"Of course, I couldn't swear to it," he said, "but it looks like a bit
of the flag halliards from the yacht. In other words, a bit of the rope
with which we tied the five pirates."
"Well?" I queried.
"I forgot to say that when I went to look for those fellows the next
morning, I didn't find any of these rope lashings. They didn't leave
even that much of a trace of themselves when they made off."
"Well?" I said again.
"I suppose you are pretty well convinced by this time that the
_Andromeda_ came back and took them off, and so am I. Taking that view
of it, you'll know what it means when I tell you that I found this
piece of knotted rope in the bushes a few yards from our camp--lost out
of somebody's pocket, for a guess."
Truly, I did know. It meant that the _Andromeda_ had come a second
time, and that, in addition to rescuing the survivors of the yawl's
crew, the rescuing party had crept up upon us; had been near enough to
massacre the lot of us as we slept after the strenuous exertions of the
forepart of the night.
"Um," said I; "why didn't they kill us all off while the killing was
good? Perhaps you can answer me that."
"There may have been reasons. Possibly the landing party--the second
one--wasn't big enough to attempt it with safety. Besides, what was the
use of their troubling themselves when the lapse of a little time would
take the job off their hands?"
Here was a ready explanation for all that had happened, or hadn't
happened, since the night of the storm. The mutineers were merely
giving us time to starve to death. Their spying expedition had
doubtless shown them that our stores were gone, and they could easily
argue that in a few days we, too, would be gone--at least gone past
the point at which we could interfere with anything they wished to do
on the island.
It was on a crabbing expedition when, as it chanced, I was paired with
the youngest of the Van Tromp trio, that Edith asked a question which I
knew must be trembling continually upon the lips of every woman in our
forlorn company.
"How long can it last, Uncle Dick? How long can we live on just
cocoanuts and hope, after the horrid great oysters are all gone, and
these creepy, leggy crabs have grown too cunning to let us catch them?"
"We must try not to dwell upon that," I told her. "Our problem is to
live from day to day."
"But there will come a day," she asserted. "I can see it in Billy's
eyes, when I can get him to look at me."
"Ouch!" I said, purposely letting a crab nip my finger for the sake of
making a diversion. But the tribe to which Miss Edith belongs rejoices
in its ability to cling, limpet-like, to a matter in hand.
"The Caribs were cannibals, weren't they?--in the long ago?" she went
on. "Are we coming to that, Richard Preble? If we should, Billy and I
will draw straws. We're both young and tender, you know."
"Hush!" I commanded; "that isn't a pretty joke." And later that same
day, when I was able to get hold of Billy Grisdale, I read the riot act
to him.
"You want to rub the O-Lord-pity-us look out of your eyes, young man,
and put a little more ginger into your conversation with Edie," I
suggested. "She is beginning to see things in the back part of your
brain, and that isn't good for little girl Crusoes."
"Take it to yourself!" he retorted spitefully. "I saw you looking at
Conetta not fifteen minutes ago with a scare in your eyes big enough to
set an innocent bystander's teeth on edge."
"I'll reform," I promised, "and so must you, Billy. Take Bonteck for
your model; not me."
"Bonteck's got something up his sleeve," he said morosely. "He's been
going through the bunch for weapons. Think of it--nine men of us here
three thousand miles out of reach of a policeman, and not so much as
one poor little potato-popgun among us."
This was a mistake on Billy's part, of course. We still had the
three pistols taken from the men we had waylaid on the night of the
storm, but of these no mention had been made to Billy or any of the
others, since to speak of them would have called for the story of the
night's adventures--a story which Van Dyck and I were still keeping to
ourselves.
But Billy's remark about the inquiry for weapons was news of a sort.
Had Van Dyck caught a fresh glimpse of the _Andromeda's_ smoke plume on
the horizon he was always sweeping with the field-glass?
"Bonteck wasn't trying to disarm anybody, was he?" I asked.
"Oh, no. He talked sort of vaguely about a scrap of some kind, and
being prepared for it; wanted to know if the professor and Grey and
Dupuyster and I would put ourselves under orders, and do what he might
tell us to, sight unseen. Said maybe he'd be able to explain more fully
a little later on."
I thought I saw what was in Van Dyck's mind. His secret was gnawing the
life out of him, and, sooner or later, it would have to come out. I
knew well enough that he was not hesitating from any cowardly motive;
it was rather because I had urged him to wait, holding out the hope
that a more auspicious time for the telling of the plot would come--or
at least that a less auspicious time than this starvation period could
hardly come.
In the waiting interval, and as in some sense still our host and
leader, he had been obliged to busy himself with something, and apart
from the daily effort to make the hardships less grinding upon all of
us, and the women in particular, he had organized the six of us men who
were willing into four-hour watches of two men each to patrol the two
beaches, urging our daily decreasing food supply as a reason for the
increased vigilance, and insisting that we must not allow the smallest
chance of discovery to escape us. If a ship were sighted in the night,
the two watchers making the discovery were to arouse the other four
instantly, and without giving a general alarm.
Though he had not confided it to me in detail, his plan was obvious
enough. He was still expecting another return of the _Andromeda_, and
was determined to make a desperate effort to regain possession of the
yacht when the chance should offer. For this attempt, hazardous as it
would surely prove to be, he could count definitely upon only six of
our nine. Barclay was certainly out of it, and the major's age exempted
him. Ingerson was a doubtful quantity--very doubtful from my point of
view--and I questioned if Van Dyck would call upon him or make him a
party to any plan that might be determined upon when the time for
action should arrive. Still, outnumbered as we must be, a recapture of
the yacht appeared to be our only hope. We might all starve a thousand
times over before any chance ship should sight our isolated island;
sight it and approach near enough to make out our distress signals.
Just how much or how little Van Dyck would confess to the others, if
a time should come when he would no longer be able to keep silence,
was a question that was puzzling me. To tell the assembled castaways
that there had probably been a real mutiny where only a sham one was
intended would cut no figure as news, since sixteen of our eighteen
already believed it to have been real. That being the case, the only
encouraging thing to be revealed was the burial of the golden hoard,
and the reasonable hope it gave us that the _Andromeda_ would come
back, sooner or later, in order to search for it.
As to this, however, I was quite confident that Bonteck would never go
so far as to tell the others about the gold planting. That he would
publish the bald truth about his generous and lover-like little plot,
the object of which was to enable Madeleine Barclay to buy her freedom
of choice in matters matrimonial, was simply unthinkable. And if the
gold-burying episode were to be left out of his confession, in what
other manner could he account to the others for his belief that the
yacht would eventually return?
As it came about, the answers to all these questioning reflections were
already marshaling themselves for a descent upon us at the moment when
I was undertaking to show Billy Grisdale that a man's eyes should be
kept decently shuttered when his brain is conjuring up pictures of the
terrible things that may happen to the loved one.
On this same evening Professor Sanford and I were paired to take the
first watch for the patrolling of the beach, and at eight o'clock we
set out from the camp in the glade, leaving the other members of our
Crusoe company sitting around the dying embers of the cooking fire.
Following the regular sentry-go routine, Sanford and I parted at the
camp; he was to take the south beach and I the north, and we were to
meet at the sandspit in which the island terminated to the eastward. As
I tramped along upon my solitary watch round I was sorrier than ever
for Van Dyck. All that day he had been going about like a man with a
dozen murders on his conscience, and it was plain to be seen that each
added day--days in which he was obliged to see some of us actually
going hungry because we hadn't been able to gather enough to satisfy
eighteen normal and healthy appetites--was crowding him nearer to the
brink of the humiliating confession chasm. From advising him not to
tell, I was coming around to the opposite point of view and wishing
that I hadn't tried to stop him. As matters stood, he was like a man
facing a deferred surgical operation. It was true, the operation might
prove fatal; but there were opportunities for the dying of any number
of anticipatory deaths during the interval of suspense.
Skirting the northern edge of the island without seeing anything to mar
the mirror-like surface of the starlit sea, I was first at the sandspit
rendezvous by a good half-hour. Since there was no reason for haste,
and the sandy cape commanded a wide view of the watery waste in all
directions save one, I filled my pipe with the final shakings of my
last sack of tobacco, and after poking in the ashes of the neglected
signal fire and finding no live coals among them, I lighted the pipe
with one of the few precious matches we were hoarding, and sat down on
the sands to wait. In due course of time the professor appeared, a dark
figure trudging along aimlessly; and when he came nearer I saw that he
had his hands clasped behind him and was walking with his head down
like a person buried in the deepest thought--the very antitype of an
alert coast guardsman on the watch for a sail. When he descried me he
came over and sat down beside me, still thoughtfully abstracted.
"I was beginning to wonder what had become of you, Professor," I said,
merely to start things going.
"Yes; I was detained. Mr. Van Dyck called me back shortly after you
left," he explained half-absently. Then he opened up: "Mr. Preble, I
have been listening to a most astounding--er--confession, I suppose you
might call it. I wonder if you know what it is?"
"I do," I answered shortly. "Van Dyck has been telling you that a
harmless little comedy planned by him to break the monotony of our
cruise has turned into a potential tragedy, with all the attendant
hardships and horrors."
"You are quite right. He was very manly about it, and he blames himself
unsparingly. It was an exceedingly difficult thing for him to do--to
tell us of it. He realized fully that the present conditions must make
any explanation seem wretchedly inadequate."
"They do," I agreed, and then I asked the one burning question: "The
others, Professor Sanford? How did they take it?"
"A-a-hem-hem--h'm; each after his or her kind, Mr. Preble. The
women are pretty generally sympathetic. They see only the immense
responsibility which Mr. Van Dyck freely acknowledges, and are very
humanly and generously sorry for him. I wish I might say as much for
the men. Grey and young Grisdale are both loyal, though it was plainly
evident that Grey had to fight for his loyalty, since the unhappy
outcome involves his wife. Ingerson talked and acted like a surly
ruffian, as you would imagine; and Major Terwilliger's language was
scarcely less reprehensible. Dupuyster played the man. He rebuked his
uncle quite sharply and went across to grip Van Dyck's hand and to
say what a manly fellow might say in the circumstances. And Miss Van
Tromp--the second Miss Van Tromp--went with him."
"Of course," I said crustily--and made another mark on the score that I
meant to settle with one Gerald Dupuyster if we should ever attain to a
time when personal scores could be audited and settled. Then I reminded
the professor that he had omitted Mr. Holly Barclay.
"I wish to continue omitting him," was the reply, and the professor's
tone was a measure of his disgust. "Let it be sufficient to say that he
made his daughter blush for very shame with his puerile accusations. He
even went so far as to intimate that Mr. Van Dyck was not telling the
truth; that the entire affair was a deep-laid plot designed to involve
Miss Madeleine in some way."
"That was to be expected--from Holly Barclay," I said. "But you are
omitting one more: Professor Abner Sanford, Ph. D."
I was relighting my pipe with another of the precious matches, and in
the momentary flare the professor's plain-song face revealed itself.
There was a half-quizzical smile wrinkling at the corners of the quiet
gray eyes.
"Mrs. Sanford and I are Mr. Van Dyck's guests," he qualified. "But,
apart from that, I was content to wait and hear what might develop
further. As it appears, Mr. Van Dyck has not entirely lost hope. If
there were a real mutiny--and, indeed, there seems little doubt of
that--Van Dyck still has confidence in the resourcefulness of Goff, the
sailing-master. He insists that, sooner or later, the _Andromeda_ will
return."
In the little interval of silence that followed I was turning the
professor's story over thoughtfully in my mind. There had evidently
been no mention made of the gold-burying episode. Van Dyck had dodged
it very cleverly, it seemed, letting it be understood that his hope
of the yacht's return was based upon the loyalty, in the last resort,
of Elijah Goff. It was better that way. So long as the hope had been
definitely held out to the others, there was no need of terrifying the
women by telling them that if we should be lucky enough to regain our
ship it would be by hard knocks and a rather forlorn-hope fight against
overwhelming odds as to numbers and arms.
"There is still one vote outstanding, Mr. Preble--your own," said the
professor, breaking into my reverie.
"You have already taken that for granted," I returned. "If Bonteck
had confided in me before the fact--which I assure you he did not--I
should certainly have vetoed his plan for a fortnight's picnic on this
God-forsaken bit of coral in the middle of nowhere. Yet, as his nearest
friend, I can understand, perhaps better than any one else, why he
was impelled to do it. Also, I can understand that he had no reason
whatever to foresee the remotest possibility of any such tragic turn as
things have taken."
"Of course, of course; I think we shall all understand that after
we have duly weighed and considered." The professor had locked his
fingers over his knees and was regarding me thoughtfully. "Do you
know," he went on, quite as if the main problems had been worked out
and definitely wiped from the blackboard, "do you know, I am sometimes
a little regretful that I didn't learn to smoke tobacco in my younger
days? You gentlemen of the pipe and cigar seem to get so much comfort
out of it."
"It is never too late to mend--or mar," I told him; and with that
we got up to resume our respective sentry beats by which, under the
established routine, each of us would return to the camp end of the
island by the route over which the other had come.
When we parted it was with the agreement to meet again at the western
extremity of the island, and I ventured to call my watchmate's
attention to the fact that a lookout's duty was to look out.
"Why, bless me!--of course it is," he laughed. "Now that you mention
it, I remember that I wasn't very faithful on the way over here. I'll
reform, Mr. Preble, I will, truly." And he went on his way around the
north beach toward the bay of the galleon wreck.
It is probably a rare thing for a crisis in the affairs of a group
of nearly a score of people to turn upon so trivial a matter as the
tobacco habit. There was still an unburned dottel in my pipe, and I
could not think of wasting it. If I had not stopped and felt in my
pockets for my one remaining match while the professor was still a
trudging shadow on the white sands of the northern beach, the crisis
might have come and gone undiscovered by any soul of our eighteen.
For, just as I had found the match and was in the act of striking it,
the ghost-like bulk of a ship loomed silently in the starlight a short
half-mile to the eastward; a ship headed directly for the island and
showing no lights. It was the _Andromeda_ again.