Latitude 19 degree Part 20

"What would she say to sixty thousand pounds?"

The boy's face blanched.

"I may as well be frank with you, Captain; she could not procure anything like that sum."

"Well, well, say forty thousand; we won't be particular about a little less. Suppose, now, I should leave you here, Lord George, with provisions for a certain length of time, in a safe place which I know of in this neighbourhood, and you give me a letter to your mother the countess, saying----"

"It is useless," said the boy, hanging his head. "She could not give it to you."

"I'm afraid, then, we'll have to do with you as we have with many a fellow twice your size. It would never do to let you go home and set the English law working against Captain Jonas, plain Captain Jonas."

Jonas laughed his burly, fat laugh.

"Not to speak of Mauresco," he said, "handsome Mauresco!"

"But if I promise never to say a word to a soul of where I have been, whom I saw, what was said, when we----"

"We've heard those promises afore," said Captain Jonas. "Remember, Mauresco? When we caught that d.a.m.ned Spanish don, and all the promises he made, and then that infernal chase! No, no, boy--Lord George, I should have said. We know too much about the faith of a prisoner of war."

"My family have always been noted for their honour and faith!" The boy drew himself up with pride as he said these words. "I would die before I would tell if I promised not----"

"That will be the case anyway," said Mauresco with a careless laugh.

"Will you shoot me? Will you make me walk that horr----"

The boy shuddered and turned paler than he had been.

"No, no, boy, on the word of the buccaneer, we have no such intention.

We shall neither shoot you, hang you, nor make you walk the plank. Don't be so anxious. You have got some fine stories into your head about us, but really at bottom we are the most humane of men.--Aren't we, Jonas? I beg pardon, Captain Jonas."

"So they tell me," said Jonas pleasantly.

The third boat had now come into the cove, and had landed near the first two. The Captain of the third boat was a squat, little red-faced man, with a hump on his back to make him seem smaller--in fact, he was a dwarf. His legs were bowed, his arms long. He had small ferret eyes and an ugly grin.

"Your fate will be decided by the Admiral of the Red," said Mauresco, with a wave of the hand toward the newcomer.

As the third boat grounded, in answer to the punting oars, the men on the bank, Mauresco and Captain Jonas among them, arose from, their sitting postures and stood with an air almost of respect. The little man scrambled over the seats and tumbled himself down on the beach.

"Some of you fellows come and carry me," he said. "It's too d.a.m.nably hot to walk."

At a glance from Mauresco three or four of the strongest of the men ran to the help of the Admiral of the Red and lifted him upon their shoulders. Some one else ran to the boat and seized a boat cloak which lay in the stern sheets and placed it in the shade under a mahogany tree. The Admiral of the Red, or the Red Admiral, as he might better be called, gave each of the bearers a vicious kick as they deposited their share of him upon the ground; at which they laughed as if it were a delightful joke, and ran down to the boat to help land the Admiral's belongings.

"Broach a keg!" squeaked the Admiral.

"We have just broached one," answered Captain Jonas.

"It was rum," whispered the Skipper to me. "I told you so. I'll take that sperm whale, if you please."

I was glad that the Skipper could joke under such horrible circ.u.mstances; it seemed to make our situation less hopeless.

The Admiral now squeaked for his horse pistol, and, while some one was concocting a drink for him out of various fiery compounds, he laid under the tree and amused himself in taking aim at the prisoners in the different boats. The men turned pale and shook as each shot flew over their heads or about their ears, and watched the Admiral with apprehensive eye, and dodged as they saw him pull the trigger. They kept their hopeless gaze fixed upon him, not knowing at which boat or which man he intended to aim.

"Why don't they push the boats off and row for it?" whispered I indignantly.

"Can't, sir," answered the Bo's'n. "Even if they could jump out of the boats and push them off they must punt to the mouth of the stream, and they would be riddled with bullets before they got that far, sir.

Besides, you don't suppose, sir, those h.e.l.lions would leave an oar where they could get it?"

I looked where he pointed, and saw that the oars had all been taken from the boats and were piled together some distance from the little beach.

We stood and watched those dreadful men for an hour or more. They were repulsive, but they fascinated those who had never been near persons of such notorious fame. I left Cynthia to watch the pirates and joined the Skipper.

"Captain," said I, when I could speak to him alone, "who brought you into this cavern?"

"Didn't notice exactly; that girl, I suppose. Lacelle, they call her."

"Well, she didn't bring me in. She was here when I came. She was the first person I saw. They were all here. She and the Bo's'n, Cynthia, your niece, and the Minion."

"You've got fanciful, Jones; who else could it be? Answer me that."

I did not answer him, but asked him another question.

"Did you notice, Captain, when we went along the beach this morning, when we went to bury those men, I mean----" I stopped suddenly. "It doesn't seem only a day, does it--in fact, only a few hours--since that happened?"

"Hardly twenty-four hours since we came ash.o.r.e," added the Skipper.

"Well, you remember when we went along the sh.o.r.e, don't you?" The Skipper nodded. "When we got to the place where the sailors were lying, there were three graves on the beach."

"Yes, what of that?"

"I want you to corroborate my statement, that is all. When I left the spot with the Bo's'n, you remember, when he was so afraid of the ring that your niece found----" The Skipper nodded again.

"Well, when I left that place with the Bo's'n there were two graves, another partly dug, and a dead Hatien lying on the edge of it. When I went back there with you there were three graves, as I have said, and no Hatien. How do you account for that?"

"Don't account for it at all," said the Captain.

"That's the way I account for it. The idee of your askin' me to account for anything in this devil's hole. If it was a little later in the day, and we were on board the old Yankee, I should say you had been looking at the sun through the bottom of a gla.s.s. About those graves now,"

continued the Skipper ruminatingly, "you remember what I said about a man in love, don't you?"

The old man looked at me with his eyes half closed and a peculiar expression of countenance.

"Leaving the strangeness of the completed burial aside," said I, "can you explain why there were only three graves when there were four men concerned in carrying off Lacelle?"

"I'm not good at guessing riddles," answered the old man. "Why should you care, anyway?"

"Well, Captain," said I, "there's an air of mystery about things down here that I don't like. Some strange compelling power seems to have taken forcible possession of all of us. Whose hand was it that pushed out from between the leaves and beckoned to you? And when you had entered the darkness of the archway, so that you could not recognise its owner, who took your hand and led you into the cave?"

"That girl, I told you," said the Skipper. "That girl Lacelle."