Gold from the wreck of the pirate-ship Whydah, lost in a storm on April 26th, 1717.
Lost and found... Gold coins from the wreck of the Whydah, a slave-ship turned pirate-ship broken on the shoals off Wellfleet, Massachusetts, during a storm on April 26th, 1717. The captain was killed along with all but two of his crew of 145 men. The wreck was brought to light by Barry Clifford in 1984, the first authenticated pirate-ship ever to be rediscovered.
Part 1 of 2
HE rose and placed his candle unsuspectingly on the floor near his loom, swept away the sand without noticing any change, and removed the bricks. The sight of the empty hole made his heart leap violently, but the belief that his gold was gone could not come at once — only terror, and the eager effort to put an end to the terror. He passed his trembling hand all about the hole, trying to think it possible that his eyes had deceived him; then he held the candle in the hole and examined it curiously, trembling more and more. At last he shook so violently that he let fall the candle, and lifted his hands to his head, trying to steady himself, that he might think. Had he put his gold somewhere else, by a sudden resolution last night, and then forgotten it? A man falling into dark waters seeks a momentary footing even on sliding stones; and Silas, by acting as if he believed in false hopes, warded off the moment of despair.
Précis
Tonight, Silas Marner plans to lay his hard-earned savings out along with his supper; so he goes to the hole in the floor where he keeps them, only to find it empty. Dazed, he tries to steady his rocking world by reasoning that he must have stowed the coins somewhere else, contrary to invariable habit. (55 / 60 words)
Part Two
‘The Weaver’, painted by Vincent van Gogh in 1884.
‘The Weaver’, painted in 1884 by Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890). Silas Marner should not be thought of as a miser of the cartoonish type. He was a decent man who had seen his character warped by unhappy experiences. His obsession with work and with money was a pitiable reaction to an earlier injustice that had cost him his home, his reputation, the woman he loved, even his religious faith, and all this at the hands of his best friend. That much he had in common with Charles Dickens’s unforgettable Ebenezer Scrooge. Unlike Scrooge, however, who revenged himself on those who had done him no harm, Marner’s vices had little impact on others, as Eliot is careful to remind us. When little Eppie came into his life, Silas so quickly forgot the grief of losing his savings that we realise greed had never truly possessed him.
HE searched in every corner, he turned his bed over, and shook it, and kneaded it; he looked in his brick oven where he laid his sticks. When there was no other place to be searched, he kneeled down again and felt once more all round the hole. There was no untried refuge left for a moment’s shelter from the terrible truth.
Yes, there was a sort of refuge which always comes with the prostration of thought under an overpowering passion: it was that expectation of impossibilities, that belief in contradictory images, which is still distinct from madness, because it is capable of being dissipated by the external fact. Silas got up from his knees trembling, and looked round at the table: didn’t the gold lie there after all? The table was bare. Then he turned and looked behind him — looked all round his dwelling, seeming to strain his brown eyes after some possible appearance of the bags where he had already sought them in vain. He could see every object in his cottage — and his gold was not there.
Again he put his trembling hands to his head, and gave a wild ringing scream, the cry of desolation.
Précis
A feverish search of his house follows, from workroom to bedroom, but reveals no coins. For a moment, his mind still refuses to accept what his senses tell him, but it is a last flicker of fading hope, not a settled delusion. Reason at last acknowledges that the coins are quite gone, and Silas lets out an anguished cry. (59 / 60 words)
