A Romany of the Snows Part 33

Bissonnette paused on an out-pull, and threw back his head with a soundless laugh, then played the concertina into contortions.

"That Lafarge! H'm! He is very polite; but pshaw, it is no use that, in whisky-running! To beat a great man, a man must be great. Tarboe Noir can lead M'sieu' Lafarge all like that!"

It seemed as if he were pulling the nose of the concertina. Tarboe began tracing a kind of maze with his fingers on the deck, his eyes rolling outward like an endless puzzle. But presently he turned sharp on Joan.

"How many times have you met him?" he asked. "Oh, six or seven--eight or nine, perhaps."

Her father stared. "Eight or nine? By the holy! Is it like that? Where have you seen him?"

"Twice at our home, as you know; two or three times at dances at the Belle Chatelaine, and the rest when we were at Quebec in May. He is amusing, M'sieu' Lafarge."

"Yes, two of a kind," remarked Tarboe drily; and then he told his schemes to Joan, letting Bissonnette hang up the "The Demoiselle with the Scarlet Hose," and begin "The Coming of the Gay Cavalier." She entered into his plans with spirit, and together they speculated what bay it might be, of the many on the coast of Labrador.

They spent two days longer waiting, and then at dawn a merchantman came sauntering up to anchor. She signalled to the Ninety-Nine. In five minutes Tarboe was climbing up the side of the Free-and-Easy, and presently was in Gobal's cabin, with a gla.s.s of wine in his hand.

"What kept you, Gobal?" he asked. "You're ten days late, at least."

"Storm and sickness--broken mainmast and smallpox." Gobal was not cheerful.

Tarboe caught at something. "You've got our man?" Gobal drank off his wine slowly. "Yes," he said. "Well?--Why don't you fetch him?"

"You can see him below."

"The man has legs, let him walk here. h.e.l.lo, my Gobal, what's the matter? If he's here bring him up. We've no time to lose."

"Tarboe, the fool got smallpox, and died three hours ago--the tenth man since we started. We're going to give him to the fishes. They're putting him in his linen now."

Tarboe's face hardened. Disaster did not dismay him, it either made him ugly or humourous, and one phase was as dangerous as the other.

"D'ye mean to say," he groaned, "that the game is up? Is it all finished? Sweat o' my soul, my skin crawls like hot gla.s.s! Is it the end, eh? The beast, to die!"

Gobal's eyes glistened. He had sent up the mercury, he would now bring it down.

"Not such a beast as you think. Alive pirate, a convict, as comrade in adventure, is not sugar in the teeth. This one was no better than the worst. Well, he died. That was awkward. But he gave me the chart of the bay before he died--and that was d.a.m.n square."

Tarboe held out his hand eagerly, the big fingers bending claw-like.

"Give it me, Gobal," he said.

"Wait. There's no hurry. Come along, there's the bell: they're going to drop him."

He coolly motioned, and pa.s.sed out from the cabin to the ship's side.

Tarboe kept his tongue from blasphemy, and his hand from the captain's shoulder, for he knew only too well that Gobal held the game in his hands. They leaned over and saw two sailors with something on a plank.

"We therefore commit his body to the deep, in the knowledge of the Judgment Day--let her go!" grunted Gobal; and a long straight canvas bundle shot with a swishing sound beneath the water. "It was rough on him too," he continued. "He waited twenty years to have his chance again. d.a.m.n me, if I didn't feel as if I'd hit him in the eye, somehow, when he begged me to keep him alive long enough to have a look at the rhino. But it wasn't no use. He had to go, and I told him so.

"Then he did the fine thing: he give me the chart. But he made me swear on a book of the Ma.s.s that if we got the gold we'd send one-half his share to a woman in Paris, and the rest to his brother, a priest at Nancy. I'll keep my word--but yes! Eh, Tarboe?"

"You can keep your word for me! What, you think, Gobal, there is no honour in Black Tarboe, and you've known me ten years! Haven't I always kept my word like a clock?"

Gobal stretched out his hand. "Like the sun-sure. That's enough. We'll stand by my oath. You shall see the chart."

Going again inside the cabin, Gobal took out a map grimed with ceaseless fingering, and showed it to Tarboe, putting his finger on the spot where the treasure lay.

"The Bay of Belle Amour!" cried Tarboe, his eyes flashing. "Ah, I know it! That's where Gaspard the pilot lived. It's only forty leagues or so from here." His fingers ran here and there on the map. "Yes, yes," he continued, "it's so, but he hasn't placed the reef right. Ah, here is how Brigond's ship went down! There's a needle of rock in the bay. It isn't here."

Gobal handed the chart over. "I can't go with you, but I take your word; I can say no more. If you cheat me I'll kill you; that's all."

"Let me give a bond," said Tarboe quickly. "If I saw much gold perhaps I couldn't trust myself, but there's someone to be trusted, who'll swear for me. If my daughter Joan give her word--"

"Is she with you?"

"Yes, in the Ninety-Nine, now. I'll send Bissonnette for her. Yes, yes, I'll send, for gold is worse than bad whisky when it gets into a man's head. Joan will speak for me."

Ten minutes later Joan was in Gobal's cabin, guaranteeing for her father the fulfilment of his bond. An hour afterwards the Free-and-Easy was moving up stream with her splintered mast and ragged sails, and the Ninety-Nine was looking up and over towards the Bay of Belle Amour. She reached it in the late afternoon of the next day. Bissonnette did not know the object of the expedition, but he had caught the spirit of the affair, and his eyes were like spots of steel as he held the sheet or took his turn at the tiller. Joan's eyes were now on the sky, now on the sail, and now on the land, weighing as wisely as her father the advantage of the wind, yet dwelling on that cave where skeletons kept ward over the spoils of a pirate ship.

They arrived, and Tarboe took the Ninety-Nine warily in on a little wind off the land. He came near sharing the fate of Brigond, for the yawl grazed the needle of the rock that, hiding away in the water, with a nose out for destruction, awaits its victims. They reached safe anchorage, but by the time they landed it was night, with, however, a good moon showing.

All night they searched, three silent, eager figures, drawing step by step nearer the place where the ancient enemy of man was barracked about by men's bodies. It was Joan who, at last, as dawn drew up, discovered the hollow between two great rocks where the treasure lay. A few minutes' fierce digging, and the kegs of gold were disclosed, showing through the ribs of two skeletons. Joan shrank back, but the two men tossed aside the rattling bones, and presently the kegs were standing between them on the open sh.o.r.e. Bissonnette's eyes were hungry--he knew now the wherefore of the quest. He laughed outright, a silly, loud, hysterical laugh. Tarboe's eyes shifted from the sky to the river, from the river to the kegs, from the kegs to Bissonnette. On him they stayed a moment. Bissonnette shrank back. Tarboe was feeling for the first time in his life the deadly suspicion which comes with ill-gotten wealth.

This pa.s.sed as his eyes and Joan's met, for she had caught the melodrama, the overstrain; Bissonnette's laugh had pointed the situation; and her sense of humour had prevailed. "La, la," she said, with a whimsical quirk of the head, and no apparent relevancy:

"Lady-bird, lady-bird, fly away home, Your house is on fire, and your children all gone."

The remedy was good. Tarboe's eyes came again to their natural liveliness, and Bissonnette said:

"My throat's like a piece of sand-paper."

Tarboe handed over a brandy flask, after taking a pull himself, and then sitting down on one of the kegs, he said: "It is as you see, and now Angel Point very quick. To get it there safe, that's the thing!" Then, scanning the sky closely: "It's for a handsome day, and the wind goes to bear us up fine. Good! Well, for you, Bissonnette, there shall be a thousand dollars, you shall have the Belle Chatelaine Inn and the little lady at Point Pierrot. For the rest, you shall keep a quiet tongue, eh?

If not, my Bissonnette, we shall be the best of strangers, and you shall not be happy. Hein?"

Bissonnette's eyes flashed. "The Belle Chatelaine? Good! That is enough.

My tongue is tied; I cannot speak; it is fastened with a thousand pegs."

"Very good, a thousand gold pegs, and you shall never pull them. The little lady will have you with them, not without; and unless you stand by me, no one shall have you at any price--by G.o.d!"

He stood up, but Joan put out her hand. "You have been speaking, now it is my turn. Don't cry cook till you have the venison home. What is more, I gave my word to Gobal, and I will keep it. I will be captain.

No talking! When you've got the kegs in the cellar at Angel Point, good!

But now--come, my comrades, I am your captain!"

She was making the thing a cheerful adventure, and the men now swung the kegs on their shoulders and carried them to the boat. In another half-hour they were under way in the gaudy light of an orange sunrise, a simmering wind from the sea lifting them up the river, and the grey-red coast of Labrador shrinking sullenly back.

About this time, also, a Government cutter was putting out from under the mountain-wall at Quebec, its officer in command having got renewed orders from the Minister to bring in Tarboe the smuggler. And when Mr.

Martin, the inspector in command of the expedition, was ordered to take with him Mr. Orvay Lafarge and five men, "effectively armed," it was supposed by the romantic Minister that the matter was as good as done.

What Mr. Orvay Lafarge did when he got the word, was to go straight to his hat-peg, then leave the office, walk to the little club where he spent leisure hours, called office hours by people who wished to be precise as well as suggestive,--sit down, and raise a gla.s.s to his lips.

After which he threw himself back in his chair and said: "Well, I'm particularly d.a.m.ned!" A few hours later they were away on their doubtful exploit.

II. THE DEFENCE