He took the skeleton in his arms reverently, and proceeded to lift it from the chair: He could not. He looked more narrowly, and saw a chain which had been fastened around it and bound it to the chair.
What was the meaning of this? Had the crew mutinied, bound the captain, and run? Had the Spaniards seized the ship after all? Had they recovered the spoil, and punished in this way the plunderer of three galleons, by binding him here to the chair, scuttling the ship, and sending him down to the bottom of the sea?
The idea of the possibility of this made Brandon sick with anxiety. He pulled the chair away, put it on one side, and began to examine the wooden wall by running his hand along it. There was nothing whatever perceptible. The wall was on the side farthest from the stern, and almost amidships. He pounded it, and, by the feeling, knew that it was hollow behind. He walked to the door which was on one side, and passed in behind this very wall. There was nothing there. It had once perhaps been used as part of the cabin. He came back disconsolately, and stood on the very place where the chair had been.
“Let me be calm,” he said to himself. “This enterprise is hopeless. Yes, the Spaniards captured the ship, recovered the treasure, and drowned my ancestor. Let me not be deceived. Let me cast away hope, and search here without any idle expectation.”
Suddenly as he thought he felt the floor gradually giving way beneath him. He started, but before he could move or even think in what direction to go the floor sank in, and he at once sank with it downward.
Had it not been that the tube was of ample extent, and had been carefully managed so as to guard against any abrupt descent among rocks at the bottom of the sea, this sudden fall might have ended Brandon’s career forever. As it was he only sank quickly, but without accident, until his breast was on a level with the cabin floor.
In a moment the truth flashed upon him. He had been standing on a trap-door which opened from the cabin floor into the hold of the ship. Over this trap-door old Ralph Brandon had seated and bound himself. Was it to guard the treasure? Was it that he might await his descendant, and thus silently indicate to him the place where he must look?
And now the fever of Brandon’s conflicting hope and fear grew more intense than it had ever yet been through all this day of days. He stooped down to feel what it was that lay under his feet. His hands grasped something, the very touch of which sent a thrill sharp and sudden through every fibre of his being.
They were metallic bars!
He rose up again overcome. He hardly dared to take one up so as to see what it might be. For the actual sight would realize hope or destroy it forever.