Ten days passed.
The mystery thickened. On Thursday two men of the starboard watch were
reported missing. On Friday the carpenter’s assistant disappeared. On
the night of Saturday a circumstance occurred which, slight as it was,
gave me some clue as to what was happening.
As I stood at the wheel about midnight, I saw the Captain approach in
the darkness carrying the cabin-boy by the hind leg. The lad was a
bright little fellow, whose merry disposition had already endeared him
to me, and I watched with some interest to see what the Captain would
do to him. Arrived at the stern of the vessel, Captain Bilge looked
cautiously around a moment and then dropped the boy into the sea. For a
brief instant the lad’s head appeared in the phosphorus of the waves.
The Captain threw a boot at him, sighed deeply, and went below.
Here then was the key to the mystery! The Captain was throwing the crew
overboard. Next morning we met at breakfast as usual.
“Poor little Williams has fallen overboard,” said the Captain, seizing
a strip of ship’s bacon and tearing at it with his teeth as if he
almost meant to eat it.
“Captain,” I said, greatly excited, stabbing at a ship’s loaf in my
agitation with such ferocity as almost to drive my knife into it— “You
threw that boy overboard!”
“I did,” said Captain Bilge, grown suddenly quiet, “I threw them all
over and intend to throw the rest. Listen, Blowhard, you are young,
ambitious, and trustworthy. I will confide in you.”
Perfectly calm now, he stepped to a locker, rummaged in it a moment,
and drew out a faded piece of yellow parchment, which he spread on the
table. It was a map or chart. In the centre of it was a circle. In the
middle of the circle was a small dot and a letter T, while at one side
of the map was a letter N, and against it on the other side a letter S.
“What is this?” I asked.
“Can you not guess?” queried Captain Bilge. “It is a desert island.”
“Ah!” I rejoined with a sudden flash of intuition, “and N is for North
and S is for South.”
“Blowhard,” said the Captain, striking the table with such force as to
cause a loaf of ship’s bread to bounce up and down three or four times,
“you’ve struck it. That part of it had not yet occurred to me.”
“And the letter T?” I asked.
“The treasure, the buried treasure,” said the Captain, and turning the
map over he read from the back of it—“The point T indicates the spot
where the treasure is buried under the sand; it consists of half a
million Spanish dollars, and is buried in a brown leather dress-suit
case.”
“And where is the island?” I inquired, mad with excitement.
“That I do not know,” said the Captain. “I intend to sail up and down
the parallels of latitude until I find it.”
“And meantime?”
“Meantime, the first thing to do is to reduce the number of the crew so
as to have fewer hands to divide among. Come, come,” he added in a
burst of frankness which made me love the man in spite of his
shortcomings, “will you join me in this? We’ll throw them all over,
keeping the cook to the last, dig up the treasure, and be rich for the
rest of our lives.”
Reader, do you blame me if I said yes? I was young, ardent, ambitious,
full of bright hopes and boyish enthusiasm.
“Captain Bilge,” I said, putting my hand in his, “I am yours.”
“Good,” he said, “now go forward to the forecastle and get an idea what
the men are thinking.”
I went forward to the men’s quarters—a plain room in the front of the
ship, with only a rough carpet on the floor, a few simple arm-chairs,
writing-desks, spittoons of a plain pattern, and small brass beds with
blue-and-green screens. It was Sunday morning, and the men were mostly
sitting about in their dressing-gowns.
They rose as I entered and curtseyed.
“Sir,” said Tompkins, the bosun’s mate, “I think it my duty to tell you
that there is a great deal of dissatisfaction among the men.”
Several of the men nodded.
“They don’t like the way the men keep going overboard,” he continued,
his voice rising to a tone of uncontrolled passion. “It is positively
absurd, sir, and if you will allow me to say so, the men are far from
pleased.”
“Tompkins,” I said sternly, “you must understand that my position will
not allow me to listen to mutinous language of this sort.”