ELDORADO OR—HOGLAND
The island looked bare and desolate enough from the point of view of the deck of our steamer, long and rather narrow at each end, but bulging in the middle to a width of several miles; covered with pine forests and patches of moorland, and with a high backbone of tree-clad hills running down the middle from end to end. It was exceedingly like the old man's map as we remembered it, and the first sight of it so whetted my enthusiasm and treasure-ardour that I could scarcely contain my joy when we steamed into view of it.
Jack and I, nevertheless, made the most of the bird's-eye prospect of the island which we now obtained; for we knew well that such a survey of the place might be exceedingly useful to us in our subsequent investigations. We saw the spot which appeared to us to answer to that described in our lost maps as the grave of Clutterbuck's Treasure, and we noted the best way to get to it, which was by the seashore to the left from the lighthouse.
The keepers of that most useful building must have been surprised indeed to see a large British steamer stop within half a mile of the hungry-looking rocks upon which their house and tower were erected; for though such vessels passed daily, none ever stayed. Three men, two women, and several children came out in a hurried way and stood staring like startled rabbits at us and our proceedings before bolting back to their holes as the boat approached into which we had transferred ourselves and our luggage, guns, spades, and provisions.
So far as these good folk were concerned, we might as well have had no passport at all; and as for the "bon pour Hochland" of the Consul, if we had written across the document any such legend as, for instance, "Herrings at tenpence a dozen," it would have served the purpose equally well. For the lighthouse keeper, after having studied the passports wrong way up, and scratched his head for inspiration, and spat on the ground in true Muscovite protest against the incomprehensible, and having crossed himself in case there should be anything appertaining to the evil eye or the police (which he regarded as amounting to much the same thing) about the proceedings, gave it up as a bad job, and inquired of our interpreter, Michail, what on earth we had come for.
I fancy Michail indulged in some pleasantry at our expense, for the two women and three men and seven children, standing gaping around us, all burst out laughing at the same moment, and the conversation among them "became general."
Presently, however, Michail informed us that it was all right, and that we might remain if we pleased. He said a small offering to the lighthouse keeper, for "tea," would be acceptable, and this we cheerfully provided, with the result that that gentleman and all his following were our sworn friends for life, in the hope of more tea-money some other day.
We were offered quarters in the wooden houses in which these good people lived; but when we entered their abode and learned that we should be expected to herd in one suffocatingly hot room, together with every person whom we had yet seen, and perhaps others to whom we had not yet been introduced, and to sleep on straw upon the floor, or on sheepskins upon the top of a huge brick stove which occupied half the room, we explained to Michail that we had other engagements. There were several reasons for this decision besides those given—some crawly ones and some jumpy. We saw a number of the former on the walls, and had already begun to suspect the presence of the latter nearer still to our persons.
Michail might come back and sleep here, we told him, after he had accompanied us to the small fishing village where we desired to make a few inquiries.
This seemed to please Michail, who, we concluded, had some good reason for liking the poor dumb animals on the wall better than we did. I suppose there is good in most things, if one can only discern it through the evil.