Strange emotions of mingled joy and mortification filled my mind, on conceiving that I had made this valuable discovery—joy, that a vast treasure, such as that which filled the hold of this old shattered ship, lay there in secret and only known to me; and mortification, that if I perished on this most desolate isle, my bones might lie unseen and unknown for as many years as she had done.
If she was—as I doubted not—the Lima of the buccaneer history, of what avail to me were all the millions of dollars she contained, or which were strewed at the bottom of the cave wherein she lay? Twenty times that sum, had it been mine, I would have given freely, joyfully, to be away from the place of my involuntary captivity, on board the smallest craft that ever sailed the sea.
In the miserable little wigwam—the veritable rabbit-burrow, which I had constructed, I lay for hours that night, thinking of the wreck of the great Spanish galleon, and picturing the great iron-bound boxes of treasure that were lying among the weedy ruins of her gaping timbers—treasure existing there perhaps for me alone; and then I smiled mournfully, and almost with surprise at myself, and disgust, to find how, with hope, the demon of acquisitiveness began to fill my heart with the glow of avarice; and even while thus smiling I resolved, with dawn, to visit the scene of my long-hidden treasure.
CHAPTER LIV.
A SURPRISE.
During the whole of the next day I toiled to form a species of hook, from the iron sling of the topsail-yard, with which I had been washed ashore—using a long flinty stone as a hammer, and another as an anvil. Then I conveyed this impromptu engine (which I had lashed with a tough creeper to the yard arm) along the shore towards the cavern, where I intended to use it as a drag and lever.
On this evening, as if an adventure was about to be achieved, I was struck (I know not why) by the wild, rugged, and beautiful aspect of this lonely island.
About the cavern-mouth, the foreground of the view was a rocky beach, on which the waves of the Caribean sea were dashing in white foam, for the trade-wind blew freshly from the east. Outside, the breakers had that greenish-brown tint, peculiar to the sea when near shoal water that is full of tropical weeds. Beyond, rose lofty crags and rugged precipices, crowned by palm-trees, and cleft here and there into deep passes and fissures.
The time was evening now; the sun had gone down into the waste of waters, but had left behind the splendid tints of a windy sunset still playing upon the ever-changing masses of torn vapour that hovered about the quarter of his declension. On the other hand, the moon, (to use the language of Ossian) "full as the round-orbed shield of the Mighty," was rising, but obscured in masses of dark and opaque cloud, behind which her cold white lustre was spread over the sky, and glittered in sheets of silver on the rippling sea below.
It was amid a strange and wild, though not uupleasing combination of light and shade, sea and shore, moonrise and sunset, that I sought the weird cavern where the old weedy caravel lay; yet I felt something impelling me on—a craving after activity and excitement—though I had a horror of the loneliness around me. All my strength was required in handling the topsail-yard, with which I made three or four vigorous thrusts at the side of the ancient ship and tore away one or two pieces of mouldered plank, covered with shells and barnacles. At every stroke the plash of the water echoed mournfully.