With Cochrane the Dauntless Part 23

"My dear lad!" the admiral exclaimed, grasping his hand, "I gave you up for lost many months ago, and we have all mourned for you deeply. Where have you been? what have you been doing? what on earth have you done to yourself? and where did you get this extraordinary craft?"

"I have been cast away on an island some twelve hundred miles to the west.

Only three of us were saved. We built this craft between us. One of my comrades is dead, the other remains on the island, and I have sailed her back single-handed. I think this, sir, will account for my somewhat strange appearance."

"Fully, fully, lad. Well, you must tell me all about it afterwards. Why did you not come direct in the boat to my ship instead of sending for me?"

"Because I was afraid of anyone else coming on board until you had sent someone you could trust to take possession of her?"

"Why, bless me!" Lord Cochrane said with a laugh, "I should not have taken her to be as valuable as all that. She is most creditable as a specimen of the work of three shipwrecked men, and I should say from her appearance as I rowed up to her that she was fairly fast. She might be worth a good deal as an exhibition if you had her in the Thames, but she would not fetch many hundred dollars here; though I have no doubt that, when properly painted up and in trim, she would make an excellent little coaster."

"It is the cargo and not the ship, sir, that is valuable."

"What does it consist of?"

"It consists of gold, sir. There are five hundred thousand dollars stowed in boxes."

The admiral looked at him in astonishment.

"Five hundred thousand dollars, Mr. Embleton! Are you in earnest?"

"Quite so, sir; the ship you sent me off to with twelve hands was laden with military stores and money for the payment of the Spanish troops. I was fortunate enough to get on board and capture her just before the storm burst. When she was wrecked, on an island of whose name I am ignorant, her stern, where the gold was stowed, was fortunately in only four feet of water, and we had, therefore, no difficulty in getting at the boxes and carrying them on sh.o.r.e, where we buried them until we had built this craft."

The admiral ran down the companion into the cabin and saw the boxes lying side by side along the length of the keel.

"I congratulate you heartily," he said to Stephen, "this is by far the richest prize that has fallen into our hands. You did perfectly right in sending for me, for, in faith, I would not trust this treasure out of my sight on any consideration, until I handed it over to the Chilian government, after taking care to deduct the fleet's share of the prize-money. It will be welcome, I can tell you, for the pay of the fleet is terribly in arrear. The treasury is empty, and there are no means of refilling it. Properly speaking, the whole of the fleet's share of the money should go to you, but the rules of the service are arbitrary."

The conversation had been in English, and the admiral going on deck ordered the officer, who had remained sitting in his gig, to tow the cutter alongside the flag-ship. The officer at once gave the necessary orders. Two of the men jumped on board and hauled up the anchor, and nothing but the presence of the admiral prevented a burst of laughter among the boat's crew as the stone came to the surface. As it was, there was a broad grin on their faces. The two men resumed their places in the boat, and the cutter was towed to the side of the flag-ship. Lord Cochrane ordered a whip to be sent down with slings, and himself superintended the bringing up of the boxes, whose weight in comparison to their size excited lively surprise among the sailors who brought them up to the deck. The slings were placed round them one by one, and they were hoisted to the deck of the frigate, and carried into the admiral's cabin.

After the last box had been swung up, the admiral and Stephen went up the accommodation ladder to the deck. The officers were gathered round the boxes wondering at their weight.

"What should you say they have in them, gentlemen?" Lord Cochrane asked.

"I should say that they contained specie," the captain said, "had it not been out of the question that so great an amount could be collected in Chili."

"I am happy to inform you, gentlemen, that those boxes contain Spanish gold, and that they are a lawful prize captured from the enemy by a boat's crew from this ship, under the command of my flag-midshipman, Mr.

Embleton. Every man on board, therefore, in proportion to his rank, will come in for a share of prize-money, and for this you will have to thank your fellow-officer here."

Hitherto none of them had recognized Stephen, but had been wondering who the strange figure was, that had come on board with the admiral. They still looked almost incredulous, until Stephen stepped forward and held out his hand to his special friends and addressed them by name.

"Why, is it really you, Don Estevan? We had all given you up for lost. We are glad indeed to see you again."

The other officers all came round and heartily greeted Stephen, all asking questions together about his long absence and the wonderful prize of which the admiral had spoken.

"I will answer as many questions as I can presently," Stephen protested; "but, in the first place, I must have a bath, and change my clothes, and have my hair cut. Are my things still on board, and is anyone else in my cabin?"

He learned to his great satisfaction that his cabin was as he had left it.

"For weeks the admiral hoped that you would return. There was, indeed, much anxiety about the boat when we saw the storm coming on. Whether you had gained the brig before it burst, of course none of us knew. We could only hope that you had done so. The storm was a terrible one here. While some thought that the brig might have foundered at once when it struck her, it was certain that if she weathered the first blow she would have to run for it. It was one of the worst storms, people here say, that has been experienced on the coast for many years, alike in its fury and in its duration, and all agreed that she would have been blown at least a thousand miles off the land before the gale spent its force. As the wind continued in the same quarter for a long time it would have taken the brig weeks to beat back against it, but when two months pa.s.sed without your return, all concluded that you had either sunk before gaining the ship, or that she had gone down in the gale, or been wrecked among some of the islands into whose neighbourhood she must have been blown. However, the admiral continued to hope long after the rest of us had given you up. At the end of two months he appointed me his flag-midshipman to fill your place, as he especially said, until your return. This being the case, I have not shifted my berth, and your cabin has remained unoccupied."

One of the officers gave orders that a tub should be at once taken to Stephen's cabin filled with water, and that the ship's barber should hold himself in readiness when called upon.

When Stephen came out, an hour later, dressed in uniform, and with his hair a reasonable length, he was told that the admiral had requested his presence in his cabin as soon as he was dressed, but had ordered the message not to be given to him until he came on deck.

"Now, lad, let me hear the whole story," he said; "but first fill your gla.s.s from that bottle. I should imagine that you have almost forgotten the taste of wine."

"I have not touched it since two days after we were wrecked, sir; but on the whole we have not done at all badly with regard to food."

"In the first place, what has become of your boat's crew?"

"They are all dead, sir. Some were killed or washed overboard during the storm; the rest were drowned at the time of the wreck."

"That is a bad business. However, begin at the beginning, and tell the story your own way. I have plenty of time to listen to it, and the fuller you make it the better."

Stephen related the story, from the time of his leaving the ship until he had anch.o.r.ed in the bay. As he saw that the admiral wished to have full details, he told the story at length, and the sun was setting by the time he brought it to a conclusion.

"You have done wonderfully well, lad," Lord Cochrane said warmly when he had ceased speaking, "wonderfully well indeed; no one could have done better. The arrangements throughout were excellent, and you showed a n.o.ble spirit in delaying your departure for four days in order to a.s.sist the poor wretch who had murdered your companion, and would have murdered yourself in his greed for gold. I do not praise you for bringing the treasure back here; it is the conduct that I should expect from every British officer; but, at the same time, it is clear that you had it in your power to leave it buried on that island, so that you could have gone back in some craft, and brought it away with you. I shall represent your conduct in the strongest light to the government. By the rules of the service, of course, you are ent.i.tled only to a junior officer's share of the ship's portion of the prize-money, but I shall certainly suggest that your case shall be specially considered. Now, I will take you ash.o.r.e with me. I am going to a dinner given by the president, and I shall create a sensation when I state that I have, after deducting a fifth for the fleet's share of the prize-money, four hundred thousand dollars to hand over to them.

"I shall take you first to my wife. She will be delighted to see you again, and so will the children. You can give her an outline of your story. If you had been three days later you would not have found me here.

For the last four months I have been endeavouring to get my ships fitted out, but in vain, and I am putting to sea no stronger than when I came back, and there can be no doubt that, profiting by their last lesson, the Spaniards will have made Callao stronger than before. However, we will do something which shall be worthy of us, though I fear that it will not be the capture of Callao."

A few minutes later the admiral's gig was alongside, and the admiral, his captain, and Stephen went ash.o.r.e. Lady Cochrane greeted Stephen as warmly and kindly as her husband had done, and the children were exuberant in their delight at the return of their friend.

"He has a wonderful story to tell you, my dear," Lord Cochrane said. "It has taken him more than three hours to give me the details, and you will have a greater treat listening to them this evening than I shall have at this state dinner."

"It was too bad, Don Estevan," one of his friends said to Stephen next morning, "that the admiral should have taken you on sh.o.r.e with him yesterday after you had been with him all the afternoon. We had been looking forward to having you all to ourselves, and hearing your story.

You may imagine that we are all burning with curiosity to hear how it is that you came back all alone in that curious craft astern, and, above all, how you have brought with you this prize-money. All we have heard at present is that the whole of the boat's crew that went with you are dead.

I promised the others that I would not ask any questions until our morning's work was over, so that we could hear your story together."

"It is just as well not to tell it by driblets," Stephen said. "It is really a long story, as it consists of a number of small things, and not of any one special incident. It can hardly be cut as short as I should like to cut it, for I am but a poor hand at a yarn."

After the usual work of exercising the men at making sail, preparing for action, and gun and cutla.s.s exercise had been performed, anchor again cast, ropes coiled up, and everything in apple-pie order, the Chilian officers rallied round Stephen, and, taking his seat on the breech of a gun, he told them the story, but with a good deal less detail than he had given to Lord Cochrane. This relation elicited the greatest admiration on the part of his hearers. The fact that he and two others alone, and without any tools save swords, should have built the stout little craft astern, and that he should, single-handed, have sailed her some thirteen or fourteen hundred miles was to them nothing short of marvellous. All had, the afternoon before, gone on board of her, and had seen that she only wanted paint to be a handsome little boat. Unaccustomed to manual labour, it seemed wonderful that three men-two of whom were officers-should have even attempted such work with only the materials from a wreck to build with.

Stephen had pa.s.sed very lightly over his four days' nursing of Jacopo, but this incident surprised them more than anything else, save the construction of the cutter. That, after the man had murdered the captain and attempted to shoot Stephen, with the intention of obtaining possession of the whole of the gold, the latter should have nursed him back to life instead of finishing him at once, seemed to them an incomprehensible piece of folly.

"But the man was a murderer, senor; he deserved death. Why should you have troubled about him, especially when, as you say, the natives might have come at any moment and taken the craft that had cost you so much pains and labour, and carried off the treasure."

"You see, when he became powerless, he was no longer an enemy," Stephen replied. "He was a criminal, it is true; but the temptation had been great. The man saw a chance of possessing himself of what to him was a fabulous treasure; better men than he have yielded to such a temptation; and though I do not say that he did not deserve death, the punishment of seeing the failure of his plans, and of being left, probably for life, a prisoner on that island was a severe one indeed. He will, at any rate, have time to repent of his sins, and some day he may be picked up by a pa.s.sing vessel, and thus be able to retrieve his errors. At any rate, he will do no harm there."

"Well, no ill came from it," one of the officers said; "but I own that, for my part, as soon as I had knocked him down, I should have put my musket to his head and blown out his brains, and should never have repented the action afterwards."

"I might have done so," Stephen said, "had I overtaken him directly after he had murdered my companion; but, you see, twenty-four hours had pa.s.sed, and I had had time to think how great had been the temptation to which he had yielded. Besides, everything had gone well: I had obtained possession of the cutter, and had partially victualled her; I had completely turned the tables on him, and instead of his lying in wait for me I was lying in wait for him. He was practically at my mercy, as I could have shot him down without giving him any chance whatever. When one has got things all his own way one can afford to be lenient. The man had been already very severely wounded, and his power for doing harm was at an end. At any rate, I am very glad now that I did not kill him. And you must remember that I owed him something for his work upon the cutter, from which he was not now to profit, but which was to afford me the means of returning here and bringing back the treasure from which we shall all obtain some benefit."

"That is all true, Don Estevan; but the real reason of all was that you pitied the poor wretch, and so were ready to run a great risk to succour him. We might not have acted as you did, but at least we shall all love you the better for it. As to the prize-money, it is ridiculous that our share of it should be as large as yours, and I hope the government will see that, under the circ.u.mstances, you have a right to a handsome slice of it, for indeed, after the wreck of the vessel, it seems to me that their claim to it was fairly lost."

"I cannot see that. It was never out of my possession."

"I don't know," the other laughed. "They were two to one against you, and probably held the opinion that they had as much right to its possession as you."

"If they had been Spaniards it might have been so," Stephen agreed; "but you see the treasure had never been theirs, and from the moment that the ship surrendered they had nothing whatever to do with it."