Chapter Fifteen.
Rival Apparitions.
“By Jingo!” said Tom, with a deep breath, bending down and helping Hiram to clear away the weeds and débris from the rotten old door, now clearly disclosed to view. “Jest fancy our lighting on it like this!”
“Perhaps it isn’t a cave at all,” said I, likewise breathless with excitement, but not wishing to place my hopes too high, lest I should be disappointed; “it’s too far from the sea, I think.”
“Nary a bit,” retorted Hiram, doggedly. “I’ll bet my bottom dollar it’s the place sure enuff. Hyar goes, anyhow, fur a try.”
So saying, rising from his stooping posture, he administered a thumping kick with his heavy seamen’s boot against the rotten woodwork.
This instantly gave way, a thick cloud of dust rolling up; and then, a hollow dark cavity appeared right in the centre of the mound, which we could now see was heaped up over the wooden framework, so as to conceal it from the notice of any one passing by.
“Hooray!” shouted Tom Bullover, waving his hat and jumping up in the air to further express his emotion. “We’ve found the buccaneers’ blessed treasure. Look out for the ghost, Hiram!”
“Durn the ghost!” retorted the other; “not twenty on ’em wu’d kep me back now, I guess!”
At the same moment, he made a dive to enter the opening, but Tom put his hand on his shoulder and half pulled him back.
“Stop, bo,” he said. “There might be foul air in it, ’cause of its being so long closed up. Let’s wait and see.”
“How ken ye tell thet?” asked Hiram; “guess it don’t matter a red cent if ther air.”
“You just wait,” insisted Tom. “I’ll find out in a jiffey; and then, if it’s safe, we can venture in. The cave ain’t a-goin’ to run away from us, and you know the old saying, ‘more haste less speed!’ We’re going to do things in proper shipshape fashion, bo, so none o your rushing matters; it’ll all come right in time!”
With these words, Tom, who was a sensible, matter-of-fact fellow, with his head screwed on straight and all his wits about him, took out a box of matches from the inside lining of his hat, where he always kept his pipe and tobacco and such things that he did not wish to get wet; and, lighting one of the matches, he proceeded to hold it within the dark cavity.
The flame flickered and then suddenly went out, although there wasn’t a breath of air stirring, the trees around preventing the sea-breeze from reaching the spot where we stood—a sort of little hollow between the hills.
“There you are, bo,” said Tom; “see that?”
“Guess I don’t underconstubble,” answered Hiram, staring at him in perplexity. “What d’ye mean, hey?”
“Didn’t you watch the match go out?” returned Tom. “Lord, I never did see such a feller!”
“Wa-al, what ef the durned match did fiz out?”
“Don’t yer know what it means?”
“Guess not.”
“It shows as how there’s foul air there, bo—that’s what the match’s going out means. It tells us not to go in!”
Tom said this with a chuckle, for which Hiram gave him a dig in the ribs.
“Hev yer own way, Chips, fur a bit,” he said; “but I’m jiggered if ye air a-going to kep me from prospectin’ thet thaar hole.”
“Nobody wants to,” retorted Tom. “Only just wait a bit till the wentilation gets better and blows out all the gas. It would a-pizened you if I’d let you go in at first, as you wanted.”
“Wa-al, go ahead, an’ hev another try fur to see ef it’s right now.”
In reply, Tom lit a second match, and held it in the opening of the cave as before.
This time it did not flicker so much, burning for a longer time, before the faint flame finally expired.
“Better,” said Tom; “but it ain’t quite safe yet.”
“Hurry up,” replied Hiram. “I’m bustin’ to see thet boocaneer tree-sor ez the mate wer talkin’ on!”
After an interval of another quarter of an hour or so, while we all waited on the tenter-hooks of suspense, an inquisitive land tortoise waddling up to see what we were about, Tom lit a third match.
This time it burnt bravely with a clear light, which showed us something of the interior of the cavern. It did not show us much, though, the darkness being too great for such a feeble illuminant to penetrate far into it.
“Now, boys,” said Tom, “I think we may venture in, as the foul air must be pretty well spent by this time; but we’ll have to get a torch or something to see our way by, or else we shall be breaking our necks or smashing our heads against the roof.”
“Guess one o’ them port fires we hev aboard would lighten it up to rights.”
“So it would,” replied Tom; “but we ain’t got it now, and must try and find somethin’ else to make a flare up.”
“Hyar’s some o’ the old wood,” observed the other, taking up a fragment of the broken door, which was crumbly with age. “Strike another match, will ye. I think this timber ’ll burn long enuff fur us to git inside an’ prospect a few.”
“Right you are, my hearty,” returned the other, carrying out this suggestion; and the next minute, the piece of old oak was in a blaze, when, holding it up in one hand, Hiram stooped down once more and stepped within the cave.
There was nothing there, however.
Nothing!
“Wa-all,” exclaimed Hiram, after bending here and there, and searching in every direction. “I calls this a durned sell, I dew!”
“Hold the light up again,” said Tom; “a little more to the right, bo, so as to throw it on that dark corner there.”
But nothing was to be seen save the rocky walls of the cave, which was of peculiar shape, and more like a sort of fissure in the rock, riven open possibly by some volcanic shock, than if made by man. The roof was formed of lava, it seemed to me by the light of our impromptu torch, similar to the same substance we noticed on the arid plain near the shore of the bay, and again below the sand at high-water mark.
There were queer fragments of rock also, placed round the hard floor of the cavern like seats, with regular intervals between them; while apparently in the middle, as near as we could approximate, was a raised portion of the under stratum of rock shaped like a pulpit.
“Guess if thaar’s airy tree-sor hyar, b’ys,” observed Hiram, pointing to this, “it’s thaar!”
“No, bo,” replied Tom, laughing, “that’s the black man’s pulpit, where he preaches a Sunday, same as our ‘Holy Joes’ do when they’re ashore!”
Hiram paid no attention to this remark, but continued poking about the place, stamping with his feet and trying in every way to see whether the treasure we were in search of might not be buried in some spot or other; but his trouble was all in vain.
Presently, the piece of blazing wood began to give forth a more feeble light, being almost burnt out; and, then, all at once Hiram and I noticed another spark of light like a round hole, at the opposite end of the cave.
“Hillo!” shouted Hiram, “I guess thaar’s another end to the durned hole, an’ we hev taken the wrong track!”
Making our way slowly, so as not to extinguish the torch, we advanced in the direction of the new light, which got bigger and bigger as we approached nearer to it.
There was no doubt it was another entrance to the cave, and a far more convenient one, too, for it opened out on to a little spur of the hill that ran down a somewhat steep declivity to the seashore below.
“It must be the buccaneers’ cave,” said Tom. “It’s just the sort o’ place men that were sailors would choose. I misdoubted it at first, from being so far inland, as I thought; but now I see it’s near the sea.”
“But there ain’t nary a tree-sor thaar!”
“Don’t you be too cocksure o’ that,” returned Tom, looking about him well, to make certain of his direction. “Howsomdever, we ain’t got the time to search the place properly now, as it’ll be dark soon, and we ought to be aboard.”
“Durned if I likes givin’ it up like this.”
“Never mind, bo; there’ll be plenty of time for us to look the cave over to-morrer arternoon, and I’ll bring one o’ them port fires you spoke on to light up the place.”
“Guess thet’ll jest about do, Chips,” replied Hiram, turning round, as if about to go back within the entrance, loth to leave without finding the buccaneers’ hoard, repeating his previous exclamation: “I’m durned, though, if I likes givin’ it up like this!”
“Come along, my hearty!” cried Tom. “Come along, Charley. But, mind, neither on you be telling the hands what we’ve found out! There wouldn’t be a chance for us if the skipper or that drunken cur Flinders knowed on it.”
“Not me,” replied Hiram, following Tom along the curve of the shore towards a little group of trees, which I recognised now as immediately above the pool frequented by the doves. “I won’t tell nary a soul, an’ I reckon we ken both on us anser fur Cholly?”
“Certainly,” said I, replying to his implied question, as I came up behind the two, and we started off retracing our way at once to the ship, on the fo’c’s’le of which we could see several of the men already gathered together. “I’m sure I won’t tell anybody, for I have nobody to tell except you, Tom, and Hiram—you’re my only friends on board.”
“Wait till you get hold of the buccaneers’ gold, Charley,” said Tom dryly. “You’ll get plenty o’ chums then, for money makes friends!”
Nothing further was said by either of us, and we presently found ourselves once more on board, when I turned in at once, for we had walked a goodish distance, and I was tired out.
The next afternoon, when work was ended and Hiram and I were ready to start on another excursion to the cave, we could not find Tom.
“Nary mind thet, Cholly,” said Hiram. “I guess we ken go ’long, an’ Chips ’ll pick us up by-an’-by.”
Passing the grove and pool of the doves, we made our way over the brow of the little hill beyond, and sighted the second bay; when, just as the opening to the cave became visible, both of us heard the familiar sound of Sam Jedfoot’s banjo.
It was passing strange!
The same old air was being played upon it that we had heard immediately before the ship struck—and, indeed, almost always prior to every catastrophe and mischance that had happened throughout our eventful voyage.
Hiram turned pale.
“Jee-rusalem, Cholly!” he exclaimed, at once arresting his footsteps; “what on airth air thet?”
I was almost equally frightened.
“It—it—it—sounds like poor Sam’s banjo,” I stammered out. “I—I—hope he ha—ha—hasn’t come to haunt us again!”
“Seems like,” said he; and then, plucking up his courage, he started once more for the mouth of the cave, I following close, like his shadow, afraid to leave him now, because then I would be there by myself. “Durned, though, if Sam’s ghostess or any other cuss ’ll kep me back now. Come on, Cholly!”
But, when we got up to the entrance, we saw a sight that stopped us at once, Hiram dropping to the ground as if he had been shot.
There, sitting on the very rock at the back which Tom Bullover had joked about on the previous day as being the ‘ghost’s pulpit’ was the dim apparition of a man, the very image of our whilom negro cook, leaning back and playing the banjo, just as Sam used to do on board the Denver City.
But, stranger still, even as I looked, a queer supernatural sort of light suddenly illumined the interior of the cavern, and I saw another apparition rise, as it were, out of the darkness, immediately behind the one on the rock, the last spectral form raising its hand threateningly.
I stood there at the mouth of the cave, almost paralysed with terror, watching the weird scene that was being enacted within, the wonderful electrical glare making every detail come out in strong relief and lighting up the whole place, so that it was as bright as day.
Not the slightest incident escaped my notice.
As the second apparition rose from behind the rock at the back of the cavern, the first figure, which I had believed up to now really to be the negro cook’s ghost or spirit, permitted for some occult purpose or other to revisit the earth, also jumped up out of the corner, dropping the banjo incontinently.
Not only this, the original ghost, spirit, or what you will, displayed an abject fright that was too real for any inhabitant of the other world to assume; for the face of the ghost in an instant grew as long as my arm, while its woolly hair crinkled up on top of its head until it became erect and stiff as a wire brush.
At the same time, the eyes of this first ‘ghost,’ distended with fear, rolled round and round, the white eyeballs contrasting with the darker skin of the face, which, however, appeared to have become of an ashy grey colour, instead of black—though whether this was from the effects of fear or owing to the peculiar light that shone full upon it I could not tell, nor, indeed, puzzled my mind at the time to inquire.
The two figures thus confronted each other for about the space of a second, the headless apparition rising and rising till it seemed to touch the roof of the cave, when it extended its wide arms and made a clutch at the other, and now trembling, figure in front.
This was too much for the banjo-playing spectre.
Uttering a wild yell that only a human throat could have emitted, and with his mouth open as wide as the mouth of the cave towards which he rushed, Sam Jedfoot—for it was his own substantial self, I saw, and no ghost at all, as I was now convinced—cleared in two bounds the intervening space that lay between him and the entrance to the cavern, seeking to get away as far as possible from his terrible visitant. Apparently, he must have thought the other to be the ‘genuine Simon Pure,’ come to punish him for his false pretences in making believe to be a denizen of the spirit world whilst he was yet in the flesh, and so poaching unlawfully on what was by right and title the proper domain of the ghostal tribe!
In his hurry and haste, however, to avoid this avenging spectre, poor Sam, naturally, did not see me standing in front of the cave blocking the entrance, nor had I time to get out of his way, so as to avoid the impetuous rush he made for the opening.
The consequences may be readily surmised.
He came against me full butt, and we both tumbled to the ground headlong together all of a heap.
Sam thereupon imagined the terrible apparition to be clutching him, and that his last hour had come.
“Oh, golly! De debbel’s got me, de debbel’s got me fo’ suah!” he roared out in an agony of terror, clawing at my clothes and nearly tearing the shirt off my back in his attempts to regain his feet, as we rolled over and over together down the decline towards the shore. “Lor’, a mussy! Do forgib me dis time, Massa Duppy, fo’ play-actin’ at ghostesses, an’ I promises nebber do so no moah! O Lor’! O Lor’! I’se a gone niggah! Bress de Lor’, fo’ ebbah an’ ebbah! Amen!”