When I saw the light of that lantern I began to think. Right off I
realized I should have started up my thinker a long while ago. There we
were—Catty and I—under a tarpaulin and entirely surrounded by canned
tomatoes and baked beans and enemies. There wasn’t any reason for our
being there that I could see, and there were a million reasons for our
being some place else. I was sore. At that minute I could have taken
Catty and whacked him across the nose with something heavy and
painful.... The way it looked to me was this:—He had gotten us into this
pickle just for the sake of getting us into a pickle. He hadn’t had any
plan at all, but just that everlasting desire of his to have an
adventure out of a story book.
That was it. He had played pirate, or whatever game he had in his head,
and had gone along with it till he got out where his feet couldn’t touch
bottom, and I went with him like a ninny. Now the adventure we were
likely to have wasn’t one out of a story book at all. It had all the
look of a real one with lots of grief in it.
Of course neither of us dared whisper, and we could hardly breathe under
that thick canvas. We didn’t object to that especially. I would have
been willing to have the canvas two feet thick. Then nobody could have
seen through it or heard through it.
The man with the lantern came closer and walked all around the pile of
supplies and then sat down on something and lighted his pipe. I could
have reached out and scratched his back. If he hadn’t been deaf as a
brickbat he would have heard my heart beat, and I was pretty sure I
wouldn’t be able to hold it down inside me where it belonged. It acted
like it wanted to settle in my throat, or maybe come popping right out
of my mouth. There was a box corner that gouged me in the middle of the
back and was about ready to poke a hole through my skin, and my left
foot was asleep and prickling like the mischief, and I was hot and
sweaty and lonesome. I don’t believe anybody was ever so uncomfortable.
The worst of it was I couldn’t complain. When you’re feeling sore at
everybody and everything, it helps a lot if you can roar about it.
Catty was right alongside of me, which was some comfort, though not so
much as if I had dared jam a pin into him two or three times. I wished I
could go to sleep, but didn’t ever try it on account of snoring.
Well, after I’d sat there all cramped up for two or three weeks, I heard
another man come along and sit down by the first one and light his pipe.
“What was all the rumpus?” he says.
“I dunno, but I don’t like this place. Them men seen ghosts.”
“Mebby so—mebby not. Say, ever hear of a feller that was _hurt_ by a
ghost?”
“Don’t call none to mind; if you don’t count bein’ scairt to death.”
“Ever hear of a ghost cuttin’ barb wire?”
“I calc’late they could cut anythin’ they wanted to cut.”
“They wa’n’t ghosts,” says the second man.
“What was they, then?”
“Folks.”
“What folks?”
“Why, folks that want to git rich.”
“Um....”
“Same as you and me want to git rich. You do want to git rich, don’t
you?”
“So’s never to have to work no more, and to buy me a sloop and go
sailin’ with plenty of grub and all the terbacker a feller kin smoke.
You bet you. Rich!... I’ve allus had a hankerin’ to git rich.”
“The boss is rich, hain’t he?”
“Awful rich.”
“Come here to git richer, didn’t he?”
“Calc’late so.”
“Figgered to take a lot of money away from this here sandbar, didn’t
he?”
“Hain’t give it much thought.”
“Maybe a million dollars.”
“How d’ye know?”
“Look at the cost of all this. Payin’ wages and all. He’s diggin’ for
treasure, hain’t he? Plain as the nose onto your face. Buried treasure.
Put here by them ol’ pirates.”
“Think that’s it?”
“Sure.”
“How much d’you figger them pirates buried?”
“They never bothered to bury nothin’ less’n a million. Near’s I kin find
out, they allus spent their small change leadin’ a gay life in port. But
when they got a million all to wunst, they up and buried it.”
“Um....”
“How much d’you figger would make you rich enough?”
“Wa-al, if I was to have say fifty thousand dollars out at interest——”
“Me, too, and, mate, this here’s the first chance I ever see to come by
that sum of money.”
“Come by it? What d’ye mean?”
“It’s here, hain’t it?”
“Looks that way.”
“Then,” says the man, “what for do we dig it up for Jonas P. Dunn? Why
don’t we jest dig it up for ourselves?”
“Because Jonas P. won’t let us.”
“How many is there of him?”
“Jest one.”
“Sure—and there’s a lot of us. Suppose now, jest suppose, twenty of us
says to ourselves that it was a heap better if we was to take this here
treasure and divide it up into fifty-thousand-dollar lots—one for each
of us—than it is to dig it up and hand it over to Jonas P. Dunn? Eh?
What then?”
“Oho!... Ahum!... Fifty thousand!”
“And easy come by.”
“How easy?”
“Nothin’ to do but git the twenty of us all ready, and then, all of a
sudden, to grab onto Jonas P. and the mate and them friends of his’n,
and tie ’em up, and grab the treasure and the yacht and—off we go.
Easier’n catchin’ herrin’ in a net.”
“Mebby some fellers would stick by him.”
“Shucks! With fifty thousand in the offing. Not much. I’ve kind of
sounded out more’n a dozen, and every one’s willin’. I’ll finish up
tonight, and know where everybody stands. Git twenty as easy as fallin’
off a log. I’ll be captain, and give the signal. When the time’s ripe
I’ll pass the word, and we’ll jest keel over everybody that’s like to
interfere, and smouge the treasure and off we go. Simple, hain’t it?”
“Sounds kind of easy.”
“Be you with us?”
“You bet you,” says the man with the lantern, “only I hain’t hankerin’
to git caught.”
“For doin’ what?”
“Stealin’.”
“Stealin’ what and off’n who?”
“A million dollars off’n Jonas P. Dunn.”
“’Tain’t his treasure, is it? Got as much right to it as he has, hain’t
we?”
“Wa-al, now you put it that way, I dunno but what we have.... But hain’t
it mutiny?”
“We don’t aim to harm nobody—unless we jest got to. And we’ll jest take
his yacht fer a little pleasure cruise—like. We don’t aim to keep it.
We’ll cruise till we find a safe place to land, and then we’ll go ashore
and divide up the treasure, and everybody skedaddle in a different
direction—and live rich and handsome forever after. Who’s a-goin’ to
ketch us, and how be they a-goin’to go about it?”
“Sounds like you was right. Sounds mighty easy.... Um.... Fifty
thousand. Put out to interest that’s a deal of money. Lemme see,
supposin’ I was to git six percent on it all, what would that amount
to?”
“Three thousand a year. I got it all figured out.”
“Shucks! Three thousand. Feller could live in a regular hotel with that
much to spend. Say, mate, I’m with you. You kin count on me from
vegetable soup to toothpicks.”
“Thought I knowed a man when I seen one. Shake.”
They shook hands, and then the man who had thought up the scheme says:
“I’m captain. Somebody’s got to be till this is pulled off. I got to
have authority and all hands has got to mind what I say.... Jest sit
tight till I give the sign, and then we’ll jump ’em. Keep your eye
peeled and don’t waggle your tongue.”
Then he moved off and left the man with the lantern thinking it over and
spending his fifty thousand dollars, I guess. Catty reached over in the
dark and put his hand on my knee, and I could tell he was tickled to
death. This was a better adventure than he ever had any idea of running
into, and it came free, as you might say. It was extra, without any
cost. I could see his face just as well as if it was light as day. I
know he’d got kind of pale and that his eyes were shining like they
always do when he’s excited. Say, he wouldn’t have taken fifty thousand
dollars for his chance at this adventure. Me? Well, I’d have given fifty
thousand to be fifty thousand miles away from it!
Just where we were going to fit into it, I couldn’t see for the life of
me. We’d fit in some place, all right, but it looked to me like it would
be an unpleasant fit. It was bad enough to be shut up in the enemy’s
camp, but now we had two sets of enemies, and the last were worse than
the first.
I’ve read about mutinies, and I know what mutineers do to cabin boys and
such who happen onto the secret of their plot. I thought of a dozen
stories, and every one was worse than the one before. The back of my
neck got prickly, and I came close to giving myself up altogether.
“Here’s the finish of Wee-wee Moore,” says I to myself, “and likely
nobody’ll ever know what become of me.”
For another two or three weeks I sat being awful sorry for myself, and
then the man with the lantern got up and walked away. I listened, and
heard him going farther and farther, and then everything was quiet. The
camp sound asleep, it seemed as though.
Then Catty leaned over with his lips close to my ear and whispered.
“Isn’t it—_gorgeous_?” he says.
“Yes,” says I, “_it ain’t_.”
“I never expected to be mixed up in a real mutiny. Pirate treasure was
fine, but who ever would expect to pile mutiny on top of it?”
“Not me,” says I, “or I wouldn’t have come.”
“And we’ll make out to be the heroes—like Jim in Treasure Island,” he
says.
“Thank you,” says I, “none on my plate. I got enough.”
“Why,” says he, “it’ll give you something to think about all the rest of
your life.”
“Seeing,” says I, “that my life ain’t apt to last much more’n a few
hours, that isn’t much comfort.”
“Rats,” says he, “the heroes always get out of it somehow. I never read
a book where the hero came to much harm.”
“This,” says I, “isn’t any book. This is awful real. There’s a real box
corner prodding a hole in my hide. This is a real tarpaulin that’s
choking us to death. Those are real men with arms and legs....”
“Fiddlesticks,” says he. “We’re in for the adventure of our lives. We’ve
got to circumvent these mutineers and save Jonas P. On top of that,
we’ve got to grab the treasure for Mr. Browning and Mr. Topper, and——”
“I know the undertaker back home,” says I, “and I never liked him.”
“Who you’ll get to know,” says he, “is the president of the bank. And if
this goes right, he’ll take off his hat to you the next time you pass.”
“Folks,” says I, “and even the bank presidents, take off their hats to
funeral processions.”