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| Illustration by George Barbier |
WILLIAM PHIPS
Treasure Hunter
by Marcel Schwob
WILLIAM PHIPS William Phips was bom in 1651 near the mouth of the Kennebec River and those forests from which the shipbuilders cut their lumber. In a Maine village, poor and small, he dreamed his dreams of fortune hunting and adventure for the first time. There, in the sight of ships and makers of ships, the shifting, changing light from the New England seas brought to his eyes a gleam of sunken gold—a gleam of silver buried beneath the sands. Wealth was out there under the sea, he believed, and he wanted it. He learned shipbuilding, earned a small stake, journeyed to Boston. Strong in his faith, he repeated this prophecy: “Some day I’ll command a king’s ship and own a fine brick house on Green Street.”
In those days numerous shipwrecked Spanish galleons laden with gold lay rotting at the bottom of the Atlantic. Rumors of them stirred William Phips to the soul. When he learned of a mighty one, wrecked years ago near Port de la Plata, he sailed for London after scraping together all the money he could command, planning to fit out an expedition. He besieged the admiralty with petitions. They finally gave him The Rose of Algiers, carrying eighteen guns, and in 1687 he set sail for the unknown. He was thirty-six years old.
The Rose of Algiers was manned by a crew of ninety-five. Adderly, the first mate, came from Providence. When the men first learned that Phips had set his course for the island of Hispaniola they were not over¬ joyed, for Hispaniola was a pirate stronghold while The Rose of Algiers had every appearance of an honest craft. When they first touched land the sailors called a council between themselves with the intent of becoming gentlemen of fortune. While they were assembled on a little beach, Phips stood at the prow of The Rose of Algiers, scanning1 the sea. The ship’s carpenter chanced to overhear the crew’s conspiracy and carried the tale at once to the captain’s cabin. Phips ordered one broadside discharged at his mutinous men, then sailed away with several faithful sailors, leaving the rest marooned there, on a barren stretch of the archipelago. Adderly, the mate from Providence, managed to regain the vessel by swimming.
They came to Hispaniola on a calm sea under a burning sun. Phips asked questions about all the vessels that had foundered in these waters during the past half century, in sight of Port de la Plata. An old Spaniard remembered one, showing Phips the very reef. It was a long, round rock with sides sloping away, down to the far depths of the clear, vibrant water. Perched in the rigging, Adderly laughed to see the waves go whirling in little ripples and eddies, as The Rose of Algiers made a slow tour of the reef, while all the men examined the transparent sea in vain. Phips stood on the fo’castle, tapping his foot, pacing up and down between the winches and spars. Once more The Rose of Algiers made a turn of the reef, but the ocean floor was all alike, with its wet sand patterned in concentric waves, and its feathery sea-verdure moving gently to the wash of the current. When The Rose of Algiers came about for her third tour of the reef the sun went down and the sea grew black.
Then it grew phosphorescent. “There’s the treasure,” shouted Adderly through the darkness, pointing to the smoky gold streaking the surface of the sea. But the hot dawn of the tropics revealed an ocean clear and tranquil, and The Rose of Algiers continued her monotonous course. Eight days she held to it, until the men’s eyes burned red from their constant scrutiny of the limpid depths. Phips ran out of provisions. There was nothing to do but depart, so he gave the order and The Rose of Algiers came about. At that moment Adderly spied an unusual cluster of pure white seaweed growing on a side of the reef. He wanted it, so one of the Indians plunged, plucked the thing and brought it up, hanging straight and heavy from his hand. It was strangely heavy, the twisted roots seeming to entwine themselves around some form not unlike a pebble. Adderly swung the roots down against the deck to rid them of this weight, and a bright object rolled out sparkling in the sunlight. Phips yelled aloud. It was a lump of silver worth three hundred pounds. Adderly waved the white seaweed stupidly while the Indians began to dive. Within a few hours the deck was covered with old sacks as hard as stone, petrified, grown over completely with barnacles and little shells. When they were split open with cold chisels and mallets a stream of gold and silver nuggets and pieces of eight came pouring out of the holes. “God be praised!” cried Phips, “our fortune is made.” In all, the treasure amounted to three hundred thousand pounds sterling. Adderly kept repeating, “and all that came out of the root of a white seaweed!” He died at Bermuda several days later, raving mad.
Phips brought his treasure back. The King of England made him Sir William Phips, naming him High Sheriff of Boston. There he realized his dreams when he built a fine house of red brick on Green Street. He became a man of some importance. It was he who led the campaign against the French possessions, taking Arcadia from de Meneval and de Villebon, whereupon the king made him Governor of Massachusetts and Captain-General of Maine and New foundland. His strong-boxes were now heaped with gold. Then he set out to capture Quebec after gathering up all the loose money in Boston to fund his project. The enterprise failed and the colony was ruined. Phips tried issuing paper money, giving out his own gold in exchange, hoping by that measure to increase the value of the paper. But fortune had turned. The paper could not be upheld and Phips lost everything. Soon he found himself poor, in debt, har¬ assed by his enemies. His prosperity had only lasted eight years. As he was embark¬ ing miserably enough, for London, he was arrested in default of twenty thousand pounds at the request of Dudley and Brenton, and was taken to Fleet Prison.
They locked Sir William Phips in a bare cell. The only thing he had saved was the silver nugget that brought him his fortune— the silver nugget from the white seaweed. Fever and despair were on him: death took him by the throat. He struggled, haunted by visions of treasure. The galleon of the Spanish governor Bobadilla had gone down, loaded with gold and silver, in the vicinity of the Bahamas. Gaunt with fever and his last, furious hope, Phips sent for the keeper of the prison. Holding out his silver nugget in his shriveled hand, he mumbled crazily:
“Let me dive—here, see? Here is one of the nuggets of Bo-ba-dil-la!”
Then he died. The nugget from the white seaweed paid for his coffin.
Marcel Schwob
Imaginary Lives
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