In a corner of the Cathedral graveyard at Spanish Town, overhung by a
big spreading mango tree, and thickly covered by prickly scrub of agave
and cactus, the white-haired old mulatto gentleman led Cecil Mitford up
to a water-worn and weathered stone, on which a few crumbling letters
alone were still visible. Cecil kneeled down on the bare ground,
regardless of the sharp cactus spines that stung and tore his flesh, and
began clearing the moss and lichen away from the neglected monument.
Yes, his host was right! right, right, right, indubitably. The first two
letters were IO, then a blank where others were obliterated, and then
came ANN. That stood clearly for IOHN CANN. And below he could slowly
make out the words, "Born at ... vey Tra ... Devon...." with an
illegible date, "Died at P ... Royal, May 12, 1669." Oh, great heavens,
yes. John Cann's grave! John Cann's grave! John Cann's grave! Beyond
any shadow or suspicion of mistake, John Cann and his precious secret
lay buried below that mouldering tombstone.
That very evening Cecil Mitford sought out and found the Spanish Town
gravedigger. He was a solemn-looking middle-aged black man, with a keen
smart face, not the wrong sort of man, Cecil Mitford felt sure, for such
a job as the one he contemplated. Cecil didn't beat about the bush or
temporise with him in any way. He went straight to the point, and asked
the man outright whether he would undertake to open John Cann's grave,
and find a paper that was hidden in the coffin. The gravedigger stared
at him, and answered slowly, "I don't like de job, sah; I don't like de
job. Perhaps Massa John Cann's ghost, him come and trouble me for dat: I
don't going to do it. What you gib me, sah; how much you gib me?"
Cecil opened his purse and took out of it ten gold sovereigns. "I will
give you that," he said, "if you can get me the paper out of John Cann's
coffin."
The negro's eyes glistened, but he answered carelessly, "I don't tink I
can do it. I don't want to open grabe by night, and if I open him by
day, de magistrates dem will hab me up for desecration ob interment. But
I can do dis for you, sah. If you like to wait till some buckra
gentleman die--John Cann grabe among de white man side in de
grabeyard--I will dig grabe alongside ob John Cann one day, so let you
come yourself in de night and take what you like out ob him coffin. I
don't go meddle with coffin myself, to make de John Cann duppy trouble
me, and magistrate send me off about me business."
It was a risky thing to do, certainly, but Cecil Mitford closed with it,
and promised the man ten pounds if ever he could recover John Cann's
paper. And then he settled down quietly at Leigh Caymanas with his
friendly host, waiting with eager, anxious expectation--till some white
person should die at Spanish Town.
What an endless aimless time it seemed to wait before anybody could be
comfortably buried! Black people died by the score, of course: there was
a small-pox epidemic on, and they went to wakes over one another's dead
bodies in wretched hovels among the back alleys, and caught the
infection and sickened and died as fast as the wildest imagination could
wish them: but then, they were buried apart by themselves in the pauper
part of the Cathedral cemetery. Still, no white man caught the
small-pox, and few mulattoes: they had all been vaccinated, and nobody
got ill except the poorest negroes. Cecil Mitford waited with almost
fiendish eagerness to hear that some prominent white man was dead or
dying.
A month, six weeks, two months, went slowly past, and still nobody of
consequence in all Spanish Town fell ill or sickened. Talk about
tropical diseases! why, the place was abominably, atrociously,
outrageously healthy. Cecil Mitford fretted and fumed and worried by
himself, wondering whether he would be kept there for ever and ever,
waiting till some useless nobody chose to die. The worst of it all was,
he could tell nobody his troubles: he had to pretend to look unconcerned
and interested, and listen to all old Mr. Barclay's stories about
Maroons and buccaneers as if he really enjoyed them.
At last, after Cecil had been two full months at Spanish Town, he heard
one morning with grim satisfaction that yellow fever had broken out at
Port Antonio. Now, yellow fever, as he knew full well, attacks only
white men, or men of white blood: and Cecil felt sure that before long
there would be somebody white dead in Spanish Town. Not that he was
really wicked or malevolent or even unfeeling at heart; but his wild
desire to discover John Cann's treasure had now overridden every better
instinct of his nature, and had enslaved him, body and soul, till he
could think of nothing in any light save that of its bearing on his one
mad imagination. So he waited a little longer, still more eagerly than
before, till yellow fever should come to Spanish Town.
Sure enough the fever did come in good time, and the very first person
who sickened with it was Cecil Mitford. That was a contingency he had
never dreamt of, and for the time being it drove John Cann's treasure
almost out of his fevered memory. Yet not entirely, even so, for in his
delirium he raved of John Cann and his doubloons till good old Mr.
Barclay, nursing at his bedside like a woman, as a tender-hearted
mulatto always will nurse any casual young white man, shook his head to
himself and muttered gloomily that poor Mr. Mitford had overworked his
brain sadly in his minute historical investigations.
For ten days Cecil Mitford hovered fitfully between life and death, and
for ten days good old Mr. Barclay waited on him, morning, noon, and
night, as devotedly as any mother could wait upon her first-born. At the
end of that time he began to mend slowly; and as soon as the crisis was
over he forgot forthwith all about his illness, and thought once more of
nothing on earth save only John Cann's treasure. Was anybody else ill of
the fever in Spanish Town? Yes, two, but not dangerously. Cecil's face
fell at that saving clause, and in his heart he almost ventured to wish
it had been otherwise. He was no murderer, even in thought; but John
Cann's treasure! John Cann's treasure! John Cann's treasure! What would
not a man venture to do or pray, in order that he might become the
possessor of John Cann's treasure!
As Cecil began to mend, a curious thing happened at Leigh Caymanas,
contrary to almost all the previous medical experience of the whole
Island. Mr. Barclay, though a full mulatto of half black blood, suddenly
sickened with the yellow fever. He had worn himself out with nursing
Cecil, and the virus seemed to have got into his blood in a way that it
would never have done under other circumstances. And when the doctor
came to see him, he declared at once that the symptoms were very
serious. Cecil hated and loathed himself for the thought; and yet, in a
horrid, indefinite way he gloated over the possibility of his kind and
hospitable friend's dying. Mr. Barclay had tended him so carefully that
he almost loved him; and yet, with John Cann's treasure before his very
eyes, in a dim, uncertain, awful fashion, he almost looked forward to
his dying. But where would he be buried? that was the question. Not,
surely, among the poor black people in the pauper corner. A man of his
host's distinction and position would certainly deserve a place among
the most exalted white graves--near the body of Governor Modyford, and
not far from the tomb of John Cann himself.
Day after day Mr. Barclay sank slowly but surely, and Cecil, weak and
hardly convalescent himself, sat watching by his bedside, and nursing
him as tenderly as the good brown man had nursed Cecil himself in his
turn a week earlier. The young clerk was no hard-hearted wretch who
could see a kind entertainer die without a single passing pang; he felt
for the grey old mulatto as deeply as he could have felt for his own
brother, if he had had one. Every time there was a sign of suffering or
feebleness, it went to Cecil's heart like a knife--the very knowledge
that on one side of his nature he wished the man to die made him all the
more anxious and careful on the other side to do everything he could to
save him, if possible, or at least to alleviate his sufferings. Poor old
man! it was horrible to see him lying there, parched with fever and
dying by inches; but then--John Cann's treasure! John Cann's treasure!
John Cann's treasure! every shade that passed over the good mulatto's
face brought Cecil Mitford a single step nearer to the final enjoyment
of John Cann's treasure.