The Englishman's Story
I rose at dawn, but my host was out before me. He had left two
fish cleaned and ready for cooking on a plate outside the door.
Having breakfasted, I started on a walk around the atoll, which I
estimated I could accomplish in about an hour. I expected to meet
the Englishman somewhere on the way, and I did find him on the
opposite side of the lagoon. The shore was steep-to there. He had
a steel-tipped rod in his hand and was diving off a ledge of rock,
remaining below for as long as a full minute. He waved when he saw
me, but kept on with his work. In about a quarter of an hour he came
over to where I was standing.
"Tiresome work," he said. "I need a blow." Then, "You see, I've been
doing a bit of digging here."
I had walked along the lagoon beach and had not noticed before the
series of trenches higher up the land. I should think he had been
digging! I inspected the ditches under his guidance. There were three
at least a quarter of a mile in length each and from three to four
feet deep. These ran in parallel lines and were about four paces
apart. Fifteen to twenty shorter trenches cut through them at right
angles.
The sun was well above the horizon. We lit our pipes and sat down
in the shade. After a few moments of silence he said: "I suppose you
know what I'm doing here? If you have been in Papeete you must have
heard. There is no secret about it--at least not any longer."
I said that I had left Papeete shortly after my arrival. I had spent
several idle afternoons on the veranda of the Bougainville Club, but
in the talk which went around there I didn't remember having heard of
Pinaki.
"So much the better," he said. "Yes, seven years is a long time, and
I'm not keen about feeding gossip; but when I first came down here
there was a clacking of tongues from one end of the group to the
other. I believe I have since earned the reputation of being rather
queer. I thought you must know. The fact is I'm looking for treasure.
Would you care to hear the story?"
"Very much," I said, "if it won't bore you to tell it."
"On the contrary, it will be something of a relief. Seven years of
digging, with nothing to show for it, must strike an outsider as a
mad business. Sometimes I'm half persuaded that I am a complete fool
to go on with the search. But you can't possibly know the fascination
of it. It seems only yesterday that I came here. As you see for
yourself, it's not much of an island. And to know that there is a
treasure of more than three million pounds buried somewhere in this
tiny circle of scrub and palm--"
"But do you know it?" I asked.
"I'm as sure of it as that I am smoking your tobacco. That is, I am
sure it was buried here. Whether it has been removed since, I can't
say, of course. The natives at Nukatavake remember a white man whom
they called Luta, who came here about twenty years ago and remained
for something over a month. One of the four men who stole the gold
and brought it to Pinaki was a man named Luke Barrett, and it may
have been he who came back, although he was supposed to have been
killed in Australia forty years ago. It is the uncertainty which
makes this such killing work at times. But when I think of giving
it up--you would have to live with the thought of treasure for
seven years, and to dream at night of finding it, before you could
understand." He rose suddenly. "If you don't mind a short walk, I
will show you something rather interesting."
We went along the lagoon beach for several hundred yards, then
crossed toward the ocean side. Near the center of the island we came
upon an immense block of coral broken from the reef and carried there
by some great storm of the past. Cut deeply into the face of the rock
I saw a curious design:
[Illustration]
I asked what it meant.
"Man, if I knew that! I believe it's the key, and I can't master it!
But we may as well sit down and be comfortable. If you would really
care to hear the story from the beginning it will take the better
part of an hour. I'll not give you all the details; but when I have
finished you will be in a position to judge for yourself whether or
not I was mad in coming here.
"Have you ever read Walker's book, _Undiscovered Treasure_? It
doesn't matter, except that you have missed a very entertaining
volume. It is a pity that old work is out of print. Nothing in it but
bare facts about all sorts of treasure supposed to have been buried
here and there about the world. You might think it would be dry, but
I found it better company than any romance I've ever read. However,
that has nothing to do with this story, except in an indirect way. I
first read the book as a boy and it started me on my travels.
"To me the facts about this Pinaki treasure are as interesting as
any of Walker's. He, of course, knew nothing about it, for it had not
been stolen when his book was published. Four men had a hand in the
business: a Spaniard named Alvarez; an Irishman named Killorain; and
two others of uncertain nationality, Luke Barrett, whom I spoke of a
moment ago, and Archer Brown. They were a thieving, murdering lot by
all accounts--adventurers of the worst sort; and in hope of plunder,
I suppose, had joined the Peruvian army during the war with Chile in
eighteen fifty-nine to sixty. Their hopes were realized beyond all
expectations. They got wind of some gold buried under the floor of a
church, and the strange thing was that the gold was there and they
found it. It was in thirty-kilo ingots, contained in seven chests,
the whole lot worth in the neighborhood of three and a half million
pounds. How they managed to get away with it I don't know; but I have
investigated the business pretty thoroughly and I have every reason
to believe that they did. They buried it again in the vicinity of
Pisco, and then set out in search of a vessel. Alvarez was the only
one of the four who had any education. They had all followed the sea
at one time or another, but he alone knew how to navigate. The others
could hardly write their own names. At Panama they signed on as
members of the crew of a small schooner, and as soon as they had put
to sea knocked the captain and the two other sailors in the head and
chucked them overboard. They returned to Pisco, loaded the gold, and
started for Paumotus.
"This was in the autumn of eighteen fifty-nine. In the December
following they landed at Pinaki, where they buried the treasure. The
island was uninhabited then as now, and they crossed to Nukatavake
to learn the name of it. The natives were shy, but they persuaded one
man to approach, and when they had the information they wanted, shot
him and rowed out to their boat. If you should go to Nukatavake you
will find two old men there who still remember the incident.
"Then they went to Australia, scuttled their vessel not far from
Cooktown, and went ashore with a story of shipwreck. They had some
of the gold with them--not much in proportion to the amount of the
treasure, but enough to keep four ordinary men in comfort for the
rest of their lives. It soon went, and the four were next heard of
at the Palmer gold fields. Alvarez and Barrett were both supposed
to have been killed there in a fight with some blacks. Brown and
Killorain had not mended their ways to any extent, and both were
finally jerked up for manslaughter and sentenced to twenty years'
penal servitude. Brown died in prison, but Killorain served out his
term, and finally died in Sydney hospital in nineteen twelve.
"Most of these facts--if they are facts--I had from Killorain himself
the night before he died. I met him in a curious way; or, better, the
meeting came as the result of a curious combination of circumstances.
You may have noticed the scar on my side?"
I had noticed it, a broad gash puckered at the edges where the flesh
had healed, tapering to a point in the middle of his back.
"It was not much of a wound," he went on, "but it gave me a deal of
trouble at the time. I got it in New Guinea in nineteen eleven, when
I was prospecting for gold in the back country. I was a long way from
a settlement, and one day a nigger took it into his head to stick me
with a spear. I suppose he wanted my gun and ammunition, for I had
little else excepting my placer outfit. I let him have one bullet
from my Colt just as he was about to dive into the bush, and for all
I know he may be lying there to this day. I have that little frizzly
headed native to thank for my knowledge of the Pinaki treasure.
Sometimes I am sorry that I killed him; but at other times I feel
that shooting was altogether too easy a death for the man really
responsible for bringing me here. I was in a bad way from the wound.
Infection set in, and I had to nurse myself somehow and get down to a
place where I could have medical attention. I managed it, but the ten
days' journey was a nightmare. I was nothing but skin and bone when
I left the hospital, and New Guinea not being a likely place for a
convalescent, the doctor recommended me to go to Australia.
"I had a small bag of dust, the result of a year and a half of
heart-breaking work in the mountains. Most of it went for the
hospital bill, and when I reached Sydney I had very little left. I
was compelled to put up at the cheapest kind of a boarding house,
although the woman who kept it was quite a decent sort. Her house was
in a poor quarter of the town and her patrons mostly longshoremen and
teamsters. It was a wretched life for her, but she had two children
to support and was making the best of a bad job. I admired her pluck
and did what I could in a small way to help her out.
"One evening I was waiting for supper in the kitchen when some one
rapped. Before I could go to the door, it opened, and an old man came
stumbling in, asking for something to eat. I thought he was drunk
and was about to hustle him back the way he came when I noticed that
he was wet through--it was a cold, rainy night--and really suffering
from exposure and lack of food. I made him remove his coat--he had
nothing on under it--but not without a great deal of trouble, and
he insisted on drying it across his knees. He was a little wizened
ape of an Irishman, about five feet three or four in height, with
deep-set blue eyes, bushy eyebrows, a heavy, discolored mustache, and
a thick shock of white hair--altogether the most frightful-looking
little dwarf that ever escaped out of a picture book. He was tatooed
all over the arms and chest--Hands Across the Sea, the Union Jack,
a naked woman--several other designs common in waterfront tatooing
parlors.
"His body was as shriveled as a withered apple, but his little
bloodshot eyes blazed like bits of live coal. Except for the fire
in them, he might have been a hundred years old and, as a matter of
fact, he wasn't a great way from it. Eighty-seven, he told me, and
that is about all he did tell me. He gorged some food and was all
for getting away at once. But it had set in to rain very hard and
I persuaded him to wait until the worst of it was over. He was very
suspicious at first. I believe he expected me to call a policeman.
Later he thawed a little, and became even talkative in a surly way
when I told him, with the landlady's consent, that he might stay the
night if he had no place else to go. Wouldn't hear of it, though. He
said he had a job as night watchman at Rush-cutters' Bay. That might
or might not have been true. At any rate, I went with him to the car
line--the boarding house was a good mile from Rush-cutters' Bay--and
gave him a couple of shillings, as a loan, I said. He could return
it sometime. Just before I left him he asked for my name and address,
mumbling something about doing me a bit of good one of these days. He
was insistent, so I gave it to him, but not at all willingly. He had
frightened Mrs. Sharpe, the landlady, just by the way he looked at
her, and I didn't want him coming back.
"He didn't come back. That was in May, nineteen twelve, and I heard
nothing more of him until September. I was still at the boarding
house, getting slowly better, but not yet good for anything. I kept
out of doors as much as possible, took long walks in the country and
along the waterfront looking at ships. When I came in one evening
Mrs. Sharpe told me that an attendant from the Sydney hospital had
called twice during the day. An old man named Killorain, a patient
at the hospital, wanted to see me. The name meant nothing to me
and I couldn't imagine who the man could be. The attendant called
again later in the evening. Killorain was about to die, he said, and
wouldn't give them any peace until I was brought to see him.
"It was getting on toward midnight when we reached the hospital. The
old man was in one of the public wards. I recognized him at once,
although he had shriveled away to nothing at all. It was impossible
to forget his eyes, once you had seen them. He was dying--no doubt of
it, but I could see that he wasn't going to die until he was ready.
"'Sit down close here,' he said. 'I'm glad you came. You did me a
good turn once and I haven't forgot it. Few good turns I've had in my
life. Not so many but what I can remember the lot.' The night nurse
had approached quietly and was standing on the other side of the bed.
All at once he saw her. 'Hey, you!' he said. 'Grease off out of this!
Stand over there on the other side of the room where I can watch
you!' When she had gone he rose from his pillow and looked cautiously
around the room. The beds on either side of him were empty. There was
a patient in the one across the aisle, but he was sleeping. Killorain
watched him for a moment to make sure of this. Then he motioned me
with his finger to come still closer. 'Listen!' he said. 'I've cut
more throats in my time than you might think.' Sounds a bit stagey,
doesn't it? But these were his exact words. Nothing remarkable about
them, of course. Throat-cutting is still a fairly thriving business.
I waited for him to go on. He again looked up and down the room, and
then asked me to hand him the coat which was lying across the foot
of the bed. It was the same coat he had been wearing in May, when he
came to the boarding house.
"'When they brought me here,' he said, 'they took my clothes, and
I've had some trouble getting this back.' The attendant had told me
as much. The old man had raised the very devil of a row until it was
found. He asked me to rip open the lining of the right sleeve and to
give him the paper I would find there. It was a soiled, greasy sheet
of foolscap, pasted on a piece of cloth. 'Once,' he went on, 'you
gave me two shillings for car fare to Rush-cutters' Bay. It probably
wasn't any hardship on you, but never mind about that. You said I
could pay it back if I'd a mind to. Well, I'm going to pay it back
with a bit of interest. I'm going to give you this paper, and it's as
good as three million pound notes of the Bank of England.'
"I thought, of course, that he was completely off his chump, and
the fear that I would think so was uppermost in his mind. He kept
repeating that he was old and worn out, but that his mind was clear.
'Don't you think I'm balmy,' he said. 'I know what I'm talking
about as well as I know I'm going to die before morning.' He gave
me a circumstantial account of the whole affair. I have outlined it
briefly. There were many other interesting facts, but it is not worth
while to speak of them here. As he talked, the conviction grew upon
me that he was perfectly sane and was telling the truth. He went over
the chart with me. It had been made by Alvarez, the scholar of the
party, he said. There had been a good deal of quarreling and fighting
later for the possession of it.
"Before I left him he made me promise that I would go to Pinaki. He
wouldn't rest easy in his grave, he said, unless he knew that I was
looking for the treasure. 'It's there, and it will always be there
if you're bloody fool enough to think I'm queer. It ain't likely
I'd lie to you on my deathbed.' Rest easy in his grave! There was an
odd glimpse into his mind. He wasn't worrying about his crimes, and
there were enough of them, according to his own confession. It was
the thought of the gold lying forever forgotten which worried him. He
could rest quietly if he knew before he died that some one else was
fighting and throat-cutting over it. I asked him why he hadn't gone
back for it himself. He told me that of the fifty-three years since
it had been buried he had spent forty in prison and the rest of the
time he was trying to earn or steal the money to buy a schooner. I
told him that I would come back to see him the following day. 'You
needn't bother,' he said. 'I'm finished.' And it was true. He died
three hours later.
"I tried to forget the incident, but it was one of those things
which refuse to be forgotten. It was always in the back of my head. I
decided to check up Killorain's story where I could. I made inquiries
in Peru, and found that the gold had actually been stolen. The dates
and circumstances coincided with his account. A friend in the customs
at Cooktown confirmed for me the story of four shipwrecked sailors
who landed in February, eighteen sixty, from a ship called the _Bosun
Bird_. I had a small piece of property on the outskirts of Cooktown
which I had bought years ago. With the money realized from the sale
of it I took passage for Tahiti on my way to Pinaki.
"That voyage was the longest one I have ever made. By that time the
thought of those seven chests of gold, all in thirty-kilo ingots,
was with me twenty-four hours out of the twenty-four. Yes, even
at night. I slept very little, and when I did it was to dream of
hunting for the treasure; of finding it. I became suspicious of a
villainous-looking old man who was traveling third class. I thought
he might be Brown or Luke Barrett. Perhaps they were not dead,
after all. At Papeete I told no one of my purpose there, with the
exception of one governmental official. If the treasure should be
found the French government would have a claim to certain percentage
on uncoined gold, and I meant to be aboveboard in my dealings with
it. This official was sworn to secrecy, but the business leaked out
eventually and created a great deal of excitement. I was immensely
annoyed, of course, for I had guarded the secret as well as old
Killorain ever had. However, I had in my pocket all the necessary
papers, drawn up accurately, witnessed, signed, and sealed. I went on
with my preparations, and finally, in February, nineteen thirteen, I
was put ashore from a small cutter, not four hundred yards from where
we are sitting.
"I started the search before the cutter was two miles on the return
voyage. For two months I slept in the open--had no time to build a
house--and ate tinned food which I had brought with me. Killorain's
chart was of but little use. It made reference to trees which
had long since rotted away or had been cut down by the natives of
Nukatavake. The marks which I found corresponded precisely with those
on the chart, but several of the most important ones were missing."
The treasure hunter rose. "Well," he said, "there's the end of the
story. You know the rest of it."
"But I don't know the rest at all!" I said. "You have left out the
most interesting part. Tell me something of your life here."
"You have seen three days of it. It has gone on for seven years in
the same way."
"You were diving just now in the lagoon. Do you think the gold may
have been buried there or that the land has fallen away?"
"My dear fellow, I'll not weary you with an account of what I think.
It's rather warm here. Shall we go back to the house?"
I was hoping for a week of calm, and when we went to bed that evening
there was reason to believe we might have it. A few hours later,
however, I was awakened by the Englishman. "There's going to be a bit
of a blow presently," he said. "Your skipper has just sent for you.
He wants to get away at once."
The stars had been blotted out. The wind was soughing in the palms,
and the waves slapping briskly on the lagoon beach. Our farewell was
a brief one.
"When shall you come to Tahiti?" I asked.
"Not until I have found what I'm looking for."
"Well," I said, "I hope that will be soon."
But if he holds fast to his resolve my belief is that it will be
never.
Conclusion
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