Kitabı oku: «The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove: or, The Missing Chest of Gold», sayfa 8
CHAPTER XX
THE EMPTY HUT
“Listen to the poets,” jibed Bill. “Homer and Milton have nothing on them.”
“Don’t mind his knocking, Ross,” said Teddy. “He’s only envious because he can’t rise to our heights. He’s like that fellow that Wordsworth tells us about:
“‘A primrose by the river’s brim
A yellow primrose was to him
And nothing more.’”
“Well, what more was it?” grinned Bill, stubbornly holding his ground.
“A hopeless case,” groaned Teddy. “If he heard a bobolink singing, he’d ask whether it was good to eat.”
“What is this anyway?” laughed Fred. “It sounds like elocution day at Rally Hall.”
“Talking about eats,” chimed in Lester, “what’s the matter with getting our stuff off the boat before it gets dark? Mark will have plenty of fish with him when he gets back, and with what we can supply we ought to be able to get up a nifty little supper.”
“Count me in on this,” said Ross. “I’ve got quite a cargo of supplies on the Sleuth, and we’ll all chip in together.”
“The more the merrier,” cried Lester, accepting the offer. “I imagine Mark doesn’t have much variety in his diet, and we’ll see that to-night at least the old man has a bang-up meal.”
“They say that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,” observed Teddy, “and if we fill him up, he’ll be all the more ready to loosen up and tell us all he knows.”
“I wish we had a Chinaman along,” remarked Fred. “We’d get him to make us a soup out of the shark’s fins.”
“We’ll try it ourselves if we get hard up,” laughed Ross, “but it seems to me we’ve got our money’s worth out of the shark already, without taxing him any further.”
They waded out to the boats and ransacked the lockers, returning loaded with coffee and bacon and beans and eggs and jams, the sight of which added a spur to their already lively appetites.
“That looks like Mark’s boat out there now,” observed Lester, as he straightened up and surveyed the sea.
He pointed to a tiny catboat coming in at a spanking gait, and that seemed to be headed directly for that part of the beach where the boys stood.
“At the rate he’s coming, he’ll be here in fifteen minutes,” Lester announced a moment later.
“What’s the matter with having supper all ready when the old man gets in?” chuckled Fred. “It’ll pay for using his tools, and it will give him the surprise of his life.”
“Good thing!” exclaimed Lester heartily. “The poor old chap doesn’t get many surprises–pleasant ones I mean–and it will warm his heart.”
“To say nothing of his stomach,” added the ever practical Bill.
The boys set to work with a zest, and five pairs of hands transformed the interior of the little hut in a twinkling. Fred lighted a fire in the rusty stove, Bill cut up some wood for fuel, Ross brought water for the coffee from a neighboring spring, Teddy cleared the litter of odds and ends off the rough pine table and set out the eatables, while Lester fried the bacon, warmed the beans and made the coffee. Everything, even down to salt and sugar, had come from their own stores, so that Mark’s meagre stock was not drawn upon for anything. A fluffy omelet finished Lester’s part of the work, and when Ross produced a big apple pie that his landlady had given him to take along that morning, the boys stood off and viewed their handiwork with pride.
“It makes one’s mouth water,” said Teddy, who claimed to be an expert where food was concerned.
“I can’t wait,” declared Bill. “I wish Mark had wings.”
“He doesn’t need them,” replied Lester, looking out of the door, “for here he comes now.”
The boys ran out to greet the returning master of the house, who had rounded the point into the sheltered bay and was fast approaching the beach. He had already noticed the two boats lying side by side and surmised that he had visitors. He looked at the boys curiously and waved his hand to Lester in friendly fashion.
Then his boat claimed all his attention. With surprising agility for one so old, he did all that was necessary to lay it up snugly for the night. Then he clambered into a small rowboat that trailed at the stern, loosed the rope that held it and with a few deft pulls at the oars rowed in until he grounded on the beach. The boys ran forward and drew the boat far up on the sands above the high water mark, while Lester shook hands with the newcomer.
“How are you, Mark?” he said heartily.
“How be yer, Les?” responded the other with no less cordiality, “an’ how’s yer pa?”
“Dad’s all right and so am I,” was the answer. “You see I’ve brought a bunch of my friends over to see you.”
“I take it kindly of yer,” said Mark. “I get a leetle lonesome here all by myself, an’ it heartens me up a bit ter git a sight of young critters. Out on a fishin’ trip, I s’pose?”
The boys had crowded round them by this time, and Lester introduced them to the old fisherman, who shook hands heartily, albeit rather awkwardly.
“Yes,” said Lester, when this ceremony was finished, answering Mark’s last question, “we are on a fishing trip, but we’re fishing for information more than for anything else.”
“Information?” repeated Mark, taken a little aback. “Waal,” he said, recovering himself, “ef there’s anythin’ I know, yer welcome ter have it. What is it yer want ter know?”
“Lots of things,” laughed Lester. “But they can wait till after supper. By the way, Mark, I suppose you’ll let us stay to supper? I know it’s awfully nervy to plump ourselves down on you this way without any warning and without being invited. But if you can take care of us for the night and give us a bite to eat, we’ll be mighty thankful.”
“Sure I will,” replied Mark warmly. “But yer’ll have ter take pot luck. Come up ter the cabin an’ I’ll hunt yer up a snack of sumthin’.”
The boys had been standing between him and their catch of the morning, but as they separated to go up to the shack he caught sight of the stranded body of the shark. He stopped short in amazement.
“Sufferin’ cats!” he shouted. “Where in the world did that thing come from?”
“He didn’t come of his own accord,” laughed Fred. “We picked him up and brought him along.”
“Do yer mean ter tell me that you youngsters caught him all by yerselves?” asked Mark, looking from one to the other in incredulous astonishment.
“That’s what we did,” replied Teddy. “That is, we all had a part in hooking him, and then Lester, here, finished the job with his father’s harpoon.”
“Les, ye’re a chip of the old block,” cried Mark delightedly. “Yer pa was one of the best harpooners thet ever sailed from these parts an’ ye sure have got his blood in yer ter do a man-sized job like this. A mighty good job it is too, fer I don’t know when these fellers has been more troublesome than they’ve been this year, what with sp’ilin’ the nets an’ scarin’ away the fish.”
He walked around the body, giving vent to muttered exclamations of wonder and satisfaction, and the boys had a chance to study him more closely than they had yet been able to do.
He was a wizened, dried-up little man, not much more than five feet in height. His shoulders were bent with the infirmities of age–they judged him to be over seventy–but his movements were spry, and they had already seen by the way he handled his boat that he was not lacking in dexterity. There was a suspicious redness about his nose that was explained by Lester’s hint about his fondness for a certain black bottle. But his eyes were friendly and free from guile, and the simple cordiality with which he had welcomed them to his scanty fare showed that his heart was kindly.
He found it hard to tear himself away from gloating over the body of the shark–the shark he hated with the hatred of all the members of his calling–but he recalled himself at last to the duties of hospitality.
“Waal, I swan!” he ejaculated. “Here I am wastin’ time on this cantankerous old pirate when I ought ter be hustlin’ around ter get you boys some grub.”
The boys could see a growing perplexity in the old fellow’s kindly face as he tried to think how to feed such a hungry crew as he saw about him.
“Oh, anything will do,” Lester hastened to assure him. “Come along up to the cabin and we’ll pitch in and help.”
They reached the door, and as Mark’s eyes fell upon the crowded table, and as the fragrant odor of the coffee and the other good things assailed his nostrils, he gave vent to an exclamation of astonishment and relief that was lost in the roar of laughter that burst from the boys.
“Waal, I vum!” he exclaimed as soon as he could catch his breath.
“Some surprise party, eh Mark?” asked Lester.
“Yer could knock me down with a feather,” the old fisherman replied. “An’ me a-rackin’ my old noddle as ter how I was goin’ ter giv’ ye anythin’ but fish.”
“You’re not going to taste of fish to-night,” stated Teddy.
“Waal, that won’t be no loss,” grinned Mark delightedly. “I eat so much fish that I’m expectin’ almost any minnit I’ll be sproutin’ fins an’ gills.”
“This treat is all on us,” affirmed Fred, “and all you have to do is to fill up on what you see before you and tell us what you think of our cook.”
“I’ll do that right enough,” said Mark, “an’ ef it tastes as good as it smells an’ looks, there ain’t one of you youngsters that will stow away more than I kin.”
They installed him at the head of the table in the one chair that the cabin boasted, while they disposed themselves around on boxes and whatever else would serve as seats. Their surroundings were of the rudest kind but the fare was ample and their appetites keen and there was an atmosphere of mirth and high spirits that made full amends for whatever was lacking in the way of what Teddy called frills. Mark renewed his youth in the unaccustomed company of so many young lads, and ate as he had not eaten for many a day or year.
They did not broach the object of their visit until the meal was finished and the remnants cleared away. Then they adjourned to the beach in front of the cabin, where Mark filled his pipe and tilted back in his chair against the front of the shack, while the boys threw themselves down on the sand around him.
“Well, Mark,” began Lester, when, with his pipe drawing well, the old fisherman beamed on them all in rare good humor, “I suppose you’ve been wondering what we mean by coming down and taking you by storm in this way.”
“I’d like ter be taken by storm that way a mighty sight oftener than I be,” returned Mark. “But sence yer speak of it, I am a leetle mite curious as ter what yer wanted with an old fisherman like me.”
“It’s about something that happened nine or ten years ago,” went on Lester. “Do you remember the time you picked up a man in an open boat off this coast somewhere?”
Mark was attentive in an instant.
“I’ll never forgit it,” he declared emphatically. “I never was so sorry fur a feller-bein’ in all my life as I was fur him.”
“This is his son,” said Lester, indicating Ross.
CHAPTER XXI
BITS OF EVIDENCE
If Mark had received a shock from a galvanic battery he would not have been more startled.
“What’s that you say?” he demanded, bringing his chair down from its tilted position and looking around upon the group in a bewildered way.
“Lester is right,” said Ross, who had risen to his feet and stretched out his hand. “My name is Ross Montgomery, and I want to thank you with all my heart for what you did for my father. I’ve never had the chance to do it before.”
His voice was shaken with emotion at this meeting with the man who had played so large a part in the tragedy of his family so many years before.
Mark grasped the extended hand and shook it warmly.
“So it was your pa that I picked up that day,” he said. “I hed a sort of feelin’ to-day that I had seen you somewheres, an’ I s’pose it’s because you favored him some. You have the same kind of hair an’ eyes, as near as I kin rec’lect.”
“Of course I was only a little chap when it all happened,” said Ross, “but I’ve often heard mother tell how kind you were to him after you found him adrift.”
“Oh, pshaw! that was nothin’,” replied Mark deprecatingly, as he resumed his seat. “I only did fur him what any man would do fur an’ unfo’tunit feller-man. He was nearly all gone when I come across him. The doc said he would ’a’ died ef he’d floated around a few hours longer.”
“Do you remember anything he said to you while you were taking care of him?” asked Lester.
“Oh, he said a heap o’ things, jest like any man does when he is out of his head,” was the answer. “I didn’t pay much attention like. I was too busy holdin’ him down when he got vi’lent, as he did pretty often the first few days. After that he kind of settled down an’ only kep’ a-mutterin’ to himself.”
“Yes, but didn’t he say anything that would give you a hint of what had happened to him and how he came to be adrift?” asked Fred.
Mark ruminated for a full minute, evidently doing his best to tax his memory.
“I ain’t got the best memory in the world,” he said apologetically, “an’ I couldn’t make out fur certain all he said. But I got the idee thet there’d been a fight of some kind an’ thet he’d lost a pile of money. He kep’ a talkin’ of ‘gold’ an’ some ‘debts’ he owed. Course I thought it was only the ravin’s of a crazy man an’ I didn’t take much stock in it.”
“Wasn’t there anything else?” prodded Fred.
“N-no,” replied Mark hesitatingly, “nothin’ thet I remember on. Oh, yes,” he went on, as a sudden flash of memory came to him, “I do rec’lect he kep’ sayin’: ‘It’s where the water’s comin’ in.’ But of course there wasn’t no sense in that.”
The boys sat up straight.
“Say that again, won’t you?” asked Teddy.
“It’s where the water’s comin’ in,” repeated Mark. “He said that over and over. I s’pose it was the feelin’ of the spray thet came over him in the boat. I don’t rightly know what else it could have been.”
As the boys themselves turned the phrase over in their minds, they could not see how it bore on the object of their search. They filed it away in their minds to think about later on.
For the next two hours they discussed the matter with Mark, trying to get from him any little shred of evidence that would be of help, and yet at the same time guarding carefully against revealing the real object of their questioning. He, for his part, set it down to the natural curiosity they felt in an event that touched the life of one of them so nearly, and did his best to cudgel his memory. But nothing more came of it than they had already learned, and it was with a sense of depression and failure that they finally gave up the cross examination that they had come so far to make.
“Well, Mark,” said Lester at last, when several long yawns had shown that the old man was tired and sleepy, “we can’t tell you how much obliged we are to you for all you’ve told us. But I guess we’ve tired you out with all our questions.”
“Not a bit of it,” denied Mark valiantly, though his drooping eyelids belied his words.
“I was just a-wonderin’ where I was goin’ to put all you boys for the night,” he went on. “There’s only one bed in the cabin, but I kin spread some blankets on the floor, ef that’ll do yer.”
“Don’t worry at all about that,” said Fred cheerily. “You go right in to bed and we’ll bunk out here on the beach. It’s a warm night, and we’d as soon do it as not.”
As there was really nothing else to do, Mark, after making a feeble protest, said good-night and went inside, while the boys moved down the beach until they were out of earshot and prepared to camp out.
“We didn’t get much out of the old chap after all, did we?” said Bill rather despondently.
“After coming all this way too,” added Teddy, even more dejectedly.
“The only thing we’ll have to show for the trip will be the shark, I guess,” said Lester.
“Well, that would be enough if we hadn’t gotten anything else,” declared Fred. “But I’m not so sure that we came on a fool’s errand after all.”
“What makes you think we didn’t?” asked Bill. “What do we know that we didn’t know before?”
“Well,” suggested Fred, “we hadn’t heard before of that phrase Mr. Montgomery used over and over. ‘It’s where the water’s coming in.’”
“That’s nothing at all,” affirmed Bill decidedly.
“I have a hunch it does mean something,” replied Fred, “and I’m going to keep mulling it over in my mind until I find out what the meaning is.
“By the way, Ross,” he went on, turning to their new-found friend where he sat brooding a little way apart from the rest, “we’ve learned something since we saw you first that may interest you. We’d have told you earlier this afternoon, but we’ve been traveling in different boats, and then when we got on shore we were so busy with cutting up the shark that we didn’t get a chance till now.”
Ross looked up eagerly.
“What is it?” he cried, getting up and joining the group.
He listened breathlessly while Fred told him what they had learned during their talk with Mr. Lee–the fight with the smugglers, their flight to the south Pacific, the partial confession of Dick and the going down of the ship with all on board.
When Fred had finished, Ross rose and paced the beach excitedly.
“You fellows found out in a few minutes what I’ve spent years trying to learn,” he cried. “All the time I’ve been hunting, I’ve been haunted by the fear that even if I found where the gold had been hidden, the money would long ago have been taken and spent by the robbers. I’ve felt like all kinds of an idiot in keeping up the search on such a slender chance, and again and again I’ve been tempted to give it up. But this puts new life and hope in me. There’s still a chance to find the gold and pay my father’s debts.”
“It’s practically certain that the money is still there,” affirmed Fred. “The fellows who took it are all drowned–unless they’re living somewhere on a desert island, and that’s so unlikely after all this time that it isn’t worth giving it a second thought. The only living man, outside of ourselves, who knows about the gold is Tom Bixby. He’s just a rough sailor knocking about all over the world, and he too may be dead by this time. The whole secret lies with us, and if the gold’s ever found, we’ll be the ones who will find it.”
“You boys have been perfect bricks,” declared Ross warmly, “and you make me ashamed for having kept anything back from you from the start.”
“You needn’t feel that way at all,” asserted Teddy. “For my part, I think you’ve been very generous and outspoken in telling us as much as you have. You’d never met us before that day of the storm and didn’t know anything about us.”
“Well, I know all about you now,” declared Ross, “and from now on, everything I find out will be known to you as fast as I can get it to you.”
The boys said nothing but waited expectantly.
“There’s one thing I didn’t tell you that first night,” Ross continued. “I don’t know how important it may prove to be, but at least it’s a clue that may lead to something.
“As you know, the Ranger was taken to Halifax and abandoned there by the smugglers. Ramsay, the captain who died on the trip, had owned it, but he had no family and the authorities took charge of the boat and sold it after a while, holding the money they got for it for the benefit of the heirs, if any should ever turn up. The new owner used the boat for a voyage or two, but he found it hard to get a crew. You know how superstitious sailors are. The mysterious way it was found abandoned gave sailor men the impression that there was a hoodoo of some kind connected with it, and they wouldn’t ship aboard her. So the new owner sold it and the name was changed.
“One day in Canada I ran across a sailor who had made a trip in the ship before the name was changed, and he told me a queer thing. He said he had found a rough map cut out on the wood of the forecastle with a jackknife. There were wavy lines to represent the water and a shaded part that might stand for a beach. Then there was a clump of three trees standing together, and a little way off were two more. One big rock rose out of the water on the right-hand side.
“Of course I jumped to the conclusion that it might have something to do with the place where the gold was hidden. I thought perhaps some of the sailors had wanted to impress on their memory just how the place looked, so that they could find it more easily when the time came. I pumped the man for more details, but that was all he could remember. I’ve tried in every way I knew to trace the old Ranger but she has slipped out of sight like a ghost. If I could only have one look at that old forecastle, I think that the map might put me on the right trail.”
“I’ll bet it would,” declared Fred with conviction, and his opinion was eagerly echoed by the others.
For a long time they debated the matter from this new angle, and it was very late when Lester urged that they should settle down for the night.
“We’ll get an early start in the morning and get back to the Shoals before noon,” he suggested. “I want to get busy on the government maps and plot out every mile of the coast so that we can start out in earnest.”
But Lester’s plan miscarried in part. They got the early start after a cordial good-bye to Mark. But the wind was baffling and they had to make long tacks, so that dusk was drawing on when they at last reached Bartanet Shoals.
