Pieces of Eight Part 15

"You seem to know a good many things I don't," said Charlie, whose grimness had evidently relaxed a little at the lad's display of mettle.

Meanwhile, my temper was beginning to rise on behalf of our young pa.s.senger.

"I tell you what, Charlie," I interposed; "if you are going to keep this up, you'd better count me out on this trip and set us both ash.o.r.e at West End. You're making a fool of yourself. The lad's all right. Any one can see with half an eye there's no harm in him."

The boy shot me a warm glance of grat.i.tude.

"All right," agreed Charlie, beginning to lose his temper too, "I'm d.a.m.ned if I don't." And, his hand on the tiller, he made as if to turn the boat about and tack for the sh.o.r.e.

"No! no!" cried the boy, springing between us, and appealingly laying one hand on Charlie's shoulder, the other on mine. "You mustn't let me spoil your trip. I'll compromise. And, skipper, I'll tell your friend here all there is to tell--everything--I swear--if you will leave it to his judgment."

Charlie gloomed for a moment or two, thinking it over, while I stood aloof with an injured air.

"Right-O," agreed Charlie at last; so our pa.s.senger and I thereupon withdrew for our conference.

It was soon over, and I couldn't help laughing aloud at the simplicity of it all.

"Just as I told you, Charlie," I exclaimed; "it's innocence itself."

Turning to the lad, I said: "Dear boy, there is really no need to keep such a small secret as that from the skipper here. You'll really have to let me tell him."

The boy nodded acquiescence.

"All the same, I gave my word," he said

When I told Charlie the innocent secret, he laughed as I had done, and his usual good humour instantly returned.

"But to think, you young scapegrace," he exclaimed, "that you might either have been eaten by a shark, or have broken up an old friends.h.i.+p, for such nonsense as that." And, turning to me, and stretching out his huge paw, "My hand, old man; forgive my bad temper."

"Mine too," said I.

So harmony was restored, and the stubbornly held secret had merely amounted to this: Our lad was acquainted with my conchologist, and had paid him a visit the very afternoon I did, had in fact seen me leaving the house. Answering to the boy's romantic talk of buried treasure and so forth, the sh.e.l.l enthusiast had thought no harm to tell him of our projected trip; and that was the whole of the mysterious matter.

Yet the day was not to end without a little incident which, slight though indeed it was, was momentarily to arouse Charlie's suspicions of our charming young companion once more.

By this we had shaken off the unwelcome convoy of the coast-line, and, having had a thrilling minute or two running the gauntlet of the great combers of the southwest bar, we were at last really out to sea, making our dash under a good sailing breeze, with the engine going, too, across the Tongue of Ocean.

This Tongue of Ocean is but a narrow strip of sea--so narrow indeed that you scarcely lose sight of one coast before you sight the other--yet the oldest sailors cross it with fear, for its appalling depth within its narrow boundaries make it subject to sudden "rages" in certain winds.

Even Charlie, who must have made the trip half a hundred times, scanned the western horizon with an anxious eye.

Presently, in the far southwest, tiny points like a row of pins began very faintly to range themselves along the sky-line. They were palm trees, though you could not make them out to be such, or anything in particular, till long after. One darker point seemed closer than the rest.

"There's High Cay!" rang out the rich young voice of our pa.s.senger, whom we'd half forgotten in our tense scanning of the horizon. Charlie and I both turned to him together in surprise--and his face certainly betrayed the confusion of one who has let something slip involuntarily.

"Ho! ho! young man," cried Charlie, his face darkening again, "what do you know about High Cay? I thought this was your first trip."

"So it is," answered the boy, with a flush of evident annoyance, "on the sea."

"What do you mean by 'on the sea'?"

"I mean that I've done it many a time--on the chart. I know every bluff and reef and shoal and cay around Andros from Morgan's Bluff to Washerwoman's Cut--"

"You do, eh?"

"On the chart. Why, I've studied charts since I was a kid, and gone every kind of voyage you can think of--playing at buccaneering or whaling, or discovering the North Pole. Every kid does that."

"They do, eh?" said Charlie, evidently quite unimpressed. "_I_ never did."

"That's because you've about as much imagination as a turnip in that head of yours," I broke in, in defence of my young Apollo.

"Maybe, if you're so smart," continued Charlie, paying no attention to me, "you can navigate us through the North Bight?"

"Maybe!" answered our youngster pertly, with an odd little smile. He had evidently recovered his nerve, and seemed to take pleasure in piquing Charlie's bearish suspicions.

CHAPTER V

_In Which We Enter the Wilderness._

Andros, as no other of the islands, is surrounded by a ring of reefs stretching all around its coasts. The waters inside this ring are seldom more than a fathom or two deep, and, spreading out for miles and miles above a level coral floor, give something of the effect of a vast natural swimming-bath. Frequently there is no more than four or five feet of water, and in calm weather it would be almost possible to walk for miles across this strange sea-bottom.

Darker and solider grew the point on which our eyes were set, till at length we were up with a thick-set, little scrub-covered island which, compared with the low level of the line of coast stretching dimly behind it, rose high and rocky out of the water. Hence its name, "High Cay,"

and its importance along a coast where such definite landmarks are few.

We were now inside the breakwater of the reefs, and the rolling swell of ocean gave way at once to a millpond calmness. Through this we sped along for some ten miles or so, following a low, barren coast-line till at length, to our right, the water began to spread out inland like a lake. We were at the entrance of North Bight, one of the three bights which, dotted with numerous low-lying cays, breaks up Andros Island in the middle, and allows a pa.s.sage through a mazelike archipelago direct to the northwest end of Cuba. Here on the northwest sh.o.r.e is a small and very lonely settlement--one of the two or three settlements on the else-deserted island--Behring's Point.

Here we dropped anchor, and Charlie, who had some business ash.o.r.e, proposed our landing with him; but here again our pa.s.senger aroused his suspicions--though Heaven knows why--by preferring to remain aboard. If Charlie has a fault, it is a pig-headed determination to have his own way--but our pa.s.senger was politely obstinate.

"Please let me off," he requested, in his most top-lofty English accent.

"You can see for yourself that there's nothing of interest--nothing but a beastly lot of n.i.g.g.e.r cabins, and dirty coral rock that will cut your boots to pieces. I'd much rather smoke and wait for you in peace;" and, taking out his case and lighting a cigarette, he waved it gaily to us as we rowed off.

He had certainly been right about Behring's Point--Charlie was absurdly certain that he had known it before, and had some reason for not landing--for a more forlorn and poverty-stricken foot-hold of humanity could hardly be conceived; a poor little cl.u.s.ter of negro cabins, indeed, scrambling up from the beach, and with no streets but craggy pathways in and out among the grey clinker-like coral rock.

But it was touching to find even here that, though the whole worldly goods of the community would scarcely have fetched ten dollars, the souls of men were still held worth caring for--one handsome youth's contempt notwithstanding--for presently we came upon a pretty little church, with a schoolhouse near by, while from the roof of an adjacent building we were hailed by a pleasant-faced white man, busy with some s.h.i.+ngling.

It was the good priest of the little place, Father Serapion, disguised in overalls and the honest grime of his labour; like a true Benedictine, praying with his strong and skilful hands. He was down from his roof in a moment, a youngish man with the face of a practical dreamer, strangely happy-looking in what would seem to most an appalling isolation; there alone, month after month, with his black flock. But evidently his was no such thought, for he showed us with pride the new schoolhouse he was building out of the coral limestone with his own hands, as he had built the church, every stone of it, and the picturesque well, and the rampart-like wall round the churchyard. His garden, too, he was very proud of, as he well might be, wrested as it was out of the solid rock.

Father Serapion and Charlie were old friends, and, when we had accepted the Father's invitation to step into his neat little house--also built with his own hands--and dissipate with him to the extent of some grape juice and an excellent cigar, Charlie took occasion to confide in him with regard to Tobias, and, to his huge delight, discovered that a man answering very closely to his description had dropped in there with a large sponger two days before. He had only stopped long enough to buy rum at the little store near the landing, and had been off again through the bight, sailing west. He might have been making for Cuba or for a hiding-place--of which there were plenty on the western sh.o.r.e of the island itself. Father Serapion, who knew Charlie Webster's shooting ground, promised to send a swift messenger, should anything further of interest to us come to his knowledge within the next week or so. As he was, naturally, in close touch with the natives, this was not unlikely.

And then we had to bid the good priest farewell--not without a reverent hush in our hearts as we pondered on the marvel of n.o.ble lives thus unselfishly devoted, and as we thought, too, of the loneliness that would once more close around him when we were gone.

It was not until we had left him that I suddenly recalled King Coffee's first vision. Clearly, Father Serapion was the man in overalls s.h.i.+ngling the roof! If only his other visions should prove as true!

Then we sailed away from Behring's Point, due west through the North Bight. But we had spent too much time with the good Father, and in various pottering about--making another landing at a lone cabin in search of fresh vegetables and further loading up our much-enduring craft with three flat-bottomed skiffs, for duck-shooting, marvellously lashed to the sides of the cabin deck--to do much more sailing that day.

So at sunset we dropped anchor under the lee of Big Wood Cay, and, long before the moon rose, the whole boat's crew was wondrously asleep.

Morning found us sailing through a maze of low-lying desert islands of a bewildering sameness of shape and size, with practically nothing to distinguish one from another. Even with long experience of them, one is liable to go astray; indeed Charlie and the captain had several friendly disputes, and exchanged bets, as to which was which. Then, too, the curious milky colour of the water (in strange contrast to the jewel-like clearness of the outer sea) makes it hard to keep clear of the coral shoals that shelve out capriciously from every island. In the daylight, the deeper water is seen in a bluish track (something like the "bluing" used in laundry work), edged on either side by "the white water." One has to keep a sharp lookout every foot of the way, and many a time our keel gave an ominous grating, and we escaped some nasty ledges by the mere mercy of Heaven.