A RECOVERED TREASURE
For five days Code yawned or rushed through the greater part of Nat's
stock of lurid literature. It was the one thing that kept him from
falling into the black pit of brooding; sometimes he felt as though he
must go insane if he allowed himself to think. He had not the courage
to tear aside the veil of dull pain that covered his heart and look at
the bleeding reality. He was afraid of his own emotions.
It was impossible for him to go lower in the scale of physical
events.
Nat was about to triumph, and Code himself was forced to admit that
this triumph was mostly due to Nat's own wits. First he had stolen
Nellie Tanner (Code had thought a lot about that ring missing from
Nellie's hand), then he had attached the _Charming Lass_ in the
endeavor to take away from him the very means of his livelihood.
Then something had happened. Schofield did not know what it was, but
something evidently very serious, for the next thing he knew Nat had
crushed his pride and manhood under a brutal and technical charge of
murder.
But this was not all.
His victim escaping him with the schooner and the means of livelihood,
Burns had employed a traitor in the crew to poison the bait and force
him to come ashore to replenish his tubs. Once ashore, the shanghaiing
was not difficult.
Code had no doubt whatever that the whole plan, commencing with the
disappearance of the man in the motor-dory and ending with his
abduction from St. Pierre, was part and parcel of the same scheme. In
this, his crowning achievement of skill and cunning, Burns had showed
himself an admirable plotter, playing upon human nature as he did to
effect his ends.
For it was nothing but a realization of Peter Ellinwood's weakness in
the matter of his size and fighting ability that resulted in his
(Code's) easy capture. Schofield had no shadow of a doubt but that the
big Frenchman had been hired to play his part, and that, in the
howling throng that surrounded the fighters the crew of the _Nettie
B._ were waiting to seize the first opportunity to make the duel a
_melee_ and effect their design in the confusion.
Their opportunity came when the Frenchman tried to trip Pete Ellinwood
after big Jean had fallen and Code rushed into the fray with the
ferocity of a wildcat. Some one raised the yell "Police," he was
surrounded by his enemies, some one rapped him over the head with a
black-jack, and the job was done. It was clever business, and despite
the helplessness of his position, Code could not but admire the
brilliance of such a scheming brain, while at the same time deploring
that it was not employed in some legitimate and profitable cause.
Now he was in the enemy's hands, and St. Andrew's was less than a
dozen hours away; St. Andrew's, with its jail, its grand jury, and its
pen.
Life aboard the _Nettie B._ had been a dead monotony. On the foremast
above Code's prison hung the bell that rang the watches, so that the
passage of every half hour was dinged into his ears. Three times a day
he was given food, and twice a day he was allowed to pace up and down
the deck, a man holding tightly to each arm.
The weather had been propitious, with a moderate sea and a good
quartering wind. The _Nettie_ had footed it properly, and Code's
experienced eye had, on one occasion, seen her log her twelve knots in
an hour. The fact had raised his estimation of her fifty per cent.
It must not be supposed that, as Code sat in his hard wooden chair, he
forgot the diary that he had read the first afternoon of his
incarceration. Often he thought of it, and often he drew it out from
its place and reread those last entries: "Swears he will win second
race," "Says he can't lose day after to-morrow," "I wonder what the
boy has got up his sleeve that makes him so sure he will win?"
At first Code merely ascribed these recorded sayings of Nat Burns to
youthful disappointment and a sportsmanlike determination to do better
next time. But not for long. He remembered as though it had been
yesterday the look with which Nat had favored him when he finally came
ashore beaten, and the sullen resentment with which he greeted any
remarks concerning the race.
There was no sportsmanlike determination about him! Code quickly
changed his point of view. How could Nat be so sure he was going to
win?
The thing was ridiculous on the face of it. The fifty-year-old _May_
had limped in half an hour ahead of the thirty-year-old _M. C. Burns_
after a race of fifteen miles. How, then, could Nat swear with any
degree of certainty that he would win the second time. It was well
known that the _M. C. Burns_ was especially good in heavy weather, but
how could Nat ordain that there would be just the wind and sea he
wanted?
The thing was absurd on the face of it, and, besides, silly
braggadocio, if not actually malicious. And even if it were malicious,
Code thanked Heaven that the race had not been sailed, and that he
had been spared the exhibition of Nat's malice. He had escaped that
much, anyway.
However, from motives of general caution, Code decided to take the
book with him. Nat had evidently forgotten it, and he felt sure he
would get off the ship with it in his possession. Now, as he drew near
to St. Andrews, he put it for the last time inside the lining of his
coat, and fastened that lining together with pins, of which he always
carried a stock under his coat-lapel.
As Schofield had not forgotten the old log of the _M. C. Burns_,
neither had he forgotten the threat he made to Nat that he would try
his best to escape, and would defy his authority at every turn.
He had tried to fulfil his promise to the letter. Twice he had removed
one of the windows before the alert guard detected him, and once he
had nearly succeeded in cutting his way through the two-inch planking
of his ceiling before the chips and sawdust were discovered, and he
was deprived of his clasp-knife.
Every hour of every day his mind had been constantly on this business
of escape. Even during the reading, to which he fled to protect his
reason, it was the motive of every chapter, and he would drop off in
the middle of a page into a reverie, and grow inwardly excited over
some wild plan that mapped itself out completely in his feverish
brain.
Now as they approached St. Andrew's his determination was as strong as
ever, but his resources were exhausted. Double-guarded and without
weapons, he found himself helpless. The fevered excitement of the past
four days had subsided into a dull apathy of hurt in which his brain
was as delicate and alert as the mainspring of a watch. He was
resigned to the worst if it came, but was ready, like a panther in a
tree, to spring at the slightest false move of his enemies.
Now for the last time he went over his little eight-by-ten prison. He
examined the chair as though it were some instrument of the
Inquisition. He pulled the bed to pieces and handled every inch of the
frame. He emptied every compartment of the queer hanging cabinet that
had been stuffed with books and miscellanies; he examined every
article in the room.
He had done this a dozen times before, but some instinct drove him to
repeat the process. There was always hope of the undiscovered, and,
besides, he needed the physical action and the close application of
his mind. So, mechanically and doggedly he went over every inch of his
little prison.
But in vain.
The roof and walls were of heavy planking and were old. They were full
of nicks as well as wood-knots, and the appearance of some of the
former gave Code an idea. He went carefully over the boards, sticking
his thumb-nail into them and lifting or pressing down as the shape of
the nick warranted. For they resembled very much the depressions cut
in sliding covers on starch-boxes whereby such covers can be pushed in
their grooves.
At any other time he would have considered this the occupation of a
madman, but now it kept him occupied and held forth the faint gleam of
hope by which he now lived.
Suddenly something happened. He was lying across his immovable cot
fingering the boards low down in the right rear corner when he felt
something give beneath his thumb. A flash of hope almost stifled him,
and he lay quiet for a moment to regain command of himself. Then he
put his thumb again in the niche and lifted up. With all his strength
he lifted and, all at once, a panel rushed up and stuck, revealing a
little box perhaps a foot square that had been built back from the
rear wall of the old storeroom.
That was all, except for the fact that something was in the box--a
package done up in paper.
For a while he did not investigate the package, but devoted his
attention to sounding the rest of the near-by planks with the hope
that they might give into a larger opening and furnish a means of
egress. For half an hour he worked and then gave up. He had covered
every inch of wall and every niche, and this was all!
At last he turned to the contents of the box that he had uncovered.
Removing the package, he slid the cover down over the opening for fear
that his guard, looking in a window, might become aware of what he had
discovered. Then, sitting on the bed, he unwrapped the package.
It was a beautiful, clear mirror bound with silver nickel and fitted
with screw attachments as though it were intended to be fastened to
something.
At first this unusual discovery meant nothing whatever to him. Then,
as he turned the object listlessly in his hands, his eyes fell upon
three engraved letters, C. A. S., and a date, 1908.
Then he remembered.
When he was twenty years old his father had taught him the science of
navigation, so that if anything happened Code might sail the old _May
Schofield_.
Because of the fact that a position at sea was found by observing the
heavenly bodies, Code had become interested in astronomy, and had
learned to chart them on a sky map of his own.
The object in his hand was an artificial horizon, a mirror attached to
the sextant which could be fixed at the exact angle of the horizon
should the real horizon be obscured. This valuable instrument his
father had given him on his twenty-first birthday because the old man
had been vastly pleased with his interest in a science of which he
himself knew little or nothing.
Code remembered that, for a year or two, he had pursued this hobby of
his with deep interest and considerable success, and that his great
object in life had been to some day have a small telescope of his own
by which to learn more of the secrets of the heavens. But, after his
father died, he had been forced to take up the active support of the
family, and had let this passion die.
But how did it happen that the mirror was here?
He recalled that the rest of his paraphernalia had gone to the bottom
with the _May Schofield_. It was true that he had not overhauled his
equipment for some time, and that it had been in a drawer in the
_May's_ cabin, but that drawer had not been opened.
He pursued the train of thought no farther. His brain was tired and
his head ached with the strain of the last five days. His last hope of
escape had only resulted in his finding a forgotten mirror, and his
despair shut out any other consideration. He had not even the fire to
resent the fact that it was in Burns's possession, and concealed.
It was his, he knew, and, without further thought of it, he thrust it
into his pocket just as he heard the men outside his little prison
talking together excitedly.
"By George, she looks like a gunboat," said one. "I wonder what she
wants?"
"Yes, there's her colors. You can see the sun shinin' on her brass
guns forward."
"There, she's signalin'. I wonder what she wants?"
Code walked idly to his windows and peered out, but could not see the
vessel that the men were talking about.
"She wants us to heave to, boys," sang out Nat suddenly. "Stand by to
bring her up into the wind. Hard down with your wheel, John!"
As the schooner's head veered Code caught a glimpse of a schooner-rigged
vessel half a mile away with uniformed men on her decks and two
gleaming brass cannon forward. Then she passed out of vision.
"She's sending a cutter aboard," said one man.