The Treasure of Pearls: A Romance of Adventures in California
As those waters were wont to have furnished a bountiful harvest of
pearls to Spain--up to 1530 from the conquest, a million dollars worth
had been sent home officially, heaven only knowing what supplement
the tyrants had smuggled to the Jews of Barcelona, Cadiz, Lisbon,
and Oporto--Gladsden cherished the hope that he would pick up some
Indian, versed by innate inheritance, skilful and strong, if not any
too honest. Though the pearl fishery on the West Coast was practically
exhausted in the seventeenth century, still a few essay it "for their
own hand." It is not impossible that notable pearls are still picked
up, and secretly disposed of, as only the other day (1883, to be exact)
one was found in the Bay of Panama, so large as to rank among the few
celebrated gems of historical note.
The search for a diver was fruitless to Gladsden. The Indians, no
doubt, scented a little coolie catching in the wind, where so rakish a
vessel was concerned, and had no inclination to be carried to Ceylon
and set to work at coffee planting during an engagement of 99 years.
Besides, with so ugly an enemy, the captain of _bandoleros_ hatching a
scheme to recover his property, with which don Jorge Federico was more
and more delighted, so that he wondered it had ever been valued at only
twenty thousand dollars, he ought already to have sailed. He determined
to weigh, therefore, spite of his unsupplied want, obeying the rude
alternative.
On the eve, while the men were putting the finishing touches to the
seagoing trim, while captain Gladsden was in the cabin, lolling back in
a Windsor (Connecticut) chair, smoking and seeing Gladsden Hall rising
in a vast estate of new purchase like Chatsworth itself, the South
American page came to the doorsill, and announced the arrival alongside
of a strange gentleman, with the last provisions of fresh vegetables
and water.
Gladsden was in no good humour at the interruption, especially as he
conjectured that the newcomer was an emissary of the ex-skipper of the
pretty cotter. He was, therefore, about to rejoin that the cabin boy
and the uninvited caller might go to Hades in company, when the party
mentioned, probably of an impatient temperament, or too pressed by the
urgency of his case to stand on ceremony, caught the boy by the waist
belt, tossed him aside, and, leaping into the cabin, said as easily as
one could imagine and with a winning smile:--
"Be good enough to overlook the manner of my arrival, sir Captain, but
I _must_ speak with you."
Without any invitation he sat himself down on a locker, and pulling out
tobacco and paper from his sash at the waist, proceeded to roll up a
cigarette.
Rather taken aback by this abrupt intrusion, the Englishman took a long
stare at the speaker, who did not show in the least that the attention
was burdensome. Then he smiled, with a reflection which he did not
care just then to express. When the cigarette was made and lit, the
stranger, half hiding his handsome young face in a cloud of smoke,
leant towards his compulsory host with a somewhat mocking air, and
began:--
"Señor Capitán, I am of the opinion that, though you should reckon me
up by the hour together in the comprehensive style you are doing, that
would in no way enlighten you as to who I am."
"That is just where you are out, my friend," returned Gladsden, with
some Triumph. "It is I who know more about you than you do of me, or
rather it is you who are more in my debt than ever I hope I shall be in
yours."
It was the turn for the young Mexican to evince surprise, but he bore
the shock very well.
"There is an error, sir," he responded, after reflecting, whilst he
regarded the frank, hardy features over against him, repaying his
mocking air with a derisive expression which was full of fun, though.
"I have never seen you before."
"That is true, perhaps. At the time when we were face to face there was
the ugly head of a red Indian thrust between, a head, by the way, in
which I lodged a bullet, thanks to which your hair remains on yours."
"Oh!" exclaimed Benito Bustamente, in a gush of joy and amazement.
"Was it you whose shot rang in my ear like the voice of a delivering
archangel when that murderous savage's knife was hovering over my heart
in order to precipitate the death which his envenomed darts had failed
to inflict? How can I thank you?"
He sprang forward, let the cigar fly from his fine teeth, and seizing
the Englishman's hand, carried it effusively to his lips.
"Well, there, have done, do stop it, my good fellow!" said the other,
embarrassed, "I am heartily glad I saved the life of so graceful a
caballero, and more. I cannot say now, particularly, if your present
errand has anything to do with the occurrence which culminated in
placing you, mighty pale and 'gone' looking, at the mercy of that
scalping fiend."
"Something to do with it? All, all!" cried Benito.
They exchanged stories. When the Mexican explained how his despair had
goaded him into taking up the trail of Dolores, though ill fitted to
combat a horde of ruffians, the Englishman stayed him.
"I was on the same track," said he, "how singular! We might have fallen
foul of one another, and had a pretty mincing and slashing duet in the
thicket, that stormy night. Well, such a fatal blunder was not in the
books."
"Thank heaven! To proceed," went on Benito; "I found Dolores sheltered
from the rain in a hollow tree. She was like the dead, speechless,
inflexible, cold; but fortunately I carried the means of resuscitating
her. When she had been so revivified, I left her to await my return
with the steed I proposed stealing from a frightened herd which could
be seen by the lightning glare around the base of that Mound Tower. The
robbers were within the pile, I could move bodily; to my amazement, I
spied, on looking up, a man suspended as by a thread from the top of
the cylinder of brick. There, in another part, I recognised another
visage, hideous, demoniacally grinning, hovering over this doomed
wretch. A knife soon glittered in the hand of the cruel scoundrel. I
knew the peculiar profile, the thin lips, the chin and hooknose nearly
meeting. It was don Aníbal Cristobal de Luna, as he called himself,
the visitor at don José's, suspected then to be affiliated to the
salteador. I hesitated not a moment. I could not stay your fall, Señor,
but I was bound to revenge it, I fired with the untried gun, which
handsomely did its work, and the scream of don Aníbal, whose beauty I
had marred, was my reward and an alarm to his gang. But I had time to
select a horse, stampede the others, gallop to Dolores' refuge, place
her on the saddlebow, and flee round the terrified animals over the
prairie. When our flight became slower by fatigue, I lassoed a second
horse for Dolores, and we two rode easily on to Guaymas."
"Whilst I was carried away, heaven knows how far, luckily I fell in
with a couple of decent fellows, professional protectors of the cattle
from vermin, and they conducted me to the post, also whither they were
bearing their pelts. What a strange meeting! So your idea of humanity
was to shoot close to the ear of a man suspended fifty feet on high, so
as to startle him into the drop!" laughing. "Well, shake hands again,"
continued Gladsden, extending his hand.
"But you are alive?"
"I agree with you there. But if I had not fallen on something so soft
as a couple of horses, one of which obligingly bolted and took me out
of the robbers' camp, I should have been a pancake. All this thanks to
your _humanity_!"
Benito hardly understood this kind of jesting; but the ways of the
Anglo-Saxon are often incomprehensible to the Southern American, and he
did not stop to require an elucidation.
"We are quits, then; that is manifest!" said he.
"Which means we are both, with the very natural proneness of each man,
to overrate his vital value infinitely, under ceaseless obligation to
one another. What can I do for you?"
"Captain, you have been beating up Guaymas for a pearl fisher--a
diver of the rare old sort, who could go deeper and stay under longer
than the degenerate descendants of that almost forgotten man-fish
Miguelillo, of Tehuantepec, who, in 1620 or so, dived an incredible
number of fathoms, and brought up the 'Queen of the Gulf,' which
precious pearl, worthy of being called a 'Cleopatrina,' and dissolved
in an Imperator's cup, was, up to a few years ago, the largest gem in
the coronet of Our Lady in Saragossa Cathedral!"
"My learned friend, I want a diver, indeed. Only I mean to fish in
bulk; that is, draw up at one scoop a mass of pearls!"
"Did you never hear the men about the port mention one Benito Vázquez,
of the Upper Gulf?" went on the Mexican, without reference to this
announcement.
"Well, several did say that the person you name was the very man I was
feeling for. But no one had seen him for some time back."
"Benito Vázquez is Benito de Bustamente! Fond of the seas, acquainted
with an old Indian, one of the many who assert a descent from the early
kings, I know almost every inch of water, far below the surface, too,
from the mouth of the Gila to Cape Palmo. I am that diver!"
"Famous diver," said Gladsden. "My dear fellow, you will make my
expedition a short and surely successful one. You are the very man I
want. I won't say now, engage with me at a sum; but come, point out the
spot I seek, help me to drag up the sunken treasure, and as I live, I
shall turn my head whilst you dip with your cap into the chest."
"Are you speaking seriously, Captain?" demanded Benito, not surprised
at the sudden friendship he had excited, that not being an unexampled
event.
"Most seriously."
"Then our bargain is made. The conditions lie thus: ask me whatsoever
you will, my Englishman, and I will do my best to gratify it. On your
part, let me be accompanied on the voyage by my wife, doña Dolores de
Miranda."
"Is that all! Delighted to turn myself out of my cabin for the young
lady."
"Afterwards you will land me and her where I indicate."
"Right, but about your remuneration?"
"Not a seed of a pearl. I shall consider myself sufficiently rewarded,
if you loyally keep this arrangement, on which depends the happiness of
all my life."
"Señor Benito Vázquez de Bustamente," said Gladsden, rising and gravely
holding out his hand. "I read in some old newspaper which beguiled the
dreary watch, that your father, in resigning the Presidency of these
Mexican States, said: He retired with nothing but his family, whom
he would rear to be like himself, content with the grand but simple
ambition to be _good Mexicans_. You are worthy your father, who must
have been a fine gentleman! And I tell you, one such Mexican suffices
to make me reckon very little in the opposing balance a thousand
mongrels like that don Aníbal, the robber chief, and his citizen
allies. Bring the young lady aboard--she shall be the Queen of the Sea
here, my very sister!"
"By my soul!" cried the young Mexican: "You have a gallant heart, and I
anticipated little less from a seaman and an Englishman! So, the lady
is alongside at this very moment, in the dugout that I paddled out in,
awaiting the result of my pleading."
"Enough, the young lady shall have a stateroom, and even a sitting
room apart, for the carpenter can soon knock up a partition here.
No one but you and I, if I may be considered a guest now and then,
may enter there, and I never without you. It is needless to say that
Madam Bustamente shall be treated on my ship with all the respectful
consideration which is her due."
"Then the sooner we are off soundings the better. Both of us have
active enemies ashore."
"Not while my flag covers you. The fiery flag of England is one that
grasping fingers have been burnt again afore now, Señor. Now let's