Spanish Doubloons Part 4

Mr. Shaw approached and the two men greeted each other in their offhand British way. As we couldn't well, under the circ.u.mstances, maintain a fiction of mutual invisibility, Mr. Shaw, with a certain obvious hesitation, turned to me.

"Only lady pa.s.senger, eh? Hope you're not wet through. Cookie's making coffee over yonder."

"I say, Shaw," cried the beautiful youth enthusiastically, "Miss Harding's the most ripping sport, you know! Not the least nervous about the trip, I a.s.sure you."

"I was," I announced, moved to defiance by the neighborhood of Mr.

Shaw. "Before we started I was so afraid that if you had listened you might have heard my teeth chattering. But I had at least the comforting thought that if I did go to my end it would not be simply in pursuit of sordid gain!"

"And indeed that was almost a waste of n.o.ble sentiment under the circ.u.mstances," answered the dour Scot, with the fleeting shadow of an enraging smile. "Such disappointingly calm weather as it is!

See that Miss Harding has some coffee, Bert."

I promised myself, as I went with Mr. Vane toward the fire, that some day I would find the weapon that would penetrate the Scotchman's armor--and would use it mercilessly.

Cookie, in his white attire, and with his black shining face and ivory teeth gleaming in the ruddy firelight, looked like a converted cannibal--perhaps won from his errors by one of Mr.

Vane's missionary Johnnies. He received us with unctuous warmth.

"Well, now, 'clar to goodness if it ain't the li'le lady! How come you git ash.o.r.e all dry lak you is? Yes, sah, Cookie'll git you-all some'n hot immejusly." He wafted me with stately gestures to a seat on an overturned iron kettle, and served my coffee with an air appropriate to mahogany and plate. It was something to see him wait on Cuthbert Vane. As Cookie told me later, in the course of our rapidly developing friendship, "dat young gemmun am sure one ob de quality." To indicate the certainty of Cookie's instinct, Miss Higglesby-Browne was never more to him than "dat pusson." and the cold aloofness of his manner toward her, which yet never sank to impertinence, would have done credit to a duke.

On the beach Mr. Shaw, Captain Magnus and the sailors were toiling, unloading and piling up stores. Rather laggingly, Apollo joined them. I was glad, for a heavy fatigue was stealing over me.

Cookie, taking note of my sagging head, brought me somebody's dunnage bag for a pillow. I felt him drawing a tarpaulin over me as I sank into bottomless depths of sleep.

I opened my eyes to the dying stars. The moon had set. Black shapes of tree and boulder loomed portentous through the ashen dimness that precedes the dawn. I heard men shouting, "Here she comes!" "Stand by to lend a hand!" In haste I scrambled up and tore for the beach. I must witness the landing of Aunt Jane.

"Where are they, where are they?" I demanded, rubbing my sleepy eyes.

"Why didn't you stay by the fire and have your nap out?" asked Mr.

Shaw, in a tone which seemed to have forgotten for the moment to be frigid--perhaps because I hadn't yet waked up enough to have my quills in good p.r.i.c.king order.

"Nap? Do you think that for all the treasure ever buried by a pirate I would miss the spectacle of Aunt Jane and Miss Browne arriving? I expect it to compensate me for all I have suffered on this trip so far."

"See what it is, Bert," exclaimed the Scotchman, "to have a truly gentle and forgiving nature--how it brings its own reward. I'm afraid you and I miss a great deal in life, lad."

The beautiful youth pondered this.

"I don't know," he replied, "what you say sounds quite fit and proper for the parson, and all that, of course, but I fancy you are a bit out in supposing that Miss Harding is so forgiving, old man."

"I didn't know that _you_ thought so badly of me, too!" I said timidly. I couldn't help it--the temptation was too great.

"I? Oh, really, now, you can't think that!" Through the dusk I saw that he was flushing hotly.

"Lad," said the Scotchman in a suddenly harsh voice, "lend a hand with this rope, will you?" And in the dusk I turned away to hide my triumphant smiles. I had found the weak spot of my foe--as Mr.

Tubbs might have said, I was wise to Achilles's heel.

And now through the dawn-twilight that lay upon the cove the boat drew near that bore Mr. Tubbs and his fair charges. I saw the three cork helmets grouped together in the stern. Then the foaming fringe of wavelets caught the boat, hurled it forward, seemed all but to engulf it out leaped the sailors. Out leaped Mr. Tubbs, and disappeared at once beneath the waves. Shrill and prolonged rose the shrieks of my aunt and Miss Higglesby-Browne. Valiantly Mr.

Shaw and Cuthbert Vane had rushed into the deep. Each now appeared staggering up the steep, foam-swept strand under a struggling burden. Even after they were safely deposited on the sand. Miss Browne and my aunt continued to shriek.

"Save, save Mr. Tubbs!" implored Aunt Jane. But Mr. Tubbs, overlooked by all but this thoughtful friend, had cannily saved himself. He advanced upon us dripping.

"A close call!" he sang out cheerfully. "Thought one time old Nep had got a strangle-hold all right. Thinks I, I guess there'll be something doing when Wall Street gets this news--that old H. H. is food for the finny denizens of the deep!"

"Such an event, Mr. Tubbs," p.r.o.nounced Violet, who had recovered her form with surprising swiftness, "might well have sent its vibrations through the financial arteries of the world!"

"It would have been most--most shocking!" quavered poor Aunt Jane with feeling. She was piteously striving to extricate herself from the folds of the green veil.

I came to her a.s.sistance. The poor plump little woman was trembling from head to foot.

"It was a most--unusual experience," she told me as I unwound her.

"Probably extremely--unifying to the soul-forces and all that, as Miss Browne says, but for the moment--unsettling. Is my helmet on straight, dear? I think it is a little severe for my type of face, don't you? There was a sweet little hat in a Fifth Avenue shop--simple and yet so chic. I thought it just the thing, but Miss Browne said no, helmets were always worn--Coffee? Oh, my dear child, how thankful I shall be!"

And Aunt Jane clung to me as of yore as I led her up the beach.

V

THE CAPTAIN'S LEGACY

When in my tender years I was taken to the matinee, usually the most thrilling feature of the spectacle to me was the scene depicted on the drop-curtain. I know not why only the decorators of drop-curtains are inspired to create landscapes of such strange enchantment, of a beauty which not alone beguiles the senses--I speak from the standpoint of the ten-year-old--but throws wide to fancy the gate of dreams. Directly I was seated--in the body--and had had my hat taken off and been told not to wriggle, I vaulted airily over the unconscious audience, over an orchestra engaged in tuning up, and was lost in the marvelous landscape of the drop-curtain. The adventures which I had there put to shame any which the raising of the curtain permitted to be seen upon the stage.

I had never hoped to recover in this prosaic world my long-lost paradise of the drop-curtain, but morning revealed it to me here on Leeward Island. Here was the feathery foliage, the gushing springs, the gorgeous flowers of that enchanted land. And here were the soft and intoxicating perfumes that I had imagined in my curtain landscape.

Leeward Island measures roughly four miles across from east to west by three from north to south. The core of the island is the peak, rising to a height of nearly three thousand feet. At its base on three sides lies a plateau, its edges gnawed away by the sea to the underlying rocky skeleton. On the southeastern quarter the peak drops by a series of great precipices straight into the sea.

Back from the cove stretches a little hollow, its floor rising gently to the level of the plateau. Innumerable clear springs which burst from the mountain converge to a limpid stream, which winds through the hollow to fall into the little bay. All the plateau and much of the peak are clothed with woods, a beautiful bright green against the sapphire of sea and sky. High above all other growth wave the feathery tops of the cocoa-palms, which flourish here luxuriantly. You saw them in their thousands, slender and swaying, tossing all together in the light sea-wind their crowns of nodding plumes.

The palms were nowhere more abundant than in the hollow by the cove where our camp was made, and their size and the regularity of their order spoke of cultivation. Guavas, oranges and lemons grew here, too, and many beautiful banana-palms. The rank forest growth had been so thoroughly cleared out that it had not yet returned, except stealthily in the shape of brilliant-flowered creepers which wound their sinuous way from tree to tree, like fair Delilahs striving to overcome arboreal Samsons by their wiles. They were rankest beside the stream, which ran at one edge of the hollow under the rise of the plateau.

At the side of the clearing toward the stream stood a hut, built of cocoa-palm logs. Its roof of palm-thatch had been scattered by storms. Nearer the stream on a bench were an old decaying wash-tub and a board. A broken frying-pan and a rusty axe-head lay in the gra.s.s.

In the hut itself were a rude bedstead, a small table, and a cupboard made of boxes. I was excited at first, and fancied we had come upon the dwelling of a marooned pirate. Without taking the trouble to combat this opinion, Mr. Shaw explained to Cuthbert Vane that a copra gatherer had once lived here, and that the place must have yielded such a profit that he was only surprised to find it deserted now. Behind this cool, unemphatic speech I sensed an ironic zest in the destruction of my pirate.

After their thrilling experience of being ferried from the _Rufus Smith_ to the island, my aunt and Miss Browne had been easily persuaded to dispose themselves for naps. Aunt Jane, however, could not be at rest until Mr. Tubbs had been restored by a cordial which she extracted with much effort from the depths of her hand-bag. He partook with gravity and the rolled up eyes of grat.i.tude, and retired grimacing to comfort himself from a private bottle of his own.

The boats of the _Rufus Smith_ had departed from the island, and our relations with humanity were severed. The thought of our isolation awed and fascinated me as I sat meditatively upon a keg of nails watching the miracle of the tropic dawn. The men were hard at work with bales and boxes, except Mr. Tubbs, who gave advice. It must have been valuable advice, for he a.s.sured everybody that a word from his lips had invariably been enough to make Wall Street sit up and take notice. But it is a far cry from Wall Street to Leeward Island. Mr. Tubbs, ignored, sought refuge with me at last, and pointed out the beauties of Aroarer as she rose from the embrace of Neptune.

"Aroarer Borealis, to be accurate," he explained, "but they didn't use parties' surnames much in cla.s.sic times."

The glad cry of breakfast put an end to Mr. Tubbs's exposition of mythology.

So does dull reality clog the feet of dreams that it proved impossible to begin the day by digging up the treasure. Camp had to be arranged, for folk must eat and sleep even with the wealth of the Indies to be had for the turning of a sod. The cabin was reroofed and set apart as the bower of Aunt Jane and Miss Browne.

I declined to make a third in this sanctuary. You could tell by looking at her that Violet was the sort of person who would inevitably sleep out loud.

"Hang me up in a tree or anywhere," I insisted, and it ended by my having a tarpaulin shelter rigged up in a group of cocoa-palms.

Among our earliest discoveries on the island was one regrettable from the point of view of romance, though rich in practical advantages; the woods were the abode of numerous wild pigs. This is not to write a new chapter on the geographical distribution of the pig, for they were of the humdrum domestic variety, and had doubtless appertained to the copra gatherer's establishment. But you should have seen how clean, how seemly, how self-respecting were our Leeward Island pigs to realize how profoundly the pig of Christian lands is a debased and slandered animal. These quadrupeds would have strengthened Jean Jacques's belief in the primitive virtue of man before civilization debauched him. And I shall always paraphrase the familiar line to read: "When wild in woods the n.o.ble porker ran."

Aunt Jane had been dreadfully alarmed by the pigs, and wanted to keep me immured in the cabin o' nights so that I should not be eaten. But nothing less than a Bengal tiger would have driven me to such extremity.