Though all these events took place more than fifty years ago, I have a
very perfect recollection of that drive. In those days there was not
much traffic on the Sussex roads; and we passed nothing on the way to
Slindon save a hay-cart and a brewer's wagon. On neither occasion did I
dare cry out for help, for Joshua Trust sat by the side of me with his
loaded pistol, pressed close against my ribs, in the pocket of his
sailor's pea-jacket. I never doubted for an instant that he would
shoot. I had then, it is true, little experience of the world; but I
could scarce fail to recognise that I was fallen into the hands of
desperate men who counted human life of little worth.
So I kept my silence upon the road, wondering all the time what was to
become of me, and, above all else, what Amos Baverstock would say when
he discovered that I had cast away my fragment of the map.
That he thought I had it still was plain enough, since he twice told
Joshua to keep an eye on me, lest I should throw it from the cart. He
was in a great haste to reach the woods at Slindon, where in springtime
the wild flowers are like a garden; and he had a good reason for this.
Indeed, in all my experience of Amos, I never knew him fail for want of
caution; and when a man is circumspect as well as fearless, he is an
enemy who cannot be trifled with.
It was the scoundrel's design, so I discovered, to reach the woods with
as little delay as possible, and there to wait until the evening, when
he could take the Portsmouth road under cover of darkness. There were,
at that date, many coaches on the highways; and Amos evidently thought
it wiser not to trust me.
So to Slindon Woods we went, and were there in no time, soon after noon.
They unharnessed the horse, and turned him out to graze; and whilst Mr.
Forsyth unpacked a hamper that was well stocked with provisions and wine
to drink, Amos took me by the shoulders, and looked me straight in the
face.
"And now, boy," he said, "I'll have no more nonsense from you--so
understand me, once and for all. It's an unwise thing to pry into my
affairs--I can tell you that. You know more about me already than I
care to think; and I tell you fairly, you had best mend your ways, if
you value life."
I was afraid of the look of him, of the hard glitter in his eyes and the
way in which his thin lips were tightly pressed together. And I was
more afraid still of what would happen when he discovered that I had
made away with my fragment of the torn map. My heart was in my mouth.
I felt as if I were suspended by a thread upon the brink of a precipice,
and that at any moment that thread would break and I be hurled into
eternity.
Fortunately, perhaps, I was not left long in such uncertainty; for no
sooner had Amos taken his hands from off my shoulders than he clapped
them together behind his back, and came out with the very question that
I feared.
"And where's the map, my boy?" said he.
I answered nothing.
"Give it up," he demanded, and held out a hand.
"I have not got it," said I.
At that his jaw dropped. He stared at me in amazement, not knowing
whether or not to believe me.
"Haven't got it!" he repeated. "What d'ye mean?"
And the way he rapped out those last few words made my blood run cold. I
saw, however, that I must make a clean breast of the matter, let it end
which way it would.
"I have not got it," said I, "for a simple reason; because I had thrown
it away before you caught me. And now, you know the truth, and can do
with me what you will."
The hunchback stood staring at me as if I were a ghost. His thin,
wrinkled face had gone a yellow or a greenish colour, and his little
eyes looked blacker and more on fire than ever. He kept working his
mouth about, as if he were chewing some of his vile tobacco; and, on the
whole, I cannot conceive an expression more menacing, a countenance less
prepossessing.
He came up to me, and searched my pockets; and whilst he was doing so, I
noticed that both his hands were trembling. He had then been joined by
both Trust and Forsyth, who stood on either side of him.
Amos, as he drew away from me, came out with an oath that I can never
write. Indeed, the swearing of this man was not the least of his many
sins.
"He has not got it!" he cried. "We've been fooled, Mr. Forsyth; and
that by a slip of a boy!"
I thought that he would kill me, then and there, beneath the shadow of
the trees in Slindon Woods. But, though Amos Baverstock often worked
himself into fits of ungovernable fury, he never was guilty of a foolish
action. For my life--though at the time I never guessed it--was of some
use to him. Not only did I know where I had hidden the torn map, but,
as like as not, I had looked at it, and might be able to remember the
names of some of the places that were marked thereon--knowledge for
which Amos would give much. Had it not been for this, I have little
doubt he would have put me out of the world.
They tied my feet together, in case I should endeavour to escape, whilst
the three seated themselves upon the gnarled surface roots of a great
oak tree, and examined their fragment of the map, discussing the
question openly, so that I overheard them and learned of the trick that
Providence had played us all.
For the map had been rent in twain, not by the hands of Amos Baverstock
and me, but by the sure and supple fingers of Almighty Destiny. Amos
had in his possession at least three-quarters of the parchment--he had
it all, indeed, except one corner, that which I had seized in my attempt
to wrench it from his grasp. And, as good luck had it, that one corner
contained the information of the greatest value: to wit, the exact
locality where the Greater Treasure was to be found.
As for the rest of the map, it carried you from the outskirts of what
may pass as modern civilisation to within a certain unknown distance of
the secret place. It put you on the right road, as it were, and then
left you--lost in the midst of a wilderness of doubt.
When Amos grasped the full significance of this, he jumped to his feet,
a perfect figure of fury, storming at me and swearing, using threats and
shouting of torture, if I did not then and there confess. But speak I
would not. Whatever happened, I was resolved to hold my ground, though
I was filled with grave misgivings.
For all that afternoon they badgered me, trying intimidation, bribery
and curses; and then, at last, they settled it amongst themselves that
they would take me with them into Portsmouth, and thence across the sea
into the very heart of a black barbarous country, where they hoped to
find the Treasure of the Incas.
It was then, whilst we waited in the woods for sunset, that I saw
myself, a lad of sixteen summers, launched upon a series of adventures,
among strange peoples and in wild, romantic lands--adventures such as
those of which I had often read, of the bold Spaniards who had followed
Columbus into a new and unknown world, and brave blades of the stamp of
Drake and Grenville, who--like John Bannister himself--were all men of
Devon. That I was to be one of a company so glorious seemed to me all
my heart could wish, though I went as a hostage with my life itself at
ransom.
In a strange fashion, in very truth, did I begin my travels; for I
journeyed that night to Portsmouth, not only bound hand and foot and
tied to the seat of the dog-cart, but gagged as well; so that, by the
time we reached our destination, I ached in every limb.
For three weeks we dwelt together in a lodging-house, patronised by
seamen, in a poor quarter of the town. The landlord--a fat, slovenly
fellow whose hand was seldom far from a pint mug or near a razor--was,
as I guessed, hand in glove with Amos; for he must have known that
throughout those three dreary weeks I was kept locked in a stuffy room,
where I had neither fresh air nor liberty, and no better fare than is
accorded to a convict.
I have said that we dwelt together, but this was not wholly so; for Mr.
Gilbert Forsyth, though he was often of our party, had taken rooms in
one of the best hotels. He was a gentleman somewhat fastidious in his
habits, with a nice taste in wine and clothes, though--as he was soon to
prove--he could rough it with the best of us.
Joshua, too, was seldom in our lodgings. It appears that he spent most
of his time in the neighbourhood of the docks, on the lookout for an old
shipmate whom he knew he could trust, with whom Amos could strike a
bargain.
Such a man was eventually found. Joshua brought him in, one evening,
and shortly afterwards Mr. Forsyth arrived, looking more than ever as if
he had just come out of a bandbox.
This fellow proved to be the skipper of a barque, due to sail in a few
days' time, bound for Caracas in Venezuela. She must call first at
Liverpool, to take on a cargo of cotton goods, but would touch at no
port upon the voyage but Fayal in the Western Islands, which are now
called the Azores.
All this fitted in exceedingly well with Amos's plans. As I was in the
next room when they talked the matter out, and they never troubled to
close the door, I know for a fact that Baverstock bribed the skipper,
and that Forsyth--who I suspected all along had undertaken to produce
the funds--paid him as much as fifty pounds down, quite apart from the
question of passage money, and there was more to come at the end of the
voyage.
Gilbert Forsyth, indeed, was a member of the expedition for no other
reason than that he supplied the sinews of war, else Amos had never
taken him into his confidence and agreed to forego a third part of the
loot. For all that, Forsyth proved himself a man of action and
resource, though he never looked it; and things would have gone worse
with Amos than they did, had he not had at his right hand one so capable
and cool throughout those wild, adventurous days.
For Joshua Trust was well enough in his way to strike a blow or carry a
camp-kettle across a mountain range that topped the clouds--otherwise he
was a bull-in-a-china-shop kind of a fellow, whose worth was in his
forearms and not his head.
But Forsyth was cast in a finer mould: a man of education, with tags of
Latin in the corners of memory, a sense of humour--subtle enough to be
lost upon both his strange companions--and a wonderful brain for
figures.
The man's laziness was all pretence and affectation. He always talked
as if he were half asleep, and yawned at intervals, screening his mouth
with a hand upon one of the fingers of which he wore a golden signet
ring; and yet, his brain was ever active, and he had the happy knack of
doing the right thing at the right time--as he had already proved to my
cost.
Even whilst I lay imprisoned in that dingy room in Portsmouth, Forsyth
returned along the coast to within a stone's throw of John Bannister's
cabin by the sea, and searched vainly for the fragment of the map which
I had thrown away. And that in itself was a bold thing to do; for the
police--to whom Bannister had described the appearance of both
Baverstock and Trust--had been told of my disappearance, and the
countryside, from Arundel to Chichester, was populous with printed
offers of reward.
For, all this time, my mother was well near distracted by anxiety and
distress. John Bannister called upon her, and tried in his own
straightforward way to set her fears at rest, and swore to her that he
would find me, though he had to search the world.
Of how well he kept his oath it is my task to write, and of much else
besides. For the barque, which was called the _Mary Greenfield_,
dropped her pilot off the Needles of the Isle of Wight, and with a fair
wind and under full canvas struck the open sea. And I, Dick Treadgold,
was on board, sea-sick that night as any full-grown man could be, and
sick at heart as well. For, when the white cliffs of dearest England
faded in the evening light, I realised for the first time that I was
alone, and there was no telling what the Fates held in store for me.