Leonard Lindsay ;

by Angus B. Reach

The night seemed long to many on board, and with the grey dawn the boats were manned, Bedloe sitting beside the captain in the launch, and directing the steersman. The dwarf told us that he would take the boats to the place where the wreck lay, which was near the open sea, by such a channel as the schooner could follow in. We therefore laid down buoys as we went along, it being determined that as soon as the launch reached the wreck, I should pull back in the shallop, and navigate the ship to the scene of action.

And now, behold us, with shout, and joke, and laugh, like men who are to be speedily and marvellously enriched, pulling gaily for the sunken El Dorado. The morning mist was rising slowly from the ocean; the surf-ridges sparkled in the first glances of the hot sunlight and the white and grey sea-birds wheeled and screamed joyously overhead. The very rocks and sands bore a changed aspect in our eyes; instead of forlorn and dreary shelves of crag and shingle lying desolately in a far-off sea, we gazed upon them as the mystic beds of incalculable wealth: ‘The sea,’ we said, joyfully, ‘may not give up her dead, but she keeps a feebler clutch upon her gold. Courage, comrades, courage! we shall divide the ingots which were melted for the treasury of Old Castile.’

‘Why may there not be more than one single castaway ship lying hereabouts?’ quoth our surgeon. And we echoed, ‘Why indeed?’

At this juncture I noticed Paul Bedloe start and turn pale, just as he did when I told him his secret the day before. He recovered himself, however, directly, and it was not until after events had made me connect that start with the topic of conversation at the moment, that I realized all its significance and meaning.

A pull of less than an hour brought us to the spot where Bedloe declared that the treasure of the Santa Fè lay hid. The shoal, to the southward extremity, where we now anchored the boats, split into two long branches or arms, having deep and sheltered water between them. It was on the weathermost or eastern of these banks, among spits of sand and jags of rock, that the remains of the ill-fated ship lay. Making fast a grapnel to a point of coral, we allowed the boats, under the pilot’s direction, to drift five or six fathoms to leeward, until they floated in a rather deep channel, or hole, well sheltered by the coral reefs from the motion of the sea.

‘Now then,’ quoth Bedloe, ‘look beneath you.’ Immediately, we were all bending over the gunwales of launch and shallop, and presently, shading off the light with one hand, we saw, some five fathoms down, wavering and quivering through the clear cold water, the mouldering form of a ship of size. There lay the once graceful hull, bulged and split by the rocks, the bows broken off altogether, the quarter and stern firmly jammed in a crevice of the reef, and so uninjured that we could distinguish the quarter galleries and the outlines of the sculptured figures and medallions and carving. The deck had been partially broken up, and two or three cannon lay half upon the bulwarks, half upon the rocks. All three masts had been broken off close by the board, and their stumps, like the rest of the wreck, were encrusted with masses of shell-fish, and heaped, here and there, with wavy bunches of slimy sea-weed. Fish of many sizes and forms glided tranquilly between us and the foundered ship, and once or twice we saw a great flat ray rise up from the dark recesses of the hold, and glide like a plate of burnished copper along the deck.

‘There, gentlemen,’ says Paul Bedloe, ‘you see I have dealt fairly by you. You look upon the Santa Fè, which, more than one hundred and sixty years ago, set sail from Porto Bello for Old Spain.’

So, rising up, we gave a great shout, which, in a minute, we heard echoed by our comrades, whom we had left behind in the Will-o’-the-Wisp.

‘Will Thistle,’ says the captain, ‘bring up the schooner directly, and for heaven’s sake, take care of her bottom against the reefs; we may have a freight of price to carry home in it.’

So presently, having returned to the Will-o’-the-Wisp, and satisfied the eager demands of those on board, we very soon cast off our moorings, and the trade wind blowing steadily, we set our forestay sail and mainsail and began to run down the channel towards the launch. The way being well buoyed, and all hands working very smartly, and keeping a bright look-out, there was no difficulty, and little danger in making the run, and in less than an hour from the time I had left the launch, the schooner glided into the fork of deep water between the two tails of the reef, and then forging near the edge of the weathermost bank we furled our canvas, and the anchor plunged down, twelve fathoms to the bottom, sinking well into the soft sand, which here formed good holding-ground.