Kitabı oku: «Doubloons—and the Girl», sayfa 10
Reluctantly, the little party went back to the boat. They found the crew waiting for them and were pulled rapidly to the schooner, whose anchor lights were already gleaming like fireflies in the sudden dusk.
CHAPTER XX
THE EARTH TREMBLES
It was with a feeling of relief after their surroundings of the last few hours, that the treasure seekers found themselves again on board the Bertha Hamilton and seated in the bright cabin at the appetizing and abundant meal that Wah Lee had prepared for them.
All four felt jubilant at the discoveries they had made. Drew and Ruth were sure that they were on the very brink of finding the pirate hoard, and might, that very afternoon, have uncovered it if they had had a few more hours of daylight. To-morrow, they felt sure, would find them in possession of the doubloons.
Drew's personal trouble had been for the moment obscured, although the thought of it was sure to return to torment him as soon as the excitement of the afternoon's search was past.
One thing served to delight and to torture him at the same time. He was almost sure that he had surprised a secret in the eyes of Ruth. He was thrilled as he thought of it. But the next moment he groaned in anguish as he remembered the frightful charge hanging over his head. What had he now to offer her but a wrecked career and a blackened name?
The exhilaration all had felt on their return was followed soon by reaction. Ruth withdrew early to her room, pleading weariness. Tyke was thoughtful, thinking of the thunder he had heard just before they had left the island. The captain went on deck only to find in the report of the second officer more cause for gravity.
Mr. Rogers came up to him as he emerged from the cabin.
"Couldn't get any water this afternoon, sir," he reported. "Found some; but it tasted strong of sulphur, sir."
"Yes, I know, Mr. Rogers," replied the captain. "I tasted some myself while I was ashore, and found it no good. Still, we've got plenty on board, so it doesn't matter."
Still the second officer lingered.
"What is it, Mr. Rogers?" asked the captain, who saw that the man had something on his mind.
"Why, I hardly know how to put it, sir," answered the second officer, a little confusedly. "Perhaps it's foolish to speak about it; and there may be nothing in it, after all."
"Out with it, Mr. Rogers," ordered the captain, all alert in an instant.
"Why, it's this way, sir," returned the second officer. "I don't like the way the men are acting. I never was sweet on the crew from the beginning, for the matter of that, not meaning any disrespect to Mr. Ditty, who had the choosing of most of them. There's a few of them that are smart seamen, but most of them are rank swabs that don't know a marlinspike from a backstay. Seem more like a gang of river pirates than deep-sea sailors."
"I know that most of them are a poor lot," replied the captain. "But they've managed to work the ship down here, and I guess they can get her home again."
"But it isn't only that, sir," went on the other. "There's altogether too much whispering and getting into corners when the men are off duty to suit me. And they shut up like clams when I pass near 'em. And they're surly and impudent when I give 'em orders. I've had to lick a half dozen of 'em already."
"Well, you've got Mr. Ditty to help you out," said the captain.
"That's another queer thing, sir," continued the second officer, evidently reluctant to speak against his superior. "Mr. Ditty is usually quicker with his fists than he is with his tongue; but I never saw him like he is on this voyage. Seems like at times as though he took the men's part, sir."
"That's a hard saying, Mr. Rogers," said the captain.
"True enough, sir; but you told me to speak out. I had trouble with some of the men this very afternoon, sir, when I went over to the island. They found the water tasted of sulphur, and some of 'em started in saying that the devil wasn't very far off when you could taste brimstone so plain. Of course, sailors are superstitious, and I wouldn't have thought anything of that, only it seemed as if the bad ones were just making that an excuse to get the others sore and discontented. They were growling and muttering amongst themselves all the time they were ashore.
"I've got it off my chest now, sir, and maybe you'll think it's foolish, but I thought you ought to know. There's something going on that I can't understand, and it bothers me."
"You've done quite right to tell me what you have, Mr. Rogers," replied the captain, "and I'm obliged to you. I'll think it over. In the meantime, keep your eyes wide open and let me know at once if anything comes to light. By the way, did you ever find anybody who saw what happened to Mr. Parmalee?"
"Not a man among 'em will own to having seen anything. It was a dark night," replied Mr. Rogers, touching his cap and turning away.
Captain Hamilton sought out Tyke immediately and related to him what Rogers had said.
"How many men that you know you can depend on have you got in your crew?" asked Tyke quickly.
"Not more than a dozen that I'm sure of," admitted Captain Hamilton. "That many've sailed with me on a number of voyages and they came home with me from Hong Kong. They are as good men as ever hauled on a sheet. But even some of them may have been affected by whatever it is that's brewing. It takes only a few rotten apples to spoil a barrel, you know."
"A dozen," mused Tyke reflectively. "Those, with you and Allen and me would make fifteen."
"Don't forget Rogers," put in Hamilton.
"Sixteen," corrected Tyke. "That leaves only eighteen, if Ditty's got 'em all. Counting himself, that's nineteen. Sixteen against nineteen. Considering the kind of muts they are, we ought to lick the tar out of 'em."
"We could if it came to open fighting. But if they're up to mischief, they'll know what they're after and will have the advantage of striking the first blow.
"That is," he went on, "if there's anything in it at all. Perhaps we're just imagining they mean something serious, when after all it may be only a matter of sailors' grumbling. Rogers may have only uncovered a mare's nest."
"Perhaps," admitted Tyke. "All the same, I've never trusted that rascal, Ditty, from the minute I clapped eyes on him. An' since he lied so about Allen, I know he's a scoundrel."
"I hope he did lie," said the captain doubtfully.
"Hope!" cried the old man hotly. "Don't you know? Look here, Rufe Hamilton, you an' me have been friends for going on thirty years, but we break friendship right here and now if you tell me you don't know that Ditty lied!"
"There, there, Tyke," soothed the skipper, "have it your own way. But what we have on hand just now is how to get the better of Ditty and his gang."
Gradually Tyke's ruffled feathers were smoothed and he devoted himself to the matter in hand.
They talked late and long, but in the face of only vague conjectures, could reach no definite conclusion. One thing they did decide: It was so to manage matters as to leave Rogers in command of the schooner when the captain himself should be ashore. Unless Ditty were actually deposed, and as yet there was no valid excuse for doing this, the only way they could carry out this plan was to see that Ditty was on shore at the same time that the treasure seekers were.
The next morning when the party was ready to start, Captain Hamilton spoke to Ditty.
"Mr. Ditty," he directed, "you will take ten of the men ashore on leave this morning in the long-boat. I am going myself with the crew of the smaller boat. Mr. Rogers will remain in charge of the ship. If you find sweet water, send back for the casks."
Ditty started to make an objection.
"Beg pardon, sir, but I don't care for shore leave myself. Mr. Rogers can go in my place if he wants to, sir."
"You heard what I said, Mr. Ditty. Mr. Rogers went yesterday," said the captain curtly. "Have both boats lowered at once."
There was no help for it, and Ditty yielded a surly obedience.
"What time shall I bring the men back, sir?" he asked.
"When I give you the signal," replied the captain. "Perhaps not till late afternoon. Take your dinner grub with you."
The boats left the ship's side together, and in a few minutes both reached the beach. With instructions to Ditty to keep his men on the east end of the island, the captain's party entered the jungle.
They easily found the path they had trodden the day before, and were well on their way to the whale's hump when they were startled by a queer vibration of the earth. There was no sound accompanying it. On the contrary, everything seemed hushed in a deathlike stillness. The cries of birds and the humming of insects had stopped as though by magic. Nature seemed to be holding her breath.
Then came a second quivering stronger than the first – a shock which threw the four treasure hunters violently to the ground.
CHAPTER XXI
"IF I WAS SUPERSTITIOUS – "
"What is this?"
"An earthquake!"
"The island is sinking!"
"We'll have to get out of this!"
Such were some of the cries of the treasure hunters as the earth trembled beneath them.
For perhaps twenty seconds the sickening vibration continued. Then it stopped as suddenly as it had begun. The swaying trees finished their dizzy dance, and the rocks that had seemed to be bowing to each other like so many mummers resumed their impassive attitudes. Their lawless frolic had ended!
Drew had caught Ruth by the arm as she went down, and thus had broken the violence of her fall. But all were jarred and shaken.
As the more agile of the quartet, the young man was first on his feet. He tenderly assisted Ruth to rise, while the others scrambled up unaided.
"Are you hurt?" Drew asked the girl solicitously.
"Not a bit," she answered pluckily, and Drew reflected on what a thoroughbred she was.
The others also had sustained no injury. But their forebodings as to their safety on the island had been quickened by this striking example of nature's restlessness. The giant in the volcano was not dead. He was uneasy and had turned in his sleep. It was as though he resented the coming of these interlopers, and was giving them warning to go away and leave him undisturbed.
"Now if I was superstitious," remarked Tyke, "I should say that something was trying to keep us from getting this treasure."
"Let it try then," said the captain grimly. "We haven't come as far as this to turn tail and run just when we're on the point of getting what we came for."
"Good for you, Daddy!" cried Ruth gaily. "We're bound to have that treasure."
They quickened their steps now. This was no time for leisurely investigation of the phenomena of earthquakes. They soon reached the point they had attained the day before. But as they had explored that section of the hillside already, they did not halt there, but pushed on to the west.
"Now," said the captain, as he and Drew disburdened themselves of the spades and mattocks they had brought along, carefully wrapped under the guise of surveyors instruments, "we'll go at this thing in a scientific way. We'll make a rough division of this whole section" – he included with a wave of his hand a space half a mile square – "into four parts. No, three parts. Tyke must rest his leg. Then each must search his section to find some rocks that look like those beauties marked on the map."
The three scattered promptly, and began the search. They looked diligently, but for a long time found nothing to reward their efforts. Drew tried as conscientiously as the rest, although at times he could not make his eyes behave, and his gaze would wander over in Ruth's direction. It was in one of these lapses from industry that he saw her lift her arm and wave eagerly in his direction. He did not wait for a second summons, but hurried over, after calling to the others to follow.
The girl was flushed and excited.
"What have you found?" Drew asked, as soon as he got within speaking distance.
"Look!" she answered. "Doesn't that big rock over there seem to you like a witch's head – wild and ragged locks, and all that?"
From where he was then standing, he could trace no resemblance, but when he reached her side and looked from the same angle he raised a shout.
"The very thing!" he cried. "There can't be any doubt of it."
The rock in question stood apart from the rest on the slope of the hill. Nature had carved it in a moment of prankishness. There were all the features of an old crone, forehead, nose, sunken mouth, nut-cracker jaws, while small streams of lava, hardening as they had flowed, gave the similitude of scanty tresses.
Tyke and the captain, soon came up, and all their doubts disappeared as they gazed.
"The Witch's Head!" they agreed exultantly.
"With that to start with, the rest will be easy," cried Drew. "The Three Sisters can't be more than a few hundred feet or so away."
Ten minutes' further search revealed a group of three rocks, which, while having no resemblance to female faces, were the only ones that stood apart from all the rest as a trio.
The hands of the three men trembled as they got out the old map and pored over it.
"Thirty-seven big paces due north from the Witch's Head; eighty-nine big paces due east from The Three Sisters," muttered the captain.
"Paces, even big paces, is rather indefinite," commented Drew. "If it were yards or feet, now, it would be different. But one man's paces differ from another's, and a short man's differ from a tall man's."
"It was very inconsiderate of that old pirate not to tell exactly how tall he was," jested Ruth.
"Well, we can't have everything handed to us on a gold plate," said the captain. "We may have to dig in a good many places before we strike the right spot."
"Let's do this," suggested Tyke. "Each one of us men will mark off the paces, taking good long strides, an' see where we bring up. Then we'll mark off a big circle that will include all three results. It's a moral certainty that it will be somewheres in that circle if it's here at all."
They acted on this suggestion, Ruth, with pencil and paper, serving as scribe, while the men did the pacing. She was elated at the part she had played in the discovery.
It was an easy enough matter to make thirty-seven big paces from one point and eighty-nine big paces from another, but, as every student of angles knows, it was very difficult to make the two lines converge at the proper point. But though their methods were rough, they succeeded at last in getting a very fair working hypothesis. A rough circle of forty feet in diameter was drawn about the stake Drew set up, and within that circle they were convinced the treasure lay.
By this time the sun had reached the zenith, and before they started to dig they retreated to the shade in the edge of the jungle and ate their lunch.
"Hadn't you better wait until it gets a little cooler by and by?" asked Ruth anxiously. "It will be frightful under this hot sun. This is the hour of siesta."
"I guess we're too impatient for that," answered her father. "But we'll work only a few minutes at a time and take long resting spells between."
Fortunately the ground was moderately soft within the circle, and their spades sank deep with every thrust. Tyke was not allowed to share in this work of excavation, much to his disgust. As for Drew and Captain Hamilton, their muscular arms worked like machines, and they soon had great mounds of earth piled around their respective pits.
But fortune failed to reward their efforts. One place after another was abandoned as hopeless.
They were toiling away with the perspiration dripping from them, when Drew was startled by a cry from Ruth. He leaped instantly out of his excavation, and ran to her. Ruth was standing in the shade of the jungle's edge; but she was staring across the barren hillside toward the west.
"What is it?" demanded the young man. "What do you see?"
"I – I don't know. I'm not sure I saw anything," she admitted. "And yet – "
"Some of the seamen?" demanded Drew. "I've been expecting that, though your father is so sure that Ditty and his gang will remain at the eastern end of the island."
"Oh, Allen! Not Ditty! Not one of the sailors! I – I could almost believe in – in ghosts," and she tried to laugh.
"What is it, my dear?" asked Tyke, who had come over. "What's happened? Did you see something?"
"Yes. It moved. It was there, and then it wasn't there. The space it stood in was empty," said the girl earnestly.
"For the love o' goodness!" cried Tyke, mopping his brow. "You've got me all stirred up. Now, if I was superstitious – "
"You will be if I tell you more about that – that thing," Ruth said. She said it jokingly, and Tyke turned away, going over to where Captain Hamilton was still at work.
"It must have been the spirit of the old pirate come back to guard his hoard," Drew said lightly.
Ruth looked at him very oddly.
"What do you think?" she whispered, when Tyke was out of hearing. "Why should the ghost of Ramon Alvarez look so much like Mr. Parmalee?"
Drew paled, and then flushed.
"Do you mean that, Ruth?" he asked, and he could not keep his voice from trembling.
"Yes," she said. Then she flashed him a sudden smile. "Of course, it was merely an hallucination. But, 'if I was superstitious – '" and she quoted Tyke with a look which she tried to make merry.
CHAPTER XXII
BURIED ALIVE
Ruth pointed out to Drew exactly where the figure that had so startled her had stood. It was down the slope of the hill to the westward, and directly between two lava boulders at the edge of the jungle.
The figure – man, apparition, what or whoever it was – had lingered in sight but a moment.
Before returning to work in his excavation, Drew went down to the spot Ruth had pointed out. There was not a sign of anybody having been there. The earth between the huge lumps of lava seemed not to have been disturbed. He could find no broken twigs or torn vines at the edge of the jungle.
"She dreamed it – that's all," muttered Drew. "Poor Parmalee!"
He thought of the man whose tragic end was so linked with his own existence – of the body buffeted by the waves somewhere in the blue expanse that stretched easterly from this little island.
Of what use would the pirate treasure, if they found it, be to Allen Drew? This bitter query obsessed him. He would gladly give every coin and jewel Ramon Alvarez had buried here, were it his to give, to see Parmalee, leaning on his cane, walk out of the jungle.
He was so lost in these gloomy musings that he started when he felt a light touch on his arm.
He looked up to find Ruth standing beside him.
"Did you find any trace of him, Allen?" she asked, in a voice from which the tremor had not entirely gone.
"Not the slightest sign," he answered. "The man or thing, whatever it was, seems to have vanished into thin air."
"It must have been mere fancy," she murmured, though without conviction.
"Our nerves play strange tricks sometimes," Drew rejoined lightly. "We are all of us in such an excited state just now that anything may happen."
"I've always felt that nerves had been left out of my composition," said Ruth, smiling faintly. "But when it comes to the pinch, I suppose I'm just as liable to them as any one else."
"No, you're not," denied Allen Drew warmly. "You're the most perfect thoroughbred of any woman I ever knew."
"Perhaps your experience has been limited," she suggested, with a flash of her old mischief.
"I'm perfectly willing it should be limited from this time on to just one woman," he was on the point of saying, but bit his lip just in time.
"It is strange that this apparition, for want of a better name, should have taken the form of Parmalee," he continued, his jealousy in spite of himself taking possession of him. "Perhaps you were thinking of him, just then," he hazarded.
"Not at all," returned Ruth frankly. "Just at that moment I'm afraid my mind was fixed on nothing else but the hunt for the pirate's treasure."
Drew felt somewhat reassured by this, and they had turned to retrace their steps when he suddenly stood stock still.
"What is it?" asked Ruth in some alarm.
"I thought I saw an opening in the side of the mountain over there," he replied. "Perhaps the ghost, or whatever it was, is hiding in that," he added jestingly. "At any rate I'm going to take a minute and see what it is."
He made a step in the direction he had indicated. Ruth sought to restrain him.
"Don't you think you had better call my father and Mr. Grimshaw before you venture in there?" she asked. "You don't know what may be lurking there."
"Nonsense," laughed the man lightly. "They'd only be vexed at being interrupted in their digging. At any rate they're within easy call – if there should be any need of them."
Ruth was silenced though only half convinced. Together they went over to a gaping rent in the side of the hill.
As a matter of precaution, Drew had taken his revolver from his belt and held it ready in his hand. He had really no expectation of meeting anything hostile in human shape and he did not believe that any animal that would be at all formidable ranged the island.
"If it's a ghost, I don't suppose this revolver would do any good," he joked, more to relieve Ruth's uneasiness than any that he felt himself. "At the very least I'd have to have a silver bullet or one that had been dipped in the river Jordan."
The opening before which they stood was irregular in shape and seemed to have been made by one of the convulsions of nature that apparently were so common to the island. It was, roughly speaking, about four feet wide and nine high, and from the glimpse they got into its depths seemed to widen out in the interior. There was nothing about it to speak of human occupancy and the ground leading to it bore no marks of footprints. Nor were there any bones scattered about that might indicate that it was the lair of wild beasts.
Drew cupped his hands to his mouth and sent forth a ringing call.
"Hello, in there!" he shouted.
There was no answer, but the reverberations of his own voice that came back to him seemed to show that the cave extended inward to a considerable depth.
"Hello!" he shouted again. "If there's any one in there, come out! We're friends and won't hurt you."
Again there was no answer.
"Doesn't seem to be sociably inclined," muttered Allen grimly.
"I guess there's nobody there," said Ruth. "Let's go back to the others, Allen. We've spent too much time already on this foolish notion of mine."
"It wasn't foolish at all," protested Drew. "As a matter of fact it may prove to be of the greatest importance. We ought to sift the matter to the bottom. If there's anybody on this island we don't know about, it ought to be our first business to find out. I think I'll take a peep into this mysterious cave."
He made a step forward, but Ruth's hand tightened on his arm and he stopped.
"Do you think you'd better risk it, Allen?" she asked. "How do you know what may be in there. Suppose – suppose – "
"Suppose what?" he asked with a whimsical smile.
"Suppose anything should happen to you?" she half whispered.
"Nothing will happen to me," he rejoined. "Not that it matters much anyway," he added bitterly, as the thought swept over him of the black cloud of suspicion that hung above him.
"Just give me a minute, Ruth," he pleaded, hating himself for his reckless words as he saw the pained look in her eyes. "I won't go in for more than twenty or thirty feet, just to see if there's anything about this place that we really ought to know. You stay here and I'll be back before you fairly know I've gone."
She reluctantly loosened her grasp of his arm and he plunged forward into the darkness.
For the first ten feet or so, the going was rendered rather difficult by projecting bits of rock that caught at his clothes and impeded his progress. But then the passage widened out steadily until he could not feel the sides even when his arms were stretched to their utmost limit.
The light that had followed him from the small entrance finally vanished, and he went forward with the utmost caution, carefully planting each foot for the next step. At any moment, for all he knew, he might find himself on the brink of a precipice.
"Black as Egypt in here," he muttered to himself, as he felt for the matches he carried in an oilskin bag in the pocket of his coat. "I guess I'd better strike a – "
But he never finished the sentence.
A deafening roar resounded through the cavern and he was thrown violently forward on his hands and knees. Again came that dizzy, sickening shaking of the earth, that nauseating sense of being lifted to a height and suddenly let fall, that squirming of the ground beneath him as though it were a gigantic reptile.
His earlier experience in the open air had been bad enough, but there at least he had had the sense of space and sunlight and companionship. Here in the darkness and confinement the horrors of the earthquake were multiplied.
For more than a minute, which seemed to him an hour, the convulsions of the earth continued. Then they gradually subsided, though it was some minutes later before the quivering finally ceased.
Dazed and bewildered, Allen Drew scrambled to his feet. His hands were scraped and bleeding, though he thought little of this in his mental perturbation.
His thought turned instantly to Ruth. What might have happened to her while he was away from her? The trees were thick near the mouth of the cave. Suppose one had fallen and caught her before she could escape?
He started to rush back to the entrance, but to his astonishment, could see no trace of the light that had marked the place where the opening had been.
He stopped short, puzzled and alarmed.
"That's queer," he muttered. "I guess that jar I got has turned me around. It must be in the other direction."
He hastily retraced his steps. But as the cave grew wider and he found no sign of the narrow passage by which he had entered, he knew that he was wrong.
"Must have had it right the first time," he thought, "but it's strange that I didn't see any light. Perhaps there was a bend in the passage that I hadn't noticed."
Again he went back, feeling his way. The path narrowed and his outstretched hand came in contact with a shred of cloth that had been torn from his coat when he had entered. This was proof positive that he was on the right track. But where then was the light?
The answer came to him with startling suddenness when he plunged violently into a mass of earth and rock that barred his way.
The entrance to the cave had vanished!
In its place was a vast mass of earth, a slice of the mountain side that had been torn loose by that last mighty writhing of tortured nature and that now held him as securely a prisoner as though he were in the center of the earth.
