more sheltered. With much difficulty, bracing themselves against the
stones, they carried the litter across the swift current. Selecting a
site sheltered by a huge bowlder, the men sent in advance to pitch camp
began with picks to clear a spot for the tent. With a ring that could
not be mistaken the steel struck the rock. The men gave a great cheer.
Gilbert raised himself on his litter when it was brought up, and gazed
excitedly at the great bowlder and its surroundings, which had come to
him so vividly in that prophetic death-dream--his last on earth.
"The Lost Lead!" he cried in a triumphant tone, and then adding in a
weak voice, "Bury me here, boys," he sank back--dead.
_Spring freshets had changed the torrent's course, and the east bank
had become the west!_
They buried Louis Gilbert with the treasure he had never possessed,
and while the rich mine became known in financial circles as "The Lost
Lead," yet old miners themselves speak of it only as "The Grave of
Gold."
THE MYSTERY OF THE THIRTY MILLIONS[1]
[Footnote 1: This story was written in collaboration with T. F.
Anderson.]
At eight o'clock on the morning of March 14, the Anglo-American liner,
the _Oklahoma_, left her dock in North River on her regular trip to
Southampton.
The fact of her departure, ordinarily of merely local interest, was
telegraphed all over the United States and Canada, and even to London
itself; for there was a significance attached to this particular trip
such as had never before marked the sailing of an ocean steamship from
these shores.
It was not because the great vessel numbered among her crowd of
passengers a well-known English duke and his young bride, the
grand-niece of a world-famous New York railroad magnate, that her
sailing was heralded by such a blowing of trumpets, nor because she
also had upon her lists the names of the august British ambassador to
the United States, returning home on a brief furlough, the noted French
tragedian, fresh from his American triumphs, and a score of other
illustrious personages whose names were household words in a dozen
countries.
The presence of all these notables was merely incidental. What made
this trip of the _Oklahoma_ an event of international interest was the
fact that at this, the apparent climax of the great gold exporting
movement from the United States, now continued until it had almost
drained the national treasury of its precious yellow hoard, and had
precipitated a commercial crisis such as never before had been
experienced, the _Oklahoma_ was taking to the shores of insatiate John
Bull the largest lump amount of gold ever shipped upon a single vessel
within the memory of man.
Not even in the memorable gold exporting year of 1893 had any such sum
as this been sent abroad at one time.
It was not the usual paltry half million or million dollars that she
was carrying away in her great strong room of steel and teak wood, but
thirty million dollars' worth of shining eagles and glinting bars,
hastily called across the ocean because of the adverse "balance of
trade" and the temporary mistrust of American securities by the fickle
Europeans.
The mere insurance premium on this vast sum was in itself a comfortable
fortune. Business men wondered why such a large amount was intrusted
to one steamer. Suppose she should collide in the fog and sink, as one
great ship had done only a few weeks before--what would become of the
insurance companies then?
Suppose some daring Napoleon of crime should hatch a startling
conspiracy to seize the steamer, intimidate the crew and passengers,
and possess himself of the huge treasure? "It would be a stake well
worth long risks," thought some of the police officials, as they read
the headlines in the evening papers.
The _Oklahoma_ was a fast sailer. Her five hundred feet of length and
her twelve thousand tons of displacement were made light work of by
the great clanking, triple-expansion engines when their combined force
of fifteen thousand horse power was brought to bear upon her twin
screws. Under ordinary conditions she ought to have made port on the
other side in time to let her passengers eat late dinner on the sixth
day out. Incoming steamers reported a brief spell of nasty weather in
mid-ocean, however, and so her failure to reach Southampton on the
sixth and even the seventh day was not particularly remarked.
The great American public had been busy with other weighty matters in
the interim, including a threatened secession of the silver-producing
States; and the departure of this modern argosy with her precious
freight had almost passed into history. For history in that year was
anything that had happened farther than a week back--a day, if it was
not of overwhelming importance.
If the big ship's arrival had been cabled on the eighth day, or
even early on the ninth, it would still have found the public in a
comparatively calm state of mind, for the mid-Atlantic storm would
naturally account for a multitude of lost hours; but when the ninth
lapped over onto the tenth and the tenth onto the eleventh and twelfth,
with no tidings of the tardy steamer, surprise grew into anxiety and
anxiety into an international sensation.
Of course all sorts of plausible theories were advanced by the
steamship agents, the newspapers, and other oracles, including that of
the inevitable broken shaft; and these might have sufficed for a day or
two longer had it not been for another and much more startling theory
that suddenly came to the surface and threw two continents into a fever
of trepidation and suspense.
It was the following announcement in a leading New York morning paper
that roused excitement to fever heat: "A new and most astounding phase
has come over the case of the mysteriously missing _Oklahoma_. It has
just been given out from police headquarters that 'Gentleman Jim'
Langwood, the noted cracksman and forger, whose ten years' sentence
at Sing Sing expired only a few weeks ago, was in the city several
days previous to the sailing of the _Oklahoma_ and went with her as a
passenger, under an assumed name. Even at that very time the central
office detectives were looking for him, as a tip had been sent around
that he was up to some new deviltry. One of those clever people whom
nothing ever escapes had seen him go aboard almost at the last minute,
and gave an accurate description of his personal appearance, which was
evidently but slightly disguised.
"Langwood is probably the only criminal in the country who would ever
conceive and try to execute such a stupendous undertaking, and it is
something more than a suspicion on the part of the New York police that
he has smuggled on board a couple of dozen well-armed desperadoes, who
could easily hold the entire crew and passengers in check and make them
do their bidding, for a time, at least. The idea is so replete with
thrilling possibilities that the entire community stands aghast at it."
It is to be noted that the public always "stands aghast" in such a case
as this; but it is more to the point just now to say that the article
went on, through a column or more, to describe in minute detail the
circumstances attendant upon the departure of "Gentleman Jim" even to
the number and shape of the bundles he had in his arms. The famous
robber was very boyish in appearance, and one of the last persons in
the world whom a chance acquaintance would think of looking up in the
rogues' gallery. Evidently he was "out for the stuff," in most approved
stage villain style, with more millions in the stake than even Colonel
Sellers, of nineteenth century fame, had ever dreamed of. Of course
this theory, which was already accepted as a fact, especially in police
and newspaper circles, was quickly cabled across, and created such a
profound sensation on the other side that even the London papers had to
give it that prominent position which is usually reserved for American
cyclones, crop failures, and labor outbreaks.
Upon the phlegmatic British government it acted much like an electric
shock and nearly threw the foreign office into a panic; for was not the
British minister plenipotentiary himself a passenger on the ill-fated
_Oklahoma_, and possibly at that very hour being butchered in cold
blood by a lot of Yankee cut-throats?
The thought was too horrible for a moment's endurance, and forthwith
the cablegrams began to flash thick and fast between the foreign office
and the British legation at Washington.
The result was that, within a few hours after the appearance of the
paragraph, one of the fastest and most powerful of her majesty's
cruisers, quickly followed by a second and a third, hastily steamed
from Portsmouth Roads, the three spreading out north, west, and
south, like a great marine fan, as they hurried to the rescue of the
_Oklahoma_ and the British ambassador.
Meanwhile, at the Boston, Brooklyn, and League Island navy yards three
or four of Uncle Sam's white war dogs were getting up steam for a
similar errand, and a small fleet of ocean-going steamers, specially
chartered by New York, Boston, and Chicago newspapers to go in search
of the absent leviathan, were already threading their way through the
Narrows.
Not for years had there been such world-wide interest in an ocean
expedition. The newspapers commanded an unheard of sale, for everybody
was on the tiptoe of expectation concerning the fate of the missing
steamer, her six hundred passengers and her thirty millions of gold.
While the public was thus feverishly awaiting the news, certain
discoveries were being made by the New York police, which only went
to confirm their previous suspicions. Four or five other hardened
graduates from state prison were found to be absent from their
accustomed haunts in the East Side slums, although known to have been
in the city just before the _Oklahoma_ sailed, as was "Gentleman Jim,"
himself.
These discoveries had their natural effect upon the public mind, and
the friends of those on board the steamer began to despair of hearing
that even human life had been respected by the piratical band.
As to the British foreign office, this cumulative evidence threw it
into a perfect frenzy, and it was only by a miracle that a declaration
of war against the United States was averted.
Three days passed by after the departure of the big searching fleets,
during which time all incoming steamers reported that they had not
found a single trace of the _Oklahoma_ either in the northern or
southern route. Vessels from the Mediterranean, the West Indies, South
America, all made the same ominous report.
The tension was terrible. Thousands could not even sleep on account
of the mental strain, and the minds of some of the weaker actually
gave way beneath it. The public by this time was convinced beyond a
reasonable shadow of doubt that the robbers had successfully carried
out their fiendish plan; but how? and when? and where?
When they opened their newspapers on the morning of the eighteenth day
of suspense, they found the answer to the question, and the greatest
marine mystery of centuries was solved.
In the small hours of the night there had flashed across the European
continent, and under the dark waters of the Atlantic, this startling
message from the representative of the _Union Press Association_:--
"Lisbon, April 1,--The missing _Oklahoma_ is disabled at Fayal, Azores,
where she was discovered by the _Union Press_ special expedition. Many
of the half-starved crew and passengers are on the verge of insanity.
The officers tell a most astounding story of the steamer's exciting
and almost fatal adventures. On the third night out, the _Oklahoma_
suddenly came under some mysterious but irresistible influence by which
she was carried rapidly out of her course towards the south. Every
effort was made by the officers to bring the ship back to her course,
but the big liner seemed drifting helplessly at the mercy of some
powerful current. The compasses were useless, and the wheel no longer
exercised the slightest control over the steamer's movements.
"Naturally the anxiety of the officers was in no way diminished when on
the morning of the next day, which was then the fourth day out, another
vessel,--a long low-setting craft of shining steel,--was discovered
off the _Oklahoma's_ starboard bow, about a mile ahead, but moving
in the same direction. By careful observations it was discovered that
the course of the two steamers was identical. Both were apparently
under the same mysterious influence. Instead of sighting a rescuer, the
_Oklahoma_ had, so it seemed, only discovered another victim of the
irresistible current!
"Time and again the _Oklahoma_ attempted to signal the companion ship,
but the latter made no reply. Close observation revealed that she
was built on the whaleback principle, with nothing above decks save
ventilators and signal mast,--but failed to discover any sign of human
beings.
"By afternoon their continued failure to bring the liner back to her
course had so wrought upon the minds of her officers that their anxiety
infected the spirits of the passengers, who were now aroused to the
real danger that menaced them.
"When the fifth day dawned, with the _Oklahoma_ hundreds of miles out
of the regular transatlantic course, the gravity of the situation could
no longer be concealed. Distress signals were kept flying, and all
possible steam was put on with the idea of overhauling the companion
ship and giving or receiving aid. To the amazement of both officers
and passengers, however, in spite of every effort, the _Oklahoma_
failed to gain a single inch on the other vessel. Before they had time
to attempt an explanation of this remarkable fact, amazement gave
way to consternation. For just a moment a third vessel had appeared
on the horizon like a messenger of hope; but no sooner had she been
sighted than with the swiftness of lightning the mysterious companion
craft turned half around and darted away to the southeast, with the
_Oklahoma_ following as helplessly as though she were in tow.
"In that moment the awful truth was revealed. The steel vessel was
nothing more nor less than a floating loadstone, which by some
mysterious power was dragging the great ocean monster hither and
thither as easily as a magnet draws a toy ship from one side to the
other of a mimic pond!
"Who was she, and what was her motive? Almost before those on board had
asked the question, the answer flashed upon them. The thirty millions
of gold! Beyond a doubt, it was their capture which she was planning
to accomplish, either by luring the _Oklahoma_ from the regular path
of ocean travel, and looting her and her passengers at leisure, or by
compelling her to run aground upon some remote rock or shoal.
"With this revelation a new horror unveiled itself. Equipped as they
were only with the supplies for a short trip across the Atlantic, the
overwrought minds of many saw starvation looming up before them. That
night not a soul sought his berth. From time to time consultations were
held between the chief officers, and many-colored rockets spit and
blazed their signals of distress incessantly across the sky.
"At length, soon after dawn of the sixth day, orders were given to
bank fires and hoist sail in the hope that the _Oklahoma_ as a sailing
vessel might free herself from the awful influence that chained her.
"But the effort was vain. Wind and sail proved as useless as wheel and
compass against the fatal power of that mysterious craft which drew the
_Oklahoma_ after her as irresistibly as though the two vessels were
united by an unseen hawser.
"The steamer had now become a scene of indescribable horror. Mealtime,
bedtime,--all the customary routine was disorganized; and daily prayer
meetings were conducted among the more emotional of the passengers.
"Finally, seven days after she had left New York, the officers of the
big liner united in one last desperate effort to offset the magnetic
influence of the mysterious 'pirate.' The fires were revived in the
engine room, the steam pressure in all the boilers was run up to the
'blowing off' point; then, suddenly, the reversing mechanism was
applied and a shudder ran through the great floating city as the twin
screws began to back water.
"For a few minutes there ensued a titanic tug of war such as the
beholders had never before witnessed. The water astern was lashed into
a lather of foam, and for a brief moment the triumph of steam over
magnetism seemed assured.
"Only for a moment, however, for the cheer that had ascended from the
anxious scores on the deck of the _Oklahoma_ when she slowly began to
back had scarcely died away when with a mighty crash a vital section
of the overtaxed engines gave way, followed by a hoarse yell of
consternation from the excited engineers and stokers--and both screws
were helpless and still.
"With this failure hope was well-nigh extinguished; and the _Oklahoma_,
with her precious freight and her six hundred and forty-three human
souls, abandoned all active effort to escape. With not a sail of any
kind in sight, she passively rolled and plunged south-ward for seven
days after her strange and terrible pilot, from which, to add to the
horror of the situation, no human sign had yet been given. The supply
of rockets was now exhausted, and food was doled out in minute portions
as to members of a ship-wrecked crew in order to husband supplies.
"On the afternoon of the fourteenth day, when the exhausted passengers
had reached the verge of distraction, a gleam of hope appeared on the
horizon in the shape of a solitary steamer, bearing down from the
southwest. A glance through the telescope proved her to be a fast and
formidable British cruiser, evidently en route from South America to
England.
"At this news a mighty shudder, half of hope, half of fear, seized the
crowd assembled upon the deck. Would the British cruiser come to their
assistance, and if so, would she, too, become a victim of the magnetic
craft? For a moment their fate hung in the balance; then from three
hundred throats rang out a hoarse cry of joy as the mysterious craft
swerved, turned sharply and shot away over the surface of the Atlantic
due north.
"The spell was broken. The big liner with her six hundred human souls
and thirty millions in gold was freed from the power that had for so
long held her captive. But crippled as she was by the accident to her
machinery she was unable to proceed unaided, and was taken in tow by
the British steamer, the _Midlothian_, and a day later was brought
safely into port at Fayal.
"The _Union Press_ steamer is the first to bring the thrilling news.
The first officer of the _Oklahoma_ and the saloon passengers,
including Sir Gambrel Roufe, the British ambassador, accompanied your
correspondent to Lisbon. A relief steamer is urgently needed, as the
_Oklahoma's_ engines are both disabled, and she will not be able to
proceed for several weeks.
"The passenger thought to be 'Gentleman Jim' Langwood, proves to be
the Duke of Medfordshire, now on his wedding trip with his young
millionaire American bride."
Hardly had the excitement caused by this startling intelligence
subsided, when it was once more aroused by a despatch from Providence,
R. I., announcing the capture in the act of robbing a jewelry store
of "Gentleman Jim" Langwood, and a gang of four other oldtimers,
and by the following even more important cablegram from the Russian
representative of the _Union Press_:--
"St. Petersburg, April 2.--The identity of the mysterious craft by
which the _Oklahoma_ was drawn from her course has been established
beyond a doubt. The vessel is a Hypnotic Cruiser, recently completed
by a Russian inventor, named Slobodenski, and possessed of an electric
apparatus by which any vessel can be brought completely under its
control.
"Whether the Hypnotic Cruiser's bedevilment of the _Oklahoma_ was
merely a trial of power, or whether plunder was intended, can only be
surmised. But naval lawyers say that this marvelous new invention will
revolutionize naval warfare and necessitate the passage of stringent
laws to cover a crime for which at present no penalty exists."
ASLEEP AT LONE MOUNTAIN
It occurred nearly fourteen years ago, yet I never enter a sleeping-car
without being confronted by that innocent face. It clings to me all
the more because I have always looked upon partings and leave-takings
as mile-posts of sorrow in the journeys of life. I dislike good-bys. I
hate farewells.
I had just returned from Australia and was about to start on my journey
across the continent. In company with two old friends who had crossed
the ferry from San Francisco to Oakland to see me off, I sat chatting
in my sleeper, when two Sisters of Mercy hurriedly entered the car.
Just what it was in the appearance of the newcomers that arrested
the attention of the earlier arrivals--whether it was their humble
yet characteristic attire, so suggestive of charity the whole world
over, the apparent anxiety betrayed by their manner, or the fact that
a sleeping child, clasped tenderly in the arms of one, was their sole
companion--whether it was any or all of these things that caused a
sudden reign of respectful silence in the car, I am unable to say.
Certain it is, however, that their coming was not unnoticed; neither
was the circumstance that the only visible baggage of the trio
consisted of a small square bundle neatly done up in a gray shawl.
Upon being shown to seats in the section directly opposite the one
occupied by myself and friends, they at once entered into earnest
conversation with the sleeping-car conductor. At the first few
whispered words the man's manner showed unmistakable surprise. He
appeared either unable or unwilling to comply with some request
they had made. Although the nature of the request was not apparent,
the occupants of neighboring seats could not fail to note from the
conversation, which now and then became quite audible, that it bore
some important relation to the sleeping member of the party. The
evident fact that the sisters felt much concerned respecting the safety
and welfare of their youthful companion served only to increase the
mystery of the situation.
After patiently listening for some minutes to appeals first from one
and then the other, and after glancing over a railroad ticket and
letter they had handed him, the conductor consented to meet their
wishes, declining, however, to accept a sum of money they repeatedly
tendered him. Before leaving them the man spoke a few words of
reassurance and encouragement, which were cut short by the shrill
whistle of the locomotive, announcing the train's departure. The
sisters arose instantly, hastily expressed their earnest thanks to the
conductor, and then, sinking upon their knees before the child, which
had been aroused from its slumbers and sat innocently gazing about,
first one and then the other clasped the infant in fond embrace, and,
amid sobs and kisses, showered upon the little being the most fervent
blessings and tender farewells. Then, covering their tearful faces with
their hands, they arose, still weeping as though their hearts would
break, and hurriedly left the car, which was already moving slowly out
of the station.
No sooner had they gone than all eyes were directed towards the
diminutive stranger who had caused the scene just witnessed. Too young
to realize what was going on, he sat motionless, as though spellbound
by fear or astonishment at his strange surroundings. In an instant
the child became an object of intense curiosity. More than that, its
extreme youth and utter helplessness aroused, on the part of its
fellow-travelers, feelings of genuine sympathy and pity--feelings which
the heroic silence maintained by the little innocent, in spite of the
now swiftly moving train, only served to intensify.
Neither memory nor imagination can suggest to me a more touching
picture than the one presented by that plainly clad handful of human
loneliness, as it sat there in meek silence, its tiny hand timidly
resting on the little bundle by its side, while its eyes remained
intently fixed on the door which, a few moments before, had closed
upon its late companions. Whose child was this? Who was to care for
it? What was to become of it? Was one of the nuns a relative? Was the
younger, perhaps, its sister? Or was either neither? These and similar
questions could be easily read on the countenances of the wondering
passengers.