From my desolate island refuge I salute the Intrepid Trio!
Good sirs, what you tell me of the "Sea Monster" makes my
flesh creep and my hair stir with terror. A murderous bad
place I should call it, and not one to trifle with. Yet it
might well be, as you think, that the sudden-appearing cavern
is the mouth of a pirate cave fairly bursting with treasure,
and only now exposed to the eyes of such daring adventurers
as yourselves by a trick of the elements. Strange things
there be above and below the waters of the world--which
serves to remind me of a tale you might not scorn to hear.
You may take it or leave it, as you will, but at least the
penning of it will pass some of my hours of banishment in a
pleasant fashion.
In the year of grace 18-- (I shudder to think how long ago)
I was a bold youth of perhaps the age of the valiant
Christopher.
Here Jerry paused to give a muffled hoot at me. I chucked a hammock
cushion at him, and he went on:
My father's house stood on a rambling street in an old
waterside town, and from the windows of my room I could see
the topmasts of sailing ships thrusting upward above gray
roofs. Small marvel that my head should be filled with the
ways of the sea and the wonder of it, or that I should spend
long hours dreaming over books that told of adventures
thereon. It was over such a book that I was poring one
summer's evening as I sat in the library bow-window. The
breeze from the harbor came in and stirred the curtains
beside my head, and brought with it the last westering ripple
of sunlight and a smell of climbing roses. The book had
dropped from my hand and I was well-nigh drowsing, when I
saw, as plain as day, the queerest figure possible clicking
open our garden gate. He looked to be some sort of South
American half-breed,--swart face under rough black hair, and
striped blanket gathered over dirty white trousers. Now I had
seen many a strange man disembark from ships, but, never such
a one as this, and when I saw that he was coming straight
toward my window, I was half tempted to make an escape.
He leaned on the sill of the open casement with his dark face
just below mine and began to pour out, in halting English, a
tale which at first I had some trouble in understanding. The
most that I made of it was that he, and he alone, knew the
whereabouts of a city buried ages since under the sea and
filled with treasure of an unbelievable description. But you
may imagine that even the hint of such a thing was enough to
set me all athrill, and I was not greatly surprised at myself
when I found that I was following the queer, slinking figure
down our bare little New England street.
He led me to a ship, an old brigantine heavy with age and
barnacles and hung about with the sorriest gray rags of
canvas that ever did duty for sails. No wonder that nine days
out we lost our fore tops'l. But stay; I fear I go too fast!
For you must know that I went aboard that brigantine, and
once aboard I could not go ashore again, partly because the
strange, ill-assorted crew detained me at every turn, and
partly because the longing was so strong upon me to see the
things I had read of so often. And that night found me still
upon the vessel, nosing down to the harbor light, with the
lamps of my father's house winking less and less brightly on
the dim shore astern.
Well, sirs, it would weary you to tell much of that voyage,
and besides, many's the time you yourselves must have
weathered the Horn. For it was 'round Cape Stiff we went--no
Panama Canal in those days--and I served a bitter
apprenticeship on ice-coated yards, clutching numbly at
battering sails frozen stiff as iron. It was Peru we were
bound for,--Peru where the submarine city lay beneath
uncounted fathoms waiting for us. The captain and I were the
only ones Acuma, the half-breed, had taken into his
confidence; all the others sailed on a blind errand, trusting
to the skipper, who was a shrewd man and severe. And the
brigantine wallowed around the Cape and toiled on and on up
the coast, and every day Acuma grew more restless; every day
he cast about the water with eyes that seemed to pierce to
the very bottom of the Pacific.
One day of blue sky and little breeze, when we were pushing
the brigantine with all sails set, Acuma flung himself at a
bound to the quarterdeck, and a moment later the skipper
shouted quick orders that the crew could not understand for
the life of them. For to heave the ship to, just when we all
had been whistling for enough breeze to give her something
more than steerage way, seemed nothing short of insane. Acuma
climbed to the maintop and looked at the coast of Peru with a
telescope, and the captain took bearings with his
instruments.
It was Acuma and I who went over the side in diving suits,
for no others save the captain knew what we sought, as I have
said. Down I went and down, with the weight of water crushing
ever more strongly against me, till I stood upon the sea's
floor. That in itself was quite wonderful enough--the green
whiteness of the sand and the strange, multi-colored forest
of weed and coral through which my searchlight bored a
single, luminous pathway. But right ahead, looming and
wavering, seen for an instant, lost again when a deep
vibration stirred and swayed the water, shone the faintly
golden shape of a great portal. Acuma I had lost sight of,
but I had no need to ask him what lay before me. The wild
pounding of my heart told me that I stood at the gateway of
the city that had been covered a thousand thousand years ago
by the unheeding sea. Leaning at an angle against the tide, I
struggled forward till the great gate towered above me, its
arch half lost in the green, swimming shadow of the water.
But as I flashed my light up across its pillars, it answered
with the shifting sparkle of gems crusted thick upon it.
I walked then, breathless, into a street paved with rough
silver ingots, each one surely weighing a quintal, between
tremulous shapes of buildings which pointed lustrous towers
upward through fathoms of green water. It was many minutes
before I dared enter one of those great silent halls.
Dragging my heavy leaden-soled boots, I pushed through a
shapely silver doorway, and a fish darted past me as I
entered. Who could imagine the wonder of that vast room! The
mosaic that covered the walls and ceilings was of gold and
jewels, not porphyry and serpentine, such as delight the
wondering visitor to Venice, but precious stones--rubies,
sapphires, emeralds, amethysts as richly purple as grape
clusters, topaz as clear and mellow as honey.
Behind a traceried grillwork lay heaped a mound of treasures
such as no human eye will ever see again. I lifted a little
tree fashioned all of gold,--each leaf wrought of the
metal--and strung with jewelled fruits on which ruby-eyed
golden birds fed. In despairing rapture I clutched after a
neck ornament hung with pendulous pearls as large as plums.
But as I reached for it, I felt that something was looking at
me from the corner. Not Acuma; no human being was in sight.
Peering out through the glass visor of my helmet, I saw fixed
on me from low down beside the doorway two inky, moveless
eyes as large as saucers. They were not human eyes, nor did
they belong to any sea creature I had ever beheld or read of.
They were round and fixed, pools of bottomless blackness,
staring at me through two varas of clear, swaying water. I
took an uncertain step backwards, and as I did so I felt
something soft and heavy laid slowly and slimily upon my
shoulder....
Ah me, here is an interruption! A native child approaches,
bearing as an offering a Lol Ipop (one of the native fruits).
Just before he reaches me he falls face down, doubtless out
of respect for my gray hairs, and, on arising, proffers me
the Lol Ipop, now coated with sand. In this state I am
expected to eat it, and, being in great awe and fear of the
inhabitants, I proceed to do so, which incapacitates me for
further epistolatory effort.
So, till I recover from the effects of my enforced meal,
believe me your devoted correspondent,
THE BOTTLE MAN.
"Well, of all mean tricks!" Jerry said.
"It's worse than a continued story," I said. "Bother the horrid
native child! Do you suppose that's really why he stopped?"
"Probably not; he knew it was the excitingest place to stop. What
did I tell you about his being ancient? Now he _says_ he has gray
hairs, so that proves it."
"I should think he might," I said, "after such experiences. What do
you think it could have been that stared at him?"
"An octopus, most likely," Jerry said. "They have goggly black eyes;
I've read it."
"But he said he'd never seen such eyes on any sea beast he knew of,
and he's read as much as you have; that's sure."
"That treasure! Oh, my eye!" Jerry sighed. "Do you suppose he
brought home hunks of it?"
"Just the same hunks that we dig up on Wecanicut, I suppose," I
said.
"You mean you think he's making up the whole yarn?" Jerry asked.
"Well, even if he is, it's a mighty good one, and it might have
happened to him, at that."
Greg looked up suddenly from beside me, and said:
"_I_ think the thing what stared at him was a mer-person."
"My child," said Jerry, "I believe you're right."