Perseverance Island; Or, The Robinson Crusoe of the Nineteenth Century

by Douglas Frazar

  CHAPTER XXV.

  Finding of the Sunken Wreck. The Submarine Explosion of the Hull. Recovery of over Ten Millions in Bars of Gold and Silver.

  This, then, was the history of my predecessor; and his legacy consistedof millions of dollars at the bottom of the sea. He no doubt thoughtthat some of it could be recovered, as he said, "with skill andfortitude;" perhaps by anchoring some boat over the reef, and fishingfor it, or in some such lame way as that. He had little idea, when hewrote this eighty years ago, that it would be read by a mortal who hadinvented a submarine boat, and built it from materials drawn from thevery bowels of this very island, and who could descend and examineevery part of his famous pirate ship. The reading of this history setmy impulsive nature to work at once to acquire the lost treasure. But,to do this, I must first find out where it lay,--its exact locality;and I very much feared that time had effaced the marks that alignedupon the spot, and, if so, I might search for it in vain.

  But what was the use of my regaining it? Inside of my brain I wascontinually answered, "You will escape! you will escape! and with thistreasure, added to your stock of pearls and ownership of the island,with its mineral wealth of coal, iron, saltpetre, and sulphur, youwill be the richest man in the world. With these industries oncedeveloped, your submarine boats multiplied, and pearl oysters procuredby thousands, and your island peopled with contented and happy workingpeople, not even the Rothschilds or Barings will be able to competewith you."

  Having carefully put aside the manuscript that I had just finishedreading, I went on shore to see if I could find any signs of thebearings upon the spot where the "Rover" had formerly gone to pieces.On the window-frame mentioned, I found, although defaced by theweather, a deep cut made in the general direction pointed out, whichwas no doubt the one referred to; and, encouraged by this, I picked outwith my eye several trees of the species referred to in the manuscript,between me and the sea, that I thought might be the one designated;and, having chosen three that seemed likely ones, I went towards themto look for the notch that I ought to find cut in one of their trunks.I found it instantly on the first tree I approached, which had seemedto me the most likely. There it was, plainly marked upon the side ofthe trunk,--grown over, to be sure, and the tree evidently old andtime-worn,--but showing that the wound in its side had been made withdeliberation and care, and such as would occur from no natural cause.Being satisfied upon this point, I went back to the hut and placed myeye along the bearings, and found that my sight struck the ocean atsome four or five miles distant. This was sufficient for the present;so, getting back to my yacht, I went to bed and to sleep, it being nownearly dusk. In the morning I got under way, and stood out of the bayand rounded Eastern Cape for home, and soon ran up Stillwater Cove,and found everything all right at the Hermitage. I then went to workand made two sheet-iron discs, about three feet in diameter, which Imounted upon iron rods fully fifteen feet in length. I whitewashed oneof these with a preparation of lime, and left the other its naturaldark color. I then, after caressing, feeding, and attending to my flockof goats and barn-yard fowl, again set out for Mirror Bay, takingthese targets with me. Arriving safely, I soon had them on shore,and, after an hour or two of measurements and calculations, had themdriven into the ground so as, when in line with each other, to point tothe same position on the surface of the ocean, as the old marks weresupposed to do, except that they stood clear of all intervening treesor obstructions, and could be seen from the seaward perfectly well.Having these all arranged, I went to work, and, with care and decency,transferred the bones of my predecessor to the hole excavated under thetree, and, reverently placing them within, I said a prayer or two forthe repose of his soul, and covered them carefully up. This being done,I made my way back to the Hermitage, and arranged everything about thesubmarine boat to start early the next day to look for the pirate shipbeneath the waves of the ocean.

  Bright and early I started down Stillwater Cove in the steam yacht,carrying my treadmill team of goats and all necessary things for mytrip. At the mouth of the cove I hauled alongside of the submarine boatlying quietly at anchor, and, leaving the "Fairy" and steam yacht, Iwent on board, rigged the pendant steps, and started my goat-powerpropeller, and headed out of Perseverance Bay and around Eastern Cape.The day was a beautiful one; so smooth was the ocean that I did nothave to descend beneath it, but held on my way with the manhole wideopen; and my goats by this time, by repeated trips, had become quitegood sailors and did not seem to mind a little swell any more than oldsalts would have done. My progress in this clumsy boat was not as fastas in the beautiful and graceful steam yacht; and I was seven hoursmaking the neighborhood of where I expected to find the wreck. I stoodon till I obtained a good view of my white and black discs. The onenearer the sea being black, I sailed along, in the first place, till Ibrought the two in line, and then, the white disc appearing above theblack one, I commenced sailing in towards the land, still keeping themon a line, till the former gradually sank down, seemingly, behind theface of the latter, when I stopped the boat, fastened down the manhole,and descended. When I arrived near the bottom I let out my buoy lineto the surface, and found that I was in nine fathoms of water, and nosign of a reef of any kind, a firm sandy bottom appearing before me.I therefore still pointed the boat by compass towards the shore, andcommenced slowly creeping forward. I had not advanced more than a fewhundred yards before the abrupt walls of a solid reef met my view. Iran near to it, and then, by pumping, ascended towards the surface,along its face, till I arrived at the top, which I found by my surfacelead line to be not quite three fathoms beneath the water. If anyreader should ask how I knew how much a fathom was, I would simply saythat every sailor becomes used to measuring off fathoms of rope duringhis sea life, and finally becomes so skilful as to measure fifty andsixty fathoms of line, and not be but a few inches out of the way, bygrasping a piece of rope and stretching it at arm's length across thebreast, which, with two inches added, in a man of my stature, should bejust six feet, or one fathom, and by this measurement as a standard wasmy floating surface lead line marked, and it agreed substantially withthe foot standard that I had made from my thumb joint, as heretoforedescribed. When I arrived at the top of the reef, I knew in a momentthat if I had lived on this side of the island I should in some heavygales have seen the surf break in this spot; for, by calculation ofthe tide, which was now nearly at high water, this reef must at timesbe within eight or nine feet of the surface at dead low water; andin gales of wind I could readily believe that the surf would breakover it. Having made all these discoveries and calculations, but withno signs of the wreck, I again descended half way down the nearlyperpendicular face of the reef towards the smooth bottom at its base.It was a strange formation, rising abruptly from the bottom of the sea,five or six fathoms, like the walls of a citadel. I saw plainly that avessel could at one moment, by a cast of the lead, get nine fathoms,and in the very next find herself hard and fast upon the reef, if shedrew over eighteen feet of water. Holding myself in equilibrio at abouthalf distance from the surface and the bottom, I moved cautiouslyalong the face of this wall to the eastward, looking for my prize. Iwent nearly a quarter of a mile in this direction without result, and,turning about, I retraced my steps and made to the westward, feelingsure that at the base of this barrier lay the sunken pirate ship, andthat she had never probably passed above its surface; for, havingnothing else to do, I had already calculated by means of my Epitomewhat the state of the tide would have been on the evening of the 23dor 24th of September, 1781, at midnight; and, knowing by the pirate'smanuscript that it was probably on one of those nights that the "Rover"was lost, and that an error of a day would only make one hour error inthe calculation, I was enabled to find out that it was high water onthose days at 5 or 6 P. M., and that the vessel must have struck thereef at very nearly, if not quite, dead low water, when it was within afew feet of the surface, and, being bilged, the rising tide would not,even during the storm, lift her one inch, but only hold her upon thejagged edges, whence she
must eventually drop to the tranquil watersat the base. I felt confident that this theory was correct, and that Ihad only to move along this rocky face till I came to the spot wherethe vessel had finally fallen back to the bottom of the ocean; and suchwas the case, for as I was thinking out the problem in my own head, lo!and behold! there lay the wreck nearly beneath my feet, not fifty yardsdistant.

  I approached it with awe, and held myself suspended in the water aboveit. I then descended and circumnavigated it in all possible directions,and ended by dropping a grapnel near to it, attached to a good strongline ending in a buoy, which I pushed under the tanks, and allowed toascend to the surface to mark its position for me in the future. Ithen set my air-boat at work, and soon had enough new air to fill myexhausted tanks, and to rise to the surface and take off the man-holecover and look about me. I saw that my discs were a little off, andthat the wreck lay a little nearer shore and more to the southwardthan where they pointed. But they had fulfilled their part; they werehenceforward useless. I had found the wreck, and had it buoyed so asto be able to again find it, and should I lose it by the buoy beingwashed away at any time in a storm, the very variation in the discsfrom the true direction, now known, would show me where to look. Iagain descended and commenced examining my prize. She lay upon herside, perfectly free from sand or rocks, and had evidently not movedsince she sank back from the rocky summit to her cradle at the base.She was terribly beaten and worm-eaten, and both masts had evidentlybeen cut away, as the pirate captain in his manuscript supposed. Herribs were exposed, and her decks torn up, and innumerable barnacles andshell-fish had fastened upon her timbers. Still falling back into thiscomparatively tideless and quiet abyss, she had changed very little, Ishould think, from the day she sank, over eighty years ago. And as shelay I saw that I had another problem to solve, and that was to get atthe riches she contained still confined in her hull as in an immensecasket. I saw plainly that I should have to blow open the hull to getat what I wanted and expose it. In the meanwhile I was fascinated withthe thousand and one old-fashioned shapes about the hull that struckmy eye,--the peculiar long brass eighteen pounders, some of which laybeside her, covered with barnacles, but yet showing their shape andgeneral formation; the blunt bows of what the pirate captain had termeda fast-sailing vessel; the comical anchors, and peculiar formation ofthe decks, that to me, as a sailor, were very interesting. She lookedto me more like Noah's ark than the vessel of a civilized nation. Howrapidly and almost imperceptibly had we advanced in this science sincethis tub was called a vessel, fast, strong, and staunch; and how manyhours would she have been able to keep in sight a modern clipper-ship,much less overtake her. In comparison to the latter she seemed like aship's jolly-boat. And so indeed she was, being about 300 tons, asagainst the 2,000 and 2,500 tons ship of my day and time.

  Having satisfied my curiosity and seen that the grapnel to thewatch-buoy held all right, I drew in some new air, rose to the surface,and made for Mirror Bay, not over four miles distant. I ran up to theriver's mouth near the hut and came to an anchor, and made all snugabout the boat, and then, tethering out the goats on the shore, Istruck out manfully for home across the island, for I saw plainly thatI should have to make Mirror Bay my headquarters for some time to come,and that I must get home and bring together all the powder I possessed,and the steam yacht.

  I had a pleasant walk home of about four miles without difficulty, asduring the last two years I had several times before crossed the islandin this direction, but not often. I put everything to rights at theHermitage, and then with the steam yacht I visited Eastern Cape, Eastand West Signal, and Penguin Points, and gathered together all thegunpowder placed there beside the cannon mounted at those stations.I added to this stock nearly all I possessed at the Hermitage beforestarting, and at the end of two days made my way back to Mirror Bay,stopping at South Cape, and getting all the powder there. Arriving atMirror River, I found my poor goats glad enough to welcome me back.Putting all the powder I possessed together, I should think that therewas perhaps fifty pounds in all. This I put carefully by itself in thedeserted hut, and, taking the steam yacht, returned to the Hermitageand my workshop. It was busy days with me now, and I scarcely gavemyself time to eat and drink. In my workshop I made a thin cylinder ofsheet iron that would contain my fifty pounds of powder, but beforebolting it together, and making it water and air-tight, I arranged inthe interior two flint locks, exactly like the locks to a gun, onlylarger. My cylinder was in the shape of a large painter's oil can,which it resembled. Out of the mouth of this can came four strings, twoof which would cock the locks, attached inside, and two attached tothe triggers would fire them off, or rather release the hammer so thatthe flint would strike upon a steel plate attached to the side of theinterior. These were kept free also from the powder with which the canwas to be filled, by placing the latter, when to be exploded, upon itsside, with the locks uppermost and clear; the capacity of the can beingmuch greater than the amount of powder to be placed within it, at leastone third.

  Having my infernal machine all made, and having experimented with thestrings leading out of the mouth, and finding that I could cock oneor both locks and fire them by pulling the opposite string, I setsail again for Mirror Bay. I had made my infernal machine with twolocks simply that, if one did not explode the charge, the other might.Arriving, I went on shore with it and filled it with the powder therestored, taking good care first to see that the hammers of the two locksin the interior were down upon the steel, and not cocked ready for adischarge. Till they were cocked, the powder was as safe in the can asin any other utensil in which it could be stored. And now, being allready, I went on board the submarine boat for my final test.

  I made my way to the wreck, and, descending, was soon balanced oppositethe mouth of the main hatch, which was partially open, and large enoughto admit ten cans of the size of mine. And now came the dreadful momentin which, under the sea, and far from any helping hand, I must cockthese locks within the can, surrounded, as they were, by the powder.It was a supreme moment. I loved my life in spite of its solitude.If anything was wrong in my mechanism, I should in a moment more beblown to atoms, and, if not now, perhaps whilst lowering the machineinto the hold of the vessel. I finally mustered up courage to pullupon the string attached to one of the cocks, first placing the canupon its side, and heard it cock inside; but with fear and tremblingI slackened the cord that cocked it, and I did not have nerve enoughto cock the other, but, forcing in a plug at the orifice, which hadalready been fitted and had grooves for the four strings, I smearedthe whole over with resin that I melted in a lighted candle near me.With a sailor's caution the four strings leading into the can had beennicely coiled upon the tanks ready to pay out of themselves as the canshould descend into the hold of the vessel through the open hatchway.Lashed to the outside of the can, I should have said, was a large barof iron, sufficiently heavy to make it descend in spite of the air itcontained. It was with a beating heart that I dropped the whole concerninto the water, by a line attached to the middle, and commenced shovingit with my boat hook into the hole in the main hatch where it was tobe exploded. During all this time I had the pleasant sensation thatif the small cord attached to the trigger should become entangled inany way, and pull with any strain, the charge would be exploded, andI should be blown to atoms. The cold perspiration stood upon my brow,but finally, with a careful but strong push, the can entered the openhatchway and descended quietly to the side of the vessel, where itrested. I immediately cast off from the grapnel that held me near thewreck, and let the submarine boat float away with what little tidethere was, paying out, as she drifted, the small line attached to thetrigger, a pull upon which, any time during the last fifteen minutes,would have been certain death. As the line began to run out quitefreely I began to breathe again; and when several fathoms had run out,so that I knew I was some way distant from the wreck, I began to findrelief to my overtaxed brain, and felt that I was again safe, and evenas I paid out the small line I thanked God fervently and sincere
ly.Feeling now sure that I was beyond harm, I commenced to work the pumpand to ascend, and at the same time to drift further away, as I did notknow what the result of the explosion might be. When I had arrived atas near the surface as the pump would carry me, and felt confident,from the amount of string I had paid out, that I was far enough awayto be out of danger, I gathered in all the slack line, and then, withone strong, quick jerk, I proved the practical value of my machine. Inone instant the result was conveyed to my ears by a subdued murmur, andthe effect by a motion conveyed to the boat as if she had been uponthe surface of the ocean instead of beneath it. I was perfectly wellaware that, when I pulled the string, the sealed plug in the orifice ofthe can, through which the string led, would be pulled out, and let inthe water; but the same action would also discharge the flint upon thesteel inside and cause the explosion at the same instant, before onedrop of water could enter, or else I should have fifty pounds of powderwasted. But the muffled roar and the commotion of the water told methat my mechanical ingenuity had not failed me, and that my powder hadbeen exploded if nothing else had been accomplished.

  I commenced to descend again and make my way towards the wreck, butwas met with such a mass of muddy, stirred-up water, that I was gladto throw a grapnel to the bottom, and lie quietly till it had passedby with the slow motion of the tide. When the water had become againclear, I advanced, and, arriving at last over what had been the hullof the wreck, I looked down upon what might have been considered avast bird's nest, of which the late timbers of the hull formed thetwigs, outline, and shape of the nest, inextricably locked together andinterlaced, and in the centre of which appeared, in place of enormouseggs, in relative size to the bird's nest, a large, irregular mass ofstill yellow and shining metal, although in many places tarnished anddim, that seemed in quantity greater than the mind of man had everconceived. I descended upon this treasure and hooked up bar after bar,which I placed upon my hanging shelves till I could take no more, and,renewing my air with the air-boat, I made my way to Mirror Bay, andlanded my precious freight.

  My next work was to bury my treasure where it would be safe, andfor this purpose I excavated a large, square hole in the earth nearto the ruined hut. Suffice it to say that after many weary trips,extending through months, I had recovered and buried in safety atleast ten millions of money, besides having saved six of the brasseighteen-pounders, and a large quantity of copper spikes and bolts.Whilst at this work I came often upon the skulls and bones of the menwho had once manned this pirate craft, mixed in with the _debris_ ofthe wreck. Whilst I was engaged in this labor I had to make trips tothe Hermitage, and look after my flock, and prepare food for myself,and this was by far the busiest year that I had ever yet had on theisland. After carefully covering up my treasure I conveyed all thecopper bolts and the old eighteen-pounders to my workshop at theHermitage, on the steam yacht, where they would be extremely usefulto me, as heretofore I had had no brass or copper, and I often feltthe need of them in my mechanical arts. I also obtained from the wrecka small quantity of lead in different forms, which was also veryacceptable. Having gathered all these riches about me, was I happierthan before? I often asked myself this question, and was obliged toanswer it in the negative. The very acquisition of this enormous wealthmade me impatient of restraint, and more and more determined to solvethe problem of my escape. I had the knowledge of being the possessorof this immense amount of money, and at the same time the painfulconviction that at present it was worth to me no more than the sand onthe seashore.