“Good morning, Billy,” I said. “Do you happen to know whether there are any firearms, or weapons of any sort, aboard here?”
“Yes, Mr Blackburn,” replied the lad. “When Father and Mr Barber agreed upon this voyage they decided that they ought to have the means of defending the ship, if necessary, and so Father bought a dozen rifles with bayonets, and three brace of navy revolvers, with a good supply of ammunition for both kinds of firearms. They’re in two cases, down in the lazarette.”
“Do the men for’ard know they’re aboard?” I asked.
“Oh no, sir, I don’t think so,” answered the lad. “They came aboard and were stored away a week or more before the crew was shipped.”
“Good!” I commented. Then, turning to Enderby, who also was present, I said: “What you said on deck, a little while ago, suggests to me that it will be a wise thing to have those cases up out of the lazarette without further delay. We’ll open them, give their contents an overhaul, and clean and oil them, ready for immediate use, if need be. We may not require them, but if on the other hand we should, the need will probably be so urgent that there will then be no time for preparation. We will have them up immediately after breakfast.”
Upon my return to the deck I found that we were just entering the estuary, the mouth of which was about three miles wide, the shore on either side being quite low, with, here and there, narrow strips of beach composed of sand and gravel. The low, flat shore on either side of the inlet was backed by ranges of hills extending inland as far as the eye could see, but whereas the low, flat country between the shore and the base of the hills was less than a mile wide on the northern bank, it ranged from five to twelve miles wide on the southern side. The soil was everywhere grass-clad, the grass seeming to be very luxuriant and about three feet high, while dotted about pretty thickly all over the plains were clumps of palmetto, palms, trees of various kinds—some of which would probably be the fruit-trees that had restored Barber to life—and big clumps of bamboo and scrub. I anticipated that it would be among those clumps of scrub that we should eventually find the treasure hulk, if indeed the craft actually existed and was not the figment of a madman’s imagination; and I also foresaw that our search for the hulk might easily be a very much more arduous and protracted affair than I had anticipated, for it appeared to me that every one of those clumps big enough to conceal the hull of a five-hundred-ton hulk ought to be examined. There was no need, however, for us to begin our search quite at once, for we were only entering the estuary, whereas, according to Barber’s account, the hulk lay some six or eight miles from the entrance. This assumed distance was of course a very vague and unreliable guide, and I therefore determined to take the ship up the inlet about five miles, anchor her, and commence our search at that point, gradually working our way upward. Meanwhile, the wind had come away far enough out from the southward to enable us to hug the southern shore as closely as we pleased; consequently although the breeze was light we made good progress, and within an hour had reached a point at which, I decided, our quest might very well begin. We therefore anchored, furled all canvas, hoisted out the jolly-boat, and, making up a search-party consisting of the four foreigners, Enderby, and myself, went ashore and began our hunt for a craft in the existence of which I had little or no belief.
Our chief difficulty was that we had no bearings to guide us. I concluded that at the time of Barber’s visit he was destitute of all means to make notes or records of any kind, for his story was set down entirely from memory, and was singularly barren of all information but that of the most general character; there were no little illuminating details to tell us whether we were or were not nearing our goal. The one solitary fact from which I could draw a useful deduction was that, at the time of Barber’s arrival in the estuary, he was very ill and weak, yet despite his feeble condition he was able to reach certain trees, the fruit of which restored him to health. Now, from that fact I deduced the inference that the particular fruit-trees to which Barber owed his restoration must of necessity be at no great distance from the beach, otherwise the man would not have had strength to reach them; hence, to find the spot at or near which Barber landed, we must look for a part of the plain where trees were growing within, say, two or three hundred yards of the water’s edge. There was just one such clump abreast the spot where we had anchored, apart from which I could see no others anything like so near the beach for a distance of fully a mile to the eastward.
I confess that I entered upon this treasure-hunt hampered by a very strong feeling of doubt. Of course I had ocular evidence of the existence of such a place as Barber had described as that where the treasure was to be found, for there it was, visibly before me. I was also prepared to lend credence to the story of the stranded hulk, strange as that story might seem, for I actually had personal knowledge of even stranger happenings than that; but it was the existence of the treasure itself—those steel-bound chests packed with gold, silver, and gems—that I doubted. According to Barber’s own story he was crazy when he drifted into the estuary, and, although he may not have known it, he perhaps remained crazy all the time he was there; and if it was indeed true that he had stumbled upon a stranded ancient hulk, that very fact may have so excited his disordered brain as to cause him to imagine the treasure. Looking back at the episode now, after the lapse of years, that, it appears to me, was very much my mental attitude with regard to it; yet, my doubts notwithstanding, I was determined to leave no stone unturned to test Barber’s story to the uttermost; consequently when, late in the afternoon of the following day, we actually came upon the hulk, my chief feeling was one of surprise.
There was nothing whatever of an exciting or dramatic character in the circumstances connected with our discovery; it was all absolutely commonplace; we were not even molested by natives, of whom we saw no sign from first to last. Having thoroughly searched, without result, the entire area of the flat country for a space of eight or nine square miles immediately opposite the spot where the brigantine was first anchored, we got under way again and, under fore-and-aft canvas only, moved the ship some three miles farther up the estuary, intently studying the country on our starboard hand, meanwhile, through the ship’s telescope, on the look-out for any object suggestive of a stranded hulk overgrown with creepers. And it was in this way that we found her, the telescope enabling us to identify her at a distance of fully a mile.
Arrived abreast of her, we again anchored the brigantine, and the same search-party, under my command, once more landed and walked straight to the hulk.