In the Sargasso Sea / A Novel

by Thomas A. Janvier

For a minute or two I was quite dazed by my discovery; and then as I got steadier—or got crazier, perhaps I ought to say—nothing would serve me but that I must get down to where my treasure was, so that my eyes might see it and that I might touch it with my hands. And with that I caught at the tackle and gave a tug on the ropes to test them, and as they held I swung to them to slide down—and the moment that my full weight was on them they snapped like punk, and down I went feet foremost and struck on the tiers of boxes with a bang. As I fell only a little way, and upon a level surface—for I went clear of the box to which the tackle was made fast—no harm came to me; but under my feet I felt the rotten wood going squashily, and then beneath it something firm and hard. And when I got back my balance and looked down eagerly my eyes caught a dull gleam in the semi-darkness, and then made out beneath my feet a mass of yellow ingots: and I gave a great shout—that seemed to be forced out of me to keep my heart from bursting—for I knew that I was standing on bars of gold!

XXV

I AM THE MASTER OF A GREAT TREASURE

For a while, down in that black little place, I was quite a crazy creature; being so stirred by my finding this great store of riches that I went to dancing and singing there—and was not a bit bothered by the vile stench rising from the rotten wood that my feet sent flying, nor by the still viler stench rising from the reeking mass of rottenness below me in the galleon's hold.

And then, that I might see my treasure the more clearly, I fell to tossing the ingots up through the hatch into the cabin—where I could have a good light upon them, and could gloat upon the yellow gleam of them, and could make some sort of a guess at how much each of them represented in golden coin. From that I went on to calculating how much the whole of them were worth together; and when I got to the end of my figuring I fairly was dazed.

In a rough way I estimated that each ingot weighed at least five pounds, and as each of the little boxes contained ten of them the value of every single box stored there was not less than fifteen thousand dollars. As well as I could make out, the boxes were in rows of ten and there were ten rows of them—which gave over a million and a half of dollars for the top tier alone; and as there certainly was an under-tier the value of my treasure at the least was three millions. But actually, as I found by digging down through the ingots until I came to the solid flooring, there were in all five tiers of boxes; and what made the whole of them worth close upon eight millions of our American money, or well on toward two millions of English pounds. My brain reeled as I thought about it. The treasure that I had possession of was a fortune fit for a king!

I had swung myself up from the little chamber and was standing in the cabin while I made these calculations, and when at last I got to my sum total I felt so light-headed that it seemed as though I were walking on air. Indeed, I fairly was stunned by my tremendous good fortune and could not think clearly: and it was because my mind thus was turned all topsy-turvy, I suppose, that the odd thought popped into it that in the matter of weight my gold ingots were pretty much the same as the tins of beans to get which I was about to return to the barque—a foolish notion which so tickled my fancy that I burst out into a loud laugh.

The jarring sound of my laughter, which rang out with a ghastly impropriety in that deathly place, brought me to my senses a little and made me calmer. But my mind ran on for a moment or so upon the odd notion that had provoked it, and in that time certain other thoughts flashed into my head which had only to get there to spill out of me every bit of my crazy joy. For first I realized that since I could carry only the same weight of gold that I could carry of food my actual wealth was but a single back-load, which brought my millions down to a few beggarly thousands; and on top of that I realized—and this came like a douse of ice-water—that for every ingot that I carried away with me I must leave a like weight of food behind: which meant neither more nor less than that my great treasure, for all the good that ever it would be to me—so little could I venture to take of it on these terms—might as well be already at the bottom of the sea.

And then, being utterly dispirited and broken, I fell to thinking how little difference it made one way or the other—how even a single ingot would be a vain lading—since I had no ground for hoping that ever again would I get to a region where I would have use for gold. And with that—though I kept on staring in a dull way at the ingots scattered over the floor of the cabin—I thought of the treasure no longer: my heart being filled with a great sorrowing pity for myself, because of the doom upon me to live out whatever life might be left me in the most horrid solitude into which ever a man was cast.

For a long while I stood despairing there; and then at last the hope of life began to rise in me again—as it always must rise, no matter how desperate are the odds against it, in the mind of a sound and vigorous man. And with this saner feeling came again my desire to push on in the direction that offered me a chance of deliverance—leaving all my treasure behind me, since it was worth less to me than food; and presently came the farther hope that when I had succeeded in finding a way out of my sea-prison, and so was sure of my life once more, I might be able to return to the galleon and take away with me at least some portion of the great riches that I had found.