Democratic Sentinel, Volume 6, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 February 1882 — THE SECRET OF THE SEA. [ARTICLE]

THE SECRET OF THE SEA.

The story I am about to relate describes an actual occurrence. The recompense that came so speedily, and in such a singular manner, to the principal actor in the events that are portrayed' will no doubt suggest to sanguine temperaments a providential interference. The real names of the persons thus brought to the notice of the reader, I have, of course, withheld. Uncle Simon, as he was called, lived on a small island in the Casco bay, on the coast .of Maine. He was a simpleminded but hard-working fisherman of great integrity of character. .During the summer months, large schools of hake frequent the muddy bottom in the bay, affording a rich harvest to the fishermen along the coast As these fish take the hook best in the night, it is the custom of the fishermen to gcfin their small boats to the fishingground about sunset and fish till daybreak, or somewhat later. One forenoon in July, Uncle Simon was returning to the shore from baking after a successful night’s work. The light wind was barely sufficient to give h.s heavily-laden boat steerage-way and, weary Irom his toil, the old man was nodding at the helm. Suddenly his halfclosed eyes caught sight of a dead body in the water, just ahead of his boat. bo startling a sight roused Uncle Simon thoroughly. He opened his eyes wide, fur just one moment, then lowered Lis sail, and, reaching out his boathook. drew the dead body toward him. It proved to be that of a man, floating face downward. The skirts of hie coat were thrown up over his shoulders, and from a deep inside pocket of the skirts protruded a large leathern pocket-book. .-ill that prevented this book irom falling out was the lining of the pocket, winch was of cotton cloth, and being saturated by the water, held it. It at once attracted Uncle Simon’s notice, and he tuew it forth and placed it in the boat. The body had been so long in the water that it could not be taken into the bout, but Uncle Simon, by means of a rope, towed it to the island. On examining the pocket-booK neiound that it contained a large amount of money in bana bills, which were soaked with water, but not otherwise injured. Uncle Simon was a poor men. He had nothing but poverty to look forward to in his old age. This money was like a mine of wealth in his eyes. Men have been murdered, and souls have been lost for a smaller amount than that pocketbook contained. What was to hinder him from calling it his own? No living creature was within five or six miles of him. He was utterly alone. As he towed the body to the land, how easy it would have been to have kept the book, and then to allow the voiceless ocean to swallow up the dead body. Who would have known his guilty secret? But it is the inward inclination that gives force to temptation, and there was nothing in the nature of this simple fisherman that could so incline his upright mind as to make it yield. He took the pocket-book with him, and, after reaching home, he dried the bills, and then carefully recounted them. There were $950.

From letters and bills in the book, he ascertained that the body was that of a Capt. Small, who, some weeks before, h id run his vessel on Half-Way rock (a dry ledge midway between Cape Elizabeth and Cape Small Point), and had lost her. He also ascertained that the vessel was owned m North Yarmouth, a neighboring' town. At once he sent word to the owners, one of whom came to the island. They knew what freight-money the Captain Lrad in his possession, for he had written to them from his last port of depart tire. On counting the money, it was found the right amount to a dollar. About a fortnight after this, the old man was going home in his boat from Drunken Ledge, where he had been to fi-h for rock-cod, when he came across a raft of drift wood. There was but little wood on his island, and Uncle Simon, like most of his neighbors, was obliged to purchase his fuel. He took in sail and set to work picking up the wood. While thus occupien, he saw something bobbing up and dowd in the water that excited his curiosity, and which proved to be the handle of a mallet, the mallet itself being under water. He drew it toward him, and, after examining it with some attention, said to himself, ‘ ‘ It’s master heavy. Some foreign wood, I guess. It don’t look as if it had been used any. I declare I wouldn't believe it could float if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. It didn’t but just float, though. Anyhow, it’s a good mallet* and it’ll come handy in'the shop.' j Uncle Simon had a small shop, where he made lobster traps and repaired boats in the winter, when the weather was too rough tp fish. He put the mallet on the bench among his tools, and thought no morefoidt for months.

A common joiner’s mallet is about six inches long, by three in diameter at the ends.JHth a swell in the middle, and is nsmlly made by being turned in a lathe. This mallet was not round, but nearly square, with the corners taken off. .it was seven inches long and four inches by five in thickness at the ends, being somewhat larger in the middle. As .a piece of workmanship, it was handsomely made, and was finished perfectly smooth. It certainly could not have been a long time in the water, as there were no barnacles or grass sticking to it, and much of the varnish with which it had once been coated still remained. One*’ rainy day late in the fall, Unde SimoffAvas at work in the shop, when JakelKilgore, one of the neighbor’s boys, entered, and seated himself on the work bench. Soon after, Skipper Warding dropped in. It was not long before the boy saw the mallet. “Uncle, where did you get that big mallet? ” he asked. “ Picked it up adrift,” was the brief reply. While the old folks were chatting the boy kept his eyes on the mallet, it .such a curious one, and he kept turning it oygt and over. At length he smd: “Undo Simon, there’s a square pfece fayedTnto one end of this mallet; T can see +h*» seam.” “lAink it’s like enough; my ey&3 ain’t n sharp as yourn, an’ yours"won’t, be as they are. now when you’ve fiabed|B many long nights as I have.”

The boy worked a long time trying to dig out with the pointe of a pair of compasses the piece that had been inserted in the mallet. “ Let me look at it.”\said Unclp Simon ; “ I’m afeard you’ll®ead tue peiuw of my compasses.” Looking at the end of the mallet he said : “ The man that fayed that piece in was a workman. Better let it alone. I doubt if it can be got out without boring.” “ Do try and get it out. Uncle Simon I” said tue boy. ’‘lt’s Uoiiow, 1 snow it is. I don’t believe but what there’s something in there.” “ Hand the thing to me,” said Skipper Harding, and after looking at it a moment he. said: “The boy’s right, Uncle Simon; that mallet’s hollow; if it wasn’t you’d never have picked it up adrift, unless it was in a boat or on a raft” “I certainly did take it out of water twenty fathoms deep, between Eagle island and Drunken ledge; but why do you say that ?” ‘ ‘ Because that mallet’s made of linkum vitee [lignum vita]. ’Twill sink in water like a stone if it is solid. It never could have floated.” “ The handle’s white ash. Wouldn’t the handle float it ?” “ No, it wouldn’t begin to.” Uncle Simon put the mallet in a vise, and with a chisel loosened and removed the wedge-shaped piece that had been so nicely fitted in, when a large cavity appeared, stuffed with oakum. After pulling out the oakum, he took the mallet from the vise, and, striking the end on the bench, out came a large number of gold coins, which rolled over the bench and on to the floor. “What be they? what be they?” shouted John Kilgore—who had never seen a gold coin—picking up one of them, at which he gazed with dilating eyes, and then tried his teeth on it. ‘ “English sovereigns,” replied the skipper. “Be they real goold, like granny’s gooia oeaus ? ‘‘ I reckon they are a great deal better gold than your granny’s beads. At any rate, every one of ’em is worth almost $5.” The coins were forty in number. On examining the cavity, it was evident that they had occupied but a small part of it, the rest being taken up with a piece of clean new duck, which had been laid next to the metal, and with oakum. “No wonder it floated, with all that hollow. That’s the way we fix our lob-ter buoys when they get watersoaked. “ Now, skipper, in your younger days you’ve followed the sea, and been in foreign parts, but I’ve been only a fisherman. I want you to give me your candid opinion. Who did that gold belong to? and what could possess any person that they should put money in such a place as that? ” “Well, it’s my opinion that the money belonged to some ship’s carpenter; most likely the carpenter of a man-of-war, because merchant vessels don’t often carry a carpenter. Most likely that was his money-box. He knew nobody would think of looking in a mallet for Iris money, and that piece was fayed in so neat that before the varnish was washed off no person would be likely to observe it. “ I knew an old Swede, a carpenter, that went for years in one vessel, and he had a place mortised in a timber-head, where he kept, his money, and nobody knew it till he got able to stay ashore, and then he took it out. 1 expect the vessel this poor fellow was in was lost, and he with hea. You’ll have to keep the money. You c in’t find any owner for this, as you did for the other.”

“I shall try; I shall put up a writing on the school house and on the meeting house, and tell the selectmen.” “ That mallet might have drifted 'across the ocean ; and, by there being sovereigns in it, 1 expect it oeiongea to some English man-of-war’s man. It’s my belief and judgment you’ll never find an owner for it; though of course it’s your duty to try.” “Skipper Harding, if Uncle Simon tries and don’t find an owner for the money, whose will it be then ?” asked the boy. “His; and when the rightful owner had done with it, it was for Simon ; and it was for no other person to find.” “Couldn’t anybody else find it?” “No; and what establishes me more in that belief is that, though I never knew or heard of his finding that mallet till I came in here this morning, I remember the time very well, because we’d ’lotted to go together rock-fishing that day to Drunken Ledge; but I was called away to Small Point to look at a vessel we thought of buying.” “Coming back, 1 ran foul of that same drift-stuff, and let the main sheet fly, thinking I’d roll the sails up and get part of it. But I changed my mind, trimmed the sheet down again, and kept on. I had been home about two hours, when in came Uncle Simon with part of that stuff.” “ That’s the very day I found the mallet, the day we set to go together and didn’t, and 1 remember you said I’d got your drift-stuff when I came in.” “ Had I gone to taking in the wood, 1 should have found the mallet, but it was not thus to be ; it was for you, Simon. You wouldn’t take anything from the North Yarmouth folks, ’cause you said you didn’t want to be paid to do right, and this time the ocean took the matter in hand. It is my belief that the winds and waves had their orders to whom to carry that piece of wood.” Skipper Harding never had occasion to change the opinion so emphatically expressed, as, after due notice given, no person ever appeared to prove his lawful claims to the money.— Youth’s Companion.