He was only a clerk in the Colonial Office, was Cecil Mitford, on a beggarly income of a hundred and eighty a year—how small it seemed now, when John Cann's money was actually floating before his mind's eye; but he had brains and industry and enterprise after a fitful adventurous14 fashion of his own; and he had made up his mind years before that he would find out the secret of John Cann's buried treasure, if he had to spend half a lifetime on the almost hopeless quest. As a boy, Cecil Mitford had been brought up at his father's rectory on the slopes of Dartmoor, and there he had played from his babyhood upward among the rugged15 granite16 boulders17 of John Cann's rocks, and had heard from the farm labourers and the other children around the romantic but perfectly18 historical legend of John Cann's treasure. Unknown and incredible sums in Mexican doubloons and Spanish dollars lay guarded by a strong oaken chest in a cavern19 on the hilltop, long since filled up with flints and mould from the neighbouring summits. To that secure hiding-place the great buccaneer had committed the hoard20 gathered in his numberless piratical expeditions, burying all together under the shadow of a petty porphyritic tor that overhangs the green valley of Bovey Tracy. Beside the bare rocks that mark the site, a perfectly distinct pathway is worn by footsteps into the granite platform underfoot; and that path, little Cecil Mitford had heard with childish awe21 and wonder, was cut out by the pacing up and down of old John Cann himself, mounting guard in the darkness and solitude22 over the countless23 treasure that he had hidden away in the recesses24 of the pixies' hole beneath.[Pg 190]
As young Mitford grew up to man's estate, this story of John Cann's treasure haunted his quick imagination for many years with wonderful vividness. When he first came up to London, after his father's death, and took his paltry25 clerkship in the Colonial Office—how he hated the place, with its monotonous26 drudgery27, while John Cann's wealth was only waiting for him to take it and floating visibly before his prophetic eyes!—the story began for a while to fade out under the disillusioning28 realities of respectable poverty and a petty Government post. But before he had been many months in the West India department (he had a small room on the third floor, overlooking Downing Street) a casual discovery made in overhauling29 the archives of the office suddenly revived the boyish dream with all the added realism and cool intensity30 of maturer years. He came across a letter from John Cann himself to the Protector Oliver, detailing the particulars of a fierce irregular engagement with a Spanish privateer, in which the Spaniard had been captured with much booty, and his vessel31 duly sold to the highest bidder32 in Port Royal harbour. This curious coincidence gave a great shock of surprise to young Mitford. John Cann, then, was no mythical33 prehistoric34 hero, no fairy-king or pixy or barrow-haunter of the popular fancy, but an actual genuine historical figure, who corresponded about his daring exploits with no less a personage than Oliver himself! From that moment forth, Cecil Mitford gave himself up almost entirely35 to tracing out the forgotten history of the old buccaneer. He allowed no peace to the learned person who took care of the State Papers of the Commonwealth36 at the Record Office, and he established private relations, by letter, with two or three clerks in the Colonial Secretary's Office at Kingston, Jamaica, whom he induced to help him in reconstructing the lost story of John Cann's life.
Bit by bit Cecil Mitford had slowly pieced together a[Pg 191] wonderful mass of information, buried under piles of ragged37 manuscript and weary reams of dusty documents, about the days and doings of that ancient terror of the Spanish Main. John Cann was a Devonshire lad, of the rollicking, roving seventeenth century, born and bred at Bovey Tracy, on the flanks of Dartmoor, the last survivor38 of those sea-dogs of Devon who had sallied forth to conquer and explore a new Continent under the guidance of Drake, and Raleigh, and Frobisher, and Hawkins. As a boy, he had sailed with his father in a ship that bore the Queen's letters of marque and reprisal39 against the Spanish galleons40; in his middle life, he had lived a strange roaming existence—half pirate and half privateer, intent upon securing the Protestant religion and punishing the King's enemies by robbing wealthy Spanish skippers and cutting off the recusant noses of vile41 Papistical Cuban slave traders; in his latter days, the fierce, half-savage old mariner42 had relapsed into sheer robbery, and had been hunted down as a public enemy by the Lord Protector's servants, or later still by the Captains-General and Governors-in-Chief of his Most Sacred Majesty's Dominions43 in the West Indies. For what was legitimate44 warfare45 in the spacious46 days of great Elizabeth, had come to be regarded in the degenerate47 reign48 of Charles II. as rank piracy49.
One other thing Cecil Mitford had discovered, with absolute certainty; and that was that in the summer of 1660, "the year of his Matie's most happy restoration," as John Cann himself phrased it, the persecuted50 and much misunderstood old buccaneer had paid a secret visit to England, and had brought with him the whole hoard which he had accumulated during sixty years of lawful51 or unlawful piracy in the West Indies and the Spanish Main. Concerning this hoard, which he had concealed52 somewhere in Devonshire, he kept up a brisk vernacular53 correspondence in cypher with his brother William, at Tavistock; and the key to that cypher, marked outside[Pg 192] "A clew to my Bro. John's secret writing," Cecil Mitford had been fortunate enough to unearth54 among the undigested masses of the Record Office. But one letter, the last and most important of the whole series, containing as he believed the actual statement of the hiding-place, had long evaded55 all his research: and that was the letter which, now at last, after months and months of patient inquiry, lay unfolded before his dazzled eyes on the little desk in his accustomed corner. It had somehow been folded up by mistake in the papers relating to the charge against Cyriack Skinner, of complicity in the Rye House Plot. How it got there nobody knows, and probably nobody but Cecil Mitford himself could ever have succeeded in solving the mystery.
As he gazed, trembling, at the precious piece of dusty much-creased paper, scribbled56 over in the unlettered schoolboy hand of the wild old sea-dog, Cecil Mitford could hardly restrain himself for a moment from uttering a cry. Untold wealth swam before his eyes: he could marry Ethel now, and let her drive in her own carriage! Ah, what he would give if he might only shout in his triumph. He couldn't even read the words, he was so excited. But after a minute or two, he recovered his composure sufficiently57 to begin deciphering the crabbed writing, which constant practice and familiarity with the system enabled him to do immediately, without even referring to the key. And this was what, with a few minutes' inspection58, Cecil Mitford slowly spelled out of the dirty manuscript:—
"From Jamaica. This 23rd day of Jany,
"in the Yeare of our Lord 1663.
"My deare Bro.,—I did not think to have written you againe, after the scurvie Trick you have played me in disclosing my Affairs to that meddlesome59 Knight60 that calls himself the King's Secretary: but in truth your last Letter[Pg 193] hath so moved me by your Vileness61 that I must needs reply thereto with all Expedicion. These are to assure you, then, that let you pray how you may, or gloze over your base treatment with fine cozening Words and fair Promises, you shall have neither lot nor scot in my Threasure, which is indeed as you surmise62 hidden away in England, but the Secret whereof I shall impart neither to you nor to no man. I have give commands, therefore that the Paper whereunto I have committed the place of its hiding shall be buried with my own Body (when God please) in the grave-yarde at Port Royal in this Island: so that you shall never be bettered one Penny by your most Damnable Treachery and Double-facedness. For I know you, my deare Bro., in very truth for a prating63 Coxcomb64, a scurvie cowardlie Knave65, and a lying Thief of other Men's Reputations. Therefore, no more herewith from your very humble66 Servt., and Loving Bro.,
"Iohn Cann, Captn"
Cecil Mitford laid the paper down as he finished reading it with a face even whiter and paler than before, and with the muscles of his mouth trembling violently with suppressed emotion. At the exact second when he felt sure he had discovered the momentous67 secret, it had slipped mysteriously through his very fingers, and seemed now to float away into the remote distance, almost as far from his eager grasp as ever. Even there, in the musty Record Office, before all the clerks and scholars who were sitting about working carelessly at their desks at mere68 dilettante69 historical problems—the stupid prigs, how he hated them!—he could hardly restrain the expression of his pent-up feelings at that bitter disappointment in the very hour of his fancied triumph. Jamaica! How absolutely distant and unapproachable it sounded! How hopeless the attempt to follow up the clue! How utterly70 his day-dream had been dashed to the ground in those three minutes of[Pg 194] silent deciphering! He felt as if the solid earth was reeling beneath him, and he would have given the whole world if he could have put his face between his two hands on the desk and cried like a woman before the whole Record Office.
For half an hour by the clock he sat there dazed and motionless, gazing in a blank disappointed fashion at the sheet of coffee-coloured paper in front of him. It was late, and workers were dropping away one after another from the scantily71 peopled desks. But Cecil Mitford took no notice of them: he merely sat with his arms folded, and gazed abstractedly at that disappointing, disheartening, irretrievable piece of crabbed writing. At last an assistant came up and gently touched his arm. "We're going to close now, sir," he said in his unfeeling official tone—just as if it were a mere bit of historical inquiry he was after—"and I shall be obliged if you'll put back the manuscripts you've been consulting into F. 27." Cecil Mitford rose mechanically and sorted out the Cyriack Skinner papers into their proper places. Then he laid them quietly on the shelf, and walked out into the streets of London, for the moment a broken-hearted man.
But as he walked home alone that clear warm summer evening, and felt the cool breeze blowing against his forehead, he began to reflect to himself that, after all, all was not lost; that in fact things really stood better with him now than they had stood that very morning, before he lighted upon John Cann's last letter. He had not discovered the actual hiding-place of the hoard, to be sure, but he now knew on John Cann's own indisputable authority, first, that there really was a hidden treasure; second, that the hiding-place was really in England; and third, that full particulars as to the spot where it was buried might be found in John Cann's own coffin72 at Port Royal, Jamaica. It was a risky73 and difficult thing to open a coffin, no doubt; but it was not impossible. No, not[Pg 195] impossible. On the whole, putting one thing with another, in spite of his terrible galling74 disappointment, he was really nearer to the recovery of the treasure now than he had ever been in his life before. Till to-day, the final clue was missing; to-day, it had been found. It was a difficult and dangerous clue to follow, but still it had been found.
And yet, setting aside the question of desecrating75 a grave, how all but impossible it was for him to get to Jamaica! His small funds had long ago been exhausted76 in prosecuting77 the research, and he had nothing on earth to live upon now but his wretched salary. Even if he could get three or six months' leave from the Colonial Office, which was highly improbable, how could he ever raise the necessary money for his passage out and home, as well as for the delicate and doubtful operation of searching for documents in John Cann's coffin? It was tantalising, it was horrible, it was unendurable; but here, with the secret actually luring78 him on to discover it, he was to be foiled and baffled at the last moment by a mere paltry, petty, foolish consideration of two hundred pounds! Two hundred pounds! How utterly ludicrous! Why, John Cann's treasure would make him a man of fabulous79 wealth for a whole lifetime, and he was to be prevented from realizing it by a wretched matter of two hundred pounds! He would do anything to get it—for a loan, a mere loan; to be repaid with cent. per cent. interest; but where in the world, where in the world, was he ever to get it from?
And then, quick as lightning, the true solution of the whole difficulty flashed at once across his excited brain. He could borrow all the money if he chose from Ethel! Poor little Ethel; she hadn't much of her own; but she had just enough to live very quietly upon with her Aunt Emily; and, thank Heaven, it wasn't tied up with any of those bothering, meddling80 three-per-cent.-loving trustees![Pg 196] She had her little all at her own disposal, and he could surely get two or three hundred pounds from her to secure for them both the boundless81 buried wealth of John Cann's treasure.
Should he make her a confidante outright82, and tell her what it was that he wanted the money for? No, that would be impossible, for though she had heard all about John Cann over and over again, she had not faith enough in the treasure—women are so unpractical—to hazard her little scrap83 of money on it; of that he felt certain. She would go and ask old Mr. Cartwright's opinion; and old Mr. Cartwright was one of those penny-wise, purblind84, unimaginative old gentlemen who will never believe in anything until they've seen it. Yet here was John Cann's money going a-begging, so to speak, and only waiting for him and Ethel to come and enjoy it. Cecil had no patience with those stupid, stick-in-the-mud, timid people who can see no further than their own noses. For Ethel's own sake he would borrow two or three hundred pounds from her, one way or another, and she would easily forgive him the harmless little deception85 when he paid her back a hundredfold out of John Cann's boundless treasure.
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1
tattered
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| adj.破旧的，衣衫破的 | |
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inquiry
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| n.打听，询问，调查，查问 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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twitch
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| v.急拉，抽动，痉挛，抽搐；n.扯，阵痛，痉挛 | |
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pallid
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| adj.苍白的，呆板的 | |
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greasy
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| adj. 多脂的，油脂的 | |
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7
crabbed
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| adj.脾气坏的；易怒的；（指字迹）难辨认的；（字迹等）难辨认的v.捕蟹( crab的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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8
positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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feverish
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| adj.发烧的，狂热的，兴奋的 | |
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10
endorsement
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| n.背书；赞成，认可，担保；签(注)，批注 | |
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11
noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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intercepted
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| 拦截( intercept的过去式和过去分词 )； 截住； 截击； 拦阻 | |
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untold
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| adj.数不清的，无数的 | |
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adventurous
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| adj.爱冒险的；惊心动魄的，惊险的，刺激的 | |
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15
rugged
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| adj.高低不平的，粗糙的，粗壮的，强健的 | |
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granite
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| adj.花岗岩，花岗石 | |
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boulders
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| n.卵石( boulder的名词复数 )；巨砾；（受水或天气侵蚀而成的）巨石；漂砾 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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cavern
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| n.洞穴，大山洞 | |
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hoard
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| n./v.窖藏，贮存，囤积 | |
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awe
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| n.敬畏，惊惧；vt.使敬畏，使惊惧 | |
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solitude
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| n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
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23
countless
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| adj.无数的，多得不计其数的 | |
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24
recesses
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| n.壁凹( recess的名词复数 )；（工作或业务活动的）中止或暂停期间；学校的课间休息；某物内部的凹形空间v.把某物放在墙壁的凹处( recess的第三人称单数 )；将（墙）做成凹形，在（墙）上做壁龛；休息，休会，休庭 | |
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25
paltry
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| adj.无价值的，微不足道的 | |
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26
monotonous
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| adj.单调的，一成不变的，使人厌倦的 | |
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27
drudgery
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| n.苦工，重活，单调乏味的工作 | |
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disillusioning
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| 使不再抱幻想，使理想破灭( disillusion的现在分词 ) | |
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29
overhauling
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| n.大修；拆修；卸修；翻修v.彻底检查( overhaul的现在分词 )；大修；赶上；超越 | |
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30
intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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31
vessel
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| n.船舶；容器，器皿；管，导管，血管 | |
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32
bidder
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| n.(拍卖时的)出价人，报价人，投标人 | |
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33
mythical
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| adj.神话的；虚构的；想像的 | |
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prehistoric
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| adj.（有记载的）历史以前的，史前的，古老的 | |
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35
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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36
commonwealth
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| n.共和国，联邦，共同体 | |
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ragged
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| adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的 | |
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survivor
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| n.生存者，残存者，幸存者 | |
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39
reprisal
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| n.报复，报仇，报复性劫掠 | |
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40
galleons
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| n.大型帆船( galleon的名词复数 ) | |
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vile
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| adj.卑鄙的，可耻的，邪恶的；坏透的 | |
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mariner
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| n.水手号不载人航天探测器，海员，航海者 | |
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43
dominions
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| 统治权( dominion的名词复数 )； 领土； 疆土； 版图 | |
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44
legitimate
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| adj.合法的，合理的，合乎逻辑的；v.使合法 | |
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45
warfare
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| n.战争(状态)；斗争；冲突 | |
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spacious
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| adj.广阔的，宽敞的 | |
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47
degenerate
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| v.退步，堕落；adj.退步的，堕落的；n.堕落者 | |
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reign
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| n.统治时期，统治，支配，盛行；v.占优势 | |
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49
piracy
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| n.海盗行为，剽窃，著作权侵害 | |
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50
persecuted
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| （尤指宗教或政治信仰的）迫害(~sb. for sth.)( persecute的过去式和过去分词 )； 烦扰，困扰或骚扰某人 | |
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51
lawful
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| adj.法律许可的，守法的，合法的 | |
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52
concealed
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| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
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53
vernacular
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| adj.地方的，用地方语写成的；n.白话；行话；本国语；动植物的俗名 | |
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54
unearth
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| v.发掘，掘出，从洞中赶出 | |
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55
evaded
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| 逃避( evade的过去式和过去分词 )； 避开； 回避； 想不出 | |
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56
scribbled
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| v.潦草的书写( scribble的过去式和过去分词 )；乱画；草草地写；匆匆记下 | |
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57
sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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58
inspection
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| n.检查，审查，检阅 | |
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59
meddlesome
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| adj.爱管闲事的 | |
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60
knight
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| n.骑士，武士；爵士 | |
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61
vileness
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| n.讨厌，卑劣 | |
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62
surmise
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| v./n.猜想，推测 | |
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63
prating
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| v.（古时用语）唠叨，啰唆( prate的现在分词 ) | |
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64
coxcomb
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| n.花花公子 | |
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65
knave
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| n.流氓；（纸牌中的）杰克 | |
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66
humble
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| adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低 | |
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67
momentous
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| adj.重要的，重大的 | |
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68
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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69
dilettante
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| n.半瓶醋，业余爱好者 | |
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70
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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71
scantily
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| adv.缺乏地；不充足地；吝啬地；狭窄地 | |
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72
coffin
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| n.棺材，灵柩 | |
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73
risky
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| adj.有风险的，冒险的 | |
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74
galling
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| adj.难堪的,使烦恼的,使焦躁的 | |
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75
desecrating
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| 毁坏或亵渎( desecrate的现在分词 ) | |
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76
exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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77
prosecuting
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| 检举、告发某人( prosecute的现在分词 )； 对某人提起公诉； 继续从事（某事物）； 担任控方律师 | |
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78
luring
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| 吸引，引诱（lure的现在分词形式） | |
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79
fabulous
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| adj.极好的；极为巨大的；寓言中的，传说中的 | |
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80
meddling
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| v.干涉，干预（他人事务）( meddle的现在分词 ) | |
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81
boundless
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| adj.无限的；无边无际的；巨大的 | |
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82
outright
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| adv.坦率地；彻底地；立即；adj.无疑的；彻底的 | |
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83
scrap
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| n.碎片；废料；v.废弃，报废 | |
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84
purblind
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| adj.半盲的；愚笨的 | |
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85
deception
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| n.欺骗，欺诈；骗局，诡计 | |
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