CHAPTER XXXIXTHE ISLAND
The men now went to work to get tackles on to the yards, in order to hoist the long-boat over. This again ran into time, for the boat stood in chocks, and was stoutly lashed to the deck; and before they could remove her, they had to clear away the spare booms which were stowed on top of her and clean her out. When they had her alongside, they passed water and provisions and several gallons of rum into her, with other matters of this sort, of which I hardly took notice. They also handed down the shovels used for the little stock of coal that was carried in the fore-peak, and several crows, handspikes, and whatever else they could lay their hands upon that would enable many of them at a time to dig up the soil.
Whilst all this was doing, I remained seated on the poop with Miss Temple. I wasnow feeling better and stronger again, could think rationally, and astonishment was worn out.
‘It is most unmistakably the island that Captain Braine named,’ I said to the girl, speaking with my eye at the telescope. ‘I remember he spoke of a clump of trees at the foot of which the treasure lies hidden. Yonder are several clumps. Which one of them will it be, I wonder? and will the money be there? What an astonishing romance will it prove, should those sailors fall in with a booty of nearly two hundred thousand pounds!’
‘What are they going to do, do you think, Mr. Dugdale?’
‘It looks to me as if the whole body of them were going ashore to dig.’
‘Are they not taking a deal of provisions with them?’
‘They may mean to make merry. After months of shipboard life, the touch of the land will be grateful to the soles of their feet. Let them find the gold! their transports will know no bounds; there will be some wild skylarking amongst them before they come off, or I am greatly mistaken. Would to Godthey would make themselves drunk, that I might run away with the ship.’
‘Cannot that be done when they are on shore?’ she cried with an air of exultant entreaty in her sudden leaning towards me as she spoke.
‘Yes, were an off-shore gale to come on to blow, I might contrive to slip and let the barque storm out to sea before it. But in this weather! They would be after me in a jiffy in their boat, and then God help me when they got hold of me!’
A shade of paleness overspread her face, and she regarded me with a look of consternation, as though violently affected by the fancies my simple sentence had put before her. I sprang on the top of the hencoop to sweep the sea-line with the telescope, but could nowhere discern the least shadow of land. As I put down the glass, the carpenter came off the quarter-deck, where, at the gangway, he had been busily shouting out instructions and overseeing the work of preparing the boat, and approached me. He held Captain Braine’s parchment chart, at which he stopped to look for a moment when he was yet some paces distant.
‘Will ye tell me what’s your opinion of the weather, sir?’ he exclaimed, in a voice whose natural gruffness and surliness were not to be sweetened by the satisfaction that was merely visible in a small symptom of respectfulness in his bearing.
‘I do not know, I am sure. This cloudless sky should be full of promise. The mercury in the captain’s cabin promises fair weather.’
‘What do ‘ee think of letting them sails hang?’ said he, sending his malevolent gaze aloft; ‘or shall we tarn to and roll ’em up afore we go ashore?—though it’ll be a long job,’ he added, directing his eyes thirstily at the island.
‘The ship is in your hands,’ said I.
‘Oh well,’ he exclaimed, as though gratified by my admission, and sending a slow look round the sea; ‘we’ll let ’em be as they are for the present. The anchor’s got a good grip, I allow; if so be as a breeze should come along, we can send some of the men aboard to furl the sails.’
We!thought I, as I regarded him in silence.
‘My sight ain’t what it used to be,’ he continued; ‘yet I can see enough of thatthere island’—and here he began to fumble with the chart he held—‘to guess that this here’s a first-rate likeness of it. This,’ said he, pointing with his square thumb at the mark in the middle of the lagoon on the parchment, ‘is one of the bearings we’ve got to have in mind to find out where we’re to begin to dig, ain’t it?’
‘I believe so,’ said I.
‘Didn’t ye put down the particulars of the spot in writing?’ he inquired, looking up at me from the chart.
‘No,’ I answered shortly.
‘How many feet was the money hid away from the wash of the water?’ he demanded.
‘It was in paces, I remember,’ I returned, ‘but the figure is entirely gone out of my head. Wilkins should be able to recollect.’
He ran with a sort of dismay to the break of the poop and bawled for Wilkins. The lad came half-way up the steps. The carpenter spoke to him and then returned.
‘The young scowbanker don’t recall,’ he exclaimed. ‘He believes—a curse on his believes!—that the captain spoke of four hundred feet. Was that it, sir?’
‘I remember enough to make sure that it was not four hundred feet,’ I answered.
He picked up the glass and levelled it at the island.
‘Which of them clumps of trees was it that the capt’n talked to ye about?’ he asked whilst he looked.
‘He did not describe any particular clump. It was to be found by measuring so many paces from the edge of the water of the lagoon yonder, the pillar bearing something west, but what I can’t tell you. I treated the story as a madman’s dream, and dismissed all the particulars of it from my mind.’
‘We’ll have to try all them clumps, then, that’s all,’ said he, with a hard face and a voice at once sharp and coarse with ill-subdued temper. ‘We’ll get the money, though it comes to having to dig up the whole island. And now, sir, there’s nothen to stop us—the boat’s ready—if you’ll be pleased to come along.’
‘I can be of no good to you,’ I exclaimed with an involuntary recoil; ‘you have hands enough to dig. I’ll stop here.’
‘No, if you please; we shall want you,’he said, with a stare of dogged determination.
‘I must not be left alone, Mr. Lush,’ cried Miss Temple, with a painful expression of fear in her bloodless face. ‘If Mr. Dugdale goes, I must accompany him.’
‘No, mem. You’re safe enough here. We must have Mr. Dugdale along with us to show us what to do. For Lord’s sake, no arguments, sir! The impatience of the men’ll be forcing them to taking you up in their arms and lifting you over the side, if you keep ’em waiting.’
‘But am I to understand,’ I exclaimed, ‘that all hands of you intend to quit the ship, leaving this lady alone on board?’
‘Joe Wetherly and Jim Simpson’ll remain,’ he replied; ‘they’ll keep a lookout, and two’s enough with us men in hail of their voices. Now, sir, if you please.’
The crew standing in the gangway were looking my way with signs of irritation in their bearing. I merely needed to give one glance at the carpenter’s face to satisfy me that temper, protest, appeal, would be hopeless; that refusal must simply end in my being bodily laid hold of. I was urged by everyinstinct in me to a policy of conciliation. To irritate the fellows would be the height of folly; to provoke the indignity of being seized and roughly thrust into the boat, the utmost degree of madness. My resolution was at once formed.
‘I will accompany you, Mr. Lush,’ I said. ‘Get you gone on to the quarter-deck whilst I say a few words to comfort my companion.’
He walked away to the gesture with which I accompanied this request.
‘Miss Temple, pray take heart. Wetherly is one of the two men who are to be left. You will feel safe here with him on board until I return.’
‘Until you return!’ she cried, with her eyes full of misery and horror. ‘I shall never see you more!’
‘Oh no; do not believe such a thing. The men imagine I shall be of service to them in lighting upon the spot where the gold is. They cannot do without me as a navigator. They will bring me off with them when they leave the island.’
‘I shall never see you again,’ she repeated in a voice of exquisite distress. ‘Why could they not have left us together here?’
‘Now, Mr. Dugdale, ifyouplease,’ bawled the carpenter from the head of the poop ladder.
I took and pressed her hand between mine, and then broke away from her. What had I to say, what to offer, that she could convert into a hope? I felt the danger of continuing to view her in her despair and helplessness, for already it was producing in me a rage against the men that must be suppressed at all costs. I turned to smile and to wave my hand, and found her with her back upon me and her face buried.
Wetherly and the man who was to be left with him stood a little forward of the main-hatch looking on. As I stepped to the gangway I called out: ‘Wetherly, and you, Simpson: I leave the lady behind me; she is alone. You will see to her, men, I beg.’
Simpson gazed stolidly, as though not understanding me; indeed, there was no countenance amongst the sailors from which all meaning appeared to have been so entirely discharged as his. Wetherly smiled, and flourished his hand with a significant glance. He would perfectly comprehend that I hadincluded Simpson as an excuse to appeal to him only. Without another word I dropped into the main-chains and jumped into the long-boat.
When the men had entered, there were ten of us in all. The boat was a roomy, stoutly-built fabric, and her oars were almost as long as sweeps. The barque’s quarter-boats would have been too small for this service; for the ten of us made a body, and they had handsomely stowed her besides with water and rum and provisions (as you are aware), not to mention the sundries with which they proposed to dig the soil. I rather wondered that they should have supplied themselves so hospitably, till I recollected that Captain Braine had said there was no fresh water and nothing to eat upon the island. The carpenter had no doubt remembered this as a passage in the story which Wilkins had overheard and repeated. It might be also that they intended to stay awhile on this island when they had dug up the gold, to refresh themselves, with the substantiality of land under their feet, for a day or two after their long months of the heaving sea; in which case they would naturally convey what they required at once, tospare themselves the trouble of a trip to the ship.
Their leaving Wetherly behind was due, I took it, to the indifference and doubt he had exhibited from the commencement; possibly, they might also have some notion, by requiring him to remain on board, to cheat him of a portion of his share; and since they considered that two were necessary to watch the barque, they would find a willingness to remain in her only in the stupidest man amongst them, who, to be sure, was Simpson. These were thoughts which hurriedly passed through my mind even whilst the fellows were in the act of shoving off. There was neither sail nor mast in the boat. Probably they considered that those things would encumber the thwarts, whilst, in fact, there was no real need for them, since the vessel lay within a very easy pull. Four fellows threw their oars over, and the boat clumsily broke the smooth water to the impulse of their blades.
When we were clear of the shadow of the barque’s side, I turned to look for Miss Temple, and observed her seated in a posture of utter despondency upon the skylight. I stood up and flourished my hat; but she made nosort of response. She remained motionless, as though stupefied and insensible. I resumed my seat, breathing hard with the wild mood that possessed me; but I was not to be suffered to sit in silence. The carpenter plied me with questions, which he only ceased that the others might have a chance of making inquiries. Couldn’t I remember how many paces it was that the captain had said? Would it be one hundred? Would it be two hundred? Would I turn to and think a bit? A gent’s eddicated memory was always better than plain men’s, who weren’t no scholards. If the right number of paces wasn’t hit upon, it might take ’em a week to find the spot. And what about the bearings? Couldn’t I recollect exactly how the trees bore from that there pillar? Wherever the gold was, it couldn’t lie deep hid, for there was but two men to bury it, and them weak with shipwreck, and they wasn’t going all the way down to hell to make sartin of a secret nook.
To all this I had to listen and reply as I best could. Yet it was talk to put a fancy that had long haunted me—that had haunted me, I may say, from the time of some of my earliest conversations with the carpenter—intoshape, out of which arose one instantly present keen perception: that gold or no gold, they must be kept hunting for it!
It was a cloudless day; the sky a true Pacific blue, a mild breathing of wind off the island; and the sun, that was already at his meridian, flung a wide splendour upon the air that was without an insufferable excess of heat. The long-boat floated into the lagoon, the bottom of which showed like a pavement of white marble trembling through the blue, glass-like translucency. I looked carefully about me, but could see no signs of the hut which Captain Braine told me he had built, and out of which he had crawled to find the Yankee surveying craft hove-to abreast of the island. Neither were there any other relics of his shipwreck visible: such as the bottles, casks, tins, and so on, which, according to his account, he and his companion had landed from the brigantine. It is true that a good many years had elapsed since the date of the wreck as he had given it me, and in that time the island might have been visited or swept by seas and hurricanes. The sailors did not appear to heed the absence of all memorials of Captain Braine’s having landed here.
‘The Spanish craft’ll have come ashore yonder,’ said the carpenter, standing erect, referring to Braine’s story, and indicating by an eager nod of the head the position of the stretch of lustrous beach that looked northwards, but that was now invisible to us. ‘Where’ll be a good place to land here?’
All hands were staring about them. The fellow named Forrest said: ‘There’s a bit of a tree there that’ll hold the boat secure. Better let her lay afloat, Mr. Lush, ‘case of a change o’ weather and having to shove off in a hurry.’
‘Ay, she’ll lie all right off that tree,’ exclaimed the carpenter. ‘In oars, lads! Let her slide quietly stem on. I’ve heard of coral spikes a-tearing of boats’ bottoms out.’
A few minutes later most of us were ashore, the boat lying quietly secured by a line to a small but solidly rooted tree, and two or three fellows in her handing out her freight of odds and ends to the others.
The feel of solid land under my feet was a singular sensation. I had now been incessantly at sea for a time that was growing rapidly into six months, and after those interminable weeks of heaving shipboard, the immovabilityof this coral rock affected me as something in the greatest degree novel. I sent a hurried glance around; but the eyes I had strained from over the rail of the barque had acquainted me with every material point of the island, and this closer survey yielded nothing fresh. The margin of the beach of the lagoon went gently sloping up from hard coral to a species of soil that appeared to possess some qualities of fertility, for the tall coarse grass was very plentiful and of a most vivid green. The few groups of trees were also richly clad, and the bushes extraordinarily abundant. There were no signs of life of any sort saving birds, of which a score or two were wheeling about in the air over the northward fronting beach. The inland rise was a mere small green acclivity probably not above thirty feet to the summit. All was silent, desolate, lifeless; nothing to hear amid the brief intervals of stillness among the men save the delicate noise of the soft wind amongst the foliage, and the melancholy moaning of surf from the other side of the island.
Everything was landed; the men seized hold of the various implements they hadbrought with them to dig up the soil; the carpenter flourished a shovel and called to me: ‘Mr. Dugdale, have ye no recollection of the number of paces?’
‘None whatever,’ I responded.
‘What d’ye advise, sir?’
‘Measure a hundred paces, keeping yonder pillar on a line with that clump of trees there, and then dig.’
‘Ay, but Wilkins overheard the capt’n say that the money was buried at the foot of some trees,’ said Forrest. ‘A hundred paces ain’t going to bring us near a tree.’
‘I remember nothing about the foot of some trees,’ I exclaimed.
‘What doyourecall?’ the carpenter shouted to Wilkins.
‘I thought I heerd something about the foot of trees,’ answered the fellow, turning his pale meaningless countenance upon Lush. But Mr. Dugdale’ll know best, of course.’
‘If the money be here at all,’ said I, ‘you may take it as lying hidden somewhere in this space,’ and with pointing finger I indicated an oblong surface one end of which went a little beyond the fourth group of trees, whilst I defined the other as starting fromabout a hundred paces away from the edge of the beach where the boat was.
Ten minutes were now expended in heated discussion. Where should they begin? One or two were for leaving it to me and carrying out my suggestions; others were for measuring two hundred paces and starting there; whilst others were for digging at the roots of the clumps of trees, taking them one after another.
‘See here, lads,’ cried the carpenter; ‘we han’t had anything to eat yet. Better tarn to and get some dinner and grog. By that time we shall ha’ settled what to do and be the fitter to go to work.’
This was a proposal which all hands found perfectly agreeable. They flung down the implements they held, and in a very short time were seated about the grass, sheath-knives in hand, making a hearty meal off salt beef and biscuit and cheese, and tossing down pannikins of rum-and-water. They invited me to join them, and treated me with all the respect I could desire. Again and again, whilst we thus sat, I would direct looks at the barque as she lay as it might seem almost within musket-shot of us. The figure of aman paced the forecastle; but Miss Temple was not to be seen. Once the carpenter, catching me looking, exclaimed with a sort of enthusiasm in his voice: ‘Well, the little hookerisa beauty and no mistake. What a slaver she’d make!’ Commendation probably could not go higher in such a man. A beauty, indeed, she looked; the reflection of her white sides floated under her like a wavering sheet of silver; her canvas hanging in festoons showed with the milk-white softness of streaks of clouds against the blue sky past her; her rigging had the exquisite minuteness of hair. Would to God, I thought to myself with a sudden heavy sinking of my heart, that I were on board of her alone with Miss Temple, ay, with no other hands than mine to work the ship! I should find the strength of half-a-dozen seamen in me for her sake. Poor girl! and there arose before me a vision of the Indiaman—a recollection of the proud Miss Temple scarcely enduring to send a glance my way—— But this was a reverie that must be speedily disturbed by the company I was in.
They had hoarsely debated until they had come to an agreement, and, having concludedtheir meal, each man lighted his inch of sooty clay, picked up his shovel or his crow, or whatever else had been brought off from the barque, and marched to the nearest of the clump of trees, at the foot of which they fell to digging. Every man was in motion: they laboured with incredible activity, and with such faces of rapturous expectation as again and again forced a smile from me, depressed, anxious, miserable as I was. With my hands clasped behind me, I paced to and fro, watching and waiting. Now that the island had proved an absolute fact, I could no longer feel certain that the gold was a madman’s fancy. Nay, I was now indeed imagining that it was all true, and that Braine had fallen crazy through possession of his incommunicable secret acting upon a mind congenitally tinctured with insanity, and irremediably weakened yet by the horrible sufferings he had undergone before he was cast away upon this spot. Yet never did I glance at the barque without a prayer trembling from my heart to my lips that the wretches might not find the gold. An old scheme, that this unexpected lighting upon the island had quickened and given shape to, was fastmaturing in my mind, even while I paced that stretch of grass; but the discovery of the money would render it abortive.
I watched the seamen with an interest as keen as their own, but with hopes diametrically opposite. The soil was dry, stubborn, perhaps through the intermingling of coral-grit and the coarse fibres of its herbage. Yet there were many of them, and every man worked with desperate energy, and presently they had dug up a good space to some little depth. I awaited with a beating heart the exultant shout which I might be sure the first man who turned up one of the yellow pieces would raise. They continued to toil in silence. Presently the carpenter, resting his chest upon his shovel, with the sweat falling in rain from his crimson face, bawled out to me: ‘How fur down, d’ye think, we ought to keep on a-digging?’
‘I would give up at two feet,’ said I. ‘Captain Braine and his friend would not find strength to go much beyond two feet.’
One of the fellows plumbed with his crow, and, bringing it out, with his thumb at the height of the level, cried: ‘It’s more’n two feet already.’
They dug a little longer, nevertheless; then a few curses ran among them, and the carpenter, with a note of irritation in his voice, roared out: ‘No good going on here. Try this clump.’ He walked over to it and drove his shovel into the soil. The men gathered about him, and in a trice were all in motion again.
This was a severity of toil that I knew must force them to break off presently. Although I could not distinctly recollect the bearings of the treasure as given by Captain Braine, I felt persuaded that he had named the base of the group of trees which the fellows had just quitted as the hiding-place of the money. If it were not there, then I might feel perfectly satisfied it was nowhere else, and hope began to dawn in me afresh. Their labour at the base of the second clump resulted in nothing. They exposed a wide space, and went deep, but to no purpose. The time had passed rapidly; I looked at my watch, and was astonished to find it hard upon five o’clock.
All this while the sky had remained cloudless, and there was no hint visible in any part of its countenance of a change in thissoftness and tranquillity of weather. The light off-shore draught, however, had shifted into the west, and at this hour there was a cool and pleasant breeze, that brushed the breast of the sea into a surface of twinkling ripples. The water of the lagoon trembled to it as it breathed laterally athwart its face, and already the coral beach of this graceful wide-mouthed inlet bore on the lee-side its stress of tiny breakers.
The sailors by this time were pretty well exhausted. The expressions their faces wore, so far as they might be determinable amid the purple, and perspiration, and hair of their dripping and fire-hot visages, showed them full of irritability and disappointment. The carpenter addressed them; I did not catch what he said, but as they came in a body towards the part of the beach where I had been pacing or sitting whilst they worked, I could hear them swearing and cursing, whilst they grumbled and growled out their surmises as to where the money was hidden, their eyes roving over the soil as they talked. Lush’s face was hard with temper.
‘We’re agoing to send off some men to furl the lighter canvas,’ said he. ‘Ha’n’t gotmuch opinion of this soil as holding-ground, and she’ll drag with that weight of canvas loose, and blow away out of soundings, if we don’t see to it.’
‘A very proper precaution,’ said I coolly. ‘You don’t mean to give up digging yet, I suppose?’
‘Give up?’ he cried with his coarse sarcastic air, and frowning upon me out of the rage my inquiry excited. ‘No; not if we has to dig the whole island up, as I told ye.’
‘Very well. I’ll go aboard with the men in the boat. The money, if it is hidden at all, will be hereabouts,’ said I, with a wave of my arm, ‘and I can be of no further use to you.’
‘No, no; you’ll stop along with us, if you please,’ said the fellow. ‘Your recollection of the number of paces may come back to ye, and we can’t do without you.’
I sent a look from him to the faces of the fellows who stood listening near us, and without another word folded my arms, and with a spin of my heel started off on a walk to and fro.