The Treasure of the Isle of Mist Part 6

"Confound the brat!" said Jeconiah roughly. "I've not come here to play hide-and-seek with a parcel of children. Tell me at once what you've found."

Fiona straightened herself, and looked at Jeconiah as though he were some noxious reptile.

"There was nothing here to find," she said. "And this cave belongs to my father. And anything in it he gave to the Urchin."

"Well, he's not here," said Jeconiah brutally, "and I am. Who finds, keeps."

And calling to his men to bring the lights, he set off, between stumbling and crawling, for the rock barrier. One of the men had the decency to stop a moment and tell Fiona that they had seen nothing of any boy; Jeconiah turned and abused him for a laggard.

With a good deal of difficulty the two men hoisted and shoved Jeconiah over the rock barrier. Once over, he took a light himself, told the men to wait where they were, and after a good look at the map set out for the recess where the Urchin had found the doubloon. Fiona followed him; there was some vague idea in her mind of protecting the Urchin's property; behind that there was still a faint subconscious hope that in some way or other the Urchin would suddenly reappear, and laugh at her terrors.

Jeconiah reached the recess. He saw and understood the marks of the boxes on the sand. He swung round on Fiona with a snarl like that of a hungry wolf.

"You think you're clever, don't you, you and your father," he said. "I suppose you've had the stuff moved. But I'll have it if I go to the middle of the earth for it."

It was the old hawker who shouted. He had stood apart, a silent spectator of the scene. And at this moment he called out, in a voice of surprising power for so frail a body:

"Look out above you. Jump."

Fiona, who had learned to obey, jumped back just in time. But Jeconiah had never learnt to obey any orders but his own. He stood, stupidly staring, as a bit of the roof of the cave bowed downward, gave way, and came cascading about him in a shower of earth and big stones, that filled the air with thick dust. When the dust cleared again, they saw Jeconiah lying on his back in the middle of the cliff fall, motionless, and to all appearance dead.

But Fiona was not looking at Jeconiah. She was looking at the place where the roof of the cave had bowed itself before falling; and into her mind came crowding dim forgotten legends, legends of fear and hope. And she was saying over and over again to herself, as though she might miss its purport, that behind the cliff fall, as if impelling and directing it, she had seen a small brown elfin hand.

It was the old hawker who took charge of the situation. The two men, who at first had looked as if they would run, became amenable when he spoke to them. They carried Jeconiah's body to his boat, and laid it in the stern-sheets. One of the men pointed out that there was no mark at all on his face or head, and that he did not believe he had been struck.

"Died of fright, I expect," he said curtly.

"Lucky we stood out for wages in advance," said his companion. It looked as if this might be Jeconiah's fitting epitaph.

The old man himself went with Fiona in her boat. But he was too feeble to row far, so he landed on the island and went in search of Angus. In due course Angus came down and rowed Fiona home, saying that the old man was going to look after his sheep for him till he returned. It did not occur to Fiona, until they had gone too far to turn back, that it looked as though the old man wished to avoid questions. Her mind was in a helpless whirl in which everything seemed unreal, except the Urchin and that small brown hand. She could not give her father any very coherent account of what had happened; but he went out at once to find a boat and men to search the cave.

Jeconiah was laid on his bed in the big house, and there was much commotion there; this one must go for the doctor and that one for the Student; scared maids stood and whispered in the corridors; the two loafers, heroes of the hour, feasted happily in the kitchen. Then the doctor came, and went upstairs with a grave face, as befitted the occasion; but he did not come down again, and surmise grew. Half an hour pa.s.sed before the door opened, and the doctor, smiling and rubbing his hands together, came into the library, where the Student had just entered and was talking to the housekeeper.

"He's not dead at all," said the doctor. "It's catalepsy--suspended animation, you know. Like the frog in the marble. Had a shock, you tell me? Just so, just so. How long? Oh, he may be an hour, and he may be a month; no one can ever say. Never had the good luck to see a case before. Not _very_ uncommon, no. Mustn't try to rouse him, you know; might be dangerous. Just wait. Send for me at once if he comes to. Can get two nurses to watch him, if you like; just as well perhaps. Sometimes they are odd when they wake; think they are someone else for a bit, you know, change their habits, and so on. Dual personality? Oh, yes, several well-attested cases; but I don't mean as much as that. Might arise this way, of course; but what I mean is more just queer. But of course he need not be; might wake up as if he'd been asleep. If it lasts long, take away all the almanacs and things, in case he gets a shock. Well, good day, good day."

And the doctor went; and Jeconiah's body lay still on the bed, waiting till his soul, if he had one, should return to it.

So the Student went home again; and on his way he met the old hawker, who stopped and spoke to him; and for a few moments the two walked together, the old man talking rather quickly. Fiona, watching from the window of the bookroom, could see that her father first looked puzzled and then grave and then considerably relieved; in a dim kind of way she found herself thinking that Angus must have rowed back very fast to Scargill, if the old hawker were already landed. She was wondering who he really was and why her father talked to him.

"Tell Anne to get us something to eat--anything," said the Student.

"The boat will be here directly."

The Student, by straining what remained of old loyalty as far as he dared, had found half a dozen volunteers, good men, to face the haunted cave, provided he went himself.

"Do you want to come, Fiona?" he said. Of course Fiona meant to come.

And while they waited, the Student questioned Fiona, and had the whole story coherently, except the hand. That part Fiona felt she could not tell; there, in the cheerful bookroom, it seemed so impossible. Once or twice he nodded, and said, "That would be so"; and at the end he pointed out that whatever had happened had happened when her back was turned, as she faced the coming footsteps. She had not thought of that. What puzzled her, and hurt her a little, was that, though her father seemed to feel for _her_, he did not appear to be particularly concerned about the Urchin. "I believe it will come right," was all he said.

The boat arrived, rowed by strong hands; the men worked with a will, and the distance to the cave seemed short. They had brought good lights, and the Student had a powerful electric torch. High and low they searched the cave, and found nothing. One man, who was a good swimmer, dived several times and found nothing there either. Tracking footsteps was impossible; the sand, where there was any, had been hopelessly trampled.

When nothing more could be done, the Student said that he wanted to look for a thing himself which he had an idea of. He went down to the end of the cave with his torch and tapped the wall with a geological hammer. Fiona sat on the rock barrier and watched him; what he was seeking she had no idea. He came slowly back down the cave, tapping the wall, till he reached the recess where the Urchin had picked up the doubloon. He went straight to the back of the recess and tapped the wall there; and even as he did so a large piece of stone fell from above, and smashed the electric torch in his hand. He came back to the rock barrier quite unperturbed, looking as if he had found what he sought.

"Not very safe, this cave," he said calmly; and told the men to push off the boat. "There is nothing more we can do," he said; "the boy is certainly not here."

The men's courage was fast ebbing away; they were glad to get out of the haunted place.

Fiona sat in silence all the way home. It was dark before they reached the house. She waited while Anne bustled over supper; she thought she would never see her father alone. At last supper was over, and he went into the bookroom and began to light his pipe; she followed him. Her words came out in a torrent.

"Daddy," she said, "what does it all mean? and why are you so strange and unconcerned? What did that old man tell you? If I couldn't see, _he_ must have seen, for he was facing. What is it you know? And why have you told me nothing?"

"Sit down, little daughter," said the Student. He drew her beside his knee, with her head on his arm. "I will tell you now what I can. The old man gave me a sort of hint. He did not really see, for the lamp was the other way; I fancy he guessed. I wanted to test what he said to me. I have tested it now with my hammer; it all agrees. I am absolutely certain that no harm has come to the Urchin. But I can do nothing for him myself. And I must not even tell you what I think; for if I do it ruins everything. All I may tell you is this, that you are the only person who can do anything. You will have to do it all yourself and by yourself, little daughter. I believe you have ways and means of your own of finding out. Are you going through with it, Fiona?"

"Of course I am, daddy," she said. "How can I do anything else? If only I knew what it is I have to do to find him--how to begin even."

"I cannot even tell you that," said the Student. But his fingers played with the copper bangle on her wrist. And out of some dim corner of subconsciousness she seemed to hear a small voice which said "If you can't get what you want by beginning at the top you must start again at the bottom." Her father, with his learning, was the top; the bottom . . . ?

Fiona went to bed less miserable than she had expected.

CHAPTER V

THE OREAD

Fiona was out long before breakfast next morning, digging furiously in her garden. Not many minutes pa.s.sed before she was rewarded by a glint of something yellow in a shovelful of earth, and there was the centipede.

"You dear creature," she said, and caught it up quickly before it could wriggle away.

"How polite we are this morning," said the centipede, swelling with conscious pride. "I suppose we want something."

Fiona's mind was far too completely taken up with her one object to notice or resent any insinuations.

"Yes, I do," she said. "You told me that if I could not get what I wanted by beginning at the top I must start again at the bottom. I can do nothing from the top this time, so I've come to you."

"Flattered, to be sure," said the centipede. "How frank we are."

"Please don't be cross," said Fiona, humbly. "I am only doing what you told me to do."

"Bless you, child, I'm not cross," said the centipede. "I'm a philosopher."

"Don't philosophers get cross?" asked the girl.

"Never," said the centipede. "And when they do they call it something else. What's the matter with me is, that I've sprained my seventh ankle on bow side, counting from the tail. Don't say you're sorry, for you're not. Anyone can see you're not."

"You are horrid to-day," said Fiona. "And the other day you were so nice."