The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn Part 13

"That is very strange," said I, "for whenever I was cruising in the lagoon I always kept an eye on the sh.o.r.e."

"Then you moost 'ave been lookin' out abeam, or ahead, not astarn, vhere I 'appened to be," declared Van Ryn.

"Possibly," I agreed, for I saw that the man was in an aggressively disputatious humour, and I wanted to have no words with him. "Well, what happened after that? Go on with your yarn, Svorenssen."

"We saw you three or four times after that," resumed Svorenssen, "and once you pa.s.sed so close that we easily recognised both of you.

Unfortunately, we were both up a tree at the time, and were unable to descend, for the reason that there was a savage brute of a wild pig that had driven us up aloft and was waiting below for us to come down again.

Of course we shouted our loudest, and as long as there seemed any possibility that you might hear; but it was no good. I suspect it was the roar of the surf on the reef that drowned our voices. But every time we saw you, if you were not going alongside the wreck you were steering north. So at length we came to the conclusion that you had probably rigged up some sort of a shelter in that direction; and we accordingly agreed to work along-sh.o.r.e in a northerly direction, and try to find out where you had bestowed yourselves.

"To you, sailing along easily and comfortably in your boat, I dare say it would seem no very arduous job to work your way along a few miles of open beach; but to us two, circ.u.mstanced as we were, in a place swarming with savage brutes that seemed to be for ever lurking on the watch for us; without the means of kindling a fire as a protection; and with only our sheath-knives as weapons; obliged to enter the woods at the peril of our lives to obtain food--and as often as not driven out again without the food; able to sleep only during the day-time--and very often not even then; compelled to seek shelter in trees for hours at a time--ay, and often enough for a whole day--to save our lives, it was simply-- well, there are no words strong enough to describe it. Why, there were days--plenty of them--when we did not make so much as a mile of progress; when, from one cause or another, we did not make a fathom, much less a mile. No wonder that we were so long a time working our way round to you. Indeed, now that I look back upon the innumerable difficulties that we had to contend with, my only surprise is that we ever managed to get here at all.

"Then, as an appropriate climax of all our difficulties, the forest one day caught fire--perhaps you saw the blaze?--and almost the whole of the island was swept clean of every green thing. Phew! that was an experience, with a vengeance! If I had not beheld the scene with my own eyes I could never have believed there were so many wild creatures in all the world as we then saw; great, fierce monkeys, bigger than a man; little monkeys in thousands; leopards; wild pigs as savage as lions; deer of all sorts and sizes; and creatures the like of which we had never seen or heard of before--they all came swarming down to the beach to escape the flames. And--a very curious circ.u.mstance I thought it-- they were all so thoroughly terrified that none of them interfered with the others, or with us, but all stood huddled together by the water's edge, bleating, squealing, roaring, howling--no, I cannot attempt to describe it; it is the kind of thing that has to be _seen_ to be understood.

"Naturally, we all edged away as far as we could from the flames and the flying sparks, and eventually it began to dawn upon us all--beasts as well as men--that the extreme north end of the island might possibly be spared, and we all with one accord set off in that direction. And for a little while--twenty-four hours, or thereabout--we men did very well; the creatures all stood huddled together, trembling and making queer moaning, noises, too terrified to take notice of anybody or anything, and when we needed food all that was necessary was to lay hold of a deer, haul him out of the crowd, and cut his throat--and there was all the food we required.

"But that condition of affairs was of course quite temporary. No sooner had the fire burned itself out than the creatures recovered their courage and turned upon each other like--well, like wild beasts. Dirk and I quickly recognised that the north end of the island was too perilous a place for us. There was therefore nothing for us but to escape from our dangerous neighbours while we could, and this could only be done by bearing away south again, which we did.

"There was no cause for further fear of wild beasts as we pursued our journey southward; there was not a living thing to be seen anywhere ash.o.r.e; even the birds had all vanished. That condition of affairs was of course all in our favour, so far as it went; but the unfortunate part of it was that the fruit was also destroyed; so that, while we could now rest undisturbed at night, our only food consisted of such raw sh.e.l.l- fish as we could find at the margin of the beach; and we could find no fresh water wherewith to quench our thirst.

"For two days and nights we were in that predicament, our thirst being terrible, and the only relief we could obtain--and it was very partial-- was to enter the sea and lie down in it for about ten minutes, allowing the ripples to wash over us, and taking care not to go far enough in to give the sharks a chance to get at us. Then, when we felt sufficiently relieved, we staggered along for a few yards, repeating the process about thirty or forty times a day.

"At length, however, we found a stream of fresh water and camped beside it. But so terrible had been our suffering from thirst that, having at length found fresh water, we could not summon the courage to leave it again.

"One day, however, as we were seeking sh.e.l.l-fish on the beach near the mouth of the stream, Dirk suddenly remarked:--

"'Olaf, my son, just run your eye along the ridge of that hill yonder, and tell me what you see.'

"I did so; and presently saw what had attracted his attention. There was a little patch of green that looked as though it might be trees, while all below it was black, where the fire had been.

"'It certainly looks very like a clump of trees,' said I; 'and where there are trees there will also probably be fruit. Let us take a walk up there and investigate.'

"'And what about leaving this fresh water?' asked Dirk.

"'No need to do that,' said I. 'The stream comes down from that direction, and we can probably follow it for a good part of the way.

Surely it is worth while to risk it.'

"So we started, following the course of the stream until we had arrived very near to our destination. And when that was reached we found it to be a nice little patch of forest, rising to the top of the hill and dipping down on the other side of it for a distance of about two miles.

And the reason why it had not been burnt with the rest was because it stood on the lee side of a lake big enough to cut off the flames from that little patch.

"There were plenty of birds there; and when we proceeded to investigate we soon found that there were animals also--small monkeys, creatures very like hares but with short ears, a few deer; but nothing dangerous so far as we could discover. And there was an abundance of fruit of several kinds also; we therefore quickly determined to settle down there and rest a bit before going any farther. There was a great patch of reeds along the western end of the lake, and here thousands of wild duck used to settle every night; and we soon found that it was an easy matter to get a few by simply waiting for them among the reeds and catching them as they swam past.

"We built ourselves a hut of wattles, thatched with palm leaves, that kept us dry and comfortable when it rained. So happy and easy in our minds were we that we almost forgot your existence; and when we happened to remember, we used to say to each other: 'Never mind; we are every bit as comfortable as they are; we will stop on here a bit longer.' And so we did, deferring our departure day after day and week after week, until finally the ducks grew shy of us, and the other creatures seemed to recognise our traps and avoid them; so that at length a time came when we were pretty hard put to it to make a living. Then, too, we began to feel lonesome, and to get snappy and short-tempered with each other; to dream and think and talk about home and its comforts, until we grew thoroughly dissatisfied with the life we were living; and one day, after we had had one of our now frequent quarrels, I said to Dirk:--

"'Look here, mate, we appear to have quite forgotten those other two.

Do you think that a man of brains like Mr Blackburn is going to settle down and be satisfied to pa.s.s the remainder of his life among a group of desert islands like these? Because, if you do, I don't. Just consider the facts. There is he and the boy; and you may safely bet that, whatever else they may have done, or left undone, they will have taken care to save the treasure that we found aboard that old galleon; and what good will it do them so long as they remain here? No good at all.

Therefore I think we may take it for granted that he will set his wits to work to get away from here by hook or by crook, taking the treasure with them; and then where do _we_ come in, and what becomes of our share of it? Let us cut adrift from this spot--which, anyhow, is of no further use to us--and join them; and when they go, we will go with them, and take our share of the treasure.'

"Dirk quite saw the force of my reasoning and eagerly agreed to my proposal; so we made a start there and then, and--and here we are."

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

IS TROUBLE BREWING?

"Exactly," I concurred. "Here you are. But how did you know where Billy and I had located ourselves? and how did you contrive to make your way here from the southern end of West Island?"

"West Island--is that the name of the place? Oh, we managed pretty well," returned Svorenssen. "From the ridge of the hill where the forest was all burned away we were able to get a very fair idea of the geography of the group in general. We counted six islands in addition to the one we were already on, and we observed that the one to the eastward of us was, like our own, fire-swept; also that at one point it was separated from our island by a channel only about half a mile wide.

To the northward of that island we saw another, with small groups of trees dotted about here and there upon it, while the remainder of its surface appeared to be covered with corn-fields or something similar; so it is not to be wondered at if we jumped to the conclusion that we should find you established there. So we made a start by heading for the narrowest part of the channel between our own island and the next one, carrying with us as much fruit as we could handle, for we knew not when or where we should find more.

"Upon reaching the channel the question that confronted us was: How were we going to get across? We could see but one way, and that was to swim it. But what about sharks? We had already lost one of our number through them, and we had no desire that a similar fate should befall either of us. Therefore we camped alongside that channel two days, and while one of us foraged for food, the other just sat and intently watched the water. And when the evening of the second day arrived without disclosing any sign of sharks in the channel, we agreed to risk the pa.s.sage; so we stripped off our clothes--or what remained of them-- made them into a bundle, secured them upon our heads, and waded in.

"We got across safely, and were lucky enough to land just where a little stream of fresh water came down from the hill that rose in the middle of the island. We camped alongside the stream that night, and made our supper of melons and ground-nuts that had grown since the pa.s.sage of the fire over the land. On the following day we proceeded inland, following the course of the stream and heading toward the top of the hill, from which we hoped to obtain a little further knowledge of the geography of the group and also, it might be, some more definite information as to your own whereabouts. And we were successful in both particulars, for while we were on the top of that hill we saw your sailing boat coming round the eastern end of the island across the channel northward of us.

Watching you, we saw you land on that island, stay there a while, and then sail away again in a north-easterly direction. Upon seeing this, Dirk and I came to the conclusion that the proper thing for us to do would be to descend to the beach, and there await your next appearance, when we would signal you. We had already detected a little stream flowing down the hill-side and discharging into the channel, quite near the spot where we decided to await your reappearance, so we followed it down to the water's edge, where we camped. Then that same evening your boat again hove in sight, and we saw you land a party of n.i.g.g.e.rs just opposite where we were watching; having done which you again made sail to the northward and eastward; which led us to the conclusion that after all you had not settled upon that cultivated island--as we had at first supposed--but somewhere else. Of course we showed ourselves upon the beach, and hailed; but the channel was too wide for our voices to carry across, and probably you never looked in our direction, so we failed to attract your attention. But we knew now that you were still on the group, and that we were on your track; so we did not trouble overmuch.

"Then, before your boat had pa.s.sed out of sight, and while we were still watching, we saw a n.i.g.g.e.r paddling across the channel from the island you had touched at to the one that we were upon. He was heading to land at a spot rather more than a mile to the eastward of where we were, so we got back into the young growth that had sprung up after the fire, and pushed along toward the spot for which he was making. We arrived a few minutes before he did and, crouching down, we saw him haul up his tub of a canoe on the beach, and make his way inland. We allowed him to get well away from the beach, and then we crept down to the canoe, launched her, and proceeded to paddle in the track of your boat.

"It fell dark almost before we had got fairly under way, but there was a fine moon, so it did not greatly matter. We paddled down the channel and across it to the point round which you had recently vanished--a good eight miles we reckoned it to be--and hot work it was for two men who had been on short commons for more than a month; but we forgot all about that when, upon rounding the point, we saw, at a distance of not more than five or six miles, a _light_; and we knew that now you could not be very far away, while we were in possession of the means to reach you.

But it was a tough job to get that little tub of the n.i.g.g.e.r's along when once we had rounded the point, for at once we felt the full strength of the easterly breeze, and it and the popple it raised were together just as much as we could barely stem. It must have taken us _hours_ to get across that five or six miles of water; and long before we landed you had put all lights out, and turned in; but there was the house, plain enough to be seen in the bright moonlight, so we headed straight for it, and landed at last on the beach just below."

"And what became of the punt that you stole from that unfortunate native?" I demanded.

"Why, I reckon she's still there on the beach where we left her," was the reply.

"Still there!" I exclaimed. "Why--yes--I suppose she is. This must be looked to at once. Billy, take this man, Van Ryn, with you, and get him to show you where they left the punt. Then you and he will paddle her round to the cove here, and make her fast astern of the sailing boat.

Then get the sailing boat under way, and Van Ryn will point out to you the spot on Apes' Island from which he and Svorenssen took her--"

"Nod me, misder; don'd you think id!" suddenly stormed the Dutchman.

"You're nod my schibber now, and I don'd dake orders from you or anybody else. Ve're all equal now."

"Are we?" said I, slipping my hand into my jacket pocket. "That's where you are making a big mistake, my man. I mean to be just as much skipper here as I was aboard the _Yorkshire La.s.s_; and if you men wish to share in the comforts of life that I am able to give you, and to go home with me when I go, you will have to submit to discipline, and obey my orders."

"Ah! ve'll see about dot," interrupted Van Ryn, springing to his feet.

"Olaf, mine zon, haf ve comed all dis vay from over yonder to be ordered about mit dis man? Let's show 'im dot ve means to do as ve likes here.

Come on!" And, whipping out the remains of his sheath knife, he gathered himself together for a spring upon me, with one eye on Svorenssen meanwhile, in full expectation that the latter would back him up.

But I was fully prepared. There had been, from the moment when I first encountered these two men, early that morning, a certain truculence of speech and demeanour that warned me against trusting them too implicitly, and I had been on my guard with them all day. So now, as the Dutchman sprang to his feet I sprang to mine, and, leaping back from them, out of arms' reach, I whipped out the revolver that I had been carrying all day in my jacket pocket, and shouted:

"Hands up, both of you! Don't so much as think of trying conclusions with me; for if either of you advance a single step, I shoot--to kill!

I remember the reputation you two men--and _you_ especially, Van Ryn-- earned for yourselves aboard the brigantine; you were perpetually instigating trouble. But don't for a moment imagine that you will be permitted to make trouble here, for I simply won't have it. At the first hint of anything of that sort I'll hand you over to my friends, the natives of yonder island, and ask them to take charge of you; indeed I believe it would only be an act of ordinary prudence to turn you over to them at once."

"No, no, Mister," interposed Svorenssen hurriedly, "don't think of it.

There ain't goin' to be any trouble, I a.s.sure ye. Don't take any notice o' what Dirk says, Mister; 'is bark's always a lot worse 'n 'is bite.

He don't mean a half nor a quarter of what 'e says--sit down, you thunderin' fool, and put away that knife of yours," he continued, turning suddenly upon the Dutchman and forcing him back on the packing- case upon which they had both been sitting, and seating himself beside him. Then he leaned over his companion and began whispering hurriedly and excitedly in his ear.

"Stop that, Svorenssen!" I exclaimed. "If you have any advice to give that man, speak it aloud, so that I may hear. If it is good advice there is no need to whisper it."

"All right, Mister," returned the Finn, "I was only tellin' him not to make a bloomin' fool of hisself. And now, come on, Dirk, and let's do what Mr Blackburn orders. What 'e says is right; he's skipper still, and we may's well recernise it first as last. You knows as well as I do that we can't do nothin' without 'im. Come along, Billy."