Spanish Doubloons Part 13

I turned in bitterness and yearning from the silent figure by the fire.

I think in an earlier lifetime I must have been a huntress and loved to pursue the game that fled.

XII

THE ISLAND QUEEN'S FREIGHT

I woke next morning with a great thrill of exhilaration. Perhaps before the sun went down again I should know the secret of the island.

The two divisions of our party, which were designated by me privately the Land and Sea Forces, went their separate ways directly after breakfast, which we ate in the cool of earliest morning, I could retire to the perusal of the journal which I had recovered from the wrecked sloop without fear of interruption.

I resumed my reading with the entry of February 10.

This morning, having grown very tired of fish, of which I get plenty every time I go out in the boat by dragging a line behind, I decided to stay ash.o.r.e and hunt pig. I set out across the base of the point, nearly due south--whereas I had been working along the coast to the north of the cove. On my right the slope of the mountain rose steeply, and as I approached the south sh.o.r.e the rise of the peak became more abrupt, and great jutting crags leaned out over the tree-tops below.

I reached the edge of the cliffs and found that on my right hand the mountain dropped in a sheer precipice from hundreds of feet above me straight into the sea. I considered, and made up my mind that by striking back some distance one might by a very rough climb gain the top of the precipice, and so swing around the shoulder of the mountain. I did not feel inclined to attempt it. The cliffs at this point offered no means of descent, and the few yards of sand which the receding tide had left bare at their foot led nowhere.

So far I had seen no pig, and I began to think they must all be feeding on the other side of the island. I turned to go back, and at that moment I heard an outcry in the bushes and Benjy came tearing out at the heels of a fine young porker. I threw up my gun to fire, but the evolutions of Benjy and the pig were such that I was as likely to hit one as the other. The pig, of course, made desperate efforts to escape from the cul-de-sac in which he found himself. His only hope was to get back into the woods on the point. Benjy kept him headed off successfully, and I began to edge up, watching my chance for a shot. Suddenly the pig came dashing straight toward me--oblivious, I suppose, to everything but the white snapping terror at his heels. Taken by surprise, I fired--and missed. The pig shot between my knees, Benjy after him.

I withstood the shock of the pig, but not of Benjy. I fell, clawing wildly, into a matted ma.s.s of creepers that covered the ground beside me.

I got to my feet quickly, dragging the whole ma.s.s of vines up with me. Then I saw that they had covered a curiously regular little patch of ground, outlined at intervals with small stones. At one end was a larger stone.

The patch was narrow, about six feet long--instantly suggestive of a grave. But swift beyond all process of reason was the certainty that flashed into my mind. I fell on my knees beside the stone at the head and pulled away the torn vine-tendrils. I saw the letters B. H. and an attempt at cross-bones rudely cut into the surface of the stone.

I closed my eyes and tried to steady myself. I thought, I am seeing things. _This is the mere projection of the vision which has been in my mind so long_.

I opened my eyes, and lo, the fantasy, if fantasy it were, remained. I smote with my fist upon the stone. The stone was solid--it bruised the flesh. And as I saw the blood run, I screamed aloud like a madman, "_It's real, real, real_!"

Under the stone lay the guardian of the treasure of the _Bonny La.s.s_--And his secret was within my grasp.

I don't know how long I crouched beside the stone, as drunk with joy as any hasheesh toper with his drug. I roused at last to find Benjy at my shoulder, thrusting his cool nose against my feverish cheek. I suppose he didn't understand my ignoring him so, or thought I scorned him for losing out in his race with the pig. Yet when I think of what I owe that pig I could swear never to taste pork again.

Brought back to earth and sanity, I rose and began to consider my surroundings. Somewhere close at hand was the mouth of the cave--but where? The cliffs, as I have already said, were too steep for descent. Nothing but a fly could have crawled down them.

I turned to the craggy face of the mountain. There, surely, must be the entrance to the cave! For hours I clambered among the rocks, risking mangled limbs and sunstroke--and found no cave. I came back at last, wearily, to the grave. There lay the dust of the brain that had known all--and a wild impulse came to me to tear away the earth with my bare hands, to dig deep, deep--and then with listening ear wait for a whispered word.

I put the delirious fancy from me and moved away to the edge of the cliffs. Looking down, I saw a narrow sloping shelf which dropped from the brink to a distance of ten or twelve feet below, where it met a slight projection of the rock. I had seen it before, of course, but it had carried no significance for my mind. Now I stepped down upon the ledge and followed it to its end in the angle of the rock.

Snugly hidden in the angle was a low doorway leading into blackness.

Now of course I ought in prudence to have gone back to the hut and got matches and a lantern and a rope before I set foot in the darkness of that unknown place. But what had I to do to-day with prudence--Fortune had me by the hand! In I went boldly, Benjy at my heels. The pa.s.sage turned sharply, and for a little way we walked in blackness. Then it veered again, and a faint and far-off light seemed to filter its way to us through a web woven of the very stuff of night. The floor sloped a little downward. I felt my way with my feet, and came to a step--another. I was going along a descending pa.s.sage, cut at its steepest into rough, irregular stairs. With either hand I could touch the walls. All the while the light grew clearer. Presently, by another sharp turn, I found myself in a cave, some thirty feet in depth by eighteen across, with an opening on the narrow strip of beach I had seen from the top of the cliffs.

The roof is high, with an effect of Gothic arches. Near the mouth is a tiny spring of ice-cold water, which has worn a clean rock-channel for itself to the sea. Otherwise the cave is perfectly dry. The shining white sand of its floor is above the highest watermark on the cliffs outside. There is no doubt in my mind that in the great buccaneering days of the seventeenth century, and probably much later, the place was the haunt of pirates. One fancies that Captain Sampson of the _Bonny La.s.s_ may have known of it before he brought the treasure to the island.

There were queer folk to be met with in those days in the Western Ocean! The cave is cool at blazing midday, and secret, I fancy, even from the sea, because of the droop of great rock-eaves above its mouth. Either for the keeping of stores or as a hiding-place for men or treasure it would be admirable. Yes, the cave has seen many a fierce, sea-tanned face and tarry pigtail, and echoed to strange oaths and wild sea-songs. Men had carved those steps in the pa.s.sage--thirty-two of them. In the sand of the floor, as I kicked it up with my feet, hoping rather childishly to strike the corner of the chest, I found the hilt and part of the blade of a rusty cutla.s.s, and a chased silver shoe-buckle. I shall take the buckle home to Helen--and yet how trivial it will seem, with all else that I have to offer her! Nevertheless she will prize it as my gift, and because it comes from the place to which some kind angel led me for her sake.

I left the cave and hurried back to the cabin for a spade, walking on air, breaking with s.n.a.t.c.hes of song the terrible stillness of the woods, where one hears only the high fitful sighing of the wind, or the eternal mutter of the sea. As I came out of the hut with the spade over my shoulder I waved my hand to the _Island Queen_ riding at anchor.

"You'll soon be showing a clean pair of heels to Leeward, old girl!" I cried. Back in the cave, I set to work feverishly, making the light sand fly. I began at the rear of the cavern, reasoning that there the sand would lie at greater depth, also that it would be above the wash of the heaviest storms. At the end of half an hour, at a point close to the angle of the wall my spade struck a hard surface. It lay, I should judge, under about two feet of sand. Soon I had laid bare a patch of dark wood which rang under my knuckles almost like iron. A little more, and I had cleared away the sand from the top of a large chest with a convex lid, heavily bound in bra.s.s.

Furiously I flung the sand aside until the chest stood free for half its depth--which is roughly three feet. It has handles at the ends, great hand-wrought loops of metal. I tugged my hardest, but the chest seemed fast in its place as the native rock. I laughed exultantly. The weight meant gold--gold! I had hammer and chisel with me, and with these I forced the ma.s.sive ancient locks. There were three of them, one for each strip of bra.s.s which bound the chest. Then I flung up the lid.

No glittering treasure dazzled me. I saw only a surface of stained canvas, tucked in carefully around the edges. This I tore off and flung aside--eclipsing poor Benjy, who was a most interested spectator of my strange proceedings. Still no gleam of gold, merely demure rows of plump brown bags. With both hands I reached for them. Oh, to grasp them all! I had to be content with two, because they were so heavy, so blessedly heavy!

I spread the square of canvas on the sand, cut the strings from the bags, and poured out--gold, gold! All fair shining golden coins they were, not a paltry silver piece among them! And they made a soft golden music as they fell in a glorious yellow heap.

I don't know how long I sat there, playing with my gold, running it through my fingers, clinking the coins together in my palm. Benjy came and sniffed at them indifferently, unable to understand his master's preoccupation. He thrust his nose into my face and barked, and said as clearly as with words, _Come, hunt pig_!

"Benjy," I said, "we'll leave the pork alone just now. We have work enough to count our money. We're rich, old boy, rich, rich!"

Of course, I don't yet know exactly what the value of the treasure is. I have counted the bags in the chest; there are one hundred and forty-eight. Each, so far as I have determined, contains one thousand doubloons, which makes a total of one hundred and forty-eight thousand. Estimating each coin, for the sake of even figures, at a value of seven dollars--a safe minimum--you get one million, thirty-six thousand dollars. And as many of the coins are ancient, I ought to reap a harvest from collectors.

Besides the coin, I found, rather surprisingly, laid between the upper layers of bags, a silver crucifix about nine inches long. It is of very quaint old workmanship, and badly tarnished. Its money value must be very trifling, compared to the same bulk of golden coins. I think it must have had some special character of sacredness which led to its preservation here. It is strange to find such a relic among a treasure so stained by blood and crime.

And now I have to think about moving the gold. First of all I must get the chest itself aboard the _Island Queen_. This means that I shall have to empty it and leave the gold in the cave, while I get the chest out by sea. When the chest is safely in the cabin of the sloop--where it won't leave much room for Benjy and his master, I'm afraid--I will take the bags of coin out by the land entrance. I can't think of risking my precious doubloons in the voyage around the point.

Of course I should have liked to get to the task to-day, but after the first mad thrill of the great event was over, I found myself as weak and unnerved as a woman. So by a great effort I came away and left my glorious golden h.o.a.rd. Now I dream and gloat, playing with the idea that to-morrow I shall find it all a fantasy. The pleasure of this is, of course, that all the while I _know_ this wildest of all Arabian fairy tales to be as real as the most drab and sober fact of my hitherto colorless life.

After all, on the way back from the cave Benjy brought down a pig.

So he is as well pleased with the day as I am. Now I am sitting in the doorway of my cabin, writing up my journal, and trying to calm down enough to go to bed. If it were not for the swift fading of daylight, I would go back to the cave for another peep into the chest. But all round the island the sea is moaning with that peculiarly melancholy note that comes with the falling of night.

The sea-birds have risen from the cove and gone wheeling off in troops to their nests on the cliffs. Somehow a curious dislike, almost fear, of this wild, sea-girt, solitary place has come over me. I long for the sound of human voices, the touch of human hands. I think of the dead man lying there at the door of the cave, its silent guardian for so long. I suppose he brooded once on the thought of the gold as I do--perhaps he has been brooding so these ninety years! I wonder if he is pleased that I, a stranger, have come into possession of his secret h.o.a.rd at last?

Oh, Helen, turn your heavenly face on me--be my refuge from these shuddering unwholesome thoughts! The gold is for you--for you!

Surely that must cleanse it of its stains, must loose the clutch of the dead hands that strive to hold it!

February 11. This morning I was early at the cave. Yes, there it was, the same wonder-chest that I had dreamed of all night long.

It was absurd how the tightness in my breast relaxed.

I began at once the work of removing the bags from the chest and stacking them in the corner of the cave. It was a fatiguing job, I had to stoop so. At the bottom of the chest I found a small portfolio of very fine leather containing doc.u.ments in Spanish.

They bear an official seal. Although I should be interested to know their meaning, I think I shall destroy them. They weaken my feeling of ownership; I suppose there is a slight flavor of lawlessness in my carrying off the gold from the island like this.

Very likely the little Spanish-American state which has some claim to overlordship here would dispute my right to the treasure-trove.

I spent so much time unloading the chest and poring over the papers, trying, by means of my ill-remembered Latin, to make out the sense of the kindred Spanish, that before I was ready to go for my boat the tide was up and pounding on the rocks below the cave.

I find that only at certain stages of the tide is the cave approachable by sea. At the turn after high water, for instance, there is such a terrific undertow that it sets up a small maelstrom among the reefs lying off the island. At low tide is the time to come.

February 12. Got the chest out of the cave, though it was a difficult job. I don't know of what wood the thing is built--some South American hardwood, I fancy--but it weighs like metal. The heavy bra.s.s clampings count for something, of course. Luckily there was no sea, and I had a smooth pa.s.sage around the point, I laughed rather ruefully as I pa.s.sed the Cave of the Two Arches. To think of the toil I wasted there! I wish Benjy had encountered the fateful pig a little sooner.

Got the chest aboard the _Island Queen_ and stowed in the cabin.

Not room left to swing a kitten. Contrived an elaborate arrangement of ropes and spikes to keep it in place in a heavy sea.

In the afternoon began moving the gold. It's the deuce of a job.

February 15. Been hard at it for three days. Most of the gold moved. Have to think too of provisions and water for the trip. I am making rather a liberal allowance, in case of being blown out of my course by a tropical gale.