THE "MIRANDA" TAKES IN CARGO
The next day the work of removing the treasure from the caves to the
vessel began in good earnest. The Miranda was anchored not far from the
little 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 instructed
Maka to assure them that they would not be obliged to go anywhere where
it 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 and
strong, with a dark complexion, and rather given to talk. The captain
liked him well enough, his principal objection to him being that he was
rather too willing to give advice. But, whatever might be the effect of
the treasure on Burke, the captain determined that he should not be
surprised by it. He had tried that on Shirley, and did not want to try it
again on anybody. So he conversed freely about the treasure and the
mound, and, as far as possible, described its appearance and contents.
But he need not have troubled himself about the effect of the sight of a
wagon-load of gold upon Burke's mind. He was glad to see it, and whistled
cheerfully 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 we
get 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 too
low for him to reach it from above, and having put as many bars into a
coffee-bag as a man could carry, he passed it up to Burke, who slid it
down to the floor, where another lantern had been left. When five bags
had been made ready, the captain came out, and he and Burke put each bag
into another, and these were tied up firmly at each end, for a single
coffee-bag was not considered strong enough to hold the weighty
treasure. Then the two carried the bags into the part of the cave which
was lighted by the great fissure, and called the negroes. Then, each
taking a bag on his shoulder, the party returned to the cove. On the
next trip, Shirley decided to go with the captain, for he said he did
not 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 negro
who 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. Whatever
discovery should be made when the bottom of the deposit was reached, he
wanted to be there to make it.
The operations were conducted openly, and without any attempt at secrecy
or 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 to
take them to the vessel. When they were put on board, they were lowered
into 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 might
think that those bags were filled with gold, or they might think that
they contained a mineral substance, useful for fertilizer; but if by
questioning or by accidental information they found out what was the load
under which they toiled along the beach, the captain was content. There
was no reason why he should fear these men more than he feared Burke and
Shirley. 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 the
sailors to shoot him from above, and for them, or perhaps only one of
them, to become the owner of all that treasure. But then, he could be
shot in one place almost as well as in another, and if the negroes should
be 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 been
secured and the ship had sailed than now. In any case, nothing could be
gained by making them feel that they were suspected and distrusted.
Therefore it was that when, one day, Maka said to the captain that the
little stones in the bags had begun to make his shoulder tender, the
captain showed him how to fold an empty sack and put it between the bags
and 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 of
this voyage, he would be able to buy a ship bigger than the _Castor_, and
that they would not have to sail in that little brig any more, and that
he expected to be cook on the new vessel, and have a fine suit of clothes
in which to go on shore.
For nearly a month the work went on, but the contents of the mound
diminished so slowly that the captain, and, in fact, the two sailors,
also, became very impatient. Only about forty pounds could be carried by
each man on a trip, and the captain saw plainly that it would not do to
urge greater rapidity or more frequent trips, for in that case there
would be sure to be breakdowns. The walk from the cove to the caves was
a long one, and rocky barriers had to be climbed, and although now but
one man was left on board the vessel, only thirty bags a day were stored
in its hold. This was very slow work. Consultations were held, and it
was determined that some quicker method of transportation must be
adopted. The idea that they could be satisfied with what they already
had seemed to enter the mind of none of them. It was a foregone
conclusion that their business there was to carry away all the gold that
was 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 a
moderate depth. Then the bags were carried in the boats to the vessel. A
line connected each boat with the ship, and the negroes were half the
time in the water, assisting the boats backward and forward through the
surf. Now work went on very much more rapidly. The men had all become
accustomed to carrying the heavy bags, and could run with them down the
plateau. The boats were hauled to and from the vessel, and the bags were
hoisted on board by means of blocks and tackle and a big basket. Once the
side of the basket gave way, and several bags went down to the bottom of
the sea, never to be seen again. But there was no use in crying over
spilt gold, and this was the only accident.
The winds were generally from the south and east, and, therefore, there
was no high surf; and this new method of working was so satisfactory that
they all regretted they had not adopted it from the first,
notwithstanding the risk. But the captain had had no idea that it would
take 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 distance
from the shore, so as to be able to run out to sea in case of bad
weather, 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 not
hand up the bags without the assistance of a ladder, which he made from
some stuff on board the brig. By rough measurement, he found that he
should now be near the level of the outside floor of the cave, and he
worked with great caution, for the idea, first broached by Ralph, that
this mass of gold might cover something more valuable than itself, had
never left him.
But as he worked steadily, filling bag after bag, he found that, although
he had reached at the outer edge of the floor of the mound what seemed to
be a pavement of stone, there was still a considerable depth of gold in
the centre of the floor. Now he worked faster, telling Shirley, who was
outside, that he would not come out until he had reached the floor of the
mound, which was evidently depressed in the centre after the fashion of a
saucer. 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 sifted
down in the course of ages from the inside coating of the mound, but it
was not deep enough to conceal a bar of gold, and, with his lantern and
his foot, the captain made himself sure that not a piece was left. Then
his whole soul and body thrilled with a wild purpose, and, moving the
ladder 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 a
smaller cavity beneath the great one, what might he not discover within
it? 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 around
it. We have enough already. Why should we run the risk of going crazy by
trying to get more? I will not!" And he replaced the ladder.
"What's the matter in there?" called Shirley, from outside. "Who're you
talking to?"
The captain came out of the opening in the mound, pulled up the ladder
and handed it to Shirley, and then he was about to replace the lid upon
the mound. But what was the use of doing that, he thought. There would be
no sense in closing it. He would leave it open.
"I was talking to myself," he said to Shirley, when he had descended. "It
sounded crack-brained, I expect."
"Yes, it did," answered the other. "And I am glad these are the last bags
we have to tie up and take out. I should not have wondered if the whole
three of us had turned into lunatics. As for me, I have tried hard to
stop thinking about the business, and I have found that the best thing I
could 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, is
not 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 about
it. There is absolutely no reason why we should not be as happy and
contented as if we had each made a couple of thousand dollars apiece on a
good 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 were
walking about the caves looking here and there to take a final leave of
the place. Whatever the captain considered of value as a memento of the
life 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 that
empty mound after us should not know what had been in it. You see, we
will have to circulate these bars of gold pretty extensively, and we
don'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 will
want to do it ourselves, and in our own way."
"There is sense in that," said Burke. "There's another thing I want to
ask you, captain. I've been thinking a great deal about that mound, and
it 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 nobody
knows 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 know
how much,--but I made up my mind it would be the worst kind of folly to
try and get anything else out of that mound. We have now all that is good
for us to have. The only question is whether or not we have not more than
is good for us. I was not sure that I should not find something, if I
looked for it, which would make me as sick as Shirley was the first time
he looked into the mound. No, sir; we have enough, and it is the part of
sensible men to stop when they have enough."
Burke shook his head. "If I'd been there," he said, "I should have looked
for a crack in that floor."
When the brig weighed anchor, she did not set out for the open sea, but
proceeded back to the Rackbirds' cove, where she anchored again. Before
setting out, the next day, on his voyage to France, the captain wished to
take on board a supply of fresh water.