The Isle of Seven Moons/Chapter 26
CHAPTER XXVI
SOME ODD REMARKS OF CAPTAIN BRENT
The sound sleep which should have been the portion of so innocent a maiden, especially after such an arduous journey, did not visit her pillow. It was of ferns, that night, her couch, of palm-leaves in the hut, for here she stayed as had been arranged in the morning, Ben and Dick sleeping in the open not far away. She had wanted to spend one night, before sailing, in the place where Ben had rested during his exile, but at the last moment she was almost tempted to change her plans and sleep in her snug berth on the North Star. She would have felt just a little more secure after the uncanny incidents of the day. But she prided herself on "being game," and she had a goodly measure of pertinacity handed down by her Puritan ancestors, so she stayed on shore.
Even on this soft, sweet-smelling pallet she tossed and turned—for hours it must have been—although she had no man-made clock to tell the passage of time, only the Heavenly constellations, gradually sinking behind the palm-trees towards the west.
A strange and forbidding throng danced through the chambers of her tousled head. The scarlet and black kings, and queens, and knaves, of Spanish Dick s cards, stepped out of their stiff frames, and in full regalia tried her in high court for trepass on the fairy isle. Condemned, she was delivered to a swarthy crew of bearded pirates, with huge rings in their noses, and cutlasses between their teeth, and carried up the side of the mountain.
In its crater boiled a gigantic cauldron, tended by jibbering skeletons who pointed their grisly forefingers at her, their wide death's-head mouths grinning horribly. The buzzard swooped down from a black sky and stood before her. It grew and grew till its fiery eyes were as big as cart-wheels, and it was as tall as the mast of a ship.
She looked for the North Star. It was sailing away! She called, but she could not utter a single word. Even at the great distance she could see Ben at the wheel, with his face turned towards her. He shook his head mournfully. Again she tried to shriek, but could not. And suddenly the mountain became alive and spat showers of burning coals, then an avalanche of fire. She was buried, but somehow the coals did not burn her body at all. She laughed aloud in relief—then again tried to scream for help, for the coals were choking her—suffocating her.
She awoke. It must have been somewhere about midnight. She wanted to call Ben, but was ashamed of her fear.
She shook off the spell of the evil dream, and looked out of the door of the hut, through the break in the grove. The waters were calm and untroubled. A bright moon-path led to the horizon. She rubbed her eyes for down it, between the Capes of the Twin Horns, came sailing, a slender craft, with twin rakish masts, to cast anchor in the bay. Again she wanted to call the men, but she told herself it was all a part of her dream, and tried to fall asleep.
She was successful at last, and one by one the constellations wheeled on their way, those left in the blue field of the sky, paling at last in the golden-green light that comes in the East just before dawn.
The birds were in full chorus when she awoke.
Rising, she left the hut, walking around the still sleeping figures of the men, and sought the spring, to charm away with the shock of its silver waters the dark figures of her dreams.
But she paused at the brink and looked through the trunks of the palms.
It was not a dream!
Black, rakish and mysterious, there, at anchor, lay the strange craft.
The sun looked over the mountain. The slender vessel looked very real in the morning light. Little figures were climbing down the ladder; a boat shot from her side. Over the waters came the creak of the oarlocks. Back and forth swung the oars. Back and forth went the backs of the rowers. Now the nose of the boat swished in the sand and the figures leaped out. One was darkly dressed, slender and very tall; the middle one, burly with a fighter's crouch; on the end advanced a short man, a little bowed, and evidently old, but full of energy. Even at the distance she did not like their faces.
They came nearer and she hid behind the trunk of a palm, which, though narrow of girth, could quite conceal her slender figure.
"At last we found this uv a place atter tackin' all over the hull Atlantic like a hayseed chasin' a pig," she heard the little old man say, "why damme, Pete, if the boat herself didn't get so dizzy with goin' about that she near capsized. Blast me hide if ever I ship on a cruise like that agin."
It all came so quickly she didn't have time even properly to stop her ears, and now the tall man held something in his hand. It looked like her high school diploma, only dingier and stained. He unrolled it and the three bent over it.
"It's anelluva puzzle," quoth the little old man.
Puzzle, puzzle! She looked again, then crept from trunk to trunk toward the spot where they sat in the edge of the cave. There were markings upon the unrolled canvas—yes—they were something like those on the stone in the cavern.
Cautiously she retraced her steps.
Quite as light as the fall of the first rays of the sun on Ben's face, was the touch of her finger on his shoulder.
Up he sat, trying to shake the sleep from his body, and looking properly foolish, as a young man should, who finds his sweetheart up and about before him and on such a glorious morning.
"Ben—Ben wake up—there are strangers on the island!"
"Strangers—what strangers?" He hardly comprehended.
"Silly—they wouldn't be strangers if I knew who they were."
He rose to his feet.
"Where are they?"
"Back here on the beach—hush—don't talk so loud! They're suspicious looking enough."
When they reached the edge of the grove, the three figures had walked up the beach. They looked very black in the golden-lit patch of sands. Then, rounding the little cliff to the east and turning south, they disappeared.
"They re after that treasure, Ben, sure as shootin'."
"What makes you think that?"
"The tall dark man had a roll of canvas with him, and on its back were lines just like those on the stone up there."
Ben looked at her in alarm. Was the island haunted after all? Was it casting its spell on her level little head?
"Are you dreaming, Sally, or am I?"
"No, honestly—Ben—it's every word true—see that's how they came."
He hadn't noticed the black yacht before.
However, breakfast was a first law of nature, so very soon a fire snapped its rosy fingers on the beach, and Spanish Dick concocted some pretty strong coffee, Ben toasting some crackers brought from the ship the night before. For tidbits they had the wings and legs of the wild bird left over from supper and, as a special appetizer, bananas gathered from the first terrace.
Out on the waters they saw a boat put off from the North Star. The crew rowed hurriedly to the yacht, and a man, evidently Cap'n Brent, climbed the ladder. He remained on board but a few moments, then climbed down. A bit of colour caught their eyes—a gay-coloured dress. A woman's laugh floated on the morning breeze.
"Um—things are beginning to happen," muttered Ben. "I'm here for over a year without a living soul to speak to. Then in two days folks come sailing here like miners in a gold rush. We'll have a nice young city here soon."
The boat was beached and the Captain hailed them.
"Morning, Captain," called Ben, "where does she hail from?"
"New York, they say," replied the Captain, slowly filling his pipe from his oilskin pouch. "I can't make her out—there's something funny. She's called the Alice, and flies a New York Yacht Club pennant. Looks as if her name had been tampered with."
"What sort of a crew has she?"
"A pretty tough-looking lot. All I saw was a sailor with a grouch, a man who looks like a prize fighter, with an odd scar slashed across his face—like a streak of lightning—and a bell-button in his forehead." Then he smiled. "There's a woman aboard, too. Pretty fresh. Wears a sort of theatre petticoat and looks as if she were lost, strayed or stolen from some show-troupe."
The girl's curiosity rose to the boiling point.
"What did she say, Uncle Harve?"
The skipper laughed at this.
"Well—more than her prayers. When I came over the taffrail she hailed me with, 'Look who's here? If it ain't Old Cap from Way Down East, salt on his whiskers, honest 'n true-blue, and a lookin' for his daughter! You forgot your cue, old scout, back to the wings.'"
A fair imitation of his tempestuous hostess, nasal drawl and all, the Captain managed to give, then added:
"But unfortunately I couldn't find an interpreter aboard."
The pipe wouldn't draw just then, so he blew out the stem, lighted it again, then puffed on it diligently.
"She referred to me a little later in the conversation as a 'stout old party.' Now, my girl, I leave it to you. Was that quite truthful?"
"No, Uncle Harve, you're just right for a big strong man."
But the boy broke in:
"We'd better hurry. They're after it, all right."
"Yes, we sail today," returned the skipper. "If you've got any luggage in that palace of yours back there, better stow it aboard."
Here Sally interrupted.
"Give us three days here, Uncle Harve?"
Then the older man looked at her in alarm. He wondered if the island were bewitched. Islands, especially these tropical ones, were like women. Too much beauty was suspicious.
"Are you daft?" he queried. "You've just got Ben back and you want to stay on this God-forsaken place!"
"Uncle Harve, there's treasure here!"
"Treasure! By the blue beard of Old Cap'n Teach—sometimes I think the old sinner was right in reducing the number of petticoats and empty heads in the world."
He turned savagely on poor Dick, who was teaching Don Alfonso to balance a piece of drift-wood on his nose.
"You hardened old liar! It's all your fault, stuffing her head with your fool yarns."
"No, Señor Capitan, by Nostra Señora de la Caradid"
"For the love of Heaven, forget some of your saints!"
"Never mind, Dick, he doesn't mean it. It wasn't his fault, Nunkie,—I saw the chart."
The Captain's mouth opened and shut twice, as if about to swear, or say something of the sort. But, shaking his head over this fantastic proposal of the young lunatics—he said nothing.
It was Sally's opportunity now and she used it with all her witchery. She told her story, and pled, and persisted, and teased, with soft words and the softer arguments of her young arms around his neck, which he never could resist. So of course he yielded and granted the three days of grace, a little grudgingly.
Then he turned his back on them, and his eyes, blue as the waters where the icebergs float, but infinitely kinder, twinkled, and the lips over the auburn beard puckered in a whistle. He had discovered something. A little boy he had thought dead long ago was alive. Alive! although he was quite invisible to their young eyes and clamouring vociferously to be satisfied.
That boy was right. What was the use of dreary voyages around the Horn in search of sordid merchandise, when there was treasure close at hand. It didn't matter whether they found it or not. The hunt's the thing!
After all a man can be twenty-one again—or fourteen, if he will.
When, safe from the shifting sands of this illusory island, the Captain trod the deck, the real terra firma for him, he called the boatswain, the only one of the crew who, he knew, would not think him a doddering old fool for his orders.
"Benson, how old are you?"
"I'm sixty-one, sir, next December."
"No, Benson, you're not, you're twenty-one!"
"Ay, ay, sir, if you say so, sir."
"And you're going to man the long boat and load her with picks and shovels, tents and provisions; take Joe Bowling, Jack Beam, and Yeo—and I s'pose that cussed gypsy—around this island with Ben, and dig for gold."
For a second there was a gleam of suspicion even in trusting old Benson's eyes.
"Gold, sir?
"Yes, gold, and pirate gold at that. In a chest, Benson, buried under the sand by wicked pirates, d'ye hear?"
"Ay, ay, sir!" he stammered.
"The youngsters want a holiday. They shall have it. We'll dig for that gold. And by the way, arm the men. It's lucky we've those cases of rifles aboard."
Then he called after the old boatswain:
"Remember, Benson, you're only twenty-one."
The old salt evidently thought it incumbent upon him to rehearse the business of his rôle immediately, for, as he rolled away in the Gilbert and Sullivan manner he deemed appropriate, he stiffly executed the steps of a hornpipe, hitching his trousers fore and aft, and singing in a voice like a half stopped-up fog-horn.