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

by Charles Sumner Seeley

In my vest pocket was a small metal match-box half full of matches, such as every smoker carries. But on examination it proved, as might be expected, that all the matches were wet and useless. Nevertheless when I got back to the landing-place, I laid them carefully out in the sun on a stone to dry, thinking that possibly one of them might be made to light.

I now turned my attention to the chest. This chest was one of four that contained my baggage; but which one of the four, or what this particular one contained, I could not conjecture. So I set about untying the rope wound around it, and soon had it free. There was fully forty feet of strong hempen halyard stuff in the line, and this in itself was a possession of value. The bunch of keys in my pocket enabled me without trouble to open the lock. When I raised the lid I found to my bitter disappointment that the chest contained those articles which would be of least value to me under the present circumstances. The contents consisted chiefly of books, stationery, sketching appliances, drawing tools and materials, and a photographic camera and outfit. Everything was, of course, soaked with water, and I hardly had the heart to take the things out to dry. The books and paper, as well as the photographic plates, were in a sad condition. The bellows of the camera came to pieces. I spread out the contents of the chest on the hot sand to dry, putting stones on such things as might blow away when they became dried. The lens of the camera I unscrewed, intending to use it as a burning-glass to start a fire, so that there might be no further need to eat raw gull. The burning-glass, which was of priceless value to me, and the rope were practically all the chest yielded that could be put to use, as I then supposed. The chest itself would of course be useful to me.

Eager to try the burning-glass, I collected some dry branches, leaves, and other fuel. In a ball or nest of dry grass, of the size of my two fists, I placed a little bunch of silky seed fibres collected from a weed. Upon this fibre I brought to bear the focus of the lens, concentrating the sun’s rays to an intense white spot, which almost immediately began to smoke with the heat. Presently the material commenced to burn, and I whirled the ball rapidly around through the air, whereupon the whole burst into a flame, which being placed among the fuel was speedily a roaring fire. In this manner I obtained fire as long as I remained on the island. As a mere matter of curiosity I tried some of the matches which had been laid out so carefully to dry, but, as might have been expected, not a single one would light. It was very fortunate, therefore, that I had the lens, as otherwise I should have been reduced to the necessity of rubbing sticks together in the manner of the savages, and probably without being able to get fire as they are said to do. Of course I did not need the fire to keep me warm, for the air was excessively hot. But it seemed so like a new-found friend that I built it high, and when there was a mass of embers, carefully covered them with sand and ashes that they might last and be ready for future use.

It was now nearly noon and my stomach became more clamorous than ever. I therefore cooked and ate the flesh of the other gull, which had been laid on the rocks to be cured. Although the flies had begun to attack the meat, it was, as yet, in no wise tainted, nor very dry. By dipping the pieces into the sea water I gave it, as I fancied, a perceptible flavor of salt. At any rate, though tough and a little rank in flavor, it tasted good enough and my only regret was that there was not more of it. I could perceive the gulls in great numbers flying about out at sea, but none on the shore, and concluded that they came to the land only at certain stages of the tide,—probably at low tide, when their food would be exposed.

Determined to lay in a store of provisions, I next turned my attention to the cocoanut palms and made another search for fallen nuts, but without any success, though I sought the whole length of the beach beneath the trees. It became quite evident that to get the nuts I should have to climb for them. As the nut-bearing trees were from fifty to seventy-five feet high, without a branch on their cylindrical stems from the base up to the feathery crown, the climb was likely to prove a difficult if not a dangerous task. However, selecting a palm with plenty of nuts on it, I made the attempt to “shin”—as the sailors call it,—up the stem. It was hard work, and the heat was so oppressive that I had to stop several times and rest on the way up and was very glad when I found myself at the top. I broke off and threw down a score of the nuts in all stages of ripeness, and then descended in safety.

The fruit of the cocoanut palm grows in clusters of a dozen to twenty nuts in each bunch, which hang immediately under the crown of leaves. Upon the trees they by no means present the globular hard-shelled appearance which is familiar to our eyes. Each nut is encased in a thick fibrous rind or husk; exteriorly this husk is of a sub-triangular form, about twelve inches long and six inches broad. Of the fibre of this exterior husk the well-known cocoanut matting is made, and also the coarse yarn called cöir; it is also used for cordage.

I carried the nuts to a shady place and stripped off the husk by means of a pointed piece of rock set upright in the ground. The smaller ones not yet entirely ripe were full of a sweet liquid, and the meat was soft enough to have been scooped out with a spoon; the older ones were also very good, not nearly so dry and hard as we find them in our northern markets. For the first time since the shipwreck I ate until my hunger was fully appeased. What the result of a long-continued diet upon such food would be I could not of course forecast, but it seemed probable that I need not starve while the nuts were plentiful. Those which were left from this meal I carried to the landing-place and laid them on the chest, where the land crabs would probably not get at them.

With this ample supply of food, presumably nutritious and certainly quite palatable, my anxiety was greatly relieved. Animal food I could probably obtain from time to time as the island appeared to abound with birds of various kinds, if I could have time to contrive some method of ensnaring or killing them. Then too there were doubtless fish to be caught, and probably turtle. In some of the islands, I knew, there were wild pigs, as it was a common thing for the people of Martinique to come to these small isolated islands on pig-hunting expeditions. I sincerely hoped that these animals might be found on Key Seven; for I felt quite confident of my ability to think of some plan for killing or capturing them. But there was no immediate need to go fishing or hunting for birds or pigs.

I determined to find, if possible, some means of getting a supply of salt before I sought for flesh food of any kind. With this end in view, as the afternoon was still young, I began looking about for a suitable place to serve as a salt pan. I walked along the beach for a mile each way, but could find no suitable spot. The requirements were a shallow basin near the sea, with the bottom impervious to water, which should hold in a shallow depth at least five or ten barrels of water. There was plenty of rock of a coralline limestone variety, and an abundance of shells; and the idea occurred to me that I might burn a supply of lime and thus make a mortar or cement of slaked lime and sand. With this material it would be possible to construct just above high-water mark such a pan or cavity as I desired. If I used shells to make the lime, there would probably be no need of erecting a kiln, as heat enough could be attained in a large open fire, by building it of several alternate layers of dry wood and shells.

I immediately set about collecting shells with which the beach was most plentifully strewn in all directions. As I had nothing in which to carry them, I adopted the expedient of throwing them one at a time into heaps. This was very hard and fatiguing work, and it was four o’clock or later in the afternoon before I had gathered into about twenty different heaps the four or five bushels of shells which I thought enough for a burning. It still remained for me to collect the scattered heaps together, and gather the wood for fuel.