Pieces of Eight Part 1

Pieces of Eight.

by Richard le Gallienne.

PROLOGUE

_(The following MS., the authors.h.i.+p of which I am not at liberty to divulge, came to me in a curious way. Being recently present at a performance of_ "Treasure Island" _at The Punch and Judy Theatre in New York City, and, seated at the extreme right-hand end of the front row of the stalls--so near to the ground-floor box that its occupants were within but a yard or two of me, and, therefore, very clearly to be seen--I, in common with my immediate neighbours, could not fail to remark the very striking and beautiful woman who was the companion of a distinguished military-looking man on the youthful side of middle age._

_Still young, a little past thirty, maybe, she was unusually tall and stately of figure, and from her curious golden skin and ma.s.sive black hair, one judged her to be a Creole, possibly a Jamaican. Her face, which was rather heavily but finely moulded, wore an expression of somewhat poetic melancholy, a little like that of a beautiful animal, but readily lit up with a charming smile now and again at some sally of her companion, with whom she seemed to be on affectionate terms, and with whom, as the play proceeded, she exchanged glances and whispered confidences such as two who have shared an experience together--which the play seems to bring to mind--are seen sometimes to exchange in a theatre._

_But there was one particular which especially accentuated the singularity of her appearance and was responsible for drawing upon her an interested observation--seemed, indeed, even in her eyes to condone it, for she, as well as her companion, was obviously conscious of it--the two strange-looking gold ornaments which hung from her delicately shaped ears. These continually challenged the eye, and piqued the curiosity. Obviously they were two old coins, of thick gold, stamped with an antique design. They were Spanish doubloons!_

_As, in common with the rest of the audience, I looked at this picturesque pair, my eyes forsook the lady of the doubloons, and fastened themselves with a half-certainty of recognition upon her companion. Why! surely it was ---- ----, an old dare-devil comrade of mine, whose disappearance from New York some ten years before had been the talk of the two or three clubs to which we both belonged. A curious blending of soldier, poet, and mining engineer, he had been popular with all of us, and when he had disappeared without warning we were sure that he was off on some Knight-errant business--to Mexico or the Moon!_

_He was, indeed, wearing that disguise of Time, which we all come involuntarily to wear--an unfamiliar greyness of his hair at the temples, and a moustache that would soon be a distinguished white; yet the disguise was not sufficient to conceal the youthful vigour of his personality from one who had known him so well as I. The more I looked at him, the more certain I grew that it was he, and I determined to go round to his box at the conclusion of the second act._

_Then, becoming absorbed in the play, I forgot him and his companion of the doubloons for a while, and when I looked for them again, they had vanished. However, a letter in my mail next morning told me that the observation had not been all on my side. My eyes had not deceived me. It was my friend--and, at dinner with him and his lady, next evening, I heard the story of some of those lost years. Moreover, he confided to me that a certain portion of his adventures had seemed so romantic that he had been tempted to set them down in a narrative, merely, of course, for the amus.e.m.e.nt of his family and friends. On our parting, he entrusted me with this ma.n.u.script, which I found so interesting that I was able to persuade him to consent to its publication to that larger world which it seemed to me unfair to rob of one of those few romances that have been really lived, and not merely conjured up out of the imaginations of professional romancers._

_His consent was given with some reluctance, for, apart from a certain risk which the publication of the ma.n.u.script would entail, it contains also matters which my friend naturally regards as sacred--though, in this respect, I feel sure that he can rely upon the delicacy of his readers. He made it a condition that every precaution should be taken to keep secret the name and ident.i.ty of his wife and himself._

_Therefore, in presenting to the world the ma.n.u.script thus entrusted to me, I have made various changes of detail, with the purpose of the more surely safeguarding the privacy of my two friends; but, in all essentials, the ma.n.u.script is printed as it came originally into my hands._

R. Le G.

BOOK I

_Out of the constant East the breeze Brings morning, like a wafted rose, Across the glimmering lagoon, And wakes the still palmetto trees, And blows adrift the phantom moon, That paler and still paler glows-- Up with the anchor! let's be going!

O hoist the sail! and let's be going!

Glory and glee Of the morning sea-- Ah! let's be going!_

Under our keel a gla.s.s of dreams Still fairer than the morning sky, A jewel shot with blue and gold, The swaying clearness streams and gleams, A crystal mountain smoothly rolled O'er magic gardens flowing by-- Over we go the sea-fans waving, Over the rainbow corals paving The deep-sea floor; No more, no more Would I seek the sh.o.r.e To make my grave in-- _O sea-fans waving_!

PIECES OF EIGHT

CHAPTER I

_Introduces the Secretary to the Treasury of His Britannic Majesty's Government at Na.s.sau, New Providence, Bahama Islands._

Some few years ago--to be precise, it was during the summer of 1903--I was paying what must have seemed like an interminable visit to my old friend John Saunders, who at that time filled with becoming dignity the high-sounding office of Secretary to the Treasury of His Majesty's Government, in the quaint little town of Na.s.sau, in the island of New Providence, one of those Bahama Islands that lie half lost to the world to the southeast of the Caribbean Sea and form a somewhat neglected portion of the British West Indies.

Time was when they had a sounding name for themselves in the world; during the American Civil War, for instance, when the blockade-runners made their dare-devil trips with contraband cotton, between Na.s.sau and South Carolina; and before that again, when the now sleepy little harbour gave shelter to rousing freebooters and tarry pirates, tearing in there under full sail with their loot from the Spanish Main. How often those quiet moonlit streets must have roared with brutal revelry, and the fierce clamour of pistol-belted scoundrels round the wine-casks have gone up into the still, tropic night.

But those heroic days are gone, and Na.s.sau is given up to a sleepy trade in sponges and tortoise-sh.e.l.l, and peace is no name for the drowsy tenor of the days under the palm trees and the scarlet poincianas. A little group of Government buildings surrounding a miniature statue of Queen Victoria, flanked by some old Spanish cannon and murmured over by the foliage of tropic trees, gives an air of old-world distinction to the long Bay street, whose white houses, with their jalousied verandas, ran the whole length of the water-front, and all the long sunny days the air is lazy with the sound of the shuffling feet of the child-like "darky"

population and the chatter of the bean-pods of the poincianas overhead.

Here a handful of Englishmen, clothed in the white linen suits of the tropics, carry on the Government after the traditional manner of British colonies from time immemorial, each of them, like my friend, not without an English smile at the humour of the thing, supporting the dignity of offices with impressive names--Lord Chief Justice, Attorney General, Speaker of the House, Lord High Admiral, Colonial Secretary and so forth--and occasionally a figure in gown and barrister's wig flits across the green from the little courthouse, where the Lord Chief Justice in his scarlet robes, on a dais surmounted by a gilded lion and unicorn, sustains the majesty of British justice, with all the pomp of Westminster or Whitehall.

My friend the Secretary of the Treasury is a man possessing in an uncommon degree that rare and most attractive of human qualities, companionableness. He is a quiet man of middle age, an old white-headed bachelor with a droll twinkling expression, speaking seldom, and then in a curious silent fas.h.i.+on, as though the drowsy heat of the tropics had soaked him through and through. With his white hair, his white clothes, his white moustachios, his white eyelashes, over eyes that seem to hide away among quiet mirthful wrinkles, he carries about him the sort of silence that goes with a miller, surrounded by the white dusty quiet of his mill.

As we sit together in the hush of his snuggery of an evening, surrounded by guns, fis.h.i.+ng-lines, and old prints, there are times when we scarcely exchange a dozen words between dinner and bed-time, and yet we have all the time a keen and satisfying sense of companions.h.i.+p. It is John Saunders's gift. Companions.h.i.+p seems quietly to ooze out of him, without the need of words. He and you are there in your comfortable arm-chairs, with a good cigar, a whisky-and-soda, or a gla.s.s of that old port on which he prides himself, and that is all that is necessary.

Where is the need of words?

And occasionally, we have, as third in those evening conclaves, a big slow-smiling, broad-faced young merchant, of the same kidney. In he drops with a nod and a smile, selects his cigar and his gla.s.s, and takes his place in the smoke-cloud of our meditations, radiating, without the effort of speech, that good thing--humanity; though one must not forget the one subject on which now and again the good Charlie Webster achieves eloquence in spite of himself--duck-shooting. That is the only subject worth breaking the pleasant brotherhood of silence for.

John Saunders's subject is shark-fis.h.i.+ng. Duck-shooting and shark-fis.h.i.+ng. It is enough. Here, for sensible men, is a sufficient basis for life-long friends.h.i.+p, and unwearying, inexhaustible companions.h.i.+p.

It was in this peace of John Saunders's snuggery, one July evening, in 1903, the three of us being duly met, and ensconced in our respective arm-chairs, that we got on to the subject of buried treasure. We had talked more than usual that evening--talked duck and shark till those inexhaustible themes seemed momentarily exhausted. Then it was I who started us off again by asking John what he knew about buried treasure.

At this, John laughed his funny little quiet laugh, his eyes twinkling out of his wrinkles, for all the world like mischievous mice looking out of a cupboard, took a sip of his port, a pull at his cigar, and then:

"Buried treasure!" he said, "well, I have little doubt that the islands are full of it--if one only knew how to get at it."

"Seriously?" I asked.

"Certainly. Why not? When you come to think of it, it stands to reason.

Weren't these islands for nearly three centuries the stamping ground of all the pirates of the Spanish Main? Morgan was here. Blackbeard was here. The very governors themselves were little better than pirates.

This room we are sitting in was the den of one of the biggest rogues of them all--John Tinker--the governor when Bruce was here building Fort Montague, at the east end yonder; building it against pirates, and little else but pirates at the Government House all the time. A great old time Tinker gave the poor fellow. You can read all about it in his 'Memoirs.' You should read them. Great stuff. There they are," pointing to an old quarto on some well lined shelves, for John is something of a scholar too; "borrow them some time."

"Yes, but I want to hear more about the treasure," interrupted I, bringing him back to the point.

"Well, as I was saying, Na.s.sau was the rendezvous for all the cut-throats of the Caribbean Sea. Here they came in with their loot, their doubloons and pieces of eight"; and John's eyes twinkled with enjoyment of the rich old romantic words, as though they were old port.

"Here they squandered much of it, no doubt, but they couldn't squander it all. Some of them were thrifty knaves too, and these, looking around for some place of safety, would naturally think of the bush. The n.i.g.g.e.rs keep their little h.o.a.rds there to this day. Fawcett, over at Andros, was saying the other night, that he estimates that they have something like a quarter of a million dollars buried in tin cans among the brush over there now--"

"It is their form of stocking," put in Charlie Webster.

"Precisely. Well, as I was saying, those old fellows would bury their h.o.a.rds in some cave or other, and then go off--and get hanged. Their ghosts perhaps came back. The darkies have lots of ghost-tales about them. But their money is still here, lots of it, you bet your life."

"Do they ever make any finds?" I asked.

"Nothing big that I know of. A jug full of old coins now and then. I found one a year or two ago in my garden here--buried down among the roots of that old fig tree."

"Then," put in Charlie, "there was that mysterious stranger over at North Cay. He's supposed to have got away with quite a pile."

"Tell me about him," said I.

"Well, there used to be an old eccentric character in the town here--a half-breed by the name of Andrews. John will remember him--"

John nodded.