CHAPTER XXXI.

SOME LIGHT UPON THE PAST.

Her name was Barbara Alderly! This girl whose beauty was as fresh and pure as her mind was innocent, the girl who--in spite of being able to shoot birds for her food and cook them too, or to sail a boat as well as Reginald himself could do--looked as delicate as any girl brought up in an English country house, was Barbara Alderly, his, the pirate's, descendant! It seemed impossible--impossible that she could claim relationship with such as he had been; yet it was so!

A week passed from the time she had divulged her name, a week in which they were always together during the daytime--he going to his boat at night, and joining her again in the early morning--and in that week each had told the other their story, Barbara being the first to relate hers. But in justice to Reginald it must be said that, never from the moment he had heard who she was, had he had one thought of keeping back from her the secret of where the treasure was hidden, or of depriving her and her relations of one farthing of it.

"It must all be theirs," he said to himself, "all, all. I could not go away from this island with one penny of it in my pocket and continue to think myself an honest man."

But first he had to hear her family story--in itself a romance, if ever there was one--she telling it to him a few days after their acquaintance, as they sat on the verandah, while he drank some water from one of the calabashes, flavoured with a dash of whisky brought up by him from the Pompeia, and she played with her inseparable companion, the dog, Carazo.

"You must know," she began, "that it was not until some years after Simon Alderly--who was the man I think to have been a pirate--failed to return to Port Royal, where he lived, that his still young wife, Barbara--her name being the same as mine--found the paper telling her of the treasure in this island."

"Barbara!" Reginald interrupted, memory recalling Nicholas's words once more. "Barbara! A portrait of a girl with blue eyes, red gold hair, and a sweet mouth!"

"What do you mean, sir?" exclaimed his young hostess, looking at him for the first time with something like surprise, if not alarm. "How do you know she was like that? She has been dead for," and she counted rapidly on her fingers--"for one hundred and seventy years!"

"Miss Alderly," Reginald replied, "will you believe me if I tell you that I think I shall be able to throw some light upon your family history when I have heard it? I have something to tell you as well as to listen to."

"Then," said the girl, "your presence here is not due to accident. You have come purposely to this island in connection with the hidden wealth it is supposed to contain."

"Yes!" he said, "yes, I could not tell you an untruth. I have come purposely here to find out about that wealth. Believe me, my presence bodes no harm to you or yours, no deprivation of what belongs rightly to you."

"Oh!" she said, "how happy that will make father. But will you not tell me----"

"With your permission," he replied, "I will not tell you anything until you have told me your story. Then I will keep nothing back from you--I will, indeed, help you to recover that which has been sought for so long----"

"You know where it is?"

"I think so. I discovered the secret in England, and I came out here to dig----"

"But," she again interrupted, "if you discovered the secret, then this treasure is yours, not ours."

"No," he said hastily, "no; it would have been mine had I not found that there were people in existence who are more righteously entitled to it. Now I shall find it, if I can, for you. Pray continue your tale. When that is concluded I will begin mine."

For some time he could not bring her to do so, his words having caused her much excitement; but at last she took up the thread of her narrative--the narrative interrupted so early in its commencement.

"This Barbara," she said at last--while all the time her clear eyes had a searching, almost troubled, look, as she kept them fixed on him--"this Barbara of whom you seem to know, or to have guessed the appearance, though I cannot say if it is a correct one, had herself a strange history. Simon Alderly had found her, a child of about four years old, alone and deserted on one of the Lucayos group, and, since there was a boat washing about on the coast of the island, he thought that possibly she had drifted ashore in it, while her parents, or those who had saved her, had fallen into the sea from the boat after escaping from some sinking ship. He took her off, however, carried her to Port Royal, and, after bringing her up, married her when she was fifteen. Then he left her in charge of his house there, while he, following the calling of a sea-captain, was frequently away from home, sometimes for weeks at a time, sometimes for months, sometimes for more than a year. But whenever he returned he always brought a great deal of money--generally composed of the coins of several different nations--half of which he always gave to her for future household expenses, spending the remainder in great rejoicing while he stayed on shore."

"This is, of course, family history," Reginald hazarded, "handed down from generation to generation? Is it not?"

"You shall hear, though you have guessed right. Our family records since that time have been carefully kept."

"I beg your pardon for interrupting you," Reginald said. "Pray go on."

"However," the girl continued, stroking Carazo's ears all the while as she did so, "the time came when he returned no more; he disappeared finally in 1687."

"Ah!" exclaimed Reginald involuntarily.

Again her soft hazel eyes stared full at him as she exclaimed, "You are aware of that; you know it as well as I do!"

"Yes," he answered, "I know it. Once more forgive me."

"Perhaps," she said, "you know as much, or more than I do!"

"No," he replied, "after that I know no more. After the year 1687 down to this period I know nothing further of Simon Alderly--indeed I did not even know that his name was Simon; what you tell me of incidents after that period will be new to me."

"And you will tell me all you know when I have finished?" she asked, looking at him with such trusting eyes that no man, unless he were a scoundrel, could have had one thought of obtaining her confidence and yet holding his own.

"On my honour I will," he answered, "even to telling you where I believe your wealth is hidden."

She made a gesture as though deprecating the word "your," and then, seeing he was waiting eagerly for her to continue, she did so.

"He disappeared finally in 1687--Barbara never heard of him again. Then as time went on she grew very poor. There had been a son born to them whom she had brought up to be a sailor, too, hoping thereby that, when he also became a roamer, he might somehow gather news of his father; and by turning the house into an inn, she managed to exist. In that way years passed and she began to grow old, while her son still followed the sea, though never rising to be anything more than a humble seaman. But more years after, when she was getting to be quite an old woman, her house was blown down in a hurricane--though it had survived the terrible one of 1722, when all the wharves at Port Royal were destroyed--and then--she found something."

"What?" asked Reginald. "What was it?" He remembered what David Crafer had found under circumstances not dissimilar, and, perhaps, because he was a sailor--and thereby given even in these modern days to belief in strange and mysterious things--he wondered if the hand of Fate had pointed out to that old Barbara some marvellous clue to where the treasure was. Yet he knew that it could scarce have told her of the removal of the chests of treasure from the island to the Key.

"She found," went on the Barbara of to-day, "a little walled-up wooden cupboard----"

"Great Heaven!" he muttered beneath his breath, so that, this time, she did not hear him.

"Close to the place where he used to sit and drink when at home, but of the existence of which she was ignorant. Yet, she remembered, he had often told her that there were secret hiding-places in the house, and that, if he died suddenly or never came back, she was to search diligently and she would find them. Especially he bade her search in that room; but, what with waiting and watching for his return, she had forgotten his instructions. And now that it was burst open, the wall that secured it being only a plank of wood which fell out at the first violence of the hurricane, she found this cupboard full of various pieces of money, gold and silver, and a paper in his writing telling her of his treasure in this island."

"Then it was his!" exclaimed Reginald.

"By discovery. He wrote that he had put into Coffin Island--as it was called even so long ago as his time--in a storm, and that, while roaming about the place, he and his comrades had come upon a hut, old and long since built, but quite deserted now. Then he went on to write--my father has the paper now, and I have often seen it--that the sloop he had was sent to Tortola to fetch provisions----"

"Was it in charge of a man named Martin, by any chance?" asked Reginald.

But now he saw how imprudent he was. As he mentioned that name the girl started from her seat and retreated from him to the other end of the verandah.

"You frighten me," she said. "I do not understand. How do you know this?"

"Do not be alarmed, I beg," he answered in return. "When you have told your story I will put into your hands a paper that has been found, written by a forerunner of mine who knew Simon Alderly. Then you will see how I know what I do. Pray feel no alarm. I mean you nothing but goodwill, nothing. The treasure shall be yours and no one else's. Will you trust in me?"

"Yes," she said, once more calmed. "Yes, I will." Then she seated herself again and at his persuasion continued the narrative, while Reginald could not but reflect how little fear Nicholas need have had of "Martin coming back with the sloop."

The bewildered mind of the drink-inflamed pirate had mixed up two separate sojourns in Coffin Island!

"The sloop went to Tortola to purchase provisions, and, since they were short-handed, there being but three men excepting my ancestor, all went in her but him. And then it was he found the treasure, it being in a vault or cavern beneath the floor of the hut. It was the simplest way in which he unearthed it, he wrote, and had he not been alone it must have been discovered by the others as well as he. There was a trap-door in the flooring, with a great ring to it, quite visible to anyone, and opening easily. And when he went down some steps into the cavern he found it all--all! Only he had no chance to take it away then, he wrote to his wife; so, putting a vast number of gold pieces in his pocket, he carefully closed the trap-door up again and covered it over with earth, which he stamped down with his feet so that his companions should observe nothing. And in the paper which he left, giving such instructions as were necessary, which were not many--the place was so easily to be found--he wrote down that he had since, whenever opportunity offered, paid visits to Coffin Island, but, being always accompanied by comrades, he never yet had had a chance of removing it. And, he said, if he never brought it home and she found the paper, then she must go to Coffin Island after his death and get it for herself. It was a large treasure, a great fortune, he wrote, it must not be lost."

"So," said Reginald, "she came here?"

"She came here," the girl continued, "and with her came her son and a woman he had married, a Barbadian. But through all the generations from the day she came--which was in the year 1723--and I am the eighth in descent from her, they have never found the treasure. The vault was there, but there was nothing in it."

"Yet your family have continued to seek for it," exclaimed Reginald. "I should almost have thought they would have desisted."

"No," Barbara replied, "they never desisted. For first, they thought that Simon might have changed the hiding-place after he had left the paper in Jamaica--the life he led would probably necessitate his doing so, since his companions might otherwise have also found the vault--and, next, the island had become their home. Simon's son bought it for half-a-crown an acre, his wife having some little money, and we have lived here ever since, while every man who has succeeded to it has made further search."

So the tale was told, and now the time had come for Reginald to tell his.

And as that night he took farewell of Barbara, he said--

"To-morrow I shall tell you why the treasure has never been found by your family. To-morrow I shall bring you a narrative left by that connection of mine, saying where the treasure is hidden. He knew Simon Alderly, and he found out the hiding-place."

"And was Simon indeed a pirate?" Barbara asked.

"Would it grieve you to hear he was?"

She thought a moment before replying, and then she said--

"No, for we have always thought him to be one. No, not if it will not make you think worse of me for having descended from him."

"I knew that was so," Reginald replied, "when you told me your name. And I do not think I showed by my manner that I thought any the worse of you."