Kitabı oku: «What Happened at Quasi: The Story of a Carolina Cruise», sayfa 16
XXXVI
WHAT THE EARTH GAVE UP
Tom’s account of the way in which the powderkeg was entangled in the roots of the catalpa tree was more than borne out by the fact as the boys found it. It seemed to them a wonder that Tom had discovered it at all, so completely was it wrapped up in the knotted mass of root growths.
After digging away the earth until the whole root entanglement was exposed to view, the boys set Dick Wentworth at work cutting away the roots with his jackknife, a thing at which only one person could work at a time. When Dick’s hand grew tired, another of the boys relieved him at the task and the work was hurried as much as possible, not so much because it was growing late as because the little company’s curiosity was intense.
“Wonder how on earth anybody ever got the thing under the roots of a tree that way?” ventured Tom, as he toiled with his knife.
“Simple enough,” answered Cal. “He didn’t do it.”
“How did it get there, then?”
“Why, the tree grew there after the keg was buried, of course. Somebody stuck a catalpa bean in the ground directly over the keg. Probably the man who buried the thing did that; he wanted to provide a landmark by which to find the spot again, and probably he knew there wasn’t another catalpa tree on all Quasi plantation.”
“But that tree has been standing here a long time – twenty or twenty-five years I should say.”
“That only means that the keg was buried here twenty or twenty-five years ago at the least, and ’pon my word, it looks it.”
“What I’m wondering about,” interposed Larry, “is what the keg contains. It must be something important or nobody would have taken the pains to bury it and plant a tree over it.”
“And yet,” argued Dick, “if it is anything important, why did anybody bury it away out here and never come back for it?”
“It all depends,” answered Cal, “on just what you mean by ‘important.’ Things are important sometimes and utterly unimportant at others; important to one person and of no consequence to anybody else. At this moment I feel that my breakfast in the morning is becoming a thing of very great importance to me; but I don’t suppose poor Dunbar, wherever he is, cares a fig about it.”
“By the way, what can have become of the poor fellow? I wonder if he managed to fall out of the dory and get drowned?”
It was Tom who asked the question. Cal, who had thought a great deal about the matter, answered it promptly:
“That isn’t likely,” he said. “Indeed, it is scarcely possible. Dunbar was too good a boatman to fall overboard, and too good a swimmer to drown if he did. He would have climbed back into the dory with no worse consequence than a ducking in warm sea water.”
“What’s your theory then, Cal?”
“Why, that he has had one of his peculiar ‘spells.’ You remember that when he was missing from camp the last time he wrote us a letter, but when his lost knife was returned to him he seemed to remember nothing about it. More than that, he seemed to think the day he returned was the same as the day he went away. In other words, his memory was a blank as to the time he was away. Then, too, you remember that when we first found him here he couldn’t remember whether he had come three weeks or four weeks before. Still again, you remember how badly he was mixed up about the date just before he went away this time, and that too in spite of the fact that he had important papers to post before a given time.”
“Then you think he’s crazy?”
“I don’t know about that, because I’m not a doctor or an alienist, or anything else of the kind. But I think he has a way of losing himself now and then, though at ordinary times his head is a remarkably clear one.”
“I have read of such cases,” said Dick. “They call it ‘double consciousness,’ I believe. I don’t know whether it is regarded as a kind of insanity or not. Then you think, Cal – ”
“I hardly know what I think. You see I don’t know the facts in this case. We know absolutely nothing of what Dunbar did or what happened to him after he passed out of sight behind the marsh island over there. So we haven’t enough facts to base any thinking at all upon. But it has occurred to me that after he left us one of his fits of self-forgetfulness may have come on, and it may have lasted ever since.”
At this point the discussion of Dunbar’s case was brought to an end by an unexpected happening. As Tom tugged hard at one of the larger roots in an effort to loosen its hold, the keg suddenly fell to pieces. The oaken staves and headings seemed still to be fairly sound, but the iron hoops that had held the keg together had been so eaten with rust that they fell into fragments under the strain and the staves tumbled together in a loose pile.
From among them Tom drew forth something, and all the boys held their torches close while examining it.
“What is it, anyhow?” was the question on every lip.
“It’s very heavy for its size,” said Tom, poising it in his hand.
“Of course it is,” answered Cal. “Lead usually is heavy for its size. But that’s a box, made of lead. If it were solid it would be a good deal heavier. Open it, Tom.”
“I can’t. It doesn’t seem to have any opening or any seams of any kind. Look at it for yourself, Cal.”
As he spoke he handed the thing to his comrade. It was an oblong mass, seemingly hollow, but showing no sign of an opening anywhere. It was about ten or eleven inches in length, a little more than four inches wide, and about two inches thick from top to bottom. The surface was much corroded, but Larry thought he discovered a partly obliterated inscription of some kind upon it.
“We must stop handling the thing carelessly,” he said. “Corroded as the surface is we might rub the inscription off, and in that way rob ourselves of the means of making out the meaning of the thing. We’ll carry it carefully to camp, quicken up the fire with plenty of light wood, and then make a minute examination of the curious find. Tom, you may have found a fortune for yourself this time, who knows?”
“Or a misfortune,” suggested Dick, who in his childhood had been a firm believer in all the mysteries and wonder workings recorded in the Arabian Night’s Entertainments, and still recalled them upon the smallest suggestion. “Shut up as it is, with no sign of an opening, who knows but that it bears Solomon’s seal on it? The inscription may be Solomon’s autograph, put there to hold captive some malicious genie. We all know what happened to the fisherman who let the smoke out of the copper vase.”
“Oh, I’ll take my chances on that sort of thing,” laughingly answered Tom, who, as the discoverer, was recognized by his comrades as the rightful owner of the box and the person entitled to say what should be done with it.
“Of course,” said Cal. “Genii don’t play tricks in our time and country. They’re afraid of the constable.”
The boys had reached the camp now, and a few minutes later a pile of blazing fat pine made the space around it as light as day. For an hour, perhaps, the boys minutely examined the queer casket. There was, or had been, an inscription cut upon its upper surface with the point of a penknife, but the corroding of the surface had so far obliterated it that the boys succeeded only in doubtfully guessing at a half-effaced letter here and there and in making out the figures 865 at the end of the writing.
“That’s the date,” said Larry – “1865, the figure one obliterated. Obviously the inscription tells us nothing. What next, Tom?”
Tom was minutely examining the sides of the case, scraping off the rust with his thumb nail. Presently, instead of answering Larry’s question, he cried out:
“Eureka! See here, boys! This box was made in two pieces exactly alike, one top and the other bottom. The two have been fitted together and then a hot iron has been drawn over the seam, completely obliterating it. It’s the nicest job of sealing a thing up water tight and air tight that I ever saw, but I’m going to spoil it.”
With that he opened his jackknife and very carefully drew its point along the line where the upper and lower halves of the casket had been joined. After he had traced the line twice with the knife point the two halves suddenly fell apart, and some neatly folded and endorsed papers were found within.
Tom began reading the endorsements, but before he had run half through the first one he leaped up, waving the documents over his head and shouting “hurrah!” in a way that Cal said was “like the howling of a demon accidentally involved with the accentuations of a buzz saw.”
After a moment the excited boy so far calmed his enthusiasm as to throw the bundle of papers into Larry’s face, shouting:
“I’ve found the Quasi deeds! I’ve saved Quasi to its rightful owners! Why don’t you all hurrah with me, you snails, you dormice or dormouses, whichever is the proper plural of dormouse? There are the papers and it was Tom Garnett who found them! For once prying curiosity has served a good turn. Now, all together! Hip, hip, hip, hurrah!”
The others joined heartily in the cheering that seemed necessary for the relief of Tom’s excitement, and half-spoken, half-ejaculated congratulations occupied the next five minutes.
After that the whole party sat down to hear the results of the more thorough examination of the papers, which Larry was delegated to make.
“Yes, these are the deeds,” he reported, “uninjured by time or damp or anything else, thanks to our grandfather’s care in sealing that leaden box. They were executed in May, 1861, and see, down in a corner of each is written:
“‘Recorded in the clerk’s office of Beaufort District, liber 211, pp. 371, 372, 373. J. S., Clerk.’
“And here’s a memorandum in our grandfather’s handwriting and signed by him. It is on a separate sheet, dated in February, 1865, and – ”
“Read it!” suggested Cal.
“I will,” and he read as follows:
“‘The clerk’s office in which these deeds were recorded at the time of their execution has been destroyed, together with all the books of record. It is vitally necessary therefore that these original deeds shall be preserved. In these troublous times there is no place of deposit for them which can be deemed reasonably safe. I am sealing them in this leaden box, therefore, and will bury them upon the abandoned plantation of Quasi, to which they give title. I shall plant a catalpa bean above them as a sure means of identifying the spot, there being no other catalpa on the plantation. I shall send my daughters a detailed statement of what I have done, with instructions as to the way of finding the papers. I place this memorandum in the box with the deeds themselves, so that if anyone finds it he may know to whom its contents belong. The address of my daughters will be found endorsed upon the deeds themselves.’”
XXXVII
TOM’S FINAL “FIND”
“Tom,” said Cal, taking the Virginia boy by the hand and warmly greeting him, “you have crowned this expedition – ”
“Oh, bother!” interrupted Tom. “You fellows are daffy. I’ve had the good luck to find the deeds, but it was by sheer accident, and anybody else might have – ”
“But ‘anybody else’ didn’t, and that makes all the difference. Now listen. I have the floor. I have restrained my natural impulse to do all the talking lately until I’ve had to let out two holes in my belt. I was going to hurl my best speech at your head, but you interrupted, and now the graceful periods have slipped from memory’s grasp. I’ll leave the task of adequate expression to my father. He’ll do it quite as well as I can. But there’s one thing to which I must ask the attention of the company here assembled.”
“What is it, Cal?” Dick asked.
“Why, simply that Tom has added another to the purposes with which this expedition was undertaken. Our objects were sport and adventure. We have had both, and now Tom has added a third – achievement.”
“That’s all very well,” answered Tom, “but we haven’t made the achievement yet. That will be when we deliver the deeds to your father, and not till then. And we’ll never, never do that unless you stop your nonsense and let us get to work on the catamaran, or raft, or whatever else you call it. Our present job is to get away from Quasi with the golden fleece. I suppose we ought to sleep now, but – ”
“But glue wouldn’t stick our eyelids together,” broke in Dick. “Work’s the thing for us now. Let’s get at it. Oh, I say, Cal, what of the tides? When will they set in strongly toward that little town up there?”
Cal reckoned the matter up and named the hours at which the young flood tides would begin to run. Then Dick thought a little and asked:
“Is it all land-locked water from here to the town, or are there openings to the sea?”
“All closely land-locked – all creeks,” Cal answered.
“Then if we work hard we can have the catamaran ready by to-morrow noon – she won’t need to be much of a craft for such waters – and we can make our start when the tide turns, about that time. Let’s see; the distance is only ten or twelve miles, and the tide will run up for six hours. That ought to take us there with no paddling or poling except enough to keep the craft headed in the right direction.”
“We’ll do it,” declared Cal. “Now to work, all of us. Tell us what to do, Dick.”
“Let one fellow make a lot of fresh torches,” the Boston boy answered. “The rest of us can keep busy till daylight dragging bamboos, big cane stalks and the cross braces down to the shore. As soon as it is light enough in the morning we’ll fashion the two larger timbers, and get them into the water. After that two or three hours’ work will finish the job.”
“An excellent programme, so far as it goes,” muttered Cal, as if only thinking aloud.
“Go ahead, Cal, what’s lacking?”
“Seems to me,” Cal responded, “that every member of this company is in the habit of carrying a digestive apparatus somewhere about his person. That’s all.”
“Right, Cal!” Larry broke in. “We must have breakfast and dinner, and I think I remember hearing that experienced navigator, Richard Wentworth, say, once upon a time, that one should never venture upon salt water without carrying a supply of provisions along.”
“I humbly submit to the rebuke,” answered Dick, with a laugh. “It was forgetfulness, but forgetfulness is never quite pardonable. Some one must go for game immediately after breakfast. We have enough on hand for that meal.”
“I delegate you to that task, Tom,” said Larry. “Your habit of finding things may hasten the job.”
✶✶✶✶✶✶
It was a little past noon when the company pushed away from Quasi on the rude raft that served them for a ship, and were driven by the strong flood tide through the maze of broad and narrow passages among the marsh islands that lay between them and the town on the mainland.
There was some discussion before they left Quasi as to what they should do with the rifle and other things in Dunbar’s log lockup.
Larry settled the matter, saying:
“We’ll leave his belongings just where he placed them. We are not likely to find him now, and – ”
“And if he finds himself,” Tom broke in, “he’ll come to Quasi after them. Wonder where the poor fellow is, anyhow, and what’s the matter with him.”
Nobody could offer a conjecture that had not been discussed before, and so the subject was dropped in favor of more immediate concerns.
✶✶✶✶✶✶
The tide ran strong, and Dick’s “palatial passenger craft,” as Tom called the raft, proved to be cork-like in its ability to float almost as fast as the tide itself flowed. About five o’clock the last of the marsh islands was passed, and the little town, perched upon high bluffs, appeared. As the raft neared it, Tom suddenly called out:
“I’ve found something else! There’s the Hunkydory riding at anchor in that little bay over yonder! Now, maybe the next find will be Mr. Dunbar.”
While Larry was sending a telegram to his father, the others went to the boat and with permission of the man in charge, examined it. No accident had happened to it and nothing about it gave the least hint that Dunbar had merely abandoned it. The sail was neatly lashed to the boom; the mast and the rudder had been unshipped and bestowed in the bilge. Every rope was coiled and every pulley block ran free.
More significant still was the fact that the lockers were all filled with food stuffs.
“Obviously he intended to return to Quasi,” Cal argued, “and laid in supplies for us as he had promised. Whatever happened to him must have occurred after that and just before the time he had set for sailing. Let’s go up into the town and see what we can learn about him.” Then pausing, he turned to the man in charge of the boat and asked:
“Has she been lying at anchor and taking the chance of rain all this time?”
“No,” the man answered. “She’s been in that there boat house, but to-day the squire tole me to anchor her out in the sun for an hour or two, an’ that’s what I’m a doin’.”
On their way they met Larry, who had telegraphed his father both at the North and at Charleston, uncertain whether or not the earthquake had hurried his home-coming. In his dispatches Larry had said:
“Quasi deeds found by Tom Garnett, now in my possession and in perfect order. Dory sails for Charleston immediately.”
Two hours later there came two telegrams from Major Rutledge in Charleston, one of them addressed to Larry and the other to Tom Garnett. The one to Larry sent congratulations and asked him to hurry home as fast as he could. What was in Tom’s none of the boys ever knew. Tom’s eyes were full of tears as he read it, though his face was a gladly smiling one as he replaced the paper in its envelope and carefully bestowed it in his pocket.
While waiting for these dispatches the boys made diligent inquiries concerning Dunbar. He had arrived at the town about three o’clock on the day of his leaving Quasi. He had intelligently addressed and posted his manuscript and drawings. After that he had bought camping supplies of every kind that the town could furnish, and had loaded them very carefully into the dory. An hour later he had been found sitting under a big tree and seemingly in distress of some kind. He was unable to tell who he was, in answer to inquiries. His mind seemed an absolute blank. Papers found on his person gave a sufficient clue to his identity and the addresses of his nearest friends. Telegrams were sent to them, and as soon as possible they came and took the poor fellow away with them, a magistrate meanwhile setting a deputy constable to care for the boat and cargo till its owners should appear.
The young doctor whom Dunbar’s friends brought with them explained to the old doctor of the town that for many years past Dunbar had been the victim of a rather rare mental malady, causing occasional complete lapses of memory.
“This present attack,” he added, “is lasting longer than usual. He has hitherto been allowed to roam at will, to live in the woods and pursue his investigations. Now, however, I shall strongly advise his friends to keep him under some small restraint for the sake of his own safety.”
“That ends the Dunbar incident,” said Larry when the old doctor finished his relation of the facts. “Now we must be off for Charleston. What do you say, boys? There’s a moon to-night and we might as well get a little start before it sets.”
“My own judgment,” ventured Dick, “is that as we worked all of last night, we’d better stay here till morning and get some sleep. But ‘I’m in the hands of my friends’ as the politicians say.”
Dick’s suggestion was approved, and the sun was just rising the next morning when the Hunkydory set sail. When the boys stepped ashore at the Rutledge boathouse on the Ashley River, Major Rutledge was there to greet them.
“We feared you boys might be in serious difficulty down at Quasi,” he said, warmly shaking hands all round for the second time, “and I was about setting out to rescue you, when Larry’s telegram came.”
“We rescued ourselves, instead,” Cal replied; “and to us that is more satisfactory.”
“It is very much better,” answered the father, catching Cal’s meaning and heartily sympathizing with the proud sense of personal achievement that lay behind.
“Come on home now, and over a proper dinner tell your mother and me all about what happened at Quasi.”
