The Spanish Galleon / Being an account of a search for sunken treasure in the Caribbean Sea.

by Charles Sumner Seeley

When I had finished this loathsome task it was so late that I concluded to stay all night at the cove instead of trying to go home. If the weather kept clear there would be no great hardship in sleeping on the grass for one night. The sun set, however, with an angry red glow amid a mass of heavy clouds portending foul weather. Moreover, as the night fell there was an oppressive calm, and the heat was intense. So threatening was the aspect of the weather that had I been at all sure of being able to find my way in the darkness, I should have certainly attempted to get home even after the sun had set. There was no shelter if it should rain, and I was at my wits’ end how to contrive a place to pass the night. What a fool I had been not to notice the approaching storm in time to get to my comfortable house. The best provision I was able to make was to gather some grass and willow-boughs and take them under an overhanging rock, where I cut with the axe in the dark some limbs and boughs and made a sort of lean-to. This I supplemented with the tub turned up toward the quarter whence the rain would most probably come, and Duke and I crept into this sorry nest to await events.

One event came without waiting, and that was a powerful stench from the unlucky tub. But as I had endured this already for nearly half a day, I concluded it would, by familiarity, become less and less offensive. I could not go to sleep, but lay there turning and tossing on my uncomfortable couch and watching the weather.

The calm continued until near midnight, when a cool breeze sprang up and swept down the gorge and out to sea. I thought this indicated that the storm was about to pass around and away; but the heavy rumble of thunder out at sea, growing louder and sharper, and becoming almost continuous, and the constant play of lightning, quickly dissipated this notion. I looked out with awe at this tremendous electric display.

The breeze fell presently, and I looked out and saw coming in from the sea a coppery red mass of cloud glowing as though it contained a furnace. Instinctively I crouched down behind the rock beside the dog, who was shivering with fear, and grasped the corners of a huge fallen fragment. With a dreadful, screeching roar, mingled with a din of thunder such as I am utterly unable to describe, and can liken to nothing I ever heard before or since, the hurricane burst upon the island. There was no rain, but at first I thought there was, for the spray from the ocean beat in my face and drenched me to the skin. It was not rain, for it was salt to the taste. My shelter of boughs, and also the high-smelling tub were blown away instantly, and with the dog under me I fairly had all I could do to hold on. Above the roar of the wind, the rattling of stones, and the din of the thunder, I could hear the crash of falling trees and breaking boughs. Nor did the awful wind let up for nearly half an hour, and I was quite worn out with the apprehension and the struggle. If I lifted my face for an instant the spray and sand and pebbles whipped with such violence against it that I was glad to bury it close to the ground. Such awful storms I had heard of, and even been witness to their effects after the event; but never could I have had an adequate idea of the terrible reality without this experience.

During the entire passage of the hurricane not a drop of rain fell, so far as I could judge, though, as before stated, I was drenched with spray. Gradually, with an occasional renewal of the blast, the wind went down, and in an hour the stars were shining pure and serene in the dark vault above.

The temperature had now fallen many degrees, and there was a cool, steady wind from the north that chilled me through to the bone. Of course I had no fire, and no means of procuring one, and the only relief obtainable was such exercise as I could get by stamping about and thrashing my arms until the blood was in rapid circulation. Sitting back against the rock I dozed a little now and then, and waited impatiently for the break of day, which seemed as though it never would come.

As soon as it was fairly light we started for home. The effects of the hurricane were visible on every hand. Trees broken off, blown over, and uprooted, green branches scattered here and there, the silvery under sides of the leaves showing, and giving an air of disorder and destruction by their unaccustomed appearance and tint, all marked the hand of the destroyer. The central plateau seemed to have suffered most. Here several great trees had been twisted until the trunks were a mass of splinters, indicating that they had successively occupied the very eye and centre of the rotary wind. Hurrying along rapidly we came down to the lower land, and I was glad to observe much fewer signs of destruction here. We came upon a dead pig, killed by a huge fallen limb, and I pulled him out, as we were now nearly home, and dragged him along with me for food.

When we reached the open beach I found plenty of evidence of the mighty wind in the scattered palm leaves, boughs, and branches strewn along the strand. In the distance I could see the ruins of my work-shed. The roof was off, and lying down the beach a hundred yards or more in a heap at the water’s edge. The boat, for which I felt specially anxious, was hidden from view by a clump of water bushes that grew on the hither bank of the creek. The mast I could see, and noted that an unnatural tilt had been given to it. Dragging the dead pig I slowly made my way along the sand. The house stood intact, my hammock still swung to the frame-work of the shed. The top of a cocoanut palm, twisted off by the wind and carried through the air, had brought up against the frame of the shed and lodged there, while the nuts growing on it were scattered about the ground, some of them as far as the water’s edge.

I went immediately to the boat and found it careened and sunk in the shallow water of the creek, the upper gunwale just above the surface. At the house the only damage done was a hole in the northeast corner of the wall, caused by the end of a bough which had been driven through it and was still sticking in the gap. The first thing I did was to build a rousing fire in the chimney; then hanging my damp clothing up in front of it to dry I went down for a bath in the creek, and to examine more minutely the boat. When she was righted up and baled out with a gourd I found she had suffered no injury whatever, being as tight as a bottle. Nor would she have sunk except for an extra amount of ballast that happened to be on board, as the air-tight compartments held perfectly. But the sinking was doubtless the best thing that could have happened.

As soon as I could dress and get something for breakfast, I cut up the pig and put part of it in salt, and then turned to with a will upon the work of repairing the shed. The larger part of the material of the roof was uninjured, and as the weather fortunately remained clear, by the following night I had the roof on again in good shape and much stronger than before, as with the aid of the axe I was able to cut a great number of stout poles to add to the structure. When I had patched up the hole in the wall of my house and cleared away the litter, most of the signs of the hurricane had disappeared from my neighborhood.