In the Sargasso Sea - Thomas A. Janvier (top books to read txt) 📗

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 undertier 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