OF THE NEW MOON, A TALE OF AZTEC TREASURE AND A MYSTERY
On board the schooner _New Moon_ standing crazily out to sea, with
first port of call a nameless, cliff-sheltered sand beach which in his
heart he christened from afar Port Adventure, Jim Kendric was richly
content. With huge satisfaction he looked upon the sparkling sea, the
little vessel which _scooned_ across it, his traveling mate, the big
negro and the half-wit Philippine cabin boy. If anything desirable
lacked Kendric could not put the name to it.
Few days had been lost getting under way. He had gone straight up to
Los Angeles where he had sold his oil shares. They brought him
twenty-three hundred dollars and he knocked them down merrily. Now
with every step forward his lively interest increased. He bought the
rifles and ammunition, shipping them down to Barlow in San Diego. And
upon him fell the duty and delight of provisioning for the cruise. As
Barlow had put it, the Lord alone knew how long they would be gone, and
Jim Kendric meant to take no unnecessary chances. No doubt they could
get fish and some game in that land toward which their imaginings
already had set full sail, but ham by the stack and bacon by the yard
and countless tins of fruit and vegetables made a fair ballast.
Kendric spent lavishly and at the end was highly satisfied with the
result.
As the _New Moon_ staggered out to sea under an offshore blow, he and
Twisty Barlow foregathered in the cabin over the solitary luckily
smuggled bottle of champagne.
"The day is auspicious," said Kendric, his rumpled hair on end, his
eyes as bright as the dancing water slapping against their hull. "With
a hold full of the best in the land, treasure ahead of our bow, humdrum
lost in our wake and a seven-foot nigger hanging on to the wheel, what
more could a man ask?"
"It's a cinch," agreed Barlow. But, drinking more slowly, he was
altogether more thoughtful. "If we get there on time," was his one
worry. "If we'd had that ten thousand of yours we'd never have sailed
in this antedeluvian raft with a list to starboard like the tower of
Pisa."
"Don't growl at the hand that feeds you or the bottom that floats you,"
grinned Kendric. "It's bad luck."
Nor was Barlow the man to find fault, regret fleetingly though he did.
He was in luck to get his hands on any craft and he knew it. The _New
Moon_ was an unlovely affair with a bad name among seamen who knew her
and no speed or up-to-date engines to brag about; but Barlow himself
had leased her and had no doubts of her seaworthiness. She was one of
those floating relics of another epoch in shipbuilding which had
lingered on until today, undergoing infrequent alterations under many
hands. While once she had depended entirely for her headway on her two
poles, fore sail set flying, now she lurched ahead answering to the
drive of her antiquated internal combustion motor. An essential part
of her were Nigger Ben and Philippine Charlie; they knew her and her
freakish ways; they were as much a portion of her lop-sided anatomy as
were propeller and wheel.
Barlow chuckled as he explained the unwritten terms of his lease.
"Hank Sparley owns her," he said, "and the day Hank paid real money for
her is the first day the other man ever got up earlier than Hank, you
can gamble on it. Now Hank gets busy gettin' square and he's somehow
got her insured for more'n she'll bring in the open market in many a
day. Hank figures this deal either of two ways; either I run her nose
into the San Diego slip again with a fat fee for him; or else it's Davy
Jones for the _New Moon_ and Hank quits with the insurance money."
"Know what barratry is, don't you?" demanded Kendric.
"Sure I know; if I didn't Hank would have told me." Barlow sipped his
champagne pleasantly. "But we'll bring her home, never you fret,
Headlong. And we'll pay the fee and live like lords on top of it.
Hank ain't frettin'. I spun him the yarn, seein' I had to, and he'd of
come along himself if he hadn't been sick. Which would have meant a
three way split and I'm just as glad he didn't."
Kendric went out on deck and leaned against the wind and watched the
water slip away as the schooner rose and settled and fought ahead.
Then he strolled to the stern and took a turn at the wheel, joying in
the grip of it after a long separation from the old life which it
brought surging back into his memory. And while he reaccustomed
himself to the work Nigger Ben stood by, watching him jealously and at
first with obvious suspicion.
Nigger Ben, as Kendric had intimated, was a man to be proud of on a
cruise like this one. If not seven feet tall, at least he had passed
the half-way mark between that and six, a hulking, full-blooded African
with monster shoulders and half-naked chest and a skull showing under
his close-cropped kinks like a gorilla's. He was an anomaly, all
taken: he had a voice as high and sweet-toned as a woman singer's; he
had an air of extreme brutality and with the animals on board, a ship
cat and a canary belonging to Philippine Charlie he was all gentleness;
he had by all odds the largest, flattest feet that Kendric had ever
seen attached to a man and yet on them he moved quickly and lightly and
not without grace; he held the _New Moon_ in a sort of ghostly fear,
his eyes all whites when he vowed she was "ha'nted," and yet he loved
her with all of the heart in his big black body.
"Sho', she's ha'nted!" he proclaimed vigorously after a while during
which he had come to have confidence in the new steersman's knowledge
and had been intrigued into conversation. "Don't I know? Black folks
knows sooner'n white folks about ha'nts, Cap'n. Ain't I heered all the
happenin's dat's done been an' gone an' transcribed on dis here deck?
Ain't I _seen_ nothin'? Ain't I _felt_ nothin'? Ain't I spectated
when the ha'r on Jezebel's back haz riz straight up an' when she's
hunched her back up an' spit when mos' folks wouldn't of saw nothin'
a-tall? Sho', she's ha'nted; mos' ships is. But dem ha'nts ain' goin'
bodder me so long's I don't bodder dem. Dat's gospel, Cap'n Jim; sho'
gospel."
"It's a hand-picked crew, Twisty," conceded Kendric mirthfully when
Nigger Ben was again at the wheel and the two adventurers paced
forward. "The kind to have at hand on a pirate cruise!"
For Nigger Ben offered both amusement during long hours and skilful
service and no end of muscular strength, while, in his own way, Charlie
was a jewel. A king of cooks and a man to keep his mouth shut. When
left to himself Charlie muttered incessantly under his breath, his
mutterings senseless jargon. When addressed his invariable reply was,
"Aw," properly inflected to suit the occasion. Thus, with a shake of
the head, it meant no; with a nod, yes; with his beaming smile,
anything duly enthusiastic. He was not the one to be looked to for
treasons, stratagems and spoils. His favorite diversion was whistling
sacred tunes to his canary in the galley.
As the _New Moon_ made her brief arc to clear the coast and sagged
south through tranquil southern days and starry nights, Kendric and
Barlow did much planning and voiced countless surmises, all having to
do with what they might or might not find. Barlow got out his maps and
indicated as closely as he could the point where they would land, the
other point some miles inland where the treasure was.
"Wild land," he said. "Wild, Jim, every foot of it. I've seen what
lies north of it and I've seen what lies south of it, and it's the
devil's own. And ours, if Escobar's fingers haven't crooked to the
feel of it. And if they have, why, then," and he looked fleetingly to
the rifles on the cabin wall, "it belongs to the man who is man enough
to walk away with it!"
More in detail than at any time before Twisty Barlow told all that he
knew of the rumor which they were running down. Escobar was one of the
lawless captains of a revolutionary faction who, like his general, had
been keeping to the mountainous out-of-the-way places of Mexico for two
years. In Lower California, together with half a dozen of his bandit
following, he had been taking care of his own skin and at the same time
lining his own pockets. It was a time of outlawry and Fernando Escobar
was a product of his time. He was never above cutting throats for
small recompense, if he glimpsed safety to follow the deed, and knew
all of the tricks of holding wealthy citizens of his own or another
country for ransoms. Upon one of his recent excursions the bandit
captain had raided an old mission church for its candlesticks. With
one companion, a lieutenant named Juarez, he had made so thorough a job
of tearing things to pieces that the two had discovered a secret which
had lain hidden from the passing eyes of worshipful padres for a matter
of centuries. It was a secret vault in the adobe wall, masked by a
canvas of the Virgin. And in the small compartment were not only a few
minor articles which Escobar knew how to turn into money, but some
papers. And whenever a bandit, of any land under the sun, stumbles
upon papers secretly immured, it is inevitable that he should hastily
make himself master of the contents, stirred by a hope of treasure.
"And right enough, he'd found it," said Barlow holding a forgotten
match over his pipe. "If there's any truth in it three priests, way
back in the fifteen hundreds, stumbled onto enough pagan swag to make a
man cry to think about it. Held it accursed, I guess. And didn't need
it just then in their business, any way. Just what is it? I don't
know. Juarez himself didn't know; Captain Escobar let him get just so
far and decided to hog the whole thing and slipped six inches of knife
into him. How the poor devil lived to morning, I don't know and I
don't care to think about it. But live he did and spilled me the yarn,
praying to God every other gasp that I'd beat Fernando Escobar to it.
He said he had seen names there to set any man dreaming; the name of
Montezuma and Guatomotzin; of Cortes and others. He figured that there
was Aztec gold in it; that the three old priests had somehow tumbled on
to the hiding place; that they three planned to keep the knowledge
among themselves and, when they devoutly judged the time was right, to
pass the news on to the Church in Spain.
"I wish Juarez had had time to read the whole works," meditated Barlow.
"Anyway he read enough and guessed enough on top of it for me to guess
most of the rest while I've been millin' around, getting goin'. Two of
the three priests died in a hurry at about the same time, leavin' the
other priest the one man in on the know. There was some sort of a
plague got 'em; he was scared it was gettin' him, too. So he starts in
makin' a long report to the home church, which if he had finished would
have been as long as your arm and would of been packed off to Spain and
that would of been the last you and me ever heard of it. But it looks
like, when he'd written as far as he got, he maybe felt rotten and put
it away, intendin' to finish the job the next day. And the plague,
smallpox or whatever it was, finished him first."
"Fishy enough, by the sound of it, isn't it?" mused Kendric.
"Fishy, your hat! There's folks would say fishy to a man that
stampeded in sayin' he'd found a gold mine. Me, while they guyed him,
I'd go take a look-see. And it didn't read fishy to Juarez and it
didn't to Fernando Escobar, else why the six inches of knife?"
"Well," said Kendric, "we'll know soon enough. If you can find your
way to the place all right?"
"Juarez had a noodle on him," grunted Barlow. "And he was as full of
hate as a tick of dog's blood. From the steer he gave me I can find
the place all right."
Days and nights went by monotonously, routine merely varying to give
place to pipe-in-mouth idleness. But the third night out came an
occurrence to break the placidity of the voyage for Kendric, and both
to startle him and set him puzzling. He was out on deck in a steamer
chair which he had had the lazy forethought to bring, his feet cocked
up on the rail, his eyes on the vague expanse about him. There was no
moon; the sky was starlit. Barlow had said "Good night" half an hour
before; Philippine Charlie was muttering over the wheel; Nigger Ben's
voice was crooning from the galley where he was making a friendly call
on the canary. The water slipped and slapped and splashed alongside,
making pleasant music in the ears of a man who gave free rein to his
fancies and let them soar across a handful of centuries, back into the
golden day of the last of the Aztec Emperors. The Montezumas _had_ had
vast hoards of gold in nuggets and dust and hammered ornaments and
vessels; history vouched for that. And it stood to reason that the
princes and nobles, fearing the ultimate result of the might of the
Spaniards, would have taken steps to secrete some of their treasure
before the end came. Why not somewhere in Lower California, hurried
away by caravan and canoe to a stronghold far from doomed Mexico City?
He was conscious now of no step upon the deck, no sound to mar the
present serene fitness of things. But out of his dreamings he was
drawn back abruptly to the swaying, swinging deck of a crazy schooner
by the odd, vague feeling that he was not alone.
"Barlow," he called quietly. "That you?"
There was no answer and yet, stronger than before, was the certainty
that someone was near at hand, that a pair of eyes were regarding him
through the obscurity of the night. So strong was the emotion, and so
strongly did it recall the emotion of a few nights ago when he had felt
the influence of a strange woman's eyes, that he leaped to his feet.
On the instant he half expected to see Zoraida Castelmar standing at
his elbow.
What he saw, or thought that he saw, was a vague figure standing
against the rail across the deck from him, beyond the corner of the
cabin wall. A luminous pair of eyes, glowing through the dark.
Kendric was across the deck in a flash. No one was there. He raced
sternward, whisked around the pile of freight cluttered about the mast,
tripped over a coil of rope and ran forward again. When he still found
no one, so strong was the impression made on him that someone had been
standing looking at him, he made a stubborn search from prow to stern.
Barlow was in bed and looked to be asleep; the Philippine was muttering
over the wheel and when Kendric demanded to know if he had seen
anything said, "Aw," negatively; Nigger Ben had given over singing and
was feeding the canary and freshening its water supply.
Afterwards Kendric realized that all the time while he was racing madly
up and down, peering into cabin and galley and nook and corner, there
had been a clear image standing uppermost in his mind; the picture of
Zoraida Castelmar as she had stood and looked at him when she had said,
"I have put a charm and a spell over your life." Now he simply knew
that he had the mad thought that she was somewhere on board and that,
hide as she would, he would find her. But when he gave up and went
sullenly back to his toppled chair, he knew that all he had succeeded
in was in making both Nigger Ben and Philippine Charlie marvel. Nigger
Ben, he thought sullenly, had come close enough to understanding
something of what was in his mind. For the giant African rolled his
eyes whitely and said:
"Ha'nts, Cap'n Jim? You been seein' ha'nts, too?"
"What makes you say that, Ben?" demanded Kendric. "Did you see
anything?"
Nigger Ben looked fairly inflated with mysterious wisdom. But, thought
Kendric, what negro who ever lived would have denied having seen
something ghostly? Kendric had searched thoroughly high and low; he
had turned over big crates below deck, he had peered up the masts.
Now, before settling himself back in his chair, he looked in on Barlow
again. Twisty was turning over; his eyes were open.
"I don't want any funny business," said Kendric sternly. "Did you
smuggle Zoraida Castelmar on board?"
Barlow blinked at him.
"Who the blazes is Zoraida Castelmar?" he countered. "The cat or the
canary?"
Kendric grunted and went out, plumping himself down in his chair. He
supposed that he had imagined the whole thing. He had not seen
anything definitely; he had merely felt that eyes were watching him;
what had seemed a figure across deck might have been the oil coat
hanging on a peg or a curtain blowing out of a window. The more he
thought over the matter the more assured was he that he had allowed his
imaginings to make a fool of him. And by the time the sun flooded the
decks next morning he was ready to forget the episode.
They rounded San Lucas one morning, turned north into the gulf and
steered into La Paz where Barlow said he hoped to get a line on Escobar
and where they allowed custom officials an opportunity to assure
themselves that no contraband in the way of much dreaded rifles and
ammunition were being carried into restive Sonora. "Loco Gringoes out
after burro deer," was how the officials were led to judge them.
Barlow, gone several hours, reported that Escobar had not turned up at
the waterfront dives to which, according to the murdered Juarez, he
reported now and then to keep in touch with his outlaw commander.
Steering out again through the fishing craft and harbor boats, they
pounded the _New Moon_ on toward Port Adventure.
Then came at last the night when Barlow, looking hard mouthed and
eager, announced that in a few hours they would drop anchor and go
ashore to see what they would see. Nigger Ben and Philippine Charlie
were instructed gravely. They were to remain on board and were to
maintain a suspicious reserve toward all strangers, denying them
foothold on deck.
"The gents who'd be apt to make you a call," Barlow told them
impressively, "would cut your throats for a side of bacon. You boys
keep watches day and night. When we get back into San Diego Bay, if
you do your duties, you both get fifty dollars on top of your wages."
It was shortly before they hoisted the anchor overboard to wait for
dawn that for the second time Kendric felt again that oddly disturbing
sense of hidden eyes spying at him. Again he was alone, standing
forward, peering into the darkness, trying to make some sort of detail
out of the black wall ahead which Barlow had told him was a long line
of cliff. As before Charlie was at the wheel while Nigger Ben was
listening to instructions from Barlow aft of the cabin. The voices
came faint against the gulf wind to Kendric. The words he did not hear
since all of his mental force was bent to determine what it was that
gave him that uncanny feeling of eyes, the eyes of Zoraida Castelmar,
in the dark.
This time he was guarded in his actions. He stood still a moment, his
jaw set, only his eyes turning to right and left. As he had asked
himself countless times already so now did he put the question again:
"How could a man feel a thing like that?" At his age was he developing
nerves and insane fancies? At any rate the sensation was strong,
compelling. Making no sound, he turned and stared into the darkness on
all sides. He saw no one.
Suddenly, startling him so that his taut muscles jumped involuntarily,
came an excited shout from Nigger Ben.
"Ha'nts, Cap'n Barlow! Oh, my Gawd, save me now! Looky dar! Looky
dar! It's a lady g-g-ghost! Oh, my Gawd, save me now!"
Kendric ran back. Nigger Ben was clutching wildly at Barlow's arm.
"You superstitious old fool," growled Barlow. "It's only that piece of
torn sail flappin' that Charlie was goin' to sew. Can't you see? I
thought you weren't afraid of the _New Moon's_ ha'nts, any way."
Nigger Ben shifted his big feet uneasily and little by little crept
forward to look at the flapping bit of sail cloth. Slowly his courage
returned to him. He hadn't been afraid at all, he declared, but just
sort of shook up, seeing the thing all of a sudden that way. Kendric
passed on as though nothing had happened, as he reasoned perhaps
nothing had. But just the same he made his second quiet search, in the
end finding nothing. But as he went back to his place up deck he
turned the matter over and over in mind stubbornly. Coincidences were
all right enough, but reasonable explanations lay back of them. If a
man could only see just where the explanation lay.
He sought to reason logically; if in truth someone had been standing
looking at him, if Nigger Ben had seen something other than the
flapping canvas, then that someone or something had gone aboard the
_New Moon_ at San Diego and had made the entire cruise with them. That
could hardly have been done without Barlow's knowledge. Two points
struck him then. First, Barlow had demanded who Zoraida Castelmar was;
had not Barlow even learned the name of the girl of the pearls?
Second, it recurred to him that Barlow had followed her to the hotel in
the border town, had even had word with her, since he had brought
Kendric a message. Why had Barlow gone to the hotel at all? His
explanation at the time had been reasonable enough; he had said that he
had gone to get a room. But now Kendric remembered how Barlow, on that
same night, had expressed his determination to be riding by moonrise!
What would he have done with a hotel room?
But slowly the dawn was coming, the ragged shore was revealing itself,
Barlow was calling for help with the small boat. Kendric shrugged his
shoulders and kept his mouth shut.