IT was I who told Edie Van Tromp that the name, or legendary name, of
our island was "Pirates' Hope," and when she announced it at our first
camp breakfast it was acclaimed with a cheerful unanimity which went
far to show how, after a night's rest, we were able to make a jest out
of what had figured, only a few hours earlier, as a crude calamity.
After breakfast, Van Dyck, throwing off the lethargy which had
apparently bound him hand and foot when a little decision might have
turned the tables upon the mutineers, took his place energetically and
capably as the governor of our little colony. Under his directions a
signal was set at the nearer, or western, end of the island, enough
of the jungle was cleared to enable us to pitch the tents under the
shade of the palms, a cooking camp was established, and a rude thatched
shelter was built to protect the stores and luggage.
In these various industries there were only three idlers among the
men--the major, Holly Barclay, and Hobart Ingerson; and Edie Van Tromp,
volunteering to go with me to start a smoke fire at the signal cape,
was furious.
"Wouldn't that set your back teeth on edge, seeing those three
able-bodied gentlemen sunning themselves on the beach while everybody
else is getting blisters on their hands!" she flamed out, with a fine
disregard for the little grammatical inaccuracies. "I'd be ashamed!"
"You shouldn't deny the gentlemen the privilege of smoking their
after-breakfast cigars in comfort," I protested, grinning. "Perhaps,
after the cigars are all gone, and we come down to just plain pipes and
plebeian cut-plug tobacco----"
"I don't care! It's perfectly horrid of them, _I_ think. Mother got
us women together this morning while you men were fixing the tents,
and we all agreed to do the cooking, taking turns at it. When it comes
my turn, I shall tell those three loafing gentlemen that they can
undertake to wash the dishes, or go hungry!"
"Good!" I applauded. "You are a real, honest-to-goodness human woman,
under the skin, aren't you, Edie?"
She stuck out a pretty under lip at me.
"Did you ever, for one little fraction of a minute, doubt it, Mr.
Richard Preble?"
"No; it is only fair to say that I have never doubted it. You and Billy
are the real thing, whatever may be said for the remainder of us."
"Billy is a darling!" she declared enthusiastically. "Last night, when
those pirates rushed us with their guns, you know, I wanted to cry;
boo-hoo right out like a silly baby. It was just plain scare. A grown
man would have tried to comfort me, I suppose, but Billy joshed me and
made fun of me until I was too mad to be scared. Isn't it a thousand
pities that he's so young, and so--so----"
"So poor?" I finished for her. "It is; a thousand pities. But there
is hope on ahead, my dear child. Billy will outgrow his infancy some
time; and you mustn't lose sight of the fact that, so far as poverty
and riches are concerned, we all look very much alike, just now."
In such light-hearted banterings back and forth we put the quarter-mile
of beach behind us and got busy with our smudge-fire building at the
foot of the stripped palm-tree which carried one of Madeleine Barclay's
knitted shoulder wraps for a distress signal. With a few palmetto
leaves and bits of rotting wood to crisp and smoulder in the blaze we
soon had our smoke column erected; and beyond this there was nothing
much to do save to scan the horizon for the hoped-for sail.
"Do you really believe we shall be taken off before long, Dick Preble?"
was Miss Edith's soberly put query, this after the fire was well
established, and we were doing the horizon-sweeping stunt.
"Do you want the bald truth, or some nice little hopeful fiction?" I
asked.
"You may save the fictions for Conetta and Madeleine and Annette, if
you please. As you were kind enough to admit, a few minutes ago, I am a
woman grown."
"Then I shall tell you plainly, Edie. I know this island. It is quite
some distance from the nearest of the steamer lanes. It may be a long
time before any one finds us."
She was silent for a little while, but the resolute, girlish eyes were
quite unterrified. When she spoke again it was of a different matter.
"Dick," she began earnestly, "do you believe there is anything more
than foolishness at the bottom of all the talk we hear about a woman's
intuition?"
"All sober-minded people admit that there is, don't they?" I said.
"There is something behind all this that is happening to us," she
asserted gravely; "something that I can feel, and can't grasp or
understand. It is as real to me as the breeze in those palms, or this
staring sunshine, and is as intangible as both."
"You have been talking with Conetta," I said shortly.
"About this? No, I haven't. What makes you say that?"
"No matter; go on with your intangibility."
"This sudden mutiny and the way it was hurled at us: it is all so
strange and unaccountable. Who ever heard of the sailing-master of a
private yacht turning pirate? And especially a dear, cross old Uncle
Elijah, whose ancestors probably came over in the _Mayflower_?"
"Is Bonteck saying that Goff headed the mutiny?" I asked.
"He is letting the others say it, which is just the same."
"As you say, it is fairly incredible. Yet the fact remains. We are
here, and the _Andromeda_, with Goff on board, has vanished."
"I know; but the mystery isn't to be solved in any such easy way as
that. What possible use can Uncle Elijah or his crew of Portuguese and
mixed-bloods make of the _Andromeda_, which is probably known in every
civilized harbor of the world as Mr. Bonteck Van Dyck's private yacht?"
I hesitated to tell her the story of the treasure-carrying. That was
Van Dyck's secret, so long as he chose to make a secret of it.
"As to the object of the mutiny, we are all entitled to a guess," I
said. Then I offered one which was plausible or not, as one chose to
view it: "Suppose we suppose that some one of the Central or South
American countries is on the edge of a revolution; that isn't very hard
to imagine, is it?"
"No."
"Very well. The sharpest need of the rebels in any revolution is for
arms and ammunition; next to this, a fast ship to carry the arms
and ammunition. If there should happen to be money enough in the
revolutionary war-chest, isn't it conceivable that even an Uncle Elijah
might be tempted?"
She turned and looked me squarely in the eye.
"Is that your guess, Dick Preble?" she demanded.
"It is as good as any, isn't it?" I replied evasively.
When she said: "It doesn't satisfy me; it is too absurd," her
repetition of Conetta's protest of the previous night was almost
startling.
"There are times when you women are almost uncanny," I told her, but
she merely laughed at that.
"The absurdity isn't my only hunch," she went on, after the
frank-speaking manner of her kind. "This Robinson Crusoe experience is
going to be a dreadful thing, in a way. There won't be any illusions
left for any of us, I'm afraid--any more than there were for the people
of the Stone Age."
That sage remark brought on more talk, and we speculated cheerfully on
the death of the illusions and what might reasonably be expected as the
results thereof. My chatty companion had a lively imagination, and her
forecastings of the changes that would ensue in the different members
of our colony were handsomely entertaining.
"And you," she said, when she had worked her way around to me in the
prophesying; "I can just see what an unlivable person you will become."
"Why should I be so particularly unlivable?" I asked.
"That awful temper of yours," she went on baldly. "With all the
civilized veneer cracked and peeling off--my-oh!"
Now it is one thing to be well assured, in one's own summings-up,
of the possession of a violent temper, and quite another to be told
bluntly that the possession is a commonly accepted fact among one's
friends and acquaintances. Edie Van Tromp's assertion of the fact as
one that had--or might have been--published in the newspapers came with
a decided shock.
"Am I as bad as all that?" I protested.
"Everybody knows what a vile temper you have," she replied coolly.
"Anybody who couldn't get along with Conetta Kincaide without
quarreling with her------"
"Oh; so she has told you I have quarreled with her?"
"There you go," she gibed. "One has only to mention Conetta to you to
touch off the powder train. What makes you quarrel with her, Uncle
Dick?"
"What makes you think I am quarreling with her?"
"Hoo! I've got eyes, I guess. Of course, you've been decently polite to
her, but a blind person could see that it was just put on. The veneer
wasn't cracked then. I shudder to think what will happen when it gets
all cracked and peelly."