"SKELETON VALLEY."
"This wer a reg'ler sockdollager!" said Jim Chowder, when narrating the
circumstances to us; for on this unexpected enquiry after the mate
coming so suddenly after the men had treated him in so ignominious a
fashion, they were "knocked all aback!"
So, for the moment, no one answered the skipper's question.
Of course, this did not tend to allay his excitement. "Can't nary a one
o' ye speak?" he cried angrily. "Whaar's the fust-mate--ye ain't made
away with the coon, hev ye?"
"He's out fur a ride, cap," at last said the wag of the party, whereat
there was another outburst of laughter. "Mr Flinders wer a bit out o'
sorts an' hez gone up theer fur a hairin'."
"Thaar!" echoed the skipper, looking to where the man pointed with his
hand. "Whaar?"
"Up in the hills," replied the other grinning hugely at Captain Snaggs'
puzzled expression. "He's gone fur a ride a-tortoise-back."
"Ye're a durned fule!" shouted the skipper, thinking he was `taking a
rise' out of him. "Don't ye try on bamboozlin' me. What d'ye mean by
his goin' a-ridin', an' sich nonsense?"
"He vas shbeak ze drooth, cap'en," put in Jan Steenbock, who was still
wiping the blood from his face as he got up to answer him. "I vas zee
Mistaire Vlinders zail avays oop dere on ze back of von beeg toordle
joost now."
"By thunder, ye're all makin' game of me, I guess!" yelled the skipper,
seeing that Jan was grinning like the rest, "I s'pose ye've been hevin'
a muss ag'en. Now, I ain't a-goin' to stand no more bunkum. What hev
ye done with Mr Flinders, I axes fur the last time?"
"I vas not do nuzzin," replied Jan quietly, continuing to wipe his face.
"Ze mate vas shtrike me, but I vas not touch him meinselfs, I vas not
lay von hand upon hims."
"Then what in thunder air becom' of him?"
"He wer gone a-ridin', cap," said the man who had previously spoken,
proceeding to explain what had occurred. "He came down drunk out of the
ship and went abusin' Mr Steenbock as never sed a word to him, and then
struck him with a spade, nigh killing him. So we tumbles him over in
the water theer to stop his doin' any more mischief, for he wer that mad
as he looked to murder the lot of us."
"And then, boss," went on Jim Chowder, as he told up, taking up the
story, "ez he were pretty well wet with his ducking, we lashed him on to
the back of a tortoise ez come by, an' sent him up in the hills, fur to
dry hisself, `ridin' a cock horse to Banbury Cross' like!"
At this the hands laughed again, and the skipper, whom they now surmised
must have been drinking again when away on his prospecting tour, became
perfectly furious; for he turned quite white, while his billy-goat beard
bristled up, as it always did when he was angry.
"This air rank mutiny!" he shouted, drawing his revolver and pointing it
at Jim Chowder; "but I'll soon teach ye a lesson, ye skunks. Hyar goes
fur one o' ye!"
Jan Steenbock, as on a previous occasion, however, was too quick for
him; for he knocked the weapon out of his fist, and then gripping him in
a tight grasp, threw his arms round the captain's body.
The skipper foamed at the mouth, and swore even worse than Mr Flinders
had done just before; but, presently he calmed down a bit, and sat down
on the ground--shaking all over, as soon as Jan had removed his grip,
though keeping close to him, to be on the watch for his next move, as he
expected him to have one of his old fits again.
But the convulsions seemed to pass off very quickly; and the captain,
looking like himself again after a few moments, jumped to his feet.
He then stared round about him, as if searching for something or some
one, evidently forgetting all that had just happened.
Suddenly his eyes brightened.
"Thaar he is!" he cried, "thaar he is!"
"Who, sir?" asked Jan, seeing his gaze fixed in the direction of the
cactus grove, behind which the mate had vanished on his
tortoise--"Mistaire Vlinders?"
"No, man, no," impatiently cried the skipper; "I wanted him to come with
me, but ez he's not hyar, ye'll do ez wa-all, I reckon. It's the black
buccaneer cap'en I mean, thet I met jest now, over thaar in the vall'y."
"Ze boocaneer cap'en," repeated Jan, utterly flabbergasted--"ze
boocaneer cap'en?"
"Aye, ye durned fule; don't ye reck'lect the coon ez ye told me ez
burrit the treesure? Come on quick, or I guess we'll lose him!"
"And yous have zeen hims?"
"Aye, I hev seed him, sure enuff," replied Captain Snaggs, seizing Jan,
and trying to drag him with him; "an', what's more, he an' I've been
drinkin' together, me joker. We've hed a reg'ler high old time in the
vall'y thaar, this arternoon, ye bet!"
"In ze valleys?"
"By thunder! ye're that slow ye'd anger a saint, which I ain't one,"
returned Captain Snaggs, indignantly. "I mean the vall'y whaar the
skeletons is crawlin' about an' the skulls grinning--thet air one
belongin' to the buccaneer cuss is a prime one, I ken tell ye. It beats
creation, it dew, with the lizards a-creepin' through the sockets, an' a
big snake in his teeth. Jeehosophat! how he did swaller down the
licker!"
Up to now the men could not understand that anything out of the common
was the matter with the skipper beyond being drunk, perhaps, and in a
passion--no, not even Jan; but, as soon as he got talking on this tack
about snakes and skulls, then all saw what was the matter.
So, now, on his darting off towards the hills in his delirium, Jan
Steenbock and Jim Chowder, with a couple of the other hands, quickly
followed in pursuit of the demented man.
He had got a good minute's start, however, before they recovered from
their astonishment at his incoherent speech and were able to grasp the
situation; so, he was almost out of sight by the time they went after
him.
It was a long chase, Jim said, for they went in and out between the
thorny fleshy-handed cactus trees and over the lava field, tumbling into
holes here and tearing themselves to pieces with the thorns there--the
skipper all the while maintaining his lead in front and running along as
freely and smoothly as if the track were an even path, instead of being
through a desert waste like that they raced over.
After a bit, they passed over all the intervening lava field and struck
amongst the grass and trees; and then they came up to Mr Flinders, who
was still lashed on the back of his tortoise, which had `brought up all
standing' by the side of a little water-spring, and was greedily gulping
down long draughts of the limpid stream that rippled through the glade
beneath the shade of a number of dwarf oaks and zafrau trees which had
orchilla moss growing in profusion on their trunks--some of these being
nearly three feet in diameter, and bigger, Jim said, than any trees he
had previously seen on the island.
Those in pursuit of the skipper thought he would have stopped on thus
meeting the first-mate.
But, no. He did not halt for an instant.
"Come on, Flinders," he only called out. "Come on, Flinders, we air
arter the buccaneer cap'en an' the treasure!"
Then, plunging down the side of the hill he made for a bare space
further down beyond the trees, waving his arms over his head and
shouting and screaming at the pitch of his voice, like the raging madman
that he had become.
Arrived at the bottom of the declivity, the captain abruptly paused; and
Jim Chowder and Jan, who were close behind, came up with him.
There was no need to stop him; for the skipper flung himself on the
ground at a spot where, to their wonder, they now observed three
skeletons sitting up and arranged in a circle; while in the centre of
the terrible group of bony figures was a cask on end, whose odour at
once betrayed its contents.
Rum!
A pannikin was on the ground beside the hand of one of the remnants of
mortality, and this the skipper took up, drawing a spigot from out of
the cask and filling it.
"Hyar's to ye, my brave buccaneers!" he cried, tossing it off as if it
had been water. "Hyar's to ye all an' the gold!"
He was going to fill another pannikin and drain that; but Jan Steenbock
kicked over the cask, preventing him.
Captain Snaggs at once sprung to his feet again.
As before, he took no notice of Jan's action.
It appeared as if his mind were suddenly bent on something else and that
he now forgot everything anterior to the one thought that possessed him.
"Come on now, my brave buccaneers, an' show us the gold," he cried.
"Lead on, my beauties, an' I'll foller, by thunder, to the devil
himself!"
So saying, back he climbed up the hill, and down a little pathway along
the top till he came to the entrance to the cave which Tom Bullover and
Hiram and I had first discovered; and then, suddenly, before Jan
Steenbock and Jim Chowder could see where he had gone, he disappeared
within the opening.
Jan and Jim alone had continued the pursuit, the other hands having
remained behind to release the first-mate from his uncomfortable billet
on board the tortoise; and Jim Chowder giving up the hunt at this point,
and returning to rejoin his comrades, Jan Steenbock only remained, the
latter telling us later on, when we all compared notes, that, after
looking for the skipper over the cliff, where he at first believed him
to have fallen, he finally traced him into the cave.