It was the afternoon of a glorious day, and we were floating along in
the broiling heat, now and then giving a dip with the paddles, so as to
direct the canoe more towards the bank, where we could see houses.
There was a boat here and a boat there, moored in the current; and now
and then we passed a canoe, while others seemed to be going in the same
direction as ourselves.
"Harry, look there!" cried my uncle.
I looked in the direction pointed-out ahead, shading my eyes with my
hand, when I dropped my paddle, as I rose up, trembling, in the boat;
for just at that moment, from a canoe being paddled towards us, there
came a faint but unmistakable English cheer--one to which I could not
respond for the choking feelings in my throat.
I rubbed my eyes, fancying that I must have been deceived, as the canoe
came nearer and nearer, but still slowly, till it grated against ours,
and my hands were held fast by those of honest old Tom, who was
laughing, crying, and talking all in a breath.
"And I've been thinking I was left behind, Mas'r Harry, and working away
to catch you; while all the time I've been paddling away."
"Tom!--Tom!" I cried huskily, "we thought you dead!"
"But I ain't--not a bit of it, Mas'r Harry. I'm as live as ever. But
ain't you going to ask arter anything else?"
"Tom, you're alive," I said, in the thankfulness of my heart, "and that
is enough."
"No, 'tain't, Mas'r Harry," he whispered rather faintly; for now I saw
that he looked pale and exhausted. "No, 'tain't enough; for I've got
all the stuff in the bottom here, just as we packed it in. Ain't you
going to say `hooray!' for that, Mas'r Harry?" he cried, in rather
disappointed tones.
"Tom," I said, "life's worth a deal more than gold." And then I turned
from him, for I could say no more.
We pushed in now to the landing-place, with a feeling of awakened
confidence, given--though I did not think of it then--by the knowledge
of our wealth; and leaving Tom in charge of the canoes, we sought the
first shelter we could obtain, and leaving there my uncle to watch over
the safety of the women, I set about making inquiries, and was
exceedingly fortunate in obtaining possession of a house that was
falling to ruin, having been lying deserted since quitted by an English
merchant a couple of years before. A few inquiries, too, led us to the
discovery that there was an English vice-consul resident, to whom I told
so much of our story as was safe, mentioning the attack upon my uncle,
and speaking of myself as having merely been upon an exploring visit.
The result was a number of pleasant little attentions, the consul
sending up his servants to assist in making the house habitable, and
sending to buy for us such articles of furniture as would be necessary
for our immediate wants.
I took the first opportunity of impressing upon all present secrecy
respecting the treasure, for I could not tell in what light our
possession of it might be looked upon; and then I hurried down to the
canoes to Tom with refreshments, of which he eagerly partook, as he said
at intervals:
"I believe I should have been starved out, Mas'r Harry, if there hadn't
been some of the eatables stuffed in my canoe by mistake; for I'd got
nothing much to swop with the Indians when I did happen to see any
ashore."
It was then arranged that he should still stay with the boats till I
could return and tell him that I had a safe place, while as Tom lazily
stretched himself over the packages in the canoe, sheltering his head
with a few great leaves, his appearance excited no attention, and I left
him without much anxiety, to return to my uncle.
The discovery that Tom existed had robbed our perils of three parts of
their suffering; and now, with feelings of real anxiety respecting the
treasure springing up, I hurried back again to the landing-place, to
find all well, for the place was too Spanish and lazy for our coming to
create much excitement.
"Say, Mas'r Harry," cried Tom, grinning hugely, in spite of his pale
face and exhaustion, "I've got you now. I said you was to let me have a
pound a week; I must go in for thirty bob after this. Come, now, no
shirking. Say yes, or I'm hanged if I don't scuttle the canoe."
It was evident, though, that Tom had undergone a great deal, and was far
from able to bear much more; for that evening, after telling the Indian
porters that I was a sort of curiosity and stone collector, and getting
the treasure carried up safely to the house which I had taken, he
suddenly gave a lurch, and would have fallen had I not caught his arm.
"Why, Tom!" I cried anxiously.
"I think, Mas'r Harry," he said softly, "it might be as well if you was
to let a doctor look at me--it would be just as well. I've a bullet in
me somewhere, and that knife--"
"Bullet--knife, Tom?"
"Yes, Mas'r Harry, that Garcia--but I'll tell you all about it after."
The doctor I hastily summoned looked serious as he examined Tom's hurts;
and though, with insular pride, I rather looked down upon Spanish
doctors, this gentleman soon proved himself of no mean skill in surgery,
and under his care Tom rapidly approached convalescence.
"You see, Mas'r Harry, it was after this fashion," said Tom one evening
as I sat by his bedside indulging in a cup of coffee, just when one of
the afternoon rains had cooled the earth, and the air that was wafted
through the open window was delicious. "You see it was after this
fashion--"
"But are you strong enough to talk about it, Tom?" I said anxiously.
"Strong, Mas'r Harry! I could get a toller cask down out of a van.
Well, it was like this: I was, as you know, in the gold canoe; and being
on my knees, I was leaning over the side expecting you to swim off to
me, and at last, as I thought, there you was, when I held out my hands
and got hold of one of yours and the barrel of a gun with the other,
when a thought struck me--
"`Why, surely Mas'r Harry hadn't his gun with him?'
"But it was no time, I thought, for bothering about trifles, with the
night black as ink, and the Indians collected together upon the bank; so
I did the best I could to help you, and the next minute there you was in
the gold canoe, and not without nearly oversetting it, heavy-laden as
she was--when I whispers, `You'd best take a paddle here, Mas'r Harry,'
when I felt two hands at my throat, my head bent back, a knee forced
into my chest, and there in that black darkness I lay for a few minutes
quite stupid, calling myself all the fools I could think of for helping
someone on board that I knew now was not you.
"That was rather ticklish work, being choked as I was, Mas'r Harry,"
said Tom, with his pale face flushing up, and his eyes brightening with
the recollection; "but above all things, I couldn't help feeling then
that, if I did get a prick with a knife, I deserved it for being such a
donkey. Then I got thinking about Sally Smith, and wishing that we had
parted better friends; then about you and Miss Lilla, and about how all
the gold would be lost; and then I turned savage, and seemed to see
blood, as I made up my mind that, if you didn't have the treasure, the
Don shouldn't, for I'd upset the canoe and sink it all first for the
crockydiles.
"I don't know what I said, and I don't much recollect what I did, only
that fox ever so long there was a reg'lar struggle going on, which made
that little canoe rock so that I expected every moment it would be
overset; but I s'pose we both meant that it shouldn't: and at last we
were lying quite still on the gold, with all round us black and quiet as
my lord's vault in the old churchyard at home. Garcia had got tight
hold of my hands, and I kept him by that means so that he couldn't use
his sting--I mean his knife--you know, Mas'r Harry.
"It seemed to me at last that my best plan was to lie still and wait
till he give me a chance; for after one or two struggles I only found
that I was nowhere, and ever so much weaker; so I did lie still, waiting
for a chance, and wondering that Mas'r Landell didn't come and lend me a
hand.
"All at once there came a horrible thought to me, and that was--ah!
there were two horrible thoughts--that you had missed the canoe and had
gone down, and that the raft had broke away from the gold canoe while we
were jerking and rocking about, and that I was left alone here on this
big river, with the Don waiting for a chance to send that knife of his
through me.
"Now, you needn't go thinking it was because I cared anything about you,
Mas'r Harry," continued Tom in a sulky voice, "for it wasn't that: it
was only just because I was a weak great booby, and got a wondering what
your poor mother would say when I got home, and then, I couldn't help
it, if I didn't get crying away like a great girl kep' in at school, for
I don't know how long, and the canoe gliding away all the time on the
river.
"Getting rid of all that warm water made me less soft; and when Mas'r
Garcia got struggling again I give him two or three such wipes on the
head as must have wound him up a bit; and then, after nearly having the
boat over again, there we lay for hour after hour in the thick darkness,
getting stiff as stiff, as we kep' one another from doing mischief. And
then at last came the light, with the fog hanging over the river, thick
as the old washus at home when Sally Smith took off the copper-lid and
got stirring up the clothes. Then the sun came cutting through the
mist, chopping it up like golden wires through a cake of soap. There
was the green stuff like a hedge on both sides of the river, the parrots
a-screaming, the crockydiles crawling on to the mud-banks or floating
down, the birds a-fishing, and all looking as bright as could be, while
my heart was black as a furnace-hole, Mas'r Harry, and that
black-looking Don was close aside me.
"I ain't of a murderous disposition, Mas'r Harry, but I felt very nasty
then, in that bright, clear morning, though all the time I was thinking
what a nice place this world would be if it wasn't for wild beasts, and
men as makes themselves worse; for there was that Don's eye saying as
plain as could be:--
"`There ain't room enough in this here canoe for both of us, young man!'
"`Then it's you as must go out of it, Don Spaniard,' says my eyes.
"`No; it's you as must go out of it, you beggarly little soap-boiling
Englishman,' says his eyes.
"`It's my Mas'r Harry's gold, and if he's gone to the crockydiles I'll
save the treasure for his Miss Lilla and the old folks--so now, then!'
says my eyes.
"And all this, you know, was without a word being spoke; when all at
once if he didn't make a sort of a jump, and before I knew where we were
he was at one end of the canoe and I was at the other.
"Well, you may say that was a good thing. But it wasn't; for as I
scrambled up there he was with both guns at his end, and me with nothing
but my fisties.
"I saw through his dodge now, but it was too late; and in the next few
moments I thought three things:--
"`Shall I sit still like a man and let him shoot me?'
"`Shall I rock the canoe over and let it sink?'
"`Shall I go at him?'
"I hadn't pluck enough to sit still and be shot, Mas'r Harry, for you
know what a cur I always was; and I thought it a pity to sink the canoe
in case you, if you were alive, or Mas'r Landell, might come back to
look for it. So I made up my mind to the last, being bristly, and, with
my monkey up, I dashed at him.
"_Bang_! He got a shot at me, and I felt just as if some one had hit me
a blow with a stick hard enough to make me savage; but it didn't stop me
a bit, for I reached at him such a crack with my double fist just as he
struck his knife into me; and then we were overboard and struggling
together in the sunlit water, making it splash up all around.
"`It's all over with you, Tom!' I said to myself; for as we rose to the
surface after our plunge he got one arm free, his knife was lifted, and
I looked him full in the face as I felt, though I didn't say it--`You
cowardly beggar! why can't you fight like a man with your fists?'
"The next moment he must have struck that knife into me again, when I
never see such a horrible change in my life as come over his face--from
savage joy to fear--for in a flash he let go the knife, shrieked
horribly, and half-forced himself out of the water, leaving me free,
when, with a terrible fear on me that the crockydiles were at him, I
swum for the canoe; and how, I don't know, I managed to get in, with
hundreds of tiny little fish leaping and darting at me like a shoal of
gudgeons, only they nipped pieces out of my hands and feet, which were
bare; and if I hadn't been quick they'd have had me to pieces.
"No sooner was I in the canoe than I turned, for Garcia was shrieking
horribly in a way that nearly drove me mad to hear him, as he beat, and
splashed, and tore about in the water--now down, now up, now fighting
this way, now that--wild with fear and despair, for those tiny fish were
at him by the thousand; his face and hands were streaming with blood,
and I could see that it would be all over with him directly, when,
catching up a paddle, I sent the canoe towards him, to pass close by his
hand just as he sank.
"To turn and come back was not many moments' work; but he didn't come up
where I expected, and I had to paddle back against stream, but again I
missed him, and he went down with a yell, Mas'r Harry, that's been
buzzing in my ears ever since--wakes me up of a night, it does, and
sends me in a cold perspiration as all the scene comes back again.
"I forgot all about his shooting and knifing me; and, Mas'r Harry, as I
hope to get back safe to old England I did all I could to save him when
he come up again--silent this time! Did I say him? No, it wasn't him,
but a horrible, gashly, bleeding mass of flesh and bone, writhing and
twisting as the little fish hung to it and leaped at it by thousands,
tearing him really to pieces before he once more sank under the stream,
which was all red with blood.
"I paddled here and I paddled there, frantically, but the body didn't
come up again; and then, Mas'r Harry, it seemed to me as if a strong
pair of hands had taken hold of the canoe and were twisting it round and
round, so that the river and the trees on the banks danced before my
eyes, making me that giddy that I fell back and lay, I don't know how
long.
"When I opened my eyes again, Mas'r Harry, I thought I was dying, for
there was a horrible sick feeling on me--one which lasted ever so long--
till, remembering all about what had taken place, I felt that I had only
been fainting; and, raising myself up, I looked on the river for a few
minutes, shuddering the while as I tried to leave off thinking about the
horrors in it; but try hard as I would, I couldn't help looking--the
place having a sort of way for me as if it was pulling me towards it--
and I seemed to see all that going on again, though, perhaps, I'd
floated down a good mile since it happened.
"At last I dragged my eyes from the water and they fell upon the
packages, and they made me think of you, Mas'r Harry; and, in the hope
that you were a long way on ahead, I took up a paddle--thinking, too, at
the same time, that if you was alive, as soon as you had got Miss Lilla
safe you would come back for me."
I did not speak--I could not just then; for in a flood the recollection
of the past came upon me, and taking Tom's hands in mine, for a good ten
minutes I sat without speaking.
"Well, Mas'r Harry," continued Tom--but speaking now in a thick, husky
voice--"I took up the paddle and then I dropped it again, I was that
weak, faint, and in pain; and it seemed to me that before I could do
anything else I must wash and bind up a bit.
"One of my hands was terribly crippled from my hurt, but I managed to
bind a couple of paddles together; and then, rowing slowly on, I was
thinking that my labour had been all in vain unless I could manage still
to save the gold, when, happening one day to turn round to look
upstream, I saw that, Mas'r Harry, as seemed to give me life, and hope,
and strength all in a moment; and you know the rest."