Onslow read the little man’s mind to a comma, and bowed gravely without speaking. Then he did as he was bidden with the door and key, and went below, and began the Herculean task of bringing up the iron-bound specie boxes one by one out of the cabin where they had ridden from the Mersey dock. He placed them in the port quarter boat, which he had lowered from its davits flush with the bridge deck rail; and when she was loaded he put the boat into the river. He rowed her far up stream, past bights and bayous, till he found a narrow canal leading off the main river through mangrove clumps, and held on up that till the boat reached a great round vat of black water, walled all around with solemn cypress-trees, and roofed to darkness by their fringing branches.
One by one the boxes were raised on the gunwale and launched with a sullen plunge; and it seemed an age before the foul-smelling bubbles came up to tell that they had sounded bottom. And then away back for another load. And then for a third. The inky water closed over all, and not so much as a splinter from one of the boxes floated on the surface.
Small fear of any one raiding that cache, Onslow thought; and two days later, with a clear mind, he was cabling “Right” to Theodore Shelf from the Eastern Union Telegraph Company’s Office in the hotel hall at Point Sebastian.
Now, modern science enables us to cry a message by wire round half the earth at breakfast time, and have an answer returned to us before the gong sounds for luncheon; and it was in anticipation of a quick exchange of news like this that Onslow had come to the nearest outpost of civilization.
He had hidden his £500,000 of gold, released the two men in the chart-house, with instructions that when they felt inclined (or sufficiently recovered) for work they should, with the negroes’ help, set about transforming the steamer’s appearance; and afterwards had made his way, partly overland by an Indian’s path he knew of, partly in dug-out through lagoon and bayou, to Point Sebastian. It was an entire surprise to him to meet Miss Kildare there. But this time it was no special shock. That early morning glimpse of her in the schooner had warned him of her neighborhood.
He got a return message to his cable it is true; but not before noon on the following day. It said “Take no steps: am writing,” and seemed to hint at a change of plan.
In another place he might have resented the delay. At least eleven days must pass, and probably more, before a letter could reach him; and all the while he would be condemned to inaction and anxiety. But, as it was, he read Mr. Theodore Shelf’s reply cablegram with a frown, which was quite evanescent, and felt a mild satisfaction in the respite. In the afternoon he took out Miss Kildare to fish for tarpon.
By one of those singular chances which occur every century or so, a tarpon they did actually catch on that first day of fishing, a thirty pound monster, with glittering silver scales on him as big as dollars, who gave three hours’ frantic fight before he turned his belly to the skies, and submitted to traveling beachwards in the boat.
“We got him between us,” said Miss Kildare. “That’s my first, and I’ve tried for him times out of number.”