Poison Island Part 23

The breeze dried up as the day grew hotter, and in the end I downed sail and rowed the last few miles. I know Whydah pretty well, having had dealings there. It is a fine place, with orange-trees growing wild and great green meadows, and rivers chock full of fish, and the whole of it full of fever as an egg is of meat. The factory there was kept by an old man, an Englishman, who pretended to be Dutch and called himself Klootz, but was known to all as Bristol Pete.

The building stood on a rise at the back of the swamps. It had a verandah in front, with a tier of guns which he loaded and fired off on King George's birthday, and in the rear a h.e.l.l of a barracks, where he kept the slaves, ready for dealing. He was turned sixty and grown careless in his talk, and he lived there with nine wives and ten strapping daughters. Sons did not thrive with him, somehow.

In the matter of men he was short-handed, his habit being to entice seamen off the s.h.i.+ps trading there to take service with him on the promise of marrying them up to his daughters. It looked like a good speculation, for the old man had money. But every one of the women was a widow, and the most of them widowed two deep. The climate never agreed with the poor fellows, and just now he had over four hundred slaves in barracks, and only one son-in-law, an Englishman, to look after them.

The old man made me welcome. A father couldn't have shown himself kinder, and when I told him about the _Mary Pynsent_ he could scarce contain himself.

"If there's one thing more than another I enjoy at my age," said he, "'tis a salvage job."

And he actually left the agent--A. G.--in charge of the slaves for three days, while he and I and three of the women took boat and went after the vessel. We found her still at her moorings, and brought her round to Whydah, he and me working her with the youngest of the three (Sarah by name), while the two others cleaned s.h.i.+p. I cannot say why exactly, but this woman appeared superior to her sisters, besides being the best looking. The old man--he had an eye lifting for everything--took notice of this almost before I knew it myself, and put it to me that I couldn't do better than to marry her.

The woman, being asked, was willing. She had lost two husbands already, she told me, but the third time was luck. Her father read the service over us, out of a Testament he always carried in his pocket. As for me, since my poor wife's death I had thoroughly given myself over to the devil, and did not care. Old Klootz was first-rate company, too; though living in that forsaken place he seemed to be a dictionary about every s.h.i.+p that had sailed the seas for forty years past, and to know every scandal about her.

He listened, too, though he seemed to be talking in his full-hearted way all the time. And the end was that I told him about Melhuish, and showed him the map.

He had heard about Melhuish, as about everything else; but the map did truly--I think--surprise him. We studied it together, and he wound up by saying--

"There's a clever fellow somewhere at the bottom of this, and I should like to make his acquaintance."

Said I: "Then you believe there is such a treasure hidden?"

"Lord love you," said he, "I know all about that! It happened in the year '86 at Puerto Bello. A Spaniard, Bartholomew Diaz, that had been flogged for some trouble in the mines, stirred up a revolt among the n.i.g.g.e.rs and half-breeds, and came marching down upon the coast at the head of fourteen thousand or fifteen thousand men, sacking the convents and looting the mines on his way. He gave himself out to be some sort of religious prophet, and this brought the blacks like flies round a honey-pot. The news of it caught Puerto Bello at a moment when there was not a single Royal s.h.i.+p in the harbour.

The Governor lost his head and the priests likewise. Getting word that Diaz was marching straight on the place, and not five leagues distant, they fell to emptying the banks in a panic, stripping the churches, and fetching up treasure from the vaults of the religious houses. There happened to be a schooner lying in the harbour--the _Rosaway_, built at Marblehead--lately taken by the Spaniards off Campeachy, with her crew, that were under lock and key ash.o.r.e, waiting trial for cutting logwood without licence. The priests commandeered this Vessel and piled her up with gold, the Governor sending down a guard of soldiers to protect it; but in the middle of the night, on an alarm that Diaz had come within a mile of the gates, the dunderhead drew off half of this guard to strengthen the garrison. On their way back to the citadel these soldiers were met and pa.s.sed in the dark by the _Rosaway's_ crew, that had managed to break prison, and in the confusion had somehow picked up the pa.s.sword. Sparke was the name of _Rosaway's_ skipper, a Marblehead man; the mate, Griffiths, came from somewhere in Wales; the rest, five in number, being likewise mixed English and Americans.

They picked up a sh.o.r.e-boat down by the harbour, rowed off to the s.h.i.+p, got on board by means of the pa.s.sword, and within twenty minutes had knocked all the Spaniards on the head, themselves losing only one man. Thereupon, of course, they slipped cable and stood out to sea. Next morning the _Rosaway_ hadn't been three hours out of sight before two Spanish gun-s.h.i.+ps came sailing in from Cartagena, having been sent over in a hurry to protect the place; and one of them started in chase. The _Rosaway_, being speedy, got away for the time, and it was not till three weeks later that the Spaniards ran down on her, snug and tight at anchor in a creek of this same island of Mortallone. She was empty as a drum, and her crew ash.o.r.e in a pretty state of fever and mutiny. The Spaniards landed and took the lot, all but the mate Griffiths, that was supposed to have been knifed by Sparke, but two of the prisoners declared that he was alive and hiding. They hanged four, saving only Sparke, keeping him to show where the treasure was hidden. He led them halfway across the island, lured them into a swamp, and made a bolt to escape, and the tale is he was getting clear off when one of the Spanish seamen let fly with his musket into the bushes and bowled him over like a rabbit. It was a chance shot, and of course it put an end to all hope of finding the treasure. They ransacked the island for a week or more, but found never a dollar; and before giving it up some inclined to believe what one of the prisoners had said, that the treasure had never been buried in Mortallone at all, but in the island of Roatan, some leagues to the eastward. But, if you ask my opinion, the stranger that took lodgings with Melhuish was the mate Griffiths, and no other. There has always been rumours that he got away with the secret. Know about it?" said old Klootz. "Why, there was even a song made up about it--

"'O, we threw the bodies over, and forth we did stand Till the tenth day we sighted what seemed a pleasant land, And alongst the Kays of Mortallone!'"

From the first the old man had no doubt but we had struck the secret.

All the way home he was scheming, and the very night we reached Whydah again he came out with a plan.

"Have you ever read your Bible?" said he.

"A little," I said, "between whiles; but latterly not much."

"The more shame to you," said he, "for it is a good book. But you ought to have heard of Noah, if you ever read the Book at all, for he comes almost at the beginning. Well, I've a notion almost as good as Noah's and not so very different. We will take the _Mary Pynsent_ and put all the family on board, for we must take A. G. (naming the Englishman, his other son-in-law), and I don't like to leave the women alone, here in this wicked place. We will pack her up with slaves and sail her across to Barbadoes. 'Tis an undertaking for a man of my years, but a man is not old until he feels old; and I have been wanting for a long time to see if trade in the Barbadoes is so bad as the skippers pretend, cutting down my profits. At Barbadoes we can hire a pinnace. Daniel Coffin, you and me will go into this business in partners.h.i.+p," says he.

The old fellow, once set going, had the pluck of a boy. The very next night he called in A. G., and took him into the secret, in his bluff way overriding me, that was for keeping it close between us two. That the map was mine did not trouble him. He agreed that I should be guardian of it, but took charge of all the outfit, ordering me about sometimes like a dog, though, properly speaking, the vessel herself belonged to me--or, at any rate, more to me than to him.

As for A. G., he didn't count. We filled up and weighed anchor on August 12, having on board 420 blacks--290 men and 130 women--all chained, and all held under by us twenty-two whites, of the which nineteen were women. The weather turned sulky almost from the start, and after ten days of drifting, with here and there a fluke of wind, we found ourselves off the Gaboon river. From this we crept our way to the Island of St. Thomas, three days; watered there, and fetched down to the south-east trades. The n.i.g.g.e.rs were dying fast, and between the south-east and north-east trades, six weeks from our starting, we lost between one and two score every day. I will say that all the women worked like horses. We reached Barbadoes short of our complement by 134 negroes and one of Klootz's wives. This last did not trouble him much.

He kept mighty cheerful all the way, although the speculation up to now had turned out far from cheerful; and all the way he kept singing sc.r.a.ps about the Kays of Mortallone in a way to turn even a healthy man sick. I had patched up a kind of friends.h.i.+p with A.G., and we allowed that, for all his heartiness, the old man was enough to madden a saint. The slaves we landed fetched about nineteen pounds on an average. They cost at starting from two pounds to three pounds; but the ones that had died at sea knocked a hole in the profits.

At Barbadoes Klootz left the womenfolk in a kind of boarding-house, and hired a pinnace, twenty tons, to take us across to the main, pretending he wanted to inquire into the market there. Klootz and I made the whole crew, with A. G., who could not navigate. January 17, late in the afternoon, we ran down upon Mortallone Island and anch.o.r.ed off the Kays, north of Gable Point. Next morning we out with the boat and landed. Time, about three-quarters of an hour short of low water.

The Kays are nothing but sand. At low water, and for an hour before and after, you can cross to Gable point dry-shod. We spent that day getting bearings; dug a little, but nothing to reward us. Next day we got to work early. Had been digging for two hours, when we turned up the first body. It turned A. G. poorly in the stomach, and he sat down to watch us. Half an hour later we struck the first of the chests. It did not hold more than five s.h.i.+llings' worth, and we saw that somebody had been there before us.

The third day we turned up three more bodies, besides two chests, empty as before, and a full one. We stove it in, emptied the stuff into the boat, and made our way back to the s.h.i.+p.

The fourth day we had scarcely started to dig before Klootz struck on a second chest that sounded like another full one--

Here Miss Belcher turned a page, glanced overleaf, and came to a full stop.

"For pity's sake, Lydia--" protested Mr. Rogers, who sat leaning forward, his elbows on the table.

"There's no more," Miss Belcher announced.

"No more?"

"Not a word." She fumbled quickly through the remaining blank leaves. "Not a word more," she repeated.

"Death cut short his hand," said Captain Branscome, his voice breaking in upon a long silence.

"Cut short his fiddlestick-end!" snapped Miss Belcher. "The man funked it at the last moment--started out promising to tell the whole truth, but refused the fence. Look back at the story, and you can see him losing heart. Just note that when he comes to A. G.--that's the man Aaron Gla.s.s, I suppose--he dares not write down the man's name. There has been foul work, and he's afraid of it. That's as plain as the nose on my face."

"But what's to be done?" asked Mr. Rogers, picking up the ma.n.u.script and turning its pages irritably.

"Dear me," said a voice, "there is surely but one thing to be done!

We must go and search for ourselves."

We all turned and stared at Plinny.

CHAPTER XXI.

IN WHICH PLINNY SURPRISES EVERYONE.

Everybody stared; and this had the effect of making the dear good creature blush to the eyes.

"I beg your pardon, ma'am?" said Mr. Jack Rogers.

"It--it was not for me to say so, perhaps." Her voice quavered a little, and now a pair of bright tears trembled on her lashes; but she kept up her chin bravely and seemed to take courage as she went on. "I am aware, sir, that in all matters of hazard and enterprise it is for the gentlemen to take the lead. If I appear forward--if I speak too impulsively--my affection for Harry must be my excuse."

Mr. Rogers stared at Captain Branscome, and from Captain Branscome to Mr. Goodfellow, but their faces did not help him.

"That's all very well, ma'am, but an expedition to the other end of the world--if that's what you suggest?--at a moment's notice--on what, as like or not, may turn out to be a wild-goose chase--Lord bless my soul!" wound up Mr. Rogers incoherently, falling back in his chair.

"I was not proposing to start at a moment's notice," replied Plinny, with extreme simplicity. "There will, of course, be many details to arrange; and I do not forget that we are in the house of mourning.

The poor dear Major claims our first thoughts, naturally. Yes, yes; there must be a hundred and one details to be discussed hereafter--at a fitting time; and it may be many weeks before we find ourselves actually launched--if I may use the expression--upon the bosom of the deep."

"_We?_" gasped Mr. Rogers, and again gazed around; but we others had no attention to spare for him. "_We?_ Who are 'we'?"

"Why, all of us, sir, if I might dare to propose it; or at least as many as possible of us whom the hand of Providence has so mysteriously brought together. I will confess that while you were talking just now, discussing this secret which properly speaking belongs to Harry alone, I doubted the prudence of it--"

"And, by Jingo, you were right!" put in Miss Belcher.

"With your leave, ma'am," Plinny went on, "I have come to think otherwise. To begin with, but for Captain Branscome the map would never have found its way to the Major's room, where Harry discovered it; but might--nay, probably would--have been stolen by the wicked man who committed this crime to get possession of it. Again, but for Mr. Goodfellow this written narrative would undoubtedly have been lost to us, and the map, if not meaningless, might have seemed a clue not worth the risk of following. In short, ma'am"--Plinny turned again to Miss Belcher--"I saw that each of us at this table had been wonderfully brought here by the hand of Providence. And from this I went on to see, and with wonder and thankfulness, that here was a secret, sought after by many evildoers, which had yet come into the keeping of six persons, all of them honest, and wishful only to do good. Consider, ma'am, how unlikely this was, after the many bold, bad hands that have reached out for it. And will you tell me that here is accident only, and not the finger of Providence itself?

At first, indeed, we suspected Captain Branscome and Mr. Goodfellow: they were strangers to us, and, as if that we might be tested, they came to us under suspicion." Here Mr. Goodfellow put up a hand and dubiously felt his nose, which was yet swollen somewhat from his first encounter with Mr. Rogers. "But they have proved their innocence; Harry gives me his word for them; and I do not think,"

said Plinny, "that you, ma'am, can have heard Captain Branscome's story without honouring him."

Miss Belcher, thus appealed to, answered only with a grunt, at the same time shooting from under her s.h.a.ggy eyebrows an amused glance at the Captain, who stared at the table-cloth to hide his confusion, which, however, was betrayed by a pair of very red ears.