As a matter of fact, there was less disposition than we anticipated on the part of the crew to object to this new labor. And the reason was not far to seek. The transfer of the treasure to the fort by the Anchorage furnished them an opportunity to establish an intimacy of contact with it they had not known previously, an intimacy alluring, stimulating, discomposing. True, they already had transferred the entire cargo of the Santissima Trinidad once, had removed the half of it from the Royal James to the Dead Man's Chest, and only two days since had broken out the remainder for division with the Walrus.
But that was very different from shifting the squat, weighty, little chests and kegs and the canvas-jacketed bars overland in the darkness, along brush-paths dimly illuminated by occasional lanthorns and torches, into a corner of the log block-house which was the citadel of Flint's ramshackle fort—very different, too, from the realization that the treasure's well-nigh fabulous wealth was outside the charmed hull of the Royal James, where Murray's personality and the arbitrary divisions of rank and intellect had reared an insuperable barrier betwixt it and themselves, lying instead in a promiscuous heap without a door to guard it, where any one of them could gloat over its bright mysteries.
Peter and I, with Moira and Ben Gunn and Scipio, followed the main column of the evacuation about midnight. Coupeau had led the first contingent, some of whom we met returning to the ship, to fetch a second load of stores. My great-uncle was to come after us with these and the remainder of the crew, leaving behind on the Royal James only some twenty-odd men who had not yet recovered sufficiently from wounds received in the two actions with the Santissima Trinidad and the Walrus to permit of their removal, and who were made as comfortable as possible on the gundeck.
I noted uneasily that the groups who passed us were talking eagerly amongst themselves, with no appearance of the surliness to be expected normally from any sailors put to extra work, although they fell silent as soon as they saw who we were.
"They have never been drinking," I muttered to Peter.
"Neen," he answered. "But they get drunk on der treasure."
"Do but see how it is a fell curse upon all who touch it," said Moira. "Ah, blessed Virgin, that it were all in the depths of the ground where God first planted it!"
Our misgivings were justified when we toiled up the sandy slopes of the hill upon which the stockade was built. The glare of an immense bonfire showed through the trees, and rude voices were chanting that sinister sea-song which had been my introduction to the pirate brotherhood:
"Fifteen men on the Dead Man's Chest—
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest—
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!"
I had never heard it sung by the James' crew before.