CHAPTER XVIIIANCHORED HEARTS
Our rescue had been due to the vigilance of Tom Yeager. He had seen Bothwell slip down from the bridge and follow me to the forecastle.
The first impulse of the Arizonian had been to step out and end the campaign by a fighting finish with the Slav. But second thoughts brought wiser counsels. Blythe, called hurriedly upstairs, had agreed to his proposal to try and determine the mutiny at a stroke.
To both of them it had been clear that Bothwell surrendered the bridge because he was afraid to let me have a talk with the men alone. That my life was in great danger neither doubted.
Swiftly the men had been gathered for the sortie into the forecastle, Evelyn having volunteered to take the wheel until relieved. The success of the plan had been beyond the expectations of any.
Bothwell was the first of the prisoners to speak.
"Let me offer my congratulations, Captain Blythe," he said with suave irony.
The lean, brown face of the Englishman expressed quiet scorn.
"Not necessary at all. It is the only result I have considered from the first. One doesn't expect to be driven from his ship by wharf rats, no matter how numerous they may be."
Bothwell laughed, debonair as ever.
"True enough, captain. My scoundrels made an awful botch of it. They played a good hand devilish badly or we should have won out."
"The devil you would! We beat you from first to last at odds against of two to one nearly. I reckon, Mr. Pirate, you undertook too big a round-up," grinned the cattleman.
"Fortunately there is always a to-morrow," retorted Bothwell with a bow.
"Sometimes it's mortgaged to Jack Ketch."
"I'll wager he doesn't foreclose, Mr. Yeager," answered Boris with a lip smile.
Blythe cut short the repartee.
"We'll put this man in a stateroom and lock him up, Sedgwick. The rest will stay here guarded by Alderson. If one of them makes a suspicious move, shoot him down like a mad dog. Understand, my man?"
"Yes, sir. I'll see they make no trouble," Alderson answered resolutely.
I made a suggestion to our captain. After a moment's consideration he accepted it.
"Very good, Mr. Sedgwick. Have Gallagher, Neidlinger, and Higgins freed. See that they clean the ship up till she is fresh as paint."
The first thing we did was to gather the bodies of the poor fellows who had fallen in the struggles for the ship. Blythe read the burial service before we sank the weighted corpses into the sea.
Under my direction the men then swabbed the decks, washed the woodwork, and scoured the copper plates until they shone.
It was not until luncheon that I found time for more than a word with Evelyn. None of us, I suppose, had suffered more than she and Miss Berry, but they made it their business to help us forget the nightmare through which we had lately passed.
I remember that Miss Wallace looked round from a gay little sally at Jimmie with a smile in her eyes. I was reaching for some fruit when her glance fell upon my hand.
"What's the matter with your fingers?" she asked quickly.
I withdrew my hand promptly. The flesh was swollen and discolored from the attentions of Boris Bothwell.
"I had a little accident—nothing of importance," was my inadequate answer.
Her gaze circled the table, passed from Sam's face to that of Jimmie and from Jimmie to Higgins, who was waiting on us. She must have read a confirmation of her intuition of a secret, for she dropped the subject at once.
"Jack crushed his hand against a piece of iron," explained the captain.
At which Miss Evelyn murmured. "Oh!" and inquired how long it would probably be before we reached the Bay of Panama.
"Using only our canvas we may reach there to-morrow night, and we may not. We can't make very good time till we start the engines again," Blythe said.
"And when are you going to start them?" Miss Berry asked.
"Don't quite know. I'm shy of engineers. The only ones I have are on a vacation," Sam answered with a smile.
They were not to enjoy one very long, however. About sunset theArgosbegan to rock gently on a sea no longer glassy.
"Cap says we're going to have trouble," Yeager informed me. "When you get this sultry smell in the air and that queer look in the sky there is goingto be something doing. She's going to begin to buck for fair."
I noticed that Blythe was taking in sail and that the wind was rising.
"Knock the irons off the Flemings and send Gallagher down into the engine room to stoke for them. We'll need more hands. This thing is going to hit us like a wall of wind soon," he told me.
When I returned from the forecastle the sea had risen. As I was standing on the bridge a voice called my name. I looked down to see Evelyn on the promenade deck in a long, close-fitting waterproof coat, her hair flying a little wildly in the breeze. In the face upturned to mine was a very vivid interest.
"We're in for it. There's going to be a real squall," she cried delightedly.
I stepped down and tucked her arm under mine, for the deck was already tipping in the heavy run of seas.
Most of our canvas was in, and the booming wind was humming through the rest with growing power. TheArgosput her nose into the whitecaps and ran like a racer, for the engines were shaking the yacht as she plowed forward.
The young woman turned to me an eager, mobile face into which the wind had whipped a rich color.
"What would you take to be somewhere else? Back in your stuffy old law office, say?"
The lurch of the staggering yacht threw her forward so that the lithe, supple body leaned against me and the breath of the dimpling lips was in my nostrils.
Just an instant she lay there, with that smile of warm eyes and rose-leaf mouth to tantalize me, before she recovered and drew back.
"Not for a thousand dollars a minute," I answered, a trumpet peal of indomitable happiness ringing in my heart.
From the wheelhouse Blythe shouted a warning to be careful. His voice scarcely reached us through the singing of the wind. I nodded and took hold of the little hand that lay close to mine.
"You must be a rich man to value the pleasure of the hour so highly," she answered lightly, with a look quick and questioning at me.
The squall that had flung itself across the waters hit us in earnest now. We went down into the yawning troughs before us with drunken plunges and climbed the glassy hills beyond to be ready for another dive.
"The richest man alive if last night was not a dream."
Our fingers interlaced, palms kissing each other.
"Does it seem to you a dream?" she asked, deep in a valley of the seas.
From the top of the next comber I answered:
"It did until you joined me here, but now I know you belong to me forever, both in the land of dreams and waking."
"Did the storm teach you that?"
I looked out at the flying scud and back at the storm-bewitched girl with laughter rippling from her throat and the wild joy of a rare moment in her eyes.
"Yes, the storm. It brought you to my arms and your heart to mine."
"I think it did, Jack; the wee corner of it that was not yours already."
Her shy eyes fell and I drew her close to me. In the dusk that had fallen like a cloak over the ship her lips met mine with the sweetest surrender in the world.
So in the clamorous storm our hearts found safe anchorage.
CHAPTER XIXSENSE AND NONSENSE
The squall passed as suddenly as it had swept upon us, and left in its wake a night of stars and moonbeat.
Apparently there was no question of returning the mutineers to the irons from which we had freed them. Alderson, Smith, Neidlinger, and Higgins were grouped together on the forecastle deck in amiable chat.
Blythe was still at the wheel, and our cheerful friend from the cattle country at the piano bawling out the identical chorus I had interrupted so ruthlessly just before the first blow of the mutiny was struck.
He was lustily singing as Evelyn and I trod the deck.
"Tom sings as if with conviction. I hope it may not be deep-rooted," I laughed.
"If you mean me——"
"I don't mean Miss Berry."
To my surprise she took the words seriously.
"It isn't so, Jack. Say it isn't so."
"Does that mean that it is?" I asked.
"No-o. Only I can't bear to think that our happiness will make anybody else unhappy."
"It doesn't appear to be making him unhappy."
"But he doesn't know—yet."
"Then he's really serious? I wasn't quite sure."
She sighed.
"I wish he wasn't. How girls can like to make men fall in love with them I can't conceive. He's such a splendid fellow, too."
"He's a man, every inch of him," I offered by way of comfort. "It won't hurt him to love a good woman even if he doesn't win her. He'll recover, but it will do him a lot of good first."
"Would you feel so complacent if it were you?" she asked slyly, with a flash of merry eyes.
We happened to be in the shadow of the smokestack. After the interlude I expounded my philosophy more at length.
"He's young yet—at least his heart is. A man has to love a nice girl or two before he is educated to know the right one when he meets her. I don't pity Yeager—not a great deal, anyhow. It's life, you know," I concluded cheerfully.
"Oh, I see. A man has to love a nice girl or two as an educative process." Her voice trailed intothe rising inflection of a question. "Then the right girl ought to thank me for helping to prepare Mr. Yeager for her—if I am."
"That's a point of view worth considering," I assented.
"But I suppose she will never even know my name," she mused.
"Most likely not," was my complacent answer.
Whereupon she let me have her thrust with a little purr of amusement in her voice.
"Any more than I shall know what nice girls prepared you for me."
"Touché," I conceded with a laugh. "I didn't know you were the kind of young woman that lays traps for a fellow to tumble into."
"And I didn't know you were a war-worn veteran toughened by previous campaigns," she countered gaily. "You've been very liberally educated, didn't you say?"
"No, I didn't say. This is how I put it to myself: A boy owes something to the nice girls all about him. One would not like to think, for instance, that the youths of Tennessee had been so insensible as never to have felt a flutter when your long lashes drifted their way," I diplomatically suggested.
"How nicely you wrap it up," she said with herlow, soft laugh. "And must my heart have fluttered, too, for them? Unless it has, I won't be properly educated for you, shall I?"
"Ah, that's the difference. You are born perfect lovers, but we have to acquire excellence through experience."
"Oh!"
An interjection can sometimes express more than words. My sweetheart's left me wondering just what she meant. There was amusement in it, but there was, too, a demure suppression to which I had not the key.
She, too, I judged, had known a few love episodes in her life. Perhaps she had been engaged before, as is sometimes the custom among Southern girls. The thought gave me a queer little stab of pain.
Yeager came out of the deck pavilion as we passed.
"I say, let's have some music, good people."
I looked at my watch.
"My turn at the wheel. Maybe Blythe will join you."
He did. From the pilot-house I could hear his clear tenor and Evelyn's sweet soprano filling the night with music. Presently they drifted into patriotic songs, in which Tom came out strong if notmelodious. But when the piano sounded the notes of "Dixie" Evelyn's voice rose alone, clear and full-throated as that of a lark.
After being relieved by Alderson I turned in and slept round the clock. The tune of drumming engines was in my ears when I woke.
"Sam is making her walk," I thought, and when I reached the deck I learned that we had entered the Gulf of Panama. A long, low line showed dimly in the foggy distance to the left. We were running parallel with it, Prieto Point directly in front of us.
With the exception of the older Fleming, who had been transferred to the same cabin as Bothwell, all the crew were at work. Only the true men, however, were armed. From the looks cast by the former mutineers toward the blurred shore line it was plain that they looked forward to Panama with anxiety.
In the canal zone, with the flag of the United States flying to the breeze, the law would give them short shrift. We observed that whenever their duties permitted it, they drew uneasily together in earnest talk.
Blythe smiled grimly.
"Our friends don't like the wages of sin, now that pay day is at hand. I'll give you two to one,Jack, that before an hour is up you'll see a delegation to the captain."
He was right. As Sam stepped down from the bridge, having turned the wheel over to Alderson, he was approached timidly by Neidlinger and Gallagher. Higgins, in partial payment for his share in the revolt, was taking a turn at shoveling coal in the stifling furnace room.
Gallagher touched his hat humbly.
"We'd like a word with you, Captain Blythe."
"I thought Bothwell was your captain?"
The sailor flushed.
"No, sir. We're through with him."
"Now that he's a prisoner?" suggested Sam.
"We wish we'd never let him bamboozle us, sir. It would 'a' been a sight better for a lot of poor fellows if we'd never seen him. That man's a devil, sir."
"Indeed!"
As he stood there, a lean brown man straight as a ramrod, efficient to the last inch of him, it struck me that the mutineers would get justice rather than mercy from our captain.
The sailor moistened his dry lips and went on.
"Captain Blythe, we—we're sorry we let ourselves be led into—into——"
Gallagher stumbled for a word. Sam supplied it quietly:
"Mutiny."
"Yes, sir; if you want to put it that way, sir."
"How else can I put it?"
"We were led astray by that man Bothwell, sir. He promised there would be no bloodshed. We're sorry, sir."
"I don't doubt it," the Englishman assented dryly.
"Begging your pardon, sir, we asks to be taken back and punished by you. Whatever you give us we'll take and not a word out of our heads. Say a flogging and we'll thank you kindly, sir. But don't turn us over to the law."
"Didn't I tell you what would come of it, Gallagher?"
"Yes, sir; you warned us straight. But that man Bothwell had us bewitched."
"If you're taken ashore at Panama you'll be hanged."
"We know that, sir."
Blythe considered for a minute and announced his decision sharply.
"I'll give you another chance—you two and Higgins and young Fleming. I'll not let you off scot-free,but your punishment will depend on how faithful you are for the rest of the cruise."
Once I saw a man acquitted of murder in a courtroom. The verdict was such a relief that he fainted. The captain's unexpected clemency took these men the same way, for virtually he had untied the noose from their necks. Tears started to their eyes. Plainly they were shaken with emotion.
"You'll not regret it, sir. We'll be true to the death, Captain Blythe," the Irishman promised, his white lips trembling.
After Alderson's turn at the wheel came mine. Evelyn presently joined me in the pilot-house.
"When shall we get ashore?" she asked me.
We were at the time, I remember, passing Taboga Island.
"Not till morning. We'll have to be inspected. To-night we'll lie in the harbor."
"How is your hand?" she asked, glancing at my bruised fingers.
I flashed a look quickly at her.
"My hand! Oh, it's all right now."
"Jimmie's is better, too," she said quietly.
In the language of my boyhood I was up a stump. So I played for time.
"Jimmie's?"
"Yes. I have been taking care of it for him. Hisfingers were not bruised much, though. It's odd, isn't it, that both of you were hurt in exactly the same place—by accident?"
I murmured that it was strange.
"So I had a little talk with him," she went on quietly.
"Yes?"
"And he told me all about it. Oh, Jack, I didn't think even Boris would do a thing like that!" She looked up at me with bright, misty eyes. "I asked Gallagher and Neidlinger about it. They both told me how brave you were."
"I'm grateful for their certificate of valor," I answered lightly.
Before I knew what she was at my sweetheart had stooped to kiss the bruises above my knuckles. I snatched my hand away.
"Don't do that," I said gruffly. "It isn't exactly—you know—right."
"Why not?" She looked at me with head flung back in characteristic fashion. "Why not? They suffered for us, the poor, bruised fingers. Why shouldn't I honor them with my poor best?"
"Oh, well!" I shrugged, embarrassed by her shining ardor, even though in my heart it pleased me.
She came close to me.
"I love you better every day, Jack. You're splendid. Life is going to be a great, big thing for me with you."
"Even though we don't find the treasure?" I asked, thrilling with the joy of her confession.
"We've found the treasure," she whispered. "I don't give that"—she snapped her fingers with a gesture of scorn—"for all the gold that was ever buried compared to you, laddie. I just spend my time thanking God for you with all my heart."
"But you mustn't idealize me. I'm full of faults."
"Don't I know it? Don't I love your faults, too, you goose? Who wants a perfect man?"
"I know, I know."
The wheel was getting very little attention, for my darling was in my arms and I was kissing softly her tumbled hair and the shadows under her glorious eyes.
"Love is like that. It doesn't want perfection. I care more for you because you're always wanting your own way. The tiny, powdered freckles on the side of your nose are beauty marks to me."
"Youarea goose," she laughed. "But it's true. I've seen lots of handsomer men than you—Boris, for example; but I've never seen one so good looking."
"And that's just nonsense," I told her blithely.
"Of course it's nonsense. But there is no sense so true as nonsense."
I dare say we babbled foolishly the inarticulate rhapsody all lovers find so expressive.
CHAPTER XXTHE BIG DITCH
Darkness had fallen before we dropped anchor in the harbor of Panama. It was such a night as only the tropics can produce, the stars burning close and brilliant, the full moon rising out of a silent sea. In front of us the lights of the city came twinkling out. Behind them lay the mystery of conquest.
No spot in all the western hemisphere held so much of romance as this. Drake and Pizarro had tarried here in their blustering careers, Morgan had captured and burned the city.
Many times in the past centuries the Isthmus had been won and lost, but never had such a victory been gained as that our countrymen had secured in the past half dozen years.
They had overcome yellow fever and proved that the tropics might be made a safe place for the Anglo-Saxon to live. They had driven a sword through the backbone of the continent and had built a canal through which great liners could climb up and down stairs from one ocean to another.
The dream of the centuries had become a reality through the skill and resolution with which the sons of Uncle Sam had tackled the big ditch.
It may be guessed how anxious all of us were to get ashore. There was little sleep aboard theArgosthat night. It was long past midnight before any of us left the deck.
The truth is that the yacht had become a prison to us just as it had to Bothwell. The thought of a few days on land, where we need not watch every moment to keep our throats from being slit, was an enormous relief.
But Blythe was taking no chances with the vessel. It had been decided among us that either he, Yeager, or I should remain in charge of theArgosevery minute of our stay.
I had volunteered for the first day and Yeager was to relieve me on the second.
All three of us were firmly resolved, though we had not yet broached the subject to Evelyn, that the ladies should remain in the canal zone while we continued down the coast to lift the treasure.
Before Bothwell was taken ashore he had the effrontery to ask for a talk with his cousin. Blythe did not even submit his request to her. Fleming and he were removed from the vessel while the ladies were eating breakfast with Yeager, so thatthey did not even know until afterward that the men had been turned over to the authorities.
None of the reconstructed mutineers asked for shore leave. Each of them knew that if he left the ship he would be liable to arrest for a capital offense and preferred to take his chance of any punishment the captain might inflict.
The day was an endless one, but it wore away at last. The cattleman was to relieve me at breakfast time. I was up with the summer sun and had bathed, shaved, and eaten long before the city showed any sign of activity around the harbor.
"You'll like Panama," Yeager assured me after he had clambered aboard. "It's a city of madmen, plumb daffy about the big ditch. The men can't talk anything but cuts, dams, cubic feet, steam plows, and earth slides. But, by Moses, when I see what they've done it makes me glad I'm an American. Everything is the biggest in the world—the dam, the locks, the cuts, the lake, the machinery, the whole blessed works. They've set a new mark for the rest of the earth."
"What is Sam doing about getting a crew in place of our precious mutineers?" I asked.
"He's picked up several fellows already. A Yankee named Stubbs is chief engineer. Sam is shipping Jamaica niggers for firemen."
No schoolboy out for a holiday could have been half so keen to be free as I was. At the wharf I picked up acocheand was driven to the Tivoli, the hotel in the American quarter where our party was staying.
The mud and the mosquitoes of former years were gone, though the natives were as indolent as ever. It is a town of color, due largely to the assorted population. I was told by a young engineer from Gatun that forty languages are spoken on the Isthmus at present, a condition due to the number of Caribbean islanders employed by our government.
I found that the program for the day included a trip to Colon on the Isthmus railroad. Miss Berry preferred to rest quietly at the hotel, so her niece, Sam, and I set out to see the great canal.
As I look back on it now Panama means to me a series of panoramic pictures. To give more than a cursory description of our impressions is impossible. The fact is that one obliterated another so swiftly as to leave a sense only of confusion.
Take Culebra Cut, for instance, where the monsters of man's invention are biting into the mountain sides, ripping down with giant jaws loose dirt, and hauling it away on a maze of tracks.
Great hoses, under tremendous pressure, are tearingat hills and washing them down. All the time there is a deafening noise, the crash of the continent's spine being rent by dynamite, the roar of trains, the shrieks of dirt shovels blowing off steam, the stab and hammer of drills.
Man is making war on nature with amazing energy on a titanic scale. The disorder seemed hopeless, but one realized that these little figures moving about it in the man-made cañon were achieving the seemingly impossible none the less.
"Isn't it wonderful?" Evelyn asked for the tenth time, as we looked down on a machine which had just seized a section of track and hoisted it up, rails and ties complete, to swing it over to another place.
I quoted to her Damon Runyon's verses:
We are ants upon a mountain, but we're leavin' of our dent,An' our teeth-marks bitin' scenery they will show the way we went;We're a liftin' half-creation, and we're changin' it around,Just to suit our playful purpose when we're diggin' in the ground.
"You Americans take the cake," Blythe admitted. "You never tire of doing big things."
His eyes had come back to a group of young engineers who had just entered the car. The grimy sweat had dried on their sooty faces and theirhands were black and greasy. They wore no coats and their shirts, wet from the perspiration drawn by the hot Panama sun, stuck to the muscular shoulders.
They looked like tramps from their attire, but Olympians could not have carried in their manner a blither confidence. These boys—I'll swear the oldest could have been no more than twenty-five—had undertaken to cut asunder what God has joined.
It did not matter to them in the least that they looked like coal miners. The only thing of importance was the work, the big ditch. Yet I knew that these were just such splendid fellows as our technical schools are turning out by thousands.
A few years before their thoughts had been full of cotillions and girls and the junior prom. The Isthmus had laid hold of them and hardened their muscles and bronzed their faces and given them a toughness of fiber that would last a lifetime.
They had taken on responsibility as if they had been born to it. A glow of pride in them flushed me. I was proud of the country that could fling out by hundreds of thousands such young fellows as these.
Empire, Gorgona, Gatun. From one to another we were hurried, passing through jungles such aswe of the North never dream exist. In that humid climate vegetation is prodigal beyond belief, gorgeous with spattered greens and yellows and crimsons bizarre enough to take the breath.
We ate luncheon at Colon and were back across the Isthmus at Panama a few hours later. After dinner we strolled around the city and saw the Parque de la Catedral, the Plaza Santa Ana, and the old sea wall.
It did my heart good to see broad-shouldered, alert young Americans walking with wholesome girls from home and making love to them in the same fashion their friends were doing up in "God's country."
Bothwell and his bunch of pirates began to lose themselves in the background of my mind. There was a dance at the hotel that evening. Before I had waltzed twice with Evelyn her buccaneer cousin had dissolved into a myth.
When Yeager came ashore next morning he brought a piece of news. Henry Fleming had taken a boat during the night and escaped.
"If I run across him I'll curl his hair for him," Tom promised with a look that made me think he would keep his word.
But I was not sorry Fleming had taken French leave. Neidlinger could be trusted now, andneither Higgins nor Gallagher would go far astray without a leader.
But both the engineers had known of Bothwell's plans from the first. If I could have foreseen what effect the desertion of our second engineer was to have upon the expedition I would not have taken his disappearance so easily.
Our stay on the canal zone was a delightful one, though we were busy every minute of the time enjoying ourselves or making preparations for departure. With some difficulty Blythe picked up two engineers and a couple of firemen from Barbados and Jamaica, the latter of whom were natives. Philips was to stay at Panama until our return.
I had my share of duty aboard theArgosto do, but every minute that was my own I spent in the old city or on the works.
Evelyn surprised us by making no objection to our decree that she should remain at Panama while we took theArgosdown to San Miguel Bay to lift the doubloons. In spite of her courage she was a woman. She confessed to me that she had seen bloodshed enough on the way down from California to last her a lifetime. The thought of returning so soon to the yacht had been a dreadful one to her.
On the afternoon of our last day at Panama,Evelyn and I went out to the old sea wall for an hour together. The tide was in and from the parapet we watched the waves beat against the foot of the wall.
Away to our right was Balboa, above which rested a smoke pall from tugs, dredges, and tramp west coasters. Taboga we could just make out, and closer in a group of smaller islands the names of which I have forgotten. Beyond them all stretched the endless Pacific.
Evelyn was quieter than usual, but I had never seen her look so lovely. The poise of my dear girl's burnished head, the untutored grace of her delicate youth, the gleam of tears behind the tremulous smile, all made mighty appeal to me.
"I'm afraid for you, Jack. That's the truth of it. We've just found each other—after all these years. I don't want to run the risk of losing you again." Ever so slightly her voice broke.
"You'll not lose me. Do you think anything could keep me away—with the sweetest girl in the world waiting for me here?"
"I know," she smiled, a little drearily. "It sounds foolish, but I think of that dreadful man."
We had been following the cement promenade on top of the wall. I led her across it to the landward side, from which we could look down intothe yard of a prison. Under the eyes of an armed guard some prisoners were crossing to their cells. Two of them were in stripes, the third was not.
"Look," I told her. "Bothwell is down there, locked up and guarded. He can't escape."
The little group below came closer. I had noticed that the prisoner not in uniform was a white man and not a native. He carried himself with a distinction one could not miss. Even before he looked up both of us knew the man was Boris Bothwell.
He stopped in his tracks, white-lipped, a devil of hatred and rage burning out of his deep-set eyes. A dullard could not have missed his thoughts. He was a prisoner in this vile hole, while I had brought the woman he loved to mock at him. The girl and the treasure would both be mine. Before him lay no hope.
I felt a sense of shame at being an unexpected witness of his degradation. As I started to draw Evelyn back a guard prodded the Slav with his bayonet point. Bothwell whirled like a tiger and sprang for the throat of the fellow. They went down together. Other guards rushed to the rescue of their companion.
We waited to see no more.
It must have been a minute before either of us spoke.
"Bad as he is, I can't help being sorry for him. It's as if a splendid lion were being worried to death by a pack of coyotes," Evelyn said with a shudder.
"Yes, there's something big even in his villainy. But you may take one bit of comfort: He can't get free to interfere with us—and he deserves all he'll get."
"I know. My reason tells me that all will be well now, but I have a feeling as if the worst were not yet over."
I tried to joke her out of it.
"It hasn't begun. You're not married to Jack Sedgwick yet."
"No; but, dear, I can't get away from the thought that you are going into danger again," she went on seriously.
"Tis dangerous to take a cold, to sleep, to drink," I quoted lightly.
"I dare say I'm a goose," she admitted.
"You are. My opinion is that you're in as much danger as we shall be."
"Is that why you are leaving me here?" she flashed back.
I laughed. In truth I did not quite believe whatI had said. For I could see no danger at all that lay in wait for her. But the events proved that I had erred only in not putting the case strongly enough. Before we returned to civilization she was to be in deadly peril.
CHAPTER XXIA MESSAGE FROM BUCKS
In the forenoon we drew out from the harbor and followed the shore line toward the southwest, bound for that neck of the Isthmus which is known loosely as The Darien.
Before night had fallen we were rounding Brava Point into the Gulf of San Miguel, so named by Balboa because it was upon St. Michael's Day, 1513, that his eyes here first fell upon the blue waters of the Pacific.
We followed the north shore, along precipitous banks that grew higher the farther inland we went. The dense jungle came down to the water's edge and was unbroken by any sign of human habitation.
In the brilliant moonlight we passed the South and the North bays, pushing straight into the Darien Harbor by way of the Boco Chico. The tides here have a rise and fall of nearly twenty feet, but we found a little inlet close to a mangrove swamp that offered a good harborage for the night.
The warm sun was pouring over the hill whenI reached the deck next morning. We were steaming slowly past the village of La Palma along a precipitous shore heavily timbered. One could not have asked a pleasanter trip than that to the head of the harbor, at which point the Rio Tuyra pours its waters into the bay. Between La Palma and the river mouth we did not see a sign of human life.
At the distance of a rifle shot from the head of the harbor we rounded a point and saw before us a long tongue of sand running into the water.
Blythe and I spoke almost together:
"Doubloon Spit."
There could be no mistake about it. We had reached the place where Bully Evans and Nat Quinn had buried the gold ingots they had sold their souls to get. We came to anchor a couple of hundred yards from the end of the sand spit.
Neither Blythe nor I had said a word to any of the crew to indicate that we were near our journey's end, but all morning there had been an unusual excitement aboard. Now we could almost see the word run from man to man that the spot where the treasure was buried lay before us.
"You'll command the shore party to-day, Jack," Blythe announced.
"Do I draw shore duty?" Yeager asked eagerly.
"You do. I'll stay with the ship. Jack, you'llhave with you, too, Alderson, Smith, Gallagher, and one of the stokers."
"Also James A. Garfield Welch," I added.
"Also Jimmie," he nodded.
We had no reason to expect any trouble, but we went ashore armed, with the exception of Gallagher and Barbados, as we called our white-toothed, black-faced fireman.
I had our boat beached at the neck of the peninsula. While the men were drawing it up on the sand beyond reach of the tide I called to Jimmie.
"Yes, Mr. Sedgwick."
"Take off your coat."
"Are youse going to give me that licking now?" he asked, eyes big with surprise.
"How often have I told you not to ask questions? Shuck the coat."
He twisted out of it like an eel. I took it from him, turned it inside out, and opened my pocket knife. Carefully I ripped the lining at the seams. From a kind of pocket I drew an envelope. Out of the envelope I took the map that had been so closely connected with the history of Doubloon Spit.
When I say the men were surprised, I do them less than justice. One could have knocked their eyes off with a stick.
"Crikey! I didn't know that was there," Jimmie cried.
It had been Evelyn's idea to sew the map in Jimmie's coat, since that was the last place the mutineers would think of looking for it. While he had been peacefully sleeping Miss Wallace had done so neat a piece of tailoring that Jimmie did not suspect the garment had been tampered with.
We had, however, taken the precaution to take a copy of the map. During all the desperate fighting it had been lying in a shell snugly fitted into one of the chambers of a revolver in Yeager's room.
"Beg pardon, sir. Did the boy have the map with him while he was Mr. Bothwell's prisoner?" asked Gallagher.
"He did; but he didn't know it."
"Glad he didn't, sir, because if he had that devil would have got it out of him."
"Which no doubt would have distressed you greatly," I answered dryly.
"I'm on the honest side now, sir," the sailor said quietly.
"Let's hope you stay there."
"I intend to, sir," he said, flushing at my words.
"CRIKEY! I DIDN'T KNOW THAT WAS THERE," JIMMIE CRIED. p. 240"CRIKEY! I DIDN'T KNOW THAT WAS THERE," JIMMIE CRIED. p. 240
The chart that Tom and I looked at was a contour map of the spit and the territory adjacent to it. No doubt it had in the old days been roughly accurate, but now the tongue of sand was wider than it had been by nearly a hundred years of sand deposits washed up by the tide.
Both on the map and the spit a salient feature was the grove of palms that stood on the hill just beyond the neck of the peninsula. Here plainly was the starting point of our quest. With Yeager I led the way to the clump, followed by my men carrying spades and shovels.
"Ye Grove" the clump of palms was labeled, and the great drooping tree to one side some fifty yards farther down the hill must be "Ye Umbrela Tree."
Beneath the map were the directions for finding the treasure, written in the angular hand of Nat Quinn. In order that you may understand I give these just as he had written them.
HOW TO FIND ITTE: **
From inlet nearest shore go 200 paces to summit where Grove is. From most eastern palm measure 12 steps to Ye Umbrela Tree and seven beyond. Take a Be line from here thirty paces throu ye Forked Tree. Here cut a Rite Anggel N. N. E. till Tong of Spit is lost. Cast three long steps Souwest to Big Rock and dig on landward side.
(Sined)
Bully EvansX (His Mark)Nat Quinn
While I had been poring over this map and the directions with it in my office at San Francisco it had seemed an easy thing to follow them, but in this dense, tropical jungle I found it quite another matter.
The vegetation and the underbrush were so rank that one found himself buried before he had gone three steps in them.
No doubt at the time when the survivors of theMary Annof Bristol had cached their ill-gotten doubloons a recent fire had swept this point of land so that they had found no difficulty in traversing it, but now the jungle was so thick and matted that I decided to begin by cutting roads to the palm grove and the umbrella tree.
From the yacht I got hatchets and machetes and we set to work. Before night we all had a tremendous respect for the power of resistance offered by a Panama jungle. We might almost as well have hacked at rubber.
There was none of that sturdy solidity of our northern woods. The jungle yields to every blow and springs back into place with a persistence that seems devilish. By nightfall we had made so little progress that I was discouraged.
To our right there was a mangrove swamp. As we passed its edge on the way back to the boat oureyes beheld thousands upon thousands of birds coming there to roost for the night. Among them were many aigrette herons, white as the driven snow. I think I have never seen a bird so striking as this one.
Blythe, with Neidlinger, Higgins, our engineers, and the other fireman, took the second day on shore. Morgan was doing the cooking, and so was exempt from service. Dugan, still weak from his wound, was helping in the galley as best as he could.
All through the third day it rained hard, but on the fourth I and my detail were back on the job. We were making progress. By this time a path had been cut through to the palm grove and from it to the umbrella tree.
It was clear that a century ago the line of palms must have stretched farther down the hill, for now the nearest was at least fifty yards from the umbrella tree, instead of twelve as mentioned in the directions.
The only alternative to this was that the original umbrella tree had disappeared, and this I did not want to believe. At best one of the landmarks had gone.
We could go seven paces beyond the big tree, but "beyond" is a vague word, the point from which the measurement began having vanished.
Moreover, we encountered here another difficulty.
"Take a Be line from here thirty paces throu ye Forked Tree," we read on the chart, but the forked tree had apparently fallen and rotted long since. There were trees in the jungle, to be sure, but none of them were of sufficient age to have been in existence then.
The best I could do was to guess at the point seven paces beyond the umbrella tree and, using it as a center, draw a circle around it at thirty paces. Our machetes hacked a trail, and at one point of it we crossed the stump of a tree that had been in its day of some size.
The stump had rotted so that one could kick it to pieces with the heel of a boot. This might or might not be the remains of the forked tree, but since we were working on a chance, this struck us as a good one to try.
It was impossible to tell where the fork had been, but we made a guess at it and proceeded to follow directions.
"Here cut a Rite Anggel N. N. E. till Tong of Spit is lost."
This at least was specific and definite. North northeast we went by the compass, slashing our way through the heavy vines and shrubbery inchby inch. We dipped over a hillock and came out of the jungle into the sand before the end of the spit was hidden by higher ground.
"Cast three long steps Souwest to Big Rock and dig on landward side."
Three steps to the southwest brought me deeper into the sand. There was no big rock in sight.
I looked at Tom. He laughed, as he had a habit of doing when in a difficulty.
"I guess we'll have to try again, Jack."
Gallagher broke in, touching his hat in apology:
"Not meaning to butt in, Mr. Sedgwick, but mightn't the rock be covered with sand? Give a hundred years and a heap of sand would wash into this cove here."
"There's sense in that. Anyhow, we'll try out your theory, Gallagher."
I marked a space about twelve by twelve upon which to begin operations. It took us an hour and a half to satisfy ourselves that nothing was hidden there.
I marked a second square, a third, and finally a fourth. Dusk fell before we had finished digging the last. Tired and dispirited we pulled back to the yacht.
During the night it came on to rain again, and for three successive days water sluiced down fromskies which never seemed empty of moisture. There was a gleam of sunshine the fourth day and though the jungle was like a shower bath Blythe took his machete and shovel squad to work.
At the end of the day they were back again. Sam had picked on a greatlignum vitæas the forked tree named in the chart and had come to disappointment, even as I had.
In the end it was Gallagher who set us right. By this time, of course, every member of our party had the directions on the chart by heart, though several had not read the paper. We had finished luncheon and several of the men were strolling about. I was half way through my cigar when Gallagher came swinging back almost at a run.
"Beg pardon, sir. Would you mind coming with me?"
"What is it?" I asked in some excitement.
"It may not amount to anything. I don't know. But I thought I'd tell you, Mr. Sedgwick."
He had been lying down on the sand where it ran back to the jungle from the farthest inlet. Kicking idly with his heel he had come to solid stone. An examination proved to him that he was lying on a big rock covered with sand.
"You think this is the Big Rock," I said, after I had examined it.
"That's my idea. Stand here, sir, at the edge. You can't see the tongue of the spit, can you?"
"No, but that doesn't prove anything. We can't see it from this inlet at all."
"Sure about that, sir? Take three steps nor'east—long ones. Can you see the point now?"
"No, there's a hillock between."
"Take one step more."
I moved forward another yard. Over the top of the rise I could just see the sand tongue running into the bay.
Jimmie, the irrepressible, broke out impatiently.
"Don't see what he's getting at, Mr. Sedgwick. The map says to take three stepssouthwestto the big rock."
"Exactly, Jimmie, but we're startingfromthe big rock, so we have to reverse directions. By Jove, I believe you've hit on the spot, Gallagher."
I called to Alderson to bring the men with their spades. A tree more than a foot thick at the ground had grown up at the edge of the rock. We brought this down by digging at the roots. After another quarter of an hour's work Barbados unearthed a bottle. He was as proud of his find as if it had been a bar of gold.
We were all excited. The bottle was passed from hand to hand.
"We're getting warm," I cried. "This is the spot. Remember that every mother's son of you shares what we find. Five dollars to the man that first touches treasure."
There was a cheer. The men fell to work with renewed vigor. Presently Gallagher's spade hit something solid. A little scraping showed the top of an iron box.
"I claim that five, sir," cried Gallagher.
I jumped into the hole beside him. With our hands we scraped the dirt away from the sides.
"Heave away," I gave the word.
We lifted the box to the solid ground above. It was very rusty, of a good size, and heavy.
"Let's open it now," cried Jimmie, dancing with enthusiasm.
"Let's not," I vetoed. "We'll take it on board first. Five dollars to the man that finds the second box."
But there was no second box. We worked till dark at the hole. Before we left there was an excavation large enough for the cellar of a house. But not a trace of more treasure did we find.
Blythe had decided it best not to open the treasure before the men, and though the crew was plainly disappointed we stuck to that resolution.
Sam promised the men that they should see itbefore we reached San Francisco, and that they should appoint two of their number to accompany the treasure to the assay office in that city to determine the value of our find and their share.
Yeager, being handier with an ax than the rest of us, broke open the lid of the chest. A piece of coarse sacking covered the contents. Blythe lifted this—and disclosed to our astonished eyes a jumble of stones and sand.
We looked at our find and at each other. Tom put our feeling into words.
"Bilked, by Moses!"
We tossed the rocks and sand upon the table and came to a piece of ragged paper folded in two. In a faint red four words were traced as if with the end of a pointed stick.
Sold, you devils!Bucks.