THE LOST TREASURE
All the week or more that the Captain was sick, he never, even in his
few conscious moments, asked about his ship or where he was. He seemed
just to take everything for granted and to have no curiosity about
things round him.
Madame Carreau said that sometimes, when he was delirious, he called
out orders to his men, but they were always in regard to handling his
vessel, and mostly incomprehensible to the Carreaus. Once he muttered
something about maps and Morgan, and Madame told us afterward her heart
almost stopped beating for sheer excitement. But he only trailed off
into grunts and broken words.
After the crisis was past however, and he had begun to pick up strength
more and more surely with each day, we all worried a little how we were
to break the news to him about his crew’s desertion, and the loss of
his ship. When the time came, however, it all happened quite simply
and without fuss of any sort.
Madame had brought up his breakfast tray with his first real breakfast
of eggs and coffee on it, and he was propped up in the pillows,
enjoying every mouthful like a hungry schoolboy, when he turned his
head suddenly toward her.
“Sort of funny ain’t it, Anderson and some of the others haven’t been
up to see me ’fore this?” he asked thoughtfully. “Or wouldn’t you let
’em in?” Anderson was his first mate. We’d met him at our breakfast
party on the Captain’s first visit to the Island.
Madame says she hesitated just a moment, and I guess the Captain’s eyes
were pretty sharp, and his wits too.
He drew a quick breath, looking away from her toward the window and
then back.
“It would be like Anderson to give me the slip,” he said without any
sort of emotion in his tone. “He’s been kind of itchin’ to have a
command of his own for some time now. And in this game it’s every man
for himself. He wouldn’t find much loyalty in that bunch of swabs we
call a crew to hinder him stealin’ the ship, if he was minded that
way.” He stared at Madame keenly. “That’s what he done, ain’t it,
mam?” he asked. “You got it writ all over your face. I guess you
couldn’t lie even if you wanted to, nohow.”
Madame nodded, a little frightened now the secret was out, but he said
nothing more except: “You folks here on the Island got a schooner,
ain’t you? Calls here every so often?”
She nodded again, and he went on as if he were thinking it all out:
“Well, mebbe her cap’n’ll give me a chance to work my passage back to
the States. Don’t care much what port.” He gave a long sigh and lay
back on his pillows, pushing the tray away. “It ain’t the furst time
I’ve been double-crossed, lady,” he told Madame, grinning at the sight
of her puzzled expression. “I’ll win out again somehow, an’ then I’ll
see that Anderson an’ some of them others sweat for this. But you folks
have been real white to me. I won’t forgit that neither.”
He fell asleep after that, so Madame hurried downstairs, and repeated
what had passed between them on the subject.
“He’s a rough customer,” Uncle Charles said drily, “and I, for one,
wouldn’t care to incur his ill will. I’d hate to be in Anderson’s
boots, when he’s well and about again. But I believe the man’s capable
of gratitude--perhaps. We won’t trust him too far, but we’ll hope
for the best. When he’s able to get outdoors, I propose to tell him
frankly our theory about the treasure, and perhaps make up a party to
visit the cave and take him along. Just as well to rid his mind of any
hankerings after those gold pieces right now, and I guess Gay here,
and Madame--not to speak of Mollie and Red, will all be interested in
coming too.”
Of course we were enthusiastic about the plan, and Madame was given
permission to broach the subject to the Captain, and tell him what
we had in mind. She later reported to us that he had been sort of
shame-faced when she first spoke of the map, and tried to pass off his
action in taking possession of it, as a joke. He pretended to believe
that he’d thought the map some play gotten up by the boys and myself to
fool Reddy.
Madame let the matter rest at that, without questioning his
explanations, but insisted on telling him the whole story, showing him
Rosemary’s diary--which made him open his eyes very wide with a kind
of blue gleam of excitement she didn’t much care for, she said--and
then wound up frankly with the account of our locating the cave of the
stream, the old boat, and finally the effect the earth-shocks, and Mt.
Pélée’s eruption had had on the cave bed.
“So it’s down there, maybe several hundred fathom,” he had said sort of
musingly, when she finished. “Well, life’s a funny business. It ain’t
doin’ nobody any good, neither, where it is. And there’s quite a lot
of us could use it, if it was in reach, couldn’t we?” He appeared to
count himself in as a sharer of the treasure if it were found, though
it didn’t seem to us as if he had much to base his rights on.
When he was able to dress and walk downstairs, we found him a very
quiet, unobtrusive visitor, anxious to do what he could to save
trouble, and expressing himself several times a day as honestly
grateful to us for saving his life--that’s what he called it, and what
it really was, though the credit for it was due mostly to Madame and
Monsieur Carreau.
The first thing he had done, when he could walk about his room, was
to rip open the inner lining of his big sea carryall, that the men
had brought his clothes ashore in, and bring out the lost map. He had
handed this over to Madame Carreau with another apologetic reference to
“fooling.” But, as we all agreed privately after she’d told us of his
act, he had certainly hidden it pretty securely away for something he
regarded as just a children’s joke.
Before either the Captain or my ankle were in traveling trim for the
second expedition to the caves, the _Myra_ returned, and with a long
sigh of relief all round we shifted our responsibility in the matter of
Captain Rawson to Uncle Joe’s shoulders.
Uncle Joe grunted sort of non-committally when he’d listened to
the story of the Captain’s return, the way we’d nursed him through
pneumonia, and his present expressions of being grateful.
“Maybe he is--for the present, anyhow,” he said with a little shrug.
“We won’t strain his gratitude too far. I’ll see he gets a chance to
work his way north on the _Myra’s_ next trip--and we won’t put that off
too long either, while we’re about it.”
He endorsed heartily Uncle Charles’ plan of showing the Captain the
cave of the stream as proof of our story, and two or three days after
the _Myra’s_ sails had flashed between the reef-opening, we might have
been seen one morning just at sunrise, paddling up the lagoon in the
_Myra’s_ dinghy and the green canoe, with plenty of lanterns aboard,
and a picnic breakfast to eat in the cave.
Everyone in the family went, even Aunt Mollie, Monsieur and Madame
Carreau and little Red. And of course the Captain who appeared in high
spirits. As Syd whispered to me on the way, he thought the Captain,
in spite of our tale of earthquakes and volcanoes, fully expected
by superior cleverness to discover the treasure, and claim at least
nine-tenths as a reward for doing it.
Maybe we did him an injustice, but if so we’ll never know it now, for
the temptation to show himself in his blackest colors didn’t present
itself.
We had no trouble in locating the inlet, or--with the help of all those
muscular arms on board--of dragging both the canoe and dinghy across
the sand bar in no time at all, and launching them on the other side.
Then we all embarked again, and the journey up the stream began. Aunt
Mollie, Madame and Andy were in ecstasies over the beauty of the
flowering jungle vines that shut in both sides of the stream, and the
effects of light and shadow the interlacing of the trees overhead made
on the water. But the boys and I were impatient to get to the cave. We
had all been over this route before, and were far too excited to put
our minds on the beauties of Nature at the moment.
When we swung around the final bend I found it had suddenly become hard
to breathe, and my fingers were clinched so tightly on the edge of the
dinghy they were sore for days afterward.
There was the low, black mouth of the cave just before us as I
remembered it that first time with Syd. The canoe, which was leading
the way with Uncle Joe, Syd, Dan and Monsieur in it, was already
disappearing through the cave opening and our dinghy was just behind.
The dinghy, being so much more heavily loaded than the canoe, ran
aground about twenty feet before the canoe did. In fact we found, by
prodding the bottom with the oars, that we hadn’t grounded on the old
jolly boat at all, but upon the floor proper of the cave itself. By
the time we’d settled this fact to our own satisfaction the canoe was
perched on the overturned bottom of the old boat, and we all proceeded
to climb out--all of us, that is, except Aunt Mollie, and Madame, who
preferred to keep their feet dry, and look on.
Even Andy, who used to think more of her clothes than being a good
sport, forgot herself entirely, and sprang out into the shallow water
as quickly as Syd or Dan. It flashed over me as I saw her, that Andy
was quite a different girl from the one we knew in Braeburn. She didn’t
talk much more, but she was usually ready now for any expedition or fun
we others had on foot, and she didn’t hang back, or complain if things
went wrong and we got tired or hungry.
And the Andy who came down with us on the _Myra_ nearly a year ago,
and who had cried on the lagoon beach when we landed on Sunset Island
because she was afraid of snakes, must have had a big fight with
herself before she could clamber so unconcernedly out of the dinghy
now into cold, black water nearly to her knees, in a dark, underground
cave, and never give a thought to possible sea animals under foot. I
felt awfully proud of her, all at once.
First of course we explored the cave of the stream, and crept
cautiously up onto the overturned boat, to listen to the faint, far-off
sound of falling water underground, going down, down into the depths of
the sea where Sir Henry Morgan’s treasure lay.
Straightening up from my turn at listening, I found Captain Rawson
beside me, his face wearing in the lantern light an expression of
disappointment as open and unashamed as Reddy himself might have worn.
“So it was true, after all,” he said. “It’s down there now--millions
just waitin’ to be picked up. An’ not a soul can touch a penny of it!”
I felt sorry for him because I knew by my own disappointment what he
was feeling.
“I guess it’s there all right,” I said as cheerfully as I could. “And
what’s more I guess it’ll stay there.”
He grunted. “A lot of good that does us to know.”
“Come on,” I urged, “the others are going on to the outside caves.
Syd says we can squeeze through where the passage is blocked. I guess
Madame’ll want to go with us, she’s crazy about this treasure-hunt
business. Her son used to take her with him when he was alive.”
“I’ll take care of the little French lady,” Captain Rawson said
unexpectedly. His face had softened as much as its natural make-up
allowed. He didn’t look quite so villainous when he smiled like that,
and for a moment I almost forgot his roughness with poor Reddy, and
how he had planned to rob us if the doubloons were found. I guess it’s
true after all, that there’s some little hidden-away soft spot in even
the cruelest and wickedest folks if you can only find it. I knew then
that Captain Rawson’s gratitude was quite genuine as far as Madame was
concerned.
She was awfully pleased and touched when he went up to her and asked if
he could help her into the other caves, if she wanted to go.
“You don’t weigh no more’n a baby, mam,” he told her, grinning. “You
jus’ let me carry you on my shoulder where the walkin’s bad, an’ I’ll
promise you you won’t wet the tip of your shoe, nor bump agin nothin’
in the dark.”
She held out her arms to him as trustingly as a baby, saying only,
“Thank you, Captain, I am sure you will take good care of me,” and he
put her up on his shoulder the way Uncle Joe had carried me when I
sprained my ankle.
Syd and Uncle Joe went first, with the lanterns, and the rest of us
straggled carefully behind. We made a funny procession, plodding along
in that twisty, dark passage, climbing carefully over fallen rocks, and
stubbing our toes against crevices in the passage floor.
But after about fifty yards or more of the roughest kind of going,
we saw a little glimmer of light ahead. Just in front of us was the
hardest blockade to pass we’d struck yet, but we managed it at last,
and came through into the inner cave where Andy, Aunt Mollie and I had
slept so long ago, and where I had found Rosemary’s locket.
Aunt Mollie, and little Red who was tired, elected to go home by way of
the beach, through the outer cave, but the rest of us returned by the
passage to the Cave of the Stream, and the waiting boats.
“Syd,” I whispered anxiously, as we passed over the upturned bottom of
the old boat, “Syd, don’t you think you could scrape me off a piece of
the old jolly boat just for a souvenir?”
He nodded good humoredly and bent down, but, as I had also found it
on a former occasion, that half-rotted old wood was slippery flooring
to keep your balance on, and with a little exclamation he slid to his
knees in the water, dropping his knife.
“And it was my prize whittling knife,” he grumbled in disgust. “Here’s
your sliver of souvenir, Sis. Now be a good sport, in return, and help
me feel for Old Trusty. It’s bound to be somewheres around.”
Dan, seeing us rooting in the water, came to our help, finally
suggesting that we get our hands under the edge of the boat and lift it
enough to make anything on top of it slide off into the shallow water.
“Only take care to tilt it this way,” he added with a laugh, “or your
precious knife will go slipping down to join Morgan’s pieces of eight
at the bottom of the sea. The deep hole’s on the other side.”
After maneuvering about a bit, we decided to work our way to the end of
the boat, and try to tilt it from there. Uncle Joe and Captain Rawson
lent their arms also, and after a good deal of heaving and puffing, we
felt the old hulk move. Then I gave a startled scream, as a crumbling
piece of the wooden thwart broke off in my hand, and I stumbled
backward holding something oblong and heavy.
Examining my catch by the light of the nearest lantern I found that it
seemed to be a box, about the size of a quart measure, made of some
heavier kind of wood than the jolly boat. It was bound with an iron rim
and hoops, and was somehow attached to the piece of wood I had broken
off.
“Syd! Uncle Joe! Dan!” I shrieked, as my mind slowly took in the fact
of what I was holding. “It’s a box--caught under the edge of the old
boat! Bring more light, somebody, please!”
They were round me then, in a second; nobody speaking, but with a
circle of curious eyes riveted on the slimy, brown object.
I passed it over to Uncle Joe. “You see,” I begged. “I’m--I’m sort of
scared----”
Well, after a while we calmed down enough to pry the rotted wood free
of the old hasps, and so, after perfect ages of time to our impatience,
got the box open.
The flickering lanterns showed gleams of gold, and other things that
were small and hard and sparkled in gay colors where the light fell
on them. Pieces of eight--doubloons--some few bits of jewels set in
ancient, chased gold and silver pins, a bracelet or two and some rings.
“Watch Rawson,” Uncle Joe said in a whispered aside to the boys and
Uncle Charles; but after all, there was no need. It wasn’t a real
fortune in that small package, just a few odds and ends of the great
pirate’s loot, that had somehow wedged in the bow of the boat when it
was overturned, or--as Uncle Joe pointed out was more likely--been
secreted there by one of the buccaneers who hoped later to return and
retrieve it on the sly.
Anyhow, it proved beyond a doubt to us, the way the rest of the
treasure had gone, and after admiring our find a long time in the light
of the lanterns, we carried it out to the cave’s mouth, and inspected
it all over again in the sunlight.
Uncle Joe held out his two big hands to us filled with the lovely,
flashing things.
“First choice to the little lady who found them. Here, Gay-girl--what
do you want?”
I drew in my breath and looked--and _looked_. Rubies, and the green of
emeralds, and golden coins, all heaped together in Uncle Joe’s familiar
sun-browned hands. It was like a story after all--or the nice kind of
dream you hate to wake up and leave.
And then I put out one finger and touched the loveliest thing of all
there. It wasn’t the most valuable, or I wouldn’t have been selfish
enough to claim it.... A little pink pearl, set in a carved ring that
had a dragon’s wings round the finger part, and the pearl itself held
in the beast’s mouth. It just fitted my middle finger--not too snugly,
perhaps, but Aunt Mollie wouldn’t want me to wear it, I knew, till I
was older.
“I wonder,” I said, with a sudden shiver at the thought, “who owned it
originally, Uncle Joe?”
“Never mind, honey,” he said quickly, “whoever she was, she’s over all
her troubles now, poor soul. And perhaps,” he added smiling, “it never
belonged to anyone in especial. It’s quite likely it was part of some
big merchant’s stores being brought out to New Spain, when Morgan took
them. Now, all the rest of you, make your various choices. There’s just
enough to go round.”
So we chose and chose, and exchanged, and made up our minds all over
again, until nothing was left but the golden doubloons--worth, Uncle
Joe figured, about three hundred dollars.
Then Madame did a surprising thing. But she went over first to whisper
in Uncle Joe’s ear, and after a moment of close attention, he nodded
back, and laid the doubloons in her hands.
“Captain Rawson,” Madame said clearly, with her pleasant little smile,
beckoning him nearer, “you have lost your ship, and are starting life
all over again. And you have been very kind to me today. As kind, and
as strong as my Raoul could have been. We have all made our choice of
the treasure trove, and we’d like these pieces of eight to be your
share.”
She put them in his hands, and closed his big fingers down over the
coins.
“Now,” she said, with a tired little sigh, “let’s all go home. It has
been a wonderful day.”
* * * * *
It would surely be what I’ve seen writers describe as an anti-climax,
to carry this journal of Sunset Island beyond our finding the jewels
and the pieces of eight in the cave that morning. Of course there’s
a lot more that I could tell, like Captain Rawson leaving us on the
_Myra_, our getting a great avalanche of orders from New York for our
candied peel and all of us plunging into a regular orgy of boiling and
beating. Then there were Syd’s successful experiments in gardening
that produced some brand new types of vegetables for our table, and
Andy’s developing a positive genius in making over the old frocks
and petticoats in Rosemary’s chest into pretty, every-day clothes
for herself and me. Things like that--not really exciting except to
ourselves, but making life on the Island so busy and interesting we
never knew where the days went to.
There was a storm blowing up from the east when I sat down to finish
this journal, and sitting at the desk by my window I could see the surf
dashing over the reef and hear the wind singing a high note through the
palms.
But while I’ve been writing, the wind has veered round again suddenly,
and now there’s the fragrant little Island breeze I love blowing across
my room, smelling of desert islands and jungle flowers and hot sunshine
on tropical gardens. I wish you could smell it too--and open your own
windows, every one of you, to see Sunset Island lying just outside, in
a blue, blue ocean.
THE END
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Perceived typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.