That was by no means such a roystering sort of a life as it sounds to
be. They used to sell liquor in the tavern in the old stage-coaching
days, when the place was a post station; the little catty-cornered bar
is there in the big room, its worn wood shiny from the dragging of rough
fists and from many scrubbings; behind is the cupboard, with wavy glass
set in diamond-shaped panes. But the cupboard was bare in my boyhood
days and the shelves were dusty. Dodovah Vose, the landlord, was a
teetotaler and believed in impressing that principle on others.
“I have seen what liquor will do and undo,” he said when he used to
get on to the subject. “In my young days, when the West Injy trade
flourished and rum held its place without blushing, I have set in
meeting and seen the parson soop a sip of rum-and-water between the
firstly and secondly, and so on. It may have improved him and the
sermon--I’m not arguing. But do you think that liquor would ever have
improved my brother Jodrey and made him the best deep-sea diver on
the Atlantic coast, as he is to-day? No, gents! Where a man needs the
strength of his arms, the full power of his ten fingers, the quickness
of his brain, and the help of his lungs and a good heart--then he’d
better let liquor alone. That’s what my brother says and he has been
deeper underwater than any other man--and you can look around you and
see some of the queer and wonderful things he has brought up for the
peerusal of mankind.”
The old foreroom was really a storehouse of curious pickings and
gleanings which had been sent up-country, from time to time, by the
diver brother. It had been one of my earliest haunts, for I had always
hit it off nicely with Dodovah Vose. I did not lark about the room or
molest the curios, as other boys in the village sometimes did.
On the contrary, I always surveyed them with respect and interest; the
awe I felt when I first laid eyes on them never left me, entirely. I
have not been able to determine, exactly, whether my boyhood study of
those objects inspired the hankering I developed, the burning desire to
go down into the depths of the sea some day, or whether the queer things
merely catered to my natural instinct in the matter. At any rate, I
touched them reverently and I asked many questions of Landlord Vose and
he told me hair-raising stories which, he said, his brother had told
him. I remember that when I was so young I was still wearing a plaid
kilt, I got down on all-fours and stuck my leg in the air at his
request; he called it “playing circus,” and gave me a penny. He said I
was a smart boy and allowed that a smart boy might grow up and be made a
diver by Jodrey Vose. So there was an idea put into my head at an
early age. And Dodovah Vose used to call me “Lobster Sidney”--a truly
deep-water nickname! He had a rather droll idea of a joke--it was to
prompt youngsters to go and make fools of themselves. My folks gave
me the middle name of Webster. In order to plague the new schoolma’am,
Dodovah Vose told me to insist on the first day of school that my name
was Ross Webster Lobster Sidney--and I did, even though the boys in the
school laughed themselves sick. Mr. Vose praised me because I had
obeyed orders, and gave me a conch-shell on which, by the aid of three
finger-stops, one could play more or less of a tune. He had already
given to me a shell which whispered in my ear the everlasting murmuring
of the great ocean I had never seen.
It was a big fountain-shell from somewhere in the West Indies, and it
fairly boomed, deep in its spirals, when I held it to my ear; I sensed
all the vastness and the mystery and the solemnity of the ocean
depths. The more I listened the better acquainted I seemed to be with a
wonderful stranger far away at the other end of a wire.
It really seemed like a call to bigger things, and my job with my uncle
was getting less and less to my taste. If there’s any such thing as the
angels looking down on earth over the parapets of heaven in their hours
off duty, some of the things my uncle would do in horse trades, in order
to get back at other cheaters, must have grieved the judicious in the
upper spheres.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but I can look back now and see how my
lashings to the life in Levant were in the way of severance, one by one.
I found no comfort in the lull of Skokum activities; I reckoned that the
boys were reorganizing and getting ready for a really big slam. I felt
as a timid girl must, feel in a thunder-shower when the thing is right
overhead and there’s an extra wait between claps.
I continued to visit the tavern evenings and I came, into closer
intimacy with Dodovah Vose. He brought, out old letters written by his
brother and read them to me. In one Jodrey Vose described his venture
on the sunken British frigate _Triton_ somewhere off the coast, of
Nova Scotia. She was bringing pay to the Hessian troops in the American
colonies, so old reports had it. Jodrey Vose was more of a diver than a
writer and his, letter had no frills. He informed his brother, who had
invested modestly in the gamble at Jodrey’s suggestion, that the thing
was a failure, though the frigate had been located by dragging and
Jodrey himself had gone down and explored her where she had lain for
more than a century.
Diver Vose stated bluntly that he believed, from what; he saw down
there, that the _Triton_ had been scuttled or blown up by certain of her
officers, who secured her treasure, escaped to the main in small boats
and reported her loss in a storm; tradition has it that there was always
considerable doubt about that storm. Also, tradition has it that those
officers settled in America and lived happily ever after. Diver Vose
tried to help pay expenses by raising the cannon. But though they seemed
sound enough under the sea, they crumbled into lumpy masses after they
were exposed to the air.
“But I never begrudged the money I put in,” Dodovah Vose told me. “I got
my curiosity scratched where it had been itching for a good many years,
ever since Jodrey and I first began to talk about the _Triton_. And I
helped my brother get something off his mind. He wouldn’t have died easy
if he hadn’t made sure about that treasure. I stand ready to invest in
another scheme of his if he ever gets ready to tackle it. That’s to go
down and dig in the bottom of the river Tiber, providing he can fix it
with the town officers of Rome. As near as we can find out from history,
Jodrey and I, when the Romans wasn’t throwing their treasures into
the river to keep ’em away from one another in their civil wars, the
barbarians were up to the same game, because they didn’t enjoy art. And,
of course, there’s always the treasure of the _Golden Gate!_ That’s in
modern times.”
But it was not in times sufficiently modern so that I knew anything
about it, as my blank stare showed.
“She caught fire on her way from San Francisco to the Isthmus and was
run ashore with three or four million dollars’ worth of gold ingots in
her. That’s fact! But Jodrey says there’s been so much blasted lying
done since by owners, underwriters, divers, claimers, and others, that
nobody knows for sure just what has become of the treasure. That’s
another of his hankerings--to find out!”
More and more did I feel the spirit of adventure stirring in me!
I could not understand why the whereabouts of that great treasure should
remain in doubt, and so I expressed myself to Mr. Vose.
“There’s some sort of a mystery about it--and so far’s my brother is
concerned he can’t drop regular contracts to go chasing dreams--only
once in so often. That _Triton_ case made a hearty meal for his
curiosity--he hasn’t been hungry for high-spiced stuff since.” He looked
at me with shrewd kindness. “Maybe he’ll let you go on that job after he
has made a diver out of you.”