Doubloons-and the Girl Part 40

"An' we won't let this feller git away with it for long," answered Tyke. "We'll give him a tr.i.m.m.i.n.g he'll never forgit. But we'll choose our own time for it, an' that time ain't now. Wait till we've found the treasure an' got it safe on board. Then, my mighty! if he starts anything, put him an' his gang ash.o.r.e an' sail without 'em."

"You think, then, he wants me to knock the chip off his shoulder?"

mused the captain.

"Exactly," replied Tyke. "An' if you don't, he may be so flabbergasted that before he cooks up anything new we'll have the whip hand of him."

"Well, I'll do as you say, though it sure does go against the grain."

Tyke's recipe worked; for when Ditty sauntered to the p.o.o.p a little later to receive the rebuke which he expected and which he was prepared to resent, the wind was taken out of his sails by the captain's good nature and pleasant smile.

"Quite a little scare the men got, I suppose, when they felt the quake this morning?" Captain Hamilton inquired genially.

"Yes, sir," replied the mate. "There was nothin' to do but to get back to the ship. Some of 'em was so scared that they would 've swum the lagoon, and I didn't want 'em to do that for fear of sharks."

"Quite right, Mr. Ditty," returned the captain approvingly. "That is all."

Still Ditty lingered.

"I ordered the men in your boat to come back too," he said, eyeing the skipper aslant.

"That was all right too," replied the captain absently, as though the matter was of no importance. "The ship was so near that it wasn't worth while keeping the men out there in the sun all day."

Ditty stared. This was not the strict disciplinarian that Captain Hamilton had always been. He hesitated, opened his mouth to say something, found nothing to say, and at last, with his ideas disordered, went sullenly away. If he had planned to bring things to a crisis he had signally failed.

Captain Hamilton watched the retreating back of his mate with a somber glow in his eyes that contrasted strongly with the forced smile of a moment before, and then retired to the cabin to go again into conference with Grimshaw.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE GIANT AWAKES

Allen Drew had not been a party to the conference between Captain Hamilton and Grimshaw after supper. After the strenuous exertions of the day he had felt the need of a bath and a change of linen.

Once more clothed and feeling refreshed, Drew paced the afterdeck with his cigar, hearing the voices of Captain Hamilton and Tyke in the former's cabin, but having no desire just then to join them.

Although his body was rejuvenated, his mind was far from peaceful. He had not lost hope of their finding what they had come so far to search for; he still believed the pirate h.o.a.rd to be buried on the side of the whale's hump. "Hope deferred maketh the heart sick;" but hope had not been long enough deferred in this case to sicken any of the party of treasure seekers. Yet there was a great sickness at the heart of Allen Drew.

That particular incident of the afternoon that had brought the remembrance of Parmalee so keenly to his mind, had thrown a pall over his thoughts not easily lifted.

It had shown, too, that Parmalee's strange and awful death had strongly affected Ruth. That mystery was likely to erect a barrier between the girl and himself. Indeed, it had done so already. Drew felt it--he knew it!

There was in her father's att.i.tude something intangible, yet certain enough, which spelled the captain's doubt of him. As long as Parmalee's disappearance remained unexplained, as long as Ditty's story could not be disproved, Drew felt that Captain Hamilton would nurse in his mind a doubt of his innocence.

And that doubt, if it remained, whether Drew was ever tried for the crime of Parmalee's murder or not, just as surely put Ruth out of his grasp as though his hands actually dripped of the dead man's blood.

Captain Hamilton would never see his daughter marry a man under such a cloud. Drew appreciated the character of the schooner's commander too thoroughly to base any illusions upon the fact that Hamilton treated him kindly. They were partners in this treasure hunt. The doubloons once secured, the _Bertha Hamilton_ once in port, Drew well knew that Ruth's father would do what he felt to be his duty. He would be Drew's accuser at the bar of public justice. That, undoubtedly, was a foregone conclusion.

Plunged in the depth of these despairing thoughts, Drew was startled by the light fall of a soft hand upon his arm, and he descried the slight figure of Ruth beside him.

"Walking the deck alone, Allen?" she said softly. "I wondered where you were."

"Just doing my usual forty laps after supper," he responded, trying to speak lightly.

"I should think your work to-day in the digging, to say nothing of our experience in the cave, would have been as much exercise as you really needed," she said, laughing. "And all for nothing!"

"We could scarcely expect success so soon," he replied.

"No? Perhaps success is not to be our portion, Allen. What then?"

"Well," and he tried to say it cheerfully, "we've had a run for our money."

"A run for the pirate's money, you mean. Let's see," she added slyly, "that confession did not state just how many doubloons were buried, did it?"

"The amount specified I failed to make out," he told her. "Time had erased it."

"Then we are after an unknown amount--an unknown quant.i.ty of doubloons.

And perhaps we are fated never to know the amount of the pirate's h.o.a.rd," and she laughed again. Then, suddenly, she clutched his arm more tightly as they paced the deck together, crying under her breath: "Oh! look yonder Allen."

A strangely flickering light dispelled the pall that hung above the hilltop. The cloud of smoke or steam, rising from the crater and which they had first seen that afternoon, was now illuminated and shot through with rays of light evidently reflected from the bowels of the hill.

"The volcano is surely alive!" cried the young man.

The crew, loafing on the forecastle, saw the phenomenon, and their chattering voices rose in a chorus of excitement. Tyke came up from below and joined Drew and the captain's daughter. The glare of the volcano illuminated the night, and they could see each other's features distinctly.

"Looks like we'd stirred things up over there," chuckled the old man.

"There are more'n ghosts of dead and gone pirates guarding that treasure."

"It--it is rather terrifying, isn't it?" Ruth suggested.

"It is to them ignorant swabs for'ard," growled Tyke. "Good thing, though. They'll be too scared to want to roam over the island. We want it to ourselves till we find the loot. Don't we, Allen?"

"That's true. The disturbance over there may not be an unmitigated evil," was the young man's rejoinder.

Captain Hamilton called Ruth through the open window of his cabin, and she bade Grimshaw and Allen Drew good night and went below. Tyke remained only long enough to finish his cigar, then he departed.

The light over the volcano faded, the rumblings ceased. Drew, in his rubber-soled shoes, paced the deck alone; but he could not be seen ten feet away, for he wore dark clothes.

He knew that Mr. Rogers had long since gone to his room. Most of the crew had either sought their bunks or were stretched out on the forecastle hatch. Yet he heard a low murmur of voices from amidships.

When he paced to that end of his walk, the voices reached him quite clearly and he recognized that of the one-eyed mate. The other man he knew to be Bingo, the only English sailor aboard--a shrewd and rat-faced little c.o.c.kney.

"Blime me, Bug-eye! but wot Hi sye Hi means. The devil 'imself's near where there's so much brimstone. If that hull bloomin' 'ill blows hup, where'll we be, Hi axes ye?"

"Jest here or hereabouts," growled Ditty.

Drew stepped nearer and frankly listened to the conversation.

"Hi'm as 'ungry for blunt as the next bloke, an' ye sye there's plenty hin it----"