The Coming Wave Part 12

"What are you going to do with the book, then?"

"Send it to his friends, if I can find where they are."

Leopold carried the diary to his room, in a part of the house which was not to be disturbed, and locked it up in his chest. He wanted to read the portion which related to the wreck of the Waldo, and the burying of the money, if such an event had occurred, of which he had some grave doubts. But he could not stop then, for he was doing a man's work for his father, and his conscience would not allow him to waste his time.

The mason asked more questions when Leopold returned to his work, and they were answered as definitely as the circ.u.mstances would permit. The young man examined the construction of the chimney, and found another flue besides that of the Franklin stove, into which the diary had fallen. It had formerly served for a fireplace in an adjoining apartment, and had been bricked up before the landlord purchased the estate. The Franklin stove, which was merely an iron fire place set into the chimney, had the less direct flue of the two, so that the package had fallen where it was found.

During the rest of the day, Leopold's thoughts were fixed upon the long-lost diary, for which Miss Liverage and himself had vainly searched. Doubtless she would claim the diary, if it was found; but had she any better right to it than its present possessor? Leopold considered this question with no little interest. The secret of the hidden treasure was certainly in his keeping, and after the "trade" made between them, he felt that she had some rights in the matter which he was bound to respect. But the affair was no longer a secret; for after the "humbug was exploded," as Leopold expressed it, he told his father all about it. The landlord only laughed at it, and insisted that the nurse was crazy; and her excited conduct at the hotel rather confirmed his conclusion.

The result of Leopold's reflections during the day was a determination to write to Miss Liverage again, if he found anything in the diary which would enable him to discover the hidden treasure. The day seemed longer to him than usual, so anxious was he to examine the pages of the diary.

When at last his work was done, and he had eaten his supper, he hastened to his chamber, and opened the oil-cloth package. He was greatly excited, as most people are when long-continued doubts are to be settled. In a few moments he would know whether or not Miss Liverage was crazy, and whether or not there was any foundation to the story of the hidden treasure. He locked the door of his room before he opened the package, for he felt now that the secret was not his own exclusive property. If there was twelve hundred dollars in gold buried in the sands under High Rock which belonged to n.o.body, he felt bound in honor by his agreement with the nurse to make the division of it with her, in accordance with the conditions of the contract.

He desired very much to speak to his father about the diary; but he did not feel at liberty to do so. It did not appear that the mason with whom Leopold was at work had told Mr. Bennington, or any person, of the finding of the package. After his questions had been answered, he seemed to feel no further interest in the diary, and probably forgot all about it before he went home to dinner. The discovery of it did not seem to him to be a matter of any importance, and Leopold kept his information all to himself.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LEOPOLD MAKES A DISCOVERY. Page 149.]

Removing the string from the package, the young man proceeded to unwrap the oil-cloth, shaking the soot and lime dust into the fireplace as he did so. The diary came out clean and uninjured from its long imprisonment in the chimney. Leopold's agitation increased as he continued the investigation, and he could hardly control himself as he opened the book and looked at the large, clear, round hand of the schoolmaster. The writing was as plain as print.

He turned the leaves without stopping to read anything, till he came to the record of the last day whose events Harvey Barth had written in the book; but those pages contained only an account of his illness, and a particular description of his symptoms, which might have interested a physician, but did not secure the attention of the young man. He turned back to the narrative of the loss of the Waldo. It was very minute in its details, and contained much "fine writing," such as the editor of the newspaper had struck out in the ma.n.u.script for publication.

Leopold had read the account in the newspaper, and he skipped what he had seen in print, till the name of "Wallbridge" attracted his attention. The first mention of the pa.s.senger that he saw was made when he went into the cabin, after his recovery from the effects of the lightning, and returned with something in his hand. The reader followed the narrative, which was already quite familiar to him, till he came to the landing of the party in the whale-boat on the beach; and at this point he found something which Harvey Barth had not written in his newspaper article, or mentioned during his stay at the hotel. Leopold read as follows:--

"As soon as we had landed on the beach, Wallbridge told me he had twelve hundred dollars in gold, which he had earned by his two years' work in Cuba. By the light of the flashes of lightning I saw the bag in his hand. It was an old shot-bag, tied up with a piece of white tape.

Wallbridge said he was afraid the bag might cost him his life, if he held on to it, and I suppose he thought he might have to swim, and the weight of the gold would sink him.

"I have figured up the weight of twelve hundred dollars in gold, and I found it would be almost five pounds and a half Troy, or nearly four and a half Avoirdupois. I don't blame him now for wanting to get rid of it; but I did not think before I figured it up, that the money would weigh so much. Four and a half pounds is not much for a man to carry on land, but I should not want to be obliged to swim with this weight in my trousers' pocket, even when I was in good health.

"Wallbridge said he would bury the money in the sand, under a projecting rock in the cliff, so that he could come and get it when he wanted it.

Just then a flash of lightning came, and I looked up at the cliff under which he stood. I saw the projecting rock, and it looked to me, in the blaze of the lightning, just like a coffin, from where I stood. It seemed to me then just like a sign from Heaven that I should soon need a coffin, if the sea did not carry me off; but if the sign meant anything, it did not apply to me, but to Wallbridge, who in less than half an hour afterwards was swallowed up in the waves. I am sorry for him, and I only hope he had not done anything very bad, for I could not help thinking he had committed some crime."

Leopold did not see why the writer should think so; but then he had not read the preceding pages of the diary, which Harvey Barth had written just before the pa.s.senger came to the galley to light his pipe. The narrative, after a digression of half a page of reflections upon the unhappy fate of Wallbridge, continued:--

"Wallbridge got down on his knees, and scooped out a hole not more than a foot deep in the sand, and dropped the bag into it. I looked up at the projecting rock again, when another flash of lightning came, and there was the coffin, just as plain as though it had been made for one of us.

It was not a whole coffin, but only the head end of one. It seemed to project and overhang the beach at an angle of about forty-five degrees, and a man could have sat down on the upper end, which was about twenty feet high. The shape of it startled me so that I did not think any more of what the pa.s.senger was doing, though I saw him raking the sand into the hole with his hands. I thought the thing was a bad sign, and I did not like to look at it, though I could not help doing so when the lightning flashed. I walked along to get out of the way of it, and pa.s.sed the place where Wallbridge was at work. When I looked up at the cliff again, I could not see the coffin any more. There was the projecting rock, but on this side it did not look at all like a coffin.

"I walked along to the end of the beach, where an angle in the cliff carried it out into the water. I expected every moment to be carried off by the sea or to be crushed against the rocks. I did not expect to save myself, and I could not help feeling that the coffin I had seen was for me. Just then a flash of lightning showed me a kind of opening in the cliff, near the angle."

Leopold knew this part of the story by heart, and had often pa.s.sed up and down through the ravine, which Harvey Barth described in his diary with as much precision as though the locality had contained a gold mine.

"A projecting rock shaped like a coffin!" said the reader, as he raised his eyes from the book to consider what he had read. "I don't remember any such rock, though there may be such a one there. I must go down to High Rock in a thunder-storm, and then perhaps it will look to me as it did to him."

But the nurse was right, after all; there was a solid foundation to the story she had told, though she had not mentioned any rock shaped like the head of a coffin. Probably Harvey Barth, who at the time he told the nurse the story had expected to get well enough to go to his home, had not intended to describe the locality of the hidden treasure so that she could find it, but only to a.s.sure her that he should have money with which to reward her, if she took good care of him during his sickness.

Leopold read the account of the burying of the money again; but he could not recall any rock answering to the description in the book. He had dug up the sand under every projecting rock that overhung the beach, to the depth of a foot, without finding the treasure. By the death of every person on board of the brig except Harvey Barth, the knowledge of the acts of Wallbridge was necessarily confined to him. If the money had ever been buried on the beach, Leopold was confident it was there now.

No one could have removed it, for no one could have suspected its existence.

Faithful to the agreement he had made, Leopold wrote a letter that evening to Miss Liverage, directing it to the address she had given him.

The letter contained but a few lines, merely intimating that he had important business with her. The young man was now anxious to visit the beach under High Rock, for the purpose of identifying the mortuary emblem which had so strongly impressed the author of the journal, in the lightning and the hurricane; but he could not be spared from his work, and it was several months before he was able to verify the statements in the diary.

Weeks and months pa.s.sed away, and no answer to his letter came. In June he wrote another letter, to the "Superintendent of Bellevue Hospital, New York City," in which Harvey Barth died, requesting information in regard to Miss Sarah Liverage. A reply soon came, to the effect that the nurse had married one of her patients, and now lived somewhere in Oregon, the writer did not know where.

CHAPTER IX.

COFFIN ROCK.

Miss Sarah Liverage had taken herself out of the reach of all further communication in regard to the hidden treasure. Leopold had no hope of being able to see or hear from her. She had not sent him her last address, and he had used all the means in his power to carry out the terms of the agreement. He considered himself, therefore, released from all responsibility, so far as she was concerned. But even then he did not feel like going to High Rock and taking the money for his own or his father's use. He could not get rid of the idea that the money belonged to somebody. If Wallbridge had saved this money from the earnings of two years in Cuba, it certainly ought to go to his heirs, now that he was dead.

The remarks of Harvey Barth in his diary seemed to indicate that the pa.s.senger had committed some crime, or at least that he was open to the suspicion of having done so. Leopold considered, whether this might not be the reason why no one had yet claimed any relationship to him. The young man was sorely perplexed in regard to his duty in the matter; and he was really more afraid of doing wrong than he was of losing twelve hundred dollars in gold. He did not like to confess it even to himself; but he was afraid that his father's views, if he told him about the hidden treasure, might he looser than his own. He believed that the landlord was even more honest than the majority of men; but, after he had commenced upon the extensive improvements of the hotel, the son feared that the father might be tempted to do what was not exactly right.

While all these questions remained unsettled in the mind of Leopold, he did nothing to recover the money, until the hotel was nearly completed.

In fact, he had no time to do so, for his father kept him busy from morning till night, and then he was so tired that he did not even feel like reading the diary. After he had obtained the important facts in regard to the buried money, he did not feel any further interest in the journal of Harvey Barth. He had tried to read portions of it; but each day commenced with a detailed account of the writer's health, with remarks on the weather, and similar topics, which did not hold the attention of the young man. The enlargement of the hotel was a subject which engrossed his whole mind, after the novelty of finding the diary had worked itself off. He was deeply interested in the progress of the work; and when the putting up of the part.i.tions gave form and shape to the interior, not many other matters occupied his mind.

The mechanics finished their labors, and the hotel was ready to receive the new furniture which had been purchased for it. Leopold was busier than ever, and hardly a thought of the hidden treasure came to his mind.

He put down carpets and put up bedsteads, till he was nearly worn out with hard work, though the excitement of seeing the various apartments of the new house a.s.sume their final aspect prevented him from feeling the fatigue of his labor. By the middle of June everything was ready for the reception of guests, though not many of them were expected to arrive till the middle of July. Now the hotel was called the "Sea Cliff House," and its opening was advertised in the princ.i.p.al cities of New York and New England. As the Island Hotel lost its "trade" and the new house obtained it all, Ethan Wormbury was correspondingly angry.

As usually happens to those who rebuild and remodel private or public houses, the expense far exceeded the estimates. The war of the rebellion was in progress, and the prices of everything in the shape of building material and furniture had fearfully increased. The nine thousand dollars which Mr. Bennington had on hand to pay his bills, was exhausted long before the work was completed. The landlord was sorely troubled, and he went to Squire Wormbury to obtain a further loan on his property; but the money-lender declared that he would not risk another dollar on the security. Then Mr. Bennington mortgaged his furniture for two thousand dollars,--all he could obtain on it,--in order to relieve the pressure upon him; but even then the "floating debt" annoyed him very seriously. He had always paid his bills promptly, and kept out of debt, so that his present embarra.s.sment was doubly annoying to him, on account of its novelty. With all his mind, heart and soul he regretted that he had undertaken the great enterprise, and feared that it would end in total ruin to him.

The landlord talked freely with his wife and Leopold about his embarra.s.sments, and the son suffered quite as much as the father on account of them. There were guests enough in the hotel to have met the expenses of the old establishment, but not of the new one; and the landlord found it difficult even to pay the daily demands upon him. He was almost in despair, and a dollar seemed larger to him now than ever before, and hardly a single one of them would stay in his pocket over night. The interest on the mortgage note would be due on the first of July, and Mr. Bennington knew not where to obtain the first dollar with which to pay it. The landlord was in great distress, for he knew that Squire Moses was as relentless as death itself, and would show him no mercy.

"I don't see but I must fail," said Mr. Bennington, with a deep sigh, as the day of payment drew near.

"Fail, father!" exclaimed Leopold.

"That will be the end of it all. If I don't pay my interest on the day it is due, Squire Wormbury will foreclose his mortgage, and take possession of the house," groaned the landlord.

"Can't something be done, father?" asked the son.

"I don't know what I can do, I have borrowed of everybody who will lend me a dollar. With one good season I could pay off every dollar I owe, except Squire Wormbury's mortgage. It seems hard to go to the wall just for the want of a month's time. I am sure I shall make money after the season opens, for I have engaged half the rooms in the house after the middle of July. Half a dozen families from Chicago are coming then, and when I was in Boston a dozen people told me they would come here for the summer."

"I think you will find some way to raise the money, father," added Leopold, more hopeful than his father.

"I don't see where it is coming from. The bank won't discount any more for me. I feel like a beggar already; and all for the want of a month's time."

Leopold was very sad; but in this emergency he thought of the hidden treasure of High Rock. But he had already made up his mind that this money did not belong to him. He even felt that it would be stealing for him to take it. In his father's sore embarra.s.sment he was tempted to appropriate the treasure, and let him use it as a loan. But then, if his father should fail, and the heirs of Wallbridge should appear, he could not satisfy them, or satisfy his own conscience.

But the temptation was very great; and the next time he went out alone in the Rosabel, he visited the beach under High Rock. It was the first time he had been there this season. He landed, and commenced the search for the projecting rock which was shaped like a coffin. He walked from one end of the beach to the other, without discovering any rock which answered to Harvey Barth's description. He started to retrace his steps, remembering that the writer of the journal had been unable to observe the singular form of the rock after he had changed his position. The tide was low, and he walked on the edge of the water; but by going in this direction he had no better success. After spending an hour in looking for it, he could discover no rock which looked like the emblem of death. He returned to Rockhaven, almost convinced that Harvey Barth had imagined the scene he had described in his diary.

The next day, just at dark, a thunder-storm, the first of the season, came up. The weather had been warm and sultry for a week, and the farmers declared that the season was a fortnight earlier than usual. The roaring thunder and the flashing lightning reminded Leopold of the scene described in Harvey's journal, and especially of the burying of the twelve hundred dollars in gold. Without saving anything to any one of his intention, he left the hotel, and embarked in the Rosabel, with no dread of the rain, or a squall. There was wind enough to take him down as far as the ledges, and then it suddenly subsided. Leopold furled his mainsail, for the calm indicated a coming squall. It wanted an hour of high tide, and he anch.o.r.ed the Rosabel at a considerable distance from the sh.o.r.e, paying out the cable till the stern of the boat was in water not more than three feet deep. Pulling upon the rope till he was satisfied that the anchor had hooked upon one of the sharp rocks below the beach, he prepared to go on sh.o.r.e. The beach sloped so sharply that the sands were not more than twenty feet from the stern of the Rosabel.

It was now quite dark, but the scene was frequently lighted up by the sharp lightning. The tide had risen so that the water was within a rod of the cliffs. Taking an oar in his hand, he planted the blade end of it in the water as far as he could reach from the stern, and grasping the other end, he made a flying leap with its aid, and struck at a spot where the water was only knee-deep. He had scarcely reached the beach before the squall came; but it blew out of the north-west, so that the Rosabel was partially sheltered from its fury by the projecting cliffs between High Rock and the mouth of the river. She swung around, abreast of the cliffs, into the deep water between the beach and the ledges.

Leopold watched her for a few moments, fearful that the change of position might have unhooked the anchor; but it held on till the squall, which expended its force in a few moments, was over. Then the rain came down in torrents, drenching the boatman to the skin.

Leopold, with the oar in his hand, walked along the narrow beach, watching the play of the lightning on the rocks of the cliff.

Occasionally he halted to observe the shapes they a.s.sumed, and he could not help perceiving that the glare of the electric fluid gave them an entirely different appearance from that which they usually wore. He had landed near the ravine by which Harvey Earth had escaped from the angry billows, and he walked to the farther end of the beach without seeing any rock which bore the least resemblance to a coffin. The tide was rising all the time, driving him nearer and nearer to the cliff. Leopold was not much excited, for his former failure to find the hidden treasure had almost convinced him that no such thing existed. He was cool enough--drenched to the skin as he was--to reason about the movements of the shipwrecked party on the beach.

"When Harvey Barth left Wallbridge filling up the hole in which he had put the bag of gold," thought Leopold, "he must have walked towards the 'Hole in the Wall'"--as the ravine was called by those who visited High Rock. "If he hadn't walked towards it, he wouldn't have found it. If he had walked up and down the beach, he would have seen Wallbridge and the mate when they went off in the whale-boat to return to the wreck. This shows plainly enough that he only walked one way before he came to the Hole. That way must have been the opposite direction from that I have just come; for if he had walked the way I have, he could not have reached the Hole; and there is no beach to walk on beyond it.