The Coming Wave; Or, The Hidden Treasure of High Rock by Oliver Optic (books to improve english txt) 📖

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 manuscript for publication.[Pg 154]

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 passenger 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[Pg 155] 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."[Pg 156]

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 passenger 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 passenger 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[Pg 157] along to get out of the way of it, and passed 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 passed 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[Pg 158] 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 assure 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.[Pg 159]

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 passed 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.

[Pg 160]

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[Pg 161] seemed to indicate that the passenger 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[Pg 162] 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 partitions 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 assume their final aspect prevented him from feeling the fatigue of his labor.[Pg 163] 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 principal 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