bit, when a squall came along, and the ship, with a kick-up of her stern,
let go the painter of her own accord and bolted into the thickness; ’twas
like muck when that squall bursted, with me a-hollering; I lost sight of
the vessel, and should have been a dead man if it hadn’t been for that
there island.” After a pause. “What island is it, sir?” he asked.
“An island fifteen mile east of Rum Cay,” answered the captain.
Hawke had got it into his head that the paper in the snuff-box was the
record of a treasure secret, but he was afraid to exhibit it and ask
questions. He did not know in what language it was written, whether, in
fact, it might not be in good English, and he thought if he showed the
paper and it proved a confession of money-burial, or something of that
sort, the man who read it, knowing where the island was, would forestall
him.
On the arrival of the schooner at Kingston, Jamaica, Christian Hawke went
ashore. He was without money or clothes, and at once sold the skeleton’s
watch and hair guard, for which he received thirty dollars. The purchaser
of the watch looked at Hawke curiously across the counter after paying
down the money, and said—
“Vere did you get this?”
“It’s a family hairloom,” answered Hawke, pointing to the watchguard with
a singular grin.
“This here vatch,” said Mr. Solomons, “is a hundred year old, and a vast
curiosity in her vurks. Have you more of this sort of thing to sell? If
so, I was the most liberal dealer of any man in Jamaica.”
Hawke gave him a nod and walked out. He found a ship next morning and
signed articles as carpenter and second mate. She was sailing for England
in a week from that date, and was a plump, old-fashioned barque of four
hundred tons. At the sailors’ lodging-house he had put up at he fell into
conversation one evening, a day or two before he sailed, with a dark,
black-eyed, handsome, intelligent foreign seaman, who called himself
simply Pedro. This fellow did not scruple to hint at experiences gained
both as a contrabandist and piccaroon.
“D’ye speak many languages?” said Hawke, puffing at a long clay pipe, and
casting his grave, slow-moving little eyes upon a tumbler of amber rum at
his elbow.
“I can speak three or four languages,” said the foreign seaman.
Hawke surveyed him thoughtfully and then, putting down his pipe, thrust
his hand in his pocket, and extracted the paper from the snuff-box
without exposing the box.
“What language is this wrote in?” said he, handing the paper to his
companion.
The man looked at it, frowning with the severity of his gaze, so dim was
the pencil scrawl, so queer the characters, as though the handwriting
were the march of a spider’s legs over the page. He then exclaimed
suddenly, “Yes, I have it. It is my own language. It is Spanish.”
“Ha!” exclaimed Hawke, “and what’s it all about, mate?”
“How did you come by it?” said the man.
“Found it in an old French Testament,” answered Hawke.
The man glanced at him, and then fixed his eyes upon the paper and began
to read. He read very slowly, with difficulty deciphering the Spanish,
and with greater difficulty interpreting it. The two men were alone. The
foreign seaman made out the writing to signify this:—
“I who write am Luis de Argensola, that was second in command of the _Gil
Polo_, commanded by Leonardo de Leon. In a terrible hurricane the ship
that was bound from the Havannah to old Spain was lost. I escaped in a
boat with Dona Mariana de Mesa and two seamen; both men went mad, and
cast themselves overboard in the night. The Dona Mariana was my cousin.
She was following her husband to Madrid. He had preceded her by two
months. She had many valuable jewels, the gift of her husband, and some
had been for many centuries in possession of her own family, who were
nobles of Spain. Before the ship foundered the Dona urged me to save
these jewels, which were in a box in her cabin. I found the box and threw
it into the boat, and shortly afterwards the ship went down.
“After five days of anguish we arrived at a little island, and
twenty-four hours afterwards the Dona Mariana expired. I had no spade
to dig a grave, and placed her body in a cave on the left-hand side of
a little bay opposite the wood or grove where the fresh water stream
begins. I have now been here six weeks, and have beheld no ship, and
am without hope and feel as a dying man. Oh, stranger, who shall
discover this my writing, to your honour as a man and to your charity
as a Christian do I appeal. My own bones may rest in the place where
I die—I care not, but I entreat that the remains of the Dona Mariana
may be enclosed in a box, and carefully conveyed for interment to her
relatives at Madrid, and that this may prove no profitless duty to him
who undertakes it, behold! in the foot of the tree I am accustomed to
climb at night, that I may sleep free from the sting of the scorpion, you
shall find a hole. There, within easy reach of your hand lies the box
of jewels. This box and the remains of Dona Mariana I entreat of your
Christian charity to convey to Alonzo Reyes, Villagarcia, Spain, and I
pledge the honour of a Spaniard that one-half the value of the jewels
shall be given to you.—LUIS DE ARGENSOLA. July, 1840.”
“That’s twenty year ago,” said Hawke, sucking at his pipe.
“What’ll you take for the secret?” said his companion.
“Eh!”
“If I can find some one to help you to recover those jewels, what share
will you give me?”
Hawke pocketed the paper with a sour smile and went out of the room.
His ship sailed and all went well with her. On his arrival in England,
as soon as he had taken up his wages and purchased a suit of clothes, he
went down to Ramsgate, where, in a little off street not far from the
entrance to the pier, dwelt his brother Reuben. This man was by trade a
boat-builder. He also owned some bathing-machines. The brothers had not
met for some years, nor had they heard from or of each other since they
were last together. Yet when Christian, after beating with a little brass
knocker upon a little green door, turned the handle and entered straight
into a dwelling-room, his brother Reuben, who sat at tea with his wife,
two girls, and his wife’s grandfather, exhibited no surprise. Their
greeting was simply, “Hallo, Christian!” “Well, Rube!”
Christian sat down and partook of tea with the family, and related his
adventures to the great entertainment of the grandfather, who laughed
till his cheeks were wet at all the pathetic parts—such as Hawke’s
description of his thirst and his feelings of loneliness when upon the
ocean and when lying in the boat at the island. The women cleared away
the tea-things and went out; the old grandfather fell asleep; then said
Christian to his brother—
“Rube, I’m down here to have an airnest chat along with yer.”
“So I guessed,” said Reuben, who resembled his brother in face, manner,
and tone of voice.
“Still got that cutter o’ yourn?”
“D’yer mean the _Petrel_?”
“Ay.”
“Yes, she’s a-lying in the west gully. She airnt me some good money last
year as a pleasure-boat. I’ve been thinking of sending her out a-fishing.”
“What’s her tonnage?”
“Eighteen. Want to buy her, Christian?”
“Not I. Suppose you and me goes down and takes a look at her.”
Reuben put on his coat and cap, and the brothers issued forth. Two square
figures, the shoregoer rolling in his gait like the seafarer, as though,
in fact, he was as fresh from the heave of the sea as the other. They
walked along the pier till they came abreast of a stout little cutter
lying at her moorings in the thick of a fleet of smacks hailing from
Gravelines, Penzance, and other places. Christian viewed her in silence
with the critical eye of an old sailor and a ship’s carpenter to boot.
“How old’s she, Rube?”
“Nine year.”
“She’ll do,” said Christian. “Rube, I’m going to spin yer a yarn.”
They went leisurely along the pier, and as they walked Christian told his
brother about the skeleton in the tree and the document in Spanish which
he had found in the dead man’s snuff-box. He produced the snuff-box and
the paper, also the clay pipe mounted in the bone of an albatross’s wing,
and the small gold cross. Reuben listened with an eye bright and keen
with interest and conviction. The mere sight of the silver box was as
convincing to his mind as though he had been carried to the island, and
stood looking at Argensola’s bones and the hole in the tree in which the
box of jewels lay hid.
That night the two brothers sat up late, deep in discourse. Christian put
ten pounds upon the table.
“That’s all I own in the world,” said he. “It’ll help to victual the
boat.”
“We shall want a navigator,” said Reuben. “I’m rather ignorant, myself,
of that art, and I don’t suppose you’ve learnt yourself to read yet, ha’
ye, Christian? There’s young Bob Maxted knows all about shooting of the
sun. Us two and him’ll be hands enough. Shall we make shares?”
“No,” said Christian; “you and me divides. T’other’ll come along on
wages.”
“There’s no doubt about the situation of the island, I suppose?” said
Reuben.
“No.”
“Let’s look at that there Spanish writing again.”
Christian produced the snuff-box and Reuben opened the paper.
“Are you cocksure,” said Reuben, fastening his eyes upon the dim scrawl,
“that that there Pedro, as you call him, gave you the right meaning of
this writing?”
“Yes; and there was my own ixpurrience to back his varsion.”
“I’m rather for having it made into English again, Christian,” said
Reuben, thoughtfully. “Young Jones down at Consul Hammond’s office speaks
Spanish. What d’yer say?”
“No; I’m not a-going to trust any man but yourself with the secret.
See here: if we come back rich—as’ll follow—and you’ve bin meanwhile
and shown that there paper to some one who understands it, what’ll be
thought? The gaff’ll be blowed; the relaytives of that there Mary Ann’ll
be getting wind of our haul, and’ll come upon us for the jewels.”
This and the like reasoning satisfied Reuben, who presently returned the
paper to Christian, and, after drinking a final glass of grog, the two
brothers went to bed.
Next day, and for some days afterwards, they were full of business. Young
Maxted was willing to sail with them; they gave out vaguely that they
were bound to the West Indies, partly on pleasure, partly on business.
The true character of their errand was not revealed to Maxted, who had
agreed for six pounds a month to navigate the little ship into the West
Indian seas and back again. Reuben drew all his savings from the bank;
twenty pounds and Christian’s ten pounds formed their capital. They
provisioned themselves with forecastle fare, adding some bottled beer and
a few gallons of rum, and on a fine morning at daybreak, when Ramsgate
still slumbered, and the hush of the night yet brooded over the harbour,
the three men hoisted their mainsail and jib, and blew softly down the
gulley and round the head of the pier into the English Channel, which was
by this time white with the risen sun, and beautiful in the south-west,
where a hundred ships that had lain wind-bound in the Downs were flashing
into canvas, and moving like a cloud before the light easterly breeze.
All went well down-Channel with the little craft. She was a stout and
buoyant sea boat, with a dominant sheer of bow, coppered to the bends
like a revenue cutter, and uncommonly stout of scantling for a vessel
of her class. She was in good trim, and she plunged along stoutly,
making fine weather of some ugly seas which ridged to her bow as she
drove aslant through the Bay. By this time young Maxted had been made
acquainted with the cutter’s destination, and was steering a course for
the little island. He plied his sextant nimbly, and clearly understood
his business. The brothers represented to him that the object of their
voyage was to recover some treasure which had been washed ashore out of a
small Spanish plate ship and buried.
“We ain’t sure,” Christian Hawke told him, “that the island we’re bound
to is the island where the wreck took place. But the herrant’s worth the
cost and the time, and we mean to have a look round, anyhow.”
Maxted was silent; perhaps with the proverbial heedlessness of the sailor
he was satisfied to take things as they happened. The actual motive of
the voyage could be of no interest to him. All that he had to do was to
steer the little ship to an island and receive so many sovereigns in
wages on their return.
They made a swift run for so small a keel; in fact, the island was
in sight at the grey of dawn thirty-three days after the start from
Ramsgate. Christian Hawke with a telescope at his eye quickly recognized
the central hill, the soft, cloud-like mass of green shadow made by the
wood or grove on the right, and the slope of the green land to the ivory
dazzle of sand vanishing in the foam of the charging comber. He warmly
commended Maxted’s navigation, and both brothers stared with flushed
faces and nostrils wide with expectation at the beautiful little cay that
lay floating like a jewel full of gleams upon the calm blue brine right
ahead.
They hove-to and rounded at about a mile from the land, and then let
go their anchor in sixteen fathoms of water. They next launched their
little fat jolly-boat smack-fashion through the gangway, and Christian
and Reuben entered her and pulled away for the land, leaving Maxted in
charge of the cutter; but little vigilance was needed in such weather as
that; the sea was flat, and bare, and as brilliant as the sky; under the
sun the water trembled in a glory of diamonds to the delicate brushing
of a hot, light breeze. Nothing broke the silence upon the deep save the
low, organ-like music of the surf beating on the western and northern
boards of the island.
Whilst Christian pulled, Reuben steering the boat with an oar, he talked
of his sufferings when in these parts, how his jaws had been fixed in a
horrid gape by thirst, and of the terror that had besieged him when he
looked up into the trees and beheld the skeleton. They made direct for
the little creek into which Christian had driven his boat, and where he
had slept on that first and only night he had passed on the island; and
when her forefoot grounded they sprang out and hauled the boat high and
dry, and then with hearts loud in their ears and restless eyes, directed
their steps towards the little wood. Christian glanced wildly about him,
imagining that in everything his sight went to, he beheld a token of the
island having been recently visited.
“How long’ll it be since you was here, Christian?” rumbled Reuben, in a
note subdued by expectation and other passions.
“Five month,” answered Christian, hoarsely.
They walked to the margin of the little wood, and arrived at the source
of the stream that ran glittering and straying like pearls amidst the
tall sweet green grass that grew in the bed of it. Reuben grasped
Christian by the arm.
“What’s that?” he cried.
It was a human skull, and close beside it were the complete bones of a
human skeleton, together with a little heap of rags. It looked as though
the stuff had been raked together for removal and forgotten.
“That wasn’t how they was left,” exclaimed Christian, coming to a halt
and looking at the bones and rags. “There’s been a hand arter me here in
that job.”
“A boat’s crew may ha’ landed and shovelled the stuff together out of
a sort o’ respect for the remains of something that might have been a
sailor,” exclaimed Reuben. “Where’s the tree with the hole in it?”
Christian walked to the place where he had been seated when his eye went
to the skeleton aloft.
“That’ll be the tree,” said he.
It was a large tree, the trunk of the bigness of an English chestnut,
but dwarfed in altitude; its beauty was in the spread and curve of its
branches. In the hinder part of the trunk—speaking with regard to its
bearings from the source of the stream—about five feet above the ground,
was a large hole, partly concealed by the festooning drapery of the
leaves of a rich and vigorous parasite, which soared in coils to the
summit of the tree. Christian put his hand in.
“Stand by for snakes!” shouted Reuben.
The other drew out a little common brass tobacco-box.
“What’s here?” cried he.
“Try for the jewel box!” exclaimed Reuben.
Christian entered his hand again and felt round.
“There’s nothen more here,” said he.
“Has it fallen to the bottom?”
“There ain’t no hole for it to fall through,” cried Christian, still
feeling. “It’s tight as a locker.”
He looked at the common little brass tobacco-box, then opened it, and
found inside a slip of paper, folded to the shape of the box, as though
in imitation of the snuff-box document in Christian’s possession. The
handwriting was a bold scrawl in ink. With a trembling hand and ashen
face the poor fellow presented the paper to his brother, who, putting on
his glasses, read aloud as follows:—
“I would have been glad to take a small share to help you to find the
jewels, but you would not put a little money in my way, though by
interpreting Luis de Argensola’s dying request in writing I was the
instrument of your discovering that there lay a treasure to your hand.
I therefore arranged with another to seek for the jewels: the situation
being exactly known to me, because of your ignorance of the Spanish
language, and perhaps of the art of reading, for at the end of the
document, in three lines which it did not suit my purpose to interpret to
you, Don Luis states how the island bears—that, in short, it is between
ten and fifteen miles east of Rum Cay. My friend, I have found the
jewels, and thank you for a fortune. They consist of pearl and diamond
necklaces, brooches, bracelets, earrings, smelling-bottles, rings, and
diamond ornaments for the hair. I should say they will not fetch less
than £10,000.—Your amigo of Kingston, PEDRO.
“I have left the skeletons to your pious care to coffin and carry to the
representative at Villagarcia. You will find the remains of the Lady
Mariana de Mesa in a cave on the west side of the island.”
The two men burst into a storm of oaths, and the little wood rang with
forecastle and ’longshore imprecations. When they had exhausted their
passions they knelt and drank from the spring of water, then walked to
the boat, launched her, and returned to the cutter.
They arrived in England safely in due course, but some time later Reuben
was obliged to compound with his creditors. Christian Hawke died in 1868
on board ship, still a carpenter.
_THE TRANSPORT “PALESTINE.”_
In the spring of 1853 the hired transport _Palestine_, which had been
fitting out at Deptford for the reception of a number of convicts, was
reported to the Admiralty as ready for sea.
The burthen of the _Palestine_ was 680 tons, and the number of felons she
had been equipped to accommodate in her ’tween-decks was 120. My name
is John Barker, and I was second mate of that ship. Her commander was
Captain Wickham, and her chief officer Joseph Barlow. The _Palestine_ was
an old-fashioned craft, scarcely fit for the work she had been hired for.
Official selection, however, was probably influenced by the owners’ low
tender. Good stout ships got £4 7s. 6d. a ton; I believe the _Palestine_
was hired for £3 15s.
A guard from Chatham came aboard whilst we were at Deptford, consisting
of a sergeant and ten privates, under the command of Captain Gordon and
Lieutenant Venables. Shortly afterwards Dr. Saunders, R.N., who was going
out as surgeon in charge of the convicts, took up his quarters in the
cuddy. On the day following the arrival of the doctor and the guard,
we received instructions to proceed to Woolwich and moor alongside that
well-known prison-hulk H.M.S. _Warrior_. It was a gloomy, melancholy day;
the air was full of dark vapour, and the broad, grey stream of the river
ran with a gleam of grease betwixt the grimy shores. A chill wind blew
softly, and vessels of all sorts, to the weak impulse of their wings of
brown or pallid canvas, dulled by the thickness, sneaked soundlessly by
on keels which seemed to ooze through a breast of soup.
I had often looked at the old _Warrior_ in my coming and going, but never
had I thought her so grimy and desolate as on this day. A pennant blew
languidly from a pole-mast amidships; she was heaped up forward into
absolute hideousness by box-shaped structures. Some traces of her old
grandeur were visible in a faded bravery of gilt and carving about her
quarters and huge square of stern, where the windows of the officials’
cabins glimmered with something of brightness over the sluggish tremble
of wake which the stream ran to a scope of a dozen fathoms astern of her
rudder. All was silent aboard her. I looked along the rows of heavily
grated ports which long ago had grinned with artillery, and observed no
signs of life. Indeed, at the time when we moored alongside, most of the
criminals were ashore at their forced labour, and those who remained in
the ship were caverned deep out of sight hard at work at benches, lasts,
and the like in the gloomy bowels of the old giantess.
The _Palestine_ sat like a long-boat beside that towering fabric of
prison hulk. We were no beauty, as I have said, and the little vessel’s
decks were now rendered distressingly unsightly by strong barricades,
one forward of the foremast, leaving a space betwixt it and the front of
the topgallant forecastle, and the other a little abaft the mainmast, so
as to admit of some area of quarter-deck between it and the cabin front.
Each barricade was furnished with a gate; the main-hatch was fortified by
oak stanchions thickly studded with iron nails, the foot of them secured
to the lower deck. This timber arrangement resembled a cage with a narrow
door, through which one man only could pass at a time. The main-hatch
was further protected by a cover resembling a huge, roofless sentry-box.
To this were attached planks of heavy scantling, forming a passage which
went about ten feet forward; there was a door at the end of this passage,
always guarded by a sentry with loaded musket and fixed bayonet.
The convicts came aboard at nine o’clock in the morning following the
day of our arrival alongside the hulk. We were to receive our whole
draught of 120 at once from the _Warrior_, and then proceed. I stood
in the waist and watched the prisoners come over the side. It was an
old-world picture, and the like of it will never again be seen. The day
was as sullen as that which had gone before; the tall spars and black
lines of rigging of our ship glistened with dripping moisture. A guard
of six soldiers were drawn up along the front of the poop commanding the
quarter-deck; each bayonet soared above the motionless shoulder like a
thin blue flame. Captain Gordon and Lieutenant Venables stood near the
men; at the break of the poop, grasping the brass rail, was Dr. Saunders,
scrutinizing the convicts with a severe, almost scowling face as they
arrived.
The unhappy wretches were heavily fettered, and the long chains attached
to the leg-irons clanked with a strange effect upon the hearing as the
heavy tread of the many feet awoke a low thunder in the hollow deck. They
were marched directly to their quarters in the ’tween-decks. I observed
their faces as they passed through the hatch, and was struck by a general
expression of light-heartedness, as though they were overjoyed at getting
away from the horrors of the prison hulk and the spirit-breaking labour
ashore, with a bright chance of fortune in the sunny lands beyond the
seas to which the ship was bound.
And certainly the convict in those days was out and away more tenderly
dealt with than were the greater mass of the poor, honest emigrants. They
were well clothed and better fed than the sailors in the forecastle;
those who were ignorant were taught to read and write; they were prayed
for and eloquently admonished, and their health was rendered a matter of
sincere concern to both the skipper and the doctor in charge. I recollect
that the felons in our ship were dressed in coarse grey jackets and
trousers, red stripes in the cloth, Scotch caps, and grey stockings, and
the ship’s number of the criminal was painted on a square yellow ground
on the arm and back.