If Sampson did live to tell his secret, then any day there may be a
sail in the offing. And still I can not find it! Oh, if my
grandfather had been more worldly wise! If he hadn't been too
intent on the eternal welfare of the man he rescued from the Havana
tavern brawl to question him about his story. A cave on Leeward
Island--near by a stone marked with the letters B. H. and a
cross-bones--_I told the captain_, said the poor dying wretch, _we
wouldn't have no luck after playing it that low down on Bill_! So
I presume Bill lies under the stone.
Well, all I have is in this venture. The old farm paid for the
_Island Queen_--or will, if I don't get back in time to prevent
foreclosure. All my staid New England relatives think me mad. A
copra gatherer! A fine career for a minister's son! Think how
your father scrimped to send you to college--Aunt Sarah reproached
me. Well, when I get home with my Spanish doubloons there will be
another story to tell. I won't be poor crazy Peter then. And
Helen--oh, how often I wish I had told her everything! It was too
much to ask her to trust me blindly as I did. But from the moment
I came across the story in grandfather's old, half-forgotten
diary--by the way, the diary habit seems to run in the family--a
very passion of secrecy has possessed me. If I had told Helen, I
should have had to dread that even in her sweet sleep she might
whisper something to put that ferret, her stepmother, on the scent.
Oh, Helen, trust me, trust me!
December 25. I have a calendar with me, so I am not reduced to
notching a stick to keep track of the days. I mark each off
carefully in the calendar. If I were to forget to do this, even
for a day or two, I believe I should quite lose track. The days
are so terribly alike!
My predecessor here in the copra-gathering business, old Heintz,
really left me a very snug establishment. It was odd that I should
have run across him at Panama that way. I sounded him on the
question of treasure. He said placidly that of course the island
had been the resort of Edward Davis and Benito Bonito and others of
the black flag gentry, and he thought it very likely they had left
some of their spoils behind them, but though he had done a little
investigating as he had time he had come on nothing but a ship's
lantern, a large iron kettle, and the golden setting of a bracelet
from which the jewels had been removed. He had already disposed of
the bracelet. The kettle I found here, and sank in the spring to
keep the water clear. (Where it still is. V. H.) Evidently old
Heintz knew nothing of the _Bonny Lass_. This was an immense
satisfaction, as it proves that the story can not have been noised
about.
Christmas Day! I wonder what they are all doing at home? December
28. Of course the cave under the point is the logical place. I
have been unable to find any stone marked B. H. on the ground above
it, but I fear that a search after Bill's tombstone would be
hopeless. Although the formation of the island is of the sort to
contain numerous caves, still they must be considerably less
plentiful than possible tombstones. Under circumstances such
as those of the mate's story, it seems to me that all the
probabilities point to their concealing the chest in the cave with
an opening on the bay. It must have been necessary for them to act
as quickly as possible, that their absence from the ship might go
unnoticed--though I believe the three conspirators had made the
crew drunk. Then to get the boat, laden with the heavy chest,
through the surf to any of the other caves--if the various cracks
and fissures I have seen are indeed properly to be called
caves--would be stiff work for three men. Yes, everything
indicates the cavern under the point. The only question is, isn't
it indicated too clearly? Would a smooth old scoundrel such as
this Captain Sampson must have been have hidden his treasure in the
very place certain to be ransacked if the secret ever got out?
Unless it was deeply buried, which it could have been only at
certain stages of the tide, even old Heintz would have been apt to
come across it in the course of his desultory researches for the
riches of the buccaneers. And I am certain placid old Heintz did
not mislead me. Besides, at Panama, he was making arrangements to
go with some other Germans on a small business venture to Samoa,
which he would not have been likely to do if he had just unearthed
a vast fortune in buried treasure. Still, I shall explore the cave
thoroughly, though with little hope.
Oh, Helen, if I could watch these tropic stars with you to-night!
January 6. I think I am through with the cave under the point--the
Cavern of the Two Arches, I have named it. It is a dangerous place
to work in alone, and my little skiff has been badly battered
several times. But I peered into every crevice in the walls, and
sounded the sands with a drill. I suppose I would have made a more
thorough job of it if I had not been convinced from the first that
the chest was not there. It was not reason that told me so--I know
I may well be attributing too much subtlety of mind to Captain
Sampson--but that strange guiding instinct--to put it in its lowest
terms--which I know in my heart I must follow if I would succeed.
Shall I ever forget the feeling that stirred me when first I turned
the pages of my grandfather's diary and saw there, in his faded
writing, the story of the mate of the _Bonny Lass_, who died in
Havana in my grandfather's arms? My grandfather had gone as
supercargo in his own ship, and while he did a good stroke of
business in Havana--trust his shrewd Yankee instincts for that--he
managed to combine the service of God with that of Mammon. Many a
poor drunken sailor, taking his fling ashore in the bright,
treacherous, plague-ridden city, found in him a friend, as did the
mate of the _Bonny Lass_ in his dying hour. Oh, if my good
grandfather had but made sure from the man's own lips exactly where
the treasure lay! It is enough to make one fancy that the unknown
Bill, who paid for too much knowledge with his life, has his own
fashion of guarding the hoard. But I ramble. I was going to say,
that from the moment when I learned from my grandfather's diary of
the existence of the treasure, I have been driven by an impulse
more overmastering than anything I have ever experienced in my
life. It was, I believe, what old-fashioned pious folk would call
a _leading_. The impetus seemed somehow to come from outside my
own organism. All my life I had been irresolute, the sport of
circumstances, trifling with this and that, unable to set my face
steadfastly toward any goal. Yet never, since I have trodden this
path, have I looked to right or left. I have defied both human
opinion and the obstacles which an unfriendly fate has thrown in my
way. All alone, I, a sailor hitherto of pleasure-craft among the
bays and islands of the New England coast, put forth in my little
sloop for a voyage of three hundred miles on the loneliest wastes
of the Pacific. All alone, did I say? No, there was Benjy the
faithful. His head is at my knee as I write. He knows, I think,
that his master's mood is sad to-night. Oh, Helen, if you ever see
these lines, will you realize how I have longed for you--how it
sometimes seems that my soul must tear itself loose from my body
and speed to you across half a world?
February 1. Since my last record my time has been well filled. In
the _Island Queen_ I have been surveying the coasts of my domain,
sailing as close in as I dared, and taking note of every crevice
that might be the mouth of a cave. Then, either in the rowboat or
by scrambling down the cliffs, I visit the indicated point. It is
bitterly hard labor, but it has its compensations. I am growing
hale and strong, brown and muscular. Aunt Sarah won't offer me any
more of her miserable decoctions when I go home. Heading first
toward the north, I am systematically making the rounds of the
island, for, after all, how do I know for certain that Captain
Sampson buried his treasure near the east anchorage? For greater
security he may have chosen the other side, where there is another
bay, I should judge deeper and freer of rocks than this one, though
more open to storms.
So far I have discovered half a dozen caves, most of them quite
small. Any one of them seemed such a likely place that at first I
was quite hopeful. But I have found nothing. Usually, the floor
of the cave beneath a few inches of sand is rock. Only in the
great cave under the point have I found sand to any depth. The
formation in some cases is little more than a hardened clay, but to
excavate it would require long toil, probably blasting--and I have
no explosives. And I go always on the principle that Captain
Sampson and his two assistants had not time for any elaborate work
of concealment. Most likely they laid the chest in some natural
niche. Sailors are unskilled in the use of such implements as
spades, and besides, the very heart of the undertaking was haste
and secrecy. They must have worked at night and between two tides,
for few of the caves can be reached except at the ebb. And I take
it as certain that the cave must have opened directly on the sea.
For three men to transport such a weight and bulk by land would be
sheer impossibility.
February 10. To-day a strange, strange thing happened--so strange,
so wonderful and glorious that it ought to be recorded in luminous
ink. And I owe it all to Benjy! Little dog, you shall go in a
golden collar and eat lamb-chops every day! This morning--
Across my absorption in the diary cut the unwelcome clangor of
Cookie's gong. Right on the breathless edge of discovery I was
summoned, with my thrilling secret in my breast, to join my
unsuspecting companions. I hid the book carefully in my cot. Not
until the light of to-morrow morning could I return to its perusal.
How I was to survive the interval I did not know. But on one point
my mind was made up--no one should dream of the existence of the
diary until I knew all that it had to impart.