Black Bartlemys Treasure

Thus (and all unknowing) she rebuked my ungrateful despondency. For (thinks I) if she, a woman accustomed to ease and comfort, may thus front our desperate fortunes undismayed and with faith unshaken, how much more should I, a man inured to suffering and hardened by privation? Thus, checking my gloomy foreboding, I too breathed a prayer to God for His infinite mercies, and thereafter fell to pondering how I might supply our more pressing needs with such small means as I possessed; and so in a while, dozed off to sleep.

I started up, knife in hand, to find the moon very big and bright, flooding the world with a radiance wondrous to behold; and blinking drowsily, I wondered what had waked me. Now as I gazed about me the place seemed all at once to take on an evil look, what with its steepy sides a-bristle with tangled vines and bushes and pierced here and there with black holes and fissures, and I shivered. The fire being low I, minded to replenish it, was groping for my fuel when I started and remained peering up at the cliff above, with ears on the stretch and every nerve a-tingle. The night was very calm and still, for the wind had died away, and save for the distant murmur of the surf beyond the reef, nought was to hear; then and all at once, from one of those black holes in the rock above I heard a long-drawn, sighing breath and therewith a faint scuffling. Slowly and cautiously I got to my feet and, with knife gripped ready, began to creep thither; and now within one of these gloomy crevices in the rock-face I saw a crouching shape that, as I drew nearer, sprang away with a snort and clatter, and I saw this was a large goat.

And surely no poor wight ever more relieved than I as, sheathing my knife, I wiped the sweat from me; and now to relief was added a mighty satisfaction, for where was one goat would be others. Thus, my fears allayed, and bethinking me how savoury was a mess of goat's-flesh, I fell a-watering at the mouth like the hungry animal I was.

Having no more mind to sleep (and the moon so marvellous bright) I wandered forth of these shadowy rocks and, being upon the sands, stood to look about me. Before me stretched the wide ocean, a desolation of heaving waters that, rolling shorewards, broke in splendour 'neath the moon; to my right lay a curve of silver beach backed by cliffs and groves of stately palms; and to my left and hard beside these bush-girt rocks was a great and lofty tree.