The Treasure Trail

by Frank Lillie Pollock

“There’ll be all the more for the rest of you if I don’t,” returned Elliott.

“The fact is, we’re all getting nervous and morbid,” Henninger remarked. “A good sleep is the best antidote, and I’m going to turn in.”

Bennett also swathed himself in his blanket and sought a soft plank by the lee rail, with the prospect of being rolled across the deck when the dhow should go upon the other tack. Hawke retired out of sight below, and Elliott was left to silence.

Under the stiffly drawn sails he could see Margaret still leaning over the bow. Behind him an Arab bore heavily upon the tiller-head, holding her steady, and it occurred to Elliott that the man could stab him in the back with the greatest ease. It would not be an unfitting conclusion for the adventure that was stained with so much blood already; and he imagined the sudden rising of the Moslem crew, the brief melée, the flash of pistols and knives, the massacre on the reeling deck. But he continued to sit on the keg, with his back to the helmsman, and did not trouble to turn around.

A yard beneath his feet were nearly two million dollars in hard gold; the treasure that had spun so much intrigue and mystery over three continents was in his power at last. But the price had been paid; there had been blood enough spilled to redden every sovereign or louis or double-eagle that might ever be minted from the metal. Elliott fancied he heard the crash of the Clara McClay on the reefs when all but two of her company had perished. He remembered the revolver drawn on the platform of the St. Louis train, and the bleeding figure of Bennett beside the rails. He saw vividly the gambling-rooms; he saw the missionary reeling back from the red knife; he saw Sullivan with the widening scarlet stain on his breast, and he heard again the fierce hail from Sevier’s steamer, and heard the crash as she rammed the rocks where the Clara McClay had perished months before. And, as he brooded there in the dark, there arose in him a loathing and a horror of the gold that had worked like a potent poison in the heart of every man who had known of it.

In the whole adventure there was but one period that had left no bitter taste. He remembered the interlude from the treasure hunt at Hongkong, and the bungalow on the Peak, where for a month there was neither the bewilderment of tangled mysteries nor the feverish excitement of greed. The heat, the rain, the miseries that had tortured him, he had already forgotten, or he remembered them only dimly as the discomforts that emphasized more keenly the graceful and domestic charm of such a home as he had never known before.

The Arab steersman droned softly to himself as he leaned on the creaking tiller behind. Margaret had not yet gone to her hammock. He could see her still at the bow, looking forward over the sweeping seas in the cloudy moonlight. She thought him a thief; she had as good as said so; and he watched her, feeling strangely as if everything depended upon her staying there till he was released from duty.

Bennett came up at midnight to relieve him, and Elliott went forward at once. But he could think of nothing in the manner of what he wanted to say, and after a few commonplaces he fell silent, and they leaned over the prow together, listening to the sucking gurgle and the hissing crash as the cutwater split the seas.

“I want you to see clearly just why I insisted on coming with you,” said Margaret, breaking the silence at last. “I didn’t understand it at all, then. My father had spoken of recovering this gold—he couldn’t have known that it was government money—and I supposed that it was right to do it. In fact, I felt almost as if he had left it to me. Then I had no money—nothing. I knew that I was dependent on you for everything. It was even your money that brought me from China; I know it was, though the consul said he advanced it to me. It nearly maddened me with shame, and—I didn’t know what to do. Only I knew that I couldn’t take anything more from you. I thought I had a right to a share of this gold, but I couldn’t even let you go and do the work for me. I had to help, and do my part—and so I did it.

“But now it’s all over. I understand it all as I didn’t before, and you see that I can’t take a cent of this money. I should feel myself a criminal as long as I lived. But I don’t blame you for taking it, if you feel that you can.”