WE TALK OVER OUR SITUATION.
That night, as afterwards, Tassard occupied the berth that he was used
to sleep in before he was frozen. Although I had not then the least fear
that he would attempt any malignant tricks with me whilst we remained in
this posture, the feeling that he lay in the berth next but one to mine
made me uneasy in spite of my reasoning; and I was so nervous as to
silently shoot a great iron bolt, so that it would have been impossible
to enter without beating the door in.
In sober truth, the sight of the treasure had put a sort of fever into
my imagination, of the heat and effects of which I was not completely
sensible until I was alone in my cabin and swinging in the darkness.
That the value of what I had seen came to ninety or a hundred thousand
pounds of our money I could not doubt; and I will not deny that my fancy
was greatly excited by thinking of it. But there was something else.
Suppose we should have the happiness to escape with this treasure, then
I was perfectly certain the Frenchman would come between me and my share
of it. This apprehension threading my heated thoughts of the gold and
silver kept me restless during the greater part of the night, and I also
held my brains on the stretch with devices for saving ourselves and the
treasure; yet I could not satisfy my mind that anything was to be done
unless Nature herself assisted us in freeing the schooner.
However, as it happened, the gale roared for a whole week, and the cold
was so frightful and the air so charged with spray and hail that we were
forced to lie close below with the hatches on for our lives. It was true
Cape Horn weather, with seas as high as cliffs, and a westering tendency
in the wind that flung sheets of water through the ravine, which must
have quickly filled the hollow and built us up in ice to the height of
the rails but for the strong slope down which the water rushed as fast
as it was hurled.
I never needed to peep an inch beyond the companion-way to view the
sky; nor for the matter of that was there ever any occasion to leave the
cabin to guess at the weather, for the perpetual thunder of it echoed
strong in every part of the vessel below, and the whole fabric was
constantly shivering to the blows of the falls of water on her decks.
At first the Frenchman and I would sit in the greatest fear imaginable,
constantly expecting some mighty disaster, such as the rending of the
ice under our keel and our being swallowed up, or the coming together of
the slopes in such a manner as to crush the ship, or the fall upon her
of ice weighty enough to beat her flat; though perhaps this we least
feared, for unless the storm changed the whole face of the cliffs, there
was no ice in our neighbourhood to serve us in that way. But as the time
slipped by and nothing worse happened than one sharp movement only in
the vessel, following the heels of a great noise like a cannon
discharged just outside; though this movement scared us nearly out of
our senses, and held us in a manner dumbfounded for the rest of the day;
I say, the time passing and nothing more terrifying than what I have
related happening, we took heart and waited with some courage and
patience for the gale to break, never doubting that we should find a
wonderful change when we surveyed the scene from the heights.
We lived well, sparing ourselves in nothing that the vessel contained,
the abundance rendering stint idle; the Frenchman cooked, for he was a
better hand than I at that work, and provided several relishable
sea-pies, cakes, and broths. As for liquor, there was enough on board to
drown the pair of us twenty times over: wines of France, Spain,
Portugal, very choice fine brandy, rum in plenty, such variety indeed as
enabled us to brew a different kind of punch every day in the seven. But
we were much more careful with the coal, and spared it to the utmost by
burning the hammocks, bedding, and chests that lay in the forecastle;
that is to say, we burnt these things by degrees, the stock being
excessive, and by judiciously mixing them with coal and wood, they made
good warming fires, and as tinder lasted long too.
We occupied one morning in thoroughly overhauling the forecastle for
such articles of value as the sailors had dropped or forgotten in their
flight; but found much less than I had expected from the sight of the
money and other things on the deck. There was little in this way to be
found in the cabins: I mean in the captain's cabin which I used, and the
one next it that had been the mate's, for of course I did not search Mr.
Tassard's berth. But though it was quite likely that the seamen had
plundered these cabins before they left the ship, I was also sure that
the Frenchman had made a clean sweep of what they had overlooked when he
pretended to search for the keys of the treasure-chests; and this
suspicion I seemed to find confirmed by the appearance of the captain's
boxes. One of these boxes contained books, papers, a telescope, some
nautical instruments, and the like. I looked at the books and the
papers, in the hope of finding something to read; but they were written
and printed in the Spanish tongue, and might have been Hebrew for all
the good they were to me.
Our life was extraordinarily dismal and melancholy, how much so I am
unable to express. It was just the same as living in a dungeon. There
was no crevice for the daylight to shine through, and had there been we
must have closed it to keep the cold out. Nothing could be imagined more
gloomy to the spirits than the perpetual night of the schooner's
interior. The furnace, it is true, would, when it flamed heartily, throw
a brightness about it; but often it sank into redness that did but
empurple the gloom. We burned but one candle at a time, and its light
was very small, so that our time was spent chiefly in a sullen twilight.
Added to all this was my dislike of my companion. He would half fuddle
himself with liquor, and in that condition hiccup out twenty kinds of
villainous yarns of piracy, murder, and bloodshed, boasting of the
number of persons he had despatched, of his system of torturing
prisoners to make them confess what they had concealed and where. He
would drivel about his amours, of the style in which he lived when
ashore, and the like; but whether reticence had grown into a habit too
strong even for drink to break down, he never once gave me so much as a
hint touching his youth and early life. He was completely a Frenchman in
his vanity, and you would have thought him entirely odious and
detestable for this excessive quality in him alone. Methinks I see him
now, sitting before me, with one half of him reflecting the light of the
furnace, his little eyes twinkling with a cruel merriment of wine,
telling me a lying story of the adoration of a noble, queenly-looking
captive for his person--some lovely Spanish court lady whom, with
others, they had taken out of a small frigate bound to old Spain. To
test her sincerity he offered to procure her liberty at the first
opportunity that offered; but she wept, raved, tore her hair. No;
without her Jules life would be unendurable; her husband, her country,
her king, nay, even the allurements and sparkle of the court, had grown
disgusting; and so on, and so on. And I think a monkey would have burst
into laughter to see the bald-headed old satyr beat his bosom, flourish
his arms, ogle, languish, and simper, all with a cut-throat expression,
too, soften his voice, and act in short as if he was not telling me as
big a lie as was ever related on shipboard.
It naturally rendered me very melancholy to reflect that I had restored
this old villain to life, and I protest it was a continuous shock to
such religious feelings as I had managed to preserve to reflect that
what had been as good as nearly half a century of death had done nothing
for this elderly rogue's morals. It entered my head once to believe that
if I could succeed in getting him to believe he had lain frozen for
eight-and-forty years, he might be seized with a fright (for he was a
white-livered creature), and in some directions mend, and so come to a
sense of the service I had done him, of which he appeared wholly
insensible, and qualify me to rid my mind of the fears which I
entertained concerning our association, should we manage to escape with
the treasure. I said to him bluntly--not _apropos_ (to use his own
lingo) of anything we were talking about,--
"'Tis odd, Mr. Tassard, you should doubt my assurance that this is the
year eighteen hundred and one."
He stared, grinned, and said, "Do you think so?"
"Well," said I, "perhaps it is not so odd after all; but you should
suffer me to have as good an idea of the passage of time as yourself.
You cannot tell me how long your stupor lasted."
"Two days if you like!" he interrupted vehemently. "Why more? Why longer
than a day? How do you know that I had sunk into the condition in which
you found me longer than an hour or two when you landed? How do you
know, hey? How do you know?" and he snapped his fingers.
"I know by the date you name and by the year that this is," said I
defiantly.
He uttered a coarse French expression and added, "You want to prove that
I have been insensible for forty-eight years."
"It is the fact," said I.
He looked so wild and fierce that I drew myself erect ready for him if
he should fall upon me. Then, slowly wagging his head whilst the anger
in his face softened out, he said, "Who reigns in France now?"
I said, "There is no king; he was beheaded."
"What was his name?" said he.
"Louis the Sixteenth," I answered.
"Ha!" cried he, with an arch sneer; "Louis the Sixteenth, hey? Are you
sure it wasn't Louis the Seventeenth?"
"He is dead too."
"This is news, Mr. Rodney," said he scornfully.
"Whilst you have been here," said I, "many mighty changes have happened.
France has produced as great a general and as dangerous a villain as the
world ever beheld; his name is Buonaparte."
He shrugged his shoulders with an air of mocking pity.
"Who is your king?" he asked.
"George the Third," said I; "God bless him!"
"So--George and Louis--Louis and George. I see how it is. Stick to your
dates, sir. But, my friend, never set up as a schoolmaster."
This sally seemed to delight him, and he burst into a loud laugh.
"Eighteen hundred and one!" he cried. "A man I knew once lost ten
thousand livres at a _coup_. What do you think happened? They settled in
him here;" he patted his belly: "he went about bragging to everybody
that he was made of money, and was nicknamed the walking bourse. One day
he asked a friend to dine with him; when the bill was presented he felt
in his pockets, and exclaimed, 'I left my purse at home. No matter;
there is plenty here;' with which he seized a table-knife and ripped
himself open. Eighteen hundred and one, d'ye call it? _Soit._ But let
it be _your_ secret, my friend. The world will not love you for making
it fifty years older than it is."
It was ridiculous to attempt to combat such obstinacy as this, and as
the subject produced nothing but excitement and irritation, I dropped it
and meddled with it no more, leaving him to his conviction that I was
cracked in this one particular. In fact, it was a matter of no
consequence at all; what came very much closer home was the business of
our deliverance, and over this we talked long and very earnestly, for he
forgot to be mean and fierce and boastful, and I to dislike and fear
him, when we spoke of getting away with our treasure, and returning to
our native home.
For hour after hour would we go on plotting and planning and scheming,
stepping about the cook-house in our earnestness, and entirely engrossed
with the topic. His contention was that if we were to save the money and
plate, we must save the schooner.
"Unless we build a vessel," said I.
"Out of what?"
"Out of this schooner."
"Are you a carpenter?" said he.
"No," I replied.
"Neither am I," said he. "It's possible we might contrive such a
structure as would enable us to save our lives; but we have not the
skill to produce a vessel big enough to contain those chests as well as
ourselves, and the stores we should require to take. Besides, do you
know there is no labour more fatiguing than knocking such a craft as
this to pieces?"
This I very well believed, and it was truer of such a vessel as the
_Boca del Dragon_ that was a perfect bed of timber, and, like the
_Laughing Mary_, built as if she was to keep the seas for three hundred
years.
"And supposing," said he, "after infinite toil we succeeded in breaking
up as much of her as we wanted, what appliances have we for reshaping
the curved timbers? and where are we to lay the keel? Labour as we
might, the cold would prove too much for us. No, Mr. Rodney, to save the
treasure, ay, and to save ourselves, we must save the ship. Let us put
our minds to that."
In this way we would reason, and I confess he talked very sensibly,
taking very practical views, and indicating difficulties which my more
ardent and imaginative nature might have been blind to till they
immovably confronted me, and rendered days of labour useless. But how
was the ship to be saved? Was it possible to force Nature's hand; in
other words, to anticipate our release by the dissolution of the ice? We
were both agreed that this was the winter season in these seas, though
he instantly grew sulky if I mentioned the month, for he was as certain
I was as mad in this, as in the year, and he would eye me very
malignantly if I persisted in calling it July. But, as I have said, we
were both agreed that the summer was to come, and though we could not
swear that the ice was floating northwards, we had a right to believe
so, in spite of the fierceness of the cold, this being the trick of all
these frozen estates when they fetch to the heights under which we lay;
and we would ask each other whether we should let our hands and minds
rest idle and wait to see what the summer would do for us, or essay to
launch the schooner.
"If," said he, "we wait for the ice to break up it may break us up too."
"Yes," said I, "but how are we to cut the vessel out of the ice in which
she is seated to above the garboard streak? Waiting is odious and
intolerable work; but my own conviction is, nothing is to be done till
the sun comes this way, and the ice crumbles into bergs. The island is
leagues long, and vanishes in the south; but it is wasting fast in the
north, and when this gale is done I shall expect to see twenty bergs
where it was before all compact."
As you may guess, our long conversations left us without plans, bitter
as was our need, and vigorous as were our efforts to strike upon some
likely scheme. However, if they achieved no more, they served to beguile
the time, and what was better yet, they took my companion's mind off his
nauseous and revolting recollections, so that it was only now and again
when he had drained a full bowl, and his little eyes danced in their
thick-shagged caves, that he regaled me with his memories of murder,
rapine, plank-walking, hanging, treacheries of all kinds, and cruelties
too barbarous for belief.