THE CAPTAIN'S LETTER
On a sofa in her well-furnished parlor reclined Edna, and on a table near
by lay several sheets of closely written letter-paper. She had been
reading, and now she was thinking--thinking very intently, which in these
days was an unusual occupation with her. During her residence in San
Francisco she had lived quietly but cheerfully. She had supplied herself
abundantly with books, she had visited theatres and concerts, she had
driven around the city, she had taken water excursions, she had visited
interesting places in the neighborhood, and she had wandered among the
shops, purchasing, in moderation, things that pleased her. For company
she had relied chiefly on her own little party, although there had been
calls from persons who knew Captain Horn. Some of these people were
interesting, and some were not, but they all went away thinking that the
captain was a wonderfully fortunate man.
One thing which used to be a pleasure to Edna she refrained from
altogether, and that was the making of plans. She had put her past life
entirely behind her. She was beginning a new existence--what sort of an
existence she could not tell, but she was now living with the
determinate purpose of getting the greatest good out of her life,
whatever it might be.
Already she had had much, but in every respect her good fortunes were but
preliminary to something else. Her marriage was but the raising of the
curtain--the play had not yet begun. The money she was spending was but
an earnest of something more expected. Her newly developed physical
beauty, which she could not fail to appreciate, would fade away again,
did it not continue to be nourished by that which gave it birth. But what
she had, she had, and that she would enjoy. When Captain Horn should
return, she would know what would happen next. This could not be a
repetition of the life she was leading at the Palmetto Hotel, but
whatever the new life might be, she would get from it all that it might
contain for her. She did not in the least doubt the captain's return, for
she believed in him so thoroughly that she felt--she knew--he would come
back and tell her of his failure or his success, and what she was to do
next. But now she was thinking. She could not help it, for her tranquil
mind had been ruffled.
Her cogitations were interrupted by the entrance of Ralph.
"I say, Edna," said he, throwing himself into an easy-chair, and placing
his hat upon another near by, "was that a returned manuscript that
Cheditafa brought you this morning? You haven't been writing for the
magazines, have you?"
"That was a letter from Captain Horn," she said.
"Whew!" he exclaimed. "It must be a whopper! What does he say? When is he
coming here? Give me some of the points of it. But, by the way, Edna,
before you begin, I will say that I think it is about time he should
write. Since the letter in which he told about the guano-bags and sent
you that lot of money--let me see, how long ago was that?"
"It was ten days ago," said his sister.
"Is that so? I thought it was longer than that. But no matter. Since that
letter came, I have been completely upset. I want to know what I am to
do, and, whatever I am to do, I want to get at it. From what the captain
wrote, and from what I remember of the size and weight of those gold
bars, he must have got away with more than a million dollars--perhaps a
million and a half. Now, what part of that is mine? What am I to do with
it? When am I to begin to prepare myself for the life I am to lead when I
get it? All this I want to know, and, more than that, I want to know what
you are going to do. Now, if I had got to Acapulco, or any other
civilized spot, with a million dollars in solid gold, it would not have
been ten days before I should have written to my family,--for I suppose
that is what we are,--and should have told them what I was going to do,
and how much they might count on. But I hope now that letter does tell?"
"The best thing to do," said Edna, taking up the letter from the table,
"is to read it to you. But before I begin I want to say something, and
that is that it is very wrong of you to get into these habits of
calculating about what may come to you. What is to come will come, and
you might as well wait for it without upsetting your mind by all sorts of
wild anticipations; and, besides this, you must remember that you are
not of age, and that I am your guardian, and whatever fortune may now
come to you will be under my charge until you are twenty-one."
"Oh, I don't care about that," said Ralph. "We will have no trouble
about agreeing what is the best thing for me to do. But now go ahead
with the letter."
"'I am going to tell you'" (at the beginning of the second paragraph)
"'of a very strange thing which happened to me since I last wrote. I will
first state that after my guano-bags had all been safely stored in the
warerooms I have hired, I had a heavy piece of work getting the packages
of gold out of the bags, and in packing the bars in small, stout boxes I
found in the City of Mexico and had sent down here. In looking around for
boxes which would suit my purpose, I discovered these, which had been
used for stereotype plates. They were stamped on the outside, and just
what I wanted, being about as heavy after I packed them with gold as they
were when they were filled with type-metal. This packing I had to do
principally at night, when I was supposed to be working in a little
office attached to the rooms. As soon as this was done, I sent all the
boxes to a safe-deposit bank in Mexico, and there the greater part of
them are yet. Some I have shipped to the mint in San Francisco, some have
gone North, and I am getting rid of the rest as fast as I can.
"'The gold bars, cast in a form novel to all dealers, have excited a good
deal of surprise and questioning, but for this I care very little. My
main object is to get the gold separated as many miles as possible from
the guano, for if the two should be connected in the mind of any one who
knew where the guano was last shipped from, I might have cause for
anxiety. But as the bars bear no sort of mark to indicate that they were
cast by ancient Peruvians, and, so far as I can remember,--and I have
visited several museums in South America,--these castings are not like
any others that have come down to us from the times of the Incas, the
gold must have been cast in this simple form merely for convenience in
transportation and packing. Some people may think it is California gold,
some may think it comes from South America, but, whatever they think,
they know it is pure gold, and they have no right to doubt that it
belongs to me. Of course, if I were a stranger it might be different, but
wherever I have dealt I am known, or I send a good reference. And now I
will come to the point of this letter.
"'Three days ago I was in my office, waiting to see a man to whom I hoped
to sell my stock of guano, when a man came in,--but not the one I
expected to see,--and if a ghost had appeared before me, I could not have
been more surprised. I do not know whether or not you remember the two
American sailors who were the first to go out prospecting, after Mr.
Rynders and his men left us, and who did not return. This man was one of
them--Edward Shirley by name.'"
"I remember him perfectly!" cried Ralph. "And the other fellow was George
Burke. On board the _Castor_ I used to talk to them more than to any of
the other sailors."
"'But astonished as I was,'" Edna went on to read, "'Shirley did not seem
at all surprised, but came forward and shook hands most heartily. He said
he had read in a newspaper that I had been rescued, and was doing
business in Acapulco, and he had come down on purpose to find me. I told
him how we had given up him and his mate for lost, and then, as he had
read a very slim account of our adventures, I told him the whole story,
taking great care, as you may guess, not to say anything about the
treasure mound. He did not ask any questions as to why I did not come
back with the rest of you, but was greatly troubled when he heard of the
murders of every man of our crew except himself and Burke and Maka.
"'When I had finished, he told me his story, which I will condense as
much as possible. When he and Burke started out, they first began to
make their way along the slope of the rocky ridge which ended in our
caves, but they found this very hard work, so they soon went down to the
sandy country to the north. Here they shot some little beast or other,
and while they were hunting another one, up hill and down dale, they
found night was coming on, and they were afraid to retrace their steps
for fear they might come to trouble in the darkness. So they ate what
they had with them, and camped, and the next morning the mountains to the
east seemed to be so near them that they thought it much easier to push
on instead of coming back to us. They thought that when they got to the
fertile country they would find a settlement, and then they might be able
to do something for the rest of the party, and it would be much wiser to
go ahead than to turn back. But they found themselves greatly mistaken.
Mountains in the distance, seen over a plain, appear very much nearer
than they are, and these two poor fellows walked and walked, until they
were pretty nearly dead. The story is a long one as Shirley told it to
me, but just as they were about giving up entirely, they were found by a
little party of natives, who had seen them from a long distance and had
come to them.
"'After a great deal of trouble,--I believe they had to carry Burke a
good part of the way,--the natives got them to their huts at the foot of
the mountains, and took care of them. These people told Shirley--he knows
a little Spanish--that it was a piece of rare good luck that they found
them, for it was very seldom they went so far out into the desert.
"'In a day or two the two men went on to a little village in the
mountains, and there they tried to get up an expedition to come to our
assistance. They knew that we had food enough to last for a week or two,
but after that we must be starved out. But nobody would do anything, and
then they went on to another town to see what they could do there.'"
"Good fellows!" exclaimed Ralph.
"Indeed, they were," said Edna. "But wait until you hear what they did
next.
"'Nobody in this small town,'" she read on, "'was willing to join Burke
and Shirley in their proposed expedition, and no wonder; for crossing
those deserts is a dangerous thing, and most people said it would be
useless anyway, as it would be easier for us to get away by sea than by
land. At this time Burke was taken sick, and for a week or two Shirley
thought he was going to die. Of course, they had to stay where they were,
and it was a long time before Burke was able to move about. Then they
might have gone into the interior until they came to a railroad, and so
have got away, for they had money with them, but Shirley told me they
could not bear to do that without knowing what had become of us. They did
not believe there was any hope for us, unless the mate had come back with
assistance, and they had not much faith in that, for if a storm had come
up, such as had wrecked the Castor, it would be all over with Mr.
Rynders's boat.
"'But even if we had perished on that desolate coast, they wanted to
know it and carry the news to our friends, and so they both determined,
if the thing could be done, to get back to the coast and find out what
had become of us. They went again to the little village where they had
been taken by the natives who found them, and there, by promises of big
pay,--at least, large for those poor Peruvians,--they induced six of
them to join in an expedition to the caves. They did not think they had
any reason to suppose they would find any one alive, but still, besides
the provisions necessary for the party there and back, they carried
something extra.
"'Well, they journeyed for two days, and then there came up a
wind-storm, hot and dry, filling the air with sand and dust, so that
they could not see where they were going, and the natives said they
ought all to go back, for it was dangerous to try to keep on in such a
storm. But our two men would not give up so soon, and they made a camp
in a sheltered place, and determined to press on in the morning, when
they might expect the storm to be over. But in the morning they found
that every native had deserted them. The wind had gone down, and the
fellows must have started back before it was light. Then Shirley and
Burke did not know what to do. They believed that they were nearer the
coast than the mountains, and as they had plenty of provisions,--for the
natives had left them nearly everything,--they thought they would try to
push on, for a while at least.
"'There was a bit of rising ground to the east, and they thought if they
could get on the top of that they might get a sight of the ocean, and
then discover how far away it was. They reached the top of the rising
ground, and they did not see the ocean, but a little ahead of them, in a
smooth stretch of sand, was something which amazed them a good deal more
than if it had been the sea. It was a pair of shoes sticking up out of
the sand. They were an old pair, and appeared to have legs to them. They
went to the spot, and found that these shoes belonged to a man who was
entirely covered by sand, with the exception of his feet, and dead, of
course. They got the sand off of him, and found he was a white man, in
sailor's clothes. First they had thought he might be one of our party,
but they soon perceived that this was a mistake, for they had never seen
the man before. He was dried up until he was nothing but a skeleton with
skin over it, but they could have recognized him if they had known him
before. From what they had heard of the rainless climate of the Peruvian
coast, and the way it had of drying up dead animals of all sorts, they
imagined that this man might have been there for years. He was lying on
his back, with his arms folded around a bundle, and when they tried to
move this bundle, they found it was very heavy. It was something wrapped
up in a blanket and tied with a cord, and when they opened the bundle,
they were pretty nearly struck dumb; for they saw it held, as Shirley
expressed it, about a peck of little hunks of gold.
"'They were utterly astounded by this discovery, and utterly unable to
make head or tail of it. What that man, apparently an English sailor, had
been doing out in the middle of this desert with a bundle of gold, and
where he got it, and who he was, and where he was going to, and how long
he had been dead, were things beyond their guessing. They dragged the
body out of its burrow in the sand, and examined the pockets, but there
was nothing in the trousers but an old knife. In the pocket of the shirt,
however, were about a dozen matches, wrapped up in an old envelope. This
was addressed, in a very bad hand, to A. McLeish, Callao, Peru, but they
could not make out the date of the postmark. These things were all there
was about the man that could possibly identify him, for his few clothes
were such as any sailor would wear, and were very old and dirty.
"'But the gold was there. They examined it and scraped it, and they were
sure it was pure gold. There was no doubt in their minds as to what they
would do about this. They would certainly carry it away with them. But
before they did so, Burke wanted to hunt around and see if they could not
find more of it, for the mass of metal was so heavy he did not believe
the sailor could have carried it very far. But after examining the
country as far as the eye could reach, Shirley would not agree to this.
They could see nothing but wide-stretching sands, and no place where it
seemed worth while to risk their lives hunting for treasure. Their best
plan was to get away with what they had found, and now the point was
whether or not they should press on to the coast or go back; but as they
could see no signs of the sea, they soon came to the conclusion that the
best thing to do if they wanted to save their lives and their treasure
was to get back to the mountains.
"'I forgot to say that as soon as Shirley began to talk about the dead
man and his gold, I left the warehouse in charge of Maka, and took him to
my hotel, where he told me the rest of his story in a room with the door
locked. I must try to take as many reefs in what followed as I can. I
don't believe that the finding of the gold made any difference in their
plans, for, of course, it would have been foolish for them to try to get
to us by themselves. They cut the blanket in half and made up the gold
into two packages, and then they started back for the mountains, taking
with them all the provisions they could carry in addition to the gold,
and leaving their guns behind them. Shirley said their loads got heavier
and heavier as they ploughed through the sand, and it took them three
days to cover the ground they had gone over before in two. When they got
to the village, they found scarcely a man in the place, for the fellows
who had deserted them were frightened, and kept out of sight. They stayed
there all night, and then they went on with their bundles to the next
village, where they succeeded in getting a couple of travelling-bags,
into which they put their gold, so that they might appear to be carrying
their clothes.
"'After a good deal of travel they reached Callao, and there they made
inquiries for A. McLeish, but nobody knew of him. Of course, he was a
sailor who had had a letter sent there. They went up to Lima and sold a
few pieces of the gold, but, before they did it, they got a heavy hammer
and pounded them up, so that no one would know what their original shape
was. Shirley said he could not say exactly why they did this, but that
they thought, on the whole, it would be safer. Then they went to San
Francisco on the first vessel that sailed. They must have had a good deal
of talk on the voyage in regard to the gold, and it was in consequence of
their discussions that Shirley wanted so much to find me. They had
calculated, judging by the pieces they had sold, that the gold they had
with them was worth about twelve thousand dollars, and they both thought
they ought to do the right thing about it. In the first place, they tried
in San Francisco to find out something about McLeish, but no one knew of
such a man. They then began to consider some persons they did know about.
They had heard in Lima that some of the people of the _Castor_ had been
rescued, and if any of them were hard up, as most likely they were,
Shirley and Burke thought that by rights they ought to have some of the
treasure that they had found. Shirley said at first they had gone on the
idea that each of them would have six thousand dollars and could go into
business for himself, but after a while they thought this would be a mean
thing to do. They had all been shipwrecked together, and two of them had
had a rare piece of good luck, and they thought it no more than honorable
to share this good luck with the others, so they concluded the best thing
to do was to see me about it. Burke left this business to Shirley,
because he wanted to go to see his sister who lives in St. Louis.
"'They had not formed any fixed plan of division, but they believed that,
as they had had the trouble, and, in fact, the danger, of getting the
gold, they should have the main share, but they considered that they had
enough to help out any of the original party who might be hard up for
money." Of course, we must always remember," said Shirley, in finishing
up his story, "that if we can find the heirs of McLeish, the money
belongs to them. But, even in that case, Burke and I think we ought to
keep a good share of it to pay us for getting it away from that beastly
desert." Here I interrupted him. "Don't you trouble yourself any more
about McLeish," I said. "That money did not belong to him. He stole it."
"How do you know that, and who did he steal it from?" cried Shirley.
"He stole it from me," said I.
"'At this point Shirley gave such a big jump backward that his chair
broke beneath him, and he went crashing to the floor. He had made a start
a good deal like that when I told him how the Rackbirds had been swept
out of existence when I had opened the flood-gate that let out the waters
of the lake, and I had heard the chair crack then. Now, while he had been
telling me about his finding that man in the sand, with his load of gold,
I had been listening, but I had also been thinking, and almost any man
can think faster than another one can talk, and so by this time I had
made up my mind what I was going to say to Shirley. I would tell him all
about my finding the gold in the mound. It touched me to think that these
poor fellows, who did all that they could to help us escape, and then,
when they got safely home, started immediately to find us in order that
they might give us some of that paltry twelve thousand dollars--give to
us, who are actually millionaires, and who may be richer yet! It would
not do to let any of the crew get ahead of their captain in fair dealing,
and that was one reason why I determined to tell him. Then, there was
another point. Ever since I have been here, selling and storing the gold
I brought away, I have had a heavy load on my mind, and that was the
thought of leaving all the rest of the gold in that mound for the next
person who might come along and find it.
"'I devised plan after plan of getting more of it, but none of them would
work. Two things were certain: One was that I could not get any more away
by myself. I had already done the best I could and all I could in that
line. And the second thing was that if I should try for any more of the
treasure, I must have people to help me. The plan that suited me best was
to buy a small vessel, man it, go down there, load up with the gold, and
sail away. There would be no reasonable chance that any one would be
there to hinder me, and I would take in the cargo just as if it were
guano, or anything else. Then I would go boldly to Europe. I have looked
into the matter, and I have found that the best thing I can do, if I
should get that gold, would be to transport it to Paris, where I could
distribute it better than I could from any other point. But the trouble
was, where could I get the crew to help me? I have four black men, and I
think I could trust them, as far as honesty goes, but they would not be
enough to work the ship, and I could not think of any white men with whom
I would trust my life and that gold in the same vessel. But now they
seemed to pop up right in front of me.
"'I knew Shirley and Burke pretty well when they were on the _Castor_,
and after what Shirley told me I knew them better, and I believed they
were my men. To be sure, they might fail me, for they are only human, but
I had to have somebody to help me, and I did not believe there were any
other two men who would be less likely to fail me. So by the time Shirley
had finished his yarn I was ready to tell him the whole thing, and
propose to him and Burke to join me in going down after the rest of the
treasure and taking it to France.'"
At this point Ralph sprang to his feet, his eyes flashing. "Edna!" he
cried, "I say that your Captain Horn is treating me shamefully. In the
first place, he let me come up here to dawdle about, doing nothing, when
I ought to have been down there helping him get more of that treasure. I
fancy he might have trusted me, and if I had been with him, we should
have brought away nearly twice as much gold, and at this minute we
should be twice as well off as we are. But this last is a thousand times
worse. Here he is, going off on one of the most glorious adventures of
this century, and he leaves me out. What does he take me for? Does he
think I am a girl? When he was thinking of somebody to go with him, why
didn't he think of me, and why doesn't he think of me now? He has no
right to leave me out!"
"I look at the matter in a different light," said his sister. "Captain
Horn has no right to take you off on such a dangerous adventure, and,
more than that, he has no right to take you from me, and leave me alone
in the world. He once made you the guardian of all that treasure, and now
he considers you as my guardian. You did not desert the first trust, and
I am sorry to think you want to desert the other."
"That's all very fine," said Ralph. "You blow hot and you blow cold at
the same time. When you want me to keep quiet and do what I am told, you
tell me I am not of age, and that you are my guardian; and when you want
me to stay here and make myself useful, you tell me I am wonderfully
trusty, and that I must be your guardian."
Edna smiled. "That is pretty good reasoning," she said, "but there isn't
any reasoning needed in this case. No matter what Captain Horn may say or
do, I would not let you go away from me."
Ralph sat down again. "There is some sense in what you say," he said. "If
the captain should come to grief, and I were with him, we would both be
gone. Then you would have nobody left to you. But that does not entirely
clear him. Even if he thought I ought not to go with him, he ought to
have said something about it, and put in a word or so about his being
sorry. Is there any more of the letter?"
"Yes," said Edna, "there is more of it," and she began to read again:
"'I intended to stop here and give you the rest of the matter in another
letter, but now, as I have a good chance to write, I think it is better
to keep on, although this letter is already as long as the pay-roll of
the navy. When I told Shirley about the gold, he made a bounce pretty
nearly as big as the others, but this time I had him in a stout
arm-chair, and he did no damage. He had in his pocket one of the gold
bars he spoke of, and I had one of mine in my trunk, and when we put them
together they were as like as two peas. What I told him dazed him at
first, and he did not seem properly to understand what it all meant, but,
after a little, a fair view of it came to him, and for hours we talked
over the matter. Who the man was who had gone there after we left did not
matter, for he could never come back again.
"'We decided that what we should do was to go and get that gold as soon
as possible, and Shirley agreed to go with me. He believed we could trust
Burke to join us, and, with my four black men,--who have really become
good sailors,--we would have a crew of seven men altogether, with which
we could work a fair-sized brig to Havre or some other French port.
Before he went away our business was settled. He agreed to go with me as
first mate, to do his best to help me get that gold to France, to
consider the whole treasure as mine, because I had discovered it,--I
explained the reason to him, as I did to you,--and to accept as regular
pay one hundred dollars a day, from then until we should land the cargo
in a European port, and then to leave it to me how much more I would give
him. I told him there were a lot of people to be considered, and I was
going to try to make the division as fair as possible, and he said he was
willing to trust it to me.
"'If we did not get the gold, he was to have eighteen dollars a month
for the time he sailed with me, and if we got safely back, I would give
him his share of what I had already secured. He was quite sure that Burke
would make the same agreement, and we telegraphed him to come
immediately. I am going to be very careful about Burke, however, and
sound him well before I tell him anything.
"'Yesterday we found our vessel. She arrived in port a few days ago, and
is now unloading. She is a small brig, and I think she will do; in fact,
she has got to do. By the time Burke gets here I think we shall be ready
to sail. Up to that time we shall be as busy as men can be, and it will
be impossible for me to go to San Francisco. I must attend to the
shipping of the treasure I have stored in the City of Mexico. I shall
send some to one place and some to another, but want it all turned into
coin or bonds before I start. Besides, I must be on hand to see Burke the
moment he arrives. I am not yet quite sure about him, and if Shirley
should let anything slip while I was away our looked-for fortune might be
lost to us.'
"And that," said Edna, "is all of the letter that I need read, except
that he tells me he expects to write again before he starts, and that
his address after he sails will be Wraxton, Fuguet & Co., American
bankers in Paris."