Never once in all this while, and my story is covering many days, was I visited by the palest shadow of a scheme of release. And why? Because the schatz—the treasure—the dollars and I were one. All plans of escape provided that I left my dollars behind me. But I wanted my money. I had lived in a golden dream. The abandonment of the treasure was an unendurable consideration. I believe I could have faced death on board that brig with something of coolness. The contemplation of it would not have been frightful; the calling of the sea hardens the sensibilities and accustoms the soul to more things than the wonders of the Lord; but I could not consider with coolness the idea of the men possessing themselves of the fifteen tons of silver, burying the half-million dollars in the Island of Amsterdam, then perhaps being unable to find out where they had hidden the money, or hindered by who knows what of the unforeseen from ever getting to the island again.
I say I fell half mad whenever my head ran on that forecastle device. The thought of it regularly threw me into a fever. I have walked my cabin for a whole glass or watch at a time, as bad a murderer as any man can well be in heart only, killing the crew in imagination over and over.
Yet not the leanest vision of a scheme offered itself. Suppose I had attempted to recapture the brig by slaughtering the men after the manner proposed by Miss Aurora; by her stabbing them in the cabin while I engaged their attention, and then by her and me shooting the others; suppose this wild, ridiculous, horrid proposal practicable—all the crew being hove over the side—what was I to do with the brig, I, whose assistants would be a woman and a tall, clumsy, idiotic lad? Navigate her to the nearest port? Ay, but that was just what I durst not do if I wished to keep my dollars. Greaves had been strong on this point; he’d touch nowhere—rather reduce all hands to quarter allowance than touch, lest by entering or hovering off a port he’d court a visit that should carry him every dollar ashore.
Well, then, since I dared not convey the brig to a port, was I to wash about the sea with Miss Aurora and Jimmy for my crew, until I fell in with a ship willing to put me two or three men aboard? Yes, that sounds nicely; but what would be the risks before we fell in with a ship willing to assist? Many days, many weeks might pass before we sighted a sail, for I am writing of the year 1815, when the ocean we were afloat on ran for countless leagues bare to the sky, nearly all the traffic steering northward, Mozambique way.
But what was the good of this sort of speculation? The crew were alive; I was one to ten; I was without an idea; and every day was diminishing something of the meridians betwixt us and the Island of New Amsterdam.
I did not in this time give Miss Aurora a lesson in English. I do not remember that she asked me to give her a lesson. We had many long earnest conversations about our situation, by which she profited, for I spoke mainly in my own tongue. She did not favor me with another song, she nevermore asked for the fiddle, nor did it once occur to me to request her to oblige me with a recital in the rich and beautiful tongue of her nation. Yet she was now speaking English very fairly well. She was seldom at a loss, and conversation was easy without signs, nods, or gesticulations, saving an occasional shrug of her shoulders, the naturally impassioned action of her hands when she talked eagerly and hotly, and the many expressions of face which accompanied her speech.
She did not again offer to assassinate Bol and the others; she had read in my face what I thought of that proposal, and her fiery and scornful flinging from me because I would not consent was a flare of temper that was out before we next met. On one occasion, however, we quarreled rather warmly, and I was sulky with her afterward for some days. She told me that I thought more of my dollars than of her life. I colored up and answered that that was not true; I valued her life, and would restore her to her friends if I could; but I also valued my dollars. I had worked hard for them, and was not to be robbed by the blackguards forward of a considerable fortune.
“You think only of your dollars,” said she; “you do not scheme, because your dollars are in the way of every idea. Is this how an English cavalier should treat a poor, unhappy, shipwrecked lady? Señor Fielding, I should be first with you; nothing should occupy your attention but the resolution to release me from this horrid situation and the dangers which lie before us;” and then she towered with her figure, and swelled her breast and flashed her eyes at me.
There was more of truth in her words than I relished to hear from her lips, and it was this perhaps that angered me. I begged her to advise; she shrugged her shoulders, and with an arch sneer which rather improved than deformed her beauty, said that if I were a Spanish sailor I would be ashamed to ask counsel of a woman.
“If I were a Spanish sailor I would be ashamed of myself,” I said.