across an open space between two vessels, and so go at my climbing and jumping with both hands free. As for the compass, my back was the only place for it and I put it there—where it did not bother me much, having little weight; and I stuck the hatchet to blaze my path with into a sort of a belt that I made for myself with a bit of line.

Considering what a load I was carrying, and that on every vessel which I crossed I had to stop while I blazed a mark on her, I made a good long march of it before the waning of the daylight was a sign to me that I must put about again; and my return journey was both quick and easy, for I left the whole of my load, excepting the empty bag, behind me and came back lightly along my plainly marked path. But I was tired enough when I got on board the barque again, and glad enough to eat my supper and then stretch myself out to sleep upon the cabin floor.

That night, being easy in my body—except for my wholesome weariness—and easier in my mind because it seemed to me that I was doing something for my deliverance, and being also aboard a vessel that I knew was clean and pure, I had no visions of any kind whatever, but went to sleep almost in a moment, and slept like a log, as the saying is, the whole night through. Indeed, I slept later than suited my purposes—being for rising early and making a long day's march of it—and I might have wasted still more time in drowsing lazily had I not been wakened a little before sunrise by the rattle on the cabin roof of a dashing burst of rain. I was on deck in a moment, and by stopping a scupper—as I had done the previous morning—presently had by me a far bigger supply of water than I needed; from which I got a good drink lying down to it, and filled an empty bean-tin for another drink after my breakfast, and so had my two bottles full to last me until the next day—and was pretty well satisfied by the rain's recurrence that I could count upon a shower every morning about the hour of dawn.

When I had finished my breakfast I stowed ten tins of beans in the bag and lashed four more together so that I could carry them on my shoulders—being able to manage them in that way because I had no other back-load—and so was ready to set out along my blazed path. But before leaving the barque—hoping never again to lay eyes on her—I took one more look through the cabin to make sure that I had not passed over something that might be useful to me: and was lucky enough to find under one of the bunks a drawer—that had been hidden by the tumbled sheets hanging down over it—in which were some shirts and a suit of linen clothing that most opportunely supplied my needs. They all were badly mildewed, but sound enough, and the trousers—I had no use for the coat and waistcoat—fitted me very well. So I threw off the rags and tatters that I was wearing and put on in their place these sound garments; and then I picked up my load and was off.

Not having to stop to take bearings or to blaze my way, I made such good time that I got to the end of the course over which I had spent a good part of the previous afternoon in not much more than three hours. I was pretty well pleased to find that I could make such brisk marching under such a load; for it showed me that even when I should get a long way from my base of supplies, that is to say from the barque, I still could return to it at no great expense of time—and the thought never entered my head that time was of no value to me, since only by what would be close upon a miracle could I hope for anything better than to find ways for killing it through all the remainder of my days.

Being thus come to my place of deposit I had to rearrange my packing—going forward with a lighter load of food that I might carry also the compass and the hatchet; and going slowly because of my constant stops to take fresh bearings and to mark my path. But that time I went straight onward until nightfall; and my heart sank a good deal within me as I found that the farther I went the more antique in model, and the more anciently sea-worn, were the wrecks which I came upon—and so I knew that I must be making my way steadily into the very depths of my maze.

Yet I could not see that I would gain anything by going back to the barque and thence taking a fresh departure. The barque, as I knew certainly from the sort of craft surrounding her, was so deeply bedded in the pack that no matter how I headed from her I should have to go far before I came again to the coast of it; and on the other hand I thought that by holding to my course northward I might work my way in no great time across the innermost huddle of ancient wrecks—for of the vast number of these I had no notion then—and so to the outer belt of wrecks new-made: on board of which I certainly should find fresh food in plenty, and from which (as I forced myself to believe) I might get away once more into the living world. And so I pushed on doggedly until the twilight changed to dusk and I could not venture farther; and then I ate my supper on board of a strange old ship, as round as a dumpling and with a high bow and a higher stern; and when I had finished settled myself for the night, being very weary, under the in-hang of her heavy bulging side.

When morning came—and a shower with it that gave me what drink I wanted and a store of water for the day—I debated for a while with myself as to whether I should go onward with my whole load, or leave a part of it in a fresh deposit to which I could return at will. The second course seemed the better to me; and, indeed, it was necessary for me to go light-loaded in order to get on at all. For I had come among ships of such strange old-fashioned build, standing at bow and stern so high out of the water, that unless they happened to be lying side by side so that I could pass from one to another amidships—which was the case but seldom—I had almost as much climbing up and down among them as though I had been a monkey mounting and descending a row of trees.

Therefore I ate as much breakfast as I could pack into myself—that being as good a way as any other of carrying food with me—and then I tore the sleeves from my shirt and stuffed them from the tins that I opened until I had two great bean sausages, which I fastened belt-fashion about my waist and so carried without any trouble at all. Indeed, but for this new arrangement of my load I doubt if I could have gone onward; and even with it I had all that I could do to make my way. The bag with the remaining tins in it I stood away inside the cabin of the old ship—which I should have explored farther, so strange-looking was it, but for my eager desire to get on; and I felt quite sure that I would find all just as I had left it there even though I did not come back again for twenty years.

XXIV

OF WHAT I FOUND ABOARD A SPANISH GALLEON

Bent as I was upon hurrying forward, I could not but stop often in my wearying marches—which began each morning at sunrise and did not end until dusk—to gaze about me in wonder at the curious ancient craft across which lay my way. It seemed to me, indeed, as though I had got into a great marine museum where were stored together all manner of such antique vessels as not for two full centuries, and a good many of them for still longer, had sailed the seas. Some of them were mere shallops, so little that sailormen nowadays would not venture to go a-coasting in them, and others were great round-bellied old merchantmen—yet half war-ships, too—with high-built fore-castles, and towering poops blossoming out into rich carvings and having galleries rising one above another and with a big iron lantern at the top of all. And all of them had been shattered in fights and tempests, and were so rotten with age that the decks beneath my feet were soft and spongy; and all were weathered to a soft gray, or to a brownish blackness, with here and there a gleam of bright upon them where there still clung fast in some protected recess of their carving a little of the heavy gilding with which it all had been overlaid. Guns of some sort were on every one of them—ranging upward from little swivels mounted on the rail (mere pop-guns they looked like) to long bronze pieces of which the delicate ornamentation was lost in a thick coat of verdigris that had been gathering slowly through years and years. But as to the strange rig that they had worn in their days of active sea-faring, I could only guess at it; for such of them as had come into this death-haven with any of their top-hamper still standing, as some of them no doubt had come, long since had lost it—first the standing-rigging and later the masts rotting, and so all together falling in a heap anyway upon the decks or over the side. And such a company of withered old sea-corpses as these ancient wrecks made there, all huddled together with the weed thick about them, was as hopeless and as dismal a sight as ever was seen by the eyes of man. But a matter that to me was more instantly dismal, as I pressed on among them, came when I found that I was getting so close to the end of my stock of provisions—while yet apparently no nearer to the end of my journey—that there was no shirking the necessity of returning to the distant barque for a fresh supply: a journey involving such desperate toil, and so much of it, that the mere thought of it sent aches through all my bones.

It was about noon one day, while I was trying to nerve myself to make this hard expedition, that I called a halt in order to eat my dinner—which I knew would be a very little one—being just then come aboard of a great ungainly galleon that from the look of her I thought could not be less than two centuries and a half old: she being more curiously ancient in her build than any vessel that I had got upon, and her timbers so rotten that I had ticklish climbing as I worked my way up her high quarter—and, indeed, one of her galleries giving way under me, was near to spilling down her tall side to my death beneath the tangled weed. And when at last I got to her deck I found it so soft, partly with rottenness and partly with a sort of moss growing over it, that I was fearful at each step that it would give way under me and let me down with a crash into her hold.

I would have been glad of a better place to eat my dinner in—she being sodden wet everywhere, and with a chill about her for all the warmth of the misty air shimmering with dull sunshine, and with a rank unwholesome smell rising from her rotting mass. But all the hulks thereabouts were in so much the same condition that by going on I was not likely greatly to better myself; and I was so tired and so hungry that I had no heart to attempt any more hard scrambling until I had had both rest and food. And so I hunted out a spot on her deck where the moss was thinnest and least oozy with moisture—being a place a little sheltered by a sort of porch above her cabin doorway—and there I seated myself and with a good deal of satisfaction fell to upon my very scanty ration of beans.

For a while I was busied wholly with my eating, being mighty sharp set after my morning's walk; but when my short meal was ended I began to look about me, and especially to peer into the deep old cabin—that was pretty well lighted through the stern-windows and through the doorway at my shoulder, of which the door had rotted away.

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.