The Island Treasure Part 30

"My mans," said he bravely, turning his back on the beach and away from the treacherous, smiling sea, "we moost not give vays to bat toughts and tings! Let us go inlants and do zometing dat vill make us d.i.n.k of zometing else! We vill go oop to dat blace vere ze groond vas blanted mit tings bedween ze hills, and zee if we can zee any bodatoes or bananes vot to eat; vor, as mein frent Sambo here zays, it vas goot to look after ze grub, vor we hab no sheeps now to zupply us mit provisions!"

This was sound advice, which we immediately acted on, our little quintet abandoning the sh.o.r.e, and following our leader again up the cliff to the old deserted plantation. This, it may be remembered, Tom and Hiram and I had first lighted on in our quest for the treasure before we discovered the cave, but we now found out that Jan Steenbock had been previously acquainted with it from being formerly on the island.

Here we made a camp, bringing Sam's sailcloth from the cave, with a tin pot and other mess gear he had stowed away for his own use when in hiding there, and no one knew save Tom Bullover that he was anything but a ghost; and here, thenceforward, by the help of the tortoises, whose flesh we fared on, with an occasional wild hog, when we were lucky enough to catch one, our meat diet being varied with the various tropical vegetables which we found in the valley in profusion, we lived until the rainy season came on, when we went back again to the cave for shelter.

It must not be thought, though, that our time was entirely spent in eating, or in devices how we should procure food, notwithstanding that this was the princ.i.p.al care of our solitary desert island life, like as in the case of most shipwrecked mariners.

No, we had a greater purpose than this.

It was the hope of escaping from our dismal exile, through the help of some coasting vessel bound up or down the Pacific, or to ports within the Gulf of Panama; and, in order to observe such pa.s.sing craft we erected a signal station on the top of Mount Chalmers, and took it in turns to keep watch there throughout the day, with a bonfire hard by, ready to be kindled the moment a sail was sighted.

Alas, our watch for weeks was in vain!

Sometimes we would see a ship in the distance, but she was generally too far off to notice us; and our hearts would sink again to utter despondency when this occurred, more than when we never noticed any sail at all, on our seeing her gradually melting away, until she would be finally lost in the mists of the sea and air.

At last, however, one morning, about six months or so after the loss of the _Denver City_--I'm sure I cannot tell the precise date, for we began then to forget even the pa.s.sage of time--Tom Bullover, who was on the look-out, came rushing down the sloping side of the cliff like a madman, covering yards with each leap and bound he took in his rapid descent, looking as if he were flying.

"A sail! a sail!" he shouted, as soon as he got near. "There's a ship in sight, and she's just entering the bay!"

"Vere?--vere?" cried Jan Steenbock, equally excited, running to meet him. "A sheep? You vas mat, mein pore vellow,--you vas mat!"

"Jee-rusalem--no, he ain't!" exclaimed Hiram, who, standing on the summit of the little mound by the entrance to the cave, could see further out to sea than Jan from below. "Tom's all right. Hooray!

It's a shep sure enuff, an' she's now tarnin' the p'int on the starboard side over thaar!"

With that we all looked now in this direction; and, oh, the blessed sight! There, as Hiram said, was a vessel under full sail rounding the opposite cliff and coming into the bay!

"My golly! I sh.e.l.l bust--I'se so glad!" cried poor Sam, dancing, and shouting, and laughing, and crying, all in one breath. "Bress de Lor'!

Bress de Lor'!"

What I and the rest did to express our joy under the circ.u.mstances it would be impossible to tell; but I'm pretty sure we were quite as extravagant in our actions and demeanour as the negro,--if not so hearty in our recognition of the all-wise Providence that had sent this ship to our rescue!

There is little more to add.

The vessel soon cast anchor in the bay; and on her lowering a boat and reaching the beach where, as may be supposed, we eagerly awaited its coming, we found out that she was a whaler, full of oil, and homeward bound to San Francisco, her captain putting in at Abingdon Island for fresh water and vegetables, as some of his crew were suffering from scurvy, and they had run short of all tinned meat on board, having only salt provisions left.

We were thus enabled to mutually accommodate each other, Hiram, and Sam, and Tom Bullover, soon fetching a big store of green stuff from our plantation in the valley, besides securing a batch of tortoises for the men in the boat to kill and take on board; while Jan Steenbock and I went with the whaler's captain to point out our water-spring near the cave, where the doves' grove used to be, the stream from the hills still finding its way down there to the sea below, although the little lake, or pool, had become dried up by the acc.u.mulation of sand and the trees all disappeared.

In return for these welcome supplies, the captain of the whaler gladly agreed to give us all a free pa.s.sage to ''Frisco'; although as I need hardly tell, he would have willingly done this without any such consideration at all, after hearing our story and being made acquainted with the strange and awful catastrophe that had befallen our ill-fated ship.

But we were not altogether dest.i.tute.

Our good fortune, if long in coming, smiled on us at the last; for, the very morning of our departure from the island, a week after the whaler's arrival, the captain remaining a few days longer than he first intended in order to allow his sick hands to recover, Hiram, while routing out a few traps left in the cave to take on board with us, found, much to Jan Steenbock's regret,--the second-mate saying it would bring us ill-luck again--one of the little chests containing the buccaneers' treasure, which Captain Snaggs had left unwittingly behind him when he and Mr Flinders cleared off with the rest, which they thought the entire lot.

The box contained a number of gold ingots and silver dollars, which the whaler captain said were worth 'a heap of money,' as he expressed it, though he would not take a penny of it for himself.

The whaler skipper was an honest man, for he told Hiram Bangs and Tom, who tried to press a certain portion of the treasure on him as his due, that it all rightfully belonged to us, and that he should consider himself a pitiful scoundrel if he took advantage of our misfortunes!

There--could anything be n.o.bler than that?

"Guess not," said Hiram; and, so we all agreed!

We had a capital voyage to San Francisco from the island, which we were glad enough to lose sight of, with its lava cliffs and cactus plants, and other strange belongings in the animal and vegetable world, and, above all, its sad memories and a.s.sociations in other ways to us; and no more happy sailors ever landed from board ship than we five did who set foot ash.o.r.e in the 'Golden State,' as California is called, some three odd summers ago.

The whaler captain sold our treasure for us; and the share of each of us came to a good round sum--I, though only a boy, being given by the others a fourth share, just as if I had been a man, for Jan Steenbock refused to touch any.

My portion, when realised, amounted to over 400 pounds, a sum which, if not quite enough to set one up in life and enable one to stop working, was still 'not to be sneezed at,' as Tom Bullover remarked to me confidentially, when we made our way eastwards from San Francisco towards New York, by the Union Pacific line, a month or so afterwards.

Hiram remained behind in California, saying he had gone through enough sailoring, and intended trying something in the farming or mining line.

But Tom, and Jan Steenbock, and I, with our old friend Sam, stuck together to the end, taking a ship at New York for Liverpool, where we touched English ground again, just a year almost to a day from the time we started on our ill-starred voyage in the poor _Denver City_.

All of us still see each other now and again, even Hiram meeting us sometimes, when he ships in a liner and comes 'across the herring pond,'

having soon got tired of a life ash.o.r.e.

Our general rendezvous is a little shop kept by Sam Jedfoot, who has married a wife, and supplies goods in the ship-chandling line to vessels outward bound; for the darkey has a large acquaintance amongst stewards and such gentry who have the purchasing of the same, and being a general favourite with all this cla.s.s of men--save and excepting Welshmen, whom he detests most heartily, somehow or other!

I am now a grown-up sailor, too, like Tom Bullover, and he and I always sail together in the same ship.

We are called the 'two inseparables' by the brokers, for one of us will never sign articles for a new vessel unless the other goes; and, when we come off a voyage and land at Liverpool old town, as frequently is the case, no sooner do we step ash.o.r.e, at the Prince's Landing Stage or in the docks, as may happen, than we 'make tracks,' to use Hiram Bang's Yankee lingo, for Sam Jedfoot's all-sorts shop, hard by in Water Street.

Here, 'you may bet your bottom dollar,' adopting Hiram's favourite phrase again, we are always warmly welcomed by our old friend, the whilom darkey cook of the lost _Denver City_, whose wife also greets us cordially whenever we drop in to visit her 'good man,' as she calls him.

They are a happy couple, and much attached, though opposed in colour; and, here, of an evening, after the hearty spread which Sam invariably insists on preparing for our enjoyment, to show us that he has not lost practice in his culinary profession, I believe, as well as from his innate sense of hospitality, the ex-cook will--as regularly as he was accustomed to do on board ship in his caboose, towards the end of the second dog-watch, when, you may recollect, the hands were allowed to skylark and divert themselves--take up his banjo, which is the identical same one that he brought home with him from Abingdon Island.

The tune he always plays, the song he always sings, is that well-remembered one which none of us, his shipmates, can ever forget, bringing back as it does, with its plaintive refrain, every incident of our memorable pa.s.sage across the Atlantic and round Cape Horn--aye, and all the way up the Pacific to the Galapagos Isles.

It is full of our past life, so pregnant with its strange perils and weird surroundings, and which ended in such a terrible catastrophe:--

"Oh, down in Alabama, 'fore I wer sot free, I lubbed a p'ooty yaller gal, an' fought dat she lubbed me, But she am proob unconstant, an' leff me hyar to tell How my pore hart am breakin' far dat croo-el Nancy Bell!"

Sam's wife, too, although she isn't a 'yaller girl,' but, on the contrary, as white as he is black, and Tom Bullover and I, with Hiram and Jan Steenbock--should either or both happen likewise to be ash.o.r.e in Liverpool, and with us, of course, at the time--all, as regularly and unfailingly on such occasions join in the same old chorus.

Don't you recollect it?

"Den, cheer up, Sam! don't let your sperrits go down; Dere's many a gal dat I knows wal am waitin' fur you in de town!"

The ditty always winds up invariably, as in the old days at sea, with the self-same sharp tw.a.n.g of the chords of the banjo at the end of the last bar, that Sam used to give when sitting in the galley of the poor _Denver City_.

"Ponk-a-tink-a-tong-tang. P-lang!"

I can hear it now.

Bless you, I can never forget that tune--no, never--brimful as it is with the memory of our ill-fated ship.

THE END.