A NIGHT IN THE CAVES
When I gasped that breathless question at Uncle Joe about the
possibility of the cave having been used by Morgan’s men, there was a
sort of stunned silence for a moment. Then Dan and Sydney burst out
with a regular war-whoop, in which Reddy--who by now had forgotten he’d
believed himself hurt by his fall--joined shrilly.
“_Boys_, for goodness sakes, do stop that awful racket,” I begged. “I
want to know what Uncle Joe thinks about it.”
I had to put my hands over my ears for a second or two, till things
quieted down, and then I looked up at Uncle Joe and repeated my
question.
“It _might_ have been--oh, Uncle Joe, say it would be just exactly the
kind of place to find buried treasure. Because, really it _is_!”
“Well, I don’t know,” he said cautiously, “never having buried any. It
certainly looks like a pretty good spot to hide anything, from a band
of smugglers to pieces of eight. We’ll camp here tonight, anyway, and
have a look-see. But there may be a dozen other better hiding places on
the Island that we haven’t found yet.”
“Not so nice and convenient to the beach though,” I said firmly, for
I couldn’t bear to give up the notion, or even admit a doubt of its
probability until we’d at least made a thorough search.
“Why--don’t you see, Uncle Joe, how easily the pirates could have
brought the stuff ashore in boats, and carried it these few hundred
feet up here to a perfectly safe secret cave like this? Treasure is
heavy, you know,--it would be so much easier to bury it as near the
landing place as they could. Very likely they stumbled on the cave by
chance, just as we did, and then realized it was exactly what they
needed.”
“You’d make a great little lawyer,” Uncle Joe laughed. “However, it’s
all right with me. You’ve convinced me Sir Henry Morgan’s golden loot
is lying somewhere near us at this very moment--that is, until we don’t
find it.”
I pouted, but had to grin a little, too. Ever since I can remember I’ve
been teased about my enthusiasms. Still, I don’t really mind. Who wants
to be a _lettuce_--cool and green and undisturbed by nice things and
sorry things both.
But the boys were as excited as I was, this time.
Aunt Mollie, who had taken possession of the flashlight, and was busily
exploring the corners of the cave, now gave a little exclamation that
brought us all running to her.
“Look what I’ve found!” she cried delightedly. “Another cave--light,
too!”
Sure enough, there was a slightly smaller cave opening out of the big
one, that was lighted quite brightly by a long narrow aperture up near
the roof, which probably looked out into another clump of bushes higher
up the cliff.
The floor was as dry and sandy as in the outer cave, and as a room it
was certainly more cheerful in there, though perhaps not so mysterious.
“This will make a nice bedroom for you and the girls, Mollie,” Uncle
Joe said at once. “Pirates or no pirates, these caves are a great find
considered as a camp site. We might even fit them up as a permanent
headquarters for outdoor picnics and hiking parties. Let’s go and
collect blankets and the rest of the stuff.”
We hurried back to the outer cave and, as the first step in making
camp, Uncle Joe, Dan and Sydney began to enlarge the entrance and pile
the loose earth removed in doing it inside the cave to form a narrow
sloping path from the floor level to the mouth. This certainly made
entering and leaving camp easier, especially for Aunt Mollie and Uncle
Charles. Then they cut down some of the thickest bushes and underbrush
around our new doorway, which let more light into the cave, changing
the interior from almost dusk to a cool and pleasant twilight.
We cooked supper on the beach because there wasn’t any proper vent for
the smoke inside the caves if we’d lighted a fire in there. But as soon
as the meal was over, instead of lingering round the fire and talking,
as we usually did, we washed up our few plates, cups and cooking
utensils at top speed, so we might hurry back to our latest find.
It was while Syd and I were scrubbing our one and only camp frying
pan--both of us working at it together, because Aunt Mollie insisted
on its being scrupulously clean and shining--that Syd brought up the
subject of the _Myra’s_ return. By a sort of unspoken understanding
we hadn’t mentioned it since that morning after the hurricane when we
spied that piece of snapped-off mast and the wrecked lifeboat floating
beyond the reef. I think we felt, instinctively, that putting our
fears into words made them seem that much more real and alarming.
But now, as if the bare possibility of our being suddenly rich had made
him think of home, Syd spoke, rather hesitantly.
“Gay, if we don’t find Morgan’s _cache_ before the _Myra_ comes--” he
broke off, and I said softly, “_If_ she comes, Syd dear.”
He gulped and tried to turn the sound into a laugh.
“Well, we’ll try to believe she will till we know--she won’t. What do
you think Uncle Joe believes, Gay?”
I shook my head and suddenly the lovely twilight sky and the bright
reflections on the waters of the lagoon blurred together in a silvery
mist of tears across my eyes.
“Of course I haven’t said anything to him, Syd, because we promised
each other not to. But I’ve been watching him a lot----”
“So’ve I,” Syd said, in a low voice, huskily.
“And when he doesn’t think anyone’s noticing him,” I went on,
more slowly, “he looks so troubled, and--and sort of anxious. And
_remorseful_, someway. Do you know, I think he’s blaming himself,
inside, all the time, for bringing us down here and letting us in for
what we may be up against if the _Myra_ doesn’t--come back. And Syd, if
he’s really feeling that--and he is--it’s because he lost hope of the
_Myra_ after seeing those pieces of wreckage that morning.”
Syd nodded without speaking. I think I had half expected him to
contradict me, and this unprotesting agreement with my words came with
a funny sense of shock. It was like finding those floating bits of
wreckage all over again and realizing what they might mean to us.
All the delicious excitement of our discovery of the caves faded out in
an awful _numbness_ that closed my throat up uncomfortably. My heart
began to pound against my ear-drums.
“Oh, Syd,” I said forlornly. “Oh--Syd!”
He put his hand on my arm, and squeezed it hard, which--from Syd--meant
more than a whole speech from most people.
“We’d better not talk about it, Sis,” he said, quite decidedly. “I
oughtn’t to have started the subject. But I was thinking how--how queer
it would be if we really did manage to find old Morgan’s treasure and
then couldn’t ever get away to--to spend it.”
The others had gone up to the caves without waiting for us, and
looking after them, we could see a cheerful little glow of light stream
suddenly out of the black entrance-hole; the lantern, probably, that
Uncle Joe had insisted on bringing with us and Dan had carried in
addition to his own pack. It certainly would come in usefully now, to
make the caves more cheerful that evening.
We packed up the pans and as many of the dishes as Aunt Mollie had left
for us, and made our way up the steep hillside to the glow of lantern
light. But half way up, something dark, crouching in the bushes,
stopped us. Syd went over to investigate and I heard him say, in a
startled voice, “Why, it’s Andy--_crying_. Andy, you hurt anywhere? Are
you sick?”
He sounded frightened and I ran over to them as fast as my legs would
carry me.
Andrée was lying in a huddled little heap, her face down in her arms,
and her shoulders shaking in convulsive heaves. Funny, strangled sounds
came from her that were more like a hurt baby crying and trying to
catch its breath than a big girl of fourteen. It made me feel toward
her just as I would have if she’d really been a baby in trouble,--all
shaken up inside and sympathetic and anxious to comfort her.
I put both my arms around her and got her head out of the leaves and
brambles onto my shoulder, and hugged her close for a few minutes,
without trying to say a word. She felt so soft and scared and limp in
my arms that I had to put my face down against her wet cheek, and kiss
her two or three times, _hard_.
“Andy, what’s the matter?” I asked her after I’d waited a while, and
she seemed to be crying more quietly. “Tell Gay, honey. Syd and I’ll do
anything--_please_, Andy!”
She wouldn’t say a word at first, though she still held on to me with a
desperate sort of hold, but little by little the sobs quieted down and
at last she pushed me back from her and sat up, rubbing her eyes with
both fists--which again was exactly like a frightened baby.
“Nothing’s the m-matter,” she said, not too steadily. “I’m such a
goose about getting scared--you know I do, Gay. That’s all it was.
It--it just came suddenly. I was s-scared of the dark and--and those
c-caves--” she caught her breath, and I felt a shiver go through her.
“Oh, Andy, you’re not afraid of the caves,” I cried in a dismayed tone.
“Why, we’ve been all over them--in every single corner, and there’s
not a thing to hurt you.”
“Oh, I’m not afraid of _things_ in the caves,” she interrupted me quite
scornfully.
“But you said--” I began.
“No, I didn’t,” she insisted. “I only said I got scared easily. I--I
like the caves. I’d much rather sleep in there than out on the beach,
as we did the other nights. Come on, Mother’ll be waiting for us, Gay.
I’ll carry the coffee pot.”
She turned and started up the cliff at a brisk climb, leaving Syd and
me to follow, both of us so puzzled by her contradictory words and
actions that we hadn’t even a word left to comment on them to each
other.
The cave was so enormous that Uncle Joe’s lantern only succeeded in
making a round splash of yellow light in the very middle of it, leaving
the walls far-off patches of greyish dusk.
But Aunt Mollie and Red had spread all our gay scarlet and tan camping
blankets in a circle on the sandy floor around the lantern, as if it
were a camp fire, and we sat down, each on our own particular blanket,
in our own particular attitude of comfort, ready for the latest of Aunt
Mollie’s study hours. She’d had a new one for us at each halt on the
entire trip.
That night was the best of all--for me, anyhow. It was supposed to be a
history class, but it was the most fascinating way to study history I’d
ever tried.
Aunt Mollie called it the “History of the Spanish Main” and it was all
about the part of the world we were in right then--the West Indies,
the Caribbean Sea, and the coasts of Central and northern South
America. She and Uncle Charles told us things they’d read in books and
histories, but Uncle Joe’s were the sea stories that sailors hand down
to one another in the long, lonely voyages in sailing ships. There were
pirates ancient and modern--rum-runners and smugglers of our present
day, and the deliberate losing of a ship at sea for the insurance money
the owners could collect on her, when she’d stopped being a paying
investment as a trader or freighter. I wish you could have heard the
scorn Uncle Joe boomed out in his big voice for the captains who let
themselves be bribed by owners to commit that lowest-of-all crimes in
the sea calendar.
And then, there were stories of the old pirates and buccaneers
we’d read about at school in our history books--Captain Kidd, and
Blackbeard, and Sir Henry Morgan who was the one we kept the tales
going about longest of all; and half a dozen others. They were wicked,
cruel men, of course, every last one of them, and we’d have hated
terribly to have met them in the flesh on our beautiful Sunset Island,
but now we drank in the old sea yarns about them that have come to be
sort of legends. Wouldn’t anyone have been thrilled!
There we sat, about our lantern fire, in the very cave, the very circle
on the sandy floor where--maybe--once upon a time nearly four hundred
years ago Morgan himself and his men had sat before us, and counted
pieces of eight, Spanish doubloons and moidores. (I don’t know how much
or what nationality a _moidore_ is even now, but I adore the sound of
the word!)
And then, much too soon, the evening was over and it was time for our
blanket beds.
The boys had brought in soft brush and spread three thick luxurious
piles of it in the inner cave for Aunt Mollie, Andy and me. And when we
had laid our blankets over them, we couldn’t have envied the richest
millionaire at home in the States his most expensive mattress and box
springs.
I dropped right off to sleep at once, I was so tired, and I don’t know
how long I had slept when I found myself broad awake again, listening
to some faint, smothered sort of sound quite near me that was repeated
steadily over and over again.
For a while I couldn’t place it, and raised my head on my elbow to
listen harder. Then I reached for the flashlight that lay on the floor
beside me and turned its light cautiously into the darkness where the
sound came from. It was Andy, sobbing into the thick folds of her
blanket she’d pulled over her face.
I let the light go out, and reaching over put my arm around her.
“Andy,” I whispered. “Andy, you’ve _got_ to tell me what’s the matter.”
An uneasy little suspicion had occurred to me that she might possibly
have overheard Syd’s and my conversation about the _Myra_ down on the
beach after supper. If she had, poor kid, it would be natural enough if
the knowledge of the uncertainty confronting us had made her cry. But
it wasn’t natural for Andy to keep a thing like that to herself, and
cry over it in the dark, alone. So I decided it wasn’t that, but I kept
getting more and more puzzled as to what could be wrong.
She pulled away from me, shaking her shoulder free of my arm with a
little shrug that I knew of old meant “let me alone.”
“Go to sleep, Gay, I’m only--h-h-homesick,” she whispered in a cross
voice. But somehow I didn’t mind the crossness as I’d ordinarily have
done--being rather quick-tempered myself--because, in spite of its
crossness, it was the forlornest and most miserable voice you can
imagine.
I deliberately moved my blanket closer, spreading it on the sand of the
cave floor, because I was afraid if I moved the brush, too, I’d surely
wake Aunt Mollie.
“I’m going to sleep over nearer, where you can grab me in the night if
you wake again,” I said cheerfully. And when she didn’t answer I set
about scooping some of the sand together in a little mound for a pillow.
There was a small flat pebble in the sand I was sifting through my
fingers, and I was about to toss it to one side, so I shouldn’t hurt my
cheek against it, when something tiny and round at one end of it moved
loosely as I touched it. It felt exactly like the little ring in the
top of a watch to snap the chain into.
I twisted about so my back was toward Aunt Mollie, and using my body to
screen the light from her, I held the pebble-thing I had in my hand
under the light of the electric torch.
It wasn’t a pebble at all, or, if it was, it was a golden pebble that
sent back a flicker of sparks at the flashlight.
It was about the size of a United States fifty-cent piece, only a
second look showed me it wasn’t round, but heart-shaped, with a gold
ring at the top to slip a chain through. Andrée, seeing the light and
hearing me give--I suppose I must have--a little grunt of astonishment,
turned over quickly, and together we studied the heart-shaped thing in
the light of the torch.
“Is it a--a piece of eight, do you suppose?” she asked in an awed
voice, but remembering to speak softly because of Aunt Mollie.
“_No!_” I whispered back; my breath was coming in gasps as if I’d been
running a race. “Don’t you see--it’s a locket! A gold locket.”
We both bent closer to stare at our surprising treasure-love lying on
my shaking, outstretched palm.
“It’s got a name engraved on it,” Andrée murmured, and put out the tip
of a finger that was trembling as hard as my own.
I held the locket nearer to the flashlight, and together we made out
the name, engraved in flourishing old-fashioned lettering that looked
somehow familiar.
It was “Rosemary.”