LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

and sat himself in a chair, his legs wide apart, his feet placed firmly in shoes without heels, his huge handkerchief spread on his knees—a cotton handkerchief with blue and red flowers, ornamented with an anchor at each corner.

      This handkerchief always made Antifer shrug his shoulders. An anchor for a bargeman! Why not a foremast or a mainmast or a mizen on a barge!

      “You will take some brandy,” said he, bringing out two glasses and a bottle.

      “You know, my friend, that I never take anything.”

      This did not prevent Antifer from filling two glasses. According to a custom now ten years old, he first drank his own brandy, and then drank Tregomain’s.

      “And now let us talk.”

      “Of what?” asked the bargeman, who knew exactly what was coming.

      “Of what? Of what would you like us to talk, if not of—?”

      “That is true. Have you found the spot that interests you on this famous latitude?”

      “Found it? And how would you like me to find it? By listening to the chatter of the two females who were here just now?”

      “The good Nanon and my pretty Enogate!”

      “Oh! I know—you are always ready to take their part against me. But that has nothing to do with it. Here has my father been dead for eight years, and for eight years this latitude question has not advanced a step. It is time it should finish.”

      “I,” said the bargeman, winking, “would soon finish it, by not bothering any more about it.”

      “Indeed. And my father’s command on his death-bed, what would you do with that? That sort of thing is sacred I believe.”

      “It is a pity,” said Tregomain, “that the worthy man did not say a little more.”

      “If he did not say a little more it was because he did not know a little more! Am I, too, to see my last day without knowing any more?”

      Tregomain was about to answer that it was very likely—and even desirable. He refrained, however, so as not to excite his excitable friend.

      What had happened a few days before Antifer died was as follows:—

      It was in the year 1854—a year which the old sailor was not to see out in this world. Feeling himself very ill, he thought he would tell his son a story, the mystery of which he had been unable to penetrate.

      Fifty-five years before—in 1799—while he was trading in the Levant, Thomas Antifer was cruising off the coast of Palestine, the very day that Bonaparte was massacring the prisoners of Jaffa. One of these unfortunates, who had taken refuge on a rock, where he was awaiting inevitable death, had been taken away by the French sailor during the night, embarked on his ship, had his wounds dressed, and finally recovered, after two months of good treatment.

      This prisoner told his rescuer who he was. He said he was Kamylk Pasha, a native of Egypt, and when he took his leave, he assured the gallant sailor that he would not forget him. When the time came he would receive a proof of his gratitude.

      Thomas Antifer pursued his voyages, thinking more or less of the promises that had been made to him, and made up his mind to think no more of them, as it did not seem that they would ever be realized.

      In his old age he retired to Saint Malo, devoting himself to the maritime education of his son, and he was seventy-seven years old when a letter reached him, in June, 1842.

      Whence came this letter, written in French? From Egypt evidently, from the postmark. What did it contain? Simply this:—

      “Captain Thomas Antifer is requested to note in his pocket-book this latitude, 24 degrees 59 minutes north, which will be completed by a longitude that will eventually be communicated to him. He will do well not to forget this, and to keep it secret. It is of considerable importance to him. The enormous sum in gold, diamonds and precious stones that this latitude and longitude will one day be worth to him, will only be the just recompense for the services he formerly rendered to the prisoner of Jaffa.”

      And this letter was signed with a double K, in the form of a monogram.

      This is what it was that fired the imagination of the worthy man—the worthy father of his son. And so after forty-three years Kamylk Pasha had remembered him! He had taken his time about it! But probably obstacles of all kinds had delayed him, in this country of Syria, the political position of which was only definitely settled in 1840 by the treaty of London, signed on the 15th of July, and to the advantage of the Sultan.

      Now Thomas Antifer was the possessor of a latitude which passed through a certain point of the earth where Kamylk Pasha had buried a fortune. And what fortune? In his opinion nothing less than millions. In any case he had been required to keep the matter secret, until the arrival of a messenger, who would some day bring him the promised longitude. And so he spoke to no one about it—not even to his son.

      He waited. He waited for twelve years, and if he had had a sister Anne on a tower, sister Anne would have seen nothing. But was it reasonable that he should carry the secret to the tomb with him, that he should reach the end of his life without having to open his door to the envoy of the Pasha? No! he could not believe it. He said to himself that this secret ought to be entrusted to him who would stand in his place, his son Pierre. And in 1854 the old sailor, then aged eighty-one, thinking that he had only a few days to live, told his son and heir of Kamylk’s intentions. He made him promise—as he himself had done—never to forget the figures of this latitude, to carefully preserve the letter signed with the double K, and to await in all confidence the appearance of the messenger.

      Then the worthy man, wept for by his family, lamented by all those who knew him, was buried in the family grave.

      We know Captain Antifer, and we can easily imagine with what intensity such a revelation worked on his mind, and on his inflammable imagination: the millions his father had imagined, he multiplied by ten. Of Kamylk Pasha he made a sort of nabob of the Arabian Nights. He dreamt only of gold and precious stones buried in an Ali Baba’s cave. But with his natural impatience, his characteristic nervousness, it was impossible for him to show the same reserve as his father. To remain a dozen years without saying a word, without confiding to anybody, without doing anything to discover what had become of the signatory of the letter with the double K—the father might be able to do this, but not the son. And so in 1855, during one of his voyages in the Mediterranean, having put in at Alexandria, he judiciously obtained as much information as he could concerning Kamylk Pacha.

      Had he existed? There was no doubt as to this, for the old sailor possessed a letter in his handwriting. Did he still exist? This was a serious question, to which Captain Antifer attached particular importance. The information was disconcerting. Kamylk Pasha had disappeared for twenty years, and no one knew what had become of him.

      Here was an obstacle for Captain Antifer to run into; but he did not sink, all the same. He might be without news of Kamylk, but there was no doubt Kamylk was living in 1842, the famous letter proved it. Probably he had had to leave the country, for reasons he was not obliged to reveal. When the time came, his messenger, the bearer of the interesting longitude, would present himself, and as the father was no longer in the world, it would be his son who would receive him, and give him a warm welcome, you may be sure.

      Captain Antifer returned then to St. Malo, and said nothing to anybody, much as it might cost him. He continued at sea until his retirement in 1857, and since then he had lived in the midst of his family.

      But what an enervating existence! Occupationless, unemployed, always possessed with one fixed idea! These twenty four degrees and these fifty-nine minutes flew about his brain like so many tormenting flies. He could keep his tongue still no longer; he confided his secret to his sister, to his niece, to his nephew, to Gildas Tregomain. And soon the secret—in part at least—was known all over the town, and even beyond Saint Servan and Dinard. It was known that an enormous fortune was to fall some day into the hands of Captain Antifer, and that it could not fail to come to him. And there never came a knock at his door

Скачать книгу