The Ship of Coral

by H. De Vere Stacpoole

With the knowledge of possession had come the fear of dispossession. He had not forgotten Marie, he had not foregone his desire to return to Martinique, but in the first wonderful hours with his treasure, he wished to be alone, to feel it live under his hand, to make plans as to safe disposal, to dream for a while the wonderful dream of wealth here, where there was nothing to disturb him but the gulls and the waves.

Besides, why should he grieve about Marie now? There was nothing to stop him from reaching her, the road was clear before him once he was free from the island, the least of those stones lying there in a glittering heap would give him his passage to Martinique from the ends of the earth.

He looked around at the far horizon—not a sail.

As he was standing thus with his hand in his left-hand pocket containing the pocket-book of Sagesse which he had not yet examined, he felt something beside the pocket-book. A round, hard disc. It was the coin he had picked out of the treasure pit. Rich as he was, this was the only coin in his possession. Then, sitting down on the sand beside his treasure, he began to sort the stones, arranging them in lines according to their colour. Some were unset, others had still clinging to them some fragments of the settings from which they had been broken.

There were seven rubies, all of the true pigeon-blood colour, the least of these was as large as one’s little finger-nail, the three largest were immense stones as big as the top of an ordinary man’s thumb above a line drawn across the base of the nail; it is only in rubies of the true colour and of this great size that the splendour of precious stones finds its ultimate expression. There is nothing in the inanimate world to approach them in magnificence and beauty.

There were seventeen emeralds, ten quite small and inconsiderable, and seven simply priceless, all save the largest, which was starred and flawed.

He arranged these beneath the rows of rubies. Then came the diamonds of which there were forty-eight, not counting the diamond in the ring lying where he had placed it by the jewelled snake. Some of these diamonds still had the gold of their settings clinging to them, the six largest were the size of hazel nuts and of perfect water. In any market of the world those six diamonds would have fetched thirty thousand pounds and have given a huge profit to the buyer, seven were about half the size of hazel nuts, but of these one was blue and it alone was a little fortune; of the thirty-five remaining three were sherry-coloured and the remainder pure white.

The great turquoise had no companion, he placed it alone on the sand beneath the diamonds, and then, under it, he began to arrange the sapphires; as he was doing it a shadow passed over him, it was the shadow of a frigate bird, flying heavily, gorged with its feast and making south; the same wind on which it was drifting brought with it the clamouring of the cormorants; he rose, glanced around and with dazed eyes looked over the sea, sweeping the horizon; there was no sign of smoke or sail and he sat down again to continue the jewelled pattern on the sand.

He counted the sapphires, two dozen and four there were, varying from cornflower blue to the blue of night, varying in size from the size of a pea to the size of a broad bean. He arranged them between the turquoise. The great amethyst he placed beneath the sapphires, and under the amethyst the spinels, and peridots, of which there were half a handful. The pear-shaped black pearl, the only pearl amidst all these treasures, he placed last.

The white pearl, the ring, and the snake were still lying apart by themselves; besides the stones arranged in lines there were a few fragments of gold, bits of settings, which he disregarded.