ADVENTURES AHEAD
“Three of us,” replied Dave. “And all mighty glad to see you.”
“What is it? A picnic party? Well, I’m hanged!” said the voice, the
owner of which jumped out of the boat. He was a big, broad-shouldered
man, with a pleasant ring in his voice.
“Much obliged to you for calling,” said Tempest. “Hope we haven’t
inconvenienced you.”
“It’s a wonder we’re here at all,” said the big man. “I saw your beacon
as I was going below. Marooned?”
“Our ship had a bit of an argument with a rock out there,” said
Tempest, “and the rock won. We’d be glad of a passage out of this. You
in a hurry? There’s lots of stores worth taking.”
“Stores, eh?” said the big man, who proved to be the mate. “Guess I’d
better see the skipper about that. It’ll be daylight in a few hours.
You come off and see him.”
A dozen faces peered curiously over the side of the steamer as they
approached it.
“Bless my soul!” said the skipper, when Dave and his companions stepped
aboard. “What have we got here?”
Tempest explained briefly, thanked the captain for stopping, and
mentioned the stores.
“Why, yes, I’ll be glad to have them,” said the skipper. “We’re not
over provisioned. Those natives at Fiji wanted too much for their
things for my liking, so I only took enough to last till we hit
’Frisco.”
As soon as it was light the captain himself went off and inspected the
mass of stuff that had been landed from the _Manihiki_.
“Jer-usalem!” he said, “but this lot is worth a young fortune. Who’s
the real owner of it?”
“You’ll have to fight that out with the owners of the _Manihiki_,”
said Tempest. “May I ask if you’re calling anywhere on the way to San
Francisco?”
“A few places in Samoa, then Washington Island and Honolulu,” replied
the skipper.
Tempest smiled.
“That’s funny,” he said. “I was going to ask you to oblige us with a
passage at the expense of the _Manihiki’s_ owners, but since you’re
bound for Washington Island I think it would be much better if you
could sign us on as members of your crew till we get there.”
“Why, certainly. I can do that,” said the skipper. “What’s the idea?”
“Nothing much,” Tempest observed, “except that we might have a
little――er――business not so far from Washington Island; and though
we’re not stuck for funds, a bit of extra cash might come in very handy
when we get there.”
The captain displayed no further curiosity in the matter. He had
knocked about the South Seas too long to be surprised by the mysterious
movements of men there. He turned his attention to hustling out to the
ship all the miscellaneous articles which had to be got aboard and
checked; and long before midday his vessel was again heading for the
northeast.
“Do you know where we are going to get off this packet, Dave?” Tempest
asked as soon as they got the opportunity for a quiet chat.
“Not exactly,” the boy replied. “I heard you saying something about
Washington Island, but I never heard of it. What is the scheme?”
“I’m afraid they never taught you your geography very well,” said
Tempest, stuffing tobacco into his now well-worn pipe with an air of
great contentment. “Some people never can see a piece of luck when it
comes their way, even if it is sticking out half a yard.”
An idea flashed into the boy’s mind. Christmas Island was away to the
northeast. They were going northeast as fast as their engines could
take them.
“Are you thinking about the _Hatteras_?” Dave said in a low voice. He
was conscious of a little thrill even as he put the question. Hitherto,
their discussions about the treasure-ship had been more or less vague.
True, there had been wagging of wise heads and solemn discussions over
charts in smoky cabins, but they had always taken place many thousands
of miles from that mysterious island where the semblance of a camel’s
back loomed up over a lagoon. The subject had been interesting, but
intangible. Now, in a flash, it seemed different.
“Tell me what Washington Island has got to do with it?” Dave asked,
with a serious light in his grey eyes.
“Only this――that if we get off there, we shall be within something
like three hundred miles of the spot where your old mariner says the
bones of the _Hatteras_ are sticking up out of the sand,” Tempest
replied. “Even three hundred miles is a mighty long distance, in a
way, but it’s better than three thousand, and it looks to me as though
Old Man Opportunity was going out of his way to knock at your door a
second time. Do you remember that I once told you there comes a time in
everybody’s life when it’s worth while to go full steam ahead whatever
effort it costs? Fussy people, who get excited over every blessed thing
from sunrise to sunset, haven’t got any steam left in ’em when the big
chance bobs up. They fuss along just the same as they always have done,
but they haven’t got any punch to it. Now, it looks to me as though
this is where you and I should wake up.”
“Well, you know, Tempest, whatever you say, I’m with you.” A queer
sense of excitement was beginning to creep over the boy. It was only
at rare moments that Bruce Tempest dropped the mask of light-hearted
carelessness, and he was unquestionably serious now. “What do you
suggest?”
“I can’t say,” Tempest replied with a light laugh, seeing how intent
the boy had suddenly become. “Don’t let this make an old man of you.
We may be on a wild-goose chase all the time――but then again we might
not. And what we’ve got to do is to assume that it _isn’t_ a wild-goose
chase. We’ve got to try this thing out, somehow or other.”
“Well, there’s one thing,” Dave commented. “One might go to sea for
a hundred years and never get as near as three hundred miles to Lost
Island again.”
“That’s just my point,” said Tempest. “To tell you the truth, I can’t
see very far ahead at the moment. If we had a private yacht and plenty
of money, the thing would be simplified; but we haven’t too much money
between us, and our yacht is now rotting at the bottom of the Pacific.
That is as far as the _Mud Turtle_ ever got. Anyway, we’ve got arms and
legs, and Jim is going to stick with us.”
“By the way, Tempest,” Dave said, “has it ever occurred to you to
wonder whether that treasure really would be ours if we did happen to
find it?”
“It has, and it would,” the other replied. “I know what you mean――the
man who mined it turning up and claiming it and all that sort of thing.
Yes, I have thought of that, and I should think it’s about a million
to one that nothing of the sort could possibly happen after all these
years. I talked that over with old Lightning Grummitt, and he took
the same view that I do. No, laddie, put that right out of your mind.
Never cross your bridges before you get to them. The man who dug that
platinum up is as dead as mutton; and though I’m sure I should be only
too pleased to let him have his share if he did bob up, it just won’t
happen. If he were alive, don’t you think he would have moved heaven
and earth to get back to the wreck of the _Hatteras_ and rescue his
blessed stuff?”
“I suppose he would,” Dave agreed. “But if it comes to that, how do we
know that he never did go back to the _Hatteras_ and get it, the same
way that we propose to do now?”
“How do you know that pigs can’t fly when you aren’t watching ’em?”
Tempest expostulated. “How do you know the earth isn’t flat? How do
you know the moon isn’t made of green cheese? You’ve never been up to
see. The only thing we shall know definitely, if ever we do handle
the treasure, is that that platinum miner was too dead to go for it
himself.”
“There’s no getting away from that,” Dave agreed, now satisfied on the
subject.
During his watch below, Dave spent some time during the run to the
Samoan Islands writing to his father, knowing that Captain Hallard
must be growing anxious. He told how they had been cast away, and
wrote cheerfully about all the adventures he had had since leaving
Australia. Of the immediate future, however, he said very little, not
being sure himself of what was likely to happen.
“I am leaving this ship,” he added, “at Washington Island, with
my friend Bruce Tempest, and we may stop a week or two in that
neighborhood.”
Dave nibbled the end of his pen thoughtfully for a while. He was
wondering whether his father would look Washington Island up on the map
and connect his making a stop there with the old _Hatteras_.
“After that,” he went on, “I am surely coming home, as I want to see
you both again very much. I started out for just one trip away and
back, but it seems to have got mixed up somehow, doesn’t it? Ask Aunt
Martha to be ready to make me some flapjacks, as I haven’t had any
since I left Brooklyn.”
Knowing nothing of what was in store, Dave thought the time was not far
distant when he would be eating those flapjacks and proudly relating
his own stories of the sea to his father.
Tempest, however, did not seem to share that view. For him, he was
growing curiously serious. He rarely lost his old, bantering way, but
there were moments when he was unusually thoughtful. He was wrestling
with the problem of how one man, one boy, and one Kanaka were to
perform the prodigious feat they had set themselves on an extremely
limited capital with the best possible chance of success. It was not
an easy problem. It would be galling to get so far and not be able to
get any farther. And yet Tempest had the conviction that they would
find a solution to some of their difficulties. As to the treasure, his
mind was perfectly open on that point. To him the matter was merely an
interesting possibility. There were a dozen reasons why, even if they
ever did reach the end of this curious journey they were planning, they
would never find what they were seeking at the end of it; but the bare
possibility of success made it worth trying. And when Tempest did find
anything in life that he considered worth going after, he went after it
very hard.
The steamer made one or two calls on her way, and Dave was surprised
to find such signs of civilization in remote places like Apia, where a
trim little mail boat was just arriving, crowded with tourists. Even
here, Tempest was not unfamiliar with the sights. Once before he had
landed at Apia for a few hours, and now was able to show Dave around.
But the boy’s interest was not in the beautiful home of the Samoans for
the moment. The adventures that lay ahead filled him with suppressed
excitement. That they might be pretty desperate he knew: exactly
how desperate he could only conjecture. He was all agog to sight
Washington, from which point they would have to start shaping their
course in real earnest, and when the steamer cleared Apia at last for
that island he stared ahead at the blue, tumbled ocean as though trying
to read the riddle of the future.