It was a particularly dark night and all was very calm. The moon did not top the eastern bank of the river until long past midnight, and the stars gave but little light. Also, the silence was extreme. Sometimes, it is true, he could hear the rustling of birds and small animals in the luxuriant vegetation on either bank, or catch the whisper of the soft night breezes among thegros-gros, the moriches, and the great leaves of the green bananas; but that was all. And sparkling all around him, as they whirled in their evolutions, were the myriads of fireflies that make every tropical acre of ground look like an illuminated garden; but, beyond these and the dim stars above the opening between the two banks, there was nothing else to be seen. Even the great trunks of the trees were shrouded in gloom, and seemed nothing but dense patches on the sombre background.
Reginald sat on in his cabin, his pipe in his mouth, his tumbler by his side, the portholes and the door open for coolness and also for precaution's sake. And on the table upon which he leant his elbows there lay the revolver. He had promised, voluntarily promised Barbara, he would not use the weapon upon her brother, who had none; yet he did not know but that, should a crisis come, he might have occasion to do so. If Alderly were the scheming scoundrel the unhappy girl believed him to be, then it was by no means unlikely that he, too, might possess, secretly, a similar pistol which he had carefully kept her in ignorance of. Or, since he was so big and powerful, if by any chance he could board thePompeia--as he might do by swimming from one of the banks--it might come to a hand-to-hand fight, in which Alderly would possibly be armed with other weapons, and thereby force Reginald to use his own. But he was resolved there should be no use of it unless absolutely necessary.
"How quiet it all is," he meditated, as he sat there, "how undisturbed. Surely Barbara had no need for fear on my account! Why, Nicholas could hardly have been more secure when he had the island all to himself after Simon Alderly's death, than I am now."
And this thought set his mind off into another train, a reflection of the similarity there was between him and his kinsman, and between their actions in this spot--in spite of two hundred years having rolled away.
"Nicholas had his galliot anchored here," he thought; "perhaps in the very spot where I am now. He, too, used the path up to the hut--not far away from here the Snow was sunk--and--and--and----" He gave a start and shook himself. He had nearly fallen asleep! He was very tired, for the day had been a long one, what with sailing back from Tortola--to which he had gone, as Barbara surmised, to purchase provisions--and his having been now awake and on the stretch for more than eighteen hours. Therefore, to try and arouse himself, he went on to the deck of thePompeia, and inhaled the fresh night air as he peered all around. But there was nothing to be seen, nothing. Nor, had there been anything out of the ordinary, could he have seen it. The darkness was intense.
He sat down again on the locker which ran round the cabin and formed a seat, sitting bolt upright this time to prevent sleep coming upon him, though all the while he kept telling himself that such precaution was unnecessary. Alderly was safe asleep in his own house, he felt sure, or was sitting up drinking and carousing by himself, as, so Barbara told him, was always his habit. He would sit and drink, she had said, and smoke, and as often as not play a game of cards by himself with an imaginary opponent, and go on doing so far into the night. Then, when at last he was exhausted and could drink no more, he would roll off his chair on to the floor, and so lie there and sleep off his nightly debauch. He was doubtless doing that now.
As Reginald pondered thus, he again let his elbows rest on the table and put his head in his hands.
"The air is so hot!" he murmured, unloosing his flannel shirt-collar as he did so, "so hot! And--there--is--no--danger. Yet I promised her," again rousing himself, "yet--yet--Alderly stabbed the diver--if he had had a revolver--in the casket--Barbara----"
He was asleep. Asleep peacefully, though wearily, worn out with his long day; and presently there was no noise in all the tranquil night but the sound of his regular breathing, and the ripple of the little river against the bows of thePompeia, as it flowed down to the sea.
Yet once he started from his slumbers, hearing in them, as he thought, a distant shriek, and hastily went on deck, wondering if aught could have befallen the girl up at the hut, but only to find that it was some night bird that had alarmed him. For in the woods, away up towards where the Alderlys dwelt, he could hear the macaws chattering--the birds which occasionally passed from one island to another--and an owl hooting.
"It is nothing," he said wearily, "nothing. My nerves are overstrung--I have heard such sounds often at night since I have been here. It is nothing. They are fast asleep enough up there. And--and--I need watch no longer."
So, utterly overcome now by the desire for slumber that had seized upon him, and not more than half awakened even by the visit to the deck, he stretched himself out at full length on the locker to get an hour or so of rest. Yet he was careful to place the revolver near to his hand.
It wanted still an hour to the time when the moon would be above the fronds of the tallest palms on the eastern bank--a time at which even all the insect life of the island seemed at last to be hushed to rest--when, to the ripple of the river and its soft lap against the yacht's forefoot, was added another sound--the sound, subdued, it is true, yet still one that would have been perceptible to anyone who was awake in that yacht--of something disturbing, something passing through the waters; but, had the sleeper awakened to hear it, he could have seen nothing. All was still too dark, too profound.
But he himself was seen--seen by a pair of gleaming eyes staring at him through the cabin window, the blinds of which had not been drawn, nor the latchwork closed; a pair of eyes that glistened from out a face over which the hair, all dank and matted with water, curled in masses. The face of Joseph Alderly!
Presently an arm came through the cabin window, an arm long, bare, and muscular, the hand stretched to its fullest length, the fingers sinuous as all powerful fingers are, and striving to reach the pistol on the table, across the body of the sleeping man. Yet soon they desisted; they were half a foot off where the weapon lay; any effort to project more of that arm into the cabin would almost certainly awake the sleeper. So arm and hand were withdrawn, and again the evil face of Alderly gazed down upon Reginald Crafer. Once, too, the hand that had failed in its endeavour sought its owner's breast pocket, and drew forth a long glittering knife; once through the open window it raised that knife over the other's throat--all open and bare as it was!--and then the hand was drawn back, the face and arm were withdrawn; the villain had disappeared.
And still Reginald slept on, unknowing how near to death he had been, how near to having the shining weapon driven through his throat. Slept on and heard nothing. Slept on while the lamp hanging in the cabin burnt itself out--he had not fed and trimmed it overnight--and until, above, through the fan-like leaves of palm, bamboo, and cyclanthus, there stole a ray of moonlight that shone down directly on the sleeping man's features.
Half an hour later he began to turn restlessly, to mutter to himself--perhaps it was the flooding of the rays of the now fully uprisen moon upon his face that was awaking him--and, gradually, to return to the knowledge of where he was. Yet still he could not for a moment understand matters--the lamp was burning brightly when he went to sleep, and all was dark as pitch outside; now the cabin was illuminated by the moon, and all outside was light. Then he recognised he had been asleep, and also that he was in his yacht.
He turned round to get up and go on deck to see if day was breaking, and, as he did so and put his feet to the cabin floor, he started. It was covered with water--water a foot deep--half up to his knees. Looking down, he perceived it shining in the rays of the moon as a large body of water always shines beneath those rays.
"Heavens!" he exclaimed, "she is filling, sinking! She will not float another ten minutes; the water is almost flush with her deck already." And he rushed to the cabin door.
He had left that door open ere he slept, he felt positive. Now it was shut.
"She has listed a bit, perhaps," was the first thought that came to his mind. Yet in another moment that idea was dispelled. ThePompeiawas sinking on as even a keel as did ever any water-logged boat; there was no list in her. Then, almost feeling sure of what he would discover a moment later, he tried to open the door.
It was fast.
"I knew it," he muttered through his teeth, as he shook and banged at the door--there was no time to be wasted; even now the water was on a level with the top of the locker on which he had lately slept; a few more minutes and the yacht must sink--"I knew it. It is the whole history over again. Phips was locked in his cabin--damn the door and he who closed it!--and I am locked in here to sink with the boat and be drowned like a rat. There's no chance--a child could scarcely escape through those windows! Oh! Joseph Alderly, if I ever----"
He stopped. Across the stream, from down by the mouth of it, there came the most awful, blood-curdling cry he had ever heard, the death cry of one who knew he was uttering his last shriek, knew that his doom was fixed. A horrid shriek, followed by the words, "Help! help!"--and then silence--dense as before.
"Ay! call for help," muttered Reginald. "Whoever you are, you do not want it more than I. Another five minutes and the end will have come."
He looked round the cabin in hope of some means of escape presenting themselves, and his eyes lighted on the revolver. Then he knew that, if he were but accorded time, only a few moments, he might get free. But more than two or three such moments would not be his; the water was nearly to his waist now. Once, twice, thrice, the report of the pistol rang out from that doomed yacht, each shot shattering the lock and panels; and then one sturdy push was sufficient to force the door open against the water, and for him to be standing half in the river, half out; and at that instant he felt a heaving beneath his feet, he felt he was sinking to his shoulders, that he was swimming with nothing beneath him any longer. The yacht was gone; he had not been a minute too soon!
The current was strong--the river being swollen with the recent rains--and it bore him downwards to the mouth, he not struggling against it, as he knew very well that he could easily land on the sea-beach outside. So he went with the tide until gradually he reached the outlet, and there he saw a sight that might well affright him, even after what he had gone through. He saw the face of Alderly on the waters, an awful look of fear in the wide-open eyes, and the jaws tightly clenched, but with the lips drawn back from the white teeth on which the moon's rays glistened. And he saw that he was dead.
"My God!" he exclaimed. "How has he died?" And as he so pondered he swam towards the villain, whose head bobbed about on the water as though there were no limbs, nor even trunk, beneath. But all the time as it turned round and round the eyes gleamed with a horrible light under the moon, and the great strong teeth glistened behind the drawn lips.
Another moment, and he knew how Alderly had died. The water in which he swam towards him tasted salter than sea-water as it touched his lips, and its clearness was discoloured--crimson! And even as Reginald seized the head of the now limbless trunk and towed it to the bank, striking out with all his power for fear of a similar dreadful fate befalling him--which was probable enough, since the shark is, like the tiger, eager for more when once its taste is whetted--he thought to himself:
"Out of the depths, out of the depths the past rises again and again."
Then, sweating with fear, he gave one last masterful side-stroke and landed safely on the shingle, dragging his gory burden after him.
The white shark--for such it is which is the most terrible in these regions--that had taken both Alderly's legs off above the knee, so that he must have soon bled to death, had doubtless done so while his intended victim was escaping from the trap he had set for Reginald.
Each bite--for the brute must have given two--was as clean as though the limbs had been snipped-off by a pair of blunt scissors, and, as Reginald regarded the mangled trunk in the moonlight, he could not but thank his Maker that he had not been the next victim, for he recognised how narrow his own escape was. His experience as a sailor told him that where the sharks have found one prey they will, sometimes for weeks, hover about in expectation of another, and he could only wonder--while his wonder was tinged with devout gratitude--why he should not also by now be torn in half.
As he dragged the body up the slope of the shingle, meaning to cover it over with palm leaves until Barbara had seen the face--the lower part she must not be allowed to see--and then to bury it, a bundle of papers fell out of the pocket of the dead man's rough shirt, which he picked up and put in his own. It must be handed to Barbara, he reflected, who was now the last of the Alderlys, and consequently the heiress to all the wealth of the Key!
"Which is," reflected Reginald, "the very best thing that could possibly have happened. She will now be able to lead the life so beautiful a woman ought to lead, a life which she by her education and womanly ideas is fitted to lead. For her, nothing could be better than Alderly's death."
Yet, when he thought of her inexperience--had she not believed that Trinidad was the world!--and of how she was all alone now without kith or kin, he could not but wonder what would become of her.
"At least," he pondered, "I pray she may fall into the hands of no such an adventurer as this," and he glanced at Alderly's mangled body. "That would be too awful. Better anything than that, even to finding her fortune gone when we dig up the Key. Though that would be a strange climax, too, to all that has taken place. Gone! great heavens, what an idea! To think of it! To think that when we go to unearth it we may discover there is nothing to be got. The very thought makes my blood run cold. But--bah! it is nonsense. It must be there!"
His blood was running cold, though not from this idea which had come into his mind, but from the wetting he had received.
Therefore, as soon as the sun burst upon the island once more, he stripped himself of his clothes, and, laying them out to dry, proceeded to dry himself also by the old-fashioned method of running up and down the beach. Then, when but a short exposure of his garments to the sun had sufficed to render them once more wearable, he put them on again and set out for Barbara's home.
"Though," he said to himself, "it is no easy task to break such news to her. Alderly was not kind to her, and she knew his failings and despised him--yet he was her brother, and his death was awful. But it must be told."
He made his way with the usual difficulty through all the entanglement of the luxuriant vegetation that grew down to the beach, and at last reached the path leading to the hut. Indeed, he was eager to get there in spite of the fact that he had such dismal news to break to Barbara, since he was somewhat surprised that he had neither seen nor heard anything of her now. He had almost feared to denude himself of his clothes at daybreak, thinking that at any moment the girl might come down to him--it being her custom to rise at that time--and when an hour had passed, as it had now done, he was still more astonished at not seeing her. She must know by now that her brother was not in his house; she must, have known long ago that he had not sat up carousing far into the night as was his habit. Where was she? What could have happened?
His fears became intensified as her house came into sight. For he soon perceived that the jalousies were not opened, and that the door on the verandah was closed--a thing he had never known before to be the case, from daybreak until late night--nay, worse, more appalling than all to him, was to see that behind the slats of the jalousie of the front room there was a light burning--the light of the lamp that stood always on the table in the middle of the living-room.
Springing up the wooden steps leading to the verandah, he rattled the slats in great agitation, and called loudly, "Barbara! Barbara, are you there?" a summons which, he thanked Heaven, instantly produced a reply. He heard the bark of her dog, who knew him well now; but no answer came from her.
Unable to bear any further suspense, fearing the worst, namely, that her brother had murdered her before he set forth on his attempt to do as much for him, and remembering--fool that he was, as he called himself!--the shriek he had heard in the night and attributed to some of the disturbed denizens of the island, he tore the jalousie aside and entered the general room.
And then he knew why Barbara had not come to seek him at daybreak as was her wont.
She was lying on the lounge, or rude sofa, her hands bound in front of her, her feet tied together, and in her mouth a rude gag made of a coarse pocket-handkerchief. By her side was the dog, moaning and whimpering, but making, when he entered, an attempt to jump up and fondle him. It also was tied, to the foot of the couch.
"Oh! Barbara!" he exclaimed, rushing forward to her, while he saw with infinite thanks that her eyes were open, and that she seemed to have suffered no further brutality than being made a prisoner of. "Oh! Barbara! that he should have treated you so!"
Then in a moment he had taken the gag from her mouth and had set her free, while all the time he was speaking kindly and considerately to her, and pitying her for having been so treated. And her first words were:
"Thank God, you are alive! I have been picturing you to myself for hours as dead. Did he not try to kill you?"
"Yes, Barbara," he said, after a moment's pause, almost dreading to tell her the tale, yet recognising that he must do so. "Yes, he tried to kill me."
"How?"
"By drowning. He must have bored some holes in the yacht unknown to me, when I slept. Oh! Barbara! I know I promised to keep careful watch, yet I was so tired, and at last I fell asleep. When I awoke the yacht was full of water--was sinking. Then----" he hesitated to tell her of how he had been locked in the cabin--"I--I escaped--I swam for my life."
"And he?" she asked faintly, almost in a whisper. "What of him?"
"He is dead."
"Ah! yes," she replied, with a shiver. "I know. I heard the report of your revolver. Then I knew all. Oh! how I wish he had not died at your hands!"
"He did not die at my hands, Barbara. He was dr----; he died in the water."
"Tell me all," she said, still faintly. "Tell me all."
Therefore he told her the whole of the dreadful story, omitting only the most blackening act, the double treachery and attempt of Alderly to take his life without giving him one chance of escape.
"I never thought to see you again," she whispered, when his recital was finished. "Never, never. For," she went on, telling now her experiences, "I knew by midnight that what I had dreaded he would attempt was about to take place. At that hour he left off drinking, having taken much less than was usual all the evening, and rising he went to the cupboard, from which, though he thought I could not do so, I saw him take out his long knife. It was one he brought back from Uruguay, from Paysandu, where they slaughter the oxen wholesale. I have heard him say more than once that it was too good to slay beasts with, and more fit to use on men--and once he drew it upon father. So that I knew he meant ill to you. Then I tried to escape to give you warning, only he would not let me. He seized me, tied me as you saw, and gagged me, though I shrieked once, hoping to alarm you--indeed, he threatened to kill me. And, at last, after he had also tied the dog--he would have slain that too, I feel sure, had it uttered one cry--he left me to the horrors of the night. Without one word he went away, not even saying when he would return. And," the girl concluded, "when I heard your pistol shots I fainted from fear--fear of what was going on. Oh! thank God, thank God, that he did not murder you--that you were not obliged to take his life in self-defence."
"I am thankful, too," he said; "above all things, thankful for your sake." After which he added, "Now, Barbara, would it not be best for you to come with me and see his body? I must bury it, you know, and then I ought to go over to Tortola and tell the Commissioner. I suppose he should be informed of his death."
"I suppose so," she said. "Only--how are you to go? The yacht is lost."
"There is his own boat. Where is that?"
But Barbara could not tell him, and soon after he found out. But now he prepared to go back to the beach to bury her brother's body, and he was not altogether surprised when she refused to accompany him.
"You have told me he is dead and how he died," she said. "That is enough--what more can I need? And for himself--oh! why should I see him? He never cared for me as a brother should, his last act was one of cruelty to me, and he went forth to murder you. Moreover, he was callous about father's death, did indeed rejoice in it, I believe, because by it he became master of the place. No, I will not go and see him; I could not bear to look upon him again. And," she concluded, "my only regret is that you should have the task of burying him. It would have been better almost had he sunk to the bottom of the river."
Therefore Reginald went off upon this duty, but before he did so he gave to Barbara the water-soaked packet of papers which he had taken from Alderly's shirt-pocket.
"They fell out," he said, "after I had brought him ashore. There was nothing else. The knife you speak of must have sunk to the bottom; perhaps he even tried to defend himself against the shark with it in his last moments. We shall never know!"
Nor did he ever know how that long Uruguay knife had once been nearly thrust into his breast as he lay sleeping; nor that with the knife, which had, indeed, sunk to the bottom of the river, had also sunk the auger with which he had bored half-a-dozen holes (each of the circumference of an ordinary cork) in the bottom of thePompeia. One thing did, however, strike him as strange as he meditated over it all, namely, that from the time when Alderly must have bored those holes in the yacht to the time when she sank a considerable period had undoubtedly elapsed. And he wondered if it was during that period that he had managed to get on board and close the cabin door. Then, as he was burying him, he knew; he found out that his would-be murderer had indeed visited thePompeia.
For he was mistaken when he told Barbara earlier that there was nothing else on her brother's body. As he prepared to put the trunk into the hole he had dug for it--while still the fixed open eyes stared up at him, this time in the morning's sunlight, and still the beautifully white teeth gleamed in that light--he observed that, besides the papers which had dropped from his shirt, there were still some others that had remained within the pocket.
And drawing them out he saw that, all soaked as they were like the others, they were the narrative of Nicholas Crafer.
"So," he thought, while he felt faint and sick as he mused--"so he was in the cabin, after all! Heavens! he must have crept in while I slept, have rifled my pockets in the dark when the lamp had gone out, have--faugh!--had his foul hands all about me! Thank God! he must have come when the light had burnt out, otherwise he would have seen the pistol."
He never knew that the ruffian had, in truth, known the pistol was there, but had forgotten, or feared to use, it when in the cabin later on.
He tossed the remains into the hole he had dug, touching them with the greatest disgust and loathing, and then covered the spot up hurriedly and stamped the earth down over it, and took his way back to Barbara. And, as he went, he determined that he would not tell her of this further instance of villainy on her brother's part. Henceforth she should learn no more of the workings of that wicked heart and brain.
When he reached the hut he saw her on the verandah, seated in the usual chair and with tears in her eyes. The papers he had given her were stretched out on a table before her, and, as he mounted the steps, she held out one to him and bade him read it. A glance showed that it was a will made by her father, a will properly drawn up and attested at some lawyer's office in Tortola; a will by which everything was left to her, including the island and the treasure if ever found--indeed, all that he possessed.
"Because," he read, in the cramped legal hand of the person who had drawn it out, "of the cruelty, the greed and the evil temper of my son to me, as well as his ill-treatment of me and my dear daughter, Barbara, I give and bequeath to her all and everything of which I may die possessed, including Coffin Island, any buried treasure that may chance to be found," etc., etc., etc.
"Great heavens!" Reginald thought to himself, as he handed her back the will, "there was no end to the scoundrel's wickedness. How could this villain be Barbara's brother?"
Reginald found Joseph Alderly's boat on the same evening, when he was out on a tour about the coast of the island on the lookout for it. As he suspected, Alderly had brought it round to the neighbourhood of the river's mouth, preferring to get at him that way instead of by the path down from his house. His reasons for doing so might have been manifold, the young man knew very well--reasons that would, doubtless, at once occur to such a scheming brain as that of the dead ruffian. For, independently of the fact that he would have strongly wished to avoid any encounter with him on shore--and, for aught he knew, Reginald might be ashore at any period of the night--he might have brought his cutter to that neighbourhood so as to be able to get away from the island at once, after the sinking of thePompeiahad been accomplished.
For instance, had his plan succeeded he could have sailed to Anegada or Tortola within two or three hours from the time of the crime being committed, and, arriving at either place in the night, could have very easily induced the belief that he had anchored much earlier than he had actually done. In those spots very little, if any, notice is taken after dark of what boats are about--especially such boats as Alderly's, which are common all over the islands--and hisalibiwould consequently have held good when Reginald was reported missing. And even the report of his being missing would not have spread abroad for probably some time after the event. None but tourists came to Coffin Island, and Barbara would have been unable to get away from it; while, since thePompeiawould have disappeared for ever from human eyes, no one could have absolutely said that her temporary owner was dead. He might just as well have gone off with her to some other island as she have sunk to the bottom of the river, and Alderly could, therefore, have returned without his sister being able to advance one proof that Reginald Crafer had been made away with.
"Though," said Reginald to himself, as he mused over the matter while he inspected Alderly's own boat, "if I had been drowned after she heard the pistol shots, she would certainly have thought I had died trying to defend myself. And, had her scoundrelly brother managed to survive me, Barbara would, if I mistake not, have taxed him very plainly with my death."
He found the cutter anchored in about three fathoms of water, and had to get out to her in such a crazy, water-logged punt--in which Alderly must himself have come ashore--that he feared every moment the thing would sink under his weight, and expose him to the chance of a similar fate to that which had overtaken its owner. However, it was sounder than it looked, and, on inspecting the larger craft, he came to the conclusion that she would be navigable across to Tortola if she escaped bad weather--of which there were no signs now. The dead man had managed to patch her up in a manner very creditable to his knowledge of seacraft, and to set right the injuries she had received when cast ashore; so that, as far as the journey over to the Commissioner was concerned, he might start at once.
"Though," he pondered, as he inspected the cutter and found nothing inside her beyond her ordinary gear but a bottle of rum, some meat and coarse bread, and a pipe--"though there is no reason why I should hurry myself. We had better begin to dig up the treasure now, I think, and, meanwhile, this dog's hole of a boat will serve for my habitation as well as the poorPompeia, though it's not quite so sweet and wholesome."
Whereon he hauled up her anchor, got her round to the river, and moored her as near as possible over the spot where the sunken yacht lay.
"I may have to pay Juby a good deal, for her," he mused, as he went up the path to Barbara's house. "However, we ought to find the wherewithal on the Key to do so. I suppose she will give me enough to do that." And he laughed to himself as the thought passed through his mind.
Barbara was eating her evening meal when he reached the hut, and he sat down to share it with her, telling her that henceforth she would have to keep him in food as long as they were together.
"I had loaded thePompeiaup with all sorts of good things such as are to be procured in the islands and at their stores," he said, trying to be gay and also to brighten her up, "but I might have saved myself the trouble. They are at the bottom of the river, and there they will stay until they are rotten. So, Barbara, I must live on you."
She gave him one swift glance from the sweet hazel eyes under the straight black eyebrows--eyes whose lids were red now from long weeping--and he understood it well enough. He knew that she would give him everything she possessed in the world, including her very life, as well as the fortune that was now to be hers--if old Nicholas had made no mistake, and if no one had ever lighted on the Key and its contents between the time of his departure and the coming of the other Barbara.
"By-the-bye," he said, as they ate their supper side by side, and Barbara tried to put such choice morsels of her poor plain food as there were on his plate, which attention he managed sometimes to avoid--"by-the-bye, we don't know after all what we are really going to discover. Nicholas managed to lose one of the most important parts of his manuscript, the list, as he calls it, of part of what he found. It is a good thing he didn't mislay the description of the Key and the measurements as well. If he had done that we should have been in a fix."
"But," said Barbara, "he has said what is in the long box. We know that, at any rate. Surely that's a fortune in itself?"
"What! six thousand pounds! Why, Barbara, when you go out into the world, the real world, London, the Continent, swagger German and Swiss places in the summer, and Rome and the Riviera in the winter, you'll find what a little bit of money six thousand pounds make. No! Nick's fifty thousand 'guineas' must be found for you before you become anything like a swell heiress with a romantic history, run after by all the men for your beauty and your wealth."
"Don't--don't talk like that!" the girl said. "It pains me to hear you joking like that. I know nothing of the places you mention, and as to men running after me--oh, don't, don't! And besides, you have forgotten--it is not mine."
"Every penny of it!" exclaimed Reginald, "except what Mr. Juby wants for the yacht if uninsured."
"No! no! no!" she said. "Remember, it is not in the island--my island, I suppose, now. The Keys are as much yours, or anyone else's, as mine. And if it had been on the island, and we had dug it up, I would not have taken it. If you would not have shared it with me--I--I--well, I would have thrown it into the sea."
"What a nice ending to poor old Nick's troubles and labours here in finding it, and at home in writing his long account in that queer fist of his! And also to all that your people have gone through, from your namesake downwards. No, no, Barbara! We won't throw it back into the sea, at any rate. And to-morrow we'll dig it up. Shall we?"
This was agreed upon, and then Reginald prepared to leave her. He offered to stay in the house if she felt nervous--as she had once before implored him to do; but now she said, "No, she was not nervous. She feared nothing now. There was no one else who could come to harm him or her; the island was theirs and theirs alone." He noticed that she called it "theirs" and not "hers," but made no remark on the subject, since an idea had arisen in his mind: he knew now what the future of the treasure, of Barbara, and of himself must be!--and he proceeded to arrange for their movements on the morrow.
"It will be low water two hours after daybreak," he said, "and by that time I will have brought the cutter and the boat round to the strip of beach nearest to the Keys. You might meet me there, Barbara, and bring some food and fresh water, and then we will begin. Meanwhile, let me have whatever tools and implements you possess for digging. I will take them with me and bring them in the cutter in the morning."
In the shed behind the hut they found what was required, an old spade and a nearly new one, a pickaxe and some ropes--for the Alderlys, father and son, had had to attend to their garden in this tropical island almost as much as though they had lived in Europe--and these would be enough, he thought.
So, shouldering them, he bade her "Good-night"--it seemed to each as though their hands were clasped together longer and more tightly now than they had ever been before!--and went his way down to the river once more.
It would have been strange if, to-night--the night before the story, that his ancestor had written in those long past and forgotten years, was to be realised--he should not have had a host of thoughts whirling through his brain; if past and present had not been strangely confused and jumbled up together in that brain.
There lay the cutter, a dark indistinct mass, in the midst of the stars reflected from above; in the very self-same spot where so many other small vessels, all connected with him, with Barbara, and with the treasure, had lain before. Itself the property of a villain whose villainy was inherited through centuries, it occupied the spot in that little river where once theEtoylehad been moored, where she had been sunk, and where Simon Alderly and his murdered victim, the diver, had got ashore. Also there, or close by, had been the galliot of honest Nicholas with its dying and dead crew, and with Nicholas sleeping, or trying to sleep, in that place of death, or watching Alderly in his murderous madness as he slew his companion. And he pictured to himself the sloop with the unknown Martin having probably been anchored there before those days--doubtless as full of reckless, bloodstained scoundrels as was theEtoyleherself; he remembered how, not twenty-four hours before, the graceful and prettyPompeiahad ridden at anchor on the river's bosom--and now she, too, had gone to join the other wrecks below the water.
He shuddered as these thoughts passed through his mind; shuddered at all that the treasure had led to in the way of murder and death.
"It was here, here where I stand," he whispered to himself, "that the diver was slain; there, in the river, that the bones of the pirates lie, and also those of the crew of the galliot; above--where she, the pure outcome of so much evil, dwells--that Simon Alderly died mad and without time to repent."
A slant of the rising moon gleamed through the wood on to the bank and played on the waters of the river lower down; the ray was thrown upon the very spot where, last night, he had seen the staring eyes and the glistening teeth of Joseph Alderly, as the limbless body swirled round with the stream--and he started and shivered.
"Heavens!" he exclaimed, "it is a charnel-house, a place of horror! I--I cannot sleep in that boat to-night."
He turned from the accursed spot--all beautiful as it was now beneath the rising moon, and illuminated with myriads of fireflies, while over and above all was the luscious perfume of tropical plants and flowers--and went his way through the thick underbrush to a part of the shore beyond the spot, where the body of Joseph Alderly had been buried, avoiding that place as he proceeded. Then, when he had gone some distance, he chose a bit of the beach high and dry above the line of the already receding sea, and, laying himself down upon it, gazed far over the waters to where a few lights sparkled at intervals from the little island of Tortola.
But ere he slept, and when a deep sense of fatigue was stealing over him, he rose once more, and, kneeling down by the spot he had selected, he prayed long that, whatever the morrow might bring forth, at least one thing might be granted. He prayed that all the bloodshed, and the cruelty that that treasure had been the cause of for more than two centuries, had ended at last, never more to be renewed--he prayed that, henceforth, it might bring only happiness and peace in its train.
"For her, for her," he whispered. "For her and for me."
And, feeling sure that his prayer was heard and would be granted, he laid himself down again and soon was sleeping peacefully.
As the dawn came, and a cool wind blew over the water and brushed his cheek, he arose from a night of refreshing slumber--the first for two days--and took his way back to the cutter. Then, reaching her, he soon unmoored, made the boat fast astern, and, getting down the river, sailed round the island to the spot where the Keys were.
It took him an hour to fetch the beach in two tacks, and then he saw that, early as he was, Barbara was there before him, and that she was seated on the shore, the dog at her feet and a basket by her side.
This morning her eyes were no longer red--she had done with weeping for her vile brother, he thought--and her colour, always beautiful, except since the events of the last few days had driven it all away, had now come back to her. She, too, he knew, had slept peacefully at last, and in that peaceful rest all her loveliness had returned.
"Now, Barbara," he said, after they had exchanged their morning greetings, he from the boat, and she from the shore, "we'll call the boat away, and off we go to your inheritance. In a few hours you will, I trust, be put in possession of it." Saying which, he anchored the cutter, got into the boat and cast her off, and so rowed ashore for Barbara. He had found out that the capabilities of this boat--crazy as it seemed--were quite equal to carrying them, and the implements for digging, out to the Key a hundred yards off, and he also knew that, by leaving Barbara on the middle Key when they had found the treasure, he could convey each of the boxes, or coffers, back to the island one by one. Then, as to the final removal of them and their owner from Coffin Island--well, that would all be arranged for later.
A few minutes only and they stepped out upon the soft wet sand of the middle Key--they stood upon the place that, perhaps, no other foot had trodden since Nicholas left it more than two hundred years ago. There was nothing to bring anyone to that particular atom of an island among all the thousands upon thousands of islands with which the marine surface of the world is dotted, not even a search for the turtles and the eggs they laid. For, in these regions, those creatures are so common that nobody desiring to procure one would have even troubled to visit the middle Key while the outer ones were easier of access.
"I begin to feel very nervous now we have reached here, and the search is about to begin," Barbara said. "Oh! what shall we find--or shall we find anything?"
"Make your mind easy," Reginald replied, although he himself felt unaccountably excited, too, at what was before them. "The story left by Nicholas bears the stamp of truth on every line of it; I would stake my existence on his having buried the boxes as he wrote. And as to their having been disinterred, why! there is no possibility of that. Come, let us begin."
He looked round at the sea as he spoke, and scanned the little crisping waves as they rolled on to the Key's shore, and, involuntarily and sailor-like, searched the horizon to see if there was any sail in sight, any likelihood of their being observed. Yet, as he knew and told the girl by his side, there was no chance of that.
"On this, the east side of the Key," he said, "there is nothing nearer than the Cape de Verd Islands and the African coast, and nothing passes east or west within twenty miles of this place. We will make a beginning."
Then they sat down on the brushwood of the island, disturbing as they did so a great two-hundred-pound turtle that crawled gasping away, and Reginald, taking out the now water-stained and blurred pages of Nicholas, began to read over carefully his measurements and instructions for finding the exact spot where the buried treasure lay.
"'From the north side of the middle Key is fifty-one good strides of three feet each,'" he repeated from the paper; "'from the south side is fifty-three, from the east is forty-nine, from the west is fifty strides and a half.' Barbara, let us measure. I will begin from this, the south side."
Very carefully he paced out the strides, "good ones," as his predecessor had directed, only, instead of sticking in the ground a sword--which, of course, he did not possess here--he put a large white stone. Then, as Nicholas had himself done, three times did he go over the ground, making all the strides correspond with the ancient manuscript; and at last he said to Barbara, "Now we will dig."
"It is only three feet from the surface to the topmost turtle shell," he remarked, as he took off his light jacket and rolled up his sleeves. "Ten minutes will show if we have hit it right."
At the end of those ten minutes he found that, though he had made a mismeasurement of a foot and a half from the east to west, he had otherwise judged his distance with sufficient accuracy. The treasure, certainly the topmost turtle shell, was there. The spade struck against the edge of that shell instead of the exact middle of it; in a few minutes more, by digging the sand up further to the west, the whole of it was exposed, its convex side rising towards them.
"We have found it," he exclaimed. "We have found it, Barbara! The treasure is--yours!"
* * * * * * *
What was in the oblong box has been told by Nicholas himself, therefore it is not necessary to write down an account of its contents again. Roughly, too, he has told what he found in the first two "coffers" or chests, including the "grinning skull," which they, of course, found also. But Nicholas's list had been lost, therefore one somewhat more full shall now be given, leaving his account of the first strong box to speak for itself. And also in the second, "the Spanish pieces of eight, the Portyguese crusadoes, English crowns, and many more French coins as well as hundreds of gold pieces of our kings and queens away back to Elizabeth," were all there as he has described, so neither need they be again set down. It was when they came to the third coffer that their curiosity was the most aroused, for with it began their search for something he had left no account of, something that was described in that "list" which was missing. Therefore, they opened it with almost trembling hands--when it had been brought up to the surface--wondering what they should find.
On the top lay a deerskin, dressed and trimmed, showing that whenever it might originally have been put in, it had at least belonged to people who had some of the accessories of civilisation about them, since, had it belonged to wild and savage persons, it would have been hardly dressed at all, nor would it have possessed any trimming at the edges. This they lifted off, only to come to a variety of smaller skins, such as those of fox, goat, and sheep, which it was easy to perceive were simply used as wrappers to large substances within them.
"These coverings," said Reginald, as he unwrapped one, "seem to point to England, or at least Europe, as the spot whence they came; well, let us--ah!"
There rolled from out the one he was at that moment unwinding a beaker a foot high, of a dull copper colour, much embossed with leaves and flowers. Yet, dull as it was, even their slight knowledge was enough to tell them it was gold. Also its shape was antique enough to show that it was no new piece of workmanship, even when Simon Alderly had found it--if he did find it, as seemed most likely; its long, thin lip, thin neck, and big body proclaimed it of the middle ages at least.
"So," said Reginald, giving it a rub with some of the sand by his side, under which the dim coppery hue turned to a more golden yellow, "this is Number Three. If the other box is full of such gold ornaments the find will be worth having."
In this box itself there were no more gold beakers, only, instead, it was full of silver plate of all kinds, and all enveloped in skins. There were also two more beakers, but in silver, many cups and chalices, some with covers to them and some without, several silver ewers, a long vase all neck and spout, some extremely ancient candelabras, and a woman's silver dagger, known in old days as a wedding knife.
"Oh!" said Barbara, appalled at the sight of objects so unfamiliar to her, who had never drunk out of aught but calabashes, gourds, and cheap earthenware--"Oh! it seems a sin to dig all these beautiful things up."
"A greater one to let them lie in the earth," said Reginald with a laugh. "Come, let's go on to Number Four and see what he has got inside him."
"Now, Barbara," Reginald said next, as they began on Number Four. "Shut your eyes until I tell you to open them."
The girl obeyed--indeed, all through this treasure hunt, or, as it had now become, treasure inspection, they were more like a boy and girl playing with new toys than a grown man and a young woman just about to leave her teens behind her--and, when he told her to open them, she saw that he had come upon a number of little plump bags tied at the neck. These bags were made of a coarse kind of linen cloth, or Russia duck, and were much discoloured; yet, rough as they were, they did not prevent the impression of coins being seen inside.
"Here we come to the money--let's hope it's not copper!" exclaimed Reginald.
Again, when they opened the first bag and poured out the contents into Barbara's lap, it looked as though they had found copper; but again, as before, what seemed copper was in reality gold. But the pieces which they saw were such as they had never seen the like of before, such as they never were able to guess the name of until some time afterwards, when more experienced numismatists than this young sailor and the girl by his side had the handling of them. What they absolutely found was: First, a bag full of Elizabeth "soveraines," valued in her time at 30s. each, it containing two hundred and six of these pieces. Then there was a bag full of angels of the same reign, valued at 12s. each, of angelets at 6s., and of quarter angels at 3s., there being of these smaller coins three hundred and eleven in the little sack. The third bag they opened--a larger one--contained fifty gold crowns of Henry VIII.'s reign, fifty gold half-crowns of Elizabeth's--the former having the figure of the king on horseback--and in it, also, were one hundred and thirty rose nobles, eighty-five double-rose nobles, eighty-three double-rose rials, or reals, each of the value of 30s., and two double gold crowns, these two being the largest and most valuable of any of the coins they found.
"We are getting on, Barbara; we shall have a nice stock to take back to the hut," Reginald said, as he tied the bags up again exactly as before. "However, let's continue. This box is a monster and contains the most of all."
Whoever had put together all this treasure of money--as well as what was to come--was, it is certain, a methodical person; for, with the exception of the above coins of Henry VIII. being mixed with those of his daughter (there was not one of her sister, Mary's reign), the different monarchs had been kept separate and distinct from one another. This was shown by the next three bags, two of which contained gold coins of James I.'s reign, but of no other English king. Of these, the first had in it two hundred and one spur-rials of the value of 15s. each--these coins being so called from the rays, issuing out of the sun upon them, resembling the rowels of spurs--one hundred and three of the single rose rials, and four single crowns. The second bag had exactly one hundred single crowns by themselves; the third had two hundred and two small gold pieces, French ones, they being crowns of the sun as originally coined by Louis XI., and valued in England in Elizabeth's time at 7s. each.
"Well, Barbara," Reginald said, as they finished these bags, "what do you think of your fortune as far as it has gone? After we have had some food we will go on and see what more there is."
"I think," the girl replied, as she opened her basket and took from it some bread, eggs, a piece of cold roasted goat's flesh, and some of the fruit which grew in such profusion on Coffin Island--"I think as I have always thought, namely, that it is not my fortune but yours, and that----"
"Ah!" interrupted Reginald. "Well! we won't quarrel over that now. So I'll put my question in a different way. What do you think of the fortune as far as it has gone?"
"I think it is a shame to dig it up. It seems like digging up the poor dead creatures who put it first in the vault--who wrapped it all up so carefully, and tied the money up in bags as if they felt sure the day would come when they, or those dear to them, would inherit it all. And think of what strangers it has come to, not only now but before! Simon Alderly had no real right to it, neither had Nicholas Crafer, nor have you nor I."
"You or I--you, of course--mean to keep it, though, Barbara. It has been ours for two hundred years: yours by the first discovery--namely, by the respected Simon; mine by the second--namely, the worthy Nicholas; and, in spite of any silly old laws about treasure trove, why, finding's keepings. Besides, the treasure trove was two hundred years ago. Our ancestors are responsible for that part of it. We, on the contrary, can show a two centuries' title--that's good enough for all the lawyers in the world, I fancy."
With jokes andbadinagesuch as this the young man passed the luncheon, dinner, or meal-hour--whichever it should be called--away. Indeed, at this time, when the long-buried wealth of the past was being at last revealed to its ultimate heirs and possessors, he was anxious above all things to keep off the discussion of whose it was, and who was to have it and who was not. As has been suggested a little earlier,hesaw,heknew--or felt almost positive that he saw and knew--what was the final disposition of all that the Key was now disgorging, only--the present was not the time to speak about that disposition to Barbara. So, as much as possible, he kept to other matters in connection with the task they were now engaged upon.
"Whoever they were," he went on meditatively, as the simple repast drew to an end, "who originally owned it all, they must almost certainly have been our country people. Although we don't either of us know what those coins are, we can at least see that they are mostly English, and all about one period, namely, Elizabeth's and her successor's, James. Now, let's see. Charles I. succeeded James, eh, Barbara?"
"Yes," said the girl. "Yes. At school we thought Charles I. the most interesting of all the English kings."
"Ah!" said Reginald; "well, I've heard other people say differently. Our chaplain in theIanthe, for instance, used to wrangle with the paymaster for hours about him, and call him all kinds of names. However, let's put two and two together. Charles's was an uncomfortable sort of reign, for others besides himself, and all sorts of rumpusses were going on--people flying from England to America,et cetera. I wonder if the gentleman who owned all these things was one of those? He might be, you know, and have got drifted down here after making bad weather of it in the Atlantic; or the pirates--hem!--ofhis ownday, Barbara--no allusions meant to respected ancestors!--might have seized on him--or--or--half a dozen things. I don't suppose we ever shall find out."
"No," she said, "I don't suppose we shall. Perhaps it's better that we never should. It might interfere withyourenjoyment of it all."
Whereon Reginald laughed once more, while a beautiful but tell-tale blush came to the girl's face--possibly it had dawned on her, too, by now, how the ultimate possession of the treasure might be arranged!--and then they proceeded to inspect what remained.