Then my mind would wander away to plans for conducting my negotiations: how I should seek out a man whom I could trust, and how I should present matters to secure his aid and co-operation. How should I get the money? Ah, there were the pearls! I would sell them and possibly raise money enough myself. But would I dare offer these pearls for sale? Would not their possession excite the cupidity of others and cause them to follow me back to the island and come upon me in the midst of the work of securing the treasure?
And so my fancies came and went, until at last, overpowered by fatigue, I fell fast asleep in my chair, and was wakened an hour or two before break of day by Duke’s cold nose against my hand. Whereupon I sensibly went to bed and to sleep.
CHAPTER X.
THE CASTAWAYS.
IT was now the month of May and I had been about nine months a prisoner on the island. If all went as well as I hoped, I might be at home before the end of a year with money enough to redeem the dear old farm.
The morning was gray and gloomy, the wind still driving gusts of rain from the northeast, and the breakers yellow with sand rolling in on the beach, and dashing up fragments of weed and long streamers of bladder plant. There was a strong salt smell in the nostrils that such weather brings on the seashore; the gray, leaden clouds hung low and heavy over a dark, indigo sea, whitened far and near with foaming crests, like manes of racing steeds; the foliage gleamed silvery gray as the leaves were swept by the wind; and the willows along the creek bent until they dipped their slender branches in the stream. Occasionally a parrot or other long-tailed bird could be seen tossed and buffeted in an attempt to fly from one tree to another, frequently giving up the struggle and fairly drifting away to be lost among the foliage.
Notwithstanding the wet, I went about getting stores into the boat and preparing for the voyage. I filled half a dozen two-gallon gourds with water, and stopped them with well waxed wooden plugs, stowing them carefully in the bottom of the boat with due regard to her trim. Then I put on board the remainder of the dried turtle-meat, and set a ham on the fire to boil. I made two pans of bread, and put them, with pork, beans, yams, and potatoes, in the oven to bake. This food would all keep well. In addition I parched and ground up two or three quarts of seed for cold gruel. Everything was stowed away, and the boat in readiness by three o’clock in the afternoon.
There was but little sign of an abatement or change in the weather. I felt curious to know if my buoy still held, and as there was yet time before dark to go up to the north cape by way of the beach and return, I called Duke and started along the strand. About half-way there we came upon the carcass of a magnificent silver-sided tarpon,—a huge fish somewhat like a sea-bass,—that would have weighed probably two hundred pounds. It was dead when cast ashore, and so of course unfit for food. A flock of gulls were quarrelling and fighting over it, and as we approached they arose and filled the air in a great cloud. After we passed by they circled around, wind-buffeted, and settled again on their food, covering the beach, and hovering in a seething, hungry, struggling crowd about the fish, which must have been a rare feast for them.
I picked up a beautiful and perfect specimen of the fragile shell of the pearly nautilus, thin as paper, fluted and corrugated with lovely regularity, and tinted like the shaded petals of a blush rose. Rarely beautiful, divinely perfect, this sample of nature’s handiwork, cast up by the foaming, angry breakers amid the brown tangle of the shore and the foul-smelling ocean-weeds, seemed like a poem, a hymn in praise of nature’s God. I put the delicate and perfect structure carefully in my bosom to carry away as a memento of my island home.
We reached the cape, and I clambered up the highest rock from which I could obtain a clear outlook, and found my buoy all right, rising and falling with the swell, now submerged, and now reappearing, evidently tugging at its anchor-rope, and securely held thereby.
I thought how peacefully slept the ancient hulk beneath all this turbulence. Undisturbed by wind or wave it lay there slowly changing its tough timbers of Andalusian oak back into the elements from which they sprang. I thought, too, of the indestructible gold that lay buried there, waiting the fulness of time for its reappearance in the active life of man; how long the years had been since it had felt the grip of avarice or slid freely from the fingers of charity.