Finding of the Sunken Wreck. The Submarine Explosion of the Hull.
Recovery of over Ten Millions in Bars of Gold and Silver.
This, then, was the history of my predecessor; and his legacy consisted
of millions of dollars at the bottom of the sea. He no doubt thought
that some of it could be recovered, as he said, "with skill and
fortitude;" perhaps by anchoring some boat over the reef, and fishing
for it, or in some such lame way as that. He had little idea, when he
wrote this eighty years ago, that it would be read by a mortal who had
invented a submarine boat, and built it from materials drawn from the
very bowels of this very island, and who could descend and examine
every part of his famous pirate ship. The reading of this history set
my impulsive nature to work at once to acquire the lost treasure. But,
to do this, I must first find out where it lay,--its exact locality;
and I very much feared that time had effaced the marks that aligned
upon the spot, and, if so, I might search for it in vain.
But what was the use of my regaining it? Inside of my brain I was
continually answered, "You will escape! you will escape! and with this
treasure, added to your stock of pearls and ownership of the island,
with its mineral wealth of coal, iron, saltpetre, and sulphur, you
will be the richest man in the world. With these industries once
developed, your submarine boats multiplied, and pearl oysters procured
by thousands, and your island peopled with contented and happy working
people, not even the Rothschilds or Barings will be able to compete
with you."
Having carefully put aside the manuscript that I had just finished
reading, I went on shore to see if I could find any signs of the
bearings upon the spot where the "Rover" had formerly gone to pieces.
On the window-frame mentioned, I found, although defaced by the
weather, a deep cut made in the general direction pointed out, which
was no doubt the one referred to; and, encouraged by this, I picked out
with my eye several trees of the species referred to in the manuscript,
between me and the sea, that I thought might be the one designated;
and, having chosen three that seemed likely ones, I went towards them
to look for the notch that I ought to find cut in one of their trunks.
I found it instantly on the first tree I approached, which had seemed
to me the most likely. There it was, plainly marked upon the side of
the trunk,--grown over, to be sure, and the tree evidently old and
time-worn,--but showing that the wound in its side had been made with
deliberation and care, and such as would occur from no natural cause.
Being satisfied upon this point, I went back to the hut and placed my
eye along the bearings, and found that my sight struck the ocean at
some four or five miles distant. This was sufficient for the present;
so, getting back to my yacht, I went to bed and to sleep, it being now
nearly dusk. In the morning I got under way, and stood out of the bay
and rounded Eastern Cape for home, and soon ran up Stillwater Cove,
and found everything all right at the Hermitage. I then went to work
and made two sheet-iron discs, about three feet in diameter, which I
mounted upon iron rods fully fifteen feet in length. I whitewashed one
of these with a preparation of lime, and left the other its natural
dark color. I then, after caressing, feeding, and attending to my flock
of goats and barn-yard fowl, again set out for Mirror Bay, taking
these targets with me. Arriving safely, I soon had them on shore,
and, after an hour or two of measurements and calculations, had them
driven into the ground so as, when in line with each other, to point to
the same position on the surface of the ocean, as the old marks were
supposed to do, except that they stood clear of all intervening trees
or obstructions, and could be seen from the seaward perfectly well.
Having these all arranged, I went to work, and, with care and decency,
transferred the bones of my predecessor to the hole excavated under the
tree, and, reverently placing them within, I said a prayer or two for
the repose of his soul, and covered them carefully up. This being done,
I made my way back to the Hermitage, and arranged everything about the
submarine boat to start early the next day to look for the pirate ship
beneath the waves of the ocean.
Bright and early I started down Stillwater Cove in the steam yacht,
carrying my treadmill team of goats and all necessary things for my
trip. At the mouth of the cove I hauled alongside of the submarine boat
lying quietly at anchor, and, leaving the "Fairy" and steam yacht, I
went on board, rigged the pendant steps, and started my goat-power
propeller, and headed out of Perseverance Bay and around Eastern Cape.
The day was a beautiful one; so smooth was the ocean that I did not
have to descend beneath it, but held on my way with the manhole wide
open; and my goats by this time, by repeated trips, had become quite
good sailors and did not seem to mind a little swell any more than old
salts would have done. My progress in this clumsy boat was not as fast
as in the beautiful and graceful steam yacht; and I was seven hours
making the neighborhood of where I expected to find the wreck. I stood
on till I obtained a good view of my white and black discs. The one
nearer the sea being black, I sailed along, in the first place, till I
brought the two in line, and then, the white disc appearing above the
black one, I commenced sailing in towards the land, still keeping them
on a line, till the former gradually sank down, seemingly, behind the
face of the latter, when I stopped the boat, fastened down the manhole,
and descended. When I arrived near the bottom I let out my buoy line
to the surface, and found that I was in nine fathoms of water, and no
sign of a reef of any kind, a firm sandy bottom appearing before me.
I therefore still pointed the boat by compass towards the shore, and
commenced slowly creeping forward. I had not advanced more than a few
hundred yards before the abrupt walls of a solid reef met my view. I
ran near to it, and then, by pumping, ascended towards the surface,
along its face, till I arrived at the top, which I found by my surface
lead line to be not quite three fathoms beneath the water. If any
reader should ask how I knew how much a fathom was, I would simply say
that every sailor becomes used to measuring off fathoms of rope during
his sea life, and finally becomes so skilful as to measure fifty and
sixty fathoms of line, and not be but a few inches out of the way, by
grasping a piece of rope and stretching it at arm's length across the
breast, which, with two inches added, in a man of my stature, should be
just six feet, or one fathom, and by this measurement as a standard was
my floating surface lead line marked, and it agreed substantially with
the foot standard that I had made from my thumb joint, as heretofore
described. When I arrived at the top of the reef, I knew in a moment
that if I had lived on this side of the island I should in some heavy
gales have seen the surf break in this spot; for, by calculation of
the tide, which was now nearly at high water, this reef must at times
be within eight or nine feet of the surface at dead low water; and
in gales of wind I could readily believe that the surf would break
over it. Having made all these discoveries and calculations, but with
no signs of the wreck, I again descended half way down the nearly
perpendicular face of the reef towards the smooth bottom at its base.
It was a strange formation, rising abruptly from the bottom of the sea,
five or six fathoms, like the walls of a citadel. I saw plainly that a
vessel could at one moment, by a cast of the lead, get nine fathoms,
and in the very next find herself hard and fast upon the reef, if she
drew over eighteen feet of water. Holding myself in equilibrio at about
half distance from the surface and the bottom, I moved cautiously
along the face of this wall to the eastward, looking for my prize. I
went nearly a quarter of a mile in this direction without result, and,
turning about, I retraced my steps and made to the westward, feeling
sure that at the base of this barrier lay the sunken pirate ship, and
that she had never probably passed above its surface; for, having
nothing else to do, I had already calculated by means of my Epitome
what the state of the tide would have been on the evening of the 23d
or 24th of September, 1781, at midnight; and, knowing by the pirate's
manuscript that it was probably on one of those nights that the "Rover"
was lost, and that an error of a day would only make one hour error in
the calculation, I was enabled to find out that it was high water on
those days at 5 or 6 P. M., and that the vessel must have struck the
reef at very nearly, if not quite, dead low water, when it was within a
few feet of the surface, and, being bilged, the rising tide would not,
even during the storm, lift her one inch, but only hold her upon the
jagged edges, whence she must eventually drop to the tranquil waters
at the base. I felt confident that this theory was correct, and that I
had only to move along this rocky face till I came to the spot where
the vessel had finally fallen back to the bottom of the ocean; and such
was the case, for as I was thinking out the problem in my own head, lo!
and behold! there lay the wreck nearly beneath my feet, not fifty yards
distant.
I approached it with awe, and held myself suspended in the water above
it. I then descended and circumnavigated it in all possible directions,
and ended by dropping a grapnel near to it, attached to a good strong
line ending in a buoy, which I pushed under the tanks, and allowed to
ascend to the surface to mark its position for me in the future. I
then set my air-boat at work, and soon had enough new air to fill my
exhausted tanks, and to rise to the surface and take off the man-hole
cover and look about me. I saw that my discs were a little off, and
that the wreck lay a little nearer shore and more to the southward
than where they pointed. But they had fulfilled their part; they were
henceforward useless. I had found the wreck, and had it buoyed so as
to be able to again find it, and should I lose it by the buoy being
washed away at any time in a storm, the very variation in the discs
from the true direction, now known, would show me where to look. I
again descended and commenced examining my prize. She lay upon her
side, perfectly free from sand or rocks, and had evidently not moved
since she sank back from the rocky summit to her cradle at the base.
She was terribly beaten and worm-eaten, and both masts had evidently
been cut away, as the pirate captain in his manuscript supposed. Her
ribs were exposed, and her decks torn up, and innumerable barnacles and
shell-fish had fastened upon her timbers. Still falling back into this
comparatively tideless and quiet abyss, she had changed very little, I
should think, from the day she sank, over eighty years ago. And as she
lay I saw that I had another problem to solve, and that was to get at
the riches she contained still confined in her hull as in an immense
casket. I saw plainly that I should have to blow open the hull to get
at what I wanted and expose it. In the meanwhile I was fascinated with
the thousand and one old-fashioned shapes about the hull that struck
my eye,--the peculiar long brass eighteen pounders, some of which lay
beside her, covered with barnacles, but yet showing their shape and
general formation; the blunt bows of what the pirate captain had termed
a fast-sailing vessel; the comical anchors, and peculiar formation of
the decks, that to me, as a sailor, were very interesting. She looked
to me more like Noah's ark than the vessel of a civilized nation. How
rapidly and almost imperceptibly had we advanced in this science since
this tub was called a vessel, fast, strong, and staunch; and how many
hours would she have been able to keep in sight a modern clipper-ship,
much less overtake her. In comparison to the latter she seemed like a
ship's jolly-boat. And so indeed she was, being about 300 tons, as
against the 2,000 and 2,500 tons ship of my day and time.
Having satisfied my curiosity and seen that the grapnel to the
watch-buoy held all right, I drew in some new air, rose to the surface,
and made for Mirror Bay, not over four miles distant. I ran up to the
river's mouth near the hut and came to an anchor, and made all snug
about the boat, and then, tethering out the goats on the shore, I
struck out manfully for home across the island, for I saw plainly that
I should have to make Mirror Bay my headquarters for some time to come,
and that I must get home and bring together all the powder I possessed,
and the steam yacht.
I had a pleasant walk home of about four miles without difficulty, as
during the last two years I had several times before crossed the island
in this direction, but not often. I put everything to rights at the
Hermitage, and then with the steam yacht I visited Eastern Cape, East
and West Signal, and Penguin Points, and gathered together all the
gunpowder placed there beside the cannon mounted at those stations.
I added to this stock nearly all I possessed at the Hermitage before
starting, and at the end of two days made my way back to Mirror Bay,
stopping at South Cape, and getting all the powder there. Arriving at
Mirror River, I found my poor goats glad enough to welcome me back.
Putting all the powder I possessed together, I should think that there
was perhaps fifty pounds in all. This I put carefully by itself in the
deserted hut, and, taking the steam yacht, returned to the Hermitage
and my workshop. It was busy days with me now, and I scarcely gave
myself time to eat and drink. In my workshop I made a thin cylinder of
sheet iron that would contain my fifty pounds of powder, but before
bolting it together, and making it water and air-tight, I arranged in
the interior two flint locks, exactly like the locks to a gun, only
larger. My cylinder was in the shape of a large painter's oil can,
which it resembled. Out of the mouth of this can came four strings, two
of which would cock the locks, attached inside, and two attached to
the triggers would fire them off, or rather release the hammer so that
the flint would strike upon a steel plate attached to the side of the
interior. These were kept free also from the powder with which the can
was to be filled, by placing the latter, when to be exploded, upon its
side, with the locks uppermost and clear; the capacity of the can being
much greater than the amount of powder to be placed within it, at least
one third.
Having my infernal machine all made, and having experimented with the
strings leading out of the mouth, and finding that I could cock one
or both locks and fire them by pulling the opposite string, I set
sail again for Mirror Bay. I had made my infernal machine with two
locks simply that, if one did not explode the charge, the other might.
Arriving, I went on shore with it and filled it with the powder there
stored, taking good care first to see that the hammers of the two locks
in the interior were down upon the steel, and not cocked ready for a
discharge. Till they were cocked, the powder was as safe in the can as
in any other utensil in which it could be stored. And now, being all
ready, I went on board the submarine boat for my final test.
I made my way to the wreck, and, descending, was soon balanced opposite
the mouth of the main hatch, which was partially open, and large enough
to admit ten cans of the size of mine. And now came the dreadful moment
in which, under the sea, and far from any helping hand, I must cock
these locks within the can, surrounded, as they were, by the powder.
It was a supreme moment. I loved my life in spite of its solitude.
If anything was wrong in my mechanism, I should in a moment more be
blown to atoms, and, if not now, perhaps whilst lowering the machine
into the hold of the vessel. I finally mustered up courage to pull
upon the string attached to one of the cocks, first placing the can
upon its side, and heard it cock inside; but with fear and trembling
I slackened the cord that cocked it, and I did not have nerve enough
to cock the other, but, forcing in a plug at the orifice, which had
already been fitted and had grooves for the four strings, I smeared
the whole over with resin that I melted in a lighted candle near me.
With a sailor's caution the four strings leading into the can had been
nicely coiled upon the tanks ready to pay out of themselves as the can
should descend into the hold of the vessel through the open hatchway.
Lashed to the outside of the can, I should have said, was a large bar
of iron, sufficiently heavy to make it descend in spite of the air it
contained. It was with a beating heart that I dropped the whole concern
into the water, by a line attached to the middle, and commenced shoving
it with my boat hook into the hole in the main hatch where it was to
be exploded. During all this time I had the pleasant sensation that
if the small cord attached to the trigger should become entangled in
any way, and pull with any strain, the charge would be exploded, and
I should be blown to atoms. The cold perspiration stood upon my brow,
but finally, with a careful but strong push, the can entered the open
hatchway and descended quietly to the side of the vessel, where it
rested. I immediately cast off from the grapnel that held me near the
wreck, and let the submarine boat float away with what little tide
there was, paying out, as she drifted, the small line attached to the
trigger, a pull upon which, any time during the last fifteen minutes,
would have been certain death. As the line began to run out quite
freely I began to breathe again; and when several fathoms had run out,
so that I knew I was some way distant from the wreck, I began to find
relief to my overtaxed brain, and felt that I was again safe, and even
as I paid out the small line I thanked God fervently and sincerely.
Feeling now sure that I was beyond harm, I commenced to work the pump
and to ascend, and at the same time to drift further away, as I did not
know what the result of the explosion might be. When I had arrived at
as near the surface as the pump would carry me, and felt confident,
from the amount of string I had paid out, that I was far enough away
to be out of danger, I gathered in all the slack line, and then, with
one strong, quick jerk, I proved the practical value of my machine. In
one instant the result was conveyed to my ears by a subdued murmur, and
the effect by a motion conveyed to the boat as if she had been upon
the surface of the ocean instead of beneath it. I was perfectly well
aware that, when I pulled the string, the sealed plug in the orifice of
the can, through which the string led, would be pulled out, and let in
the water; but the same action would also discharge the flint upon the
steel inside and cause the explosion at the same instant, before one
drop of water could enter, or else I should have fifty pounds of powder
wasted. But the muffled roar and the commotion of the water told me
that my mechanical ingenuity had not failed me, and that my powder had
been exploded if nothing else had been accomplished.
I commenced to descend again and make my way towards the wreck, but
was met with such a mass of muddy, stirred-up water, that I was glad
to throw a grapnel to the bottom, and lie quietly till it had passed
by with the slow motion of the tide. When the water had become again
clear, I advanced, and, arriving at last over what had been the hull
of the wreck, I looked down upon what might have been considered a
vast bird's nest, of which the late timbers of the hull formed the
twigs, outline, and shape of the nest, inextricably locked together and
interlaced, and in the centre of which appeared, in place of enormous
eggs, in relative size to the bird's nest, a large, irregular mass of
still yellow and shining metal, although in many places tarnished and
dim, that seemed in quantity greater than the mind of man had ever
conceived. I descended upon this treasure and hooked up bar after bar,
which I placed upon my hanging shelves till I could take no more, and,
renewing my air with the air-boat, I made my way to Mirror Bay, and
landed my precious freight.
My next work was to bury my treasure where it would be safe, and
for this purpose I excavated a large, square hole in the earth near
to the ruined hut. Suffice it to say that after many weary trips,
extending through months, I had recovered and buried in safety at
least ten millions of money, besides having saved six of the brass
eighteen-pounders, and a large quantity of copper spikes and bolts.
Whilst at this work I came often upon the skulls and bones of the men
who had once manned this pirate craft, mixed in with the _débris_ of
the wreck. Whilst I was engaged in this labor I had to make trips to
the Hermitage, and look after my flock, and prepare food for myself,
and this was by far the busiest year that I had ever yet had on the
island. After carefully covering up my treasure I conveyed all the
copper bolts and the old eighteen-pounders to my workshop at the
Hermitage, on the steam yacht, where they would be extremely useful
to me, as heretofore I had had no brass or copper, and I often felt
the need of them in my mechanical arts. I also obtained from the wreck
a small quantity of lead in different forms, which was also very
acceptable. Having gathered all these riches about me, was I happier
than before? I often asked myself this question, and was obliged to
answer it in the negative. The very acquisition of this enormous wealth
made me impatient of restraint, and more and more determined to solve
the problem of my escape. I had the knowledge of being the possessor
of this immense amount of money, and at the same time the painful
conviction that at present it was worth to me no more than the sand on
the seashore.