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[Illustration: Cover]
PIECES OF EIGHT
_Being the Authentic Narrative of a Treasure Discovered in the Bahama
Islands in the Year 1903--Now First Given to the Public_
BY RICHARD LE GALLIENNE
[Illustration]
_Frontispiece_
[Illustration: "'YOU YOUNG FOOL!' EXCLAIMED CHARLIE, 'THE WATER ROUND
HERE IS THICK WITH SHARKS!'"]
A.L. BURT COMPANY
Publishers New York
Published by arrangement with Doubleday, Page & Company
_Copyright, 1918, by_
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
_All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign
languages, including the Scandinavian_
COPYRIGHT, 1917, 1918, BY THE BUTTERICK PUBLISHING COMPANY
LIFE BEING OF THE NATURE BOTH OF A TREASURE-HUNT AND A PIRATICAL
EXPEDITION, I DEDICATE THIS NARRATIVE TO THE FOLLOWING SAILING
COMPANIONS OF MINE ON THIS ENTERTAINING OLD PIRATE CRAFT WE CALL THE
EARTH, IN THE HOPE THAT EACH MAY FIND HIS TREASURE, AND, AT LEAST,
ESCAPE HANGING AT THE END OF THE TRIP--TO WIT: HARRY DASH JOHNSON, SAM
NICHOLSON, BERT WILLSIE AND CHARLEY BETHEL, ALL ENGAGED IN ONE OR
ANOTHER OF THE PIRATICAL PROFESSIONS.
PROLOGUE
_(The following MS., the authorship of which I am not at liberty to
divulge, came to me in a curious way. Being recently present at a
performance of_ "Treasure Island" _at The Punch and Judy Theatre in New
York City, and, seated at the extreme right-hand end of the front row of
the stalls--so near to the ground-floor box that its occupants were
within but a yard or two of me, and, therefore, very clearly to be
seen--I, in common with my immediate neighbours, could not fail to
remark the very striking and beautiful woman who was the companion of a
distinguished military-looking man on the youthful side of middle age._
_Still young, a little past thirty, maybe, she was unusually tall and
stately of figure, and from her curious golden skin and massive black
hair, one judged her to be a Creole, possibly a Jamaican. Her face,
which was rather heavily but finely moulded, wore an expression of
somewhat poetic melancholy, a little like that of a beautiful animal,
but readily lit up with a charming smile now and again at some sally of
her companion, with whom she seemed to be on affectionate terms, and
with whom, as the play proceeded, she exchanged glances and whispered
confidences such as two who have shared an experience together--which
the play seems to bring to mind--are seen sometimes to exchange in a
theatre._
_But there was one particular which especially accentuated the
singularity of her appearance and was responsible for drawing upon her
an interested observation--seemed, indeed, even in her eyes to condone
it, for she, as well as her companion, was obviously conscious of
it--the two strange-looking gold ornaments which hung from her
delicately shaped ears. These continually challenged the eye, and piqued
the curiosity. Obviously they were two old coins, of thick gold, stamped
with an antique design. They were Spanish doubloons!_
_As, in common with the rest of the audience, I looked at this
picturesque pair, my eyes forsook the lady of the doubloons, and
fastened themselves with a half-certainty of recognition upon her
companion. Why! surely it was ---- ----, an old dare-devil comrade of
mine, whose disappearance from New York some ten years before had been
the talk of the two or three clubs to which we both belonged. A curious
blending of soldier, poet, and mining engineer, he had been popular with
all of us, and when he had disappeared without warning we were sure that
he was off on some Knight-errant business--to Mexico or the Moon!_
_He was, indeed, wearing that disguise of Time, which we all come
involuntarily to wear--an unfamiliar greyness of his hair at the
temples, and a moustache that would soon be a distinguished white; yet
the disguise was not sufficient to conceal the youthful vigour of his
personality from one who had known him so well as I. The more I looked
at him, the more certain I grew that it was he, and I determined to go
round to his box at the conclusion of the second act._
_Then, becoming absorbed in the play, I forgot him and his companion of
the doubloons for a while, and when I looked for them again, they had
vanished. However, a letter in my mail next morning told me that the
observation had not been all on my side. My eyes had not deceived me. It
was my friend--and, at dinner with him and his lady, next evening, I
heard the story of some of those lost years. Moreover, he confided to me
that a certain portion of his adventures had seemed so romantic that he
had been tempted to set them down in a narrative, merely, of course, for
the amusement of his family and friends. On our parting, he entrusted me
with this manuscript, which I found so interesting that I was able to
persuade him to consent to its publication to that larger world which it
seemed to me unfair to rob of one of those few romances that have been
really lived, and not merely conjured up out of the imaginations of
professional romancers._
_His consent was given with some reluctance, for, apart from a certain
risk which the publication of the manuscript would entail, it contains
also matters which my friend naturally regards as sacred--though, in
this respect, I feel sure that he can rely upon the delicacy of his
readers. He made it a condition that every precaution should be taken to
keep secret the name and identity of his wife and himself._
_Therefore, in presenting to the world the manuscript thus entrusted to
me, I have made various changes of detail, with the purpose of the more
surely safeguarding the privacy of my two friends; but, in all
essentials, the manuscript is printed as it came originally into my
hands._
R. Le G.
CONTENTS
PAGE
Prologue vii
_Book I_
Out of the Constant East the Breeze 2
CHAPTER
I. Introduces the Secretary to the Treasury
of His Britannic Majesty's Government
at Nassau 3
II. The Narrative of Henry P. Tobias, Ex-Pirate,
as dictated on his deathbed,
in the year of our Lord, 1859 13
III. In which I charter the _Maggie Darling_ 21
IV. In which Tom catches an enchanted fish,
and discourses of the dangers of treasure
hunting 30
V. In which we begin to understand our unwelcome
passenger 40
VI. The incident of the Captain 48
VII. In which the sucking fish has a chance to
show its virtue 57
VIII. In which I once again sit up and behold
the sun 64
IX. In which Tom and I attend several funerals 69
X. In which Tom and I seriously start in
treasure hunting 75
XI. An unfinished game of cards 85
_Book II_
The dotted cays, with their little trees 92
I. Once more in John Saunders's snuggery 95
II. In which I learn something 100
III. In which I am afforded glimpses into
futurity--possibly useful 108
IV. In which we take ship once more 123
V. In which we enter the wilderness 141
VI. Duck 154
VII. More particulars concerning our young
companion 160
VIII. Better than duck 169
_Book III_
Across the scarce-awakened sea 178
I. In which we gather shells--and other
matters 179
II. In which I catch a glimpse of a different
kind of treasure 187
III. Under the Influence of the Moon 193
IV. In which I meet a very strange individual 200
V. Calypso 213
VI. Doubloons 223
VII. In which the "King" dreams a dream--and
tells us about it 232
VIII. News! 239
IX. Old Friends 246
X. The Hidden Creek 253
XI. An Old Enemy 258
XII. In which the "King" imprisons me
with some old books and pictures 266
XIII. We Begin to Dig 274
XIV. In which I lose my way 283
XV. In which I pursue my studies as a Troglodyte 292
XVI. In which I understand the feelings of a
Ghost! 306
XVII. Action 315
XVIII. Gathering up the threads 321
Postscript 328
Epilogue By the Editor 332
BOOK I
_Out of the constant East the breeze
Brings morning, like a wafted rose,
Across the glimmering lagoon,
And wakes the still palmetto trees,
And blows adrift the phantom moon,
That paler and still paler glows--
Up with the anchor! let's be going!
O hoist the sail! and let's be going!
Glory and glee
Of the morning sea--
Ah! let's be going!_
Under our keel a glass of dreams
Still fairer than the morning sky,
A jewel shot with blue and gold,
The swaying clearness streams and gleams,
A crystal mountain smoothly rolled
O'er magic gardens flowing by--
Over we go the sea-fans waving,
Over the rainbow corals paving
The deep-sea floor;
No more, no more
Would I seek the shore
To make my grave in--
_O sea-fans waving_!
PIECES OF EIGHT
CHAPTER I
_Introduces the Secretary to the Treasury of His Britannic Majesty's
Government at Nassau, New Providence, Bahama Islands._
Some few years ago--to be precise, it was during the summer of 1903--I
was paying what must have seemed like an interminable visit to my old
friend John Saunders, who at that time filled with becoming dignity the
high-sounding office of Secretary to the Treasury of His Majesty's
Government, in the quaint little town of Nassau, in the island of New
Providence, one of those Bahama Islands that lie half lost to the world
to the southeast of the Caribbean Sea and form a somewhat neglected
portion of the British West Indies.
Time was when they had a sounding name for themselves in the world;
during the American Civil War, for instance, when the blockade-runners
made their dare-devil trips with contraband cotton, between Nassau and
South Carolina; and before that again, when the now sleepy little
harbour gave shelter to rousing freebooters and tarry pirates, tearing
in there under full sail with their loot from the Spanish Main. How
often those quiet moonlit streets must have roared with brutal revelry,
and the fierce clamour of pistol-belted scoundrels round the wine-casks
have gone up into the still, tropic night.
But those heroic days are gone, and Nassau is given up to a sleepy trade
in sponges and tortoise-shell, and peace is no name for the drowsy tenor
of the days under the palm trees and the scarlet poincianas. A little
group of Government buildings surrounding a miniature statue of Queen
Victoria, flanked by some old Spanish cannon and murmured over by the
foliage of tropic trees, gives an air of old-world distinction to the
long Bay street, whose white houses, with their jalousied verandas, ran
the whole length of the water-front, and all the long sunny days the air
is lazy with the sound of the shuffling feet of the child-like "darky"
population and the chatter of the bean-pods of the poincianas overhead.
Here a handful of Englishmen, clothed in the white linen suits of the
tropics, carry on the Government after the traditional manner of British
colonies from time immemorial, each of them, like my friend, not
without an English smile at the humour of the thing, supporting the
dignity of offices with impressive names--Lord Chief Justice, Attorney
General, Speaker of the House, Lord High Admiral, Colonial Secretary and
so forth--and occasionally a figure in gown and barrister's wig flits
across the green from the little courthouse, where the Lord Chief
Justice in his scarlet robes, on a dais surmounted by a gilded lion and
unicorn, sustains the majesty of British justice, with all the pomp of
Westminster or Whitehall.
My friend the Secretary of the Treasury is a man possessing in an
uncommon degree that rare and most attractive of human qualities,
companionableness. He is a quiet man of middle age, an old white-headed
bachelor with a droll twinkling expression, speaking seldom, and then in
a curious silent fashion, as though the drowsy heat of the tropics had
soaked him through and through. With his white hair, his white clothes,
his white moustachios, his white eyelashes, over eyes that seem to hide
away among quiet mirthful wrinkles, he carries about him the sort of
silence that goes with a miller, surrounded by the white dusty quiet of
his mill.
As we sit together in the hush of his snuggery of an evening,
surrounded by guns, fishing-lines, and old prints, there are times when
we scarcely exchange a dozen words between dinner and bed-time, and yet
we have all the time a keen and satisfying sense of companionship. It is
John Saunders's gift. Companionship seems quietly to ooze out of him,
without the need of words. He and you are there in your comfortable
arm-chairs, with a good cigar, a whisky-and-soda, or a glass of that old
port on which he prides himself, and that is all that is necessary.
Where is the need of words?
And occasionally, we have, as third in those evening conclaves, a big
slow-smiling, broad-faced young merchant, of the same kidney. In he
drops with a nod and a smile, selects his cigar and his glass, and takes
his place in the smoke-cloud of our meditations, radiating, without the
effort of speech, that good thing--humanity; though one must not forget
the one subject on which now and again the good Charlie Webster achieves
eloquence in spite of himself--duck-shooting. That is the only subject
worth breaking the pleasant brotherhood of silence for.
John Saunders's subject is shark-fishing. Duck-shooting and
shark-fishing. It is enough. Here, for sensible men, is a sufficient
basis for life-long friendship, and unwearying, inexhaustible
companionship.
It was in this peace of John Saunders's snuggery, one July evening, in
1903, the three of us being duly met, and ensconced in our respective
arm-chairs, that we got on to the subject of buried treasure. We had
talked more than usual that evening--talked duck and shark till those
inexhaustible themes seemed momentarily exhausted. Then it was I who
started us off again by asking John what he knew about buried treasure.
At this, John laughed his funny little quiet laugh, his eyes twinkling
out of his wrinkles, for all the world like mischievous mice looking out
of a cupboard, took a sip of his port, a pull at his cigar, and then:
"Buried treasure!" he said, "well, I have little doubt that the islands
are full of it--if one only knew how to get at it."
"Seriously?" I asked.
"Certainly. Why not? When you come to think of it, it stands to reason.
Weren't these islands for nearly three centuries the stamping ground of
all the pirates of the Spanish Main? Morgan was here. Blackbeard was
here. The very governors themselves were little better than pirates.
This room we are sitting in was the den of one of the biggest rogues of
them all--John Tinker--the governor when Bruce was here building Fort
Montague, at the east end yonder; building it against pirates, and
little else but pirates at the Government House all the time. A great
old time Tinker gave the poor fellow. You can read all about it in his
'Memoirs.' You should read them. Great stuff. There they are," pointing
to an old quarto on some well lined shelves, for John is something of a
scholar too; "borrow them some time."
"Yes, but I want to hear more about the treasure," interrupted I,
bringing him back to the point.
"Well, as I was saying, Nassau was the rendezvous for all the
cut-throats of the Caribbean Sea. Here they came in with their loot,
their doubloons and pieces of eight"; and John's eyes twinkled with
enjoyment of the rich old romantic words, as though they were old port.
"Here they squandered much of it, no doubt, but they couldn't squander
it all. Some of them were thrifty knaves too, and these, looking around
for some place of safety, would naturally think of the bush. The niggers
keep their little hoards there to this day. Fawcett, over at Andros, was
saying the other night, that he estimates that they have something like
a quarter of a million dollars buried in tin cans among the brush over
there now--"
"It is their form of stocking," put in Charlie Webster.
"Precisely. Well, as I was saying, those old fellows would bury their
hoards in some cave or other, and then go off--and get hanged. Their
ghosts perhaps came back. The darkies have lots of ghost-tales about
them. But their money is still here, lots of it, you bet your life."
"Do they ever make any finds?" I asked.
"Nothing big that I know of. A jug full of old coins now and then. I
found one a year or two ago in my garden here--buried down among the
roots of that old fig tree."
"Then," put in Charlie, "there was that mysterious stranger over at
North Cay. He's supposed to have got away with quite a pile."
"Tell me about him," said I.
"Well, there used to be an old eccentric character in the town here--a
half-breed by the name of Andrews. John will remember him--"
John nodded.
"He used to go around all the time with a big umbrella, and muttering to
himself. We used to think him half crazy. Gone so brooding over this
very subject of buried treasure. Better look out, young man!"--smiling
at me. "He used to be always grubbing about in the bush, and they said
that he carried the umbrella, so that he could hide a machete in it--a
sort of heavy cutlass, you know, for cutting down the brush. Well,
several years ago, there came a visitor from New York, and he got thick
with the old fellow. They used to go about a lot together, and were
often off on so-called fishing trips for days on end. Actually, it is
believed, they were after something on North Cay. At all events, some
months afterward, the New Yorker disappeared as he had come, and has not
been heard from since. But since then, they have found a sort of brick
vault over there which has evidently been excavated. I have seen it
myself. A sort of walled chamber. There, it's supposed, the New Yorker
found something or other--"
"An old tomb, most likely," interrupted John, sceptically. "There are
some like that over at Spanish Wells."
"Maybe," said Charlie, "but that's the story for what it's worth."
As Charlie finished, John slapped his knee.
"The very thing for you!" he said, "why have I never thought of it
before?"
"What do you mean, John?" we both asked.
"Why, down at the office, I've got the very thing. A pity I haven't got
it here. You must come in and see it to-morrow."
And he took a tantalising sip of his port.
"What on earth is it? Why do you keep us guessing?"
"Why, it's an old manuscript."
"An old manuscript!" I exclaimed.
"Yes, an old document that came into my hands a short time ago. Charlie,
you remember old Wicks--old Billy Wicks--'Wrecker' Wicks, they called
him--"
"I should say I do. A wonderful old villain--"
"One of the greatest characters that ever lived. Oh, and shrewd as the
devil. Do you remember the story about his--"
"But the document, for heaven's sake," I said. "The document first; the
story will keep."
"Well, they were pulling down Wicks's own house just lately, and out of
the rafters there fell a roll of paper--now, I'm coming to it--a roll of
paper, purporting to be the account of the burying of a certain
treasure, telling the place where it is buried, and giving directions
for finding it--"
Charlie and I exclaimed together; and John continued, with tantalising
deliberation.
"It's in the safe, down at the office; you shall see it to-morrow. It's
a statement purporting to be made by some fellow on his deathbed--some
fellow dying out in Texas--a quondam pirate, anxious to make his peace
at the end, and to give his friends the benefit of his knowledge."
"O John!" said I, "I sha'n't sleep a wink to-night."
"I don't take much stock in it," said John. "I'm inclined to think it's
a hoax. Some one trying to fool the old fellow. If there'd been any
treasure, I guess one could have trusted old 'Wrecker' Wicks to get
after it.... But, boys, it's bed-time, anyhow. Come down to the office
in the morning and we'll look it over."
So our meeting broke up for the time being, and taking my candle, I went
upstairs, to dream of caves overflowing with gold pieces, and John
Tinker, fierce and moustachioed, standing over me, a cutlass between his
teeth, and a revolver in each hand.
CHAPTER II
_The Narrative of Henry P. Tobias, Ex-Pirate, as Dictated on His
Deathbed, in the Year of Our Lord, 1859._
The good John had scarcely made his leisurely, distinguished appearance
at his desk on the morrow, immaculately white, and breathing his
customary air of fathomless repose, when I too entered by one door, and
Charlie Webster by the other.
"Now for the document," we both exclaimed in a breath.
"Here it is," he said, taking up a rather grimy-looking roll of foolscap
from in front of him.
"A little like hurricane weather," said the broadly smiling Charlie
Webster, mopping his brow.
The room we were in, crowded with pigeon-holes and dusty documents from
ceiling to floor, looked out into an outer office, similarly dreary, and
painted a dirty blue and white, furnished with high desks and stools,
and railed off with ancient painted ironwork, forlornly decorative,
after the manner of an old-fashioned countinghouse, or shipping office.
It had something quaintly "colonial" about it, suggesting supercargoes,
and West India merchants of long ago.
John took a look into the outer office. There was nothing to claim his
attention, so he took up the uncouthly written manuscript, which, as he
pointed out, was evidently the work of a person of very little
education, and began to read as follows:
"_County of Travas_
"_State of Texas_
"_December 1859_
_"I being in very poor health and cannot last long, feeling my end is
near, I make the following statement of my own free will and without
solicitation. In full exercise of all my faculties, and feel that I am
doing my duty by so doing._
_"My friends have shown me much kindness and taken care of me when sick,
and for their kindness I leave this statement in their hands to make the
best of it, when I will now proceed to give my statement, which is as
follows:--_
_"I was born in the city of Liverpool, England (on the 5th day of
December 1784). My father was a seaman and when I was young I followed
the same occupation. And it happened, that when, on a passage from Spain
to the West Indies, our ship was attacked by free-traders, as they
called themselves, but they were pirates._
_"We all did our best, but were overpowered, and the whole crew, except
three, were killed. I was one of the three they did not kill. They
carried us on board their ship and kept us until next day when they
asked us to join them. They tried to entice us, by showing us great
piles of money and telling us how rich we could become, and many other
ways, and they tried to get us to join them willingly, but we would not,
when they became enraged and loaded three cannon and lashed each one of
us before the mouth of each cannon and told us to take our choice to
join them, as they would touch the guns and that dam quick. It is
useless to say we accepted everything before death, so we came one of
the pirates' crew. Both of my companions were killed in less time than
six months, but I was with them for more than two years, in which time
we collected a vast quantity of money from different ships we captured
and we buried a great amount in two different lots. I helped to bury it
with my own hands. The location of which it is my purpose to point out,
so that it can be found without trouble in the Bahama Islands. After I
had been with them for more than two years, we were attacked by a large
warship and our commander told us to fight for our lives, as it would be
death if we were taken. But the guns of our ship were too small for the
warship, so our ship soon began to sink, when the man-of-war ran
alongside of our vessel and tried to bore us, but we were sinking too
fast, so she had to haul off again, when our vessel sunk with everything
on board, and I escaped by swimming under the stern of the ship, as ours
sunk, without being seen, and holding on to the ship until dark, when I
swam to a portion of the wrecked vessel floating not far away. And on
that I floated. The next morning the ship was not seen. I was picked up
by a passing vessel the next day as a shipwrecked seaman._
_"And let me say here, I know that no one escaped alive from our vessel
except myself and those that were taken by the man-of-war. And those
were all executed as pirates,--so I know that no other man knows of this
treasure except myself and it must be and is where we buried it until
to-day and unless you get it through this statement it will remain there
always and do no one any good._
_"Therefore, it is your duty to trace it up and get it for your own
benefit, as well as others, so delay not, but act as soon as possible._
_"I will now describe the places, locations, marks etc., etc., so
plainly that it can be found, without any trouble._
_"The first is a sum of one million and a half dollars--($1,500,000)--"_
At this point, John paused. We all took a long breath, and Charlie
Webster gave a soft whistle, and smacked his lips.
"A million and a half dollars. What ho!"
Then I, happening to cast my eye through the open door, caught sight of
a face gazing through the ironwork of the outer office with a fixed and
glittering expression, a face anything but prepossessing, the face of a
half-breed, deeply pock-marked, with a coarse hook nose, and
evil-looking eyes, unnaturally close together. He looked for all the
world like a turkey buzzard, eagerly hanging over offal, and it was
evident from his expression, that he had not missed a word of the
reading.
"There is some one in the outer office," I said, and John rose and went
out.
"Good morning, Mr. Saunders," said an unpleasantly soft and cringing
voice.
"Good morning," said John, somewhat grumpily, "what is it you want?"
It was some detail of account, which, being despatched, the man shuffled
off, with evident reluctance, casting a long inquisitive look at us
seated at the desk, and John, taking up the manuscript once more
resumed:
_"... a sum of one million and one half dollars--buried at a cay known
as Dead Men's Shoes, near Nassau, in the Bahama Islands."_
"'Dead Men's Shoes!' I don't know any such place, do you?" interrupted
Charlie.
"No, I don't--but, never mind, let's read it through first and discuss
it afterwards," and John went on:
_"Buried at a cay known as Dead Men's Shoes, near Nassau, in the Bahama
Islands; about fifty feet (50 ft.) south of this Dead Men's Shoes is a
rock, on which we cut the form of a compass. And twenty feet (20 ft.)
East from the cay is another rock on which we cut a cross (X). Under
this rock it is buried four feet (4 ft.) deep._
_"The other is a sum of one million dollars ($1,000,000). It is buried
on what was known as Short Shrift Island; on the highest point of this
Short Shrift Island is a large cabbage wood stump and twenty feet (20
ft.) south of that stump is the treasure, buried five feet (5 ft.) deep
and can be found without difficulty. Short Shrift Island is a place
where passing vessels stop to get fresh water. No great distance from
Nassau, so it can be easily found._
"_The first pod was taken from a Spanish merchant and it is in Spanish
silver dollars._
"_The other on Short Shrift Island is in different kinds of money, taken
from different ships of different nations--it is all good money._
"_Now friends, I have told you all that is necessary for you to know, to
recover these treasures and I leave it in your hands and it is my
request that when you read this, you will at once take steps to recover
it, and when you get it, it is my wish that you use it in a way most
good for yourself and others. This is all I ask._
"_Now thanking you for your kindness and care and with my best wishes
for your prosperity and happiness, I will close, as I am so weak I can
hardly hold the pen._
"_I am, truly your friend,_
HENRY P. TOBIAS.
"Henry P. Tobias?" said Charlie Webster. "Never heard of him. Did you,
John?"
"Never!"
And then there was a stir in the outer office. Some one was asking for
the Secretary of the Treasury. So John rose.
"I must get to work now, boys. We can talk it over to-night." And then,
handing me the manuscript: "Take it home with you, if you like, and
look it over at your leisure."
As Charlie Webster and I passed out into the street, I noticed the
fellow of the sinister pock-marked visage standing near the window of
the inner office. The window was open, and any one standing outside,
could easily have heard everything that passed inside. As the fellow
caught my eye, he smiled unpleasantly, and slunk off down the street.
"Who is that fellow?" I asked Charlie. "He's a queer looking specimen."
"Yes! he's no good. Yet he's more half-witted than bad, perhaps. His
face is against him, poor devil."
And we went our ways, till the evening, I to post home to the further
study of the narrative. There seated on the pleasant veranda, I went
over it carefully, sentence by sentence. While I was reading, some one
called me indoors. I put down the manuscript on the little bamboo table
at my side, and went in. When I returned, a few moments afterward, the
manuscript was gone!
CHAPTER III
_In Which I Charter the "Maggie Darling."_
As luck would have it, the loss, or rather the theft, of Henry P.
Tobias's narrative, was not so serious as it at first seemed, for it
fortunately chanced that John Saunders had had it copied; but the theft
remained none the less mysterious. What could be the motive of the thief
with whom--quite unreasonably and doubtless unjustly--my fancy persisted
in connecting that unprepossessing face so keenly attentive in John
Saunders's outer office, and again so plainly eavesdropping at his open
window.
However, leaving that mystery for later solution, John Saunders, Charlie
Webster, and I spent the next evening in a general and particular
criticism of the narrative itself. There were several obvious objections
to be made against its authenticity. To start with, Tobias, at the time
of his deposition, was an old man--seventy-five years old--and it was
more than probable that his experiences as a pirate would date from his
early manhood; they were hardly likely to have taken place as late as
his fortieth year. The narrative, indeed, suggested their taking place
much earlier, and there would thus be a space of at least forty years
between the burial of the treasure and his deathbed revelation. It was
natural to ask: Why during all those years, did he not return and
retrieve the treasure for himself? Various circumstances may have
prevented him, the inability from lack of means to make the journey, or
what not; but certainly one would need to imagine circumstances of
peculiar power that should be strong enough to keep a man with so
valuable a secret in his possession so many years from taking advantage
of it.
For a long while too the names given to the purported sites of the
treasure _caches_ puzzled us. Modern maps give no such places as "Dead
Men's Shoes" and "Short Shrift Island," but John--who is said to be
writing a learned history of the Bahamas--has been for a long time
collecting old maps, prints, and documents relating to them; and at
last, in a map dating back to 1763, we came upon one of the two names.
So far the veracity of Tobias was supported. "Dead Men's Shoes" proved
to be the old name for a certain cay some twenty miles long, about a day
and a half's sail from Nassau, one of the long string of coral islands
now known as the "Exuma Cays." But of "Short Shrift Island" we sought in
vain for a trace.
Then the details for identification of the sites left something to be
desired in particularity. But that, I reasoned, rather made for Tobias's
veracity than otherwise. Were the document merely a hoax, as John
continued to suspect, its author would have indulged his imagination in
greater elaboration. The very simplicity of the directions argued their
authenticity. Charlie Webster was inclined to back me in this view, but
neither of my friends showed any optimism in regard to the possible
discovery of the treasure.
The character of the brush on the out-islands alone, they said, made the
task of search well nigh hopeless. To cut one's way through twenty miles
of such stubborn thickets, would cost almost as much in labour as the
treasure was worth. And then the peculiar nature of the jagged coral
rock, like endless wastes of clinker, almost denuded of earth, would
make the task the more arduous. As well look for a particular fish in
the sea. A needle in a haystack would be easy in comparison.
"All the same," said I, "the adventure calls me; the adventure and that
million and a half dollars--and those 'Dead Men's Shoes'--and I intend
to undertake it. I am not going to let your middle-aged scepticism
discourage me. Treasure or no treasure, there will be the excitement of
the quest, and all the fun of the sea."
"And some duck perhaps," added Charlie.
"And some shark-fishing for certain," said John.
* * * * *
The next thing was to set about chartering a boat, and engaging a crew.
In this Charlie Webster's experience was invaluable, as his friendly
zeal was untiring.
After looking over much likely and unlikely craft, we finally decided on
a two-masted schooner of trim but solid build, the _Maggie Darling,_ 42
feet over all and 13 beam; something under twenty tons, with an
auxiliary gasolene engine of 24 horse power, and an alleged speed of 10
knots. A staunch, as well as a pretty, little boat, with good lines, and
high in the bows; built to face any seas. "Cross the Atlantic in her,"
said the owner. Owners of boats for sale always say that. But the
_Maggie Darling_ spoke for herself, and I fell in love with her on the
spot.
Next, the crew.
"You will need a captain, a cook, an engineer, and a deck-hand," said
Charlie, "and I have the captain, and the cook all ready for you."
That afternoon we rounded them all up, including the engineer and the
deck-hand, and we arranged to start, weather permitting, with the
morning tide, which set east about six o'clock on July 13, 1903. Charlie
was a little doubtful about the weather, though the glass was steady.
"A northeaster's about due," he said, "but unless it comes before you
start, you'll be able to put in for shelter at one or two places, and
you will be inside the reef most of the way."
Ship's stores were the next detail, and these, including fifty gallons
of gasolene, over and above the tanks and three barrels of water, being
duly got aboard, on the evening of July 12, all was ready for the start;
an evening which was naturally spent in a parting conclave in John
Saunders's snuggery.
"Why, one important thing you've forgotten," said Charlie, as we sat
over our pipes and glasses. "Think of forgetting that. Machetes--and
spades and pickaxes. And I'd take a few sticks of dynamite along with
you too. I can let you have the lot, and, if you like, we'll get them
aboard to-night."
"It's a pity you have to give it away that it's a treasure hunt," said
John,--"but, then you can't keep the crew from knowing. And they're a
queer lot on the subject of treasure, have some of the rummest
superstitions. I hope you won't have any trouble with them."
"Had any experience in handling niggers?" asked Charlie.
"Not the least."
"That makes me wish I were coming with you. They are rum beggars. Awful
cowards, and just like a pack of children. You know about sailing
anyhow. That's a good thing. You can captain your own boat, if need be.
That's all to the good. Particularly if you strike any dirty weather.
Though they're cowards in a storm, they'll take orders better than white
men--so long as they see that you know what you are about. But let me
give you one word of advice. Be kind, of course, with them--but keep
your distance all the same. And be careful about losing your temper. You
get more out of them by coaxing--hard as it is, at times. And, by the
way, how would you like to take old 'Sailor' with you?"
"Sailor" was a great Labrador retriever, who, at that moment, turned up
his big head, with a devoted sigh, from behind his master's chair.
"Rather," I said. So "Sailor" was thereupon enrolled as a further
addition to the crew.
"Of course, you needn't expect to start on time," said Charlie, with a
laugh; "you'll be lucky if the crew turns up an hour after time. But
that's all in the game. I know them--lazy beggars."
And the morning proved the truth of Charlie's judgment.
"Old Tom," the cook, was first on hand. I took to him at once. A simple,
kindly old "darky" of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" type, with faithfulness
written all over him, and a certain sad wisdom in his old face.
"You'll find Tom a great cook," said Charlie, patting the old man on the
shoulder. "Many a trip we've taken together after duck, haven't we,
Tom?" said he kindly.
"That's right, suh. That's right," said the old man, his eyes twinkling
with pleasure.
Then came the captain--Captain Jabez Williams--a younger man, with an
intelligent, self-respecting manner, somewhat non-committal,
business-like, evidently not particularly anxious as to whether he
pleased or not, but looking competent, and civil enough, without being
sympathetic.
Next came the engineer, a young hulking bronze giant, a splendid
physical specimen, but rather heavy and sullen and not over-intelligent
to look at. A slow-witted young animal, not suggesting any great love of
work, and rather loutish in his manners. But, he knew his engine, said
Charlie. And that was the main thing. The deck-hand proved to be a
shackly, rather silly effeminate fellow, suggesting idiocy, but
doubtless wiry and good enough for the purpose.
While they were busy getting up the anchor of the _Maggie Darling,_ I
went down into my cabin, to arrange various odds and ends, and presently
came the captain, touching his hat.
"There's a party," he said, "outside here, wants to know if you'll take
him as passenger to Spanish Wells."
"We're not taking passengers," I answered, "but I'll come and look him
over."
A man was standing up in a rowboat, leaning against the ship's side.
"You'd do me a great favour, sir," he began to say in a soft,
ingratiating voice.
I looked at him, with a start of recognition. He was my pock-marked
friend, who had made such an unpleasant impression on me, at John
Saunders's office. He was rather more gentlemanly looking than he had
seemed at the first view, and I saw that, though he was a half-breed,
the white blood predominated.
"I don't want to intrude," he said, "but I have urgent need of getting
to Spanish Wells, and there's no boat going that way for a week. I've
just missed the mail."
I looked at him, and, though I liked his looks no more than ever, I was
averse from being disobliging, and the favour asked was one often asked
and granted in those islands, where communication is difficult and
infrequent.
"I didn't think of taking any passengers," I said.
"I know," he said. "I know it's a great favour I ask." He spoke with a
certain cultivation of manner. "But I am willing, of course, to pay
anything you think well, for my food and my passage."
I waived that suggestion aside, and stood irresolutely looking at him,
with no very hospitable expression in my eyes, I dare say. But really my
distaste for him was an unreasoning prejudice, and Charlie Webster's
phrase came to my mind--"His face is against him, poor devil!"
It certainly was.
Then at last I said, surely not overgraciously: "Very well. Get aboard.
You can help work the boat"; and with that I turned away to my cabin.
CHAPTER IV
_In Which Tom Catches an Enchanted Fish, and Discourses of the Dangers
of Treasure Hunting._
The morning was a little overcast, but a brisk northeast wind soon set
the clouds moving as it went humming in our sails, and the sun, coming
out in its glory over the crystalline waters, made a fine flashing world
of it, full of exhilaration and the very breath of youth and adventure,
very uplifting to the heart. My spirits, that had been momentarily
dashed by my unwelcome passenger, rose again, and I felt kindly to all
the earth, and glad to be alive.
I called to Tom for breakfast.
"And you, boys, there; haven't you got a song you can put up? How about
'The _John B._ sails?'" And I led them off, the hiss and swirl of the
sea, and the wind making a brisk undertone as we sang one of the quaint
Nassau ditties:
Come on the sloop _John B._
My grandfather and me,
Round Nassau town we did roam;
Drinking all night, ve got in a fight,
Ve feel so break-up, ve vant to go home.
_Chorus_
So h'ist up the _John B._ sails,
See how the mainsail set,
Send for the captain--shore, let us go home,
Let me go home, let me go home,
I feel so break-up, I vant to go home.
The first mate he got drunk,
Break up the people trunk,
Constable come aboard, take him away;
Mr. John--stone, leave us alone,
I feel so break-up, I vant to go home.
_Chorus_
So h'ist up the _John B._ sails, _etc.,_ _etc._
Nassau looked very pretty in the morning sunlight, with its pink and
white houses nestling among palm trees and the masts of its sponging
schooners, and soon we were abreast of the picturesque low-lying fort,
Fort Montague, that Major Bruce, nearly two hundred years ago, had had
such a time building as a protection against pirates entering from the
east end of the harbour. It looked like a veritable piece of the past,
and set the imagination dreaming of those old days of Spanish galleons
and the black flag, and brought my thoughts eagerly back to the object
of my trip, those doubloons and pieces of eight that lay in glittering
heaps somewhere out in those island wildernesses.
We were passing cays of jagged cinder-coloured rock covered with low
bushes and occasional palms, very savage and impenetrable. Miles of such
ferocious vegetation separated me from the spot where my treasure was
lying. Certainly it was tough-looking stuff to fight one's way through;
but those sumptuous words of Henry P. Tobias's narrative kept on making
a glorious glitter in my mind: "_The first is a sum of one million and
one half dollars.... The other is a sum of one million dollars.... The
first pod was taken from a Spanish merchant and it is in Spanish silver
dollars. The other on Short Shrift Island is in different kinds of
money, taken from different ships of different nations ... it is all
good money._"
In fact I found to my surprise that I had the haunting thing by heart,
as though it had been a piece of poetry; and over and over again it kept
on going through my head.
Then Tom came up with my breakfast. The old fellow stood by to serve me
as I ate, with a pathetic touch of the old slavery days in his
deferential, half-fatherly manner, dropping a quaint remark every now
and again; as, when drawing my attention to the sun bursting through the
clouds, he said, "The poor man's blanket is coming out, sah"--phrases in
which there seemed a whole world of pathos to me.
Presently, when breakfast was over, and I stood looking over the side
into the incredibly clear water, in which it seems hardly possible that
a boat can go on floating, suspended as she seems over gleaming gulfs of
liquid space, down through which at every moment it seems she must
dizzily fall, Tom drew my attention to the indescribably lovely
"sea-gardens" over which we were passing--waving purple fans, fairy
coral grottoes, and jewelled fishes, lying like a rainbow dream under
our rushing keel. Well might the early mariners people such submarine
paradises with sirens and beautiful water-witches, and imagine a fairy
realm down there far under the sea.
As Tom and I gazed down lost in those rainbow deeps, I heard a voice at
my elbow saying with peculiarly sickening unction:
"The wonderful works of God."
It was my unwelcome passenger, who had silently edged up to where we
stood. I looked at him, with the question very clear in my eyes as to
what kind of disagreeable animal he was.
"Precisely," I said, and moved away.
I had been trying to feel more kindly toward him, wondering whether I
could summon up the decency to offer him a cigar, but "the wonderful
works of God" finished me.
"Hello! Captain," I said presently, pointing to some sails coming up
rapidly behind us. "What's this? I thought we'd got the fastest boat in
the harbour."
"It's the _Susan B.,_ sponger," said the Captain.
The Captain was a man of few words.
The _Susan B._ was a rakish-looking craft with a black hull, and she
certainly could sail. It made me feel ashamed to watch how quickly she
was overhauling us, and, as she finally came abreast and then passed us,
it seemed to me that in the usual salutations exchanged between us there
was mingled some sarcastic laughter; no doubt it was pure imagination,
but I certainly did fancy that I noticed our passenger signal to them in
a peculiar way.
I confess that his presence was beginning to get on my nerves, and I was
ready to get "edgy" at anything or nothing--an irritated state of mind
which I presently took out on George the engineer, who did not belie his
hulking appearance, and who was for ever letting the engine stop, and
taking for ever to get it going again. One could almost have sworn he
did it on purpose.
My language was more forcible than classical--had quite a piratical
flavour, in fact; and my friend of "the wonderful works of God" looked
up with a deprecating air. Its effect on George was nil, except perhaps
to further deepen his sulks.
And this I did notice, after a while, that my remarks to George seemed
to have set up a certain sympathetic acquaintance between him and my
passenger, the shackly deck-hand being apparently taken in as a humble
third. They sat for'ard, talking together, and my passenger read to
them, on one occasion, from a piece of printed paper that fluttered in
the wind. They listened with fallen lower jaws and occasional attempts
to seem intelligent.
The Captain was occupied with his helm, and the thoughts he didn't seem
to feel the necessity of sharing; a quiet, poised, probably stupid man,
for whom I could not deny the respect we must always give to content,
however simple. His hand was on the wheel, his eyes on the sails and the
horizon, and, though I was but a yard away from him, you would have said
I was not there at all, judging by his face. In fact, you would have
said that he was all alone on the ship, with nothing to think of but her
and the sea. He was a sailor, and I don't know what better to say of a
man.
So for companionship I was thrown back upon Tom. I felt, too, that he
was my only friend on board, and a vague feeling had come over me that,
within the next few hours, I might need a friend.
Fishing occurred to me as a way of passing the time.
"Are we going too fast for fishing, Tom?" I asked.
"Not too fast for a barracouta," said Tom; so we put out lines and
watched the stretched strings, and listened to the sea. After awhile,
Tom's line grew taut, and we hauled in a 5-foot barracouta, a bar of
silver with a long flat head, all speed and ferocity, and wonderful
teeth.
"Look!" said Tom, as he pointed to a little writhing eel-like shape,
about nine inches long, attached to the belly of the barracouta.
"A sucking fish!" said Tom. "That's good luck;" and he proceeded to turn
over the poor creature, and cut from his back, immediately below his
head, a flat inch and a half of skin lined and stamped like a rubber
sole--the device by which he held on to the belly of the barracouta much
as the circle of wet leather holds the stone in a school-boy's sling.
"Now," he said, when he had it clean and neat in his fingers, "we must
hang this up and dry it in the northeast wind; the wind is just
right--nor'-nor'east--and there is no mascot like it, specially
when--" Old Tom hesitated, with a slyly innocent smile in his eyes.
"What is it, Tom?" I asked.
"Have I your permission to speak, sah?" he said.
"Of course, you have, Tom."
"Well, sar, then I meant to say that this particular part of a sucking
fish, properly dried in the northeast wind, is a wonderful mascot--when
you're going after treasure." Tom looked frightened again, as though he
had gone too far.
"Who said I was going after treasure?" I asked.
"Aren't you, sah?" replied Tom, "asking your pardon?"
I looked for'ard where the three delegates seemed to have lost interest
for a while in their conversation and the fluttering paper, and appeared
to be noticing Tom and me.
"Let's talk it over later on, when you bring me my dinner, Tom."
Later, as Tom stood, serving my coffee, I took it up with him again.
"What was that you were saying about treasure, Tom?" I asked.
"Well, sar, what I meant was this: that going after treasure is a
dangerous business ... it's not only the living you've got to think
of--." Here Tom threw a careful eye for'ard.
"The crew, you mean?"
He nodded.
"But it's the dead too."
"The dead, Tom?"
"Yes, sar--the dead!"
"All right, Tom," I said, "go on."
"Well, sar," he continued, "there was never a buried treasure yet that
didn't claim its victim. Not one or two, either. Six or eight of them,
to my knowledge--and the treasure just where it was for all that. I
das'say it sounds all foolishness, but it's true for all that. Something
or other'll come, mark my word--just when they think they've got their
hands on it: a hurricane, or a tidal wave, or an earthquake. As sure as
you live, something'll come; a rock'll fall down, or a thunderbolt, and
somebody gets killed--And, well, the ghost laughs, but the treasure
stays there all the same."
"The ghost laughs?" I asked.
"Eh! of course; didn't you know every treasure is guarded by a ghost?
He's got to keep watch there till the next fellow comes along, to
relieve sentry duty, so to speak. He doesn't give it away. My no! He
dassn't do that. But the minute some one else is killed, coming looking
for it, then he's free--and the new ghost has got to go on sitting
there, waiting for ever so long till some one else comes looking for
it."
"But, what has this sucking fish got to do with it?" And I pointed to
the red membrane already drying up in Tom's hand.
"Well, the man who carries this in his pocket won't be the next ghost,"
he answered.
"Take good care of it for me then, Tom," I said, "and when it's properly
dried, let me have it. For I've a sort of idea I may have need of it,
after all."
And just then, old Sailor, the quietest member of the crew, put up his
head into my hands, as though to say that he had been unfairly lost
sight of.
"Yes, and you too, old chap--that's right. Tom, and you, and I."
And then I turned in for the night.
CHAPTER V
_In Which We Begin to Understand our Unwelcome Passenger._
Charlie Webster had hinted at a nor'easter--even a hurricane. As a rule,
Charlie is a safe weather prophet. But, for once, he was mistaken. There
hadn't been much of any wind as we made a lee at sunset; but as I yawned
and looked out of my cabin soon after dawn, about 4.30 next morning,
there was no wind at all.
There was every promise of a glorious day--calm, still, and untroubled.
But for men whose voyaging depended on sails, it was, as the lawyers
say, a _dies non._ In fact, there was no wind, and no hope of wind.
As I stood out of the cabin hatch, however, there was enough breeze to
flutter a piece of paper that had been caught in the mainsail halyard;
it fluttered there lonely in the morning. Nothing else was astir but it
and I, and I took it up in my hand, idly. As I did so, George reared his
head for'ard--
"Morning, George," I said; "I guess we've got to run on gasolene to-day.
No wind in sight--so far as I can see."
"That's right, sar," said George, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.
Presently, he came to me in his big hulking way, and said:
"There ain't no gasolene, sir--"
"No gasolene?" I exclaimed.
"It's run out in the night."
"The tanks were filled when we started, weren't they?" I asked.
"Yes, sir."
"We can't have used them up so soon...."
"No sir,--but some one has turned the cocks...."
I stood dazed for a moment, wondering how this could have
happened,--then a thought slowly dawned upon me.
"Who has charge of them?" I said.
George looked a little stupid, then defiant.
"I see," I said; and, suddenly, without remembering Charlie Webster's
advice not to lose your temper with a negro--I realised that this was no
accident, but a deliberate trick, something indeed in the nature of a
miniature mutiny. That fluttering paper I had picked from the halyard
lay near my breakfast table. I had only half read it. Now its import
came to me with full force. I had no firearms with me. Having a quick
temper, I have made it a habit all my life never to carry a
gun--because they go off so easily. But one most essential part of a
gentleman's education had been mine, so I applied it instantly on
George, with the result that a well-directed blow under the peak of the
jaw sent him sprawling, and for awhile speechless, in the cockpit.
"No gasolene?" I said.
And then my passenger--I must give him credit for the courage--put up
his head for'ard, and called out:
"I protest against that; it's a cowardly outrage. You wouldn't dare to
do it to a white man."
"O I see," I rejoined. "So _you_ are the author of this precious paper
here, are you? Come over here and talk it over, if you've the courage."
"I've got the courage," he answered, in a shaking voice.
"All right," I said; "you're safe for the present--and, George, who is
so fond of sleep, will take quite a nap for a while, I think."
"You English brute!" he said.
"You English brute!" he had said; and the words had impelled me to
invite him aft; for I cannot deny a certain admiration for him that had
mysteriously grown up in me. It can only have been the admiration we all
have for courage; for, certainly I cannot have suggested that he had
any other form of attractiveness.
"Come here!" I said, "for your life is safe for the time being. I would
like to discuss this paper with you."
He came and we read it together, fluttering as I had seen it flutter in
his fingers as he read it for'ard to the engineer and to the deck-hand.
George, meanwhile, was lying oblivious to the rhetoric with which it was
plentifully garnished, not to speak of the Latin quotations, taking that
cure of bleeding, which was the fashionable cure of a not-unintelligent
century. It began:--
"THINK HOW MANY WE ARE!--THINK WHAT WE COULD DO! _It isn't either that
we haven't intelligence--if only we were to use it. We don't lack
leaders--we don't lack courage--we don't lack martyrs; All are ready--_"
I stopped reading.
"Why don't you start then?" I asked.
"We have a considerable organisation," he answered.
"You have?" I said. "Why don't you use it then?"
"We're waiting for Jamaica," he answered; "she's almost ready."
"It sounds a pretty good idea to me," I remarked, "from your point of
view. 'From your point of view,' remember, I said; but you mustn't think
that yours is mine--not for one moment--O dear no! On the contrary, my
point of view is that of the Governor of Nassau, or his representative,
quite near by, at Harbour Island, isn't it?"
My pock-marked friend grew a trifle green as I said this.
"We have sails still, remember," I resumed. "George and the lost
gasolene are not everything. Five hours, with anything of a wind, would
bring us to Harbour Island, and--with this paper in my hand it would
be--what do you think yourself?--the gallows?"
My friend grew grave at that, and seemed to be thinking hard inside,
making resolutions the full force of which I didn't understand till
later, but the immediate result of which was a graciousness of manner
which did not entirely deceive me.
"O" he said, "I don't think you quite mean that. You're impulsive--as
when you hit that poor boy down there--"
"Well," I observed, "I'm willing to treat you better than you deserve.
At the same time, you must admit that your manifesto, as I suppose you
would call it, is justified neither by conditions nor by your own best
sense. You yourself are far more English than you are anything else--you
know it; you know how hard it is for white men to live with black men,
and--to tell the truth--all they do for them. The mere smell of negroes
is no more pleasant to you than it is to many other white men.
Englishmen have exiled themselves, for absurdly small salaries, to try
to make life finer and cleaner for those dark--and, I'll admit,
pathetic--barbarians. You can't deny it. And you've too much sense to
deny it. So, I'll say nothing about this, if you like" (pointing to the
manuscript), "and if the wind holds, put you ashore to-morrow at Spanish
Wells. I like you in spite of myself. Is it a bargain?"
On this we parted, and, as I thought, with a certain friendliness on
both sides.
There was no sailing wind, so there was nothing to do but stay where we
were all day. The boys fished and lay around; and I spent most of the
time in my cabin, reading a novel, and, soon after nine, I fell asleep
in a frame of mind unaccountably trustful.
I suppose that I had been asleep about three hours when I was disturbed
by a tremendous roar. It was Sailor (who always slept near me) out on
the cockpit with a man under his paws--his jaws at the man's throat. I
called him off, and saw that it was my pock-marked friend, with his
right hand extended in the cockpit and a revolver a few inches away from
it. So far as I knew it was the only firearm on the ship. "Let's get
hold of that first, Sailor," I said, and I slipped it into my hip
pocket.
"It's too bad that we can't be decent to people, Sailor, isn't it? It
makes life awfully sad," I said.
Sailor wagged his tail.
The stars were fading on the eastern islands.
"Wake up, Tom," I called, and, "wake up, Captain!" Meanwhile, I took out
the revolver from my hip pocket, and held it over the man I seemed to
grow more and more sorry for.
"We've not only got a mutiny aboard," I told the captain, "but we've got
treason to the British Government. Do you want to stand for that? Or
shall I put you ashore with the rest?"
Unruffled as usual, he had nothing to say beyond
"Ay, ay, sir!"
"Take this cord then," I ordered him and Tom, "and bind the hands and
feet of this pock-marked gentleman here; also of George, engineer; and
also of Theodore, the deck-hand. Bind them well. And throw them into the
dingy, with a bottle of water apiece, and a loaf of bread. By noon,
we'll have some wind, and can make our way to Harbour Island, and there
I'll have a little talk with the Commandant."
And as I ordered, all was done. Tom and I rowed the dingy ashore, with
our three captives bound like three silly fowls, and presently threw
them ashore with precious little ceremony, I can tell you; for the coral
rock is not all it sounds in poetry. Then we got back to the _Maggie
Darling,_ with imprecations in our ears, and particularly the promises
of the pock-marked rebel, who announced the certainty of our meeting
again.
Of course we laughed at such threats, but I confess that, as I went down
to my cabin and picked up the "manifesto," which had been forgotten in
all the turmoil, I could not escape a certain thrill as I read the
signature--for it was: "Henry P. Tobias, Jr."
CHAPTER VI
_The Incident of the Captain._
As we hoisted the sails and the sun came up in all his glory, the smell
of Tom's coffee seemed to my prosaic mind the best of all in that
beautiful world. I said: "Let's give 'em a song, boys,--to cheer 'em up.
How about 'Delia gone!'?"
At this suggestion even the imperturbability of the captain broke into a
smile. He was a man hard to move, but this suggestion seemed to tickle
him.
_Some gave a nickel, some gave a dime;
I never gave no red cent--
She was no girl of mine.
Delia gone! Delia gone!_
seemed to throw him into convulsions, and I took the helm awhile to give
him a chance to recover. The exquisiteness of its appeal to the
scoundrels, so securely trussed there on the island we were swiftly
leaving behind, seemed to get him to such a degree that I was almost
afraid that he might die of laughing, as has been heard of. He laughed
as only a negro can laugh, and he kept it going so infectiously that Tom
and I got started, just watching him. Even Sailor caught the infection,
his big tongue shaking his jaws with the huge joke of it.
I don't know what they thought had happened to us, the three poor devils
there on the jagged coral rock. At all events the laughter did us good
by relieving the tension of our feelings, and when at last we had
recovered and the captain was at the wheel again, once more sober as a
judge, you couldn't have believed such an outbreak possible of him.
The _Maggie Darling_ was sailing so fast that it hardly seemed necessary
to trouble to call at Harbour Island; but, then, the wind might go down,
our adventure was far from over, and gasolene might at any moment be a
prime necessity. So we kept her going, with her beautiful sails filled
out against the bluest sky you can dream of, and the ripple singing at
her bow--the loveliest sight and sound in the world for a man who loves
boats and the sea.
"Is there anything like it, Tom?" I asked. "Do you read your Bible? You
should; it's the greatest book in the world."
Tom hastened to acquiesce.
"You remember in the Book of Job? _Three things are wonderful to me, The
way of a ship on the sea, the way of an eagle in the air, and the way
of a man with a maid._"
"Ay, ay, sir," said Tom, "the way of a ship on the sea--but the way of a
man with a maid--"
"What's the matter with that, Tom?"
"They're all very pretty--just like the boat; but you'll not find one
near so true. We're better without them, if you ask my advice. A man's
all right as long as he keeps on his boat; but the minute he lands--the
girls and the troubles begin."
"Ah! Tom," I said; "but I think you told me you've a family--"
"Yes, sar, but the only good one amongst them is in the churchyard, this
fifteen years."
"Your wife, Tom?"
"Yes, sar, but she was more than a woman. She was a saint. When I talk
of women I don't think of her. No; God be kind to her, she is a saint,
and I only wait around till she calls me."
"Tom, allow me to shake hands with you," I said, "and call myself your
friend for ever."
The tears rolled down the old fellow's cheeks, and I realised how little
colour really matters, and how few white men were really as white as
Tom.
And so that night we made Harbour Island, and met that welcome that can
only be met at the lonely ends of the earth.
The Commandant and the clergyman took me under their wings on the spot,
and, though there was a good hotel, the Commandant didn't consider it
good enough for me.
Bless them both! I hope to be able some day to offer them the kind of
hospitality they brought me so generously in both hands; lonely men,
serving God and the British Empire, in that apparently God-forsaken
outpost of the world.
I liked the attitude they took toward my adventure. Their comments on
"Henry P. Tobias, Jr." and the paper I had with me, were especially
enlightening.
"The black men themselves," they both agreed, "are all right, except, of
course, here and there. It's fellows like this precious Tobias, real
white trash--the negroes' name for them is apt enough--that are the
danger for the friendship of both races. And it's the vein of a sort of
a literary idealism in a fellow like Tobias that makes him the more
dangerous. He's not all to the bad--"
"I couldn't help thinking that too," I interrupted.
"O! no," they said, "but he's a bit mad, too. That's his trouble. He's
got a personal, as well as an abstract, grudge against the British
Government."
"Treasure?" I laughed.
"How did you know?" they asked.
"Never mind; I somehow got the idea."
"And he thinks that by championing the nigger he can kill two birds,
see?"
"I see," I said. "I'm sorry I didn't nab him while I had him."
"Never mind," they rejoined; "if you stick to your present object,
you're bound to meet him again and soon. Only take a word of advice.
Have a few guns with you, for you're liable to need them. We're not
afraid about nabbing the whole bunch; but we don't want to lose good men
going after a bad man. And there's such a thing as having too much
courage."
"I agree," I remarked. "I'll take the guns all right, but I'm afraid
I'll need some more crew. I mean I'll want an engineer, and another
deck-hand."
And, just as I said this, there came up some one post-haste from the
village; some one, too, that wanted the clergyman, as well as me, for my
captain was ill, and at the point of death.
It was an hour or so after dinner time, and we were just enjoying our
cigars.
"What on earth can be the trouble?" I said, but, the three of us,
including the Commandant went.
We found the captain lying in his berth, writhing with cramps.
"What on earth have you been doing with yourself, Cap.?" I asked.
"I did nothing, sir, but eat my dinner, and drink that claret you were
kind enough to give me."
"That half-bottle of claret?"
"Yes, sir, the very same."
"Well, there was nothing to hurt you in that," I said. "Did you take it
half and half with water, as I told you?"
"I did indeed, sir."
"And what did you eat for your dinner?"
"Some pigeon-peas, and some rainbow fish."
"Sure, nothing else?"
"God's truth, sir."
"It's very funny," I said. And then as he began to writhe and stiffen, I
called out to Tom: "Get some rum, Tom, and make it boiling hot,
quick--quick!"
And Tom did.
"We must get him into a sweat."
Very soon we did. Then I said to Tom:
"What do you make out of this smell that's coming from him, Tom?"
"Kerosene, sar," said Tom.
"I thought the very same," I said.
Tom beckoned me to go with him to the galley, and showed me several
quart bottles of water standing on a shelf.
"Two of these were kerosene," he said, "and I suppose Cap. made a
mistake"; for one looked as clear as the other.
Then I took one of them back to the captain.
"Was it a bottle like this you mixed with the claret?" I asked.
"Sure it was, sir," he answered, writhing hard with the cramps.
"But my God, man!" I said. "Couldn't you tell the difference between
that and water?"
"I thought it tasted funny, boss, but I wasn't used to claret."
And then we had to laugh again, and I thought old Tom would die.
"A nigger's stomach and his head," said the Commandant, "are about the
same. I really don't know which is the stronger."
And Tom started laughing so that I believe, if the wind had been blowing
that way, you could have heard him in Nassau.
The captain didn't die, though he came pretty near to it. In fact, he
took so long getting on his feet, that we couldn't wait for him; so we
had practically to look out for a new crew, with the exception of Tom,
and Sailor. The Commandant proved a good friend to us in this, choosing
three somewhat characterless men, with good "characters."
"I cannot guarantee them," he said; "that's impossible, but, so far as I
know, and the parson'll bear me out, they're all quiet, good-living men.
The engineer's in love, and got it bad; he is engaged to be married, and
is all the gladder of the good pay you're offering--more than usually
comes their way--and that always keeps a man straight, at least until
after he's married."
The Commandant was a splendid fellow, and he had a knowledge of human
nature that was almost Shakespearean, particularly when you considered
the few and poor specimens he had to study it by.
As we said good-bye, with a spanking southwest breeze blowing, I could
see that he was a little anxious about me.
"Take care of yourself," he said, "for you must remember none of us can
take care of you. There's no settlement where you're going--no telegraph
or wireless; you could be murdered, and none of us hear of it for a
month, or for ever. And the fellows you're after are a dangerous lot,
take my word for it. Keep a good watch on your guns, and we'll be on
the look out for the first news of you, and anything we can do we'll be
there, you bet."
And so the _Maggie Darling_ once more bared her whiteness to the breeze,
and the world seemed once more a great world.
"It's good to be alive, Tom," I said, "on a day like this, though we get
killed to-morrow."
Tom agreed to this, so did Sailor; and so, I felt, did the _Maggie
Darling,_ the loveliest, proud-sailed creature that ever leaned over and
laughed in the grasp of the breeze.
CHAPTER VII
_In Which the Sucking Fish Has a Chance to Show Its Virtue._
The breeze was so strong that we didn't use our engine that day.
Besides, I wanted to take a little time thinking over my plans. I spent
most of the time studying the charts and pondering John P. Tobias's
narrative, which threw very little light on the situation. There was
little definite to go by but his mark of the compass engraven on a
certain rock in a wilderness of rocks; and such rocks as they were at
that.
As I thought of that particular kind of rock, I wondered too about my
three friends, trussed like fowls, on their coral rock couches. Of
course they had long since cut each other free, and were somewhere
active and evil-doing; and the thought of their faces seemed positively
sweet to me, for of such faces are made "the bright face of danger" that
all men are born to love.
Still the thought of that set me thinking too of my defences. I looked
well to my guns. The Commandant had made me accept the loan of a
particularly expert revolver that was, I could see, as the apple of his
eye. He must have cared for me a great deal to have lent it me, and it
was bright as the things we love.
Then I called Tom to me: "How about that sucking fish, Tom?" I asked.
"It's just cured, sar," he said. "I was going to offer it to you this
lunch time. It's dried out fine; couldn't be better. I'll bring it to
you this minute." And he went and was back again in a moment. "You must
wear it right over your heart," he said, "and you'll see there's not a
bullet can get near it. It's never been known for a bullet to go through
a sucking fish. Even if they come near, something in the air seems to
send them aside. It's God's truth."
"But, Tom," I said, "how about you?"
"I've worn one here, sar, for twenty years, and you can see for
yourself"--and he bared the brown chest beneath which beat the heart
that like nothing else in the world has made me believe in God.
And so we went spinning along, and, if only I had the gift of words, I
could make such pictures of the islands we sailed by, the colours of the
waters, the joy of our going--the white coral sand beaches and the big
cocoanut palms leaning over them, and the white surges that curled along
and along the surf reef, over and over again, running like children to
meet each other and join each other's hands, or like piano keys rippling
white under some master's fingers.
That night we made a good lee, and lay in a pool of stars, very tranquil
and alive with travelling lights, great globed fishes filled with soft
radiance, and dreaming glimmers and pulsating tremors of glory and
sudden errands of fire. Sailor and I stayed up quite late watching the
wonder in which we so spaciously floated, and of the two of us, I am
sure that Sailor knew more than I.
But one thought I had which I am sure was not his, because it was born
of shallower conditions than those with which his instincts have to
deal. I thought: What treasure sunk into the sea by whatsoever lost
ship--galleons piled up and bursting with the gold and silver of Spain,
or strange triangular-sailed boats sailing from Tripoli with the
many-coloured jewels of the east, "ivory, apes, and peacocks"--what
treasure sunk there by man could be compared with the treasure already
stored there by Nature, dropped as out of the dawn and the sunset into
these unvisited waters by the lavish hand of God? What diver could hope
to distinguish among all these glories the peculiar treasures of kings?
We awoke to a dawn that was a rose planted in the sky by the mysterious
hand that seems to love to give the fairest thing the loneliest setting.
But there was no wind, so that day we ran on gasolene. We had some fifty
miles to go to where the narrative pointed, a smaller cay, the cay which
it will be remembered was, according to John Saunders's old map, known
in old days as "Dead Men's Shoes"--but since known by another name
which, for various reasons, I do not deem it politic to divulge--near
the end of the long cay down which we were running.
Tom and I talked it over, and thought that it might be all the better to
take it easy that day and arrive there next morning, when, after a good
night's sleep, we should be more likely to feel rested, and ready to
grapple with whatever we had to face.
So about twilight we dropped anchor in another quiet bay, so much like
that of the night before, as all the bays and cays are along that coast,
that you need to have sailed them from boyhood to know one from another.
The cove we were looking for, known by the cheery name of Dead Men's
Shoes, proved farther off than we expected, so that we didn't come to it
till toward the middle of the next afternoon, an afternoon of the most
innocent gold that has ever thrown its soft radiance over an earth
inhabited for the most part by ruffians and scoundrels.
The soft lapping beauty of its little cove, in such odd contrast to its
sinister name--sunshine on coral sand, and farther inland, the mangrove
trees, like walking laurel stepping out into the golden ripples--Ah! I
should like to try my hand on the beauty of that afternoon; but we were
not allowed to admire it long, for we were far from being alone.
"She's changed her paint," said Tom, at my elbow. And, looking round, I
saw that our rakish schooner with the black hull was now white as a
dove; and, in that soft golden water, hardly a foot and a half deep,
five shadowy young sharks floated, with outstretched fins like huge
bats. Our engineer, who was already wading fearlessly in the water,
beautifully naked, "shooed" them off like chickens. But it was soon to
be evident that more dangerous foes waited for us on the shore.
Yet there was seemingly nothing there but a pile of sponges, and a few
black men. The _Susan B._ had changed her colour, it was true, but she
was a well-known sponger, and I noticed no one among the group ashore
that I recognised.
There was one foolish fellow that reminded me of my shackly deck-hand,
whom I had always thought out of his mind, standing there on his head on
the rocks, and waving his legs to attract attention.
"Why! There's Silly Theodore," called out the captain.
"Look out!" murmured Tom at my elbow.
"I'm going ashore all the same, Tom," I said.
"I'm going with you too," said the Captain. "You needn't be afraid of
me. You're the sort I like. But look after your guns. There's going to
be something doing--quiet as it looks."
So we rowed ashore, and there was Theodore capering in front of a pile
of sponges, but no other face that I knew. But there were seven or eight
negroes whose looks I took no great liking to.
"Like some fancy sponges to send home?" said one of these, coming up to
me. "Cost you five times as much in Nassau."
"Certainly I'd like a few sponges," I said.
And then Theodore came up to me, looking as though he had lost his mind
over the rather fancy silk tie I happened to be wearing.
"Give me dat!" he said, touching it, like a crazy man.
"I can't afford to give you that, Theodore."
"I'd die for dat," he declared.
"Take this handkerchief instead;" but, meanwhile, my eyes were opening.
"Take this instead, Theodore," I suggested.
"I'd die for dat," he repeated, touching it.
His voice and touch made me sick and afraid, just as people in a lunatic
asylum make one afraid.
"Look out!" murmured Tom again at my elbow.
And just then I noticed, hiding in some bushes of seven-year apple
trees, two faces I had good reason to know.
I had barely time to pull out the Commandant's revolver from my pocket.
I knew it was to be either the pock-marked genius or the engineer. But,
for the moment, I was not to be sure which one I had hit. For, as my gun
went off, something heavy came down on my head, and for the time I was
shut off from whatever else was going on.
CHAPTER VIII
_In Which I Once Again Sit Up and Behold the Sun._
"Which did I hit, Tom?" were my first words as I came back to the glory
of the world; but I didn't say them for a long time, and, from what Tom
told me it was a wonder I ever said them at all.
"There he is, sar," said Tom, pointing to a long dark figure stretched
out near by. "I'm afraid he's not the man you were looking for."
"Poor fellow!" I said; it was George, the engineer; "I'm sorry--but I
saw the muzzles of their guns sticking out of the bush there. It was
they or me."
"That no lie, sar, and, if it hadn't been for that sucking-fish's skin,
you wouldn't be here now."
"It didn't save me from a pretty good one on the head, Tom, did it?"
"No, sar, but that was just it--if it hadn't been for that knock on the
head, pulling you down just that minute, that thar pock-marked fellow
would have got you. As it was, he grazed your cheek, and got one of his
own men killed by mistake--the very fellow that hit you. There he
is--over there."
"And who's that other, Tom?" I asked, pointing to another dark figure a
few yards away.
"That's the captain, sar."
"The captain? O I'm sorry for that. God knows I'm sorry for that."
"Yas, sar, he was one of the finest gentlemen I ever knowed was Captain
Tomlinson; a brave man and a good navigator. And he'd taken a powerful
fancy to you, for when you got that crack on the head, he picked up your
gun, and began blazing away, with words I should never have expected
from a religious man. The others, except our special friend--"
"Let's call him Tobias from now on, Tom," I interposed.
"Well him, sar, kept his nerve, but the others ran for the boats as if
the devil was after them; but the captain's gun was quicker, and only
four of them got to the _Susan B._ The other two fell on their faces, as
if something had tripped them up, in a couple of feet of water. But,
just then, Tobias hit the captain right in the heart; ah! if only he had
one of those skins--but he always laughed off such things as
superstitious.
"There was only me and Tobias then, and the dog, for the engineer boy
had gone on his knees to the _Susan B._ fellows, at the first crack,
and begged them to take him away with them. I wouldn't have thought it
of him--for he wasn't afraid o' them sharks, sar, as you saw, but I
suppose it was thinking of his gal--anyway he went off a-praying and
blubbering with what was left of the crew of the _Susan B.,_ who seemed
too scared to notice him, and so let him come; and, as I was saying,
there was no one left but Tobias and the dog and me, and I was sure my
end was not far off, for I was never much of a shot.
"As God is my witness, sar, I was ready to die, and there was a moment
when I thought that the time had come and Martha was calling me; but
Tobias suddenly walked away to the top of the bluff and called out to
the _Susan B._ that was just running up her sails. At his word, they put
out a boat for him, and, while he waited, he came down the hill towards
me and the dog that stood growling over you; and for sure, I thought it
was the end. But he said: 'Tell that fellow there that I'm not going to
kill a defenceless man. He might have killed me once but he didn't. It's
bound to be one of us some day or other, but despise me all he
likes--I'm not such carrion as he thinks me; and if he only likes to
keep out of my way, I'm willing to keep out of his. Tell him, when he
wakes up, that as long as he gives up going after what belongs to
me--for it was my grandfather's--he is safe, but the minute he sets his
foot or hand on what is mine, it's either his life or mine.' And then he
turned away and was rowed to the _Susan B.,_ and they soon sailed away."
"With the black flag at the peak, I suppose, Tom," said I. "Well, that
was a fine speech, quite a flight of oratory, and I'm sure I'm obliged
to him for the life that's still worth having, in spite of this ungodly
aching in my head. But how about the poor captain there! Where does all
his eloquence come in there? He can't call it self-defence. They were
waiting ready to murder us all right behind that seven-year apple tree,
as you saw. I'm afraid the captain and the law between them are all that
is necessary to cook the goose of our friend Henry P. Tobias, Jr.,
without any help from me--though, as the captain died for me, I should
prefer they allowed me to make it a personal matter."
And then I got on my feet, and went and looked at the captain's calm
face.
"It's the beginning of the price," said Tom.
"The beginning of the price?"
"It's the dead hand," continued Tom; "I told you, you'll remember, that
wherever treasure is there's a ghost of a dead man keeping guard, and
waiting till another dead man comes along to take up sentry duty so to
say."
"That's what you said, Tom," I admitted. "Several men have been killed,
it's true, but no one's put his hand on the treasure."
"All the worse for that!" replied Tom, shaking his head. "These are only
a beginning. The ghost is getting busy. And it makes me think that we're
coming pretty near to the treasure, or we wouldn't have had all this
happen."
"Growing warm, you mean, as the children say?"
"The very thing!" said Tom. "Mark me, the treasure's near by--or the
ghost wouldn't be so malicious."
And then, looking around where the captain, and the engineer and Silly
Theodore lay, I said:
"The first thing we've got to do is to bury these poor fellows; but
where," I added, "are the other two that fell in the water?"
"O," said Tom, "a couple of sharks got them just before you woke up."
CHAPTER IX
_In Which Tom and I Attend Several Funerals._
When Tom and I came to look over the ground with a view to finding a
burial-place for the dead, I realised with grim emphasis the truth of
Charlie Webster's remarks--in those snuggery nights that seemed so
remote and far away--on the nature of the soil which would have to be
gone over in quest of my treasure. No wonder he had spoken of dynamite.
"Why, Tom," I said, "there isn't a wheel-barrow load of real soil in a
square mile. We couldn't dig a grave for a dog in stuff like this," and,
as I spoke, the pewter-like rock under my feet clanged and echoed with a
metallic sound.
It was indeed a terrible land from the point of view of the husbandman.
No wonder the Government couldn't dispose of it as a gift. It was a
marvel that anything had the fierce courage to grow on it at all. For
the most part it was of a grey clinker-like formation, tossed, as by
fiery convulsions, in shelves of irregular strata, with holes every few
feet suggesting the circular action of the sea--some of these holes no
more than a foot wide, and some as wide as an ordinary-sized well--and
in these was the only soil to be found. In them the strange and savage
trees--spined, and sown thick with sharp teeth--found their rootage, and
writhed about, splitting the rock into endless cracks and fissures with
their fierce effort--sea-grape, with leaves like cymbal-shaped plates of
green metal; gum-elemi trees, with trunks of glistening bronze; and
seven-year apples, with fruit like painted wood.
Here and there was a thatch-palm, stunted, and looking like the
head-dress of some savage African warrior. Inland, the creek, all white
sand and golden sunny water at its opening, spread out far and near into
noisome swamps overgrown with mangroves. Those strangest of all trees,
that had something tender and idyllic as they stepped out into the
ripple with their fresh child-like laurel-line leaves and dangling rods
of emerald, that were really the suckers of their banyan-like roots, had
grown into an obscene and bizarre maturity, like nightmares striding out
in every direction with skeleton feet planted in festering mud, and
stretching out horned, clawing hands that seemed to take root as one
looked, and to throw out other roots of horror like a dream.
Twilight was beginning to add to its suggestions of _diablerie,_ and
the whole land to seem more and more the abode of devils.
"Come along, Tom, I can't stand any more of this. We'll have to leave
our funerals till to-morrow, and get aboard for the night"--for the
_Maggie Darling_ was still floating there serenely, as though men and
their violence had no existence on the planet.
"We'd better cover them up, against the turkey-buzzards," said Tom, two
of those unsavory birds rising in the air as we returned to the shore.
We did this as well as we were able with rocks and the wreckage of an
old boat strewn on the beach, and, before we rowed aboard--Tom, and
Sailor, and I--we managed to shoot a couple of them,--_pour encourager
les autres._
I don't think two men were ever so glad of the morning, driving before
it the haunted night, as Tom and I; and Sailor seemed as glad as
ourselves, for he too seemed to have been troubled by bad dreams, and
woke me more than once, growling and moaning in his sleep in a
frightened way.
After breakfast, our first thought was naturally to the sad and
disagreeable business before us.
"I tell you what I've been thinking, sar," said Tom, as we rowed ashore,
and I managed to pull down a turkey-buzzard that rose at our
approach--happily our coverings had proved fairly effective--"I've been
thinking that the only one of the three that really matters is the
captain, and we can find sufficient soil for him in one of those big
holes."
"How about the others?"
"Why, to tell the truth, I was thinking that sharks are good enough for
them."
"They deserve no better, Tom, and I think we may as well get rid of them
first. The tide's running out strong and we won't have them knocking
about for long."
So it was done as we said, and carrying them by the feet and shoulders
to the edge of the bluff--George, and Silly Theodore, and the nameless
giant who had knocked me down so opportunely--we skilfully flung them
in, and they glided off with scarce a splash.
"See that fin yonder!" cried Tom eagerly; and next minute one of the
floating figures was drawn under. "Got him already!" (with a certain
grim satisfaction). "That's what I call quick work."
Then we turned to the poor captain, and carried him as gently as we
could over the rough ground to the biggest of the banana holes, as the
natives call them, and there we were able to dig him a fairly
respectable grave.
"Do you know the funeral service, Tom?" I asked.
"No, sar, can't say as I do, though I seem to have heard it pretty
often."
"Wait a minute. I've got a Bible aboard, I'll go and get it."
"I'd rather go with you, sar, if you don't mind."
"Why, you're surely not frightened of the poor fellow here, are you,
Tom?"
"Well, sar, I don't say as I'm exactly that; but somehow he seems kind
of lonesome; and, if you don't mind--"
So we went off, and were back in a few moments with the Bible, and I
read those passages, from Job and the Psalms, immemorially associated
with the passage of the dead:
_"Man, that is born of woman, is of few days, and full of trouble. He
cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down: He fleeth also as a shadow,
and continueth not--;_ and again:
_Behold Thou hast made my days as a hand-breadth: and mine age is as
nothing before Thee: Verily every man at his best state is altogether
vanity. Surely every man walketh in a vain show: surely they are
disquieted in vain: he heapeth up riches, and knoweth not who shall
gather them. When Thou with rebukes dost correct man for iniquity, Thou
makest his beauty to consume away like a moth: surely every man is
vanity. Have mercy, O Lord, and give ear unto my cry: hold not thy peace
at my tears, for I am a stranger with Thee, and a sojourner, as all my
fathers were--."_
And, by the time we had got to the end, our tears were falling like rain
into a brave man's grave.
CHAPTER X
_In Which Tom and I Seriously Start in Treasure Hunting._
Tom and Sailor and I were now, to the best of our belief, alone on the
island, and a lonesomer spot it would be hard to imagine, or one touched
at certain hours with a fairer beauty--a beauty wraith-like and, like a
sea-shell, haunted with the marvel of the sea. But we, alas!--or let me
speak for myself--were sinful, misguided men, to whom the gleam and
glitter of God's making spoke all too seldom, and whose hearts were
given to the baser shining of such treasure as that of which I for one
still dreamed--with an obstinacy all the more hardened by the opposition
we had encountered, and by the menace of danger the enterprise now held
beyond peradventure--a menace, indeed, to which Tobias's words had given
the form of a precise challenge. Perhaps but for that, remembering the
count of so many dead men--men who had lost their lives in the
prosecution of my probably vain desire--I would have given the whole
thing up, and sailed the boat back to less-haunted regions, which Tom
and I might easily have done, and as Tom, I could plainly see, would
himself have preferred.
But Tobias's challenge made such a course impossible for any man worthy
of the name, and I never gave the alternative a moment's consideration.
But I did give Tom his choice of staying or going--a choice made
possible that day by a schooner sailing close in shore and easy to
signal. Yet Tom, while making no secret of his real feelings, would not
hear of quitting.
"I sha'n't think a cent worse of you, Tom," I assured him. "Indeed, I
won't. It's no doubt a mad business anyway, and I'm not sure I've the
right to endanger in it any other lives than my own."
"No, sar," said Tom; "I came with you, you have treated me right, and I
am going to see you through."
"You're the real thing; God bless you, Tom," I exclaimed. "But I doubt
if I've the right to take advantage of your goodness. I'm not sure that
I oughtn't to signal those fellows to take you off with them
willy-nilly."
"No, sar, you wouldn't do that, I'm sure. I'm a free man, God be
praised, though my mother and father were slaves"--and he drew himself
up with pathetic pride--"and I can choose my own course, as they
couldn't. Besides, there's no one needs me at home; all my girls and
boys are well fixed; and if I have to go, perhaps there's some one needs
me more in heaven."
"All right, Tom, and thank you; we'll say no more about it." And so we
let the schooner go by, and turned to the consideration of our plans.
First we went over our stores, and, thanks to those poor dead mouths
that did not need to be reckoned with any more, we had plenty of
everything to last us for at least a month, not to speak of fishing, at
which Tom was an expert.
When, however, we turned to our plans for the treasure-hunting, we soon
came to a dead stop. No plans seemed feasible in face of that rocky
wilderness, all knives to the feet, and writhing serpents of fanged and
toothed foliage to the eye, with brambles like barbed-wire fences at
every yard.
The indications given by Tobias seemed, in the face of such a terrain,
naïve to a degree. Possibly the land had changed since his day. Some
little, of course, it must have done. Tom and I went over Tobias's
directions again and again. Of course, there was the compass carved on
the rock, and the cross. There was something definite--something which,
if it was ever there at all, was there still--for in that climate the
weather leaves things unperished almost as in Egypt.
Sitting on the highest bluff we could find, Tom and I looked around.
"That compass is somewhere among these infernal rocks--if it ever was
carved there at all--that's one thing certain, Tom; but look at the
rocks!"
Over twenty miles of rocks north and south, and from two to six from
east to west. A more hopeless job the mind of man could not conceive.
Tom shook his head, and scratched his greying wool.
"I go most by the ghost, sar," he said. "All these men had never been
killed if the ghost hadn't been somewhere near. It's the ghost I go by.
Mark me, if we find the treasure it'll be by the ghost."
"That's all very well," I laughed. "But how are we going to get the
ghost to show his hand? He's got such bloodthirsty ways with him."
"They always have, sar," said Tom, no doubt with some ancestral shudder
of voodoo worship in his blood. "Yes, sar, they always cry out for
blood. It's all they've got to live on. They drink it like you and me
drink coffee or rum. It's terrible to hear them in the night."
"Why, you don't mean to say you've heard them drinking it, Tom," I
asked. "That's all nonsense."
"They'll drink any kind,--any they can get hold of,--chickens' or pigs'
or cows'; you can hear them any night near the slaughterhouse." And Tom
lowered his voice. "I heard them from the boat, the other night, when I
couldn't sleep--heard them as plain as you can hear a dog lapping water.
And it's my opinion there was two of them. But I heard them as plain as
I hear you."
As Tom talked, I seemed to hear Ulysses telling of his meeting with
Agamemnon in Hades, and those terrible ghosts drinking from the
blood-filled trench, and I shuddered in spite of myself; for it is
almost impossible entirely to refuse credence to beliefs held with such
certitude of terror across so many centuries and by such different
people.
"Well, Tom," I remarked, "you may be right, but of one thing I'm
certain; if the ghost's going to get any one, it sha'n't be you."
"We've both got one good chance against them--" Tom was beginning.
"Don't tell me again about that old sucking fish."
"Mind you keep it safe, for all that," said Tom gravely. "I wouldn't
lose mine for a thousand pounds."
"Well, all right, but let's forget the damned old ghosts for the
present," and I broke out into the catch we had sung on so momentous an
occasion--
_Some gave a nickel, some gave a dime;
But I didn't give no red cent--
She was no girl of mine--
Delia's gone! Delia's gone!_
And it did one good to hear Tom's honest laughter resounding in that
beautiful haunted wilderness, as the song brought back to both of us the
memories of that morning which already seemed so long ago.
"I wonder what's become of our friend of 'the wonderful works of God,'"
I queried.
"Wherever he is, he's up to no good, we may be sure of that," answered
Tom.
At last we decided to try a plan that was really no plan at all; that is
to say, to seek more or less at random, till we consumed all our stores
except just enough to take us home. Meanwhile, we would, each of us,
every day, cut a sort of radiating swathe, working single-handed, from
the cove entrance. Thus we would prospect as much of the country as
possible in a sort of fan, both of us keeping our eyes open for a
compass carved on a rock. In this way we might hope to cover no
inconsiderable stretch of the country in the three weeks, and, moreover,
the country most likely to give some results, as being that lying in a
semi-circle from the little harbour where the ships would have lain. It
wasn't much of a plan perhaps, but it seemed the most possible among
impossibles.
So the next morning, bright and early, we started work, I letting Tom
take Sailor with him as company and protection against the spirits of
the waste; also we took a revolver apiece and cartridge belts, and it
seemed to me that the old fellow showed no little courage to go alone at
all, with such hair-raising beliefs as he had. We each took food and a
flask of rum and water to last us the day, and we promised to halloo now
and again to each other for company, as soon as we got out of sight of
each other. This, however, did not happen the first day. Of course, we
carried a machete and a mattock apiece, though the latter was but little
use, and, if either of us should find any spot worth dynamiting, we
agreed to let the other know.
Harder work than we had undertaken no men have ever set their hands to.
It would have broken the back of the most able-bodied navvy; and when we
reached the boat at sunset, we had scarce strength left to eat our
supper and roll into our bunks. A machete is a heavy weapon that needs
no little skill in handling with economy of force, and Tom, who had been
brought up to it, was, in spite of his years, a better practitioner than
I.
I have already hinted at the kind of devil's underbrush we had to cut
our way through, but no words can do justice to the almost intelligent
stubbornness with which those weird growths opposed us. It really seemed
as though they were inspired by a diabolic will-force pitting itself
against our wills, vegetable incarnations of evil strength and fury and
cunning.
Battalions of actual serpents could scarcely have been harder to fight
than these writhing, tormented shapes that shrieked and hissed and bled
strangely under our strokes, and seemed to swarm with new life at each
onset! And the rock was almost more terrible to grapple with than they.
Jagged and pointed, it was like needles and razors to walk on; and it
was brittle as it was hard. While it could sometimes resist a hammer, it
would at others smash under our feet like a tea-cup. It looked like some
metallic dross long since vomited up from the furnaces of hell.
Only once in a while was a softer, limestone, formation--like the pit
in which we had buried the captain--with hints at honeycombing, and
possibilities that invariably came to nothing. Now again we would come
upon a rock of this kind that seemed for a second to hint at mysterious
markings made by the hand of man, but they proved to be nothing but some
decorative sea-fossilisation, making an accidental pattern, like the
marking you sometimes come across on some old weathered stone on a moor.
Nothing that the fondest fancy could twist into the likeness of a
compass or a cross!
Day after day, Tom and I returned home dead-beat, with hardly a tired
word to exchange with each other.
We had now been at it for about a fortnight, and I loved the old chap
more every day for the grit and courage with which he supported our
terrible labours and kept up his spirits. We had long since passed out
of sight of each other, and much time was necessarily wasted by our
going to and from the place where we left off each day. Many a time I
hallooed to the old man to keep his heart up, and received back his
cheery halloo far and far away.
Once or twice we had made fancied discoveries which we called off the
other to see, and once or twice we had tried some blasting on rocks
that seemed to suggest mysterious tunnellings into the earth. But it had
all proved a vain thing and a weariness of the flesh. And the ghost of
John P. Tobias still kept his secret.
CHAPTER XI
_An Unfinished Game of Cards._
One evening, as I returned to the ship unusually worn-out and
disheartened, I asked Tom how the stores were holding out. He answered
cheerfully that they would last another week, and leave us enough to get
home.
"Well, shall we stick out the other week, or not, Tom? I don't want to
kill you, and I confess I'm nearly all in myself."
"May as well stick it out, sar, now we've gone so far. Then we'll have
done all we can, and there's a certain satisfaction in doing that, sar."
Good old Tom! and I believe that the wise old man had the thought
behind, that, perhaps, when there was evidently nothing more to be done,
I might get rid of the bee in my bonnet, and once more settle down to
the business of a reasonable being.
So next morning we went at it again; and the next, and the next again,
and then on the fourth day, when our week was drawing to its close,
something at last happened to change the grim monotony of our days.
It was shortly after the lunch hour. Tom and I, who were now working too
far apart to hear each other's halloes, had fired our revolvers once or
twice to show that all was right with us. But, for no reason I can give,
I suddenly got a feeling that all was not right with the old man, so I
fired my revolver, and gave him time for a reply. But there was no
answer. Again I fired. Still no answer. I was on the point of firing
again, when I heard something coming through the brush behind me. It was
Sailor racing toward me over the jagged rocks. Evidently there was
something wrong.
"Something wrong with old Tom, Sailor?" I asked, as though he could
answer me. And indeed he did answer as plainly as dog could do, wagging
his tail and whining, and turning to go back with me in the direction
whence he had come.
But I stopped to shoot off my revolver again. Still no answer.
"Off we go then, old chap," and as he ran ahead, I followed him as fast
as I could over those damnable rocks.
It took me the best part of an hour to get to where Tom had been
working. It was an extent of those more porous limestone rocks of which
I have spoken, almost cliff-like in height, and covering a considerable
area. Sailor brushed his way ahead, pushing through the scrub with
canine importance. Presently, at the top of a slight elevation, I came
among the bushes to a softer spot where the soil had given way, and saw
that it was the mouth of a shaft like a wide chimney flue, the earth of
which had evidently recently fallen in. Here Sailor stopped and whined,
pawing the earth, and, at the same time, I heard a moaning underneath.
"Is that you, Tom?" I called. Thank God, the old chap was not dead at
all events.
"Thank the Lord, it's you, sar," he cried. "I'm all right, but I've had
a bad fall--and I can't seem able to move."
"Hold on and keep up your heart--I'll be with you in a minute," I called
down to him.
"Mind yourself, sar," he called cheerily, and, indeed, it was a problem
to get down to him without precipitating the loose earth and rock that
were ready to make a landslide down the hole, and perhaps bury him for
ever.
But, looking about, I found another natural tunnel in the side of the
hill. Into this I was able to worm myself, and in the dim light found
the old man, and put my flask to his lips.
"Anything broken, do you think?"
Tom didn't think so. He had evidently been stunned by his fall, and
another pull at my flask set him on his feet. But, as I helped him up,
and, striking a light, we began to look around the hole he had tumbled
into, he gave a piercing shriek, and fell on his knees, jabbering with
fear.
"The ghosts! the ghosts!" he screamed.
And the sight that met our eyes was certainly one to try the nerves. We
had evidently stumbled upon a series of fairly lofty chambers hollowed
out long ago first by the sea, and probably further shaped by
man--caverns supported here and there by rude columns of the same rock,
and dimly lit from above in one or two places by holes like mine shafts,
down one of which fell masses of snake-like roots of the fig tree, a
species of banyan.
Within the circle of this light two figures sat at a table--one with his
hat tilted slightly, and one leaning sideways in his chair in a careless
sort of attitude. They seemed to be playing cards, and they were
strangely white--for they were skeletons.
I stood hushed, while Tom's teeth rattled at my side. The fantastic awe
of the thing was beyond telling. And, then, not without a qualm or two,
which I should be a liar to deny, I went and stood nearer to them.
Nearly all their clothes had fallen away, hanging but in shreds here
and there. That the hat had so jauntily kept its place was one of those
grim touches Death, that terrible humorist, loves to add to his jests.
The cards, which had apparently just been dealt, had suffered scarcely
from decay--only a little dirt had sifted down upon them, as it had into
the rum glasses that stood too at each man's side. And, as I looked at
the skeleton jauntily facing me, I noticed that a bullet hole had been
made as clean as if by a drill in his forehead of bone--while, turning
to examine more closely his silent partner, I noticed a rusty sailor's
knife hanging from the ribs where the lungs had been. Then I looked on
the floor and found the key to the whole story. For there, within a few
yards, stood a heavy sailor's chest, strongly bound around with iron.
Its lid was thrown back, and a few coins lay scattered at the bottom,
while a few lay about on the floor. I picked them up.
They were pieces of eight!
Meanwhile, Tom had stopped jabbering, and had come nearer, looking on in
awed silence. I showed him the pieces of eight.
"I guess these are all we'll see of one of John P. Tobias's treasure,
Tom," I said. "And it looks as if these poor fellows saw as little of it
as ourselves. Can't you imagine them with it there at their
feet--perhaps playing to divide it on a gamble; and, meanwhile, the
other fellows stealing in through some of these rabbit runs--one with a
knife, the other with a gun--and then: off with the loot and up with the
sails. Poor devils! It strikes me as a very pretty tragedy--doesn't it
you?"
Suddenly--perhaps with the vibration of our voices--the hat toppled off
the head of the fellow facing us, in the most weird and comical
fashion--and that was too much for Tom, and he screamed and made for the
exit hole. But I waited a minute to replace the hat on the rakish one's
head. As I was likely often to think of him in the future, I preferred
to remember him as at the moment of our first strange acquaintance.
BOOK II
_The dotted cays,
With their little trees,
Lie all about on the crystal floor;
Nothing but beauty--
Far off is duty,
Far off the folk of the busy shore._
_The mangroves stride
In the coloured tide,
With leafy crests that will soon be isles;
And all is lonely--
White sea-sand only,
Angel-pure for untrodden miles._
_In sunny bays
The young shark plays,
Among the ripples and nets of light;
And the conch-shell crawls
Through the glimmering halls
The coral builds for the Infinite._
_And every gem
In His diadem,
From flaming topaz to moon-hushed pearl,
Glitters and glances
In swaying dances
Of waters adream like the eyes of a girl._
_The sea and the stars,
And the ghostly bars
Of the shoals all bright 'neath the feet of the moon;
The night that glistens,
And stops and listens
To the half-heard beat of an endless tune._
_Here Solitude
To itself doth brood,
At the furthest verge of the reef-spilt foam;
And the world's lone ends
Are met as friends,
And the homeless heart is at last at home._
BOOK II
CHAPTER I
_Once More in John Saunders's Snuggery._
Need I say that it was a great occasion when I was once more back safe
in John Saunders's snuggery, telling my story to my two friends,
comfortably enfolded in a cloud of tobacco smoke, John with his old port
at his elbow, and Charlie Webster and I flanked by our whiskies and
soda, all just as if I had never stirred from my easy chair, instead of
having spent an exciting month or so among sharks, dead men,
blood-lapping ghosts, card-playing skeletons and such like?
My friends listened to my yarn in characteristic fashion, John
Saunders's eyes more like mice peeping out of a cupboard than ever, and
Charlie Webster's huge bulk poised almost threateningly, as it were,
with the keenness of his attention. His deep-set kind brown eyes glowed
like a boy's as I went on, but by their dangerous kindling at certain
points of the story, those dealing with our pock-marked friend, Henry
P. Tobias, Jr., I soon realised where, for him, the chief interest of
the story lay.
"The ---- rebel!" he roared out once or twice, using an adjective
peculiarly English.
When I come to think of it, perhaps there is no one in His Britannic
Majesty's dominions so wholeheartedly English as Charlie Webster. He is
an Englishman of a larger mould than we are accustomed to to-day. He
seems rather to belong to a former more rugged era--an Englishman say of
Elizabeth's or Nelson's day; big, rough, and simple, honest to the core,
slow to anger, but terrible when roused--a true heart of oak, a man with
massive, slow-moving, but immensely efficient, "governing" brain. A born
commander, utterly without fear, yet always cool-headed and never rash.
If there are more Englishmen like him, I don't think you will find them
in London or anywhere in the British Isles. You must go for them to the
British colonies. There, rather than at home, the sacred faith in the
British Empire is still kept passionately alive. And, at all events,
Charlie Webster may truly be said to have one article of faith--the
glory of the British Empire. To him, therefore, the one unforgivable sin
is treason against that; as probably to die for England--after having
notched a good account of her enemies on his unerring rifle--would be
for him not merely a crown of glory, but the purest and completest joy
that could happen to him.
Therefore it was--somewhat, I will own, to my disappointment--that for
him my story had but one moral--the treason of Henry P. Tobias, Jr. The
treasure might as well have had no existence, so far as he was
concerned, and the grim climax in the cave drew nothing from him but a
preoccupied nod. And John Saunders was little more satisfactory. Both of
them allowed me to end in silence. They both seemed to be thinking
deeply.
"Well?" I said, somewhat dashed, as one whose story has fallen down on
an anti-climax. Still no response.
"I must say you two are a great audience," I said presently, perhaps
rather childishly nettled.
"What's happened to your imagination!"
"It's a very serious matter," said John Saunders, and I realised that it
was not my crony, but the Secretary to the Treasury of his Britannic
Majesty's Government at Nassau that was talking. As he spoke, he looked
across at Charlie Webster, almost as if forgetting me. "Something should
be done about it, eh, Charlie?" he continued.
"---- traitor!" roared Charlie, once more employing that British
adjective. And then he turned to me:
"Look here, old pal, I'll make a bargain with you, if you like. I
suppose you're keen for that other treasure, now, eh?"
"I am," said I, rather stiffly.
"Well then, I'll go after it with you--on one condition. You can keep
the treasure, if you'll give me Tobias!"
"Give you Tobias?" I laughed.
"Yes! if you go after the treasure, he'll probably keep his word, and go
after you. Now it would do my heart good to get him, as you had the
chance of doing that afternoon. Whatever were you doing to miss him?"
"I proposed to myself the satisfaction of making good that mistake," I
said, "on our next meeting. I feel I owe it to the poor old captain."
"Never mind; hand the captain's rights over to me--and I'll help you all
I know with your treasure. Besides, Tobias is a job for an
Englishman--eh, John? It's a matter of 'King and Country' with me. With
you it would be mere private vengeance. With me it will be an execution;
with you it would be a murder. Isn't that so, John?"
"Exactly," John nodded.
"Since you were away," Charlie began again, "I've bought the prettiest
yawl you ever set eyes on--the _Flamingo_--forty-five over all, and this
time the very fastest boat in the harbour. Yes! she's faster even than
the _Susan B._ Now, I've a holiday due me in about a fortnight. Say the
word, and the _Flamingo's_ yours for a couple of months, and her captain
too. I make only that one condition."
"All right, Charlie," I agreed, "he's yours."
Whereat Charlie shot out a huge paw like a shoulder of mutton, and
grabbed my hand with as much fervour as though I had saved his life, or
done him some other unimaginable kindness. And, as he did so, his old
broad sweet smile came back again. He was thinking of Tobias.
CHAPTER II
_In Which I Learn Something._
While Charlie Webster was arranging his affairs so that he might be able
to take his holiday with a free mind, I busied myself with provisioning
the _Flamingo,_ and in casually chatting with one and another along the
water front, in the hope of gathering some hint that might guide us on
our coming expedition. I thought it possible, too, that chance might
thus bring me some information as to the recent movements of Tobias.
In this way, I made the acquaintance of several old salts, both white
and black, one or two of whom time and their neighbours had invested
with a legendary savour of the old "wrecking days," which, if rumour
speaks true, are not entirely vanished from the remoter corners of the
islands. But either their romantic haloes were entirely due to
imaginative gossip, or they themselves were too shrewd to be drawn, for
I got nothing out of them to my purpose. They seemed to be more
interested in talking religion than the sea, and as navigators of
Biblical deep seas little visited except by professional theologians
they were remarkable. Generally speaking, indeed, piety would seem to
have taken the place of piracy among the sea-going population of Nassau;
a fact in which, no doubt, right-thinking folk will rejoice, but which
I, I am ashamed to say, found disappointing.
Those who would master the art of talking to the Nassau negro should
first brush up on their Bibles; for a pious salutation might almost be
said to be Nassau etiquette for opening a conversation. Of course, this
applies mainly to negroes or those "conchs" in whom negro blood
predominates. The average white man in Nassau must not be considered as
implicated in this statement, for he seems to take his religion much as
the average white man takes it in any other part of the world.
One afternoon, in the course of these rather fruitless if interesting
investigations among the picturesque shipyards of Bay Street, I had
wandered farther along that historic water front than is customary with
sight-seeing pedestrians; had left behind the white palm-shaded houses,
the bazaars of the sellers of tortoise-shell, the negro grog-shops and
cabins, and had come to where the road begins to be left alone with the
sea, except for a few country houses here and there among the
surrounding scrub--when my eye was caught by a little store that seemed
to have strayed away from the others--a small timber erection painted in
blue and white with a sort of sea-wildness and loneliness about it, and
with large naïve lettering across its lintel announcing itself as an
"Emporium" (I think that was the word) "of Marine Curiosities."
A bladder-shaped fish, set thick with spines like a hedgehog, swung in
the breeze over the doorway, and the windows on each side of the doorway
displayed, without any attempt at arrangement, all sorts of motley
treasures of the sea: purple sea-fans; coral in every fairy shape, white
as sea-foam; conches patterned like some tessellated pavement of old
Rome; monster star-fish, sharks' teeth, pink pearls, and shells of every
imaginable convolution and iridescence, and many a weird and lovely
thing which I had not the knowledge to name; objects, indeed, familiar
enough in Nassau, but here amassed and presented with this attractive
difference--that they had not been absurdly polished out of recognition,
or tortured into horrible "artistic" shapes of brooch, or earring, or
paper-knife, or ash-tray, but had been left with all their simple
sea-magic upon them--as they might have been heaped up by the sea itself
in some moonlit grotto, paved with white sand.
I pushed open the door. There was no one there. The little store was
evidently left to take care of itself. Inside, it was like an old
curiosity shop of the sea, every available inch of space, rough tables
and walls, littered and hung with the queer and lovely bric-à-brac of
the sea. Presently a tiny girl came in as it seemed from nowhere, and
said she would fetch her father. In a moment or two he came, a tall
weathered Englishman of the sailor type, brown and lean, with lonely
blue eyes.
"You don't seem afraid of thieves," I remarked.
"It ain't a jewelry store," he said, with the curious soft sing-song
intonation of the Nassau "conch."
"That's just what I was thinking it was," I said.
"I know what you mean," he replied, his lonely face lighting up as faces
do at unexpected understanding in a stranger. "Of course, there are some
that feel that way, but they're few and far between."
"Not enough to make a fortune out of?"
"O! I do pretty well," he said; "I mustn't complain. Money's not
everything, you see, in a business like this. There's going after the
things, you know. One's got to count that in too."
I looked at him in some surprise. I had met something even rarer than
the things he traded in. I had met a merchant of dreams, to whom the
mere handling of his merchandise seemed sufficient profit: "There's
going after the things, you know. One's got to count that in too."
Naturally we were neck-deep in talk in a moment. I wanted to hear all he
cared to tell me about "going after the things"--such "things"!--and he
was nothing loth, as he took up one strange or beautiful object after
another, his face aglow, and he quite evidently without a thought of
doing business, and told me all about them--how and where he got them,
and so forth.
"But," he said presently, encouraged by my unfeigned interest, "I should
like to show you a few rarer things I have in the house, and which I
wouldn't sell, or even show to every one. If you'd honour me by taking a
cup of tea, we might look them over."
So we left the little store, with its door unlocked as I had found it,
and a few steps brought us to a little house I had not before noticed,
with a neat garden in front of it, all the garden beds symmetrically
bordered with conch-shells. Shells were evidently the simple-hearted
fellow's mania, his revelation of the beauty of the world. Here in a
neat parlour, also much decorated with shells, tea was served to us by
the little girl I had first seen and an elder sister, who, I gathered,
made all the lonely dreamer's family. Then, shyly pressing on me a
cigar, he turned to show me the promised treasures. He also told me more
of his manner of finding them, and of the long trips which he had to
take in seeking them, to out-of-the-way cays and in dangerous waters.
All this I really believe the reader would find as attractive as I did;
still, as I am under an implied contract to tell him a story, I am not
going to palm off on him merely descriptive or informative matter,
except in so far as such matter is necessary, and I have only introduced
him to my dreamer in "marine curiosities" for a very pertinent reason,
which will immediately appear.
He was showing me the last and rarest of his specimens. He had kept, he
said, the best to the last. To me, as a layman, it was not nearly so
attractive as other things he had shown me--little more to my eye than a
rather commonplace though pretty shell; but he explained--and he gave me
its learned name, which I confess has escaped me, owing, doubtless, to
what he was next to say--that it was found, or had so far been found,
only in one spot in the islands, a lovely, seldom-visited cay several
miles to the north-east of Andros Island.
"What is it called?" I asked, for it was part of our plan for Charlie to
do a little duck-shooting on Andros, before we tackled the business of
Tobias and the treasure.
"It's called ---- Cay nowadays," he answered, "but it used to be called
Short Shrift Island."
"Short Shrift Island!" I cried, in spite of myself, immediately annoyed
at my lack of presence of mind.
"Certainly," he rejoined, looking a little surprised, but evidently
without suspicion. He was too simple, and too taken up with his shell.
"It is such an odd name," I said, trying to recover myself.
"Yes! those old pirate chaps certainly did think up some of the rummiest
names."
"One of the pirate haunts, was it?" I queried with assumed indifference.
"Supposed to be. But one hears that of every other cay in the Bahamas. I
take no stock in such yarns. My shells are all the treasure I expect to
find."
"What did you call that shell?" I asked.
He told me the name again, but again I forgot it immediately. Of course
I had asked it only for the sake of learning more precisely about Short
Shrift Island. He told me innocently enough just where it lay.
"Are you going after it?" he laughed.
"After what?" I enquired in alarm.
"The ----"; (again he mentioned the name of the shell.)
"O! well," I replied, "I am going on a duck-shooting trip to Andros
before long, and I thought I might drop around to your cay and pick a
few of them up for you."
"It would be mighty kind of you, but they're not easy to find. I'll tell
you just exactly--" He went off, dear fellow, into the minutest
description of the habitats of ----, while all the time I was eager to
rush off to Charlie Webster and John Saunders, and shout into their
ears--as, later, I did, at the first possible moment, that evening:
"I've found our missing cay! What's the matter with your old maps, John?
Short Shrift Island is ----; (I mentioned the name of a cay, which, as
in the case of "Dead Men's Shoes," I am unable to divulge.)
"Maybe!" said Charlie, "maybe! We can try it. But," he added, "did you
find out anything about Tobias?"
CHAPTER III
_In Which I am Afforded Glimpses into Futurity--Possibly Useful._
Two or three evenings before we were due to sail, at one of our snuggery
conclaves, I put the question whether any one had ever tried the
divining rod in hunting for treasure in the islands. Charlie took his
pipe out of his mouth, the more comfortably to beam his big brotherly
smile at me.
"What a kid you are!" he said. "You want the whole bag of tricks, eh?"
But I retorted that he was quite behind the times if he considered the
divining rod an exploded superstition. Its efficacy in finding water, I
reminded him, was now admitted by the most sceptical science, and I was
able to inform him that a great American railway company paid a yearly
salary to a "dowser" to guide it in the construction of new roads
through a country where water was scarce and hard to find.
Old John nodded, blinking his mischievous eyes. He had more sympathy
than Charlie with the foolishness of old romance. It was true enough, he
said, and added that he knew the man I wanted, a half-crazy old negro
back there in Grant's Town--the negro quarter spreading out into the
brush behind the ridge on which the town of Nassau proper is built.
"He calls himself a 'king,'" he added, "and the natives do, I believe,
regard him as the head of a certain tribe. Another tribe has its 'queen'
whom they take much more seriously. You must not forget that it is not
so long ago since they all came from Africa, and the oldest negroes
still speak their strange African languages, and keep up their old
beliefs and practices. 'Obeah,' of course, is still actively practised.
"Why," he resumed presently, "I may even be said to practise it myself;
for I protect that part of my grounds here that abuts on Grant's Town by
hanging up things in bottles along the fences, which frighten away at
least a percentage of would-be trespassers. You should go and see the
old man, if only for fun. The lads call him 'Old King Coffee'--a memory
I suppose of the Ashantee War. Any one will tell you where he lives. He
is something of a witch-doctor as well as 'king,' and manages to make a
little out of charms, philtres and such like, I'm told--enough to keep
him in rum anyway. He has a name too as a preacher--among the Holy
Jumpers!--but he's getting too old to do much preaching nowadays. He
may be a little off his head, but I think he's more of a shrewd old
fraud. Go and see him for fun anyway."
So, next morning, I went.
I had hardly been prepared for the plunge into "Darkest Africa" which I
found myself taking, as, leaving Government House behind, perched on the
crest of its white ridge, I walked a few yards inland and entered a
region which, for all its green palms, made a similar sudden impression
of pervading blackness on the mind which one gets on suddenly entering a
coal-mining district, after travelling through fields and meadows.
There were far more blacks than whites down on Bay Street, but here
there were nothing but blacks on every side. The wood of the
cabins--most of them neat enough and pleasantly situated in their little
gardens of bananas and cocoa-nut palms--was black, as with age or coal
dust; and the very foliage, in its suggestion of savage scenes in one's
old picture-books, suggested "natives." The innumerable smart little
pigs that seemed free of the place were black. The innumerable goats,
too, were black. And everywhere, mixed in with the pigs and the goats,
were the blackest of picaninnies. Everywhere black faces peered from
black squares of windows, most of them cheery and round and prosperous
looking, but here and there a tragically old crone with witch-like white
hair.
The roads ran in every direction, and along them everywhere were figures
of black women shuffling with burdens on their heads, or groups of
girls, audaciously merry, most of them bonny, here and there almost a
beauty. There were churches, and dance-halls, and saloons--all
radiating, so to say, a prosperous blackness. It was from these
dance-halls that there came at night that droning and braying of
barbaric music, as from some mysterious "heart of darkness," as one
turned to sleep in one's civilised Nassau beds--a music that kept on and
on into the inner blackness of the night.
At first the effect of the whole scene was a little sinister, even a
little frightening. The strangeness of Africa, the African jungle, was
here, and one was a white man in it all alone among grinning savage
faces. But for the figures about one being clothed, the illusion had
been complete; but for that and the kind-hearted salutations from comely
white-turbaned mammies which soon sprang up about me, and the groups of
elfish children that laughingly blocked one's progress with
requests--not in any weird African dialect but in excellent
national-school English--for "a copper please."
This request was not above the maidenly dignity of quite big and buxom
lasses. One of these, a really superb young creature, not too liberally
clothed to rob one's eyes of her noble contours, caught my attention by
the singularity of something she carried. It was an enormous axe, the
shining blade balanced easily on her head, and the handle jutting out
horizontally like some savage head-dress. She looked like a beautiful
young headswoman. Even she asked for "a copper, please," but with a
saucy coquetry befitting her adolescence.
"A big girl like you too!" I ventured. She gave a fine savage laugh,
without in the least jeopardising the balance of the axe.
"I'll give you one if you'll tell me where the 'King' lives," said I.
"Ole King Coffee?" she asked, and then fell into a very agony of negro
laughter. The poor old king was evidently the best of all possible jokes
to this irreverent young beauty. Then, recovering, she put her finger to
her lips, suggesting silence, and said:
"Come along, I'll show you!"
And, walking by my side, lithe as a young animal, evidently without
giving a thought to her gleaming headdress, she had soon brought me to a
cabin much like the rest, though perhaps a little poorer looking.
Stopping a little short of it, she once more put her finger to her lips.
"Shh! There he is!" and she shook all over again with suppressed
giggles.
I gave her a sixpence and told her to be a good girl. Then I advanced up
a little strip of garden to where I had caught a glimpse of a venerable
white-haired negro seated at the window, as if for exhibition, with a
great open book in his hands. This he appeared to be reading with great
solemnity, through enormous goggles, though I thought I caught a
side-glint of his eye, as though he had taken a swift reconnoitring
glance in my direction--a glance which apparently had but deepened his
attention and increased the dignity of his demeanour. That dignity
indeed was magnificent, and was evidently meant to convey to the
passers-by and the world at large that they were in the presence of
royalty.
As I approached the doorway, my eye was caught by a massive decoration
glittering immediately above it. It was a design of large gilt wooden
letters which I couldn't make out at first, as it had been turned upside
down. I didn't realise its meaning till afterward, but I may as well
tell the reader now.
Shortly before, King Coffee, feeling in need of some insignia to blazon
forth his rank, had appealed to a friend of his, a kindly American
visitor, who practically kept the old fellow alive with his bounty. This
kind friend was a wag too, and couldn't resist the idea that had come to
him. The old man wanted something that glittered. So the American had
bethought him of those big lettered signs which on the face of saloons
brighten the American landscape--signs announcing somebody or other's
"extra." This it was that now glittered in front of me as--the royal
arms!
That it was upside down merely added to its mysterious impressiveness
for the passer-by, and in no way afflicted the old king since, in spite
of that imposing book at the window, he was quite unable to read. That
book, a huge, much-gilded family Bible, was merely another portion of
the insignia--presented by the same kind friend; as also was the
magnificent frock coat, three sizes too big for the shrunken old figure,
in which I found him--installed, shall I say?--as I presently stood
before him in response to a dignified inclination of his head, welcoming
me, at the window.
Remembering that he was not merely royal, but pious also, I made my
salutation at once courtier-like and sanctimonious.
"Good day to Your Majesty," I said; "God's good, God looks after his
servants."
"De Lord is merciful," he answered gravely; "God takes care of his
children. Be seated, sar, and please excuse my not rising, my rheumatism
is a sore affliction to me. But de Lord is good, de Lord giveth and de
Lord He taketh away--and de holy text includes rheumatism too--as I have
told my poor wandering flock many a Sabbath evening."
And he smiled in a sly self-satisfied way at his pious pun. "The old
fellow is far from being crazy," I said to myself.
I was not long in getting to the subject of my visit. The old man
listened to me with great composure, but with a marked accession of
mysterious importance in his manner. So mediæval astrologers drew down
their brows with a solemn assumption of supernatural wisdom when
consulted by some noble client--noble, but pitiably mortal in the
presence of their hidden knowledge. He had put his book down as I
talked. I noticed that he had been holding it--like his royal
arms--upside down.
"It's true, sar," he said, when I had finished, "I could find it for
you. I could find it for you, sure enough; and I'm de only man in all de
islands dat could. But I should have to go wid you, and it's de Lord's
will to keep me here in dis chair wid rheumatics. O! I don't murmur. It
is de Lord's doing and it is marvellous in our eyes. De rods has turned
in dese old hands many a time, and I have faith in de Lord dey would
turn again--yes. I'd find it for you; sure enough. I'd find it if any
man could--and it was de Lord's will. But mebbe I can see it for you
widout moving from dis chair. For when de Lord takes away one gift from
his servants, he gives dem another. It is His will dat dese 'ere old
legs are stiff and can carry me round no more. So wot does de good Lord
do? He says: 'Nebber mind dem ole legs; nebber mind dem ole weary eyes;
sit jus' whar yuh are,' says de Lord, 'nebber min' no movin' round.' De
Lord do wondrous things to his faithful followers; He opens de eyes of
de spirit, so, having no eyes, dey shall see. Hallelujah! Glory be to de
Lord!--see down into de bowels of de earth, see thousands of miles away
just as plain as dis room--"
He had worked himself up to a sort of religious ecstasy, as I had seen
the revivalist sect he belonged to, known as the Holy Jumpers, do at
their curious services.
"Do you mean, brother, that the Lord has given you second sight?"
"Dat am it! Glory to His name, Hallelujah!" he answered. "I look in a
glass ball--so; and if de spirit helps me I can see clear as a picture
far under de ground, far, far away over de sea. It's de Lord's truth,
sar--Blessed be His Name!"
I asked him whether he would look into his crystal for me. With a burst
of profanity, as unexpected as it was vivid, he cursed "dem boys" that
had stolen from him a priceless crystal which once had belonged to his
old royal mother, who, before him, had had the same gift of the spirit.
But, he added--turning to a table by his side, and lifting from it a
large cut-glass decanter of considerable capacity, though at present
void of contents--that he had found that gazing into the large glass
ball of its stopper produced almost equally good results at times.
He said this with perfect solemnity, though, as he placed the decanter
on top of his Bible in front of him, I observed, with an inner smile,
that he tilted it slightly on one side, as though remarking, strictly to
himself, that, save for a drain of dark-coloured liquid in one corner,
it was painfully empty.
Then, with a sigh, he applied himself to his business of seer. First, he
asked me to be kind enough to shut the door.
We had to be very quiet, he declared; the spirit could work only in deep
silence. And he asked me to be kind enough to close my eyes. Then I
heard his voice muttering, in a strange tongue, a queer dark gobbling
kind of words, which may have been ancient African spell-words, or sheer
gibberish such as magicians in all times and places have employed to
mystify their consultants.
I looked at him through the corner of my eye--as, doubtless, he had
anticipated, for he was glaring with an air of inspired abstraction into
the ball of the decanter stopper. So we sat silent for, I suppose, some
ten minutes. Then I heard him give another deep sigh. Opening my eyes, I
saw him slowly shaking his head.
"De spirits don't seem communicable dis afternoon," he muttered, once
more tilting the decanter slightly on one side and observing it drearily
as before.
I had been rather slow, indeed, in taking the hint, but I determined to
take it, and see what would happen.
"Do you think, Your Majesty," I asked, with as serious a face as I
could assume, "the spirits might work better--if the decanter were to be
filled?"
The old man looked at me a little cautiously, as though wondering how to
take me. I tried to keep grave, but I couldn't quite suppress a twinkle;
catching it, he took courage--seemed to feel that he could trust me.
Slapping his knee, he let himself go in a rush of that deep, chuckling,
gurgling, child-like negro laughter which is one of the most appealing
gifts of his pathetic race.
"Mebbe, sar; mebbe. Spirits is curious things; dey need inspiration
sometimes, just like ourselves."
"What kind of inspiration, do you think, gets the best results, Your
Majesty?"
"Well, sar, I can't say as dey is very particular, but I'se noticed dey
do seem powerful 'tached to just plain good old Jamaica rum."
"They shall have it," I said.
I had noticed that there was a saloon a few yards away, so before many
more minutes had passed, I had been there and come back again, and the
decanter stood ruddily filled, ready for the resumption of our _séance._
But before we began, I of course accepted the seer's invitation to join
him and the spirits in a friendly libation.
Then--I having closed my eyes--we began again, and it was astonishing
with what rapidity the thick-coming pictures began to crowd upon that
inner vision with which the Lord had endowed his faithful follower!
Of course, I was inclined now to take the whole thing as an amusing
imposture; but presently, watching his face and the curious "seeing"
expression of his eyes, and noting the exactitude of one or two of his
pictures, I began to feel that, however much he might be inventing or
elaborating, there was some substratum of truth in what he was telling
me. I had had sufficient experience of mediums and clairvoyants to know
that, except in cases of absolute fraud, there was usually--beneath a
certain amount of conscious "imaginativeness"--a mysterious gift at
work, independent of their volition; something they did see, for which
they themselves could not account, and over which they had no control.
And as he proceeded I became more and more convinced that this was the
case also with Old King Coffee.
The first pictures that came to him were merely pictures, though
astonishingly clear ones, of Webster's boat, the _Flamingo,_ of Webster
himself, and of the men and the old dog Sailor; but in all this he might
have been visualising from actual knowledge. Yet the details were
curiously exact. We were all bathed in moonlight, he said--very bright
moonlight, moonlight you could read by. Pictures of us out at sea,
passing coral islands and so forth followed, all general in character.
But presently, his gaze becoming more fixed:
"I see you anchored under a little settlement. You are rowing ashore.
Dere are little pathways running up among de coral rock, and a few white
houses. And, yes! Dere is a man in overalls, on de roof of a building,
seeming like a little schoolhouse. He waves to you; he is getting down
from de roof to meet you. But his face is in a mist, I can't see him
right. Now he is gone."
He stopped and waited awhile. Then he resumed:
"Seems to be a forest; big, big trees--not like Nassau trees--and thick
brush everywhere; all choked up so thick and dark, can't see nut'n. Wait
a minute, dough. Dere seems to be old houses all sunk in and los', like
old ruins. Can't see dem right for de brush. And wait--Lord love you,
sar, but I'se afraid--I seem to see a big light coming up trough de
brush from far under de ground--just like you see old rotten wood
shining in de dark--deep, deep down. Didn't I tell you de Lord gave me
eyes to see into de bowels of de earth?--it's de bowels of de earth for
sure--all lit up and shining. Praise de Lord!--it am de gold, for
certain, all hidden away and shining dere under de ground--"
"Can't you see it closer, clearer?" I exclaimed involuntarily; "get some
idea of the place it's in?"
The old man gazed with a renewed intensity.
"No," he said presently, and his disappointed tone seemed to me the best
evidence yet of his truth, "I only see a little golden mist deep, deep
down under de ground; now it is fading away. It's gone; I can only see
de woods and de ruins again."
This brought his visions to an end. The spirits obstinately refused to
make any more pictures, though the old man continued to gaze on in the
decanter stopper for fully five minutes.
"De wind of de spirit bloweth as it listeth," said he at length, with
the note of a more genuine piety in his voice than at the beginning; and
there was a certain hushed gravity in his manner as we said good-bye,
which made me feel that there had been something in his visions that had
even surprised and solemnised himself.
CHAPTER IV
_In Which We Take Ship Once More._
The discovery which--through my friend the dealer in "marine
curiosities"--I had made, or believed myself to have made, of the
situation of Henry P. Tobias's second "pod" of treasure, fitted in
exactly with Charlie Webster's wishes for our trip, small stock as he
affected to take in it at the moment.
As the reader may recall, "Short Shrift Island" lay a few miles to the
northwest of Andros Island. Now Andros is a great haunt of wild duck,
not to speak of that more august bird, the flamingo. Attraction number
one for the good Charlie. Then, though it is some hundred and fifty
miles long and some fifty miles broad at its broadest, it has never yet,
it is said, been entirely explored.
Its centre is still a mystery. The natives declare it to be haunted, or
at all events inhabited by some strange people no one has yet approached
close enough to see. You can see their houses, they say, from a
distance, but as you approach them, they disappear. Here, therefore,
seemed an excellent place for Tobias to take cover in. Charlie's
duck-shooting preserves, endless marl lakes islanded with mangrove
copses, lay on the fringe of this mysterious region. So Andros was
plainly marked out for our destination.
But, when Charlie was ready for the start, the wind, which is of the
essence of any such contract in the Bahamas, was contrary. It had been
blowing stormily from the southwest, the direction we were bound for,
for several days, and nothing with sails had, for a week, felt like
venturing out across the surf-swept bar. It is but forty miles across
the Tongue of Ocean which divides the shores of New Providence and
Andros, but you need to pick your weather for that, if you don't want to
join the numerous craft that have vanished in that brief but fateful
strip of water. However, the wind was liable to change any minute now,
Charlie said, so he warned me to hold myself in readiness to jump aboard
at an hour's notice.
The summons came at last. I had been out for dinner, and returned home
about ten to find the message: "Be ready to sail at midnight."
There was a thrilling suddenness about it that appealed to one's
imagination. Here I had been expecting a landsman's bed, with a book and
a reading-lamp, surrounded by the friendly security of houses; instead,
I was to go faring with the night wind into the mystery of the sea.
It was a night of fitful moonlight, and Nassau, with its white houses
and white streets, seemed very hushed and spectral as I made my way down
to the wharf, vivid in black and silver.
There is always something mysterious about starting a journey at night,
even though it be nothing more out-of-the-way than catching a midnight
train out of the city; and the simple business of our embarkation
breathed an air of romantic secrecy. The moon seemed to have her finger
on her lip, and we talked in lowered voices as though we were bound on
some midnight raid. The night seemed to be charged with the expectancy
of the unknown, and Sailor, who, of course, was to be a fellow-voyager,
whined restlessly from the wharf side at the little yawl that awaited us
in the whispering, lapping water.
Sailor had watched his master getting his guns ready for some days, and,
doubtless, memories stirred in him of Scotch moors they had shot over
together. He raised his head to the night wind, and sniffed impatiently,
as though he already scented the wild duck on Andros Island. He was
impatient, like the rest of us, because, though it was an hour past
sailing-time, we had still to collect two of the crew. The same old
story! I marvelled at the good humour with which Charlie--who is really
a sleeping volcano of berserker rage--took it. But he reminded me of his
old advice as I started for my first trip: "No use getting mad with
niggers--till you positively have to!"
Well, the two loiterers turned up at last, and, all preliminaries being
at length disposed of, we threw off the mooring ropes, and presently
there was heard that most exhilarating of sounds, to any one who loves
sea-faring, the rippling of the ropes through the blocks as our mainsail
began to rise up high against the moon which was beginning to look out
over the huge block of the Colonial Hotel, the sea-wall of which ran
along as far as our mooring. A few lights in its windows here and there
broke the blank darkness of its facade, glimmering through the avenues
of royal palms. I am thus explicit because of something that presently
happened, and which stayed the mainsail in its rippling ascent.
A tall figure was running along the sea-wall from the direction of the
hotel, calling out, a little breathlessly, in a rich young voice as it
ran:
"Wait a minute there, you fellows! Wait a minute!"
We were already moving, parallel with the wall, and at least twelve feet
away from it, by the time the figure--that of a tall boy, cow-boy
hatted, and picturesquely outlined in the half light--stopped just ahead
of us. "Like the herald Mercury," I said to myself. He raised something
that looked like a bag in his right hand, calling out "catch" as he did
so; and, a moment after, before a word could be spoken, he took a flying
leap and landed amongst us, plump in the cock-pit, and was clutching
first one of us and then the other, to keep his balance.
"Did it, by Jove!" he exclaimed in a beautiful English accent, and then
started laughing as only absurd dare-devil youngsters can.
"Forgive me!" he said, as soon as he could get his breath, "but I had to
do it. Heaven knows what the old man will say!"
He seemed to take it all for granted in a delightful, nonchalant way, so
that the angry protest which had already started from Charlie's lips
stopped in the middle. That fearless leap had taken his heart.
"You're something of a long jump!" said Charlie.
"O! I have done my twenty-two and an eighth on a broad running jump, but
I had no chance for a run there," answered the lad, carelessly.
"But suppose you'd hit the water instead of the deck?"
"What of it? Can't one swim?"
"I guess you're all right, young man," said Charlie, softened; "but ...
well, we're not taking passengers."
The words had a familiar sound. They were the very ones I had used to
Tobias, as he stood with his hand on the gunwale of the _Maggie
Darling._ I rapidly conveyed the coincidence--and the difference--to
Charlie. It struck me as odd, I'll admit, that our second start, in this
respect, should be so like the first. Meanwhile, the young man was
answering, or rather pleading, in a boyish way.
"Don't call me a passenger; I'll help work the boat. I'm strong, you'll
see--not afraid of hard work; and anyway, won't you help a chap to an
adventure?... I'll tell the truth. I heard--never mind _how_--about your
trip, and I'm just nutty about buried treasure. Come, be a sport; I've
been watching for you all day. Pretty late starting, aren't you?... We
can let the old guv'nor know, somehow ... and it won't kill him to tear
his hair for a day or two. He knows I can take care of myself."
"Well!" said Charlie, after thinking awhile in his slow way, "we'll
think it over. You can come along till the morning. Then I can get a
good look at you. If I don't like your looks, we'll still be able to put
you off at West End; and if I do--well--right-ho!"
"My looks!" exclaimed our young stranger, with a peculiar mellow laugh.
"What's the joke?" demanded Charlie.
"O! I only wondered what my looks had to do with it!"
"Well," laughed Charlie, entering into the spirit of the lad, "you might
be pock-marked for all I know in this light--and I have a peculiar
prejudice against pock-marked gentlemen."
"Unfeeling of you!" retorted the boy. "Anyhow," he added, with the same
curiously attractive laugh, "I'm not pock-marked."
"We'll see at sunrise," said Charlie. "Now, boys," he shouted, "go ahead
with the sails."
Once more there was that rippling of the ropes through the blocks, as
our mainsail rose up high against the moon and filled proudly with the
steady northeast breeze we had been waiting for. The water began to talk
along our sides, and the immense freshness of the nocturnal sea took us
in its huge embrace. The spray began to fly over our bows as we nosed
into the glassy rollers, one of which, on the starboard side, admonished
us, by half swallowing us, that only the mighty-limbed immortals might
dance with safety on the bar that night, and that it were wise for even
45-foot yawls to hug the land till daylight. So, reluctantly, we kept
the shadowy coast-line for our companion, as we steered for the
southwestern end of the island; to our right, companions more of our
mood, parallel ridges of savage whiteness, where the surf boiled and
gleamed along the coral shoals.
How good it seemed to all of us to be out thus in the freedom of the
night and the sea--not least to the great noble-headed hound sitting up
on his haunches, keen and watchful by the steersman's side. What a
strange waste of a life so short to be sleeping there on the land, when
one might be out and away on such business as ours!
So two or three hours went by, as we plunged on, to the seething sound
of the water, and the singing of our sails, and all the various rumour
of wind and sea. After all, it was a good music to sleep to, and, for
all my scorn of sleeping landsmen, an irresistible drowsiness stretched
me out on the roof of the little cabin, wonderfully rocked into
forgetfulness.
My nap came to an end suddenly, as though some one had flung me out
through a door of blue and gold into a new-born world. There was the
sun rising, the moon still on duty, and the morning star divinely naked
in the heaven. And, with these glories, there rushed in again upon my
ears the lovely zest and turmoil of the sea, heaving huge and tumultuous
about us in gleaming hills and foam-flecked valleys.
And there was Charlie, his broad face beaming with boyish happiness, and
something like a fatherly gentleness in his eyes, as he watched his
companion at the tiller, whom, for a half-asleep moment of waking, I
couldn't account for, till our start all came back to me, when I
realised that it was our young scapegrace of over-night. Charlie and he
evidently were on the best of terms already.
"Nice sailor you are!" Charlie laughed, as I sat up rubbing my eyes.
"Falling asleep on watch! Our young friend here is worth ten of you."
I smiled good morning to our young passenger.
"How about the court-martial on his looks you spoke of last night,
Charlie?" I asked.
"Well, he's not pock-marked, at all events, is he?--he told the truth so
far. But I've still a question or two to ask him before we leave West
End. We'll have breakfast first--to give him courage."
The lad made a humorous face to suggest his fear of the ordeal; as he
did so, I took a good look at him. Charlie might easily have said a
little more about his looks, had it been in his line, for, so far from
being only "not pock-marked," he was something more like a young Apollo:
some six feet in height, upstanding like the statue of a Greek athlete;
a rich olive skin, through which the pink of youth came and went; and
splendid blue-green eyes, fearless, and yet shy as a lad's eyes often
are--at that moment of development when a good-looking lad, in spite of
his height and muscles, has something of the bloom and purity of a girl,
without in the least suggesting effeminacy. So, many tall athletic
girls, for a brief period, suggest boys--without there being the least
danger of mistake as to their real sex.
He was evidently very young--scarcely more than eighteen--and had a
great tendency to blush, for all his attempt at nonchalant grown-up
airs. He was the very embodiment of youth, in its sun-tipped morning
flower. What Charlie could have to "question" this artless young
being--as incapable of plotting, it seemed to me, as a young
faun--passed my conjecture; but, as Charlie had given me a quiet wink,
as he spoke of the after-breakfast examination, I suspected that it was
one of those jokes of his which are apt to have something of the
simplicity and roughness of seafaring tradition.
Meanwhile, old Tom had been busy with breakfast, and soon the smells of
coffee and freshly made "johnny-cake" and frying bacon competed not
unsuccessfully with the various fragrances of the morning. Is there
anything to match for zest a breakfast like that of ours at dawn on the
open sea?
Breakfast over, Charlie filled his pipe, assuming, as he did so, a
judicial aspect. I filled mine, and our young friend followed suit by
taking a silver cigarette-case from his pocket, and striking a match on
the leg of his khaki knickerbockers with a professional air.
"All set?" asked Charlie, and, after a slight pause, he went on:
"Now, young man, you can see we are nearing the end of the island.
Another half-mile will bring us to West End. Whether we put you ashore
there, or take you along, depends on your answers to my questions."
"Fire away," answered the youth, blowing a cloud of cigarette smoke in a
delicate spiral up into the morning sky; "but I've really told you all I
have to tell."
"No; you haven't told us how you came to know of our trip, what we were
supposed to be after, and when we were starting."
"That's true!" flushed the lad, momentarily losing his composure. Then,
partly regaining it: "Is it necessary to answer that question?"
"Absolutely," answered Charlie, beginning to look really serious.
"Because, if you don't mind ... well, I'd just as soon not."
The boy's cheeks were burning with confusion, and he looked more than
ever like a girl.
"For that very reason, I want to know. We are out on a more serious
business than perhaps you realise, and your answer may mean more to us
than you think."
"I'm sure it cannot be of such importance to you. Really it's nothing--a
mere accident; and, besides, it's hardly fair for me to tell. I should
have to give away a friend, and that, I'm sure you'll agree, is not
cricket."
The boy had such a true innocent air, not to speak of his taking ways
which had already quite won my heart, that I protested with Charlie on
his behalf. But Charlie was adamant. He'd got Tobias so on the brain
that there was no reasoning with him, and the very innocent air of the
lad seemed to have deepened his suspicions.
"I'm sorry, but I shall have to insist," replied Charlie, looking very
grim, and more and more like an Elizabethan sea-rover.
"All right, then," answered the youth, looking him straight in the eyes,
"put me ashore."
"No; I won't do that now, either," declared Charlie, sternly setting his
jaw. "I'll put you in irons, rather--and keep you on bread and
water--till you answer my questions."
"You will, eh?" retorted the youth, flashing fire from his fine eyes.
And as he spoke, quick as thought, he leaped up on to the gunwale, and,
without hesitation, dived into the great glassy rollers.
But Charlie was quick too. Like a flash, he grabbed one of the boy's
ankles, so that the beautiful dive was spoiled; and there was the boy,
hanging by an imprisoned leg over the ship's side, a helpless
captive--his arms in the water and his leg struggling vainly to get
free. But he might as well have struggled against the grip of Hercules.
In another moment Charlie had him hauled aboard again, his eyes full of
tears of boyish rage and humiliation.
"You young fool!" exclaimed Charlie. "The water round here is thick with
sharks; you wouldn't have gone fifty yards without one of them getting
you." ...
"Sharks!" gasped out the boy, contemptuously. "I know more about sharks
than you do."
"You seem to know a good many things I don't," said Charlie, whose
grimness had evidently relaxed a little at the lad's display of mettle.
Meanwhile, my temper was beginning to rise on behalf of our young
passenger.
"I tell you what, Charlie," I interposed; "if you are going to keep this
up, you'd better count me out on this trip and set us both ashore at
West End. You're making a fool of yourself. The lad's all right. Any one
can see with half an eye there's no harm in him."
The boy shot me a warm glance of gratitude.
"All right," agreed Charlie, beginning to lose his temper too, "I'm
damned if I don't." And, his hand on the tiller, he made as if to turn
the boat about and tack for the shore.
"No! no!" cried the boy, springing between us, and appealingly laying
one hand on Charlie's shoulder, the other on mine. "You mustn't let me
spoil your trip. I'll compromise. And, skipper, I'll tell your friend
here all there is to tell--everything--I swear--if you will leave it to
his judgment."
Charlie gloomed for a moment or two, thinking it over, while I stood
aloof with an injured air.
"Right-O," agreed Charlie at last; so our passenger and I thereupon
withdrew for our conference.
It was soon over, and I couldn't help laughing aloud at the simplicity
of it all.
"Just as I told you, Charlie," I exclaimed; "it's innocence itself."
Turning to the lad, I said: "Dear boy, there is really no need to keep
such a small secret as that from the skipper here. You'll really have to
let me tell him."
The boy nodded acquiescence.
"All the same, I gave my word," he said
When I told Charlie the innocent secret, he laughed as I had done, and
his usual good humour instantly returned.
"But to think, you young scapegrace," he exclaimed, "that you might
either have been eaten by a shark, or have broken up an old friendship,
for such nonsense as that." And, turning to me, and stretching out his
huge paw, "My hand, old man; forgive my bad temper."
"Mine too," said I.
So harmony was restored, and the stubbornly held secret had merely
amounted to this: Our lad was acquainted with my conchologist, and had
paid him a visit the very afternoon I did, had in fact seen me leaving
the house. Answering to the boy's romantic talk of buried treasure and
so forth, the shell enthusiast had thought no harm to tell him of our
projected trip; and that was the whole of the mysterious matter.
Yet the day was not to end without a little incident which, slight
though indeed it was, was momentarily to arouse Charlie's suspicions of
our charming young companion once more.
By this we had shaken off the unwelcome convoy of the coast-line, and,
having had a thrilling minute or two running the gauntlet of the great
combers of the southwest bar, we were at last really out to sea, making
our dash under a good sailing breeze, with the engine going, too, across
the Tongue of Ocean.
This Tongue of Ocean is but a narrow strip of sea--so narrow indeed that
you scarcely lose sight of one coast before you sight the other--yet the
oldest sailors cross it with fear, for its appalling depth within its
narrow boundaries make it subject to sudden "rages" in certain winds.
Even Charlie, who must have made the trip half a hundred times, scanned
the western horizon with an anxious eye.
Presently, in the far southwest, tiny points like a row of pins began
very faintly to range themselves along the sky-line. They were palm
trees, though you could not make them out to be such, or anything in
particular, till long after. One darker point seemed closer than the
rest.
"There's High Cay!" rang out the rich young voice of our passenger, whom
we'd half forgotten in our tense scanning of the horizon. Charlie and I
both turned to him together in surprise--and his face certainly betrayed
the confusion of one who has let something slip involuntarily.
"Ho! ho! young man," cried Charlie, his face darkening again, "what do
you know about High Cay? I thought this was your first trip."
"So it is," answered the boy, with a flush of evident annoyance, "on the
sea."
"What do you mean by 'on the sea'?"
"I mean that I've done it many a time--on the chart. I know every bluff
and reef and shoal and cay around Andros from Morgan's Bluff to
Washerwoman's Cut--"
"You do, eh?"
"On the chart. Why, I've studied charts since I was a kid, and gone
every kind of voyage you can think of--playing at buccaneering or
whaling, or discovering the North Pole. Every kid does that."
"They do, eh?" said Charlie, evidently quite unimpressed. "_I_ never
did."
"That's because you've about as much imagination as a turnip in that
head of yours," I broke in, in defence of my young Apollo.
"Maybe, if you're so smart," continued Charlie, paying no attention to
me, "you can navigate us through the North Bight?"
"Maybe!" answered our youngster pertly, with an odd little smile. He had
evidently recovered his nerve, and seemed to take pleasure in piquing
Charlie's bearish suspicions.
CHAPTER V
_In Which We Enter the Wilderness._
Andros, as no other of the islands, is surrounded by a ring of reefs
stretching all around its coasts. The waters inside this ring are seldom
more than a fathom or two deep, and, spreading out for miles and miles
above a level coral floor, give something of the effect of a vast
natural swimming-bath. Frequently there is no more than four or five
feet of water, and in calm weather it would be almost possible to walk
for miles across this strange sea-bottom.
Darker and solider grew the point on which our eyes were set, till at
length we were up with a thick-set, little scrub-covered island which,
compared with the low level of the line of coast stretching dimly behind
it, rose high and rocky out of the water. Hence its name, "High Cay,"
and its importance along a coast where such definite landmarks are few.
We were now inside the breakwater of the reefs, and the rolling swell of
ocean gave way at once to a millpond calmness. Through this we sped
along for some ten miles or so, following a low, barren coast-line till
at length, to our right, the water began to spread out inland like a
lake. We were at the entrance of North Bight, one of the three bights
which, dotted with numerous low-lying cays, breaks up Andros Island in
the middle, and allows a passage through a mazelike archipelago direct
to the northwest end of Cuba. Here on the northwest shore is a small and
very lonely settlement--one of the two or three settlements on the
else-deserted island--Behring's Point.
Here we dropped anchor, and Charlie, who had some business ashore,
proposed our landing with him; but here again our passenger aroused his
suspicions--though Heaven knows why--by preferring to remain aboard. If
Charlie has a fault, it is a pig-headed determination to have his own
way--but our passenger was politely obstinate.
"Please let me off," he requested, in his most top-lofty English accent.
"You can see for yourself that there's nothing of interest--nothing but
a beastly lot of nigger cabins, and dirty coral rock that will cut your
boots to pieces. I'd much rather smoke and wait for you in peace;" and,
taking out his case and lighting a cigarette, he waved it gaily to us as
we rowed off.
He had certainly been right about Behring's Point--Charlie was absurdly
certain that he had known it before, and had some reason for not
landing--for a more forlorn and poverty-stricken foot-hold of humanity
could hardly be conceived; a poor little cluster of negro cabins,
indeed, scrambling up from the beach, and with no streets but craggy
pathways in and out among the grey clinker-like coral rock.
But it was touching to find even here that, though the whole worldly
goods of the community would scarcely have fetched ten dollars, the
souls of men were still held worth caring for--one handsome youth's
contempt notwithstanding--for presently we came upon a pretty little
church, with a schoolhouse near by, while from the roof of an adjacent
building we were hailed by a pleasant-faced white man, busy with some
shingling.
It was the good priest of the little place, Father Serapion, disguised
in overalls and the honest grime of his labour; like a true Benedictine,
praying with his strong and skilful hands. He was down from his roof in
a moment, a youngish man with the face of a practical dreamer, strangely
happy-looking in what would seem to most an appalling isolation; there
alone, month after month, with his black flock. But evidently his was no
such thought, for he showed us with pride the new schoolhouse he was
building out of the coral limestone with his own hands, as he had built
the church, every stone of it, and the picturesque well, and the
rampart-like wall round the churchyard. His garden, too, he was very
proud of, as he well might be, wrested as it was out of the solid rock.
Father Serapion and Charlie were old friends, and, when we had accepted
the Father's invitation to step into his neat little house--also built
with his own hands--and dissipate with him to the extent of some grape
juice and an excellent cigar, Charlie took occasion to confide in him
with regard to Tobias, and, to his huge delight, discovered that a man
answering very closely to his description had dropped in there with a
large sponger two days before. He had only stopped long enough to buy
rum at the little store near the landing, and had been off again through
the bight, sailing west. He might have been making for Cuba or for a
hiding-place--of which there were plenty on the western shore of the
island itself. Father Serapion, who knew Charlie Webster's shooting
ground, promised to send a swift messenger, should anything further of
interest to us come to his knowledge within the next week or so. As he
was, naturally, in close touch with the natives, this was not unlikely.
And then we had to bid the good priest farewell--not without a reverent
hush in our hearts as we pondered on the marvel of noble lives thus
unselfishly devoted, and as we thought, too, of the loneliness that
would once more close around him when we were gone.
It was not until we had left him that I suddenly recalled King Coffee's
first vision. Clearly, Father Serapion was the man in overalls shingling
the roof! If only his other visions should prove as true!
Then we sailed away from Behring's Point, due west through the North
Bight. But we had spent too much time with the good Father, and in
various pottering about--making another landing at a lone cabin in
search of fresh vegetables and further loading up our much-enduring
craft with three flat-bottomed skiffs, for duck-shooting, marvellously
lashed to the sides of the cabin deck--to do much more sailing that day.
So at sunset we dropped anchor under the lee of Big Wood Cay, and, long
before the moon rose, the whole boat's crew was wondrously asleep.
Morning found us sailing through a maze of low-lying desert islands of a
bewildering sameness of shape and size, with practically nothing to
distinguish one from another. Even with long experience of them, one is
liable to go astray; indeed Charlie and the captain had several
friendly disputes, and exchanged bets, as to which was which. Then, too,
the curious milky colour of the water (in strange contrast to the
jewel-like clearness of the outer sea) makes it hard to keep clear of
the coral shoals that shelve out capriciously from every island. In the
daylight, the deeper water is seen in a bluish track (something like the
"bluing" used in laundry work), edged on either side by "the white
water." One has to keep a sharp lookout every foot of the way, and many
a time our keel gave an ominous grating, and we escaped some nasty
ledges by the mere mercy of Heaven.
We had tried bathing at sunrise, but the water was not deep enough to
swim in. So we had paddled around picking up "conches"--those great
ornamental shells which house with such fanciful magnificence an animal
something like our winkle, the hard white flesh of which, cut up fine,
makes an excellent salad; that is, as old Tom made it.
There is no fishing to speak of in these inclosed waters; nothing to go
after except sponges, which you see dotting the coral floor in black
patches. We gathered one or two, but the sponge in its natural state is
not an agreeable object. It is like a mass of slimy india-rubber, and
has to "die" and rot out its animal life, which it does with a
protesting perfume of great power, the sponge of our bath-tubs being the
macerated skeleton of the once living sponge.
We had hoped to reach our camp, out on the other side of the island,
that evening, but that dodging the shoals and sticking in the mud had
considerably delayed us. Besides, though Charlie and the captain both
hated to admit it, we had lost our way. We had been looking all
afternoon for Little Wood Cay, but as I said before, one cay was so much
like another--all alike flat, low-lying, desolate islands covered with a
uniform scrub and marked by no large trees--not unbeautiful if one has a
taste for melancholy levels, but unpicturesquely depressing and hopeless
for eyes craving more featured and coloured "scenery."
So night began to fall, and, as there is no sailing in such waters at
night, we once more cast anchor under a gloomy, black shape of land,
exceedingly lonesome and forgotten-looking, which we agreed to call
"Little Wood Cay"--till morning.
Soon all were asleep except Sailor and me. I lay awake for a long time
watching the square yard of stars that shone down through the hatch in
our cabin ceiling like a little window looking into eternity, while the
waters lapped and lapped outside, and the night talked strangely to
itself. It was a wonderful meeting-place of august lonely things--that
nameless, dark island, that shadowy water heaving vast and mournful,
that cry of the wind, that swaying vault of the stars, and, framed in
the cabin doorway, the great black head of the old dog, grave and
moveless and wondering.
Next morning Charlie and the captain were forced to own up that the
island, discovered to the day, was not Little Wood Cay. No humiliation
goes deeper with a sailing man than having to ask his way. Besides, who
was there to ask in that solitude? Doubtless a cormorant flying overhead
knew it, but no one thought to ask him.
However, we were in luck, for, after sailing about a bit, we came upon
two lonely negroes standing up in their boats and thrusting long poles
into the water. They were sponging--most melancholy of occupations--and
they looked forlorn enough in the still dawn. But they had a smile for
our plight. It was evidently a good joke to have mistaken Sapodilla Cay
for Little Wood Cay. Of course, we should have gone--"so." And "so" we
presently went, not without rewarding them for their information with
two generous drinks of old Jamaica rum. I never before saw two men so
grateful for a drink. Their faces positively shone with happiness.
Certainly it must have seemed as if that rum had fallen out of the sky,
the last thing those chilled and lonesome men could have hoped for out
there in the inhospitable solitude.
One of our reasons for seeking Little Wood Cay, which it proved had been
close by all the time, was that it is one of the few cays where one can
get fresh water. "Good water here," says the chart. We wanted to refill
some of our jars, and so we landed there, glad to stretch our legs,
while old Tom cooked our breakfast on the beach, under a sapodilla tree.
The vegetation was a little more varied and genial than we had yet seen,
and some small white flowers, growing in long lines, as if they had been
planted, wafted a very sweet fragrance across our breakfast table of
white coral sand. While we were eating, two or three little lizards with
tails curiously twirled round and round, like a St. Catherine wheel,
made themselves friendly, and ate pieces of bread from our hands without
fear.
Now that we knew where we were, it was clear, but by no means careless
sailing to our camp. By noon we had made the trip through the bight and,
passing out of a narrow creek known as Loggerhead Creek, were on the
southwest side of the island. A hundred and fifty miles or so of
straight sailing would have brought us to Cuba, but our way lay north
up the coast, as we had come down the other. Here was the same white
water as the day before, with the bluish track showing the deeper
channel; the same long, monotonous coast; the same dwarf, rusty-green
scrub; not a sign of life anywhere. Nothing but the endless
blue-streaked white water and the endless desert shore. We were making
for what is known as the Wide Opening, a sort of estuary into which a
listless stream or two crawl through mangrove bushes from the interior
swamps.
But there is one startlingly pleasant river, curiously out of place in
its desolate surroundings, which, after running through several miles of
marl swamps, enters upon an oasis of fresher foliage and even such
stately timber as mahogany, lignum vitæ, and horseflesh; and it was in
this oasis, at the close of the third day out, we found ourselves. Here,
a short distance from the bank, on some slightly ascending rocky ground,
under the spreading shade of something like a stretch of woodland,
Charlie, several years ago, had built a rough log shanty for his
camp--one of two or three camps he had thus scattered for himself up and
down the "out islands," where nearly all the land is no man's, and so
every man's, land. The particular camp at which we had now arrived he
had not visited for a long time.
"Last time I was here," said Charlie, laughing, as, having dropped
anchor, we rowed ashore, "I thought of what seemed to me an infallible
test of the loneliness of the place. Let's see how it has worked."
The log shanty stood before us, doorless, comfortably tucked in under an
umbrella-headed tamarind tree. There was no furniture in it but a rough
table. On the table was a bottle, fallen over on its side. This Charlie
snatched up, with a cry of satisfaction.
"What do you think of this?" he said. "Not a soul has been here but the
turkey-buzzards. The beggars knocked this over, but otherwise it is just
as I left it. Do you want better proof than this?"--and he held out the
bottle for me to look at.
It was a quart of Scotch whisky, corked and sealed as it had left the
distillery. And it had been there for two years! The more the reader
ponders this striking fact, the better will he be able to realise the
depth of the solitude in which we now found ourselves. While the boys
slung the beds, and Tom busied himself with dinner, we sat and smoked,
and savoured together our satisfaction in our complete and grandiose
isolation.
"It might well be weeks before any one could find us!" said my friend,
eager as a boy lapping up horrors from his favourite author. "Yes,
weeks!" And then he added: "It was creeks like this the old pirates used
to hide in."
And so we talked of pirates and buried treasure, while the sun set like
a flight of flamingoes over a scene that was indeed like a picture torn
from a Boy's Own Book of Adventure.
Then Tom brought us our dinner, and the dark began to settle down upon
us, thrillingly lonely, and full of strange, desolate cries of night
creatures from the mangrove swamps that surrounded our little oasis for
miles. Not even when Tom and I had been alone on "Dead Men's Shoes" had
I felt so utterly out of and beyond the world.
Charlie smacked his big smiling lips at the savage solitude of it.
"It's great to get away from everything--like this--isn't it?" he
remarked, looking round with huge satisfaction into the homeless haunted
wild, with its brooding blackness as of primeval chaos.
Sailor lay at our feet, dreaming of to-morrow's duck. His master's
thoughts were evidently in the same direction.
"How are you with a gun?" he asked, turning to the boy.
"O! I won't brag. I had better wait till to-morrow. But, of course, you
will have to lend me a gun."
"I have a beauty for you--just your weight," replied Charlie, his face
beaming as it did only at the thought of his guns, which he kept
polished like jewels and guarded as jealously as a violinist his violin,
or an Arab his harem.
CHAPTER VI
_Duck._
Dawn was just breaking as I felt Charlie's great paw on my shoulder next
morning. He was very serious. For a moment, as I sat up, still half
asleep, I thought he had news of Tobias. But it was only duck. He had
heard a great quacking during the night, and was impatient to make a
start. So was Sailor.
I was scarcely dressed when Tom arrived with breakfast, and in a few
minutes we had shouldered our guns, and were crossing the half mile of
peaty waste that divided us from the marl lakes from which the night
wind had carried that provocative quacking. Ahead of us, the crew were
carrying the skiffs on their shoulders, and very soon we were each
seated in regulation fashion on a canvas chair in front of our
respective skiffs, with our guns across our knees, and a negro behind us
to do the poling.
Charlie went ahead, with Sailor standing in the bow quivering with
excitement. The necessity of absolute silence, of course, had been
impressed upon us all by the most severe of all sportsmen. But the
admonition was scarcely necessary, for, as the sun rose, the scene that
spread before us was beautiful enough to have hushed the most garrulous
tongue. Far and near stretched misty levels of milkwhite water, in which
the mangrove trees made countless islands, sometimes of considerable
extent, impenetrable coppices often thirty or forty feet high. From
horizon to horizon there was nothing but white water and these
coppice-islands of laurel green--one so like another that I marvelled
how Charlie expected to find his way back to camp again in the evening.
As the sun rose, flooding the wide floors with lonely splendour, it
smote upon what at first I took to be gleaming clouds of purest silver
unrolling before it. It was an angelic host of white herons soaring and
circling, stainless spirits of the dawn high up in the fathomless blue.
As we stole silently along in our skiffs, it seemed to me that we were
invading some sanctuary of morning, "occult, withdrawn," at the far
limits of the world.
I looked around to see how it was all affecting my young friend. He was
close behind, almost at my shoulder--his beautiful young face like that
of a Greek god in a dream.
"Isn't it wonderful?" he mused, in that voice like a musical instrument.
My heart went out to him in gratitude, for, as I caught sight of
Charlie's serious figure ahead--with no thought, I was sure, but duck--I
realised how lonely I would have been amid all that solemn morning
without my young fellow-worshipper.
Presently, the herons alighted on one of the near-by mangrove coppices,
and it was as though the green bushes had suddenly been clothed with
miraculous white flowers--or been buried under a fall of virgin snow.
High up against the sun, several larger birds were uncouthly gambolling
in morning joy. It was hard to believe that they were pelicans--such
different birds they seemed from their foolish moping fellows at the
Zoo. And ah! yonder, riding innocent of danger, filling the morning air
with their peaceful quacking, a huge glittering fleet of--teal.
At the sight, Charlie turned with solemn warning hand--at which I heard
my young friend behind me smothering his profane laughter--and made
various signs by which Tom (who was poling me) and I understood that our
job, and also that of my companion, was to steal behind one mangrove
copse after another till we had got on the other side of that
unsuspecting squadron--which might then be expected to take flight in
Charlie's direction and rush by him in a terrified whirlwind. This not
very easy feat of stalking we were able to accomplish, thereby winning
Charlie's immense approval and putting him a splendid temper for the
rest of the day; for, as the wild cloud swept over him, he was able to
bring down no less than seven. Like a true sportsman, in telling the
story afterward in John Saunders's snuggery, he averred that the number
was nine!
I don't know who was happier; he, or Sailor, again and again splashing
through the water and returning with a bird in his mouth. As for me, I'm
afraid I am but a half-hearted sportsman, for I noticed that, as the
bang-bang-bang of the gun shivered the silence like a crystal mirror,
those white spirits of the morning, till then massed in dazzling purity
on the mangrove coppice, rose once more in a silver cloud and vanished.
It was as though beauty were leaving the world.
And once more I was thankful for the presence of dreaming and worshipful
youth.
"I shall hate him in a minute," said the boy, but just then came across
the water to him Charlie's jovial challenge to show his marksmanship,
and he took it forthwith with the same nonchalant skill as he did
everything, making, by long odds, as Charlie generously admitted, the
most brilliant shot of the day.
Now duck-hunting, while exciting enough in itself, makes unexciting
reading, and when I have recorded that Charlie's bag for the day was no
less than seven and a half dozen (I am not sure that our figures will
agree) and related one curious incident of the day, I shall leave the
reader to imagine the rest. The incident was this:
Early in the afternoon, Charlie had made one notable killing (five, I
think it was; he will correct me if I am wrong), but one of the birds,
not quite dead, had fluttered away into a particularly dense coppice.
Sailor had been sent in after it, but, after a lot of fussing about,
came out without his bird. Twice Charlie sent him in; with the same
result. So, growing impatient, he got out of his skiff, went splashing
through the marl water himself, and disappeared in the coppice.
Presently we heard his big laugh, and the next second, his gun. A moment
or two after, he reappeared, shouldering a huge black snake. No wonder
Sailor had been unable to find his bird, for, as Charlie had entered the
coppice, the first thing he saw was this snake coiled up in the centre,
with a curious protuberance bulging out his neck. Flying from Charlie's
gun, the unfortunate duck had landed right into the jaws of the snake!
As Charlie ripped open the snake's side--there, sure enough, was the
duck. So he was added to the day's bag; and, if he was among those Tom
cooked for dinner when we reached camp again that evening, he had the
somewhat unusual experience of being eaten twice in one day.
CHAPTER VII
_More Particularly Concerns Our Young Companion._
The days that now followed for a week might be said to be accurate
copies of that first day. Had one kept a diary, it would have been
necessary to write only: "ditto," "ditto," "ditto" under the happenings
of the first. Wonderful dawn--ditto; white herons and pelicans--ditto;
duck--ditto. But they were none the less delightful for that--for there
is a sameness that is far indeed from monotony--though I will confess
that, for my own tastes, toward the week-end, the carnage of duck began
to partake a little of that latter quality. Still, Charlie and Sailor
were so happy that I wouldn't have let them suspect that for the world.
Besides, I had my wonderful young friend, to whom I grew daily more
attached. He and I, of course, were of the same mind on the subject of
duck, and, as often as possible, would give Charlie the slip and explore
the ins and outs of the mangrove islands--merely for beauty's sake, or
in study of the queer forms of life dimly and uncouthly climbing the
ladder of being in those strange solitudes. In these comradely hours
together, I found myself feeling drawn to him as I can imagine a young
father is drawn to a young son; and sometimes I seemed to see in his
eyes the suggestion of a confidence he was on the edge of making me--a
whimsical, pondering expression, as though wondering whether he dare to
tell me or not.
"What is it, Jack?" I asked him for once when, early in our
acquaintance, we had asked him what we were to call him, he had answered
with a laugh: "O! call me Jack--Jack Harkaway." We had laughed,
reminding him of the schoolboy hero of that name and he had answered:
"Never mind. One name is as good as another. That is my name when I go
on adventures. Tell me your adventure names. I don't want your prosaic
every-day names." "Well," I had replied, entering into the lad's humour,
"my friend here is Sir Francis Drake, and I, well--I'm Sir Henry
Morgan."
"What is it, Jack?" I repeated.
But he shook his head.
"No!" he replied, "I like you ever so much--and I wish I could; but I
mustn't."
"Somebody else's secret again?" I ventured.
"Yes!" And he added: "This time it's mine too. But--some day perhaps;
who knows?--" He broke off in boyish confusion.
"All right, dear Jack," I said, patting his shoulder, "take your own
time. We're friends anyway."
"That we are," responded the lad, with a fine glow.
We left it so at the moment, and had ourselves poled in the direction of
Charlie's voice, which was breaking mirror after mirror of exquisite
lagoon-like silence with demands for our return to camp. He evidently
had shot all the duck he wanted, for that day, and was beginning to be
hungry for dinner.
Yet, I mustn't be too hard on Charlie, for, as we know, even Charlie had
another object in his trip besides duck. As a certain poet brutally puts
it, he had anticipated also "the hunting of man." In addition, though it
is against the law of those Britannic islands, he had promised me a
flamingo or two for decorative purposes. However, flamingoes and Tobias
alike kept out of gunshot, and, as the week grew toward its end, Charlie
began to grow a little restive.
"It looks," he murmured one evening, as we had completed our fourteenth
meal of roast duck, and were musing over our after-duck cigars, "it
looks as if I am not going to have any use for this."
He had taken a paper from his pocket. It was a warrant with which he had
provided himself, empowering him to arrest the said Henry P. Tobias, or
the person passing under that name, on two counts: First, that of
seditious practices, with intent to spread treason among His Majesty's
subjects, and, second, that of wilful murder on the high seas. I should
say that, following my recital of the eventful cruise of the _Maggie
Darling,_ old Tom and I had been required to make sworn depositions of
Tobias's share in the happenings of that cruise, the murder of the
captain and so forth, and I too had surrendered as evidence that
eloquent manifesto which I had seen Tobias reading to the ill-fated
George and "Silly" Theodore, and had afterward discussed with him.
The probabilities were that the Government would treat Tobias's case as
that of a dangerous madman, rather than as a hanging matter, but,
whatever its point of view, it was clearly undesirable for such an
individual to remain at large. So the governing powers in Nassau, with
whom Charlie Webster was _persona grata,_ had been glad to take
advantage of his enthusiastic patriotism and invest him with
constabulary powers, hoping that he might have an opportunity of using
them. Personally, he was rather ashamed of having to employ such tame
legal methods. From his point of view, shooting at sight was all that
Tobias deserved, and to give him a trial by jury was an absurdity of
legal red-tape. In this respect he agreed with the great Mr. Pickwick,
that "the law is a hass." It was always England's way, he said, and, if
she didn't mind, this leniency to traitors would some day be her
undoing!
Charlie put the despised, yet precious, warrant back into his pocket,
and gazed disgustedly across the creek, where the loveliest of young
moons was rising behind a frieze of the homeless, barbaric brush.
"There was never such a place in the world," he asserted, "to hide
in--or get lost in--or to starve in. I have often thought that it would
make the most effective prison in the world. Instead of spending good
public money in housing and feeding scoundrels behind bars, and paying
officials to keep them there, supporting expensive establishments at
Dartmoor and so forth, why doesn't the British Government export her
convicts over here, land them on one of those mangrove shoals, and--give
them their freedom! Five per cent. might succeed in escaping. The
mangrove swamps would look after the rest."
As I have said, Charlie was a terrifying patriot. For most offences he
had the humanity of a vast forgiveness. He was, generally speaking, the
softest-hearted man I have ever met. But for any breach of the sacred
laws of England he was something like a Spanish Inquisitor. England, in
fact, was his religion. I have heard of worse.
The young moon rose and rose, while Charlie sat in the dusk of our
shanty, like a meditative mountain, saying nothing, the glowing end of
his cigar occasionally hinting at the circumference of his broad
Elizabethan face.
"I'll get him, all the same," he said presently, coming out of a sort of
trance, in which, as I understood later, his mind had been making a
geographical survey of our neighbourhood, going up and down every creek
and corner on a radius of fifty miles.
"If," he added, "he knows this island better than I do, I'll give him
this warrant to eat for his breakfast.... But let's turn in. I'll think
it out by the morning. Night brings counsel."
So we sought our respective cots; but I had scarcely begun to undress,
when a foolish accident for which I was responsible happened, an
accident that might have had serious consequences, and which, as a
matter of fact did have--though not at the moment.
As I told the reader at the beginning of this story, I am not accustomed
to guns--being too afraid of my bad temper. Charlie knew this, and was
all the time cautioning me about holding my gun right and so on, and
especially about shaking out any unused cartridges at the end of the
day's shoot.
Well, this special night, I had forgotten his warnings. Neglecting
everything a man should do to his gun when he is finished with it for
the day, I had left two cartridges in it, left the trigger on the
hair-brink of eternity, and other enormities for which Charlie
presently, and quite rightly, abashed me with profanity; in short, my
big toe tripped over the beast as it stood carelessly against the wall
of my cabin, and, as it fell, I received the contents in the fleshy part
of my shoulder.
The explosion brought the whole crew out of their shanty, in a state of
gesticulating nature, and, as Charlie, growling like a bear, was helping
to bring first aid, suddenly our young friend Jack--whose romantic youth
preferred sleeping outside in a hammock slung between two palm
trees--put him aside.
"I know better how to do this than you, Sir Francis," he said, laughing.
"Same as the sharks, eh?" said Charlie.
"Just the same ... but, let's have a look at your medicine chest, and
give me the lint quick."
So Jack took charge, and acted with such confidence and skill,--finally
binding up my wound, which was but a slight one--that Charlie stood by
dumbfounded and with a curious soft look in his face which I didn't
understand till later. The tears came into my eyes at the wonderful
tenderness of the lad, as he bent over me.
"Do I hurt you?" he kept saying. "You and I are pals, you know."
"You don't hurt me a bit, dear Jack," I answered; "what a clever lad you
are!"
Then Jack looked up for a moment, and caught Charlie's wondering look;
and, it seemed to me that he changed colour, and looked frightened.
"Sir Francis is jealous," he said; "but I've finished now. I guess
you'll sleep all right after that dose I gave you. Good night...." And
he slipped away.
Jack had proved himself a practised surgeon, and, as he predicted, I
slept well--so well and so far into next morning that Charlie at last
had to waken me.
"What do you think?" were his first words.
"Why, what?" I asked, sitting up, and wincing from my wounded shoulder.
"Our young friend has skipped in the night!"
"'Skipped?'" I exclaimed, with a curious ache at my heart.
"Sure enough! Gone off on that little nigger sloop that dropped in here
yesterday afternoon, I guess."
"You don't mean it?"
"No doubt of it--I wonder whether you've had the same thought as I
had."
"What do you mean?"
"You know I always said there was a mystery about that boy?"
"Well, what of it?"
"Did you notice the way he bound your shoulder last night?"
"What of it?"
"Did you ever see a man bind a wound like that?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean simply that the mystery about our Jack Harkaway was just this:
Jack Harkaway was no boy at all--but just a girl; a brick of a
dare-devil girl!"
CHAPTER VIII
_Better Than Duck._
Charlie Webster's discovery--if discovery it was--of "Jack Harkaway's"
true sex seemed so far plausible in that it accounted not only for much
that had seemed mysterious about him and his manner, but also (though
this I did not mention to Charlie) it accounted for certain dim feelings
of my own, of which, before, I had been scarcely conscious.
But we were not long left to continue our speculations, being presently
interrupted by the arrival of exciting news--news which, I need hardly
say, promptly drove all thought of "Jack Harkaway" out of Charlie
Webster's head, though it was not so soon to be banished from mine.
The news came in the form of a note from Father Serapion. He had sent it
by the captain of a sponging schooner, who, in turn, had sent it by two
of his men in a rowboat, not being able to venture up the creek himself
owing to the northeast wind which was blowing so hard, that, as
sometimes happens on that coast, he might have been left high and dry.
Father Serapion's note simply confirmed his conjecture that it was
Tobias who had bought rum at Behring's Point, and that he was probably
somewhere in the network of creeks and marl lagoons in our
neighbourhood. Telling Tom to give the men a good breakfast, Charlie
thought the news over.
"I'll tell you what we'll do," he said presently. "I'm going to leave
you here--and I'm going to charter the sponger out there. This river we
are on comes out of a sound that spreads directly south--Turner's Sound.
Turner's Sound has two outlets: this, and Goose River ten miles down the
shore. Now, if Tobias is inside here, he can only get out either down
here, or down Goose River. I am going down in the sponger to the mouth
of Goose River, to keep watch there; and you must stay where you are,
and keep watch here. Between the two of us, a week will starve him out.
Or, if not, I'll chase after him up Goose River; and in that case, he'll
have to come down here--and it will be up to you, for I don't believe
he'll have the nerve to try walking across the marl ponds to the east
coast."
So it was settled, and, presently, Charlie went along with two of his
best guns and Sailor, in the rowboat, and I saw him no more for a week.
Meanwhile, I kept watch and studied the scenery, and old Tom and I
talked about the strange people who inhabited the interior--those houses
that moved away into the mist as soon as you caught sight of them. Some
day old Tom and I are going to explore the interior, for he is not so
much afraid of ghosts as he was, since we tried them out together.
At the end of the week, the wind was blowing strong from the west and
the tides ran high. About noon we caught sight of triumphant sails
making up the river. It was Charlie back again.
"Got him!" was all he said, as he rowed ashore.
Sailor was with him in the rowboat, but I noticed that he was limping,
going on three legs.
"Yes!" said Charlie. "It's lucky for Tobias he only got Sailor's foot,
or, by the living God, I'd have stood my trial for manslaughter, or
whatever they call it. It'll soon be all right, old man," he said,
taking Sailor's wounded paw in his hand, "soon be all right." Sailor
wagged his tail vigorously, to show that a gunshot through one of his
legs was a mere nothing.
"Yes!" said Charlie, as we sat at lunch in the shack, under the tamarind
tree; "we've got him safe there under decks all right; chained up like
a buoy. If he can get away, I'll believe in the Devil."
"Won't you tell me about it?" I asked.
"Not much to tell; too easy altogether. I waited a couple of days at the
mouth of Goose River. Then I got tired, and left the sponger with the
captain and two or three men, while I went up the river with a couple of
guns and Sailor, and a man to pole the skiff--just for some
duck-shooting, you know. We lay low, for two days, on the marshes, and
then Sailor got sniffing the wind one morning, as if there was something
around he didn't care much for. The day before, we had heard firing a
mile or so inland, and had come upon some duck that some one or other
had shot and hadn't had time to pick up. So, that morning, I let Sailor
lead the way. We had been out about an hour, and were stealing under the
lee of a big mangrove island, after some duck we had sighted a little to
the eastward, when, suddenly, apparently without anything to alarm them,
they rose from the water and came flying in our direction. But evidently
something, or somebody, had startled them. They came right by me. It was
hard luck not to be able to take a shot at them. I could have got a
dozen of them at least."
"Probably more," I suggested.
"I really believe I could," agreed Charlie, in entire innocence. "Well,
as I have said, it was hard luck; but Sailor seemed to have something on
his mind, beside duck. As we poled along silently in the direction from
which the duck had risen, he grew more and more excited, and, at last,
as we neared a certain mangrove copse to which all the time he had been
pointing, he barked two or three times, and, I let him go. Poor old
fellow!"
As he told the story, Sailor, who seemed to understand every word,
rubbed his head against his master's hand.
"He went into the mangroves, just as he'd go after duck, but he'd hardly
gone in, when there were two shots, and he came out limping, making for
me. But, by this, I was close up to the mangroves myself, and in another
minute, I was inside; and there, just like that old black snake you
remember, was Tobias--his gun at his shoulder. He had a pot at me, but,
before he could try another, I knocked him down with my
fist--and--Well, we've got him all right. And now you can go after
your treasure, as soon as you like. I'll take him over to Nassau, and
you can fool around for the next month or so. Of course we'll need you
at the trial, but that won't come off for a couple of months. Meanwhile,
you can let me know where you are, in case I should need to get hold of
you."
"All right, old man," I said, "but I wish you were coming along with
me."
"I've got all the treasure I want," laughed Charlie. "But don't you want
to come and interview our friend? He might give you some pointers on
your treasure hunt."
"How does he take it?" I asked.
"Pretty cool. He talked a little big at first, but now he sits with his
head between his hands, and you can't get a word out of him. Something
up his sleeve, I dare say."
"I don't think I'll bother to see him, Charlie," I said. "I'm kind of
sorry for him." Charlie looked at me.
"Sorry for him?"
"Yes! In fact, I rather like him."
"Like him?" Charlie bellowed; "the pock-marked swine!"
"I grant," I said, smiling, and recalling Charlie's own words of long
ago, "that his face is against him."
"Rather like him? You must be crazy! You certainly have the rummiest
taste."
"At least you'll admit this much, Charlie," I said; "he has courage--and
I respect courage even in a cockroach--particularly, perhaps, in a
cockroach ..."
"He's a cockroach, all right," said Charlie.
"Maybe," I assented. "I don't pretend to love him, but--"
"If you don't mind," interrupted Charlie, "we'll let it go at 'but'--".
And he rose. "The tide's beginning to run out. Send me word where you
are, as soon as you get a chance; and good luck to you, old chap, and
your doubloons and pieces of eight!"
Then we walked down to his row-boat, and soon he was aboard the sponger.
Her sails ran up, and they were off down stream--poor Tobias, manacled,
somewhere between decks.
"See you in Nassau!" I shouted.
"Right-O!" came back the voice of the straightest and simplest
Englishman in the world.
BOOK III
_Across the scarce-awakened sea,
With white sail flowing,
And morning glowing,
I come to thee--I come to thee._
_Past lonely beaches,
And gleaming reaches,
And long reefs foaming,
Homing--homing--
A-done with roaming,
I come to thee._
_The moon is failing,
A petal sailing
Down in the west
That bends o'er thee;
And the stars are hiding,
As we go gliding
Back to the nest,
Ah! back to thee._
BOOK III
CHAPTER I
_In Which We Gather Shells--and Other Matters._
With Charlie gone, and duck-shooting not being one of my passions, there
was nothing to detain me in Andros. So we were soon under way, out of
the river, and heading north up the western shore of the big monotonous
island. We had some fifty miles to make before we reached its northern
extremity--and, all the way, we seldom had more than two fathoms of
water, and the coast was the same interminable line of mangroves and
thatch palms, with occasional clumps of pine trees, and here and there
the mouth of a creek, leading into duck-haunted swamps.
It was evident that the island kept its head above water with
difficulty, and that the course we were running over was all the time
aspiring to be dry land, right away from the coast to the Florida
channel. For miles west and north, it would have been impossible to find
more than three fathoms. As I said of the east coast, inside the reef,
it was a vast swimming bath, but of greater dimensions, a swimming bath
with a floor of alabaster, and water that seemed to be made of dissolved
moonstones.
For a while, our going seemed very much as though we were sailing a big
toy-boat in an illimitable porcelain bathtub. There were no rocks to
look out for, no shoals in what was really one vast shoal, and all was
smooth as milk. All the afternoon, till the sun set and the stars came
out and we dropped our anchor in a luminous nothingness, a child could
have navigated us; but, when the next day brought us up to the northwest
corner of Andros, we found ourselves face to face with a variety of
difficulties: glimmering sandbars, reaches of moon-white shoals, patches
of half-made land with pines struggling knee-deep in the tide; here and
there a mile of mangroves, and delusive channels of blue water; beauty
everywhere spreading out her sweeping laces of foam--a welter of a world
still in its making, with no clear passages for any craft drawing more
than a canoe. Loveliness everywhere--again the waving purple fans, and
the heraldic fish, and the branching coral mysteriously making the
world. Loveliness everywhere!--in fact a labyrinth of beauty with no way
out.
And the captain, like nearly every captain I have met in the Bahamas,
knew as little about it as I did. Charlie had been right; you must know
how to sail your own boat when you hoist your sails in Bahaman waters. I
confess that I began to regret Charlie's preoccupation with Tobias--for,
in spite of his missing his way that day in the North Bight, Charlie
seems to know his way in the dark wherever one happens to be on the sea.
However, there was really nothing to worry us. There was no wind. The
weather was calm, and there was lots of time. At last, after studying
the chart and talking it over with Tom, who though he had only shipped
as cook, was the best sailor on board, we decided to run north, and take
a channel described on the chart as "very intricate."
At last we came to a little foam-fringed cay, where it was conceivable
that the shyest and rarest of shells would choose to make its home--a
tiny aristocrat, driven out of the broad tideways by the coarser
ambitions and the ruder strength of great molluscs that feed and grow
fat and house themselves in crude convolutions of uncouthly striving
horn; a little lonely shore, kissed with the white innocence of the sea,
where pearls might secretly make themselves perfect, untroubled by the
great doings of wind and tide--merely rocked into beauty by ripple and
beam, with a teardrop falling, once in a while, into their dim growing
hearts, from some wavering distant star.
It was impossible to imagine a cay better answering to my conchologist's
description of Short Shrift Island. Its situation and general character,
too, bore out the surmise. On landing, also, we found that it answered
in two important particulars to Tobias's narrative. We found, as he had
declared, that there was good water there for passing ships. Also, we
found, in addition to the usual scrub, that cabbage-wood trees grew
there very plentifully, particularly, as he said, on the highest part of
the island. Our conjectures were presently confirmed by the captain of a
little sponging boat that, an hour after our arrival, put in for water.
Yes, he said, it was ---- Cay (giving it the name by which it was
generally known, and by which the conchologist had first mentioned it to
me). So, having talked it all over with Tom, I decided that here we
would stay for a time, and try our luck.
But, first, having heard from the sponging captain, that he was en
route for Nassau, I gave him a letter to Charlie Webster, telling him of
our whereabouts, in case he should have sudden need of me with regard to
Tobias.
It was too late to begin treasure-hunting that day, but Tom and I made
an early start, the following morning, prospecting the island--I having
set the men to work gathering shells, in the hope of being able to
oblige my shell-loving friend. The island was but a small cay compared
with that of Dead Men's Shoes,--on which we had so memorably laboured
side by side--some five miles long and two broad. It was a pretty little
island, rising here and there into low hills, and surprising us now and
again with belts of pine trees. But, of course, the cabbage-wood tree
was our special tree; and, as I said before, this grew plentifully. All
too plentifully, indeed; and cabbage-wood stumps, alas! were scarcely
more rare.
The reader may recall that Tobias's narrative, in reference to his
second "pod" of one million dollars, had run: "_On the highest point of
this Short Shrift Island is a large cabbage-wood stump, and twenty feet
south of that stump is the treasure, buried five feet deep and can be
found without difficulty._" But which was the highest point? There were
several hillocks that might claim to be that--all about equal in height.
We visited them all in succession. There was a "large cabbage-wood
stump" on each and all of them! It had seemed an absurdly inadequate
direction, even as we had talked the narrative over in John Saunders's
snuggery. But, confronted with so many "large cabbage-wood stumps," one
began to suspect Henry P. Tobias of having been a humourist, and to
wonder whether John Saunders was not right after all, and the whole
manuscript merely a hoax for the benefit of buried-treasure cranks like
myself.
However, as the high points of the island were only seven in all, it was
no difficult matter to try them all out, one by one, as we had plenty of
time and plenty of hands for the work. For, of course, it would have
been idle to attempt any concealment of my object from the crew.
Therefore, I took them from their shell-gathering, and, having duly
measured out twenty feet south from each promising cabbage-wood stump,
set them to work. They worked with a will, for I promised them a
generous share of whatever we found.
Alas! it was an inexpensive promise, for, when we had duly turned up the
ground, not only twenty feet, but thirty, forty, and fifty feet, not
only south but north, east and west of the various cabbage-wood stumps
on the seven various eminences, we were none of us the richer by a
single piece of eight. Then we tried the other cabbage-wood stumps on
lower ground, and any other likely looking spots, till, after working
for nearly a fortnight, we must have dug up most of the island.
And then Tom came to me with the news that our provisions were beginning
to give out. As it was, he said, before we returned to Nassau, we should
have to put in at Flying Fish Cove--a small settlement on the larger
island some five miles to the nor'ard,--for the purchase of various
necessities.
"All right, Tom," I said, "I guess the game is up! Let's start out
to-morrow morning."
And then I betook myself, like the great philosopher, to gathering
shells on the sea-shore, finding some specimens which, to my unlearned
eye, seemed identical with that shell so dear to the learned
conchologist's heart.
The following afternoon we put in at Flying Fish Cove, a neat little
settlement, with a pretty show of sponging craft at anchor, a few
prosperous-looking houses on the hill-side, and a sprinkling of white,
or half-white, people in the streets. I instructed Tom and the Captain
to stock in whatever we needed. We would lie there that night, and in
the morning we would make a start, homeward-bound, for Nassau.
"You may as well have your sucking fish back, Tom," I said, laughing in
self-disgust. "I shall have no more need of it. I am through with
treasure-hunting."
"I'd keep it a little longer, sar," answered Tom; "you never know."