ONE HALF OF A CIPHER
That the old crone was very much “worked up” was easily to be seen. Tom
and Nicky, watching uneasily, saw her fumble in her old bag and draw out
with her bony fingers three queer objects.
These were small figures, made rudely of clay or mud. Tom and Nicky
started and stared at them. They were made in the shape of small human
figures, with heads a little larger than peas, and with dented places to
mark out the arms and legs.
“What do you think those things are?” Tom whispered. “I don’t like this.
Remember what Mr. Neale said about this woman?”
“Yes,” Nicky answered softly. “He said Ma’am Sib is a Voodoo woman and
that the colored people are afraid of her. But I’m not! I want to see
what she is going to do.”
That was quickly seen. She laid the little objects in a row on the
doorsill; all of them had their tiny heads pointed out from the shade of
the roof, so that the heads were in the sunshine.
She scowled at Nicky and Tom, then muttered under her breath and glanced
up toward the sun, then back at the boys.
“I know it’s just imagination,” Tom told his chum, “but I feel sort of
queer——”
Nicky made a practical suggestion.
“I think she’s trying to scare us away by making us believe that she has
bewitched us or something,” he said, “It’s something that the sun will
do to us. If you’re uneasy, go and stay in the cabin shade at the side.”
Tom looked sheepish and uncomfortable, but after hesitating for a while
his fears overcame his good sense and he went out of sight.
Nicky did not follow; instead, he made an unexpected move.
Quick as a flash he leaped forward, bent and made a scooping movement of
his fingers. When he dodged back out of reach of the irate old woman’s
cane, his hand was closed over the mud images.
“I’ll keep these,” he said, trembling a little with natural uncertainty
as to the outcome of his bravado.
“Here comes Cliff with Mr. Neale!” called Tom from beside the cabin,
while the colored boy poked his head out through the door and made his
eyes roll in his excitement.
Cliff and the young archaelogist were climbing the fence. They hurried
over and confronted the woman.
“What does this mean, Ma’am Sib?” asked Clarence Neale quietly. He
showed no anger, only curiosity. The old woman looked up at the tall,
clean-cut young fellow, not much more than twenty-two or so, and
frowned.
“White boys not to dig! I order them to go yesterday. They come back!
I—” she made a gesture toward Nicky who unclosed his hand. The moisture
of his palm was already breaking up the shape of the figures.
“Cliff’s father told us about the Egyptians doing this like this,” Nicky
said. “They used to make little images of wax, he said, and put spells
on them to injure the magicians’ enemies—then when they stuck pins in
the wax, or burned it, the enemies were supposed to suffer with pain.
But I didn’t know they did that sort of thing in Jamaica.”
“Sometimes,” Mr. Neale admitted. “But why did you come back to dig when
Ma’am Sib ordered you away?”
“It isn’t her field,” Cliff answered. “I asked father. And, besides,
there is another trench started. See! Over there.” He pointed to the
digging that had been done at a point closer to the cabin.”
“Can they really hurt you—these voodoo people?” Tom asked. “I began to
feel sort of uneasy——”
Mr. Neale spoke quietly in reply. “The boy was told to do as he did so
as to suggest an idea to you,” he explained. “You see, all sorts of
magic depend on our being afraid. We are afraid of things we do not
understand. Because we don’t understand them we think ‘maybe they do
have power to hurt us.’”
“It’s just the same as if I came to Tom some morning and looked at him
as if something was wrong, and then asked him what’s the matter,” Cliff
said. “He’d wonder and then begin to think that something was wrong and
he would begin to feel sick, if he kept thinking about it long enough.”
“Exactly,” Mr. Neale replied. “Voodoo depends on ignorance and fear.
Because people are ignorant and afraid, their own minds work against
them. Tom let himself imagine there was danger——”
“I knew it,” Tom said, shamefacedly, “but it got the best of me.”
“But why did she do it?” demanded Nicky. “Not just because we didn’t
obey her and stop digging——”
“I claim there must be something hidden here that she knows about and
she tried, the way she is used to doing, to drive us away,” Cliff
declared.
“There isn’t anything buried here that I have heard about,” Clarence
Neale responded. He turned to the woman, “Ma’m Sib, what induced you to
try to frighten these friends of mine?”
“Perhaps I can help you?” inquired a voice behind them. So absorbed had
they all been in the discussion that they had not noticed the arrival of
a slender colored fellow of nineteen. He stood just back of them,
smiling pleasantly. He was as black as ebony, with perfect, white teeth
which showed in strong contrast when he gave his good-natured smile. He
spoke without the Southern Negro’s dialect, as is the custom of all the
Jamaica inhabitants whose speech is often of the very best English, with
only a few colloquial bits of dialect.
Mr. Neale turned. He recognized the grandson of old Ma’am Sib.
“Your grandmother has been voodooing my young assistants, Sam,” he said
pleasantly. “They were digging and she must have thought that voodoo was
easier than the natural way—to come and ask me to keep them away.”
The young Negro shrugged his shoulders. He had been sent to a school in
the United States and he was better educated than was his ancient
grandmother.
“No harm is done, anyhow, sar,” he replied. “I ask you to forgive.”
“Done!” answered the white man, “but I am curious to know just what is
so important that she should take that sort of measure to drive off our
digging comrades.”
“She thought that there was something buried here,” explained the
colored fellow. “She knew that I have been doing some exploring in my
spare time. But I found what I was looking for—and I was so disappointed
that I did not even bother to tell her, sar.”
“Disappointed?”
“Yes, sar. There is an old legend in our family and my grandmother had
told me and I was searching for a letter. When Captain William Kidd
traded between New York and these islands, before he was really a
pirate, he was much friends with our Governor. In those days the
Governor was kind to pirates. He let them come into harbor and he did
not give them to the law for punishing.”
Nicky and his friends became alert. Nicky thought of the old paper so
carefully preserved by his family, although no one thought it would ever
amount to anything. Cliff and Tom were intensely interested because this
was becoming a living story, linking the present with the old, piratical
days and their natural love of adventure was whetted by the suave words
of the colored man.
“You may not know about Captain Kidd,” Sam continued. Nicky knew a great
deal but he remained silent, listening eagerly. “He was really not as
bad as the story books have made him. He was not one of the terrible
pirates. But he did wrong and finally he was made a prisoner in America,
and was kept in prison until he could be sent to England to be tried.”
He became very earnest and they all drew closer.
“While he was in prison he sent a letter to his friend, the Governor of
Jamaica, who had a house not far from this place. That was the owner of
this field and his family holds it yet. We are descendants of old family
servants of that Governor. Well, sar, the letter came one day and the
Governor began to brag about finding great treasure soon; one of my race
who was his body-servant thought the letter must tell about the treasure
and so he stole it. But he became disgusted and buried the despatch box.
I do not know why. At least, I did not know why until I dug it up last
night!”
They were all tense with suspense as he reached into his pocket and
pulled out a folded paper. Holding his hands around it until he made
sure that it was the right one, his eyes rolling with the colored race’s
love for being the center of the interest, he slowly opened the paper,
holding it down low so that they could all see the surface.
It was dirty and brown with age and the ink on it was faint and faded to
a faint brownish tint.
They all craned their necks.
What they saw was disappointing, as Sam had said. There were three
small, irregular shaped circles toward the top of the paper, in such a
relation to one another that if a line had been drawn between each pair
so as to connect them, they would have been at the points of a triangle.
At one side, and a little lower down, was the regulation, old-fashioned
representation of a compass to show direction.
Further down, there was part of a word which they made out to be “per.”
Still further down, was a mass of tiny dots and marks, too faint to be
given any meaning, they were not in the form of letters, but were just
like the blotches that break out on the skin during measles-here, there
and everywhere. But at the left side they went right to the edge of the
paper, and there was a very dim line starting there and running a little
way in among the blotches.
Just beneath was a nautical bearing: “25—30—13 N.”
“You can see,” said Sam, his finger running along the left hand edge,
“this paper is torn off. It is only half of a cipher, sar.”
Mr. Neale, Cliff and Tom nodded.
“So it is of no good.” said Sam, but he returned it to his pocket. “It
may come that the other half will be found. I hope so.”
Then he turned and looked, with surprise, toward Nicky.
“Can it be,” muttered Sam, “that Ma’am Sib’s voodoo has worked, after
all?”
Nicky was turning somersaults and rolling about like a boy who has gone
mad!