The Atlanta constitution. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1885-19??, 1888-08-28
TREASURE COVE.
A Legend of the Tropic Seas.

beauty the sands of lonely beach, where the
waves are breaking gently. This is a barra-a
tidal creek-and its cove is smooth and peace
full, bong we'll protected by q line of breakers
that here lie further out from shore than is
usual in such places Black against the back
ground OF crimson and gold with which the
great orb decks his descent to his tomb, boat
looms up, rounding the point from the sea into
the creek, thence opening inland and present.
~ the frail vessel grounds and the two men
leap ashore and draw the canoe up beyond
danger Of drifting.
So brief is the twilight of the tropics that it
is airly nightfall as they alight on the bank.
The stars are coming out and reflect them
selves in the sea, and far away CLEAN the lights
$rom scattered cabins The chattering black
birds have flown home to their night haunts,
and the belated guls are winging toward
their craggy nests. In the edge of the darlened
water the mangroYes rustic sadly, the broad
banana leaves wave i'll the plantation further
inland toward the savannahs. The mournful
cry OF the lurking iackal resounds from the
thicket, and from the forest comes the roar of
the tiger-the jaguar while a thousand insects
call from the jungle. Nature seems calling to
rest; sea, heaven and earth, all animated
creatures appear to be in prayer The only
sounds of activity are the splashes of the
countless fish that leap into the air and fall
back into the placid, onward-howing water of
the barra, and the fitful CLEAN of the myriad
freflies against their fornless background.
Even these, however, show the light of their
greenish, phosphorescent lamp but languidly,
as if they lacked energy or stimulus for more
sustained glow.
The men from the boat, who had sat down
1pon the bank, as if weary from their task of
rowing, arise as the moon climbs slowly up
from the horizon, and turn to where their ca
noe lay canted upon the sands.
'Just yonder in the thicl1et,' says one sis
che spot have marked out on the parchment
that we have left in your sea chest that each
of US might be able to trace the way again
should aught befall the other. You can see
she palms spoke of,two tall but slender ones,
growing close together
ssI see" says the other. briefly; 'fit is not far
to carry, and well enough for US, for the load
Is heavy enough"
"Thcre are net many who would complain
of the weight Of it, rejoins his companion,
s'if it were theirs for the carrying And it is
ours beyond question. No one can claim it
from US, though if our comrades knew of our
having it they might determine to take share
by foul or by fair MEANS
Iess asso c0B4a 20 Che soaJ now -a.it are
lifting out the load from it--a massive-looking
Golfer, under whose weight the two, with their
forces combined, still stagger. And so they
60 unsteadily up the bank and into the Jungle,
to the foot of the tall young palm-trees. and
there, plying the spade and mattock with a
right good will, they soon have dug pit
among the nodding ferns and other herbage,
rank and clustering, and with many groan
and straining of knotted sinews, they lower
into it the heavy, precious coffee.
"Andnow to bury our treasure, says he who
has first spoken, ito cover it over SO well that
none but ourselves can find it ever"
aye, bury it deeply" says the other, "for
Che heavy-lying earth betrays no secrets"
81 am not SO sure of that" returns the
CORNER; "as the sea gives up its dead from
time to time, so the earth has been known to
lay bare CHASTITY buried horrors" The SEN
tence is never finished. AS the speaker has
been STOPPING to push into the pit the loose
lying earth, his cympanIOn, grasping the mat
took, has half lifted it now and then rreso-
Iutely, and at last he lifts.it suddenly on high
and sends it crashing down upon the skull of
the defenceless unsuspecting man before him.
A traitorous, eowardly murder! The victim
falls in q huddled shapeess mass; his body is
convulsed in one or two long, horrible quiyers,
and then that form, so lately full of strength
and vigor, is inert and still forever
The assassin stands stockstill for few mo-
ments, gazing upon the work of his hands,
upon the ruin he has wrought. Then he turns
hastily away from the spot, and even takes
few wild steps toward the creek-side, but sud
denly he stops, returns, thrusts the body into
She pit above the treasure, pushing it with the
3nattoc1 carefully avoiding its touch with his
hands. Then hurriedly, frantically, he throws
the dirt upon it, until the pit is level with the
surrounding plane, ere he turns away again.
The freshly-moved earth shows plainly its dis
yurbance largish mound remains, displaced
by the box and the body of the dead man, the
ground about is trampled and indented, and
even one spot, ominously darker than the rest,
where the moonbeams stream through the
palm leaves shows where the life-bood OF the
murdered man had poured out, in piteous waste
and spelling.
But tho red-handed one no longer notes
ought of this. The silence and the solitude Of
Che spot weigh upon him with potent, dread
full terror, and his only thought and care is to
e 4lsratv 81, ,f..w
head, rustling their leaves at him loudly are
accusing him, he thinks, with ineligible
voices. So he dashes madly through the low
growth Of the jungle, and, reaching the boat,
Jumps in, casts loose the rope and pushes Off in
haste from that shore accursed.
But has he left his sin and his awful fear
behind him? Not SO. Even here, on the
bosom of the tranquil water, thousand wit
hesses seem to murmur of his crime. The
voice of the distant tiger, that roars in
the jungle, he fancies might be the wall
of his victim. The luminous wake of
a phosphorescent fish has terrors for him; he
secs in it the CLEAN of the ghostly moonlight,
fltering through the palin-leaves on the palIid
countenancc yonder. He is rowing on, wildly
blindly, needless Of his course and, instead Of
rounding the point he is going straight on out
coward the breakers. He looks up to heaven
in desperate hope Of solace; alas but heaven
Itself derides and threatens he thinks, for in
Che flying scuds Of clouds he sees but spectres
On, ON, he hurries bending to his oars till his
frai bark bounds and leaps on the heaving,
swelling water, now growing more turbulent
with every impulse that urges the light
boat forward. The roar OF the breakers IN his
ears is dcmoniac, but he heed5 not the warn
ing rather he hears in the clamor the cutlery
of denuncation. lie Is in the midst of chuTn-
ing, foaming, angry waters. A black rock
eeems to uprear itself from the raging waves
and wrest an oar from him. AS he bends to
anatch at the shattered fragments the other
Slips from his hand and goes spinning away in
5he moonlight. as If whiring in O weird dance
OF mockery. His boat crashes on the reef
whose fantastic mantle Of spray. flung high in
She air, he takes at the supreme moment for
another phantom. There is brief struggle
between a stupendous force and an atom-and
The man and his sin are buried ia the waves
forever.
Long years have passed. The two men who
once landed here ara forpottou the fate Of