by Bret Harte
A TREASURE OF THE GALLEON.
Her father's house was nearly a mile from the sea, but the breath ofit was always strong at the windows and doors in the early morning, andwhen there were heavy "southwesters" blowing in the winter, the windbrought the sharp sting of sand to her cheek, and the rain an odd tasteof salt to her lips. On this particular December afternoon, however, asshe stood in the doorway, it seemed to be singularly calm; the southwesttrades blew but faintly, and scarcely broke the crests of the longPacific swell that lazily rose and fell on the beach, which onlya slanting copse of scrub-oak and willow hid from the cottage.Nevertheless, she knew this league-long strip of shining sand muchbetter, it is to be feared, than the scanty flower-garden, arid andstunted by its contiguity. It had been her playground when she firstcame there, a motherless girl of twelve, and she had helped her fathergather its scattered driftwood--as the fortunes of the Millers were notabove accepting these occasional offerings of their lordly neighbor.
"I wouldn't go far to-day, Jenny," said her father, as the girl steppedfrom the threshold. "I don't trust the weather at this season; andbesides you had better be looking over your wardrobe for the ChristmasEve party at Sol. Catlin's."
"Why, father, you don't intend to go to that man's?" said the girl,looking up with a troubled face.
"Lawyer Miller," as he was called by his few neighbors, looked slightlyembarrassed. "Why not?" he asked in a faintly irritated tone.
"Why not? Why, father, you know how vulgar and conceited he is,--howeverybody here truckles to him!"
"Very likely; he's a very superior man of his kind,--a kind theyunderstand here, too,--a great trapper, hunter, and pioneer."
"But I don't believe in his trapping, hunting, and pioneering," saidthe girl, petulantly. "I believe it's all as hollow and boisterous ashimself. It's no more real, or what one thinks it should be, than heis. And he dares to patronize you--you, father, an educated man and agentleman!"
"Say rather an unsuccessful lawyer who was fool enough to believe thatbuying a ranch could make him a farmer," returned her father, but halfjestingly. "I only wish I was as good at my trade as he is."
"But you never liked him,--you always used to ignore him; you'vechanged, father"--She stopped suddenly, for her recollection of herfather's quiet superiority and easy independence when he first camethere was in such marked contrast to his late careless and weakconcession to the rude life around them, that she felt a pang of vaguedegradation, which she feared her voice might betray.
"Very well! Do as you like," he replied, with affected carelessness;"only I thought, as we cannot afford to go elsewhere this Christmas, itmight be well for us to take what we could find here."
"Take what we could find here!" It was so unlike him--he who had alwaysbeen so strong in preserving their little domestic refinements in theirrude surroundings, that their poverty had never seemed mean, nor theirseclusion ignoble. She turned away to conceal her indignant color. Shecould share the household work with a squaw and Chinaman, she couldfetch wood and water. Catlin had patronizingly seen her doing it, but todance to his vulgar piping--never!
She was not long in reaching the sands that now lay before her,warm, sweet-scented from short beach grass, stretching to a dim rockypromontory, and absolutely untrod by any foot but her own. It was thisvirginity of seclusion that had been charming to her girlhood; fencedin between the impenetrable hedge of scrub-oaks on the one side, and thelifting green walls of breakers tipped with chevaux de frise of whitefoam on the other, she had known a perfect security for her sportsand fancies that had captivated her town-bred instincts and nativefastidiousness. A few white-winged sea-birds, as proud, reserved, andmaiden-like as herself, had been her only companions. And it was nowthe custodian of her secret,--a secret as innocent and childlike as herprevious youthful fancies,--but still a secret known only to herself.
One day she had come upon the rotting ribs of a wreck on the beach. Itsdistance from the tide line, its position, and its deep imbedding ofsand, showed that it was of ancient origin. An omnivorous reader of allthat pertained to the history of California, Jenny had in fancy oftensailed the seas in one of those mysterious treasure-ships that hadskirted the coast in bygone days, and she at once settled in her mindthat her discovery was none other than a castaway Philippine galleon.Partly from her reserve, and partly from a suddenly conceived plan,she determined to keep its existence unknown to her father, as carefulinquiry on her part had found it was equally unknown to the neighbors.For this shy, imaginative young girl of eighteen had convinced herselfthat it might still contain a part of its old treasure. She would digfor it herself, without telling anybody. If she failed, no one wouldknow it; if she were successful, she would surprise her father andperhaps retrieve their fortune by less vulgar means than their presenttoil. Thanks to the secluded locality and the fact that she was knownto spend her leisure moments in wandering there, she could work withoutsuspicion. Secretly conveying a shovel and a few tools to the spot thenext day, she set about her prodigious task. As the upper works weregone, and the galleon not large, in three weeks, working an hour or twoeach day, she had made a deep excavation in the stern. She had foundmany curious things,--the flotsam and jetsam of previous storms,--but asyet, it is perhaps needless to say, not the treasure.
To-day she was filled with the vague hope of making her discovery beforeChristmas Day. To have been able to take her father something on thatday--if only a few old coins--the fruit of her own unsuspected labor andintuition--not the result of vulgar barter or menial wage--would havebeen complete happiness. It was perhaps a somewhat visionary expectationfor an educated girl of eighteen, but I am writing of a youngCalifornian girl, who had lived in the fierce glamour oftreasure-hunting, and in whose sensitive individuality some of itssubtle poison had been instilled. Howbeit, to-day she found nothing.She was sadly hiding her pick and shovel, as was her custom, when shediscovered the fresh track of an alien foot in the sand. Robinson Crusoewas not more astounded at the savage footprint than Jenny Miller at thisdamning proof of the invasion of her sacred territory. The footprintscame from and returned to the copse of shrubs. Some one might have seenher at work!
But a singular change in the weather, overlooked in her excitement, hereforced itself upon her. A light film over sea and sky, lifted only byfitful gusts of wind, seemed to have suddenly thickened until it becamean opaque vault, narrowing in circumference as the wind increased. Thepromontory behind her disappeared, as if swallowed up, the distancebefore her seemed to contract; the ocean at her side, the color ofdull pewter, vanished in a sheet of slanting rain, and by the time shereached the house, half running, half carried along by the quarteringforce of the wind, a full gale was blowing.
It blew all the evening, reaching a climax and fury at past midnightthat was remembered for many years along that coast. In the midst of itthey heard the booming of cannon, and then the voices of neighbors inthe road. "There was," said the voices, "a big steamer ashore just aforethe house." They dressed quickly and ran out.
Hugging the edge of the copse to breathe and evade the fury of the wind,they struggled to the sands. At first, looking out to sea, the girl sawnothing but foam. But, following the direction of a neighbor's arm, forin that wild tumult man alone seemed speechless, she saw directly beforeher, so close upon her that she could have thrown a pebble on board, thehigh bows of a ship. Indeed, its very nearness gave her the feeling thatit was already saved, and its occasional heavy roll to leeward, drunken,helpless, ludicrous, but never awful, brought a hysteric laugh to herlips. But when a livid blue light, lit in the swinging top, showed anumber of black objects clinging to bulwarks and rigging, and the sea,with languid, heavy cruelty, pushing rather than beating them away, oneby one, she knew that Death was there.
The neighbors, her father with the others, had been running hopelesslyto and fro, or cowering in groups against the copse, when suddenly theyuttered a cry--their first--of joyful welcome. And with that shout,the man she most despised and hated, Sol. Catlin,
mounted on a "calico"mustang, as outrageous and bizarre as himself, dashed among them.
In another moment, what had been fear, bewilderment, and hesitationwas changed to courage, confidence, and action. The men pressed eagerlyaround him, and as eagerly dispersed under his quick command. Gallopingat his heels was a team with the whale-boat, brought from the river,miles away. He was here, there, and everywhere; catching the line thrownby the rocket from the ship, marshaling the men to haul it in, answeringthe hail from those on board above the tempest, pervading everythingand everybody with the fury of the storm; loud, imperious, domineering,self-asserting, all-sufficient, and successful! And when the boat waslaunched, the last mighty impulse came from his shoulder. He rode at thehelm into the first hanging wall of foam, erect and triumphant! Dazzled,bewildered, crying and laughing, she hated him more than ever.
The boat made three trips, bringing off, with the aid of the hawser,all but the sailors she had seen perish before her own eyes. Thepassengers,--they were few,--the captain and officers, found refuge inher father's house, and were loud in their praises of Sol. Catlin. Butin that grateful chorus a single gloomy voice arose, the voice of awealthy and troubled passenger. "I will give," he said, "five thousanddollars to the man who brings me a box of securities I left in mystateroom." Every eye turned instinctively to Sol.; he answered onlythose of Jenny's. "Say ten thousand, and if the dod-blasted hulk holdstogether two hours longer I'll do it, d--n me! You hear me! My name'sSol. Catlin, and when I say a thing, by G-d, I do it." Jenny's disgusthere reached its climax. The hero of a night of undoubted energy andcourage had blotted it out in a single moment of native vanity andvulgar avarice.
He was gone; not only two hours, but daylight had come and theywere eagerly seeking him, when he returned among them, drippingand--empty-handed. He had reached the ship, he said, with another; foundthe box, and trusted himself alone with it to the sea. But in the surfhe had to abandon it to save himself. It had perhaps drifted ashore, andmight be found; for himself, he abandoned his claim to the reward. Hadhe looked abashed or mortified, Jenny felt that she might have relented,but the braggart was as all-satisfied, as confident and boastful asever. Nevertheless, as his eye seemed to seek hers, she was constrained,in mere politeness, to add her own to her father's condolences. "Isuppose," she hesitated, in passing him, "that this is a mere nothingto you after all that you did last night that was really great andunselfish."
"Were you never disappointed, Miss?" he said, with exasperatingabruptness.
A quick consciousness of her own thankless labor on the galleon, anda terrible idea that he might have some suspicion of, and perhaps theleast suggestion that she might have been disappointed in him, brought afaint color to her cheek. But she replied with dignity:--
"I really couldn't say. But certainly," she added, with a new-foundpertness, "you don't look it."
"Nor do you, Miss," was his idiotic answer.
A few hours later, alarmed at what she had heard of the inroads of thesea, which had risen higher than ever known to the oldest settler, andperhaps mindful of yesterday's footprints, she sought her old secludedhaunt. The wreck was still there, but the sea had reached it. Theexcavation between its gaunt ribs was filled with drift and the seaweedcarried there by the surges and entrapped in its meshes. And there, too,caught as in a net, lay the wooden box of securities Sol. Catlin hadabandoned to the sea.
This is the story as it was told to me. The singularity of coincidenceshas challenged some speculation. Jenny insisted at the time upon sharingthe full reward with Catlin, but local critics have pointed out thatfrom subsequent events this proved nothing. For she had married him!