Confessions Of Con Cregan, the Irish Gil Blas

by Charles James Lever

As for me, I heard no more. The sound of that name, which brought up the memory of my night at Anticosti and all its terrors, filled my heart, besides, with a strange swelling of hope, vague and ill-defined, it is true, but which somehow opened a vision of future wealth and greatness before me. The name, coupled with the place, Guajuaqualla, left no doubt upon my mind that they were talking of no other than the Black Boatswain himself. If I burned to ask a hundred questions about him, a prudent forbearance held me back. I knew that of all men living, none are so much given to suspicion and mistrust as the Gambusinos. The frauds and deceits eternally in practice among them, the constant concealments of treasure, the affected desertion of rich “Placers,” in order to return to them later and alone,—these and many like artifices suggest a universal want of confidence which is ever at work to trace motives or attribute intentions for every chance word or accidental expression. I retained my curiosity therefore; but from that hour forward, the negro and his hidden gold were ever before me. It mattered not where I was, in what companionship, or how engaged. One figure occupied the foreground of every picture. If my waking thoughts represented him exactly as I saw him at Anticosti, my sleeping fancies filled up a whole history of his life. I pictured him a slave in the “Barracoons” of his native land, heavily ironed and chained. I saw him on board the slaver, with bent-down head and crippled limbs, crouching between the decks. I followed him to the slave-market and the sugar plantation. I witnessed his sufferings, his sorrows, and his vengeance. I tracked him as he fled to the woods, with the deep-mouthed bloodhounds behind him; and I stood breathless while they struggled in deadly conflict, till, pale, bleeding, and mangled, the slave laid them dead at his feet, and tottered onward to stanch his wounds with the red gum of the liana. Then came an indistinct interval; and when I saw him next, it was as a gold-washer in the dark stream of the “Rio Nero,” his distorted limbs and mangled flesh showing through what sufferings he had passed.

Broken, incoherent incidents of crime and misery, of tortured agonies and hellish vengeance, would cross my sleeping imagination, amidst which one picture ever recurred,—it was of the negro as I saw him at Anticosti, crouching beast-like on the earth, and while he patted the ground with his hand, throwing a stealthy, terrified glance on every side to see that he was not observed. That he fancied himself in the act of concealing the gold for which he had bartered his very blood, the gesture indicated plainly enough; and in the same attitude my fancy would depict him so powerfully, so truthfully, too, that when I awoke, I had but to close my eyes again, and the vision would come back with every color and adjunct of reality.

My preoccupation of mind could not have escaped the shrewd observation of companions, had not the unexpected discovery of gold in the sands of the river effectually turned every thought into another and more interesting channel. At first it was mere dust was detected; but, later on, small misshapen pieces of dusky yellow were picked up, which showed the gold in its most valuable form, in combination with quartz rock.

Up to the moment of that discovery, all was lassitude and indifference. A few only gave themselves the trouble to wet their feet, the greater number sitting lazily down upon the river's bank, and gazing on the “washers” with a contemptuous negligence. The failures they experienced, even their humble successes, were met with sneers and laughter; till at last Hermose held up aloft a little spicula of gold about the thickness of a pencil. No sooner had the brilliant lustre caught their eyes, than, like hounds at the sight of the stag, they sprung to their feet and dashed into the stream.

What a sudden change came over the scene! Instead of the silence of that dark river, through whose dull current three or four figures waded noiselessly, while in lazy indolence their companions lay smoking or sleeping near, now, in an instant, the whole picture became animated. With plashing water and wild shouts of various import, the deep glen resounded, as upwards of thirty men descended into the river; and while some examined the bed of the stream with the “barretas,” others dived beneath the water to explore it with their hands, and bring up mingled masses of earth and dust, over which they bent with earnest gaze for many minutes together.

Then what cries of joy or disappointment broke forth at every instant! There seemed at once to come over that hardened, time-worn group of men all the changing fickleness of childhood,—the wayward vacillations of hope and despair, bright visions of sudden wealth, with gloomy thoughts of disappointment,—when, suddenly, one brought up from the bed of the stream something which he showed to his neighbor, then to another and another, till a knot had gathered close around him, among which I found myself. “What is it?” said I, disappointed at not seeing some great mass of yellow gold.

“Don't you see? It is the fossil bone of the antelope,” said Hermose; “and when the floods have penetrated deep enough to unbury that, there 's little doubt but we shall find gold enough.”

“Who says enough?” cried a Mexican, as, emerging half-suffocated from the water, he held aloft a pure piece of metal, nearly the size of a small apple. “Of such fruit as this, one never can eat to indigestion!”

Halkett's whistle was soon heard, summoning the whole party to a council on the bank; nor was the call long unanswered. In an instant the tanned and swarthy figures were seen emerging, all dripping as they were, from the stream, ascending the banks, and then throwing themselves in attitudes of careless ease around the leader.

A short discussion ensued as to the locality upon which we had chanced, some averring that it was an unexplored branch of the “Brazo,” others that it was one of those wayward courses into which mountain streams are directed in seasons of unusual rain. The controversy was a warm, and might soon have become an angry, one, had not Halkett put an end to all altercation by saying, “It matters little how the place be called, or what its latitude; you know the Mexican adage, 'It's always a native land where there's gold.' That there is some here, I have no doubt; that there is as much as will repay us for the halt, is another question. My advice is, that we turn the river into another course, leave the present channel dry and open, and then explore it thoroughly.”