"Where you stop, I shall stop," said Kenner; "you know me well enough for that. Not that I don't think you're right; you're right all along. We've sat on the stuff and fed on it, yet there's not a man among us but yourself that knows what it would look like if rolled out on this shore in sovereigns. And that's nat'ral, I guess. But as for being with you, I'm with you to the end."
"You may pass that round," said Burke, as the man shook hands—a practice beloved of every American—and then he continued with satisfaction, "I reckon, Prince, ez your talk is like oil to a lamp—it lights all of us. Once the load is ashore here, and we've got our arms in it, there's a dozen roads to take. What I'm looking for now is dark—the sooner the better! "
"And an hour's sleep," said Messenger; "there's nothing like a doze to clear the mind, and we don't want any thick heads for the work we've got before us. The nigger there will watch, for he's slept all day."
"Be gor, sah," said the nigger; "you think I sleep, you labor under a lie, sah; watch better with eyes shut, sah—presarve the sight, by golly!"
"I'm thinking if you sleep this watch that there'll be darned little of you to preserve, anyway!" said Burke; and with that they all turned in, and not a man of them moved until dark was down upon the sea, and from the distant cape the light shone flickering and feeble, as do so many of the headland lanterns on this desolate coast. At that hour Messenger, huddled up amidships, shook himself like a dog; and when he had sat up, he awakened the others, but to the nigger he gave a fierce kick, for the man was heavy with sleep, and lay hunched up in the bows. All being thus aroused, they pushed out the boat silently from the alcove, and, scarce daring to use their oars, crept to the bay in the shelter of the dark, and then rowed with that fierce excitement and brooding expectancy which were so entirely the outcome of the situation.
Was the gold still lying in the poop of the ship, or had the poop broken up so completely that the kegs had gone swirling away in the current to be lost in the deep of the sea beyond the headlands? Would they ever look upon that power of treasure again, or was it engulfed with the unnumbered dead, and the ships of the ages, and the wealth of cities and of nations which the Atlantic has fed upon since her conquest? Had any from the shore anticipated them? If they recovered the gold, could they drag it through Spain with them? These were but a tithe of the questions the men asked themselves as they drove the ship over the shallows of the bay, and onward, until the greater waves touched her, and she began to rise upon the swell of the bar. Then all eyes were turned to the reef; and when they had rowed a short space, the first of the crags of rock seemed to take shape from the sea, when it rose before them as a dark pinnacle, Burke uttered a low cry of exultation, for the poop stood clear up above the water, and in the stillness there was no wave so great that it broke upon it.
A few strokes now carried them to the cradle of rock in which the last of the Semiramis lay. Though this presented a sheer face to the land, it fell away on the far side of the bar; and the men, bringing the boat under shelter of the crag, waited until the tide should fall, for it was yet but an hour after high water.
When at last the ebb set in more rapidly, Burke sprang from the bows to the plateau with nimble step, and, being come up on the poop, he presently disappeared into the cabin. But the others waited with a great silence upon them, robbed of words by the moment of his mission; yet possessing full knowledge of the meaning both of good tidings and of bad.
XVI. GOLD PROM THE SEA
The interval of waiting seemed interminable. The four in the boat, holding to the jutting pinnacle of rock with difficulty, could hear the lapping of the water in the wreck and the rush of the tide as it swept through the gullies of the reef. But they feared to speak, scarce dared to breathe fully, were oblivious of the hazard of their own situation, terrible only in the unusual stillness of the sea.
Yet Burke did not come, and gradually there crept upon them the chill of a great fear—the fear that the gold was swept out to the depths of the bay, and that their all-venturing emprise had brought them nothing but beggary and peril. Even Fisher, upon whose mind suspicion of half the truth had long weighed, forgot in that weird and passionate excitement, which the gain or loss of bullion ever excites, the impulses which had troubled him. The spell of expectation was too strong for them, the import of the moment too engrossing.
Now Burke was not in the wrecked cabin for more than five minutes, the anxiety of the men waiting having led them to magnify the moments ridiculously; and when he came on deck again, Kenner, who stood in the prow of the life-boat, could no longer restrain himself.
"Burke!" he shouted, "for God's sake, speak!—have ye found anything?"
To this shout of a question Burke gave no answer, but he beckoned them with his hand to come aboard; and Messenger and Kenner, leaving the other two to hold the boat against the rush of the tide, sprang up to the deck, and stood with him. The American was quivering with fear, but the Prince showed no emotion, though he said as he came to the broken booby-hatch—
"I'm supposing that it's worth our while to go below;" and with that he swung himself down the rope that Burke had hitched aft, and entered the saloon. But Kenner continued to stand upon the slippery deck, while the nerves of his face twitched, and he could not keep his hands still. A moment later Messenger clambered up as he descended, and burst into a hearty fit of sniggering laughter—the nervous result of the unspeakable strain,
"Good Heaven!" said Kenner, as he saw him, "can none of ye speak? Is the money there, or is it not? By gosh, my heart's going right round like a windmill! Man, it's more than I can bear!"
The Prince ceased to laugh, observing the other's strong distress, and gave him his hand.
"Kenner," said he, "come and look for yourself. So far as I can see every shilling of the bullion is just where I left it!"
"What!" cried Kenner; and with that he rolled over upon the deck in a faint, so that if Burke had not held him, he would have gone down into the sea. He was then a man worn with the want of food and with exposure; and although his dizziness passed away as he fell, they put him back into the life-boat, making that fast to the taffrail, and called the nigger aboard the yacht to help them. It was not a moment for words, and no man spoke; but the three went at once to the saloon and began their labour while night shielded them.
To the complete understanding of this remarkable preservation of the bullion the position of the yacht upon the reef is the key. She had run upon a small group of rocky islets standing, as the Admiralty chart shows, more than a mile from the tongue of land near Cape Celstigos. Her prow being caught in the claw-like grip of scissor-like projections of rock, the stern had swung round until it had rested upon a cup-shaped ridge which had raised it above the immediate wear of the sea, and left it exposed completely at the ebb, and scarce covered at the top of the tide. This being the position of the yacht as she struck, she had subsequently broken in two; but the stern of her, with its bulkhead intact, had sunk into the cup, and suffered little hurt beyond the ripping of the bottom and the flood of the water. Naturally, the heavy kegs of gold had stood unharmed; and as the grey light of the summer's night came down through the broken skylight those who looked saw the whole of the bullion stacked as they had left it; though one keg had burst, and ingots of gold shone with wondrous lustre among the wreckage upon the floor.
If this was the case with the gold, elsewhere in the fetid saloon the destruction was complete. The whole place reeked of damp and foulness; the fine upholstery was slime-hid and dripping; there was water gushing upon the floors. It was pitiable to see gaudy travelling bags with oozy mud upon them,