THAT remark of Edith Van Tromp's, to the effect that the illusions
would all be swept away, had its confirmation before we had tholed
through the first week of our island captivity. Little by little the
masks slipped aside, and some of the revealments of the true character
hiding behind them--some of the revelations, but not all--were grimly
illuminating.
Before the week's end I saw the major slyly slip the last box of the
precious cigars under his coat when he thought no one was looking and
go off to hide it in a shallow hole scooped in the dry sand of the
beach edge at a safe distance from the camp. Later, I came upon him
as he was burying a couple of bottles of the diminishing supply of
liquor in the same place--and he lied to me and said he was digging for
shell-fish.
Two or three days earlier than this, Holly Barclay had taken to his
hammock bed in a fit of purely imaginary illness, exacting constant
attendance and pampering in which he made a toiling slave of his pretty
daughter. When the pampering began and continued with no sign of
abatement in the querulous demands Barclay was making upon Madeleine,
Van Dyck grew gloomy and snappish, and I knew that the day was only
postponing itself when Bonteck would flame out at the sham invalid and
tell him exactly and precisely what a selfish malingerer he was.
Still lower in the unmasking scale came Ingerson--the real
Ingerson--who had lapsed into a sullen barbarian; unshaven, unbathed,
and with the coarse warp and woof of him showing at every threadbare
seam. What time he had free access to the liquor, he drank himself
ugly at least once in every twenty-four hours; and when Mrs. Van Tromp
finally shamed him out of his daylight attacks upon the liquor chest,
he took to raiding it after the camp was asleep, keeping this up until
one night when he found that the remainder of the bottled stuff had
disappeared. After this he became a morose threat to everybody, and
even Mrs. Van Tromp ignored his millions and turned a cold shoulder
upon him.
Three nights after his unsuccessful effort to turn up another bottle of
whiskey in the stores, the drink maniac tried it again, and this time
Van Dyck awoke and caught him at it.
"Looking for something you haven't lost, Ingerson?" he said, speaking
quietly to keep from disturbing the others.
Ingerson backed out of the palmetto-thatched store shelter and whirled
upon Van Dyck with a face which, as the firelight showed it to me, was
that of a devil denied.
"Where have you hid it?" he demanded hoarsely. "Tell me, or I'll wring
your damned neck!"
Van Dyck's smile was almost as devilish as Ingerson's teeth-baring
snarl.
"You needn't make a racket and wake the camp," he said in the evenest
of tones. "I did hide it, and it was partly to give you a decently
fair chance. Come with me." And he got up and the pair of them
disappeared among the palms.
Not trusting Ingerson any more than I would have trusted a snake, I
rose silently and followed them into the shadows, coming in sight of
them again as they entered a little open glade on the opposite side of
the island. Ingerson had halted and was gesticulating angrily.
"I want to know here and now what you meant by that 'decent chance'
break you made at me!" he was saying. "If you mean Madge Barclay, I can
tell you right off the bat that you're a dead one!"
"We will leave Miss Barclay quite out of it, if you please," said
Bonteck, still apparently as cool as Ingerson was hot. "You want
liquor, and I've brought you here to give it to you."
"We'll settle that other little thing first," Ingerson broke in
truculently. "You put up this winter cruise, that you've bungled and
turned into a starvation picnic, with the notion that you were going to
corner the market for yourself, I suppose. I'm here to tell you that
you lose out. Barclay makes this deal without any brokers, and I hold
an option on him."
"You will have to make that part of it a little plainer, I'm afraid,"
said Van Dyck; and now there was a dangerous softness in his voice.
"You can have it straight, if you want it that way. Barclay's in a hole
for money; he's always in a hole. I've agreed to pay him out, once for
all, and he's accepted the bid."
"And the price?" queried Bonteck gently--very gently.
"You can ask Madge about that," was the surly rejoinder. And then: "Get
a move: where have you hid that whiskey?"
"You shall have the whiskey presently, Ingerson; but first I'm going
to give you something you've been needing a good bit worse for a long
time. Put up your hands, if you know how!"
It was a very pretty fight, out there in the moonlit glade, with the
camp far enough removed to make the privacy of it safe, and with no
ring-side audience, so far as either of the combatants knew, to hiss
or applaud. Ingerson was no coward, neither was he lacking in bull
strength, nor in the skill to make fairly good use of it. Though he
went in at the beginning with a handicap of blind rage, the first few
passes steadied him and for a minute or so it looked as if Bonteck had
taken on a full load.
But, as a very ordinary prophet might have foretold, Ingerson's late
prolonged soak--for it was nothing less--presently got in its work.
Twice Van Dyck landed swinging body blows; and though neither of
these would have winded a sober man, the second left Ingerson gasping
and with his jaw hanging. I thought that settled it, and it did,
practically, though the bully was still game. Handling himself as
coolly as if he were giving a boxing lesson on a gymnasium floor, Van
Dyck landed again and again, and each blow was sent home with an impact
that sounded like the kick of a mule.
Ingerson stood up to it as long as he could, and when his wind was
gone he went into a clinch. Bonteck broke the clinch with a volley of
short-arm jabs that was little less than murderous, and when he was
hammered out of the clinch, Ingerson staggered and went down. I looked
to see him stay down, but he didn't. After a moment of breath-catching
he was up and at it again, and it took three more of the well-planted
body blows to drive him into a second clinch. As before, he failed to
pinion Van Dyck's right arm, and I made sure he tried to set his teeth
in Van Dyck's shoulder.
At this, Bonteck shifted his short-arm jabs from the ribs and swung
upon the unguarded jaw; whereupon Ingerson lost his grip and curled up
on the ground like some huge worm that had been stepped on.
Van Dyck stood over him, breathing hard.
"Have you had enough?" he demanded; and when the vanquished one made
some sort of grunting acknowledgment, Bonteck brought water from the
near-by spring in a folded leaf of a giant begonia and held it while
Ingerson struggled to his knees and bathed the battered jaw.
"Now I'll get you your whiskey," said Van Dyck shortly; and leaving
Ingerson to dabble his hands in the cooling water, he went aside into
the jungle, returning after a minute or so with a case-bottle. "Here
you are," he said, giving the bottle to the beaten bully; "take it and
make a brute of yourself, if that's what you want to do." And then I
had to hurry to be before Bonteck in the camp clearing; to be in my
place beside the handful of night fire before he should return and
catch me out of it. For I had no notion of marring the perfect joy of
victory which I knew must be filling his soul.
After this there were other days merging slowly into weeks; days of
back-slippings into deeper depths of the primitive, a retrogradation
in which we all participated more or less; days in which we stolidly
maintained the signal fires at either extremity of the island and wore
out the dragging hours as best we could, scanning the horizon for the
coming sail of rescue, though each succeeding day with less hope of
seeing it, I think.
More and more markedly the conventions withdrew into a past which was
daily growing to seem more like life in a former avatar than a reality
once ours to possess. From merely slipping aside now and again, the
masks were carelessly dropped and suffered to remain where they fell.
Seen in the new perspective, there were many surprising changes, and
not all of them were disappointing. For example: Mrs. Eager Van Tromp,
in her normal state a good lady driven to distraction by her efforts
to hold her footing on the social ladder and so to marry her daughters
adequately, became, _en séquestre_, the good-natured, plain-spoken
mother of us all, and a past mistress in the fine art of camp
cooking--a specialty in which she was ably seconded by all three of her
daughters, also, when she would permit it, by Mrs. Sanford, Annette
Grey and Conetta.
Courageous fortitude best describes the change that had come over
Madeleine Barclay. With her irritable father to placate and wait upon,
and with Ingerson's attitude toward her coming to be that of blunt
possessorship, she was by turns the patient nurse to the malingerer
and the cheerful heartener of the rest of us. Never, in all those
depressing days of hope deferred, did I hear her complain; and always
she had a steadying word for the despairing ones: if a ship didn't come
for us to-day, it would come to-morrow, and into the most dejected she
could put new life--for the moment, at least.
In John Grey and Annette, and in the professor and his wife, the
changes were the least marked. For the newly married couple nothing
much seemed to matter so long as they had each other. Once or twice,
indeed, I surprised Grey with a look in his eyes that told of the dread
undercurrent that must have been underlying his every thought of the
future and what it might hold for Annette, but that was all. And as
for the older couple--well, perhaps they had attained to a higher and
serener plane than any to which we younger ones could climb. Day in and
day out, when he was not doing his apportioned share of the common camp
tasks, the professor was immersed to the eyes in a study of the lush
flora of the island, thumbing a little pocket Botany until its leaves
were worn and frayed with much turning. And where he wandered, his wife
wandered with him.
In Miss Mehitable, too, a transformation of a sort was wrought. For
many days she held sourly aloof and had bitter words for Van Dyck, and
black looks for me when by any chance I was able to deprive her for a
time, long or short, of Conetta's caretaking and coddling. But with the
lapse of time I fancied that even this crabbed lady was beginning to
lose her sense of the mere money distinctions, and I was rash enough to
say as much to Conetta on a day when I was so fortunate as to secure
her for a companion in the signal-fire watch which Bonteck still made
us maintain.
"You shouldn't say such things about poor Aunt Mehitable," was the
reproof I got. "This is a very terrible experience for her--as it would
be for any woman of her age--and she is really more than half sick."
"Don't mistake me," I made haste to say. "I meant it wholly in a
congratulatory sense."
"She has changed," Conetta admitted, adding: "But dear me! we have all
changed."
"'All the world's queer, excepting thee and me, and sometimes
even thee's a little queer'," I quoted. "What changes have you
remarked--particularly?"
"For one, Major Terwilliger is just a selfish, peevish old man, utterly
impossible to live with," she said calmly.
"Amen to that. Yet, one of these days you will probably have to reckon
with him as a member of your household. Go on."
She went on, paying no attention to what I had said about householding
the major.
"The professor is a dear, just as you'd expect him to be, and so is
Mrs. Professor. Annette is as brave as brave, and the way she is
keeping up is only equaled by Jack's adorable care of her, which is at
the bottom of his constant breezy assurances that each day will be the
last of our Crusoeing."
"And Billy?" I prompted.
"Billy is a dear, too. He has changed less than any one, I think.
Yesterday, at supper-time, he nearly broke my heart. Perhaps you
remember that he got up and went away while we were eating, saying that
he'd forgotten something. A few minutes later I went back to the spring
to get some fresh water for Aunt Mehitable and found him sharing his
supper with Tige. He'd heard what Major Terwilliger had said about our
wasting food on the dog when we'd probably need it ourselves. Wouldn't
that make you weep?"
"The dog is much more worthy of his rations than the major is of what
he consumes," I averred. "Tige is at least willing to do his best if
anybody will show him how. Any more transmogrifications?"
"Lots of them. Possibly you've noticed that Mrs. Van Tromp no longer
tries to shoo Billy away from Edie. That's a miracle in itself. Then
there is Madeleine: I have always thought her rather--um--well, you
know; rather stand-offish and maybe a bit self-centered. Dick, she is
an angel! The way she devotes herself, body and soul, to that father of
hers, and still finds time and the heart to chirk the rest of us up, is
beyond all praise."
"You can't get a quarrel out of me on that score," I returned.
"Madeleine is all that you say she is, and more. As for her father, I
guess we can pass him up. Between us two, he is no more sick than I am.
And I don't believe he has changed a particle; we are merely coming to
know him better as he really is, and always has been."
"I have known him for a long time," Conetta said thoughtfully. Then she
agreed with me: "We'll leave him out; he cancels himself on the minus
side of the equation, as you used to say of certain people we knew in
the old days at home."
I wasn't half sure enough of myself to be willing to have her drag
in the old days, so I urged her to go on with her cataloguing of our
fellow castaways, saying: "You haven't completed the list yet."
"There is one more to be omitted--Hobart Ingerson," she said soberly,
with a shadow of deep disgust coming into her eyes.
"Will Madeleine omit him?" I asked quickly.
"If she doesn't--after what we've been compelled to see and feel and
endure! Dick, it's dreadful; simply dreadful!"
"Yet she will marry him," I insisted--purely to hear what my companion
would say to that.
"It is unbelievable. What possible motive could she have in doing such
an unspeakable thing?"
"A few minutes ago you called her an angel; perhaps it will be the
angelic motive. Her father needs money; needs a very considerable sum
of money, and needs it badly. She knows of the need--though I think she
doesn't know the immediate and exciting cause of it--and she also knows
that Ingerson is willing to buy and pay."
"How perfectly horrible!" said my watchmate, with a shudder. And then:
"What a pity it is that Madeleine's money was all swallowed up in that
bank failure out West."
I smiled when she said that. Madeleine's fortune hadn't gone in any
bank failure, neither out West nor back East. This was only another of
Holly Barclay's plausible little fictions.
"You mean?--" I suggested.
"I mean that if she had money of her own she might buy her freedom. I
imagine it is purely a financial matter with Mr. Holly Barclay. If she
could only find some of the Spaniards' gold--find it for herself so
that it would belong to her.... Wouldn't that be splendid!"
This was something entirely new to me, and I said: "What gold is this
you are talking about?"
She looked around at me with wide-open eyes.
"Why--haven't you heard?" Then: "Oh, I remember; Bonteck was telling
us the story last evening, while you and the professor were out at the
other signal fire." And thereupon she repeated the old tale of the
siege and wreck of the Spanish galleon in Queen Elizabeth's reign, with
the tradition of the hidden treasure whose hiding place the survivors
had refused to betray--paying for their refusal with their lives.
"Of course, that is only a sea yarn--one of the many that are told
about those old days and the doings in them," was my comment. "You knew
that while you were listening to it, didn't you?"
"Oh, yes; I supposed it wasn't true. I kept telling myself that Bonteck
was only trying to start some new interest that would keep us from
going stark mad over this wretched imprisonment, and the watching and
waiting that never amounts to anything. It's serving a purpose, too.
Most of the young ones are turning treasure hunters--going in couples.
Jerry Dupuyster was trying to persuade Beatrice to slip away just as we
left the camp. I heard him."
That small reference to Jerry and his disloyalty--which was becoming
daily more and more apparent, and which I may have omitted to
mention--moved me as one of the Yellowstone Park geysers is said to be
moved by the dropping into it of a bar of soap.
"One of these fine days I'm going to beat Jerry Dupuyster until his
best friend wouldn't recognize him," I said savagely.
Conetta laughed; the silvery little laugh that I was once besotted
enough to believe that she kept especially for me.
"There goes your temper again. That is one thing that hasn't changed,"
she said. And then: "Poor Jerry! You'd have to have one hand tied
behind you, wouldn't you?--just to be reasonably fair, you know."
There had been a time when I should have admitted that her gibe hit the
mark, but that was before the transformed--or transforming--Jerry had
been revealed to me.
"Nothing like that," I said. "He may not have confided it to you, but
Jerry is a man of his hands. Hasn't he ever shown you the medal he won
in England?"
She shook her head. "There are lots of things Jerry hasn't shown
me--yet."
"Well, he has the medal, and it says he was the top-notcher in his
class in some London boxing club. I give him credit for that; but just
the same, there have been times during the past few days when I've had
a curious longing to see how near I could come to throwing him bodily
across the lagoon."
Again she said, "Poor Jerry!" and had the calm assurance to ask me what
he had done to incur my ill will.
"Done!" I exclaimed. "What hasn't he done? If he thinks he is going to
be allowed to play fast and loose with you for a chit of a girl like
Beatrice Van Tromp----"
Once more her silvery laugh interrupted.
"Beatrice will be twenty-three on her next birthday. She is quite well
able to fight her own battles, Mr. Dickie Preble."
"Oh, confound it all; you know what I mean!" I fumed hotly. "He has
asked you to marry him, hasn't he?"
"He has," she replied quite calmly.
"Well, isn't that enough?"
"Don't be silly," she said. "You must try to control that dreadful
temper of yours. You're miles too touchy, Dickie, dear."
That remark was so true that I was constrained to wrench the talk aside
from Jerry and the temperamental things by main strength.
"This treasure-hunting business," I said. "I'm wondering if that is
what Bonteck has had on his mind? He has been acting like a man half
out of his senses for the past few days. Surely you have noticed it?"
"Yes; and I've been setting it down as one of the most remarkable of
the changes we have been talking about. You know how he was at first;
he seemed to take everything as a matter of course, and was able to
calm everybody's worries. But lately, as you say, he has been acting
like a man with an unconfessed murder on his soul. I was so glad when
he told us that galleon story last night. He was more like himself."
"He feels his responsibility, naturally," I suggested, "and it grows
heavier the longer we are shut up here. While I think very few of us
blame him personally for what has happened to us, he can't help feeling
that if he hadn't planned the cruise and invited us, the thing wouldn't
have happened at all."
"Of course; anybody would feel that way," she agreed, and after that
she fell silent.
The weather on this day of our morning watch under the western
palm-tree signal staff was much like that of all the other days;
superlatively fine, and with the sun's warmth delightfully tempered by
the steady fanning of the breeze which was tossing miniature breakers
over the comb of the outer reef. Conetta's gaze was fixed upon the
distant horizon, and when I looked around I saw that her eyes were
slowly filling with tears.
We had been comrades as well as lovers in the old days; which was
possibly why I took her hand and held it, and why she did not resent
the new-old caress.
"Tell me about it," I urged. "You used to be able to lean upon me once,
Conetta, dear."
"It's just the--the loneliness, Dick," she faltered, squeezing the
tears back. "We've all been dropping the masks and showing what we
really are; but there is one mask that we never drop--any of us. We
laugh and joke, and tell one another that to-morrow, or the next day at
the very farthest, will see the end of this jolly picnic on Pirates'
Hope. But really, in the bottom of our hearts, we know that it may
never end--only with our lives. Isn't that so?"
I did not dare tell her the bald truth; that it might, indeed, come to
a life-and-death struggle with starvation before our slender chance of
rescue should materialize.
"I don't allow myself to think of that," I said quickly--and it was
a lie out of the whole cloth. "And you mustn't let your small anchor
drag, either, Connie, girl."
"I know; but I can't help hearing--and seeing. This morning early,
before most of them were up, I saw Billy and Jack Grey trying to make
some fishing lines and hooks; they were jollying each other about the
fun they were going to have whipping the lagoon for a change of diet
for us. And yesterday I happened to overhear the professor telling
Bonteck that he had made a careful search of the island for the edible
roots that grow wild in the tropics, and hadn't been able to find any.
Naturally, I knew at once what these things meant. The provisions are
running low."