JACK JOURNEYS AFOOT
IT is often said that a thing is not lost if you know where it is. This
was Jack Cockrell's opinion concerning that weighty sea-chest which had
splashed to the bottom of the sluggish stream in the heart of the
Cherokee swamp. With young Bill Saxby and eager old Trimble Rogers he
hastened from the grave of the pirate seaman whom they had buried on the
knoll and fetched up at the shore where the pirogue had been left.
Beside it floated Blackbeard's boat filled with water.
Having cut two or three long poles, they sounded the depth and prodded
in the muddy bed to find the treasure chest. It had sunk no more than
eight feet below the surface, as the tide then stood, which was not much
over the head of a tall man. The end of a pole struck something solid,
after considerable poking about. It was not rough, like a sunken log,
and further investigation with the poles convinced them that they were
thumping the lid of the chest.
"D'ye suppose you could muster breath to dive and bend a line to one o'
the handles, Master Cockrell?" suggested Trimble Rogers. "Here's a coil
of stout stuff in Cap'n Teach's boat what he used for a painter."
"The bottom of the creek is too befouled," promptly objected Jack, "and
I confess it daunts me to think of meeting that drownded corpse down
there. Try it yourself, if you like."
"I be needed above water to handle the musket if Blackbeard sneaks back
to bang at us with his pistols," was the evasive reply. The mention of
the corpse had given old Trimble a distaste for the task. To his
petulant question, Bill Saxby protested that he couldn't swim a blessed
stroke and he sensibly added:
"What if you did get a rope's end belayed to a handle of the chest? Even
if the strain didn't part the line, we couldn't heave away in this tipsy
canoe. And I am blamed certain we can't drag the chest ashore lackin'
purchase and tackles."
"The smell o' treasure warps my judgment," grumpily confessed Trimble
Rogers. "We ain't properly rigged to h'ist that chest from where she
lays, and that's the fact."
"Give us the gear and we'd have it out and cracked open as pretty as you
please," said Bill. "Set up a couple o' spars for shears, stay 'em from
the bank, rig double blocks, and grapplin' irons for a diver to work
with----"
"Which is exactly what Cap'n Teach will be doin' of when he finds his
ship again," lamented the buccaneer.
"He will be some time findin' his ship afoot," grimly chuckled Bill.
"We have naught to smash his boat with, but we'll just take it along
with us."
"If we make haste to report to Captain Stede Bonnet," spoke up Jack
Cockrell, "he may make sail in time to give Blackbeard other things to
think on than this treasure chest. And it is my notion that the need of
fitting the _Revenge_ for action is too urgent to spare a crew to
attempt this errand."
"We shall have it yet," cried Trimble, much consoled. "And Stede
Bonnet'll blithely furnish the men and gear. For a mere babe, Master
Cockrell, ye leak wisdom like a colander. Our duty is to tarry no longer
at this mad business."
"The first sound word I've heard out of the old barnacle, eh, Jack?"
said Bill Saxby. "We must be out of this swamp by night and layin' a
course for Cap'n Bonnet and the _Royal James_."
"Whilst you empty Blackbeard's boat of water so we can tow it, let me
make a rude chart," was Jack's happy idea. "Some mishap or other may
overtake us ere we get the chance to seek the treasure again. And our
own memory of this pest-hole of a swamp may trick us."
Bill Saxby's tattered diary supplied a scrap of paper and Jack dug
charred splinters from the inside of the canoe which enabled him to draw
a charcoal sketch or map. It traced the smaller stream from the fork
where it had branched off, the stretch in which it widened like a tiny
lagoon or bayou, and the point of shore just beyond which the pirogue
had unexpectedly rammed Blackbeard's boat. A cross designated the spot
where the treasure chest had sunk in eight feet of water.
The knoll and the grave of Seaman Jesse Strawn were also indicated, with
the distance estimated in paces and the bearings set down by the
position of the sun.
"There," said Jack, well pleased with his handiwork, "and once we are
aboard ship, I can make fair copies on parchment, one for each of us."
"Thankee, lad," gratefully exclaimed Trimble Rogers who now had
something to live for. "'Twas a fond dream o' mine, when I sailed wi'
the great Cap'n Edward Davis in the South Sea, some day to blink at a
chart what showed where the gold was hid."
They were, indeed, recovered from the intoxication of treasure and
recalled to realizing the obligation that was upon them. They had
swerved from it but now they pressed forward to finish the appointed
journey. The canoe moved down to the fork of the waters with the light
cock-boat skittering in its wake and perhaps the unhappy Blackbeard,
stranded in the swamp, hurled after them a volley of those curses for
which he was renowned. Once Jack Cockrell laughed aloud, explaining to
his laboring comrades:
"Captain Teach will be combing the burrs from his grand beard when he
boards his ship again. He may get hung by the chin in a thicket."
"He's sure to spend this night in the swamp, blast him," earnestly
observed Bill, "and the mosquitoes'll riddle his hide."
"And may Jesse Strawn lose no time in hauntin' him," said Trimble
Rogers.
There was an hour of daylight to spare when they had ascended the larger
creek as far as the canoe could be paddled. There they disembarked and
hid the dugout and the cock-boat in the overhanging bushes where they
could be found again in case of a forced retreat. Bill and Jack burdened
themselves with the sack of food and the water jug while the old
buccaneer set out in the lead as a guide. It was irksome progress for a
time, but gradually the ground became drier and the foliage was more
open. Dusk found them safely emerged from the great Cherokee swamp and
in a pleasant forest of long-leaf pine with a carpet of brown needles.
In fear of Indians, they dared not kindle a fire and so stretched
themselves in their wet and muddy rags and slept like dead men. What
awakened Jack Cockrell before sunrise was a series of groans from
Trimble Rogers who sat with his back against a tree while he rubbed his
legs. Ashamed at being heard, he grumpily explained:
"Cord and faggot 'ud torment me no worse than this hell-begotten
rheumatism. I be free of it in a ship but the land reeks with foul
vapors. It hurt me cruel at Cartagena in the year of----"
"But can you walk all day, in such misery as that?" anxiously
interrupted Jack.
"If not, I'll make shift to crawl," said the old sea dog.
It was apparent to Jack and also to Bill Saxby that the ordeal of the
swamp had crippled their companion whose bodily strength had been
overtaxed. They debated whether to try to return to the coast and risk a
voyage in the canoe but Trimble Rogers swore by all the saints in the
calendar that he was done with the pestilent swamp. He would push on in
spite of the rheumatism. His hardy spirit was unbroken. And so they
resumed the march, the suffering buccaneer hobbling with the musket as a
staff or with a strong arm supporting him.
Halts were frequent and progress very slow. Now and then they had
glimpses of the blue sea and so knew that they held the course true. It
had been reckoned that two days would suffice to bring them to the bay
in which Stede Bonnet's ship was anchored. By noon of this first day,
however, it was plainly evident that Trimble Rogers was done for. He
uttered no complaints, and withheld the groans behind his set teeth, but
his lank body was a-tremble with pain and fatigue. Whenever he sank down
to rest they had to raise him up and set him on his legs again before he
could totter a little way farther.
"What say, Jack, to slingin' him on a pole, neck and heels?" suggested
Bill Saxby. "Can we make him fast with our belts?"
"And choke him to death? In Charles Town I saw Captain Bonnet's pirates
carry their wounded in litters woven of boughs."
The suffering Trimble put a stop to this by shouting:
"Avast wi' the maunderin' nonsense! Push on, lads, and leave this old
hulk be. Many a goodly man have I seen drop in the jungle. What matters
it? Speed ye to Cap'n Bonnet."
"Here is one pirate that won't desert a shipmate," declared Bill Saxby.
"And how can we push on without you, old True-Penny, to lay your nose to
the trail? I took no heed o' the marks and landfalls."
"Like a sailor ashore, mouth open and eyes shut," rasped the buccaneer
of Hispaniola.
"Methinks I might find my way in this Carolina country," ventured Jack
Cockrell. "It would be easier for a landsman like myself than for Bill
who is city-bred and a seaman besides."
"More wisdom from the stripling," said Trimble. "Willing as I be to die
sooner than delay ye and so vex Stede Bonnet, it 'ud please me to live
to overhaul that sea chest of Blackbeard's."
"I'll stand by this condemned old relic," amiably agreed Bill Saxby. "Do
you request Cap'n Bonnet to send a party to salvage us, Jack."
"He will take pleasure in it, Bill. Before I go let me help you find
shelter,--dry limbs for props and a thatch of palmetto leaves."
"Take no thought of us," urged Trimble. "Trust me to set this lazy oaf
to work. Now listen, Jack, and carefully. Cap'n Bonnet's ship waits in
the Cape Fear River, twelve leagues to the north'ard of us. You will
find her betwixt a bay of the mainland and a big-sized island where the
river makes in from the sea. There will be a lookout kept and I can tell
ye where to meet a boat."
With a memory as retentive as a printed page, the keen-eyed old wanderer
described the landscape league by league, the streams and their
direction, the hills which were prominent, the broad stretches of
savannah or grassy meadow, the belts of pine forest, the tongues of
swamp which had to be avoided. Jack was compelled to repeat the detailed
instructions over and over, and he was a far more studious pupil than
when snuffy Parson Throckmorton had rapped his knuckles and fired him
with rebellious dreams of piracy. At length, the buccaneer was willing
to acknowledge:
"Unless an Indian drive an arrow through the lad's brisket, Bill, I can
trust him to find our ship. Best give him the musket."
"Me shoulder that carronade and trudge a dozen leagues?" objected Jack.
"I travel light and leave the ordnance with you."
They insisted on his taking more than a third of the food but he
refused to deprive them of the water jug. There would be streams enough
to slake his thirst. It was an affectionate parting. Bill Saxby's
innocent blue eyes were suffused and his chubby face sorrowful at the
thought that they might not meet again. Trimble Rogers fished out his
battered little Bible and quoted a few verses, as appeared to be his
habit on all solemn occasions. Jack Cockrell knew him well enough by now
to find it not incongruous. Among this vanishing race of sea fighters
had been many a hero of the most fervent piety. Their spirit was akin to
that of Francis Drake who summoned his crew to prayers before he cleared
for action.
And in this wise did Master Jack Cockrell set out to bear a message from
comrades in dire distress. Moreover, in his hands were the lives of Joe
Hawkridge and those other marooned seamen, as he had every reason to
believe. It was a grave responsibility to be thrust upon a raw lad in
his teens who had been so carefully nurtured by his fretful guardian of
an uncle, Mr. Peter Arbuthnot Forbes. Jack thought of this and said to
himself, with a smile:
"A few weeks gone, and I was locked in my room without any dinner for
loitering with Stede Bonnet's pirates at the Charles Town tavern. My
education has been swift since then."
He was expectant of meeting no end of peril and hardship and he fought
down a sense of dread that was not to his discredit. But it was so
decreed that he should pass secure and unmolested. At first he went too
fast, without husbanding his strength, and loped along like a hound
whenever the country was clear of brushwood. This wore him down and he
failed to watch carefully enough for his landmarks. Toward the end of
the day he became confused because he could not discern the sea even by
climbing a tree. But he tried to keep bearing to the northeast until the
sun went down. Afraid of losing himself entirely and ignorant of the lay
of the land by night, he made his bivouac in a grove of sycamore
saplings and imagined Indians were creeping up whenever the leaves
rustled.
This fear of roaming savages troubled him next day as he wearily trudged
through this primeval wilderness unknown to white settlers. It spurred
him on despite his foot-sore fatigue and he was making the journey more
rapidly than old Trimble Rogers, for all his cunning woodcraft, had been
able to accomplish it. Almost at the end of his endurance, the plucky
lad discerned the sheen of a broad water in the twilight and so came to
the Cape Fear River.
He had worried greatly lest he might have veered too far inland but
there was the wooded bay and the fore-land crowned with dead pines which
had been swept by forest fire. And out beyond it was the island, of the
size and shape described by Trimble Rogers, making a harbor from the sea
which rolled to the horizon rim.
But no tall brig, nor any other vessel rode at anchor in this silent and
lonely haven. Jack had been told precisely where to look for it. He had
made no mistake. Some emergency had caused Captain Stede Bonnet to make
sail and away.
A king's ship or some other hostile force might have compelled him to
slip his cable in haste, reflected Jack as he descended to the shore of
the bay. It was most unlike the chivalrous Stede Bonnet to abandon two
of his faithful seamen without an effort to succor them. Endeavoring to
comfort himself with this surmise, the sorely disappointed boy paced the
sand far into the night and gazed in vain for the glimmer of a fire or
the spark of a signal lantern in a ship's rigging. He could not bear to
think of the dark prospect should no help betide him.
Some time before day he was between waking and sleeping when a queer
delusion distracted him. Humming in his ears was the refrain of a song
which was both familiar and hauntingly pleasant. It seemed to charm away
his poignant anxieties, to lull him with a feeling of safety. He
wondered if his troublesome adventures had made him light-headed. He
moved not a muscle but listened to this phantom music and noted that it
sounded louder and clearer instead of fading away. And still he refused
to believe that it was anything more than a drowsy mockery.
At length a vagrant breeze brought him a snatch of this enjoyable
chorus in deeper, stronger volume and he leaped to his feet with a
shout. It was no hallucination. Lusty seamen were singing in time to the
beat of their oars, and Jack Cockrell knew it for the favorite song of
Stede Bonnet's crew. He could distinguish the words as they rolled them
out in buoyant, stentorian harmony:
"An' when my precious leg was lopt,
Just for a bit of fun
I picks it up, on t'other hopt,
An' rammed it in a gun.
'What's that for?' cries out Ginger Dick,
'What for? my jumpin' beau?
Why, to give the lubbers one more kick,'
_Yo, ho, with the rum below!_"