That was a fearful moment for Don. The quest of the golden pearl,
entered upon with all the love of adventure and sanguine hope natural to
young hearts, began to wear a serious aspect indeed. Even had Jack been
there to share the heartbreak of it, this sudden, numbing blow would
still have been terribly hard to bear. But Jack was gone--whither,
Heaven alone knew--and the captain was dead.
Ay, the “Providence that sits up aloft” had at last looked out a snug
berth for the old sailor, and shipped him for the Eternal Voyage.
Kneeling by his side in the solemn twilight, with aching heart Don
recalled all his quaint ways and quainter sayings, his large-hearted
generosity, his rollicking good-nature, his rough but ever-ready
sympathy--and sealed the kindly eyes with such tears as are wrung from
us but once or twice in a lifetime, and recalled with sadness often,
with shame never.
But for him the captain would never have undertaken this disastrous
venture. This was the bitterest, the sorest thought of all.
At last Bosin's low wailing broke in upon his sad reverie. Well-nigh
human did the monkey seem, as with tender, lingering touch he caressed
his master's face, and sought to rouse him from this strange sleep of
which he felt but could not understand the awful meaning. Then, failing
to win from the dumb lips the response he craved, he turned his
eyes upon his master's friend with a look of pathetic appeal fairly
heartbreaking in its mute intensity.
No sooner did he succeed in attracting Don's attention, however, than
his manner underwent a complete change. The plaintive wail became a
hiss, the puny, lithe hands tore frantically at something that showed
like a thin, dark streak about the dead man's neck. What with the waning
light and the shock of finding the captain dead, Don had not noticed
this streak before. He looked at it closely now, and as he looked a
horrified intelligence leapt into his face. The dark streak was a cord:
the captain had been strangled!
Oh, the horror of that discovery! Hitherto he had suspected no foul
play, no connection of any kind, indeed, between the captain's death and
the lascar's escape; for had he not taken the precaution to disarm
the native? But now he remembered seeing that cord about the fellow's
middle. He had thought it harmless. Harmless! Ah, how different was the
mute witness borne by the old sailor's lifeless form! In the lascar's
hands the cord had proved an instrument of death as swift and sure as
any knife.
But why had the captain been singled out as the victim? Was the lascar
merely bent on wreaking vengeance on those who had injured him? Or was
he a tool in other and invisible hands?
Feverishly he asked himself these questions as he removed the fatal
cord, and composed the distorted features into a semblance of what they
had been in life; asked, but could not answer them. Only, back of the
whole terrible business, he seemed to see the cunning, unscrupulous
shark-charmer, bent on retaining the pearls at any cost, fanning the
lascar's hatred into fiercer flame, guiding his ready hand in its work
of death.
Could he, alone and all but unaided, cope with the cunning of this enemy
who, while himself unseen, made his devilish power felt at every turn?
The responsibility thrown upon his shoulders by the captain's murder
involved other and weightier issues than the mere recovery of a few
thousand pounds' worth of stolen pearls. Jack must be rescued, if indeed
he was still alive; while, if he too was dead, his and the captain's
murderers must be brought to justice. This was the task before him; no
light one for a youth of eighteen, with only a brace of timid native
servants at his back. Yet he addressed himself to it with all the
passionate determination born of his love for the chum and his grief for
the friend who had stood by him “through thick and thin.” There was no
hesitation, no wavering. “Do or die!” It was come to that now.
The captain's burial must be his first consideration; for Don had lived
long enough in the East to know how remorseless is the climate in
its treatment of the dead. Morning at the latest must snatch the old
sailor's familiar form for ever from his sight.
A tarpaulin lay in the “fo'csle,” and with this he determined to hide
the lascar's dread handiwork from view before waking the blacks, who
still slept. While he was disposing this appropriate pall above the
corpse, the captain's jacket fell open, and in an inside pocket he
caught sight of a small volume.
“Perhaps he has papers about him that ought to be preserved,” thought
Don. “I'll have a look.”
Drawing the volume from its resting-place with reverent touch, he found
it to be a copy of the Book of Common Prayer, sadly worn and battered,
like its owner, by long service. Here and there a leaf was turned down,
or a passage marked by the dent of a heavy thumb-nail--the sailor's
pencil. But what arrested his attention were these words written on the
yellow fly-leaf in a bold, irregular hand, and in ink so faded as to
make it evident that many years had elapsed since they were penned:
“To all and sundry as sights these lines, when-somedever it may please
the Good Skipper to tow this 'ere old hulk safe into port, widelicit.
If so be as I'm spared to go aloft when on the high-seas, wery good! the
loan of a hammock and a bit o' ballast is all I axes. But if so be as
I'm ewentually stranded on shore, why then, d'ye mind me, who-somedever
ye be as sights these 'ere lines, I ain't to be battened down like a
lubberly landsman, d'ye see, but warped off-shore an' shipped for the
Eternal V'yage as a true seaman had ought to be. And may God have mercy
on my soul.--Amen. The last Log and Testament of me,
“(Signed) John Mango, A.B.”
The faded characters grew blurred and misty before Don's eyes as he
scanned them. Closing the book, he grasped the captain's cold hand
impulsively, and in tones choked with emotion, cried:
“You shall have your wish, dear old friend! We'll warp you off-shore and
ship you for the Eternal Voyage in a way befitting the true seaman that
you are.”
And the mute lips seemed to smile back their approval, as though they
would say:
“Ay, ay, wrhy not, I axes? An' cheer up, my hearty, for, d'ye mind me,
lad, pipin' your eye won't stop the leak when the ship's a-sinkin'.”
What boots it to linger over the noisy, but none the less genuine
grief, of the faithful Spottie when he learned the sad truth? Nor is it
necessary to describe at length the sad preparations for consigning the
dead captain to his long home beneath the waves that had been his home
so long in life. Suffice it to say that without loss of time a rude bier
was constructed on which to convey the remains to the beach, and that
while this was preparing there occurred an event so remarkable, and
withal of so important a bearing upon the future of the quest, as to
merit something more than mere passing mention.
It happened while the three were in the jungle cutting materials for the
litter, and it concerned the fatal cord.
“Until the lascar's paid out, I'll keep this as a reminder of what I owe
him,” Don had said grimly, just before starting; and taking the lascars
knife from his belt he stuck it into a crevice in the “fo'csle” wall,
and hung the snake-like cord upon it.
Spottie and Puggles being too timid to leave with the dead, or to send
alone into the jungle in quest of materials for the bier--for was it not
at nightfall that shadowy spooks walked abroad?--Don was forced to bear
them company. There was no help for it; the captain's body must be left
unguarded in their absence--except, indeed, for such watch-care as puny
Bosin was able to give it.
Up to the moment of their setting out the monkey had not for a single
instant left his master's side. This fact served to render all the more
extraordinary the discovery they made on their return--namely, that the
monkey had quitted his post. What could have induced him to abandon his
master at such a moment was a mystery.
And the mystery deepened when Don, wanting the knife, sought it in the
“fo'csle,” for, to his astonishment, neither knife nor cord was to be
found.
“Dey spooks done steal urn, sar,” cried Spottie, with chattering teeth.
“Huh,” objected Puggles, between whom and Spottie there had grown up a
sharp rivalry during their brief acquaintance, “why they no steal
dead sahib? I axes.” Then to his master: “Lascar maybe done come back,
sahib.”
This suggestion certainly smacked more of plausibility than that offered
by Spottie, since it not only accounted for the disappearance of the
cord and knife, but of Bosin as well. Was it too much to believe that
the faithful creature's hatred, instinctively awakened by the lascar's
stealthy return, had outweighed affection for his dead master and
impelled him to abandon the one that he might track the other?
Remembering the intelligence exhibited by the monkey in the past, Don at
least was satisfied that this explanation was the true one.
By midnight all was in readiness, and with heavy hearts they took up
their dead and began the toilsome descent to the creek. This reached,
the _Jolly Tar_ was drawn from her place of concealment, and the
captain's body lashed in a tarpaulin. Then, with white wings spread,
the cutter bore silently away from the creek's mouth in quest of a last
resting-place for the master whose behest she was never again to obey.
“This will do,” said Don, when a half-hour's run had put them well
off-shore. “Take the tiller, Pug, and keep her head to the wind for a
little.”
With bowed head he opened the well-worn Prayer Book, and, while the
waves chanted a solemn funeral dirge, read in hushed tones the office
for the burial of the dead at sea. A pause, a tear glinting in the
moonlight, a splash--and just as the morning star flashed out like
a beacon above the eastern sea-rim, the old sailor began the Eternal
Voyage.
“And now,” said Don, as he brought the cutters head round in the
direction of the creek; “now for the last tussle and justice for the
dead. Let me only come face to face once more with that murderous lascar
or his master, and no false notions of mercy shall stay my hand--so help
me Heaven!”
And surely not Heaven itself could deem that vow unrighteous.