"The next moment I saw the two men emerge from the bell and swim to the surface. Heans had been entangled in the signal line, but he managed to release himself, and Dewar bobbed up a few seconds later. They were too exhausted to say much, but Heans called to his partner, 'Never mind, mate, we haven't done with the damn thing yet.'"
These plucky seamen went down again and discovered considerable wreckage of the lost frigate. A Brazilian colonel, with a gang of native Indian divers now appeared on the scene with a great deal of brag about their ability to find the treasure without any apparatus. They proved to be pestering nuisances who accomplished nothing and were sent about their business after several futile attempts under water. They furnished one jest, however, which helped to lighten the toil. The bell was being lowered when one of these natives, or caboclos, slid over the side of the boat and disappeared in the green depths. In a few seconds, the signal came from the bell to hoist up. Fearing trouble, the helpers hoisted lustily, and as the bell approached the surface, something of a brownish hue was seen hanging to its bottom which was presently discovered to be the caboclo who had tried to enter the bell. The men mistook him for an evil spirit or some kind of a sea monster and kicked him back into the water outside, and he could only hang on by the foot-rail, with his head inside the bell.
The first encouraging tidings was signaled from the small diving bell on March 27th, when a bit of board floated up from the submerged men with these words written upon it: "Be careful in lowering the bell to a foot, for we are now over some dollars." Soon they came up, from seven fathoms down, with their caps full of silver dollars and some gold. Captain Dickinson decided to push the search night and day, and the boats were therefore equipped with torches. It was a spirited and romantic scene as he describes it.
"Thetis Cove would have supplied a fine subject for an artist. The red glare cast from the torches on every projection of the stupendous cliffs rendered the deep shadows of their fissures and indentations more conspicuous. The rushing of roaring sea into the deep chasms produced a succession of reports like those of cannon; and the assembled boats, flashing in and out of the gloom were kept in constant motion by the long swell. The experiment succeeded to admiration, and we continued taking up treasure until two o'clock of the morning of the first of April, when we were glad to retire; having obtained in the whole by this attempt, 6326 dollars, 36 pounds, 10 ounces of Plata pina, 5 pounds, 4 ounces of old silver, 243 pounds, 8 ounces of silver in bars, and 4 pounds, 8 ounces of gold. After a little rest we were again at our employment by half-past five, and proceeded very prosperously for some hours, and then had to desist because of a dangerous shift of wind."
As soon as the larger bell and the giant derrick could be put in service, the happy task of fishing up treasure was carried on at a great pace. Unlike many other such expeditions, nothing was done at haphazard. The toilers under water "were first to go to the outermost dollar, or other article of gold they could discover, and to place a pig of ballast, with a bright tally board fast to it, against and on the inner side of the nearest fixed rock they could find. From this they were then to proceed to take up all that lay immediately on the surface of the bottom, but not to remove anything else until all that was visible was obtained. This being done, they were to return to the place first searched and passing over the same ground, remove the small rocks and other articles, one by one, and progressively take up what might be recovered by such removal, but not on any account to dig without express orders from me."
Life in the camp on Cape Frio had no holiday flavor, and while there was continual danger afloat, there were troubles and hardships on shore. "In addition to our sufferings from the wind and rain penetrating our flimsy huts, we were attacked by myriads of tormentors in the shape of ants, mosquitoes, fleas, and worst of all, jiggers. Many of the people frequently had their eyes entirely closed from the stings of the mosquitoes. At night swarms of fleas assailed us in our beds, while by day it afforded a kind of amusement to pull up the leg of one's trousers and see them take flight like a flock of sparrows from a corn-stack, while there might be a hundred congregated inside the stocking. Those little insidious devils, the jiggers, penetrated the skin in almost all parts of the body, forming a round ball and causing sores which, being irritated by the sand, became most painful and troublesome ulcers, and produced lameness to half of our number at a time.
"Snakes were so numerous that the thatching and almost every nook of our huts was infested with them. They were often found in the peoples' hammocks and clothes, and several were caught on board the ship. On one occasion, my clerk's assistant was writing in his hut when a rustling in the overhanging growth caused him to look up and discover a huge snake, its head extending several feet inside the hole that served as a window. He alarmed the camp, and muskets, cutlasses, sticks, and every other weapon were caught up. The snake escaped, but I received numerous reports of his extraordinary dimensions. My steward insisted that it was as big around as his thigh, the sentry said it was as big as the Lightning's bower cable, and as to length the statements varied between twenty and thirty feet. At another time, Mr. Button, the boatswain, went into the store, in which there was no window, to get a piece of rope. Going in from the glare of the sun, the place appeared dark to him, and he laid hold of what he thought was a length of rope, pulled lustily at it, and was not undeceived until it was dragged out into the light. Then he was horror-struck to find he had hold of a large snake."
In May, Captain Dickinson was able to send to England in H.M.S. Eden, treasure to the handsome amount of $130,000 in bullion and specie, and had every promise of recovering most of the remainder of the precious cargo. Then a terrific storm swept the cove, totally demolished the derrick, carried the large diving bell to the bottom, and made hash of the whole equipment devised with such immense toil and pains. Was he discouraged? Not a bit of it. He straightway set his men at work to construct new apparatus with which he fetched up more gold and silver, to the value of half a million dollars before he forsook the task. First let him tell you in his own words of that tragic storm and its results.
"At one o'clock of the morning of May 19th, it blew a perfect gale, the cove was in a far more disturbed state than I had ever seen it before, the seas rolled up the cliff to an astonishing height, and by daylight the cove was in a state of awful commotion. The spray was driven so wildly that while standing on the main platform, at an elevation of 155 feet, I was completely wet and could scarcely resist it. The waves struck the derrick with steadily increasing force, and I watched it with all the distressing feelings that a father would evince toward a favorite child when in a situation of great danger. By six o'clock the wind threw the waves obliquely against the southeast cliff, and caused them to sweep along its whole length until opposed by the opposite cliff from which as each wave recoiled it was met by the following one, and thus accumulated, they rose in one vast heap under the derrick stage, beat it from under the bell, and washed away the air-pump, air-hoses, and semaphore. The stage was suspended at a height of thirty-eight feet above the surface of the sea in ordinary weather, from which circumstances an idea may be formed of the furious agitation of the cove.