IX

"LASSIE, LASSIE. . ."

Two or three days later occurred a painful episode. The small

unsuspected germ of it had lain ambushed in a discourse of Mr.

Shaw's, delivered shortly after our arrival on the island, on the

multifarious uses of the cocoa-palm. He told how the juice from

the unexpanded flower-spathes is drawn off to form a potent toddy,

so that where every prospect pleases man may still be vile.

Cookie, experimentally disposed, set to work. Mr. Vane, also

experimentally, sampled the results of Cookie's efforts. The

liquor had merely been allowed to ferment, whereas a complicated

process is necessary for the manufacture of the true arrack, but

enough had been achieved to bring about dire consequences for

Cuthbert Vane, who had found the liquid cool and refreshing, and

was skeptical about its potency.

Aunt Jane took the matter very hard, and rebuked the ribald mirth

of Mr. Tubbs. He had to shed tears over a devastating poem called

"The Drunkard's Home," before she would forgive him. Cookie made

his peace by engaging to vote the prohibition ticket at the next

election. My own excuses for the unfortunate were taken in very

ill part. My aunt said she had always understood that life in the

tropics was very relaxing to the moral fiber, and mine was

certainly affected--and besides she wasn't certain that barons wore

coronets anyhow.

Mr. Shaw was disturbed over Cuthbert, who was not at all bad, only

queer and sleepy, and had to be led away to slumber in retirement.

Also, it was an exceptionally low tide and Mr. Shaw had counted on

taking advantage of it to work in the cave. Now Cuthbert was laid

up--

"You and I will have to manage by ourselves, Magnus."

"Nothing doing--boat got to be patched up--go out there without it

and get caught!" growled the captain.

"Well, lend a hand, then. We can be ready with the boat inside an

hour."

The captain hesitated queerly. His wandering eyes seemed to be

searching in every quarter for something they did not find. At

last he mumbled that he thought he felt a touch of the sun, and had

decided to lay off for the afternoon and make his way across the

island. He said he wanted to shoot water-fowl and that they had

all been frightened away from the cove, but that with the glass he

had seen them from Lookout thickly about the other bay.

"Very well," said the Scotchman coldly. "I suppose you must suit

yourself. I can get the boat in shape without help, I dare say."

I saw him presently looking in an annoyed and puzzled fashion after

the vanishing figure of the sailor.

Mr. Tubbs and the umbrellas soon disappeared into the woods. I

believe the search for Bill Halliwell's tombstone was no longer

very actively pursued, and that the trio spent their time ensconced

in a snug little nook with hammocks and cushions, where Mr. Tubbs

beguiled the time with reading aloud--Aunt Jane and Violet both

being provided with literature--and relating anecdotes of his rise

to greatness in the financial centers of the country. I more than

suspected Mr. Tubbs of feeling that such a bird in the hand as Aunt

Jane was worth many doubloons in the bush. But in spite of

uneasiness about the future, for the present I rested secure in the

certainty that they could not elope from the island, and that there

was no one on it with authority to metamorphose Aunt Jane into Mrs.

Hamilton H. Tubbs.

The waters of the cove had receded until a fringe of rocks under

the high land of the point, usually covered, had been left bare. I

had watched the emergence of their black jagged surfaces for some

time before it occurred to me that they offered a means of access

to the cave. The cave--place of fascination and mystery! Here was

the opportunity of all others to explore it, unhampered by any one,

just Crusoe and I alone, in the fashion that left me freest to

indulge my dreams.

I waited until the Scotchman's back was safely turned, because if

he saw me setting forth on this excursion he was quite certain to

command me to return, and I had no intention of submitting to his

dictatorial ways and yet was not sure how I was successfully to

defy him. I believed him capable of haling me lack by force, while

tears or even swoons left him unmoved. Of course he would take the

absurd ground that the cave was dangerous, in the face of the

glaring fact that a girl who had come to this island solely to

protect Aunt Jane ought certainly to be able to protect herself.

Besides, what right had he to care if I was drowned, anyhow?

But of course I was not going to be.

The retreating tide had left deep pools behind, each a little

cosmos of fairy seaweeds and tiny scuttling crabs and rich and

wonderful forms of life which were strange to me. Crusoe and I

were very much interested, and lingered a good deal on the way.

But at last we reached the great archway, and passed with a

suddenness which was like a plunge into cool water from the hot

glare of the tropic sunshine into the green shadow of the cavern.

At the lower end, between the two arches, a black, water-worn rock

paving rang under one's feet. Further in under the point the floor

of the cave was covered with white sand. All the great shadowy

place was murmuring like a vast sea-shell. Beyond the southern

archway spread the limitless heaving plain of the Pacific. Near at

hand bare black rocks rose from the surges, like skeletons of the

land that the sea had devoured. And after a while these walls that

supported the cavern roof would be nibbled away, and the roof would

fall, and the waves roar victorious over the ruins.

I wished I could visit the place in darkness. It would be thrice

as mysterious, filled with its hollow whispering echoes, as in the

day. I dreamed of it as it might have been when a boat from the

_Bonny Lass_ crept in, and the faint winking eye of a lantern

struck a gleam from the dark waters and showed nothing all around

but blackness, and more blackness.

From the ledge far above my head led off those narrow, teasing

crevices in which the three explorers did their unrewarded

burrowing. I could see the strands of a rope ladder lying coiled

at the edge of the shelf, where it was secured by spikes. The men

dragged down the ladder with a boat-hook when they wanted to

ascend. I looked about with a hope that perhaps they had left the

boat-hook somewhere.

I found no boat-hook but instead a spade, which had been driven

deep into the sand and left, too firmly imbedded for the tide to

bear away. At once a burning hope that I, alone and unassisted,

might bring to light the treasure of the Bonny Lass seethed in my

veins. I jerked the spade loose and fell to.

I now discovered the great truth that digging for treasure is the

most thrilling and absorbing occupation known to man. Time ceased

to be, and the weight of the damp and close-packed sand seemed,

that of feathers. This temporary state of exaltation passed, to be

sure, and the sand got very heavy, and my back ached, but still I

dug. Crusoe watched proceedings interestedly at first, then

wandered off on business of his own. Presently he returned and

began to fuss about and bark. He was a restless little beast,

wanting to be always on the move. He came and tugged at my skirt,

uttering an uneasy whine.

"Be quiet, Crusoe!" I commanded, threatening him with my spade.

The madness of the treasure-lust possessed me. I was panting now,

and my hands began to feel like baseball mitts, but still I dug.

Crusoe had ceased to importune me; vaguely I was aware that he had

got tired and run off. I toiled on, pausing now and then for

breath. I was leaning on my spade, rather dejectedly considering

the modest excavation I had achieved, when I felt a little cool

splash at my feet. Dropping my spade I whirled around--and a

shriek echoed through the cave as I saw pouring into it the dark

insidious torrent of the returning tide.

How had I forgotten it, that deadly thing, muttering to itself out

there, ready to spring back like an unleashed beast? Crusoe had

warned me--and then he had forsaken me, and I was alone.

And yet at first, wild as my terror was, I had no thought but that

somehow I could escape. That these waters were for me the very

face of death, sure and relentless, terrible and slow, did not at

once seize hold upon my heart.

Frantically I sprang for the entrance on the cove. The floor of

the cave was sloping, and the water deepened swiftly as I advanced.

Soon I was floundering to my knees, and on the instant a great wave

rushed in, drenching me to the waist, dazing me with its spray and

uproar, and driving me back to the far end of the cave.

With a dreadful hollow sucking sound the surge retreated. I

staggered again toward the archway that was my only door to life.

The water was deeper now, and swiftly came another fierce inrush of

the sea that drove me back. Between the two archways a terrible

current was setting. It poured along with the rush of a mountain

river, wild, dark, tumultuous.

I had fled to the far end of the cave, but the sea pursued me.

Swiftly the water climbed--it flung me against the wall, then

dragged me back. I clutched at the naked rock with bleeding

fingers.

Again, after a paroxysm during which I had seemed to stand a great

way off and listen to my own shrieks, there came to me a moment of

calm. I knew that my one tenuous thread of hope lay in launching

myself into that wild flood that was tearing through into the cove.

I was not a strong swimmer, but a buoyant one. I might find refuge

on some half-submerged rock on the shores of the cove--at least I

should perish in the open, in the sunlight, not trapped like a

desperate rat. And I began to fight my way toward the opening.

And then a dreadful vision flashed across my mind, weighed down my

feet like lead, choked back even the cry from my frozen lips.

Sharks! The black cutting fin, the livid belly, the dreadful jaws

opening--no, no, better to die here, better the clean embrace of

the waters--_if indeed the sharks did not come into the cave_.

And then I think I went quite mad. I remember trying to climb up

to the ledge which hung beetling fifteen feet above. Afterward my

poor hands showed how desperately. And I remember that once I

slipped and went clear under, and how I choked and strangled in the

salt water. For my mouth was always open, screaming, screaming

continually.

And when I saw the boat fighting its way inch by inch into the cave

I was sure that it was a vision, and that only my own wild

beseeching of him to save me had made the face of Dugald Shaw arise

before my dying eyes. Dugald Shaw was still mending the boat on

the shore of the cove, and this was a mocking phantom.

Only the warm human clasp of the arms that drew me into the boat

made me believe in him.

The boat bobbed quietly in the eddy at the far end of the cave,

while a wet, sobbing, choking heap clung to Dugald Shaw. I clasped

him about the neck and would not let him go, for fear that I should

find myself alone again, perishing in the dark water. My head was

on his breast, and he was pressing back my wet hair with strong and

tender hands.