Chapter XV: Out of the Depths

The village was long asleep when at last we issued forth, as blamelessly agitated a body of brigands as ever trod the corridors of night. We had taken our measures with infinite precaution, so that not a hint of our designs should leak out; yet still we had delayed, sitting, like the party in the parlour, “all silent and all damned,” while Dunberry sunk into deep and deeper unconsciousness of our conspiracy in its midst. We were assembled, in fact, in the rector’s study, Joshua, Mr. Sant himself, my uncle, and we two; and there we stuck, spelling out the blessed quarters, until the chimes of the school clock, coming in a flurry out of silence, called up a single rebukeful stroke from Time, and subsided upon it. So late as this, an hour after midnight, had we resolved to linger, to make assurance double sure; and at the sound, with a great pouf! of relief, we were on our feet and tingling to depart.

There had been no longer any question, of course, since our learning where the treasure was, or should be, concealed, of my foregoing my share in the attempt to recover it. No possible peril, within reason, could attach to this purely open-air sport; though, indeed, Uncle Jenico had made, even now, some presumptive risk to me the excuse for his joining us in the expedition.

It was a question, at this last, if he or Mr. Sant were the more excited. Our dear comical tutor and sceptic still made a show, it is true, of subscribing to a madness in order to humour a party of lunatics under his charge; but this affectation, I do believe, took in none of us. Was it not he, in solemn fact, who had insisted upon the necessity of this postponement of the foray until the small hours? Was it not he who had manœuvred to enwrap our plans in a profound mist of secrecy? Was it not he who had appointed the present rendezvous with a masterly eye to contingencies? As to wit: (1) His house stood remote, and we could reach the sea-front from the back of it, without ever touching the village; (2) A French window gave from his study upon the garden to the rear; (3) There was a little hand-cart for luggage in a shed in this garden, which cart offered itself apt to a dual purpose--(A) to convey down to the shore a pick and a shovel, together with Uncle Jenico’s colossal wrench, which, under pretence of its being submitted to some test, had already been brought to the rectory; (B) to serve as vehicle for the carrying back of the treasure.

On the top of all which, I ask you, was Mr. Sant the incredulous humourist he professed to be?

Whatever _he_ thought, however, Uncle Jenico was patently and irresistibly the enthusiast of the undertaking. He stumped along, dear soul, his face one moon of hilarity. The adventure was to his very heart. To be called upon, in _such_ an enterprise, to advertise the merits of _such_ an invention, his own! It was unspeakable--beyond expectation! He laughed constantly, holding my arm, and rebuking me for being a sluggard when I tried to regulate his pace lest he upset himself.

Harry trundled the cart, making the softest track he could manage, under the hill towards the Gap. It was a brilliant moonlit night, with a singing wind. We had brought lanterns; but had no need of them. It was near as bright as day, indeed, and we sped rapidly on our course, never having need to pause or pick our way till we reached the sands. The great shaft of the well, when we stood over against it, seemed to topple towards us, tragically anticipating its doom. The sight of it, so lonely and so ancient in this moon-drowned solitude, thrilled me with a sort of pity. It had stood so long, baffling the winds and tides, foregathering with such generations of dead and departed ghosts! And now at last man’s cupidity was scheming to compass the final ruin of what Nature had been impotent to wreck. Ah! a more fatal force than any storm! the one against which no monument, however venerable, is proof.

If the others were touched by this spirit of regret, they were sensible enough to subordinate it to the inevitably practical. While I was, literally, mooning, they had already lifted the wrench from the barrow, and were busy, under Uncle Jenico’s directions, getting it into position on the sand.

I can only hastily elucidate the idea of this machine. Pinned to a sort of frame, or trestle, which was anchored all round with stout grapnels, and shored up in front against a bracket, was a ship’s steering-wheel, which the inventor had picked up cheap at a marine auction. A good rope (length indefinite), to be passed round the subject of the proposed haulage, and its two ends then carried to the wheel and clamped, one on each side, to its rim, completed the design. So disposed, nothing remained but to turn the wheel by its spokes, when the rope would garrotte the object, and, mechanically contracting of itself, induce a forward strain.

Now, I know little about scientific values; but certainly in this case the result justified the means, as you shall hear.

We had got all in place but the rope; and then suddenly Mr. Sant drew himself up, scratching his head in an unclerical manner.

“Whereabouts is it to be passed round?” he said.

“O!” answered Uncle Jenico: “as high up on the shaft as one can reach.”

“My good man,” cried the rector sarcastically, “do you really imagine we are going to haul that thing over by tugging at its base, or near it?”

“It is tottering already. It is laid bare to its lowest course. These boys examined and proved it!” answered Uncle Jenico.

Nevertheless, I could see he was taken by surprise and dismayed.

“That may be,” said Mr. Sant, “but----”

He paused, shrugged his shoulders, and laughed out comically.

“O, it will never do!” he said. “We must give this insanity a better chance. By hook or by crook, we must get the thing fixed up near the top.”

I started forward.

“I’ll carry the rope up, sir. I know the way. Harry and I climbed it once before.”

“No,” cried Uncle Jenico, sharply and decisively. “I won’t have you go on any account, Richard!”

“Then it’s to be me!” cried Harry; and, as I muttered discontentedly, trying to block his way, he evaded me and ran for the shaft. Mr. Sant, trailing the rope, followed him, and in a moment they were under its shadow.

I chafed, watching them: but my relative was inexorable. And, indeed, to speak truth, there was considerably more risk in the venture than formerly before the storm. Harry, however, accomplished his part in safety; and, while he still dwelt aloft, holding the loop in place, Mr. Sant captured the two ends of the rope, and came running towards us with them. In a moment we had pulled them taut and clamped them in place to the wheel. And then we hailed Harry to come down, which he did, rather with a run, so afraid was he of missing any detail of the sport.

Uncle Jenico had already given a half-turn to the wheel, in order to clinch the hold of the rope; and now he stood in a tense eagerness, dwelling on the psychologic moment. He held, by right of patent, the larboard spokes; Mr. Sant, the port. The dear old man was so wrought up out of feebleness, that I was apprehensive of the part he insisted upon taking in the manipulation of his own design. He would not be denied, however; and who could have had the heart to disappoint him? Was not this the very first time that his genius for invention promised him a harvest of gold? He took a long breath, and tightened his hold on the spokes.

Joshua stood rigid, awaiting the result. Harry and I shook on wires, staring from the wrench to the shaft, and hardly stifling the exclamations that rose to our lips. It was a solemn moment.

“Go!” cried Uncle Jenico; and the wheel spun a little, stiffened, and began to cry ominously.

Something cracked; thank Heaven it was only Uncle Jenico’s braces! The old man tugged and puffed, wrestling with his task. Suddenly he staggered--the wheel seemed to give and spin away from him--and he was almost on his face. In the same moment I fancied the shadow of a night-bird had crossed my vision--and I looked; and where had been the well was nothing. It was fallen prone upon the sand, so wearily, so softly, that in that humming wind no sound of the concussion had reached us.

Hardly suppressing a cry of triumph, we dropped everything, and raced for the place. The shaft in falling had broken into three pieces, of which the middle one was in a proportion of two-fourths. The fracture nearest the base was only three or so inches in width; but the top fragment was quite detached, and tilted over a little away from the neck.

Where the shaft had stood was surprisingly little scar in the ground--nothing to see, in fact, but a pyramid of sand, which had run from the stuffed base of the well in its parting. Upon this we flung ourselves, scrambling and scraping like children about a burst sugar cask. We clawed, as badgers claw, throwing the draff behind us. A hole opened under our furious assault, and sunk, and deepened--and revealed nothing. We ran for the tools, and picked and dug like madmen. Presently Mr. Sant threw down his shovel.

“We are feet below the well bottom. Are you satisfied at last, Mr. Pilbrow?” he said, really in a quite quarrelsome way. He had been cheated, he felt, of the fruits of his own condescension.

“No,” snarled Joshua, “I’m not. Here was mud, perhaps, once. It was a loaded box of iron--we know that. It may have sunk far.”

Mr. Sant laughed offensively. The best of us bear awakening from engaging dreams badly. As for me, I had desisted from working when he did, and was sitting disconsolately on the lower part of the shaft, fumbling with my fingers in the fracture.

All in a moment the blood seemed to rush to my heart, making me gasp. I jumped to my feet.

“Here it is!” I screeched. “I’ve found it! I felt it!”

My fingers, burrowing through the crack into a choke of sand, had touched upon the iron-bound corner of a box.

They were all up and swarming about me directly. One by one, quite cavalier to each other in their eagerness to dive and feel, they exclaimed and fell back, Some people say that colours are indiscernible by moonlight. I can answer for the flush which suffused our rector’s cheek as he looked at Joshua.

But it was Uncle Jenico who commanded the situation.

“We must rope this lowest piece, and pull it away from the other,” he cried, full of bustle and excitement. “What a providential thought was this wrench of mine! Hey, my boys? Ha-ha!”

It was brilliantly the obvious course, and at the word we were all scurrying to put it into execution, Uncle Jenico directing us in a perfect and quite lovable rapture of self-importance. He and I, when the rope had been readjusted to its new position, hurried to manipulate the machine, while the others remained to watch the result of our efforts on the huge pipe of masonry. We seized the spokes.

“Right!” said my uncle, with a laugh of joyous confidence.

Now, I don’t know if the first test had amounted to no more than a little soft extra persuasion applied to an already tottering article. I know only that _that_ success was not to be repeated.

“Right!” said Uncle Jenico; and the wheel turned under our hands, tightened, and began to scream as before, only infinitely more distressfully. We strained our mightiest, putting our backs into it.

“It gives, I think,” said Uncle Jenico, in a suffocating voice.

And with the word, an explosive lash whistled by my ear, the machine bounded and pitched, and there were we rolling on the sand amidst a mad wreck of everything.

We were neither of us hurt. Uncle Jenico sat up ruefully. Mr. Sant came running to us across the sand.

“Anybody killed?” he panted, as he rushed up.

Nobody, by God’s mercy! It was the nearest shave. If I had had a whisker, it would have been shorn off, I think. The rope had snapped like a piece of string, and we were right in the path of its recoil.

“Anyhow, I suppose we moved the thing a little?” said Uncle Jenico.

“Not an inch,” was the answer.

“Eh!” cried my uncle. “I can’t understand. It must have severed itself on a sharp stone, I suppose.”

“That was the case, without doubt,” said the clergyman, kindly. “Well, there’s nothing for us now but to take pick and shovel, and dig out the pith of the thing. It will take a little longer, that’s all.”

Indeed, we found the other two, once assured of our safety, already hard at the job. It proved a tough one, for the silt inside from long pressure was grown as compact as mortar, and every fragment of it had to be chipped off and pulled away--a difficult matter, when from the depth of our boring it was no longer possible to wield the pick. However, we got through it, taking turns at the tools, and working now by lantern light, for the end of the great trunk was turned from the face of the moon.

Suddenly Harry, when he and I were once more hammering and shovelling together, uttered a stifled sound, and scrambled up, so quickly as half to fracture his skull against the roof of the tube. Then, holding his head, and squatting out backwards, he gingerly raked after him a little white thing--a human bone.

I scuttled to join him, and we all looked at one another.

“We’re coming to it,” muttered Mr. Sant; and almost on the instant, as we plunged in again to resume our burrowing, the end was wrought. A slab of concreted stuff, falling detached to our renewed blows and tilting outwards, let down an avalanche of loosened sand, and, slipping on its torrent--what?

We did not wait to discriminate. The dead, it seemed to us only, had come sliding and chuckling to meet us half way, with his, “Here we are again!” like a clown.

“It’s there!” gasped Harry, as we stood up outside. “Some one else must fetch it--not me: I won’t.”

Joshua dived on the instant: we heard him scuffling and chattering inside. And then he emerged.

“The rope!” he cried like a madman. “Fetch it--a bit of it--anything!”

I ran off, unknotted the shorter length from the wreck of the machine, and returned with it to him. He disappeared again into the tunnel, drawing the slack after him, and in a minute reissued, unkempt and agitated beyond measure, and disposed us all to haul. Without a question we obeyed, and, at his word, set our shoulders to a simultaneous tug. Slowly the capture responded to our efforts, and drew out heavily into the open--a great iron-ribbed box, with the upper half of a human skeleton chained to it by the neck.

Joshua seized the pick, and, before Mr. Sant could stop him, had parted at a blow the skull from its vertebræ. It leapt and settled, grinning up at us from the sand.

“That was basely done,” said our rector. “Take your spoil, sir. These poor remains are my concern.”

Joshua had thrown away the tool, and was standing, as if petrified, looking down on the chest. It might have measured a yard by two feet, and some two feet and a half in depth. The wood, under the corroded clamps of iron, was spongey, half-eaten by water, and, half-eaten, preserved in sand. But of the immense antiquity of the whole there was no question.

“We must secure what of these bones we can,” said Mr. Sant. “Well, Dick? Well, Harry?”

His quiet appeal overcame our repugnance. Once more we grovelled and groped in the bowels of the well. It was a gruesome task; but we fulfilled it. Excitement, no doubt--an eagerness to be done with it, and so earn the sweeter reward of adventure, stimulated us. At the end we had found, and gathered into a heap outside, all evidence that remained to mortality of that ancient deed of murder. It made one’s brain swim to look down on this wonderful tragic salvage of the centuries. It was all true, then--all true! And Destiny had made us her instruments in this unspeakable resurrection!

All this time Joshua, and even my uncle, had remained as if tranced. Now, suddenly, the former raised his voice in a shrill ecstatic cry.

“Poor Abel! poor fool! Come, let us load up! What are we waiting for?”

It was evident he was wrought far beyond any susceptibility to moral warning or rebuke. The rector perceived this, I think, and submitted himself to circumstance.

The truck was hurried up, and the chest placed upon it. It needed our united efforts to raise the thing; and at our every stagger Joshua sawed out a little jubilant laugh. We gathered the tools and the ropes and the ruin of the wrench, and piled all on top. Then we disposed the broken skeleton amidst, and started on our way home.

It was a hard pull now, though we all gave a hand to it. Three o’clock had struck, when at last, exhausted and agitated, we drew the little cart cautiously up to the study window, and unloaded it of its weightest burden, leaving the rest temporarily outside while we examined our haul.

The box had been stoutly fastened and secured; but the wood being shrunk away from its clamps rendered our task an easy one. A little wrenching with forceps, and the whole lid came apart, sinking upon the floor with a dusty clang. And then----

Sleeking and glinting through a dust of perished rags--piled to the throat, and kept burnished by the sand that had filtered in--a glut of gold!

Gold in rouleaux and ingots; gold in sovereigns and ryals; gold in angels and rose-nobles--near all of Henry the Seventh’s and Henry the Eighth’s reigns, and of incalculable antiquarian, apart from their intrinsic, value; gold in patens; gold and more in a jewelled ciborium; chased gold and ivory in an exquisite chalice with handles, and little queer figures of saints in rich enamel; gold in such wealth as we had never dreamt.

The vessels had been wrapped, it appeared, in soft skins of suckling-calf vellum, which had long crumpled into a floury meal, keeping all bright as blossoms preserved in sand, and easy to dust and blow away, We felt fairly drunk with the sight, as we gazed down spell-bound into that brimming reservoir of all wealth.

And then suddenly Mr. Sant had fallen upon his knees.

“O Lord!” he prayed, in a low half-agonized tone; “teach thy servant to deal rightly with this, converting it to fair uses, and justifying himself of Thy generosity.”

A little dead silence followed; and at the end Joshua bowed his head, and raising his hands clasped together, cried twice, in a firm voice--

“Amen!”

And so at last was consummated that wonderful and tragic tale of mystery and fatality, which had begun for me in the old court house of Ipswich. Truly, other things than hanging and wiving go by destiny.