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

his furniture for two thousand dollars,—all he could obtain on it,—in order to relieve the pressure upon him; but[Pg 164] 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 embarrassment 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 embarrassments, 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.[Pg 165]

"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.[Pg 166]

"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 embarrassment 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[Pg 167] 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[Pg 168] wanted an hour of high tide, and he anchored the Rosabel at a considerable distance from the shore, 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 shore. 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[Pg 169] 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 assumed, 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[Pg 170] 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.

"When Harvey Barth looked behind him, he could not see the coffin; and of course I couldn't see it when I came this way. I suppose it only shows itself, like the man's head near the light-house, from one particular point. The head can only be made out from a boat, when it ranges between the island and the light, one way, and[Pg 171] in line with the dead tree and Jones's barn on the north shore, the other way. Twenty feet from this position, nothing that looks like a head can be seen. Probably this coffin works by the same rule. If it don't, it is strange that I have never noticed it. Now I will walk in the direction that Harvey Barth did, and if there is any coffin here I shall see it."

The bright flashes of lightning still illuminated the cliffs, as Leopold walked slowly towards the Hole in the Wall, scrutinizing the rocks with the utmost care. By the rising of the tide his line of march was now within ten feet of the cliff, and the beach was of about the same width as when the shipwrecked party had sought a refuge upon it; but the sea was comparatively calm, and there was no peril on its smooth sands. Leopold had gone about one third of the length of the beach, when his eye rested upon a formation in the cliff, which, as the lightning played upon it, assured him he had found what he sought. The view he had obtained of it was only for an instant. He halted, waiting again till the lightning again, enabled him to see the rock.[Pg 172]

"That's it, as sure as I live!" exclaimed the boatman.

Again and again he saw it, as the lightning glared upon it; and the resemblance to a coffin was certainly very striking. Harvey Barth was justified again, and Leopold acknowledged to himself the correctness of the description in the diary. Thrusting the oar down into the sand on the spot where he was, so as not to loose the locality, he stood for some time observing the phenomenon on the rocks. He understood now why he had not seen it before. In his previous search, he had walked on the beach twenty feet farther out from the cliff. Changing his position by wading into the water, the shape of the coffin on the rock was lost before he had moved ten feet from the oar. From this point it assumed a new form, looking like nothing in particular but a mass of rock.

Leopold returned to the stake which he had set up, and then walked from it to the cliff. When he stopped, the projecting rock was directly over his head. He knew the spot very well. He had baked clams there for Rosabel Hamilton during one of his visits to High Rock[Pg 173] with her; and he had dug over every foot of sand beneath it, in search of the hidden treasure, without finding it. But Harvey Barth was so correct in regard to his description of the locality that the boatman was more disposed to rely upon his statements in other matters than he had ever been before. He gathered a pile of stones to mark the place, and then gave himself up to a careful consideration of the circumstances of the case. He could not now escape the conclusion that the money was actually buried beneath the projecting rock—"Coffin Rock" he had already named in his own mind; and he proceeded to inquire why he had not found it, when he dug the ground all over.

"Miss Liverage told me the hole which Wallbridge dug was not more than a foot deep; and Harvey Barth's diary contained the same statement," said the boatman to himself. "I dug a foot down, and the money was not there. I remember I found a piece of boat-hook, with the iron on it about that distance below the surface. What does that prove? How happened that piece of a boat-hook, to be a foot under ground? On the top of the cliffs the sand and[Pg 174] gravel, with a little soil on top, is six feet deep, and this beach is formed by the caving down of the earth. There is no beach beyond the Hole, because the rocks are all bare on the top of the cliff. I suppose the sand