XXV
I AM THE MASTER OF A GREAT TREASURE
For a while, down in that black little place, I was quite a crazycreature; being so stirred by my finding this great store of richesthat I went to dancing and singing there--and was not a bit botheredby the vile stench rising from the rotten wood that my feet sentflying, nor by the still viler stench rising from the reeking mass ofrottenness below me in the galleon's hold.
And then, that I might see my treasure the more clearly, I fell totossing the ingots up through the hatch into the cabin--where I couldhave a good light upon them, and could gloat upon the yellow gleam ofthem, and could make some sort of a guess at how much each of themrepresented in golden coin. From that I went on to calculating howmuch the whole of them were worth together; and when I got to the endof my figuring I fairly was dazed.
In a rough way I estimated that each ingot weighed at least fivepounds, and as each of the little boxes contained ten of them thevalue of every single box stored there was not less than fifteenthousand dollars. As well as I could make out, the boxes were in rowsof ten and there were ten rows of them--which gave over a million anda half of dollars for the top tier alone; and as there certainly wasan under-tier the value of my treasure at the least was threemillions. But actually, as I found by digging down through the ingotsuntil I came to the solid flooring, there were in all five tiers ofboxes; and what made the whole of them worth close upon eight millionsof our American money, or well on toward two millions of Englishpounds. My brain reeled as I thought about it. The treasure that I hadpossession of was a fortune fit for a king!
I had swung myself up from the little chamber and was standing in thecabin while I made these calculations, and when at last I got to mysum total I felt so light-headed that it seemed as though I werewalking on air. Indeed, I fairly was stunned by my tremendous goodfortune and could not think clearly: and it was because my mind thuswas turned all topsy-turvy, I suppose, that the odd thought poppedinto it that in the matter of weight my gold ingots were pretty muchthe same as the tins of beans to get which I was about to return tothe barque--a foolish notion which so tickled my fancy that I burstout into a loud laugh.
The jarring sound of my laughter, which rang out with a ghastlyimpropriety in that deathly place, brought me to my senses a littleand made me calmer. But my mind ran on for a moment or so upon the oddnotion that had provoked it, and in that time certain other thoughtsflashed into my head which had only to get there to spill out of meevery bit of my crazy joy. For first I realized that since I couldcarry only the same weight of gold that I could carry of food myactual wealth was but a single back-load, which brought my millionsdown to a few beggarly thousands; and on top of that I realized--andthis came like a douse of ice-water--that for every ingot that Icarried away with me I must leave a like weight of food behind: whichmeant neither more nor less than that my great treasure, for all thegood that ever it would be to me--so little could I venture to take ofit 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 howlittle difference it made one way or the other--how even a singleingot would be a vain lading--since I had no ground for hoping thatever 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 ingotsscattered over the floor of the cabin--I thought of the treasure nolonger: my heart being filled with a great sorrowing pity for myself,because of the doom upon me to live out whatever life might be leftme 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 hopeof life began to rise in me again--as it always must rise, no matterhow desperate are the odds against it, in the mind of a sound andvigorous man. And with this saner feeling came again my desire to pushon in the direction that offered me a chance of deliverance--leavingall my treasure behind me, since it was worth less to me than food;and presently came the farther hope that when I had succeeded infinding a way out of my sea-prison, and so was sure of my life oncemore, I might be able to return to the galleon and take away with meat least some portion of the great riches that I had found.
Because of this foolish hope, and the very human comfort that I foundin knowing myself to be the possessor of such prodigious wealth, Ineeds must jump down again to where it was and take another survey ofit before I left it behind. And then, being cooler and looking morecarefully, I noticed that the box to which the tackle had been madefast was not like the other boxes--though about the same size withthem--but was a little coffer that seemed once to have been locked andthat still had around it the rusty remnants of iron bands. Thisdifference in the make of it put into my head the notion that itscontents were more precious than the contents of the otherboxes--though how that could be I did not well see; and my notionseemed the more reasonable as I reflected that if the coffer reallywere of an extraordinary value there would have been sense in tryingto save it even in a time of great peril--which was more than could besaid of trying to load down boats launched in the midst of some finaldisaster with any of those heavy boxes of gold.
My mind became excited by another mirage of riches as these thoughtswent through it, and to settle the matter I stooped down and got agrip on the coffer--which was made of a tougher wood than the boxesand held together--and managed by a good deal of straining to lift itup through the hatch into the cabin, where I could examine it atmy ease.
When it was new an axe would not have made much impression upon it, sostrongly had it been put together; but there were left only blackstains to show where the iron had bound it, and the wood had rotteduntil it was softer than the softest bit of pine. Indeed, I had onlyto give a little jerk to the lid to open it: both the lock and thehinges being gone with rust, and the lid held in place only by a sortof sticky slime.
But when I did get it open the first thing that came out of it was astench so vile that I had to jump up in a hurry and rush to the opendeck until the worst of it had ebbed away; and this exceeding evilodor was given off by a slimy ooze of rotted leather--as I knew alittle later by finding still unmelted some bits of small leather bagsin which what was stored there had been tied. But even as I jumped upand left the cabin my eyes caught a gleam of brightness in the horridslimy mess that set my heart to beating hard again; and it poundedaway in my breast still harder when I came back and made out clearlywhat I had found.
For there in the rotten ooze, strewn thickly, was such a collection ofglittering jewels that my eyes fairly were dazzled by them; and when Ihad turned the coffer upside down on the deck so that the slime flowedaway stickily--giving off the most dreadful stench that ever I haveencountered--I saw a heap of precious stones such as for size andbeauty has not been gathered into one place, I suppose--unless it mayhave been in the treasury of some Eastern sovereign--since the verybeginning of the world. At a single glance I knew that the greattreasure of gold, which had seemed to me overwhelming because of itsimmensity, was as nothing in comparison with this other treasurewherein riches were so concentrate and sublimate that I had the veryessence of them: and I reeled and trembled again as I hugged thethought to me that by my finding of it I was made master of it all.
In the Sargasso Sea Page 25