Was she a smuggler working along the coast or from one island to another? By no means. The keenest customhouse officer might have gone down into her hold, overhauled her cargo, dived into her packages, ransacked her cases, without discovering any dutiable merchandise. To tell the truth she had no cargo at all. She carried provisions for several years in her hold, and in the lazarette there were three oak casks, strongly hooped with iron; the rest was mere ballast, heavy ballast to enable her to carry so large a spread of canvas.
Perhaps you may think that these three barrels contained powder or some other explosive?
Evidently not, for none of the indispensable precautions were taken in entering the store-room in which they were kept.
Besides, not one of the sailors could have given you any information on the subject—neither on the brigantine’s destination, nor on the motives which made her change her course whenever a ship appeared in sight, nor on the goings to and fro during the fifteen months she had been at sea, nor even on her position at the present moment, sometimes under full sail, sometimes under hardly any at all, sometimes on an inland sea, sometimes on a boundless ocean. During this inexplicable voyage what high lands had been sighted which the captain had immediately steered away from! What islands had been discovered, which the helm had at once been shifted to avoid! Looking at the log-book, you would have found the strangest changes of course which neither the caprices of the wind nor the appearances of the sky could possibly explain. That was a secret between the captain—a grizzly man of forty-six—and a personage of lofty mien, who at the moment appeared at the companion—
“Nothing?” he asked.
“Nothing, your Excellency,” was the reply.
A shrug of the shoulders betraying some annoyance terminated this conversation of four words. Then the personage went down the steps and regained his cabin. There he stretched himself on a couch and abandoned himself to a kind of torpor. He could not have been more motionless if sleep had taken possession of him, and yet he was not asleep. He seemed to be under the influence of some fixed idea.
He might be fifty years old. His tall stature, his powerful head, his abundant hair, with the grey showing in it, his large beard spreading over his chest, his black eyes with their keen glances, his proud but evidently gloomy physiognomy, the dignity of his bearing, indicated a man of noble birth. A large burnous braided at the sleeves fringed with many-coloured scales, enveloped him from shoulders to feet, and on his head he wore a greenish cap with a black tassel.
Two hours later his breakfast was brought in to him by a boy; it was laid on a rolling table fixed to the floor of the cabin, which was covered with a thick carpet diapered with raised flowers. He scarcely touched the dainty dishes, but devoted his chief attention to the hot and perfumed coffee, served in two small finely chased silver cups. Then a narghili was placed before him crowned with scented fumes, and with the amber mouthpiece between his lips he resumed his reverie amid the fragrant vapours of latakia.
Part of the day was thus passed, while the brigantine, gently cradled on the billows, continued her uncertain course over the sea.
About four o’clock his Excellency arose, took a few turns backwards and forwards, stopped before the light ports open to the breeze, looked away to the horizon, and stood before a sort of trap-door which was covered by a piece of carpet. This door swung open by pressing the foot on one of the angles, and disclosed the way down into the store-room beneath the cabin-floor.
There lay side by side the three casks we have spoken of. The distinguished personage stooped over the trap and remained in that attitude for some seconds, as if the sight of the casks had hypnotized him. Then he stood upright.
“No,” he murmured, “no hesitation! If I cannot find an unknown island where I can bury them in secret, it would be better to throw them into the sea!”
He shut down the trap-door and replaced the carpet; then he went to the companion stairs and mounted to the poop.
It was five o’clock in the afternoon. There was no change in the weather. The sky was dappled with white clouds. Barely heeling to the gentle breeze, the vessel glided along on the port tack, leaving a light lacework of foam to vanish in her wake.
His Excellency slowly looked round the clear horizon. Afar off, at a distance of from fourteen to fifteen miles, he could see moderately high land; but there was no sharp ridge to break the line of sea and sky.
The captain walking towards him was received by the inevitable—
“Nothing?”
Which provoked the inevitable reply,—
“Nothing, your Excellency.”
The personage remained silent for a few minutes. Then he went off and sat down on one of the seats, while the captain walked to windward; and in an excited way he worked about with the telescope.
“Captain?” he said at last.
“What does your Excellency desire?”
“To know where we are exactly.”
The captain took a large scale chart and opened it out on the deck.
“Here,” he answered, pointing with his pencil to where a line of latitude crossed a meridian.
“At what distance from that island to the east?”
“Twenty-two miles.”
“And from that land?”
“About twenty-six.”
“No one on board knows where we are just now?”
“No one, save you and I, your Excellency.”
“Not even on what sea we are?”
“We have been sailing so many different courses for so long that the best of seamen could not tell you.”
“Ah! Why has ill-fortune prevented us from reaching some island that has escaped the search of other navigators, or if not an island, an islet, or even a rock of which I alone should know the position? There would I bury this treasure, and in a voyage of a few days I could recover it, if ever the time came for me to return!”
And so saying he lapsed into silence. With a long look down over the taffrail into the water, which was so transparent that he could see quite eighty feet beneath him, he returned to the captain, and with a certain vehemence exclaimed,—
“I will throw my riches into the sea.”
“It will never give them up again, your Excellency.”
“Let them perish rather than fall into the hands of my enemies or those who are unworthy of them.”
“As you please.”
“If before to-night we have not discovered some unknown island, those three casks shall be thrown into the sea.”
“Ay, ay, your Excellency!” replied the captain, who at once gave orders to haul a little closer to windward.
His Excellency returned to the stern and, sitting down on the deck, resumed the dreamy state which was habitual to him.
The sun was sinking rapidly. At this time of year, a fortnight before the equinox, it would set but a few degrees from the west. That is to say in exactly the direction the captain was looking. Was there in this direction any high promontory on the shore of the continent or on some island? Impossible, for the chart showed no island within a radius of from fifteen to twenty miles, and this on a sea well known to navigators. Was this then a solitary rock, a reef rising but a few yards above the surface of the waves, which would serve as the spot which up to then his Excellency had sought in vain as a deposit for his treasure. There was nothing answering to it on the very careful charts of this portion of the sea. An island with the breakers around it, girdled with mist and spray, was not likely to have escaped a sailor’s notice. The charts