OUT OF THE DEPTHS.
The village was long asleep when at last we issued forth, as
blamelessly agitated a body of brigands as ever trod the corridors of
night. We had taken our measures with infinite precaution, so that not
a hint of our designs should leak out; yet still we had delayed,
sitting, like the party in the parlour, “all silent and all damned,”
while Dunberry sunk into deep and deeper unconsciousness of our
conspiracy in its midst. We were assembled, in fact, in the rector’s
study, Joshua, Mr. Sant himself, my uncle, and we two; and there we
stuck, spelling out the blessed quarters, until the chimes of the
school clock, coming in a flurry out of silence, called up a single
rebukeful stroke from Time, and subsided upon it. So late as this, an
hour after midnight, had we resolved to linger, to make assurance
double sure; and at the sound, with a great pouf! of relief, we were
on our feet and tingling to depart.
There had been no longer any question, of course, since our learning
where the treasure was, or should be, concealed, of my foregoing my
share in the attempt to recover it. No possible peril, within reason,
could attach to this purely open-air sport; though, indeed, Uncle
Jenico had made, even now, some presumptive risk to me the excuse for
his joining us in the expedition.
It was a question, at this last, if he or Mr. Sant were the more
excited. Our dear comical tutor and sceptic still made a show, it is
true, of subscribing to a madness in order to humour a party of
lunatics under his charge; but this affectation, I do believe, took in
none of us. Was it not he, in solemn fact, who had insisted upon the
necessity of this postponement of the foray until the small hours? Was
it not he who had manœuvred to enwrap our plans in a profound mist of
secrecy? Was it not he who had appointed the present rendezvous with a
masterly eye to contingencies? As to wit: (1) His house stood remote,
and we could reach the sea-front from the back of it, without ever
touching the village; (2) A French window gave from his study upon the
garden to the rear; (3) There was a little hand-cart for luggage in a
shed in this garden, which cart offered itself apt to a dual
purpose--(A) to convey down to the shore a pick and a shovel, together
with Uncle Jenico’s colossal wrench, which, under pretence of its
being submitted to some test, had already been brought to the rectory;
(B) to serve as vehicle for the carrying back of the treasure.
On the top of all which, I ask you, was Mr. Sant the incredulous
humourist he professed to be?
Whatever _he_ thought, however, Uncle Jenico was patently and
irresistibly the enthusiast of the undertaking. He stumped along, dear
soul, his face one moon of hilarity. The adventure was to his very
heart. To be called upon, in _such_ an enterprise, to advertise the
merits of _such_ an invention, his own! It was unspeakable--beyond
expectation! He laughed constantly, holding my arm, and rebuking me
for being a sluggard when I tried to regulate his pace lest he upset
himself.
Harry trundled the cart, making the softest track he could manage,
under the hill towards the Gap. It was a brilliant moonlit night, with
a singing wind. We had brought lanterns; but had no need of them. It
was near as bright as day, indeed, and we sped rapidly on our course,
never having need to pause or pick our way till we reached the sands.
The great shaft of the well, when we stood over against it, seemed to
topple towards us, tragically anticipating its doom. The sight of it,
so lonely and so ancient in this moon-drowned solitude, thrilled me
with a sort of pity. It had stood so long, baffling the winds and
tides, foregathering with such generations of dead and departed
ghosts! And now at last man’s cupidity was scheming to compass the
final ruin of what Nature had been impotent to wreck. Ah! a more fatal
force than any storm! the one against which no monument, however
venerable, is proof.
If the others were touched by this spirit of regret, they were
sensible enough to subordinate it to the inevitably practical. While I
was, literally, mooning, they had already lifted the wrench from the
barrow, and were busy, under Uncle Jenico’s directions, getting it
into position on the sand.
I can only hastily elucidate the idea of this machine. Pinned to a
sort of frame, or trestle, which was anchored all round with stout
grapnels, and shored up in front against a bracket, was a ship’s
steering-wheel, which the inventor had picked up cheap at a marine
auction. A good rope (length indefinite), to be passed round the
subject of the proposed haulage, and its two ends then carried to the
wheel and clamped, one on each side, to its rim, completed the design.
So disposed, nothing remained but to turn the wheel by its spokes,
when the rope would garrotte the object, and, mechanically contracting
of itself, induce a forward strain.
Now, I know little about scientific values; but certainly in this case
the result justified the means, as you shall hear.
We had got all in place but the rope; and then suddenly Mr. Sant drew
himself up, scratching his head in an unclerical manner.
“Whereabouts is it to be passed round?” he said.
“O!” answered Uncle Jenico: “as high up on the shaft as one can
reach.”
“My good man,” cried the rector sarcastically, “do you really imagine
we are going to haul that thing over by tugging at its base, or near
it?”
“It is tottering already. It is laid bare to its lowest course. These
boys examined and proved it!” answered Uncle Jenico.
Nevertheless, I could see he was taken by surprise and dismayed.
“That may be,” said Mr. Sant, “but----”
He paused, shrugged his shoulders, and laughed out comically.
“O, it will never do!” he said. “We must give this insanity a better
chance. By hook or by crook, we must get the thing fixed up near the
top.”
I started forward.
“I’ll carry the rope up, sir. I know the way. Harry and I climbed it
once before.”
“No,” cried Uncle Jenico, sharply and decisively. “I won’t have you go
on any account, Richard!”
“Then it’s to be me!” cried Harry; and, as I muttered discontentedly,
trying to block his way, he evaded me and ran for the shaft. Mr. Sant,
trailing the rope, followed him, and in a moment they were under its
shadow.
I chafed, watching them: but my relative was inexorable. And, indeed,
to speak truth, there was considerably more risk in the venture than
formerly before the storm. Harry, however, accomplished his part in
safety; and, while he still dwelt aloft, holding the loop in place,
Mr. Sant captured the two ends of the rope, and came running towards
us with them. In a moment we had pulled them taut and clamped them in
place to the wheel. And then we hailed Harry to come down, which he
did, rather with a run, so afraid was he of missing any detail of the
sport.
Uncle Jenico had already given a half-turn to the wheel, in order to
clinch the hold of the rope; and now he stood in a tense eagerness,
dwelling on the psychologic moment. He held, by right of patent, the
larboard spokes; Mr. Sant, the port. The dear old man was so wrought
up out of feebleness, that I was apprehensive of the part he insisted
upon taking in the manipulation of his own design. He would not be
denied, however; and who could have had the heart to disappoint him?
Was not this the very first time that his genius for invention
promised him a harvest of gold? He took a long breath, and tightened
his hold on the spokes.
Joshua stood rigid, awaiting the result. Harry and I shook on wires,
staring from the wrench to the shaft, and hardly stifling the
exclamations that rose to our lips. It was a solemn moment.
“Go!” cried Uncle Jenico; and the wheel spun a little, stiffened, and
began to cry ominously.
Something cracked; thank Heaven it was only Uncle Jenico’s braces! The
old man tugged and puffed, wrestling with his task. Suddenly he
staggered--the wheel seemed to give and spin away from him--and he was
almost on his face. In the same moment I fancied the shadow of a
night-bird had crossed my vision--and I looked; and where had been the
well was nothing. It was fallen prone upon the sand, so wearily, so
softly, that in that humming wind no sound of the concussion had
reached us.
Hardly suppressing a cry of triumph, we dropped everything, and raced
for the place. The shaft in falling had broken into three pieces, of
which the middle one was in a proportion of two-fourths. The fracture
nearest the base was only three or so inches in width; but the top
fragment was quite detached, and tilted over a little away from the
neck.
Where the shaft had stood was surprisingly little scar in the
ground--nothing to see, in fact, but a pyramid of sand, which had run
from the stuffed base of the well in its parting. Upon this we flung
ourselves, scrambling and scraping like children about a burst sugar
cask. We clawed, as badgers claw, throwing the draff behind us. A hole
opened under our furious assault, and sunk, and deepened--and revealed
nothing. We ran for the tools, and picked and dug like madmen.
Presently Mr. Sant threw down his shovel.
“We are feet below the well bottom. Are you satisfied at last, Mr.
Pilbrow?” he said, really in a quite quarrelsome way. He had been
cheated, he felt, of the fruits of his own condescension.
“No,” snarled Joshua, “I’m not. Here was mud, perhaps, once. It was a
loaded box of iron--we know that. It may have sunk far.”
Mr. Sant laughed offensively. The best of us bear awakening from
engaging dreams badly. As for me, I had desisted from working when he
did, and was sitting disconsolately on the lower part of the shaft,
fumbling with my fingers in the fracture.
All in a moment the blood seemed to rush to my heart, making me gasp.
I jumped to my feet.
“Here it is!” I screeched. “I’ve found it! I felt it!”
My fingers, burrowing through the crack into a choke of sand, had
touched upon the iron-bound corner of a box.
They were all up and swarming about me directly. One by one, quite
cavalier to each other in their eagerness to dive and feel, they
exclaimed and fell back, Some people say that colours are
indiscernible by moonlight. I can answer for the flush which suffused
our rector’s cheek as he looked at Joshua.
But it was Uncle Jenico who commanded the situation.
“We must rope this lowest piece, and pull it away from the other,” he
cried, full of bustle and excitement. “What a providential thought was
this wrench of mine! Hey, my boys? Ha-ha!”
It was brilliantly the obvious course, and at the word we were all
scurrying to put it into execution, Uncle Jenico directing us in a
perfect and quite lovable rapture of self-importance. He and I, when
the rope had been readjusted to its new position, hurried to
manipulate the machine, while the others remained to watch the result
of our efforts on the huge pipe of masonry. We seized the spokes.
“Right!” said my uncle, with a laugh of joyous confidence.
Now, I don’t know if the first test had amounted to no more than a
little soft extra persuasion applied to an already tottering article.
I know only that _that_ success was not to be repeated.
“Right!” said Uncle Jenico; and the wheel turned under our hands,
tightened, and began to scream as before, only infinitely more
distressfully. We strained our mightiest, putting our backs into it.
“It gives, I think,” said Uncle Jenico, in a suffocating voice.
And with the word, an explosive lash whistled by my ear, the machine
bounded and pitched, and there were we rolling on the sand amidst a
mad wreck of everything.
We were neither of us hurt. Uncle Jenico sat up ruefully. Mr. Sant
came running to us across the sand.
“Anybody killed?” he panted, as he rushed up.
Nobody, by God’s mercy! It was the nearest shave. If I had had a
whisker, it would have been shorn off, I think. The rope had snapped
like a piece of string, and we were right in the path of its recoil.
“Anyhow, I suppose we moved the thing a little?” said Uncle Jenico.
“Not an inch,” was the answer.
“Eh!” cried my uncle. “I can’t understand. It must have severed itself
on a sharp stone, I suppose.”
“That was the case, without doubt,” said the clergyman, kindly. “Well,
there’s nothing for us now but to take pick and shovel, and dig out
the pith of the thing. It will take a little longer, that’s all.”
Indeed, we found the other two, once assured of our safety, already
hard at the job. It proved a tough one, for the silt inside from long
pressure was grown as compact as mortar, and every fragment of it had
to be chipped off and pulled away--a difficult matter, when from the
depth of our boring it was no longer possible to wield the pick.
However, we got through it, taking turns at the tools, and working now
by lantern light, for the end of the great trunk was turned from the
face of the moon.
Suddenly Harry, when he and I were once more hammering and shovelling
together, uttered a stifled sound, and scrambled up, so quickly as
half to fracture his skull against the roof of the tube. Then, holding
his head, and squatting out backwards, he gingerly raked after him a
little white thing--a human bone.
I scuttled to join him, and we all looked at one another.
“We’re coming to it,” muttered Mr. Sant; and almost on the instant, as
we plunged in again to resume our burrowing, the end was wrought. A
slab of concreted stuff, falling detached to our renewed blows and
tilting outwards, let down an avalanche of loosened sand, and,
slipping on its torrent--what?
We did not wait to discriminate. The dead, it seemed to us only, had
come sliding and chuckling to meet us half way, with his, “Here we are
again!” like a clown.
“It’s there!” gasped Harry, as we stood up outside. “Some one else
must fetch it--not me: I won’t.”
Joshua dived on the instant: we heard him scuffling and chattering
inside. And then he emerged.
“The rope!” he cried like a madman. “Fetch it--a bit of it--anything!”
I ran off, unknotted the shorter length from the wreck of the machine,
and returned with it to him. He disappeared again into the tunnel,
drawing the slack after him, and in a minute reissued, unkempt and
agitated beyond measure, and disposed us all to haul. Without a
question we obeyed, and, at his word, set our shoulders to a
simultaneous tug. Slowly the capture responded to our efforts, and
drew out heavily into the open--a great iron-ribbed box, with the
upper half of a human skeleton chained to it by the neck.
Joshua seized the pick, and, before Mr. Sant could stop him, had
parted at a blow the skull from its vertebræ. It leapt and settled,
grinning up at us from the sand.
“That was basely done,” said our rector. “Take your spoil, sir. These
poor remains are my concern.”
Joshua had thrown away the tool, and was standing, as if petrified,
looking down on the chest. It might have measured a yard by two feet,
and some two feet and a half in depth. The wood, under the corroded
clamps of iron, was spongey, half-eaten by water, and, half-eaten,
preserved in sand. But of the immense antiquity of the whole there was
no question.
“We must secure what of these bones we can,” said Mr. Sant. “Well,
Dick? Well, Harry?”
His quiet appeal overcame our repugnance. Once more we grovelled and
groped in the bowels of the well. It was a gruesome task; but we
fulfilled it. Excitement, no doubt--an eagerness to be done with it,
and so earn the sweeter reward of adventure, stimulated us. At the end
we had found, and gathered into a heap outside, all evidence that
remained to mortality of that ancient deed of murder. It made one’s
brain swim to look down on this wonderful tragic salvage of the
centuries. It was all true, then--all true! And Destiny had made us
her instruments in this unspeakable resurrection!
All this time Joshua, and even my uncle, had remained as if tranced.
Now, suddenly, the former raised his voice in a shrill ecstatic cry.
“Poor Abel! poor fool! Come, let us load up! What are we waiting for?”
It was evident he was wrought far beyond any susceptibility to moral
warning or rebuke. The rector perceived this, I think, and submitted
himself to circumstance.
The truck was hurried up, and the chest placed upon it. It needed our
united efforts to raise the thing; and at our every stagger Joshua
sawed out a little jubilant laugh. We gathered the tools and the ropes
and the ruin of the wrench, and piled all on top. Then we disposed the
broken skeleton amidst, and started on our way home.
It was a hard pull now, though we all gave a hand to it. Three o’clock
had struck, when at last, exhausted and agitated, we drew the little
cart cautiously up to the study window, and unloaded it of its
weightest burden, leaving the rest temporarily outside while we
examined our haul.
The box had been stoutly fastened and secured; but the wood being
shrunk away from its clamps rendered our task an easy one. A little
wrenching with forceps, and the whole lid came apart, sinking upon the
floor with a dusty clang. And then----
Sleeking and glinting through a dust of perished rags--piled to the
throat, and kept burnished by the sand that had filtered in--a glut of
gold!
Gold in rouleaux and ingots; gold in sovereigns and ryals; gold in
angels and rose-nobles--near all of Henry the Seventh’s and Henry the
Eighth’s reigns, and of incalculable antiquarian, apart from their
intrinsic, value; gold in patens; gold and more in a jewelled
ciborium; chased gold and ivory in an exquisite chalice with handles,
and little queer figures of saints in rich enamel; gold in such wealth
as we had never dreamt.
The vessels had been wrapped, it appeared, in soft skins of
suckling-calf vellum, which had long crumpled into a floury meal,
keeping all bright as blossoms preserved in sand, and easy to dust and
blow away, We felt fairly drunk with the sight, as we gazed down
spell-bound into that brimming reservoir of all wealth.
And then suddenly Mr. Sant had fallen upon his knees.
“O Lord!” he prayed, in a low half-agonized tone; “teach thy servant
to deal rightly with this, converting it to fair uses, and justifying
himself of Thy generosity.”
A little dead silence followed; and at the end Joshua bowed his head,
and raising his hands clasped together, cried twice, in a firm voice--
“Amen!”
And so at last was consummated that wonderful and tragic tale of
mystery and fatality, which had begun for me in the old court house of
Ipswich. Truly, other things than hanging and wiving go by destiny.
CONCLUSION.
There was a sequel, which I must relate. Stories of recovered
treasure, if true like this, do not always end with the emotional
unities and the final chapter. Morning does not always bring a
confirmation of pious resolves. A little sourness of digestion
sometimes impairs the glamour of last night’s feast of righteousness.
That is the deuce of it.
Now, I will not say that Joshua repudiated in the slightest reality
the sense of that “Amen” of his; but, once awake and restored to the
full realization of his possession, he certainly did try to back out
of his undertaking to challenge the law to deprive him of it. Not
unscrupulously--not in the least. He merely strove to convince Mr.
Sant as to the actual letter of that law, and, consequently, of the
Quixotry of calling upon it to establish his claim--probably at
considerable expense to both sides--to do what was already, by its own
decreeing, indubitably his.
But he was entirely unsuccessful. The rector, seeing in this only a
personal obstructive policy, designed to shackle that main moral
question of the cleansing of his Augean stable, utterly declined to
forego his bond, and wrung a promise out of my reluctant relative
himself that I should not be allowed to touch a penny of this treasure
until it could be proved well-gotten.
So Joshua, forced at last to give way, though with a very ill grace,
sent in his notice to the Ipswich coroner.
In the mean time the process of cleansing was carried through with all
despatch. The hill was cleared, at some risk, of its tragic
impedimenta, which--after a jury had sat on them, and brought in a
verdict of accidental death--were consigned to rest in the
churchyard--Abel’s, with some distinction, in a separate grave. The
whole story was wrung out at the inquest, and aired, and hung up on
the lines for gossips to find holes in; and gradually the
village--with the entire country-side, to boot--subsided from its
fever heat of excitement, which was only to suffer a temporary
recrudescence in the _cause célebre_ which came presently to provide
the epilogue.
One day, a tax-cart, a coroner’s clerk, a posse of insurance-office
firemen, and a couple of cavalrymen from the barracks to escort the
whole, appeared before the rectory, and, removing the treasure-box,
well encased and sealed, from the clerical strong-room--where it had
lain perdu since its discovery--mounted that and Joshua in the
vehicle, and incontinently drove away with both.
We saw him go, sitting darkly on the top of his coffin, like a
dyspeptic Jack Sheppard being jogged off to Tyburn; and thereafter for
a desperate week or more heard or saw nothing of him. Then one day, a
great trumpeting and cheering in the street brought us all out
pell-mell; and there he was, worshipful in the repute of fabulous
riches, being carried shoulder high.
He had won his cause; and through whom do you think? Why, Mr. Quayle.
The little Q.C. accompanied the procession, and shared in its triumph.
Joshua had alighted on him, quite accidentally, in Ipswich, and
revealing to him everything--not without an ironic satisfaction, one
may be sure, in returning at this eleventh hour a Rowland for his
Oliver--had engaged him to conduct his case. And he had done it, and
won it; and the treasure was ours.
“Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings,” said the little man,
meeting me again with delight. “Richard, I am rebuked. I once said you
were the son of your father, but not so good a lawyer. I withdraw the
riservation, entirely. You could see further than some of us into a
stone wall. To think now that your friend spoke the truth through ut
all! I’ll never trust the evidence of me nine senses again. Five, is
ut? Well, I was thinking of the Muses, I suppose. ’Tis a weakness I
have, and will prove my undoing in the end. Never you bother about the
girls, Richard. They spoil your law.”
I have only a word or two to add. I am afraid to declare what that box
of gold realized. The sum, anyhow, was so large as to enrich us all. A
great part of its treasures was distributed into the cabinets of
collectors, the beautiful chalice finding its way, I believe, at an
immense figure, into the museum of a famous cardinal and virtuoso in
Rome. From the total proceeds Joshua handsomely presented to Harry the
equivalent of a comfortable income, which was the means of helping my
dear friend to the very satisfactory position to which he attained a
few years later in London. For me he held the residue nominally in
trust till I was come of age, when he proposed to establish himself
and Uncle Jenico as pensioners on my bounty. The question was one
merely of terms. We made, in fact, our common home together until the
end, even after I had so far neglected Mr. Quayle’s advice as to
bother my head very much indeed about one girl, and to wive her into
the bargain.
We had left Dunberry soon after the events narrated above, taking Mrs.
Puddephatt with us for housekeeper, and not forgetting Fancy-Maria.
For some time, I understand, after our departure, the famous crypts
were a gazing-stock, attracting so many visitors that in the end Mr.
Sant’s dearest wish was realized, and a popular watering-place
established on the foundations of the old smugglers’ haunt. But long
before that the vaults had been closed, as unsafe, by councillors’
authority; and at this day only a deep depression in the soil above
denotes the spot under which the tragedy of Abel Pilbrow was enacted.
So the old order changes--all, that is to say, but Uncle Jenico, who
is engaged at this moment, very bent and white, in demonstrating to my
little boy the method of his latest machine for solving the riddle of
perpetual motion.
THE END
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES.
Minor spelling inconsistencies (_e.g._ drowzily/drowsily,
schoolhouse/school-house, barn-door/barn door, etc.) have been
preserved.
Alterations to the text:
Assorted punctuation corrections.
[Part I/Chapter I]
Change “mamma said we must _restrench_, and cried” to _retrench_.
[Part II/Chapter VIII]
“watch him fattening, and _enjy_ him in anticipation” to _enjoy_.
[Part II/Chapter X]
“He stood before me, _dropping_ wet, a most wretched” to _dripping_.
[Part II/Chapter XV]
“It was a brilliant _moonlight_ night” to _moonlit_.
[End of Text]