Pieces of Eight Part 14

"Did it, by Jove!" he exclaimed in a beautiful English accent, and then started laughing as only absurd dare-devil youngsters can.

"Forgive me!" he said, as soon as he could get his breath, "but I had to do it. Heaven knows what the old man will say!"

He seemed to take it all for granted in a delightful, nonchalant way, so that the angry protest which had already started from Charlie's lips stopped in the middle. That fearless leap had taken his heart.

"You're something of a long jump!" said Charlie.

"O! I have done my twenty-two and an eighth on a broad running jump, but I had no chance for a run there," answered the lad, carelessly.

"But suppose you'd hit the water instead of the deck?"

"What of it? Can't one swim?"

"I guess you're all right, young man," said Charlie, softened; "but ...

well, we're not taking pa.s.sengers."

The words had a familiar sound. They were the very ones I had used to Tobias, as he stood with his hand on the gunwale of the _Maggie Darling._ I rapidly conveyed the coincidence--and the difference--to Charlie. It struck me as odd, I'll admit, that our second start, in this respect, should be so like the first. Meanwhile, the young man was answering, or rather pleading, in a boyish way.

"Don't call me a pa.s.senger; I'll help work the boat. I'm strong, you'll see--not afraid of hard work; and anyway, won't you help a chap to an adventure?... I'll tell the truth. I heard--never mind _how_--about your trip, and I'm just nutty about buried treasure. Come, be a sport; I've been watching for you all day. Pretty late starting, aren't you?... We can let the old guv'nor know, somehow ... and it won't kill him to tear his hair for a day or two. He knows I can take care of myself."

"Well!" said Charlie, after thinking awhile in his slow way, "we'll think it over. You can come along till the morning. Then I can get a good look at you. If I don't like your looks, we'll still be able to put you off at West End; and if I do--well--right-ho!"

"My looks!" exclaimed our young stranger, with a peculiar mellow laugh.

"What's the joke?" demanded Charlie.

"O! I only wondered what my looks had to do with it!"

"Well," laughed Charlie, entering into the spirit of the lad, "you might be pock-marked for all I know in this light--and I have a peculiar prejudice against pock-marked gentlemen."

"Unfeeling of you!" retorted the boy. "Anyhow," he added, with the same curiously attractive laugh, "I'm not pock-marked."

"We'll see at sunrise," said Charlie. "Now, boys," he shouted, "go ahead with the sails."

Once more there was that rippling of the ropes through the blocks, as our mainsail rose up high against the moon and filled proudly with the steady northeast breeze we had been waiting for. The water began to talk along our sides, and the immense freshness of the nocturnal sea took us in its huge embrace. The spray began to fly over our bows as we nosed into the gla.s.sy rollers, one of which, on the starboard side, admonished us, by half swallowing us, that only the mighty-limbed immortals might dance with safety on the bar that night, and that it were wise for even 45-foot yawls to hug the land till daylight. So, reluctantly, we kept the shadowy coast-line for our companion, as we steered for the southwestern end of the island; to our right, companions more of our mood, parallel ridges of savage whiteness, where the surf boiled and gleamed along the coral shoals.

How good it seemed to all of us to be out thus in the freedom of the night and the sea--not least to the great n.o.ble-headed hound sitting up on his haunches, keen and watchful by the steersman's side. What a strange waste of a life so short to be sleeping there on the land, when one might be out and away on such business as ours!

So two or three hours went by, as we plunged on, to the seething sound of the water, and the singing of our sails, and all the various rumour of wind and sea. After all, it was a good music to sleep to, and, for all my scorn of sleeping landsmen, an irresistible drowsiness stretched me out on the roof of the little cabin, wonderfully rocked into forgetfulness.

My nap came to an end suddenly, as though some one had flung me out through a door of blue and gold into a new-born world. There was the sun rising, the moon still on duty, and the morning star divinely naked in the heaven. And, with these glories, there rushed in again upon my ears the lovely zest and turmoil of the sea, heaving huge and tumultuous about us in gleaming hills and foam-flecked valleys.

And there was Charlie, his broad face beaming with boyish happiness, and something like a fatherly gentleness in his eyes, as he watched his companion at the tiller, whom, for a half-asleep moment of waking, I couldn't account for, till our start all came back to me, when I realised that it was our young scapegrace of over-night. Charlie and he evidently were on the best of terms already.

"Nice sailor you are!" Charlie laughed, as I sat up rubbing my eyes.

"Falling asleep on watch! Our young friend here is worth ten of you."

I smiled good morning to our young pa.s.senger.

"How about the court-martial on his looks you spoke of last night, Charlie?" I asked.

"Well, he's not pock-marked, at all events, is he?--he told the truth so far. But I've still a question or two to ask him before we leave West End. We'll have breakfast first--to give him courage."

The lad made a humorous face to suggest his fear of the ordeal; as he did so, I took a good look at him. Charlie might easily have said a little more about his looks, had it been in his line, for, so far from being only "not pock-marked," he was something more like a young Apollo: some six feet in height, upstanding like the statue of a Greek athlete; a rich olive skin, through which the pink of youth came and went; and splendid blue-green eyes, fearless, and yet shy as a lad's eyes often are--at that moment of development when a good-looking lad, in spite of his height and muscles, has something of the bloom and purity of a girl, without in the least suggesting effeminacy. So, many tall athletic girls, for a brief period, suggest boys--without there being the least danger of mistake as to their real s.e.x.

He was evidently very young--scarcely more than eighteen--and had a great tendency to blush, for all his attempt at nonchalant grown-up airs. He was the very embodiment of youth, in its sun-tipped morning flower. What Charlie could have to "question" this artless young being--as incapable of plotting, it seemed to me, as a young faun--pa.s.sed my conjecture; but, as Charlie had given me a quiet wink, as he spoke of the after-breakfast examination, I suspected that it was one of those jokes of his which are apt to have something of the simplicity and roughness of seafaring tradition.

Meanwhile, old Tom had been busy with breakfast, and soon the smells of coffee and freshly made "johnny-cake" and frying bacon competed not unsuccessfully with the various fragrances of the morning. Is there anything to match for zest a breakfast like that of ours at dawn on the open sea?

Breakfast over, Charlie filled his pipe, a.s.suming, as he did so, a judicial aspect. I filled mine, and our young friend followed suit by taking a silver cigarette-case from his pocket, and striking a match on the leg of his khaki knickerbockers with a professional air.

"All set?" asked Charlie, and, after a slight pause, he went on:

"Now, young man, you can see we are nearing the end of the island.

Another half-mile will bring us to West End. Whether we put you ash.o.r.e there, or take you along, depends on your answers to my questions."

"Fire away," answered the youth, blowing a cloud of cigarette smoke in a delicate spiral up into the morning sky; "but I've really told you all I have to tell."

"No; you haven't told us how you came to know of our trip, what we were supposed to be after, and when we were starting."

"That's true!" flushed the lad, momentarily losing his composure. Then, partly regaining it: "Is it necessary to answer that question?"

"Absolutely," answered Charlie, beginning to look really serious.

"Because, if you don't mind ... well, I'd just as soon not."

The boy's cheeks were burning with confusion, and he looked more than ever like a girl.

"For that very reason, I want to know. We are out on a more serious business than perhaps you realise, and your answer may mean more to us than you think."

"I'm sure it cannot be of such importance to you. Really it's nothing--a mere accident; and, besides, it's hardly fair for me to tell. I should have to give away a friend, and that, I'm sure you'll agree, is not cricket."

The boy had such a true innocent air, not to speak of his taking ways which had already quite won my heart, that I protested with Charlie on his behalf. But Charlie was adamant. He'd got Tobias so on the brain that there was no reasoning with him, and the very innocent air of the lad seemed to have deepened his suspicions.

"I'm sorry, but I shall have to insist," replied Charlie, looking very grim, and more and more like an Elizabethan sea-rover.

"All right, then," answered the youth, looking him straight in the eyes, "put me ash.o.r.e."

"No; I won't do that now, either," declared Charlie, sternly setting his jaw. "I'll put you in irons, rather--and keep you on bread and water--till you answer my questions."

"You will, eh?" retorted the youth, flas.h.i.+ng fire from his fine eyes.

And as he spoke, quick as thought, he leaped up on to the gunwale, and, without hesitation, dived into the great gla.s.sy rollers.

But Charlie was quick too. Like a flash, he grabbed one of the boy's ankles, so that the beautiful dive was spoiled; and there was the boy, hanging by an imprisoned leg over the s.h.i.+p's side, a helpless captive--his arms in the water and his leg struggling vainly to get free. But he might as well have struggled against the grip of Hercules.

In another moment Charlie had him hauled aboard again, his eyes full of tears of boyish rage and humiliation.

"You young fool!" exclaimed Charlie. "The water round here is thick with sharks; you wouldn't have gone fifty yards without one of them getting you." ...

"Sharks!" gasped out the boy, contemptuously. "I know more about sharks than you do."