_In Which a Pirate's Cave grows Interesting, and Two
Young Members of the Ethnological and Antiquarian
Club of St. John's, Undertake an Adventure under the
Guidance of Billy Topsail_
THERE landed in Ruddy Cove, that summer, two youngsters from St.
John's on a vacation--city schoolboys both: not fisher lads. They were
pleasant fellows, and were soon fast friends with Billy Topsail and the
lads of the place, by whom they were regarded with some awe, but still
with great friendliness.
"Hello!" the visitors exclaimed, when they clapped eyes on Billy.
"Where you going?"
"Fishin'."
"Take us, won't you, please?"
Billy Topsail grinned.
"Won't you?"
"I don't know," said Billy. "I 'low so."
They went to the grounds; and the day was blue, and the sea was quiet,
and Billy Topsail and the schoolboys had a marvellously splendid time;
so they were all friends together from that out.
Tom Call and Jack Wither were members of what they called, with no
little pride, "The Ethnological and Antiquarian Club of St. John's."
The object of this club of lads was, in the beginning, to preserve
relics of the exterminated Beothuk tribe; but to the little collections
of stone implements and flint-lock guns were soon added collections
of mineral specimens, of fossils, of stamps, of fish and shells and
sea-weeds, of insects, of old prints and documents--in short, of
everything to which an inveterate collector might attach a value.
Wherever they went in the long vacation, whether to the coast or to
the interior, not one of them but kept an eye open for additions to
the club collections; and, though much of what they brought back had
to be rejected, it was not long before they had the gratification
of observing an occasional reference to "the collections of the
Ethnological and Antiquarian Club" in the city newspapers.
All this accounts for the presence of Tom Call and Jack Wither in the
Little Tickle Basin, in the thick of the islands off Ruddy Cove, one
vacation day, and for their interest in a rusted iron mooring-ring,
which was there sunk in the rock.
"And nobody knows who put it there?" Tom asked, curiously fingering the
old ring.
"No," replied Billy Topsail, who had taken them over; "but they says
'twas the pirates put it there, long ago."
"Pirates!" cried Tom. "Do they say that?"
"'Twas me grandfather told me so."
It may be that pirates harboured in the Little Tickle Basin in the days
when they made the Caribbean Sea a fearsome place to sail upon. When
the Newfoundland coast was remote, uninhabited, uncharted, no safer
hiding place could have been found than that quiet little basin, hidden
away among the thousand barren islands of the bay. If, as they say,
every pirate had his place of refuge, the iron ring is some evidence,
at least, that a buccaneer was accustomed to fly to the basin when
pursuit got too persistent and too hot for him.
"Of course!" said Tom, when they were sailing back to Ruddy Cove. "How
else can you account for that ring? I bet you," he concluded, "that
dozens of pirates had dens on this coast."
"Now, Tom," said Jack, "you know as well as I do that that's just a
little too----"
"Well," he interrupted, "everybody knows that pirates used to come
here. You'll find it in the histories. It wouldn't surprise me to learn
that there is a cave around here."
"There is," said Billy Topsail.
"There!" cried Tom, his eyes shining. "I told you so!"
"'Tis a wonderful curious place, too," Billy went on. "You has t'
crawl through a hole t' get inside. Sure, the hole is no bigger than a
scuttle. You could close it with a fair sized rock. But once you gets
through, the cave is as big as a room. 'Twould hold a score o' men very
comfortable."
Tom gave Jack a meaning glance. Then he turned to Billy Topsail.
"Can you take us there?" he asked.
"I don't know as I could. I've only _heered tell_ they was a cave like
that."
"And you've never been there?"
"Not me."
Tom's face fell--fell so suddenly and to an expression so woeful that
Jack laughed outright, though he sympathized with Tom's disappointment.
"But I knows a man that _has_ been there," Billy continued. "He's the
man that found it. 'Tis like, now, that he's the only man that's ever
been inside."
"Then the place isn't well known?"
"So far as I can tell, nobody knows it but ol' Joe West."
When they ran Billy's punt to old Joe West's stage, at Ruddy Cove, that
night, Joe was inside, splitting the day's catch of cod. They broached
the object of their visit without delay. Would he guide them to the
cave at Little Tickle Basin? But Joe shook his head. The squid were in
the harbour, and the fish were taking the bait in lively fashion. The
loss of a day's catch was "beyond thinkin' of."
"Do you know the bearings?" Tom asked.
"T' be sure. 'Tis very simple t' get near the spot; but 'tis wonderful
hard t' find the hole. 'Tis all overgrown. You might hunt for a year,
I'm thinkin', an' never find it. When you does find it, it takes a deal
o' nerve t' crawl in. 'Tis that dark an' damp! You keeps thinkin' all
the time, too, that something will fall over the hole an' shut you in.
If you crawls through," Joe concluded, impressively, "be sure one o'
you stays outside."
"But we've no chart of the place," Tom complained.
"If you've paper an' a bit o' pencil," said Skipper Joe, "I'll draw you
one."
Here is what he drew:
[Illustration]
Skipper Joe, of course, carefully explained his drawing. "Does you see
where the arrow points?" said he. "Well, 'tis there. You gets the head
o' that little rock in line with the point, at high water, an' there
you are. The cliff is rough, an' covered with a growth o' spruce. The
hole is about half way up, openin' off a mossy ledge. You'll have t'
pry around a wonderful lot t' find it."
"What's it like inside?" Tom asked, eagerly.
"Well, they is a deal o' birch bark scattered around, an' a lot o'
broken rock. I saw that by the light of a match; but I was too scared
t' stay long, an' I haven't never been there since."
Billy Topsail agreed to sail the sloop to Little Tickle Basin on the
next day. Then the boys walked home by the road, much excited. Indeed,
Tom, who was of an imaginative and enthusiastic turn, was fairly
transported. No flight of fancy was too high for him--no hope too wild.
The chart passed from his hand to Jack's and back again a hundred
times. The crude, strange drawing, with its significant arrow, touched
all the pirate tales with reality.
"If it had been only a cave, without a rusted mooring-ring, it wouldn't
have been so much," said Tom. "But with the ring--_with_ the ring, my
boy--a narrow, hidden passage to a cave means a great deal more."
Jack asked Tom what he was "driving at."
"I think," said he calmly, "that there is buried treasure there."
Jack scoffed.
"Very well," said Tom; "but you must remember that these discoveries
come unexpectedly. They're _stumbled_ on. You can't expect to find a
sign-post near buried treasure."
That night they lay awake for a long time. Tom and Jack were
bed-fellows at Ruddy Cove. Struck by a simple idea, Jack awoke his
friend.
"Tom," said he, "I think we'll find something there."
"Spanish gold or English?" Tom asked, sleepily.
"It will be _something_," Jack replied. "Something we want."