The Republican journal. [volume] (Belfast, Me.) 1829-current, 1911-10-26
soaked box bound with iron bands. This



was treasure trove.
Jarvis fastened to the cottage and with
hammer and chisel pounded away at the
little box till its rotted sides fell inward
and the iron bands crumbled to rusty
flakes.
Pitiful indeed was the little treasure
contained in the tiny chest-a sailor's
keepsakes. Bits of coral and pretty
shells, a woman's lovely face smiling
from a furnished frame, baby's first
photograph, the mothers loving inscrip-
ton penned on the back; few letters,
intimately tender, from wife to husband;
a copy of will, few months wages
tied in little oilskin sacks, the owner
name on the inside of the memorandum
book - James Petrol, master of the
freighter Sea Nymph that was all.
So the man who had been thrown on
the beach as revealed to Jarvis in the
vision-for such the painter believed his
strange adventure to be-must have
been the captain of the Inflated vessel.
On the morrow he would inquire concern
ing the wreck of the Sea Nymph and try
to find the relatives of James Petrol.
After that Jarvis tumbled into bed
and went to sleep, wondering why he of
all men had been chosen to bring to light
the long buried box. He dreamed about
the curly headed baby, whose charming
smile pursued him through his dreams.
eyes" said the oldest cottager when
Jarvis guardedly made inquiries concern
ing wrecks on the coast. "It was as far
back as 1885 that the Sea Nymph went
ashore off here. She got on the shoals,
but the seas were riding so high she
didn't stick Back she went, and they
simply swallowed her up, so the story
goes. Bits of cargo fioated ashore long
afterward-one or two bodies of seamen.
That was all. Divers never found trace
of her. 1t was the worst storm ever
known on the coast. After that they
built the breakwater and the lighthouse.
At that time there was an old fisher
mans hut on the spot where your cot
tage stands. Tradition has it that the
old man lured the steamer to her ruin.
If he did it was small profit to him, for
the storm washed his hut into the sea,
and he went with it. The man who owns
your cottage once found copper canis-
ter filled with choice smoking tobacco
buried in the sand near by. It pleased
him to resurrect it and smoke it. He
quit using it after awhile because, he
claimed, it gave him the nightmare said
IHe sea NyIlpu went ashore every ulSHL
in his dreams. If there's any of it left
you better not smoke it," added the old
est cottager whimsically.
cts all gone,'' replied Jarvis with a
cryptic smile.
And this is the treasure that Jarvis
found. When he had traced the widow
of the luckless Captain Petrol he found
her prosperously married to one of the
ships owners, while the curly headed
baby with the charming smile had grown
to be the loveliest girl Jarvis had ever
met. AS consequence Doris Petrol be-
came the artists wife.
In addition, the memory of the vision
that had come to him he transferred the
stormy scene to canvas with every detail
of that wild night of thunder and light
ming, hurricane wind and mammouth
waves, the ghostlike vessel shuddering
to her watery grave, the package on the
beach half obliterated by the sand. Next
to Doris herself, this picture proved to
be Jarvis treasure, for it made his for
tune.