Chapter Sixteen.
A Story of Mutiny.
Not until Leslie was once more back in his own tent, and absolutely safe from all possibility of interruption or espionage, did he venture to open and peruse the scrap of paper that the steward had that morning so surreptitiously slipped into his hand. It was apparently part of the leaf of a pocket memorandum book; and, hastily scribbled in pencil, in an ill-formed and uneducated hand, it bore the following words:—
“Sir, for God’s sake take care what your about, or your life won’t be worth a brass farden. Turnbull aint no more the proper capten of this ship than I am. There won’t be no anchor watch aboard here to-night so if youl come off about half after midnight I’ll be on the lookout for yer and tell yer the hole bloomin yarn. For God’s sake come.—Steward.”
“Um!” meditated Leslie, as he held the document to the light of the lamp. “Now, what does this mean? Is it a trap to get me aboard the barque, or is it genuine? The latter, I am inclined to think, for several reasons; the first of which is that the poor man was obviously in a state of abject terror this morning. Secondly, he was so keenly anxious to open up communication with me that he made an unsuccessful attempt to do so while helping me to my whisky and soda. Thirdly, his statement that Turnbull is not the legitimate skipper of the barque is so evidently true that it needs no discussion. And fourthly, if Turnbull had seriously desired to make me a prisoner this afternoon, he could easily have done so by sending a boat’s crew in pursuit of me—that is to say,” he corrected himself, “for all he knows to the contrary, he could easily have done so. For how was he to know that I had two fully loaded revolvers in my pocket, equivalent to the lives of twelve men? Yes, I am strongly inclined to believe that this remarkable little document is genuine, and that there is something very radically wrong aboard that barque. What is it, I wonder? That Turnbull has somehow got scent of the treasure, and is after it, I am almost prepared to swear; his obvious vexation and disappointment at finding me here as ‘the man in possession,’ and his equally obvious efforts to shake me off to-day that he might have an opportunity to go away by himself in search of the cave, prove that; but there is something more than that, I am certain. I wonder, now, whether his story of the sick man in the cabin has anything to do with it? I should not be surprised if it had. And where were the crew this morning? Turnbull spoke of being short-handed; but surely there are more people aboard than himself, the steward, the cook, and the two or three men I saw? Oh yes, there is something very queer about the whole business; and this document is genuine. At all events I will go off to-night, and hear what the steward has to say about it.”
In accordance with this resolution Leslie forthwith partook of a good hearty meal, and then, extinguishing his lamp, left the tent—to guard against the possibility of his being surprised there in his sleep—and, walking over to the pile of goods that he had accumulated from the brig’s cargo, raised the tarpaulin that covered it, and, creeping underneath, stretched himself out as comfortably as he could to snatch a few hours’ sleep, confident that the faculty which he possessed of being able to wake at any desired moment would not play him false. And a few minutes later he was fast asleep; for Dick Leslie was one of those men who, when once they have resolved upon a certain course of action, dismiss further consideration of it from their minds and allow it to trouble them no longer.
He had fixed upon half-past eleven as the hour at which he would rise, this allowing him a full hour in which to paddle off to the barque; and when by-and-by he awoke, and under the shelter of the tarpaulin cautiously struck a match and consulted his watch, he found that it was within five minutes of the half-hour. He next peered out from under the tarpaulin and carefully scanned the beach by the light of the stars, to see whether Turnbull had sent a boat ashore in the hope of “catching a weasel asleep;” but his own canoe was the only craft visible, and he accordingly made his way down to the water’s edge, and, pushing her off, sprang noiselessly into her as she went afloat. Then, heading her round with a couple of powerful sweeps of the paddle, he pointed her nose toward the spot where the Minerva’s spars made a delicate tracery of black against the star-spangled heavens, and with long, easy, silent strokes drove her quietly ahead.
That the crew had not yet retired to their bunks was soon evident to him from the fact that snatches of maudlin song came floating down to him occasionally upon the pinions of the dew-laden night breeze; but these dwindled steadily as he drew nearer to the vessel, and about a quarter of an hour before he arrived alongside they ceased altogether, and the craft subsided into complete silence.
Leslie deemed it advisable to approach the barque with a considerable amount of caution, not that he doubted the steward, but because, despite the silence that had fallen on board, it was just possible that some of the crew might still be awake and on deck; he therefore kept the three masts of the vessel in one, and crept up to her very gently from right astern. As he drew in under the shadow of her hull the complete darkness and silence in which the craft was wrapped seemed almost ominous and uncanny; but presently he detected a solitary figure on the poop, evidently on the watch, and a moment later saw that this figure was silently signalling to him to draw up under the counter. Obeying these silent signals, he found a rope dangling over the stern, which he seized, and the next instant the figure that he had observed came silently wriggling down the rope into the canoe. Leslie at once recognised him as the steward.