the world a knowledge it has long hungered for, and true love is of more
value than either. Besides you are—or would have been—my heir, if my
ship had come into port. As it is, perhaps I can help a little. I have
had a good deal of time to prospect, over yonder, during the past twenty
years, and I have found indications that may develop something in the
way of mining. We’ll go over to-morrow, and take a look. Good night,
now—I mean good morning—you must try and rest some.”
I retired, but sleep seemed far from me. The events of the day had been
too momentous. And then my uncle’s words had left in me a spark of
comfort—of hope. Yet, from somewhere out of the spaces sleep did come,
and the sun was pouring into the uptilted port-hole of my stateroom when
I awoke.
We were off for the island again, immediately after breakfast. My uncle,
trimmed, and arrayed in one of Captain Biffer’s uniforms, made now a
most imposing figure, and this time Captain Biffer himself, with
Chauncey and Edith Gale, completed the party.
As we passed the point of rock where I had noticed what had seemed to me
signs of hammering, my uncle paused.
“Here is one place where I prospected,” he said. He pointed to a
thread-like vein of yellow. “I believe that is gold. But I have never
had tools to follow a ledge vein, and have done rather more at looking
for placers, such as I saw in California, in the fifties.”
My hopes withered. The tiny yellow streak seemed to me so small and
uncertain. As for “placers,” I only knew dimly that they were connected
in some way with “pockets,” and “washing.”
We pushed on to his hut of stones. A very comfortable hut we had found
it to be, and more roomy than it had appeared from without. My uncle
entered first, and presently called to us. Within, he indicated seats on
the stone benches ranged around the walls. He first exhibited a few
curiosities he had gathered during his long exile, then also seating
himself, he said:
“My nephew Nicholas confided to me last night a matter I take to be well
understood by all present. It concerns chiefly himself and a certain
young lady, who is not far away.” He looked toward Edith Gale, who
blushed and smiled, but said nothing. “Nicholas told me further,” my
uncle continued, “of his lack of fortune, and his unwillingness to hold
her to a promise made with different prospects ahead.”
At this point Chauncey Gale started to speak, but my Uncle Nicholas
checked him. I did not look at Edith, but she told me afterwards how she
felt, and I sympathized with her. My uncle proceeded.
“I told my nephew that money was not all of life. That he would give to
the world a treasure of information, and that love was still greater
than either knowledge or riches.”
I began to grow uncomfortable. Also, less glad than I had been that we
had discovered my uncle. True, he had not talked to anybody for so long
that he was doubtless anxious to make up for lost time, but I wished he
had selected some other subject. We waited the end in silence.
“He would have been my heir,” he went on, “had my ship come into port.
He is my heir to-day of whatever of property or prospect I may leave
behind. Of prospect I believe there is considerable on this island. Of
property—well, as I told Nick, I have had a good deal of time on my
hands during the past twenty-one years, and the result”—turning, he laid
his hand on a great flat stone in the wall near him, and swung it
aside—“it is in there—you can see it for yourselves.”
We leaned forward and looked into the opening made. Beyond, there was a
sort of storehouse or small room, the floor smoothly covered with skins.
In the center arose a heap or pyramid of what appeared to be irregular
yellow lumps of earth, or pebbles, of varying sizes—some very
small—others quite large. No one spoke, but we looked at him
questioningly.
“Those are nuggets,” he said. “That pile contains, I believe, about two
tons of solid gold!”
XL.
CLAIMING THE REWARD.
For three weeks the Billowcrest lay a prisoner off the South
Shetlands—just which of these islands, I do not consider it proper at
this time to say. Assisted by Chauncey and Edith Gale, my uncle and I
put the treasure into bags and had it conveyed to the vessel as “mineral
specimens,” for we felt that we could not wholly trust our crew. Then at
length a wind from the northwest set the currents a new pace and altered
the sand drift. We found ourselves afloat one morning, and crowding on
sail and steam made all speed northward, arriving safely in New York
harbor on the evening of February second, after an absence of nearly
eighteen months.
As we came in through the dusk, the splendid cities and the bridge
between to us seemed gloriously illuminated; but if so, it was not in
our honor. Nobody knew that we had returned, or even that we had gone.
We steamed up North River to our old dock, and Chauncey Gale set forth
at once to catch a Broadway car for a certain down-town theater, which
he greatly feared had been discontinued during our absence. Next morning
I went with my uncle to establish some desirable banking connections,
through which his treasure might be properly transferred, and converted
into funds.
As to when and in what manner we should make our adventures, and the
results of the expedition, public property, we were at first undecided.
Newspaper notoriety was not a pleasant prospect, particularly as we were
already contemplating a second voyage to the South. We therefore
concluded to say nothing immediately, and meanwhile to have the old
Billowcrest thoroughly overhauled and outfitted for the voyage to be
undertaken in the late summer—not to the South Pole this time, but to
the South Shetlands, to develop in the spot of his exile the mines which
my uncle believes to be almost inexhaustible.
And so—to use the so-called Irish form—we have “continued to say
nothing” through the spring and summer, during which period I have
prepared the matter already in the proper hands for publication.
We are about to sail again now, and by the time my report is given to
the reader I shall be beyond the reach of either approval or
condemnation—far on my way to our new “Treasure Island” of the South,
where the rarest treasure will be one who joins in this, our unique
honeymoon—she who was Edith Gale.
For I claimed my reward this morning—two years from the day when she
jestingly agreed that I should name my price for a new world—and in the
little forward cabin of the Billowcrest where the agreement was made.
[Illustration]
“It was hardly fair,” she whispered, just before the ceremony. “I am
paying to the full, while you, though you found the world, could not
deliver it into my hands.”
“It is the old story,” I said. “The man always gets more than he
bargained for, and the woman less.”
And Chauncey Gale, when he took our hands in congratulation, repeated
the first comment that was made when my uncle showed us his store of
gold.
“Well, Nick,” he said, “as I remarked once before, I’m something of a
speculator, myself, but I give you credit for making the smallest
investments and raking off the biggest returns on record.”
He accompanies us on our expedition. He hesitated somewhat at first, but
a few months of New York and a warm northern summer have brought back
the memory and nameless fascination of the glacial atmosphere and
trackless seas of the far south.
“Besides,” he said, “I’m not going to become a vagrant in my old age.
Think of me being homeless in the streets of New York, with no place to
hang up in, except the police station of the Waldoria. Oh, Lord, what’s
a hat without a hall-tree!”
Mr. Sturritt, too, remains “with the Admiral, as usual.” He has prepared
lozenges in new and improved combinations, and especially adapted to the
exertions of a miner’s life. Even Zar is not going to desert us. Our
former voyage, with Mr. Sturritt in charge of the commissary, was not
without its attractions for her, and she now declares that “if we jus’
give up huntin’ foh poles, an’ stick to lookin’ up our los’ relation,
she has no rejections to he’pin’ us all she can. Besides,” she says, “my
Miss Edith ain’ gwine off down dere widout her ole mammy to sing ‘Brown
Cows’ when that po’ li’l’ gal cain’t sleep.”
My Uncle Nicholas, who has spent much of the summer with relatives, will
naturally be in charge of the expedition, though Captain Biffer will
continue in command of the Billowcrest, with Officers Larkins and Emory
as heretofore.
“Thim’s the bake-apple,” said the former, when I first showed him a
handful of the nuggets. “The little yellow berries that grow one on a
shtalk—I felt in me bones that they grew there. I’ll be helpin’ ye hunt
fer thim.”
And so it is, that of those who sailed with us before, only Ferratoni is
missing. He has become to us as a sweet memory, but far to the south,
where lies my long-ago fancy, he has found that of which he also,
dreamed. The long, polar night now lingers there, but I recall that
enchanted land only as bathed in the light of an eternal afternoon,
wherein, after our weary struggle, we found for a time the anodyne of
forgetfulness and rest. Perhaps ere this he has learned a way to lighten
the burden of their long dark, and however this may be, we are happy in
knowing that he, too, walks in the light of love, and that his gentle
soul is chorded at last with the perfect ideal.
But I am writing—writing. Already both Chauncey Gale and my Uncle
Nicholas have looked in to say that Captain Biffer is ready to cast off,
while Edith, who sits by to read as I finish these last lines, whispers
that the messenger boy is eagerly afraid we are going to carry him away
with us.
There came to me last night, once more, the old childhood dream of blue
water and white sails.
And the tide still calls, and the wind is fair, and I am going back to
the sea.
THE END.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected typographical errors.
2. Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
End of Project Gutenberg's The great White way, by Albert Bigelow Paine