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What I Found In The Sea
by
“At this the stock-broker, frightened nearly out of his wits, and with his hands still tied and the rope around his neck, made a dive for the companionway, and disappeared below. I stood up very bold; I threw out my chest, and gazed around in triumph. The air of the sixteenth century had saved me! Those men would have no more dared to attack me, as I stood roaring out my defiance and my threat, than they would have ventured to give battle to the boldest and the blackest of all bloody buccaneers.
“I now called the men around me, and I told them all my story. You may imagine that they opened their eyes and mouths so wide that I thought some of them would never get them shut again. But the captain–he was from Provincetown, Cape Cod, and he went straight to business.
“‘We’ve mended the leak,’ said he, ‘and we’ll pump all night, and it may be to-morrow we shall float free. Then we’ll form a company for the recovery of the treasure on that Spanish galleon. I will take one third of it; Mr. Gayther shall have one third; and one third shall be divided among the crew. Then we’ll anchor a buoy near this spot and sail away, to come back again as soon as may be.’
“Everybody agreed to this, and we all went to supper. Early the next morning a breeze blew very fresh from the southwest; then it increased to a gale; and before ten o’clock the waves began to run so high that one of them lifted the brig clean off the sunken ships on which she had been resting, and we were afloat. In ten seconds more we were lying broadside to the wind. Then indeed we had to skip around lively, get up some sails, and put her properly on the wind. Before we had time to draw an easy breath we were scudding along, far from the spot which we had intended to mark with an anchored buoy. There was a good deal of water in the hold, but the brig went merrily on as if glad to get away from those two old sea spectres of the past with which she had been keeping such close company.
“Of course it was impossible to beat up against such a wind, and so we kept on toward St. Thomas. The captain had carefully taken the longitude and latitude of the spot where we had been stranded on the ancient ships, and he was sure he could find the place again by sounding in fair weather.
“Before we reached port, he came on deck with the three gold pieces which I had brought up from the Spanish galleon. One of these he put into his own pocket; one he gave to me; and the other he gave to the crew to be changed into small coin and divided. The stock-broker got nothing, and I saw him no more on that voyage. I had sworn to break his head if my eyes ever fell upon him, and he was wise enough to keep out of my sight.”
“And that is all the money you ever got from the galleon?” asked the Daughter of the House.
“Yes,” said John Gayther, “that was all. I have the ancient gold piece in my room now, and some day I will show it to you.
“As soon as we could do it, we all went with the captain to New York, and there we organized our company, and sold a lot of stock, and chartered a good steamer with derricks and everything necessary for raising sunken treasure. But, although the weather was fair, and we sounded and sounded day after day at the very point of longitude and latitude where we had left the two great ships of the olden time, we never could find them.
“One day, just before we had concluded to give up the search, we saw another vessel not far away, also sounding. This we afterwards heard belonged to the stock-broker. He had chartered a steamer, and he had on board of her a president, a secretary, a treasurer, a board of trustees, and four derricks. We steamed away and soon left him, and I am very sure that if his company had ever declared any dividends I should have heard of it.”
“And that is the end of your story, John Gayther?” said the Daughter of the House, as she rose from her seat.
“Yes, miss; that is the end of it,” replied the gardener.
The young lady said no more, but walked away in quiet reflection, while John Gayther picked up the only pea-stick on which he had been at work that morning.