CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE ISLAND'S OWNER.
"Who are you, and what do you want?" asked Reginald, confronting the intruder; while, as he spoke, he observed that the coarse and scanty clothes in which he was clad were drenched with more water than even the heavens could have poured on him.
He was a man of great bulk, young as himself, and with a mass of reddish-yellow hair that hung about his face, matted and dishevelled from the wet in which it was soaked; and as he advanced into the room the water dripped off him on to the floor.
"Want!" he replied, "want! What should a man want in his own house but rest and comfort after a storm? Master, this is my house! I had best ask what you want here? And at night--alone with my sister."
Yet he did not pause for an answer, but going up to where that sister lay back in the swoon that had overcome her, he shook her roughly by the shoulder and called out--
"Come, get over your fit. I have bad news for you."
"Be a little more gentle with her!" Reginald exclaimed. "We can bring her to in a better manner than that;" and as he spoke he went to the spirit flask he had brought up from the yacht, and moistened her lips with some of the whisky, and bathed her forehead with water from one of the calabashes.
"What the devil is the matter with the girl?" asked her brother. "She has never been used to indulging in such weaknesses--what does it mean?"
"It means," the other replied, "that the storm has frightened her."
"Bah! she has seen plenty of them since she was born. We are used to storms here."
"And also," Reginald went on, "she saw a man--you--outside, listening to us. She saw your hand on the blind and your face through the slats, but did not recognise you. It is not strange that she should be frightened."
But by this time Barbara was coming round--she opened her eyes as her brother spoke, then closed them again, as though the sight of him was horrible to her, and shivered a little. But, after a moment, she opened them once more, and, fixing them on him, said--
"You have come back. Where is father?"
"He is dead," he said, using no tone of regret as he spoke, and, indeed, speaking as he might have done of the death of some stranger. "He is dead not an hour ago. The storm drove us here, brought us home. But as we reached the shore, for we could not get round to the creek, the breakers flung our boat over, and us out of it. I was fortunate enough to scramble on land, but the old man had no such luck. He was carried out to sea again, and I saw no more of him."
Barbara had burst into tears at the first intimation of her father's death, and now she wept silently, her brother sitting regarding her calmly while he sipped at Reginald's flask as though it were his own!--and the latter felt his whole heart go out to her in sympathy. Yet--how could he comfort her? The one whose place it was to do that was now by her side, but being a rough, uncouth brute, as it was easy to see he was, he neither offered to do so, nor, it seemed probable, would he have done aught but mock at any kind words Reginald might speak.
"Father! Father!" the girl sobbed. "Oh, father! And I have been looking forward so much to your return--hoping so much from it. Thinking how happy we might be."
Her brother--who seemed to consider that, after having told her of old Alderly's death, no further remark on the subject was necessary, and who, if he knew what sympathy meant, certainly did not consider it needful to exhibit any--had by now turned his back to them and, going to a cupboard, was busily engaged in foraging in it. Reginald had seen Barbara take food out of this cupboard ere this, both for him and for herself--food consisting of dried goat's flesh, cheese and other simple things--and therefore he was not surprised at the man doing so now. But he was somewhat surprised at hearing Barbara, while her brother's back was turned, whisper to him--
"Say nothing at present about the Key."
He nodded, willing to take his line of action from her in anything she might suggest in the circumstances which had now arisen; yet he felt that his silence would make his presence there still more inexplicable But, also, his trust was so firm in the girl that without hesitation he determined to do as he was bidden.
Presently her brother turned away from the cupboard, coming towards them again and bearing in one hand a piece of coarse bread and, in the other, a scrap of meat he had found.
"Been here long keeping Barbara company?" he asked, while his twinkling eyes--how unlike hers! Reginald thought--glistened maliciously. "We don't often get visitors here."
"Indeed," Reginald replied; "I have heard differently. I was told in Tortola that curiosity about the strange history of your island brought many people here. And, having a little yacht which I have hired and being a sailor myself, I ventured to pay a visit."
"Sailor, eh? What line? American and--but, there, it's easy enough to see you're a Britisher. What is it? Royal Mail, eh?"
"I am in the Royal Navy. A lieutenant. And my name's Crafer."
"Crafer, eh? and in the Royal Navy? I don't think much of the Royal Navy myself. A damned sight too condescending in their ways, as a rule, are the gentlemen in your line--that is, when they take any notice of you at all. Well, if you're going to stay I hope you're not like that. And my name's Alderly--Joseph Alderly. That's good enough for me."
"I certainly did hope to stay a little longer. I am on leave and like cruising about."
"Your boat's in the river, you say?"
"Yes."
"Why don't you live in it instead of in this house, then? Or at Tortola, where there is a hotel? In some of the islands hereabouts my sister would get a bad name if it was known she was entertaining young English officers all alone."
At his words Reginald sprang to his feet, Barbara also rising, her hazel eyes, that were usually so soft and innocent, flashing indignant glances at her brutal brother.
"You don't know, you don't understand," she began; "if you did you would behave differently. Mr. Crafer has come----" But Reginald was speaking also.
"Mr. Joseph Alderly," he said, "this is the first night I have ever stayed in your house as late as this. I should not be here now were it not for the storm. However, I will trespass upon your hospitality no longer. Miss Alderly, I wish you 'Good-night.'" He touched her hand as he spoke--not knowing what her glance meant to convey, yet feeling sure that there must be much she would have said to him if she had had but the opportunity--and then he turned on his heel, passed through the jalousie, and so out on to the verandah.
The storm was ceasing as he went forth, the clouds were rolling away to the south; around him there were the odours of all the tropical flowers, their perfume increased threefold by the rain. He knew the path so well now from having traversed it many times backwards and forwards from the Pompeia, that it took him very little time even in the dark to reach the bank of the river, to unmoor the dinghy, and to get on board the craft. Then, lighting his pipe, he sat himself down in his little cabin to meditate on what this fresh incident--the arrival of Joseph Alderly--might mean.
"I should know better what to think," he mused, "if I only knew how long he had been behind the blind. The brute may have been there for sufficient time to have heard all the last instructions of old Nicholas about finding the treasure which I read out. Or he may have heard only enough to give him an inkling that I know where the treasure is. Let me see," and he put his hand in his pocket and drew forth his forerunner's narrative.
"Yes," he muttered, as he turned over the leaves, "yes, I had got far enough--having reached the rescue of Nicholas by the Virgin Prize--for him to have heard all if he was there. If he was there; that's it. Only--was he? or did he come later when there was nothing more to be overheard than the description of Nicholas leaving the island?"
Again he pondered, turning the arrival of Alderly over in his mind, and then he remembered how the jalousies had rattled at a time when the wind had lulled, though he had taken little heed of the fact beyond glancing up from the papers. Yet, as he racked his mind to recall what they had been saying, or he reading, at the moment, he remembered the words he had uttered--
"There is nothing to tell you now but the burying of the treasure in the spot where it lies and where we will dig it up."
These had been his words, or very similar ones. If Alderly had been there then--if he had arrived on the verandah by the time they were uttered--he knew all. He had heard the middle Key mentioned, he had heard how the measurements were to be taken, he knew as much as Reginald and Barbara knew. But--had he been there? was it his hand that shook the blind, or was it some light gust of air, a last breath of the storm? That was the question.
Still, independent of this--indeed, far beyond the thought of the treasure, which he had definitely decided he would take no portion of, since it was not, could not be, his by any right--his mind was troubled. Troubled about Barbara and her being alone with the savage creature who was her brother--"Heavens!" he thought, "that they should be the same flesh and blood!"--troubled to think of what form his brutality might take towards her if he suspected that she knew where all the long-sought wealth was hidden away.
"But," he said to himself, as he still sat on smoking, "no harm shall come to her if I can prevent it--if I can! nay, as I will. He may order me out of these moorings since the whole island is his--well, let him. If he does, I will find out Nicholas's cove and anchor myself there--or, better still, I will go and lie off the middle Key. And, by the powers! if he does know that the treasure is there and begins to dig for it, not a penny, not a brass farthing shall he take away without my being by to see that he shares fair and fair alike with his sister. He seems capable, from what I have seen of him and she has told me, of taking the whole lot off to Aspinwall or Porto Rico and losing it in one of his loathsome gambling dens, while he leaves her here alone!"
He went on deck of his little craft as he made these reflections, and, more from sailor-like habit than aught else--since no one ever came into the river--he trimmed his lights and arranged them for the night, and then went to his cabin and turned in. But before he did so, he cast a glance up to where Barbara's home was, and saw that on the slight eminence there twinkled the rays of the lamp through the now opened windows. All was well, therefore, for this night.
Yet he could not sleep. He could not rest for thinking of the girl up there with no one but that brutal kinsman for a companion; with no one to help her if he in his violence should attempt to injure her--a thing he would be very likely to do if he questioned her about aught he might have overheard, and she refused to satisfy him.
At last this feeling got too strong for him--so strong that he determined to go and see if all was well with her. Therefore, ashore he went again, and, making his way up quietly through the glade and the little wood, he came within sight and earshot of the hut. And there he soon found that, no matter how fierce and cruel a nature Alderly's was, he at least meant no harm to the girl herself.
She, he could see from the close proximity to the hut which he had attained, was lying asleep upon a low couch on which he had often sat, a couch covered with Osnaburgh cloth and some skins. Alderly was sitting at the table, drinking and smoking and occasionally singing. He had evidently found some liquor of his own--probably stowed away by him ere setting out on his various cruises--and was pouring it out pretty rapidly into the mug he drank from.
"Heavens!" exclaimed Reginald. "How the past repeats itself! Here stand I, a Crafer, watching an Alderly in his cups, even as, two hundred years ago, my relative stood here watching this man's. And he sings there as he drinks, even as his rascally forerunner sang, too--the one when his father has not been dead many hours, the other when he had murdered a man! And Barbara,--well, there is Barbara in place of the fancied Barbara the other conjured up. It is the past all over again, in the very same place, almost the very same hour at night. Let us hope that, as all came well with Nicholas afterwards, so it may with me. And with Barbara, too. Yes, with Barbara, too."
Whereon, seeing that all was well for the present at any rate, he moved silently away and so regained his boat.