‘By the Lord!’ says Captain Jem, ‘I think we are all bewitched among these cursed reefs, which no one ever saw or heard of before.’
CHAPTER XV.
AT LENGTH THEY CATCH THE DWARF PILOT, AND HEAR
STRANGE THINGS TOUCHING A TREASURE.
Preparations were now again made in order to discover a way out. My comrades would have me turn in and go to sleep, but I was too much excited to hear of it; and, accordingly, after breakfast I was in the shallop again, with four fresh men, including Nicky Hamstring and Bristol Tom. We carried with us fragments of light wood and great stones for sinkers, to buoy a passage for the schooner. There was no need of lead or line, for we could see to the bottom of the crystal water, even where it was many fathoms deep. We were thus engaged great part of the day, and being now working with something like method and regularity, we were making sensible progress in discovering a channel, when, just as I was setting one of our buoys, Nicky Hamstring grasped my arm, and whispered with a sort of gasp, ‘There—look there!’
I followed his eye, and started up with delight. A long bank of sand, with ridges of coral, along which we had been skirting for some time, terminated in one of the largest and highest rocks we had seen. Indeed, when the tide was out, it seemed rather a rocky islet than a rock; but what directed our attention to it was a deep cleft, into which the sea ran, and in which, as in a cistern of water, floated the bark canoe of the dwarf pilot. The shallop was close alongside the sand-bank when we made this discovery, and Nicky and I leaped out of her into the shallow water like a couple of madmen, and screaming to our comrades to row for the little creek, we both scampered along the dry hard sand towards the rock.
‘You secure the canoe,’ I called to Nicky; ‘the owner is not far from the nest; so, while Nicky went clambering along the steep shelves to the cove, I climbed up the ledges of the rock, slipping down now and then into cracks and hollows, which peeled my shins famously, but very soon arriving at the summit, from which I caught sight of the dwarf running with great speed round the base of the rock, and immediately gave chase, shouting out to our friend to surrender at discretion. But he took no notice, making as straight as he could for the cove, whence, doubtless, he expected to get clear off in his canoe. I seeing this, thought it unnecessary to risk my neck in order to intercept him, and so clambered leisurely down the rock laughing aloud, and calling to the dwarf that I had told him that our turn would come with daylight. Meantime, the little man went skipping over the rocks like a goat, never making a false step, until suddenly he came in sight of the cove, within which the shallop by this time lay alongside the canoe. Then he sent up a shrill cry of surprise, which my comrades answered with a cheer, and stopping short, appeared to pause for a moment, after which he made straight for a projecting shoulder of the rock, round which he speedily disappeared.
‘Never mind,’ quoth I; ‘take care of the canoe, and we shall soon find him.’ So saying, I called upon Nicky and Bristol Tom to land, which they did, making their way to the projection, round which the dwarf had run, while I, following a steep cleft or split in the rock, which ran from near the top of it, down to a white sandy beach on the opposite side from the cove, descended rapidly. All at once, about half-way down, my eye caught the flutter of canvas, and immediately I discerned something like a tent, very snugly pitched in a nook of rock, about a couple of fathoms above high water-mark, with a sort of fence of barrels and boxes round it.
‘Ho, ho!’ quoth I. ‘Here is the hermitage, at last.’
‘Stop!’ says the shrill voice I had so often heard, ‘stop there—as you value your life!’
And thereon I descried the dwarf, with a long-barrelled Spanish gun in his hand, which he was in the act of lifting to his shoulder.