CHAPTER V

Come on the sloopJohn 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.ChorusSo h'ist up theJohn 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.ChorusSo h'ist up theJohn B.sails,etc.,etc.

Come on the sloopJohn 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.

ChorusSo h'ist up theJohn 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.

Chorus

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.

ChorusSo h'ist up theJohn 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 theSusan B.,sponger," said the Captain.

The Captain was a man of few words.

TheSusan 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.

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, adies 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. "Soyouare 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 theMaggie 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."

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!

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.

TheMaggie Darlingwas 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 theMaggie Darlingonce 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 theMaggie Darling,the loveliest, proud-sailed creature that ever leaned over and laughed in the grasp of the breeze.

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. TheSusan 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.

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 theSusan 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 theSusan 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 theSusan 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 theSusan 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 theSusan 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."

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 ofdiablerie,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 theMaggie Darlingwas 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.

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—


Back to IndexNext