The Tickencote Treasure

by William Le Queux

The storm showed no sign of abatement, and laying to as we were we received the full force of the sweeping gale. The skipper was asleep, snoring loudly, as was his wont, therefore I returned to my berth, and for a couple of hours watched the capers of the rats, until the motion of the boat rising and rolling lulled me again to unconsciousness.

Through the whole of the following day we lay off the seaweed-covered relic of the past until, in the red sundown, the wind dropped, and after several attempts the men secured a wire hawser to the battered prow, and when Seal rang, “Full steam ahead,” the Seahorse began slowly to follow in our wake, amid the loud cheering of those on board.

The Mysterious Man stood on the bridge at my side and watched the operation with an expression of complete satisfaction, although more than once, when he believed I was not looking, he would turn and shake his skinny fist at the curious old craft at our stern.

Our progress was slow, for the Thrush was never at any time a fast boat. And with such a dead weight behind her the engineer had to be careful at what pressure he worked our unsafe boilers.

The skipper, after consultation with Thorpe and myself, decided not to make for Valencia but to tow his prize straight to Gibraltar and on to London. As the great black hull with its shroud of marine plants rose and fell behind us it certainly presented more the appearance of Noah’s Ark, as pictorially represented, than of a sea-going vessel. One fact I now discovered that I had not before noticed was that on the bows above the broken figure-head representing a seahorse was a wooden crucifix perhaps two feet high; broken it was true, but still bearing an effigy of the crucifixion, while upon the breast of the seahorse was carved a Maltese cross of similar design to that upon the old silken banner.

The mystery of it all was the sole topic of conversation both on the bridge and in the forecastle. Every man on board tried to obtain some word from the castaway, but in vain. He became tractable, ate well, would not touch grog, but remained always silent. He would stand erect by the capstan in the stern for hours, and with folded arms watch the rolling hulk ploughing her way slowly in the long streak of foam left by our propeller. He still wore his faded velvet breeches, but his bare legs were now covered by a pair of woollen stockings, while in place of his ragged doublet he wore an old pea-jacket, and sometimes an oilskin coat and peaked cap. He still, however, clung to the rusty sword which he had chosen, a blunt but finely-tempered weapon, and often it would be seen poking from beneath his oilskin as he walked the deck.

Once an attempt had been made to trim his long white hair and flowing beard, but this he had resented so vigorously, threatening to spit the man who held the scissors, that the effort had to be abandoned. He thus gave them to understand that although he might accept their modern dress as a loan he would brook no interference with his personal appearance.

Who was he? That was the question which all of us, from Job Seal down to the apprentices, were anxious to solve.

The mystery of the Seahorse was great enough, but that surrounding the unknown man was greater. My own theory regarding the vessel was that in the early seventeenth century she had gone down or aground in shallow water, perhaps in one of the many coves on the Moroccan or Algerian coast, but the high prow and stern being closed down so tight both air and water were excluded. Those on board—fighting men, it seemed—had perished, but the buoyancy of the ship had been preserved, and by some submarine disturbance—volcanic, most probably—it had become released and risen to the surface.

The growth of barnacles, mussels, and weeds over the whole of the vessel from the stumps of her masts caused Seal to believe that she could only have been covered at high tide, and that she must have lain hidden in some well-sheltered spot where the force of the waves had been broken, otherwise she must have been beaten to pieces. He pointed out to me how some of the weed on her was only to be found on rocks covered at high water, yet if the theory were a correct one then she could not have been hidden in the Mediterranean, as it is an almost tideless sea.