CHAPTER XXXIII
THE "MIRANDA" TAKES IN CARGO
The next day the work of removing the treasure from the caves to thevessel began in good earnest. The Miranda was anchored not far from thelittle pier, which was found in good order, and Shirley, with one negro,was left on board, while the captain and Burke took the three others,loaded with coffee-bags, to the caves.
For the benefit of the minds of the black men, the captain had instructedMaka to assure them that they would not be obliged to go anywhere whereit was really dark. But it was difficult to decide how to talk to Burke.This man was quite different from Shirley. He was smaller, but stout andstrong, with a dark complexion, and rather given to talk. The captainliked him well enough, his principal objection to him being that he wasrather too willing to give advice. But, whatever might be the effect ofthe treasure on Burke, the captain determined that he should not besurprised by it. He had tried that on Shirley, and did not want to try itagain on anybody. So he conversed freely about the treasure and themound, and, as far as possible, described its appearance and contents.But he need not have troubled himself about the effect of the sight of awagon-load of gold upon Burke's mind. He was glad to see it, and whistledcheerfully as he looked down into the mound.
"How far do you think it goes down?" said he to the captain.
"Don't know," was the reply. "We can't tell anything about that until weget it out."
"All right," said Burke. "The quicker we do it, the better."
The captain got into the mound with a lantern, for the gold was now toolow for him to reach it from above, and having put as many bars into acoffee-bag as a man could carry, he passed it up to Burke, who slid itdown to the floor, where another lantern had been left. When five bagshad been made ready, the captain came out, and he and Burke put each baginto another, and these were tied up firmly at each end, for a singlecoffee-bag was not considered strong enough to hold the weightytreasure. Then the two carried the bags into the part of the cave whichwas lighted by the great fissure, and called the negroes. Then, eachtaking a bag on his shoulder, the party returned to the cove. On thenext trip, Shirley decided to go with the captain, for he said he didnot care for anything if he did not have to look down into the mound,for that was sure to make him dizzy. Maka's place was taken by the negrowho had been previously left in the vessel. Day by day the work went on,but whoever might be relieved, and whatever arrangements might be made,the captain always got into the mound and handed out the gold. Whateverdiscovery should be made when the bottom of the deposit was reached, hewanted to be there to make it.
The operations were conducted openly, and without any attempt at secrecyor concealment. The lid of the mound was not replaced when they left it,and the bags of gold were laid on the pier until it was convenient totake them to the vessel. When they were put on board, they were loweredinto the hold, and took the place of a proportionate amount of ballast,which was thrown out.
All the negroes now spoke and understood a little English. They mightthink that those bags were filled with gold, or they might think thatthey contained a mineral substance, useful for fertilizer; but if byquestioning or by accidental information they found out what was the loadunder which they toiled along the beach, the captain was content. Therewas no reason why he should fear these men more than he feared Burke andShirley. All of them were necessary to him, and he must trust them.Several times when he was crouched down in the interior of the mound,filling a bag with gold, he thought how easy it would be for one of thesailors to shoot him from above, and for them, or perhaps only one ofthem, to become the owner of all that treasure. But then, he could beshot in one place almost as well as in another, and if the negroes shouldbe seized with the gold fever, and try to cut white throats at midnight,they would be more likely to attempt it after the treasure had beensecured and the ship had sailed than now. In any case, nothing could begained by making them feel that they were suspected and distrusted.Therefore it was that when, one day, Maka said to the captain that thelittle stones in the bags had begun to make his shoulder tender, thecaptain showed him how to fold an empty sack and put it between the bagsand his back, and then also told him that what he carried was not stones,but lumps of gold.
"All yourn, cap'n!" asked Maka.
"Yes, all mine," was the reply.
That night Maka told his comrades that when the captain got to the end ofthis voyage, he would be able to buy a ship bigger than the _Castor_, andthat they would not have to sail in that little brig any more, and thathe expected to be cook on the new vessel, and have a fine suit of clothesin which to go on shore.
For nearly a month the work went on, but the contents of the mounddiminished so slowly that the captain, and, in fact, the two sailors,also, became very impatient. Only about forty pounds could be carried byeach man on a trip, and the captain saw plainly that it would not do tourge greater rapidity or more frequent trips, for in that case therewould be sure to be breakdowns. The walk from the cove to the caves wasa long one, and rocky barriers had to be climbed, and although now butone man was left on board the vessel, only thirty bags a day were storedin its hold. This was very slow work. Consultations were held, and itwas determined that some quicker method of transportation must beadopted. The idea that they could be satisfied with what they alreadyhad seemed to enter the mind of none of them. It was a foregoneconclusion that their business there was to carry away all the gold thatwas in the mound.
A new plan, though rather a dangerous one, was now put into operation.The brig was brought around opposite the plateau which led to the caves,and anchored just outside the line of surf, where bottom was found at amoderate depth. Then the bags were carried in the boats to the vessel. Aline connected each boat with the ship, and the negroes were half thetime in the water, assisting the boats backward and forward through thesurf. Now work went on very much more rapidly. The men had all becomeaccustomed to carrying the heavy bags, and could run with them down theplateau. The boats were hauled to and from the vessel, and the bags werehoisted on board by means of blocks and tackle and a big basket. Once theside of the basket gave way, and several bags went down to the bottom ofthe sea, never to be seen again. But there was no use in crying overspilt gold, and this was the only accident.
The winds were generally from the south and east, and, therefore, therewas no high surf; and this new method of working was so satisfactory thatthey all regretted they had not adopted it from the first,notwithstanding the risk. But the captain had had no idea that it wouldtake so long for five men to carry that treasure a distance of two miles,taking forty pounds at a time.
At night everybody went on board the brig, and she lay to some distancefrom the shore, so as to be able to run out to sea in case of badweather, but no such weather came.
It was two months since the brig had dropped anchor in the Rackbirds'cove when the contents of the mound got so low that the captain could nothand up the bags without the assistance of a ladder, which he made fromsome stuff on board the brig. By rough measurement, he found that heshould now be near the level of the outside floor of the cave, and heworked with great caution, for the idea, first broached by Ralph, thatthis mass of gold might cover something more valuable than itself, hadnever left him.
But as he worked steadily, filling bag after bag, he found that, althoughhe had reached at the outer edge of the floor of the mound what seemed tobe a pavement of stone, there was still a considerable depth of gold inthe centre of the floor. Now he worked faster, telling Shirley, who wasoutside, that he would not come out until he had reached the floor of themound, which was evidently depressed in the centre after the fashion of asaucer. Working with feverish haste, the captain handed up bag after bag,until every little bar of gold had been removed from the mound.
The bottom of the floor was covered with a fine dust, which had sifteddown in the course of ages from the inside coating of the mound, but itwas not deep enough to conceal a bar of gold, and, with his lantern andhis foot, the captain made himself sure that
not a piece was left. Thenhis whole soul and body thrilled with a wild purpose, and, moving theladder from the centre of the floor, he stooped to brush away the dust.If there should be a movable stone there! If this stone should cover asmaller cavity beneath the great one, what might he not discover withinit? His mind whirled before the ideas which now cast themselves at him,when suddenly he stood up and set his teeth hard together.
"I will not," he said. "I will not look for a stone with a crack aroundit. We have enough already. Why should we run the risk of going crazy bytrying to get more? I will not!" And he replaced the ladder.
"What's the matter in there?" called Shirley, from outside. "Who're youtalking to?"
The captain came out of the opening in the mound, pulled up the ladderand handed it to Shirley, and then he was about to replace the lid uponthe mound. But what was the use of doing that, he thought. There would beno sense in closing it. He would leave it open.
"I was talking to myself," he said to Shirley, when he had descended. "Itsounded crack-brained, I expect."
"Yes, it did," answered the other. "And I am glad these are the last bagswe have to tie up and take out. I should not have wondered if the wholethree of us had turned into lunatics. As for me, I have tried hard tostop thinking about the business, and I have found that the best thing Icould do was to try and consider the stuff in these bags as coal--good,clean, anthracite coal. Whenever I carried a bag, I said to myself,'Hurry up, now, with this bag of coal.' A ship-load of coal, you know, isnot worth enough to turn a man's head."
"That was not a bad idea," said the captain. "But now the work is done,and we will soon get used to thinking of it without being excited aboutit. There is absolutely no reason why we should not be as happy andcontented as if we had each made a couple of thousand dollars apiece on agood voyage."
"That's so," said Shirley, "and I'm going to try to think it."
When the last bag had been put on board, Burke and the captain werewalking about the caves looking here and there to take a final leave ofthe place. Whatever the captain considered of value as a memento of thelife they had led here had been put on board.
"Captain," said Burke, "did you take all the gold out of that mound?"
"Every bit of it," was the reply.
"You didn't leave a single lump for manners?"
"No," said the captain. "I thought it better that whoever discovered thatempty mound after us should not know what had been in it. You see, wewill have to circulate these bars of gold pretty extensively, and wedon't want anybody to trace them back to the place where they came from.When the time comes, we will make everything plain and clear, but we willwant to do it ourselves, and in our own way."
"There is sense in that," said Burke. "There's another thing I want toask you, captain. I've been thinking a great deal about that mound, andit strikes me that there might be a sub-cellar under it, a little one,most likely, with something else in it--rings and jewels, and nobodyknows what not. Did you see if there was any sign of a trap-door?"
"No," said the captain, "I did not. I wanted to do it,--you do not knowhow much,--but I made up my mind it would be the worst kind of folly totry and get anything else out of that mound. We have now all that is goodfor us to have. The only question is whether or not we have not more thanis good for us. I was not sure that I should not find something, if Ilooked for it, which would make me as sick as Shirley was the first timehe looked into the mound. No, sir; we have enough, and it is the part ofsensible men to stop when they have enough."
Burke shook his head. "If I'd been there," he said, "I should have lookedfor a crack in that floor."
When the brig weighed anchor, she did not set out for the open sea, butproceeded back to the Rackbirds' cove, where she anchored again. Beforesetting out, the next day, on his voyage to France, the captain wished totake on board a supply of fresh water.
The Adventures of Captain Horn Page 33