The Hispaniola Plate

"Well, well," says he, "we must see. Meanwhile I incline to it hailing from the Bahamas. For look you, Nick, 'Provydence' is good English and not Spanish, as most of the buccaneers are. And by the same token it may be the Provydence in our own American colonies. Moreover, the buccaneers as a rule put no markes in their crafts."

"Etoyle," says I, "is not English, though!"

"Neither," replies he, "is it Spanish. And," with his fierce lion look upon his face, he went on, "belong it either to English, French, or Spanish colonist or to pirate, they shall not have our treasure while we are above water."

So, all being done, we went back to rejoin the tender.

Now, when we got to her we heard that the Blackamoor had directed that she should proceed to a spot immediately on the other, or eastern side, of the reef, from which we had previously fished, since there it was that the old man, Geronimo, had laid down that we should find the wreck. So Ayscough had taken her to this spot, namely, half a league away from the Boylers, and we found all preparations made for a descent, Juan, the Buzo, being particularly keen to go down at once. But now we summoned our own diver-a straightforward, honest Englishman, whose name was Woods-to come and confer with us, and asked him what he thought. Then he told us that the soundings were good enough for a descent, since the bottom was not more than twenty fathoms below where we were anchored, and that the tallow brought up soft sand and limestone, which showed a good bed.

"Therefore," says Phips, "you can reach the bottom, can you not?"

"If not, sir," says he, "I can at least descend so far as to see the bottom, and if then I find the wreck it shall go hard but that I will get down to her. My diving chest can sink easily to forty feet, and with Mister Halley's3 new dress I am confident I can touch the bottom here."

"So be it," says Phips, "and now about the Black. Here you, sir," then he calls out to Juan, who was even now leaning over the gunwale, peering down into the hot sea, "come here and tell us how you propose to reach the bottom."

"That very easy, sir," answered he; "I have new dress Massa Woods lend me, which I am sure I manage very nicely. I go down if the Signor Capitan wish me."

"No," says Phips, "Woods shall go down first. And since 'tis a calm morning, get you ready now, Woods."

At once the man did this, going forward to where he berthed in the ship, and returning presently a strange figure to behold, since now he was all enveloped in Mr. Halley's new improved dress, all over cords for lowering and pipes for a-taking in the air.

"For," says he, "I will try this, sir, now, and see how far I can go down."

You may be sure all watched him with eagerness. For besides that we hoped he should find below what we sought, but a few of us had ever seen this dress before, and were almost afraid of what might come to him. Yet, he assured us, we need to have no fear; he had made many experiments and descents as trials at home in the sea and river Thames, and was confident of what he could do. So, as calmly as if he were going down the stairs of a house, he bade the sailors lower him over from the gangway, and descended by the lines he had arranged and was gone beneath the sea, and in a few moments there was nought but a few bubbles to mark the spot where he had been.

Presently we knew by a signal agreed upon with those who held the ropes, that he had reached the bed, and then by the paying out of his pipes that he was moving about. And so he stayed thus for some twelve minutes, when we also knew he was returning to below the ship, and then there came the next signal to haul him up again, which, being done, his great helmet with its fierce goggle eyes appeared above the water once more, he following.

Tied on to him he bore two things, one a great beam of wood in which was stuck pieces of jagged rock, which looked for all the world like the great teeth of some beast that had been fastened in't and then broken off-they were indeed bits of the reef-the other a great piece of limestone as big as my head, all crusted and stuck over with little disks or plates, which were, we found, rusty pieces of eight.

"A sign! A sign!" says Phips, taking them from him; "now get your breath, Woods, and tell us what you have found," and this the man did, puffing and blowing freely for a time ere he could speak.

Then he said, "Of the wreck, sir, I have seen nought, but surely I have found the track. All the bottom of the sea is scored as though some great thing had passed over it, and everywhere there lie great lumps of limestone such as this, and great beams such as that."

"Ha!" says Phips, and with that he takes the diver's axe and splits open the lump, and there, wedged in all over it, were many more rusty old pieces. "Ha! she has left a silver track as she passed along. Go on."

"So I do think, sir," says the diver, "and she cannot be afar off where I descended, unless she is all gone to pieces. And even then the bed of the sea must be full of all she had gotten inside her. But, sir, I think this is not so; I think she has been brought up short, for, close by, as I gather, is another reef."

"How far off? How far off?" suddenly called out the captain, full of strange excitement.

"Not two cables off, I think, sir," replies Woods, "since the bottom where I was begins to rise towards it, and therefore-"

"And therefore," exclaims Phips, "it is the reef itself! Marvellous strange it seemed to me that a great Spanish galleon should have shifted at the bottom of the sea-whoever heard of a ship that moved below the water! – yet all would have it so; even you, Woods, thought so yourself! But now I know all. She struck upon a spur of the reef and not the reef itself, and she has never moved. In which direction does the rise of bottom of which you speak begin?"

The diver look't round, tracing his course beneath, and then, pointing to the Boylers, or Bajo, said, "There, sir."

"Why, so 'tis, of course," says Phips. "And, as I say, her keel took the first, or outside spur of the reef as she passed along, and she never got nearer to the main one. She is there! She is there! Hearts up, my lads, we have found the treasure ship!"

I gave the word and up went a roaring cheer from all, one for Phips, one for the galleon, and one for what she had got in her, or about her, if she had broken up. Then Phips, all alive now, gives an order to shift the tender to the spot where Woods did consider the ridge of the spur should be, and bade the diver come along with us in it to go down again. Though, a moment afterwards, he paused, saying in his kindly way,

"Yet no, Woods. You have done enough work for to-day. You shall rest easy. Now, where is that Blackamoor? He shall go."

The negro came forward, his eyes glistening-perhaps with the hope of what he should find-and to him says Phips,

"Get you into the dress, or, since you are new to that, into the diver's chest; that shall do very well for finding of the reef, and, perhaps, the carrack-she cannot be afar. Come, away with you."

So, into the tender got the captain and I and the negro, and the sailors told off to her, and in a few moments we were apeak of the spot where Woods said the reef must be. And then to our astonishment-for we had never been this side of the Boylers before, and, consequently, had never seen any shoal water-of which, indeed, there was little ever-on looking down we saw, not three feet below the surface, the long sharks-toothed back of the spur.

"Great Powers!" says Phips, "'twas here all those years we wasted on the other side, and we never thought to even come round to this. Fools! fools! that we were. We might have had the treasure back into London long ago. Now," says he, turning from his meditations to actions, "now," to the black, "into your tub and down with you."

Nothing loth, for the great beast was as eager for gain as any of us, into the chest did he get and was lowered away, but scarce had the top of it sunk beneath the water when the rope quivered, then the signal was given to haul up, and back he came, and, jumping out of the chest, or bell, exclaimed excitedly,

"Oh! Signor Phips. Oh, Signor Capitan Commandante. The shippy all down there. Fust ting the chest knock on cannon sticking up in water, then against her sidy, then I bery much frighted, for I see dead man's head looking at me out of hole. Oh! Capitan Commandante, the shippy there, and she full of dead men. Oh! capitan, send Massa Woods down to see if I speak truf."

So you see we had found the ship

"And," says Phips, that night, as we drank together, "it is my thirty-seventh year!"

CHAPTER XV.

WHAT THE FIRST SEARCH REVEALED

Now, therefore, have I to write down of all that, having found the ship, we found in her. Yet how shall I begin?

Firstly, let me describe how it was with the carrack herself.

She lay canted right over on to her larboard side, the whole of her larboard forepart broke away and stove in, and crushed as would be an egg beaten in with a hammer. And in the fifty years-if it were so long-in which she had been there she seemed to have grown so much to the reef, or the reef to her, that they seemed part and parcel of one another. She must, we could see at once, have struck full head on, and the wicked teeth of the rock had torn her forepart to pieces. Whether at once she heeled over and sank was never to be known now, or whether she filled and sank after a while. Perhaps 'twas the latter, since, otherwise, it was not to be understood how those sailors whom Geronimo had known and danced with, and sang with, could, had she turned over in a sudden shock, have ever collected together the plate they had, and have gotten away in the open boat.

Aft, from the beginning of her waist above, she was not broken into at all, being quite sound Od her starboard side as she lay, though, as we found, her larboard side aft, which lay on the bottom, had rotted somewhat and bulged away, so that what was in her on that side was, indeed, lying on the sea's bed. Her masts and yards were all broke off short, and the broken pieces, into which the limestone had not wedged itself and so held them down, had doubtless risen and floated. And this must have been the case with the stern-rail which the old Portuguese had seen, though why that went adrift we never rightly understood, since no other part of the stern was gone. We found all this out later on, as you shall see, when we determined what we must do; but now Phips and I went apart to hold a conference, the first thing he said being,

"Nick, we have found the plate ship, therefore is one, nay, the greatest, of our difficulties over. But with this begins the necessity for great caution. For, see you, Nick, we cannot trust the overhauling of this ship to the two divers alone. We must know all that is in her, and we must see that all comes safe up and into our hands. What, therefore, shall be done?"

"Easy enough," says I, "to answer that. It's for you or me, sir, who are the responsible officers, to be divers too." This I said, for I had quickly caught his meaning. Then I went on, "As for myself, I will cheerfully go down."

"Have you ever dived?" asked he.

"No," I replied, "but I can soon learn myself to do so. Woods had never used this dress until a little while ere he came aboard the Furie; yet, now, see what he can do; and what he can, so can I. Therefore, unless you go I will."

He thought a little while-perhaps communing with himself as to whether 'twas not his duty to go-but at last he said,

"Well, that way is p'raps best. You shall go, but to-day-since it grows on apace-there shall be no new descent. To-night we will rest, and then begin the work to-morrow. That shall suffice."

So we did no more that day, only we signalled for the bark to come nearer to us and so anchored her a little closer to the Bajo, and then all who were in the tender went off and into her for the night, the spot by the reef being buoyed, though there was little enough need for that, since, now we knew where to look, we could easily see the shoal water.

One thing we desired to know, so sent for the black to tell us-namely, what he meant by saying that he saw a dead man looking at him from a hole.

"Oh! signor," he said, when he had come in to us, "oh, signor, I see him berry plain. He leanie right out of big porthole, his body half way out, his bony hands holding to the sides, his bony skull turned up to me."

"Nonsense," says Phips, "his hands and head would have fallen off long ago. You dreamed it, man!"

But the black asseverated that he had not dreamed it, and so we left it until to-morrow to see.

Now, when the morning came, at once we made our preparations for the descent. Woods and I were to go down first, he telling me that it was nought to do; that to begin with I should feel a suffocation which would soon pass away, and that, excepting I would seem to be surrounded by green glass full of bubbles, 'twould not be so very strange. Moreover, he told me to fear nothing, no, not even a shark if he came near me, for he would be more affrighted than I, since he knew not what I might be.

So down to the carrack we descended.

First went Woods, saying he would wait for me at the bottom to set me on my feet, and so, as easy as ever, over he went and disappeared from all sight, and then my turn came, and the sailors lowered me from the gunwale.

In a moment I was sinking through the waters, all blue and green and bubbling, passing as I went the cannon sticking up from its port-it had been left run out when the ship sank, and was a long Spanish one, its muzzle formed like a snake's mouth, and looking three times the size it really was, since the water much magnified it-and so down, seeing fishes dart all around me, looking with frighted eyes at my strange figure. Then I felt my feet clasped by Woods and placed firm upon the bottom, and I was there.

And what a strange sight did meet my eyes! Firstly I perceived I was not on the bottom at all, but standing on the upturned starboard side of the ship, quite near by the great cannon, and also to an open port. Yet, as she was not entirely canted over but lay at an angle, 'twas very hard work to support oneself steady, and I was very glad to cling to a stanchion for the time. But, now, Woods taking me by the hand did lead me up the chain wales and so over the bow, until I stood with him upon the deck, which was here not difficult; and then I look'd around.

The first thing to be perceived was that the whole of the deck was swept clean of most that had been on't, except such things as the hatch-hoods which were fixed, the after bittacle, the stumps of the broken masts, and so forth. The cannons, too, had slid down owing to the incline of the wreck, and did all lie huddled on the lower, or larboard side, and the hatches were mostly open. Wedged in among the cannon were some bones and a skull, so that now I knew that the negro had seen this in his descent, and had thought the black muzzle of the cannon was a porthole.

And now, Woods making to me a sign to follow him and pointing to my air-pipe-which, he had told me before he came down, I must by no means get twisted, or the air would cease-he set his foot upon the after hatch-ladder, and, so, slowly descended, I following. So did we go down to the middle deck, around which were placed the cabins or berths. And now I was to see a sight enough to freeze anyone's blood, even though so old a sailor as myself. For first we went into the main or living cabin, and there we observed what Death had done in its most grisly way. We saw huddled into a corner of it the clothes of a man and woman, within them still their bones, and they were, or had been, locked in each other's arms-the long hair of the woman lying close by the fleshless head. Then did we see in another corner another woman-her mass of hair pale and golden, like to an Englishwoman's, and in her bony arms she held also some little bones and a skull, which told a sad tale-it was a mother and her poor babe, who had perished together. And, around and about all, there swam and darted away as we drew near hordes of fishes, though 'twas long since they had made a meal of these poor dead things.

But now I could stay no longer, being as yet not used to my strange head-dress of copper, so I made to Woods a sign that I must go above, and so we went forth, and, giving of the signal, were drawn up to the surface again. And once more I breathed the air of Heaven and was very grateful therefore.

Then Phips took both me and Woods aside, asking us what we had found, and we told him-he sighing at the sad news from below-and also did we tell him how, as yet, we had done no more; so says he,

"Well, courage, Nick; when next you go down you shall find better than these poor dead ones-what think you, Woods?"

"I hope so, sir," says he, "since all around the main cabin are many sleeping ones in which there should be some sort of things of value, and then must we break away the middle-deck to get to the lower, where the plate, if any, should be."

"If any!" exclaims Phips. "Why, now, I do believe from all reports I got from Cuba years ago, that she is full of it! She was, besides being a galleon, taking home the Adelantado, or Governor, and his family, and also some others. If we find not a hundred thousand's-worth at least 'twill be little enough good for me."

Woods opened his eyes at this, for tho' all knew we sought for treasure, none knew that she might have so much within her; indeed, none had been told what she might contain. And, now that both ship and tender were apeak over the wreck and nothing could be brought up without being seen by all in them, there was no longer any secret to be made.

Soon again, after we had refreshed ourselves, we were ready once more to go down, and Juan the Black was to go with us, only both I and Woods were ordered by Phips to keep an eye on him. This brute was, as we knew, a Coromantee, and, from all accounts, they are not only the biggest thieves of all the Blacks but very ferocious as well. Moreover, neither the Captain nor I fully believed in his keeping us waiting off Porto only so that he might get drunk, and we knew not if he and the old Portyguese, or he and some other villains, might not have been concocting some precious scheme to defeat us.

But we had no dress for him, only a copper bladder-head, which, however, would do very well, since the creature was ever naked and certainly wanted no garments in which to enter the water, and was so strong that he said the water could not press on him to hurt; and so, taking the longest air-pipes we had for all of us, again down we went, all arriving on the middle deck one following the other-Woods first, I next, and the negro last. As we passed into the main cabin we saw the Black's great copper head bent over to the dead where they lay huddled, and then suddenly darted back, so we knew-or, at least, I did know-that to his other qualities he added that of fear and timorousness.

And now, seeing that on the bulkheads, or on the cabin doors, could be still read the painted names, such as "Capitan," "Teniente Po,"4 "Pasagero,"5 and others, I motioned to Woods to burst open with his axe the captain's door and let us see what was within. This was soon done, since in nature the woodwork was somewhat rotten, and, moreover, 'twas not fast, and so we entered, or clambered, into it. The bed, or bunk, which was very large and roomy, we could observe, even after the fifty years that had passed, had not been slept in since it was made; therefore we did conclude the captain was above when the ship struck, and so was lost. For the rest there were, all shifted into the corner of the cabin, two great heavy chests clamped with iron, and on them great padlocks, and these we decided must at once go up to the tender. So we lifted them up with much ado and affixed them to the slings, and then they were gotten up.

And now I was becoming so used to my strange habit that, beyond a singing in my ears that went and came, I felt no inconvenience, and was, though not rash, very busy about the main cabin. And in this way I entered into a berth which we made no doubt was that set apart for the Adelantado of Cuba, since all showed it to be so. The swords about the cabin, the rich clothes, though soaked with water, of both a man and a woman proved this to be the case, as did the great chests that had slipped about the place and the bed. And herein was another terrible and ghastly sight. In that bed lay two human forms, or what had been human forms once, though now but skeletons, the two skulls being side by side, the woman's hair being a great black mass upon the coverlet like a pall. So they had died together, he who had ruled Spain's greatest colony and she who had acted for Spain's Queen. And this was all left of their greatness! Poor things!

But we had to see to the chests and what was therein contained, since doubtless the Governor had much. And since they were bursted open, perhaps by the shock of the ship striking on the reef, we peered therein and saw things enough to make one gasp, even more than I did in my strange head-dress. For, lying in the water of the chests, or leastways of one chest, were golden plates and ewers and candlesticks and sockets, all of them set in with pearls and rubies, and there, too, were caskets, not open, but so firmly fixed and locked that very well might one guess what should be within. Also on this chest-for the others contained, as we could see, but wearing apparel for both of them-were many other choice things, such as comfit boxes, necklaces, the jewel'd orders of the Adelantado, the gems and brilliants of his lady, some jewel'd swords and daggers, and several great bags or sacks full of gold coins.

Verily it was a great sight for us to see-as for the Coromantee, he thrust his helmeted head so far into the chest that we had to draw him back by main force-and I could not but feel joyful that, at last, we were in a fair way of discovering of all. For it was not to be doubted that on the deck below we should find the silver itself.

But now we were signalled to from above to rejoin the tender, so, sending the black first, since it would never have done to leave him here a minute by himself, and I going up last, we returned back above the sea.

CHAPTER XVI.

AN HONEST MAN ARRIVES

Now when we got up to the surface again, I taking with me one of the bags of gold coins to show the Captain, we were very much astonished to see that, moored alongside of our ship was another-a small craft such as is known in England as a "snow," which is generally very fast in sailing, having a main and a foresail, as well as a trysail mast. And as I looked round after getting my head free again, I did see on her stern a great gilt star and the words "Etoyle, Provydence," so now I knew what she was, and, perhaps whence she came, or at least that she was from one of the Provydences. Leaning over her bows and watching us as we arose-with a twinkle in his eye, which squinted somewhat, when he saw the Coromantee-was a man whom I guessed to be the skipper, a great yellow person with a shock of black curly hair, so that I thought he must be a Mustee, and with a big slash, or scar, all along his face. And leaning over, too, were several others, sailors, all regarding us fixedly. Their eyes were set upon the bag of coins at once with, as I thought, an eager gleam in them, and then their Captain hails me and says:

"What luck below, shipmate?" to which I did but grunt a word, not knowing how things stood as yet. But now comes forward Phips, who says to him:

"Captain Alderly, this is our first lieutenant, who is in charge of the diving at present;" and then he turns to me and says, "Crafer, our friend has been here before-that is his ship's boat drawn up on the isle-and he thinks he should have a share of the spoil, since he found the wreck before us-so he says."

"Does he, indeed?" I replied; "'tis strange, then, that he took not away the spoil when he found it;" and I fixed my eye on him to see what he would reply, for since, as I say, we were moored close alongside, every word spoken on one deck could be heard on the other.

"Ay, ay," says that skipper, "and so I should indeed, and came here hoping to get all. But of what avail is hope? My little snow cannot fight your great vessel of two hundred tons, and we both sail under the English flag. And therefore, since I am an honest man and peaceable, I must, perforce, lose my chance. But your Captain says, sir," he went on, addressing me, "that I may have a percentum on what I help to bring up, and that must suffice. Yet, 'tis hard on an honest man!"