IN WHICH PLINNY SURPRISES EVERYONE.
Everybody stared; and this had the effect of making the dear good
creature blush to the eyes.
"I beg your pardon, ma'am?" said Mr. Jack Rogers.
"It--it was not for me to say so, perhaps." Her voice quavered a
little, and now a pair of bright tears trembled on her lashes; but
she kept up her chin bravely and seemed to take courage as she went
on. "I am aware, sir, that in all matters of hazard and enterprise
it is for the gentlemen to take the lead. If I appear forward--if I
speak too impulsively--my affection for Harry must be my excuse."
Mr. Rogers stared at Captain Branscome, and from Captain Branscome to
Mr. Goodfellow, but their faces did not help him.
"That's all very well, ma'am, but an expedition to the other end of
the world--if that's what you suggest?--at a moment's notice--on
what, as like or not, may turn out to be a wild-goose chase--Lord
bless my soul!" wound up Mr. Rogers incoherently, falling back in his
chair.
"I was not proposing to start at a moment's notice," replied Plinny,
with extreme simplicity. "There will, of course, be many details to
arrange; and I do not forget that we are in the house of mourning.
The poor dear Major claims our first thoughts, naturally. Yes, yes;
there must be a hundred and one details to be discussed hereafter--at
a fitting time; and it may be many weeks before we find ourselves
actually launched--if I may use the expression--upon the bosom of the
deep."
"_We?_" gasped Mr. Rogers, and again gazed around; but we others had
no attention to spare for him. "_We?_ Who are 'we'?"
"Why, all of us, sir, if I might dare to propose it; or at least as
many as possible of us whom the hand of Providence has so
mysteriously brought together. I will confess that while you were
talking just now, discussing this secret which properly speaking
belongs to Harry alone, I doubted the prudence of it--"
"And, by Jingo, you were right!" put in Miss Belcher.
"With your leave, ma'am," Plinny went on, "I have come to think
otherwise. To begin with, but for Captain Branscome the map would
never have found its way to the Major's room, where Harry discovered
it; but might--nay, probably would--have been stolen by the wicked
man who committed this crime to get possession of it. Again, but for
Mr. Goodfellow this written narrative would undoubtedly have been
lost to us, and the map, if not meaningless, might have seemed a clue
not worth the risk of following. In short, ma'am"--Plinny turned
again to Miss Belcher--"I saw that each of us at this table had been
wonderfully brought here by the hand of Providence. And from this I
went on to see, and with wonder and thankfulness, that here was a
secret, sought after by many evildoers, which had yet come into the
keeping of six persons, all of them honest, and wishful only to do
good. Consider, ma'am, how unlikely this was, after the many bold,
bad hands that have reached out for it. And will you tell me that
here is accident only, and not the finger of Providence itself?
At first, indeed, we suspected Captain Branscome and Mr. Goodfellow:
they were strangers to us, and, as if that we might be tested, they
came to us under suspicion." Here Mr. Goodfellow put up a hand and
dubiously felt his nose, which was yet swollen somewhat from his
first encounter with Mr. Rogers. "But they have proved their
innocence; Harry gives me his word for them; and I do not think,"
said Plinny, "that you, ma'am, can have heard Captain Branscome's
story without honouring him."
Miss Belcher, thus appealed to, answered only with a grunt, at the
same time shooting from under her shaggy eyebrows an amused glance at
the Captain, who stared at the table-cloth to hide his confusion,
which, however, was betrayed by a pair of very red ears.
"All this," pursued Plinny, "I saw by degrees, and that it was
marvellous; but next came something more marvellous still, for I saw
that if one had gone forth to choose six persons to carry out this
business, he could not have chosen six better fitted for it."
From the effect of this astounding proposition Miss Lydia Belcher was
the first to recover herself.
"Thank you, my dear," she murmured; "on behalf of myself and the
company, as they say. It is true that in all these years I have
overlooked my qualifications for a buccaneering job; but I'll think
them out as you proceed."
"Oh!" exclaimed Plinny, "I wasn't counting on you, ma'am, to
accompany this expedition; nor on Mr. Rogers. You are great folks as
compared with us, and have public duties--a stake in the country--
great wealth to administer. Yet I was thinking that, while we are
abroad, there may happen to be business at home requiring attention,
and that we may perhaps rely on you--who have shown so much interest
in this sad affair."
"Meaning that we have been dipping our fingers pretty deep into this
pie. Well, and so we have; and thank you again, my dear, for putting
it so delicately."
"But I meant nothing of the sort--indeed I didn't!" protested Plinny.
"Tut, tut! Of course you didn't, but it's the truth nevertheless.
Well, then, it appears that Jack Rogers and I are to be the
spotsmen[1] for this little expedition, and that you and Captain
Branscome, and Mr. Goodfellow, and--yes, and Harry, too, I suppose--
are to be the Red Rovers and scour the Spanish Main. All right; only
you don't look it, exactly."
"But is not that half the battle?" urged the indomitable Plinny.
"They'll be so much the less likely to suspect us."
"They--whoever they may be--will certainly be so far deluded."
"And really--if you will consider it, ma'am--what I am proposing is
not ridiculous at all. For what is chiefly wanted for such an
adventure? In the first place, a ship--and thank God I have means to
hire one, in the second place, a trustworthy navigator--and here, by
the most unexpected good fortune, we have Captain Branscome; in the
third place, a carpenter, to provide us with shelter on the island
and be at hand in case of accident to the vessel--and here is Mr.
Goodfellow; while as for Harry--" Plinny hesitated, for the moment
at a loss; then her face brightened suddenly. "Harry can climb a
tree, and the instructions on the back of the map point to this as
necessary. Harry will be invaluable!"
I could have wrung her hand; but Plinny, having finished her
justification of the ways of Providence, had taken off her spectacles
and was breathing on them and polishing them with a small silk
handkerchief which she ever kept handy for that purpose.
"Captain Branscome," said Miss Belcher, sharply, "will you be so good
as to give us your opinion?"
Captain Branscome lifted his head. "My mind, if you'll excuse me,
ma'am, works a bit slowly, and always did. But there's no denying
that Miss Plinlimmon has given the sense of it."
"Hey?"
"To be sure," said the Captain, tracing with his finger an imaginary
pattern on the table-cloth, "her courage carries her too far--as in
this talk about hiring a ship. A ship needs a crew; a crew that
could be trusted on a treasure-hunt is perhaps the most difficult to
find in the whole world; and when you've found one to rely upon, your
troubles are only just beginning. The main trouble is with the ship,
and that's what no landsman can ever understand. A ship's the most
public thing under heaven. You think of her, maybe, as something
that puts out over the horizon and is lost to sight for months.
But that helps nothing. She must clear from a port, and to a port
sooner or later she must return; and in both ports a hundred curious
people at least must know all about her business.
"I don't say that a ship, once out of sight, cannot be made away
with--though even that, with a crew to tell tales, has beaten some of
the cleverest heads; but to take out a ship and fill her up with
treasure, and bring her home _and unload her without any one's
knowing_--that's a feat that (if you'll excuse me) I've heard a
hundred liars discuss at one time and another; and one has said it
can be done in this way, and another in that, but never a one in my
hearing has found a way that would deceive a child."
"Yet you said, a moment since, that Miss Plinlimmon had given the
sense of it?"
"I did, ma'am. I am saying that to fetch this treasure will be
difficult, even if we find it--"
"You don't doubt its existence?"
"I do not, ma'am. I doubt it so little, ma'am, that I would ten
times sooner engage to find than to fetch it. But I don't even
despair of fetching it, if the lady goes on being as clever as she
has begun."
"What?" exclaimed Plinny. "I? Clever?"
"Yes, indeed, ma'am," Captain Branscome answered, still in a slow,
measured voice. "But, indeed, too, I might have been prepared for it
when you started by taking a line that beats all my experience of
landsmen; or perhaps in this case I ought to say lands_ladies_."
"Why, what have I done that is wonderful?"
"You took the line, ma'am, that, from here to Honduras, what is it
but a passage? A few months at the most--oh, to be sure, to a seaman
that's no more than nature; but to hear it from any one land-bred,
and a lady too! As a Christian man, I have believed in miracles,
but to-day I seem to be moving among them. And after your saying
_that_, I had no call to be surprised when you up and suggested a way
that would have taken a seaman twenty years to hit upon! I am not
talking about the ship, ma'am. That part of your plan (if you'll
allow me, as a seaman, to give an opinion) won't work at all.
But the plan in general is a masterpiece."
"But I do not see," Plinny confessed, with a small puckering of the
brows, "that I have suggested anything that can be called a plan."
"Why, ma'am, you have been talking heavenliest common sense, and once
you've started us upon common sense there's no such thing as a
difficulty. 'Let us go to the island,' you said; and with that at a
stroke you get rid of the worst danger we have to fear, which is
suspicion. For who's to suspect such a company as this present, or
any part of it, of being after treasure? 'Let us make it a pleasure
trip,' said you, or words to that effect; and what follows but that
the whole journey is made cheap and simple? We book our passages in
the Kingston packet. Peace has been declared with France, and what
more natural than that a party of English should be travelling to see
the West Indies? Or what more likely than that, after what has
happened, the doctor has advised a sea-voyage, to soothe your mind?
As for me, I am Harry's tutor; every one in Falmouth knows it, and
thinks me lucky to get the billet. It won't take five minutes to
explain Mr. Goodfellow here, just as easily--"
"And as for me," struck in Miss Belcher, "I'm an old madwoman, with
more money than I know what to do with. And as for Jack Rogers, I'm
eloping with him to a coral island."
Mr. Rogers checked himself on the edge of a guffaw.
"But, I say, Lydia, you're not serious about this?" he asked.
"I don't know, Jack. I rather think I am. I'm getting an old woman,
mad or not; and the hours drag with me sometimes up at the house.
But"--and here she looked up with one of those rare smiles that set
you thinking she must have been pretty in her time--"there's this
advantage in having followed my own will for fifty years: that no one
any longer troubles to be surprised at anything I may do.
You're something of an eccentric yourself, Jack. You had better join
the picnic."
"I ought to warn you, ma'am," said Captain Branscome gravely, "that
although the West India route has been fairly well protected for some
months now, there _is_ a certain amount of risk from American
privateers."
"The Americans are a chivalrous nation, I have always heard."
"Extremely so, ma'am; nevertheless, there is a risk, in the event of
the packet being attacked. But I was about to say," pursued Captain
Branscome, "that our being at war with America may actually help us
to get across from Jamaica to the island. Quite a number of old
Colonial families--loyalists, as we should call them--have been
driven from time to time to cross over from the Main and settle in
the West Indies. But of course they have left kinsfolk behind them
in the States; and, in spite of wars and divisions, it is no unusual
thing for relatives to slip back and forth and visit one another--
secretly, you understand. I have even heard of an old lady, now or
until lately residing in St. Kitts, who has made no less than eleven
such voyages to the Delaware--whenever, in short, her daughter was
expecting an addition to her family."
"Good," said Miss Belcher. "I have found some one to impersonate;
and that settles it."
"I really think, ma'am," said Captain Branscome, "that, once in
Jamaica, we shall have no difficulty in finding, at the western end
of the island, just the ship we require."
"Bless my soul!" said Miss Belcher. "Except for the sea-voyage, it
might be a middle-aged jaunt in a po'-shay!"
[1] Miss Belcher was here employing a smuggling term. A "spotsman"
is the agent who arranges for a run of goods, and directs the
operation from the shore, without necessarily taking a part in it.