# The adventures of Captain Horn/Chapter 24

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CHAPTER XXIV
HIS FORTUNE UNDER HIS FEET
notwithstanding the fact that the captain had, for the present, closed his account with the treasure in the lake cave, and had determined not to give another thought to further drafts upon it, he could not prevent all sorts of vague and fragmentary plans for getting more of the gold from thrusting themselves upon him; but his hand was strong upon the tiller of his mind, and his course did not change a point. He now began to consider in what condition he should leave the caves. Once he thought he would go there and take away everything which might indicate that the caves had been inhabited, but this notion he discarded.
"There are a good many people," he thought, "who know that we lived there, and if that man who was there afterwards should come back, I would prefer that he should not notice any changes, unless, indeed,"—and his eyes glistened as a thought darted into his mind,—"unless, indeed, he should find a lake where he left a dry cave. Good! I ll try it."
With his hands in his pockets, the captain stood a few moments and thought, and then he went to work. ​From the useless little vessel which had belonged to the Rackbirds he gathered some bits of old rope, and having cut these into short pieces, he proceeded to pick them into what sailors call oakum.
Early the next morning, his two canvas bags filled with this, he started for the caves. When he reached the top of the mound, and was just about to hold his lantern so as to take a final glance into its interior, he suddenly turned away his head and shut his eyes.
"No," he said. "If I do that, it is ten to one I'll jump inside, and what might happen next nobody knows."
He put the lantern aside, lifted the great lid into its place, and then, with a hammer and a little chisel which he had brought with him from the tools which had been used for the building of the pier, he packed the crevices about the lid with oakum. With a mariner's skill he worked, and when his job was finished, it would have been difficult for a drop of water to have found its way into the dome, no matter if it rose high above it.
It was like leaving behind a kingdom and a throne, the command of armies and vast navies, the domination of power, of human happenings; but he came away.
When he reached the portion of the cave near the great gap which opened to the sky opposite the entrance to the outer caves, the captain walked across the dry floor to the place where was situated the outlet through which the waters of the lake had poured out into the Rackbirds' valley.
The machine which controlled this outlet was ​situated under the overhanging ledge of the cave, and was in darkness, so that the captain was obliged to use his lantern. He soon found the great lever which he had clutched when he had swum to the rescue of Ralph, and which had gone down with him and so opened the valve and permitted egress of the water, and which now lay with its ten feet or more of length horizontally near the ground. Near by was the great pipe, with its circular blackness leading into the depths below.
"That stream outside," said the captain, "must run in here somewhere, although I cannot see nor hear it, and it must be stopped off by this valve or another one connected with it, so that if I can get this lever up again, I should shut it off from the stream outside and turn it in here. Then, if that fellow comes back, he will have to swim to the mound, and run a good chance of getting drowned if he does it, and if anybody else comes here, I think it will be as safe as the ancient Peruvians once made it."
With this he took hold of the great lever and attempted to raise it. But he found the operation a very difficult one. The massive bar was of metal, but probably not iron, and although it was not likely that it had rusted, it was very hard to move in its socket. The captain's weight had brought it down easily, but this weight could not now be applied, and he could only attempt to lift it.
When it had first been raised, it was likely that a dozen slaves had seized it and forced it into an upright position. The captain pushed up bravely, and, a few inches at a time, he elevated the end of the great lever. Frequently he stopped to rest, and it was ​over an hour before the bar stood up as it had been when first he felt it under the water.
When this was done, he went into the other caves, looked about to see that everything was in the condition in which he had found it, and that he had left nothing behind him during his many visits. When he was satisfied on these points, he went back to the lake cave to see if any water had run in. He found everything as dry as when he had left it, nor could he hear any sound of running or dripping water. Considering the matter, however, he concluded that there might be some sort of an outside reservoir which must probably fill up before the water ran into the cave, and so he came away.
"I will give it time," he thought, "and come back to-morrow to see if it is flooded."
That night, as he lay on his little pallet, looking through the open front of his tent at the utter darkness of the night, the idea struck him that it was strange that he was not afraid to stay here alone. He was a brave man,—he knew that very well,—and yet it seemed odd to him that, under the circumstances, he should have so little fear. But his reason soon gave him a good answer. He had known times when he had been very much afraid, and among these stood preeminent the time when he had expected an attack from the Rackbirds. But then his fear was for others. When he was by himself it was a different matter. It was not often that he did not feel able to take care of his own safety. If there were any danger now, it was in the daytime, when some stray Rackbirds might come back, or the pilferer of the mound might return with companions. But if any ​such came, he had his little fort, two pistols, and a repeating rifle. At night he felt absolutely safe. There was no danger that could come by land or sea through the blackness of the night.
Suddenly he sat up. His forehead was moist with perspiration. A shiver ran through him, not of cold, but of fear. Never in his life had he been so thoroughly frightened; never before had he felt his hands and legs tremble. Involuntarily he rose and stood up in the tent. He was terrified, not by anything real, but by the thought of what might happen if that lake cave should fill up with water, and if the ancient valves, perhaps weakened by his moving them backward and forward, should give way under the great pressure, and, for a second time, a torrent of water should come pouring down the Rackbirds' ravine!
As the captain trembled with fear, it was not for himself, for he could listen for the sound of the rushing waters, and could dash away to the higher ground behind him; but it was for his treasure -bags, his fortune, his future! His soul quaked. His first impulse was to rush out and carry every bag to higher ground. But this idea was absurd. The night was too dark, and the bags too heavy and too many. Then he thought of hurrying away to the caves to see if the lake had risen high enough to be dangerous. But what could he do if it had? In his excitement, he could not stand still and do nothing. He took hold of one end of his trunk and pulled it out of his tent, and, stumbling and floundering over the inequalities of the ground, he at last got it to a place which he supposed would be out of reach of a sudden flood, and the difficulties of this little piece of work assured him of the utter ​futility of attempting to move the bags in the darkness. He had a lantern, but that would be of little service on such a night and for such a work.
He went back into his tent, and tried to prevail upon himself that he ought to go to sleep—that it was ridiculous to beset himself with imaginary dangers, and to suffer from them as much as if they had been real ones. But such reasoning was vain, and he sat up or walked about near his tent all night, listening and listening, and trying to think of the best thing to do if he should hear a coming flood.
As soon as it was light, he hurried to the caves, and when he reached the old bed of the lake, he found there was not a drop of water in it.
"The thing doesn't work!" he cried joyfully. "Fool that I am, I might have known that although a man might open a valve two or three centuries old, he should not expect to shut it up again. I suppose I smashed it utterly."
His revulsion of feeling was so great that he began to laugh at his own absurdity, and then he laughed at his merriment.
"If any one should see me now," he thought, "they would surely think I had gone crazy over my wealth. Well, there is no danger from a flood, but, to make all things more than safe, I will pull down this handle, if it will come. Anyway, I do not want it seen."
The great bar came down much easier than it had gone up, moving, in fact, the captain thought, as if some of its detachments were broken, and when it was down as far as it would go, he came away.
"Now," said he, "I have done with this cave for this trip. If possible, I shall think of it no more."
​When he was getting some water from the stream to make some coffee for his breakfast, he stopped and clenched his fist. "I am more of a fool than I thought I was," he said. "This solitary business is not good for me. If I had thought last night of coming here to see if this little stream were still running, and kept its height, I need not have troubled myself about the lake in the cave. Of course, if the water were running into the caves, it would not be running here until the lake had filled. And, besides, it would take days for that great lake to fill. Well, I am glad that nobody but myself knows what an idiot I have been."
When he had finished his breakfast, Captain Horn went to work. There was to be no more thinking, no more plans, no more fanciful anxieties, no more hopes of doing something better than he had done. Work he would, and when one thing was done, he would find another. The first thing he set about was the improvement of the pier which had been built for the landing of the guano. There was a good deal of timber left unused, and he drove down new piles, nailed on new planking, and extended the little pier considerably farther into the waters of the cove. When this was done, he went to work on the lighter, which was leaky, and bailed it out, and calked the seams, taking plenty of time, and doing his work in the most thorough manner. He determined that after this was done, and he could find nothing better to do, he would split up the little vessel which the Rackbirds had left rudderless, mastless, and useless, and make kindling-wood of it.
But this was not necessary. He had barely finished ​his work on the lighter, when, one evening, he saw against the sun-lighted sky the topmasts of a vessel, and the next morning the Finland lay anchored off the cove, and two boats came ashore, out of one of which Maka was the first to jump.
In five hours the guano had been transferred to the ship, and, twenty minutes later, the Finland, with Captain Horn on board, had set sail for Acapulco. The captain might have been better pleased if his destination had been San Francisco, but, after all, it is doubtful if there could have been a man who was better pleased. He walked the deck of a good ship with a fellow-mariner with whom he could talk as much as he pleased, and under his feet were the bags containing the thousands of little bars for which he had worked so hard.