_Gathering Up the Threads._
But, though it was hard to astonish and almost impossible to alarm the
"King," his sense of wonder was quite another matter, and the boyish
delight with which he listened to our several stories would have made it
worth while to undergo tenfold the perils we had faced. And the best of
it was that we each had a new audience in the others--for none of us
knew what had happened to the rest, and how it chanced that we should
all come to meet at that moment of crisis on the sea. Our stories, said
the "King," were quite in the manner of "The Arabian Nights,"
dovetailing one into the other.
"And now," he added, "we will begin with the Story of the Murdered Slave
and the Stolen Lady."
Calypso told her story simply and in a few words. The first part of it,
of which the poor murdered Samson had been the eloquent witness, needed
no further telling. He had done his brave best--poor fellow--but Tobias
had had six men with him, and it was soon over. Her they had gagged and
bound and carried in a sort of improvised sedan-chair; Tobias had done
the thing with a certain style and--she had to admit--with absolute
courtesy.
When they had gone a mile or two from the house, he had had the gag
taken from her mouth, and, on her promise not to attempt to escape
(which was, of course, quite impossible) he had also had her unbound, so
that her hurried journey through the woods was made as comfortable as
possible. Certainly it had not been without its spice of romance, for
four of the men had carried lanterns, and their progress must have had a
very picturesque effect lighting up the blackness of the strange trees.
Tobias had walked at her side the whole way, without speaking a word.
They were making, she had gathered--and as we had surmised--for the
northern shore, and, after about a three hours' march, she heard the
sound of the sea. On the schooner she had found a cabin all nicely
prepared for her--even dainty toilet necessaries--and an excellent
dinner was served, on some quite pretty china, to her alone. Poor Tobias
had seemed bent on showing--as he had said to Tom--that he was not the
"carrion" we had thought him.
After dinner, Tobias had respectfully asked leave for a few words with
her. He had apologised for his action, but explained that it was
necessary--the only way he had left, he said, of protecting his own
interests, and safeguarding a treasure which belonged to him and no one
else, if it belonged to any living man. It had seemed to her that it was
a monomania with him. His eyes had gleamed so, as he spoke of it, that
she had felt a little frightened for the first time--for he seemed like
a madman on the subject.
While he had been talking, she had made up her mind what she would do.
She would tell him the plain truth about her doubloons, and offer him
what remained of them as a ransom. This she did, and was able at last
half to persuade him that, so far as any one knew, that was all the
treasure there was, and that the digging among the ruins of the old
house was a mere fancy of her father's. There might be something there
or not--and she went so far as to give her word of honour that, if
anything was found, he should have his share of it.
It was rather a woman's way, she admitted, but she thought that, so long
as she kept Tobias near the island, some favouring incident might happen
at any moment--that the proffered ransom, in fact, might prove the bait
to a trap.
Tobias had seemed impressed, and promised his answer in the morning,
leaving her to sleep--with a sentry at her cabin door. She had slept
soundly, and wakened only at dawn. As soon as she was up, Tobias had
come to her, saying that he had accepted her offer, and asking her to
direct him to her treasure.
This she had done, and, to avoid passing the settlement, they had taken
the course round the eastern end of the island. As they had approached
the cave (and here Calypso turned a quizzical smile on me, which no one,
of course, understood but ourselves), a sloop was seen approaching them
from the westward ... and here she stopped and turned to Charlie
Webster.
"Now," said the "King," "we shall hear the Story of Apollo--or, let us
say, rather Ajax--the Far-Darter--He of the Arrow that never missed its
mark."
And Charlie Webster, more at home with deeds than words, blushed and
blushed through his part of the story, telling how--having called at the
settlement--he had got our message from Sweeney, and was making up the
coast for the hidden creek. He had spied what he felt sure was Tobias's
schooner--had called on him "In the King's Name" to surrender--("I had
in my pocket the warrant for his arrest," said Charlie, with innocent
pride--"the d----d scoundrel") but had been answered with bullets. He
had been terribly frightened, he owned, when Calypso had been brought on
deck, but she had given him courage--he paused to beam on her, a
broad-faced admiration, for which he could find no words--and, as he had
never yet missed a flying duck at--I forget how many yards Charlie
mentioned--well ... perhaps he oughtn't to have risked it--And so his
story came to an end, amid reassuring applause.
"Now," said the "King," "for the Story of the Disappearing Gentleman and
the Lighted Lantern."
And then I told my story as it is already known to the reader, and I
have to confess that, when I came to the chestful of doubloons and
pieces of eight, I had a very attentive audience. But, at first, the
"King" shook his head with an amused smile.
"Ulysses is romancing for the benefit of my romantic second childhood,"
he said, and then, after his favourite manner he added--
"I might not this believe
Without the sensible and true avouch of mine own eyes ..."
Then, he was for starting off that very night. But, reminded of the
difficult seclusion in which the treasure still lay, he was persuaded to
wait till the morrow.
"At dawn then," he said, "to-morrow--'what time, the rosy-footed dawn'
... so be it. And now I am going to talk to Ajax the Far-Darter of
duck-shooting."
"But wait!" I cried. "Why did 'Jack Harkaway' go to Nassau?"
Calypso blushed. The "King" chuckled.
"I prefer not to be known in Nassau, yet some of my business has to be
done there. Nor is it safe for beauty like Calypso's to go unprotected.
So from time to time, 'Jack Harkaway' goes for us both! And now enough
of explanations!"; and he launched into talk of game and sport in
various parts of the world, to the huge delight of the great
simple-hearted Charlie.
But, after a time, other matters claimed the attention of his other
auditors. During the flow of his discourse night had fallen. Calypso and
I perceived that we were forgotten--so, by an impulse that seemed to be
one, we rose and left them there, and stole out into the garden where
the little fountain was dancing like a spirit under the moon, and the
orange trees gave out their perfume on the night breeze. I took her
hand, and we walked softly out into the moonlight, and looked down at
the closed lotuses in the little pool. And then we took courage to look
into each other's eyes.
"Calypso," I said, "when are you going to show me where you keep your
doubloons?"--and I added, in a whisper, "Jack--when am I going to see
you in boy's clothes again?"
And, with that, she was in my arms, and I felt her heart beating against
my side.
"O! my treasure," I said--ever so softly--"Calypso, my treasure."
POSTSCRIPT
Now, such readers as have been "gentle" enough to follow me so far in my
story, may possibly desire to be told what lay behind those other locked
doors in the underground gallery where I so nearly laid my bones.
I should like nothing better than to gratify their legitimate curiosity.
But, perhaps, they will not have forgotten my friend John Saunders,
Secretary to the Treasury of His Britannic Majesty's Government at
Nassau.
John is a good friend, but he is a man of very rigid principles and a
great stickler in regard to any matters pertaining to the interests and
duties of his office. Were I to divulge--as, I confess, my pen is
itching to do--the dazzling--I will even say blinding--contents of these
other grim compartments (particularly if I were to give any hint of
their value in bullion), no feelings of friendship would for one second
weigh with him as against his duty to the august Government he so
faithfully serves. He may suspect what he likes, but, so long as he
actually knows nothing, we may rely on his inactivity. In fact, I know
that he has no wish to be told--so far he will go with us, but no
further--and, as we wish neither to sully his fine probity, nor, on the
other hand, to disgorge our "illgotten gains"--for which, after all,
each one of us risked his life (and for which one life, most precious of
all, was placed in such terrible jeopardy)--gains too which His
Britannic Majesty is quite rich enough to do without--the readers must
pardon me my caution, and draw upon his imagination for what I must not
tell him.
This, however, I will say: he cannot well imagine too vividly or too
magnificently, and that, in fact, he may accept those hyperboles
fancifully indulged in by the "King" as very slightly overshooting the
mark. We do not, indeed, go disguised in cloth of gold, nor are we
blinding to look upon with rings and ropes of pearls. It does not happen
to be our western fashion to be so garmented. But--well--I won't say
that we couldn't do so if we were so minded.
Nor will I say, either, that the "King" does not occasionally, in
private, masquerade in some such splendour; though, as a rule, he still
prefers that shabby tatterdemalion costume which we have still to accept
as a vagary of his fantastic nature. He is still the same Eternal Child,
and his latest make-believe has been to fit up those caverns, through
which so miserably I wormed my way, with the grandiose luxury of the
Count of Monte Cristo; that, as he says, the prophecy might be fulfilled
which said: "Monte Cristo shall seem like a pauper and a penny gaff in
comparison with the fantasies of our fearful wealth."
Those caverns, we afterward discovered, did actually communicate with
Blackbeard's ruined mansion, and the "King," who has now rebuilt that
mansion and lives in it in semi-feudal state with Calypso and me, is
able to pass from one to the other by underground passages which are an
unfailing source of romantic satisfaction to his dear, absurd soul.
As to whether or not the mansion and the treasure were actually
Blackbeard's--that is, Edward Teach's--we are yet in doubt, though we
prefer to believe that they were. At all events, we never found any
evidence to connect them at all with Henry P. Tobias, whose second
treasure, we have every reason to think, still remains undiscovered.
As for the sinister and ill-fated Henry P. Tobias, Jr., we have since
learned--through Charlie Webster, who every now and again drops in with
sailors from his sloop and carries off the "King" for duck-shooting--that
his real name was quite different; he must have assumed, as a _nom de
guerre,_ the name we knew him by, to give colour to his claim. I am
afraid, therefore, that he was a plain scoundrel, after all, though it
seemed to me that I saw gleams in him of something better, and I shall
always feel a sort of kindness toward him for the saving grace of gallant
courtesy with which he invested his rascally abduction of Calypso.
Calypso.... She and I, just for fun, sometimes drop into Sweeney's
store, and, when she has made her purchases, she draws up from her bosom
a little bag, and, looking softly at me, lays down on the counter--a
golden doubloon; and Sweeney--who, doubtless, thinks us all a little
crazy--smiles indulgently on our make-believe.
Sometimes, on our way home, we come upon Tom in the plantations,
superintending a gang of the "King's" janissaries--among whom Erebus is
still the blackest--for Tom is now the Lord High Steward of our estate.
He beams on us in a fatherly way, and I lay my hand significantly on my
leftside--to his huge delight. He flashes his white teeth and wags his
head from side to side with inarticulate enjoyment of the allusion. For
who knows? He may be right. In so mysterious a world the smallest cause
may lead up to the most august results and there is nothing too
wonderful to happen.
EPILOGUE BY THE EDITOR
_It remains for me, as sponsor for the foregoing narrative, reluctantly
to add a second postscript to that of its author, bringing the fortunes
of himself and his friends a little nearer to the present year of grace.
Not that anything untoward has happened to any of them. Their lives are
still lived happily in the sun, and their treasure is still
safe--somewhere carefully out of the sun. But neither their lives nor
their treasure are where my friend's postscript left them. They are,
indeed, very much nearer New York than at that writing._
_As a matter of fact, after King Alcinoüs had played but a short time at
being the Count of Monte Cristo in his underground palace, it gradually
was borne in upon his essentially common-sense mind, as upon the minds
of Calypso and her husband, that their secret was known to too many for
its absolute safety. Kindly coloured people indeed, and a very friendly
"Secretary to the British Treasury" ... still, there was no knowing,
and, on all accounts, they gradually came to the unromantic conclusion
that the safe deposit vaults of New York were more reliable than
limestone caverns filled with the sound of sea. This conclusion explains
the presence of my friend and his Lady of the Doubloons in the box of
the Punch and Judy Theatre that, to me, eventful evening._
_Since then, I myself have made a pilgrimage to all the places that play
a part in this romance. I have crawled my way through those caves in
which my friend came so near to leaving his bones, looked into those
vaults once glittering with pieces of eight and all that other
undivulged treasure-trove, wedged myself as far as I dared into that
slit in the rocks, looking out like a narrow window on the sea._
_All those places are real; any one, with a mind to, can find them; but,
should any one care to undertake the pilgrimage, he will note, as I did,
that those baronial halls of Edward Teach--for a while the playground of
King Alcinoüs--are rapidly being reclaimed by the savage wilderness,
fiercely swallowed minute by minute by the fanged and serpentine
vegetation--which, after all, was only stayed for a moment, and which,
humanly speaking, will now submerge them for all eternity._
_Once more, to employ one of the favourite quotations of King Alcinoüs,
"I PASSED BY THE WALLS OF BALCLUTHA, AND THEY WERE DESOLATE." The King,
I may be allowed to add, finds New York quite a good place to talk
in--though he is frank in saying that he prefers a coral island._
R. Le G.
THE END
Transcriber's Notes:
List of A.L. Burt Company's Popular Copyright Fiction removed.
Dash lengths standardised.
Page 262: Changed intance to instance
Page 295: Changed Monto Cristo to Monte Cristo.
Page 102: Changed mooonlit (non dialogue) to moonlit.