Foul Play Part 44

"Oh, no; I have my seal-skin jacket on; and it is so sheltered here. I wish you were as well off."

"You are not afraid to be alone down there?"

"I am not alone when your voice is near me. Now don't you fidget yourself, dear friend. I like these little excitements. I have told you so before. Listen. How calm and silent it all is; the place; the night!

The mind seems to fill with great ideas, and to feel its immortality."

She spoke with solemnity, and he heard in silence.

Indeed it was a reverend time and place. The sea, whose loud and penetrating tongue had, in some former age, created the gully where they both sat apart, had of late years receded and kissed the sands gently that calm night; so gently, that its long, low murmur seemed but the echo of tranquillity.

The voices of that pair sounded supernatural, one speaking up, and the other down, the speakers quite invisible.

"Mr. Hazel," said Helen, in a low, earnest voice; "they say that night gives wisdom even to the wise; think now, and tell me your true thoughts.

Has the foot of man ever trod upon this island before?"

There was a silence due to a question so grave, and put with solemnity, at a solemn time, in a solemn place.

At last Hazel's thoughtful voice came down. "The world is very, very, very old. So old, that the words 'Ancient History' are a falsehood, and Moses wrote but as yesterday. And man is a very old animal upon this old, old planet; and has been everywhere. I cannot doubt he has been here."

Her voice went up. "But have you seen any signs?"

His voice came down. "I have not looked for them. The bones and the weapons of primeval man are all below earth's surface at this time of day."

There was a dead silence. Then Helen's voice went up again. "But in modern times? Has no man landed here from far-off places, since ships were built?"

The voice came sadly down. "I do not know."

The voice went up. "But think!"

The voice came down. "What calamity can be new in a world so old as this?

Everything we can do, and suffer, others of our race have done, and suffered."

The voice went up. "Hush! there's something moving on the sand."

CHAPTER x.x.xV.

HAZEL waited and listened. So did Helen, and her breath came fast; for in the stilly night she heard light but mysterious sounds. Something was moving on the sand very slowly and softly, but nearer and nearer. Her heart began to leap. She put out her hand instinctively to clutch Mr.

Hazel; but he was too far off. She had the presence of mind and the self-denial to disguise her fears; for she knew he would come headlong to her a.s.sistance.

She said in a quavering whisper, "I'm not frightened; only v--very c--curious."

And now she became conscious that not only one but several things were creeping about.

Presently the creeping ceased, and was followed by a louder and more mysterious noise. In that silent night it sounded like raking and digging. Three or four mysterious visitants seemed to be making graves.

This was too much; especially coming as it did after talk about the primeval dead. Her desire to scream was so strong, and she was so afraid Hazel would break his neck, if she relieved her mind in that way, that she actually took her handkerchief and bit it hard.

But this situation was cut short by a beneficent luminary. The sun rose with a magnificent bound--it was his way in that lat.i.tude--and everything unpleasant winced that moment; the fog shivered in its turn, and appeared to open in furrows as great javelins of golden light shot through it from the swiftly rising orb.

Soon those golden darts increased to streams of portable fire, that burst the fog and illumined the wet sands. And Helen burst out laughing like chanticleer, for this first break of day revealed the s.e.xtons that had scared her--three ponderous turtles, crawling, slow and clumsy, back to sea. Hazel joined her, and they soon found what these evil spirits of the island had been at, poor wretches. They had each buried a dozen eggs in the sand; one dozen of which were very soon set boiling. At first, indeed, Helen objected that they had no sh.e.l.ls, but Hazel told her she might as well complain of a rose without a thorn. He a.s.sured her turtles'

eggs were a known delicacy, and very superior to birds' eggs; and so she found them. They were eaten with the keenest relish.

"And now," said Helen, "for my discoveries. First, here are my English leaves, only bigger. I found them on a large tree."

"English leaves!" cried Hazel, with rapture. "Why, it is the caoutchouc!"

"Oh, dear," said Helen, in a disappointed tone; "I took it for the India-rubber free."

"It is the India-rubber tree; and I have been hunting for it all over the island in vain, and using wretchedly inferior gums for want of it."

"I'm so glad," said Helen. "And now I have something else to show you.

Something that curdled my blood; but I dare say I was very foolish." She then took him half across the sand and pointed out to him a number of stones dotted over the sand in a sort of oval. These stones, streaked with sea gra.s.s, and incrusted with small sh.e.l.ls, were not at equal distances, but yet, allowing for gaps, they formed a decided figure.

Their outline resembled a great fish, wanting the tail.

"Can this be chance?" asked Helen; "oh, if it should be what I fear, and that is--savages!"

Hazel considered it attentively a long time. "Too far at sea for living savages," said he. "And yet it cannot be chance. What on earth is it? It looks Druidical. But how can that be? The island was smaller when these were placed here than it is now." He went nearer and examined one of the stones; then he sc.r.a.ped away the sand from its base, and found it was not shaped like a stone, but more like a whale's rib. He became excited; went on his knees, and tore the sand up with his hands. Then he rose up agitated, and traced the outline again. "Great Heaven!" said he, "why, it is a ship."

"A ship!"

"Ay," said he, standing in the middle of it; "here, beneath our feet, lies man; with his work, and his treasures. This carca.s.s has been here for many a long year; not so very long, either; she is too big for the sixteenth century, and yet she must have been sunk when the island was smaller. I take it to be a Spanish or Portuguese ship; probably one of those treasure-ships our commodores, and chartered pirates, and the American buccaneers, used to chase about these seas. Here lie her bones and the bones of her crew. Your question was soon answered. All that we can say has been said; can do has been done; can suffer has been suffered."

They were silent, and the sunk ship's bones moved them strangely. In their deep isolation from the human race, even the presence of the dead brought humanity somehow nearer to them.

They walked thoughtfully away, and made across the sands for Telegraph Point.

Before they got home, Helen suggested that perhaps, if he were to dig in the ship, he might find something useful.

He shook his head: "Impossible! The iron has all melted away like sugar long before this. Nothing can have survived but gold and silver, and they are not worth picking up, much less digging for; my time is too precious.

No, you have found two buried treasures to-day--turtles' eggs, and a ship, freighted, as I think, with what men call the precious metals.

Well, the eggs are gold, and the gold is a drug--there it will lie for me."

Both discoveries bore fruits. The ship: Hazel made a vow that never again should any poor ship lay her ribs on this island for want of warning. He buoyed the reefs. He ran out to White Water Island, and wrote an earnest warning on the black reef, and, this time, he wrote with white on black.

He wrote a similar warning, with black on white, at the western extremity of G.o.dsend Island.

The eggs: Hazel watched for the turtles at daybreak; turned one now and then; and fed Helen on the meat or its eggs, morn, noon and night.

For some time she had been advancing in health and strength. But, when the rains declined considerably, and she was all day in the air, she got the full benefit of the wonderful climate, and her health, appet.i.te and muscular vigor became truly astonishing; especially under what Hazel called the turtle cure; though, indeed, she was cured before. She ate three good meals a day, and needed them; for she was up with the sun, and her hands and feet never idle till he set.

Four months on the island had done this. But four months had not shown those straining eyes the white speck on the horizon; the sail, so looked and longed for.

Hazel often walked the island by himself; not to explore, for he knew the place well by this time, but he went his rounds to see that all his signals were in working order.

He went to Mount Lookout one day with this view. It was about an hour before noon. Long before he got to the mountain he had scanned the horizon carefully, as a matter of course; but not a speck. So, when he got there, he did not look seaward, but just saw that his flagstaff was all right and was about to turn away and go home, when he happened to glance at the water; and there, underneath him, he saw--a ship; standing toward the island.