THE ISLAND
The men now went to work to get tackles on to the yards, in order to
hoist the long-boat over. This again ran into time, for the boat stood
in chocks, and was stoutly lashed to the deck; and before they could
remove her, they had to clear away the spare booms which were stowed on
top of her and clean her out. When they had her alongside, they passed
water and provisions and several gallons of rum into her, with other
matters of this sort, of which I hardly took notice. They also handed
down the shovels used for the little stock of coal that was carried in
the fore-peak, and several crows, handspikes, and whatever else they
could lay their hands upon that would enable many of them at a time to
dig up the soil.
Whilst all this was doing, I remained seated on the poop with Miss
Temple. I was now feeling better and stronger again, could think
rationally, and astonishment was worn out.
‘It is most unmistakably the island that Captain Braine named,’ I said
to the girl, speaking with my eye at the telescope. ‘I remember he spoke
of a clump of trees at the foot of which the treasure lies hidden.
Yonder are several clumps. Which one of them will it be, I wonder? and
will the money be there? What an astonishing romance will it prove,
should those sailors fall in with a booty of nearly two hundred thousand
pounds!’
‘What are they going to do, do you think, Mr. Dugdale?’
‘It looks to me as if the whole body of them were going ashore to dig.’
‘Are they not taking a deal of provisions with them?’
‘They may mean to make merry. After months of shipboard life, the touch
of the land will be grateful to the soles of their feet. Let them find
the gold! their transports will know no bounds; there will be some wild
skylarking amongst them before they come off, or I am greatly mistaken.
Would to God they would make themselves drunk, that I might run away
with the ship.’
‘Cannot that be done when they are on shore?’ she cried with an air of
exultant entreaty in her sudden leaning towards me as she spoke.
‘Yes, were an off-shore gale to come on to blow, I might contrive to
slip and let the barque storm out to sea before it. But in this weather!
They would be after me in a jiffy in their boat, and then God help me
when they got hold of me!’
A shade of paleness overspread her face, and she regarded me with a look
of consternation, as though violently affected by the fancies my simple
sentence had put before her. I sprang on the top of the hencoop to sweep
the sea-line with the telescope, but could nowhere discern the least
shadow of land. As I put down the glass, the carpenter came off the
quarter-deck, where, at the gangway, he had been busily shouting out
instructions and overseeing the work of preparing the boat, and
approached me. He held Captain Braine’s parchment chart, at which he
stopped to look for a moment when he was yet some paces distant.
‘Will ye tell me what’s your opinion of the weather, sir?’ he exclaimed,
in a voice whose natural gruffness and surliness were not to be
sweetened by the satisfaction that was merely visible in a small symptom
of respectfulness in his bearing.
‘I do not know, I am sure. This cloudless sky should be full of promise.
The mercury in the captain’s cabin promises fair weather.’
‘What do ‘ee think of letting them sails hang?’ said he, sending his
malevolent gaze aloft; ‘or shall we tarn to and roll ’em up afore we go
ashore?—though it’ll be a long job,’ he added, directing his eyes
thirstily at the island.
‘The ship is in your hands,’ said I.
‘Oh well,’ he exclaimed, as though gratified by my admission, and
sending a slow look round the sea; ‘we’ll let ’em be as they are for the
present. The anchor’s got a good grip, I allow; if so be as a breeze
should come along, we can send some of the men aboard to furl the
sails.’
_We!_ thought I, as I regarded him in silence.
‘My sight ain’t what it used to be,’ he continued; ‘yet I can see enough
of that there island’—and here he began to fumble with the chart he
held—‘to guess that this here’s a first-rate likeness of it. This,’ said
he, pointing with his square thumb at the mark in the middle of the
lagoon on the parchment, ‘is one of the bearings we’ve got to have in
mind to find out where we’re to begin to dig, ain’t it?’
‘I believe so,’ said I.
‘Didn’t ye put down the particulars of the spot in writing?’ he
inquired, looking up at me from the chart.
‘No,’ I answered shortly.
‘How many feet was the money hid away from the wash of the water?’ he
demanded.
‘It was in paces, I remember,’ I returned, ‘but the figure is entirely
gone out of my head. Wilkins should be able to recollect.’
He ran with a sort of dismay to the break of the poop and bawled for
Wilkins. The lad came half-way up the steps. The carpenter spoke to him
and then returned.
‘The young scowbanker don’t recall,’ he exclaimed. ‘He believes—a curse
on his believes!—that the captain spoke of four hundred feet. Was that
it, sir?’
‘I remember enough to make sure that it was not four hundred feet,’ I
answered.
He picked up the glass and levelled it at the island.
‘Which of them clumps of trees was it that the capt’n talked to ye
about?’ he asked whilst he looked.
‘He did not describe any particular clump. It was to be found by
measuring so many paces from the edge of the water of the lagoon yonder,
the pillar bearing something west, but what I can’t tell you. I treated
the story as a madman’s dream, and dismissed all the particulars of it
from my mind.’
‘We’ll have to try all them clumps, then, that’s all,’ said he, with a
hard face and a voice at once sharp and coarse with ill-subdued temper.
‘We’ll get the money, though it comes to having to dig up the whole
island. And now, sir, there’s nothen to stop us—the boat’s ready—if
you’ll be pleased to come along.’
‘I can be of no good to you,’ I exclaimed with an involuntary recoil;
‘you have hands enough to dig. I’ll stop here.’
‘No, if you please; we shall want you,’ he said, with a stare of dogged
determination.
‘I must not be left alone, Mr. Lush,’ cried Miss Temple, with a painful
expression of fear in her bloodless face. ‘If Mr. Dugdale goes, I must
accompany him.’
‘No, mem. You’re safe enough here. We must have Mr. Dugdale along with
us to show us what to do. For Lord’s sake, no arguments, sir! The
impatience of the men’ll be forcing them to taking you up in their arms
and lifting you over the side, if you keep ’em waiting.’
‘But am I to understand,’ I exclaimed, ‘that all hands of you intend to
quit the ship, leaving this lady alone on board?’
‘Joe Wetherly and Jim Simpson’ll remain,’ he replied; ‘they’ll keep a
lookout, and two’s enough with us men in hail of their voices. Now, sir,
if you please.’
The crew standing in the gangway were looking my way with signs of
irritation in their bearing. I merely needed to give one glance at the
carpenter’s face to satisfy me that temper, protest, appeal, would be
hopeless; that refusal must simply end in my being bodily laid hold of.
I was urged by every instinct in me to a policy of conciliation. To
irritate the fellows would be the height of folly; to provoke the
indignity of being seized and roughly thrust into the boat, the utmost
degree of madness. My resolution was at once formed.
‘I will accompany you, Mr. Lush,’ I said. ‘Get you gone on to the
quarter-deck whilst I say a few words to comfort my companion.’
He walked away to the gesture with which I accompanied this request.
‘Miss Temple, pray take heart. Wetherly is one of the two men who are to
be left. You will feel safe here with him on board until I return.’
‘Until you return!’ she cried, with her eyes full of misery and horror.
‘I shall never see you more!’
‘Oh no; do not believe such a thing. The men imagine I shall be of
service to them in lighting upon the spot where the gold is. They cannot
do without me as a navigator. They will bring me off with them when they
leave the island.’
‘I shall never see you again,’ she repeated in a voice of exquisite
distress. ‘Why could they not have left us together here?’
‘Now, Mr. Dugdale, if _you_ please,’ bawled the carpenter from the head
of the poop ladder.
I took and pressed her hand between mine, and then broke away from her.
What had I to say, what to offer, that she could convert into a hope? I
felt the danger of continuing to view her in her despair and
helplessness, for already it was producing in me a rage against the men
that must be suppressed at all costs. I turned to smile and to wave my
hand, and found her with her back upon me and her face buried.
Wetherly and the man who was to be left with him stood a little forward
of the main-hatch looking on. As I stepped to the gangway I called out:
‘Wetherly, and you, Simpson: I leave the lady behind me; she is alone.
You will see to her, men, I beg.’
Simpson gazed stolidly, as though not understanding me; indeed, there
was no countenance amongst the sailors from which all meaning appeared
to have been so entirely discharged as his. Wetherly smiled, and
flourished his hand with a significant glance. He would perfectly
comprehend that I had included Simpson as an excuse to appeal to him
only. Without another word I dropped into the main-chains and jumped
into the long-boat.
When the men had entered, there were ten of us in all. The boat was a
roomy, stoutly-built fabric, and her oars were almost as long as sweeps.
The barque’s quarter-boats would have been too small for this service;
for the ten of us made a body, and they had handsomely stowed her
besides with water and rum and provisions (as you are aware), not to
mention the sundries with which they proposed to dig the soil. I rather
wondered that they should have supplied themselves so hospitably, till I
recollected that Captain Braine had said there was no fresh water and
nothing to eat upon the island. The carpenter had no doubt remembered
this as a passage in the story which Wilkins had overheard and repeated.
It might be also that they intended to stay awhile on this island when
they had dug up the gold, to refresh themselves, with the substantiality
of land under their feet, for a day or two after their long months of
the heaving sea; in which case they would naturally convey what they
required at once, to spare themselves the trouble of a trip to the ship.
Their leaving Wetherly behind was due, I took it, to the indifference
and doubt he had exhibited from the commencement; possibly, they might
also have some notion, by requiring him to remain on board, to cheat him
of a portion of his share; and since they considered that two were
necessary to watch the barque, they would find a willingness to remain
in her only in the stupidest man amongst them, who, to be sure, was
Simpson. These were thoughts which hurriedly passed through my mind even
whilst the fellows were in the act of shoving off. There was neither
sail nor mast in the boat. Probably they considered that those things
would encumber the thwarts, whilst, in fact, there was no real need for
them, since the vessel lay within a very easy pull. Four fellows threw
their oars over, and the boat clumsily broke the smooth water to the
impulse of their blades.
When we were clear of the shadow of the barque’s side, I turned to look
for Miss Temple, and observed her seated in a posture of utter
despondency upon the skylight. I stood up and flourished my hat; but she
made no sort of response. She remained motionless, as though stupefied
and insensible. I resumed my seat, breathing hard with the wild mood
that possessed me; but I was not to be suffered to sit in silence. The
carpenter plied me with questions, which he only ceased that the others
might have a chance of making inquiries. Couldn’t I remember how many
paces it was that the captain had said? Would it be one hundred? Would
it be two hundred? Would I turn to and think a bit? A gent’s eddicated
memory was always better than plain men’s, who weren’t no scholards. If
the right number of paces wasn’t hit upon, it might take ’em a week to
find the spot. And what about the bearings? Couldn’t I recollect exactly
how the trees bore from that there pillar? Wherever the gold was, it
couldn’t lie deep hid, for there was but two men to bury it, and them
weak with shipwreck, and they wasn’t going all the way down to hell to
make sartin of a secret nook.
To all this I had to listen and reply as I best could. Yet it was talk
to put a fancy that had long haunted me—that had haunted me, I may say,
from the time of some of my earliest conversations with the
carpenter—into shape, out of which arose one instantly present keen
perception: that gold or no gold, they must be kept hunting for it!
It was a cloudless day; the sky a true Pacific blue, a mild breathing of
wind off the island; and the sun, that was already at his meridian,
flung a wide splendour upon the air that was without an insufferable
excess of heat. The long-boat floated into the lagoon, the bottom of
which showed like a pavement of white marble trembling through the blue,
glass-like translucency. I looked carefully about me, but could see no
signs of the hut which Captain Braine told me he had built, and out of
which he had crawled to find the Yankee surveying craft hove-to abreast
of the island. Neither were there any other relics of his shipwreck
visible: such as the bottles, casks, tins, and so on, which, according
to his account, he and his companion had landed from the brigantine. It
is true that a good many years had elapsed since the date of the wreck
as he had given it me, and in that time the island might have been
visited or swept by seas and hurricanes. The sailors did not appear to
heed the absence of all memorials of Captain Braine’s having landed
here.
‘The Spanish craft’ll have come ashore yonder,’ said the carpenter,
standing erect, referring to Braine’s story, and indicating by an eager
nod of the head the position of the stretch of lustrous beach that
looked northwards, but that was now invisible to us. ‘Where’ll be a good
place to land here?’
All hands were staring about them. The fellow named Forrest said:
‘There’s a bit of a tree there that’ll hold the boat secure. Better let
her lay afloat, Mr. Lush, ‘case of a change o’ weather and having to
shove off in a hurry.’
‘Ay, she’ll lie all right off that tree,’ exclaimed the carpenter. ‘In
oars, lads! Let her slide quietly stem on. I’ve heard of coral spikes
a-tearing of boats’ bottoms out.’
A few minutes later most of us were ashore, the boat lying quietly
secured by a line to a small but solidly rooted tree, and two or three
fellows in her handing out her freight of odds and ends to the others.
The feel of solid land under my feet was a singular sensation. I had now
been incessantly at sea for a time that was growing rapidly into six
months, and after those interminable weeks of heaving shipboard, the
immovability of this coral rock affected me as something in the greatest
degree novel. I sent a hurried glance around; but the eyes I had
strained from over the rail of the barque had acquainted me with every
material point of the island, and this closer survey yielded nothing
fresh. The margin of the beach of the lagoon went gently sloping up from
hard coral to a species of soil that appeared to possess some qualities
of fertility, for the tall coarse grass was very plentiful and of a most
vivid green. The few groups of trees were also richly clad, and the
bushes extraordinarily abundant. There were no signs of life of any sort
saving birds, of which a score or two were wheeling about in the air
over the northward fronting beach. The inland rise was a mere small
green acclivity probably not above thirty feet to the summit. All was
silent, desolate, lifeless; nothing to hear amid the brief intervals of
stillness among the men save the delicate noise of the soft wind amongst
the foliage, and the melancholy moaning of surf from the other side of
the island.
Everything was landed; the men seized hold of the various implements
they had brought with them to dig up the soil; the carpenter flourished
a shovel and called to me: ‘Mr. Dugdale, have ye no recollection of the
number of paces?’
‘None whatever,’ I responded.
‘What d’ye advise, sir?’
‘Measure a hundred paces, keeping yonder pillar on a line with that
clump of trees there, and then dig.’
‘Ay, but Wilkins overheard the capt’n say that the money was buried at
the foot of some trees,’ said Forrest. ‘A hundred paces ain’t going to
bring us near a tree.’
‘I remember nothing about the foot of some trees,’ I exclaimed.
‘What do _you_ recall?’ the carpenter shouted to Wilkins.
‘I thought I heerd something about the foot of trees,’ answered the
fellow, turning his pale meaningless countenance upon Lush. But Mr.
Dugdale’ll know best, of course.’
‘If the money be here at all,’ said I, ‘you may take it as lying hidden
somewhere in this space,’ and with pointing finger I indicated an oblong
surface one end of which went a little beyond the fourth group of trees,
whilst I defined the other as starting from about a hundred paces away
from the edge of the beach where the boat was.
Ten minutes were now expended in heated discussion. Where should they
begin? One or two were for leaving it to me and carrying out my
suggestions; others were for measuring two hundred paces and starting
there; whilst others were for digging at the roots of the clumps of
trees, taking them one after another.
‘See here, lads,’ cried the carpenter; ‘we han’t had anything to eat
yet. Better tarn to and get some dinner and grog. By that time we shall
ha’ settled what to do and be the fitter to go to work.’
This was a proposal which all hands found perfectly agreeable. They
flung down the implements they held, and in a very short time were
seated about the grass, sheath-knives in hand, making a hearty meal off
salt beef and biscuit and cheese, and tossing down pannikins of
rum-and-water. They invited me to join them, and treated me with all the
respect I could desire. Again and again, whilst we thus sat, I would
direct looks at the barque as she lay as it might seem almost within
musket-shot of us. The figure of a man paced the forecastle; but Miss
Temple was not to be seen. Once the carpenter, catching me looking,
exclaimed with a sort of enthusiasm in his voice: ‘Well, the little
hooker _is_ a beauty and no mistake. What a slaver she’d make!’
Commendation probably could not go higher in such a man. A beauty,
indeed, she looked; the reflection of her white sides floated under her
like a wavering sheet of silver; her canvas hanging in festoons showed
with the milk-white softness of streaks of clouds against the blue sky
past her; her rigging had the exquisite minuteness of hair. Would to
God, I thought to myself with a sudden heavy sinking of my heart, that I
were on board of her alone with Miss Temple, ay, with no other hands
than mine to work the ship! I should find the strength of half-a-dozen
seamen in me for her sake. Poor girl! and there arose before me a vision
of the Indiaman—a recollection of the proud Miss Temple scarcely
enduring to send a glance my way—— But this was a reverie that must be
speedily disturbed by the company I was in.
They had hoarsely debated until they had come to an agreement, and,
having concluded their meal, each man lighted his inch of sooty clay,
picked up his shovel or his crow, or whatever else had been brought off
from the barque, and marched to the nearest of the clump of trees, at
the foot of which they fell to digging. Every man was in motion: they
laboured with incredible activity, and with such faces of rapturous
expectation as again and again forced a smile from me, depressed,
anxious, miserable as I was. With my hands clasped behind me, I paced to
and fro, watching and waiting. Now that the island had proved an
absolute fact, I could no longer feel certain that the gold was a
madman’s fancy. Nay, I was now indeed imagining that it was all true,
and that Braine had fallen crazy through possession of his
incommunicable secret acting upon a mind congenitally tinctured with
insanity, and irremediably weakened yet by the horrible sufferings he
had undergone before he was cast away upon this spot. Yet never did I
glance at the barque without a prayer trembling from my heart to my lips
that the wretches might not find the gold. An old scheme, that this
unexpected lighting upon the island had quickened and given shape to,
was fast maturing in my mind, even while I paced that stretch of grass;
but the discovery of the money would render it abortive.
I watched the seamen with an interest as keen as their own, but with
hopes diametrically opposite. The soil was dry, stubborn, perhaps
through the intermingling of coral-grit and the coarse fibres of its
herbage. Yet there were many of them, and every man worked with
desperate energy, and presently they had dug up a good space to some
little depth. I awaited with a beating heart the exultant shout which I
might be sure the first man who turned up one of the yellow pieces would
raise. They continued to toil in silence. Presently the carpenter,
resting his chest upon his shovel, with the sweat falling in rain from
his crimson face, bawled out to me: ‘How fur down, d’ye think, we ought
to keep on a-digging?’
‘I would give up at two feet,’ said I. ‘Captain Braine and his friend
would not find strength to go much beyond two feet.’
One of the fellows plumbed with his crow, and, bringing it out, with his
thumb at the height of the level, cried: ‘It’s more’n two feet already.’
They dug a little longer, nevertheless; then a few curses ran among
them, and the carpenter, with a note of irritation in his voice, roared
out: ‘No good going on here. Try this clump.’ He walked over to it and
drove his shovel into the soil. The men gathered about him, and in a
trice were all in motion again.
This was a severity of toil that I knew must force them to break off
presently. Although I could not distinctly recollect the bearings of the
treasure as given by Captain Braine, I felt persuaded that he had named
the base of the group of trees which the fellows had just quitted as the
hiding-place of the money. If it were not there, then I might feel
perfectly satisfied it was nowhere else, and hope began to dawn in me
afresh. Their labour at the base of the second clump resulted in
nothing. They exposed a wide space, and went deep, but to no purpose.
The time had passed rapidly; I looked at my watch, and was astonished to
find it hard upon five o’clock.
All this while the sky had remained cloudless, and there was no hint
visible in any part of its countenance of a change in this softness and
tranquillity of weather. The light off-shore draught, however, had
shifted into the west, and at this hour there was a cool and pleasant
breeze, that brushed the breast of the sea into a surface of twinkling
ripples. The water of the lagoon trembled to it as it breathed laterally
athwart its face, and already the coral beach of this graceful
wide-mouthed inlet bore on the lee-side its stress of tiny breakers.
The sailors by this time were pretty well exhausted. The expressions
their faces wore, so far as they might be determinable amid the purple,
and perspiration, and hair of their dripping and fire-hot visages,
showed them full of irritability and disappointment. The carpenter
addressed them; I did not catch what he said, but as they came in a body
towards the part of the beach where I had been pacing or sitting whilst
they worked, I could hear them swearing and cursing, whilst they
grumbled and growled out their surmises as to where the money was
hidden, their eyes roving over the soil as they talked. Lush’s face was
hard with temper.
‘We’re agoing to send off some men to furl the lighter canvas,’ said he.
‘Ha’n’t got much opinion of this soil as holding-ground, and she’ll drag
with that weight of canvas loose, and blow away out of soundings, if we
don’t see to it.’
‘A very proper precaution,’ said I coolly. ‘You don’t mean to give up
digging yet, I suppose?’
‘Give up?’ he cried with his coarse sarcastic air, and frowning upon me
out of the rage my inquiry excited. ‘No; not if we has to dig the whole
island up, as I told ye.’
‘Very well. I’ll go aboard with the men in the boat. The money, if it is
hidden at all, will be hereabouts,’ said I, with a wave of my arm, ‘and
I can be of no further use to you.’
‘No, no; you’ll stop along with us, if you please,’ said the fellow.
‘Your recollection of the number of paces may come back to ye, and we
can’t do without you.’
I sent a look from him to the faces of the fellows who stood listening
near us, and without another word folded my arms, and with a spin of my
heel started off on a walk to and fro.