plans when we could see no further than the ship’s bolt-sprit? Had
we slipped away before, Murch would have chased us; now that he lay
in sight of harbour, he would very likely let us go, and say no more
about it. Pomfrett was going to keep faith with Dawkins after all;
his owners must take their chance; and as to the third obligation to
which he stood committed, that must wait likewise. The little blind
boy with the bow and arrows must wait his turn; an exercise, after
all, to which he should be well accustomed. Poor Morgan Leroux must
even suffer; but I’ll wager that her sufferings were lighter than her
lover’s. During the voyage to Barbadoes he would spend hours beside
the taffrail staring at the _Blessed Endeavour_, where she leaned and
rose and dipped, a cable’s length to starboard; and if he caught but
a glimpse of Morgan, and a wave of her kerchief, I suppose he thought
himself lucky. Now, as he held the wheel himself, his face was set
like a death’s head, dim in the gleaming dark; and when the boatswain
came aft, to enquire delicately, as a gentleman of fortune should, the
meaning of this right-about-face, Pomfrett struck the man on the mouth,
consigning him to perdition. Our friend went grumbling to the waist;
and thereafter we had much ado to stay the men from breaking into open
mutiny. A gay voyage we had of it; but, what with fair words and hard
blows, we made Caratasca Cays at last, and dropped anchor in the great
lagoon once more. Never were two mariners gladder to see the beach;
yet there at the water’s edge, huddled about the camp-fire, was the
fount and origin of all our troubles. Not sixty men, by what we could
make out from the deck; perhaps twenty, or less; but there was Dawkins,
whom no disaster seemed to quell. We saw him standing apart, and heard
him roaring orders, while the men ran hither and thither, apparently
putting themselves in a posture of defence; and the brown Indians came
out upon the top of the beach, and stood looking on, in the shadow of
the forest. We had a boat lowered, and rowed ashore with a white shirt
hoisted on an oar, in case these desperate gentlemen should think fit
to fire on their best friends. Dawkins suffered us to land in silence;
then he broke out in a voice that scared the sea-birds, brandishing a
great pistol.
“What now, Mr Pomfrett? Where’s Mr Murch? Lying-to round the point, I
reckon. I might ’a’ known it from the first, but I believed in you, God
curse me for a fool. Where’s Murch, I say?”
“I don’t know,” says Pomfrett, with great composure. “I left him off
Barbadoes. I thought you’d want the ship, captain.”
Dawkins dropped his pistol hand and glowered at him, shaking his head.
“You’re right there, shipmate,” he growled. “We do want a ship--a
little. Ah, but I ain’t satisfied yet, Mr Supercargo, not by a long
reckoning. Nor yet these here poor gentlemen o’ fortune--what’s left of
’em--_they_ ain’t satisfied, if I don’t mistake.”
They were not, to judge by their furious looks and questions, as they
crowded about us; and Pomfrett there and then called a council. He had
taken his resolution; they should sail to England if they chose to come
aboard; or--in Mistress Morgan’s phrase--they could stay where they
were and be damned. This was no occasion, you see, for circumlocution;
everyone spoke their mind roundly, except Mr Dawkins, who held an
unaccountable silence. As for gratitude to us for having rescued them,
these gentlemen, whatever they felt, were careful to conceal any spark
of that uncomfortable emotion.
“You talk very big, Mr Supercargo,” said one. “What! Go to England and
rot in the streets, after all what we’ve done? A pleasant thing, to be
sure! A proper way to talk to gentlemen of fortune! Just cast your eye
round you. Now where would you be if we up and took the blessed ship,
what belongs to us as much as you, I reckon?” And the observation was
much applauded.
“Just cast your eye over there,” returned Pomfrett, jerking his thumb
to where the little _Modesty_ ship sat like a butterfly on the water,
“and you’ll see a couple of guns trained on you.” They looked, and,
sure enough, there was the red glimmer of the lighted matches, as we
had taken care there should be. “Sit still, shipmates,” says Pomfrett.
“My gunner isn’t a patient man; and if any of you was to give way to
his feelings, there might be an accident.”
Pomfrett was master of the situation for the time; he had but to lift
his hand, and a couple of rounds of grape would be whistling about the
ears of the unfortunate pirates. So he gained himself a hearing; and
when he set before them the posture of affairs, and told them he had
sacrificed all to keep faith with Captain Dawkins, they believed him.
Landsmen would still have suspected the agent of some secret duplicity;
but sailors are a folk both cunning and simple; and they will accept
plain dealing with the confidence of children. Pomfrett dictated his
terms, implacable as a slaver captain: it was England or the beach;
and, since no better might be, they sulkily elected for England. After
all, every man had his little gleanings out of Cartagena, though Murch
had reaped the harvest; and we might pick up a ship or two on the
voyage. Dawkins gave his vote with the others; for, in all questions of
policy, save the questions of chasing and fighting, the captain ranks
with the rest of the council. He made no remark at the time, but while
the men were preparing to embark he drew Pomfrett aside.
“Mr Pomfrett,” says he, “you’ve dealt fair by me--no man couldn’t deal
fairer--and I’ll deal fair by you, so help me God! Now, to show you,”
Dawkins screwed up an eye, with his head on one side. “You remember
that little business of the glass bottle, maybe?”
“An old trick; lucky for you, ’twas new to me,” says the agent,
shortly. He did not enjoy these reminiscences.
“An old trick, was it? Why, now, I reckon Murch put you up to
that--eh?” returned Dawkins, with a cunning leer. “He don’t believe in
no messages in no glass bottles from no Captains de Graaf and Captains
Grammont--not he. Eh?”
“Not very likely, Mr Dawkins.”
“Not very likely, as you say, shipmate. No, not likely. Jevon Murch
would never be bammed by a simple little dodge like that, would he? So
he don’t believe in it?”
“No, he don’t,” answered Pomfrett, wondering what the old rogue might
mean by this persistency.
“Why, then, if he don’t--and I reckon he don’t--that’s a good thing
for you and me, shipmate,” Dawkins went on, with great deliberation.
“And why, says you? Why is this same old Dawkins, this poor old
broken-down forsaken buccaneer on his beam-ends, a-talking like this
here? That’s what you’re a-thinking, shipmate, at this blessed minute.
Has he took leave of his senses, owing to hunger and disapp’intment,
and the blessed sun, or what not, you’re asking of yourself.” Dawkins
paused in this singular adjuration, his little eyes glowing under his
penthouse brows, took a step forward, laid his hand on Pomfrett’s
breast, and spoke low. “It’s true,” says he. “The bottle’s true. So far
as I know, mind ye, that is. So far as I know, and I’ll swear it on the
Book. I didn’t find that there same bottle, nor that message, mind ye,
but I found another bottle and another message, and then I lost ’em
ashore in a island port. Drunk, I reckon. But not before I’d a-learned
the writing by heart. Gamaliel wrote it out from what I rec’lected, so
he did, and Gamaliel, he supplied the bottle. And Gamaliel, he thought
it was all a bam. But,” said Mr Dawkins, with indescribable emphasis,
“_it ain’t!_”
He fell back a step, and Pomfrett stood regarding him with amazement.
“Now, by your leave, commander, we’ll lay that pretty little ship
o’ yours for Catoche Bay on the coast of Yucatan--all as we was,
commander, all as we was at the start, and on the way home, too,”
Dawkins ended.
And so we did. But the ship had to be provisioned for the long voyage
to England; and, taking advantage of the safe anchorage and the
traffic of the friendly Indians, we spent a week in Caratasca Lagoon,
getting wood, water, and victuals. After all, there was no hurry. Murch
had sailed for England by this time, in all likelihood; his course lay
north and east of the islands, while ours lay west and north of them;
and we might consider ourselves secure from Murch, who, moreover, was
doubtless glad to be rid of us. But, with him went Morgan Leroux;
and although the agent, in reward of his fidelity, saw a chance of
retrieving a great part of his owners’ losses, he went about heavy-eyed
and silent. He was never quiet, working doggedly all day at this and
that; nor did he sleep much. He would walk about the camp, along the
shore and back again, or, if he were on shipboard, up and down the
deck at night; then he would sit down where he was and fall asleep
for a little while; and then he would wake again, and again take to
his restless wandering. But when we were fairly at sea his melancholy
lightened a little, and when we dropped anchor in Catoche Bay, on a
fine night of moonlight, he nearly forgot his woes. The glimmering
surf ran about us in a half-circle, thundering upon a zone of silver
beach; on either hand rose tall cliffs, all black and silver in the
moonlight, and beyond, the familiar dark barrier of forest, rising upon
dim hills. Here, then, was the haven we had come so far to find. On
one side of the bay the forest was cleft in a black notch; a few pines
straggled thence upon the beach, bordering a gleam of running water.
“_At a point on nothe mainland Yucatan two leagues due south from the
hed of Catoche Bay, having the red rocke where the stream flows out in
line with the extreemest projection of cliffe on west horn of bay._”
Dawkins had the marks by heart, as he had said. Now, the crew had been
told nothing of the matter; no one aboard knew of the treasure save
Dawkins and Pomfrett and I; so that, if by any evil chance we found
ourselves deceived, there would be the less discontent.
We three, then, had a boat ashore at dawn, with a cargo of empty
water-barrels, which were to be filled. This made the ostensible
object of our landing. There were the marks, sure enough,--a square
lump of red, glistening rock standing alone on the stony beach; and,
aligning the rock with the extreme point of the west horn of the bay,
we took bearings, and found the line to run nearly due south. Leaving
the men to fill the barrels, the three explorers struck through the
forest. Dawkins trotted forward like a hound on the trail, panting and
pounding, his big face shining with sweat, a humming cloud of flies
hovering about him and clustering unheeded in patches upon his skin.
There was a curious fixed purpose in his face; he kept glancing at us,
where we ran on either side of him, with little, quick, ugly glances;
and I could not but remember that, were we out of the way, the whole of
the prize would fall to Mr Dawkins. He carried a brace of pistols and
a sword; but so did we, though it’s true we were no great hands at the
use of these weapons. We had travelled thus, with scarce a word spoken,
for about a couple of leagues, when the little river, running in a
deep gorge, curved to meet us; and there we were, in a grove of acajou
trees, as the message had described.
“‘_The felled tree_,’” quoted Dawkins, “‘_bridging the stream between
two groves of acajou trees_.’” And there it was; we could see a piece
of the trunk, as we hurried forward through the trees. I’ll not deny
that, in the few moments during which we traversed the grove, the
agent, and I suppose myself, betrayed as much excitement as Dawkins.
This elusive hoard of silver, this will-o’-the-wisp treasure, for which
we had come so far and suffered so much--did it lie under our hand at
last? The next moment we pulled up short, as though struck by a bullet,
and stood staring and dismayed.
XVII
THE LUCK IS FAIRLY OUT
It was not much we saw: only a litter of white, fresh chips, pieces
of bark, and the new-cut butt end of the felled tree, facing us; but
a thunderbolt crashing at our feet would not have stunned the party
more effectually. That tree had been felled by white men’s axes but a
few days since; so much we perceived at the first glance; the next,
showed us a small object standing upright on the middle of the great
trunk, giving back the strong sunlight with a glitter that dazzled the
eye. Dawkins, with an incoherent mutter of speech, in which we could
distinguish the word “Murch,” pointed towards it. The hand he lifted
held a pistol, whose muzzle wavered in the air. What was Mr Dawkins
doing with a pistol? The other hand held a pistol, too; he had drawn
them from his sash as he ran. His eyes were fixed in his head, his jaw
was a little dropped, the veins in his neck stood out like cords, and
his face was of a purplish colour. The next moment he fell forward on
his face and lay motionless. The poor old buccaneer was stricken with a
fit. We opened a vein in his huge arm with the point of a clasp-knife,
and presently his eyelids fluttered and he seemed to revive. So,
having bound up the wound, we took away his pistols--for fear of
accidents--propped him up, and turned to business.
Pomfrett walked along the felled tree, the open knife shining in his
hand, stooped, cut the lashings that held the little and bright object,
and returned with a Dutch flask in his hand. It was securely corked,
and within was a scrap of paper. Mr Dawkins, with a haggard eye upon
our proceedings, and speaking with a thick utterance, was understood
to claim the bottle as his own. It may have been, since the origin
of our misfortunes had been left in the great cabin of the _Blessed
Endeavour_, which ship, if the reader hath had patience to follow our
bewildering exchanges in the matter of ships, was now displaying the
flag of Captain Jevon Murch. For this was the message written upon the
paper which was contained in that accursed flask:
“_Captain Murch to Captain Dawkins or
Captain Pomfrett. As the case may be._
_The prey shall be to him that finds It and the Longest Liver takes
All._”
Captain Dawkins merely gaped when he heard these words. But perhaps
he was not in a condition to be stirred by any emotion, for it may be
that we had taken more blood from him than was absolutely requisite
to ease his distemper. He might not have entertained the notion of
shooting his partners in the back; but, then, what was he doing with
the pistol? Now he could neither shoot nor walk; and, as we had no
mind to carry a couple of hundredweight of limp buccaneer through the
forest, Captain Pomfrett sent me for a bearer party. When I returned
with the men the two captains were sound asleep in the shade, the empty
bottle standing between them, a sarcastic little monument of futility.
The men naturally concluded that their officers were sleeping the sleep
of the drunken. Down in the gorge, on the other side of the stream, a
cave opened in the rocky bank, loose boulders and fresh earth strewn
about its mouth. Pomfrett had, he said, made a careful exploration,
but had not found so much as a ducat. Every particle of the treasure,
if treasure there had been, was gone.
The next day we put to sea, and laid the course for England. Since all
was lost, we had but the one thought--to seek Mr Murch until we found
him. Now, Murch must have sailed directly from Barbadoes to Catoche
Bay, gaining a few days’ start of us the while we were victualling ship
in Caratasca Lagoon, on the bare chance of Dawkins’s yarn being true
after all; and, to all appearance, he had secured the booty. His ship
was crammed with plunder; he had nothing to fear from the pursuit of
the little _Modesty_ ship, even supposing she had ever come to Catoche
Bay, which to Mr Murch must have seemed an event by no means certain;
and so, we had little doubt, Mr Murch had borne away from Catoche Bay
for England. If so, we were following on his track; if so, barring
accidents, soon or late we should come up with him; and then--why,
then, the longest liver should take all. And of all the hopeless
enterprises that ever a shipload of poor ruined adventurers embarked
upon, I thought, as we cut sail from Catoche Bay, that ours was the
most desperate. True, we might have gone a-privateering again, but
Brandon Pomfrett was immovably fixed to sail for England. It remained
to be seen how long he could keep his resolution in the face of a
mutinous crew.
As for Dawkins, he lay on deck beneath an awning; ready to give sailing
orders to the boatswain, did that officer require direction; sleeping,
smoking, drinking as much as he could get by fear or favour; and
playing a dreary card-game, his right hand against his left.
“This is poor old Dawkins’s last voyage, I reckon,” he would maunder.
“Poor old Dawkins, what never done no harm, no more than was strickly
necessary, as to every man. Murch has bammed us, as I knowed he would.
I knowed it from the first. Why did I ever go to Murch in Barbadoes,
says you? I don’t know--I don’t know a mite. We was shipmates, you
see, and how was I to know he’d up and hoist the old flag before a
man could turn around in his bunk? And especially, moreover, how was
I to know--how,” said Mr Dawkins, with extreme bitterness, “in the
devil was I to know, as _he_ knew all about Cap’n Morgan’s little
game? Ah, well, it’s fate, that’s what it is. No man can’t go against
his fate. But it’s hard on a old seaman--hard it is, and no mistake.
Now I only wanted for to lay up a store of victuals, and live quiet
in amongst green trees, and the birds a-singing, and read a chapter
of the Bible, Sundays--only wanted what many a tallow-faced landsman
who’ve never risked his miserable skin gets natural, and never feels
no gratitude for--not him, the swab! Ah, well, there’s many a man upon
this cruise what never will come back. We’re a-sailing for the Golden
Gates, shipmates. The luck’s out in this here barky, sure enough. You’d
better take and heave old Dawkins overboard. He’d thank you for the
service--he would, by the bones of the deep!”
This gloomy spirit infected the whole ship’s company: a cursed
cruise, a coffin ship with the devil aboard of her, and a lunatic
commander,--these were the common expressions. I think we were even
disappointed when day by day went by without misfortune. But we had no
sooner cleared the Bahamas than the trouble began. The wind, which had
hitherto held wonderfully fair, turned contrary, and for three weeks we
had a continual succession of foul winds. The _Modesty_ ship spoomed
along before the gale, blown clean out of her course into the midst of
the Atlantic. Now, we had reckoned our provisions to last, on a very
exact allowance, for three months, the time in which we might fairly
have hoped to make the voyage. Behold us, then, three weeks out of our
reckoning and a thousand miles or so farther from home; the sails bad,
the cordage rotten, the ship leaky; the water-casks decayed, the water
short, and what there was in very ill condition. Christmas Day found
us heading northward again, but on dismally short allowance. And as
we neared the Line, the dried beef, being insufficiently cured, began
to breed worms. Then the men fell sick with a dreadful illness that
caused them to swell from the ankles upward, until they could scarce
draw breath. Their pain and misery were so extreme that many lost their
wits, and some leaped overboard and were drowned. Within a fortnight
twenty-seven men died out of forty-one, and of the fourteen remaining,
but six were fit for any duty. Mr Dawkins, who had by this time quite
recovered his seizure and its treatment, kept his health, and did the
work of three; of the rest, Captain Pomfrett, myself, and the boy
who waited on us were the only sound persons aboard. This, our good
fortune, may have been due to our berthing aft, away from the crowding
and noisome stench of the waist and forecastle. The six men were barely
able to man the capstan; to go aloft was beyond them; and so the whole
labour of the ship devolved upon the three officers--Captain Pomfrett,
Mr Dawkins, and myself. The captain and master took in and hove out
the topsails, while I attended the spritsail, and the three took turns
at the helm. If any care to imagine for themselves the dreadful misery
of that voyage, let them do so; it is not my purpose to tell of it
further; and, indeed, the thing were not to be figured in words.
We were either in the Bay of Biscay or some leagues to the westward,
in the same latitude, when the wind, increasing suddenly at nightfall
to a fine t’gallant gale, carried away the topsails and spritsail. The
ship drove before the wind, helpless, but still, the wind blowing
south by east, keeping on her course; and the sea, though running high,
was not extraordinary dangerous. The next day, the wind abating, we
contrived to rig some sort of sail; and so, for sundry days and nights,
we continued. I cannot tell how long it was, for we lost all count
of time; until, as near as we could judge, we were off Brest, though
out of sight of land; and here the wind, rising again, drove us into
Berehaven in Ireland.
The low and desolate hills, all covered with snow, rose upon the wild
grey sky in the dawning of the day, and at their inhospitable feet
we pitched the ship ashore. You may think we were glad to touch the
beach again, and I suppose we were, but I have no remembrance of any
sensation save an intolerable desire to sleep. The Irishmen came from
their wretched huts and helped us to get in what sail there was, and
to moor the ship, charging so extortionately for their very unskilful
labours that the captain had to pay these savages ten pounds.
We got fresh food and water from the Irishmen, paying for them at the
same high rate; and finding that after five or six days the sick men
began to pluck up, we declared the dividend of plunder, and left them
to go whither they would; the captain, Mr Dawkins, and myself taking
passage in a fishing-boat for Bristol.
XVIII
HOOKY GAMALIEL PAYS THE SCORE
We fetched up at Bristol docks in twilight and a flurry of snow. Let
the darkness blacken and the snow fall thick and fast, the night could
not be too dark and too foul for three broken buccaneers, who only
wanted to slink unregarded through the blinded streets. Dawkins headed
straight for John Gamaliel’s tavern. “Hooky Gamaliel,” growled Mr
Dawkins, “owes this here ship’s company three months’ provisions, and
I reckon he’s going to pay. I’ll burn his house over his skulking head
for a noggin of rum. It’s going to be hot for Hooky John--damned hot,
by the bones of the deep!”
Pomfrett had no desire to face his uncle--and his aunt--on an empty
stomach, and so, wrapped in boat-cloaks, we followed Mr Dawkins. With
his great head and shoulders bowed, the old pirate forged ahead,
ploughing through the snow and leaving great formless footprints, like
some monstrous beast of prey. When we came into the narrow alley and
saw the red firelight gleam in the tavern windows, Dawkins stopped and
turned. “Shipmates,” says he, “you follow old Dawkins’s lead, will you?
He knows how to deal with a Jew, does Dawkins. You put your trust in
him once more, will you, shipmates?”
“Carry on, old gentleman,” says Pomfrett. “Don’t bring the constables
on us, that’s all.”
“Never fear for that. I reckon Gamaliel would scuttle his ship sooner
than see the janissaries a-boarding her. Ho! never fear for that.” With
a chuckle, he began to chant, in a hoarse whisper:
“Ye fancy men, now turn again,
For we’re out on the chase to-night.”
So three cloaked figures, white with snow, entered the room, where
seamen were sitting at their drink, in the warmth and light, Gamaliel,
in shirt-sleeves and clean apron, attending upon them. We sat down in
a corner, a low partition fencing us from the company, and Gamaliel
stepped briskly to us. Our faces were hidden by hat and cloak, so that
he should not recognise us at once.
“Give you good-evening, Mr Gamaliel,” says Dawkins, thrusting forth
a huge hand, which the other must needs grasp. “A word in your ear,
shipmate.” Gamaliel cried out as Dawkins drew him downward with a
single powerful wrench, so that the Jew’s distorted and staring face
was close to his own.
“Another noise like that, Hooky, and I’ll twist your arm out,” says
Dawkins, in a savage whisper. “Now, what time d’ye close?--but it don’t
matter--you close early to-night, d’ye see. You close now, immediate,
and smart about it. There’s business to discuss, Hooky. Now bring rum,
and then clear out this mess of swabs. Smart, now!”
He jerked Gamaliel upright again, as though the wiry Jew were pliant
as a figure of straw. We sat and drank our liquor, and very good it
was, and watched Gamaliel going from one to another of his guests,
whispering confidentially to them. I don’t know what he said, but
whatever it was--and in a house like Gamaliel’s a sudden need of
departure was no novelty--the argument was effectual. Within half
an hour or so the room was clear, the shutters up, and the door
locked. Then Dawkins removed hat and cloak and stretched himself
at ease before the fire, we following his example. Gamaliel stood
contemplating us, his head bent a little forward and one side, his
shoulders drooped forward, his crooked hands loosely hanging at his
side, all as we remembered. There was discomfiture in his face and a
furtive uneasiness, and now and again his glance turned to the door,
and he seemed to listen. For once the effusive Jew appeared at a loss
for words; he gave us no greeting, asked us no questions, expressed no
surprise at our presence there.
“What d’ye stand staring for?” roared Dawkins. “Fetch supper, Hooky;
fetch aft the supper, will ye?”
“There’s but little in the house, Mr Dawkins,” said the Jew. “What
would you fancy? A bit of Dutch cheese, or----”
“Cheese, was it? Cheese, eh? You hear him, shipmates? Now look you
here, Hooky,” said Mr Dawkins, getting up, “you and me will go-look-see
the store-room in company, my lad.”