CHAPTER XI
An Old Enemy.
Charlie Webster's laconic note was naturally our chief topic over breakfast. "Tobias escaped—just heard he is on your island. Watch out. Will follow in a day or two." The "King" read it out, when I handed him the note across the table.
"Your friend writes like a true man of action," he added, "like Cæsar—and also the electric telegraph. We must send word to Sweeney to be on the look-out for him. I will send Samson the Redoubtable with a message to him this morning. Meanwhile, we will smoke and think."
Then for the next hour the "King" thought—aloud; while Calypso and I sat and listened, occasionally throwing in a parenthesis of comment or suggestion. It was evident, we all agreed, that Calypso had been right. It had been Tobias and none other whose evil eye had sent her so breathless back to me, waiting in the shadow of the woods; and it was the same evil eye that had fallen vulture-like on her golden doubloon exposed on Sweeney's counter.
Now what were we to think of Tobias?—what really were his notions about this supposititious treasure?—and what was likely to be his plan of action? Had he really any private knowledge of the whereabouts of his alleged ancestral treasure?—or was his first authentic hint of its whereabouts derived from the manuscript—first overheard while eavesdropping at John Saunders's office, and afterward purloined from John Saunders's verandah?
There seemed little doubt that this second surmise was correct; for, if he had had any previous knowledge, he would have had no need of the manuscript and long ago he would have gone after the treasure for himself, and found it or not, as the case might be. Probably there was a tradition in his family of the existence somewhere of his grandfather's treasure; but that tradition was very likely the sum of his inheritance; and doubtless it was the mere accident of his dropping into Saunders's office that morning which had set him on the track.
It was also likely, indeed practically certain, that he had been able to make no more out of the manuscript than I had; that he had concluded that I had somehow or other unearthed more about it than he; and that, therefore, his most promising clue to its discovery would be my actions. To keep me in sight was the first step. So far so good.
But thus far, it would appear to him, I had had no very positive success. Otherwise, I would not still be on the quest. He had probably been aware of my movements, and may have been lying hidden on the island longer than we suspected. From some of his spies he had heard of my presence in the settlement, and, chance having directed him to Sweeney's store at the moment of Calypso's ringing down that Spanish gold on the counter, he had somehow connected Calypso's doubloon with me.
At all events, it was clear that there were such coins on the island in somebody's possession. Then, when he had watched Calypso on her way home—and, without any doubt, been the spectator of our meeting at the edge of the wood though we had been unable to catch sight of him—there would, of course, be a suspicion in his mind that my quest might at last be approaching success, and that his ancestral millions might be almost in my hands. That there might be some other treasure on the island with which neither he nor his grandfather had any concern would not occur to him, nor would it be likely to trouble him if it did. My presence was enough to prove that the treasure was his—for was it not his treasure that I was after? Logic irrefutable! How was he to know that all the treasure so far discovered was that modest hoard—unearthed, as I had heard, in the garden—the present whereabouts of which was known only to Calypso. The "King" had interrupted himself at this point of argument.
"By the way, Calypso, where is it?" he asked unexpectedly, to the sudden confusion of both of us. "Isn't it time you revealed your mysterious Aladdin's cave?"
At the word "cave" the submerged rose in Calypso's cheeks almost came to the surface of their beautiful olive.
"Cave!" she countered manfully, "who said it was a cave?"
"It was merely a figure of speech, which—if I may say so, my dear—might apply with equal fitness, say—to a silk stocking."
And Calypso laughed through another tide of rose-colour.
"No, Dad, not that either. Never mind where it is. It is perfectly safe, I assure you."
"But are you sure, my dear? Wouldn't it be safer, after all, here in the house? How can you be certain that no one but yourself will accidentally discover it?"
"I am absolutely certain that no one will," she answered, with an emphasis on the last three words which sent a thrill through me, for I knew that it was meant for me. Indeed, as she spoke, she furtively gave me one of those glances of soft fire which had burnt straight through to my heart in Sweeney's store—a sort of blended challenge and appeal.
"Of course, Dad," she added, "if you insist—you shall have it. But seriously I think it is safer where it is, and if I were to fetch it, how can I be sure that no one"—she paused, with a meaning which I, of course, understood—"Tobias, for instance, would see me going—and follow me."
"To be sure—to be sure," said the "King." "What do you think, friend Ulysses?"
"I think it more than likely that she might be followed," I answered, "and I quite agree with Miss Calypso. I certainly wouldn't advise her to visit her treasure just now—with the woods probably full of eyes. In fact," I added, smiling frankly at her, "I could scarcely answer for myself even—for I confess that she has filled me with an overpowering curiosity."
And in my heart I stood once more amid the watery gleams and echoes of that moonlit cavern, struck dumb before that shining princess from whose mouth and hands had fallen those strange streams of gold.
"So be it then," said the "King"; "and now to consider what our friend here graphically speaks of as those eyes in the woods. 'The woods were full of eyes.' Ah! friend Ulysses, you evidently share my taste for the romantic phrase. Who cares how often it has been used? It is all the better for that. Like old wine, it has gained with age. One's whole boyhood seems to be in a phrase like that—Dumas, Scott, Fenimore Cooper. How often, I wonder, has that divine phrase been written—'the woods were full of eyes.' And now to think that we are actually living it—an old boy like myself even. 'The woods were full of eyes.' Bravo! Ulysses, for it is still a brave and gallant world!"
The "King" then made a determined descent into the practical. The woods, most probably, were full of eyes. In plain prose, we were almost certainly being watched. Unless—unless, indeed, my bogus departure for Nassau had fooled Tobias as we had hoped. But, even so, with that lure of Calypso's doubloon ever before him, it was too probable that he would not leave the neighbourhood without some further investigation—"an investigation," the "King" explained, "which might well take the form of a midnight raid; murdered in our beds, and so forth."
That being so, being in fact almost a certainty—the "King" spoke as though he would be a much disappointed man otherwise—we must look to our garrison. After all, besides ourselves, we had but Samson and Erebus, and their dark brethren of doubtful courage, while Tobias probably had command of a round dozen of doughty desperadoes. On the whole, perhaps, he said, it might be best to avail ourselves of the crew of the Flamingo—"under cover of the dark," he repeated with a smile.
Yes! that must be the first step. We must get them up there that night, under cover of the dark; keep them well hidden, and—well! await developments. Charlie Webster might be expected any moment with his reinforcements, and then!—"Lay on, Macduff!"
While we had been talking, Samson had long since been on his way with the word to Sweeney to look out for Webster, and, as he had been admonished to hurry back, it was scarcely noon when he returned, bringing in exchange a verbal message from Sweeney.
"The pock-marked party," ran the message as delivered by Samson, "had left the harbour in his sloop that morning. Yes, sar!"
"Ha! ha!" laughed the "King," turning to me. "So two can play at that game, says Henry P. Tobias, Jr. But if we haven't fooled him, let's make sure that he hasn't fooled us. We'll bring up your crew all the same—what do you think?"
"Under cover of the dark," I assented.
CHAPTER XII
In Which the "King" Imprisons Me with Some Old Books and Pictures.
Nothing further transpired that day, and, at nightfall, we brought the crew of the Flamingo up to the house—all but two of them, whom we left on guard. Two out of six was rather more than we had bargained for, but we found that none of them had the courage to face the night there in that dismal swamp alone—and we couldn't blame them, for a more devil-haunted desolation could not be imagined even in the daylight, and the mere thought of what might go on there after dark was enough to uncurl the wool on the head of the bravest negro. And we agreed, too, that the watch should be changed nightly, a fresh pair going on duty each evening.
Then there was nothing to do but sit down and await events—amongst them, the coming of Charlie Webster.
In regard to this, we had decided that it would be as well that, instead of disembarking at the settlement, he should come and join the Flamingo in the hidden creek; so Samson was once more despatched down to Sweeney with a letter for him to hand to Charlie on his arrival, giving him direction how to find us. Meanwhile, our two men on the Flamingo could keep watch for him by day, and have a light burning for him at the entrance of the creek by night.
The "King's" instructions to me were that I was not to show my nose outside the house. Possibly I might expose the tip of it once in a while, for a little exercise in the garden—where all this time the little silver fountain went on playing amid the golden hush of the orange trees, filling the lotus flowers with big pearls of spray. But, most of the day, I must regard myself as a prisoner, with the entire freedom of his study—a large airy room on the second floor, well furnished with all manner of books, old prints, strange fishes in glass cases, rods, guns, pipe-racks, curiosities of every kind from various parts of the world—India, the South Seas, Australia, not forgetting London and Paris—and all the flotsam and jetsam of a far-wandered man, who—as the "King" remarked, introducing their autobiographic display with a comprehensive wave of his hand—had, like that other wanderer unbeloved of all schoolboys, the pious Æneas, been so much tossed about on land and sea—vi superum, sævæ memorem Junonis ob iram—that he might found his city and bring safe his household gods from Latium. Touching his hand lightly on a row of old quartos, in the stout calfskin and tarnished gold dear to bookmen, he said:
"These I recommend to you in your enforced leisure."
They were a collection of old French voyages—Dampier and others—embellished with copper-plate maps and quaint engravings of the fauna and flora of the world, still in all the romantic virginity of its first discovery.
"This," he said, pointing to a stout old jar of Devonshire ware, "is some excellent English tobacco—my one extravagance; and here," pointing to a pipe-rack, "are some well-tried friends from that same 'dear, dear land,' 'sceptred isle of kings,' and so forth. And now I am going to leave you, while I go with Samson and Erebus on a little reconnoitring tour around our domains."
So he left me, and I settled down to a pipe and a volume of Dampier; but, interesting as I found the sturdy old pages, my thoughts, and perhaps particularly my heart, were too much in the present for my attention long to be held by even so adventurous a past; so, laying the book down, I rose from my chair, and made a tour of inspection of the various eloquent objects about the room—objects which made a sort of chronicle in bric-à-brac of my fantastic friend's earthly pilgrimage, and here and there seemed to hint at the story of his strange soul.
Among the books, for example, was a fine copy of Homer, with the arms of a well-known English college stamped on the binding, and near by was the faded photograph of a beautiful old Elizabethan house, with mouldering garden walls, and a moat brimming with water-lilies surrounding it. Hanging close by it, was another faded photograph, of a tall stately old lady, who, at a glance, I surmised must be the "King's" mother. As I looked at it, my eyes involuntarily sought the garden with its palms and its orange trees. Far indeed had the son of her heart wandered, like so many sons of stately English mothers, from that lilied moat and those old gables, and the proud old eyes that would look on her son no more forever.
And then in my privileged inspection of these sacred symbols, carried across so many storm-tossed seas from that far-away Latium, I came upon another photograph, hanging over the writing-desk—a tall, Spanish-looking young woman of remarkable beauty. It needed but one glance to realise that here was Calypso's mother; and, as was natural, I stood a long time scanning the countenance that was so like the face which, from my first sight of it, had seemed the loveliest in the world. This was a flower that had been the mother of a flower. It was a face more primitive in its beauty, a little less touched with race, than the one I loved, but the same fearless natural nobility was in it, and the figure had the same wild grace of pose, the same lithe strength of carriage.
As I stood looking at it, lost in thought, I heard the "King's" voice behind me. His step was so light that I had not heard him enter the room.
"You are looking at Calypso's mother!" he said. "She was a beautiful creature. I will tell you of her some day, Ulysses."
And indeed, that very night, as we sat over our pipes, he told me; and without a word of his, I knew that the loneliness of his heart had singled me out for his friend, since, for all his love of speech, he was not the man to speak easily of the deep things of his heart.
"Beauty is a very mysterious thing, friend Ulysses," he began, his eyes musing on the face above his desk, "as our old friends of the Siege of Troy knew all too well. The eternal Helen! And in nothing is the divinity of youth so clearly shown as in its worship of beauty, its faith that there is nothing the world holds—the power and the glory, the riches and the honours—nothing so well worth fighting for as a beautiful face. When the world was young, the whole world thought that too. Now we make ignoble war for markets, but the Greeks made nobler warfare—for a beautiful face—
"The face that launched a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium.
"So is it still with every young man. 'Fair Helen! make me immortal with a kiss' is still his cry. Titles and broad lands, and all such earthly gear—what are these to a youth, with his eyes on the face of the eternal Helen?—that face we meet once and once only, and either win—to lose all the rest, or lose—and win what? What is there to win if that be lost? So, at all events, it was with me, who, after winging away from those old gables yonder on all the adventurous winds of the seven seas, and having in truth looked into many a fair face in every corner of the globe, suddenly, in a certain little island of the French West Indies, came upon the face I had been unconsciously seeking.
"So, long years before my coming, had it befallen also with a certain young French nobleman, out there on military service, who had set eyes on Calypso's grandmother in the streets of that quaint little town, where the French soul seems almost more at home than in France itself. All had seemed nothing to him—his ancestral ties, his brilliant future—compared with that glory of a woman. He married her and settled down for good, the world well lost, in that dream island. And the dream he had been faithful to remained faithful to him. He seems to have been a singularly happy man. I never saw him, for he was dead when I set foot on his island—destined, though I knew it not, to live his life again in the love of his daughter.
"She and her mother were living quietly on the small fortune he had left them, in an old palm-shaded house backed by purple mountains, and sung to by the sea. The soul of old France seemed to haunt that old house like a perfume, taking on a richer colour and drawing a more ardent life from the passionate tropic soul that enfolded it. Both had mysteriously met and become visibly embodied in the lovely girl, in whose veins the best blood of France blended with the molten gold of tropic suns. So, as had happened with her mother, again it happened with her—she took the wandering man to her heart"—he paused—"held him there for some happy years"—he paused again—"and the rest is—Calypso."
We did not speak for a long time after he had ended, but his confidence had touched me so nearly that I felt I owed him my heart in exchange, and it was hard not to cry out: "And now I love Calypso. Once more the far-wandered man has found the great light on a lonely shore."
But I felt that to speak yet—believer in the miracle of love though he had declared himself to be—would seem as though I set too slight a value on the miracle itself.
There should be a long hush before we speak, when a star has fallen out of heaven into our hearts.
CHAPTER XIII
We Begin to Dig.
Two or three days went by, but as yet there was no news of either Charlie Webster or Tobias. Nothing further had been heard of the latter in the settlement, and a careful patrolling of the neighbourhood revealed no signs of him. Either his sailing away was a bona-fide performance, or he was lying low in some other part of the island—which, of course, would not be a difficult thing for him to do, as most of it was wilderness—and as, also, there were one or two coves on the deserted northern side where he could easily bide his time. Between that coast and us, however, lay some ten miles of scrub and mangrove swamps, and it was manifestly out of the question to patrol them too. There was nothing to do but watch and wait.
"Vigile et ora," said the "King."
But in spite of that counsel, watching and praying was not much in the "King's" temperament. Besides, as I could see, he was anxious to begin operations on John Teach's ruined mansion, and was impatient of the delay.
"With Golconda and Potosi beneath our very feet," he exclaimed at last, "to be held up by this scurvy pock-marked ruffian, I swear 'I like it not.' No news from your duck-shooting friend either. It is a slow-moving world, and the Bird of Time has either lost his wings, or been captured as a specimen on behalf of the Smithsonian Institute."
At last there came a message from Charlie Webster, another of his Cæsarian notes: "Sorry delayed a few days longer. Any news?"
That seemed to decide the "King."
"What do you say, Ulysses," he said, "if we begin digging to-morrow? There are ten of us—with as many guns, four revolvers and plenty of machetes—not counting Calypso, who is an excellent shot herself."
I agreed that nothing would please me better—so, an early hour of the following morning found us with the whole garrison—excepting Samson, whom it had been thought wise to leave at home as a bodyguard for Calypso—lined up at the old ruined mansion, with picks and shovels and machetes, ready to commence operations.
The first thing was to get rid of the immense web, which, as I have already described, the forest had woven with diabolic ingenuity all around, and in and out the skeleton of the sturdy old masonry. Till that was done, it was impossible to get any notion of the ground plan of the several connected buildings. So the first day was taken up with the chopping and slashing of vegetable serpents, the tearing out of roots that writhed as if with conscious life, the shearing away of all manner of haunted leafage, all those dense fierce growths with which Nature loves to proclaim her luxuriant victory over the work of man's hands—as soon, so to say, as his back is turned for a moment—like a stealthy savage foe ever on the watch in the surrounding darkness and only waiting for the hushing of human voices, for the cessation of human footsteps, to rush in and overwhelm.
"'I passed by the walls of Balclutha and they were desolate'" quoted the "King," touched, as a less reflective mind must have been, by this sinister triumph of those tireless natural forces that neither slumber nor sleep.
"Here," said he, "is the future of London and Paris—in miniature. The flora and fauna will be different. There will be none of these nasty centipedes" (he had just crushed one with his foot), "and oaks, beeches, and other such friendly trees will take the place of these outlandish monstrosities. That pretty creature, the wild rose, will fill the desolation with her sweet breath, but the incredible desolation will be there; and as we here to-day watch this gum-elemi tree, flourishing where the good Teach 'gloried and drank deep,' so the men of future days will hear the bittern booming in the Rue de la Paix and their children will go a-blackberrying in Trafalgar Square. Selah!"
Two days we were at it with axe and machete—wearisome work which gave Tom and me occasion to exchange memories of the month we had put in together on the Dead Men's Shoes. We smiled at each other, as the other fellows groaned and sweated. It seemed child's play to us, after what we had gone through.
"They should have been with us, Tom, shouldn't they? They'd have known what work is;" and I added, for the fun of watching his face: "I wonder whether we'll find any gentlemen playing poker downstairs, Tom."
"God forbid, sar! God forbid!" he exclaimed, with a look of terror.
The next step was the clearing away of the mounds of fallen masonry and various rubbish, which still lay between us and our fortune—tedious preliminaries which chafed the boyish heart of the "King." To tell the truth, I believe we had both expected to uncover a glittering hoard with the first stroke of the pick.
"'And metals cry to me to be delivered!'" quoted the "King," whimsically, fuming as he took his long strides, hither and thither amid the rubbish-heaps, so slow to disappear and reveal those underground passages and hidden vaults, by which the fancies of both of us were obsessed.
We had worked for a week before we made a clearance of the ground floor. Then at last we came upon a solidly built stone staircase, winding downward. After clearing away the debris with which it was choked to a depth of some twenty or thirty steps, we came to a stout wooden door studded with nails.
"The dungeon at last," said the "King."
"The kitchens, I bet," said I.
After some battering, the door gave way with a crash, a mouldering breath as of the grave met our nostrils, and a cloud of bats flew in our faces, and set the negroes screaming. A huge cavernous blackness was before us. The "King" called for lanterns.
As we raised these above our heads, and peered into the darkness, we both gave a laugh.
"'Yo—ho—ho—and a bottle of rum,'" sang the "King."
For all along the walls stood, or lay prone on trestles, a silent company of hogsheads, festooned with cobwebs, like huge black wings. It was the pirate's wine cellar!
Such was our discovery for that day, but there is another matter which I must mention—the fact that, somehow, the news of our excavation seemed to have got down to the settlement. It is a curious fact, as the "King" observed, that if a man should start to dig for gold in the centre of Sahara, with no possible means of communicating with his fellows, on the third day, there would not fail to be some one to drop in and remark on the fineness of the weather. So it was with us. As a general thing, not once in a month did a human being wander into that wilderness where the "King" had made his home. There was nothing to bring them there, and, as I have made clear, the way was not easy. Yet we had hardly begun work when one and another idle nigger strolled in from the settlement, and stood grinning his curiosity at our labours.
"I believe it's them black parrots has told them," said old Tom, pointing to a bird common in the islands—something like a small crow with a parrot's beak. "They're very knowing birds."
I saw that Tom was serious. So I tried to draw him out.
"What language do they speak, Tom?" I asked.
"Them, sar? They speak Egyptian," he answered, with perfect solemnity.
"Egyptian!"
"Yes, sar," said Tom.
"Egyptian?—but who's going to understand them?"
"There's always some old wise man or woman in every village, sar, who understands them. You remember old King Coffee in Grant's Town?"
"Does he know Egyptian?"
"O yaas, sar! He knows 'gyptian right enough. And he could tell you every word them birds says—if he's a mind to."
"I wonder if Tobias knows Egyptian, Tom?"
"I wouldn't be at all surprised, sar," he answered; "he looks like that kind of man," and he added something about the Prince of the Powers of the Air, and suggested that Tobias had probably sold his soul to the devil, and had, therefore, the advantage of us in superior sources of information.
"He's not unlike one of those black parrots himself, is he, Tom?" I added, for Tom's words had conjured up a picture for me of Tobias, with his great beak, and his close-set evil eyes, and a familiar in the form of a black parrot perched on his shoulders, whispering into one of his ugly ears.
However, we continued with our digging, and Tobias continued to make no sign.
But, at the close of the third day from our discovery of John Teach's wine cellar, something happened which set at rest the question of Tobias's knowledge of Egyptian, and proved that he was all too well served by his aërial messengers. The three days had been uneventful. We had made no more discoveries, beyond the opening up of various prosaic offices and cellars that may once have harboured loot but were now empty of everything but bats and centipedes. But, toward evening of the third day, we came upon a passage leading out of one of these cellars; it had such a promising appearance that we kept at work later than usual, and the sun had set and night was rapidly falling as we turned homeward.
As we came in sight of the house, we were struck by the peculiar hush about it, and there were no lights in the windows.
"No lights!" the "King" and I exclaimed together, involuntarily hurrying our steps, with a foreboding of we knew not what in our hearts. As we crossed the lawn, the house loomed up dark and still, and the door opening on to the loggia was a square of blackness, in a gloom of shadows hardly less profound. Not a sound, not a sign of life!
"Calypso!" we both cried out, as we rushed across the loggia. "Calypso! where are you?—but there was no answer; and then, I, being ahead of the "King," stumbled over something dark lying across the doorway.
"Good God! what is this?" I cried, and, bending down, I saw that it was Samson.
The "King" struck a match. Yes! it was Samson, poor fellow, with a dagger firmly planted in his heart.
Near by, something white caught my eye attached to the lintel of the doorway. It was a piece of paper held there with a sailor's knife. I tore it off in a frenzy, and—the "King" striking another match—we read it together. It bore but a few words, written all in capital letters with a coarse pencil:
"WILL RETURN THE LADY IN EXCHANGE FOR THE TREASURE," and it was signed "H.P.T."
CHAPTER XIV
In Which I Lose My Way.
I stood a full minute with the astonishing paper in my hand, too stunned to speak or move. It seemed too incredible an outrage to realise. Then a torrent of feelings swept over me—wild fear for her I loved, and impotent fury against the miscreant who had dared even to conceive so foul a sacrilege. To think of her beauty subject to such coarse ruffianism! I pictured her bound and gagged and carried along through the brush in the bestial grasp of filthy negroes, and it seemed as though my brain would burst at the thought.
"The audacity of the fellow!" exclaimed the "King," who was the first to recover.
"But Calypso!" I cried.
The "King" laid his hand on my shoulder, reassuringly.
"Don't be afraid for her," he said. "I know my daughter."
"But I love her!" I cried, thus blurting out in my anguish what I had designed to reveal in some tranquil chosen hour.
"I have loved her for twenty years," said the "King," exasperatingly calm. "'Jack Harkaway' can take care of himself."
I was not even astonished at the time.
"But something must be done," I cried. "I will go to the commandant at once and rouse the settlement. Give me a lantern," I called to one of the negroes, who by this had come up to us, and were standing around in a terrified group. I waited only for it to be lit, and then, without a word, dashed wildly into the forest.
"Hadn't you better take some one with you?" I heard the "King" call after me, but I was too distraught to reply, plunging headforemost through the tangled darkness—my brain boiling like a cauldron with anger and a thousand fears, and my heart stung too with wild unreasoning remorse. After all, it was my doing.
"To think! to think! to think!" I cried aloud—leaving the rest unspoken.
I meant that it had all come of my insensate pursuit of that filthy treasure, when all the time the only treasure I coveted was Calypso herself. Poor old ignorant Tom had been right, after all. Nothing good came of such enterprises. There was a curse upon them from the beginning. And then, as I thought of Tobias, my body shook so that I could hardly keep on walking, and, next minute, my hatred of him so nerved me up again that I ran on through the brush, like a madman, my clothes clutched at by the devilish vines and torn at every yard.
I fled past the scene of our excavations, looking more haunted than ever in the flashing gleam of the lantern. With an oath, I left them behind, as the accursed cause of all this evil; but I cannot have gone by them many yards when suddenly I felt the ground giving way beneath me with a violent jerk. My arms went up in a wild effort to save myself, and then, in a panic of fright, I felt myself shooting downward, as one might fall down the shaft of a mine. Vainly I clutched at rocky walls as I sped down in the earth-smelling darkness. I seemed to be falling forever, and for a moment my head cleared and I had time to think of the crash that was coming, at the end of my fall—a crash which, I said to myself, must mean death. It came with sudden crunching pain, a swift tightening round my heart, as though black ropes were being lashed tightly about it, squeezing out my breath; then entire blackness engulfed me, and I knew no more.
How long I lay there in the darkness I cannot tell. All I remember is my suddenly opening my eyes on intense blackness, and vaguely wondering where I was. My head felt strangely clear and alive, but for a moment I could remember nothing. I was conscious only of a strong earthy smell, and my eyes felt so keen that, as the phrase goes, they seemed to make darkness visible. They seemed, too, to see themselves, as rings of light in the blackness. My head, too, seemed entirely detached from my body, of which, so far, I was unconscious. But, presently, the realisation of it returned, and involuntarily I tried to move—to find, with a sort of indifferent mild surprise, that it was impossible.
So there I lay, oddly content, in the dark—the pungent smell of the earth my only sensation, and my head uselessly clear.
Then, bit by bit, it all came back to me, like returning circulation in a numbed limb; but as yet dreamily, as something long ago and far away. Then I found myself partly risen, leaning on my elbow, and looking about—into nothingness. Then feeling seemed slowly to be coming back to the rest of me. My head was no longer isolated. It was part of a heavy something that lay inert on the ground, and was beginning to feel numbly—to ache dully. Then I found that I could move one of my legs, then the other, and eventually, with a mighty effort, I could almost raise myself. But, for the moment, I had to fall back.
The remembrance of what had happened began to grow in force and keenness and, of a sudden, the thought of Calypso smote me like a sword! Spurred to desperate effort, I stood up on the instant and leaned against a rocky wall. Miracle of miracles! I could stand. I was not dead, after all. I was not, indeed, so far as I could tell, seriously hurt. Badly bruised, of course—but no bones broken. It seemed incredible, but it was so. The realisation made me feel weak again, and I sat down with my back propped up against the rock, and waited for more strength.
Slowly my thoughts fumbled around the situation. Then, as by force of habit, my hand went to my pocket. God be praised! I had matches, and I cried with thankfulness, out of very weakness. But I still sat on in the dark for a while. I felt very tired. After thinking about it for a long time, I took out my precious match-box, which unconsciously I had been hugging with my hand, and struck a light, looking about me in a dazed fashion. The match burnt down to my fingers, and I threw it away, as the flame stung me. I had seen something of my surroundings, enough to last my tired brain for a minute or two. I was at the bottom of a sort of crevasse, a narrow cleft in the rocks which continued on in a slanting downward chasm into the darkness. It was a natural corridor, with a floor of white sand. The sand had accounted for my coming off without any broken bones.
After another minute or two, I struck another match, and lo! another miracle. There was my lantern lying beside me. The glass of it was broken, but that was no matter. As I lit the wick, my hopes leapt up with the flame. At the worst, I had light.
"Lux in tenebris!" I seemed to hear the voice of the "King"—inextinguishably gay; and, at the thought of him, my inertia passed. What could he be thinking? His daughter spirited away, and now I too mysteriously vanished. What was happening up there, all this time? Up there! How far was it to "up there"? How far had I fallen? All about me was so terribly still and shut away. I could believe myself at the very centre of the earth, and it seemed ages ago, æons of time, since I had last seen the "King." What time was it? I felt for my watch. I found but the wreck of it. It was the only thing that had suffered. It was smashed to smithereens.
Then I moved myself again, and, taking up the lantern, raised it aloft, but the chasm down which I had fallen went up and up in a slanting direction, and lost itself in darkness. Bringing the lantern down to the level again, I examined the rock corridor. Behind me, as before me, it continued—a long, deep fissure, splitting its way through the earth. I limped my way along some yards of the section that lay before me, but it seemed to me that it was growing narrower as it went on, as though it were coming to an end; and indeed, after a while, I came to a place too narrow for me to pass.
I swung my lantern aloft, seeking the possibilities of a climb, but everywhere it was sheer, without a ledge or protuberance of any kind to take advantage of, and it was utterly devoid of vegetation—not a sign of a friendly shrub or root to hold by.
So I turned back to try my luck in the other direction. But first I shouted and shouted with all my might. I could not be far away from the ruins, and there was a chance of some one hearing me. However, I had little faith in my effort, and was too tired to keep it up; so I turned with my lantern toward the other end of the corridor. And here it was easy going, along a gently-graded descent, covered, as I have said, with white sand, in which shells were here and there embedded. My heart beat wildly. Perhaps I had only to walk on a little farther to come out on the sea—for here certainly the sea had been once, whether or not it came up there any more. Vain hope!—for when I had followed the corridor some fifty yards or so, it suddenly widened out for a few yards into something of a cavern, and then as suddenly narrowed into a mere slit, and so came to an end.
The deadening of my spark of hope weakened me. I slid down, with my back against the rock, and gave way to despair. As I looked up at the smooth implacable walls that imprisoned me, I felt like some poor insect clinging to the side of a bowl partly filled with water. How frantically the poor creature claws and claws the polished sides, at each effort slipping nearer and nearer to the fatal flood.
I had sense enough to know that I was too tired to think profitably, and drowsiness coming over me told me that an hour or two's sleep would give me the strength I needed to renew with a will, and more chance of success, my efforts to escape.
Light was too precious to waste, so I blew out my lantern, and, curling up on the sand, almost instantly fell asleep. But, before I lapsed into unconsciousness, I had clutched hold of one sustaining thought in the darkness—the assurance of Calypso's safety, so confidently announced by her father: "Don't be afraid for her. I know my daughter." Whatever happened to me, she would come out all right. As her brave shape flashed before my mind's eye, down there under the earth, I could have no doubt of that.
CHAPTER XV
In Which I Pursue My Studies as a Troglodyte.
My instinct had been right in giving way to my drowsiness, for I woke up from my sleep a new man. How long I had been there, of course, I had no means of knowing; but I fancy I must have slept a good while, for I felt so refreshed and full of determination to tackle my escape in good earnest.
It is remarkable how rest sharpens one's perceptions. When we are weary, we only half see what we look at, and the very thing we are desperately seeking may be right under our nose and we quite unaware.
So I had hardly relit my lantern, when its rays revealed something which it seemed impossible for any one with eyes, however weary, to have overlooked.
In the right-hand corner of the little cavern, five or six feet above my head, was a dark hole, like the entrance to a tunnel, or, more properly speaking, a good-sized burrow—for it was scarcely more than a yard in diameter. It seemed to be something more than a mere cavity in the rock, for, when I flashed my lantern up to it, I could see no end. To climb up to it, at first, seemed difficult; but providentially, I had a stout claspknife in my pocket, and with this I cut a step or two in the porous rock, and so managed it. Lying flat on my stomach, I looked in.
It was, as I had thought, a narrow natural tunnel, snaking through the rocks—as often happens in those curious fantastic coral formations—for all the world, indeed, as if it had been made ages ago by some monstrous primeval serpent, a giant worm-hole no less, leading—Heaven alone knew where.
There was just room to crawl along it on all fours, so I started cautiously, making sure I had my precious matches, and my jackknife all safe.
After all, I said to myself, I was no worse off than thousands of poor devils in mines. I had myself snaked through just such passages in coal-mines. Still, I confess that the choking sense of being shut in this earth-smelling tube, like a fox in a drain, and the sudden realisation of the appalling tonnage of superincumbent earth above me—liable at any moment to loosen, and, as with a giant thumb, press out my poor little insect existence—made the sweat pour from me and my heart stand still. I had to shut my eyes for a moment and command myself back to calmness and courage, before I could go on. Above all things I had to blindfold my imagination, the last companion for such a situation.
After this first flurry of fear, I went on crawling in a methodical way, allowing no thought to enter my mind that did not concern the yard or two of earth immediately ahead of me. So I progressed, I should say, for some twenty or thirty yards when, to my inexpressible relief, I came out, still on all fours, onto a spreading floor; then, standing up, I perceived that I was in a cave of considerable loftiness, and some forty feet or so across. It was good to breathe again such comparatively free air; yet, as I looked about and made the circuit of the walls, I saw that I had but exchanged one prison for another. There was this difference, however: whereas there had only been one passageway from the cave I had just left, there were several similar outlets from that in which I now stood. Two or three of them proved to be nothing but alcoves that ran a few yards and then stopped.
But there were two close by each other which seemed to continue on. There was not much choice between them, but, as both made in the same direction, as far as I could judge the direction in which I had so far progressed, I decided to take the larger one. It proved to be a passage much like the tunnel I had already traversed, only a little roomier, and therefore it was easier going, and it, too, brought me out, as had the other, on another cavern—but one considerably larger in extent.
Here, however, I speedily perceived that it was not a case of one cavern, but several—opening out, by natural archways one into another. I walked eagerly through them, scanning their ceilings for sign of some outlet into the upper air; but in vain. Still, after the strangling embrace of those tunnels, it was good to have so much space to breathe and walk about in. In fact, I had stumbled on something like a Monte Cristo suite of underground apartments. And here for a moment I released my imagination from her blinders, and allowed her to play around these strange halls. And in one of her suggestions there was some comfort. It was hardly likely that caverns of such extent had waited for me to discover them. They must surely have been known to Teach, or whatever buccaneer it was who had occupied the ruined mansion not so very far above-ground. What better place could be conceived for his business? It was even likely—more than likely, almost certain—that there was some secret passageway connecting this series of caves with the old house—if one could only find it. And so the dear creature prattled on to me, till I thought it was time to blindfold her again—and return to business.
Still, there was something in what she had said, and I set about the more carefully to examine every nook and corner. And, if I didn't find anything so splendid as she had dreamed, I did presently find evidence that, as she had said, I was not the first human being to stand where now I stood. Two iron staples imbedded in one of the walls, with rusting chains and manacles attached, were melancholy proof of one of the uses to which the place had once been put. Melancholy for certain unhappy souls long since free of all mortal chains, but for me—need I say it?—exceedingly joyous. For if there had been a way to bring prisoners here, it was none the less evident that there had been a way to take them out. But how and where? Again I searched every nook and cranny. There was no sign of entrance anywhere.
Then a thought occurred to me. What if the entrance were after the manner of a mediæval oubliette—through the ceiling! There was a thought indeed to send one's hopes soaring. I ran in my eagerness through one cavern after another, holding my lantern aloft. That must be the solution. There could be no other way. I sought and sought, but alas! it was a false hope, and I threw myself down in a corner in despair, deciding that the prisoners must have been forced to crawl in as I had—though it was hardly like jailers to put themselves to such inconvenience.
I leaned back against the wall and gazed listlessly upward. Next moment I had bounded to my feet again. Surely I had seen some short regular lines running up the face of the rock, like a ladder. I raised my lantern. Sure enough, they were iron rounds set in the face of the rock, and they mounted up till I lost them in the obscurity, for the cave here must have been forty feet high. Blessed heaven! I was saved!
But alas! they did not begin till some six feet above my head, and the wall was sheer. How was I to reach the lowest rung? The rock was too sheer for me to cut steps in, as I had done farther back. I looked about me. Again the luck was with me. In one of the caves I had noticed some broken pieces of fallen rock. They were terribly heavy, but despair lent me strength, and after an hour or two's work, I had managed to roll several of them to the foot of the ladder, and—with an effort of which I would not have believed myself capable—had been able to build them one on top of another against the wall. So, I found myself able to grasp the lowest rung with my hands. Then, fastening the lantern round my neck with my necktie, I prepared to mount.
The climb was not difficult, once I had managed to get my feet on the first rung of the ladder, but there was always the chance that one of the rungs might have rusted loose with time, in which case, of course, it would have given way in my grasp, and I should have been precipitated backward to certain death below.
However, the man who had mortised them had done an honest piece of work, and they proved as firm as on the day they were placed there. Up and up I went, till I must have been forty feet above the floor, and, then, as I neared the roof, instead of coming to a trap door, as I had conjectured, I found that the ladder came to an end at the edge of a narrow ledge, running along the ceiling much as a clerestory runs near the roof of some old churches. On to this I managed to climb. It was barely a yard wide, and the impending roof did not permit of one's standing erect. It was a dizzy situation, and it seemed safest to crawl along on all fours, holding the lantern in front of me. Presently it brought me up sharp in a narrow recess. It had come to an end.
Yes! but imagine my joy! it had come to an end at a low archway rudely cut in the rock. Deep set in the archway was a stout wooden door. My first thought was that I was trapped again, but, to my infinite surprise and gratitude, it proved to be slightly ajar, and a vigorous push sent it grinding back on its hinges. What next! I wondered. At all events, I was no longer lost in the bowels of the earth; step by step, I was coming nearer to the frontiers of humanity.
But I was certainly not prepared for what next met my eyes, as I pushed through the low doorway with my lantern, and looked around. Yes! indeed, man had certainly been here, man, too, very purposeful and businesslike. I was in a sort of low narrow gallery, some forty feet long, to which the arching rock made a crypt-like ceiling. At my first glance, I saw that there was another door at the far end similar to the one I had entered by; and on the left side of the gallery, built of rough stones from the low ceiling to the floor, was a series of compartments, each with locked wooden door. They were strong and grim looking, and might have been taken for prison cells, or family vaults, or possibly wine-bins. The massive locks were red with rust, and there was plainly no possibility of my opening them.
On the other side of the gallery there was a litter of old chains, and some boards, probably left over from the doors. Yes! and there were two old flintlock guns, and several cutlasses, all eaten away with rust, also a rough seaman's chest open and falling to pieces. At the sight of that, a wild thought flashed through my brain. What if—Good God!—What if this was John Teach's treasury!—behind those grim doors. I threw myself with all my force against one and then the other. For the moment I forgot that my paramount business was to escape. But I might as well have hurled myself against the solid rock. And, at that moment, I noticed that the place was darker than it had been. My lantern was going out. In a moment or two, I should be in the pitch dark, and I had discovered that the door at the end of the gallery was as solid as the others.
I was to be trapped, after all; and I pictured myself slowly dying there of hunger—the pangs of which I was already beginning to feel—and some one, years hence, finding me there, a mouldering skeleton—some one who would break open those doors, uncover those gleaming hoards, and moralise on the irony of my end; condemned to die there of starvation, with the treasure I had so long sought on the other side of those unyielding doors. Old Tom's words suddenly flashed over me, and I could feel my hair literally beginning to rise. "There never was a buried treasure yet that didn't claim its victim." Great God!—and I was to be the ghost, and keep guard in this terrible tomb till the next dead man came along to relieve me of my sentry duty!
Frantically I turned up the wick of my lantern at the thought—but it was no use; it was plainly going out. I examined my match-box; I had still a dozen or so matches left. And then my eye fell on that shattered chest. There were those boards, too. At all events I could build a fire and make torches of slivers of wood, so long as the wood lasted.
And then I had an idea. Why not make the fire against the door at the end of the gallery, and so burn my way through. Bravo! My spirits rose at the thought, and I set to at once—splitting some small kindling with my knife. In a few minutes I had quite a sprightly little fire going at the bottom of the door; but I saw that I should have to be extravagant with my wood if the fire was to be effective. However, it was neck or nothing; so I piled on beams and boards till my fire roared like a furnace, and presently I had the joy of seeing it begin to take hold of the door—which, after a short time, began to crackle and splutter in a very cheering fashion.
Whatever lay beyond, it was evident that I should soon be able to break my way through the obstacle, and, indeed, so it proved; for, presently, I used one of the boards as a battering ram, and, to my inexpressible joy, it went crashing through, with a shower of sparks, and it was but the work of a few more minutes before the whole door fell flaming down, and I was able to leap through the doorway into the darkness on the other side.
As I stood there, peering ahead, and holding aloft a burning stick—which proved, however, a poor substitute for my lantern—a wonderful sound smote my ears. I could not believe it, and my knees shook beneath me. It was the sound of the sea.
Yes! it was no illusion. It was the sound that the sea makes singing and echoing through hollow caves—the sound I heard that night as I stood at the moonlit door of Calypso's cavern, and saw that vision which my heart nearly broke to remember. Calypso! O Calypso! where was she at this moment? Pray God that she was indeed safe, as her father had said. But I had to will her from my mind, to keep from going mad.
And my poor torch had gone out, having, however, given me light enough to see that the door which I had just burnt through let out on to a narrow platform on the side of a rock that went slanting down into a chasm of blackness, through which, as in a great shell, boomed that murmuring of the sea. It had a perilous ugly look, and it was plain that it would be foolhardy to attempt it at the moment without a light; and my fire was dying down. Besides, I was beginning to feel lightheaded and worn out, partly from lack of food, no doubt.
As there was no food to be had, I recalled the old French proverb, "He eats who sleeps"—or something to that effect—and I determined to husband my strength once more with a brief rest. However, as I turned to throw some more wood on my fire—preparing to indulge myself with a little camp-fire cheerfulness as I dozed off—my eyes fell once more on that grim line of locked doors; and my curiosity, and an idea, made me wakeful again. I had burned down one door—why not another? Why not, indeed?
So I raked over my fire to the family vault nearest to me, and presently had it roaring and licking against the stout door. It was, apparently, not so solid as the gallery door had been. At all events, it kindled more easily, and it was not long before I had the satisfaction of battering that down too.
As I did so, I caught sight of something in the interior that made me laugh aloud and behave generally like a madman. Of course, I didn't believe my eyes—but they persisted in declaring, nevertheless, that there in front of me was a great iron-bound oaken chest, to begin with. It might not, of course, contain anything but bones—but it might—! The thing was too absurd. I must have fallen asleep—must be already dreaming! But no! I was labouring with all my strength to open it with one of those rusty cutlasses. It was a tough job, but my strength was as the strength of ten, for the old treasure-hunting lust was upon me, and I had forgotten everything else in the world.
At last, with a great wooden groan, as though its heart were breaking at having to give up its secret at last, it crashed open. I fell on my knees as though I had been struck by lightning, for it was literally brimming over with silver and gold pieces—doubloons and pieces of eight; English and French coins, too—guineas and louis d'or: "all"—as Tobias's manuscript had said—"all good money."
For a while I knelt over it, dazed and blinded, lost; then I slowly plunged my hands into it, and let the pieces pour and pour through them, literally bathing them in gold and silver, as I had read of misers doing.
Meanwhile, I talked insanely to myself, made all sorts of inarticulate noises, sang shreds of old songs. Rising at length, I capered up and down the gallery, talking aloud to the "King" as though he had been there, and anon breaking out again into absurd song, roaring it out at the top of my voice, laughing and war-whooping between:
"There was chest on chest of Spanish gold,
With a ton of plate in the middle hold,
And the cabin's riot of loot untold."
Then suddenly I broke out into an Irish jig—never having had any notion of doing such a thing before.
In fact I behaved as I have read of men doing, whom a sudden fortune has bereft of reason. For the time, at all events, I was a gibbering madman. Certainly, there was to be no sleep for me that night! But, in the full tide of my frenzy, I suddenly noticed something that brought me up sharp. Out beyond the doorway it was growing light. It was only a dim tremulous suffusion of it, indeed, but it was real daylight—oozing in from somewhere or other—the blessed, blessed, daylight! God be praised!
CHAPTER XVI
In Which I Understand the Feelings of a Ghost!
So, I surmised, I had been underground a whole day and two nights, and this was the morning of the second day after Calypso's disappearance. What had been happening to her all this time! My flesh crept at the thought, and, with that daylight stealing in like a living presence, and the sound and breath of the sea, my anguish returned a hundredfold. It was like coming to, after an anæsthetic, for I realised that, actively as I had been occupied in trying to escape, I had been, all the time, under a curious numbing spell. Just as my ears had seemed muffled with a silence that was more than the stillest silence above ground; silence that was itself a captive, airless and gasping, so to say, with the awful pressure of all that oblivious earth above and around; a silence that made me realise with a dreadful reality what had been a mere phrase before, "the silence of the grave"; silence literally buried alive, with eyes fixed in a trance of horror; just in the same way, all my feelings of mind and heart, memory and emotion, had likewise been deadened, as with some heavy narcotic of indifference, so that I felt and yet did not feel—remembered and yet did not remember.
The events of a few hours before, and the dearly loved friends taking part in them, seemed infinitely remote, for all their clearness, as when we see a figure waving to us from a distance, and know that it is calling to us, but yet we cannot hear a word. Even so one lies back in the grip of a deadly sickness, and all that formerly had been so important and moving seems like a picture, definite yet remote, in which one has no part any more.
I think one would die soon and easily underground, as creatures in a vacuum, for the will to live has so little to nourish itself on. One's whole nature falls into a catalepsy; all one's faculties seem asleep, save the animal impulse to escape—an impulse that would soon grow weary too. So, it seemed to me, as I saw a little light and drew the breath of the living world once more, that even my love for Calypso had, so to say, been in a state of suspended animation during an entombment which was heavy with the poppy of the grave, and made me understand why the dead forget us so soon.
But now, as I stood on the little rocky platform outside the door through which I had burned my way, and looked down into the glimmering chasm beneath, and heard the fresh voice of the sea huskily rumbling and reverberating about hidden grottoes and channels, all that Calypso was to me came back with the keenness of a sword through my heart. Ah! there was my treasure—as I had known when my eyes first beheld her—compared with which that gold and silver in there, whose gleam had made me momentarily distraught, was but so much dust and ashes. Ardently as I had sought it, what was it compared to one glance of her eyes? What if, in the same hour, I had lost my true treasure, and found the false? At the thought, that glittering heap became abhorrent to me, and, without looking back, I sought for some way by which I could descend.
As my eyes grew accustomed to the dim light, I saw that there were some shallow steps cut diagonally in the rock, and down these I had soon made my way, to find myself in a roomy corridor, so much like that in which I had seen Calypso standing in the moonlight, that, for a moment, I dreamed it was the same, and started to run down it, thinking, indeed, that my troubles were over—that in another moment I would emerge through that enchanted door and face the sea. The more so, as the sand was wet under my feet, showing that the tide had but recently left it.
But alas! instead of a broad shining doorway, and open arms of freedom widespread for me to leap into, I came at last to a mere long narrow slit—through which I could gaze as a man gazes through a prison window at the sky.
The entrance had once been wide and free, but a mass of rock had fallen from above and blocked it up, leaving only a long crack through which the tides passed to and fro.
I was still in my trap; it seemed more terrible than ever, now that I could see freedom so close and shining, her very robe rustling within a few feet of me, her very voice calling to me, singing the morning song of the sea. But in the caverns behind me, I heard another mocking song, and I felt a cold breath on my cheek, for Death stood by my side a-grin.
"The treasure!" he whispered, "I need you to guard that. The treasure you have risked all to win—the treasure for which you have lost—your treasure! You cannot escape. Go back and count your gold. 'It is all good money'! Ha! ha! 'it is all good money'!"
The illusion seemed so real to me that I cried aloud: "I will not die! I will not die!"—cried it so loud, that any one in a passing boat might have heard me, and shuddered, wondering what poor ghost it was wailing among the rocks.
But the fright had done me good, and I nerved myself for another effort. I examined the long crevice through which the sea was glittering so near. It was not so narrow as at first it had seemed, and I reckoned that it was some twenty feet through. On my side, it was a little over a foot across. Wouldn't it be possible to wedge myself through? I tried it at the opening, and found, that, with my arms extended sidewise, it was comparatively easy to enter it, though it was something of a tight fit. If it only kept the same width all through, I ought to be able to manage it, inch by inch, if it took all day. But, did it? On the contrary, it seemed to me that it narrowed slightly toward the middle, and—judging by the way the light fell on the other side—that it widened out again farther on.
If only I could wriggle past that contraction in the middle, I should be safe. And if I stuck fast midway! But the more I measured the width with my eye, the less the narrowing seemed to be. To be so slightly perceptible, it could hardly be enough to make much difference. Caution whispered that it might be enough to make the difference between life and death. But already my choice of those two august alternatives was so limited as hardly to be called a choice. On the one hand, I could worm my way back through the caves and tunnels through which I had passed, and try my luck again at the other end.
"With half-a-dozen matches!" sneered a voice that sounded like Tobias's—"Precisely" ... and the horror of it was more than I dared face again any way. So there was nothing for it but this aperture, hardly wider than one of those deep stone slits that stood for windows in a Norman castle. It was my last chance, and I meant to take it like a man.
I stood for a moment nerving myself and taking deep breaths, as though I expected to take but few more. Then, my left arm extended, I entered sidewise, and began to edge myself along. It was easy enough for a yard or two, after which it was plain that it was beginning to narrow. Very slightly indeed, but still a little. However, I could still go on, and—I could still go back. I went on—more slowly it is true, yet still I progressed. But the rock was perceptibly closer to me. I had to struggle harder. It was beginning to hug me—very gently—but it was beginning.
I paused to take breath. I could not turn my head to look back, but I judged that I had come over a third of the way. I was coming up to the waist that I had feared, but I could still go on—very slowly, scarce more than an inch at every effort; yet every inch counted, and I had lots of time. My feet and head were free—which was the main thing. Another good push or two, and I should be at the waist—should know my fate.
I gave the good push or two, and suddenly the arms of the rock were around me. Tight and close, this time, they hugged me. They held me fast, like a rude lover, and would not let me go. My knees and feet were fast, and the walls on each side pressed my cheeks. My head too was fast. I could not move an inch forward—and it was too late to go back!
Panic swept over me. I felt that my hair must be turning white. Presently I ceased to struggle. But the rocks held me in their giant embrace. There was no need for me to do anything. I could go on resting there—it was very comfortable—till—
And then I felt something touching my feet, running away and then touching them again. O God! It was the incoming tide! It would—And then I prepared myself to die. I suppose I was lightheaded, with the strain and the lack of food, for, after the first panic, I found myself dreamily, almost luxuriously, making pictures of how brave men had died in the past—brave women too. I fancied myself in one and another situation. But the picture that persisted was that of the Conciergerie during the French Revolution. I was a noble, talking gaily to beautiful ladies also under the shadow of death, and, right in the middle of a jest, a gloomy fellow had just come in—to lead me to the guillotine. The door was opening, and I kissed my hand in farewell—
Then the picture vanished, as I felt the swish of the tide round my ankles. It would soon be up to my knees—
It was up to my knees—it was creeping past them—and it was making that hollow song in the caves behind me that had seemed so kind to me that very morning, the song it had made to Calypso ... that far-off night under the moon.
I turned my eyes over the sea—I could move them, at all events; how gloriously it was shining out there! And here was I, helpless, with arms extended, as one crucified. I closed my eyes in anguish, and let my body relax; perhaps I dozed, or perhaps I fainted—but, suddenly, what was that that had aroused me, summoned me back to life? It seemed a short, sharp sound—then another, and then another—surely it was the sound of firing! I opened my eyes and looked out to sea, and then I gave a great cry:
"Calypso! Calypso!" I cried. "Calypso!"—and it seemed as though a giant's strength were in me—that I could rend the rocks apart. I made a mighty effort, and, whether or not my relaxing had made a readjustment of my position, I found that for some reason I could move forward again, and, with one desperate wriggle, I had my head through the narrow space. To wrench my shoulders and legs after it was comparatively easy, and, in a moment, I was safe on the outer side, where, as I had surmised, the aperture did widen out again. Within a few moments, I was on the edge of the sea, had dived, and was swimming madly toward—
But let me tell what I had seen, as I hung there, so helpless, in that crevice in the rocks.
CHAPTER XVII
Action.
I had seen, close in shore, a two-masted schooner under full sail sweeping by, as if pursued, and three negroes kneeling on deck, with levelled rifles. As I looked, a shot rang out, from my right, where I could not see, and one of the negroes rolled over. Another shot, and the negro next him fell sprawling with his arms over the bulwark.
At that moment, two other negroes emerged from the cabin hatchway, half dragging and half carrying a woman. She was struggling bravely, but in vain. The negroes—evidently acting under orders of a white man, who stood over them with a revolver—were dragging her toward the mainmast. Her head was bare, her hair in disorder, and one shoulder from which her dress had been torn in the struggle, gleamed white in the sunlight. Yet her eyes were flashing splendid scornful fires at her captors; and her laughter of defiance came ringing to me over the sea. It was then that I had cried "Calypso!" and wrenched myself free.
The next moment there came dashing in sight a sloop also under full canvas, and at its bow, a huge white man, with a levelled rifle that still smoked. At a glance, I knew him for Charlie Webster. He had been about to fire again, but, as the man dragged Calypso for'ard, he paused, calm as a rock, waiting, with his keen sportsman's eyes on Tobias—for, of course, it was he.
"You—coward!" I heard his voice roar across the rapidly diminishing distance between the two boats, for the sloop was running with power as well as sails.
Meanwhile, the men had lashed Calypso to the mast, and even in my agony my eyes recorded the glory of her beauty as she stood proudly there—the great sails spread above her, and the sea for her background.
"Now, do your worst," cried Tobias, his evil face white as wax in the sunlight.
"Fire, fire—don't be afraid," rang out Calypso's voice, like singing gold. At the same instant, as she called, Tobias sprang toward her with raised revolver.
"Another word, and I fire," shouted the voice of the brute.
But the rifle that never missed its mark spoke again. Tobias's arm fell shattered, and he staggered away screaming. Still once more, Charlie Webster's gun spoke, and the staggering figure fell with a crash on the deck.
"Now, boys, ready," I heard Charlie's voice roar out again, as the sloop tore alongside the schooner—where the rest of the negro crew with raised arms had fallen on their knees, crying for mercy.
All this I saw from the water, as I swam wildly toward the two boats, which now had closed on each other, a mass of thundering canvas, and screaming and cursing men—and Calypso there, like a beautiful statue, still lashed to the mast, a proud smile on her lovely lips.
Another moment, and Charlie had sprung aboard, and, seizing a knife from one of the screaming negroes, he cut her free.
His deep calm voice came to me over the water.
"That's what I call courage," he said. "I could never have done it."
The "King" had been right. He knew his daughter.
By this I was nearing the boats, though as yet no one had seen me. They were all too busy with the confusion on deck, where four men lay dead, and three others still kept up their gibberish of fear.
I saw Calypso and Charlie Webster stand a moment looking down at the figure of Tobias, prostrate at their feet.
"I am sorry I had to kill him," I heard Charlie's deep growl. "I meant to keep him for the hangman."
But suddenly I saw him start forward and stamp heavily on something.
"No, you don't," I heard him roar—and I learned afterward that Tobias, though mortally wounded, was not yet dead, and that, as the two had stood looking down on him, they had seen his hand furtively moving toward the fallen revolver that lay a few inches from him on the deck. Just as he had grasped it, Charlie's heavy boot had come down on his wrist. But Tobias was still game.
"Not alive, you English brute!" he was heard to groan out, and, snatching free his wrist too swiftly to be prevented, he had gathered up all his remaining strength, and hurled himself over the side into the sea.
I was but a dozen yards away from him, as he fell; and, as he rose again, it was for his dying eyes to fix with a glare upon me. They dilated with terror, as though he had seen a ghost. Then he gave one strange scream, and fell back into the sea, and we saw him no more.
It will be easier for the reader to imagine, than for me to describe, the look on the faces of Calypso and Charlie Webster when they saw me appear at almost the same spot where poor Tobias had just gone bubbling down. Words I had none, for I was at the end of my strength, and I broke down and sobbed like a child.
"Thank God you are safe—my treasure, my treasure!" was all I could say, after they had lifted me aboard, and I lay face down on the deck, at her feet. Swiftly she knelt by my side, and caressed my shoulder with her dear hand.
All of which—particularly my reference to "my treasure"—must have been much to the bewilderment of the good simple-hearted Charlie, towering, innocent-eyed, above us. I believe I stayed a little longer at her feet than I really had need to, for the comfort of her being so near and kind; but, presently, we were all aroused by a voice from the cliffs above. It was the "King," with his bodyguard, Erebus and the crew of the Flamingo—no Samson, alas! The sound of the firing had reached them in the woods, and they had come hurrying to discover its cause.
So we deferred asking our questions, and telling our several stories, till we were pulled ashore.
As Calypso was folded in her father's arms, he turned to me:
"Didn't I tell you that I knew my daughter?" he said.
"And I told you something too, O King," I replied—my eyes daring at last to rest on Calypso with the love and pride of my heart.
"And where on earth have you been, young man?" he asked, laughing. "Did Tobias kidnap you too?"
It was very hard, as you will have seen, to astonish the "King."
CHAPTER XVIII
Gathering Up the Threads.
But, though it was hard to astonish and almost impossible to alarm the "King," his sense of wonder was quite another matter, and the boyish delight with which he listened to our several stories would have made it worth while to undergo tenfold the perils we had faced. And the best of it was that we each had a new audience in the others—for none of us knew what had happened to the rest, and how it chanced that we should all come to meet at that moment of crisis on the sea. Our stories, said the "King," were quite in the manner of "The Arabian Nights," dovetailing one into the other.
"And now," he added, "we will begin with the Story of the Murdered Slave and the Stolen Lady."
Calypso told her story simply and in a few words. The first part of it, of which the poor murdered Samson had been the eloquent witness, needed no further telling. He had done his brave best—poor fellow—but Tobias had had six men with him, and it was soon over. Her they had gagged and bound and carried in a sort of improvised sedan-chair; Tobias had done the thing with a certain style and—she had to admit—with absolute courtesy.
When they had gone a mile or two from the house, he had had the gag taken from her mouth, and, on her promise not to attempt to escape (which was, of course, quite impossible) he had also had her unbound, so that her hurried journey through the woods was made as comfortable as possible. Certainly it had not been without its spice of romance, for four of the men had carried lanterns, and their progress must have had a very picturesque effect lighting up the blackness of the strange trees.
Tobias had walked at her side the whole way, without speaking a word.
They were making, she had gathered—and as we had surmised—for the northern shore, and, after about a three hours' march, she heard the sound of the sea. On the schooner she had found a cabin all nicely prepared for her—even dainty toilet necessaries—and an excellent dinner was served, on some quite pretty china, to her alone. Poor Tobias had seemed bent on showing—as he had said to Tom—that he was not the "carrion" we had thought him.
After dinner, Tobias had respectfully asked leave for a few words with her. He had apologised for his action, but explained that it was necessary—the only way he had left, he said, of protecting his own interests, and safeguarding a treasure which belonged to him and no one else, if it belonged to any living man. It had seemed to her that it was a monomania with him. His eyes had gleamed so, as he spoke of it, that she had felt a little frightened for the first time—for he seemed like a madman on the subject.
While he had been talking, she had made up her mind what she would do. She would tell him the plain truth about her doubloons, and offer him what remained of them as a ransom. This she did, and was able at last half to persuade him that, so far as any one knew, that was all the treasure there was, and that the digging among the ruins of the old house was a mere fancy of her father's. There might be something there or not—and she went so far as to give her word of honour that, if anything was found, he should have his share of it.
It was rather a woman's way, she admitted, but she thought that, so long as she kept Tobias near the island, some favouring incident might happen at any moment—that the proffered ransom, in fact, might prove the bait to a trap.
Tobias had seemed impressed, and promised his answer in the morning, leaving her to sleep—with a sentry at her cabin door. She had slept soundly, and wakened only at dawn. As soon as she was up, Tobias had come to her, saying that he had accepted her offer, and asking her to direct him to her treasure.
This she had done, and, to avoid passing the settlement, they had taken the course round the eastern end of the island. As they had approached the cave (and here Calypso turned a quizzical smile on me, which no one, of course, understood but ourselves), a sloop was seen approaching them from the westward ... and here she stopped and turned to Charlie Webster.
"Now," said the "King," "we shall hear the Story of Apollo—or, let us say, rather Ajax—the Far-Darter—He of the Arrow that never missed its mark."
And Charlie Webster, more at home with deeds than words, blushed and blushed through his part of the story, telling how—having called at the settlement—he had got our message from Sweeney, and was making up the coast for the hidden creek. He had spied what he felt sure was Tobias's schooner—had called on him "In the King's Name" to surrender—("I had in my pocket the warrant for his arrest," said Charlie, with innocent pride—"the d——d scoundrel") but had been answered with bullets. He had been terribly frightened, he owned, when Calypso had been brought on deck, but she had given him courage—he paused to beam on her, a broad-faced admiration, for which he could find no words—and, as he had never yet missed a flying duck at—I forget how many yards Charlie mentioned—well ... perhaps he oughtn't to have risked it—And so his story came to an end, amid reassuring applause.
"Now," said the "King," "for the Story of the Disappearing Gentleman and the Lighted Lantern."
And then I told my story as it is already known to the reader, and I have to confess that, when I came to the chestful of doubloons and pieces of eight, I had a very attentive audience. But, at first, the "King" shook his head with an amused smile.
"Ulysses is romancing for the benefit of my romantic second childhood," he said, and then, after his favourite manner he added—
"I might not this believe
Without the sensible and true avouch of mine own eyes ..."
Then, he was for starting off that very night. But, reminded of the difficult seclusion in which the treasure still lay, he was persuaded to wait till the morrow.
"At dawn then," he said, "to-morrow—'what time, the rosy-footed dawn' ... so be it. And now I am going to talk to Ajax the Far-Darter of duck-shooting."
"But wait!" I cried. "Why did 'Jack Harkaway' go to Nassau?"
Calypso blushed. The "King" chuckled.
"I prefer not to be known in Nassau, yet some of my business has to be done there. Nor is it safe for beauty like Calypso's to go unprotected. So from time to time, 'Jack Harkaway' goes for us both! And now enough of explanations!"; and he launched into talk of game and sport in various parts of the world, to the huge delight of the great simple-hearted Charlie.
But, after a time, other matters claimed the attention of his other auditors. During the flow of his discourse night had fallen. Calypso and I perceived that we were forgotten—so, by an impulse that seemed to be one, we rose and left them there, and stole out into the garden where the little fountain was dancing like a spirit under the moon, and the orange trees gave out their perfume on the night breeze. I took her hand, and we walked softly out into the moonlight, and looked down at the closed lotuses in the little pool. And then we took courage to look into each other's eyes.
"Calypso," I said, "when are you going to show me where you keep your doubloons?"—and I added, in a whisper, "Jack—when am I going to see you in boy's clothes again?"
And, with that, she was in my arms, and I felt her heart beating against my side.
"O! my treasure," I said—ever so softly—"Calypso, my treasure."
POSTSCRIPT
Now, such readers as have been "gentle" enough to follow me so far in my story, may possibly desire to be told what lay behind those other locked doors in the underground gallery where I so nearly laid my bones.
I should like nothing better than to gratify their legitimate curiosity. But, perhaps, they will not have forgotten my friend John Saunders, Secretary to the Treasury of His Britannic Majesty's Government at Nassau.
John is a good friend, but he is a man of very rigid principles and a great stickler in regard to any matters pertaining to the interests and duties of his office. Were I to divulge—as, I confess, my pen is itching to do—the dazzling—I will even say blinding—contents of these other grim compartments (particularly if I were to give any hint of their value in bullion), no feelings of friendship would for one second weigh with him as against his duty to the august Government he so faithfully serves. He may suspect what he likes, but, so long as he actually knows nothing, we may rely on his inactivity. In fact, I know that he has no wish to be told—so far he will go with us, but no further—and, as we wish neither to sully his fine probity, nor, on the other hand, to disgorge our "illgotten gains"—for which, after all, each one of us risked his life (and for which one life, most precious of all, was placed in such terrible jeopardy)—gains too which His Britannic Majesty is quite rich enough to do without—the readers must pardon me my caution, and draw upon his imagination for what I must not tell him.
This, however, I will say: he cannot well imagine too vividly or too magnificently, and that, in fact, he may accept those hyperboles fancifully indulged in by the "King" as very slightly overshooting the mark. We do not, indeed, go disguised in cloth of gold, nor are we blinding to look upon with rings and ropes of pearls. It does not happen to be our western fashion to be so garmented. But—well—I won't say that we couldn't do so if we were so minded.
Nor will I say, either, that the "King" does not occasionally, in private, masquerade in some such splendour; though, as a rule, he still prefers that shabby tatterdemalion costume which we have still to accept as a vagary of his fantastic nature. He is still the same Eternal Child, and his latest make-believe has been to fit up those caverns, through which so miserably I wormed my way, with the grandiose luxury of the Count of Monte Cristo; that, as he says, the prophecy might be fulfilled which said: "Monte Cristo shall seem like a pauper and a penny gaff in comparison with the fantasies of our fearful wealth."
Those caverns, we afterward discovered, did actually communicate with Blackbeard's ruined mansion, and the "King," who has now rebuilt that mansion and lives in it in semi-feudal state with Calypso and me, is able to pass from one to the other by underground passages which are an unfailing source of romantic satisfaction to his dear, absurd soul.
As to whether or not the mansion and the treasure were actually Blackbeard's—that is, Edward Teach's—we are yet in doubt, though we prefer to believe that they were. At all events, we never found any evidence to connect them at all with Henry P. Tobias, whose second treasure, we have every reason to think, still remains undiscovered.
As for the sinister and ill-fated Henry P. Tobias, Jr., we have since learned—through Charlie Webster, who every now and again drops in with sailors from his sloop and carries off the "King" for duck-shooting—that his real name was quite different; he must have assumed, as a nom de guerre, the name we knew him by, to give colour to his claim. I am afraid, therefore, that he was a plain scoundrel, after all, though it seemed to me that I saw gleams in him of something better, and I shall always feel a sort of kindness toward him for the saving grace of gallant courtesy with which he invested his rascally abduction of Calypso.
Calypso ... She and I, just for fun, sometimes drop into Sweeney's store, and, when she has made her purchases, she draws up from her bosom a little bag, and, looking softly at me, lays down on the counter—a golden doubloon; and Sweeney—who, doubtless, thinks us all a little crazy—smiles indulgently on our make-believe.
Sometimes, on our way home, we come upon Tom in the plantations, superintending a gang of the "King's" janissaries—among whom Erebus is still the blackest—for Tom is now the Lord High Steward of our estate. He beams on us in a fatherly way, and I lay my hand significantly on my leftside—to his huge delight. He flashes his white teeth and wags his head from side to side with inarticulate enjoyment of the allusion. For who knows? He may be right. In so mysterious a world the smallest cause may lead up to the most august results and there is nothing too wonderful to happen.
EPILOGUE BY THE EDITOR
It remains for me, as sponsor for the foregoing narrative, reluctantly to add a second postscript to that of its author, bringing the fortunes of himself and his friends a little nearer to the present year of grace. Not that anything untoward has happened to any of them. Their lives are still lived happily in the sun, and their treasure is still safe—somewhere carefully out of the sun. But neither their lives nor their treasure are where my friend's postscript left them. They are, indeed, very much nearer New York than at that writing.
As a matter of fact, after King Alcinoüs had played but a short time at being the Count of Monte Cristo in his underground palace, it gradually was borne in upon his essentially common-sense mind, as upon the minds of Calypso and her husband, that their secret was known to too many for its absolute safety. Kindly coloured people indeed, and a very friendly "Secretary to the British Treasury" ... still, there was no knowing, and, on all accounts, they gradually came to the unromantic conclusion that the safe deposit vaults of New York were more reliable than limestone caverns filled with the sound of sea. This conclusion explains the presence of my friend and his Lady of the Doubloons in the box of the Punch and Judy Theatre that, to me, eventful evening.
Since then, I myself have made a pilgrimage to all the places that play a part in this romance. I have crawled my way through those caves in which my friend came so near to leaving his bones, looked into those vaults once glittering with pieces of eight and all that other undivulged treasure-trove, wedged myself as far as I dared into that slit in the rocks, looking out like a narrow window on the sea.
All those places are real; any one, with a mind to, can find them; but, should any one care to undertake the pilgrimage, he will note, as I did, that those baronial halls of Edward Teach—for a while the playground of King Alcinoüs—are rapidly being reclaimed by the savage wilderness, fiercely swallowed minute by minute by the fanged and serpentine vegetation—which, after all, was only stayed for a moment, and which, humanly speaking, will now submerge them for all eternity.
Once more, to employ one of the favourite quotations of King Alcinoüs, "I passed by the walls of Balclutha, and they were desolate." The King, I may be allowed to add, finds New York quite a good place to talk in—though he is frank in saying that he prefers a coral island.
R. Le G.
THE END
Transcriber's Notes:
List of A.L. Burt Company's Popular Copyright Fiction removed.
Dash lengths standardised.
Page 262: Changed intance to instance
Page 295: Changed Monto Cristo to Monte Cristo.
Page 102: Changed mooonlit (non dialogue) to moonlit.