The Coming Wave; Or, The Hidden Treasure of High Rock, Oliver Optic [story read aloud TXT] 📗

I came down here, all the way from New York, to cheat or wrong anybody."

"I hope not. If you did, I can't do anything for you."

"You shall judge for yourself. It is just as Harvey Barth said: you are a good young man, and you will be as honest by me as you mean to be by other folks."

"Of course I will be."

"Your share of the money will be five hundred dollars. Shall you be satisfied with this?"

"I think I shall be," laughed Leopold, to whom the amount seemed like a fortune.[Pg 131]

"You agree to take this as your share?"

"Yes; I agree to it."

"And to keep the secret?"

"On the conditions I named."

"I am satisfied with the conditions. If you and I don't get this money, somebody else will, who has no more right to it than we have."

"But who owns the money?" asked Leopold, whose views of an honest policy required him to settle this question first.

"Nobody."

"Nobody!" exclaimed the young man. "It must belong to somebody."

"No it don't."

"How can that be?"

"The owner is dead and gone."

"Then it belongs to his heirs."

"He has no heirs."

"Who is he, anyhow?"

"He isn't anybody now. Didn't I say he was dead and gone?" demanded Miss Liverage, impatiently.

"Well, who was he, then?"

"I don't know."

"It's very strange," mused Leopold.[Pg 132]

"I know it's strange. I am the only person living who knows anything about this money. If I don't take it, somebody else will, or it will stay in the ground till the end of the world," said the woman. "It's a plain case; and I think the money belongs to me as much as it does to anybody else."

"Where is it buried?"

Before she would answer this question, Miss Liverage satisfied herself that Leopold understood the bargain they had made, and was ready to abide by all its conditions. With the proviso he had before insisted upon, the young man agreed to the arrangement.

"I don't know exactly where the money was buried," continued the owner of the great secret.

"O, you don't!" exclaimed Leopold, rising from his chair, and bursting into a laugh. "Then this is a 'wild goose chase.'"

"No, it isn't. But now you have agreed to the terms, I will tell you all about it. Sit down; for I don't want to scream out what I have to say. Will any one hear us?"

"No; I think not."[Pg 133]

"Won't your father?"

"No, he has gone up to Squire Wormbury's."

Miss Liverage drew her chair up to the cheerful wood fire that blazed in the Franklin stove, and Leopold seated himself in the corner nearly opposite her, with his curiosity intensely excited by what he had already heard.

"In the first place do you know whatever became of Harvey Barth's diary?" Miss Liverage began.

"I haven't the least idea; but he said it was stolen from him, and he was going to get it when he went to New York," replied Leopold, deeply interested even in this matter.

"But he never found it, and I don't believe anybody stole it. I think it is in this house now. Our first business is to find it."

"We couldn't find it in the time of it, and I don't believe we can now."

"We must find it, for that diary will tell us just where the money is buried."

"You never will find the diary or the money."

"Don't be too fast. Harvey told me where the money was buried. It was under the cliffs at High Rock," added Miss Liverage.[Pg 134]

"The cliffs are about a mile long."

"The money was buried in the sand."

"The beach under High Rock is half a mile long, and it would be a winter's job to dig it all over. But who hid the money there?"

"A man who was wrecked in the brig."

"Was it Harvey Barth?"

"No; the man was a passenger and called himself Wallbridge; but Harvey thought this was not his real name."

"That was the name of the passenger as it was printed in the newspaper."

"Harvey wrote down all he knew about him in his diary. He buried his money—twelve hundred dollars in gold—on the beach; and in the diary the place is described. Harvey inquired about the passenger in Rockland; but no one knew anything about him."

"Twelve hundred in gold," said Leopold, musingly.

"Yes; and I have agreed to give you nearly half of it."

"If we find it," added the young man, who considered the information rather too indefinite for entire success.[Pg 135]

"I think we can find it."

"Did Harvey Barth tell you just where the money was buried?"

"He said it was buried on the beach. He talked a great deal about it the day before he died, and said, if he ever got well enough, he should go and get it; and then he would pay me handsomely for all I had done for him. I was a nurse in the hospital, you see, and was his only companion. He felt very bad about the loss of his diary, and told me all about it. He said he put it in the flue of the fireplace, because there was no closet in the room. Now, if nobody stole it, the diary must be there yet. I have looked into the flue, but I couldn't see anything of it; and I have made up my mind that it dropped down somewhere."

"The room is directly over this parlor, and if it dropped into the chimney, it must have come down into this fireplace," replied Leopold. "I am sure nothing was ever seen of it."

They examined the flue of the Franklin stove, and Miss Liverage was satisfied with the young man's statement in regard to its construction.

"Some one may have picked it up and put it away," suggested the nurse.[Pg 136]

"There was a summer piece fastened into the front of this stove, which was not taken down till I removed it to make the fire when you came. If the diary had been there, I should have found it. But I will search the whole house for it, though I am of Harvey Barth's opinion, that some one stole the book. If any person saw him put it into the flue, as Harvey thought the drummer did, he might have supposed it was something very valuable. Why should he take so much pains to hide it, if it was not? If the drummer did not take it himself, he may have told somebody else, who did steal it. If he had left the diary on the table, nobody would have touched it, I know. It was all because he hid it, that he lost it."

Miss Liverage was sure the diary was still in the house, and during that and the next day, while the storm lasted, Leopold searched the hotel from cellar to garret. He did not find the key to the hidden treasure of High Rock. The nurse searched for herself, so far as she could do so without exciting the suspicions of the hotel people; but she was no more successful than her confidant in the secret. If the[Pg 137] diary was in the house, it could not be found. The structure of the chimney, in which the flue of the fireplace was built, was carefully examined; and Leopold's conclusion seemed to be fully verified. Miss Liverage was reluctantly compelled to abandon all hope of finding the coveted volume.

The storm ended, and the sun shone again. The wind came fresh and cold from the north-west. The nurse looked from the windows of the hotel upon the waters of the river, which, sheltered from the force of the blast, were as smooth as an inland pond though the waves rolled up white and angry beyond the point. The guest at the Cliff House, though she had given up all expectation of finding the diary, had not abandoned the hope of obtaining the hidden treasure.

"Now, Leopold, we must go to the beach under High Rock," said she, after the storm was over.

"What is the use of going there, if you don't know where the money is hidden?" demanded the boatman.

"I think I can find the place," replied Miss[Pg 138] Liverage. "Harvey told me where it was; but I can't think of the names he used in telling me. I was pretty sure I should find the diary, when I left New York."

"If you want to go to High Rock, I will take you down there in the boat," added Leopold.

"I'm afraid of boats. Can't we go by land?"

"Not very well. My boat is as stiff as a man-of-war, and you can go a great deal easier in her than you can climb over the rocks on the other side of the river."

Miss Liverage considered the matter, and after dinner she decided to undertake the hazardous trip, as she regarded it. She had an engagement the next week in New York, and she could not remain in Rockhaven more than a day or two longer. What she did must be done at once. Mr. Bennington was astonished when he saw his son taking her out to sail on such a chilly, blustering day; but he always allowed his guests to suit themselves, and offered no objection to the expedition. Leopold seated his timid passenger in the standing-room, and shoved off the boat. In the river she made smooth[Pg 139] sailing of it; but the instant she passed the range of the high bluff on the north shore, the No-Name plunged into a heavy sea, burying her bow deep in a foam-crested billow, whose dense spray drenched the water-proof of Miss Liverage, and it seemed to her as if the end of all things had come.

"Mercy on us!" screamed she, trying to rise from her seat, as the bow of the boat was lifted far up by the wave.

"Sit down, Miss Liverage," said Leopold, pushing her back into her seat.

"We shall be drowned!" cried the terrified passenger.

"This is nothing; the boat is doing first rate," answered Leopold.

"I shall be wet to the skin," she added, as another cloud of spray was dashed over her. The skipper went to the cuddy, forward, and brought from it an old oil-cloth coat, which he spread over his passenger. Though this garment protected her from the spray, the angry waves were still a vivid terror to her, and the skipper vainly assured her there was no danger. Letting off the main sheet, he put the boat[Pg 140] before the wind, and then she rolled, pitched, and floundered, till Miss Liverage declared she was frightened out of her life.

"Don't be alarmed. There! you can see the ledges now where the Waldo went to pieces," added Leopold, pointing to the black rocks, now in sight, upon which the white foam broke at every surge of the sea.

"I can't see anything, Leopold," gasped Miss Liverage, holding on to the washboard with both hands. "Do go back as fast as you can."

"But you can't find the money if you don't go and look for it."

"I don't care for the money. I wouldn't stay out here another minute for the whole of it," protested the passenger.

She pleaded so earnestly that Leopold finally came about, and beat his way back to the river, and soon landed her in front of the hotel. She declared she would not get into a boat again for all the treasure hidden in the bowels of the earth.

Miss Liverage was satisfied that Leopold was both honest and zealous, and she finally concluded to commit to him the search for the[Pg 141] buried money. The next day she started for home, disappointed and disheartened at the result of her visit to Rockhaven, though she had some hope that her confidant might yet discover the treasure.

[Pg 142]

CHAPTER VIII. AN IMPORTANT DISCOVERY.

The landlord of the Cliff House was a man who attended to his own business to the exclusion of that of others, and he did not trouble himself any further about the affairs of his guest, though his curiosity was somewhat excited at first. Leopold "was not happy" in being obliged to conceal his thoughts and actions from his father; but then Mr. Bennington did not question him in regard to her conduct after he was a little accustomed to the ways of Miss Liverage. The young man did not place much reliance upon the statements of the nurse. He had heard and read about "money-diggers" before. He was familiar with the story of Wolfert Webber, who had dug over the whole of his cabbage garden in search of hidden treasure, and he had no