The Island of Gold Part 34

he said, "if I can focus aright. Why!" he cried next minute, "that is no steamer, Tom Wilson, but the smoke from a volcanic mountain or hill."

Down went Tandy quickly now.

"Had your island of gold a chimney to it?" he said, laughing. He could afford to laugh, for he felt convinced this was _the_ island and none other. "There wasn't a coal mine or a factory of any kind on it, was there? If not, we will soon be in sight of the land of gold. Volcanic, Halcott--volcanic!"

"Keep her away a point or two," he said to the man at the wheel.

"There were hills on the Island of Misfortune, but no signs of a volcano."

"Not then; but in this mystery of an ocean, Halcott, we know not what a day or an hour may bring forth.

"Let me see," he continued, glancing at the cardboard map; "we are on the east side of the island, or we will be soon. Why, we ought soon to reach your Treachery Bay. Ominous name, though, Halcott; we must change it."

Nearer and nearer to the land sailed the _Sea Flower_. The hills came in sight; then dark, wild cliffs o'ertopped with green, with a few waving palm-trees and a fringe of banana here and there; and all between as blue a sea as ever sun shone on.

"It is strangely like my island," said Halcott; "but that hill, far to the west yonder, from which the smoke is rising, I cannot recognise."

"It may not have been there before."

"True," said Halcott. But still he looked puzzled.

Then, after bearing round to the north side of the island, past the mouth of a dark gully, and past a rocky promontory, the land all at once began to recede. In other words, they had opened out the bay.

"But all the land in yonder used to be burned forest, Tandy."

Tandy quietly handed him the gla.s.s.

The forest he now looked upon was not composed of living trees, but of skeletons, their weird shapes now covered entirely by a wealth of trailing parasites and flowery climbing plants.

"I am satisfied now, and I think we may drop nearer sh.o.r.e, and let go the anchor."

In an hour's time the _Sea Flower_ lay within two hundred yards of the beach.

This position was by no means a safe one were a heavy storm to blow from either the north or the west. There would be nothing for it then but to get up anchor and put out to sea, or probably lie to under the shelter of rocks and cliffs to the southward of the island.

The bay itself was a somewhat curious one. The dark blue which was its colour showed that it was deep, and the depth continued till within seventy yards of the sh.o.r.e, when it rapidly shoaled, ending in a snow-white semicircle of coral sands. Then at the head of the bay, only on the east side, stretching seawards to that bold promontory, was a line of high, black, beetling cliffs, the home of those wheeling sea-birds. These cliffs were of solid rock of an igneous formation chiefly, but marked here and there with veins of what appeared to be quartz. They were, moreover, indented with many a cave: some of these, it was found out afterwards, were floored with stalagmites, while huge icicle-like stalact.i.tes depended from their roofs.

Rising to the height of at least eight hundred feet above these cliffs was one solitary conical hill, green-wooded almost to its summit.

The western side of the bay, and, indeed, all this end of the island, was low, and fringed with green to the water's edge; but southwards, if one turned his eye, a range of high hills was to be seen, adding materially to the beauty of the landscape.

The whole island--which was probably not more than sixteen miles in length, by from eight to nine in width--was divided by the river mentioned in Captain Halcott's narrative into highlands and lowlands.

The day was far advanced when the _Sea Flower_ dropped anchor in this lovely bay, and it was determined therefore not to attempt a landing that night. Halcott considered it rather an ominous sign that no savages were visible, and that not a single outrigger boat was drawn up on the beach.

Experience teaches fools, and it teaches savages also. Just a little inland from the head of the bay the cover was very dense indeed; and though, even with the aid of their gla.s.ses, neither Halcott nor Tandy could discover a sign of human life, still, for all they could tell to the contrary, that green entanglement of bush might be peopled by wild men who knew the _Sea Flower_ all too well, and would not dare to venture forth.

The wind went down with the sun, and for a time scarce a sound was to be heard. The stars were very bright, and seemed very near, the Southern Cross sparkling like a diamond pendant in the sky.

By-and-by a yellow glare shone above the shoulder of the adjacent hill, and a great round moon uprose and sailed up the firmament as clear and bright as a pearl.

It was just after this that strange noises began to be heard coming from the woods apparently. They were intermittent, however. There would be a chorus of plaintive cries and shrieks, dying away into a low, murmuring moan, which caused Nelda, who was on deck, to shiver with fear and cling close to her brother's arm.

"What on earth can it be?" said Tandy. "Can the place be haunted?"

"Haunted by birds of prey, doubtless. These are not the cries that savages utter, even during an orgie. But, strangely enough--whatever your experience may be, Tandy--I have seldom found birds of prey on the inhabited islands of the South Pacific."

"Nor I," said Tandy. "Look yonder!" he added, pointing to a balloon-shaped cloud of smoke that hovered over a distant hill-top, lit up every now and then by just such gleams of light as one sees at night penetrating the smoke from some village blacksmith's forge. But yonder was Vulcan's forge, and Jupiter was his chief employer.

"Yes, Tandy, that is the volcano. But I can a.s.sure you there was no such fire-mountain, as savages say, when I was here last."

"To-morrow," said the mate, "will, I trust, make every thing more plain to us."

"To-morrow? Yes, I trust so, too," said Halcott, musingly. "Shall we go below and talk a little?"

"I confess, my friend," Halcott continued, after he had lit his pipe and smoked some time in silence--"I confess, Tandy, that I don't quite like the look of that hill. Have you ever experienced the effects of a volcanic eruption in any of these islands?"

"I have not had that pleasure, if pleasure it be," replied the mate.

"Pleasure, Tandy! I do not know of anything more hideous, more awful, in this world.

"When I say 'any of these islands,' I refer to any one of the whole vast colony of them that stud the South Pacific, and hundreds of these have never yet been visited by white men.

"Years ago," he continued, "I was first mate of the _Sky-Raker_, as bonnie a brig as you could have clapped eyes upon. It afterwards foundered with all hands in a gale off the coast of Australia. When I trod her decks, second in command, I was a bold young fellow of twenty, or thereabouts; and I may tell you at once we were engaged in the Queensland black labour trade. And black, indeed, and b.l.o.o.d.y, too, it might often be called.

"We used to go cruising to the nor'ard and east, visiting islands here and islands there, to engage hands for working in the far interior. We arranged to pay every man well who would volunteer to go with us, and to land them again back home on their own islands, if they _did_ wish to return.

"On these expeditions we invariably employed 'call-crows.'"

"What may a 'call-crow' be, Halcott?"

"Well, you know what gamblers mean on sh.o.r.e by a 'call-bird' or 'decoy-duck.' Your 'call-crow' is the same, only he is a black who has lived and laboured in Queensland, who can talk 'island,' who can spin a good yarn in an off-hand way, and tell as many lies as a recruiting-sergeant.

"These are the lures.

"No matter how unfriendly the blackamoors among whom we may land may be, our 'call-rooks' nearly always make peace. Then bartering begins, and after a few days we get volunteers enough."

"But they do attack you at times, these natives?"

"That's so, Tandy; and I believe I was a braver man in those days than I am now, else I'd hardly have cared to make myself a target for poisoned arrows, or poisoned spears, so coolly as I used to do then."

Nelda, who had come quietly down the companion-way with her brother, seated herself as closely to Captain Halcott as she could. She dearly loved a story, especially one of thrilling adventure.

"Go on, cap'n," she said, eagerly. "Never mind me. 'Poisoned spears,'--that is the prompt-word."

"These black fellows were not of great height, Tandy," resumed Halcott.