The Mystery Part 20

"But," I expostulated, "what's the _use_ of it? Even if the men were dangerous, that would just make them think you _did_ have something to guard."

"I know that. Orders," replied Percy Darrow.

We built the stockade in a day. When it was finished we marched to the beach, and never, save in the three instances of which I shall later tell you, did I see the valley again. The next day we washed our clothes, and moved ash.o.r.e with all our belongings.

"I'm not going to have this crew aboard," stated Captain Selover positively, "I'm going to clean her." He himself stayed, however.

We rowed in, constructed a hasty fireplace of stones, spread our blankets, and built an unnecessary fire near the beach.

"Clean her!" grumbled Thrackles, "my eye!"

"I'd rather round the Cape," growled Pulz hopelessly.

"Come, now, it can't be as bad as all that," I tried to cheer them.

"It can't be more than a week or ten days' job, even if we careen her."

"You don't know what you're talking about," said Thrackles. "It's worse than the yellow jack. It's six weeks at least. Mind when we last 'cleaned her'?" he inquired of Handy Solomon.

"You can kiss the Book on it," replied he. "Down by the line in that little swab of a sand island. My eye, but _don't_ I remember!

I sweated my liver white."

They smoked in silence.

"That's a main queer contrivance of the Perfessor's--that stockade-like," ventured Solomon, after a little.

"He doesn't want any intrusion," I said. "These scientific experiments are very delicate."

"Quite like," he commented non-committally.

We slept on the ground that night, and next morning, under Captain Selover's directions, we commenced the task of lightening the ship.

He detailed the n.i.g.g.e.r and Perdosa for special duty.

"I'll just see to your sh.o.r.e quarters," he squeaked. "You empty her."

All day long we rowed back and forth from the ship to the cove, landing the contents of the hold. These, by good fortune, we did not have to carry over the neck of land, for just above the gravel beach was a wide ledge on which we could pile the stores. We ate aboard, and so had no opportunity of seeing what Captain Selover and his men were about, until evening. Then we discovered that they had collected and lowered to the beach a quant.i.ty of stateroom doors from the wreck, and had trundled the galley stove to the edge where it awaited our a.s.sistance. We hitched a cable to it, and let it down gently. The n.i.g.g.e.r was immensely pleased. After some experiment he got it to draw, and so cooked us our supper on it. After supper, Captain Selover rowed himself back to the ship.

"Eagen," he had said, drawing me aside, "I'm going to leave you with them. It's better that one of us--I think as owner I ought to be aboard----"

"Of course, sir," said I, "it's the only proper place for you."

"I'm glad you think so," he rejoined, apparently relieved. "And anyway," he cried, with a burst of feeling, "I hate the gritty feeling of it under my feet! Solid oak's the only walking for a man."

He left me hastily, as though a trifle ashamed. I thought he seemed depressed, even a little furtive, and yet on a.n.a.lysis I could discover nothing definite on which to base such a conclusion.

It was rather a feeling of difference from the man I had known. In my fatigue it seemed hardly worth thinking about.

The men had rolled themselves in their blankets, tired with the long day.

Next morning Captain Selover was ash.o.r.e early. He had quite recovered his spirits, and offered me a dram of French brandy, which I refused.

We worked hard again; again the master returned at night to his vessel, this time without a word to any of us; again the men, drugged by toil, turned in early and slept like the dead.

We became entangled in a mesh of days like these, during which things were accomplished, but in which was no s.p.a.ce for anything but the tasks imposed upon us. The men for the most part had little to say.

"Por Dios, eet is too mooch work!" sighed Perdosa once.

"Why don't you kick to the Old Man, then?" sneered Thrackles.

The silence that followed, and the sullenness with which Perdosa readdressed himself to his work, was significant enough of Captain Selover's past relations with the men.

And how we did clean her! We stripped her of every st.i.tch and sliver until she floated high, an empty hull, even her spars and running rigging ash.o.r.e. I understood now the crew's grumbling. We literally went at her with a nail brush.

Captain Selover took charge of us when we had reached this period.

He and the n.i.g.g.e.r and Perdosa had long since finished the installation of the permanent camp. They had built us huts from the wreck, collecting stateroom doors for the sides, and hatches for the roofs, huge and solid, with iron rings in them. The bronze and iron ventilation gratings to the doors gave us glimpses of the coast through fretwork; the rich inlaying of woods surrounded us. We set up on a solid rock the galley stove--with its rails to hold the cooking pots from upsetting, in a sea way. In it we burned the debris of the wreck, all sorts of wood, some sweet and aromatic and spicy as an incensed cathedral. I have seen the n.i.g.g.e.r boiling beans over a blaze of sandal wood fragrant as an Eastern shop.

First we scrubbed the _Laughing La.s.s_, then we painted her, and resized and tarred her standing rigging, resized and rove her running gear, slushed her masts, finally careened her and sc.r.a.ped and painted her below.

When we had quite finished, we had the anchor chain dealt out to us in fathoms, and sc.r.a.ped, pounded and polished that. These were indeed days full of labour.

Being busy from morning until night we knew but little of what was about us. We saw the open sea and the waves tumbling over the reef outside. We saw the headlands, and the bow of the bay and the surf with its watching seals and the curve of yellow sands. We saw the sweep of coast and the downs and the strange huts we had built out of departed magnificence. And that was all; that const.i.tuted our world.

In the evening sometimes we lit a big bonfire, sailor fashion, just at the edge of the beach. There we sat at ease and smoked our pipes in silence, too tired to talk. Even Handy Solomon's song was still.

Outside the circle of light were mysterious things--strange wavings of white hands, bendings of figures, callings of voices, rustling of feet. We knew them for the surf and the wind in the gra.s.ses: but they were not the less mysterious for that.

Logically Captain Selover and I should have pa.s.sed most of our evenings together. As a matter of fact we so spent very few. Early in the dusk the captain invariably rowed himself out to his beloved schooner. What he did there I do not know. We could see his light now in one part of her, now in the other. The men claimed he was scrubbing her teeth. "Old Scrubs" they called him to his back: never Captain Selover.

"He has to clean up after his own feet, he's so dirty," sagely proffered Handy Solomon. And this was true.

The seaman's prophecy held good. Seven weeks held us at that infernal job--seven weeks of solid, grinding work. The worst of it was, that we were kept at it so breathlessly, as though our very existence were to depend on the headlong rush of our labour. And then we had fully half the stores to put away again, and the other half to transport painfully over the neck of land from the cove to the beach.

So accustomed had I become to the routine in which we were involved, so habituated to antic.i.p.ating the coming day as exactly like the day that had gone, that the completion of our job caught me quite by surprise. I had thrown myself down by the fire prepared for the some old half hour of drowsy nicotine, to be followed by the accustomed heavy sleep, and the usual early rising to toil. The evening was warm; I half closed my eyes.

Handy Solomon was coming in last. Instead of dropping to his place, he straddled the fire, stretching his arms over his head. He let them fall with a sharp exhalation.

"'Lay aloft, lay aloft,' the jolly bos'n cried.

_Blow high, blow low, what care we!_ 'Look ahead, look astern, look a-windward, look a-lee.'

_Down on the coast of the high Barbare-e-e._"

The effect was electrical. We all sprang to our feet and fell to talking at once.

"By G.o.d, we're _through_!" cried Pulz. "I'd clean forgot it!"

The n.i.g.g.e.r piled on more wood. We drew closer about the fire. All the interests in life, so long held in the background, leaped forward, eager for recognition. We spoke of trivialities almost for the first time since our landing, fused into a temporary but complete good fellowship by the relief.

"Wonder how the old doctor is getting on?" ventured Thrackles, after a while.

"The devil's a preacher! I wonder?" cried Handy Solomon.

"Let's make 'em a call," suggested Pulz.