Month by month the _Fair Emily_ crept down south. The Great Bear and
other constellations gave way to the stars of the southern skies, and
Mr. Chalk tried hard not to feel disappointed with the arrangement of
those in the Southern Cross. Pressed by the triumphant Brisket, to whom
he voiced his views, he had to admit that it was at least as much like
a cross as the other was a bear.
As they got farther south he had doffed his jersey and sea boots in
favour of a drill suit and bare feet. In this costume, surmounted by a
Panama hat, he was the only thing aboard that afforded the slightest
amusement to Mr. Stobell, whose temper was suffering severely under a
long spell of monotonous idleness, and whose remarks concerning the sea
and everything in connection with it were so strangely out of keeping
with the idea of a pleasure cruise that Mr. Tredgold lectured him
severely on his indiscretion.
“Stobell is no more doing this for pleasure than I am,” said Captain
Brisket to Mr. Duckett. “It’s something big that’s brought him all this
way, you mark my words.”
The mate nodded acquiescence. “What about Mr. Chalk?” he said, in a low
voice. “Can’t you get it out of him?”
“Shuts up like an oyster directly I get anywhere near it,” replied the
captain; “sticks to it that it is a yachting trip and that Tredgold is
studying the formations of islands. Says he has got a list of them he is
going to visit.”
“Mr. Tredgold was talking the same way to me,” said the mate. “He says
he’s going to write a book about them when he goes back. He asked me
what I thought ’ud be a good title.”
“I know what would be a good title for him,” growled Brisket, as Mr.
Stobell came on deck and gazed despondently over the side. “We’re
getting towards the end of our journey, sir.”
“_End?_” said Mr. Stobell. “_End?_ I don’t believe there is an end.
I believe you’ve lost your way and we shall go sailing on and on for
ever.”
He walked aft and, placing himself in a deckchair, gazed listlessly at
the stolid figure of the helmsman. The heat was intense, and both
Tredgold and Chalk had declined to proceed with a conversation limited
almost entirely on his side to personal abuse. He tried the helmsman,
and made that unfortunate thirsty for a week by discussing the rival
merits of bitter ale in a pewter and stout in a china mug. The helmsman,
a man of liberal ideas, said, with some emotion, that he could drink
either of them out of a flower-pot.
Mr. Chalk became strangely restless as they neared their goal. He had
come thousands of miles and had seen nothing fresh with the exception of
a few flying-fish, an albatross, and a whale blowing in the distance.
Pacing the deck late one night with Captain Brisket he expressed mild
yearnings for a little excitement.
“You want adventure,” said the captain, shaking his head at him. “I know
you. Ah, what a sailorman you’d ha’ made. With a crew o’ six like
yourself I’d take this little craft anywhere. The way you pick up
seamanship is astonishing. Peter Duckett swears you must ha’ been at sea
as a boy, and all I can do I can’t persuade him otherwise.”
“I always had a feeling that I should like it,” said Mr. Chalk,
modestly.
“Like it!” repeated the captain. “O’ course you do; you’ve got the salt
in your blood, but this peaceful cruising is beginning to tell on you.
There’s a touch o’ wildness in you, sir, that’s always struggling to
come to the front. Peter Duckett was saying the same thing only the
other day. He’s very uneasy about it.”
“Uneasy!” repeated Mr. Chalk.
“Aye,” said the captain, drawing a deep breath. “And if I tell you that
I am too, it wouldn’t be outside the truth.”
“But why?” inquired Mr. Chalk, after they had paced once up and down the
deck in silence.
“It’s the mystery we don’t like,” said Brisket, at last. “How are we to
know what desperate venture you are going to let us in for? Follow you
faithful we will, but we don’t like going in the dark; it ain’t quite
fair to us.”
“There’s not the slightest danger in the world,” said Mr. Chalk, with
impressive earnestness.
“But there’s a mystery; you can’t deny that,” said the captain.
Mr. Chalk cleared his throat. “It’s a secret,” he said, slowly.
“From me?” inquired the captain, in reproachful accents.
“It isn’t my secret,” said Mr. Chalk. “So far as I’m concerned I’d tell
you with pleasure.”
The captain slowly withdrew his arm from Mr. Chalk’s, and moving to the
side leaned over it with his shoulders hunched. Somewhat moved by this
display of feeling, Mr. Chalk for some time hesitated to disturb him,
and when at last he did steal up and lay a friendly hand on the
captain’s shoulder it was gently shaken off.
“Secrets!” said Brisket, in a hollow voice. “From me! I ain’t to be
trusted?”
“It isn’t my doing,” said Mr. Chalk.
“Well, well, it don’t matter, sir,” said the captain. “Bill Brisket must
put up with it. It’s the first time in his life he’s been suspected, and
it’s doubly hard coming from you. You’ve hurt me, sir, and there’s no
other man living could do that.”
Mr. Chalk stood by in sorrowful perplexity.
“And I put my life in your hands,” continued the captain, with a low,
hard laugh. “You’re the only man in the world that knows who killed
Smiling Peter in San Francisco, and _I_ told you. Well, well!”
“But you did it in self-defence,” said the other, eagerly.
“What does that matter?” said the captain, turning and walking forward,
followed by the anxious Mr. Chalk. “I’ve got no proof of it. Open your
mouth—once—and I swing for it. That’s the extent of my trust in _you_.”
Mr. Chalk, much affected, swore a few sailorly oaths as to what he
wished might happen to him if he ever betrayed the other’s confidence.
“Yes,” said the captain, mournfully, “that’s all very well; but you
can’t trust me in a smaller matter, however much _I_ swear to keep it
secret. And it’s weighing on me in another way: I believe the crew have
got an inkling of something, and here am I, master of the ship,
responsible for all your lives, kept in ignorance.”
“The crew!” ejaculated the startled Mr. Chalk.
Captain Brisket hesitated and lowered his voice. “The other night I came
on deck for a look round and saw one of them peeping down through your
skylight,” he said, slowly. “I sent him below, and after he’d gone I
looked down and saw you and Mr. Tredgold and Stobell all bending over a
paper.”
Mr. Chalk, deep in thought, paced up and down in silence.
“_That’s_ a secret,” said Brisket. “I don’t want them to think that I
was spying. I told you because you understand. A shipmaster has to keep
his eyes open, for everybody’s sake.”
“It’s your duty,” said Mr. Chalk, firmly.
Captain Brisket, with a little display of emotion, thanked him, and,
leaning against the side, drew his attention to the beauty of the stars
and sea. Impelled by the occasion and the charm of the night he waxed
sentimental, and with a strange mixture of bluffness and shyness spoke
of his aged mother, of the loneliness of a seafarer’s life, and the
inestimable boon of real friendship. He bared his inmost soul to his
sympathetic listener, and then, affecting to think from a remark of Mr.
Chalk’s that he was going to relate the secret of the voyage, declined
to hear it on the ground that he was only a rough sailorman and not to
be trusted. Mr. Chalk, contesting this hotly, convinced him at last that
he was in error, and then found that, bewildered by the argument, the
captain had consented to be informed of a secret which he had not
intended to impart.
“But, mind,” said Brisket, holding up a warning finger, “I’m not going
to tell Peter Duckett. There’s no need for him to know.”
Mr. Chalk said “Certainly not,” and, seeing no way of escape, led the
reluctant man as far from the helmsman as possible and whispered the
information. By the time they parted for the night Captain Brisket knew
as much as the members of the expedition themselves, and, with a rare
thoughtfulness, quieted Mr. Chalk’s conscience by telling him that he
had practically guessed the whole affair from the beginning.
He listened with great interest a few days later when Mr. Tredgold,
after considering audibly which island he should visit first, gave him
the position of Bowers’s Island and began to discuss coral reefs and
volcanic action. They were now well in among the islands. Two they
passed at a distance, and went so close to a third—a mere reef with a
few palms upon it—that Mr. Chalk, after a lengthy inspection through his
binoculars, was able to declare it uninhabited.
A fourth came into sight a couple of days later: a small grey bank on
the starboard bow. Captain Brisket, who had been regarding it for some
time with great care, closed his glass with a bang and stepped up to Mr.
Tredgold.
“There she is, sir,” he said, in satisfied tones.
Mr. Tredgold, who was drinking tea, put down his cup, and rose with an
appearance of mild interest. Mr. Stobell followed suit, and both gazed
in strong indignation at the undisguised excitement of Mr. Chalk as he
raced up the rigging for a better view. Tredgold with the captain’s
glass, and Stobell with an old pair of field-glasses in which he had
great faith, gazed from the deck. Tredgold was the first to speak.
“Are you sure this is the one, Brisket?” he inquired, carelessly.
“Certainly, sir,” said the captain, in some surprise. “At least, it’s
the one you told me to steer for.”
“Don’t look much like the map,” said Stobell, in a low aside. “Where’s
the mountain?”
Tredgold looked again. “I fancy it’s a bit higher towards the middle,”
he said, after a prolonged inspection; “and, besides, it’s ‘mount,’ not
‘mountain.’”
Captain Brisket, who had with great delicacy drawn a little apart in
recognition of their whispers, stepped towards them again.
“I don’t know that I’ve ever seen this particular island before,” he
said, frankly; “likely not; but it’s the one you told me to find.
There’s over a couple of hundred of them, large and small, knocking
about. If you think you’ve made a mistake we might try some of the
others.”
“No,” said Tredgold, after a pause and a prolonged inspection; “this
must be right.”
Mr. Chalk came down from aloft, his eyes shining with pure joy, and
joined them.
“How long before we’re alongside?” he inquired.
“Two hours,” replied the captain; “perhaps three,” he added,
considering.
Mr. Chalk glanced aloft and, after a knowing question or two as to
the wind, began in a low voice to converse with his friends. Mr.
Tredgold’s misgivings as to the identity of the island he dismissed
at once as baseless. The mount satisfied _him_, and when, as they
approached nearer, discrepancies in shape between the island and the
map were pointed out to him he easily explained them by speaking of the
difficulties of cartography to an amateur.
“There’s our point,” he said, indicating it with a forefinger, which the
incensed Stobell at once struck down. “We couldn’t have managed it
better so far as time is concerned. We’ll sleep ashore tonight in the
tent and start the search at daybreak.”
Captain Brisket approached the island cautiously. To the eyes of the
voyagers it seemed to change shape as they neared it, until finally,
the _Fair Emily_ anchoring off the reef which guarded it, it revealed
itself as a small island about three-quarters of a mile long and two or
three hundred yards wide. A beach of coral sand shelved steeply to the
sea, and a background of cocoa-nut trees and other vegetation completed
a picture on which Mr. Chalk gazed with the rapture of a devotee at a
shrine.
He went below as the anchor ran out, and after a short absence
reappeared on deck bedizened with weapons. A small tent, with blankets
and provisions, and a long deal box containing a couple of spades and a
pick, were put into one of the boats, and the three friends, after
giving minute instructions to the captain, followed. Mr. Duckett took
the helm, and after a short pull along the edge of the reef discovered
an opening which gave access to the smooth water inside.
“A pretty spot, gentlemen,” he said, scanning the island closely. “I
don’t think that there is anybody on it.”
“We’ll go over it first and make sure,” said Stobell, as the boat’s nose
ran into the beach. “Come along, Chalk.”
He sprang out and, taking one of the guns, led the way along the beach,
followed by Mr. Chalk. The men looked after them longingly, and then, in
obedience to the mate, took the stores out of the boat and pitched the
tent. By the time Chalk and Stobell returned they were seated in the
boat and ready to depart.
A feeling of loneliness came over Mr. Chalk as he watched the receding
boat. The schooner, riding at anchor half a mile outside the reef, had
taken in her sails and presented a singularly naked and desolate
appearance. He wondered how long it would take the devoted Brisket to
send assistance in case of need, and blamed himself severely for not
having brought some rockets for signalling purposes. Long before night
came the prospect of sleeping ashore had lost all its charm.
“One of us ought to keep watch,” he said, as Stobell, after a heavy
supper followed by a satisfying pipe, rolled himself in a blanket and
composed himself for slumber.
Mr. Stobell grunted, and in a few minutes was fast asleep. Mr. Tredgold,
first blowing out the candle, followed suit, while Mr. Chalk, a prey to
vague fears, sat up nursing a huge revolver.
The novelty of the position, the melancholy beat of the surge on the
farther beach, and faint, uncertain noises all around kept him awake. He
fancied that he heard stealthy footsteps on the beach, and low, guttural
voices calling among the palms. Twice he aroused his friends and twice
they sat up and reviled him.
“If you put your bony finger into my ribs again,” growled Mr. Stobell,
tenderly rubbing the afflicted part, “you and me won’t talk alike. Like
a bar of iron it was.”
“I thought I heard something,” said Mr. Chalk. “I should have fired,
only I was afraid of scaring you.”
“_Fired?_” repeated Mr. Stobell, thoughtfully. “_Fired?_ Was it the
barrel of that infernal pistol you shoved into my ribs just now?”
“I just touched you with it,” admitted the other. “I’m sorry if I hurt
you.”
Mr. Stobell, feeling in his pocket, struck a match and held it up. “Full
cock,” he said, in a broken voice; “and he stirred me up with it. And
then he talks of savages!”
He struck another match and lit the candle, and then, before Mr. Chalk
could guess his intentions, pressed him backwards and took the pistol
away. He raised the canvas and threw it out into the night, and then,
remembering the guns, threw them after it. This done he blew out the
candle, and in two minutes was fast asleep again.
An hour passed and Mr. Chalk, despite his fears, began to nod. Half
asleep, he lay down and drew his blanket about him, and then he sat up
suddenly wide awake as an unmistakable footstep sounded outside.
For a few seconds he sat unable to move; then he stretched out his hand
and began to shake Stobell. He could have sworn that hands were fumbling
at the tent.
“Eh?” said Stobell, sleepily.
Chalk shook him again. Stobell sat up angrily, but before he could speak
a wild yell rent the air, the tent collapsed suddenly, and they
struggled half suffocated in the folds of the canvas.