"For our own part, in the boat, we were fully provisioned and armed for all the time we could need, not to speak of what the island itself afforded; and after watching the schooner stand heeling off to sea, round the deep end of it, we cruised close along, not for the beach this time, but seeking for a cove in the rocks where the boat could be hauled up out of sight, and safe from the surf at high water. This we weren't very long of finding behind some blocks that broke the force of the surge, where the wild green trailers from above crept almost down to the seaweed; and after helping them a little to hide her perfectly, the whole of us scrambled ashore. The first thing was to post a look-out on the highest point, the sharp little peak next to the reef-side, overlooking the spring and the level ground between; on the other side of the long green valley, full of bush in the midst, was the flat-topped rise towards the brown water, from which I and the planter watched the schooner softening for an hour or two, till she reached the blue sea-gleam, and lessened to a speck. By that time, the men had pitched a little canvas tent on the slope opposite to us, over the hollow—Jones evidently being anxious to keep clear of the spot, which somebody else had picked out beforehand; in fact the highest ground was betwixt us and it; and on coming down through the thicket to our quarters, after a stroll in which Rollock shot a couple of rose-coloured paroquets, declaring them to be splendid eating, we found Jones had had to send over the other way for water.
CHAPTER XXX
"I woke up in the tent perhaps an hour before midnight, as I judged on looking through the opening at the stars that shone in the dark sky through the north-east end of the valley above the sea. At the other end, being higher, you just saw the scattered heads of the bushes against a pale floating glimmer of air, with a pale streak of horizon. Behind us was the height where we had the look-out, and in front the flat top of the crag drawn somehow or other as distinct as possible upon the faint starlight in that quarter, roughening away down on both sides into the brushwood and dwarf cocoa-nut trees. With the stillness of the place all round, the bare sight of that particular point gave me a dreamy, desolate, ghastly sort of feeling, beyond aught I ever saw in my life before: it was choking hot and heavy inside, and seemingly throughout the hollow, though a good deal of dew began to fall, glistening on the dark-green bushes nearest us, and standing in drops on the fern-like cocoa-leaves which Jacobs and the other men had roofed themselves with. They were sound asleep; and the glimpse of the soles of their shoes and their knees, sticking out of the shadow you saw their rough faces in, with the sight of their cutlass-hilts, served to give one a still wilder notion of the place. One felt scarce sure of being able to wake them, in case of anything turning up; and, at any rate, a dread came over you of its being possibly somewhat unnatural enough to make the thing useless.
"On the other hand, the planter kept up such a confounded snoring inside the canvas close by me, that although there was no doubt of his being alive, the sound of it put stranger thoughts into your head. Sometimes his breath would be jogging on like that of a tolerably ordinary mortal, then get by degrees perfectly quiet; and then all of a sudden go rising and rising, faster and faster, as if some terrible dream had hold of him, or there was some devilish monster hard in chase of his soul, till out it broke into a fearful snort that made your very heart jump—whereupon he'd lie as if he were finished, then go through the whole story again. I can't tell you how that cursed noise troubled me; 'twas no use shoving and speaking to him, and all the time the old boy was evidently quite comfortable, by something he said at last about 'indigo being up.' The best I could do was to get out and leave him to himself; in fact, where Jones had gone at the time I didn't know, till suddenly I caught sight of his dark figure standing on the rise at the back of our post, and went up to him. Jones was certainly a strange mixture, for here had he been all round the low side of the island by himself, yet I found him leaning bareheaded on the barrel of his musket, listening like a deer. He assured me solemnly he thought he had heard voices for the last hour on the other side, where he hadn't been, and asked me if I would go with him to see. Then down came our look-out from the peak, rolling through the bushes like a sea-crow, to report his not having seen anything, and to say they'd forgot to relieve him aloft; so rousing up Jacobs, I sent them both back together, while Jones and I held the opposite way for the other height.
"The moment we had got to it, there was the same faint blotted-out horizon as we had had all astern of us the night before, the same strange unnatural paleness cast off the face of the sea, making it look black by contrast to north-eastward and east, against the blue shadow with the bright stars in it, where the sea rippled as usual; while the keenest glare in the middle seemed to stream right to the breast of the island, like the reflection of daylight down a long break in the ice—only it was dead and ghastly to behold. The white water washed round under the black edge of the rocks before us, to the bare sloping beach, where it came up fairly like a wide plash of milk, glimmering and sparkling back amongst the little sea-creatures you fancied you saw moving and crawling out or in: till it ran along by where the reefs were, and turned off to the dim sky again. Everything else was still, and Jones drew a breath like one relieved: 'Nothing after all, I think, sir!' said he. But to my mind there was something a long sight more awful in the look of that unaccountable white water bearing down like snow upon the island, as it were, with the wrinkles and eddies to be seen faintly in it here and there back toward the glaring breadth of it, and the floating streaks in the sky above; especially when he told me he thought it was owing to millions upon millions of living things in it, that made the same show there at two different seasons in the year, for a week or so at a time—the appearance of it getting less distinct every night.
"However, I had begun to grow uneasy again about the Indiaman, and the schooner too, as well as doubtful of the fellows coming to the island at all; on the contrary, as I said to Jones, if they saw the schooner, and Westwood didn't manage as I told him, why both she, the ship, and ourselves might possibly get the finishing-stroke altogether. 'The more I think of it,' said I, 'the more foolish it seems to be here instead of aboard!' 'Why it is, Mr Collins, I don't know,' replied Jones, 'yet I feel as sure these men will land here as if I heard them in the woods; and if I wasn't aware how one crime breeds another, for my part I shouldn't be here at present, sir. Many a night afloat has the thought of this place weighed on me, lest there was something new doing in it; but what's buried here I'm resolved no man shall stir up, if I can help it, sir!' A little after, as we got up and went down to the beach, all of a sudden—like a thing he couldn't avoid—Jones began to give me some snatches of what had happened here some years before, which, according to him, he had got from a shipmate of his that died; and I must say it made the blood creep in me to listen to it.
"'At the beginning of the war,' he said, 'the island had been a nest of regular pirates, who had taken pains to make it, from a mere muddy head of a reef with some cocoas upon it, probably into a resort on occasions—especially as even the wild Maldive natives to southward had somehow a dislike to it. The whole gang being taken by some cruiser or other at sea, however, too far off to leave any clue to their harbourage hereabouts, they were all hanged, and the place lost sight of, till, a good many years after, a country Arab craft, bound for Dacca up the Ganges, was driven in a gale upon the reefs some way off, without seeing the island at all till the sea went down, and she was going to pieces.
"'There were only two Europeans aboard, both having turned Mussulmans, and the youngest of them was mate. There was a passenger, a native Indian merchant, and his servants, with, as was believed, his harem below in the after-cabins, for nobody ever had seen them; but the Arab rais of the vessel and several more being washed off when she struck, the other Mussulmans took to the only boat they had, and got ashore, leaving the two Englishmen with the passenger. Next day the two men had contrived a raft of the spars, whereupon the Hindoo at last brought up his three women, veiled from head to foot, and the whole got safe to the island. Here all the Mahometans herded together amongst themselves, forcing the two Englishmen to keep on the other side of the island, as they had no firearms, while the old Hindoo merchant and his native servant got a tent pitched on the highest point for the women, where they were no more seen than before, and a flag hoisted on a stick all the time for a signal to ships—poor simple devil!' as Jones said with a laugh. 'Every day he offered the Arab crew more of the gold and jewels he had with him, to make for India and get him brought of, till at last some of the Arabs came round to the mate and his companion, wanting them to take the boat and go instead, otherwise they would kill both of them at once. The two men accordingly had provisions given them, and hoisted sail on the boat before the breeze to eastward; they had almost dropped the island, when all at once the one in the boat's bows stepped aft to him that had the tiller, and said it struck him the Arabs couldn't mean well to the Hindoo and his wives, in trying to get clear of others.
"'All his companion did,' Jones said, 'was to ask if he was man enough to go back, face them boldly, and offer to take the passenger and his harem too, when some craft or other might come back for the Arabs, since they weren't seamen enough to venture first in the boat. "I tell you what," said the first, '"try the two largest breakers of water there!" The water for use next after the open one was tasted, and it was salt. '"Will you stand by me?" the second man said, after awhile. The other had a dog with him of his own, that had swam ashore from the vessel after the raft he landed upon, and it was sleeping in the boat's bow at the moment, near him; the dog lifted its head as they spoke, eyed the two, and lay down again with a low sort of growl. "Ay," answered the other, "to the last I will—as long as you stick by me!" They hauled over the sheet, laid the boat sharp on a wind, and as soon as it was dusk began to pull back toward the island, where they got ashore in the dark before morning.'