WE VISIT THE "GALLEON."
On the morning of the day after I had discovered him, he suddenly
said:
"Now, mister, what game were you up to, when you were poking in that
dark hole, with this old stick, last night?"
"Stick," I reiterated, "I do not understand you."
"Oh, I know you understand me well enough; I mean this spar, which I
can see by a squint to be a stout topsail-yard."
I felt the necessity of being extremely reserved with such a reckless
companion--especially the possessor of a weapon such as I was
without--to wit, a long clasped knife; and so replied, with some
caution:
"I was merely amusing myself."
"Amusing yourself?" he reiterated insolently, while a sudden gleam
shot from his sinister eyes. "You'll excuse me, but I don't think
there could be much amusement in the matter; so cut adrift all your
quarter-deck humbug, and come to the point at once, my sojer officer."
"I am not in the habit of being addressed in this manner," said I
angrily.
"Oh--I beg your pardon," he replied with a bow of mock servility,
which was inexpressibly provoking; but, in a situation so terrible as
ours, being willing to conciliate one with whom it was not worth my
while to quarrel, I somewhat rashly said:
"Circumstanced as we are, perhaps it matters little whether I tell
you the truth or not; but I have discovered a wreck there."
"A wreck in that hole?"
"The shattered hull of an ancient Spanish galleon."
"What! d--n my limbs!--a galleon--a regular Rio de la Plata
treasure-ship?" he exclaimed.
"I have every reason to believe so."
"How--why?"
I related all that I had read about the great ship of Lima, and the
corroborations I had discovered. On the conclusion of my surmises,
Master Richard Knuckleduster uttered a series of imprecations upon
himself, by which he meant to illustrate his own extreme astonishment
and satisfaction, adding:
"Smite me, if it don't sound mighty like a galley yarn! Thirty
millions of dollars, say you, skipper, lying in that hole? I can't
overtake the sum, nohow; but it will rig our mainstays for life, and
we may drink and smoke and die in our hammocks yet. But it is like
what I have often heard. These seas and shores are full of buried
treasure and craft, sunk in the days when the old buccaneers prowled
after the plate fleets. Why, the very sharks have rings and
doubloons in their greedy bellies at times!"
We repaired to the scene of the wreck together, and with frantic
vigour Knuckleduster at once assaulted the old hull with the end of
the topsail-yard, and our united efforts brought up huge pieces of
old wood covered with shells and white coral branches. In one of
these, after careful investigation, I found two coins, which proved
to be silver duros, bearing the effigy of Philip IV of Spain.
Our operations, and the noise made by Knuckleduster,
"yo-heave-o-ing," scared the sea-birds from their nests in the clefts
of the rock, and they screamed and wheeled in and out of the cavern,
as if in anger at our intrusion, or contempt of our efforts.
On beholding the two coins, Knuckleduster nearly went mad with joy,
and as I could too readily perceive, jealousy of me. He swore,
whooped, and danced, and rushed to suck his beloved toddy-tree, at
the foot of which I found him lying insensible, and then took the
opportunity of appropriating to myself the clasped knife, of which I
felt such dread, for with a companion so lawless by nature, so
powerful in form, and entrusted with such a secret, I now felt that
my life was no longer safe.
On recovering, Knuckleduster immediately missed his knife, and after
searching all his pockets, closely and suspiciously questioned me on
the subject of its disappearance. I suggested that in some of his
frantic gyrations round the toddy-tree, he had dropped it among the
dwarf mangroves or long grass. He was forced to content himself with
this surmise, and to relinquish all hope of recovering it, after a
long and of course fruitless search.
Evening came on, and brought with it the usual buzz of countless
insects; the red fire-flies began to glance about under the branches,
the tree-toads, as large as tortoises, were croaking and squattering
in the swamps.
As we sat together at the foot of the everlasting toddy-tree (the
juice of which he could not prevail upon me to imbibe, lest it should
stupefy me), we revolved innumerable plans for making signals to
ships by day or by night--for sleeping and watching by turns on the
summit of the high cliff--for escaping from the island by a canoe, if
we could make it, and for returning to raise, break up, or explore,
the old Spanish wreck. When these were all viewed over and
discussed, I pressed Knuckleduster to relate to me, how he came to be
marooned by the crew of a privateer, when I had last seen him at Los
Santos, a seaman on board of the _Boyne_ frigate.
After some delay, and not until he had sucked a score of times at the
intoxicating and manna-like distillations from the tree, did he tell
me the following story, the oaths and imprecations with which he most
freely interlarded it, being alone omitted.