| Show i BROKERS BAY I J J BY W CLARK RUSSELL Copyright 1894 by Ihe Author Written for The Salt Lake Herald Brokers Bay is situated on the west o coast of England You may search the map for it in vain and the reason wly I call it by another name than it bears will when you read this story be as clear as the mud in the water that p brims to the base of Brokers cliffs < Brokers Bay Is a One curving sweap Of land For how many centuries the sea has been sneakingly ebbing from dt who can imagine The time has been when the galleon and the carack L strained at their hempen ground tackle at anchors six fathoms deep where the white wlndmll now Stands within musket shot of the Crown and Anchor and where the church spire darts the gleani of its weathercock above the green thickness of a huddle of dwarf tres near the little vicarage About fifty years ago a company of enterprising souls took it into their heads to reclaim some of the land which the subtle and ceaselessly ebbing sea rising and falling with moonlike regularity yet receding ever though noticeably only in spans of halfcentur lea was leaving behind They armed arm-ed themselves with the necessary legal powers they subscribed all the capital they considered needful and by processes process-es of embark ng draining manuring and the like they succeeded in raising wheat and grass vegetables and flowers flow-ers where since and long before the days of the painted Briton shuddering In the November blast or perspiring away his small clothes upder the July sun nothing had flourished but the dab and the crab Yet the speculation on the whole was a allure It was a pathetic achievement achieve-ment in its way and those concerned in iu deserved well of the nation for if it be a fine thing to bled for ones country how muchflner must it be to add to its dimensions to enlarge Its latitude and ongituile and extend the home sov creignity of the monarch who happens to be seated on the throne at the lime Yet though a pretty considerable considera-ble village stood hard by the reclaimed land houses did not increase The builder whose Christian name is Jerry came down to Brokers bay and took a look around and went home II again and did nothing He was not I to be decoyed he said Brokers Bay was not the right sort of place to start a town in he thought There was too much mud Mr Jerry considered Recalculated Re-calculated that when the water was out there was a full mile and three quartern of slime Oh yes whilst the slime was still slimy it reflected the sky just the same as If it had been water and it took a noble bloodred countenance of a hot sunset evening whEn the sky was a pink gleaming streak just under the horizon and it was very pleasing Li that sort of way But I what were the doctors going to say about ill that mud and what opportunities oppor-tunities would a waste of slush extending extend-ing one and threequarters miles at ebb tide provide the local historian with wh n he came to write a guidebook and invent Roman and early English names for the immediate district and deal with the salubriousness of the climate and give an analysis of the drinking water Aid what abou the bathing There was none And what length of pier would be wanted if the seaward end of it was to be permanently perma-nently waterwash The reclaimed land was divided into lots for building but nobody built The soil continued to be cultivated nevertheless never-theless Two marketgardeners did very well out of it A butcher rented tarty acres of the pasture land the i emiinde was variously dealt with in small ways for growing purposes Now that stretch of land had been reclaimed some fifteen years when a certain mastermariner whom I will caB Captain carey arrived at the adjacent ad-jacent village with the intention of taking tak-ing a view of tho Brokers Bay foreshore News that good land was cheap hereabouts here-abouts had reached him up at Blyth He had unexpectedly come into a little fortune had Captain Carey For years he had followed the coasting trade working his way out through the fore scuttle into the captains cabin and after thirty years of seafaring rendered ren-dered more and more uncomfortable by gloomy anticipations of the workhouse in hie old age he had been enriched by the will of an Australian aunt the amount being something between 9000 and 10000 Captain Carey had sprung from a West country woman and when they came into the Australian legacy they determined to break up their little home at Blyth and sr < tle somewhere on western soil So Ca in Carey came to Brokers Bay ana with him traveled trav-eled his giant son a youth of prodigious pro-digious muscle but of weak intellect A second Titan son was at this time at sea working his way towards the quarterdeck aboard an East Indiaman I Capt Careys survey of the Brokers I foreshore determined him on purchasing purchas-ing a plat of land right amidships of 1i the fine curve of reclaimed soil He bought four acres at a very low figure I indeed land then he ordered a little house to be built in the midst of his little estate His wife and her niece joined him and the giant halfwitted son at the adjacent village and there the family dwelt at the sign of the Seen Bells whilst the house was building It was quickly put together and was then gay with a green balcony and it had motherly lubberly bay windows that made YOU think of a whalers j boats dangling at cranes and the entrance en-trance was embellished with a singular i porch after the design of a retired mastermariner who had recollected i seeing something of the sort at Lisbon t when he had gone as a bcy on a voyage fi voy-age to Portugal Capt Carey loved seclusion Like J most retired mariners he hatedto bet be-t overlooked This fondnes for privacy fc which grows out of a habit of it maybe may-be owing to there being no streets at d sea and no overtheway The master of a vessel lives in a cabin all alone by Mmsplf the Crusoe of the after part of the ship He measures his quarterdeck quarter-deck in lonely walks no eyes glittering above the bulwarks to watch his movements move-ments his behavior as a man his < judgment as a seaman but not his TOOle of life as a private individual I are criticised by his crew Hence I when a man steps ashore after a long period of command at sea he carries with him a strong love of privacy and much resolution of retirement A great number of little cottages by the S ocean are occupied by solitary seamen who pass their time in looking through S a telescope at the hoVIson In arguing with lonesome men of their own cloth S in smoking pipes at Bugger Inn or I at the sign < of the Lord Nelson andS and-S turning In i at night and turning out I in the morning To provide against being overlooked in case others should build hard by SS Captain Carey walled his little estate of S four acres with a regular bulkhead ota S ot-a fence handsomely spiked on top and t too tall for even his giant son to I rJ peer over on tiptoe In a few months the house was being papered and in all ways completed it was then furnished S and the ground fenced rapt Carey and his family now took posession of S their new home There was first of allS all-S Caot Carey then Mrs Carey next the giant young Carey who had been S known up in Blyth toy the name of Mother Careys chicken and last Mrs r Careys niece a atout active girl of S twenty who helped Mrs Carey in cooking 5 cook-ing and looking after the house for S S 3 Carey having been robbed whilst absent S r ab-sent on a coasting voyage of a new SSS coat a soft hat a meerschaum pipe and a few other trifles by a maidof I all work had sworn in hideous forecastle fore-castle JafsffUage never again to keep S t 3 another servant v I S Thi happy family jofCareys K tvere SL ig v ry well pleisedivilh their new home yS L 0D 1 v Old Carey was never weary of stepping out of doors to look at his new house He seemed to find something fresh to admire every time he cast his eyes over the little building He and his son planted potatoes onions cabbage and other homely vegetables and dugout dug-out and cultivated a very considerable area of kitchen garden They had not above three miles to walk to attend divine worship There were several convenient shops in the adjacent village vil-lage not more than two miles and a half distant There was no roadway to speak of to Careys house but in a very few weeks the feet of the family and the tread of the tradespeople tramped out a thin path over the reclaimed land to the village roadway where it fell with the sweep of the cliff to the level of the reclaimed soil And the view on the whole from Careys windows win-dows was fairly picturesqueand pleasIng pleas-Ing even when the water was out and the scene was a sweeping fiat of mud Afar on the dark blue edge of the sea hovered the featherwhite canvas of ships easily resolved into denominable fabrics by Careys powerful telescope The western sun glowed In the briny opze till the whole stretch of the stuff resembled a vast surface of molten crold Here and there confronting Careys house stood some scores of fangs of rock and when there was a floodtide and i fresh inshore gale the sea snapped and beat and burst upon the beach with as much uproar as though it were all fathomless ocean Instead of a dirty stretch of water with an eighteen foot rise of tide and foam so dark and thick with dirt that after it had blown upon you and dried it was as though you had ridden through some dozen miles of muddy lanes t The family had been settled about three months when the eldest son arrived ar-rived home from the long voyage he had made to China and the East Indies He was a tall powerfullybuilt young man but his education In his youth had been neglected Capt Carey indeed in-deed had not in those days possessed the means to put him to school Now however that the skipper had come into a little fortune of call it 10000 he resolved to qualify his son for a position on the quarter deck Navigation I can teach him he said to his wife and If he was a masterrigger he couldnt know more about a ship What he wants is the sort of laming which you and mes is deficient in the being able to talk and write good English with some sort of knowledge of history and the likes of that so that should he ever get command of a passenger ship why then sitting at the head of the cabin table he wont be ashamed of addressing address-ing the ladies and joining in the general gen-eral conversation S So when this son arived from China and the East Indies the father instead in-stead of sending him to sea again put him to read and study with a clergyman clergy-man who lived in the adjacent village a gentleman who could not obtain a living and who disdained a curacy Thus it came to pass that Capt Care lived at home with his two sons and wife and wifes niece He stood in a bay window one day and it entered his head to dig out a pond and place a fountain in the middle mid-dle of it Ill improve the property said Capt Careyturninig to his wife and sons who were lingering at the breakfast break-fast table Well fix a pedestal amidships amid-ships of the pond and put a female statue upon tone of them white figures fig-ures who keep their right hands aloft for the holding of a whirligig fountain Theres nothing prettier than a revolving revolv-ing fountain asparkling and ashower ing down over a nude statue Youll be strikink salt waiter father if you fall adigging said the sailor son named Tom And what then exclaimed Captain Carey SAint brine as bright to the eye as fresh Water And its not going go-ing to choke the fountain either Blessed if I dont think the fountain might be set aplaying by the rise and fall of the tide When breakfast was ended the father and the two sons stepped out of doors to decide upon a spot upon which to dig the pond for the fountain After much discussion they agreed to dig in front of the house about 100 paces distant dis-tant no intrusion on the seafronting portion of the water when the tide was at its height S the water when the tide was at its height The captains grounds lay open to the sea though they were jealously fenc das d-as has been already said at the back and on either hand There could be no intrusion on the seafronting portion por-tion of the grounds The mud came to the embankment and the embankment was the oceanlimit of Careys little estate es-tate There was no path and no right of way if there had > been Selkirk and his goats could scarcely have enjoyed greater seclusion than did Carey and his family The father and sons proposed pro-posed to dig ou the pond to the shape depth and area decided upon and then bring In a mason to finish it They went to work next day it was something some-thing to dosomething to kill the time which perhaps now and again lay a little heavy upon this isolated family The old skipper dug with a vehemence and enjoyment He had been bred to a life of hard work and was never happier than when toiling His giant halfwitted son labored with the energy ener-gy of steam The sailor son stepped in when he had done with his parson and his studies for the day and drove his spade into the reclaimed soil with enthusiasm This went on for several days and something that resembled the idea of a pond without any water i in it began to suggest itself ito the eye It was on a Friday afternoon in i the month of April as the captain whom i 1 am calling Carey himself informed I me that this retired skipper who had I not felt well enough that day to dig I was seated in his parlor reading a newspaper news-paper and smoking a pipe and the giant halfwitted youth whose name was Jack walked in i Father said he aint gold found in the earth Nowhere else sonny answered the captain looking at the giant over the top of the newspaper Theres gold in the pond father said Jack Gold in your eye exclaimed the captain putting down his pipe and his newspaper What sort of gold said he smiling Shiny gold like the half sovereign you wance gave me for behavin myself my-self when you was away On this Captain Carey without another an-other word put on his hat and walked with his son to the diggings which were by this time a pretty considerable trench um1a I There said Jack pointing my spade drove upon him and Ive scraped I that much clear The captain looked and perceived what resembled a fragment of a shaft I of metal dull and yellow with lines of brightness here Jacks spade had scraped the surface He at once I jumped into the trench and bade Jack fetch his spade Then they dug toI getner and in about a quarter of an hour succeeded in Jaying bare a small brass cannon of very antique pattern I and manufacture It was pivoted They dug a litle longer and deeper land exposed a portion of woodwork The scantling was extraordinarily I thick and the gun was pivoted to it The captains face was red with excitement ex-citement Hun and see if Toms in he cried and if he aint leave word that hes to join us with < this spade as soon as he I arrives and then come you back Jacky I Jack-y the great anchor if here aint a foundered ship call me a gully The sailor son armed with a spade appeared on the scene withliU twenty minutes i S Its an old brass swivel l father he shouted 7 j J S f Jump in crfed the skipper and i I 11 = > 1 1 0 11 q lens a hand to clear away more of this muck The three pIled their spades with might and main and before sundown they had laid bare some eight feet of ships deck with about five feet breadth of bulwark measuring four feet high from the plank Mrs Carey and the niece came to the edge of the pit to look The three diggers covered cov-ered with sweat and hot as fire climbed climb-ed out threw down their spades and the family stood gazing Whatever is it cried Mrs Carey A foundered ship answered her husband A whole ship uncle exclaimed the nieceA A threehundred ton ship answered answer-ed the skipper Dye want to know if shes all here I cant tell you that but if there aint solidness enough for a Ryle Jarge running fore and aft in this unearthed piece Im no sailorman sailor-man What sort of a ship will she be said the halfwitted Jack Something twohundred years old if the whole job haint some antiquarian antiquar-ian roose like the burying of Roman baths for the digging of em up again as an advertisement of the place who was areigning twohundred year ago Here every eye was directed at the sailor son who after rubbing his nose and looking hard at the horizon answered Crummell Then its a ship of CrummeHs 0 f hcr u4t I I j c Ill I Ns PICK OXE OF EM UP TOM time cried the captain to whom the name of Crummell did not seem familiar fam-iliar and if so be shes all here intact in-tact bloomed if she wont be a fortune to us as a show That night both rut and after supper all the talk of the family was about the foundered ship in the garden The giant lads excitement was such that even the mother owned to herself her-self he had never been more fluent and imbecile Dye think its a whole ship father I said Tom the sailor Moren likely That there brass cannon ought to give us her age I Havent I heard tell of Spanish invasion in-vasion of this country in bygone years when theDons was blowed tothe nor rad and a score of their galleons castaway cast-away upon the British coasts At a time like this a man feels not being a scholard Tom fetch down your history I his-tory book and see if theres a piece wrote In it about that there Spanish I jobThe sailor brought a history of England Eng-land to the lamp and with fingers sauareended as broken carrots and with palms dark with dragging upon tarry ropes groped patiently through the pages till he came to a part of the story that told of the Spanish Armada This was read aloud and the family listened with attention Well she may prove to be one of them Spanish galleons after all said Oapt Carey Shell not be the first I ship thats been dug out of land which the seas flowed over in its day There was Jimmy Perkins of Sunder landand here he spun them a yarn Whatll be inside ithe ship I wonder won-der exclaimed the neice Ah said the young giant Jack opening his mouth Them galleons went pretty richly freighted Ive heered said the skipper skip-per When I was a boy they used to tell of their going afloat with a store of dollars in their holds their bottoms flush to the hatches with the choicest goods gold and silver candlesticks and crucifixes in the cabins for the captains cap-tains and mates to say their prayers afore Jacky thought the cannon gold said Mrs Carey He may be right Thomas though a little quick in finding out There may be gold deeper down Well now cried the skipper Ill tell you what Ive made up my mind to do Well keep this here find a secret se-cret Tom you me and Jackll go to work day after day until we see what lies buried Theres no call for any of us to say a word about this discovery Were pretty well out of sight the fence stands high and if so be as any visitor or tradesman should catch a view of the trench theyll not be able to see whats inside without drawing close to the brink which of course wont be permitted If that foundered craft he cried with great excitement pointing toward the window is intact in-tact as I before observed then let her hold contain what it may all mud or all dollars or all slush or all silk as a show she ought to be worth a matter of a thousand pounds to us But not a word to anybody till weve looked inside in-side of her If theres treasure why Its to be ourn Theres to be no dIviding dI-viding of it with the authorities and so I says plainly let the law be what it will Heres this house and grounds to be paid for Tom to be eddicated and sent to sea in a ship he holds a share in Jack to be made independent of me and Eliza to be provided for and well see he shouted hitting timetable time-table a blow with his cleched fist If that there foundered ship aint agoing ito i-to work out this traverse the same as if she was chockablock with bullion bul-lion Thus was the procedure settled and next morning early the father and two sons went to work with their I soades It was to prove a long laborious job I they knew that but were determined all the same to keep the strange business I busi-ness in the family and to solve the secret se-cret ofthe buried craft as dqrkly and mysteriously as though they were bent upon perpetrating some deed of horror The quantity of soil they threw up II formed an embankment which concealed the trench and their own laboring figures as they progressed Tom went I away to his studies for two or three hours In the day saving this and the I interruption of meal times their toil I was unintermittent In three weeks I they had disclosed enough of the poop i royal poop and quarterdeck of the strangelyshaped craft to satisfy them I that at all events a very large por tion of the after part of the vessel lay solid in its centuries old grave of mud In this time they had exhumed and scraped the whole breadth or beam of her upper decks to a distance of about twentytwo feet forward from the taff rail Their notion was to clear her from end to end betwixt the lines of her bulwarks only to satisfy themselves them-selves that she was a whole ship Day after day they labored in their secret fashion i the people of the district nevpr for an instant imagined that I they were at vork on anything more than an entren hment of extraordinary size depth and length for some purpose pur-pose known omy to themselves I I It took them to the middle of July to I expose the upper decks of the vessel and then there lay a truly marvelous S and even beautiful sight buried some i ten feet below the level of the soil the complete and quite perfect fabric of a little antique ship of war about 100 feet long and thirty feet wide with two i after decks or POps descending like steps to the quarterdeck and the bows shelving downwards like the slope of I a beach into what promised to prove la complicated curling of headboards I and some nightmare device of figurehead figure-head Four little brass cannons were pivoted on the poop rails and on her main deck she mounted eight guns of that ancient sort called sakers The wood of her < was as hard as iron and i black as old oak with the saturation of i soil and brine and times secret hardening harden-ing process The masts were clean gone from the deck and there were no j signs of a bowsprit Never was there a more wonderful picture than that I ancient ship as she lay in her grave with her grin of oldwork artillery I running the fat squab length of her the old structure jlat still in the soil to the level of the bulwark rails affecting I affect-ing the eyes as some marvelous illusion illu-sion of nature as some wild romantic vegetable or mineral caprice of the draihed but sodden soil Our little family of diggers having disentombed the decks and bulwarks to the whole length of the giant Jacks extraordinary discovery next proceeded proceed-ed all as secretly though they were I preparing for some hideous crime to uproot the covers of the main hatch which were as hard fixed as though they had been of Portland stone cemented ce-mented into a pier With much hammering ham-mering however iand they were three powerful menthey succeeded in splitting the cover and the stubborn wonderful old piece of timberframe was picked out of the yawn of the hatch in splinters And now they looked down into a black well from which however Captain Carey speedily withdrew his 1 head snuffing and spitting Run for a candle Jack said he I A candle was lighted and lowered and when it had sunk half a dozen feet the flame went out as though the wick had been suddenly pinched by the fingers of a spirit So that a current of air should sweeten the hold they went aft with their hatchets and hammers and after prodigious Jabor splintered and I cleared away the cover of a little booby hatch just under the break of the lower poop They next got open the small fore hatch and at the end of two I days when they lowered a lighted candle I can-dle the flame burnt freely I Now what did they find inside this buried ship Carey had counted upon j mud to the hatchways and scores of curios and amazing relics of Crom wells or anothers period to be dug out I of the solid mass Instead the interior was as dry as a nut whose kernel has rotted into dust This was as extraor dinary as any other feature of the discovery I dis-covery the three men each bering alighted a-lighted lantern descended the ladder they had lowered through ithe hatch and gained the bottom of the ship where they walked upon what had undoubtedly un-doubtedly been cargo In its time though It might now have passed for a sort of dunnage of lava bry harsh and gritty and powdered under the tread A basket was loaded with the stuff and hoisted Into the daylight and I examined but the family could make nothing of it As far as could be gathered gath-ered the original freight of the ship had been bale goods skins fine wool aild the I like East India or Spice Island commodities com-modities which some sort of chemical t action I had transformed into a heap of indistinguishable stuff as slender in i t comparison with its radical bulk as the cinders of a rag to the rag that is burnt Nothing to make our fortunes with here said Captain Carey as he stood in the bottom of this wonderful old ships hold with his two sons the three of them holding up their lanterns and glancing with gleaming eyes and marveling minds around Whats a baft that bulkhead Well see to it arter dinner I j Thev went to dinner and then re I I turned to the ship and applied themselves them-selves to hacking at the bulkhead so as to effect an entry This bulkhead I Which partitioned the after from the main and foreholds was of the hardness hard-ness of steel They let fly at it in I vain The hollow hold reverberated the blows of the axe and chopper with the clangor of an iron shipbuilding yardWe We must enter by an after hatch if its to be done said Captain Carey I With infinite labor wnich expanded the day and ran into the whole of the following morning they contrived to break their way through the front of the lower poop Here the air was as foul as it had ever been in the hold They could do nothing for many hours When at last the atmosphere was sweet enough to breathe they entered and found themselves in a cabin that was unusually lofty owing to the sunerstructure of the pooproyal The Interior was as dryas the hold had been So effectually had the accident I ac-cident or contrivance or the secret I processes of the ships grave sealed every aperture that standing in this now windswept cabin you might have supposed the little fabric had never shipped a bucketful of water from the hour of her launch Several human skeletons lay upon the deck I The captain and his sons held the lantern to the bones and handled the rags which had been their raiment but the colorless stuff went to pieces I It moldered in the grasp as dry sand streams from the clinched fist Five cabins were bulkheaded off this black longburied interior The captain and his sons searched for them eyerything that was not of tim ber appeared to have undergone the I same transformation that was visible in what had doubtless been the cargo in the hold They found chairs of a venerable pattern cressetlike lamps such as Milton describes bunk bedsteads bed-steads upon which were faintly dis tinguished the tracings of what might have been paintings and giltwork What dye thlhk of this boys for 0 Q 7 1 t > t > < a show cried the captain whose voice 7as tremulous with excitement and astonishment If there aint 2000 in the job as a sightgoing con sarn tell > me were all adreaming and that the whQle boilings a He And now to see whats under hatches here A small square of hatchway was visible just abaft the black oblong table that centered the interior They opened this hatch without much labor The cementing process of the ships grave had not apparently worked work-ed very actively in this cabin yet the foul air of the afterhold forced them once more upon no less than three days of Inactivity for to sweeten the place they were obliged to construct a windsall whose breeze heel rendered render-ed the atmosphere fit for human respiration res-piration in a few hours On descending they found just such another accumulation of lavalike remains re-mains of freight as they had met within with-in the main hold But they noticed a bulkhead 10 feet abaft the sternpost They chopped their way through it and stood for awhile peering around them under the lanterns which they held above their heads The gleams illuminated illumi-nated a quantity of ancient furniture sofas and chairs and little tables and framed squares and i ovals of obliterated paintings Captain Carey put his hand upon a couch and drew his fist away with a handful of pale and rotted upholstery up-holstery Are those things cases yonder said the sailor son and the three of them made their way toa corner of the hold and stood looking for a moment or two at four square chests heavily clamped with iron Whats here said Captain Carey The giant jack stooped and strove to stir one of the boxes Stand aside roared the skipper and with half a dozen strokes of his axe he split open the lid of one of the chests The three faces came together in a huddle and the light shone upon lines of linked and minted metal Pick one of em up Tom said Captain Cap-tain Carey in a faint voice my hands are atrembllng too much to do it They were Spanish silver coins subsequently sub-sequently ascertained to have been minted in times which proved the age of this sunken and recovered ship contemporaneous con-temporaneous with the early years of the reign of our second Charles Captain Cap-tain Carey told me that realized 6400 on them But this lucky family did better yet with their incredible discovery for after af-ter the captain had secreted the money in his house he called In workmen who dug away the soil from the buried ship until she was exposed to the bilge on which she rested This done he carried out his resolution to make a show of her by erecting a shed for the fabric stationing a doorkeeper at the entrance en-trance and charging sixpence for admission ad-mission Many hundreds indeed many thousands came from all parts to view the wonderful ship hat was ascertained ascer-tained by a well known expert in naval affairs to have been the Sancte Ineas captured by the privateer Amazon and lost whilst proceeding In charge of a prize crew to an English port It was further discovered that her lading had consisted of coffee cochineal indigo hides in the hair bales of fine wool and fur But down to this hour it was never known what Captain Carey had found hidden and in course of time cleverly turned Into good English money mon-ey four chests of Spanish silver worth at all events to his happy family of Brokers Bay 6400 For my own part I have honorably kept my worthy friends secret I have honorably kept my worthy friends secret |
