Treasure Hunt Tales: The Star of the South & Captain Antifer. Жюль Верн
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without asking the why and the wherefore.
Kamylk and the captain took their seats in the stern, and reached the island in a few strokes of the oars.
The first thing to be done was to choose a suitable spot for the excavation; not too near the shore, within reach of the waves on stormy days, nor too high up to be subject to the risks of a landslip. A suitable place was found at the base of a steep rock on one of the south-eastern capes of the islet.
At the captain’s orders, the men landed the casks and tools, and began the attack on the ground at this spot.
It was heavy work. As the pieces of crystallized quartz were chipped out they were carefully put into position, so as to be used for filling in the hole where the casks were buried. No less than two hours were spent in digging a hole some five or six feet wide and long.
Kamylk remained at a distance, pensive and sad. Perhaps he was pondering if it would be better for him to sleep for ever by the side of his treasure? And where else could he have found a safer shelter from the injustice and perfidy of man?
When the casks were lowered into the excavation, the Pasha took a last look at them. Then it was that the captain imagined from the Pasha’s behaviour that he was about to countermand the order, renounce his intentions, and return to sea with his wealth. But no! With a gesture the command was given to continue the work. The captain steadied the casks together with lumps of quartz, and covered them with hydraulic cement, so that they became one solid mass, as compact as the rock of the islet itself. Then the outer pieces were put back in their places, and cemented, so as to fill up the cavity to the level of the soil. When the rain and storm had swept the surface for a little it would be impossible to discover the place where the treasure was buried.
It was necessary, however, that some mark should be made—an ineffaceable mark—in order that some day the seeker might find it. On the vertical face of the rock which rose behind the excavation the boatswain carved out with a chisel a monogram of the two K’s of the name of Kamylk, placed back to back, which was the Egyptian’s usual signature.
There was no need to prolong the stay on the islet. The treasure was safe in its grave. Who would discover it here? who would carry it off from its unknown resting place? Here it was secure, and if Kamylk and the captain took the secret to their graves with them, the end of the world might come without anybody finding where the millions were hid.
The boatswain ordered the men into the boat, while his Excellency and the captain remained on a rock by the shore. A few minutes afterwards the boat came to fetch them, and brought them on board the brigantine, which had remained at anchor.
It was a quarter to twelve. The weather was magnificent. There was not a cloud in the sky. In a quarter of an hour the sun would have reached the meridian. The captain went in search of his sextant, and prepared to take his meridian altitude. When he had taken it, he found from it the latitude, and then with the longitude, obtained by calculating the horary angle after the nine o’clock observation, he obtained the position of the islet within half a mile or less.
He had finished this, and was preparing to go on deck, when his cabin door opened.
Kamylk appeared.
“Have you got your position?” he asked.
“Yes, your Excellency.”
“Give it to me.”
The captain held out the sheet of paper on which was the working.
Kamylk looked it through attentively, as if he would fix the position of the islet in his memory.
“You will keep this paper,” he said. “And as to the log-book you have been keeping for the last fifteen months in which you have recorded our course—”
“No one will ever have that, your Excellency.”
“To be quite certain of that, destroy it at once.”
“As you please.”
The captain took the book in which were registered the directions taken by the brigantine during her lengthy cruise on so many different seas; and he tore out the leaves and burnt them in the flame of a lantern.
Some hours were spent at anchor. About five o’clock clouds began to appear on the western horizon; and through their narrow intervals the setting sun shot his streams of rays, which strewed the sea with scales of gold.
The captain shook his head, like a sailor whom the appearance of the weather did not please.
“Your Excellency,” he said, “there is a strong breeze in those heavy clouds, perhaps a storm to-night! This islet affords no shelter, and before it is too dark, I should like to get a dozen miles to windward.”
“And there is nothing to keep us here!” said the Pasha.
“We will go, then.”
“For the last time there is no need for you to verify your observations for latitude or longitude?”
“No, your Excellency; I am as sure of my position as I am of being my mother’s child.”
“Get under way, then.”
The preparations did not take long. The anchor left the ground, and was hauled up to the cathead; the sails were set, and the vessel headed north-west.
Kamylk watched the unknown islet as they left it until it disappeared in the shades of the night. But the rich Egyptian could find it again when he pleased, and with it the treasure he had buried in it, a treasure worth four millions sterling in gold, and diamonds, and precious stones.
CHAPTER IV.
Every Saturday about eight o’clock in the evening Captain Antifer would smoke his pipe—a regular furnace, very short in the stem—and plunge into a blue rage, from which he would emerge quite red, an hour afterwards, when he had relieved himself at the expense of his neighbour and friend Gildas Tregomain. And what caused this rage? Simply his not being able to find what he wanted on one of the maps in an old atlas!
“Confound this latitude!” he would exclaim. “If it even ran through the furnace of Beelzebub, I should have to follow it from one end to the other!”
And until he put this plan into execution Captain Antifer dug his nails into the said latitude, and punctured it with pencil-points and compass-prods, until it was as full of holes as a coffee-strainer.
The latitude which brought down Antifer’s objurgations was written at the end of a piece of parchment which was almost as yellow as an old Spanish flag:
Twenty-four degrees fifty-nine minutes north.
Above this, in a corner of the parchment, were these words in red ink—“Let my boy never forget this.”
And Captain Antifer would exclaim:
“Never fear, my good old father, I have not forgotten it, nor will I ever forget it. But may the three patron saints of my baptism bless me if I know what use it can ever be!”
It is the 23rd of February 1862, and this evening Captain Antifer is behaving himself as usual. He is in a howling rage; he is swearing like a topman when a rope slips through his hands; he is grinding away at the pebble which he has in his mouth. He is pulling away at his pipe, which has gone out twenty times, and which he has lighted again and again from a box of matches; he has thrown his atlas into one corner, his chair into another; he has smashed a big shell on the mantelpiece; he has stamped so as to shake down flakes of whitewash from the ceiling; and in a voice accustomed to be heard above a roaring gale he shouts:
“Nanon!