THE GRAVE IN THE CLEARING
"Till Monday then!" said Garth as Lawless stepped into the launch.
"To-day week it is, sir!" returned the captain as Carstairs cast him
the painter.
"You might fire the gun to let us know you're back," cried the baronet.
"Right-o!"
Lawless turned to bend over the engine. Then he looked round quickly
and grinned.
"Good luck!" he cried, "and good hunting!" and waved a friendly hand.
With that he pushed over the lever and with a mighty flurry of
propeller and vast bustle among the sea-birds on the foreshore, the
_Naomi's_ launch throbbed her way out into the bay towards where,
spanning as it seemed the harbour's narrowest part, a creamy band of
white spume marked the surf-line. Silently we watched the pretty
craft, her paint and brass-work flashing in the morning sun, gliding
through the green water. Then Lawless raised an arm in a parting
greeting, and the white launch melted into the spume and spray of the
open sea.
We stood on a long sloping beach of gleaming white sand shut in on all
sides save the sea by lofty grey rocks. Their jagged points out-topped
the bright-green fronds of the waving palm-trees which grew almost down
to the water's edge. Their column-like appearance, coupled with the
singular silence of the island, gave me a sort of solemn feeling, like
being in a cathedral.
Some three hundred yards from where the foam-crested rollers beat their
thunderous measure on the beach, the ground rose abruptly. The sand
ended and became emerged in a tangle of coarse grass. Alternating with
a wild and luxuriant undergrowth of a great variety of tree ferns and
other plants, it formed a kind of tasselling to a great curtain of
greenery which rose, as it seemed, sheer from the sea.
The verdure was so dense that it completely hid the bases of the
pointed cliffs which, clustered together like a bundle of faggots,
formed the high central part of the island. From some hidden source a
clear cold stream of water came plunging down from the cliff, rushing
and gurgling until it lost itself in the sea.
It was the first time I had ever set foot on an uninhabited shore. It
was a curious sensation. The sea-birds wheeled aloft with their harsh
melancholy cries; among the trees above the beach there was sometimes
the flash of a brilliantly-plumaged bird and here and there some animal
rustled in the undergrowth. But otherwise a deep silence brooded over
the island. There was an atmosphere of expectancy about the place
which rather intrigued me.
I lost no time in setting about choosing a site for our camp. The
appearance of the foreshore, exposed to the full force of the wind in
unfavourable weather, did not impress me favourably, nor, owing to the
danger from lightning in the thunderstorms that spring up so suddenly
in these climes, did the obvious solution of erecting our huts under
the shelter of the trees higher up on the shore commend itself.
Moreover, I knew very little about conditions on Cock Island and, were
there any wild animals about, it would be as well, I reflected, to
pitch our camp in some spot not easily accessible to attack.
After exploring round a bit I came, behind a mantle of hanging creeper,
upon the mouth of a cave. Set in the lofty grey rocks dominating the
beach, it was well clear of high-tide level and clean and dry into the
bargain. The roof sloped somewhat, but there was ample clearance for
Garth's six feet when he stood erect and the cave ran back for some
twenty feet into the rock.
So we plumped for the cave. Having stripped to vest and trousers,
Garth and I started carrying up our stores from where the launch of the
_Naomi_ had deposited them on the beach. While we stacked the various
boxes neatly at the back of the cave, Carstairs was busy fitting up
what he called his "field-kitchen." Higher up the rocks, in a little
cavity well-sheltered from the wind, he installed his Primus stove,
cook-pots and other impedimenta.
It was with the utmost reluctance that I spared the time for this
tiring but necessary fatigue. I was on fire to be off into the
interior of the island and locate the grave. Garth, too, was as keen
as mustard, and fairly jumped at my proposal that, as soon as the
stores were stowed away, we should set forth on a voyage of discovery.
It was a long job; for the cases were heavy and the going was bad, but
when I stood on the beach below and, with the roar of the ocean in my
ears, looked up at our temporary home, I felt rather pleased.
Absolutely no trace of our presence was discernible. Though I was
aware that perhaps not one vessel in two years called at the island, I
have always had a very healthy respect for the long arm of coincidence.
I did not wish my investigations at Cock Island to become the mark of
prying eyes.
It was past three o'clock and the sun very warm when Garth and I set
out. We took with us a flask of cold tea apiece, some biscuits and
some dates and a shot-gun each. With a wave of the hand to Carstairs,
our guns slung across our backs, we plunged into the tangle of steep
woods growing down to the shore.
The climate of the island seemed to be temperate enough. The air was a
little steamy but mild and at first there was a pleasant breeze off the
sea to cool us. To be equipped for the rocky nature of the island both
of us had brought stout hob-nailed boots, and we praised our
circumspection when we realised that only by boulder-climbing should we
gain access to the higher parts of the island.
The climbing was arduous (for neither of us was in form) but not too
difficult. I kept a sharp look-out for any traces of former visitors.
Once I found some sheep droppings and again a large bleached bone which
looked as if it might have come from a sheep. But of man there was no
trace.
The scrub soon gave way to forest and for a good half hour we toiled up
the jungle-clad slopes. Great trees formed an almost impenetrable roof
over our heads through which the sunshine fell but sparsely. We went
forward in a dim and mysterious twilight with no sounds in our ears
other than the swift rushing of the stream which gave us our direction,
our laboured breathing and the rattle of our nailed boots on the
boulders. It was an eerie place which somehow filled me with
misgivings.
Suddenly Garth, who was leading, gave a shout. He stood on the flat
top of a rock, a dozen feet above my head, and pointed excitedly in
front of him. I scrambled to his side.
We were looking down into a deep circular depression shaped like a
basin. It reminded me of a quarry, but I imagine it was in reality the
crater of some small extinct volcano. What had brought the shout to
Garth's lips was the sight of a ruined hut which thrust its broken roof
from out of a tangle of gigantic ferns.
So breathless were we with our climb that we were past speech. In
silence we slithered and scrambled down into the hollow, the long
tendrils of the plants twisting themselves round our legs and the
thorns catching in our coats.
It was a rude timber shack with a door and a window, the interior
choked roof-high with growing ferns. The timber flooring had rotted
away and through the mouldering planks the jungle had thrust its shoots
profusely as though to claim its own. But in one corner, where a
roughly-carpentered bedstead of timber stood, some attempt had
apparently been made to thin out the ferns for a space. On the bed
there lay a rotting blanket; on the floor close by some empty canned
beef tins red with rust. The blanket practically fell to pieces at the
touch. It was not marked and, though we groped pretty thoroughly among
the ferns, that was all we found in the hut.
"There's nothing here," I said at last. "Let's have a look round
outside. I am wondering...."
The words died away on my lips. I had reached the hut door, my face
turned towards the farther edge of the crater, the opposite side from
that by which we had descended. A hundred and fifty yards from where I
stood a large timber cross was planted in the ground. Between it and
the hut lay a great isolated boulder which had probably concealed the
cross from our view when we had climbed down into the hollow.
For a moment I could hardly speak. I have seen the proud loneliness of
Cecil Rhodes' resting-place in the Matoppos; I have stood (like
everybody else) in the amber light that bathes Napoleon's tomb "on the
banks of the Seine among this French people I have loved so well." But
I have never seen a sight more impressive than that solitary grave on
that desert island set down beneath the little round canopy of blue sky
which seemed to be borne by the lofty frowning cliffs towering all
around. Beneath that plain wooden cross, I told myself, in a silence
unbroken by Man, lies the Unknown. It was a mighty impressive thought.
A rudimentary path, still to be discerned through the all-pervading
undergrowth, led, round the boulder of which I have spoken, to the
cross. The grave lay out in the open in a little patch which had been
cleared of ferns. As we came up to it I noted, with an odd little
trick of the memory, that the grey and weather-beaten surface of the
cross was highly polished, even as the beach-comber had described, by
the action of the sand grains blown by the wind from the seashore.
Fashioned out of two baulks of timber wired together and solidly
implanted in the ground, the cross stood at the head of a long hillock
of earth. On the grave lay, face upwards, a small round mirror and, a
little beyond it, an empty bottle, uncorked, which had fallen on its
side.
"You see," I remarked to Garth, "it's just as Adams said!"
I stooped to pick up the mirror. Then to my surprise I saw that it was
wired to a timber cross-piece which ran out from the cross as a
support. It was a little glass set in a metal frame.
"It looks like a shaving-glass!" said Garth.
I did not undeceive him. I am not a secretive person by nature but by
training. The very character of Intelligence work--the careful sifting
of every apparently insignificant scrap of evidence, the lengthy
process of surmise and deduction--tends to make one discreet, even when
dealing with one's familiars, until a plain statement of fact can be
drawn up. So I did not tell my host that, the moment I saw that the
glass was attached to the cross, my brain leaped at the first clear
clue to the Unknown's baffling cipher.
For the sight of the mirror, loosely wired so that it faced the foot of
the grave, immediately brought into my mind the first line of that
bewildering doggerel:
"Flimmer', flimmer' viel."
The reference to flashing surely indicated that the mirror was to be
used as a heliograph. The next line--that about "the garrison of
Kiel"--still utterly floored me; but, I reflected, since we had a
heliograph, the following lines which I surmised to give a compass
bearing of 27 degrees ("The Feast of Orders" _i.e._, Jan. 27), might
well furnish the direction in which--for reasons still unknown to
me--the sun's rays were to be flashed. The wiring of the mirror to the
timber indicated the direction in which the bearing was to be taken.
It looked to me as though the Unknown must have set up his own cross
and wired the mirror to it before he died.
I opened the little leathern case which hung at my belt and drew out my
prismatic compass, trusty friend of my campaigning days in France. The
grave faced practically due north. I laid the compass on the mirror
and took a bearing of 27 degrees. The white arrow on the floating
centre of the compass swung round. The mark of the 27th degree pointed
towards a gaunt and barren pile of rock on the far side of the crater.
I took as my line of direction a tall bush aflame with some gorgeous
flower on the edge of the clearing.
Some cautious instinct made me detach the mirror. Holes had been bored
on either side of the frame through which strands of copper wire were
passed and knotted to holes bored in the timber cross-piece. I removed
wire and all and slipped the mirror into my pocket. Garth did not
notice the action; for he was busy pottering about the clearing. From
the luxuriant undergrowth he ultimately collected a cigar box which, I
made no doubt, was the identical one from which the man Dutchey had
established the fact that Black Pablo and his friends had visited the
island. It was curious to find everything in the same state as it had
been left more than a year ago. I felt rather like a man must feel who
violates a grave.
"There's a path beyond," Garth said, pointing over to the left. "It
leads to the spring. I found an old bucket on the bank. But otherwise
there's no sign of our Unknown friend here. In fact the whole place
looks as if it had been undisturbed since the flood. Whew! but it's
hot! Okewood, I believe we're going to have a storm!"
The air was indeed strangely oppressive. The patch of sky which
thatched the clearing was now flecked with daubs of white cloud and
there was a curiously menacing stillness in the atmosphere. On trees
and bushes the leaves hung motionless without a tremor. We sat down to
cool off a bit.
"It doesn't look too good to me," I answered. "Garth, I shouldn't
wonder if we were in for a soaking to-night!"
Sir Alexander Garth, Bart., who had never slept out in the rain in his
life, smiled in rather superior fashion.
"I shouldn't wonder," he returned. "As a matter of fact, I rather like
roughing it. It's a devilish healthy life, my boy! What's the next
move? Has the grave given you any ideas for the location of the
treasure?"
I pointed at the scarlet bush.
"Do you see that plant with the red flowers?" said I. "I have a fancy
to take a stroll in that direction and see how far we can get up the
cliff."
Garth struck his palm with his clenched fist.
"Okewood!" he exclaimed, "By Jove! I believe you're on to something!"
"I am!" I answered rashly and cursed myself for a babbling fool. For
Garth, his curiosity afire, forthwith plied me with questions.
"Don't press me just yet!" I countered. "I'm still groping in the
dark. You shall know all in good time!"
But he would not be pacified. Two heads were better than one, he
argued, and very often a clear-sighted, shrewd man of business could
see a deal farther than an expert.
"Well," I said, "for all that, I think I'll keep my own counsel until
we've looked round a bit more!"
At that Garth became huffy. We were partners in this venture, he
reminded me, and we must have no secrets. He did not think he should
have to recall that fact to my mind.
The stifling heat and the fatigue of our long climb had made us both a
bit cross, I suppose. At any rate I was pretty short with him.
"My dear fellow," I said, and rose to my feet by way of putting an end
to the conversation, "all in good time. In this sort of work one must
work alone, at any rate in the initial stages. Give me a little
breathing space!"
Garth followed my example and stood up.
"Shall we go on?" he asked.
He spoke without heat, but there was a look in his face which reminded
me that at our first meeting, I had noticed signs of temper about his
nose and mouth. Garth was a man who obviously did not like to be
thwarted. Now I thought I knew where Marjorie got her proud temper
from.
A little puff of hot wind came whirling into the hollow. The trees
swayed to it as it rustled through the leaves with a melancholy sound.
"We don't want to go too far," remarked Garth, cocking an eye at the
sky, "or we shall have this storm on us before we can get under cover
at the camp."
At the first blush the cliff on the far side of the hollow looked
perfectly inaccessible. But handy to my bush with the red flowers a
succession of flat boulders, like a giant's staircase, enabled us to
scramble up until we found ourselves on a plateau of rock dominated on
one side by an immense crag which towered above our heads in a
succession of shelving ledges. In front of us the ground dropped to a
steep nullah from which rose a sheer wall of rock and barred the way.
It was a desolate scene. Neither tree nor shrub nor anything green
grew in this barren landscape of grey and friable volcanic rock. The
bare and frowning heights oppressed me. I turned to Garth.
"This looks like the end of things," said I, "unless we can find a way
up by these terraces. What do you say? Shall we have a try?"
"If we could manage to reach that first shelf," my companion answered,
"we could at any rate get a view. There's nothing to be seen from
here."
I had to give Garth a back to do it and his sixteen stone I felt
convinced, punched a pretty pattern of his hobnails into my skin.
However, at the cost of my back and sundry abrasions of his hands and
knees, Garth at last gained a footing on the sheer face of the rock and
then, giving me a hand, swung me up beside him. After a vertiginous
climb, which at one time brought us on to a ledge a hundred feet above
the nullah, we struck something like a steep track that eventually
landed us on the first terrace.
The view was disappointing. We were still too low to clear the
frowning cliffs encircling the nullah and we looked forth on the same
gloomy prospect of grey volcanic peaks that had confronted us from
below. The shelf on which we stood was only about thirty feet wide and
ran for a distance of sixty yards across the face of the cliff and then
stopped abruptly. It had obviously been cut by the hand of man out of
the friable rock; for a number of caves scooped out of the back wall
showed that cave-dwellers must have lived here in that remote period
when the island had been inhabited. The ledge was in fact nothing but
a street for communication between the different cave-houses. The
caves were low-roofed and empty. By craning our necks upward we saw
that the whole face of the cliff was thus honeycombed with
cave-dwellings in a succession of terraces. At the far end the steep
track, by which we had gained access to the first terrace, wound its
way upward to the higher levels. There were three terraces in all.
We rested for a while on our rocky shelf and ate some biscuits and
chocolate. From our post of vantage we looked down on to the grave in
the clearing. The sun had gone in but it was still oppressively
sultry. The sky had assumed a forbidding leaden tinge. It looked like
some great furnace door radiating a fierce heat from the fire within.
Whilst we ate our frugal lunch we discussed our plans. We decided
that, in view of the weather, we would break off our exploration for
the day, return to camp and get comfortably installed and make an early
start the next morning in order to visit the upper ledges of the rock.
Garth had apparently quite recovered his equanimity after our little
breeze.
The descent from the rock was a thrilling business. In places the
track had crumbled away and more than once we found ourselves, held
only by the nails of our boots, on a slippery slope overhanging a sheer
deep drop. I have a poor head for heights and to me it was a nightmare
experience. The result was that our progress was slow and it took us a
full hour to make the descent. By the time we had reached the rocky
plateau the wind was whirling the grey volcanic dust in great pillars
about our heads. The sky had grown perceptibly darker with an eerie
yellow glow and a few big drops of rain splashed down on the bushes.
With startling suddenness a long drawn-out rumble of thunder awakened a
thousand echoes as it reverberated among the lonely island peaks.
"By George," said Garth turning up his coat collar, "we're going to
catch it, Okewood. We'll have to steer clear of these trees."
"We'd better make a bolt for the hollow," I counselled. "The hut is
out in the open. If it stands the wind it will give us some shelter!"
We started to run while the light perceptibly diminished, like a
lighting effect on the stage. We were actually crossing the hollow
when the storm broke. There was a blinding glare of lightning, a
deafening peal of thunder and the light went out while, with a
whooshing and rushing and crashing, the rain suddenly descended in what
seemed to be a dense sheet of water.
"The hut!" I shouted in Garth's ear.
Well it was that we were just upon it or in that inky darkness we
should never have found it. Over the wooden bedstead in the corner the
roof was whole and solid and it kept the worst part of the rain off us,
though we were splashed by the cataract of water which poured off the
roof into the centre of the hut. The air was so highly charged that
one could almost smell the electricity in the atmosphere as the
lightning rent the sky in blinding flashes which illuminated the whole
clearing and the trees and cliffs all round with the brightness of
daylight.
The storm was at its height; the thunder was echoing in and out of the
rocky hollows of the island and in the moments of stillness the
gurgling and splashing of the rain filled our ears. Then came a
blinding lightning flash, brighter and more enduring than the rest. It
lit up the whole clearing and revealed the cross over the grave of the
Unknown standing out hard and black against a fantastic background of
bending, straining tree-trunks with branches and leaves blown out in
the wind. And by its light, before the brightness died, I saw the
figure of a man standing with bowed head at the grave.