Pieces of Eight Part 8

"Take this handkerchief instead;" but, meanwhile, my eyes were opening.

"Take this instead, Theodore," I suggested.

"I'd die for dat," he repeated, touching it.

His voice and touch made me sick and afraid, just as people in a lunatic asylum make one afraid.

"Look out!" murmured Tom again at my elbow.

And just then I noticed, hiding in some bushes of seven-year apple trees, two faces I had good reason to know.

I had barely time to pull out the Commandant's revolver from my pocket.

I knew it was to be either the pock-marked genius or the engineer. But, for the moment, I was not to be sure which one I had hit. For, as my gun went off, something heavy came down on my head, and for the time I was shut off from whatever else was going on.

CHAPTER VIII

_In Which I Once Again Sit Up and Behold the Sun._

"Which did I hit, Tom?" were my first words as I came back to the glory of the world; but I didn't say them for a long time, and, from what Tom told me it was a wonder I ever said them at all.

"There he is, sar," said Tom, pointing to a long dark figure stretched out near by. "I'm afraid he's not the man you were looking for."

"Poor fellow!" I said; it was George, the engineer; "I'm sorry--but I saw the muzzles of their guns sticking out of the bush there. It was they or me."

"That no lie, sar, and, if it hadn't been for that sucking-fish's skin, you wouldn't be here now."

"It didn't save me from a pretty good one on the head, Tom, did it?"

"No, sar, but that was just it--if it hadn't been for that knock on the head, pulling you down just that minute, that thar pock-marked fellow would have got you. As it was, he grazed your cheek, and got one of his own men killed by mistake--the very fellow that hit you. There he is--over there."

"And who's that other, Tom?" I asked, pointing to another dark figure a few yards away.

"That's the captain, sar."

"The captain? O I'm sorry for that. G.o.d knows I'm sorry for that."

"Yas, sar, he was one of the finest gentlemen I ever knowed was Captain Tomlinson; a brave man and a good navigator. And he'd taken a powerful fancy to you, for when you got that crack on the head, he picked up your gun, and began blazing away, with words I should never have expected from a religious man. The others, except our special friend--"

"Let's call him Tobias from now on, Tom," I interposed.

"Well him, sar, kept his nerve, but the others ran for the boats as if the devil was after them; but the captain's gun was quicker, and only four of them got to the _Susan B._ The other two fell on their faces, as if something had tripped them up, in a couple of feet of water. But, just then, Tobias. .h.i.t the captain right in the heart; ah! if only he had one of those skins--but he always laughed off such things as superst.i.tious.

"There was only me and Tobias then, and the dog, for the engineer boy had gone on his knees to the _Susan B._ fellows, at the first crack, and begged them to take him away with them. I wouldn't have thought it of him--for he wasn't afraid o' them sharks, sar, as you saw, but I suppose it was thinking of his gal--anyway he went off a-praying and blubbering with what was left of the crew of the _Susan B.,_ who seemed too scared to notice him, and so let him come; and, as I was saying, there was no one left but Tobias and the dog and me, and I was sure my end was not far off, for I was never much of a shot.

"As G.o.d is my witness, sar, I was ready to die, and there was a moment when I thought that the time had come and Martha was calling me; but Tobias suddenly walked away to the top of the bluff and called out to the _Susan B._ that was just running up her sails. At his word, they put out a boat for him, and, while he waited, he came down the hill towards me and the dog that stood growling over you; and for sure, I thought it was the end. But he said: 'Tell that fellow there that I'm not going to kill a defenceless man. He might have killed me once but he didn't. It's bound to be one of us some day or other, but despise me all he likes--I'm not such carrion as he thinks me; and if he only likes to keep out of my way, I'm willing to keep out of his. Tell him, when he wakes up, that as long as he gives up going after what belongs to me--for it was my grandfather's--he is safe, but the minute he sets his foot or hand on what is mine, it's either his life or mine.' And then he turned away and was rowed to the _Susan B.,_ and they soon sailed away."

"With the black flag at the peak, I suppose, Tom," said I. "Well, that was a fine speech, quite a flight of oratory, and I'm sure I'm obliged to him for the life that's still worth having, in spite of this unG.o.dly aching in my head. But how about the poor captain there! Where does all his eloquence come in there? He can't call it self-defence. They were waiting ready to murder us all right behind that seven-year apple tree, as you saw. I'm afraid the captain and the law between them are all that is necessary to cook the goose of our friend Henry P. Tobias, Jr., without any help from me--though, as the captain died for me, I should prefer they allowed me to make it a personal matter."

And then I got on my feet, and went and looked at the captain's calm face.

"It's the beginning of the price," said Tom.

"The beginning of the price?"

"It's the dead hand," continued Tom; "I told you, you'll remember, that wherever treasure is there's a ghost of a dead man keeping guard, and waiting till another dead man comes along to take up sentry duty so to say."

"That's what you said, Tom," I admitted. "Several men have been killed, it's true, but no one's put his hand on the treasure."

"All the worse for that!" replied Tom, shaking his head. "These are only a beginning. The ghost is getting busy. And it makes me think that we're coming pretty near to the treasure, or we wouldn't have had all this happen."

"Growing warm, you mean, as the children say?"

"The very thing!" said Tom. "Mark me, the treasure's near by--or the ghost wouldn't be so malicious."

And then, looking around where the captain, and the engineer and Silly Theodore lay, I said:

"The first thing we've got to do is to bury these poor fellows; but where," I added, "are the other two that fell in the water?"

"O," said Tom, "a couple of sharks got them just before you woke up."

CHAPTER IX

_In Which Tom and I Attend Several Funerals._

When Tom and I came to look over the ground with a view to finding a burial-place for the dead, I realised with grim emphasis the truth of Charlie Webster's remarks--in those snuggery nights that seemed so remote and far away--on the nature of the soil which would have to be gone over in quest of my treasure. No wonder he had spoken of dynamite.

"Why, Tom," I said, "there isn't a wheel-barrow load of real soil in a square mile. We couldn't dig a grave for a dog in stuff like this," and, as I spoke, the pewter-like rock under my feet clanged and echoed with a metallic sound.

It was indeed a terrible land from the point of view of the husbandman.

No wonder the Government couldn't dispose of it as a gift. It was a marvel that anything had the fierce courage to grow on it at all. For the most part it was of a grey clinker-like formation, tossed, as by fiery convulsions, in shelves of irregular strata, with holes every few feet suggesting the circular action of the sea--some of these holes no more than a foot wide, and some as wide as an ordinary-sized well--and in these was the only soil to be found. In them the strange and savage trees--spined, and sown thick with sharp teeth--found their rootage, and writhed about, splitting the rock into endless cracks and fissures with their fierce effort--sea-grape, with leaves like cymbal-shaped plates of green metal; gum-elemi trees, with trunks of glistening bronze; and seven-year apples, with fruit like painted wood.

Here and there was a thatch-palm, stunted, and looking like the head-dress of some savage African warrior. Inland, the creek, all white sand and golden sunny water at its opening, spread out far and near into noisome swamps overgrown with mangroves. Those strangest of all trees, that had something tender and idyllic as they stepped out into the ripple with their fresh child-like laurel-line leaves and dangling rods of emerald, that were really the suckers of their banyan-like roots, had grown into an obscene and bizarre maturity, like nightmares striding out in every direction with skeleton feet planted in festering mud, and stretching out horned, clawing hands that seemed to take root as one looked, and to throw out other roots of horror like a dream.

Twilight was beginning to add to its suggestions of _diablerie,_ and the whole land to seem more and more the abode of devils.

"Come along, Tom, I can't stand any more of this. We'll have to leave our funerals till to-morrow, and get aboard for the night"--for the _Maggie Darling_ was still floating there serenely, as though men and their violence had no existence on the planet.

"We'd better cover them up, against the turkey-buzzards," said Tom, two of those unsavory birds rising in the air as we returned to the sh.o.r.e.

We did this as well as we were able with rocks and the wreckage of an old boat strewn on the beach, and, before we rowed aboard--Tom, and Sailor, and I--we managed to shoot a couple of them,--_pour encourager les autres._

I don't think two men were ever so glad of the morning, driving before it the haunted night, as Tom and I; and Sailor seemed as glad as ourselves, for he too seemed to have been troubled by bad dreams, and woke me more than once, growling and moaning in his sleep in a frightened way.