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

by Charles Sumner Seeley

The dampness of my house in wet weather, which was due to the walls getting wet and soaking through with the driving rain, led me now to undertake a new task. The clay used in the building of the boat would, I thought, be sufficient in quantity to give the floor and the walls inside and out a good coat, and this when once dry would make the structure like an adobe building. I intended, moreover, to add an extra thickness of thatch, put in a row of glass photograph plates toward the sea for windows, make a good cedar door, to be hung on wooden hinges, and add a wide veranda to the front, under which I might sit in the evening.

The rain still came every day or two now, though evidently the dry season was fast approaching. The weather was too uncertain to venture out any distance in the boat, and I therefore had plenty of time on my hands to attend to my building and other schemes for domestic comfort. As planned, I daubed the whole house, inside and outside, with a good thick coat of the clay smoothed with the back of the shovel. On the outside, to give a workmanlike finish, I lined the soft clay into blocks and pointed the joints neatly. Then, with dry, pulverized clay and sand, which I sprinkled with water, trampled with the feet and smoothed by beating with the shovel, I produced a hard, smooth floor like that under the shed. All around the edge of this floor I fitted a single row of clam shells, and inside of this a second row of pink-mouthed tiger shells, which formed a handsome border. I put in a narrow horizontal window, of six panes side by side, at each side of the doorway, and constructed a good door of split cedar, pinned together and hung on wooden hinges to swing outward, and provided it with a latch. I then doubled the thatch all over the house and put up a light porch in front thatched with palm leaves, and built a floor for it the same as in the house. At one end of this porch I constructed a little low shed with walls and roof for the dog.

As there was still a great quantity of clay left I built an oven near the house, as follows: upon a raised platform of poles erected about three feet above the ground, and about three by four feet in extent, I put a layer of sand and clay about four inches thick. This was the floor of the oven. All around this floor I laid a wall of adobe bricks, made of sand and clay partly dried. I then filled the interior with sand heaped up in the form of an arch, and laid the adobe bricks over it, daubing and plastering all the cracks. At the rear was a small clay chimney, and at the front an opening for a doorway. When the clay had well set and partly hardened, I raked out the sand through the doorway and left the hollow clay structure standing. I then constructed an adobe slab with which to close the doorway. In this oven I built a hot fire of dry wood and kept it going all day, by which means the clay was partly burned and the construction made entirely proof against the wet,—though, for that matter, the adobe would have stood without such treatment.

To utilize the heat left in the walls from the burning I had put a pot full of beans on to boil, with a good chunk of salt pork. At night I put the beans and pork in an earthen dish and set them in the oven, which was still hot, and closed it up tight, covering the chimney and luting the door slab with wet clay. In the morning, when I opened it, there gushed out a delicious vapor, and the dish of beans and pork, brown and crisp came forth hot and fit for a king.

One article I needed very badly was soap. I had tried to wash my clothing several times, but it was quite filthy notwithstanding these attempts. My entire wardrobe consisted of a heavy woollen shirt, a pair of tough moleskin pantaloons, a home-made hat, and a stout pair of shoes. Socks I had none, as the single pair I brought on shore were entirely worn out. Latterly I had made a practice of going barefoot, except on extended excursions through the jungle and over the rocks. With plenty of wood ashes and pig fat at hand why should I not make soap? I rigged up a leaching apparatus thus: in the bottom of a huge gourd I pierced several holes, and laid over them a layer of grass so that the ashes would not stop them up; then I filled the gourd with alternate layers of grass and ashes to the top, and poured in fresh water as long as it would absorb any. In a little while the lye began to drip out of the holes into a vessel placed beneath to receive it. By changing and renewing the ashes several times I finally collected a kettle full of the lye. This I placed over the fire and boiled until it had lost two thirds of its volume. Then I put into the boiling lye strips and pieces of fat pork until it would dissolve no more, keeping up the boiling slowly all the time. The result was a good article of light colored soap of a jelly-like consistency. Its use both upon my clothing and myself was a luxury indeed.

One day I burned some lime and mixed a whitewash, which with a cocoa-husk swab I applied to the interior walls of the house, changing them to a dazzling white and rendering the whole interior light and cheerful; which was a great comfort on dark days when I was confined there. Moreover, it gave the place an air of wholesomeness and neatness that was very home-like. As a further improvement I made a bed of soil at each end of the porch and transplanted some flowering vines and creepers of several varieties; I also made a half-dozen hills in front of the house, carrying and filling in these spots a quantity of rich muck, and planted sweet potatoes that they might spread their vines over the sand. The garden which I had made before the rains set in was now in thriving condition, all the peas and beans being up and the potato-vines in blossom.

My diet was now varied and healthful enough; but I lacked one article of food that I longed for and felt the need of more and more every day,—and that was bread, the staff of life. Parched-seed gruel was a very poor substitute indeed, and at last I got so hungry for a taste of bread that I determined to make some out of the Indian corn.

So one day I made a basket and started across the island to bring home a supply of the corn. All the way over I kept a good lookout for a suitable gritty stone, that could be used to grind the corn, and found several that I thought might answer the purpose fairly well; but one sample—being a slab of grit-stone having a rough, pocked surface with small hard bits of chalcedony interspersed throughout—was so superior in quality to all the rest that I concluded I could do no better if I sought the island over. This slab, which was quite as much as I could carry, I laid against a tree where I could easily find it, and went on my way to “Farm Cove.” I had not been here since the great storm, and was surprised to see how quickly and fully all traces of the hurricane had disappeared. The corn was all right, the husks had fully dried, and the heap lying on the rocks had not suffered from the rains. I filled my basket,—a good bushel,—and immediately came home, returning forthwith for the slab of grit-stone. Duke treed another raccoon, which we captured by cutting down the tree, and then with our plunder and the stone we managed to get home at nightfall.

The next day it began again to rain in intermittent showers; raining and shining alternately, as in the April weather of northern latitudes. After building a fire and heating up the oven and putting in the raccoon to bake, with some yams for dinner, I went to work on my stone slab. First I broke off a good piece the full width of the slab in length, and about six inches in width to use as a grinder. With the back of the axe I hammered and dressed this as smooth as I could. Then I went at the slab itself, pounding it with the axe and breaking it at the edges until it was formed into a reasonably smooth, rectangular shape two feet long by one foot in width. I now sprinkled the face of the slab with wet sand and water, and placing it in an inclined position, rubbed the grinder up and down upon it, feeding on fresh sand and water from time to time, as it lost its cutting properties.

This was slow, hard, tedious work, and the progress made was so gradual that it called for all my will to keep at it. Perseverance, however, will finally conquer most obstacles, and this was a mere question of muscle and will-power struggling against a hard grit-stone. The stone was fated finally to yield; but it took me two days of hard work to get it into the right shape. All this for a piece of corn bread, and the bread not yet forthcoming.