[CHAPTER X.]
THE PEARL DIVER'S PRICE.
However placid our adventurous Englishman might seem to be, he was a man, like another, to be dazzled by the play of his fancy, rendering almost palpable to his mind all the jewelled dreams of The Arabian Nights, where pearls and other sea gems play so brilliant a part, and are measured out in bushels by the heroes of those prodigious tales.
Now that he owned a fleet vessel, nothing seemed easier than to realise all these visions, and to succeed in obtaining the treasure indicated by Pepillo, so that, like another Aladdin, his fortune would enable him to eclipse even the dons of the European stock exchanges.
The first thing had been to obtain indisputable command of the ship. So he went to the port governor, a military man, who was incorruptible, and would, he could see, stand no nonsense from the robber chief and his more or less public allies; Colonel Fontoro stamped the transfer paper of the late owner of the Burlonilla, and authorised captain Gladsden to defend his property against all illegal claimants.
There were a score of American or English sailors knocking about at the port. Gladsden selected eight, added a North American Negro as a colour line, a Chinaman for cook, a Karnak to help in the diving, and a Valparaisan boy for the cabin. Ignacio he allowed to be his lieutenant "on trial," but protected himself by giving the second mate, Jem Holdfast, a Bristol man, a sealed order to take command in event of his absence for twenty-four hours without notice, or the American acting suspiciously.
There was a lack of the most important desideratum in his peculiar quest, pearl divers; Ignacio did not pretend to be expert, like his brother-in-law had been, spite of overmuch assurance in most pretensions, and the Karnak was doubtful.
As those waters were wont to have furnished a bountiful harvest of pearls to Spain—up to 1530 from the conquest, a million dollars worth had been sent home officially, heaven only knowing what supplement the tyrants had smuggled to the Jews of Barcelona, Cadiz, Lisbon, and Oporto—Gladsden cherished the hope that he would pick up some Indian, versed by innate inheritance, skilful and strong, if not any too honest. Though the pearl fishery on the West Coast was practically exhausted in the seventeenth century, still a few essay it "for their own hand." It is not impossible that notable pearls are still picked up, and secretly disposed of, as only the other day (1883, to be exact) one was found in the Bay of Panama, so large as to rank among the few celebrated gems of historical note.
The search for a diver was fruitless to Gladsden. The Indians, no doubt, scented a little coolie catching in the wind, where so rakish a vessel was concerned, and had no inclination to be carried to Ceylon and set to work at coffee planting during an engagement of 99 years.
Besides, with so ugly an enemy, the captain of bandoleros hatching a scheme to recover his property, with which don Jorge Federico was more and more delighted, so that he wondered it had ever been valued at only twenty thousand dollars, he ought already to have sailed. He determined to weigh, therefore, spite of his unsupplied want, obeying the rude alternative.