Pieces of Eight Part 26

"The pock-marked party," ran the message as delivered by Samson, "had left the harbour in his sloop that morning. Yes, sar!"

"Ha! ha!" laughed the "King," turning to me. "So two can play at that game, says Henry P. Tobias, Jr. But if we haven't fooled him, let's make sure that he hasn't fooled us. We'll bring up your crew all the same--what do you think?"

"Under cover of the dark," I a.s.sented.

CHAPTER XII

_In Which the "King" Imprisons Me with Some Old Books and Pictures._

Nothing further transpired that day, and, at nightfall, we brought the crew of the _Flamingo_ up to the house--all but two of them, whom we left on guard. Two out of six was rather more than we had bargained for, but we found that none of them had the courage to face the night there in that dismal swamp alone--and we couldn't blame them, for a more devil-haunted desolation could not be imagined even in the daylight, and the mere thought of what might go on there after dark was enough to uncurl the wool on the head of the bravest negro. And we agreed, too, that the watch should be changed nightly, a fresh pair going on duty each evening.

Then there was nothing to do but sit down and await events--amongst them, the coming of Charlie Webster.

In regard to this, we had decided that it would be as well that, instead of disembarking at the settlement, he should come and join the _Flamingo_ in the hidden creek; so Samson was once more despatched down to Sweeney with a letter for him to hand to Charlie on his arrival, giving him direction how to find us. Meanwhile, our two men on the _Flamingo_ could keep watch for him by day, and have a light burning for him at the entrance of the creek by night.

The "King's" instructions to me were that I was not to show my nose outside the house. Possibly I might expose the tip of it once in a while, for a little exercise in the garden--where all this time the little silver fountain went on playing amid the golden hush of the orange trees, filling the lotus flowers with big pearls of spray. But, most of the day, I must regard myself as a prisoner, with the entire freedom of his study--a large airy room on the second floor, well furnished with all manner of books, old prints, strange fishes in gla.s.s cases, rods, guns, pipe-racks, curiosities of every kind from various parts of the world--India, the South Seas, Australia, not forgetting London and Paris--and all the flotsam and jetsam of a far-wandered man, who--as the "King" remarked, introducing their autobiographic display with a comprehensive wave of his hand--had, like that other wanderer unbeloved of all schoolboys, the pious aeneas, been so much tossed about on land and sea--_vi superum, saevae memorem Junonis ob iram_--that he might found his city and bring safe his household G.o.ds from Latium.

Touching his hand lightly on a row of old quartos, in the stout calfskin and tarnished gold dear to bookmen, he said:

"These I recommend to you in your enforced leisure."

They were a collection of old French voyages--Dampier and others--embellished with copper-plate maps and quaint engravings of the fauna and flora of the world, still in all the romantic virginity of its first discovery.

"This," he said, pointing to a stout old jar of Devonshire ware, "is some excellent English tobacco--my one extravagance; and here," pointing to a pipe-rack, "are some well-tried friends from that same 'dear, dear land,' 'sceptred isle of kings,' and so forth. And now I am going to leave you, while I go with Samson and Erebus on a little reconnoitring tour around our domains."

So he left me, and I settled down to a pipe and a volume of Dampier; but, interesting as I found the st.u.r.dy old pages, my thoughts, and perhaps particularly my heart, were too much in the present for my attention long to be held by even so adventurous a past; so, laying the book down, I rose from my chair, and made a tour of inspection of the various eloquent objects about the room--objects which made a sort of chronicle in bric-a-brac of my fantastic friend's earthly pilgrimage, and here and there seemed to hint at the story of his strange soul.

Among the books, for example, was a fine copy of Homer, with the arms of a well-known English college stamped on the binding, and near by was the faded photograph of a beautiful old Elizabethan house, with mouldering garden walls, and a moat br.i.m.m.i.n.g with water-lilies surrounding it.

Hanging close by it, was another faded photograph, of a tall stately old lady, who, at a glance, I surmised must be the "King's" mother. As I looked at it, my eyes involuntarily sought the garden with its palms and its orange trees. Far indeed had the son of her heart wandered, like so many sons of stately English mothers, from that lilied moat and those old gables, and the proud old eyes that would look on her son no more forever.

And then in my privileged inspection of these sacred symbols, carried across so many storm-tossed seas from that far-away Latium, I came upon another photograph, hanging over the writing-desk--a tall, Spanish-looking young woman of remarkable beauty. It needed but one glance to realise that here was Calypso's mother; and, as was natural, I stood a long time scanning the countenance that was so like the face which, from my first sight of it, had seemed the loveliest in the world.

This was a flower that had been the mother of a flower. It was a face more primitive in its beauty, a little less touched with race, than the one I loved, but the same fearless natural n.o.bility was in it, and the figure had the same wild grace of pose, the same lithe strength of carriage.

As I stood looking at it, lost in thought, I heard the "King's" voice behind me. His step was so light that I had not heard him enter the room.

"You are looking at Calypso's mother!" he said. "She was a beautiful creature. I will tell you of her some day, Ulysses."

And indeed, that very night, as we sat over our pipes, he told me; and without a word of his, I knew that the loneliness of his heart had singled me out for his friend, since, for all his love of speech, he was not the man to speak easily of the deep things of his heart.

"Beauty is a very mysterious thing, friend Ulysses," he began, his eyes musing on the face above his desk, "as our old friends of the Siege of Troy knew all too well. The eternal Helen! And in nothing is the divinity of youth so clearly shown as in its worship of beauty, its faith that there is nothing the world holds--the power and the glory, the riches and the honours--nothing so well worth fighting for as a beautiful face. When the world was young, the whole world thought that too. Now we make ign.o.ble war for markets, but the Greeks made n.o.bler warfare--for a beautiful face--

"The face that launched a thousand ships, And burnt the topless towers of Ilium.

"So is it still with every young man. 'Fair Helen! make me immortal with a kiss' is still his cry. t.i.tles and broad lands, and all such earthly gear--what are these to a youth, with his eyes on the face of the eternal Helen?--that face we meet once and once only, and either win--to lose all the rest, or lose--and win what? What is there to win if that be lost? So, at all events, it was with me, who, after winging away from those old gables yonder on all the adventurous winds of the seven seas, and having in truth looked into many a fair face in every corner of the globe, suddenly, in a certain little island of the French West Indies, came upon the face I had been unconsciously seeking.

"So, long years before my coming, had it befallen also with a certain young French n.o.bleman, out there on military service, who had set eyes on Calypso's grandmother in the streets of that quaint little town, where the French soul seems almost more at home than in France itself.

All had seemed nothing to him--his ancestral ties, his brilliant future--compared with that glory of a woman. He married her and settled down for good, the world well lost, in that dream island. And the dream he had been faithful to remained faithful to him. He seems to have been a singularly happy man. I never saw him, for he was dead when I set foot on his island--destined, though I knew it not, to live his life again in the love of his daughter.

"She and her mother were living quietly on the small fortune he had left them, in an old palm-shaded house backed by purple mountains, and sung to by the sea. The soul of old France seemed to haunt that old house like a perfume, taking on a richer colour and drawing a more ardent life from the pa.s.sionate tropic soul that enfolded it. Both had mysteriously met and become visibly embodied in the lovely girl, in whose veins the best blood of France blended with the molten gold of tropic suns. So, as had happened with her mother, again it happened with her--she took the wandering man to her heart"--he paused--"held him there for some happy years"--he paused again--"and the rest is--Calypso."

We did not speak for a long time after he had ended, but his confidence had touched me so nearly that I felt I owed him my heart in exchange, and it was hard not to cry out: "And now I love Calypso. Once more the far-wandered man has found the great light on a lonely sh.o.r.e."

But I felt that to speak yet--believer in the miracle of love though he had declared himself to be--would seem as though I set too slight a value on the miracle itself.

There should be a long hush before we speak, when a star has fallen out of heaven into our hearts.

CHAPTER XIII

_We Begin to Dig._

Two or three days went by, but as yet there was no news of either Charlie Webster or Tobias. Nothing further had been heard of the latter in the settlement, and a careful patrolling of the neighbourhood revealed no signs of him. Either his sailing away was a bona-fide performance, or he was lying low in some other part of the island--which, of course, would not be a difficult thing for him to do, as most of it was wilderness--and as, also, there were one or two coves on the deserted northern side where he could easily bide his time.

Between that coast and us, however, lay some ten miles of scrub and mangrove swamps, and it was manifestly out of the question to patrol them too. There was nothing to do but watch and wait.

"_Vigile et ora,_" said the "King."

But in spite of that counsel, watching and praying was not much in the "King's" temperament. Besides, as I could see, he was anxious to begin operations on John Teach's ruined mansion, and was impatient of the delay.

"With Golconda and Potosi beneath our very feet," he exclaimed at last, "to be held up by this scurvy pock-marked ruffian, I swear 'I like it not.' No news from your duck-shooting friend either. It is a slow-moving world, and the Bird of Time has either lost his wings, or been captured as a specimen on behalf of the Smithsonian Inst.i.tute."

At last there came a message from Charlie Webster, another of his Caesarian notes: "Sorry delayed a few days longer. Any news?"

That seemed to decide the "King."

"What do you say, Ulysses," he said, "if we begin digging to-morrow?

There are ten of us--with as many guns, four revolvers and plenty of machetes--not counting Calypso, who is an excellent shot herself."

I agreed that nothing would please me better--so, an early hour of the following morning found us with the whole garrison--excepting Samson, whom it had been thought wise to leave at home as a bodyguard for Calypso--lined up at the old ruined mansion, with picks and shovels and machetes, ready to commence operations.

The first thing was to get rid of the immense web, which, as I have already described, the forest had woven with diabolic ingenuity all around, and in and out the skeleton of the st.u.r.dy old masonry. Till that was done, it was impossible to get any notion of the ground plan of the several connected buildings. So the first day was taken up with the chopping and slashing of vegetable serpents, the tearing out of roots that writhed as if with conscious life, the shearing away of all manner of haunted leaf.a.ge, all those dense fierce growths with which Nature loves to proclaim her luxuriant victory over the work of man's hands--as soon, so to say, as his back is turned for a moment--like a stealthy savage foe ever on the watch in the surrounding darkness and only waiting for the hushing of human voices, for the cessation of human footsteps, to rush in and overwhelm.

"'I pa.s.sed by the walls of Balclutha and they were desolate'" quoted the "King," touched, as a less reflective mind must have been, by this sinister triumph of those tireless natural forces that neither slumber nor sleep.

"Here," said he, "is the future of London and Paris--in miniature. The flora and fauna will be different. There will be none of these nasty centipedes" (he had just crushed one with his foot), "and oaks, beeches, and other such friendly trees will take the place of these outlandish monstrosities. That pretty creature, the wild rose, will fill the desolation with her sweet breath, but the incredible desolation will be there; and as we here to-day watch this gum-elemi tree, flourishing where the good Teach 'gloried and drank deep,' so the men of future days will hear the bittern booming in the Rue de la Paix and their children will go a-blackberrying in Trafalgar Square. Selah!"

Two days we were at it with axe and machete--wearisome work which gave Tom and me occasion to exchange memories of the month we had put in together on the Dead Men's Shoes. We smiled at each other, as the other fellows groaned and sweated. It seemed child's play to us, after what we had gone through.

"They should have been with us, Tom, shouldn't they? They'd have known what work is;" and I added, for the fun of watching his face: "I wonder whether we'll find any gentlemen playing poker downstairs, Tom."

"G.o.d forbid, sar! G.o.d forbid!" he exclaimed, with a look of terror.

The next step was the clearing away of the mounds of fallen masonry and various rubbish, which still lay between us and our fortune--tedious preliminaries which chafed the boyish heart of the "King." To tell the truth, I believe we had both expected to uncover a glittering h.o.a.rd with the first stroke of the pick.