III.
How they reached Levuka at last, and parted company in that budding centre of idleness and cheap liquor—some to work their passages to Sydney, and others to scatter over the group—need not be related here. To get away from something that lay on the beach at Boot Island was Allen’s one desire. Drink is said to drown memories, so he tried drinking; but it would not wash away certain dull red stains on a background of white sand. And on the morning after the debauch the body and mind are too weak to resist an angry past: besides, what might not a man say when he was drunk? To move anyhow, anywhere, were better than this. So he became a wanderer. But the human mind is fashioned mercifully, and blunts with use. If the body be healthy, there is no impression, however strong, that will not wear away with time. He shipped in a whaler, but almost before the high land had melted into the clouds he wished himself back again. He found so many excuses for himself, and as poor Benion had killed himself, what good could the box do him lying on the beach in Boot Island? The first man who landed would find it and take it away, whereas, if he had it, he would keep only his own share, and send the rest to Benion’s widow. He left the ship at the first island they touched. It chanced to be Apemama in the Line Islands, whose king, having vanquished most of the neighbouring atolls, and sighing for other worlds to conquer, eagerly welcomed a white man who could mend his three “Tower” muskets.
LEVUKA.
He would stay there, he thought, until a vessel bound for Levuka put in; but month followed month and no such ship came. He rose rapidly from the post of chief armourer to be the king’s first minister, and took to himself a woman of the place to be his wife. Ships put in for provisions or to recruit labourers for the South American guano islands; and as the king’s adviser, his services to the captains were paid for, and the money hoarded. So three years slipped over his head, and a ship put in at last wanting provisions, and bound to Levuka to fill up with oil. Allen helped the captain to get his provisions, and sold him his stock of pearl-shell, taking in part payment a passage for himself, his native wife, and her niece. The ship got under weigh, and stood on and off the island till nightfall, and Allen, guided by the riding light, paddled off under cover of the darkness, and cast his canoe adrift; for his royal patron had found him useful, and was prone to secure his own comfort without due regard to the inclination of his dependents. At Levuka he found that his countrymen were busy developing the country with muskets and gunpowder. If a tribe would live it must have as many firearms as its neighbours, and to obtain them it would sell as much land as the foreigner wanted. And so, for ten muskets and a keg of powder, Allen became the possessor of Boot Island, and the vendor, pitying his simplicity, was ready to sell him two other rocky islands on the same terms.
He stood at last, as he had often dreamed, upon the beach where his treasure was buried, and watched the little dinghy labouring out towards the cutter, which presently swooped down upon it and bore it away, running free towards the west. Then he turned to the two women, who sat patiently by the pile of cases on the beach, and pointed to the spot where they had made their camp-fires more than three years ago. They left him to gather sticks, and he passed quickly round the point that hid the dilo-tree under which he had buried the box. It was just as he remembered it, save that the ground bore no sign of ever having been disturbed. The creeping vine that lives between soil and sand covered the place with a thick carpet of shiny leaves, and no mound could now be traced. He tried to picture the spot as he had last seen it—the flickering torchlight, the scared faces of the shipwrecked sailors, and the blood-stained sand—but the bright sun threw a checker-work of shade through the branches, and a fresh trade-wind bore the smell of the sea to his nostrils, so that the picture would not fit the frame, and the memory seemed less real to him than a nightmare. Surely he had dreamed that Benion’s shattered body was buried here! If it was true, where was the grave? and how could the whole place look so bright and peaceful? But the box—that could have been no dream! It was for that that he had come, and he must find it. He went resolutely and stood against the gnarled trunk. Standing thus, as he had stood on the night of the wreck, the box must be buried at his feet, but there was nothing to show that the treasure and its silent guardian lay there together. He stooped and tore away the matted vine, and the coral sand, dulled with vegetable mould, lay bare. Yes, there was a slight swelling of the sand here, but so slight that he could scarcely believe that anything lay beneath it. Some one must have found and stolen it! With a terrible sinking of the heart, that drove out all power of reasoning, he fell on his knees and tore away the yielding sand with his fingers. At the fourth plunge his heart stopped, for his hand struck against something hard. He plunged it lower, hoping to feel the square corner, but the thing was round and unfamiliar to the touch. A little lower, and his fingers were beneath it, and with a fierce curiosity he tore it upwards from its sandy bed. It threw the coarse sand from its slippery sides, and lay inert—a shattered skull, with a patch of hair still adhering to it! Allen sat staring with wide eyes at the grinning face as it perched knowingly on a hillock of sand, and then, as it slid over and rolled down towards him, he shrieked yell after yell of mad laughter, and the women, running in the direction of the sound, found him so.