A STARTLING PROPOSAL.
Captain Greaves, having pronounced the words with which the last chapter
concludes, came out of his bed-place and opened the cabin door. Galloon
entered. The captain stood looking. Mr. Van Laar was still at breakfast.
Captain Greaves and I had been closeted for a very considerable time,
yet Van Laar still continued to eat at table, and even as I looked at
him through the door which the captain held open, I observed that he
raised a large mouthful of meat to his lips. Captain Greaves exclaimed,
“I am going on deck to look after the brig, I shall be back in a few
minutes.” He then closed the door, and I occupied the time during which
he was absent in patting Galloon and thinking over my companion’s
narrative.
As yet I failed to see the object of his voyage. Could it be that that
object was to warp the Spanish ship out of the cave and navigate her
home? I might have supposed this to be his intention had his brig been
full of men; but Greaves’ crew were below the brig’s complement as the
average ran in those days of teeming ’tween-decks and crowded
forecastles, and they were much too few to do anything with a ship of
seven hundred tons ashore in a cave; unless, indeed, Greaves meant to
ship a number of hands when on the Western American seaboard.
He returned after an absence of a quarter of an hour.
“I have stripped her of the main topgallant sail,” said he; “Yan Bol has
the watch. I will tell you what I like about Yan Bol--he has the throat
of a cannon; he does not shout, he explodes. He sends an order like a
twenty-four-pound ball slinging aloft. The wind of his cry might beat
down a sheep.”
“Van Laar enjoys his food,” said I.
“Van Laar is a gorging baboon,” he exclaimed; “but he shall not long be
a gorging baboon in my cabin or even on board my ship.”
He resumed his seat in his bed, and, pulling from his pocket the little
book from which he had read the particulars of the cargo in the main
hold of _La Perfecta Casada_, he fastened his eyes upon a page of it,
mused a while, and proceeded thus:
“We left the Spanish ship, pulled clear of the reef, and got aboard the
_Hero_. I called my mate to me, told him that the island was uncharted,
and that it behoved us to clearly ascertain its situation in order to
correctly report its whereabouts. Together we went to work to determine
its position; our calculations fairly tallied, and I was satisfied. I
then ordered sail to be trimmed, and we proceeded on our voyage. When
the ship had fairly started afresh I went into my cabin and examined the
papers I had brought off the _Casada_. Those papers were, of course,
written in Spanish. Though I speak Spanish very imperfectly, almost
unintelligibly, I can make tolerable headway, with the help of a
dictionary, when I read it. I possessed an English-Spanish dictionary,
and I sat down to translate the _Casada’s_ papers. Then it was that I
discovered there were five thousand serons of cocoa among the cargo. I
did not count those serons when I was on board.”
“I understand.”
“The particulars I have here,” said he, slapping the book, “were in the
manifest; but there was more than cocoa and wool and tin in that
ship--very much more. The cases in the after-hold were full of silver--I
had hoped for _gold_ when I sang out to my men to seek an ax; but silver
it proved to be, and the papers I examined in my cabin told me that
those cases contained in all five hundred and fifty thousand milled
Spanish dollars of the value, in our money, of four shillings and
ninepence apiece, though I am willing to reduce that quotation and call
the sum, in English money, ninety-eight thousand pounds.”
I opened my eyes wide. “Ha!” said I, “now I think you need tell me no
more. This brig is going to fetch the money.”
“That is the object of the voyage.”
“Your men as yet don’t know where they are bound to?”
“Not as yet. I do not intend that they shall know for some time. I want
to see what sort of men they are going to prove. They shipped on the
understanding that I sailed under secret orders from the brig’s owner,
and that those orders would not be revealed until we had crossed the
equator.”
“Van Laar knows nothing, then?”
“No more than the lad Jimmy. If he did--but the cormorant _shan’t_
know.”
“Ninety-eight thousand pounds!” quoth I, opening my eyes again.
“There are several fortunes in ninety-eight thousand pounds,” said he,
smiling.
“You spoke of a gentleman named Tulp.”
“Bartholomew Tulp, my step-father. I will finish my story. I had plenty
of time for reflection, for my voyage home was long. I made up my mind
to get those dollars. I was satisfied that the money would remain as
safely for years, ay, for centuries if you like, where it lay as if it
had been snugged away in some secret part of the solid island itself.
There was, indeed, the risk of others sighting the island, landing,
discovering the ship, exploring, and then looting her. That risk remains
the single element of speculation in this adventure. But what,
commercially, is not speculative in the Change Alley meaning of the
term? You buy Consols at seventy; next day the city is pale with news
which sinks the funds to fifty. Spanish dollars to the value of
ninety-eight thousand pounds lie in the hold of a ship encaved in an
island south of the Galapagos. Is fortune going to suffer them to stay
there till we arrive? I say ‘yes.’ You, as a seafaring man, will say
‘yes.’ You know that vessels sighting that island will, seeing that it
is not down on the charts, or else most incorrectly noted--for no land
where that island is do I find marked upon the Pacific charts which I
have consulted--I say you will know that vessels sighting that island
will give it a wide berth for fear of the soundings. You will suppose
that if a vessel should find herself unexpectedly close in with that
land her people will see nothing in a mountainous mass of cinder to
court them ashore. You will hold that even supposing a thousand ships
should pass the island within the date of my proceeding on my voyage
from it in the _Hero_ and the date of my arrival off the island in this
brig _Black Watch_, there are ninety-nine chances against every one of
those thousand ships so opening the land as to catch a sight of the
vessel in the cave. The cave itself looks at a distance like a vast
shadow or smudge upon the front of the cliff. You must enter the natural
harbor, and pull close to the mouth of the cavern, to behold the ship.
Yes, it is true that the telescope will at a distance resolve the
darkness of the cave into a something that is indeterminable, but that
is more than mere shadow. But that this may be done a ship must be in
the exact situation the _Hero_ was in when I happened to point the glass
at the cave, and I say there are ninety-nine chances against any one of
a thousand ships being in the exact situation. The money in the
_Casada’s_ hold is there now, has been there since 1810, and but for me,
might be there until the ship falls to pieces with decay. What do you
say?”
“Those waters are but little navigated,” said I. “All the chances you
name are against a vessel sighting your _Casada_ as she lies in her
shell according to your description. I am of your opinion. The money is
there and will remain there. The mere circumstances of those dollars
having been a secret of the island for four years is warrant enough to
satisfy any man that the island will continue to keep what is now your
secret.”
He looked extremely gratified, and continued:
“How was I to proceed in the adventure that I was determined to embark
on? I am a sailor, which means, of course, that I am a poor man.”
“Just so,” said I.
“My mother has been dead eight years. Of late I had seen and heard but
little of my step-father. I was aware, however, that he was doing a very
good trade as a merchant in Amsterdam. It occurred to me to propose the
adventure to him, and when I had finished my business with the _Hero_ in
the Thames I went across to Amsterdam, with the _Casada’s_ papers in my
bag, and passed a week with Mynheer Bartholomew Tulp. I needed a week,
and a week of seven long days, to bring the old man into my way of
thinking. Tulp has Jewish blood in him, and the blood of the Jew is as
thick as glue. A Tulp, four generations ago, married a Jewess. The
descendants have ever since been marrying Christians, but it will take
many generations to extinguish in the Tulps the Mosaic beak, the Aaronic
eye, the Solomon leer, the Abrahamic wariness which entered into the
Tulps, four generations ago, with honest Rachael Sweers. First Tulp
wanted to know how I proposed to get the money. By hiring a small vessel
and sailing to the island. How much was he to have? He must make his own
terms. How much would I expect? I was in his hands. Supposing, when the
money was on board, the crew rose and cut my throat? That was a peril of
the sea. He could protect his outlay by insurance, the cost of which he
was welcome to deduct from my share of the dollars should I bring the
spoil home in safety.
“He was so full of objections that on the morning of the sixth day of my
stay at his house I flung from him in a rage. ‘I know what you _want_,’
I told him: ‘you want the silver and you don’t want to pay for it. I
will see you----’ and I damned him in the names of Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob. He is a little man: he arose from a velvet armchair, and
following me on tiptoe as I was leaving the room, he put his hand upon
my shoulder and said in a soft voice, ‘Michael, how much?’ To cut this
long yarn short, he commissioned me to seek a vessel, and when I had
found the sort of ship I wanted I was to enter into a calculation of the
cost of the adventure and let him know the amount I should need within
as few guilders as possible. That is the story.”
“It is a very remarkable story. I am flattered by your confiding this
secret to me.”
“It was necessary,” he answered.
I did not see _that_, but I let the remark pass. “Where did you meet
with this brig?”
“She is owned by a friend of mine who lives at Shadwell. I was thinking
all the way home of the _Black Watch_ as the ship for my purpose, and
strangely enough, among the vessels lying near me in the Pool when I
brought up was this brig. In London I shipped the English sailors we
have on board and sailed for Amsterdam at the request of Tulp, who
desired to victual and equip the ship himself. He put Van Laar upon me,
on some friend’s recommendation, and the remainder of the hands--much
too few, but the spirit of Rebecca Sweers sweats like a demon in Tulp
when there is a stiver to be saved--I shipped at Amsterdam.”
“But will not this be strictly what the longshoremen would term a
salvage job?”
“I do not intend that it shall be a salvage job. What? Deliver up the
dollars to the Dutch or British Government and be put off with an award
that would scarce do more than pay wages?”
“You mean to run the stuff?”
He nodded. “There is time enough to talk over that,” said he; “and yet
perhaps it’s right I should tell you that Tulp and I have arranged for
the running of the dollars so that we shall forfeit not one farthing.”
“Well, I heartily wish you joy of your discovery,” said I. “This voyage
will be your last, no doubt, if the dollars are still where you saw
them.”
I looked at a little clock that was ticking over a table; it was a
quarter after eleven. I then looked at the small scuttle or window which
swung with regular oscillations out of the flash of the flying foam into
the light of the blowing morning. I then looked at Galloon, and wondered
quietly within myself how long it would take me to get home; for the
speeding of the brig was continuous; the heave of the sea that rushed
her forward was full of the weight of a sort of weather that my
experience assured me was not going to fail us on a sudden. When, then,
was I going to get home? and while I kept my eyes fastened upon Galloon,
I mused with the velocity of thought upon my uncle Captain Round; upon
my adventure with the press-gang; upon the _Royal Brunswicker_, and her
arrival in the Thames; upon my little property in the cabin I had
occupied aboard her, and on the wages which Captain Spalding owed me.
Greaves glanced at the clock at which I had looked. He then said, “Will
you be interested to know how Mynheer Tulp proposes to divide the
money?”
I begged him to acquaint me with Tulp’s proposal.
“There are five hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” said Greaves. “Of
this money the ship takes half. For ship read Tulp; Tulp’s share,
therefore, is two hundred and seventy thousand dollars or fifty-five
thousand pounds.”
“These are big figures,” said I. “They slide glibly from the tongue. I
suppose a man could behold another fellow’s fifty-five thousand pounds
without feeling faint; but call a poor sailor into a room and show him
fifty-five thousand pounds in gold and tell him it is his, and I believe
you would find a large dose of rum the next thing to be done with him.”
“The ship gets half,” continued Greaves. “I as commander get two-thirds
of the remainder.”
“How much is that?”
“Thirty-six thousand pounds.”
I whistled low and long.
“The mate,” proceeded he, “not Van Laar, but the mate--” he paused and
looked at me with an expression of significant attention; “the mate gets
one-third of the remainder--thirty thousand five hundred and fifty-six
dollars, or six thousand one hundred and eleven pounds.” He read these
figures from his little book.
“A good haul for the mate,” said I.
“The balance of sixty-one odd thousand dollars,” he went on, “goes to
the men according to their rating. This they will receive over and above
their wages, which average from three to six pounds a month.”
“I think Mr. Tulp’s division into shares very fair,” said I.
“Now,” said he, “why do I tell you all this? Why am I revealing to you
what not a living soul on board knows or even suspects?”
I regarded him in silence.
“Cannot you anticipate the proposal I intend to make? Will you take Van
Laar’s place on board my brig, and act as my mate?”
I started from my chair. Not for an instant had I suspected that his
motive in telling me his story was to enable him to make this offer. I
started with so much vehemence that Galloon growled, stirred, and
elevated his ears.
“It is a magnificent proposal,” said I. “It is an offer of six thousand
pounds.”
“More,” he interrupted. “Your wages will be ten pounds a month.”
“I do not like the idea,” said I after a pause, “of taking Van Laar’s
place.”
“From him, do you mean?”
“From him, of course. The post is another thing.”
“It is I,” said he, “not you, who take it from him. Now, pray,
distinctly understand this, Fielding, that, whether you accept or not,
Van Laar will shortly cease to be my mate. If you refuse then Yan Bol
comes aft, and Laar either takes his place or goes home in the first
ship we meet.”
He spoke with a hard face and some severity of voice. It was quite clear
that his mind was resolved, so far as Van Laar’s relations with the brig
was concerned.
“It is a fine offer,” said I. “You will give me time to think it over, I
hope?”
“What time do you require?”
I again looked at the little clock.
“I shall be able to see my way in a few hours, I hope.”
“That is not sailor fashion,” said he, stepping to a quadrant case and
taking the instrument up out of it. “A sailor jumps; he never
deliberates.”
“I have no clothes save what I am wearing,” said I.
“We are well stocked with slops,” he exclaimed. “Dutch-made, to be sure,
but they are good togs.”
“I am without nautical instruments,” said I, looking at the quadrant
which he held.
“I have three of these,” he answered, “and one is at your service.”
I rose and took a turn, full of thought, wishing to say “Yes” but
wishing to consider, too.
“Even were Van Laar,” said he, “as good and trustworthy a seaman as ever
stepped a deck, I would rather have a fellow-countryman for a mate than
a Dutchman, though the Dutchman were the better man. In this case it is
wholly the other way about. Here are you, fresh from a long voyage, with
the experiences of the sea green upon you. You are young; you are
English. I owe you my life; and what a debt is that! Together we can
make this voyage not only a rich but a jolly jaunt. On the other hand,
is Van Laar--no, plague on him, he is not on the other hand, he is out
of it. Well, I must now go on deck to take sights. Let me have your
answer soon.”
He extended his hand, received mine, pressed it cordially, and quitted
the cabin.
I followed with Galloon, and, entering the stateroom, paced the deck of
it and turned Greaves’ proposal over. While I paced, Van Laar, with a
quadrant in his hand, came out of a cabin abreast of the captain’s. He
stared me full and insolently in the face, and said in a tone of irony:
“Vell, how vhas it mit you? Do you feel like going home now?”
“The sun will have crossed his meridian if you don’t hurry up,” said I.
“Vot der doyvel vhas der sun to you, sir?”
I turned my back upon him and continued to pace the deck, not choosing
that he should fasten a quarrel upon me--as yet, at all events.
His insolence, however, helped me in my reflections by extinguishing him
as a condition to be borne in mind. I had been influenced by
compunction; now I had none. I watched the fat beast climb the companion
ladder, and after him, and then over the side into the seething water to
lie drowned forever, went all compunction. How could Greaves work with
such a man? How could he live in a ship with such a man? So, opening the
door of my mind, I kicked Mate Van Laar headlong out of my
contemplation, and resolution did not then seem very hard to form.
I sat down, and said to Galloon:
“What shall I do?”
Galloon stood upon his hind legs, and, resting his fore feet upon my
knees, looked up at me with eyes which beamed with cordial invitation
and affectionate solicitude.
“What shall I do, Galloon?” said I. “Six thousand pounds is a large sum
of money for a man of my degree. Can I doubt that the dollars are in the
ship inside the cave? If Tulp is to be convinced, I should. There was
the Spanish manifest; there were the cases beheld by Greaves’ own eyes.
Why should Greaves invent this yarn? I will stake my life, Galloon, upon
its being true. Six thousand pounds! And d’ye know, my noble dog, that
there is more money in six thousand pounds than your master’s reckoning
of the Spanish dollar swells the amount to? In Jamaica the Spanish
dollar passes for six-and-eightpence; in parts of North America for
eight shillings; and in the Windward Islands for nine shillings;” and
then I told Galloon what I should do when I received the six thousand
pounds: how I would buy me a little house at Deal and a boat, live like
a gentleman on the interest of what was left, and spend the time merrily
in fishing and sailing.
The dog listened with attention. At times I seemed to catch a slight
inclination of the head, as though he nodded approvingly. I counted upon
my fingers all the advantages, which must attend my acceptance of
Greaves’ offer. First, the post of mate at ten pounds a month, with a
voyage before me of at least twelve months; then my association with a
man whose company was exceedingly agreeable to me, between whom and me
there must always be such a bond of sympathy as nothing but the
prodigious and pathetic services we had done each other could
establish; then the possibility--nay, the more than possibility, of my
receiving six thousand pounds as my dividend of the adventure. These and
the like considerations I summed up. What was the _per contra_? The
forfeiture of a few weeks of holiday ashore! Spalding’s debt to me stood
good, and would be paid whenever I turned up to receive the money. My
being seized by the press-gang, the boat being stove, and my being
picked up insensible and carried away into the ocean--all this was no
fault of mine. Therefore Spalding would pay me the money.
“Galloon, I will accept,” said I, and jumped up; and the dog fell to
cutting capers about me, springing here and there, like a dog in front
of a trotting horse, and barking joyously.