Pieces of Eight Part 10

"I wonder what's become of our friend of 'the wonderful works of G.o.d,'"

I queried.

"Wherever he is, he's up to no good, we may be sure of that," answered Tom.

At last we decided to try a plan that was really no plan at all; that is to say, to seek more or less at random, till we consumed all our stores except just enough to take us home. Meanwhile, we would, each of us, every day, cut a sort of radiating swathe, working single-handed, from the cove entrance. Thus we would prospect as much of the country as possible in a sort of fan, both of us keeping our eyes open for a compa.s.s carved on a rock. In this way we might hope to cover no inconsiderable stretch of the country in the three weeks, and, moreover, the country most likely to give some results, as being that lying in a semi-circle from the little harbour where the s.h.i.+ps would have lain. It wasn't much of a plan perhaps, but it seemed the most possible among impossibles.

So the next morning, bright and early, we started work, I letting Tom take Sailor with him as company and protection against the spirits of the waste; also we took a revolver apiece and cartridge belts, and it seemed to me that the old fellow showed no little courage to go alone at all, with such hair-raising beliefs as he had. We each took food and a flask of rum and water to last us the day, and we promised to halloo now and again to each other for company, as soon as we got out of sight of each other. This, however, did not happen the first day. Of course, we carried a machete and a mattock apiece, though the latter was but little use, and, if either of us should find any spot worth dynamiting, we agreed to let the other know.

Harder work than we had undertaken no men have ever set their hands to.

It would have broken the back of the most able-bodied navvy; and when we reached the boat at sunset, we had scarce strength left to eat our supper and roll into our bunks. A machete is a heavy weapon that needs no little skill in handling with economy of force, and Tom, who had been brought up to it, was, in spite of his years, a better pract.i.tioner than I.

I have already hinted at the kind of devil's underbrush we had to cut our way through, but no words can do justice to the almost intelligent stubbornness with which those weird growths opposed us. It really seemed as though they were inspired by a diabolic will-force pitting itself against our wills, vegetable incarnations of evil strength and fury and cunning.

Battalions of actual serpents could scarcely have been harder to fight than these writhing, tormented shapes that shrieked and hissed and bled strangely under our strokes, and seemed to swarm with new life at each onset! And the rock was almost more terrible to grapple with than they.

Jagged and pointed, it was like needles and razors to walk on; and it was brittle as it was hard. While it could sometimes resist a hammer, it would at others smash under our feet like a tea-cup. It looked like some metallic dross long since vomited up from the furnaces of h.e.l.l.

Only once in a while was a softer, limestone, formation--like the pit in which we had buried the captain--with hints at honeycombing, and possibilities that invariably came to nothing. Now again we would come upon a rock of this kind that seemed for a second to hint at mysterious markings made by the hand of man, but they proved to be nothing but some decorative sea-fossilisation, making an accidental pattern, like the marking you sometimes come across on some old weathered stone on a moor.

Nothing that the fondest fancy could twist into the likeness of a compa.s.s or a cross!

Day after day, Tom and I returned home dead-beat, with hardly a tired word to exchange with each other.

We had now been at it for about a fortnight, and I loved the old chap more every day for the grit and courage with which he supported our terrible labours and kept up his spirits. We had long since pa.s.sed out of sight of each other, and much time was necessarily wasted by our going to and from the place where we left off each day. Many a time I hallooed to the old man to keep his heart up, and received back his cheery halloo far and far away.

Once or twice we had made fancied discoveries which we called off the other to see, and once or twice we had tried some blasting on rocks that seemed to suggest mysterious tunnellings into the earth. But it had all proved a vain thing and a weariness of the flesh. And the ghost of John P. Tobias still kept his secret.

CHAPTER XI

_An Unfinished Game of Cards._

One evening, as I returned to the s.h.i.+p unusually worn-out and disheartened, I asked Tom how the stores were holding out. He answered cheerfully that they would last another week, and leave us enough to get home.

"Well, shall we stick out the other week, or not, Tom? I don't want to kill you, and I confess I'm nearly all in myself."

"May as well stick it out, sar, now we've gone so far. Then we'll have done all we can, and there's a certain satisfaction in doing that, sar."

Good old Tom! and I believe that the wise old man had the thought behind, that, perhaps, when there was evidently nothing more to be done, I might get rid of the bee in my bonnet, and once more settle down to the business of a reasonable being.

So next morning we went at it again; and the next, and the next again, and then on the fourth day, when our week was drawing to its close, something at last happened to change the grim monotony of our days.

It was shortly after the lunch hour. Tom and I, who were now working too far apart to hear each other's halloes, had fired our revolvers once or twice to show that all was right with us. But, for no reason I can give, I suddenly got a feeling that all was not right with the old man, so I fired my revolver, and gave him time for a reply. But there was no answer. Again I fired. Still no answer. I was on the point of firing again, when I heard something coming through the brush behind me. It was Sailor racing toward me over the jagged rocks. Evidently there was something wrong.

"Something wrong with old Tom, Sailor?" I asked, as though he could answer me. And indeed he did answer as plainly as dog could do, wagging his tail and whining, and turning to go back with me in the direction whence he had come.

But I stopped to shoot off my revolver again. Still no answer.

"Off we go then, old chap," and as he ran ahead, I followed him as fast as I could over those d.a.m.nable rocks.

It took me the best part of an hour to get to where Tom had been working. It was an extent of those more porous limestone rocks of which I have spoken, almost cliff-like in height, and covering a considerable area. Sailor brushed his way ahead, pus.h.i.+ng through the scrub with canine importance. Presently, at the top of a slight elevation, I came among the bushes to a softer spot where the soil had given way, and saw that it was the mouth of a shaft like a wide chimney flue, the earth of which had evidently recently fallen in. Here Sailor stopped and whined, pawing the earth, and, at the same time, I heard a moaning underneath.

"Is that you, Tom?" I called. Thank G.o.d, the old chap was not dead at all events.

"Thank the Lord, it's you, sar," he cried. "I'm all right, but I've had a bad fall--and I can't seem able to move."

"Hold on and keep up your heart--I'll be with you in a minute," I called down to him.

"Mind yourself, sar," he called cheerily, and, indeed, it was a problem to get down to him without precipitating the loose earth and rock that were ready to make a landslide down the hole, and perhaps bury him for ever.

But, looking about, I found another natural tunnel in the side of the hill. Into this I was able to worm myself, and in the dim light found the old man, and put my flask to his lips.

"Anything broken, do you think?"

Tom didn't think so. He had evidently been stunned by his fall, and another pull at my flask set him on his feet. But, as I helped him up, and, striking a light, we began to look around the hole he had tumbled into, he gave a piercing shriek, and fell on his knees, jabbering with fear.

"The ghosts! the ghosts!" he screamed.

And the sight that met our eyes was certainly one to try the nerves. We had evidently stumbled upon a series of fairly lofty chambers hollowed out long ago first by the sea, and probably further shaped by man--caverns supported here and there by rude columns of the same rock, and dimly lit from above in one or two places by holes like mine shafts, down one of which fell ma.s.ses of snake-like roots of the fig tree, a species of banyan.

Within the circle of this light two figures sat at a table--one with his hat tilted slightly, and one leaning sideways in his chair in a careless sort of att.i.tude. They seemed to be playing cards, and they were strangely white--for they were skeletons.

I stood hushed, while Tom's teeth rattled at my side. The fantastic awe of the thing was beyond telling. And, then, not without a qualm or two, which I should be a liar to deny, I went and stood nearer to them.

Nearly all their clothes had fallen away, hanging but in shreds here and there. That the hat had so jauntily kept its place was one of those grim touches Death, that terrible humorist, loves to add to his jests.

The cards, which had apparently just been dealt, had suffered scarcely from decay--only a little dirt had sifted down upon them, as it had into the rum gla.s.ses that stood too at each man's side. And, as I looked at the skeleton jauntily facing me, I noticed that a bullet hole had been made as clean as if by a drill in his forehead of bone--while, turning to examine more closely his silent partner, I noticed a rusty sailor's knife hanging from the ribs where the lungs had been. Then I looked on the floor and found the key to the whole story. For there, within a few yards, stood a heavy sailor's chest, strongly bound around with iron.

Its lid was thrown back, and a few coins lay scattered at the bottom, while a few lay about on the floor. I picked them up.

They were pieces of eight!

Meanwhile, Tom had stopped jabbering, and had come nearer, looking on in awed silence. I showed him the pieces of eight.

"I guess these are all we'll see of one of John P. Tobias's treasure, Tom," I said. "And it looks as if these poor fellows saw as little of it as ourselves. Can't you imagine them with it there at their feet--perhaps playing to divide it on a gamble; and, meanwhile, the other fellows stealing in through some of these rabbit runs--one with a knife, the other with a gun--and then: off with the loot and up with the sails. Poor devils! It strikes me as a very pretty tragedy--doesn't it you?"

Suddenly--perhaps with the vibration of our voices--the hat toppled off the head of the fellow facing us, in the most weird and comical fas.h.i.+on--and that was too much for Tom, and he screamed and made for the exit hole. But I waited a minute to replace the hat on the rakish one's head. As I was likely often to think of him in the future, I preferred to remember him as at the moment of our first strange acquaintance.

BOOK II

_The dotted cays, With their little trees, Lie all about on the crystal floor; Nothing but beauty-- Far off is duty, Far off the folk of the busy sh.o.r.e._

_The mangroves stride In the coloured tide, With leafy crests that will soon be isles; And all is lonely-- White sea-sand only, Angel-pure for untrodden miles._