Isle o' Dreams

by Frederick Ferdinand Moore

Gaining the outer deck, he stood clear of the doorway and hugged the forward bulkhead of the cabin trunk, taking care not to mask the forward port-hole of the galley with his back. If Doc Bird had heard him crawling out, he might be of an inquiring turn of mind, in his present panicky condition, and explore with a knife through the open port.

Trask had in the jacket pocket of his pajamas matches and cigarettes, so that in case he were challenged he could assume a careless manner by preparing to have a smoke, and at the same time illuminate the face of any one he encountered.

He moved forward along the starboard bulwark, feeling his way with his bare feet, taking great pains not to stumble over any obstacle. He could make out the loom of the island over the starboard quarter, a black spot focussed in the all-pervading blackness of the night. Everything seemed to give promise of secrecy for him. The rasp of the boom-jaws, the swishing of coiled ropes on the pin-rails, and the chirping creak of the shrouds as the schooner bobbed and rolled on the lulling swells, concealed the slight sounds of his advance.

He stopped and looked aft every few steps, listening for noises in the cabin. He could see the faint outline of the mizzen boom and the upper edge of the cabin. His eyes, better adjusted now to the gloom, saw a black shape over the cabin roof. It startled him for a second, for he thought it might be Jarrow peering toward him, until he knew it for a roll of canvas which had been left there to spread as awning.

He went on, stopping when he felt the well of the deck rise as he approached the forecastle. Presently he saw a tiny point of light flare up and die away. Then he caught the spicy aroma of a native cigarette in the soft air charged with the acrid smell of new hemp, the resinous odour of the deck seams, the sweet reek of opium smoked by forgotten crews and the earthy flavour of the jungles close at hand.

The thought came to him that perhaps it was he who was exotic in the schooner. It might be for this reason that he was too ready to mistake normal things as evidences of a menace which did not exist. He wondered if this fact might not well account for the formless fears he had felt about Peth and the crew. Like a person who wakes in the night, to find the windows where they shouldn't be, his judgment, too, might be at fault, and affairs far better than he thought them.

Trask had no worries for himself. The pursuit of gold in untrammelled parts of the world was his business, and at times danger was but the thrill which went with the game. He knew that if he were the only passenger in the schooner he would very likely be in his bunk asleep instead of hunting trouble.

But he felt a responsibility. This wild project of taking a young woman in a schooner, with a crew of men who had all the outer aspects of rascals, and a mild madman, to hunt an island, was largely his own fault and Trask now realized it.

Locke was far too credulous, or rather incredulous. Like most Americans who have lived quiet lives and attended to their own business, he lacked imagination for dangerous possibilities in the motives of others. Such adventures as he had had were out of books, and he had taken it for granted that what he read was always improbable and impossible. Such people never believe in danger until they have a revolver thrust into their faces. And Locke had come aboard the schooner with a roll of yellow-backed bills so big that he could hold in his hand more wealth than all the ship's company together could earn in a year of honest labour.

Trask almost wished he had declined to go in with Locke on the trip to the island. He had been quite too easy-going about it all himself, neglecting to take precautions about Jarrow and the crew because he had been reluctant to forego the pleasure of Miss Marjorie's company. Trask had been exiled so long in far corners of the globe that he was strongly averse to giving up a single hour to business details which he might have with the American girl.