The Isle of Seven Moons/Chapter 32
CHAPTER XXXII
THE SENTRY
Her eyes had not deceived her. Next morning the chest was gone. While the sailors were sleeping so heavily, those shadows had taken the treasure away.
Yes, it was surely gone, for as she advanced towards the sentry, after her first chill of disappointment and fear, she could see the object on which he sat. It was not shaped like the chest—it was round and black—a driftwood log!
How could they have done it? Old Joe was nobody's fool. He was at his post even now, not pacing up and down in military fashion, but still sitting bolt upright and gazing straight ahead, watchful and alert as a faithful sentry should be. Had they bodies of flesh and blood, those shadows she had seen steal across the cape, or phantom forms as intangible as the morning mist now stealing away in the dawn, with hands that could work evil more real and terrible than mortal rogue.
They must have been ghosts, the vengeful spirits of the old pirates themselves. She had never believed in such things. But could human hands have whisked away a ton of gold in an iron chest and placed there a driftwood log, while he was still standing guard? No, no—there were no such things. But how could they have fooled him— There were five!
A challenge was unnecessary in the broad daylight, but why didn't Joe answer her hail?
The mouth was open. That was it. Sleeping at his post! Yes, there were the furrows in the sand, where they had dragged the chest away. Sally was vexed. She grew very angry. His stupid carelessness had lost the treasure.
She shook him. Her hand recoiled at the touch. That figure was too stiff—too cold. She looked up—
The grey beard was matted with blood. And there was a knife, thrust cleanly through the throat, the reddened point emerging at the base of the skull.
The body fell aslant the log against which the thieves must have propped him when they dragged away the chest. But the rigid fingers did not drop the bright round things so tightly clutched, and with the fall of the body there was a dull clinking sound of something shifting within his shirt.
But the girl could neither see nor hear—she was as lifeless now as the body lying athwart the log, and the sailors, after they revived her, refrained from telling her of this last incident. But it troubled them mightily.
When they bent back the fingers and loosed the shining objects, they tossed them into the sea, like things accursed. The stolen chest they might seek later, but these at least they could never keep.
"This part of it we'll forget, boys," said the Captain, when Sally was slowly coming to, "Old Joe had his one failing—love o' money, and the temptation was too much. But he had always been faithful and I never knew him to be dishonest before."
And the boatswain, cap in hand, further defended the dead.
"Ye can't blame him much. It's the curse o' that devil's gold."
And the Frenchman, when he came to the camp, knew that he had made no mistake in his judgment. These simple-hearted seafaring folk, even allowing for their superstitious fears, were far more troubled over the death of their mate, than over the loss of the treasure that would have made them rich for the rest of their lives. And on the seas he had sailed and in the ports he knew, hearts like those were as rare as the treasure itself.
The simple burial service was performed by the Captain who remembered much of the short rite, having seen in his forty-five years at sea many weighted forms sink into the grey bosom of the ocean. A rough cross was raised above the mound, and around it the grasses murmured their own soft requiem, rippling in gentle waves like those of the sailor's home.
That the girl was almost heartbroken, the man could see. She blamed herself for the death of the old ship's carpenter. She had had warnings enough of all sorts. Why hadn't she heeded them—oh, why hadn't she stopped the search and sailed away!
Even after the last prayer was over, her head dropped like a flower, a lovely dark flower of the woods, and he in turn longed to comfort her, just as she had tried to comfort him because of that other rough cross back on the mountain side.
Passing strange are the ways of Fate. She, a beautiful thing and so frail, yet the daughter of a bleak New England coast, rigidly-nurtured; he the frank Gaul, from the genial shores of France. At the opposite poles, the world would say, and still not so far apart as that same world thinks. In ancestry, customs, and all outward things, unlike, yet akin in spirit and with the same clearness of vision.
An hour or two, all the converse he had ever had with her! Nevertheless he knew that that face with the dark eyes, sometimes roguish with laughter and lights of coquetry, again grave with wonder and mystery, yet always looking at him with that forthright glance, was the one he had been searching for, though unconsciously, all over the earth, even as he looked for the little old lady he had found too late. Too late? Yes, both too late.
If Fate could only have been kinder! Perhaps—if a year or two earlier— But she should be happy at any rate. And he—well, he had an hour or two—a meagre treasure to cherish, but those moments should be drops, fragrant with the double distilled quintessence of love .… they would sweeten an ocean of memories— But that would come later. (He looked above at the mountain.) Now he must get her away.
She was talking with Captain Brent.
"I'd say to forget the gold and sail away as fast as the North Star can carry us. But there are the others to think of—their wives and children—and some of them, like poor Old Joe, have lots of grandchildren too—and all are poor. I don't want it now—they can have all my share."
Larone walked over, and apologizing, interrupted:
"My dear Captain, do not search for the thieves too long. To stay after today is to slap Fate in the face. It may take a month—a week—or a day—but trouble is sure to come—from up there—and what good would the gold be then?"
"Monsieur Larone is right," said Sally. "We ought to sail tomorrow."
"Perhaps—we'll see," was the only answer. The eyes of both the Captain and Ben, who had joined them, contracted in suspicion, which the latter voiced a few moments later, while the Frenchman was pleading earnestly with Sally.
"What's his idea, trying to scare us away? Do you think he's in with that gang? I never did trust these coffee-coloured chaps. South-Americans and Frenchmen, they're all alike,—smooth-talkers and quick with the knife." He accented the last word, peculiarly, significantly. Sally was right—Ben had not been himself. A very human jealousy and a little covetousness, also very human, had flowered from the root of all evil, in the heart of an otherwise nice boy.
The Captain turned his head towards the mountain, then answered coolly:
"We want to be fair, Ben. He doesn't look crooked. I don't like that smoke myself."
"Handsome rogues are the worst. He's hustling us off too quick. He offered to help in the hunt, but that's just a blind. He can't hang around here."
Perhaps he felt a little ashamed of himself—but only for a moment—when he saw what Sally was doing. On her knees in the freshly-turned earth, she was carving with Benson's clasp-knife an inscription on the arm of the wooden cross, while little Don Alfonso looked on at the odd task, and the Frenchman was saying:
"You must not grieve, Mademoiselle, for your friend. You know there is a sea for old sailors somewhere beyond, which is fairer even than that out there, and its waves will never bring shipwreck."