The Treasure of Pearls 13 – Wraxall · Verses Across
Literature · Romance
The Treasure of Pearls 13Intervention
18
Literature · Romance
The Treasure of Pearls 13
Intervention
WraxallEnglish
The Burlonilla proved herself commendably swift. Had she been even a faster sailer, captain Gladsden would have never dreamt of going out to sea with a view of eluding anyone curious about the movements of the eccentric young Englishman, after the disappearance of Ignacio being reported to him. Search high and low, not a trace of the rogue. Spite of the sharks at Guaymas, capitán don Jorge was so convinced that the lieutenant of bandoleros was inevitably fated to adorn the gallows, that he believed the rogue had reached land, or, as the vice-consul could have given him a pointer, been taken into the scow of his famous colleagues.
Without being aware that the steamer was at the command of those who could be accounted his enemies, and would be sent in pursuit, or, rather better to say, since Ignacio was the pilot, would strive to anticipate him, the captain made all haste for the spot indicated on Pepillo's plans.
Since Ignacio had but a vague surmise to go upon, the Burlonilla passed Point St. Miguel without anything hostile arising, and soon cast anchor at the second of the islets, in a chain which were named after the knots in the rope girdle of St. Francis. But the seafarers, men supremely practical, who do not fetch their similes from afar, had also preferred to take the protuberances for a likeness to the knots in a logline, call them, Las Señales de la Cordonera de San Francisco. The good mission priests might protest, but the laws of the Medes and Persians are easily effaceable as compared with a name down on a sea chart.
Between the mainland, where a dreary haze hinted of the smoke of sleeping volcanoes in the rocky ridge of the peninsula of old California, and the string of isles, the brigantine was made secure by stem and stern.
The mainland was rugged, and apparently admirably abundant with vegetation.
There were giant palmettos tossing their feathery tops to every cat's-paw, in isolated clumps, among a verdant screen of varied trees.
Alas, for the trickiness of Dame Nature. That luxuriance was superficial, the verdancy that of worthless shrubs, cactus, and prickly pear, briar, vine and beach, plum, thorn apple and Dead Sea fruit. Behind that illusive foliage, sand, lava, stones, dust, formed the melancholy waste in which the scanty, wild creatures live in perpetual madness, induced by chronic thirst. Without irrigation, Lower California is an Arabia Petrae.
But as Gladsden had no intention to settle, he was content with the alluring, if deceptive, face of the country.
The first real annoyance was to find a small colony of Indian mongrels, painfully carrying on the re-raking up of the shells of the abandoned pearl fishery grounds. Their huts were picturesquely perched on rocks, the leafy roofs ornamented with gallinasos, fowls, more than half wild, which indolently hunted for food in the natural thatch of palm and brush. These born pearl fishers had been there so long, that they had laid out little gardens for ground and bush, fruit and vegetables, defended by live cactus. Above patches of sugarcane glowed the golden globes of orange and citron, amid deep green leaves.
As don Jorge Federico de Gladsden had come, not to scrape oyster shells, but to haul up a mass of pearls in a submerged box without desiring prying eyes to witness the operation, he allowed Benito to get the observers out of the way by simply hiring the whole settlement to go fishing at another point of the broken reef. From the brigantine they could be seen, without their being able to watch the peculiar fishing in which her crew were about to engage.
Fishing for pearls is a much more dangerous and difficult operation than is generally supposed.
Each of the several piraguas, or pirogues, or dugout canoes, as you please, had two men, stripped for diving, save an apology for bathing drawers, girded on by a rope. This retains to the left side a leather sheath for a heavy knife, not less than eighteen inches long and three fingers wide, sharp as a razor, intended to battle with the sharks and stripe backs, pez manta, a kind of galvanic ray of which the mere contact paralyses the victim.
The worst kind of shark, the tintorera, that is to say, "the dyer," promenades the Pacific where human beings congregate, and comes up the Gulf. One of the headlands on the east coast is named after this terror of the pearl divers. The tintorera owes its cognomen to a singular peculiarity, which reveals his presence providentially to afar off. Pores around his muzzle exude a luminous, gluey matter, which spreads over the entire body and gives him a glowworm like effulgence. Over and above this, the animal is next to blind, and consequently cannot go by sight alone to any point desirable. While, too, other sharks, to seize their prey, simply turn over on their sides, señor el Tintorera has to roll belly up completely.
When there are any such squaloid around the fishing place, no day passes without there being "knots to untie," between the divers and the tintoreras, as well as the pez mantas, and, almost always, the men only cut clear after horrible struggles.
When the diver takes his "header," his fellow paddles the skiff forward so as to accompany the plunger's diagonal immersion, whilst his rise is, on the contrary, vertical. This is done to pick up the swimmer at the very identical instant of his reaching the surface, his left arm laden with oysters and his lungs eager to catch air. Then he climbs in, takes the paddle, and manages similarly whilst his mate does the diving.
Good divers go very deep, the most famous can touch bottom at twelve and even fifteen fathoms, and can stay under for seven or nine minutes, but these are rare, the majority not surpassing four and five minutes, which is very pretty. The mated divers keep on by turns until they have brought up the requisite quantity of oysters. Their gains are miserable, and those whom captain Gladsden engaged were delighted to get a dollar a dozen. Many a shell has to be opened before any pearls are found; ten or twelve per cent is a good proportion for the enriched ones, and then again, many pearls are far from valuable. The basis of the estimation is the orient, as much as to say the lustre of the concentric layers, the "water," the roundness, and the size. Those worth a couple of thousand dollars are found on the South American coast, and still more seldom in "the Sea of Cortes," where we now are.
Whilst the hired Indians were engaged at this submarine toil, Benito and the two red men, old acquaintances of his, who would not have engaged themselves to another master, were searching the water at the side of the brigantine first, and latter, farther and farther away, accompanied by the yawl, two men pulling so that the two red men could rest calmly till they relieved the Mexican at the watery work.
For a time there was a growing belief that Ignacio's brother had lied, or that the chest had been burst by the waters churned up by the temporal, as is named the terrible wind, the West Coast counterpart for "the Norther" of Texas, or, at the best, moved it away into deep water. But Benito and his copper acolytes were expert in judging the aquatic "signs," and soon pronounced that the bluish tint that denoted a pearl oyster bed, showed a bright bar from a break in its continuity. The chest had dragged, but was not lost. Within an hour, all three divers being down at once, the old Indian came up and uttered a joyous shout on expelling his breath. He had a fragment of tarry rope. Next, Benito struck the trail, and came up crying, as soon as he could speak, that he had discovered the chest, the buoys had been eaten away by marine creatures on the tooth of time, and the treasure coffer had sunk, crushing into an oyster bed. The wounded oysters had exuded their pearly fluid and coated the strange object beautifully, and the shellfish had settled on it, but there it was in its lustrous and lovely mantle.
The yawl returned to the brigantine with this good news. It was coming on dark, so that nothing could be done till morning, but make ready a drag and hauling and lifting tackle, the hooks of which the chief diver and his aides undertook to attach, as confidently as others would work on dry land in open air.
Doña Dolores, whom, as a young bride, her husband had allowed to indulge in all her caprices--and heaven knows a Mexican girl, liberated by wedlock, so to say, paradoxically, has an infinity of tastes to gratify--had indulged in too much sweetmeat to have been a good sailor. As a consequence she was glad of the suggestion of Gladsden that, during the anchorage, she should remain on shore in the best hut of the little settlement. With the things landed from the Burlonilla the haquel (little hut) was made tolerable lodgings--a relief to the confinement of the brigantine's cabin.
The night was lovely, after a glorious sunset, when the reflections of the sublime play of orange and vermilion suggested why the early navigators were led to call those upper waters of the Gulf the Red Sea (Mar Rojo), rather than because the united streams of the Gila and Colorado pours, dyed with iron and copper, into the clearer blue.
In the deep, deep sky the stars glittered like diamonds of more than mortal polish. There was a mingling of air off the peninsula fragrant with wild flowers, of air off the Gulf, of tempered briny billows bumping the rocks of Cape St. Lucas, and of hot, dry breath from the mainland, rich with a honey like sweetness that cloyed. All was still, all was lonely, and the sole cry, at long intervals, was that of the lean coyote, stealing over the sands and mingling his starlight shadow with those of the giant cacti, shaped like colossal men brandishing maces and clubs, as he curiously regarded the brigantine. If a slight breeze ran along the shore it almost musically clattered the oysters clustered on rushes and mangroves, standing part submerged. Behind them the mesquite and acacia, and back of all the sparse woods on the rising slope: beyond that peaks well apart.
Once in the night watch the lookout reported a red fire gleam southwards like a fallen star quenching itself in the Gulf, and twice smoke was espied in the same quarter.
They knew it not, but it was Matasiete, after a search of San Luis Gonzales Bay by daytime, pushing the steamer into the shoals around the Islands of San Luis and Cantador. The double incentives of revenge and greed made the amphibious rascal excessively daring.
In the morning, therefore, Gladsden coming on deck early to have a tub in the brackish water drawn for his ultra-English custom, himself beheld the chaste Susana, full steam on, steering for the knots of the log line of St. Francis, and, logically, for himself.
It would have been hard to lose the prize just when he had verified its existence, as well as one may believe in a pig--we mean a pearl in a poke.
The Burlonilla floated two guns and a swivel, and no deficiency of small arms. The steamer had four ports, and canvas covered objects, one at bow and one at stern, were no doubt the complement of her armament. She came down to within two cables' length of the anchorage of the goleta, blowing off steam noisily, not to say threateningly, and there let her both bower chains run out. A kedge and hawser, let from the stern, enabled her numerous crew to moor her so that her broadside overawed the little brigantine. Before this manoeuvre, Gladsden was fain to believe it was only one of the smugglers which often run up the Gulf and await the result of the negotiation of the consignees and the port officers before returning to Guaymas or elsewhere, and discharging a cargo on which, thus, the Exchequer of Mexico is neatly defrauded and the public deficit is kept from lessening.
With his glass captain Gladsden had recognised as the officer on the steamer deck none other than the double traitor Ignacio. It needed nothing more to understand that the newcomer would stick at nothing on this desolate coast where the ship duel would have no seconds or interferers.
He was ordering Mr. Holdfast, after having pointed out the Mexican to him, to hurry all hands over breakfast with a little intimation that some of them would dine in paradise if they did not beat off the unwelcome visitor.
Suddenly the old Indian tutor and friend of Benito pointed shoreward. The canoe of the pearl diver was putting off with him and doña Dolores. Instantly, being a little nearer, and seeing the same sight, there was a bustle on the quarterdeck of the Susana, and there appeared in gorgeous array, even eclipsing that of the Chilian representative in which he had last been admired, the celebrated don Aníbal Cristobal de Luna.
