Pieces of Eight Part 29

As I did so, I caught sight of something in the interior that made me laugh aloud and behave generally like a madman. Of course, I didn't believe my eyes--but they persisted in declaring, nevertheless, that there in front of me was a great iron-bound oaken chest, to begin with.

It might not, of course, contain anything but bones--but it might--! The thing was too absurd. I must have fallen asleep--must be already dreaming! But no! I was labouring with all my strength to open it with one of those rusty cutla.s.ses. It was a tough job, but my strength was as the strength of ten, for the old treasure-hunting l.u.s.t was upon me, and I had forgotten everything else in the world.

At last, with a great wooden groan, as though its heart were breaking at having to give up its secret at last, it crashed open. I fell on my knees as though I had been struck by lightning, for it was literally br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with silver and gold pieces--doubloons and pieces of eight; English and French coins, too--guineas and louis d'or: "all"--as Tobias's ma.n.u.script had said--"all good money."

For a while I knelt over it, dazed and blinded, lost; then I slowly plunged my hands into it, and let the pieces pour and pour through them, literally bathing them in gold and silver, as I had read of misers doing.

Meanwhile, I talked insanely to myself, made all sorts of inarticulate noises, sang shreds of old songs. Rising at length, I capered up and down the gallery, talking aloud to the "King" as though he had been there, and anon breaking out again into absurd song, roaring it out at the top of my voice, laughing and war-whooping between:

"There was chest on chest of Spanish gold, With a ton of plate in the middle hold, And the cabin's riot of loot untold."

Then suddenly I broke out into an Irish jig--never having had any notion of doing such a thing before.

In fact I behaved as I have read of men doing, whom a sudden fortune has bereft of reason. For the time, at all events, I was a gibbering madman.

Certainly, there was to be no sleep for me that night! But, in the full tide of my frenzy, I suddenly noticed something that brought me up sharp. Out beyond the doorway it was growing light. It was only a dim tremulous suffusion of it, indeed, but it was real daylight--oozing in from somewhere or other--the blessed, blessed, daylight! G.o.d be praised!

CHAPTER XVI

_In Which I Understand the Feelings of a Ghost!_

So, I surmised, I had been underground a whole day and two nights, and this was the morning of the second day after Calypso's disappearance.

What had been happening to her all this time! My flesh crept at the thought, and, with that daylight stealing in like a living presence, and the sound and breath of the sea, my anguish returned a hundredfold. It was like coming to, after an anaesthetic, for I realised that, actively as I had been occupied in trying to escape, I had been, all the time, under a curious numbing spell. Just as my ears had seemed m.u.f.fled with a silence that was more than the stillest silence above ground; silence that was itself a captive, airless and gasping, so to say, with the awful pressure of all that oblivious earth above and around; a silence that made me realise with a dreadful reality what had been a mere phrase before, "the silence of the grave"; silence literally buried alive, with eyes fixed in a trance of horror; just in the same way, all my feelings of mind and heart, memory and emotion, had likewise been deadened, as with some heavy narcotic of indifference, so that I felt and yet did not feel--remembered and yet did not remember.

The events of a few hours before, and the dearly loved friends taking part in them, seemed infinitely remote, for all their clearness, as when we see a figure waving to us from a distance, and know that it is calling to us, but yet we cannot hear a word. Even so one lies back in the grip of a deadly sickness, and all that formerly had been so important and moving seems like a picture, definite yet remote, in which one has no part any more.

I think one would die soon and easily underground, as creatures in a vacuum, for the will to live has so little to nourish itself on. One's whole nature falls into a catalepsy; all one's faculties seem asleep, save the animal impulse to escape--an impulse that would soon grow weary too. So, it seemed to me, as I saw a little light and drew the breath of the living world once more, that even my love for Calypso had, so to say, been in a state of suspended animation during an entombment which was heavy with the poppy of the grave, and made me understand why the dead forget us so soon.

But now, as I stood on the little rocky platform outside the door through which I had burned my way, and looked down into the glimmering chasm beneath, and heard the fresh voice of the sea huskily rumbling and reverberating about hidden grottoes and channels, all that Calypso was to me came back with the keenness of a sword through my heart. Ah! there was my treasure--as I had known when my eyes first beheld her--compared with which that gold and silver in there, whose gleam had made me momentarily distraught, was but so much dust and ashes. Ardently as I had sought it, what was it compared to one glance of her eyes? What if, in the same hour, I had lost my true treasure, and found the false? At the thought, that glittering heap became abhorrent to me, and, without looking back, I sought for some way by which I could descend.

As my eyes grew accustomed to the dim light, I saw that there were some shallow steps cut diagonally in the rock, and down these I had soon made my way, to find myself in a roomy corridor, so much like that in which I had seen Calypso standing in the moonlight, that, for a moment, I dreamed it was the same, and started to run down it, thinking, indeed, that my troubles were over--that in another moment I would emerge through that enchanted door and face the sea. The more so, as the sand was wet under my feet, showing that the tide had but recently left it.

But alas! instead of a broad shining doorway, and open arms of freedom widespread for me to leap into, I came at last to a mere long narrow slit--through which I could gaze as a man gazes through a prison window at the sky.

The entrance had once been wide and free, but a ma.s.s of rock had fallen from above and blocked it up, leaving only a long crack through which the tides pa.s.sed to and fro.

I was still in my trap; it seemed more terrible than ever, now that I could see freedom so close and shining, her very robe rustling within a few feet of me, her very voice calling to me, singing the morning song of the sea. But in the caverns behind me, I heard another mocking song, and I felt a cold breath on my cheek, for Death stood by my side a-grin.

"The treasure!" he whispered, "I need you to guard that. The treasure you have risked all to win--the treasure for which you have lost--your treasure! You cannot escape. Go back and count your gold. 'It is all good money'! Ha! ha! 'it is all good money'!"

The illusion seemed so real to me that I cried aloud: "I will not die! I will not die!"--cried it so loud, that any one in a pa.s.sing boat might have heard me, and shuddered, wondering what poor ghost it was wailing among the rocks.

But the fright had done me good, and I nerved myself for another effort.

I examined the long crevice through which the sea was glittering so near. It was not so narrow as at first it had seemed, and I reckoned that it was some twenty feet through. On my side, it was a little over a foot across. Wouldn't it be possible to wedge myself through? I tried it at the opening, and found, that, with my arms extended sidewise, it was comparatively easy to enter it, though it was something of a tight fit.

If it only kept the same width all through, I ought to be able to manage it, inch by inch, if it took all day. But, did it? On the contrary, it seemed to me that it narrowed slightly toward the middle, and--judging by the way the light fell on the other side--that it widened out again farther on.

If only I could wriggle past that contraction in the middle, I should be safe. And if I stuck fast midway! But the more I measured the width with my eye, the less the narrowing seemed to be. To be so slightly perceptible, it could hardly be enough to make much difference. Caution whispered that it might be enough to make the difference between life and death. But already my choice of those two august alternatives was so limited as hardly to be called a choice. On the one hand, I could worm my way back through the caves and tunnels through which I had pa.s.sed, and try my luck again at the other end.

"With half-a-dozen matches!" sneered a voice that sounded like Tobias's--"Precisely" ... and the horror of it was more than I dared face again any way. So there was nothing for it but this aperture, hardly wider than one of those deep stone slits that stood for windows in a Norman castle. It was my last chance, and I meant to take it like a man.

I stood for a moment nerving myself and taking deep breaths, as though I expected to take but few more. Then, my left arm extended, I entered sidewise, and began to edge myself along. It was easy enough for a yard or two, after which it was plain that it was beginning to narrow. Very slightly indeed, but still a little. However, I could still go on, and--I could still go back. I went on--more slowly it is true, yet still I progressed. But the rock was perceptibly closer to me. I had to struggle harder. It was beginning to hug me--very gently--but it was beginning.

I paused to take breath. I could not turn my head to look back, but I judged that I had come over a third of the way. I was coming up to the waist that I had feared, but I could still go on--very slowly, scarce more than an inch at every effort; yet every inch counted, and I had lots of time. My feet and head were free--which was the main thing.

Another good push or two, and I should be at the waist--should know my fate.

I gave the good push or two, and suddenly the arms of the rock were around me. Tight and close, this time, they hugged me. They held me fast, like a rude lover, and would not let me go. My knees and feet were fast, and the walls on each side pressed my cheeks. My head too was fast. I could not move an inch forward--and it was too late to go back!

Panic swept over me. I felt that my hair must be turning white.

Presently I ceased to struggle. But the rocks held me in their giant embrace. There was no need for me to do anything. I could go on resting there--it was very comfortable--till--

And then I felt something touching my feet, running away and then touching them again. O G.o.d! It was the incoming tide! It would--And then I prepared myself to die. I suppose I was lightheaded, with the strain and the lack of food, for, after the first panic, I found myself dreamily, almost luxuriously, making pictures of how brave men had died in the past--brave women too. I fancied myself in one and another situation. But the picture that persisted was that of the Conciergerie during the French Revolution. I was a n.o.ble, talking gaily to beautiful ladies also under the shadow of death, and, right in the middle of a jest, a gloomy fellow had just come in--to lead me to the guillotine.

The door was opening, and I kissed my hand in farewell--

Then the picture vanished, as I felt the swish of the tide round my ankles. It would soon be up to my knees--

It _was_ up to my knees--it was creeping past them--and it was making that hollow song in the caves behind me that had seemed so kind to me that very morning, the song it had made to Calypso ... that far-off night under the moon.

I turned my eyes over the sea--I could move _them,_ at all events; how gloriously it was shining out there! And here was I, helpless, with arms extended, as one crucified. I closed my eyes in anguish, and let my body relax; perhaps I dozed, or perhaps I fainted--but, suddenly, what was that that had aroused me, summoned me back to life? It seemed a short, sharp sound--then another, and then another--surely it was the sound of firing! I opened my eyes and looked out to sea, and then I gave a great cry:

"Calypso! Calypso!" I cried. "Calypso!"--and it seemed as though a giant's strength were in me--that I could rend the rocks apart. I made a mighty effort, and, whether or not my relaxing had made a readjustment of my position, I found that for some reason I could move forward again, and, with one desperate wriggle, I had my head through the narrow s.p.a.ce.

To wrench my shoulders and legs after it was comparatively easy, and, in a moment, I was safe on the outer side, where, as I had surmised, the aperture did widen out again. Within a few moments, I was on the edge of the sea, had dived, and was swimming madly toward--

But let me tell what I had seen, as I hung there, so helpless, in that crevice in the rocks.

CHAPTER XVII

_Action._

I had seen, close in sh.o.r.e, a two-masted schooner under full sail sweeping by, as if pursued, and three negroes kneeling on deck, with levelled rifles. As I looked, a shot rang out, from my right, where I could not see, and one of the negroes rolled over. Another shot, and the negro next him fell sprawling with his arms over the bulwark.

At that moment, two other negroes emerged from the cabin hatchway, half dragging and half carrying a woman. She was struggling bravely, but in vain. The negroes--evidently acting under orders of a white man, who stood over them with a revolver--were dragging her toward the mainmast.

Her head was bare, her hair in disorder, and one shoulder from which her dress had been torn in the struggle, gleamed white in the sunlight. Yet her eyes were flashing splendid scornful fires at her captors; and her laughter of defiance came ringing to me over the sea. It was then that I had cried "Calypso!" and wrenched myself free.

The next moment there came dashing in sight a sloop also under full canvas, and at its bow, a huge white man, with a levelled rifle that still smoked. At a glance, I knew him for Charlie Webster. He had been about to fire again, but, as the man dragged Calypso for'ard, he paused, calm as a rock, waiting, with his keen sportsman's eyes on Tobias--for, of course, it was he.

"You--coward!" I heard his voice roar across the rapidly diminishing distance between the two boats, for the sloop was running with power as well as sails.

Meanwhile, the men had lashed Calypso to the mast, and even in my agony my eyes recorded the glory of her beauty as she stood proudly there--the great sails spread above her, and the sea for her background.

"Now, do your worst," cried Tobias, his evil face white as wax in the sunlight.

"Fire, fire--don't be afraid," rang out Calypso's voice, like singing gold. At the same instant, as she called, Tobias sprang toward her with raised revolver.