He had
eyed and measured the bearings so carefully already that he knew the
very spot to a nail's breadth where John Cann's treasure was actually
hidden. He set to work digging with a little pick as confidently as if
he had already seen the doubloons lying there in the strong box that he
knew enclosed them. Four feet deep he dug, as John Cann's instructions
told him; and then, true to the inch, his pick struck against a solid
oaken box, well secured with clamps of iron. Cecil cleared all the dirt
away from the top, carefully, not hurriedly, and tried with all his
might to lift the box out, but all in vain. It was far too heavy, of
course, for one man's arms to raise: all that weight of gold and silver
must be ever so much more than a single pair of hands could possibly
manage. He must try to open the lid alone, so as to take the gold out, a
bit at a time, and carry it away with him now and again, as he was able,
covering the place up carefully in between, for fear of the Treasury and
the Lord of the Manor. How abominably unjust it seemed to him at that
moment--the legal claim of those two indolent hostile powers! to think
that after he, Cecil Mitford, had borne the brunt of the labour in
adventurously hunting up the whole trail of John Cann's secret, two idle
irresponsible participators should come in at the end, if they could, to
profit entirely by _his_ ingenuity and _his_ exertions! At last, by a great effort, he forced the rusty lock open, and looked
eagerly into the strong oak chest. How his heart beat with slow, deep
throbs at that supreme moment, not with suspense, for he _knew_ he
should find the money, but with the final realization of a great hope
long deferred! Yes, there it lay, in very truth, all before him--great
shining coins of old Spanish gold--gold, gold, gold, arranged in long
rows, one coin after another, over the whole surface of the broad oak
box. He had found it, he had found it, he had really found it! After so
much toilsome hunting, after so much vain endeavour, after so many
heart-breaking disappointments, John Cann's treasure in very truth lay
open there actually before him! For a few minutes, eager and frightened as he was, Cecil Mitford did not
dare even to touch the precious pieces. In the greatness of his joy, in
the fierce rush of his overpowering emotions, he had no time to think of
mere base everyday gold and silver. It was the future and the ideal that
he beheld, not the piled-up heaps of filthy lucre. Ethel was his, wealth
was his, honour was his! He would be a rich man and a great man now and
henceforth for ever! Oh, how he hugged himself in his heart on the wise
successful fraud by which he had induced Ethel to advance him the few
wretched hundreds he needed for his ever-memorable Jamaican journey! How
he praised to himself his own courage, and ingenuity, and determination,
and inexhaustible patience! How he laughed down that foolish conscience
of his that would fain have dissuaded him from his master-stroke of
genius. He deserved it all, he deserved it all! Other men would have
flinched before the risk and expense of the voyage to Jamaica, would
have given up the scent for a fool's errand in the cemetery at Port
Royal, would have shrunk from ransacking John Cann's grave at dead of
night in the Cathedral precincts at Spanish Town, would have feared to
buy the high-priced corner of land at Bovey Tracy on a pure imaginative
speculation. But he, Cecil Mitford, had had the boldness and the
cleverness to do it every bit, and now, wisdom was justified of all her
children. He sat for five minutes in profound meditation on the edge of
the little pit he had dug, gloating dreamily over the broad gold pieces,
and inwardly admiring his own bravery and foresight and indomitable
resolution. What a magnificent man he really was--a worthy successor of
those great freebooting, buccaneering, filibustering Devonians of the
grand Elizabethan era! To think that the worky-day modern world should
ever have tried to doom him, Cecil Mitford, with his splendid enterprise
and glorious potentialities, to a hundred and eighty a year and a
routine clerkship at the Colonial Office! After a while, however, mere numerical cupidity began to get the better
of this heroic mood, and Cecil Mitford turned somewhat languidly to the
vulgar task of counting the rows of doubloons. He counted up the
foremost row carefully, and then for the first time perceived, to his
intense surprise, that the row behind was not gold, but mere silver
Mexican pistoles. He rubbed his eyes and looked again, but the fact was
unmistakable; there was only one row of yellow gold in the top layer,
and all the rest was merely bright and glittering silver. Strange that
John Cann should have put coins of such small value near the top of his
box: the rest of the gold must certainly be in successive layers down
further. He lifted up the big gold doubloons in the first row, and then,
to his blank horror and amazement, came to--not more gold, not more
silver, but--but--but--ay, incredible as it seemed, appalling,
horrifying--a wooden bottom! Had John Cann, in his care and anxiety, put a layer of solid oak between
each layer of gold and silver? Hardly that, the oak was too thick. In a
moment Cecil Mitford had taken out all the coins of the first tier, and
laid bare the oaken bottom. A few blows of the pick loosened the earth
around, and then, oh horror, oh ghastly disappointment, oh unspeakable
heart-sickening revelation, the whole box came out entire. It was only
two inches deep altogether, including the cover--it was, in fact, a mere
shallow tray or saucer, something like the sort of thin wooden boxes in
which sets of dessert-knives or fish-knives are usually sold for wedding
presents! For the space of three seconds Cecil Mitford could not believe his eyes,
and then, with a sudden flash of awful vividness, the whole terrible
truth flashed at once across his staggering brain. He had found John
Cann's treasure indeed--the John Cann's treasure of base actual reality;
but the John Cann's treasure of his fervid imagination, the John Cann's
treasure he had dreamt of from his boyhood upward, the John Cann's
treasure he had risked all to find and to win, did not exist, could not
exist, and never had existed at all anywhere! It was all a horrible,
incredible, unthinkable delusion! The hideous fictions he had told would
every one be now discovered; Ethel would be ruined; Aunt Emily would be
ruined; and they would both know him, not only for a fool, a dreamer,
and a visionary, but also for a gambler, a thief, and a liar. In his black despair he jumped down into the shallow hole once more, and
began a second time to count slowly over the accursed dollars. The whole
miserable sum--the untold wealth of John Cann's treasure--would amount
altogether to about two hundred and twenty pounds of modern sterling
English money.