CHAPTER XV.
OUT OF THE DEPTHS.
The village was long asleep when at last we issued forth, as blamelessly agitated a body of brigands as ever trod the corridors of night. We had taken our measures with infinite precaution, so that not a hint of our designs should leak out; yet still we had delayed, sitting, like the party in the parlour, “all silent and all damned,” while Dunberry sunk into deep and deeper unconsciousness of our conspiracy in its midst. We were assembled, in fact, in the rector’s study, Joshua, Mr. Sant himself, my uncle, and we two; and there we stuck, spelling out the blessed quarters, until the chimes of the school clock, coming in a flurry out of silence, called up a single rebukeful stroke from Time, and subsided upon it. So late as this, an hour after midnight, had we resolved to linger, to make assurance double sure; and at the sound, with a great pouf! of relief, we were on our feet and tingling to depart.
There had been no longer any question, of course, since our learning where the treasure was, or should be, concealed, of my foregoing my share in the attempt to recover it. No possible peril, within reason, could attach to this purely open-air sport; though, indeed, Uncle Jenico had made, even now, some presumptive risk to me the excuse for his joining us in the expedition.
It was a question, at this last, if he or Mr. Sant were the more excited. Our dear comical tutor and sceptic still made a show, it is true, of subscribing to a madness in order to humour a party of lunatics under his charge; but this affectation, I do believe, took in none of us. Was it not he, in solemn fact, who had insisted upon the necessity of this postponement of the foray until the small hours? Was it not he who had manœuvred to enwrap our plans in a profound mist of secrecy? Was it not he who had appointed the present rendezvous with a masterly eye to contingencies? As to wit: (1) His house stood remote, and we could reach the sea-front from the back of it, without ever touching the village; (2) A French window gave from his study upon the garden to the rear; (3) There was a little hand-cart for luggage in a shed in this garden, which cart offered itself apt to a dual purpose—(A) to convey down to the shore a pick and a shovel, together with Uncle Jenico’s colossal wrench, which, under pretence of its being submitted to some test, had already been brought to the rectory; (B) to serve as vehicle for the carrying back of the treasure.
On the top of all which, I ask you, was Mr. Sant the incredulous humourist he professed to be?
Whatever he thought, however, Uncle Jenico was patently and irresistibly the enthusiast of the undertaking. He stumped along, dear soul, his face one moon of hilarity. The adventure was to his very heart. To be called upon, in such an enterprise, to advertise the merits of such an invention, his own! It was unspeakable—beyond expectation! He laughed constantly, holding my arm, and rebuking me for being a sluggard when I tried to regulate his pace lest he upset himself.
Harry trundled the cart, making the softest track he could manage, under the hill towards the Gap. It was a brilliant moonlit night, with a singing wind. We had brought lanterns; but had no need of them. It was near as bright as day, indeed, and we sped rapidly on our course, never having need to pause or pick our way till we reached the sands. The great shaft of the well, when we stood over against it, seemed to topple towards us, tragically anticipating its doom. The sight of it, so lonely and so ancient in this moon-drowned solitude, thrilled me with a sort of pity. It had stood so long, baffling the winds and tides, foregathering with such generations of dead and departed ghosts! And now at last man’s cupidity was scheming to compass the final ruin of what Nature had been impotent to wreck. Ah! a more fatal force than any storm! the one against which no monument, however venerable, is proof.
If the others were touched by this spirit of regret, they were sensible enough to subordinate it to the inevitably practical. While I was, literally, mooning, they had already lifted the wrench from the barrow, and were busy, under Uncle Jenico’s directions, getting it into position on the sand.
I can only hastily elucidate the idea of this machine. Pinned to a sort of frame, or trestle, which was anchored all round with stout grapnels, and shored up in front against a bracket, was a ship’s steering-wheel, which the inventor had picked up cheap at a marine auction. A good rope (length indefinite), to be passed round the subject of the proposed haulage, and its two ends then carried to the wheel and clamped, one on each side, to its rim, completed the design. So disposed, nothing remained but to turn the wheel by its spokes, when the rope would garrotte the object, and, mechanically contracting of itself, induce a forward strain.
Now, I know little about scientific values; but certainly in this case the result justified the means, as you shall hear.