The First of the English 19 – Gunter · Verses Across
Literature · Romance
The First of the English 19Book 3 · The Daughter’s Dower
18
Literature · Romance
The First of the English 19
Book 3 · The Daughter’s Dower
GunterEnglish
To make preparations for this Chester’s time is desperately short. He must advance as rapidly as possible his action as to Alva’s treasure; besides this he wishes to guard most tenderly the good name of this woman who proves her love of him with every look of her eyes.
Therefore, after some half hour more of confidences in which the girl gives him one or two beautiful glimpses of her lovely soul, the Englishman, fighting with his very self, rises to go, reluctantly, lingeringly, but still—to go.
“Oh, not so soon,” pleads Hermoine. “You’ve—you’ve been away so long!”
“But I’ll be back to-morrow.”
“At what hour?”
“In the evening.”
“In the evening? Ah! That is many seconds from now.”
“I can’t come before, but I’ll be here as early as possible. For that you have my word.”
“Where are you stopping?”
“On board the vessel that brought me from the North, the Esperanza.”
“The Esperanza? The fort at Lillo is nearer to me!”
“At Lillo perhaps the commander would think me well enough for duty. I should have a garrison routine and would not be my own master to come to see you at my will.”
“Yes, you’re right. My wounded hero, who made that wondrous march over the drowned lands over there deserves a lazy month or two. All Brabant, Flanders and Spain rang with the glory of that march.” And the girl puts her arms about him whispering compliments that would make Guy very happy did he not know that they belong to the passed away Guido Amati. Then seeing his determination, she adds: “If you must go I’ll have three minutes more of you.”
“How?”
“By going to your boat to see you off.”
Putting her hand in his arm she strolls with him down the little path, the poplars throwing shadows on it here and there. Each time they reach a shadow they pause for a farewell—and as they near the boat each farewell grows longer and more drawn out, so it is many minutes before they reach the last shadowed nook and stand there listening to the sailors’ voices coming up to them from the landing. The men are making merry, having brought provisions and wine with them for their stay. Then the girl suddenly puts her arms about the lost one that has returned to her and whispers impulsively: “Oh, my Guido, if we never had to say good-night!”
“That time is coming soon.”
“Soon? Papa doesn’t even know yet.”
“Nevertheless the time is coming soon. I swear to you by this!” And Guy Chester, leaving Hermoine’s fair cheeks very blushing and her dark eyes in grandest brunette sparkle, walks down the stairs to the landing place and gets into his gig, in his heart a great determination to make good his words.
Curiously his boat does not drive up the Schelde, but turns the other way, and after a two hours’ hard pull, the tide being against it, makes the Dover Lass, in the cabin of which Chester has long and careful converse with Dalton.
The immediate result of this is that the long boat of his vessel is put overboard fully armed and equipped, and all that night and the succeeding ones patrols the Schelde in front of Dona Hermoine’s country house, guarding the slumbers of Alva’s daughter. For Chester has not as much faith as his sweetheart in the absence of all marauding Gueux, and has made up his mind that no other pirate shall carry off his treasure.
Then aided by the tide, Guy’s boat drives up the Schelde, getting to Antwerp docks in time to give him a few hours’ sleep before daybreak. On the first rise of the sun he is up.
Giving orders to Martin Corker, who is in charge, to hasten the landing of the cargo, which is mostly light silks prepared purposely for quick discharge, Chester receives astonishment.
“We’ve got too few hands to do it very quick,” grumbles the boatswain.
“How so? You’ve thirty!”
“Thirty yesterday—but Bodé Volcker, whose directions you told me to follow, came down before sunset last night and took off twelve men with their duds and bedding to sleep in the town.”
“All right,” answers the captain, but goes hurriedly up to the house on the Meir to find the reason of this.
Here getting immediate word with Bodé Volcker, who is awake and in his counting room, Guy finds that the merchant has entered into this business of treasure-stealing with true mercantile rapacity.
“I’ve got everything running now,” remarks Niklaas. “Leave the whole thing to me. You’d better not be known much in the matter. I have discovered easily enough from people about the docks that old Señora Sebastian, who is called ‘Dumb Devil’ on account of her infernal temper and lack of tongue to express it with, keeps a sailors’ lodging house for her dissipated livelihood, dividing her time between rum and sleep. Now the shipping of this port has fallen off greatly, owing to the accursed tenth penny tax.”
“Yes,” answers Guy, “the docks are not half full of vessels. But what has this to do with our matter?”
“This! As there are few vessels there are few sailors to board, and Mother Dumb Devil had only two last night, a Norwegian and a Frenchman. Now she has fourteen, twelve of your men, who occupy the balance of the house and have gone in there with their duds and bedding, each man of them carrying a large bed-tick filled with straw.”
“What is your plan?”
“This: we get the Norwegian and the Frenchman drunk—dead drunk; ship ’em drunk on a vessel of mine, and to-morrow morning they wake up upon the open ocean outside the Schelde bound for the other end of the world. Then we get Mother Dumb Devil drunk and insensible; fill up the two now vacant berths in the house with two more of your sailors——you have very careful men?”
“Yes. They know their lives depend upon their caution.”
“Then there is room for no more boarders and the house is our own for a few hours, in which we make our examination, and if all is right get the treasure of Alva; your sailors bringing it out each day, as their bedding——only the bed-ticks will be filled with doubloons instead of straw—next a new lot of your men with fresh bedding.”
“This is as good a plan,” answers Guy, considering, “as you could have hit upon. There is but one serious danger. Is the house watched by some of Alva’s agents?”
“That I have investigated, and I think no one connected with Alva or the Spanish government has ever been near the place since it was let to Señora Sebastian. But,” adds the merchant, rubbing his head, “that is what frightens me! Do you suppose such an astute man would take no precautions to inform himself of the safety of his treasure? Mark my words, there’s something in that Alva’s statue that we don’t know of.”
“If you’re afraid to make the venture, I am not,” says Guy determinedly. “I’ll take the risk.”
“Well, perhaps it were better you go in first,” returns Bodé Volcker. “You have the greatest interest in the matter. Then, if it should come to fighting, you would have a thousand chances to my none.”
So the matter is arranged, and Bodé Volcker does his part of the work thoroughly. Four hours after this the Norwegian and French sailors are drunk; the next day they awake tossing upon the open ocean, aboard a ship bound for the Indies, a cruise that will last three years. At dusk the merchant comes to Chester, who waits in his counting room, and whispers: “Mother Dumb Devil is dead drunk also; do your work.”
“Show me the place.” And Guy, taking Corker with him, is led by Niklaas to a street just on the town side of the Esplanade, where, among tumble-down dwellings as wretched and dirty as itself, stands the house of Señora Sebastian. One of Guy’s sailors lets them in, the merchant not even entering the place, only pointing it out from round the corner.
“Where is the mistress of the house?”
“Dead drunk upstairs, captain,” whispers the man. “She was raving an hour ago, but now she’s good for an all night snore—she’s a rum one—dumb, but snores like old Neptune himself.”
Inspecting the woman, Chester finds the report correct, and leaving a rum bottle handy to keep her quiet in any event—he comes down stairs and says hastily “To work.”
With this Guy and Corker enter the cellar and get to business by the light of a flickering oil lamp.
To Chester’s delight, after taking up the four stones in the center, he finds a heavy slab, made easy to handle by an iron ring inserted in its top. But it will not move to their combined strength until they use a crowbar. A hasty examination discloses that it has evidently been undisturbed for a year or two, and that time has settled and cemented it into its place. As they pry it up a little shaft is uncovered with a ladder leading down it.
This is scarce ten feet in depth, and lowering the flickering lantern, they see a passage leading from it in the right direction.
“Now,” whispers Guy to Corker, “keep watch here. If you’re attacked make the best fight you can and warn and save me if possible. If not, remain exactly as you are.”
“You’d better let me go with you, captain!”
“No, I’ll risk my own life first. I have the drawings, I have the light, I have the keys.”
First lowering the lantern to the bottom to be sure that there is no foul air that may bring him death, Chester descends and finds a paved passageway scarce large enough for two men to pass abreast, with a vaulted arch of masonry overhead. Striding along this, though his heart beats faster, his nerves act steadily.
Within two hundred feet from the bottom of the shaft he encounters the first iron doors. These are immensely strong, and would yield to nothing save explosion. Inspecting by the lantern’s light the instructions for the use of the successive keys, though Guy has already memorized them, he oils the first key with finest olive oil and inserts it.
The locks have evidently been left in perfect order and secured against all damp and rust. The key turns readily. Then the second is tried; again the wards yield; next the third with equal success. Withdrawing this Chester discovers how beautiful is the mechanism of the Italian, for the two immense iron doors would swing on their hinges to an infant’s touch.
So far the dying Paciotto has told him the truth.
He goes on more confidently. The second pair of doors, from the surging of the waters that he hears faintly above him, he knows is under the moat itself. These yielding with equal readiness to the talisman he holds, disclose to Chester the apparatus the engineer had spoken of, and of which he holds the drawing in his hand, the one regulating the valves that will deluge him with the waters of the moat if Alva’s statue is destroyed.
Following the directions on the paper, he disconnects these, shutting off connection with the moat, and to make things doubly sure wedges these valves in their places.
Then he passes to the third doors. These are the ones that will open upon Alva’s treasure house. His heart, which has been regular in its beats until now, begins to thump in spasms as he uses the keys carefully—almost lingeringly, as if afraid to see what is within.
Finally the wards yield three times, he presses the doors open, and holding his lantern in front of him would stride on, but suddenly stumbles, there is a clanking sound, and he falls groveling in the midst of bags of gingling coin. Then he holds the lantern up and gasps: “By heavens, what a miser’s sight,” and laughs, but very softly, as if he feared the twenty feet of solid rock and the great Bastion of the Duke that stands above it are as tissue paper and will let forth even his sighs.
Recovering himself he makes rapid inspection of the treasure, sufficient to know that there are four or five millions right to his hand.
Then he goes back and calling Corker to him, the seaman says: “Thing didn’t work?”
“Yes, it’s all right. Bring the men with you.”
Taking these with him he makes account of the treasure; and there are, as well as he can see—he may make a mistake of one or two—one hundred and seventy-nine bags of gold, each sealed with Alva’s arms and labeled twenty thousand crowns and about four hundred thousand Spanish silver dollars in some two hundred and fifty sacks. Besides these there is a strong case that Chester does not open, but guesses it contains jewels, plate and such pleasant things.
Leaving Corker in charge, he orders that each of the men carry out as many sacks as possible to the cellar and to continue this work until he returns. All this time he keeps four men heavily armed on guard at the entrance, and these have orders to defend the house from any sudden attack.
Then going along the dark streets to the counting room of Bodé Volcker, his step exalted and his mind on fire, Chester strides up to the merchant, who says to him—for he has not been very long upon this work—“No success—nothing!—a fool’s story!”
“A fool’s story worth five millions!”
“Hel en duivel! Five millions! God bless you, my noble boy. Let us go and get it at once.”
“No; there’s been no one troubling us,” jeers Guy. “For that reason it’s dangerous, Bodé Volcker.”
But Bodé Volcker can no more be kept from seeing Alva’s treasure than he could be kept from running away from it before; and he goes back with Guy to the house of Mother Dumb Devil.
Here he says: “Leave everything in my charge. I’ll get it out; every dollar shall be accounted for to you on the honor of a merchant.”
To this Chester answers: “The honor of a merchant is sufficient for me. But in our freebooter’s way, I have directed Corker to tally every bag and store every coin on the Esperanza. We’ll divide it at Flushing. But you get it out. You’re better at this business than I am.”
And in truth Bodé Volcker is, for his whole soul is in the transaction, while Guy has only half his heart in it, the best half being at Sandvliet with Alva’s daughter.
So the matter is arranged; the men are to carry out all the gold into the cellar during this night, then the iron doors in the gallery are to be closed again, all of them, and during the day Bodé Volcker is to transfer the treasure done up as sailors’ bedding on board the Esperanza. This his facilities as merchant permit him to do with little chance of suspicion. The next night with fresh men they are to bring out the silver from the vault to the cellar of the house and get it away in the same manner during the daytime, also the box containing jewels.
“When we have the gold I think we’ll have the main value of it,” says Bodé Volcker. “Meantime I’ll commence to put cargo into the Esperanza, to give commercial reason for the vessel sailing from Antwerp again.”
“You are commercially correct about this,” says Chester. With this he orders Corker when the gold comes on board to store it under the cabin in the place where the smuggled arquebuses had been concealed on their previous visit to Antwerp. Then turning away and looking at his watch he mutters with a start: “By heaven, eight o’clock! I can’t get through the gates of the town. I shall break my appointment.”
“Ah! At Sandvliet?” chuckles the merchant to him.
“Yes.”
“I thought so. But I can get you out of the gates now. Spanish troops no longer guard them. We have our civic guards on duty. Lieutenant Karloo, at the main port, is a friend of mine. I’ll go with you.”
At the city gate Guy finds very little trouble when vouched for by Bodé Volcker, as the Spanish garrison has been so reduced in Antwerp by drafts on it for the war in Holland that it is now only enough to properly man and guard the Citadel itself. The Fortress dominates the town and could prevent any rebellion or uprising, but the policing of the place is left entirely to the burghers themselves.
This also makes it easier, Guy thinks delightedly, to pass the gold through the gates and load it on his ship; there not being that discipline among the civic guards as prevails among the veteran soldiers of Alva. So it is with a light heart that Chester once more sails down the Schelde for the landing-place at Sandvliet, cogitating: “Now I’ve handled the daughter’s dower, I’m ready for Miss Hermoine herself!”
