In the Sargasso Sea

by Thomas A. Janvier

  XXIV

  OF WHAT I FOUND ABOARD A SPANISH GALLEON

  Bent as I was upon hurrying forward, I could not but stop often in mywearying marches--which began each morning at sunrise and did not enduntil dusk--to gaze about me in wonder at the curious ancient craftacross which lay my way. It seemed to me, indeed, as though I had gotinto a great marine museum where were stored together all manner ofsuch antique vessels as not for two full centuries, and a good many ofthem for still longer, had sailed the seas. Some of them were mereshallops, so little that sailormen nowadays would not venture to goa-coasting in them, and others were great round-bellied oldmerchantmen--yet half war-ships, too--with high-built fore-castles,and towering poops blossoming out into rich carvings and havinggalleries rising one above another and with a big iron lantern at thetop 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 softand spongy; and all were weathered to a soft gray, or to a brownishblackness, with here and there a gleam of bright upon them where therestill clung fast in some protected recess of their carving a little ofthe heavy gilding with which it all had been overlaid. Guns of somesort were on every one of them--ranging upward from little swivelsmounted on the rail (mere pop-guns they looked like) to long bronzepieces of which the delicate ornamentation was lost in a thick coat ofverdigris that had been gathering slowly through years and years. Butas to the strange rig that they had worn in their days of activesea-faring, I could only guess at it; for such of them as had comeinto this death-haven with any of their top-hamper still standing, assome of them no doubt had come, long since had lost it--first thestanding-rigging and later the masts rotting, and so all togetherfalling in a heap anyway upon the decks or over the side. And such acompany of withered old sea-corpses as these ancient wrecks madethere, all huddled together with the weed thick about them, was ashopeless 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 onamong them, came when I found that I was getting so close to the endof my stock of provisions--while yet apparently no nearer to the endof my journey--that there was no shirking the necessity of returningto the distant barque for a fresh supply: a journey involving suchdesperate toil, and so much of it, that the mere thought of it sentaches through all my bones.

  It was about noon one day, while I was trying to nerve myself to makethis hard expedition, that I called a halt in order to eat mydinner--which I knew would be a very little one--being just then comeaboard of a great ungainly galleon that from the look of her I thoughtcould not be less than two centuries and a half old: she being morecuriously 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 myway up her high quarter--and, indeed, one of her galleries giving wayunder me, was near to spilling down her tall side to my death beneaththe tangled weed. And when at last I got to her deck I found it sosoft, partly with rottenness and partly with a sort of moss growingover it, that I was fearful at each step that it would give way underme and let me down with a crash into her hold.

  I would have been glad of a better place to eat my dinner in--shebeing sodden wet everywhere, and with a chill about her for all thewarmth of the misty air shimmering with dull sunshine, and with a rankunwholesome smell rising from her rotting mass. But all the hulksthereabouts were in so much the same condition that by going on I wasnot likely greatly to better myself; and I was so tired and so hungrythat I had no heart to attempt any more hard scrambling until I hadhad both rest and food. And so I hunted out a spot on her deck wherethe moss was thinnest and least oozy with moisture--being a place alittle sheltered by a sort of porch above her cabin doorway--and thereI seated myself and with a good deal of satisfaction fell to upon myvery scanty ration of beans.

  For a while I was busied wholly with my eating, being mighty sharp setafter my morning's walk; but when my short meal was ended I began tolook about me, and especially to peer into the deep old cabin--thatwas pretty well lighted through the stern-windows and through thedoorway 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 Ifirst noted was that a little hatch in the middle of the floor wasopen, and that dangling down into it from one of the roof-beams was adouble-purchase--as though an attempt to haul up some heavy thing fromthat place had come to a short end. For the rest, there was little tosee: only a clumsy table set fast between fixed benches close underthe stern windows; a locker in which I found, when I looked into it, asodden thing that very likely had been the ship's log-book along witha queer old Jacob's staff (as they were called) such as mariners tooktheir observations with before quadrants were known; and against thewall were hanging a couple of long old rusty swords and a rusty thingthat I took at first to be a wash-basin, but made out was adeep-curved breast-plate that must have belonged to a veryround-bellied little man.

  The floor of the cabin, as I found when I went in there, was so firmand solid--being laid in teak, very likely, and having been shelteredby the roof over it from the rains--that I had no fear, as I had onthe open deck, that the planks would give way under me and let methrough. And when I was come inside I found resting on a wooden rackset against the front wall a couple of old bell-mouthed brassfire-locks, coated thick with verdigris, and with them three smallerbell-mouthed pieces which were neither guns nor pistols but somethingbetween the two. As for the log-book, if it were the log-book, I couldmake nothing of it. It was so soaked and swelled by the dampness, andso rotten, that my fingers sank into it when I tried to pick it up asthey would have sunk into porridge; and the slimy stuff left a horridsmell upon my hand. Therefore I cannot tell what was the name of thisold ship, nor to what country she belonged, nor whither she wassailing on her last voyage; but that she was Spanish--or perhapsPortuguese--and was wrecked while on her way homeward from some portin the Indies, I do not doubt at all.

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

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

  With my breath coming and going quickly, I got down upon my hands andknees and stooped my head well into the opening that I might get ridof the light in my eyes from the cabin windows; and being that way Imade out dimly that the lower block of the purchase was whipped fastto a little wooden box, and that other small boxes were stowed inregular tiers under it so that they filled snugly a little chamberabout a dozen feet square. That there were several layers of theseboxes seemed probable, for those in sight were only six feet or sobelow the level of the cabin floor, and that they held either gold orsilver I considered to be beyond a doubt; and as I raised my head upout of the hatch, my eyes blinking as the light struck them, andthought of the wealth that must be stored there in that littlechamber, and that it was mine because I had found it, I gave a longgreat sigh.

  For a minute or two I was quite dazed by my discovery; and then as Igot steadie
r--or got crazier, perhaps I ought to say--nothing wouldserve me but that I must get down to where my treasure was, so that myeyes might see it and that I might touch it with my hands. And withthat 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 myfull weight was on them they snapped like punk, and down I went feetforemost and struck on the tiers of boxes with a bang. As I fell onlya little way, and upon a level surface--for I went clear of the boxto which the tackle was made fast--no harm came to me; but under myfeet I felt the rotten wood going squashily, and then beneath itsomething firm and hard. And when I got back my balance and lookeddown eagerly my eyes caught a dull gleam in the semi-darkness, andthen made out beneath my feet a mass of yellow ingots: and I gave agreat shout--that seemed to be forced out of me to keep my heart frombursting--for I knew that I was standing on bars of gold!