cecil mitford sat at a desk in the record office with a stained and tattered sheet of dark dirty-brown antique paper spread before him in triumph, and with an eager air of anxious inquiry speaking forth from every line in his white face and every convulsive twitch at the irrepressible corners of his firm pallid mouth. yes, there was no doubt at all about it; the piece of torn and greasy paper which he had at last discovered was nothing more or less than john cann's missing letter. for two years cecil mitford had given up all his spare time, day and night, to the search for that lost fragment of crabbed seventeenth-century handwriting; and now at length, after so many disappointments and so much fruitless anxious hunting, the clue to the secret of john cann's treasure was lying there positively before him. the young man's hand trembled violently as he held the paper fast unopened in his feverish grasp, and read upon its back the autograph endorsement of charles the second's secretary of state—"letter in cypher from io. cann, the noted buccaneer, to his brother willm, intercepted at port royal by his maties command, and despatched by general ed. d'oyley, his maties captain-genl and governor-in-chief of the island of jamaica, to me, h. nicholas." that was it, beyond the shadow of a doubt; and though cecil mitford had[pg 189] still to apply to the cypher john cann's own written key, and to find out the precise import of the directions it contained, he felt at that moment that the secret was now at last virtually discovered, and that john cann's untold thousands of buried wealth were potentially his very own already.
he was only a clerk in the colonial office, was cecil mitford, on a beggarly income of a hundred and eighty a year—how small it seemed now, when john cann's money was actually floating before his mind's eye; but he had brains and industry and enterprise after a fitful adventurous fashion of his own; and he had made up his mind years before that he would find out the secret of john cann's buried treasure, if he had to spend half a lifetime on the almost hopeless quest. as a boy, cecil mitford had been brought up at his father's rectory on the slopes of dartmoor, and there he had played from his babyhood upward among the rugged granite boulders of john cann's rocks, and had heard from the farm labourers and the other children around the romantic but perfectly historical legend of john cann's treasure. unknown and incredible sums in mexican doubloons and spanish dollars lay guarded by a strong oaken chest in a cavern on the hilltop, long since filled up with flints and mould from the neighbouring summits. to that secure hiding-place the great buccaneer had committed the hoard gathered in his numberless piratical expeditions, burying all together under the shadow of a petty porphyritic tor that overhangs the green valley of bovey tracy. beside the bare rocks that mark the site, a perfectly distinct pathway is worn by footsteps into the granite platform underfoot; and that path, little cecil mitford had heard with childish awe and wonder, was cut out by the pacing up and down of old john cann himself, mounting guard in the darkness and solitude over the countless treasure that he had hidden away in the recesses of the pixies' hole beneath.[pg 190]
as young mitford grew up to man's estate, this story of john cann's treasure haunted his quick imagination for many years with wonderful vividness. when he first came up to london, after his father's death, and took his paltry clerkship in the colonial office—how he hated the place, with its monotonous drudgery, while john cann's wealth was only waiting for him to take it and floating visibly before his prophetic eyes!—the story began for a while to fade out under the disillusioning realities of respectable poverty and a petty government post. but before he had been many months in the west india department (he had a small room on the third floor, overlooking downing street) a casual discovery made in overhauling the archives of the office suddenly revived the boyish dream with all the added realism and cool intensity of maturer years. he came across a letter from john cann himself to the protector oliver, detailing the particulars of a fierce irregular engagement with a spanish privateer, in which the spaniard had been captured with much booty, and his vessel duly sold to the highest bidder in port royal harbour. this curious coincidence gave a great shock of surprise to young mitford. john cann, then, was no mythical prehistoric hero, no fairy-king or pixy or barrow-haunter of the popular fancy, but an actual genuine historical figure, who corresponded about his daring exploits with no less a personage than oliver himself! from that moment forth, cecil mitford gave himself up almost entirely to tracing out the forgotten history of the old buccaneer. he allowed no peace to the learned person who took care of the state papers of the commonwealth at the record office, and he established private relations, by letter, with two or three clerks in the colonial secretary's office at kingston, jamaica, whom he induced to help him in reconstructing the lost story of john cann's life.
bit by bit cecil mitford had slowly pieced together a[pg 191] wonderful mass of information, buried under piles of ragged manuscript and weary reams of dusty documents, about the days and doings of that ancient terror of the spanish main. john cann was a devonshire lad, of the rollicking, roving seventeenth century, born and bred at bovey tracy, on the flanks of dartmoor, the last survivor of those sea-dogs of devon who had sallied forth to conquer and explore a new continent under the guidance of drake, and raleigh, and frobisher, and hawkins. as a boy, he had sailed with his father in a ship that bore the queen's letters of marque and reprisal against the spanish galleons; in his middle life, he had lived a strange roaming existence—half pirate and half privateer, intent upon securing the protestant religion and punishing the king's enemies by robbing wealthy spanish skippers and cutting off the recusant noses of vile papistical cuban slave traders; in his latter days, the fierce, half-savage old mariner had relapsed into sheer robbery, and had been hunted down as a public enemy by the lord protector's servants, or later still by the captains-general and governors-in-chief of his most sacred majesty's dominions in the west indies. for what was legitimate warfare in the spacious days of great elizabeth, had come to be regarded in the degenerate reign of charles ii. as rank piracy.
one other thing cecil mitford had discovered, with absolute certainty; and that was that in the summer of 1660, "the year of his matie's most happy restoration," as john cann himself phrased it, the persecuted and much misunderstood old buccaneer had paid a secret visit to england, and had brought with him the whole hoard which he had accumulated during sixty years of lawful or unlawful piracy in the west indies and the spanish main. concerning this hoard, which he had concealed somewhere in devonshire, he kept up a brisk vernacular correspondence in cypher with his brother william, at tavistock; and the key to that cypher, marked outside[pg 192] "a clew to my bro. john's secret writing," cecil mitford had been fortunate enough to unearth among the undigested masses of the record office. but one letter, the last and most important of the whole series, containing as he believed the actual statement of the hiding-place, had long evaded all his research: and that was the letter which, now at last, after months and months of patient inquiry, lay unfolded before his dazzled eyes on the little desk in his accustomed corner. it had somehow been folded up by mistake in the papers relating to the charge against cyriack skinner, of complicity in the rye house plot. how it got there nobody knows, and probably nobody but cecil mitford himself could ever have succeeded in solving the mystery.
as he gazed, trembling, at the precious piece of dusty much-creased paper, scribbled over in the unlettered schoolboy hand of the wild old sea-dog, cecil mitford could hardly restrain himself for a moment from uttering a cry. untold wealth swam before his eyes: he could marry ethel now, and let her drive in her own carriage! ah, what he would give if he might only shout in his triumph. he couldn't even read the words, he was so excited. but after a minute or two, he recovered his composure sufficiently to begin deciphering the crabbed writing, which constant practice and familiarity with the system enabled him to do immediately, without even referring to the key. and this was what, with a few minutes' inspection, cecil mitford slowly spelled out of the dirty manuscript:—
"from jamaica. this 23rd day of jany,
"in the yeare of our lord 1663.
"my deare bro.,—i did not think to have written you againe, after the scurvie trick you have played me in disclosing my affairs to that meddlesome knight that calls himself the king's secretary: but in truth your last letter[pg 193] hath so moved me by your vileness that i must needs reply thereto with all expedicion. these are to assure you, then, that let you pray how you may, or gloze over your base treatment with fine cozening words and fair promises, you shall have neither lot nor scot in my threasure, which is indeed as you surmise hidden away in england, but the secret whereof i shall impart neither to you nor to no man. i have give commands, therefore that the paper whereunto i have committed the place of its hiding shall be buried with my own body (when god please) in the grave-yarde at port royal in this island: so that you shall never be bettered one penny by your most damnable treachery and double-facedness. for i know you, my deare bro., in very truth for a prating coxcomb, a scurvie cowardlie knave, and a lying thief of other men's reputations. therefore, no more herewith from your very humble servt., and loving bro.,
"iohn cann, captn"
cecil mitford laid the paper down as he finished reading it with a face even whiter and paler than before, and with the muscles of his mouth trembling violently with suppressed emotion. at the exact second when he felt sure he had discovered the momentous secret, it had slipped mysteriously through his very fingers, and seemed now to float away into the remote distance, almost as far from his eager grasp as ever. even there, in the musty record office, before all the clerks and scholars who were sitting about working carelessly at their desks at mere dilettante historical problems—the stupid prigs, how he hated them!—he could hardly restrain the expression of his pent-up feelings at that bitter disappointment in the very hour of his fancied triumph. jamaica! how absolutely distant and unapproachable it sounded! how hopeless the attempt to follow up the clue! how utterly his day-dream had been dashed to the ground in those three minutes of[pg 194] silent deciphering! he felt as if the solid earth was reeling beneath him, and he would have given the whole world if he could have put his face between his two hands on the desk and cried like a woman before the whole record office.
for half an hour by the clock he sat there dazed and motionless, gazing in a blank disappointed fashion at the sheet of coffee-coloured paper in front of him. it was late, and workers were dropping away one after another from the scantily peopled desks. but cecil mitford took no notice of them: he merely sat with his arms folded, and gazed abstractedly at that disappointing, disheartening, irretrievable piece of crabbed writing. at last an assistant came up and gently touched his arm. "we're going to close now, sir," he said in his unfeeling official tone—just as if it were a mere bit of historical inquiry he was after—"and i shall be obliged if you'll put back the manuscripts you've been consulting into f. 27." cecil mitford rose mechanically and sorted out the cyriack skinner papers into their proper places. then he laid them quietly on the shelf, and walked out into the streets of london, for the moment a broken-hearted man.
but as he walked home alone that clear warm summer evening, and felt the cool breeze blowing against his forehead, he began to reflect to himself that, after all, all was not lost; that in fact things really stood better with him now than they had stood that very morning, before he lighted upon john cann's last letter. he had not discovered the actual hiding-place of the hoard, to be sure, but he now knew on john cann's own indisputable authority, first, that there really was a hidden treasure; second, that the hiding-place was really in england; and third, that full particulars as to the spot where it was buried might be found in john cann's own coffin at port royal, jamaica. it was a risky and difficult thing to open a coffin, no doubt; but it was not impossible. no, not[pg 195] impossible. on the whole, putting one thing with another, in spite of his terrible galling disappointment, he was really nearer to the recovery of the treasure now than he had ever been in his life before. till to-day, the final clue was missing; to-day, it had been found. it was a difficult and dangerous clue to follow, but still it had been found.
and yet, setting aside the question of desecrating a grave, how all but impossible it was for him to get to jamaica! his small funds had long ago been exhausted in prosecuting the research, and he had nothing on earth to live upon now but his wretched salary. even if he could get three or six months' leave from the colonial office, which was highly improbable, how could he ever raise the necessary money for his passage out and home, as well as for the delicate and doubtful operation of searching for documents in john cann's coffin? it was tantalising, it was horrible, it was unendurable; but here, with the secret actually luring him on to discover it, he was to be foiled and baffled at the last moment by a mere paltry, petty, foolish consideration of two hundred pounds! two hundred pounds! how utterly ludicrous! why, john cann's treasure would make him a man of fabulous wealth for a whole lifetime, and he was to be prevented from realizing it by a wretched matter of two hundred pounds! he would do anything to get it—for a loan, a mere loan; to be repaid with cent. per cent. interest; but where in the world, where in the world, was he ever to get it from?
and then, quick as lightning, the true solution of the whole difficulty flashed at once across his excited brain. he could borrow all the money if he chose from ethel! poor little ethel; she hadn't much of her own; but she had just enough to live very quietly upon with her aunt emily; and, thank heaven, it wasn't tied up with any of those bothering, meddling three-per-cent.-loving trustees![pg 196] she had her little all at her own disposal, and he could surely get two or three hundred pounds from her to secure for them both the boundless buried wealth of john cann's treasure.
should he make her a confidante outright, and tell her what it was that he wanted the money for? no, that would be impossible, for though she had heard all about john cann over and over again, she had not faith enough in the treasure—women are so unpractical—to hazard her little scrap of money on it; of that he felt certain. she would go and ask old mr. cartwright's opinion; and old mr. cartwright was one of those penny-wise, purblind, unimaginative old gentlemen who will never believe in anything until they've seen it. yet here was john cann's money going a-begging, so to speak, and only waiting for him and ethel to come and enjoy it. cecil had no patience with those stupid, stick-in-the-mud, timid people who can see no further than their own noses. for ethel's own sake he would borrow two or three hundred pounds from her, one way or another, and she would easily forgive him the harmless little deception when he paid her back a hundredfold out of john cann's boundless treasure.
