Naboth’s voice came back to where we sat, and it was loud, and
high-pitched and excited. “Rameses III,” says he, “you done it. You done
it as sure as if you’d fed him pizen.”
“What did I do? Tell me that. Say.”
“You give Mr. Topper these here appendy-siduses he’s got.”
“I never,” says Rameses III. “In the fust place, I never had none, and
what a feller hain’t got, he can’t give.”
“He kin make ’em,” says Naboth.
“I wouldn’t know how to make them things he’s sick with.”
“You don’t have to know how to make ’em.”
“Now you talk sense, Naboth. Stick to facts. Don’t git me riled. Take
warnin’ now—don’t git me riled.”
“Listen here,” says Naboth, “what is this here appendy-sidus, anyhow.
D’you know?”
“Hain’t got the faintest idee.”
“It resembles stummick ache, only it hain’t stummick ache, but worse and
lots more of it. It’s kind of related to stummick ache, sort of like a
cousin by marriage, or some sich relationship, and the place where it
hurts most is right under your belt. If you don’t git it cut out and
pickled in alcohol, why, you die. That’s what that there appendy-siduses
is. Clear to you now, hain’t it?”
“Calc’late so,” says Rameses III, “but what’s eatin’ me is how you come
to figger I give ’em or it or whichever ’tis, to Mr. Topper.”
“Hain’t I jest told you it was kind of stummick trouble?”
“You done so.”
“Wa-al,” says Naboth, like he’s proved some mighty important point.
“What’s that got to do with fastenin’ the crime onto me?” says Rameses
III.
“Why,” says Naboth, “stummick trouble is caused by things you eat.”
“To be sure.”
Naboth kind of backed off a step before he shot his next broadside, like
he wanted to be ready for any emergency that might come. “Wa-al,” he
said, “the’s jest one kind of food that causes this here appendy-sidus.
Jest one kind. And you been givin’ him that three times a day.”
“I have, have I. Not if I know it. Not me. I hain’t never fed nobody
food like that.... Say, what you talkin’ about. What kind of food you
mean?”
“The kind of grub you feed everybody aboard this boat—jest plain _bad
cookin’_,” says Naboth.
Well, sir! Rameses III let out a roar like a black bull with a bee sting
in his tail and made for Naboth. He hadn’t seen where the argument was
leading him at all, and when it dawned on him that Naboth was casting
aspersions on his ability as a cook, things began to happen. Naboth
ducked and ran, and Rameses III was right on his heels, hollerin’ for
vengeance. Up and down and around and around they went, and nobody in
the world can say how it would have ended up. Mr. Browning wasn’t there
to stop it, and Catty and I liked the circus too well to try. We just
stood by and watched, and hoped for the best. They’d trampled all over
the ship about a dozen times, and were just making the thirteenth trip,
when, as they passed the hatchway to the engine room, old Tom, the
engineer, stuck his whiskers out and took a look. Naboth was right
there. Tom reached up and gave Naboth a shove, and Naboth braided his
legs and took a header—not onto the deck, but right over the rail into
the harbor. Well, mister!
And then, what d’you suppose happened. Why, Rameses he turned on a
frightened yell. “He can’t swim,” says he, “He’ll drownd.” And without
waiting to take off his hat, he dived in. The next we saw he came up
with Naboth in his mouth, like he was a Newfoundland dog, and swam with
him to the jacob’s ladder, and we helped haul them in.
Naboth coughed out about a gallon of water, and Rameses III shook
himself and scowled, and says to Naboth, “I’d a let you drownd, dog-gone
ye, but if I had I wouldn’t ’a’ got the chanct to knock you into a
cocked hat like I’m a-goin’ to the minnit this tired spell’s wore off.”
“I wondered what old Tom was for,” says Catty. “Haven’t heard him say a
word yet, have you?”
“Guess he’s dumb,” says I. “Whoa. Look there. What’s going on?”
I pointed off towards the big steam yacht, and there, putting off from
her shining black sides, were two boats full of men. I grabbed the
glasses and counted. There were ten men altogether.
“Now what?” says I.
One boat made off up the bay toward the treasure ground, and the other
headed for Nantucket dock. Something was afoot sure, and our business
was to keep our eyes open to find out what. We found out in an hour that
we couldn’t find out. It was a puzzle. The first boat kept right on and
landed way up the beach near the hole Mr. House had dug. The second one
tied to the wharf and four of the men climbed ashore and disappeared. We
waited and waited, and pretty soon they came back carrying big bundles
and three or four things that looked like enormous fried cakes.
“Life preservers,” says I.
“Nope,” says Catty, “too heavy. Look how the men carrying them sag
down.”
That was so. Whatever those fried cakes were, they took all a man’s
strength to carry one. Well, the crew loaded them in the boat and then
they rowed off up the harbor and landed right by the first boat, and
unloaded. We couldn’t see very well, but we could make out movement
among the bushes and sand dunes like those ten men were working pretty
hard. Next we saw Mr. House put off in his power dink and go up there.
“To boss the job,” says Catty, “whatever it is.”
“I’ll bet,” says I, “we aren’t going to like it.”
“The harder they make things, the more credit to us if we beat them,”
says Catty.
Now that was just like him. He kind of liked to have things hard, and to
have to work like the dickens and puzzle his head. He said anybody could
do a thing that was easy, but it took a regular fellow to pull through a
tough job. Maybe that was so, but I says to him: “You can have all the
honor and credit that’s tied up to one of these tough propositions, but
just give me plain, easy sailing when there’s a treasure in sight. I
want to be sure of those diamonds and pearls, and no monkey business.”
“I never heard,” says he, “of anybody getting a treasure easy. In every
book I ever read the treasure hunters had to work and fight and had an
awful time before they got what they were after.”
“That’s all right to read about,” says I, “but when it comes to the
actual thing with me in it, I’d as soon it wasn’t so interesting. Nope,
just hand me my treasure on a silver plate, and I’ll take it without a
kick.”
“Fine treasure hunter _you_ are,” says he. “That’s against all the
rules. Why, a treasure you just stumbled onto, and then walked off with
without any trouble, wouldn’t seem like a treasure at all.”
“It would _spend_ like a treasure,” says I.
“If spending’s all you want of a treasure,” he says, as scornful as if
I’d asked him to come and steal apples from a blind peddler, “why you
can have it.”
“Well, why else do you want a treasure?” says I.
“To get it,” says he. “Just to show myself it can be done. Spending
isn’t much fun.”
“Maybe not,” I says, “but I like it in moderation. Say about a hundred
dollars a day to spend. Nothing big or extravagant, but just that.”
“I s’pose,” says he, “you’d buy a hundred dollars’ worth of peanuts and
chocolate ice-cream soda every day.”
“All but Wednesdays and Saturdays,” I says, kind of irritated, because
he thought he was so smart; “those two days I’d spend it for crackers
and cheese.”
He just shrugged his shoulders and squinted down the bay. “Say,” says
he, “what became of that document bag?”
“Must have gone overboard,” says I.
“Don’t believe it,” says he. “I’m going to have another look.”
“Anyhow,” says I, “it’ll be something to do.”
So we started in to search, and we hunted high and low, every place
you’d think a leather case might have dropped when it was thrown, but
not a sign.
“It hit up forward some place,” says Catty, so we went up in front of
the bridge and looked all over again. There wasn’t anything there but
the windlasses for hoisting the anchors and a couple of capstan bars and
some cleats and a sort of a skylight which gave air and light to the
crew’s quarters forward of the engine room. This was closed.
“Couldn’t have got in there,” says I.
Catty took a look anyhow. The skylight, or whatever they call it, was
built above the deck about six inches at the sides and maybe a foot in
the middle, and shaped like the roof of a house. There were hinges where
the peak of the roof would be, and both sides lifted up to let in air
when you wanted it. Underneath was a flat screen to keep out flies and
mosquitoes. Well, Catty lifted up the lid, so to speak, and there was
the leather case. It sure beat all. There it was, as big as life and
three times as natural.
“Huh,” says Catty, “I dunno as we could find a better hiding place for
it. Let’s leave it right there. It’ll be safe.”
“Fine,” says I, “and now that’s off our minds, what next?”
“We’ll go scouting,” says he.
“They say there’s fishing up the bay there,” says I.
“Good idea, we’ll scout and fish, too.”
So we put our tackle in the boat and rowed off. Rameses yelled at us to
be back at eight bells, or we wouldn’t eat, and we promised.
There were lots of little boats fussing around the harbor, motor boats
and big Cape Cod cats that carried thirty or forty folks on fishing
trips—summer visitors, mostly—and there were sailing dories, and
everything you could think of. It didn’t look much like a desert place
where you would think of finding treasure, but in spite of all the folks
and the cottages and hotels, the treasure was there just the same. It
was kind of funny to think about what was going on, and none of all the
people around there a bit the wiser.
We pulled along till we got abreast of where the sailors had landed, and
then we rowed in close.
“Let’s land and see what happens,” says I.
“We’ll give it a try,” says Catty, and we headed in for the shore. But
we hadn’t touched before a man came running toward us.
“Hey,” says he. “Private property. You can’t land here!”
“Who says so?” Catty asked.
“I do,” says the man, “and I’m plenty big to back it up.”
“Guess you are. Say, what’s going on here, anyhow?”
“Oh, a feller’s just startin’ a gold-fish farm. He’s settin’ out about
ten acre of seed and he calc’lates to thrash out about twenty bushel of
gold-fish to the acre. Goin’ to sell them to towerists.”
“Anyhow,” Catty says, “we can get an eyeful from here,” and that’s what
we did. We anchored off there and pretended to fish but we didn’t do any
real fishing, not to speak of, on account of not having bait. I don’t
know how it is other places, but right where we were the fish wouldn’t
bite a bare hook.
After we’d squinted at those men working ashore for half an hour, we
made out what they were up to.
“Well,” says Catty, “I’ll be jiggered!”
“Yes?” says I. “Why?”
“See what they’re doing?”
“Not very clear,” says I.
He scowled at me a second. “They’re setting posts,” says he, “all around
that part of the beach where there’s any chance of the treasure being,
and they’re going to put a barb wire fence around it.”
“Sufferin’ mackerel!” says I, “that cooks our goose.”
“It’s a mighty slick idea,” says Catty, “but folks have got through barb
wire before this.”
“But they tore their pants,” says I.