Plotting in Pirate Seas Part 19

"For de sake, Mister Ol' Doc, I got to rub um tomorrow?" pleaded the negro.

"No, not tomorrow. From now on, I've got to 'potion um,' as you put it."

He put his hand in his pocket.

"Here, Mark," he said, "is half a sovereign. That isn't for saving the boy's life, you understand, for you'd have done that any way, but for working on him as you have."

The negro pocketed the coin with a wide smile, but lingered.

"I want to see um come 'round," he explained.

As the doctor had forecast, in half an hour's time, the color flowed back into Stuart's cheeks, his breathing became normal, and, presently, he stirred and looked around.

"What--What----" he began, bewildered.

"You went to sleep under the shade of some poison-trees, manchineel trees, we call them here," the doctor explained. "Did you eat any of the fruit?"

"I--I don't know," replied Stuart, trying to remember. "I--I sort of went to sleep, that is, my body seemed to and my head didn't. And then I saw crabs coming. At first they were only small ones, then bigger ones came, and bigger, and bigger----"

He s.h.i.+vered and hid his face at the remembrance.

"There was nothing there except the regular red land-crabs," said the doctor, "maybe eighteen inches across, but with a body the size of your hand. Their exaggeration of size was a delirium due to poisoning."

"And the big, black ogre?"

"Was our friend Mark, here," explained the doctor, "who rescued you, first, and has saved your life by working over you, here."

Stuart held out his hand, feebly.

"I didn't know there were any trees which hurt you unless you touched them," he said.

"Plenty of them," answered the scientist. "There are over a hundred plants which give off smells or vapors which are injurious either to man or animals. Some are used by savages for arrow poisons, others for fish poisons, and some we use for medicinal drugs. Dixon records a 'gas-tree'

in Africa, the essential oil of which contains chlorine and the smell of which is like the poison-gas used in the World War. And poison-ivy, in the United States, will poison some people even if they only pa.s.s close to it."

"Jes' how does a tree make a smell, Mister Ol' Doc?" queried Mark.

"That's hard to explain to you," answered the scientist, turning to the negro. "But every plant has some kind of a smell, that is, all of them have essential oils which volatilize in the air. Some, like the bay, have these oil-sacs in the leaves, some, like cinnamon, in the bark, and so on. The smell of flowers comes the same way."

"An' there is mo' kinds of debbil-trees 'an them on Terror Cove?"

"Plenty more kinds," was the answer, "though few of them are as deadly.

These are famous. Lord Nelson, when a young man here in Barbados, was made very ill by drinking from a pool into which some branches of the manchineel had been thrown. In fact, he never really got over it."

"How about me, Doctor?" enquired Stuart. His face was flus.h.i.+ng and its was evident that the semi-paralysis of the first infection was pa.s.sing into a fever stage.

"It all depends whether you ate any of the fruit or not," the doctor answered. "If you didn't, you're safe. But you seem to have spent an hour in that poison-tree grove, and that gives the 'devil-trees,' as Mark calls them, plenty of time to get in their deadly work. You'll come out of it, all right, but you'll have to fight for it!"

CHAPTER IX

THE HURRICANE

For many days Stuart lay in an alternation of fever and stupor, tormented by dreams in which visions of the red land-crabs played a terrible part, but youth and clean living were on his side, and he pa.s.sed the crisis. Thereafter, in the equable climate of Barbados--one of the most healthful of the West Indies Islands--his strength began to return.

The "Ol' Doc," as he was universally known in the neighborhood, was an eccentric scientist who had spent his life in studying the plants of the West Indies. He had lived in the Antilles for over forty years and knew as much about the people as he did about the plant life.

Kindly-natured, the old botanist became greatly interested in his young patient, and, that he should not weary in enforced idleness, sent to Bridgetown for Stuart's trunk and his portable typewriter. Day by day the boy practised, and then turned his hand to writing a story of his experiences with the "debbil-trees" which story, by the way, he had to rewrite three times before his host would let him send it.

"Writing," he would say, "is like everything else in the world. You can do it quickly and well, after years of experience, but, at the beginning, you must never let a sentence pa.s.s until you are sure that you cannot phrase it better."

Moreover, as it turned out, the Ol' Doc was to be Stuart's guide in more senses than one, for when the boy casually mentioned Guy Cecil's name, the botanist twisted his head sidewise sharply.

"Eh, what? Who's that?" he asked. "What does he look like?"

Stuart gave a description, as exact as he could.

"Do you suppose he knows anything about flowers?"

"He seemed to know a lot about Jamaica orchids," the boy replied.

The botanist tapped the arm of his chair with definite, meditative taps.

"That man," he said, "has always been a mystery to me. How old would you take him to be?"

"Oh, forty or so," the boy answered.

"He has looked that age for twenty years, to my knowledge. If I didn't know better, I should believe him to have found the Fountain of Perpetual Youth which Ponce de Leon and so many other of the early Spanish adventurers sailed to the Spanish Main to find."

"But what is he?" asked Stuart, sitting forward and eager in attention.

"Who knows? He is the friend, the personal friend, of nearly every important man in the Caribbean, whether that official be British, French or Dutch; he is also regarded as a witch-master by half the black population. I have met him in the jungles, botanizing--and he is a good botanist--I have seen him suddenly appear as the owner of a sugar plantation, as a seeker for mining concessions, as a merchant, and as a hotel proprietor. I have seen him the owner of a luxurious yacht; I have met him, half-ragged, looking for a job, with every appearance of poverty and misery."

"But," cried the lad in surprise, "what can that all imply? Do you suppose he's just some sort of a conspirator, or swindler, sometimes rich and sometimes poor, according to the hauls he has made?"

"Well," said the botanist, "sometimes I have thought he is the sort of man who would have been a privateer in the old days, a 'gentleman buccaneer.' Maybe he is still, but in a different way. Sometimes, I have thought that he was attached to the Secret Service of some government."

"English?"

"Probably not," the scientist answered, "because he is too English for that. No, he is so English that I thought he must be for some other government and was just playing the English part to throw off suspicion."

"German?"

"It's not unlikely."

Whereupon Stuart remembered the guarded way in which the Managing Editor had spoken of "European Powers," and this thought of Cecil threw him back upon his quest.