The Island of Gold Part 36

"I SEE A BEACH OF CORAL SAND, DARK FIGURES MOVING TO AND FRO."

Next morning broke bright and fair. Not a cloud in all the heaven's blue; not a ripple on the water, just a gentle swell that broke in long lines of snow-white foam on the crescent sh.o.r.e--a gentle swell with sea-birds afloat on it. Ah! what would the ocean be to a sailor were there no birds. The sea-gulls are the last to leave him, long after all other friends are gone, and the land, like a pale blue cloud far away on the horizon, is fading from his view.

"Adieu! adieu! away! away?" they shriek or sing, and as the shades of evening are merging into darkness they disappear. But these same birds are the first to welcome the mariner back, and even should there be no land in sight, or should clouds envelop it, the sight of a single gull flying tack and half-tack around the ship sends a thrill of hope and joy to the sailor's heart. On the deep, lone sea, too, Jack has ay a friend, should it be but in the stormy petrel, the frigate-bird, or that marvellous eagle of the ocean, the albatross itself.

Those birds floating here around the _Sea Flower_ so quietly on the swell of the sea looked as happy as they were pure and lovely. No whiteness, hardly even snow itself, could rival the whiteness of their chests, while under them their pink legs and feet looked like little twigs of coral.

The morning was warm, the sun was bright; they were moving gently with the tide, careless, happy. As he stood there gazing seawards and astern--for the ship had swung to the outgoing tide--Halcott could not help envying them.

"Ah!" he said half aloud, "you are at home, sweet birds; never a care to look forward to, contentment in your b.r.e.a.s.t.s, beauty all around you."

Then his thoughts went somehow wandering homewards to his beautiful house, his house with a tower to it, and his lovely gardens. They would not be neglected though. It was autumn here. It would be spring time in England, with its buds, its tender green leaves, its early flowers, and its music of birds. Then he thought of his dog. Fain would he have brought him to sea. The honest collie had placed his muzzle in his master's hand on that last sad evening of parting, and glanced with loving, pleading eyes up into his face.

"Take me," he seemed to say, "and take _her_."

_Her_ was Doris. His--Halcott's--own Doris; the lovely girl for whom he had risked so much, for whom he would lay down his life; the girl that would be his own fair bride, he told himself, if ever he returned. Ah!

those weary "ifs!"

But he had looked into the dog's bonnie brown eyes.

"Friend," he had said, "you will stay with Doris. You will never leave her side till I come back. You will watch her for me."

And he remembered now how Doris had at that moment thrown herself into his arms, and strained him to her breast in a fit of convulsive weeping.

And this had been the parting.

"What, Halcott," cried Tandy's cheerful voice, "up already! and--and-- why, Halcott, old man, there is moisture in your eyes!"

"I--I was thinking of home, and--well, I was thinking of my dog."

"And your Doris. Heigho! I have no Doris, no beautiful face to welcome me home. But look yonder," he added, taking Halcott's arm.

Little Nelda stood at the top of the companion-way, the sunlight playing on her yellow hair, one hand held up to screen her face, delicate, pink, yet so shyly sweet, and her blue eyes brimful of happiness.

Just one look she gave, then, with arms outstretched, rushed gleefully towards her father. Next moment she was poised upon his shoulder, and Tandy had forgotten that there was any such thing as danger or sorrow in the world.

The two men walked and talked together now for quite an hour. Indeed, there was very much to talk about, for although they had made the island at last, they had no idea as yet how they should set about looking for the gold which they were certain existed there.

They had not made up their minds as to what they should do, when Janeira rang the bell for breakfast, and with Fitz was seen staggering aft with the covered dish.

"Jane, you look happier than ever this morning. What is the matter?

Has some beautiful bird brought you a letter from home?"

"De bootiful bird, sah, is Lawd Fitzmantle, and see, sah, dat is de letter from home."

She lifted the dish cover as she spoke. Beautiful broiled fish caught only that morning over the stern, but oh, the delicious odour would have revived the heart of a dying epicure!

"Babs is going to be very good to-day," said Tandy to his little daughter after breakfast.

"Better than ever, daddy?"

"Yes, much, because I'm going on sh.o.r.e with Captain Halcott here and two men."

"And _me_?"

"No, not to-day, dear. We're going to climb that high hill and look all round us, and perhaps put up a flag; and Ransey will let you look through a spygla.s.s to see us, and we'll wave our hands to you. Now will you be better than usual?"

"Ye-es, I think I'll try. And oh, I'll make the Admiral look through the spygla.s.s too, and when you see him looking through, you must wave your hand and fire your gun. Then we'll all--all be happy and nicer than anything in the whole world."

It was not without a feeling of misgiving that Halcott and Tandy left the boat that had taken them on sh.o.r.e, and took their way cautiously towards the bush. There was hard work before them and the two st.u.r.dy fellows, Chips and Tom Wilson, whom they had brought with them--hard work to penetrate through the jungle and to effect an ascent of the hill they had already named the Observatory--hard work and danger combined.

The crew of the boat stood gun in hand until they saw the party safe into the bush, then, more easy in their minds now, rowed slowly back to the ship. For if savages had been hiding under cover, the attack would have been made just as the party was stepping on sh.o.r.e.

The exploring party kept to the extreme edge of the bush after penetrating and searching hither and thither for a time, but neither track nor trail of savages could they find. But they came across several little pathways that led here and there through the jungle, and at first they could not make out what these were. They learned before long, however; for Bob, who had gone on ahead a little way, came suddenly and excitedly rushing out from a thicket. In his mouth he held something that Tandy imagined was a rat, but the shrieking and yelling behind the dog soon undeceived him, and, lo! there now rushed into the open a beautiful little boar and a sow. The former flashed his tusks in the sunlight. He wanted the baby back. It was his, _his_, he said, and his wife's. He felt full of fight, and big enough to wage war against the whole world for that baby.

Tandy made Bob drop it, which he did, and it ran squealing back to its mother. The boar, or king pig, said he accepted the apology, and would now withdraw his forces. And he accordingly did so by scuttling off again into the bush. These wild dwarf-pigs and a species of rock-rabbit were, they found afterwards, about the only animals of any size the island contained.

After this trifling adventure they fought their way through a terrible entanglement of bush, till they reached the foot of the hill.

The men had brought saws and axes with them, and were thus enabled by cutting here and whacking there to make a tolerably good road. When they reached the hill they found themselves in a woodland of beautiful trees. Walking was now easy enough, and in about an hour's time they reached the summit of the hill and sat down to luncheon.

Eager eyes were watching their progress from the ship, for the upper part of this mount was covered only with stunted gra.s.s and beautiful heaths, among which they noticed many a charmingly-coloured lizard-- green with crimson markings, or pale blue and orange--but they saw no snakes.

Tandy turned his gla.s.s now upon the barque, and there sure enough was Nelda with the Admiral by her side. He waved his coat, and twice he fired his gun. From the hill on which they stood the view was lovely beyond compare. They could see well into the highland part of the island, with its rolling woods, on which the fingers of autumn had already traced beauty tints; its bosky glens; its rugged rocks and hills; its streaks of silvery streams; the lake lying down yonder in the hollow, with something like a floating garden in its centre; and afar off the vast expanse of ocean.

Look which way they would, that sea was all before them, only dotted here and there far to the northward with islands much smaller than the one on which they stood.

High up on the top of the volcanic hill a white cloud was resting, and its dark sides were seamed with many a waving line, the channels down which lava must have run during some recent eruption.

"Ha!" said Halcott presently, "now I can understand the mystery of the burned forest. At first, when we landed here, we believed that the black-birders had been ahead of us; but no, Tandy, no, it was nothing but the lava that fired the forest."

But strangely enough, however, not a sign of human life was anywhere visible.

Was there any way of accounting for this? "What is your theory, Halcott?" said Tandy. Halcott was lying on the green turf, fanning himself with his broad hat.

But he now lit his pipe. Like most sailors, he was capable of calmer and more concentrated thought when smoking.

"Tandy," he said slowly, after a few whiffs of the too seductive weed--"Tandy, we have luck on our side. Those blackamoors have fled helter-skelter at the first signs of the eruption. Nothing in the world strikes greater terror to the mind of the ordinary savage--and precious ordinary most of them are--than a sudden convulsion of nature."

Another whiff or two.

"What think you, men," he said, looking round him, "came up with the fire and the smoke from the throat of that volcanic hill?"

"Stones and ashes," ventured Chips.

"Stones and ashes? Yes, no doubt, but demons as well--so the dusky rascals who inhabited this island would believe--demons with fire-fierce eyes, tusks for teeth, and blood-red lolling tongues; only the kind of demons that at home nurses try to frighten children with, but more dreadful to those natives than either falling stones or boiling rain.