I found no comfort in the lull of Skokum activities; I reckoned that the boys were reorganizing and getting ready for a really big slam. I felt as a timid girl must, feel in a thunder-shower when the thing is right overhead and there’s an extra wait between claps.
I continued to visit the tavern evenings and I came, into closer intimacy with Dodovah Vose. He brought, out old letters written by his brother and read them to me. In one Jodrey Vose described his venture on the sunken British frigate Triton somewhere off the coast, of Nova Scotia. She was bringing pay to the Hessian troops in the American colonies, so old reports had it. Jodrey Vose was more of a diver than a writer and his, letter had no frills. He informed his brother, who had invested modestly in the gamble at Jodrey’s suggestion, that the thing was a failure, though the frigate had been located by dragging and Jodrey himself had gone down and explored her where she had lain for more than a century.
Diver Vose stated bluntly that he believed, from what; he saw down there, that the Triton had been scuttled or blown up by certain of her officers, who secured her treasure, escaped to the main in small boats and reported her loss in a storm; tradition has it that there was always considerable doubt about that storm. Also, tradition has it that those officers settled in America and lived happily ever after. Diver Vose tried to help pay expenses by raising the cannon. But though they seemed sound enough under the sea, they crumbled into lumpy masses after they were exposed to the air.
“But I never begrudged the money I put in,” Dodovah Vose told me. “I got my curiosity scratched where it had been itching for a good many years, ever since Jodrey and I first began to talk about the Triton. And I helped my brother get something off his mind. He wouldn’t have died easy if he hadn’t made sure about that treasure. I stand ready to invest in another scheme of his if he ever gets ready to tackle it. That’s to go down and dig in the bottom of the river Tiber, providing he can fix it with the town officers of Rome. As near as we can find out from history, Jodrey and I, when the Romans wasn’t throwing their treasures into the river to keep ’em away from one another in their civil wars, the barbarians were up to the same game, because they didn’t enjoy art. And, of course, there’s always the treasure of the Golden Gate! That’s in modern times.”
But it was not in times sufficiently modern so that I knew anything about it, as my blank stare showed.
“She caught fire on her way from San Francisco to the Isthmus and was run ashore with three or four million dollars’ worth of gold ingots in her. That’s fact! But Jodrey says there’s been so much blasted lying done since by owners, underwriters, divers, claimers, and others, that nobody knows for sure just what has become of the treasure. That’s another of his hankerings—to find out!”
More and more did I feel the spirit of adventure stirring in me!
I could not understand why the whereabouts of that great treasure should remain in doubt, and so I expressed myself to Mr. Vose.
“There’s some sort of a mystery about it—and so far’s my brother is concerned he can’t drop regular contracts to go chasing dreams—only once in so often. That Triton case made a hearty meal for his curiosity—he hasn’t been hungry for high-spiced stuff since.” He looked at me with shrewd kindness. “Maybe he’ll let you go on that job after he has made a diver out of you.”
I felt a flush in my cheeks.