To me, scarcely an hour after first I set foot upon the island, came an extraordinary-looking individual. Tightly drawn across his bony cheeks was his yellow parchment-like skin, bristling with [[110]]stubble as black as jet and as coarse as wire. Below his great hooked nose sprouted a huge, unkempt mustachio of raven hue, and deep within its shadow gleamed yellow fangs as long and sharp as those of a wolf. Almost like bare and browned bone his forehead shone under lank black hair, and below lowering, bushy brows his reddened eyes gleamed with the unnatural fire of fever, so deep within their sockets that they seemed mere pin points of glowing light. A huge ring of tortoise-shell hung in one long-lobed, pointed ear; tattered rags of many hues draped his bony frame, and a stained and battered hat covered his disheveled locks. A veritable apparition he seemed—the ghost of some long-dead pirate. An involuntary shudder, an uncontrollable chill of repugnance, ran through me as, shaking as with the palsy—or craven fear of the hangman’s noose—he fixed those fierce eyes upon me and in a dry, cracked voice, such as one might expect from the dead, asked in broken English if I cared to purchase old coins. At my affirmative reply he fumbled in his rags, drew forth a dirty bit of bunting that had once been part of the scarlet banner of England, and, untying its many knots, dumped a dozen bits of metal into his unsteady, claw-like hand.
Rusty, corroded, dirt-covered, and utterly impossible [[111]]of identification were the coins, if coins they were. As I examined them the fellow stood silent but shaking, and moving his long, unshaven lower jaw about as though chewing an imaginary quid of tobacco. To my questions as to where he had obtained the things, he waved a taloned hand in an indefinite arc and replied that he had picked them up about the island, and asked in a plaintive voice if they were worth a shilling to me.
To him, no doubt, a single silver coin bearing his Britannic Majesty’s head and the stamp of the British mint was a miniature fortune, for despite his savage, piratical looks, he was, I found, a bit of flotsam literally cast up by the sea, the sole survivor of a Portuguese whaling-schooner which had foundered on the reefs a dozen years before, and who, for some incomprehensible reason, refused to leave this barren, half-inundated bit of land whereon Fate had so inconsiderately placed him. How he lived no one knew, for he toiled not and neither did he spin, but wandered about aimlessly, gathering shell-fish and sea-birds’ eggs, begging tobacco and cast-off garments from the negroes, and spending long hours and days by himself, poking about with a stick and seeking for chance relics such as he now had brought to me. I doubt if ever in those ten years since he first found himself the one survivor [[112]]of his ship he had ever jingled as much silver in his pockets as I handed him in exchange for his little treasure-trove. And for good measure I added a plug of tobacco and a supply of quinine pills, while Sam presented him with a shirt—which was so much too large for his skeleton frame that had he but sewed the tails together it would have served him for a complete one-piece suit—and Joseph fed him until he could eat no more.
Then, as though he had accomplished a mission he had sworn to fulfil, he expressed his intention of forsaking Anegada and implored me to carry him to some port whence he could work or beg a passage to Fayal. Eventually we left him at St. Kitts, a far more human-looking creature than when first I gazed upon him on the beach at Anegada; and no doubt in time he once more basked in the sun and trod the picturesque streets of his Azores home.
When in due course of time and at my leisure I scraped the incrustation of limestone soil and the corrosion of centuries from the disks which he had brought to me, I gazed in amazement at what my efforts disclosed. Truly, Manuel had earned all we did for him and more, for in that handful of coins he had patiently and aimlessly gathered were two Spanish doubloons, three pieces of eight, a castellano, and two spade-guineas! What a collection [[113]]to weave story and romance about! What relics of those wild days to lure one’s imagination and conjectures!
ANEGADA
The guardian reef
ANEGADA