Spanish Doubloons Read online

  XIX

  THE YOUNG PERSON SCORES

  My first memory is of voices, and after that I was shot swiftly outof a tunnel from an immense distance and opened my eyes upon thesame world which I had left at some indefinite period in the past.Faces, at first very large, by and by adjusted themselves in aproper perspective and became quite recognizable and familiar.There was Aunt Jane's, very tearful, and Miss Higglesby-Browne's,very glum, and the Honorable Cuthbert's, very anxious and a littledazed, and Cookie's, very, very black. The face of Dugald Shaw Idid not see, for the quite intelligible reason that I was lyingwith my head upon his shoulder.

  As soon as I realized this I sat up suddenly, while every oneexclaimed at once, "There, she's quite all right--see how her coloris coming back!"

  People kept Aunt Jane from flinging herself upon me and soothed herinto calm while I found out what had happened. The penknife that Ihad lost in my struggle with Captain Magnus had fallen at theScotchman's feet. Wrenching himself free of his all but severedbonds he had seized the knife, slashed through the rope that heldhim to the tree, and flung himself on Captain Magnus. It was abrief struggle--a fist neatly planted on the ruffian's jaw hadended it, and the captain, half dazed from his potations, went downlimply.

  Meanwhile Cookie had appeared upon the scene flourishing a kitchenknife, though intending it for no more bloody purpose than thesetting free of Cuthbert Vane. Throughout the fray Chris slumberedundisturbed, and he and the unconscious Magnus were now reposingside by side, until they should awake to find themselves neatlytrussed up with Cookie's clothes-lines.

  But my poor brave Crusoe dragged a broken leg, from a kick bestowedon him by Captain Magnus, at whom he had flown valiantly in mydefense.

  So far so good; we had signally defeated our two guards, and thecamp was ours. But what about the pirates who were still in thecave and would shortly be returning from it? They were three armedand sturdy ruffians, not to include Mr. Tubbs, whose habits werestrictly non-combative. It would mean a battle to the death.

  Our best hope would be to wait in ambush behind the trees of theclearing--I mean for Dugald Shaw and Cuthbert Vane to do it--andshoot down the unsuspecting pirates as they returned. Thisdesperate plan, which so unpleasantly resembled murder, cast gloomon every brow.

  "It's the women, lad," said the Scotchman in a low voice toCuthbert. "It's--it's Virginia." And Cuthbert heavily assented.

  Seeing myself as the motif of such slaughter shocked my mindsuddenly back to clearness.

  "Oh," I cried, "not that! Why not surprise them in the cave, andmake them stay there? One man could guard the entrance easily--andafterward we could build it up with logs or something."

  Everybody stared.

  "A remarkably neat scheme," said Mr. Shaw, "but impossible ofapplication, I'm afraid, because none of us knows where to find thecave."

  I shook my head.

  "I know!"

  There was a lengthy silence. People looked at one another, andtheir eyes said, _This has been too much for her_!

  "I _know_," I impatiently repeated. "I can take you straightthere. I found the tombstone before Mr. Tubbs did, and the cavetoo. Come, let's not waste time. We must hurry--they'll begetting back!"

  Amazement, still more than half incredulous, surged round me. ThenMr. Shaw said rapidly:

  "You're right. Of course, if you have found the cave, the bestthing we can do is to keep them shut up in it. But we must movefast--perhaps we're too late already. If they have found the chestthey may by now be starting for camp with the first load ofdoubloons."

  Again I shook my head.

  "They haven't found the gold," I assured him.

  The astonished faces grew more anxious. "It sho' have told onli'le Miss Jinny's brain," muttered Cookie to himself.

  "They haven't found the gold," I reiterated with emphasis, "becausethe gold is not in the cave. Don't ask me how I know, becausethere isn't time to tell you. There was no gold there but the twobags that the pirates brought back last night. The--the skeletonmoved it all out."

  "My Lawd!" groaned Cookie, staggering backward.

  "Virginia! I had no idea you were superstitious!" quavered AuntJane.

  "I say, do take some sleeping tablets or something and quiet yournerves!" implored Cuthbert with the tenderest solicitude.

  In my exasperation I stamped my foot.

  "And while we are arguing here the pirates may be starting back tocamp! And then we'll have to kill them and go home and giveourselves up to be hanged! Please, please, come with me and let meshow you that I know!" I lifted my eyes to the intent face ofDugald Shaw.

  "All right," he said tersely. "I think you do know. How and what,we'll find out later." Rapidly he made his plan, got together thethings needful for its execution, looked to the bonds of the stilldazed and drowsy prisoners, posted Cookie in their neighborhoodwith a pair of pistols, and commanded Aunt Jane to dry her tearsand look after Miss Higglesby-Browne, who had dismayed every one bymost inopportunely toppling over in a perfectly genuine swoon.

  Then the Scotchman, Cuthbert Vane and I set off through the woods.The men were heavily armed, and I had recovered my own littlerevolver and restored it to my belt. Mr. Shaw had seen to this,and had said to me, very quietly:

  "You know, Virginia, if things don't go our way, it may benecessary for you to use it--on yourself."

  And I nodded assentingly.

  We went in silence through the green hush of the woods, moving insingle file. My place as guide was in the van, but Mr. Shawdeposed me from it and went ahead himself, while Cuthbert Vanebrought up the rear. No one spoke, even to whisper. I guidedDugald Shaw, when needful, by a light touch upon the arm. Ourenterprise was one of utmost danger. At any moment we might hearthe steps and voices of the returning pirates. Thus fore-warned,we might of course retreat into the woods and let them pass,ourselves unseen. But then, what of those whom we had left incamp? Could we leave them undefended to the vengeance of CaptainMagnus? No, if we met the pirates it was their lives or ours--andI recall with incredulity my resolution to imbed five of my sixbullets in a pirate before I turned the sixth upon myself. Ireflected with satisfaction that five bullets should be a fataldose to any pirate unless an exceptionally tough one. And I hopedhe would not be tough--

  But I tell myself with shudders that it was not I, but someextraordinary recrudescence of a primitive self, that indulgedthese lethal gloatings.

  No steps but our own, no voices but of birds, broke the stillnessof the woods. We moved onward swiftly, and presently the noise ofthe sea came to us with the sudden loudness that I remembered. Ipaused, signaled caution to my companions, and crept on.

  We passed the grave, and I saw that the vines had been torn asideagain, and that the tombstone was gone. We came to the brink ofthe cliff, and I pointed silently downward along the ledge to theangle in which lay the mouth of the cave. My breath came quickly,for at any instant a head might be thrust forth from the opening.Already the sun was mounting toward the zenith. The noontide heatand stillness was casting its drowsy spell upon the island. Theair seemed thicker, the breeze more languid. And all this meantmeal-time--and the thoughts of hungry pirates turning toward camp.

  My hope was that they were still preoccupied with the fruitlesssearch in the cave.

  Mr. Shaw and Cuthbert dropped down upon the ledge. Though underwhispered orders to retreat I could not, but hung over the edge ofthe cliff, eager and breathless. Then with a bound the men werebeside me. Mr. Shaw caught my hand, and we rushed together intothe woods.

  A quake, a roar, a shower of flying rocks. It was over--thedynamite had done its work, whether successfully or not remained tobe seen. After a little the Scotchman ventured back. He returnedto us where we waited in the woods--Cuthbert to mount guard overme--with a cleared face.

  "It's all right," he said. "The entrance is completely blocked. Iset the charge six feet inside, but the roof is down clear to themouth. Poor wretches--they have
all come pouring out upon thesand--"

  All three of us went back to the edge of the cliff. Seventy feetbelow, on the narrow strip of sand before the sea-mouth of thecave, we saw the figures of four men, who ran wildly about andsought for a foothold on the sheer face of the cliff. As we stoodwatching them, with, on my part, at least, unexpected qualms ofpity and a cold interior sensation very unlike triumph, theydiscovered us. Then for the first time, I suppose, they understoodthe nature of their disaster. We could not hear their cries, butwe saw arms stretched out to us, fists frantically shaken, handslifted in prayer. We saw Mr. Tubbs flop down upon his unaccustomedknees--it was all rather horrible.

  I drew back, shivering. "It won't be for long, of course," I saiduncertainly, "just till the steamer comes--and we'll give them lotsto eat--but I suppose they think--they will soon be just a lot moreskeletons--" And here I was threatened with a moist anticlimax tomy late Amazonian mood.

  Why should the frequent and natural phenomena of tears produce suchpanic in the male breast? At a mere April dewiness about my lashesthese two strong men quaked.

  "Don't--don't cry!" implored Cuthbert earnestly.

  "It's been too much for her!" exclaimed the once dour Scot in tonesof anguish. "Hurry, lad--we must find her some water--"

  "Nonsense," I interposed, winking rapidly. "Just think of some wayto calm those creatures, so that I shan't see them in my dreams,begging and beseeching--" For I had not forgotten the immensity ofmy debt to Tony.

  So a note was written on a leaf torn from a pocketbook and thrownover the cliff weighted with a stone. The captives swooped uponit. Followed then a vivid pantomime by Tony, expressive of easedif unrepentant minds, while Mr. Tubbs, by gestures, indicated thatthough sadly misunderstood, old H. H. was still our friend andbenefactor.

  It was an attentive group to which on our return to camp I relatedthe circumstances which had made possible our late exploit ofimprisoning the pirates in the cave. The tale of my achievements,though recounted with due modesty, seemed to put the finishingtouch to the extinction of Violet, for she wilted finally andforever, and was henceforth even bullied by Aunt Jane. The diaryof Peter was produced, and passed about with awe from hand to hand.Yesterday's discovery in the cave had rounded out the history ofPeter to a melancholy completion. But though we knew the end weguessed in vain at the beginning, at Peter's name, at that of theold grandfather whose thrifty piety had brought him to Havana andto the acquaintance of the dying mate of the _Bonny Lass_, at thewhereabouts of the old New England farm which had been mortgaged tobuy the _Island Queen_, at the identity of Helen, who waited still,perhaps, for the lover who never would return.

  But even our regrets for Peter did not chill the exultation withwhich we thought of the treasure-chest waiting there under the sandin the cabin of the _Island Queen_.

  All afternoon we talked of it. That, for the present, was all wecould do. There were the two prisoners in camp to be guarded--andthey had presently awakened and made remarks of a strongly personaland unpleasant trend on discovering their situation. There wasCrusoe invalided, and needing petting, and getting it fromeverybody on the score of his romantic past as _Benjy_ as well asof his present virtues. The broken leg had been cleverly set byDugald--somehow in the late upheaval _Miss_ and _Mister_ haddropped quite out of our vocabularies--with Cuthbert as surgeon'sassistant and me holding the chloroform to the patient's nose.There was the fatigue and reaction from excitement which everybodyfelt, and Peter's diary to be read, and golden dreams to beindulged. And there was the delicate question to be discussed, ofhow the treasure should be divided.

  "Why, it all belongs to Virginia, of course," said Cuthbert,opening his eyes at the thought of any other view being taken butthis obvious one.

  "Nonsense!" I hastily interposed. "My finding the diary was justan accident; I'll take a share of it--no more."

  Here Miss Browne murmured something half inaudible about"--confined to members of the Expedition--" but subsided for lackof encouragement.

  "I suggest," said Dugald, "that our numbers having most fortunatelydiminished and there being, on the basis of Peter's calculations,enough to enrich us all, that we should share and share alike."And this proposal was received with acclamations, as was a secondfrom the same source, devoting a certain percentage of each shareto Cookie, to whom the news of his good fortune was to come lateras a great surprise.

  As an earnest of our riches, we had the two bags of doubloons whichthe pirates had recovered from the fleshless fingers of the deadman. They were old worn coins, most of them, many dating from theseventeenth century, and bearing the effigies of successive kingsof Spain. Each disk of rich, yellow Peruvian gold, dug from theearth by wretched sweating slaves and bearing the name of a narrowrigid tyrant, had a history, doubtless, more wild and bloody thaneven that we knew. The merchant of Lima and his servant, BillHalliwell, and afterward poor Peter had died for them. For theirsake we had been captives in fear of death, and for their sake nowfour wretched beings were prisoners in the treasure-cave and twomore cursed, fate and their bonds within hearing of our outragedears. And who knew how much more of crime and blood and violencewe should send forth into the world with the long-buried treasure?Who knew--and, ah, me, who cared? So riotous was the gold-lust inmy veins that I think if I had known the chest to be anotherPandora's box I should still have cried out to open it.

  Shortly before sundown Cuthbert and Cookie were despatched byDugald Shaw to the cliff above the cave with supplies for theinhumed pirates. These were let down by rope. A note was broughtup on the rope, signed by Mr. Tubbs, and containing strangelyjumbled exhortations, prayers and threats. A second descent of therope elicited another missive, neatly folded and addressed in thesame hand to Miss Jane Harding. Cuthbert gave this privately tome, but its contents must forever be unknown, for it went, unread,into Cookie's fire. I had no mind to find Aunt Jane, with herumbrella as a parachute, vanishing over the cliffs to seek the armsof a repentant Tubbs.

  The fly in the ointment of our satisfaction, and the one remainingobstacle to our possession of the treasure, was the presence of thetwo pirates in our midst. They were not nice pirates. They werequite the least choice of the collection. Chris, when he was notswearing, wept moistly, and so touched the heart of Aunt Jane thatwe lived in fear of her letting him go if she got the opportunity.He told her that he had lost an aunt in his tender youth, of whomshe reminded him in the most striking way, and that if thislong-mourned relative had lived he felt he should have been abetter man and not led away against his higher nature by the chanceof falling in with bad companions. Aunt Jane thought herresemblance to Chris's aunt a remarkable coincidence and anopportunity for appealing to his better self which should beimproved. She wanted to improve it by untying his hands, becausehe had sprained his wrist in his childhood and it was sensitive.He had sprained it in rescuing a little companion from drowning,the child of a drunkard who had unfeelingly thrown his offspringdown a well. This episode had been an example to Chris which hadkept him from drinking all his life, until he had fallen into hispresent rough company.

  Aunt Jane took it very hard that the Scotchman seemed quiteunfeeling about Chris's wrist. She said it seemed very strange toher in a man who had so recently known the sorrows of captivityhimself. She said she supposed even suffering would not softensome natures.

  As to Magnus, his state of sullen fury made him indifferent even tothreats of punishment. He swore with a determination and fluencyworthy of a better cause. For myself, I could not endure hisneighborhood. It seemed to me I could not live through the daysthat must intervene before the arrival of the _Rufus Smith_ in theconstant presence of this wretch.

  More than all, it made Dugald and Cuthbert unwilling to leave thecamp together. There was always the possibility that the tworuffians might find means to free themselves, and, with none butCookie and the women present, to obtain control of the firearms andthe camp. For the negro, once the men were free, could not surelybe depended on
to face them. Loyal he was, and valiant in hisfashion, but old and with the habit of submission. One did not seehim standing up for long before two berserker-mad ruffians.

  What to do with the pirates continued for a day and a night aknotty problem.

  It was Cuthbert Vane who solved it, and with the simplicity ofgenius.

  "Why not send 'em down to their chums the way we do the eats?" heasked.

  It seemed at first incredibly fantastic, but the more you thoughtof it the more practical it grew. It was characteristic ofCuthbert not to see it as fantastic. For him the sharp edges offact were never shaded off into the dim and nebulous. Cuthbert,when he saw things at all, saw them steadily and whole. He wouldlet down the writhing, swearing Magnus over the cliff as tranquillyas he let down loaves of bread, aware merely of its needing moremuscular effort. Only he would take immense care not to hurt him.

  Dire outcries greeted the decision. Aunt Jane wept, and Chriswept, and said this never could have happened to him if his aunthad lived. Oaths flowed from Captain Magnus in a turgid stream.Nevertheless the twain were led away, firmly bound, and guarded byDugald, Cuthbert and the negro. And the remarkable programproposed by Cuthbert Vane was triumphantly carried out. Sixprisoners now occupied the old cave of the buccaneers.

  With the camp freed from the presence of the pirates all need ofwatchfulness was over. The prisoners in the cave were providedwith no implements but spades, whereas dynamite and crowbars wouldbe necessary to force a way through the debris which choked themouth of the tunnel. A looking over of the ground at the dailyfeeding time would be enough.

  To-morrow's sun would see our hopes crowned and all our toilrewarded by the recovery of the treasure from the _Island Queen_.