Pieces of Eight Part 19

With Charlie gone, and duck-shooting not being one of my pa.s.sions, there was nothing to detain me in Andros. So we were soon under way, out of the river, and heading north up the western sh.o.r.e of the big monotonous island. We had some fifty miles to make before we reached its northern extremity--and, all the way, we seldom had more than two fathoms of water, and the coast was the same interminable line of mangroves and thatch palms, with occasional clumps of pine trees, and here and there the mouth of a creek, leading into duck-haunted swamps.

It was evident that the island kept its head above water with difficulty, and that the course we were running over was all the time aspiring to be dry land, right away from the coast to the Florida channel. For miles west and north, it would have been impossible to find more than three fathoms. As I said of the east coast, inside the reef, it was a vast swimming bath, but of greater dimensions, a swimming bath with a floor of alabaster, and water that seemed to be made of dissolved moonstones.

For a while, our going seemed very much as though we were sailing a big toy-boat in an illimitable porcelain bathtub. There were no rocks to look out for, no shoals in what was really one vast shoal, and all was smooth as milk. All the afternoon, till the sun set and the stars came out and we dropped our anchor in a luminous nothingness, a child could have navigated us; but, when the next day brought us up to the northwest corner of Andros, we found ourselves face to face with a variety of difficulties: glimmering sandbars, reaches of moon-white shoals, patches of half-made land with pines struggling knee-deep in the tide; here and there a mile of mangroves, and delusive channels of blue water; beauty everywhere spreading out her sweeping laces of foam--a welter of a world still in its making, with no clear pa.s.sages for any craft drawing more than a canoe. Loveliness everywhere--again the waving purple fans, and the heraldic fish, and the branching coral mysteriously making the world. Loveliness everywhere!--in fact a labyrinth of beauty with no way out.

And the captain, like nearly every captain I have met in the Bahamas, knew as little about it as I did. Charlie had been right; you must know how to sail your own boat when you hoist your sails in Bahaman waters. I confess that I began to regret Charlie's preoccupation with Tobias--for, in spite of his missing his way that day in the North Bight, Charlie seems to know his way in the dark wherever one happens to be on the sea.

However, there was really nothing to worry us. There was no wind. The weather was calm, and there was lots of time. At last, after studying the chart and talking it over with Tom, who though he had only s.h.i.+pped as cook, was the best sailor on board, we decided to run north, and take a channel described on the chart as "very intricate."

At last we came to a little foam-fringed cay, where it was conceivable that the shyest and rarest of sh.e.l.ls would choose to make its home--a tiny aristocrat, driven out of the broad tideways by the coa.r.s.er ambitions and the ruder strength of great molluscs that feed and grow fat and house themselves in crude convolutions of uncouthly striving horn; a little lonely sh.o.r.e, kissed with the white innocence of the sea, where pearls might secretly make themselves perfect, untroubled by the great doings of wind and tide--merely rocked into beauty by ripple and beam, with a teardrop falling, once in a while, into their dim growing hearts, from some wavering distant star.

It was impossible to imagine a cay better answering to my conchologist's description of Short Shrift Island. Its situation and general character, too, bore out the surmise. On landing, also, we found that it answered in two important particulars to Tobias's narrative. We found, as he had declared, that there was good water there for pa.s.sing s.h.i.+ps. Also, we found, in addition to the usual scrub, that cabbage-wood trees grew there very plentifully, particularly, as he said, on the highest part of the island. Our conjectures were presently confirmed by the captain of a little sponging boat that, an hour after our arrival, put in for water.

Yes, he said, it was ---- Cay (giving it the name by which it was generally known, and by which the conchologist had first mentioned it to me). So, having talked it all over with Tom, I decided that here we would stay for a time, and try our luck.

But, first, having heard from the sponging captain, that he was en route for Na.s.sau, I gave him a letter to Charlie Webster, telling him of our whereabouts, in case he should have sudden need of me with regard to Tobias.

It was too late to begin treasure-hunting that day, but Tom and I made an early start, the following morning, prospecting the island--I having set the men to work gathering sh.e.l.ls, in the hope of being able to oblige my sh.e.l.l-loving friend. The island was but a small cay compared with that of Dead Men's Shoes,--on which we had so memorably laboured side by side--some five miles long and two broad. It was a pretty little island, rising here and there into low hills, and surprising us now and again with belts of pine trees. But, of course, the cabbage-wood tree was our special tree; and, as I said before, this grew plentifully. All too plentifully, indeed; and cabbage-wood stumps, alas! were scarcely more rare.

The reader may recall that Tobias's narrative, in reference to his second "pod" of one million dollars, had run: "_On the highest point of this Short Shrift Island is a large cabbage-wood stump, and twenty feet south of that stump is the treasure, buried five feet deep and can be found without difficulty._" But which was the highest point? There were several hillocks that might claim to be that--all about equal in height.

We visited them all in succession. There was a "large cabbage-wood stump" on each and all of them! It had seemed an absurdly inadequate direction, even as we had talked the narrative over in John Saunders's snuggery. But, confronted with so many "large cabbage-wood stumps," one began to suspect Henry P. Tobias of having been a humourist, and to wonder whether John Saunders was not right after all, and the whole ma.n.u.script merely a hoax for the benefit of buried-treasure cranks like myself.

However, as the high points of the island were only seven in all, it was no difficult matter to try them all out, one by one, as we had plenty of time and plenty of hands for the work. For, of course, it would have been idle to attempt any concealment of my object from the crew.

Therefore, I took them from their sh.e.l.l-gathering, and, having duly measured out twenty feet south from each promising cabbage-wood stump, set them to work. They worked with a will, for I promised them a generous share of whatever we found.

Alas! it was an inexpensive promise, for, when we had duly turned up the ground, not only twenty feet, but thirty, forty, and fifty feet, not only south but north, east and west of the various cabbage-wood stumps on the seven various eminences, we were none of us the richer by a single piece of eight. Then we tried the other cabbage-wood stumps on lower ground, and any other likely looking spots, till, after working for nearly a fortnight, we must have dug up most of the island.

And then Tom came to me with the news that our provisions were beginning to give out. As it was, he said, before we returned to Na.s.sau, we should have to put in at Flying Fish Cove--a small settlement on the larger island some five miles to the nor'ard,--for the purchase of various necessities.

"All right, Tom," I said, "I guess the game is up! Let's start out to-morrow morning."

And then I betook myself, like the great philosopher, to gathering sh.e.l.ls on the sea-sh.o.r.e, finding some specimens which, to my unlearned eye, seemed identical with that sh.e.l.l so dear to the learned conchologist's heart.

The following afternoon we put in at Flying Fish Cove, a neat little settlement, with a pretty show of sponging craft at anchor, a few prosperous-looking houses on the hill-side, and a sprinkling of white, or half-white, people in the streets. I instructed Tom and the Captain to stock in whatever we needed. We would lie there that night, and in the morning we would make a start, homeward-bound, for Na.s.sau.

"You may as well have your sucking fish back, Tom," I said, laughing in self-disgust. "I shall have no more need of it. I am through with treasure-hunting."

"I'd keep it a little longer, sar," answered Tom; "you never know."

CHAPTER II

_In Which I Catch a Glimpse of a Different Kind of Treasure._

I had, as I have said, made up my mind to start on the homeward trip early the following morning, but something happened that very evening to change my plans. I had dropped into the little settlement's one store, to buy some tobacco, the only kind that Charlie Webster--who carried his British loyalty into the smallest concerns of life, declared fit to smoke--some English plug of uncommon strength, not to say ferocity, a real manly tobacco such as one might imagine the favourite chew of pirates and smugglers.

I stayed chatting with the storekeeper--a lean, astute-looking Englishman, with the un-English name of Sweeney--who made a pretty good thing of selling his motley merchandise to the poor natives, on the good old business principle of supplying goods of the poorest possible quality at the highest possible prices. He was said to hold a mortgage on the lives of half the population, by letting them have goods on credit against their prospective wages from sponging trips, he himself being the owner of three or four sponging sloops, and so doubly insured against loss. His low-ceilinged, black-beamed store, dimly lit with kerosene lamps, was a wilderness of the most unattractive merchandise the mind of man can conceive, lying in heaps on trestles, hanging from the rafters, and cluttering up every available inch of s.p.a.ce, so that narrow lanes only were left among dangling tinware, coils of rope, coa.r.s.e bedding, barrels in which very unappetising pork lay steeping in brine, other barrels overflowing with grimy looking "grits" and sailors'

biscuits, drums of kerosene and turpentine, cans of paint, jostling cl.u.s.ters of bananas, strings of onions, dried fish, canned meats, loaves of coa.r.s.e bread, tea and coffee, and other simple groceries.

Two rough planks laid on barrels made the counter, up to which from time to time rather worn-looking, spiritless negro women and girls would come to make their purchases, and then shuffle off again in their listless way. Once in a while a st.u.r.dy negro would drop in for tobacco, with a more independent, well-fed air. The Englishman served them all with a certain contemptuous indifference in which one somehow felt the presence of the whip-hand.

While he was thus attending a little group of such customers, I had wandered toward the back of the store, curiously examining the thousand and one commodities which supplied the strange needs of humanity here in this lost corner of the world; and, thus occupied, I was diverted by a voice like sudden music, a voice oddly rich and laughing and confident for such grim and sinister surroundings. It was one, too, which I seemed to have heard before, and not so very long ago. When I turned in its direction, I was immediately arrested, as one always is by any splendour of vitality; for a startling contrast indeed--to the spiritless, furtive figures that had been coming and going hitherto--was this superb young creature, tall and lithe with proudly carried head on glorious shoulders. Her skin was a golden olive, and it had been hard to say which was the more intensely black--her hair, or the proud eyes which, turning presently in my direction, seemed to strike upon me as with an actual impact of soft fire. I swear I could feel them touch me, as it were, with a warm ray, the radiating glow of her fragrant vitality enfolding me as in a burning golden cloud.

I wondered whether her glance enfolded everything she looked on in the same way. Perhaps it was but the unconsciously exerted force of her superb young womanhood intensely alive. Yet--there was too a significant wild shyness about her. My presence seemed at once to put her on her guard. The music of her voice was suddenly hushed, as though she had hurriedly, almost in terror, thrown a robe of reticence about an impulsive naturalness not to be displayed before strangers. As for the storekeeper, he was evidently a familiar acquaintance. He had known her--he said, after she was gone--since she was a little girl.

While he spoke, my eyes had accidentally fallen on the coin still in his hand, with which she had just paid him.

"Excuse me," I said, "but that is a curious-looking coin."

I thought that a shade of annoyance pa.s.sed over his face, as though he had been better pleased if I had not noticed it. However, it was too late, and he handed it to me to examine--a large antique-looking gold coin.

"Why!" I said, "this is a Spanish doubloon!"

"That's what it is," said the Englishman laconically.

"But doesn't it strike you as strange that she should pay her bills with Spanish doubloons?" I asked.

"It did at first," he answered; and then, as if annoyed with himself, he was attempting to retrieve an expression that carried an implication he evidently didn't wish me to retain, he added: "Of course, she doesn't always pay in Spanish doubloons."

"But she does sometimes?"

"O! once in a great while," he answered, evasively. "I suppose they have a few old coins in the family, and use them when they run out of others."

It was as lame an explanation as well could be, and no one could doubt that, whatever his reason for so doing, he was lying.

"But haven't you trouble in disposing of them?" I enquired.

"Gold is always gold," he answered, "and we don't see enough of it here to be particular as to whose head is stamped upon it, or what date.

Besides, as I said, it isn't as if I got many of them; and you can always dispose of them as curiosities."

"Will you sell me this one?" I asked.

"I see no harm in your having it," he said, "but I'd just as soon you didn't mention where you got it."

"Certainly," I answered, disguising my wonder at his secretiveness.

"What is it worth?"

He named the sum of sixteen dollars and seventy-five cents. Having paid him that amount, I bade him good-night, glad to be alone with my eager, glowing thoughts. These I took with me to a bit of coral beach made doubly white by the moon, rustled over by giant palms, and whispered to by the vast living jewel of the sea. Surely my thoughts had a brightness to match even this glitter of the night. I took out my strange doubloon, and flashed it in the moon.

But, brightly as it shone, it hardly seemed as bright as it would have seemed a short while back; or, perhaps, it were truer to say that in another, newer aspect it shone a hundred times more brightly. The adventure to which it called me was no longer single and simple as before, but a gloriously confused goal of cloudy splendours, the burning core of which--suddenly raying out, and then lost again in brightness--were the eyes of a mysterious girl.

CHAPTER III