He rubbed his head to relieve the pressure on his brain, and to vivify his ideas. The incident which had occurred seemed to render the Hotel de Poisson an unfit place for him to remain during the balance of the night; but he was not willing to leave till he had examined the locality, and obtained whatever evidence it might afford him in regard to the mysterious couple who had met there. Kicking about the ground, he disturbed the fractured glass of the lantern. The globe had been broken, but the lamp was still whole.
Though Mr. C. Augustus Ebénier had a great many bright parts, he was inclined to be a "swell." He smoked a pipe on the forecastle of the yacht, but when he walked through the principal streets of Rockport, in his plaid pants and bobtail sack, he smoked an Havana cigar, with a meerschaum mouthpiece, in deference to his huge mustache—it was more genteel to smoke a cigar than a pipe. The steward carried a cigar case, which always contained two or three of the choicest brand, and he claimed to have brought them from Havana himself. In this case he also carried matches, which now promised to serve him a better turn than for the lighting of his cigar.
In a moment he had the lamp from the lantern burning, and was looking curiously and eagerly about the premises. The steward had an idea; perhaps not a very brilliant one, but as brilliant as could be expected of a man whose intellect had been so rudely jarred twice within a brief period. The conduct of the two transient guests at the Hotel de Poisson had been suspicious, to say the least. That afternoon the robbery had been fully discussed, and he was confident that the visitors were in some manner connected with that affair. His idea was, that the fish-house had been used as a place of concealment for the plunder. He made a hasty examination of the ground and the rocks which formed the first floor of the Hotel de Poisson, but discovered nothing to confirm his impression.
The steward crossed the place to examine under the rickety stairs. On his way he hit his head against a splintered board, which was hanging from the floor above, partly detached by his movement through the structure. It scratched the top of his head, already tender from rough usage, and thereby vexed and angered him, as slight accidents often ruffle even great minds. With a gesture of impatience, and a petulant word not in good taste for a drawing-room, he seized the projecting board, and gave it a savage wrench.
Mr. Ebénier was not a poet himself, but he was fond of the poets, and had perused Milton, Shakspeare, Beattie, Cowper, and Keats with real pleasure, to say nothing of having read Corneille and Racine in the original. The steward, therefore, was prepared to appreciate the poet's sentiment, "Oft from apparent ills our blessings rise." His impatient gesture and his petulant exclamation when the board scratched his head, indicated that he regarded the accident as "an apparent ill;" but, as he wrenched the board, a shot-bag, plethoric with gold coin, tumbled, with a clinking clang, upon the ground at his feet, narrowly avoiding his head, and thus saying him from being knocked senseless a third time.
The steward opened his eyes, and regarded the bag as the blessing. He shook the board again, and another bag came this time. Then he pulled it away, and the sail which had formed his bed in the loft rolled down. Overhauling this, he found a third bag; and this was the last he could find. Picking up the lamp till it blazed like a torch, he renewed the search; but no more of these heavy blessings were available.
Mr. Ebénier was satisfied, and he set his lamp down on the ground, intending to open one of the bags, and ascertain the nature of its contents. Under ordinary circumstances the steward would have been too careful to set his lamp down so near a pile of dry seaweed as he did on the present occasion. But his mind was, probably, so confused by the hard knocks his head had received, and by the excitement of finding the gold, that he took little note of his surroundings. His thought was concentrated upon the bags of gold. He did not even think of the two men whose conference he had disturbed, and did not seem to fear that they would return and deprive him of his booty.
He was about to untie the string of one of the heavy bags, when a bright glare overspread the space before him. The pile of dry seaweed, which had been used to cover a sail-boat in the winter, was all in a light blaze. The steward tried to quench the flames with his feet, but his efforts were unavailing. The dry stuff burned like shavings, and the more he kicked, the more the fire leaped up and spit at him. He fought the flames as long as his courage held out, and then he "allowed" that the Hotel de Poisson was a doomed structure.
Taking the money-bags, he retreated down the peninsula towards the landing-place at the Point, lighted on his way by the burning building. Crossing the plank, he reached the shore. There was a dory there, and putting the three bags into it, the steward launched it, and pulled off to the yacht. The treasure was conveyed to the cabin, and deposited temporarily in a locker under a berth. The dory was towed back to the shore, and placed where the steward had found it, that no early fisherman might be deprived of his morning trip. Augustus was in a flurry of excitement all this time, and had not even considered what he should do with the bags. His present object was to secure the plunder so that it could not be recovered by the robbers; and, having done this, he was entirely satisfied with himself, and everybody else, except Dock Vincent, to whom he owed a balance on account, for that night's business.
There was an alarm of fire on shore. The bright glare of the flames from the Hotel de Poisson penetrated the windows of a house near Dock Vincent's, and lighted up the bed-chamber of a sleeping stone-cutter. He gave the alarm; the bells rang, the engines rattled, and the whole town was aroused from its peaceful slumbers. Hundreds of men, who had worked hard all day, lost two hours of sleep for an old shanty which was not worth five dollars.