The Wreck of the South Pole and Other Strange Tales — page 96: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Indestructible Story. 89 Clement V. was obliged to remove to Avignon, and for seventy years the successors of St. Peter were exiles. Back and forth, back and forth, from Rome to Eng- land, and from England to France, this piece of silver, with its flowering rod upon one side, and its pot of man- na on the other, traveled. Driving a Christian ruler into apostasy; driving the popes from Rome to Avignon; bringing the saintly Becket to his death! Wherever it went its blighting effects were visible. And as the fa- mous Archbishop of Canterbury could not escape its dark influence, neither could the great cardinal. All uncon- scious of its dreadful history, Wolsey also received it; re- ceived it from the hands of an enemy, who knew its evil power; received it while on the crest of popularity’s wave. How quickly he sank, as a ball of fire glowing in the sky falls, and is extinguished in the depths of the sea. Was it fate or merely God’s hand molding the affairs of men, that the great cardinal’s successor, Sir Thomas More, should meet with such reverses. He, too, held the accursed piece in his possession for one year—a year of imprisonment and trial ended with death. Most tragic of all was the fate of Jacques Molay, the last grand master of the Templars. To him also the fatal coin descended and in its wake came ruin and banish- ment, torture and death for the greatest body of warriors which ever fought for Christendom. At last the ill- fated grand master, after seeing his army disbanded, was bound to the stake, and from the flames summoned his two enemies, the pope of Rome and the king of France, EORNIE OOOLKS (C©)