I then slept, and soundly too, for two or three hours, and when I awoke
it was daylight, the sea clear to the horizon, the sky a soft liquid
blue with masses of white vaporous cloud hanging under it like giant
bursts of steam, and the sun shining with a sort of misty splendor some
degree or two above the sea-line. There was a pleasant air blowing out
of the north, with power to wrinkle the water and no more. My limbs were
so cramped that for a long while I was incapable of rising; when at last
my legs had recovered their power I stood erect and swept the ocean with
my eyes. But the light blue surface went in undulations naked to the
bend of the heavens on all sides. I looked and looked again, but to no
purpose. I strained my sight till an intolerable torment in my eyeballs
forced me to close my lids. There was nothing in view. I very well
remember falling on my knees and grovelling upon the deck in the anguish
of my spirit. I had so surely counted on daylight exhibiting the _Ruby_
somewhere within the circle which inclosed me that the disappointment
that came out of the bald vacancy of the ocean struck me down like a
blow from a hammer. Presently I lifted up my head and regained my feet,
and feeling thirsty moved with a tread of lead to the yawning hatch,
sending the most passionate, yearning glances seaward as I walked, and
halting again and again to the vision of some imagination of break in
the continuity of the gleaming girdle--some delicate shoulder of remote
cloud, some imaginary speck which dissolved upon the blue air whilst my
gaze was on it.
I mixed some wine and water, and made a light repast off some biscuit
and a piece of Dutch cheese that was on the shelf. I then thought I
would look into the cabins for a chair to sit upon on deck, for a
mattress to lie upon, for something also that might make me a little
awning, and pushed open the door of the berth immediately facing the
pantry, as I may call it. The wreck was rolling very lightly, and her
decks were now as easy of stepping as the Indiaman’s. This berth
contained a bunk and bedding, a sailor’s chest, some clothes hanging
against the bulkhead, but nothing to serve my turn. The next was
similarly furnished, saving that here I took notice that a small
quantity of wearing apparel lay about as though scattered in a hurry,
and that the lid of a great box, painted a dark green with the letter D
in white upon it, had been split open as though the contents were to be
rifled, or as though the lock had resisted and there had been no time to
coax it save by a chopper. I passed into a third cabin. This had some
comfort of equipment in the shape of shelves and a chest of drawers, and
had doubtless been the commander’s. There was a very handsome telescope
on brackets, a few books, a quadrant, a large silver timepiece, a small
compass and one or two other matters of a like sort upon a little table
fitted by hinges in a corner; there were three chests in a row with a
litter of boots and shoes, a soft hat or two, a large handsome cloak
costly with fur, and so forth, strewed about the deck.
I was looking with some wonder at these articles when my eye was taken
by something bright near the smallest of the three chests. I picked it
up; it was an English sovereign. Others lay about as though a handful
had been clutched and dropped--here being the same manifestations of
terrified hurry as, it seemed to me, I witnessed in the other cabins.
The lid of the small chest was split in halves, and the chopper that had
seemingly been wielded rested against the side of the box. A massive
padlock was still in the staples. I lifted the half of the lid and was
greatly astonished by the sight of a quantity of gold pieces lying in
divisions of a tray that fitted the upper part of the chest. Each
division contained coins of various nations. They were all gold
pieces--English, Portuguese, Brazilian and coins of the United States. I
prized open the padlocked part of the lid and seized the tray to lift it
that I might observe what lay underneath. But the weight of gold in it
was so great that I had to exert my utmost strength to raise one end of
the tray on to the edge of the box; which done, I was able to slide it
along till the bottom of the box was revealed.
The sight of the gold had filled me with expectations of beholding some
amazing treasure under the tray. What I there saw was a heap of rough,
brick-shaped stuff of a dull, rusty, reddish tint. I grasped a lump, and
though I had never seen gold in that form before, I was satisfied by the
extraordinary weight of the piece I held that all those coarse, rough,
dull-colored bricks were of the most precious of metals. I slided the
tray back to its place and let fall the two halves of the lid with
another look around me for any article that might be useful to me on
deck. The excitement kindled by the spectacle of the gold rapidly died
away. I dully mused on it, so to speak, whilst my eye roamed, languidly
speculating about it, with a strange indifference in my thoughts,
concluding that it represented the privateersman’s sorted plunder; that
in all likelihood when the rush had been made to the boats one or more
had split open this chest to fill their pockets, but had been obliged to
fly for their lives ere they could find time for more than a scrambling
clutch at the tray. But it was the contents no doubt of this chest--if
indeed this chest held all the treasure of the buccaneer--that was
indicated by the writer of the letter in the concluding line of it, the
closing words of which had been found illegible by the young fellow who
translated the missive.
I put the telescope under my arm and passed into the cabin, and found a
small chair near the arms rack, and near it upon the deck lay a great
cotton umbrella, grimy and wet with the saturation of the cabin. I took
it up thankfully and carried it with the chair up the steps. There was a
great plenty of ropes’ ends knocking about. I cut a piece and unlaid the
strands, and securing the umbrella to a stanchion, sat down on the chair
under it; and indeed without some such shelter the deck would have been
insupportable, for low as the sun still was in the east, his fires were
already roasting, and I well knew what sort of temperature was to be
expected as he floated higher, leaving my form with a small blotch of
southern shadow only attached to it.
I passed the morning in sweeping the horizon with the telescope. It was
a noble glass--a piece of plunder, with an inscription that represented
it as a gift from the officers of a vessel to her commander; I forget
the names, but recollect they were English. The placidity of the day
dreadfully disheartened me. There was but little weight in the languid
air to heave the _Ruby_ or any other vessel into view. The sea under the
sun was like brand new tin for the dazzle of it, and as the morning
advanced the heavy, vaporous clouds of daybreak melted out into curls
and wisps like to the crescent moon, with a clear sky rising a pale blue
from the horizon to overhead to where it swam into the brassy glory
which flooded the central heavens. Weary of sitting, and exhausted by
looking, I put down the glass and went to the main hatch with the idea
of making out what water there was in the hold. The pumps were gone and
the wells of them sank like black shafts under the deck. But whatever
there was of water in the hulk lay so low that I could not catch so much
as a gleam of it. There was some light cargo in the hold--light as I
reckoned by the sit of the wreck upon the water; chiefly white wooden
cases, with here and there canvas bales; but whatever might have been
the commodities there was not much of them, at least amidships, down
into which I stood peering.
I then walked on to the forecastle and lifted the hatch-cover. This
interior looked to have been used by the people of the _Corsaire_ as a
sort of sail-locker. The bulkhead extended but a very short distance
abaft the hatch, and the deck was stowed with rolls of sails, coils of
spare rigging, hawsers, tackles, and so forth. I put my head into the
aperture and took a long and careful survey of the interior, for the
mate and I had not explored this part of the brig, and it was possible,
I thought, I might find the bodies of the three survivors here. But
there was nothing whatever to be witnessed in that way; so I closed the
hatch again and went aft.