I TAKE FRENCH LEAVE ASHORE.
In a sweating hurry I helped Mr. Rogers and Mr. Goodfellow to furl
sail, coil away ropes, and tidy up generally. After these tedious
weeks at sea I was wild for a run ashore, and, with the green woods
inviting me, grudged even an hour's delay.
We had run down foresail and come to our anchor under jib and
half-lowered mainsail. I sprang forward to take in the jib and carry
it, with the foresail, to the locker abaft the ladies' cabin, when
Captain Branscome sang out to me to be in no such hurry, but to fold
and stow both sails neatly without detaching them--the one along the
bowsprit, the other at the foot of the fore-stay, when they could be
re-hoisted at a moment's notice.
These precautions were the more mysterious to me because a moment
later he sent me to the locker to fetch up a tarpaulin cover for the
mainsail, which he snugged down carefully, to protect it (as he
explained) from the night dews--so carefully that he twice
interrupted Mr. Goodfellow to correct a piece of slovenly tying.
The sail being packed at length to his satisfaction, we laced the
cover about it carefully as though it had been a lady's bodice.
Our next business was to get out the boats. The _Espriella_
possessed three--a gig, shaped somewhat like a whaleboat; a useful,
twelve-foot dinghy; and a small cockboat, or "punt" (to use our West
Country name), capable, at a pinch, of accommodating two persons.
This last we carried on deck; but the larger pair at the foot of the
rigging on either side, whence we unlashed and lowered them by their
falls. The punt we moored by a short painter under the bowsprit, so
that she lay just clear of our stem.
This small job had fallen to me by the Captain's orders, and I
clambered back, to find him and Mr. Rogers standing by the
accommodation ladder on the port side, and in the act of stepping
down into the dinghy. Indeed, Mr. Rogers had his foot on the ladder,
and seemed to wait only while the Captain gave some instructions to
Mr. Goodfellow, who was listening respectfully.
"Are we all to go ashore in the dinghy?" I asked.
The Captain turned on me severely, and I observed that he and Mr.
Rogers had armed themselves with a musket apiece, each slung on a
bandolier, and that Mr. Rogers wore an axe at his belt.
"Certainly not," said the Captain. "Mr. Rogers and I are going on
shore to prospect, and I was at this moment instructing Mr.
Goodfellow that nobody is to leave the ship without leave from me."
"But--" I began, and checked myself, less for fear of his anger than
because I was actually on the verge of tears. I looked around for
the ladies, but they had retired to their cabin. Oh, this was
hard--a monstrous tyranny! And so I told Mr. Goodfellow hotly as the
dinghy pushed off and, Mr. Rogers paddling her, drew away up the
creek and rounded the bend under the almost overhanging trees.
"When are they coming back?" I demanded.
"Captain didn't say."
"You seem to take it easily," I flamed up; "but _I_ call it a
burning shame! Captain Branscome seems to think that this Island
belongs to him; and you know well enough, if it hadn't been for me,
he'd never have set eyes on it. What are you going to do?"
"Smoke a pipe," said Mr. Goodfellow, "and watch the beauties o'
Nature."
"Well, I'm not," I threatened. "Captain Branscome may be a very good
seaman but he's too much of an usher out of school. This isn't
Stimcoe's."
"Not a bit like it," assented Mr. Goodfellow, feeling in his
pockets.
"And if he thinks he can go on playing the usher over me, he'll find
out his mistake. Why, look you, whose is the treasure, properly
speaking? Who found it?"
"Nobody, yet."
Mr. Goodfellow drew forth a pipe and rubbed the bowl thoughtfully
against his nose.
"Well, then, who found the chart? Who put you all on the scent?
Who was it first heard the secret from Captain Coffin? And this man
doesn't even consult me--doesn't think me worth a civil word!
I'll be shot if I stand it!" I wound up, pacing the deck in my
rage.
Just then Plinny's voice called up to us from the cabin, announcing
that dinner was ready.
"But," said she, "one of you must eat his portion on deck while he
keeps watch; that was Captain Branscome's order."
"More orders!" I grumbled; and then, with a sudden thought, I
nodded to Mr. Goodfellow, who was replacing his pipe in his pocket.
"_You_ go. Hand me up a plate and a fistful of ship biscuit, and
leave me to deal with 'em. I'm not for stifling down there under
hatches, whatever your taste may be."
"'Tis a fact," he admitted, "that a meal does me more good when I
square my elbows to it."
"Down you go, then," said I; "and when you're wanted I'll call you."
He descended cheerfully, reappeared to pass up a plate, and descended
again. I gobbled down enough to stay my appetite, crammed my pocket
full of ship biscuit, and, after listening for a moment at the
hatchway, tiptoed forward and climbed out upon the bowsprit.
Then, having unloosed the cockboat's painter, I lowered and let
myself drop into her, and, slipping a paddle into the stern-notch,
sculled gently for shore.
The _Espriella_, of course, lay head-to-tide, and the tide by this
time was making strongly--so strongly that I had no time to get
steerage way on the little boat before it swept her close under the
open porthole through which I heard Miss Belcher inviting Mr.
Goodfellow to pass his plate for another dumpling. Miss Belcher's
voice--as I may or may not have informed the reader--was a baritone
of singularly resonant _timbre_. It sounded through the porthole as
through a speaking trumpet, and I ducked and held my breath as the
boat's gunwale rubbed twice against the schooner's side before
drifting clear.
Once clear, however, I worked my paddle with a will, though
noiselessly; and, the tide helping me, soon reached and rounded the
first bend. Here, out of sight of the ship, I had leisure to draw
breath and look about me.
Ahead of me lay a still reach, close upon half a mile in length, and
narrowing steadily to the next bend, when the two shores overlapped
and mingled their reflections on the water. On my right the red
cliffs, their summits matted with creepers, descended sheer into
water many fathoms deep, yet so clear that I could spy the fish
playing about their bases where they met the firm white sand.
On my left the channel shoaled gradually to a beach of this same
white sand, which followed the curve of the shore, here and again
flashing out into broad sunshine from the blue shadow cast by the
overhanging forest.
Between these banks the breeze could scarcely be felt, yet, though
the sun scorched me, the heat was not oppressive. The woods, dense
and tangled though they were, threw up no exhalations of mud or
rotting leaves, but a clean, aromatic odour. It seemed to give them
a substance without which they had been but a mirage, a scene painted
on a cloth, so motionless and apparently lifeless they stood, with
the long vines hanging from their boughs, and the hot, rarefied air
quivering above them.
At first their silence daunted me; by-and-by I felt (I could hardly
be said to hear) that this silence was intense, and held a sound of
its own, a murmur as of millions of flies and minute winged things--
or perhaps it came from the vegetation itself, and the sap pushing
leaf against leaf and ceaselessly striving for room.
With scarcely more noise than the forest made in growing, I let the
cockboat float up on the tide, correcting her course from time to
time with a touch of the paddle astern; and so coming to the
second bend, began to search the shore for a convenient landing.
The Captain and Mr. Rogers, no doubt, had rowed up to the very head
of the creek, and would by this time be prospecting for the clump of
trees which were the key to unlock No. 3 cache. To escape--or, at
any rate, delay--detection, I must land lower down, and preferably at
some point where I could pull up the boat and hide it.
With this in my mind, scanning the woods on the north bank for an
opening, I drifted around the bend, and with a shock of surprise
found myself in full view of the end of the creek. Worse than this,
I was bearing straight for the _Espriella's_ dinghy, which lay just
above water on the foreshore, with her painter carried out to a tree
above the bank. Worst of all, some one at that instant stepped back
from the bank and under the shadow of the tree, as if to await me
there. . . . Mr. Rogers, or the Captain? . . . Mr. Rogers certainly;
for I remembered that the Captain wore white duck trousers, and, by
my glimpse of him, this man's clothes were dark. His height and
walk, too! Yes; no doubt of it, he was Mr. Rogers.
I stood--a culprit caught red-handed--and let the boat drift me down
upon retributive justice. A while ago I had been mentally composing
a number of effective retorts upon Captain Branscome for his
tyrannical behaviour. Now, of a sudden, all this eloquence deserted
me: I felt it leaking away and knew myself for a law-breaker.
One lingering hope remained--that the Captain had pushed ahead into
the woods, and that, as yet, Mr. Jack Rogers (whose good nature I
might almost count upon) had alone detected me and would pack me home
to the ship with nothing worse than a flea in my ear.
His silence encouraged this hope. Half a minute passed and still he
forbore to lift his voice and summon me. He stood, deep in the
shadow, his face screened by the boughs, and made no motion to
advance to the bank.
Then suddenly--at, maybe, two hundred yards' distance--I saw him take
another pace backwards and slip away among the trees.
"Good man!" thought I, and blessed him (after my first start of
astonishment). "He has pretended not to see me."
At any rate he had given me a pretty good hint to make myself scarce
unless I wished to incur Captain Branscome's wrath. I slipped my
paddle forward into a rowlock, picked up the other, and, dropping
upon the thwart, jerked the cockboat right-about-face to head her
back for the schooner.
But after a stroke or two I easied and let her drift back
stern-foremost while I sat considering. Mr. Rogers had behaved like
a trump; yet it seemed mean to deceive the old man; and, moreover, it
amounted to striking my colours. I had broken orders deliberately
and because I denied his right to give such orders. I might be a
youngster; but, to say the least of it, I had as much interest
in the success of this expedition as any member of the company.
The shortest way to dissuade Captain Branscome from treating me as a
child was to assert myself from the beginning. I had started with
full intent to assert myself, and--yes, I was much obliged to Mr.
Rogers, but this question between me and Branscome had best be
settled, though it meant open mutiny. I felt pretty sure that Miss
Belcher would support the tyrant; almost equally sure that Plinny
would acquiesce, though her sympathy went with me; and strangely
enough, and unjustly, I felt the angrier with Plinny. But even
against Miss Belcher I had a card to play. "Captain Branscome may be
an excellent leader," I would say; "but I beg you to remember that
you gave me no vote in electing him. I will obey any leader I have
my share in choosing, but until then I stand out." And I had an
inkling that, though the public voice would be against me, I should
establish my claim to be taken into any future counsels.
"In for a lamb, in for a sheep," thought I, and began to back the
cockboat towards the corner where the dinghy lay. As I did so it
occurred to me to wonder why the Captain and Mr. Rogers had been so
dilatory. They must have started a full hour ahead of me; they had
left the schooner at a brisk stroke, whereas I had merely floated up
with the tide. Yet either I had all but surprised them in the act of
stepping ashore, or, if they had landed at once, why had Mr. Rogers
loitered on the bank until I was close on overtaking him?
They had landed at the extreme head of the creek. Therefore
(I argued) their intent was to follow up the stream here indicated on
the chart and search for the clump of trees which guarded the secret
of No. 3 _cache_.
Sure enough, having beached my boat alongside the dinghy and climbed
the green knoll above the foreshore, I spied their footprints on the
sandy edge of the stream which here fetched a loop before joining the
tidal waters of the creek. They led me along a flat meadow of
exquisitely green turf, fringed with palmetto-trees, to the entrance
of a narrow gorge through which the stream came tumbling in a series
of cascades, spraying the ferns that overhung it. The forest with
its undergrowth pressed so closely upon either bank that after
scrambling up beside the first waterfall I was forced to take off
shoes and stockings and work my way up the irregular bed, now wading
knee-deep, now clambering or leaping from boulder to boulder; and,
even so, to press from time to time through the meeting boughs,
shielding my face from scratches. So, for at least a mile, I climbed
as through a narrow green tunnel, and at the end of it found myself
wet to the skin. Five waterfalls I had passed, and, beside the
fourth, where the bank was muddy, had noted a long, smooth mark, and
recent, such as a man's foot might make in slipping; so that I felt
pretty confident of being on my companions' track, though I wondered
how the Captain, with his lame leg, could sustain such a climb.
But above the fifth waterfall the stream divided into two branches,
and at the fork of them I stood for a while in doubt which to choose.
So far as volume of water went, there was, indeed, little or nothing
to choose. If direction counted, the main stream would be that which
came rushing down the gorge straight ahead of me--a gorge which,
however, as my eye followed the V of its tree-tops up to the
sky-line, promised to grow steeper and worse tangled. On the other
hand, the tributary (as I shall call it), which poured down from a
lateral valley on my left, ran with an easier flow, as though drawing
its waters from less savage slopes. I could not see these slopes--a
bend of the hills hid them; but I reasoned that if a clump of trees,
separate and distinguishable, stood anywhere near the banks of
either stream, it might possibly be found by this one. The other
showed nothing but a close mass of vegetation.
Accordingly I turned my steps up the channel to the left, and was
rewarded, after another twenty minutes' scramble, by emerging
upon a break in the forest. On one side of the stream rose a
reddish-coloured cliff, almost smooth of face and about seventy or
eighty feet high, across the edge of which the last trees on the
summit clutched with their naked roots, as though protesting
against being thrust over the precipice by the crowd behind them.
The other bank swelled up, from a little above the water's edge, to a
fair green lawn, rounded, grassy, and smooth as a glade in an English
park. At its widest I dare say that, from the stream's edge back to
the steep slope where the forest started again and climbed to a tall
ridge that shut in the glen on the south side, it measured something
over two hundred yards.
"Here," thought I, glancing up the glade towards the westering sun,
"is the very spot for our clump of, trees;" and so it was--only no
clump of trees happened to be in sight. The glade, however,
stretched away and around a bend of the stream, and I was moving to
the bank to explore it to its end when my eyes were arrested by
something white not ten paces away. It was a piece of paper caught
against one of the large boulders between which, as through a broken
dam, the water poured into the ravine. I waded towards it and
stooped, steadying myself against the current.
It was a paper boat.