Chapter 23

TREASURE.

"Gold! gold! gold! gold! Bright and yellow, hard and cold, Molten, graven, hammered, and rolled; Heavy to get, and light to hold; Hoarded, bartered, bought, and sold; Stolen, borrowed, squandered, doled; Price of many a crime untold-- Gold! gold! gold! gold!"

It was long past noon when the pirate returned to his island home, and the day was hot, for the sea-breeze had not made, and the tropical sun was pouring down its burning rays until the sand was roasting as in a furnace; the very rocks throwing off a trembling mirage of heated air, and the lagoon almost boiling under the fiery influence. The sailors, with aching heads and parched mouths, were swinging in their grass hammocks beneath the sheds; and, save the watchful vigilance of the men at the look-outs and battery, the little island was wrapped in repose.

Captain Brand, however, was as cool as a cucumber; and regardless of the heat, and indifferent about _siesta_, he drew the curtains of the saloon, and took some active exercise. First, however, he desired his faithful Babette to get out some camphor trunks and pack the contents of his splendid wardrobe. This operation was performed under the critical eye of Captain Brand himself, to which he personally lent his aid by stowing away, here and there, his caskets, trinkets, and treasures--those which had been presented to him by the unfortunate people who had the ill luck to make his acquaintance on the high seas, or in midnight forays on shore. Then the captain opened and rummaged cabinets, bureaus, and bookcases, making liberal presents to his trusty housekeeper; and, turning from that occupation, he had all his table furniture spread before him, when he made careful estimates of the value of the silver, china, and glass. This concluded, Captain Brand ordered Babette to furnish him a slight repast; and while it was preparing--the captain taking the precaution to bolt his handmaiden in her kitchen--he went quietly into his bedroom, and when he came out he bore heavy burdens in his muscular arms, all of which he laid conveniently near the trap in the floor. Then letting the hatch swing softly down, he lowered the heavy articles by the silk rope, as he had Master Gibbs, though not so suddenly, going down himself as nimbly as a rat after them. In the vault beneath, Captain Brand struck a light and set fire to a torch, which blazed out luridly, and illumined the dark excavation and passages like day. Going slowly on, with his burden in his arms, by the path by which we traced the padre, he came to the outer door, which opened into the fissure in the crag; and, after a vigorous effort, the beam was raised, and he passed out. Once outside, he felt his way cautiously, stepping clear of the stagnant pools beneath, and guarding his head from the jagged rocks above; and then, lighting his way over the stones which had upset the equilibrium of Don Ricardo, he crept slowly into an aperture on the right.

No serpents or venomous reptiles disturbed the pirate's progress; for, though there were plenty of them coiled or crawling near, yet their instinct probably taught them that he was a monster with a more deadly poison than themselves, and whose fangs were sharper, though his tongue did not hiss a note of warning. Captain Brand put down his burden and crept forward on hands and knees, the blazing torch lighting up the damp and dripping rocks, all green and slimy from the tracks of the snake and lizard. Where the narrow fissure seemed to end by a wall of natural rock, the pirate rolled aside a large stone at the base, and scratching away the sand, a large copper lock was displayed, in which, after pushing aside the hasp, Captain Brand touched a spring, and it opened. Then, exerting all the force of his powerful frame, a rough slab of unhewn rock yielded to the effort, and rose like a vertical door slung by a massive hinge at the top. Placing the large stone at the opening, so as to prevent the slab falling to its place, the captain stood the torch within the opening, and went back for his burden; then he returned, and squeezed himself with it into a small excavated, uneven chamber, where he sat down.

"Nasty work," communed the pirate with himself, "but a safe place to lay up a penny for a rainy day! Let me see. These two bags of doubloons, and the small one my Gibbs brought me, with those three, there, of guineas, and those sacks of dollars, will make about ten thousand pounds. That will make me a nest-egg when I retire from the profession and return to Scotland. They will have forgotten all my boyish follies by that time."

Captain Brand alluded to forging his father's name, and other little peccadilloes of a similar nature.

"And I may be elected to Parliament--who knows? It is something of a risk, perhaps, to leave all this pretty coin here, but then it's a greater risk to carry it in the schooner"--he argued both ways--"and then, again, damp does not decay pure metal. But," thought Captain Brand, "suppose somebody should discover this little casket in the rock. Ah! that's not probable, for no soul besides myself knows of it, and even the very man who made the door did not know for what it was intended; besides, he died long ago."

Captain Brand had forgotten, in this connection, that the man who cut out the stone chamber and door, and fashioned the hinge and lock, took too much sugar in his coffee the morning the job was finished, and died in horrible convulsions before night. Oh yes, that incident had entirely escaped his memory!

Captain Brand, having now thoroughly reasoned the matter out, gave each of the bags lying on the sand a gentle kick to get a responsive echo from the coin; and then creeping out of the treasure-chamber, he withdrew the torch, removed the stone, and the heavy slab fell again into its place. Then clasping the lock, covering it over with sand, and rolling back the stone, he seized the torch and quickly returned to the vault beneath his saloon. There, putting out the torch by rubbing it against the stone pavement until not a spark was left, by the sunlight, streaming through the loopholes around, he passed to one side and began removing the cases of cochineal, silks, and what not, near to the strongly-barred portcullis door, which opened toward the basin fronting his dwelling. It was hard work, but Captain Brand seemed to enjoy it; and even after he had arranged the packages intended for shipment in his _compadre's_ felucca, he began again. Going to the farther corner of the vault, he stopped before a strong mahogany door, and taking a key from his pocket, unlocked and threw it wide open. It was as black as night inside, floored and lined with wood, and emitting a choking atmosphere of charcoal and sulphur. Piled around the walls were some fifty or a hundred small barrels with copper hoops, and branded on the heads with the word "powder." Unmindful of the odor and the rather combustible material around him, Captain Brand again resumed his work, and rolled a large number of the little barrels toward the doorway, near the merchandise already there, saying to himself the while,

"I think that will about fill the 'Centipede's' magazine, and we must make a proper disposition of the remainder."

Hereupon Captain Brand, actively bent upon the work of disposing of his treasures, rolled out a dozen or two more of the little barrels. Strange to say, among the very few articles that were never presented to him, but actually bought of Señor Moreno, was this highly useful and indispensable material of powder, and he therefore set much store by it. And it was with a sigh of regret that the pirate stood the little barrels on their ends in a line across the great vault of the building, beneath kitchen, bedrooms, and saloon, and especially beside the square upright stanchions on which the interior of the building rested. Not content with this, he took a copper hammer and knocked in all the heads of the little barrels, and then, with a scoop of the same metal, he dipped out large quantities of the black material, and poured thick trains of it from barrel to barrel, sometimes capsizing one, but always particularly cautious not to rasp a grain of it beneath his grass slippers and the pavement. Then he took a piece of match-rope, and sticking one end deep into a barrel, he just poked the other end out of a loophole, to be in readiness whenever Captain Brand should deem proper to touch his lighted cigar to it.

"There," said Captain Brand, "that piece of tow will burn about thirty or forty minutes, and then--stand from under!"

Ascending the hatchway again with the agility of a cat, he drew up and secured the trap, and in ten minutes afterward he was freshly attired in a nice pair of India panjammers, a grass cloth jacket and vest--with, of course, the usual knickknacks in his pockets--and seated at table, where his busy housekeeper had placed a broiled chicken and a bottle of old Bordeaux before him.