Pieces of Eight Part 12

All this I really believe the reader would find as attractive as I did; still, as I am under an implied contract to tell him a story, I am not going to palm off on him merely descriptive or informative matter, except in so far as such matter is necessary, and I have only introduced him to my dreamer in "marine curiosities" for a very pertinent reason, which will immediately appear.

He was showing me the last and rarest of his specimens. He had kept, he said, the best to the last. To me, as a layman, it was not nearly so attractive as other things he had shown me--little more to my eye than a rather commonplace though pretty sh.e.l.l; but he explained--and he gave me its learned name, which I confess has escaped me, owing, doubtless, to what he was next to say--that it was found, or had so far been found, only in one spot in the islands, a lovely, seldom-visited cay several miles to the north-east of Andros Island.

"What is it called?" I asked, for it was part of our plan for Charlie to do a little duck-shooting on Andros, before we tackled the business of Tobias and the treasure.

"It's called ---- Cay nowadays," he answered, "but it used to be called Short Shrift Island."

"Short Shrift Island!" I cried, in spite of myself, immediately annoyed at my lack of presence of mind.

"Certainly," he rejoined, looking a little surprised, but evidently without suspicion. He was too simple, and too taken up with his sh.e.l.l.

"It is such an odd name," I said, trying to recover myself.

"Yes! those old pirate chaps certainly did think up some of the rummiest names."

"One of the pirate haunts, was it?" I queried with a.s.sumed indifference.

"Supposed to be. But one hears that of every other cay in the Bahamas. I take no stock in such yarns. My sh.e.l.ls are all the treasure I expect to find."

"What did you call that sh.e.l.l?" I asked.

He told me the name again, but again I forgot it immediately. Of course I had asked it only for the sake of learning more precisely about Short Shrift Island. He told me innocently enough just where it lay.

"Are you going after it?" he laughed.

"After what?" I enquired in alarm.

"The ----"; (again he mentioned the name of the sh.e.l.l.)

"O! well," I replied, "I am going on a duck-shooting trip to Andros before long, and I thought I might drop around to your cay and pick a few of them up for you."

"It would be mighty kind of you, but they're not easy to find. I'll tell you just exactly--" He went off, dear fellow, into the minutest description of the habitats of ----, while all the time I was eager to rush off to Charlie Webster and John Saunders, and shout into their ears--as, later, I did, at the first possible moment, that evening: "I've found our missing cay! What's the matter with your old maps, John?

Short Shrift Island is ----; (I mentioned the name of a cay, which, as in the case of "Dead Men's Shoes," I am unable to divulge.)

"Maybe!" said Charlie, "maybe! We can try it. But," he added, "did you find out anything about Tobias?"

CHAPTER III

_In Which I am Afforded Glimpses into Futurity--Possibly Useful._

Two or three evenings before we were due to sail, at one of our snuggery conclaves, I put the question whether any one had ever tried the divining rod in hunting for treasure in the islands. Charlie took his pipe out of his mouth, the more comfortably to beam his big brotherly smile at me.

"What a kid you are!" he said. "You want the whole bag of tricks, eh?"

But I retorted that he was quite behind the times if he considered the divining rod an exploded superst.i.tion. Its efficacy in finding water, I reminded him, was now admitted by the most sceptical science, and I was able to inform him that a great American railway company paid a yearly salary to a "dowser" to guide it in the construction of new roads through a country where water was scarce and hard to find.

Old John nodded, blinking his mischievous eyes. He had more sympathy than Charlie with the foolishness of old romance. It was true enough, he said, and added that he knew the man I wanted, a half-crazy old negro back there in Grant's Town--the negro quarter spreading out into the brush behind the ridge on which the town of Na.s.sau proper is built.

"He calls himself a 'king,'" he added, "and the natives do, I believe, regard him as the head of a certain tribe. Another tribe has its 'queen'

whom they take much more seriously. You must not forget that it is not so long ago since they all came from Africa, and the oldest negroes still speak their strange African languages, and keep up their old beliefs and practices. 'Obeah,' of course, is still actively practised.

"Why," he resumed presently, "I may even be said to practise it myself; for I protect that part of my grounds here that abuts on Grant's Town by hanging up things in bottles along the fences, which frighten away at least a percentage of would-be trespa.s.sers. You should go and see the old man, if only for fun. The lads call him 'Old King Coffee'--a memory I suppose of the Ashantee War. Any one will tell you where he lives. He is something of a witch-doctor as well as 'king,' and manages to make a little out of charms, philtres and such like, I'm told--enough to keep him in rum anyway. He has a name too as a preacher--among the Holy Jumpers!--but he's getting too old to do much preaching nowadays. He may be a little off his head, but I think he's more of a shrewd old fraud. Go and see him for fun anyway."

So, next morning, I went.

I had hardly been prepared for the plunge into "Darkest Africa" which I found myself taking, as, leaving Government House behind, perched on the crest of its white ridge, I walked a few yards inland and entered a region which, for all its green palms, made a similar sudden impression of pervading blackness on the mind which one gets on suddenly entering a coal-mining district, after travelling through fields and meadows.

There were far more blacks than whites down on Bay Street, but here there were nothing but blacks on every side. The wood of the cabins--most of them neat enough and pleasantly situated in their little gardens of bananas and cocoa-nut palms--was black, as with age or coal dust; and the very foliage, in its suggestion of savage scenes in one's old picture-books, suggested "natives." The innumerable smart little pigs that seemed free of the place were black. The innumerable goats, too, were black. And everywhere, mixed in with the pigs and the goats, were the blackest of picaninnies. Everywhere black faces peered from black squares of windows, most of them cheery and round and prosperous looking, but here and there a tragically old crone with witch-like white hair.

The roads ran in every direction, and along them everywhere were figures of black women shuffling with burdens on their heads, or groups of girls, audaciously merry, most of them bonny, here and there almost a beauty. There were churches, and dance-halls, and saloons--all radiating, so to say, a prosperous blackness. It was from these dance-halls that there came at night that droning and braying of barbaric music, as from some mysterious "heart of darkness," as one turned to sleep in one's civilised Na.s.sau beds--a music that kept on and on into the inner blackness of the night.

At first the effect of the whole scene was a little sinister, even a little frightening. The strangeness of Africa, the African jungle, was here, and one was a white man in it all alone among grinning savage faces. But for the figures about one being clothed, the illusion had been complete; but for that and the kind-hearted salutations from comely white-turbaned mammies which soon sprang up about me, and the groups of elfish children that laughingly blocked one's progress with requests--not in any weird African dialect but in excellent national-school English--for "a copper please."

This request was not above the maidenly dignity of quite big and buxom la.s.ses. One of these, a really superb young creature, not too liberally clothed to rob one's eyes of her n.o.ble contours, caught my attention by the singularity of something she carried. It was an enormous axe, the s.h.i.+ning blade balanced easily on her head, and the handle jutting out horizontally like some savage head-dress. She looked like a beautiful young headswoman. Even she asked for "a copper, please," but with a saucy coquetry befitting her adolescence.

"A big girl like you too!" I ventured. She gave a fine savage laugh, without in the least jeopardising the balance of the axe.

"I'll give you one if you'll tell me where the 'King' lives," said I.

"Ole King Coffee?" she asked, and then fell into a very agony of negro laughter. The poor old king was evidently the best of all possible jokes to this irreverent young beauty. Then, recovering, she put her finger to her lips, suggesting silence, and said:

"Come along, I'll show you!"

And, walking by my side, lithe as a young animal, evidently without giving a thought to her gleaming headdress, she had soon brought me to a cabin much like the rest, though perhaps a little poorer looking.

Stopping a little short of it, she once more put her finger to her lips.

"Shh! There he is!" and she shook all over again with suppressed giggles.

I gave her a sixpence and told her to be a good girl. Then I advanced up a little strip of garden to where I had caught a glimpse of a venerable white-haired negro seated at the window, as if for exhibition, with a great open book in his hands. This he appeared to be reading with great solemnity, through enormous goggles, though I thought I caught a side-glint of his eye, as though he had taken a swift reconnoitring glance in my direction--a glance which apparently had but deepened his attention and increased the dignity of his demeanour. That dignity indeed was magnificent, and was evidently meant to convey to the pa.s.sers-by and the world at large that they were in the presence of royalty.

As I approached the doorway, my eye was caught by a ma.s.sive decoration glittering immediately above it. It was a design of large gilt wooden letters which I couldn't make out at first, as it had been turned upside down. I didn't realise its meaning till afterward, but I may as well tell the reader now.

Shortly before, King Coffee, feeling in need of some insignia to blazon forth his rank, had appealed to a friend of his, a kindly American visitor, who practically kept the old fellow alive with his bounty. This kind friend was a wag too, and couldn't resist the idea that had come to him. The old man wanted something that glittered. So the American had bethought him of those big lettered signs which on the face of saloons brighten the American landscape--signs announcing somebody or other's "extra." This it was that now glittered in front of me as--the royal arms!

That it was upside down merely added to its mysterious impressiveness for the pa.s.ser-by, and in no way afflicted the old king since, in spite of that imposing book at the window, he was quite unable to read. That book, a huge, much-gilded family Bible, was merely another portion of the insignia--presented by the same kind friend; as also was the magnificent frock coat, three sizes too big for the shrunken old figure, in which I found him--installed, shall I say?--as I presently stood before him in response to a dignified inclination of his head, welcoming me, at the window.

Remembering that he was not merely royal, but pious also, I made my salutation at once courtier-like and sanctimonious.

"Good day to Your Majesty," I said; "G.o.d's good, G.o.d looks after his servants."

"De Lord is merciful," he answered gravely; "G.o.d takes care of his children. Be seated, sar, and please excuse my not rising, my rheumatism is a sore affliction to me. But de Lord is good, de Lord giveth and de Lord He taketh away--and de holy text includes rheumatism too--as I have told my poor wandering flock many a Sabbath evening."

And he smiled in a sly self-satisfied way at his pious pun. "The old fellow is far from being crazy," I said to myself.