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My uncle’s shop in Cornhill was so narrow a place and so dwarfed by the buildings on either side, that nineteen out of every twenty of the passers-by were, I doubt not, ignorant of the fact that Simon Bannister lived there and sold telescopes.

Not one out of nineteen hundred of them would have known how to look through a telescope, and as for the compasses, quadrants, sextants, and charts of the world that helped to make up the old man’s stock-in-trade, how many Londoners would ever have known their names, much less their use?

Bannister and Slimon was the name of the firm, and if you think from the small size of the shop in Cornhill that the firm was a small one, it was not—at least in the way of making money.

It was in Brook Street, Minories, that the money was really made, for there Mr. Slimon, a thin man, hard and dry as a nut, presided over the small factory where the brass was cut for the sextants, and the lenses polished for the telescopes, and where the air was filled for ever with the humming of lathes and the coughing of brass-workers—pale-faced men in shirt sleeves, with bent backs, dwelling in rooms where the sunshine never came.

That is the impression the factory stamped on my youthful mind whenever I was sent on a message to Mr. Slimon—an impression not at all blunted or made more kindly by the miserable streets I had to pass through on my way there, or by Mr. Slimon himself, sitting in his little office before piles of papers, surrounded by rows of ledgers, buttoned tightly up in a snuff-brown coloured coat, a pen behind his ear, and his wig awry.

I disliked this man with the simple and honest dislike of a boy. I disliked him just as I disliked getting up at five of a frosty morning, just as I disliked a rainy day, a November fog, or the brimstone and treacle with which old Mrs. Service, my uncle’s housekeeper, dosed me once a fortnight.

And he returned my dislike. I would give him the message or the letter I was charged to deliver, and then I would escape from his presence with the answer as quickly as might be, and home through the bustling streets as quickly as their attraction would permit.

To this day I carry the recollection of how, on opening the shop door and closing it behind me, the roar of Cornhill would be cut off and the busy world shut out, leaving nothing for one to hear but the silence of the dark old shop and the ticking of the eight-day clock. I would sometimes open the door and shut it again several times to get the effect, a sure way of bringing my uncle out from the back parlour in a temper; for old people, ay, and even middle-aged, too, have little patience often enough with the fidgety ways of a child, forgetting that to him the great world is still a toy to be played with or, better still, a fairy tale made out of real things and fanciful.

So far as that goes I have never grown up. Whether it be a gift or whether it be a want of my mind, the world still pleases and surprises me as it did in my earliest days, when the spirit of adventure called to me out of the roar of London, and every turning promised something new.

The shop had a counter covered with a glass case, such as you see in jewellers’ shops, and on the wall behind the counter and above the lockers where charts were kept stood other glass cases all filled with nautical instruments, enough to have fitted out a dozen tall ships; and the space between the counter and the cases was so narrow that my uncle had to take it sideways.

He was a very big man, wheezy, with a red evenly coloured face, a member of the Worshipful Company of Spectacle Makers, and he had never seen the sea.

He, I, and Mrs. Service lived above the shop, for in those days a shopman and his shop were one, and he had no other house, even though he kept a glass coach to take him to a dinner at the Mansion House or a meeting of his guild.

One Saturday afternoon in June, as brave and bright a day as ever lit Cornhill, I returned from school—I was a day boy at St. Paul’s—to find my uncle on the point of going out to meet some friends. He was dressed in his best suit of mulberry-coloured cloth, silk stockings, shoes with solid brass buckles, and a huge bunch of seals dangling at his fob. He had his second-best wig on—four wigs he had always on service—and in his hand his clouded cane, brought to him as a present from the Indies by some ship’s captain or other.

“You’ll stay here,” said he, “till five of the clock. The till’s locked and there’s nothing in it, so should any person come for change in a hurry you will know what to say. Write any messages down on the slate. Should Captain Horn come, tell him to wait. There’s half of a bottle of port in the cupboard; set it out for him, and my compliments, and I’ll be back at five.” He pulled a watch like a small gold turnip out of his pocket, looked at it, put it back, and stumped out of the shop.

I watched him hailing a hackney-coach with the clouded cane; then he drove away, and I was left to my meditations and the ticking of the eight-day clock.

My bag, filled with school books, lay where I had put it down on the table of the little sitting-room. I had tasks that day to accomplish whose very name I have forgotten—sums, no doubt, to be made right and exercises to be spelled over. But there in the silence, with the ticking of the clock in my ears, and the sense of being a prisoner in a way, and a feeling that any moment the shop door might open and a customer come in, my mind could not fix itself to the sums and the exercises, so, having put the port on the table and a glass, I fetched down a book from the shelf, where my uncle kept his books and tobacco jar, and with my elbows on the table and the book before me, forgot myself and the shop and the customers and Captain Horn, and became Robinson Crusoe on his island.

I could have read that book upside down, I believe, if it had been given to me to read it in no other way; as it was I had read it through and backwards and forwards, and here and there. It was a heavy old copy with a blue and gilt cover, and two pictures were missing; but little I wanted with pictures when I could see, as clearly as though I were looking through air, the island, and the goats, and the grapes drying in the sun and turning into raisins, Friday’s footprint, and Robinson’s fur cap, his two guns, and the sea washing in on the beach—I who had never seen the sea.

Then, whilst I was sitting there reading, a sound struck my ear that I was destined afterwards to remember in lonely islands of the south within earshot of the sea, for the sound of Cornhill heard in my uncle’s little parlour when the shop door was opened was exactly like the sound of the sea on a quarrelling beach.

I shut up “Robinson” just at the place where the terror of the footstep in the sand is making him to hide, and, pushing open the glass door, which was ajar, went into the shop.

A big seafaring man was standing near the counter, slewing his head round, and gazing here and there at the fittings, the chronometers, the compasses; and “Hullo,” said he, catching sight of me, “is this here the Sign of the Spyglass—one Simon Bannister?”

“You’re Captain Horn?” I asked.

He stood staring at me as if I’d struck him. “Well,” said he at last, “is my name on my figurehead? Horn it is and Capting it is, but wherever did you see it writ on me?”

“My uncle said he was expecting you,” I replied, pleased enough at his surprise and at having hit the mark with his name, “and if you will come into the sitting-room, and take a seat and wait for him, there is some wine he asked me to set out for you——”

“Heave ahead,” said the Captain, following my lead to the sitting-room. “And so,” said he, taking his seat in the big armchair by the table, “he’s left you in charge of the premises, and all these spyglasses and compasses and sich?”

“He has.”

“Well,” said the Captain, placing his hat on the table and shutting one eye at the bottle whilst reaching for the glass, “he couldn’t have left a brighter lad—never a brighter lad. And what mou’t your name be?” asked he, pouring himself out a glass of the port.

“Dick Bannister,” I replied.

He filled his mouth with a half glassful of the port, seemed to rinse his teeth with it, and then swallowed it.

I thought I had never seen a bigger or a coarser man. His face was very large, scantily bearded, burnt almost to the colour of mahogany by the sun, and it had no expression—at least it never changed in expression during our conversation, but remained just the face of a big sailor-man: a bronze figurehead that seemed for ever gazing over the waves.

The Captain emptied his glass, and then, quite familiarly, and speaking as a man might speak when deep in thought: “See here,” said he.

“Sir!” said I.

“I can’t tackle this bilge no how. Han’t you got a drop of rum on the premises? Gin would do at a pinch, or brandy, but let it be sperrits.”

“I haven’t,” replied I, all fluttered in my hospitality. “Uncle never has spirits. I might get you some at the Grapes across the way, only—only—uncle might object—you see——”

The Captain took a guinea from his pocket; from another pocket he took an empty flask.

“Dick,” said he, “I’m stiff on my pins from walking; get me this full o’ rum and keep a shilling from the change. This is between man and man, and who’s to blow the gaff? Not I.”

I took the flask and the guinea, and, quite determined not to take the shilling, fetched the rum.

When I returned the Captain was sitting in a blue haze of smoke, his pipe in his mouth, and his tinder-box on the table. In his hands was “Robinson Crusoe,” which he seemed to be reading upside down.

“And there’s your bit,” said he, slapping a shilling down on the table with his horny thumb after he had counted the change. “Come, this is between man and man; who’s to blow the gaff? Not I—eh—who’s to blow the gaff?”

I refused, he persisted, and I gave in.

There was a jug of water on the side-table and a glass. He mixed himself a glass of grog, and tasted it whilst I picked up “Robinson Crusoe,” which he had let tumble on the floor, and placed it on the table.

The Captain sat easy in his chair as though he were at home, one great fist on the table fingering the glass of grog, his pipe between his teeth not in the least interfering with his conversation. He plied me with questions as to my age and my attainments. He seemed impressed with the fact that I could sum and read, but, as if not quite crediting or wishing to make sure, he ordered me to open the book he had dropped and read him some of the printing in it. I promptly complied, and opened “Robinson” by chance just at the place where I had left off. Then I looked back a few pages to the place just before he found Friday’s footstep on the sand.

“He was wrecked, you know,” said I, “on a desert island, and he was all alone; he had two guns, though, and a parrot.” Then I read.

The Captain sat smoking and drinking his grog, but he listened, for if I read too quickly he’d tell me to belay, or put a stopper on; making me re-read, and then telling me to heave ahead, always using some sea term, as though he were ordering some ship and not my simple story.

But when I got to the footprint on the sand, the Captain sat up in his chair. I could tell without looking up that the thing had struck him with more than ordinary interest.

He brought his fist down on the table.

Then, suddenly, and with an exclamation, he brought his fist down on the table, making the glasses jump.

“That’s it,” said he, “that’s the truth, for I’ve seen it myself with these two blessed dead lights. Wrecked on Palm Cay I was, an island not so big but you might spit over, and then one day I came on a footmark. Stove in I was with the lonesomeness and all shook up for the want of a mouthful of rum, and then I came on a footmark, and nought to make it but the gulls shoutin’ against the wind; no livin’ thing but me all taken aback and standin’ there like that chap you was tellin’ of. Truth? I can see it. And whose was the footmark, d’ye think? Why, whose but my own? Left it there the day before, I had, for some bits of sand takes a print like taller and sticks to it like wax. Crazy I might ha’ gone and run amuck hadn’t I seen there was no big toe to it, for I’d lost mine twelve year before in a traverse down south of the Antilles when we took a——”

The Captain suddenly stopped, as though remembering himself. What old adventure of the sea down south of the Antilles he had suddenly dropped the curtain of silence upon, who can say? The question moved me deeply, yet I could not put it to him. Some instinct told me it was not a thing to be brought to light; but I had not long to think on the matter, for the Captain, plugging away at the tobacco in the bowl of his pipe with a horny finger, and lighting it again and blowing big clouds of smoke, told me to heave ahead. I did for a bit, and then the continuous narration being too much for him to follow, he told me to belay, and proceeded to question me as to the doings of Robinson—who, by the way, he seemed to consider a real character—and the whereabouts of the island. I could not satisfy him on the latter point, but I gave him lots of Robinson’s doings—how he had made himself clothes from the skins of goats, how he had done this, and how he had done that—and there I was interesting and instructing a weather-beaten old seaman to whom the ocean and its desert islands were as common as Cornhill to me—I who had never seen the ocean or a desert island either. But it was the wreck of the Spanish ship that held him tighter than any of the other incidents in this most wonderful of stories.

“Spanish, were she?” asked the Captain. “Hove up on the rocks, d’ye say?”

“All the stern and quarter of her was beaten to pieces by the sea,” went on I, reciting “Robinson” from memory. “There was a live dog on her, and he found two chests full of money—at least, there was a lot of money in them beside other things—doubloons and pieces of eight, and some small bars of gold.”

“Bars, did you say?” cried the Captain.

“Bars of gold,” I replied.

What the Captain had upon his tongue was never uttered, for at that moment a slight movement behind made me spring round in my seat, and there, at the door of the room, stood Mr. Slimon. He had entered the shop so quietly that I had not heard him. It was a habit of his to go softly and take people by surprise, and there he stood looking from me to the bottle upon the table, and from the bottle to the Captain.

“Good evening, Captain,” said Mr. Slimon. “Have you been waiting long?”

“Well, I mou’t a’ been here an hour,” said the Captain with a wink at me as if to assure me of secrecy with regard to the rum. “I set here and smoked a pipe, set here waitin’ for you and Mr. Bannister, and his nevvy here set with me.”

“I hope you have been comfortable,” said Mr. Slimon, passing round the table sideways, so that his face was turned all the time to the Captain, who had resumed his seat.

“Ay, ay, comfortable enough,” replied the Captain, tapping the dottle out of his pipe into the palm of his hand. “And, may I ask, have you come to any understanding with Mr. Bannister yet on this here traverse we was agreed upon?”

“Dick,” said Mr. Slimon, turning sharply to me without answering the Captain, “the shop.”

No one had entered, and there was no one to attend to; he wanted me to go out of the room, and that was his method of ordering me to go. I rose from my chair, picked up my bag of school books, and made for the door. As I left the room I caught the Captain’s eye, and he winked at me again solemnly; not only that, but the thumb of his great hand lying upon the table made a twitch in the direction of Mr. Slimon. I do not know how he did it, but without saying a word and without Mr. Slimon noticing in the least he managed to convey to me his slight opinion of that gentleman and his knowledge that I shared in it.

This, had I needed it, would have rounded off and completed my liking for the Captain.

I spread my books on the counter, but, as for study, I might as well have left them in their bag. What was the “traverse” in which Mr. Slimon was about to engage with Captain Horn? The Captain had lost a toe in a traverse down south of the Antilles—fighting, you may be sure; had it chopped off most likely with a cutlass, or hit with a musket-ball. Was he a pirate?

In those days piracy was all but a thing of the past. British cruisers had nearly stamped it out, the great hawks of the sea had vanished; yet now and then came news of a ships’ company rising and taking a vessel, and using her for plundering purposes—short-lived affairs ending ingloriously enough, but for me and for my schoolmates there were pirates still—alive, black-bearded, sailing the seas in schooners and hanging their victims and being hanged themselves on yard-arms as pirates should.

In the midst of my speculations my uncle returned. He asked had Captain Horn arrived, and on my answering him “Yes,” he went into the parlour, where I heard him introducing Mr. Slimon formally to the Captain. Then he looked into the shop, and ordered me to put up the shutters. Mr. Prance, my uncle’s assistant, who did not live on the premises, usually did this, but he was on a holiday to-day, and so the task fell to me.

When I had finished I lit the lamp, and with my elbows on the counter returned to my books; but my uncle had not quite closed the door of the parlour, and through it I could hear their voices—Mr. Slimon’s voice low and secretive as himself, my uncle’s voice, and the voice of Captain Horn. I strained my ears, but could make out nothing very distinct, only this: that my uncle seemed to be asking questions and Mr. Slimon and Captain Horn answering them. I had been straining my ears some little time when a word came to them uttered by Mr. Slimon in a high-pitched voice.

“Gold!”

This was too much for me, and, moving cautiously along behind the counter till I reached the parlour door, there I stood and listened to the voice of the Captain, low pitched and deep and purring, with a laugh in it as you might say.

“She won’t fight us, gentlemen, she won’t fight us,” the Captain was saying, and then the voice of Mr. Slimon seemed to cut into the Captain’s voice like a thin wedge:

“No, but to be underarmed in a case like this is as bad as to be undermanned—fool’s policy. Put down a hundred and ten for the arms and ammunition, Richard.”

And then my uncle’s voice came like the voice of the clerk in church making the responses: “A hundred and ten.”

They had lit the lamp in the parlour, and I could see the shadow of my uncle’s head on the muffled glass of the door. Boy-like, I had put out my finger and touched the shadow, feeling as though I were touching him, but without the fear of the clip on the ear I would have received had he felt my finger.

Then I listened.

“Got that down?” said Mr. Slimon.

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s all.”

“All?” cried the Captain. “Why bless my soul, you haven’t put the stores into her. What mou’t you think we were goin’ to eat—the ammunition?”

“The stores,” said Mr. Slimon, “I will arrange for.”

“You won’t,” said the Captain. “I ain’t goin’ to sea with no condemned Admiralty stores aboard. I don’t mind weevils, but I must have biscuits as well; boots on my feet is all right, but I’m goin’ to have no old boots in my stomach nor in the harness cask ’nuther; and no black beadles in the molasses. Bread and beef is all I want.”

“Look here,” said Mr. Slimon, “I’ll get the stores at Jervis’s. Will that suit you? I’ll tell him to put the best he has on board. Will that suit you?”

“Ay, ay,” said the Captain; “Jervis is all right. Get him to victual me and I don’t grumble.”

“Then that’s settled,” said Mr. Slimon.

I heard the Captain heaving himself up; my uncle’s shadow rose, and blocked the whole of the muffled panel of the door, and I darted back to my books on the counter.

The Captain passed out, accompanied by Mr. Slimon, and then Mrs. Service came down to lay our supper.

During the meal I made several attempts to speak about the Captain, but my uncle would say nothing to lead the subject on. He seemed thoughtful and not at ease—as a man might seem who had pledged himself to a bargain of which he felt doubtful.

As for me, I had come to the rightful conclusion that my uncle and Mr. Slimon were about to furnish out a ship for some purpose other than trade. Those words of the Captain were ringing in my ears: “She won’t fight us.” Who was “she”?

Asking myself the question, I fell asleep that night. It had been the most eventful day in my life, for had I not spoken to a man once actually shipwrecked, and listened to him telling the story with his own lips?

Days passed and weeks, and I heard nothing more of the Captain. I might have fancied the whole thing a dream but for my uncle, who ever since that night seemed absorbed in some thought of his own—and not a pleasant thought either, to judge by his temper. It was never good at the best of times, but nowadays he would snap up Mr. Prance, the assistant, for the least fault, or fancied fault, and he would give me a clip on the ear for nothing or next to nothing, and as for Mrs. Service, he would work her up with grumbling at the food or the cooking till, unable to bear it all herself, she would pay it out on me, so that I was like a shuttlecock between two battledores, and glad enough to escape to school of a morning and sorry enough to return home at night.

Then came the holidays.

The very first morning of the holidays—a Monday, and the hottest Monday that ever dawned, perhaps on London—Mr. Slimon appeared at the Sign of the Spyglass, and ordered me to get myself ready to carry some parcels for him, as he was going down to the docks. I had never seen the docks, and you may be sure I was not long getting my hat. Mr. Slimon had a hackney-coach at the door to carry us part of the way, and into it we got, I was sitting on the front seat and he, with the parcels beside him, on the back. He gave me directions to keep my eye on the streets and notice and remember their names, for that he might have need to send me on a message the same way again. Then he took snuff for the rest of the journey, and did not open his lips again, or only to quarrel over the fare with the driver when we drew up in the West India Dock Road. Here were great drays going along laden with all sorts of things, and sailor-men (some of them drunk), and children, the filthiest I have ever seen, playing in the gutter, and, as Mr. Slimon led the way along, I thought I had never seen shops so dirty yet to hold one so, for there were some that sold parrots and all sorts of strange birds, old junk shops, ships’ chandlers, sailmakers, all sorts of trades I had never heard of, and every second house seemed a tavern, and the smell of spirits was as if they had watered the street with it.

Mr. Slimon pushed his way through the crowd, telling me all the time to keep my eyes open and to remember the way. We crossed the road, making our way between drays and lorries and under horses’ noses and then, all at once, there, in the midst of London, so to say, I found myself amongst ships. You’d have thought they had run aground. The ships I had seen up to this were ships in pictures, ships on rocks like that Spanish ship in “Robinson Crusoe,” ships sailing with the sea around them; but here were ships hove up on the streets, you might say, and with their bowsprits pointing over walls and their figure-heads so close you might almost touch them.

The sky was blue without a cloud, and all laced with masts and spars, and the little flags fluttering from the mast-tops seemed alive in the breeze. And, I don’t know where it came from, but here, though not a ship was moving, a feeling of freedom and distance and blowing winds came to me such as I had never felt before, such as I have never felt since, though I have sailed over half the world.

The smell of tar and the smell of ropes and rotten wood was strong and faint by turns, and there were green figure-heads all gone dull with sun and salt, and white figure-heads, some with yellow-painted crowns on them. Some of the ships looked new-painted, but most of them—those I expect that were in from long voyages—were dull and rusty, with great black blisters where the sun had raised the paint.

As I followed Mr. Slimon, making my way between bales and boxes and stepping over the great brown hawsers, I peeped now and then over the dock edge at the water between the ships, which, where it was not all glittering and shot over with colours from the coal tar, showed itself green with the clear green that lies nowhere but in ship shadows. But what struck me more than anything was the crying of the sailors who were warping a ship out from her moorings, which mingled itself with the creaking of cordage and the clanking of chains, the slatting of loose canvas, and the sound of a fife, a shrill and shaking sound that mixed itself with everything from the sunlight to the fluttering flags.

“Here we are!” said Mr. Slimon, as he paused at a plank leading to a ship that was moored broadside on to the wharf.

We had approached her from the stern end, and I read on her counter the name Albatross without in the least knowing all that the name would mean to me, but when Mr. Slimon paused at the gang-plank, I at once knew that the vessel was the mysterious ship which my uncle and Mr. Slimon were fitting out; and at a stroke all my imaginations and speculations swept down and roosted on her. She seemed enormous, yet she was only a brig of some three hundred tons, and as I followed my leader across the shaking gang-plank and stood on the broad deck between the high bulwarks, the great masts springing from the deck, the spars above, the standing rigging, the raffle of the running rigging, the boats, the anchors, the blocks all cried out to me telling me things I had never heard before, yet which I seemed somehow acquainted with.

A deck-house stood aft of the mizzen-mast, and scarcely had we set foot on the deck when Captain Horn appeared from the door of the deck-house and greeted my companion. He nodded to me, and then, Mr. Slimon taking my parcels, they both went into the house, shut the door, and left me alone.

There in the hot sunshine in that strange place, alone, and with the bustle of the wharf at a distance, Adventure herself seemed standing beside me, and the old brig seemed to say: “Come, touch me, feel me, pull on my ropes, clap your hand on my anchor; I’m real. I get away from the land, and then there’s nothing but me, sea all around me and winds blowing, sailors on my deck, and I take them anywhere—anywhere—anywhere.”

That is what the old brig said to me, and I answered her by playing with her as a puppy plays with its mother. I pulled on some of the falls, I examined the blocks of the purchases, I came forward and tried to shake the great anchor. The fo’c’sle-hatch was open, and I peeped down into the darkness of the fo’c’sle; the capstan and capstan bars, the belaying-pins, the old green-painted bell, the pump—all these I examined and felt and handled, till the old brig, if she had any pride in her, must have felt pleased, one would think. Nay, I even smelt her, and she had twenty delicious smells—delicious to my nose at least—from the tobacco and slush-lamp and fust smell of the fo’c’sle to the hemp and tar smell of the ropes and hawsers.

I was turning from the galley into which I had poked my head, when a loud “Hullo!” from the wharf-side brought me facing round.

On the wharf, dancing in the sun, shouting and grinning, all in tatters, and with his hair frizzled and tied up in little knots, was the most extraordinary black individual I had ever seen.

I was going to have called him a black man, but though he was of a man’s size, his antics were so childlike, his whole appearance was so full of carelessness and fun, he seemed to have so little to do with the serious business of life, that even my boy’s mind refused to give him the full title of man.

“Hullo!” cried the creature. “Hi, massa white boy! Ebber got a penny for Jam? Jam jump fo’ penny, Jam him turn topside down——”

Upside down he went, hands on the granite of the wharf and bare feet kicking at the sun. “Hi! Jam topside down now. Hi! Massa Johnson, ebber got a penny for Jam?”

“Hi! Massa Johnson, ebber got a penny for Jam?”

He turned a somersault, then he stood there grinning and frying in the sun.

“Jam’s hungry, massa—gib ’um biskit.”

I was so taken with him that I put my hand in my pocket to search for some money.

“I have only a fourpenny-bit,” said I, just as one would say to a beggar-man: “I have only a sovereign,” or, in other words, “I have no change.”

“I have only a fourpenny-bit.”

“Fowpenny-bit! That’ll do, massa, that’ll do, massa. All the same to Jam; chuck her up, massa! See Jam ketch her.”

“What’s your name, do you say?” I asked, fingering the coin, for it was my only possession in the way of money.

“Jam, massa. Chuck her up; fo’ she gets cold.

I flung the coin to him; he caught it in mid-air, stuck it in his mouth, and next instant he was upside down again, this time walking about on the palms of his hands.

At this moment the door of the deck-house opened. Mr. Slimon and the Captain came out, and the figure on the quay, catching sight of them and forgetting my existence, made, still walking on his hands, towards the stern of the ship.

“Hi, Massa Capting, good-day, sar; fine day, sar. You want cook, sar? Jam plenty fine cook, sar; bile ’um taters, sar. Hi! Massa Capting, Jam topside down now. Hi! Massa Capting, ebber got a biskit for Jam?”

Captain Horn, after one glance at the figure on the wharf, made a dash at a belaying-pin, seized it from the bulwark, and made as if to fling it at his questioner. Next moment Jam was on his feet and gone.

I never saw anyone disappear so rapidly, and I thought I had never seen anyone so completely careless and happy as Jam, and I was not a bit sorry I had given him my fourpenny-bit; he was worth it.

Captain Horn put the belaying-pin back without a word, and led the way to the gang-plank to see us off the ship.

Mr. Slimon went first, and as I followed my eye caught the eye of the Captain, who winked at me solemnly and made a jerk with his thumb in the direction of my uncle’s partner. His opinion of that gentleman could not have been conveyed in a better manner by words, and though we had never spoken on the subject, Mr. Slimon formed a bond of union between us, for much as Captain Horn disliked and disrespected his new owner, he could not have disliked or disrespected him more than I did.

“I have to see a merchant on business,” said Mr. Slimon, when we were back in the West India Dock Road. “Here is threepence; you will return to Cornhill, purchase yourself some bread and cheese on the way—it is scarcely an hour’s walk—and as you return note well the streets you pass through, as I may require you to take a message on a future occasion.”

He walked off, his mean figure buttoned up in the snuff-coloured coat, and I took my way back, glad enough to be free of him.

Several times during the next few weeks I was sent on messages to the docks. The old brig was all of a bustle now, for the hatches were off and the cargo going in. Captain Horn would take Mr. Slimon’s messages without a word more than “Ay, ay” or “All right, sonny.” He would be without his coat, sitting on a hatch edge or leaning on the bulwarks, either chewing or smoking tobacco, and with his eye on the lading, breaking out now and then to shout to an acquaintance on the wharf, or to abuse one of the stevedores; but he did not mind my idling about the ship and asking him questions.

There was one question that burned my tongue, but I never asked it: the question about the bars of gold and the ship that would not fight. Here there was nothing to hint of anything but in the way of trade, a trading brig with open hatches, barrels and crates and boxes being lowered into the holds, an old sea captain with a mahogany-coloured face watching the lading; yet something beyond the conversation I had overheard told me that this was no trading voyage, or only a trading voyage in part. It may have been Mr. Slimon’s frequent visits to my uncle, and the fact that they would sit consulting for hours at a time in the parlour with the door shut, it may have been the alteration in my uncle’s manner; whatever it was, I had the conviction that something secret, unlawful, and delightful was going forward, that Captain Horn was in main charge of the affair, and that the old brig was to be used to put their plans into operation.

All I had ever read or heard from my companions of smugglers, pirates, and desperate deeds of the sea came back to me, and at night lying in bed I would be on board the Albatross, surrounded by all sorts of ruffians armed with cutlasses, and the deck would be laden with bars of gold taken from the ship that would not fight.

The most bloodthirsty project would not have stirred my imagination so much as that half-starved conversation. What sort of ship was she, gold-laden yet unable to defend herself?

Every summer my uncle, towards the end of July, would take me down for a fortnight’s holiday to a cottage which he rented near Ware in Hertfordshire, but this summer he had determined to go alone. Mr. Slimon wanted me, it seemed, at the factory and to run messages. The prospect did not please me at all; running on messages I did not mind, but the factory and Mr. Slimon both together were too much for me, and I determined to run away. I determined to run away and hide somewhere about the docks, to wait till the brig was about to sail, and to hide myself on board of her. The idea came to me as naturally as the idea of eating my dinner; the old brig had been calling to me for weeks. It seemed as easy as possible, boy that I was, to put my project in execution, and the very day my uncle left I began, directly after breakfast, collecting such things as I thought I might want, and making a bundle of them.

Whilst I was thus engaged I heard a voice hailing me from below. It was Mr. Slimon. I came down with a very red face, and if he had been in his ordinary watchful mood he would have noticed my confusion, and maybe asked questions; but he was in a hurry. He had a small box to be carried after him to the docks, and, just as on the first day, he had a hackney coach at the door to take us to the Dock Road.

It would have cost him sixpence for a boy to do the job, and that is why he took me, so that to Mr. Slimon’s meanness I may attribute the part I played in Captain Horn’s adventures, for if I had not gone to the docks that day I should most likely now be a simple retired maker of telescopes instead of what I am. . . .

When we got to the wharf I instantly noticed a difference in the Albatross. Not only were the decks swarming with men, but a blue flag was at her fore; the sails were half shaken loose, and the old brig had altogether an indescribable appearance of life—she was like a person awakened from a long sleep and rubbing her eyes. “I’m off! I’m off!” If she had cried it to me with a human voice she could not have said it more distinctly; her fluttering Blue Peter, the bunts of canvas slatting to the breeze, the sailor-men shouting, all told the same tale.

“Mr. Slimon,” I said, “when does she start?”

“In an hour,” replied Mr. Slimon, elbowing his way through the crowd that a departing ship always draws to her. “In an hour, when the tide turns. Now mind that box, and don’t be star-gazing. Dear bless my soul, have you no eyes in your head?”

A hawser had nearly tripped me up, but I did not heed the shock or the anger of Mr. Slimon; the thought that the old brig was to start without me cast everything else out of my mind. The brig, absurd as it may seem, had become a human thing for me. I swear that I loved her decks as much as ever a boy loved the face of some mature charmer of thirty or forty; the blocks and ropes and tackles, the standing rigging, the masts and spars—all these had for me a romance and power of attraction extraordinary and beyond telling, and now she was crying “I’m off! I’m off!” waving her flag to me, and not seeming to care a bit.

“Are you going with her, sir?” I asked, emboldened by my disappointment, and not caring much whether Mr. Slimon gave me a clip on the ear or not for my inquisitiveness.

“Only as far as Tilbury,” replied Mr. Slimon. “Here, give me the box, and now cut away back; go first to the factory, and give my respects to Mr. Tellson, the overseer; tell him I will not be back to-night, but to expect me to-morrow morning; then you can return home and have your tea. Here is fourpence for your trouble; now be off.”

He took the box, which was fairly heavy, and crossed the gang-plank with it, leaving me there on the wharf with the fourpence in my hand and a feeling near to despair in my heart.

As I have said, the decks were bustling with sailors; some of them had wives who had come to see them off, some of the wives had brought children, and the squalling of the children, the laughter and shouts of the sailors and their wives—who, from all of it they showed, had little enough sorrow at parting—the shrilling of a fife and the hubbub of the dock crowd, made me giddy, so that for a while I could not think, but just stood there like a stock without turning to go or making to stay.

Then suddenly, as if it had stepped out of the crowd, an idea came to me and took me by the arm. More than that, it led me across the gang-plank on to the deck of the Albatross. Mr. Slimon was not to be seen, neither was Captain Horn. They were both in the deck-house, most probably, for its door was shut; no one observed me or questioned me. A man with a pale face—Mr. Chopping, the mate, as I afterwards found—was bawling directions to some hands forward of the galley. The galley door was open, and, unperceived, I slipped in. Close to the copper, and forming part of the galley wall, was a huge locker, which I had explored one day, little thinking of the use I was presently to put it to. It had a sliding door. I pushed the door open; the locker was empty except for some bags of peas and some old raffle, and in I popped, pushing the door to as far as I could get it.

Scarcely had I done so when a shout of laughter came from the deck outside the galley door, and I heard a voice I knew.

“Hi! you sailor-men, make way thar. Hi! massa bos’n, here’s Jam come aboa’d, cook yo’ tatoes, bile yo’ pork. Hi! hi! hi! you lebe my bundle alone. You want to know wha’s in it? Jam’s colla’s an’ shirts—claws off, impidence——”

Then a rough voice: “Here, you nigger, stick your bundle in the galley, and lend a hand with the capstan bars; look lively, or I’ll brighten you up with a rope’s end.”

A shrill whistle followed the words, a bundle was flung with a thud on top of the locker; I heard Jam’s voice shouting, “All right, massa bo’sun, here’s Jam,” and then such a hubbub as I had never heard before.

Women and children were being bundled off the ship, the gang-plank was going, the great hawsers creaking, men were shouting, and the fife, which had ceased its noise, broke out again, piercing every sound as a needle pierces layers of fabric. They were warping the brig out, kedging her too; that is to say, a rope was tied to a kedge-anchor, and the other end of the rope being wound in on the capstan. The tramp of the men at the capstan bars came to me distinctly, mixed with the chanty, a roaring, bellowing chorus, that roused my heart in me, and to which the old brig seemed to answer, for I felt her trembling under me, and stretching and straining, making as if to get at the sea which was waiting for her.

So Jam was on board! I do not know if the fact gave me any pleasure, but it certainly lightened any gloomy thoughts that may have lain at the bottom of my mind.

I was doing a desperate act, flying in the face of my elders; I had never been treated badly, but quite the reverse, by my uncle, and I was leaving him to embark on an adventure of which I knew nothing—not only leaving him, but leaving my school and my prospects of education. Why? To this day I do not know why; I only know that I was moved by a force over which I had no control, just as the iron is moved to the loadstone. I believe, honestly, that it was the spirit of the old brig that took me, for ships have spirits just like men, some evil, some good. Whatever it was, I had embarked on a course which I knew would be in direct opposition to the wishes of my elders, and a boy, if he has any proper mind in him, cannot act like this without some misgivings and feeling of gloom. It was strange that the thought of Jam being also on board gave me heart, and made me feel more at home and less of a sinner. It was as if I had been followed by a dog I had known.

Captain Horn had evidently taken him on as cook, and this was soon made more evident to me when he was released from the capstan bars, and the ship, with breeze and tide in her favour, was floating down the river. Then, bursting into the galley, he began to bustle about lighting the galley fire, cleaning kettles and so forth, talking to himself, talking to the things he was cleaning, shoving his head out of the galley door every minute to converse with the passers on the deck, and making as much noise as a bee in a bottle.

“Nebber did see sich a galley as this befo’; no bigger’n a copper, and copper no bigger’n kittle, an’ kittle no use at all. Hi, what you call y’self a kittle fo’? Where’s yo’ lid, hey? Hi, Massa Johnson, where’s yo’ lid, hey?” banging the kettle against the copper as if to make it answer. “There, yo’ set thar; yo’ move an’ Jam’ll kick yo’ out the galley do’. Humph! what’s dis? Taters? Yo’ call yo’selves taters, why yo’ ain’t no bigger’n marbles. I’ll teach yo’ call yo’selves taters. Jam’ll bile yo’; yo’ set ther’n wait an’ see. What’s in this yer pot? Roaches! Out yo’ git an’ let me at yo’. Whar’s that soup ladle; now then, yo’ call yo’self a roach”—crack!—“yo’ gone to glory dat time; yo’ call yo’self him brudder”—crack!—“go’n jine him. Yo’s not a roach, yo’s a cuchhorse”—crack! “Hi, massa bos’n, yo’ come an’ see Jam killin’ roaches; hit ’em ebbery time.”

As he cleaned and bustled about I gained heart, and, sliding the door of the locker a bit open, I waited for a lull in his clatter. Then, putting my head out, I said: “Jam!”

He took a spring into the air as if a snake had bitten him.

His back was towards me, and he took a spring into the air as if a snake had bitten him, and came down on his feet with his face towards me—and such a face that I burst out laughing. This saved me, for he was on the point of crying out, taking me to be a spirit.

“Why if ’tain’t the buckra bye; why if ’tain’t the bye flung Jam th’ fourpenny-piece. Hi, Massa Johnson, what yo’ doin’ thar in Jam’s locker?”

“Pull the door to—don’t let anyone see me,” said I. “Quick, Jam; I’m running away. That’s right, put your back against the door so that no one can come in.”

He did, and with my head out of the locker I told him all.

Jam did not seem to see anything extraordinary in my proceedings; he had run away often enough himself, no doubt, and at any rate he was but a piece of flotsam, as I afterwards discovered, with no knowledge of father or mother, sister or brother—no care, no tie, and no country—so that he could not appreciate the full gravity of my act, or guess what I was leaving behind me.

“Stick yo’ head in,” said Jam when I had finished. “Ship clear river t’-night or t’-morrow mornin’, then yo’ can stick yo’ head out, stick yo’ body out, an’ cry, ‘Hi, Massa Capt’in, here I is stow’way.’ Stick yo’ head in an’ lay low.”

I did as he directed, and he pushed the locker door to, leaving a chink open to give me air. Then he opened the galley door and went on with his business, making even more noise than before.

But although I was sufficiently hidden I could speak and make myself heard, and, lying there with my mouth to the opening, I talked to Jam now and then, telling him of Mr. Slimon and how he was to leave the ship at Tilbury.

Jam, who knew the river as well as I knew Cornhill, would keep popping out every now and then, telling me of the places we were passing, places whose names were Greek to me. He pushed biscuits in through the chink, and opening the door once put in a pannikin of water—musty-tasting biscuits they were, too, and thereby hangs a tale. Before reaching Tilbury—maybe an hour before—I was suddenly stricken paralysed by Captain Horn’s voice at the galley door.

“Here, you black imp, show us the bread-bag,” cried the voice I knew so well.

“Bread-bag, sar?” cried Jam. “Satinly, sar, here he be, an’ mighty bad bread, too, sar—yo’ look at this, sar, full o’ weevils, sar—weevils, sar, they ain’t weevils, they’m rattlesnakes——”

“Come here,” cried Captain Horn; and I heard Mr. Slimon’s voice answering:

“Well, well, what’s the matter now?”

“Matter—you told me you’d victual the ship from Jervis’s. Look at this; there’s bread for you. What do you say to that?”

“Biscuits,” said Mr. Slimon. “What’s wrong with them?”

“Smell ’em.”

“I can’t smell anything wrong.”

“Taste ’em.”

“They taste all right.”

“Eat one, then.”

I heard the noise of Mr. Slimon’s teeth meeting in a biscuit.

“Best biscuits I ever eat in my life.”

“Then you must a’ eaten some beastly bad ones. Here you, Jam, what’s the condition of the beef and pork?”

“Bad, sar,” replied Jam promptly. “Here’s the piece o’ pork I just fist from herrin’ cask.”

“Go’n fetch us a bit of beef.”

Jam departed on his errand, and the Captain and Mr. Slimon came right into the galley, much to my trepidation, the Captain storming and Mr. Slimon trying to soothe him.

“What you think sailor-men are made of?” cried the Captain. “How’m I to work my men on old leather an’ lobworms? You’ve swallowed one biscuit, but how’d you like to swallow them for a week or a month? Look at them potatoes. Why, they’re sprouting—you call them potatoes? What’s in this locker? Some more rotten stuff hidden away, I expect.”

He seized hold of the locker door and tried to open it; I, inside, fixed my feet against a bulkhead, and, jamming my back against the door, held it as tight as I could. He hauled and I pushed; it was the most exciting moment in my life, for I knew that once I was discovered all would be up with me, and Mr. Slimon would claim me for his own. I should be brought back in disgrace; my uncle would be sent for; I should be caned. But that was nothing to the disgrace my foolishness would bring on me, so I resisted with all my might, and the Captain hauled with all his strength, trying to slide the panel back; and I believe I would have won, and the Captain would have given up, thinking the panel immovably jammed, but for Mr. Slimon, who added his strength to that of the Captain. Next moment the panel gave, and I was seized upon and hauled out by the foot.

“Well, if it isn’t Dick,” cried the Captain, after the first whoop of surprise which brought heads crowding round the galley door. “Why, you young sculping, what you mean stowing yourself away like that for? Here, shut the door.” He shut the galley door in the face of the crew, who had gathered round, and Mr. Slimon, who had recovered from his surprise, seized me by the shoulder and shook me.

I never knew that Mr. Slimon was so strong.

I never knew that Mr. Slimon was so strong, and I never knew that he could look so cruel and hard, and I never knew how a shaking knocks one to pieces both in mind and body, and either makes a person cry out for mercy or raises all that is evil in them. I had been bullied by bigger boys at St. Paul’s, knuckle-screwed and arm-twisted and buckled, but I never had been shaken before, and I knew that the punishment was caused less by my offence than by the anger of Mr. Slimon at the manner in which the Captain had talked to him about the stores. I was a big boy of fifteen and over, and I let out with my foot and kicked him on the shin, so that he fell back in a corner of the galley, standing on one leg like a stork for a moment, and holding up the injured leg till the knee touched his chest. Then like a flash he seized the big iron ladle that Jam had used to kill the “roaches.” Next moment the Captain had seized him by the arm.

“Come, you drop that ladle. I’ll have no murder on my ship. What did you want man-handling the boy for, eh? Come, you drop that ladle—that’s right——” The ladle fell on the floor, and the Captain kicked it away out of danger. “Now be sensible, and just you keep your hands off the boy, or maybe he’ll land you another same as the last. Now then, Dick, what’s all this here? Speak out with the truth, and if you tell a lie I’ll lam the truth out of you with a rope’s end. Horn’s my name and Horn’s my natur’ to them that crosses my hawser. Come, speak up!”

“I don’t want to tell any lies,” replied I. “I hid in the locker because I wanted to go to sea—that’s all.”

“Is it all?” cut in Mr. Slimon. “You wait till I get you on shore—you wait till I send for your uncle; we’ll see if it’s all—oh, just you wait——”

He rubbed his hands together just as if he were washing them, and this is a horrid sign in a man, and one which, when I see it, always fills me with mistrust and aversion. I said nothing, and the Captain, who was standing with his back to the copper, said nothing for a moment. He seemed thinking, and then suddenly he burst out:

“See here, you want the boy back, don’t you?”

“Want him back!” cried Mr. Slimon. “Why, the young——”

“Shet up—you want him back; well, I’ve got him d’ye see, and you’ve got the decent victuals you promised to put aboard this hooker, d’ye see? Well, we’ll make an exchange; here at Tilbury I lie till to-morrow morning. You revictual the ship, and I’ll give you back the boy. If you don’t I’ll sail with him.”

“Then I’ll call the police at Tilbury—that’s settled,” said Mr. Slimon.

“Call the police!” cried Captain Horn, with a burst of laughter that did me good to hear. “Do, and I’ll blow the gaff on what this voyage is about. Two words more from you and I’ll go and tell it to the hands. Come, leave the boy here, and be reasonable—come, we’re right on Tilbury now; you go before me and be reasonable——”

He opened the galley door, made Mr. Slimon go first, winked at me, and made the old gesture with his thumb at the unconscious Mr. Slimon; then I was alone with the door shut upon me, and my heart thumping fit to burst.

Would Mr. Slimon go to the expense of revictualling the ship? My whole destiny hung on that question. It seemed that my destiny was always to hang and turn on the meanness of Mr. Slimon, a turning-point which had this to be said for it—it was very real, and a thing almost indestructible.

As I was debating the point a sound like the roar of a lion came from the bow of the brig. It was the anchor-chain roaring through the hawse-pipe.

Then I waited. Half an hour passed, and the brig swinging at her anchor moved with the stream slightly as a fish’s tail moves when the fish has its nose up-stream, and is not swimming, but just keeping its position on the look-out for flies.

A sunbeam through the galley window kept moving on the wall, sliding backwards and forwards. I could hear voices from the deck, and I was wondering what had become of Jam, when Jam himself burst into the galley, calling me to come on deck.

I went. Captain Horn was standing by the deck-house with his elbows on the larboard bulwarks, and his eyes fixed on a boat that had just found the landing-stage at Tilbury.

“Well, there he goes,” said the Captain. “He’s done me over the victuals, but I’ve done him over you, Dick; not if you wanted to you couldn’t go ashore now, not unless them clean victuals come aboard, which they won’t. I’ve got you in exchange for them, and a bad exchange it is. Here, get along for’ard, and tell them to sling you a hammock in the fo’c’sle if there’s a spare one. Got any belongings with you?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, you’ll sail all the lighter, and if the weather turns foul before we get down south I’ll see if I can’t rig you up summat in the way of an old pilot-coat. Get for’ard and get some grub if you can swaller the tack your precious old uncle and his mate has loaded me with. You’ll find Mr. Chopping for’ard.”

I did, and I never knew how a rope’s end can sting you up till I asked Mr. Chopping to swing me a hammock in the fo’c’sle.

The brig was close-hauled to a stiff south-easterly breeze; the sky was ice-blue with white clouds—vast white clouds piled mountain-like in the west, piled like snow-banks in the east, all as if drawn away to leave the pool of blue sky above us clear. The land lay far away for starboard, cliffs and rocks of the Cornish coast extraordinarily desolate and beautiful across the green and white of the sea.

The old brig had not lied to me; everything the ropes and blocks and masts and rigging had promised me as she laid tied up to the wharf without a movement in her had been true, and more than true, for I never could have imagined the life in her she showed now, with the waves bursting against her bow, with the foam rushing in rivers past her quarters, and every voice in her shouting as she swept like a living thing through the living sea.

She was alive, alive as a horse, and little as I knew of ships, I could feel that she was being handled like a horse for all her size, and the marvel of the great masts and spars, the great white spaces of canvas held hard against the sky, filled my heart till I could have shouted had I been with no one to hear me.

Sometimes I could feel the great hand of the wind press the brig gently over as if a giant were playing with her; that was when she went off a point or two, and my heart would get a check with fright, for it seemed as if that awful power could bend her right over and sink her for ever in the sea. Then, with the clacking of the rudder-chains and the pattering of the reef points, she would slowly come back to a more even keel with such a feeling of life in her as I cannot in the least describe; but it’s that which makes a ship, and is the soul and spirit of a ship, and if you have never felt it you will never know it.

I had not even a touch of sea-sickness; I had no time to think of it, so filled was I with the extraordinary new life into which I had plunged, and so busy doing all sorts of jobs at the setting of the mate.

I was ship’s boy and no mistake, and though Captain Horn, whenever I came across him, would call me by name and not unkindly, he never interfered to get my jobs made easier or less dirty; and I did not mind. I was happy enough, and as I did not grumble and did with a will what I was put to, my mates treated me just as I deserved—decently. The fact that I had kicked Mr. Slimon was known, and as Mr. Slimon was cursed every meal-time for the badness of the food he had put on board, that kick I gave him saved me, I think, from many another.

We were twenty hands all told. Mr. Chopping, the mate, berthed with the Captain in the deck-house, the after part of which was divided into two cabins not much bigger than dog-kennels. The fo’c’sle, where my hammock was slung, was as black as a coal-hole; daylight could not come there except by the hatchway, and it was lit by a slush-lamp swinging from a beam. It was narrow forward, where the great keel of the bowsprit entered between the knight-heads; it was lined with bunks and hammocks swung from the beams, making it a matter of difficulty to get about; and coming down there from the fresh air of the deck it was like a blanket stuffed into one’s mouth and choking one, the air was so thick with tobacco smoke and general smother, to say nothing of the smell of the slush-lamp.

It is a strange thing, and a thing which one learns when one is old, that men are so like one another as a rule that recollection carries few of the faces she meets along with her. Of all the crew of the Albatross six alone stand out clearly in my mind: Captain Horn; Mr. Chopping, the first mate, a pale-faced, middle-aged man, always complaining of his digestion; Mr. James, the second mate; Jam; Blower, the boatswain, stout as a barrel and bronzed to the colour of mahogany; and Jim Prentice, one of the hands, of whom more later on.

I kept myself as clear of the fo’c’sle as I could; the watch below was always snoring, or fretful if awake, so that it was only at meal-times a person could get about in the place without a boot being hove at his head. On deck in the fresh air one felt oneself in a different world, and on deck I stayed, helping in all sorts of matters and picking up knowledge that has helped me all my life.

Jim Prentice was my chief instructor. We had no carpenter; Prentice did all the work that had to be done in that way. He was a sharp-looking man and very silent when he was not questioning one, and Captain Horn said there was nothing on earth he could not do. I believe the Captain was pretty nearly right; carpentering, cooking, sailmaking, tailoring, doctoring—they all came alike to Prentice. He could make a pair of trousers, or splice a rope, or set a broken limb, or do any mortal thing that a pair of human hands were capable of doing, and all without a word. He talked to me far more than to anyone else; indeed, from the second day of the voyage I was his favourite.

We left the Irish coast behind us and took the full swell of the Atlantic, heading straight for the Azores, the north-east wind blowing and the grey-green waves racing us through the roaring forties, as sailors call the seas between fifty and forty degrees of latitude.

We passed the Azores one morning just after dawn, islands so far away on the horizon that the blaze of the sunrise seemed to burn them away, leaving nothing but a smudge on the sea-line, and a week later we struck the Sargasso Sea.

The weed, like no other seaweed I have ever seen, covered the water, so that sometimes we seemed sailing across a meadow; then we would come to a great break or river of blue water banked with the weed, and see other rivers far away to larboard and starboard.

Jam said the sea-cows grazed here, and that if the wind were to fail we should be stuck for ever in the weeds, which would close round us and grow over the ship.

He got a bucket, and dredged up little crabs, bits of the weed, small fish, and a thing like nothing I had ever seen before. It was as if a person had taken a lot of snakes and tied them together by the middle.

Jam laid it out on the deck. He said it was a devil-fish; he showed me the eyes and the mouth. He said he had seen them fifty times the size in the waters off Cuba. I did not believe him then, but I have altered my opinion since.

One day I was talking to Jam in the caboose; the place was stiflingly hot, for we were far south now, clear of the Sargasso, and steering our course across a flaming blue sea.

We had been talking about a lot of things whilst Jam superintended the boiling of the potatoes for the men’s dinner. We were talking now on the question of why some men were black and some men were white.

Jam said all men were originally black, and that black was the best colour.

“Hab you ebber seen a black hoss that wasn’t better’n a white? Hab you ebber seen a black dog what couldn’t lick a white dog, hey—tell me dat? Look at a black coat; on’y the boss wears a black coat. Ain’t a black coat better’n a white? Ain’t black the better colour—you tell me that?”

But before I could reply to this the voice of Captain Horn came from aft:

“Dick Bannister! Hullo there! Where’s that boy got to?”

I left Jam to his cooking, and darted out of the caboose.

Captain Horn was standing by the door of the deck-house and when he saw me he beckoned. He led me into the deck-house and shut the door.

The place was fairly large, with a table in the centre; by the table there were seats securely fastened to the deck: light came from a scuttle above and a window on the starboard side; on the wall opposite the window there was a sling containing a telescope, and a locker where the Captain stowed his charts and nautical instruments; the doors of the little cabins occupied by the Captain and Mr. Chopping opened aft. James, the second mate, a rough old shell-back not a bit better than any of the men, with the exception that he could take a sight and had some slight knowledge of navigation, berthed in the fo’c’sle.

Mr. Chopping was seated at the table before some charts. He looked up when I came in, but did not move, whilst the Captain made me sit down, and took a seat opposite to me beside Chopping.

“Dick,” said the Captain, “I’ve called you aft to have a word with you, seeing that you’re old Simon Bannister’s nevvy, and that he owns the brig and the cargo both, though there’s no knowing what share that Slimon has in the venture. I’m not bound to him; Simon Bannister is my owner, and you’re his nevvy, and maybe, when the old man dies, you’ll be coming into his money, and the profits of this trip being part of that money, it’s fair and honest you should have some knowledge of what we’re about.”

“If I’d known,” cut in Mr. Chopping, raising his chin, “I’d never have signed on for such a venture. Dead men’s money means dead men’s bones. I’ve always held to that.”

“Well, you can hold to it so long as you keep your head shut,” replied Captain Horn. “You’ve signed on, and you can’t sign off. Why, Lord bless my soul, you’d think it was piracy we were after, when all we’ve got to do is to pick an old ship’s bones. Now claw on your pigtail for a minit whilse I get a word with Dick. And, first of all, up on your pins with you, Dick, and fetch me the rum and the water-bottle—they’re in that locker under the bunk—and a pannikin.”

I fetched out the rum, the water-bottle, and the pannikin. You may be sure I was excited, though I did not know in the least what the picking of an old ship’s bones meant; the manner of the Captain and the manner of Mr. Chopping left me in no doubt that it was an adventure worth the having. I put the rum on the table, and the Captain, having mixed himself a pannikin, lit his pipe.

“This is the lie of it,” said he, “and it’s soon told. A matter of seven years ago I was in Matanzas, which is in Cuba, wanting a job. It’s neither here nor there how I came to be stranded, but there I was on my beam-ends—no money, no job nor the sight of one. Well, one day I met a Spaniard who told me of a likely ship, the Santissima Maria was her name, Spanish owned and Spanish built, lying at the quays and wanting a second mate. Ten minutes later I was on board her. We weren’t long fixing up the business, and in five minutes I was signed on as second mate, and old Snuff-and-Whiskers the Captain gave me a month’s advance, so I was able to pay for my lodgings ashore. Next day we started, bound for Cadiz. We had a general cargo, and on top of it seven hundred thousand pounds’ worth of bar gold—Spanish gold from South America bound for Cadiz. I knew nothing of the gold, till one night, ten days out from Matanzas, I heard a pistol-shot, tumbled out of my bunk, and found a crowd of Jack Spaniards trying to rush the after-guard. We got ’em under, and old Snuff-and-Whiskers hanged the mutineers. Six of them he hanged to teach the others manners, and after the hanging he showed me the gold, bricks of it, all stowed in the after-cabin.”

The Captain paused to relight his pipe. Then he picked up one of the charts from the table.

“You see this here chart? Well, it’s a chart of the waters betwixt Raccoon Cay and Columbus Bank, and all there away. All down here is north of Cuba, and up here would be Flamingo Cay. Here’s a mark which shows an island south of Raccoon Cay, and a line of reef—Bird Cay was the name I gave it. There we were wrecked. The old Santissima Maria carried bad luck with her right along, ending in a big storm which swep’ the decks, washed every man Jack away but four of the Spaniards and myself, and hove the old hooker high and dry on the reef. The four Spaniards were all foremast men; the Captain was drowned, the first mate was drowned, everyone was drowned but me and them four, and every boat stove in but the dinghy.

“Next morning when the sun shone out and the wind went down, those four beggars got the dinghy on to the reef. Then they explored the island from which the reef ran, and concluded not to stay there, but make for the track of ships. They got me to help to get the dinghy afloat and victual her. She was a small boat even for a dinghy, and them four and the water-breaker and the provisions sank her so that she wouldn’t carry another ounce. One of the fellows ran back for a brick of gold, but he might have saved his wind, for the old hooker had broke her back, and the after-house door was so jammed with wreckage it would have taken a week to break in with axes, which they hadn’t. Then the beasts shoved off, and left me there marooned like that chap Robinson What’s-his-name in that story-book of yours. Alone they left me with the old hooker and the gulls, for with the fine weather gulls hove up from all quarters of the sea, and the place was alive and alight with them.

“There was provisions and water in plenty, but the lonesomeness beat all I ever heard of. I rummaged the island, but there was nothing but coral rock and sand and bushes and crabs. The main and foremasts of the old Santissima Maria were snapped like carrots, and only a stump of the mizzen left. I got a flag on the stump of the mizzen, and it was the first bit of company I had. I’d sit by the hour and watch it flickin’ and beckonin’ in the wind, for all the world as if it was beckonin’ for help. It was a liver thing to me than the sea-gulls. And it brought help sure enough, for two days after I run it up a Frenchman from Dominica took me off. The Jeanne Louise was the name of the ship. She was bound for Havre le Grâce, and not a soul on board of her could speak a word of English. The only French I knew was parley voo, and that didn’t help me to explain to them about the gold.

“I was near mad. Their boat came up alongside the reef, and they beckoned me to jump. I pointed to the hull of the wreck and up at the deck-house, shouting to them that the stuff was there, and they had only to break in with axes and they’d salve it. The Froggies thought I was mad. Two of them jumped on to the reef, and into the boat they bundled me, and off we rowed for the ship.

“To think of it! Seven hundred thousand pounds in gold, and all to be had for a dozen blows with an axe. When they got me aboard I quieted down, seeing that no good could be done by shouting. They brought me into the Captain’s cabin; he was seated at his table with a chart before him. It was just after noon, and he had been taking the altitude and pricking the position off. No sooner did I set eyes on the chart than I made for it. Here’s the chart.”

Captain Horn placed it before me.

“And see that cross, that’s the cross the French Captain made that day indicating our position. There you are, a chart of the waters south o’ Raccoon Cay; and there you are, the position of the wreck and the gold.”

“Seven years ago,” cut in Mr. Chopping.

“You shut up,” replied the Captain. “Seven years or seventeen years ago is all the same; there’s not a ship touches that island not in a blue moon, and they might overhaul the wreck and never find the stuff. And if they did, d’you think they’d believe it gold? Copper they’d take it for. It’s there right enough. Well, as I was tellin’ Dick, the instant minit I saw the chart I went for it, and I points to the cross the French Captain had just marked and then with my thumb over my shoulder, to make him know I meant the reef and the wreck. He nodded and laughed, and had some biscuit and cheese and a big glass of rum-and-water fetched for me, and down I sat to the grub, listening to the chaps on deck hauling the yards round.

“We made a fair voyage till we reached sight of the Cornish coast, and then came a Channel fog, and we were rammed ’midships by a Dutchman bound for Amsterdam. We started a butt and began to founder, and the Dutchman took us aboard—such a shindy you never did see as the Froggies made when the water was coming into us. The Captain was the first to leave with the ship’s papers and money, and I was left to the last and near forgot, for I made a bolt back to the Captain’s cabin, and, seeing he’d left the charts behind him, nobbled this one, which wasn’t stealing, or if it was, only stealing from Davy Jones. Then I found myself landed in Antwerp lookin’ for another job, my boots near worn out, not a copper in my pocket, and seven hundred thousand pounds’ worth of gold in my head.”

“Ay, ay, in your head,” said Mr. Chopping; “that’s a long way from your pocket.”

“There’s no long road without an ending,” replied Captain Horn, “and you’ll be pleased to remember I’m addressin’ my remarks to the nevvy of old Simon Bannister, and if you choose you can take a walk on deck whilse I finish ’em——”

“No offence,” said the mate. “I’m not calling you in question; I’m only cautious.”

“Well, you can keep your caution till it’s wanted—and now, Dick, you have the story. For nigh seven year I walked the world with that chart in my pocket and that knowledge in my head, till one day I crossed your uncle’s hawser. It was in Eastcheap, and I run again’ him and near tumbled him into the gutter, and he called me a one-eyed son of a thief; and I apologized hansom’ instead of strikin’ him, seein’ he was a man in years; and with that he shook hands with me, took me into the Crown and Bells, gave me a glass of port, and got my name and trade and my story.

“For I hadn’t been speakin’ to him five minits before I knew he was a trustable man, and he hadn’t been talking to me long before he knew I was likewise, and when two trustable men knows each other they gets along fast.

“He offered to put up the money to fit out a ship on a trading voyage. He wasn’t going to take the risk of fitting out a ship to go hunt for the gold and nothing else. No, it was to be a trading voyage, and a trading voyage it is—only on our return from Havana, where we’re bound, we’re to stop at the Cay. D’ye see? Pick up the seven hundred thousand on our way back.

“Well, I agreed, and all would be right enough but for that chap Slimon; he has a share in the profits. How much I don’t know, but this I do know, that after all that’s happened he’ll try to spike my gun. I wouldn’t trust that chap as far as I could kick him, and it’s ten to one if we pick up the gold he’ll swear I’ve run crooked in some way, hidden some of the stuff, or somethin’ like that. That’s where you’ll come in, and that’s why I have told you all this yarn. You’ll be a witness of all that goes on, and you’ll be able to say whether Nick Horn is a trustable man or a scoundrel.”

“I don’t see what you want with the boy for witness when you have me,” said Mr. Chopping.

“You,” replied the Captain, “and what’s to prevent Slimon making charges against us both? The boy is Simon Bannister’s nevvy, and it’s to his interest that everything should be fair and above board. And now, Dick,” finished he, “off with you and help Jam in the caboose. Supercargo you may be, but ship’s boy you are, and it’s me you’ll be blessing when you’re a man for the finest eddication a boy ever had; and, mind you, keep your mouth shut on what I’ve told you, for not a soul on board knows of it but you and me and Mr. Chopping.”

I went back to the caboose where Jam was serving out the potatoes and pork; you may be sure I was excited by what I had just heard. Gold turns everyone’s head, and on top of the gold was the adventure of getting it. I could see in my mind’s eye the old ship stranded on the reef, high and dry, and the gulls fishing round her, and the waves breaking. The only thing that disturbed me was Mr. Chopping’s evident distrust of the whole business; seven years was a long, long time for so much money to be lying unfound. However, the conviction of the Captain outweighed in my mind the words of Mr. Chopping, and it was not long before I forgot them.

The sense of having a secret that no one else on board knew, except the Captain and the first mate, swelled me up with importance, and it so filled my head that when I got to sleep that night, and almost as soon as I had closed my eyes, I was on the wreck, with the sea-gulls flying round me, and Mr. Chopping by my side breaking into the deck-house with an axe such as I had seen the road-paviors use in Cornhill.

Then we were hauling out great glittering bars of gold, and I was shouting out the news to Captain Horn, who was alongside in a boat, when a boot hit me, flung by one of the hands whom I had awakened from sleep with my outcries.

Next morning when I was on deck, just after washing down, Prentice, the man who could do anything and who was always so silent, edged up to me. We leaned over the starboard bulwarks watching a great shoal of flying-fish, and when they had all flittered away into the blue sea, Prentice spat into the water swirling along by the brig’s side, and “Dick,” said he, “what were you hollerin’ about last night in your sleep?”

“Hollering about?” said I. “Nothing. What should I be hollering about?”

Prentice turned the quid in his mouth. He was the strangest man in his way of talking, hanging silent sometimes for a minute or more when you expected him to speak, and firing a question at you when you expected an answer.

I have said that he could do anything, or almost anything, with his hands, and I was to learn that he could do nearly as much with his head, and I think from a long life of experience that he was the sort of man one could only expect to meet with once in a lifetime. I have never met another like him.

“The old man’s taken a liking to you, Dick,” said he, after a minute’s silence. “You and him and Chopping is as thick as thieves these days. I’m not wishful to put my oar in your business, but I’ve been friends to you ever since you come aboard, and friends to you I wish to remain; there’s no secrets between friends, Dick.”

“No,” said I, not knowing what to say, for all at once the knowledge was born in me that Prentice was quite a different person from what I had imagined hitherto, and as I glanced sideways at his sharp profile his very face seemed to have changed. I had never noticed before how long his nose was nor how sharply his chin jutted out.

“Friends has no needs for secrets,” he went on, “and if so be you tell me yours, I’ll tell you mine.”

“What secrets?” said I.

“Dick,” said Prentice, “there’s more in this here voyage than trade, I know. What about the chart, Dick, hey?”

“The chart!”

“Yes, the chart. What about the gold, hey?”

“The gold!”

“Oh, there’s no use in pretendin’ with me. I know it all, every bit of it, for there I was lyin’ with my ears open, and you chatterin’ away in your sleep; and fortunate it was no one else heard, for the watch below was all snorin’ in their bunks. It was I that flung the boot that woke you.”

“I told everything, you say!”

“Everything.”

“What was it I said?”

“All about the whole business.”

He turned the quid in his mouth, laughed, and spat over the side. As for me, I was for the moment dumb.

My folly, or, more rightly speaking, my misfortune, weighed on me so that I had to lean on the bulwarks. I felt like a traitor, yet it was not my fault.

“There’s no use in takin’ on,” said Prentice; “I won’t peach. The thing’s as safe with me as if it was never said. And see here, Dick, it’s maybe better I know, for if any of the hands were to get wind of this secret of yours I can talk ’em over, and tell them there’s nothing in it; and see here, Dick——”

“Yes.”

“Go over the thing again to me careful, for, see here, Dick, from what you said in your sleep I’m thinking there has been a big mistake made, and it seems like luck that you should have blabbed, for I’m the only man who can put that mistake right.”

“A mistake about the gold?” said I.

“You’ve hit it,” said he. “So just go over the yarn again, cautious and clever, for if it turns out as I think, I may be the means of bringing everything right.”

“I mustn’t tell,” said I. “I oughtn’t to tell without speaking to the Captain and asking his permission.”

“But, man alive, you’ve told,” replied Prentice. “I only want to know one point in the story to make sure—it’s the gold I mean, for, if it is, then it’s death for us all, and it’s better you were warned. Come now and give us the story point by point. The old man calls you into the deck-house with Mr. Chopping; he shuts the door—now fire away.”

Like a fool I did. Certain that he knew everything of importance, and filled with a vague dread born of his words about death for all of us, I went through the story, Prentice listening intently, and flinging in exclamations here and there, such as “I knew that,” and “Ah, that’s one of the points I wanted to be sure of.”

When I had finished he was silent for a moment. Then he said: “You’ve told all like a man, and now I’ll tell you something. What like was that chart of the waters south of Raccoon Cay the Captain showed you—an oldish one, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, an old yellow chart—about so big.”

“And how was the bearin’s of the old hooker marked?”

“With a cross.”

“Was there any other crosses on the chart?”

“No.”

Prentice was silent for a moment; then he said: “Ah, well then, it’s not the chart I was thinkin’ of which a man showed me four years back in Matanzas, though, maybe, it may be the same wreck. I’ll think things over in my mind, Dick, and speak to you again on it, and you may lay to it I’ll never say a word to mortal of what you’ve told. I’m a man to be trusted.”

“But suppose,” said I, “that I talk again in my sleep, and someone else hears me.”

“You needn’t fear that,” replied Prentice. “A man never talks twice in his sleep about the same thing, and even if you was to talk, why, I’m in your watch and sleepin’ below, and I’m as easy to be woke as a butterfly, and at the first word out of your mouth, awake I’ll be and heaving a boot at you. You say nothing to anyone, least of all to the Captain or Chopping, and leave me to think things over in my mind.”

With that he turned away, leaving me to my thoughts, which were troubled enough. I can see now what I did not see then, that he had made me tell him the whole story by suggesting things and leading me on, and pretending that he knew far more than he really knew. I doubt if he had heard me say anything more in my sleep than the words “gold” and “chart”; yet these words, and the fact that they had been uttered after my interview with the Captain and Mr. Chopping, had been enough to make him suspect some mystery concerning treasure.

At that time I did not think of this, nor did I go over in my mind the way he had manœuvred to get my story from me. Still, I felt by instinct that things were not right, and I debated with myself as to whether I should go to the Captain straight and tell him the whole story.

I ought to have done this, and yet I did not. I said to myself: “Suppose I do, what good will be done? Prentice is only a sailor, and he can do no harm.” I reasoned the thing out, and reason as I would, I always came butt up against an argument for holding my tongue. The long and the short of it was I feared a scolding, and acted like a coward, of which action I had reason to repent later on.

The weather was now glorious; every day that passed seemed bluer and brighter. Never could I have imagined such a blue sea as that which surrounded us stretching to the wheel of the horizon.

I was never tired of watching the flying-fish when I had a chance, for I was kept as busy as it was possible for anyone to be by Mr. Chopping. It was the end of a rope on my ribs for the smallest reason, and sometimes even without any reason. Not that I think Mr. Chopping had taken any dislike to me, but that he was determined to show me that, for all my position on board as super-cargo and nephew of old Simon Bannister, I was still ship’s boy.

We were close to the Caribbean now, and the fo’c’sle was full of yarns of Havana, the port we were bound to, and the West Indies in general, and the slave trade.

I heard old sailors tell stories of the doings of the slave traders that almost lifted the hair on my head with horror—Prentice especially. He rarely talked, but when he did he was always worth hearing. I remember at the end of one of his stories a foremast hand saying to him:

“Well, Jim, if you ain’t been telling lies, by your own showing you were a slaver yourself.”

“Who said I wasn’t?” replied Prentice, and then as quick as light: “Slaver, and d’you think if I had been a slaver I wouldn’t have money put by in the bank, and not be hob-a-nobbing with a lot of gallows’ birds like the like of yous in a ship’s fo’c’sle?”

No one answered, or only one old shell-back from a hammock swung close to the hatch, who laughed as if to endorse what Prentice said; but for all that I felt in my mind that he had let out the truth.

From that night I began to have a dread of Jim Prentice. I would watch his silent figure on deck and speculate on what his past had been. Never a word did he say on the subject of the treasure, yet he did not evade me, rather seeking my company than otherwise.

At times the idea came to me to tell the whole affair to Jam and seek his advice, but Jam was such a scatter-brain in many ways that I put the idea from me. Jam was in his element now; as day after day passed and the weather got hotter and the sea bluer, Jam’s spirits rose so that he was always singing. He told me it was “getting down South” that made him so pleased.

“Where were you born, Jam?” said I one day to him.

“Born in Virginny, Massa Johnson.”

“Do you remember your father and mother?”

“Nebber had one.”

“How did you come to leave Virginia, Jam?”

“Didn’t come to leave. Jam was fetched.”

“Fetched?”

“Yas, sar; it were dis way. Jam was so high, workin’ in de cotton-field in a lonely part, when a trader he come along, an’ he say, ‘What yo’ name,’ and Jam tells him; and de trader he say, ‘Yo’ slip troo de fence an’ come ’long wid me; yo’ll have no work to do, an’ pumpkin-pie every day, two soots o’ cloes, an’ a dunkey to ride.’ Well, sar, Jam figgers on dis an’ troo de fence he slips, and off he goes wid de trader.

“Trader, he had half a dozen niggers hid in de swamp all waitin’ for pumpkin-pie an’ new cloes an’ a dunkey to ride; he gets us down to de coast an’ there he sells us. Jam fotched a hundred an’ fifty dollars gold coin. Jam says to trader: ‘What abo’t dat pumpkin-pie?’ Trader says to Jam: ‘Yo’ go wid dis gen’lum; he give you pumpkin-pie;’ an’ he did.”

“What was it like, Jam?”

“It was like de biggest thrashin’ yo’ ever had in yo’ life. Dat was when Jam objected to go aboard ship; after dat it was a thrashin’ every day, an’ sometimes every five minits, from de mate, an’ kicks from de rest ob de crew.

“She were a little ship tradin’ most in de Gulf, an’ puttin’ into Matanzas. Jam cut his lucky one day, an’ got ashore an’ mixed up wid de odder niggers. Bad lot dem Matanzas folk—mostly Spanyards, wid knives in der belts, an’ whiskers; an’ de niggers am worse dan de whites, an’ dat’s say’n sumethin’. Well, Jam was walking about Matanzas, when he sits down in de sun near a nigger woman’s door, an’ de nigger woman she come out, an’ she says: ‘What yo’ doin’ there yo’ black trash, sitting’ at my do’?’ Jam says he not know, and nigger woman say: ‘Where yo’ come from?’ She warn’t a Spanyard, she were a Virginny woman, and so Jam and she could talk, and Jam tells his story, an’ she says, ‘Yo’ like water-million?’ and she fetches out half a water-million, and Jam e’t it.”

“What’s a water-million, Jam?”

“A water-million! Ha’n’t you ever e’t one?”

“Never.”

“Well, sar, a water-million is abo’t half de size of a pumkin——”

“Oh, a melon, you mean.”

“Dat’s what I said, on’y it ain’t a million, but a water-million. A cokernut is good, but a water-million beats him holler. When Jam had finished de nigger woman say, ‘Yo’ poor unfort’nit, yo’ stay along wid Mammy Seebright’ dat war her name—‘an’ she see yo’ through.’ So she took Jam in, an’ day an’ night I hears her talkin’ to her husban’, who was a han’ in a snuff factory, an’ what you think they was talkin’ abo’t?”

“I don’t know.”

“Give you twenty guesses.”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, dey was talkin’ about sellin’ Jam.”

“Oh, how wicked!”

“Yo’ see, dey couldn’t sell him deyselves, but dey talked of puttin’ a trader on de business, an’ gettin’ a few dollars from him for de infimation. Well, presently dey gets asleep, and Jam he gets up an’ goes out and strikes for de country. Matanzas was no place for Jam, but, bless yo’, it was only jumpin’ outer de frizzlin’-pan inter de fire, for up-country a Spanyard meets him, and blest if dat Spanyard didn’t know he was a runaway, somehow or ’nuther, an’ he puts chains on him, an’ takes him off an’ sells him to a planter. Guess if Jam had all de dollars he been sold for now and den he be a rich man. Yes, sar, dat’s de troof; he wouldn’t be bilin’ p’tatoes for de hands; he’d be ridin’ in his carriage, with a top-hat on his head. But there ain’t no luck in this world, not’nless you hunt for ’um wid a shovel, an’ den mos’ like yo’ dig your own grave, which Jam was nigh on doin’ when he got out from the Spanyards, for de night after he was cotched; dat’s what Jam did—and made fo’ Havana. But, Lors a’ mercy me! de luck was clar agin’ him, for what did he fine in Havana but yallow Jack killin’ de folks by de hundred.”

“What’s that, Jam?”

“What’s what, sar?”

“Yallow Jack.”

“What! Yo’ don’t know de meanin’ of yallow Jack? Well, dere’s de marsh fever, dat’s bad; and de pison of toadstools, dat’s bad; but yo’ mix ’em both up wid a streak o’ fork-lightnin’ an’ a pound or two o’ wasps, bile in a stink-cat an’ a debble-fish, an’ swaller de lot, den yo’ll know what yaller Jack is likest. I’m tellin’ yo’ de troof, for I been dere an’ had it. It tuck me in de streets of Havana as soon as I landed foot dere, an’ dere was Jam in hospital near dead, an’ de no’y comfit was no one wanted to sell ’im. For a nigger nigh dead wid yaller Jack is de on’y thing on dis earth I belieb dat a white man wouldn’t trubble to sell.

“Den when Jam were able to shake a leg agin’ out dey shot him frum de hospital, an’ he felt dat bad and broke he’d a’ sold hisself if so be there’d a’ been anyone to buy him, which there wasn’t, for ebberyone was dead o’ de yaller Jack, and dem that wasn’t was so shook up dey had no use for niggers for awhile.

“So Jam went off to de harbour-side, an’ he hid hisself in de hol’ of a ship ’mongst de cargo. Yes, sar, he was fool ’nuff for dat, and what did dey do but close de hatches on him, an’ der he was like a rat in a trap all in de dark. Well, sar, one ob dem stevedoors had gone left a bar o’ iron behint him, an’ Jam, soon as he felt de roll ob de ship an’ knew she were under sail, he hit on de under part ob de hatch wid dat bar ob iron kerblang till dey open’ de hatch, thinkin’ de ship were ha’nted.

“Dey hauled him out an’ kicked him, an’ den dey made fo’mast man ob Jam, an’ fo’mast man an’ cook he been ebber since most all ober de world, till one day Jam he wanted a job in de Lunnon Docks, an’ he see de ole Albatross tied up wid her nose to de wharf an’ buckra white boy on her deck. Yo’ remember dat, Massa Johnson, an’ how yo’ gib Jam a fowpenny-piece. Jam nebber forget dat fowpenny-piece; no, sar, Jam nebber forget him friends—for why? Not becos Jam hab a good heart, but becos friends is so—few.”

“Well, Jam,” said I, “if I could buy as good a friend every day for fourpence as I am sure you are, I’d spend all my money in buying them—and how do you like the ship and Captain Horn?”

“Ship ain’t bad, an’ de ole man mou’t be wus. If de biskits an’ pork was as good as de ole man, den I wouldn’t swap de ship for any hooker I ever sailed in.”

Just as my dislike and fear of Prentice grew day by day, so did my liking for Jam. I had liked him from the first, but as I got to know him better I got to like him more. His good humour never failed. A slave during most of his life, bought and sold like a bale of goods, maltreated, cast hither and thither about the world, now in a ship’s caboose or fo’c’sle, now starving on a quayside—one might have fancied that he would have hated his persecutors or even his fellow human beings. But there was no hatred in Jam. I think he had never grown up; I do not know, but the fact remains that he was the quaintest, most kindly, and most innocent human being it has ever been my lot to meet. Not without faults, indeed, and plenty of them, but quite without viciousness.

One day at dawn we sighted Watling’s Island, the most outlying of the Bahamas; this was the first landfall of Christopher Columbus when he sailed to discover the New World. We passed it far away to larboard, and by noon it had vanished beyond the eastern horizon.

Next day at sunset Great Exuma Island lay on our larboard bow.

“Dick,” said Captain Horn, who was leaning on the bulwarks with his glass to his eye, “d’ye see that point o’ land?”

I was passing with a slush-tub in my hand when he hailed me, and I put the tub down and looked where he pointed.

“That’s where they hanged seven pirates thirty-two years ago come next November. Spaniards they were, of a ship called the Punta Gorda, and if you asked me how I know about it, why, I saw them hanged. I wasn’t twenty year old at the time, foremast hand on the Bristol, a barquentine bound for the Port o’ London from Punta Rasa, when we sighted two ships lyin’ off that point o’ land. Derelict they looked at first, but when we lifted them and drew close, blest if they weren’t all shot-holes. Topmasts shot away, sails in rags, and runnin’ and standin’ riggin’ in rewins.

“Pretty soon we saw that one was a Spanish man-o’-war, and t’other, which had been a tops’le schooner, we couldn’t make out what she was till the old man says: ‘She’s the Punta Gorda. Know her? Should think I did know her—why I’ve been chased by her; there’s not another vessel in these waters with her lines.’ And he was right; she were a beauty for all her condition.

“We stood close to them and passed by half a mile or less, and as we passed up came on the breeze, which was blowin’ from the sou’-east, the noise of a bugle, an’ with the bugle a little black thing was run up to the mainyard arm of the Spanish man-o’-war. It was the first of the pirates they had hanged, and they dropped him overboard, and we could see the water all beat up with the rush of sharks. Then the bugle let fly agin’, and up ran another. Seven times it happened, and by that we knew that only seven of the pirate’s crew had escaped being shot on’y to be hanged. So let that larn you, Dick, to steer clear o’ piracy.”

“But there aren’t any pirates now, are there?” I asked.

“Heaps of them,” replied Captain Horn—“only they calls them by another name.”

“And what’s that?”

“Lawyers,” replied he. Then he shut up his glass and went into the deck-house, leaving me leaning on the bulwarks and staring at the land.

It fascinated me. All the stories I had ever heard or read of pirates were nothing beside this story with the picture of the place where it had happened right before my eyes.

I fancied I could still see the two ships with their topmasts shot away and their sails in ribbons.

It was a good introduction to West Indian waters and the adventures I was soon to encounter.

Seven days later at sunset we sighted the Cuban coast like a cloud on the larboard bow, and the following morning, just after sunrise, we dropped anchor in the blue harbour of Havana.

It was my first real sight of the tropics, and never shall I forget it—the harbour, the ships with flags fluttering in the hot tropic wind, the town with its coloured, flat-topped houses, and the palm-trees. Spanish bugles were sounding from the fort, gulls were fishing and crying in the harbour, lighters were loading up or unloading from ships, and the chanting of the negroes as they worked the winches came over the water.

We had cast anchor close to a barque, and of all the vessels I have ever seen in my life that barque was the dirtiest and the strangest-looking and the most disreputable. I do not know in the least what gives a ship her individuality, yet every ship has, so to speak, a face of her own. Most ships, like most people, are pretty much alike, but, just as Prentice was different from anyone I have ever met, so was the Sarah Cutter from any other ship I have ever seen.

The Sarah Cutter was her name, written in yellow letters on her taffrail; she was low in the water and had a sag amidships as though she had been warped by the sun; her paint was all sun-blistered, and her running and standing rigging had a slack look which carried out her general appearance of neglect and untidiness.

So close were we to her and so much higher did we stand out of the water that I could get a glimpse of her decks. She had an after-house the same as we had, and I could see a man seated on the combing of the fo’c’sle-hatch smoking a pipe and mending some garment which presently, when he held it up to inspect his work, proved to be a pair of trousers. Several of the hands on deck were engaged in patching a sail, and a boy leaning over the starboard bulwarks near the deck-house was fishing.

Prentice and several of our hands were on deck, and Jam was making coffee in the caboose, popping his head out every now and then to have a word with anyone passing by.

I noticed that Prentice was paying particular attention to the Sarah Cutter, shading his eyes to get a better look at her. Presently he ranged alongside of me. He stood for a moment or two without speaking, gazing at the barque. Then he turned to me.

“Rum thing,” said he, “that we should have dropped anchor within a biskit throw of that old hooker. Know her? Sh’d think I did! See that chap on the fo’c’sle-head? That’s Cap’n Cutter. I can tell by the cut of his job even at this distance. That’s his son fishin’ for gropers over the side.”

“That dirty boy?”

“It’s his son all the same. He’s ugly as a mud cat, and as full of tricks as a bag full o’ monkeys. Richard is his name, but they mostly calls him Jack. Seven in family they were, an’ they all used to work the barque, and old woman Cutter would do the cookin’. Then the yalla fever took the six sons, and the old woman died two years ago, leavin’ the old man and Jack. Scoundrels weren’t the name for them. They’d mud grub round from Punta Rasa to Tortuga, loadin’ up with cypress wood and anythin’ they could scratch up, ste’lin’ niggers, smugglin’. Old man Cutter is hand and glove with the Spaniards. I tell you there’s nuthin’ that old chap wouldn’t put his hand on if so there was a dollar in it. Anythin’ small and mean, that is. But Jack’s a sailor born.”

In a trice he had a great fish floundering on board.

Prentice suddenly brought his hand flat down on the bulwarks and laughed as if an idea had suddenly struck him. Then he hung silent for a moment looking at the Sarah Cutter, whilst I almost forgot him in looking at Captain Cutter’s son. One would never have imagined the grubby-looking boy of fourteen or so fishing over the barque’s side to be a sailor; even at that distance I could make out his face—ugly-looking and impudent and freckled. As I watched, a tug came to his line, and in a trice he had a great fish floundering on board.

“That’s like ’em,” said Prentice. “You or I might fish all day in this harbour and catch nuthin’; fish don’t bite here, they’re too knowin’. They live on the scraps and leavin’s of the ships, but the Cutters are up to every dodge. I bet they got some bait no one else knows of.” He was silent for a moment, and then: “Dick,” said he, “I’m only a foremast hand, and can’t ax the old man for a boat, but you’re nevvy to the owner, and what’s to hinder you askin’ for the loan of the dinghy for a row? I’d row you, and we could board the barque yonder, and maybe I’d get a mouthful of rum from old man Cutter. He knows me.”

I jumped at the idea.

“There’s no use in asking him now,” said Prentice. “He’s sure to be frazzled up with the Port people and seein’ about the cargo. Wait till I give you the word, which mayn’t be to-day—to-morrow likely. Here they come.”

Sure enough boats were approaching. A white-painted boat trailed the red and yellow of the Spanish flag; this was the Port boat coming to get our credentials and to see that we had not yellow fever on board and also to look after the harbour dues. After it came several other dingy-looking boats loaded up with negroes and fruit and vegetables, chickens in coops, and all sorts of things eatable and otherwise.

In a minute we were surrounded, the negroes in the bumboats not daring to board us till the Port authorities had left, but rowing round us and shouting out their wares. The starboard watch tumbled up from below, and in a moment Jam was leaning over the side with the others, shouting, gesticulating, laughing, and chattering in broken Spanish to the darkies in the boats.

“Look, sar,” cried Jam, catching me by the arm, “that’s water-millions.” He pointed to a fruit-boat just beneath loaded with great green melons. He had no time to say more, when the boats, having now received permission, hooked alongside, and the boatmen came shinning on board.

In a moment the decks were in confusion. Piles of vegetables and baskets of fruit came over the side, and the shouting of the negroes selling, and the shouting of the hands bargaining with them, was enough to deafen one. Most of the men had a little money, English, of course, and the making of change was an added difficulty.

In the middle of the upset I heard myself called, and, turning aft, found Captain Horn prepared to go ashore.

He was making use of the Port boat, and he had a bag with him, which he ordered me to carry.

You may guess I was pleased. I bundled down into the boat, the Captain followed, and we pushed off for the shore.

We landed at a wharf, and came along it towards the town, Captain Horn leading, I following carrying the bag. Never had I imagined such a crowd as we passed through—black men, yellow men, black women with yellow turbans and baskets on their heads, white men dressed all in white and wearing big, broad-brimmed white hats, little nigger children with nothing on at all, mules with jingling bells being driven helter-skelter through the throng followed by men with sticks, hawkers, pedlars, sailors from the ships, all smoking cigars, blazed upon by the strong morning sun, and blown on by a wind full of all sorts of strange scents.

The streets were dirty, but gay enough, and so strange that one forgot their dirt. In one street Captain Horn stopped, and, telling me to wait at the door of a big house, entered.

It was the house of the merchant to whom our cargo was consigned. He was there for an hour nearly, and he came out in very good spirits, wiping his mouth with a red bandana handkerchief.

He seemed in such good spirits that I thought it would be a good time to ask him leave to borrow a boat next day to visit the Sarah Cutter.

The idea of the barque haunted me, and I was more than anxious to stand on her decks, explore her as far as I might, see old Captain Cutter, and, more than all, Richard, or Jack, or whatever they called him.

“You can take the dinghy if Prentice will row you,” replied Captain Horn, “and he has nuthin’ else to do. And now I’m goin’ to have a bite of summat to eat. You come with me. I’ve fed so long on salt horse and weevils I want to get a tooth into somethin’ a man can swaller.”

He led the way into a sort of bar, where they served us with food that was delicious after the food of the brig. I had coffee and the Captain rum. Then we went into the street; and here the Captain took out his great red handkerchief, blew his nose, wiped his mouth, and looked around him.

“Dick,” said he, “I’m goin’ into a bar alongside here where it’s likely I may meet some seafarin’ men, and it’s between you and me that when I get a drop o’ rum in my head I talks a bit looser than nateral, and havin’ that in my head which you and I knows on, it won’t do to discharge cargo in no grogshop.”

He took a pin from the lapel of his coat and handed it to me.

“Here’s a pin. Lay hold of it, and stand by, and if you hear me forget myself, say nuthin’, but jab the pin in my leg. I’ll know. There wouldn’t be no call for your interfering but the balloon juice they serves at these here bars lays over a man like a belt on the head so be that he swallers too much of it.”

He led the way down the street, which he evidently knew well, opened a door of a house and entered. I followed him, though I was nearly stifled by the fumes of the big bar-room into which I followed as he told me.

Men were seated about at tables smoking and drinking, chattering and talking in Spanish, French, English, and for all I knew half a dozen other languages. Nowhere else in the world could you find such a collection of queer people as in the bar-rooms of Havana in those long-ago times. The Spaniards then were a different race from what they are now. I saw men who might have just stepped off the deck of some pirate, long-haired, with loose silk scarves round their throats, knives in the belts, rings in their ears; I saw sea-captains like Captain Horn, pig-tailed, with fists like hams, and roaring voices. I saw Italians, crafty-looking and subtle; traders who owned little shops in Havana; fishermen stained by the sea and the sun; half-castes; Caribs with wiry black hair and wild eyes; and from all this amazing and coloured crowd were rising fumes of smoke, forming wreaths and spirals and a haze that blended everything, making of it all one picture.

No sooner had Captain Horn entered than he was hailed by several of his own sort, sea-captains making merry after a cruise. He took his seat at the table with them, motioning me to take a seat also. At first I thought they were his friends, but after a few minutes I perceived that not one of them knew the other.

At one end of the room stood a bar, and behind the bar stood the ugliest negro I had yet seen. He was six feet tall at the very least, and broadly built, and he stood there over the smoke-dimmed bar ordering several attendants about and seeming to keep an eye on everyone.

The Captain ordered me limejuice, whilst he himself partook of rum. Everyone seemed drinking rum, and presently, under the influence of the rum, Captain Horn, who, on entering the bar, had been quiet enough, became noisy.

He laughed and talked at the top of his voice, and became argumentative. The other sea-captains had been quiet enough, too, till then, and now, seeming led off by the example of the Captain, they became as noisy as he.

“The Penguin were wrecked off Foul Island, I tell you. Tell me I don’t know? Didn’t I see her? Off the southern p’int of Foul Island, where the rocks ran out like razors on a hog’s back. I tell you I see her.”

“I tell you she weren’t no such thing; you’ve got the name wrong, and the place wrong, and you’ve got every blessed thing wrong, for the Penguin she busted herself on Spanish Hat.”

“Ga-r-r out with you!”

I was getting nervous, for I was not used to scenes like this. Every moment the dispute waxed warmer, and every moment I expected trouble. I remembered the pin I carried in the lapel of my coat and the purpose for which it had been given me; but I feared to use it, and no wonder, for to stick a pin into the leg of a man who is raging like a tiger requires some courage, even though you do it by his own orders.

Then the storm calmed down almost as soon as it had risen, only to rise again a little later on the question of the depth of water in some channel whose name I have forgotten. I never saw such people for quarrelling. Captain Horn would be as jolly as possible and talking to Captain Bob—for that was the name they gave the man opposite to him—when the man on his right would put in a remark on some trifling difference occurring between the two talkers, and down would come Captain Horn’s great fist bang on the table, making the glasses jump and the row begin all over again.

I think if men could see how stupid they look when they are drinking, and if they could hear what nonsense they talk, they would leave the rum-bottle alone for very shame at their own foolery. I, drinking nothing but limejuice, sat listening to these grown men, and sometimes wondered if I were not listening to children.

I was weary, sick of it, and longing to get into the open air, but I had to stick to the Captain; not that he would not have let me go, but I dared not leave him any more than a nurse dare leave her charge. And it was well I stayed.

The conversation strayed round to salvage. It was Captain Bob who brought the question up.

“The biggest stroke I ever seen done,” said Captain Bob, after he had started the question, “and the neatest, was off the west of Martinique. There are cliffs there, you bet there are, three hundred foot high, black as a nigger and polished so’s you could see your face in them for a lookin’-glass, and not a crack you could get a toe in to climb ’em, and there’s always a thundering big sea breaking on the rocks below. It was seven years ago in the big storm that swept the islands right from Port o’ Spain to Dominica, the Ann Martin, bound from somewhere—I forget where—to Port o’ Spain, ran her nose on the rocks right under them cliffs. She was laid broadside on and high and dry, every livin’ soul was swept off her and drowned dead. She had a general cargo, and on top of that a hundred thousand dollars in gold coin aboard her, and no chance of salvin’, for to get at her from the sea you couldn’t, with the rocks like razors and a thunderin’ big surf. She was breakin’ up quick, when a chap in St. Pierre bought her all standin’ for a thousand dollars. Of course the fools all laughed, for there was not a man on the island would have given a dollar for her, and the agent he laughed and pocketed the thousand dollars. Well, what did that chap do but rig up a winch on the cliff edge and a tackle, and blest if he didn’t lower niggers down right on to the deck of the hooker, and brought up the coin in bucketfuls. Eighty thousand dollars he made after payin’ for the wreck and the salvin’, and then he sold the winch and tackle and the right to salve the cargo to a tom-fool who paid him five thousand dollars, and who broke his neck over the bisiness and didn’t salve only a crate of hardware and a bale of cotton cloth.”

“That’s nuthin’,” said the man on the right of Captain Horn. “I’ve seen salvin’ a sight more dangerous and difficult than that.” He plunged into a yarn that seemed never coming to an end, when Captain Horn cut him short.

“I’ll tell you a yarn,” said he, “that lays over any of yours.” He called the negro waiter for more rum, let the man who was speaking finish his story, and then, taking a sip from his glass, leaned over the table with his arms crossed, addressing Captain Bob.

“I’ll tell you a yarn about a friend of mine who has walked the world for seven year with the knowledge in his head of where close on to a million of money in gold bars is lyin’ only waitin’ to be picked up.”

You may guess at this I felt frightened, for Captain Horn was now very thick in his speech, his face was swollen, and even from my side view of him I could see that his eyes were staring and protruding like the eyes of a lobster.

“A million of money in gold bars on’y waitin’ to be picked up,” said Captain Bob. “Then why doesn’t he pick it up? I know that yarn, and I know that man; I’ve met him a hundred times. ’Tis generally an old foremast hand, and he’s ready to give you the whole story and the lay of the money for a tot o’ rum.”

“You don’t know that yarn,” thundered Captain Horn, “and you don’t know that man, an’ you think yourself blest clever, don’t you? Monkeys is full of such cleverness, so’s asses.”

“Who’s you comparin’ me to?” cried Captain Bob, firing up and clenching his great mahogany-coloured fist. “Who’s you comparin’ me to? What are you draggin’ your relatives into the question for?”

“My which?” cried Captain Horn.

“Your monkeys and your asses. That’s what I want to know.”

Captain Horn was on the point of springing at the other right across the table, regardless of the glasses and bottles on it and everything else, when the man on his right seized him literally in his arms, whilst the man beside Captain Bob did likewise with that warrior.

“Belay there!” cried the mediators. “Let the Capt’in finish his yarn. Bob, sit you down. Heave ahead, Capt’in, and blow differences.”

The storm disappeared, and to my alarm the Captain squared his shoulders and started with his story again.

I could not stand it any longer, nor sit still listening to this man in his foolishness chattering his secret away. I took the pin from the lapel of my coat, drew a deep breath, took hold of my courage, and jabbed the pin into his thigh.

A back-handed blow sent me sprawling on the floor.

I suppose my nervousness made me run it in deeper than I intended, but the result was surprising, for a back-handed blow sent me sprawling on the floor, and the next thing I knew was Captain Horn on his feet, held by the others, and trying to get at me. I didn’t wait; scrambling on to my legs, I made for the door, pushed it open, and escaped into the street.

Then I ran, taking the direction of the harbour, and not stopping to look behind me, not stopping to take breath till I reached the quayside, where I took my seat on a baulk of stone, and sat for a moment doubled up and gasping.

Then, when I got my breath back, I burst out laughing. There was something ridiculous in the affair, and the fact that he must have entirely forgotten his own instructions. But I did not laugh long. The thought of him there telling, perhaps, now in his foolishness, the whole story which he had told to me with such secrecy in the deck-house of the Albatross was sufficient to sober me, also the thought of how I was to get back to the brig. There she lay out on the blue water, the dirty old Sarah Cutter close to her, and seeming closer still on account of the distance, and there sat I without a penny in my pocket to hire a boat.

The boat that had brought us was not due to fetch us off till three o’clock, and it was now scarcely noon.

I got into the shelter of a go-down, for the sun was far too powerful to sit in, and from there I watched the busy life of the quayside, attracting little attention, and that little from some negro children who were playing about naked in the sun. They could speak no English, and after a while they lost interest in me and left me in peace, and I must have dozed off and slept a considerable time, for when I opened my eyes, there was Captain Horn. He had stirred me awake with his foot, and he seemed himself again, though his face was swollen and his eyes were red and bloodshot. He had, so he told me afterwards, fallen asleep in the bar, and slept off the vile fumes of the rum, awakening to remember dimly the fact that he had been quarrelling with someone, and to find his companions gone.

The sight of me evidently helped his recollection, for he looked ashamed of himself, and as he sat down beside me he pulled out a big copper watch and looked at it.

“Wants a quarter to three,” said he. “There’s no gainsayin’ the pison they serves a sailor-man with in these parts knocks his wits astray. Dick, never you touch rum. There ain’t no good to be got out of rum; rock and reefs is nuthin’ to rum, once it gets the weather-gauge on a man. Never would I touch it, but for the chills and fevers I caught on the African coast which these tropic parts wakes up in me. What was it took place in the bar, Dick, for I haven’t a clear memory in my mind?”

“Why,” said I, pitying him, yet determined not to spare him, “you gave me a pin, and told me to stick it in your leg if you got talking about—you know what.”

“Ay,” said he, “I remember now. A pin it was, and them were the instructions, if I got talkin’ or losin’ my head, for there’s no gainsayin’ a man says things sometimes when he’s jolly that he’d better keep shut in his mouth. And what did you do, Dick?

“Dick,” said he, suddenly becoming desperately serious, “what did I say?”

“Why, you said as much as you could. That man, Captain Bob, got to talking of salving ships, and you began about the gold.”

“About the gold, did I? And what did I say about it?”

“You said you knew a man who knew where nearly a million of money in gold bars was hidden, and he was walking about the world with that knowledge in his head.”

“I said that?”

“Yes.”

“Go on.”

“Then Captain Bob began to laugh at your story, and you got angry with him.”

“Yes?”

“You wanted to fight him, and they stopped you. Then you sat down and began to go on with your story.”

The Captain groaned.

“Heave ahead,” said he.

“Then I ran the pin into your leg, and you knocked me on to the floor.”

“I did, did I?” said Captain Horn. “I must have forgot. There you are again, the rum—reefs and rocks is not in it with the rum, once it gets the weather-gauge on a man.” He felt in his pocket and produced a shilling. He handed it to me.

“There’s a shillin’, Dick. I wish it were a pound. You stuck to your guns and obeyed orders, and you couldn’t a’ done more than that. And what happened then?”

“Why, you tried to get at me, and they held you back.”

“There you are,” said the Captain with a groan. “Murder it might a’ been, and all through the rum. And what happened then, Dick?”

“I ran away.”

“And left me?”

“Yes, I was afraid to stay.”

“And you don’t know if I went on talkin’?”

“No.”

The Captain was silent for a while. Then he said: “It was fort’nate you were there, anyhow. Maybe I said more when you left, maybe I didn’t.” Then, with a sigh of relief: “There’s one comfort, the rum had its hand on them, too, so, maybe, if I did say more they’ve forgot.”

“Perhaps they have,” I replied, and we hung silent, watching the crowd on the wharf, till all at once we heard a hail, and there was Mr. Chopping coming up the steps of the wharf-side.

“Dick,” said the Captain, “don’t you say a word to the mate, for he’s one of those chaps that would never let me hear the end of it.”

“Not a word,” replied I.

We rose up and came to the wharf-side, and there was the boat. We went down the steps to her and got aboard. Prentice was stroke oar.

Five minutes later we were clambering up the side of the Albatross.

It was eight bells (four o’clock in the afternoon) of the next day. I was scratching my arm against a rope wetted with sea water, which was Jam’s suggestion as a cure for mosquito bites. My face, my hands, my arms, and my feet were swollen from the attacks of Havana mosquitoes. They had boarded the ship at sundown the night before. I was in the caboose with Jam, talking to him, when we heard a lot of stamping and shouting and bad language on deck. Jam popped his head out of the caboose door, and then drew it in again, laughing.

“Skeeters,” said Jam, banging the door to and putting his back against it. “Dey’s a sw’am o’ skeeters came abroad, so thick yo’ can’t see the after-house. Ah, would you!”

He had forgotten the scuttle, which was open, and the mosquitoes had found a way in, and instead of jumping to close the scuttle, he began trying to defend himself from the mosquitoes, ducking here and there, hitting at them, shouting at them, till I was so doubled up with laughter I didn’t know I was being stung.

I was scratching myself against the rope when Prentice called to me to come along, that the dinghy was at the side, and there was no time to waste. We had been unloading cargo all day into a lighter on the larboard side, and the men had knocked off for a spell. The dinghy was on the starboard quarter. Prentice scrambled down into her, I followed, and we put off.

It was not far to the Sarah Cutter, and as we ranged alongside a man came to the starboard bulwarks, leaned on them, and looked down on us.

“Hello, Capt’in Cutter!” cried Prentice.

“Hello!” replied the other.

“Remember me?”

“Not from Adam.”

Prentice drew in his oars and caught hold of one of the channel-plates, whilst the man kept looking down at us with not the slightest expression on his face, which was bronzed, hollow-cheeked, grim as a face cast out of iron.

“What!” said my companion. “You don’t remember James Prentice of the Sea Mew? Where’s your memory gone to, Capt’in Cutter?”

“Gone a better bisiness than lookin’ for such trash,” replied the other. “Come, what are you hookin’ on to me for, damagin’ my paint? Sheer off with you!”

Prentice laughed. He was fastening the painter to the channel-plate. I had expected to see him flare up at the insulting words of the other. Not a bit. Nor was Captain Cutter in the least angry when, instead of sheering off, Prentice climbed on to the channel and over the bulwarks to the deck. I saw now that the two men were on perfectly good terms, that Captain Cutter had only been joking, and I climbed on to the channel readily enough when Prentice called to me to do so, and next moment was on the deck of the Sarah Cutter.

“And how’ve you been all these times since I seen you last?” asked Prentice, looking round him at the deck, and then casting his eye up at the rigging. “Why, blest if it ain’t the same old hooker and the same old spars. Been doin’ good bisiness?”

“Pretty fair,” replied Captain Cutter, taking a long look at the other. “Why, blest if it ain’t the same old figgerhead done a bit uglier by the weather, and the same old impidence. Been doin’ good bisiness?”

“Pretty fair,” laughed Prentice. “But you’ll judge better when I have a word with you, for I have somethin’ to tell you, and when I’ve told you I’ll leave you to judge.”

“Come into the after-house,” replied the Captain. “Who’s the boy?”

“He’s my mate, Dick,” laughed Prentice. “Otherwise Dick Bannister. He’ll look after the deck whiles we have our crack, and if so be you have a drop o’ rum to wet my whistle with, why, you’ll agree when you’ve heard my yarn I’ve earned it.”

The Captain led the way to the deck-house. They entered, shut the door, and I was left alone.

I looked around me. The Sarah Cutter interested me more than even the Albatross when I first made her acquaintance.

She was much older than the brig—even my untutored eye could tell that—and her untidiness and dirtiness made her seem even older than she really was.

From the green-painted bell to the white-painted sun-blistered deck-house she bore the mark of the hand of the sea and the sun of the tropics; the deck was sunken and so dark that you could not see the dowels in the planking; the sail, which the men had been at work yesterday, still lay where they had left it, forward of the mizzen-mast; it seemed all patches, and the original sail-cloth so old as to be almost rotten.

I turned from these things and looked over the side to see if the dinghy were all right, and when I turned again I saw something new. A head was peeping above the fo’c’sle-hatch; it was the head of the boy I had seen fishing yesterday. He was staring at me, and I almost forgot James Prentice’s yarn about him and the wife and family of old Captain Cutter, as his body emerged fully into view, coming up from the fo’c’sle just as a cat crawls.

His eyes were fixed on me, and I thought I had never seen a more rascally or impudent face for its size, or a more threatening one. Jack, for it was the boy I had seen fishing the day before and no mistake, came along the deck towards me, and then, before he had reached half-way, he hailed me:

“Hi, you, what you doin’ here? Where you come from, anyway?”

“You yourself,” said I, for I had temper enough and to spare, and the insulting expression and manner of this creature raised my bristles. “Where have you come from?”

Without answering, he went to the bulwarks and popped his head over the side, saw the boat, and then turned to me.

He looked at me, looked at my face all swollen and red with mosquito bites, at my hands, at my bare feet, and then he burst out laughing without saying a word as to the cause of his laughter, a thing much more irritating and insulting than if he had summed up my appearance in words as most boys would have done.

“What are you laughing at?” asked I.

“Nuthin’,” said Jack. “Mayn’t a body laugh on their own deck? Or, maybe, you’re capt’in of this hooker? Who are you, anyway?”

“That’s nothing to you. I’ve come on board here with a friend—and that’s enough.”

“Haven’t you got a name to you?”

“Yes.”

“What is it?”

“Dick.”

“Dick what?”

“Dick Bannister.”

“Dick what did you say?”

“Bannister.”

He broke into such a fit of laughter at this that my fists came out of my pockets and clenched themselves. If he had only spoken and called me names I could have lipped him back, but you can’t do anything with a person who only laughs.

“I tell you what,” said I, “you’d better keep some of your laughter for yourself and your old ship—you want it.”

“Who’s laughin’?” said Jack.

“You are,” said I.

At this he broke into another fit, giggling this time, and trying to walk round me as if to see me from all sides, but I kept my face to him and began to laugh myself, and sneer as much as I could, though my face was never built for that business.

Jack, failing to get the better of me on this line, suddenly swung himself up on the bulwarks, and with one hand on the ratlines began to question me.

“You’re from that brig to starboard?”

“How do you know?”

“ ’Cause you look like it. Say, the man you come with is in the after-house with dad, I expect?”

“He is.”

“What’s he come about?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s his name?”

“Prentice.”

“Is he Captin’ of that old tub?”

“No.”

“Who’s your Capt’in?”

“Captain Horn.”

“Don’t know him. What port you hail from?”

“London.”

“You come from London?”

“Yes.”

Jack was silent for a moment, kicking his heels and whistling. The magic word “London” seemed to fascinate him, he seemed struggling between curiosity and unfriendliness. Curiosity gained the day.

“London’s a big place, they say.”

“It is,” said I.

“Bigger’n Havana?”

“Bigger than Havana! Why, you could put the whole of Havana into—Cheapside.”

“What’s Cheapside?”

“A street.”

“And how many streets are there like that in London?”

“Thousands.”

“Where d’you live in London?”

“Cornhill.”

“What’s that?”

“A street.”

“Have you a dad?”

“No.”

“Then you’re lucky. How long you been at sea?”

“This is my first voyage. I’ve been at school up to now.”

“School! What’s that?”

I told him, and told him about St. Paul’s School, and the boys, and the masters, and the tasks, and the punishments.

I could not have imagined that anyone could be so interested in these commonplace things as he seemed, nor ignorant. He did not know what geography was, nor arithmetic; I had to explain, and he listened with both ears, as they say, and when I had finished wanted more.

We were quite good friends, when at last the deck-house door opened and Prentice and Captain Cutter came out.

They stood for a moment finishing their conversation, and I could tell by the side-glances they cast in my direction they were talking about me.

I wondered dimly what they had been talking about all the time they were in the deck-house, and what I had to do with it; but I had little time for thought, for Jack was finishing his questions. He jumped down from the bulwarks as Prentice came towards us, and was even civil enough to get on the channel and haul the little dinghy up alongside. The last I saw of him as we pushed away he was nodding and grinning at me, and his voice came over the water:

“See you again some time.”

I nodded in reply, little dreaming where our next meeting would take place.

We were nearly a week getting the cargo out, and I have never spent a duller time. There was no getting ashore, everybody was so busy, and all day long you could hear the clanking of the windlass and the jabbering of the negroes in the lighter alongside. I could catch sight sometimes of Jack Cutter on the barque, and we would wave to each other friendly enough; and sometimes I would see old Captain Cutter standing looking over the side, with his cast-iron face turned towards the brig. Once he was standing like this when I saw Prentice, who was close to me on deck, salute him with his scarf, which he whipped from around his neck.

I saw little of Captain Horn all this time—that is to say, in the way of speaking to him. He seemed to avoid me, not being disposed, I think, to speak of his foolishness ashore. Jam was my main stand-by in the way of amusement, and we would hang sometimes by the hour together leaning over the side and talking.

He knew a good many things about the fish of these waters, and the birds, and invented more sometimes. As we leaned like this, a grey shape would pass through the water below; it was a shark—the harbour was full of them. But the devil-fish which Jam declared to inhabit these waters interested me more even than the sharks. He said that they were big enough to tow a ship, and if they fouled the anchor-chain they would drag a ship from her moorings. Of course, I did not believe him; yet what he said was true enough, for he was speaking of the great rays—enormous flat fish, as broad as a topsail and as thick as a boat, and quite powerful enough to shift a brig of the size of the Albatross, if by any chance they fouled her anchor.

It took another week to take in cargo, which work was finished on a Monday. We were due to leave on the Wednesday, and Captain Horn, now that work was over, gave leave to all hands for a liberty day ashore; half the crew were permitted to land on the Monday afternoon, half on Tuesday.

Prentice and I being in the same watch, it fell to us both to land on the Tuesday.

“Dick,” said Prentice, “you and me will stick together and cut adrift from them chaps. We don’t want no bars and taverns and broken heads along with they chaps. You come along with me, and I’ll pilot you to a place where I know, a couple of mile out of the town, the biggest garding you ever seen, chock-full of fruit-trees, where I’ve picked oranges in the orange season many a time. Know Havana? Why, I know all the country round here about, in times when my pockets were full of money, too, and when I rid a mule instead of hoofing it; but I’ve never been one for bars and taverns, so if that’s your lay, why, you go with the others, and I’ll steer my own course.”

“I’m not one for bars and taverns, either,” replied I. “I’ll go with you. How far is this place?”

“Not more than a couple of miles,” replied Prentice; “and we’ll have time for a word or two, for I have somethin’ to talk to you about, Dick, that’ll be to your own advantage, as the lawyer chaps say, or I’m much mistaken.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“You wait and see,” replied Prentice. “Mum’s the word till I give the signal.”

I do not know why, but this last speech of his disturbed me. What could he have to say that would be to my advantage, and why could not he say it on board ship? But I could not question him any more, for he simply turned on his heel and went aft, leaving me looking over the side.

On the Tuesday after dinner the long boat was got out and manned, and the liberty men, smartened up as well as they might be, crowded down into her. I have never seen a more jolly lot than we were as we started, the men shouting songs (for you could not call it singing), playing tricks on one another, more like children than grown men, mad with delight at the idea of getting ashore and spending the few shillings in their pockets. We hooked on to the quay steps, and the men scrambled out, laughing and chasing one another up the steps. A crowd of darkies was looking on, for the landing of a liberty party always attracted attention.

“You’ll see those chaps coming back to-night, and every man Jack of them with sore heads and empty pockets,” said Prentice. “Fightin’ and larkin’ is all they thinks of, and if they’ve a penny it burns a hole in their pockets till it’s gone. You follow me.”

We came along up the quay, keeping in touch with our men till we reached the town; then in the first street we reached Prentice turned down a narrow passage, and I followed him.

In a moment we were free of the others, and very glad I was to be free of them, for they were already getting quarrelsome.

We passed into a fairly broad street, then by a long public garden, where palm-trees and the most wonderful flowers grew; we struck into another street, which turned into a road which led us to the country.

We had brought biscuits with us, and Prentice said we could find fruit in plenty; but I had no thought of eating, so taken up was I by the wonderful trees and flowers, the palms and great sand-box trees that bordered the way.

We passed negroes driving mules with bells on their harness, and here and there were wayside fountains, where we stopped to drink.

It took us less than two hours to reach the place Prentice was making for, a huge old garden half surrounded by a ruined wall. It was the strangest place I have ever seen, or perhaps will ever see again. It must have been beautiful once, for walks were still there, though half overgrown by tropical vegetation; and here and there were statues, some of them broken, and fountains dried up now. There was an old disused well with a water-wheel, and, pushing on through the trees, we found the ruins of the villa to which the grounds belonged. Only the outside walls remained, and such another ruin I never did see, for the tropical vegetation had invaded the place, and trees were growing absolutely within the walls.

Prentice picked some fruit from one of the trees, and some prickly pears, taking great care how he handled the latter. Then we sat down on a bit of broken wall in the shade and set to upon our provisions.

When we had finished, Prentice lit a pipe. He smoked for a minute or two in silence, and then all at once he began to speak out what was evidently on his mind.

“Dick,” said he, “I’ve been a sailor, man and boy, this forty year, and I’ve l’arned one thing and another; but there’s nothing I’ve l’arned truer than the fact that there’s on’y one thing worth having in this world, and that’s money. For if a chap’s got money, blest if he ain’t got wings as well as legs, to say nuthin’ of a horse to ride on and servants to serve his vittles. You’re on’y a boy, and you haven’t l’arned yet what money can do. I have, and I tell you it can do anythin’. Here’s you and me eatin’ biscuits an’ prickly jacks, sittin’ on a blessed ruin, and there’s them in Havana town eatin’ off silver plates and bein’ sarved by niggers, drivin’ with four mules to their kerridges, and livin’ in houses which is palices, they are—and I’m goin’ to be one of them.”

“Are you?” said I, surprised at the energy and conviction with which he spoke. “How are you going to do it?”

“That’s what I’ve brought you here to tell you about,” replied he. “You remember that yarn you told me some time ago?”

“Which yarn?”

“Why, the yarn about the gold.”

“Oh, that!”

“The same. Well, Dick, I’m no fool, and I’m free to admit it may all be bunkum; and then again I’m free to admit it mayn’t. I keeps an open mind; but there’s one thing I’m fixed on, and that is—I’m goin’ to see.”

“But we’re all going there,” said I.

“Who’s goin’ there?”

“Captain Horn and all of us.”

“So’s Capt’in Cutter,” replied Prentice; “and as the Sarah Cutter can outsail the old Albatross two to one, why, Dick, it seems to me that Capt’in Cutter will get there first.”

For a moment I could not speak. In a flash I saw the scoundrelism of the man beside me, and how I had played into his hands. Though I did not understand his methods in the least, I saw that he had got what sailors call “the weather-gauge” on Captain Horn.

I half rose from where I was sitting, and then took my seat again.

“Look here,” said I; “you told Captain Cutter?”

“Dick,” said Prentice, “I’m not denying it, and why shouldn’t I?”

“Why shouldn’t you?” cried I. “You got the story from me, and promised not to say a word to anyone——”

“On board,” cut in Prentice. “But what’s to hinder me talkin’ of it to my friend Capt’in Cutter? Besides, you blabbed it all out in your sleep, and if it hadn’t been for me silencin’ you with a boot, the whole fo’c’sle would have got to know of it.”

“If I told the whole story in my sleep, why didn’t you stop me before I got to the end?”

“Listen to him!” cried Prentice, as though some third person were present. Then to me: “And what call had I to stop you? What affair was it o’ mine? You told and I got the yarn——”

“Yes,” said I, “but I didn’t tell you of the locality of the wreck in my sleep; you got that out of me afterwards.”

“Maybe I did,” replied he. “But that’s all neither here nor there now. Cutter, he got wind of the thing, and Cutter has got everythin’ but the locality, which is in my head, and we’re going together to see what’s in it.”

“You’re leaving the Albatross?”

“You’ve said the word, son; desertin’ is another name for it. When the liberty men get on board to-night, they’ll go without James Prentice. I’ve money enough to pay for a shore boat to the barque after sundown, and what I brought you here for was to make a proposal. Horn’s plan is blown on: you may take that from me. The Sarah Cutter’ll reach her destination days before the old Albatross can crawl after her; and if the stuff’s there, we’ll take it. Well, what I propose is this: You come along with us and take your share and see the fun. And I’ll tell you why I ask you to come, straight and plain—I don’t trust Cutter. I want the backin’ of another pair of hands and eyes, even if they’re on’y the hands and eyes of a boy. And, see here, I have another plan in my head, which means if we do sight the stuff we may collar the lot for our own two selves.”

What new wickedness lay concealed in this plan, heaven knows. I was so taken aback by the whole business, and by the sense that I, and I alone, had brought this disaster, not only to Captain Horn, but to my uncle, that for a moment I was speechless.

“For our two selves,” he went on, evidently taking my silence as being favourable. “Dick Bannister and James Prentice’ll be the name of the firm, with a palace in Havana, and more money to spend than they could spend with two hands if they lived to be a thousand. You put your trust in James—he’s no fool, though maybe he’s been unfort’nate. He’s thought of everything and left nuthin’ to chance this time. See here!”

He took a paper from his pocket and spread it on his knee. It was the chart—the very same chart I had seen in the after-house of the Albatross.

“How did you get that?” I cried, the blood rushing to my face in a flame. I caught at it, but Prentice was too quick for me.

“Hands off!” cried he. “What you snatchin’ at?”

He held it away at arm’s length. He was a full-grown man, and I only a boy; I had no chance whatever against him, nor did I try. After the first moment I saw that force was useless, and that my only chance was to give him the slip, get back to the harbour as quickly as might be, and warn the Captain of what my folly had brought upon him.

I rose to my feet.

“Sit you down!” cried Prentice. “Ah! you would, would you?”

The next moment he was on his feet, and I was running, making for the entrance of the garden by the path we had followed. I was a good runner, and I had got a few yards’ start, and I was spurred by the thought that I was running for my life. I heard him behind me so close that every second I expected his hand on my shoulder.

The next moment Prentice was on top of me.

I had reached half-way to the entrance, and had passed the well and the water-wheel, when, catching my foot in a tree-root that stretched across the path, I fell sprawling with arms outspread, and the next moment Prentice was on top of me.

He struck me with his fist on the back of the head. I tried to kick him. Then he struck me again, this time behind the ear, and I remember nothing more.

When I recovered consciousness I was in almost complete darkness; I felt stiff and bruised, and my head felt as if an iron band had been fixed round my forehead and welded there.

For the first minute or so I remembered nothing; then bit by bit the whole thing came back to me—Prentice and our pleasure trip, and the villa garden, and his suggestion that I should join him in the Sarah Cutter business. I remembered the chart, and how I had tried to snatch it from him; how I had run away from him, how he had chased me, and struck me.

Mind is such a curious thing, and acts so strangely when shaken up or interfered with, that for a full minute I lay vaguely considering, not my own position or how I had got to the place where I lay, but the fact of the chart being in Prentice’s possession, and the fact that he must have stolen it. Then, all at once, and as though Fear had taken her seat beside me and placed her hand on my shoulder, I became wide awake to my position and the strangeness and terror of it.

I was lying on a surface of sand; my fingers told me that, for I could dig them into it; and when I pinched some of it up between finger and thumb, I could tell by the feel of the powder-dry grains that it was fine as the sand in an hour-glass.

I looked up, and far above me in the darkness I could see a circle of light, and above the circle something that moved slightly from side to side, and which in a moment I recognized as the frond of a palm-tree moved gently by the wind.

Then I struggled to my feet and stretched out my arms. My right hand touched a bricked surface. I called out, and my voice came back to me as it does when one calls out in a narrow tunnel. For a moment, filled with the terror or perplexity, which is even worse than the worst terror that knowledge can give one, I stood with the perspiration beading on my face through every pore, and pricking as if a thousand needles were piercing the skin. Then, in a second, the knowledge came to me: I was at the bottom of the old disused well which I had passed just before Prentice had seized me and struck me senseless.

He must have flung me down it, thinking me dead, or sure in his mind that I would be dead when I reached the bottom of it, and safely hid for ever. Looking back, I can scarcely recall what sensations I felt just then, for the strangest thing in life is that terrible and unpleasant things fade in the memory, whilst delightful and pleasant things do not lose their colour or their details.

One thing I remember—that I shouted for help and kept on shouting till I was hoarse, and that no reply came. An hour or more must have passed, during which time I shouted at intervals without obtaining any reply and without any seeming chance of being heard.

Yet heard I was, by the mercy of Providence. Suddenly, and after one of my shouting fits, came a voice from above, and, looking up, I saw a man’s head framed by the well-rim. I could not see the face, for it was in shadow, nor could I make out what he was saying, as he spoke in Spanish; but I shouted in reply to his words, begging him not to leave me, imploring, promising, and carrying-on so in my extravagant delight at the chance of rescue from my horrible position, that it was just as well, perhaps, that he failed to understand me.

He shouted something in reply; then his head vanished. I guessed that he had gone for help, and so overcome was I now by the chance of rescue that my knees failed me and I sat down on the sand exhausted.

For a moment I was filled with joy, as though I had come into a fortune; then my joy suddenly turned to terror. Suppose this man, on whom my life depended, had gone off intending to leave me to my fate? I had heard tales on board the Albatross of foreign sailors behaving with unimaginable cruelty, marooning men and passing vessels in distress without even replying to their signals.

The thought was so horrible that I refused it. Besides, deep in my heart I felt assured that a Power greater than the power of man had taken notice of my plight, and would not desert me in my extremity. And I was right, for after what seemed an age of waiting, I was hailed again from above, and, looking up, I saw two heads now, and almost at the same moment the end of a rope hit me on the shoulder.

And shouted to them to haul away.

I caught it, made a loop in it dexterously—thanks to my knowledge of knotting learned from Prentice—slipped the loop under my arms, and, clinging to the rope, tugged at it to let them know that I was fast, and shouted to them to haul away.

In half a minute I was at the surface, with my knees and knuckles skinned from knocking against the wall-side, but safe and sound, though half suffocated by the pressure of the rope. Half a dozen people were round the well, five men and a woman; and such an excited lot of people I never did see, all shouting and chattering and asking me questions at the same time, of which I could not make head nor tail, spoken as they were in Spanish.

I pointed to the well and then to myself, and then made pantomime as though I were falling down the well. They understood this, and shook hands with me each in turn, and the woman kissed me, which did not much matter or make me blush, as she was old enough to be my mother. Then we left the garden and went on to the road, where we said good-bye, shaking hands again all round with such goodwill that one might have fancied I had rescued them instead of it being the other way about.

I had a shilling in my pocket, but I would not have dared to offer it to any of them, for though they were poorly enough clad, they were gentlefolk every one.

At the corner of the road I turned and waved good-bye, and that was the last I ever saw of them, though I shall carry their faces in my memory till I die.

And now, as I made back to Havana at top speed, I noticed for the first time how low the sun was.

I must have lain for a long time unconscious—hours and hours—during which time Prentice would have got back to Havana. I had no doubt in my mind that by some means he would manage to board the Sarah Cutter, and if he did so he might get away before I reached the Albatross with my story. The thought of this made me quicken my pace to a run, a foolish enough proceeding, as my wind gave out, bringing me to a dead halt, with a stabbing stitch in my side where the rope had pressed on my ribs.

When I had got the better of it, I continued my way, walking this time, and so slowly that when I reached the outskirts of the town the sun was setting.

There is scarcely any twilight in Cuba, and darkness overtook me before I reached the quayside, which was nearly deserted; and here a new obstacle lay before me— What was I to do for a boat?

I could see the anchor lights of the shipping, but so dark was it before the rise of the moon that I could not make out the Albatross for certain, much less the Sarah Cutter.

I walked down the wharf, stopping at all the steps on the chance of a boat from one of the ships that might take me off for a shilling; but there were no boats to be seen—nothing but the harbour swell washing and slobbering about the steps with a sound dreary enough to cast me down completely; not, however, that I wanted much of that.

I took my seat on a stone mooring-bitt, and was debating in my mind as to whether I had not better try in one of the streets leading to the quay for some boatman to take me off, when from the direction of those same streets came a roaring, swinging chorus, and on to the quay, lit by the moon that was now peeping over the sea, came a crowd of men.

They were the liberty men from the Albatross returning from their holiday, shouting and singing and fresh enough in all conscience, but not quarrelsome.

They came along, arm in arm, four abreast, one helping to steady the other; and when they sighted me and hailed me, I thought shame for the way I had fallen in with Prentice’s sneers at them that morning.

When they found no boat waiting for them, a few of them were for going back to the town and continuing their spree; but as they had no money, the rest soon overrode them, and they began hailing the ship; and then, lining up, they yelled the “Barbary Coast Chanty,” so that you could have heard them for miles.

This brought the boat, and into it we tumbled, no one heeding James Prentice’s absence, not even the mate, who was steering and had enough to do trying to trim the boat as well as attend to his job.

The moon had risen, casting her light on the harbour, and I had tried to make out if the Sarah Cutter was still at her anchorage, but of the five or six ships lying where I supposed the Albatross to be I could not make certain of the Albatross herself, so I had to wait, holding my patience in both hands, whilst we rowed past ship after ship till the Albatross showed up all black spars and side against the blazing tropic moon.

But the Sarah Cutter was not to be seen; the place where she had berthed, a few cable-lengths to seaward of the Albatross, was vacant, and showed nothing but the harbour swell running under the moonlight.

I felt as one might fancy a ship to feel when the wind is taken out of her sails, leaving her without steerage way and all astray upon the water.

I had hoped against hope, only to find my worst fears realized. The Sarah Cutter was gone, and with her Prentice—of that I was certain. He had got the chart; he had got the location of the treasure; he was a far, far cleverer man than anyone on board either the Albatross or the barque, and if treasure was to be found, he would secure it.

These thoughts were running through my mind as we came bumping alongside the brig, and as I came over the side I scarcely saw the people on deck, but made for the starboard bulwarks, and, shading my eyes against the moon, gazed out to sea.

There was a light wind blowing, and from the deck one got a far better horizon than from the boat; and, sure enough, two miles away to the north-east, or maybe more, I spied a sail.

I could not tell at that distance whether it was the Sarah Cutter or not—that is to say, I could not tell by my eyesight; yet I knew by some instinct that it was, and the distance told me she was beyond pursuit.

As I turned away from the bulwarks my eye caught a gleam of light from the partly open door of the deck-house.

Whatever might be the upshot of the matter, my duty was clear. I must make a clean breast of the business to Captain Horn, give him all the facts and face the result.

I had only to walk into the deck-house and tell him, and I had made up my mind to do so; yet I hung off and on, powerless as a ship in irons, a voice saying in one ear, “Go in and get it over,” and a voice in the other ear saying, “Wait a moment.”

Then I walked the deck a pace or two, watching the boat being got aboard, clutching at my courage, finding it now and losing it again, and all the time trying to make up my mind what my first words would be.

I was saved the trouble of finding first words, for all of a sudden the deck-house door was flung wide open, and the big figure of the Captain blocked the light.

I heard him hail Mr. Chopping, and I guessed by his voice that something was up. Mr. Chopping came running aft, and I saw Captain Horn catch him round the back, so that his left hand rested on his left shoulder, and half swing, half drag him into the deck-house. The Captain must have shut the deck-house door with his heel, for it went to with a bang immediately they entered.

I heard the Captain’s voice, loud enough at all times, but now raised to a bellow, so that the men round the fo’c’sle-hatch could hear it through the shut door and all. I could see them in the moonlight, some on the hatch, some lounging by the bulwarks, but all with their faces turned aft, listening, and evidently wondering what was up with the old man.

Then after a minute or two the deck-house door flew open, and Captain Horn appeared. He did not see me, but hailed the men round the fo’c’sle-hatch.

“Hi, you there! Which of you saw Jim Prentice last ashore?”

“Dick Bannister was with him last, sir,” came a voice. “We didn’t see nothing of Prentice after we parted company with Dick Bannister and him in the mornin’.”

“Send him aft,” cried the Captain. “Why, here he is.” He had suddenly caught sight of me, and he lugged me into the deck-house by the arm and shut the door.

Mr. Chopping was seated at the table, upon which the whole contents of the chart locker were spread. Mr. Chopping’s white face was whiter even than ordinary, and he was fumbling with the charts, turning them over and examining them.

“Dick,” said the Captain, “we’re blown on. The chart’s gone, and there’s only one man has taken it, and that’s James Prentice. Caught him here this morning, the swab, pretendin’ to clear the place, which is Jam’s work; then Jam reported this evenin’ having seen him board the Sarah Cutter. Didn’t believe him, but it must’a’ been so; he hasn’t come off in the liberty boat. Where’d you part company with him?”

“Captain,” said I, “I was coming to tell you, only—only—I couldn’t bring my mind to it for the first few minutes I was on board. Prentice tried to kill me. He showed me the chart, which he had stolen, and wanted me to join him and go on board the barque. I wouldn’t; I tried to snatch the chart from him, and then he tried to kill me.”

“Tried to kill you! That’s a likely tale,” said Mr. Chopping. “You and he were together, and you come back safe and sound, and he goes off with the chart—those are the facts. Where does the killing come in?”

Captain Horn turned on his mate.

“Will you close your head?” said he. “Dick’s straight. Who has a better interest in the business but him—own nevvy to old Simon Bannister? Heave ahead, Dick, and give us your yard straight from the beginning. And you,” said he, turning to the mate, “don’t you be heavin’ none of your objections at him and tanglin’ him up. Leave all them businesses to me.”

“I have no wish to tangle him, only to get at the truth,” said the other; “seeing that you have made me a party to this business—a business,” he finished, with a snap, “that I would much sooner be out of than in.”

“Well, shut your head, anyhow,” replied Captain Horn. Then, motioning me to a seat with a jerk of his thumb, he took his own place at the table, and I started.

I told everything that had happened that day, right from the very beginning—how Prentice had suggested that he and I should stick together whilst on shore; how he had piloted me to the old villa garden; how he had shown me the chart, told me of his plan, chased me when I refused to join in with him, and struck me senseless.

With the feeling of it fresh on me, I must have told a hairlifting tale of my imprisonment in the well, for even Mr. Chopping seemed to forget himself, and hung on my story, gaping as though he were listening with his mouth as well as his ears.

When I had finished, the Captain, who had said not a word all through, brought his fist down on the table with a bang.

“There you have it,” cried he. “Was there ever such a two-faced scoundrel? It’s all as I laid it out before you—chart gone, Prentice gone, Jam’s yarn of having seen him board the barque, and now the boy on top of all.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Chopping, “it hangs together, seemingly, well enough; but you’ll excuse me, I’m a cautious man, and I’d like to hear the nigger’s story with my own ears. No, no!” said he, holding up his hand to cut the Captain short. “I’m not disbelieving anything, so don’t go flying in a temper. But I like to take soundings with my own hand, seeing that I’m embarked on this business, and one with you in a venture somewhat against my will. I’m Scotch on the mother’s side,” he finished, with a laugh, as if to excuse himself for his over-precaution. It was the only time I ever saw him laugh.

Captain Horn turned to me.

“Call the nigger,” said he.

I went to the door and called for Jam, who came running on the summons.

He stood at the table whilst I shut the door.

“Now, you black rascal,” said Captain Horn, “dig up your memory and give us the yarn you told me about James Prentice.”

“Yes, sar,” replied Jam. “It was this way, sar: I were in de caboose cleanin’ up de rubbage from de cookin’ when, t’inks I to myse’f, I’ll take a breff of air, an’ out I goes an’ leans over de stabboard bulwark an’ looks at de sharks; dey was crowded t’ick as poodle-dogs in de ship’s shadda, for I’d thrown over a bucket o’ scraps an’ slush an’ stuff on’y a minit before, an’ dey were waitin’ wid der moufs hingin’ open for mo’. Den I sees a boat comin’ cross de watta from de wharf, an’, t’inks I, maybe dose are de libe’ty boys comin’ back in a sho’ boat; but boat warn’t full ’nough for dem. No, sar, der were on’y four rowers, all black niggers, an’ in de starn a white man wid him hat, so, over him face. I watch, thinkin’ dey make fo’ us. No, sar, dat weren’t de port dey was mak’n fo’, but de Sarah Cutter. ‘Ho, ho!’ t’inks I, ‘who’s a-goin’ aboard de Sarah Cutter?’ Dey brings de ole scow alongside de Sarah, an’, lo an’ behold! when I see de starn-sheet man board her, I says to myse’f, ‘Dere goes James Prentice. What on ’arth James Prentice doin’ thar’?’ t’inks I. ‘What’s he up to, anyway?—comes off in a sho’ boat like a gen’leman, sittin’ in de starn-sheets bein’ rowed by niggers.’

“Den I see all dem scowbankers on de Sarah bustlin’ an’ hummin’ like a swa’m o’ bees an’ I see de ole sails of her shook out, an’ den I hear de clink, clank, clank, o’ de Sarah’s anchor-chain, an’ I hear de chaps stompin’ an’ shoutin’ at de capstan bars. Den I see de anchor come home wid a ton o’ mud on de flukes of her, an’ de ole sails of de Sarah clawin’ at de wind an’ fillin’; an’ I says to myse’f, ‘he’s off, sure, an’ James Prentice he’s aboa’d of her.’ Den I comes to you, sar, an’ tell my yarn, an’ you says, ‘Jam, you’s a liar!’ ”

“That’s all you know?” asked Mr. Chopping.

“Yes, sar, dat’s all I know.”

“Then you can get aft,” replied the mate.

“Thank you, sar,” replied Jam, and off he went.

Captain Horn was too absorbed in thought to notice that the mate had taken upon himself to order Jam aft. He was brought to himself by Mr. Chopping, who, I will say, had his head screwed on the right way, much as I disliked him for his creeping way of thinking and his hard, cold manner.

“But see here,” said Mr. Chopping, “there’s one point we haven’t arrived at, and it seems to me important enough. How did Prentice get to know of the chart, and, more than that, how did he get to know of the location we’re after?”

Here was the question that I felt was going to undo me. I had escaped wonderfully up to this. Captain Horn had all the essential news about the robbery and the robber; his knowledge that I was the cause of all the bother would not forward matters in the least. Yet I was fully prepared to make a clean breast of the matter. I could easily have escaped by lying, and it is a comfort to me now to think that I did not even contemplate that.

But Captain Horn saved me from the humiliation of a confession, and that in a most unexpected manner, and for a reason that will be seen later on.

“What in thunder has that to do with it?” he burst out. “The scamp’s gone, the thing’s done, and what is the good of poking round and asking how he did it?”

“As you please,” replied Mr. Chopping. “But how a foremast hand like Prentice came to know the business, and, what’s more, came to know of the whereabouts of the chart, passes my comprehension.”

Now, as I afterwards discovered, Captain Horn was under the belief that the whole of this business was due to his blabbing in the tavern that day when the rum overtook him. He fancied that one of the men to whom he had been talking had got hold of Prentice, and this accounts for the savage way he turned now on the mate, bidding him hold his tongue and keep his comprehension till it was called for.

“What we have to do now,” says he when he had fallen calm again, “is to put a stopper on these chaps. We can’t sail till daybreak, for the water won’t be on board till then. They’ve got a few hours’ start of us, and I’m not saying that in light winds the old barque mayn’t outsail us a bit; but not by much. Howsomever, let that be as it may, we’ll get them as quick as the wind can take us, and as quick as we can clear the port. What we have to fix our noses to now, is the fact that there’ll be fighting when us lot meets that lot, and that shows the use of a bit of foresight, for we have pistols and ammunition and cutlasses enough and to spare, and I’ll lay a dollar the Sarah Cutter hasn’t more than belayin’-pins to fight with.”

“One moment,” said Mr. Chopping. “They have the original chart, but I suspect you have the location marked down all right on our charts?”

“You may lay to that,” replied Captain Horn, “and if there wasn’t a chart in the whole blessed world, I’d find that island blindfolded—I’d smell it. Now then, let’s get to work. Have the boat ready and the water-casks to start before sun-up. It won’t take more than an hour to get the water aboard. The provisions came off this evening. Now then, Dick, get forward with you, and not a word out of your mouth unless the crew ask you about Prentice. You can tell ’em he’s deserted—the swab!”

Off I went, leaving the Captain and Mr. Chopping together confabulating over the business in hand.

You may guess I was excited. The word about the cutlasses and pistols, the chance of seeing real fighting, and the chance of the treasure, all combined to put me in a flame. It was not till now that I realized fully that my uncle was the chief one concerned in this business, and that the success of our venture might mean very much to him. From his irritability during the preparation of the brig, and from certain words which he had let drop, I gathered that he had sunk a large part of his money in the venture. He had always been a careful and saving man, but I doubt if his income from the business was extraordinarily big. What between paying the hands at the factory and the high wages he had to pay to the skilled workers whose business it was to perfect the mathematical instruments, and his easy-going way with people, letting them run up debts and not bothering about payment, I suspect his yearly takings were not half what they ought to have been. Boy though I was, these things were in my mind, and I vowed to myself, come what might, I at least would not be wanting when the moment came.

I found the hands in good humour. They were at supper and the fresh provisions ordered on board by the Captain had been served out. Word had gone about that James Prentice had deserted, and I never did hear such a power of abuse as was poured out over his name. He owed a shilling to one man, he had borrowed a scarf from another to go ashore with, he owed another fellow a plug of tobacco. But it was not what he owed that raised a storm against him, but what he was.

They all disliked him for one reason or another, and often for no apparent reason, for sailors are good character readers; and though Prentice was one of those men who make for popularity by speaking all men fairly, he was unable to make friends, and, indeed, unable to keep from making enemies.

When supper was over I got on deck; there was a good deal of bustle going on, Mr. Chopping seeing to the water-casks and the condition of the boats, of which we only carried two—the long boat and a dinghy. I, having nothing to do with the crew’s work, was idle, and found time to chat with Jam, who had finished cleaning up from supper, and who was leaning over the side watching the lights of Havana and the shipping in the harbour.

“Well, Jam,” said I; “so we’re off to-morrow?”

“Yes, sar,” replied Jam; “we’s homewa’d bound sure—maybe.”

“What do you mean by ‘maybe’?” I asked.

Jam was silent for a moment. Then he spoke, lowering his voice a bit:

“I dunno, sar; I on’y make a guess. Yo’ remember dat James Prentice? Well, he say to me sumthin’ t’other day. He say to me, ‘Jam, s’pose I take my hook f’m off de ole Albatross, you come wiff me?’ an’ I say to him, ‘Not much. Albatross good ’nuff fo’ Jam.’ An’ he say, ‘Yo’ t’ink yo’ go to Lunnon in her? Yo’s mistook. Capt’in Ho’n, he goin’ foolin’ roun’ de islands on a bisness of him own—bad bisness, too,’ says he. ‘Nebber mind,’ says I; ‘good ’nuff bisness fo’ Jam. Jam stick to de Albatross, good ’nuff fo’ Jam.’ Well, sar, when he hears that, he pritinds he were jokin’—an’ now look! he run ’way sho’ enuff.”

“Why do you think he ran away, Jam?” said I, more to test how much he knew of the affair than for any other reason.

“I dunno, sar,” replied Jam; “nor why he run aboa’d de Sarah Cutter, nor why she up wid her anchor soon as he were aboa’d, nor why Capt’in Horn he get in such a takin’, nor why he call me aft wid all dem charts on de table. You knows more dan I knows, sar; but I ’spects a lot.”

“Well, Jam,” said I, “whatever you suspect, don’t say anything of your suspicions to the men. I’d tell you all if I could, but I have promised to keep my mouth shut.”

With that I left him, called aft by Mr. Chopping on some business or other; and half an hour later I was fast asleep in my bunk, too tired to dream, much less to chatter in my sleep.

I was awakened before dawn by the noise of the men on deck getting ready the long boat to go for water.

The moon had just vanished beneath the sea-line, and the boat and the men were away before the first ray of dawn lit the eastern sky.

Mr. Chopping sighted me, and, busy as he kept me on odd jobs, I had an eye for the surprising way the day came right up through the night, so that the blazing rim of the sun was looking over the sea in a moment, as one might say, and sea and sky were blue with a breeze blowing and bending the palm-trees on shore, where ten minutes back everything had been still and dark, and lit by stars.

Jam was cooking eggs for breakfast, and flap-jacks, a kind of cake of his own invention. He set me to make the coffee; and when the men were aboard with the water and breakfast was finished, the capstan bars were manned, and the anchor began to lift from the mud.

Fellows were aloft loosening out the sails, the breeze blew merrily, and all of a sudden the old brig, that had been swinging like a log to the tides for more than a fortnight, took a feeling of life. She was away.

I stood watching the shore as it faded little by little, gliding westward, so that now Havana was behind us, a fine sailing breeze freshening by gusts, and the old Albatross talking to the sea and throwing it away from her in great bursts of spray.

I heard Captain Horn talking to Mr. Chopping, and the mate congratulating him on the fair wind, and the Captain answering back. He seemed in high spirits, and so, for a wonder, did Mr. Chopping. The latter, even, had a fair word for me when he chanced across me a moment later.

I think the thought of what might be coming raised even the mate’s slow enthusiasm, but only for a while; half an hour later he was as dour as ever, and as gloomy.

Towards noon the wind died down a bit, and the Albatross lost way. She was a good sea boat, but she wanted plenty of wind to show herself at her best. In light airs and puffy head winds I have seen her carry on, for all the world like a fat old lady wanting breath, fanning herself, so to speak, by flapping her sails and flinging herself about.

The warm weak wind kept the sails drawing, just that and no more. The brilliant sea beneath the noonday sun lay blue as a flower to the Cuban coast, and the wind tempered the heat, so that nothing could be pleasanter in the way of a cruise. But the thought of the Sarah Cutter drawing away from us, as she surely was, spoiled all the beauty for me. I hung over the side, watching the scraps of seaweed passing astern in the blue water, and great jelly-fish and Portuguese men-o’-war. Sometimes an albacore bigger than a salmon would take a leap from the sea, flash in the air, and vanish; and flocks of flying-fish, white as silver, flew with us, and sometimes right across our course.

It was after eight bells (noon)—the men had finished dinner, and Jam had cleared away the things from the Captain’s table—when I was called aft, and found Captain Horn and Mr. Chopping in consultation by the deck-house door.

Though they had sent for me they did not notice me for a moment, so deep were they in their talk.

“If you think it’s safe,” said Mr. Chopping, “then I have no more to say.”

“There’s nothing safe in this world but Bank of England stock,” replied the Captain, “and precious little of that there is for the likes of you and me; but if you can tell me how we’re to work this job and the crew not knowing, then I’ll listen to you. Dick,” said he, turning to me, “I’m goin’ to take the crew into the know, and tell them how the land lies, and what their share will be if we pull this business off. You’re Simon Bannister’s nevvy, so I tell you, and if you have any objections to make on behalf of the owners, make ’em.”

I had nothing to say, and told him so.

“Then off with you for’ard,” replied he, “and tell the bos’n to pipe all hands and send ’em aft.”

Off I went, and in a minute the men were tumbling up on deck to the shrilling of the bos’n’s pipe, and crowding aft. Every soul on board was mustered, all but the man at the wheel, and he could hear quite well what was going on as he stood twirling the spokes with his great hairy hands, and with a quid in his right cheek that bulged it out, making him look as if he had the toothache.

I can see them still, the crew of the Albatross, all grouped in a cluster, dressed in every variety of garb, striped shirts, dungaree jackets, canvas trousers; whiskered and pig-tailed; tattooed, some of them, so that you couldn’t see the colour of the skin of their arms for the flags and mottoes and girls and anchors blazoned in blue and red; chewing, every man Jack of them, and all with their eyes fixed on Captain Horn, who was standing now beside Mr. Chopping and looking mighty grim—more as if he had piped them for punishment than anything else.

The men must have thought so, too, for I saw some of them nudging the others, and the faces of the whole lot showed their feelings; but they hadn’t to wait long, for, having stepped to the leeward rail and spat his quid into the sea, the Captain turned on them and let fly with the most amazing harangue I ever heard.

He let into James Prentice first of all, gave him his character there and then without any mincing of words, and, having done this, he set to and told the whole story of the treasure, and how we were bound to pick it up. Then he told how James Prentice had stolen the chart and had got before us, and at that the whole crowd, forgetful of the quarter-deck, broke into a roar that was good to hear and which promised hot work if ever the Albatross crew and the crew of the Sarah Cutter came to clash.

“And now,” said Captain Horn, “you’ve got the whole yarn, but you haven’t got the end of it. What findings there is, three-quarters goes to the owners, and a quarter to me what gave them the bearings; the owners agreein’ to pay four hundred guineas apiece to the two mates, and two hundred golden guineas apiece to every hand aboard the ship.” He waited whilst another shout went up; then he went on: “Two hundred golden guineas, to which I add fifty out of my own pocket. That’s all—for’ard with you, now; and Jam, you black scoundrel, serve out a tot o’ rum all round to drink luck to the Albatross an’ the vent’re.”

The men went forward like schoolboys tumbling out of school, jostling one another and playing leap-frog. Jam, with a grin all over his face, served out the grog in a tin can, and presently came the squeaking of the bos’n’s fiddle from the black hole of the fo’c’sle, where they were huddled swarming like bees.

“There you are,” said Captain Horn, as they went off; “they’re fit for anything now in the way of fighting. Give ’em belayin’-pins and give the Sarah Cutter’s chaps cutlasses, and I’d back the belayin’-pins. Fight! They’ll fight like tom-cats; and there’s no fear of them risin’ when we get the stuff aboard. I’ve treated ’em like men, and if you treat men like men, they’ll be men—it’s human nature.”

That evening we sighted the cape that lies to the north of Cardenas. The land here comes out like a tongue, and eastward of the tongue and along the Cuban coast it is all reefs and islands. To be safe one must put well out and stick to the Nicholas Channel, between the reefs and islands I spoke of, and Anguilla Island. From there it’s all straight sailing till you have Cayo and Romano on your starboard bow, and the entrance of the old Bahama Channel. We were twenty miles or so off Cardenas Point, and standing farther out to avoid the islands that lie eastward of it. I watched the land fade away and the great blaze of sunset come on the water till the sea turned yellow-gold and the sky from blue to buttercup colour. Then, after supper, I got hold of Jam, and we sat in the caboose and talked of what had happened during the day.

“What’ll you do first if you get your money, Jam?” asked I.

“What’ll I do fust, sar? I’ll go fr’m de bank right down to de Highway, an’ I’ll buy a red weskit wid flap pockets an’ gold buttons all up him front; I saw him in de slop-shop where de Highway jines Punter Street, day ‘fo’ we started, and I bin sufferin’ for dat weskit ebber since. Den, next t’ing I do, I’ll get a kerridge an’ go ridin’ roun’ de town—yes, sar, I’ll do that; nebber been in a kerridge in my life. Den I’ll go an’ have a blow out—fish, an’ biled taters, an’ plum-duff, an’ sassiges, an’ bottled ginger-beer, an’ a big dish o’ cabbidge—den, when dat’s done, I gets in de kerridge ag’in an’ goes to de play, red weskit an’ all; nebber seen a play, but I guess I’ll see one dat night.”

“You’d better keep your money in the bank, Jam,” said I; “it’s safer.”

“Yes, sar, I knows de money safer; but s’pose Jam die with all him money in de bank, he nebber hab de chance to spend um.”

“Oh, but you won’t die!”

“S’pose de bank go bust. Man told me once he put all his fortun’ in a bank—almost fifty shillin’ it were. He goes to sea, an’ he comes back, an’ blest if de bank ain’t gone.”

“Gone?”

“Yes, sar, de whole t’ing gone an’ a fry-fish shop runnin’ instid. He goes to de fry-fish man an’ axes fo’ his money, an’ de fry-fish man bats him on de head wid a fryin’-pan. No, sar; when Jam draws him money from de bank, he puts it in a fry-fish shop, maybe—dat’s safe!”

I left him and slipped down to the fo’c’sle. If you know anything of sailors and the fo’c’sles of ships, you will know just how they go on, clacking like old wives over everything that turns up. The fo’c’sle is sacred to the men—no officer ever shows his nose there—and they talk as they like about officers and all. But that night there was nothing said, only about James Prentice and the treasure. Their hatred of James Prentice had risen to boiling-point; every man of them felt that the deserter stood between him and his two hundred and fifty guineas, and they would fall to abusing him, and from abuse they would go on to devising punishments for him when he was caught. One chap was for hanging him by the heels from the mainyard arm; another, who had served in the navy, was for keel-hauling; and so it went on till the treasure clapped a purchase on them, and James Prentice was forgotten in the bigger subject.

I soon saw that Captain Horn was right in his saying that if you treat men like men they will act like men. For here was a crowd of fo’c’sle hands, all without a penny to bless themselves with, hungry for money and with a huge fortune in sight, yet not a word did I hear suggestive of mutiny or discontent with their share—or only from one man, a lanky good-for-nothing, who sticks in my memory mostly because of his ugly face.

“Look here,” says he, looking over his hammock edge; “here’s a fortune lyin’ waitin’ to be picked up. Well, who’s the chaps that’s puttin’ the work in over the job—who but we?”

“Right you are, me son,” said the bos’n.

“Well, what I wants to know is this,” went on the cadaverous man, “is it fair?”

“Is what fair?” asked another chap. “What are you drivin’ at, Bill?”

“Is it fair us should put all the work in, and get a beggarly two hun’red guineas apiece?”

“A jolly lot of work you put in,” replied a fellow from one of the starboard bunks.

“Bill works hard enough with his jaws,” said another.

“ ’Bout the only work he ever does,” cut in a third.

A fourth man stole behind him and let his hammock down by the head. Bill made a bolt for the companion way, and a boot hit him as he went up it.

If he had remained he would have had an exceedingly rough time, for the crew were entirely with Captain Horn; and he had made them so, not only by his treatment of them in speaking to them as man to man, but by that promise of fifty guineas apiece out of his own pocket.

Also their hatred of Prentice and the way he had treated the Captain made them loyal to the man they liked.

For Captain Horn was liked, and the man who is liked has a power far and away above the power of the man who is feared.

Next morning the breeze still held, and we were steering an easterly course, the Cuban reefs and islands invisible beyond the horizon to southward, and Anguilla Island showing before noon on the larboard bow. We were doing nine and a half knots, or perhaps a trifle less, with every tag of canvas set.

The old brig was racing for a fortune. Mr. Chopping, the best helmsman on board, had cast dignity to the winds and took his trick at the wheel, he and Chapman, one of the foremast men, having the art of steering born in them; for it is an art, just like laying on the fiddle or painting a picture, and a good steersman will save miles where a bad steersman will waste them, letting the ship go off her course and not humouring the rudder. With the new steamships it’s different, perhaps, for they do not care for wind or wave, but go straight ahead, and any man may steer a swiftly-driven thing that goes of its own force; but with a sailing ship it is different. A sail filled with wind is like a cup brimming with water, easily spilled; and spill the wind out of your sail, and where are you? There are other differences, too, more than I can put down on paper.

Every man on deck had his eye cocked aloft most of the time, and there was no need to give an order twice; everything was done on the run.

At noon, with Anguilla Island on the larboard quarter, the helm was shifted, and we took our course to the south-east, and Columbus Bank close on two hundred and ninety miles away.

Bird Cay, as marked on the old chart which I still have in my possession, lies exactly on the 22nd parallel of latitude, ninety miles west-south-west of the southern point of Acklin Island in the Bahamas. We were making, say, nine knots, to put it at its lowest, so that if the wind held we ought to have been near our destination in thirty hours or less.

It held all that day, and freshened, so that we were doing ten and sometimes ten and a bit. The old brig seemed to know what was wanted of her, and to be putting her best foot foremost. The flying-fish chased her, and a great shoal of black fish came walloping along, steering even with us and seeming to race us; gulls passed over us, white as snow, and honey-coloured when they got between us and the sun, and a shark kept us company.

Jam discovered this unwelcome attendant. He called me aft and pointed over the taffrail, and there, like a shadow following us in the water and swimming apparently without effort, I saw the great fish. Sometimes the view of him would be washed out by the rushing foam, and again he would come to sight half a fathom under the glass-green water. Now and again I caught sight of something that flashed before him, a blue and silver gleam—it was the pilot fish that accompanied him, warning him of danger, and showing him where to get food.

Jam said the pilot fish, when frightened or threatened, would dart into the shark’s mouth and take refuge there. I thought at the time that this was only a yarn, but I have proved it since to be true.

Jam said the shark was a bad sign, following like that; he said there was sure to be trouble of some sort, and that ten to one someone would die. He went forward and got a piece of pork that was none too fresh, and hove it overboard. We saw the shark slacken and turn to take it. Then he vanished.

“Now, sar,” said Jam, “yo’ wait an’ see. Der’s a crooked pin in dat bit o’ pork; if de shark follow again after swallerin’ it, sumfin’ will happen sho’.”

“Why did you put a crooked pin in it, Jam?” I asked.

“Dat’s de custom, sar; dat tells de shark he be cotched, sho’, if he comes follerin’ us; it’s a warning to him. If he sho’ in him mind sumfin’ goin’ to happen to us, he no take de warnin’. Now yo’ look out. Ah! What I tell yo’?”

I looked over, and there, sure enough, was the shark following us again like a shadow, led by the gleam of the pilot fish.

I laughed at Jam’s face and his fancies, and went forward. The log had just been hove again, and Captain Horn was reading off the measurements on the line; we were doing ten and a quarter.

Next day toward evening I was coming aft with the cabin lamp, which Jam had been cleaning. It was a swinging affair, with a great loop of iron to hang it from. I had got within a few yards of the deck-house, when suddenly I went flat on my face, as if I had been knocked down by a blow from behind, the lamp skidding and clattering along the deck in front of me. I struggled up and looked behind me to see what had hit me, and there on the deck I saw the starboard watch picking themselves up, and, a man rushing to the side and looking over, I heard him yell out, “We’re struck!” and the next moment I was on my legs and looking over, too.

I shall never forget that sight, nor the horror of it.

Passing us, and touching us now and then with a touch that made the Albatross shiver from truck to kelson, I saw what for the first second I took to be a huge whale. Then I saw that it was a great ship, keel up, submerged, and floating like a dead body. I could see the keel and the barnacles growing on the copper, and it was the great size of her, and the fact that she had once been a big ship, that gave me the turn, and the fact that she was upside down and floating under a veil of water.

The helmsman had been sent flying, the brig had swung round, and the sails were all loose and slacking; but we had way enough on to clear the derelict, which vanished astern to the tune of our clapping canvas and the shouts of the crew now tumbling up from below. I heard Captain Horn’s voice shouting orders, and I saw Mr. Chopping hanging over the side. I saw the fellows trimming the yards, and the steersman spinning the wheel-spokes; then the old brig, seeming to recover herself, took the wind again, and we continued on our course.

I was so new to the sea that I thought now everything was right, and I was turning to look for Jam, so that I might tell him what I had seen, when my attention was drawn to the bos’n. He had dropped the sounding-iron down the well, and was hauling it up. Captain Horn was by him, and the whole of the men on deck were clustering round. I joined them.

The bos’n, having drawn up the iron, examined it; it was wet for several feet up. He measured the wet part, and then flung the iron on the deck.

The ship’s well is simply a hollow tube leading from the deck to the lower part of the hold. There is always bilge-water in the hold, and of course it rises in the well to the same level as it lies at in the hold. When the dry iron is dropped into the well and drawn up again, it shows the depth of water in the well by the extent to which it is wetted. After ten minutes the bos’n took the iron, bone-dry now from the heat of the deck, and dropped it again. He pulled it up carefully, and measured the wetted part. To the eye it was the just same as before, but to the tape it was an inch more.

“I thort so,” cried the bos’n, flinging the iron on the deck. “We’ve started a butt.”

Captain Horn turned on his heel with an exclamation; then he wheeled round again.

“You’re sure?” said he.

“Sartin,” replied the bos’n. “We struck her sidewards, but I could tell by the feel o’ the dunch something had started. Well, Capt’in, it’s the pumps or nothin’, and the sooner we man ’em the better.”

Captain Horn gave the order; then he turned to the bos’n.

“No chance to plug her?” asked he.

“Not under all that cargo,” replied the other. “She’s been hit well under the waterline—how hard, who knows. Howsomever, we’ll see.”

The clanking of the pumps came on his words, and the gush of bilge water on the deck, washing away through the scupper holes. It continued for ten minutes or more, and then the pumps began to draw clear water; then, after a while, they sucked, and the men ceased pumping.

The hold was now clear of water for the moment, and the bos’n waited for twenty minutes or so before sounding again. When he did so he found a foot, and the pumps, when they were manned again, brought up clear sea water. But they did not suck this time, which proved that the inrush of water was increasing. An hour passed, the men taking on the work in relays; and at the end of the hour, despite all their labour, the sounding-rod showed nearly three feet of water in the well.

The sun was now near its setting, and though the wind held just as fresh as ever, and though the sails filled to it, the old brig went heavily, dragging her way like a wounded thing. Three feet of water in the well meant tons of water in the hold, and the water was gaining, for, when they sounded again by the last rays of the sunset, the rod showed three and a half feet and a bit over.

The wind died down with the sunset, and then, just as the stars began to shoot out across the sky, it shifted slightly more to the north and freshened for a bit. The moon broke up beyond the sea-line, rising as though someone were pushing her in a hurry, and the water from the pumps flashed like silver in the moonlight. We all took a hand, and never did I imagine such back-breaking see-saw work. In five minutes I was spent and dizzy, hearing nothing but the clank of the iron and the rush of water; but I clung on, not seeing that even Mr. Chopping and the Captain, with the help of the fellows who were not at the pumps, were getting the boats over, and that Jam was victualling them, for the water was five feet now, and gaining so quickly for all our pumping, that the channels were awash, and all hope of saving the brig gone.

Then, when my mind cleared, I found that the pumps had stopped working, and the next thing I knew I was being shoved over the side into the smaller of the boats. There was no hurry or panic, for the brig, though doomed, might float an hour yet. Captain Horn, Jam, myself, and the bos’n were to go in the small boat, Mr. Chopping and the rest of the crew in the long boat. I had the job of keeping our boat fended from the brig’s side whilst the provisions were got into her and the water breakers; a compass was also put aboard, and the Captain’s sectant; also three of the pistols, a powder-horn, bag of bullets, and four cutlasses. I saw arms being stowed also in the long boat. This heartened me up so that I could have shouted. It was of such a “never say die” nature, as though the sinking of the brig were as nothing to our determination to be even with the crew of the Sarah Cutter; and I knew at once that it was the determination of Captain Horn to pursue our course in the boats and find Bird Cay despite everything.

Then Jam was ordered into my boat, the bos’n followed him, and having seen every man clear of the ship, the Captain, with a glance round the decks as though to be sure that nothing was left behind, stepped in alongside me, took his seat at the tiller, and we pushed off, Jam and the bos’n rowing. The long boat pushed off at the same moment. Mr. Chopping was steering her, and we kept side by side and twenty yards or so apart, till we had put a couple of hundred yards between us and the brig. Then the Captain ordered the men to cease rowing.

“We’ll wait to see the end of her,” said he. “We’ve no call to be in a hurry; she’s near done, and half an hour more or less don’t count.”

The men shipped their oars, and the two boats lay drifting a few yards apart, every face was turned towards the brig, black and low-lying on the moonlit sea.

The wind had died down to the faintest draught of air, and the sea, except for the rise of the swell, was calm as a mill-pond. Scarcely a word was spoken as we watched. It was like seeing a thing die; and I have never beheld anything more solemn or more mysterious than this death of a ship on a calm, silent sea beneath the great silent moon.

We saw the water rising on her so that now the decks were awash, and when that happened she gave a lurch to starboard, and then righted herself as though to meet her death upstanding and bravely. When the lurch came the ship’s bell rang out, and the chime of it came across the water as though she had spoken us good-bye.

The water was clear over the decks now, nothing showing but the after-house and the masts with the canvas all set.

Then she took a dive for a few fathoms whilst the water boiled to the rush of air from her. Then she checked and went more slowly, till only the topmasts were visible. Gradually these disappeared too, till nothing was left but a swirl on the sea and a few spars and bits of wreckage under the moon.

“She’s gone,” said the Captain.

“She’s gone,” said the Captain. “Well, she went handsome, and deserved better. Give her a cheer, boys!”

The fellows flung up their oars and let out a cheer that could have been heard a mile away.

“Let’s hope she’s taken our bad luck with her,” said Mr. Chopping.

“You bet she has,” replied the Captain. “She weren’t a lucky ship, and, sorry as I am for the owners, I will say, now she’s gone, I see clearer weather before us.”

He said this, no doubt, to hearten up the men, for, so far as luck went, there was nothing to complain about in the old Albatross that I could see.

“We’re watered and provisioned for a month o’ Sundays,” he went on. “We’ve arms an’ aminition, compass, chart, sails, and two good boats under us. That’s what I call luck. We’ve got Bird Cay only a matter of eighty or ninety mile away, and a fortune waitin’ us there. We’ll all be gentlemen at the end of this traverse, so be that we pull together.”

This speech put a lot of heart into the boats, a tot of rum was served out by Jam—the rum was kept in our boat under the eye of the Captain—the masts were stepped, and the lug-sails filled to the gentle breathing of air from the west-nor’-west.

There was just enough to give us steerage way, and the Captain did not want a lamp to see the compass by, as the moonlight showed the needle clear as by day. The other boat steered by us, she wasn’t so fast a sailer, as she was heavily loaded and hung behind, so that at times we had to wait for her.

Captain Horn divided us into watches: Jam and I into one watch, himself and Blower the bos’n into another. He told Jam and me we were the starboard watch, and that we’d better get in the bottom of the boat and have some sleep.

I didn’t want telling twice, for I was dead tired, what with the work at the pumps and the excitement, and they must have let me sleep it out, for, when I awoke, daylight was coming over the sky.

The long boat was a quarter of a mile away, but the breeze had died down to a dead calm. Captain Horn was shading his eyes against the light, and sweeping the horizon as if in search of a sail.

“Not a sign o’ wind,” said he; “but it may change when the sun’s up. Jam, you black rascal, get out the biscuits and a bit o’ that boiled pork; I’m sharp set after the night. How many bags of biscuit have you aboard?”

“Two, sar,” replied Jam; “ ’nuff to last us a fortnight.”

“Well, serve out the stuff,” replied the Captain, “and give us a pannikin of water, for I’m as dry as a preacher. Well, Dick, it’s little you thought, when you stowed yourself away, you’d be boat-sailin’ over the bones of the old Albatross.”

“I shouldn’t have cared,” said I; “I don’t mind.”

“Nor I don’t believe you do,” replied he, setting his teeth in a biscuit. “It’s all one at your age, but to them as is getting on, it’s rheumaticy to the joints. Blest if I ain’t as stiff as a dead cat with the cramp; it’s small work for a man of my size, is boats. Blower, what do you think of the weather?”

“It’s goin’ to be a long sight too calm to please me,” replied the bos’n, munching away at his biscuit; “but there’s no use in talkin’ of weather till you can see it. Come sun-up, there may be a change.”

Even as he spoke a line of fire began to steal along the eastern sea-line. I sat eating my biscuit and a piece of pork which Jam had haggled off from the lump with his knife, and watching the horizon, over which the sky had become full of light.

The line of fire burned brighter and began to hump itself just at the point where the sun’s brow was pushing up. Then the light spilled over the sea in such a sparkle that my eyes were dazzled, and in a moment it was bright, blazing day.

The long boat looked like a black speck on the glittering water. We saw the oars put out, and then she began to crawl towards us, looking for all the world like an insect creeping its way across the sea. When she was close enough she hailed us and then came on till she was only a couple of oars’ length off.

The crowd in her did not look over-spirited. You see, they had Mr. Chopping captaining them, and we had Captain Horn, and never did I see before or since so clearly the power of a man, for Mr. Chopping, good enough sailor as he was, had no power to hearten people. He was one of those men who look at everything on both sides, and then generally shake their heads; whereas Captain Horn had us all in good trim in our boat, just because he was one of those men who look on the bright side of things, and who, if they find a thing without a bright side, set to and polish it till it has.

“No wind,” said Mr. Chopping.

“No wind!” cried Captain Horn. “Why, bless me, how can we expect it with that face of yours fit to frighten it away! Cheer up and whistle, and the wind’ll come right enough. Now then, I’m goin’ to overhaul the stores and see how the provisions stand, and the water. Look alive, Jam, and fetch out the bread bags.”

The two boats lying side by side compared stores, and we found we had water enough for a fortnight, allowing each man a pint a day, and as for provisions, there was enough to do us for three weeks and over. Then we separated and lay a few cable-lengths apart, waiting for the wind. It came. It might have been an hour after sunrise when, stealing across the glassy sea from the north-west, came a shadow on the blue. It was the wind. Captain Horn stepped our mast with his own hands, and scarcely had he done so, than a cry from the long boat made him turn.

“Sail, ho!”

One of the fellows was standing up shading his eyes and staring in the direction from which the wind was coming. We turned and looked. Away on the horizon, brilliant as a flake of spar against the blue, was a sail.

“She’s coming straight for us,” said Mr. Chopping, who was also standing up to get a better horizon; “and she’s bringing more wind with her.”

“That’s so,” replied Captain Horn, “and a better sign o’ good luck no man could have. Now, then, step your mast, and we’ll show her some boat-sailin’ as she passes us.”

He gave the order, but not a man in the long boat stirred a hand.

“Come,” cried Mr. Chopping, “up with the mast and look lively with it. Didn’t you hear the Captain’s order?”

“We heard right enough,” replied one of the men, who piped up as spokesman for the others, “but where in the world’s the sense o’ sailing away from a vessel that may pick us up? Ain’t I right, bullies?”

“Ay, ay!” came the grumbling chorus, and then a voice: “Here we be in open boats, and where in the world is the sense of sailin’ away and she overhaulin’ us?”

“D’ye mean to say,” cried Captain Horn, growing purple in the face—“d’ye mean to say you want to board her?”

His face checked them for a moment, and there was no reply. Then the spokesman took courage.

“There’s no two ways to it, Cappen. Here is we in open boats, and there’s a wessel. We ain’t refusin’ to obey your orders in nature, but it’s not in nature to refuse being picked up. That’s the lie of it.”

“Ay, ay, that’s the lie of it!” chorused the others. “We’re ready and willin’ to obey orders in nature.”

“You and your nature!” shouted the Captain. “Lot o’ jack puddin’s chattin’ like parrots of what you know nothin’ about. I’d give you nature if I was aboard of you. There lies a fortune in gold ready to be picked up a matter of eighty mile away, or maybe less, and a fair wind to take you to it, and you keep chattin’ about nature. Where’s the sense of it? If you board that hooker, good-bye to your chance of ever seein’ a penny. D’ye think she’d listen to the yarn of a lot of old crazy sailor-men picked up at sea? And if she did, wouldn’t she stick to the findin’s, and what would you get? Five pounds apiece if she’s an Englishman, and a crack on the head and be hove overboard if she’s a furriner.”

There was silence for a moment and then the spokesmen chimed in.

“We’re not lookin’ for the gold. Our lives is more to us than all the gold ever minted. B’sides, who’s to know there’s gold there, or who’s to tell the Sarah Cutter hasn’t laid hands on it by this; that’s what we’re thinking. What d’ye say, bullies?”

“Ay, ay!” cried the men. “That’s the lie of it. The chances are, and the chances aren’t, that’s the lie of it, Bill.”

“An’ suppose,” went on the spokesman, “suppose we gets there and finds nuthin’—no gold, no Sarah Cutter, nuthin’ but a reef and an island with nuthin’ to eat, an’ maybe nuthin’ to drink, where would we be then, Cappen? That’s what I want to know. Where would we be then?”

“Where’d you be then?” roared the Captain. “A lot better off than lyin’ in some crimp’s lodging-house, hove on your beam-ends, and waitin’ for a job, as you all will be when you’re landed at Lunnon Docks without a copper in your pockets. You go on talkin’ like a blessed tea-party. O’ course, there’s danger, but where are you goin’ to pick up two hundred and fifty guineas apiece without danger? Answer me that. And don’t I take the risk as well as you, and what do I risk worth losin’? Why, a master-mariner’s skin and a master-mariner’s certificate, and what are you but a lot of old shell-backs whose hides aren’t worth makin’ trunks of? And you go on talkin’ about your lives and chattin’ about your safety, and I ready to risk mine and show you a way to be gentlemen with money in your pockets. Up with the mast, or I’ll come aboard you and show you what’s what with the flat o’ the tiller!”

Not a man moved, only Mr. Chopping, who jumped up from his seat and sat down again, as if something had pricked him.

“Captain,” said he, “a moment. I’m one with the men. You’ll excuse me, but lives are lives, and I see no two choices in this business. There,” said he, pointing to the ship, which was now well defined and growing larger moment by moment on the sea, “we have safety; if we go on, it is but a chance of our finding even our destination. If the Sarah Cutter is there, and it comes to fighting, then if we win we must take her to get away in. That smells of piracy, and the oaths of those ruffians aboard her would be taken by any court as out-valuing ours, considering that we would be undoubtedly the attacking party. On the other hand, if she is not there when we arrive, that means she will have cleared away with any treasure that she has found, and where will we be? Why, in a very bad case. Without having attained our object we will be simply castaways. The island does not lie in a trade track. That is my opinion, and I give it for what it is worth.”

“Oh, that’s your opinion, is it?” replied Captain Horn. “And now you can have mine, and my opinion of you, Sam Chopping, is, you’d a’ been a better lawyer than a sailor. Take a show of hands to back your opinion, and let’s have an end of it.”

Mr. Chopping called for a show of hands, and every right hand in the long boat shot up.

The fellows gave a cheer to hearten themselves over the business, for, much as they valued their skins, and much as they wished to be out of the boats, I could see they were a bit ashamed of their own want of daring.

“Now then,” said Captain Horn, “I’m going to talk to men. Dick Bannister, will you stick to me and help sail this boat under my direction till further orders?”

“I will,” said I.

I do not know what made me say it so prompt, for all my common sense was with Mr. Chopping and the crew of the long boat; but the words came out, and directly they were out I felt a new person, ready to dare anything, and feeling as though I had grown six inches taller than any of the fellows who were listening in the long boat.

“There you are,” said Captain Horn. “There’s one man at my back, and he but a half-grown boy. Now then, Jam, you know me, and you know my word’s as good as my bond; will you stick to me and help sail this boat under my directions till further orders?”

“Yes, sar,” said Jam. “I’m ready to stick to you, come fine, come rain.”

“Another man who is a man,” said the Captain. “That’s two at my back. Nick Blower, what say you? You know me—will you stick to me?”

The bos’n paused for a moment. It was clever of the Captain to begin with me and Jam. Had he begun with the bos’n, I am almost certain he would have refused. But the shame of backing out where a boy and a nigger stood firm was too much for Blower.

“I’m not sayin’ this isn’t the crankiest job I ever embarked on,” said he, “but I’m on it, and I sticks to it, and here’s my hand to back my word.”

He presented his huge paw to the Captain, who shook it.

Both boats were riding now within an oar’s length of each another, and Mr. Chopping, who had been listening to the foregoing, put in his word.

“D’ye mean to say, Captain,” says he, “that you intend prosecuting this venture alone with no one to back you but these two men and a boy under age?”

The Captain, who had turned to glance at the now rapidly coming ship, slewed round on Mr. Chopping.

“Prosecutin’ what venture?” cried he. “Blest if you don’t talk more like a Dutchman than an Englishman. I’m not goin’ to prosecute no venture. I’m goin’ straight to Bird Cay, and I’m goin’ to lift the stuff that’s there, and I’m goin’ to get that stuff to England, and I’m goin’ to live like a gentleman, and drive in my kerridge, whilst you swabs are walkin’ the docks on your uppers, lookin’ for jobs. That’s what I’m goin’ to do, and that’s what I’m goin’ to risk my life for. I’m sick of livin’ poor, and I tell you this: not a brass farthin’ will come to any of your shares. Dick and the nigger will stand as my crew, and Blower as my mate, and they’ll take for their shares all the money as would have come to you—every brass farthin’ of it.”

“Yah!” cried a voice from the long boat. “Find your money first before you spend it.”

The others laughed. The Captain’s words and his threats had split us off from the others like the stroke of a hatchet. They felt themselves, no doubt, at a disadvantage, and playing the meaner part, and they tried to right themselves in their own minds by jeering at us.

“Davy Jones will give you a kerridge to ride in!” cried one.

“And help you to spend your money,” cried another.

And so it went on, one chap taking up the ball when another dropped it. I could see the Captain clutching the boat’s gunwale to get a purchase on himself, but he never said a word, only sat with his eyes fixed on the approaching vessel. She was a topsail schooner of maybe two hundred tons, and her canvas was beautifully white, and showed golden in the sunlight. She was a flier, too, for she came now swiftly as a gull, not more than a mile away, and steering dead for us.

“She’s sighted us,” said the Captain.

“Ay, ay!” replied Blower. “She’s sighted us unless she’s blind.”

Mr. Chopping, who had succeeded in silencing his crew, now hailed the Captain.

“Captain,” said he, “If you’re fixed on pursuing your course, and if those chaps in the schooner take us aboard, here’s all this bread and these breakers of water may as well be with you; you’ll be provisioned then for two months or more.”

“In with them, then,” replied Captain Horn. “I don’t want the lot, haven’t room for them. Give us two bags of bread and a breaker of water. That’ll see us through, an’ll be as much as we can carry.”

The stuff was transhipped, and then the oars were got out and the boat’s bows turned to the approaching schooner.

How fine she looked, coming along with the water shearing from her fore-foot and her white sails cutting the sky! One might have thought that she was aiming to run us down, when, suddenly, to the tune of ropes and blocks and slatting canvas borne to us on the breeze, she hove to, and we were rowing to her, the long boat for all she was worth, and we to see what reception the fellows would have, and the nationality of the schooner.

That was a question not long in doubt, and soon solved by the jabbering that came across the water to greet us. She was Spanish right enough, and her crew were mostly negroes, and not a man on board of her had a word of English.

We could judge this as we lay off listening to the reception of the long boat. We saw the crew of the long boat boarding her and we saw the boat being got aboard. We saw a man, evidently the schooner’s Captain, waving to us as if beckoning us aboard.

“Blower,” said the Captain, “I don’t believe those chaps have a word of English amongst them—give them a sign.”

Blower stood up, shook his head, pointed to the north-east, and sat down again. He got hold of the mast as he sat down and prepared to step it.

“Up with the mast,” cried Captain Horn, “and let’s show them what we mean in earnest, or they’ll be stickin’ here all day. That’s right, now up with the sail.”

The sail clawed at the wind and filled, and the little boat, heeling to the breeze, turned her nose to the nor’-nor’-east, just as though she were turning her back on the schooner.

“Hark at ’em!” cried Captain Horn, as another outburst of jabbering came to us across the water. “Sounds as if they was lonesome without us. Never mind, they’ll get over it.”

They did, very soon, for, even as I looked, the schooner’s sails were trimmed, and she continued on her interrupted course, evidently determined to waste no more time over the matter.

“I bet those chaps are callin’ us a lot of mad Englishmen,” said the Captain. “They thinks everyone is mad they can’t understand. It’s the way of furriners. Give ’em time to get enough way on her, and then we’ll take our course.”

The name of the schooner would be on the taffrail, of which we could get no glimpse. But it did not matter much our knowing her name, as, according to Captain Horn, she was one of the inter-island trading schooners. She might be bound to Porto Rico or Puerto Plata in St. Domingo, or for Jamaica by the windward passage. It did not matter to us; the crew of the long boat were safe aboard her, and when she landed them they would all be broken up, one going aboard one ship and another aboard another.

“Then they may talk and yarn as much as they please,” said the Captain, “and who’s to believe ’em? If we found the money ten times over, they’d never hear of it, for there’s no news travels at sea. Once you have to ’arn your bread by bunking in the fo’c’sle, blest if you aren’t cut off as if you was in the tightest prison; for in the fo’c’sle you’re safe in jug, and out of the fo’c’sle a chap has no time to think of anythin’ but how to get another berth to save him from starvin’, and no time to meet folks.”

“That’s so,” said Blower. “Reminds me of my own brother Sam. I tried to meet Sam for a matter of ten year, but always missed him, he always havin’ shipped off on a voyage just as I’d come back from one. Now it’d be the China coast he was off for, and I back from the Guinea coast, and now I’d be back from the China coast, and him off to the West Injies. Last voyage I came back from I found him—dead and buried.”

“Ay, ay!” said the Captain, shifting the helm so that we lay now on our proper course with the schooner ahead of us on our starboard bow. “It’s a hard life and no mistake, with more partin’ than meetin’ in it, and a long sight more kicks than halfpence. And there you have those chaps sailin’ away to tuppence a week and a crimp’s lodgin’-house, and leavin’ the chance of a fortune behind them, just because they haven’t got the pluck to risk their skins.”

He gave Blower the tiller whilst he got the chart out and looked at it. The compass by which we were steering was a good one, if for no other reason than that it had got the name Simon Bannister on it. It was the pride of my uncle that everything put out from his factory was the best, both in metal and in make, and a right good honest pride it was and well founded, for here was a piece of his work, and all our lives depending on it, and we confident of it because of the name of the maker.

The schooner had shifted her course more to the south-west, and was now two, or maybe three, miles away, and dwindling fast; and I won’t say that as I watched her my heart did not make a jump towards her and safety. But I showed nothing of my feelings, nor did the bos’n or Jam, though I caught their eyes following her, now and then, and I guessed their feelings.

“Now, if those chaps had been English instead of Spaniards,” said the Captain, “they’d have been hallooing to us still and arguin’ with us to come aboard. But Spaniards don’t care; it’s a wonder they stopped at all. I’ve heard tell of a raft of castaways passed by a Spanish ship, and she did nothin’ but bob her ensign to them as she passed. It’s the same with Dutchmen.”

“So I’ve heard tell,” said Blower.

“Yes, sar,” cut in Jam, “an’ de same wid Portuguese. I were in a tradin’ schooner when de water give out, an’ a Portuguese pass us an’ all dey said was ‘Ya, ya!’ an’ away dey went. Yes, sar, dat’s de troof, an’ if English gun brig hadn’t sighted us, we’d a’ been done dat time, an’ no mistake.”

The Captain had brought his chronometer as well as the other instruments, and at noon he took a sight, we steadying the boat. Then he worked out our position, which made us seventy miles from our destination.

“We ain’t doin’ more than three knots,” said he, “but that’s not bad considering and if this wind holds, and it has all the appearance of holdin’, we ought to be there this time to-morrow for certain.”

“Suppose,” said the bos’n, “we find the Sarah Cutter chaps has got the stuff before us?”

“I’ve been supposin’ that all along,” replied Captain Horn. “Now you tell me, who does that stuff belong to? Why, me. I’ve been carryin’ the knowledge of it in my head for years; I had the brig fitted out to search for it, I had the location stole from me by that sculping of a Prentice. That’s so; well, then, ain’t these chaps robbers? Of course they are. Well, then, when I crosses their hawser, I’m goin’ to fight ’em, whether they’ve got the stuff or no. They ain’t more than six to a crew—we’re four. I’ll bet a dollar they’ve no arms but belayin’-pins, whereas we’ve two pistils and a cutlass apiece. See my meanin’? Why, I’d fight the lot single-handed, and what I’m goin’ to do is take the Sarah Cutter, anyway. S’pose she’s lyin’ off the Cay at anchor, it’s only four-fathom water there and a good bottom. She’s low enough in the water to board her, even with fightin’; but they don’t know we’re armed, an’ the chances are we may get on her decks without drawin’ a pistil. I’ll board her anyhow, fightin’ or no; and I’m goin’ to sail that old hooker to Lunnon Docks with the stuff aboard her. Us four can do it.”

“And what’ll you do with old Cutter and his crowd?” asked the bos’n.

“Knock ’em on the heads if they show fight, and maroon ’em anyway,” replied Captain Horn. “You’ve no call to be afeared. They’ll never come against us in the law courts. Cutter’s too well known in these waters to make trouble or draw inquiry on himself. He’s done enough to hang for on an English gallows, and he knows what I knows against him. You might a’ noticed that when we was berthed alongside one another in Havana Harbour, we had no dealin’s. He never came over to see me or I him.”

“Do you remember,” said I, “one day Jim Prentice took me for a row? You gave me leave to go.”

“Ay, ay!” said the Captain. “I remember.”

“Well, he took me aboard the Sarah Cutter.”

“Did he,” said Captain Horn. “The swab, I guess he was plottin’ all this then.”

“He went into the cabin with old Captain Cutter,” I went on, “and they were there some time. He left me on deck. I nearly had a fight with Captain Cutter’s son.”

“Well, you’ll soon see me having a fight with his father, if this wind holds good,” replied the Captain. “The only thing I’m fearsome of is that they may lift the stuff and be away before we get there. That’s our only bad chance, and we must chance it.”

To know the sea, or at least to get some little knowledge of its marvel and mystery, you must be shipwrecked and adrift in a small boat in tropic waters.

Close to it like this, you see things you never would see from the deck of a vessel. I am convinced that the sea is so full of life that it may be looked on almost as a living thing. Having nothing better to do, I hung over the boat’s side a good deal that afternoon watching the strips of fucus as we passed them in the blue sparkling depths; the jelly-fish, some immense, some quite small, some coloured, some transparent, so that one could scarcely see them; fleets of Portuguese men-of-war passed us with sails set to the breeze; now and then a shoal of parrot-fish would flash across my sight a fathom deep, and once a school of barracuda passed, pursued by sword-fish. Though I did not know the sword-fish by name at the time, I learnt it years after when fishing in the waters of the Florida coast. I saw a school of barracuda attacked by an army of sword-fish, and never did I see a more savage sight: the sword-fish charging amongst the barracuda and killing right and left, till the sea was red with blood. We passed turtles sunning themselves on the water surface, and flying-fish were nearly always about us.

At sunset the wind died down a bit, breezing up again after dark. We had supper, and then divided ourselves into watches. Captain Horn and I taking the first watch, Jam and the bos’n the second. There was no need of a lamp to read the compass by, the stars first, and then the moon, giving us plenty of light.

Jam and Blower had taken their places in the bottom of the boat. No sooner had they lain down than they fell asleep, and never did I hear such a snoring as they both set up.

The Captain talked to me whilst he steered. The prospect of the fight ahead of us roused up old recollections in his mind; he had seen rough service in most every sort of trade, and the yarns he told me that night during our four hours’ watch would have made a book in print.

“I’ve done everythin’,” said he, “bar slavin’ and piracy, though I’d a long sight sooner be a pirate than a slaver. I’ve never seen why a black skin should stop a body from bein’ a Christian. Look at Jam there, snorin’ his head off—ain’t he a long sight better than a lot of them swabs in the long boat, who thought of nuthin’ but their blessed skins? Ain’t he a lot better than James Prentice? No, sir, I can’t see why a black man should be sold at auction and a white man buy him. Now I’ll tell you somethin’, the first and only time I ever started to hunt for treasure before this voyage. It was twenty-two year back, and I was a foremast hand aboard a barque. The Ranger was her name, English owned and English manned. It was at Port Royal I joined her, and word was given open to the crew what we were after. It was on a reef near Cedar Creek on the Florida coast that the ship lay we was goin’ to search for. Our Captain and owner—Bolsover was his name—had bought the pickings of her from the owner, a Dutchman. The Dutchman said there were twelve thousand dollars aboard her, hid in gunny-sacks amid the cargo, and on the strength o’ that Bolsover paid five hundred dollars for the wreck, and we started to find her. The Dutchman got out of Port Royal the next day, but Bolsover didn’t know that, not till he came back from the hunt.

“Well, we reached Cedar Creek, and there, hove up on the reef with a list to starboard, just as the storm had left her, lay the wreck. She seemed all right and tight so far as the cargo went; the hatches were battened down, and we started in to open them, and what do you think her cargo was? Skeletons!”

“Skeletons?”

“Ay,” said he, “skeletons. She was a slaver, and there was not a gunny-sack nor a dollar aboard her. When the storm had come they’d battened the hatches down on the unfortunate niggers, and left them to die. That give me a turn ag’inst slavin’ I’ve never got over.”

The night passed, the wind holding fair, and another dawn broke on the sea. Not a sail was in sight. Towards ten o’clock the wind freshened, giving us at least another half knot, and at noon, when the Captain took a sight, and worked out our position on the chart, he declared that we were now only a matter of some five hours from our destination. This heartened us up a lot. We were tired of the boat and cramped. I have read many tales of shipwreck and of men being adrift in boats, yet I never have found mention of the thing that hits men hardest after hunger and thirst, and that is the discomfort of having to sit still and not exercise one’s limbs, and the cramp of mind and body that comes on one, making one wish at times to jump into the sea.

Captain Horn, to give us something to do and to exercise us for what might happen later on, set us to overhaul the arms and ammunition. The pistols had been put aboard wrapped up in a bit of sail-cloth. There were seven of them, two for each of the men and one for me. They were heavy, long-barrelled pistols, each firing a ball as big as a musket-ball almost—flintlocks. We had a bag of spare flints, a powder-horn, wadding, and a bag of bullets.

Captain Horn and Blower were used to firearms, but as for Jam and myself, we knew nothing about them.

The Captain, with his hand on the tiller and one eye on the compass, made us load the pistols and fire them each one to accustom us to them. Then the cutlasses were examined.

It took an hour, all this, and when it was over we had dinner, if such a meal could be called dinner. Then the day wore on, and as hour followed hour, silence fell on us, and our eyes searching the horizon to eastward scarcely turned anywhere else.

I do not know what the others felt, but I know that the feeling in my heart was disbelief. I felt we would never raise that island where the mysterious ship was supposed to be lying, that the Captain was mistaken as to the direction, that, perhaps, the whole thing was a dream of his. It seemed impossible that we should find it.

I believe the others shared this feeling, at least in part, all except Captain Horn, who sat holding the tiller, his mahogany-coloured face showing not a sign of what was in his mind, his eyes travelling now to the compass and now to the sea-line.

“We ought to be there about now,” said Blower, suddenly breaking a silence that had lasted some minutes.

“Give her time, give her time,” growled the Captain. “She’s doin’ her best.”

He did not seem in the least touched by doubt that he had missed the locality of the island. I have never seen a man so self-confident or admired a man more. But I could tell from Blower’s face and also from his manner that hope was fading out of him. Jam also looked depressed for the first time in my experience of him.

Suddenly the Captain flung up his left hand to his eyes, and took a long, steady look at the horizon; then, without a word, he released the sheet. The sail flapped in the wind, and the boat lost way, as, calling on us to steady her, he stood up and gazed again. Then he sat down.

“We’re there,” said he.

I stood up, so did the bos’n and Jam, and clinging together to steady ourselves, we gazed. Away on the eastern horizon we saw some smudgy dots just above the sea-line.

“Coconut-trees,” said the bos’n. “Yes, we’re there right enough, but blest if I can see any sight of the Sarah Cutter.”

“She’s not there,” replied the Captain. “She’s either been and gone, or hasn’t arrived; but we’ll soon see the rights of it.”

His face looked stiff and hard. Small wonder he felt strained with the chance of a fortune in the balance, to say nothing of the fury that must have filled his heart at the thought of James Prentice getting clear away with it.

We sat down, and the sail took the wind again.

It would not be sundown for an hour or more, and we calculated that the wind would let us beach the boat before that. Scarcely a word was spoken as we hauled closer and closer. We could see the palm-trees now, cut clear against the sky, and then, to southward of the island, we saw something else—something formless and dark like a rock, and now looking like a stranded whale such as I had seen a picture of in one of my uncle’s books on the sea.

“That’s the wreck,” said the Captain. “That’s the Santissima Maria.” Then, as we drew closer: “But the sea’s been at her! Look at her ribs!”

I have never seen anything more mournful than that wreck lying in the sunset on the reef. Masts were gone and rudder, the planking of her sides had been clean stripped away, leaving only her ribs sticking up. You could see the sky through them. Any cargo she had contained must have long ago been swept away by the sea.

As we crept closer and closer, Blower whistled, then he broke out:

“Not much of her cargo left,” said he.

“That’s nuthin’,” replied the indomitable Captain. “Her cargo was mostly tobacco: that’s easy been swept away; but gold bricks and bars is heavier than rocks, and they’ll have sunk into the sand.”

“Sand on a reef?” said Blower.

“I tell you it ain’t so much a reef as part of the island,” replied Captain Horn. “A kind of strip of shore with coral sand four foot deep, protected by the reef edges. Her stern was in sand when I left her. The sand will have shifted and blown away and come back in all these years, but the gold will have stuck by its weight where it fell.”

“Ay, ay,” replied Blower. “There’s, maybe, somethin’ to be said for that.”

The island itself, half a mile long by quarter of a mile broad, had a white, sandy beach, and the double reefs, clipping a strip of sandy beach between them, ran from the south of the island for about three hundred yards to be lost in the sea.

We were steering now for the beach of the island, which we aimed to strike twenty yards or so from the beginning of the reef.

We had taken down the mast, and Jam and the bos’n, getting out the oars, the boat came in grandly on a gentle wave. In a moment we were over the sides and hauling her up beyond reach of the surf.

I never shall forget the feeling of that beach under my feet, and the thought that I was standing on a desert island, that had not even a name. Seagulls were wheeling about in the sunset, light screaming as if they resented our intrusion there, and the noise of the surf came from all along the beach and the reef with a quiet, desolate sound beyond telling of.

Captain Horn, who was standing by the bow of the boat with one hand on the gunwale, was examining the sand as far as his eye could reach.

“It’s not trod up,” said he, “and there’s no sign of a fire nor any old truck lyin’ about. They’d have landed this side, for the anchorage is here. The other side is all razor backs and no holding ground. Boys, they haven’t arrived yet!”

“Looks like it,” said Blower; “but let’s have a peep at the hooker. We’ll tell by the look of her whether they’ve been here better’n by the look of the beach.”

We strung off along the sand, the Captain leading, to the reef.

The Captain was right. There was a regular road of sand between the two reef walls—a strip of beach, the strangest I have ever seen, with its protecting barriers of coral.

We were not long in reaching the wreck. She had been hove sideways across the western coral barrier—the long axis of island and reef lay due north and south—and her stern and twenty feet of her hull lay on the sand. The part that rested on the barrier was solidly morticed to it by a growth of coral.

In the last rays of the sunset the great ribs of the wreck stood up, casting their shadows on the sand. There was no trace of the fragile cargo, swept away long ago by storms and the torrential rains of the tropics. The deck had vanished, all but fragments of it forward, and the rudder lay flat on the sand, looking like a flung-down barn-door.

It seemed absolutely hopeless to think that the gold had been spared, and I am sure that if we could have seen Captain Horn’s mind, we would have seen the bitter disappointment that did not appear in his face.

He looked quite cheerful as he surveyed the scene.

“There’s no sign of her having been disturbed,” said he. “The sand’s not been trod up. Look at it—it’s three foot deep, and look at the reef ledges protectin’ it from the sea. Now can’t you understand how bar gold heavy as rocks will a hundred to one have sunk in the sand, and be there now for the taking? It’s a hundred to one chance, and that’s good enough for me. To-morrow we’ll begin to dig and scrape away all this stuff, and if the stuff’s not there—well, then you can call me a Dutchman.”

“Well, see here,” said Blower. “Diggin’ is all very well, but what are we to do for spades?”

“Blest if you aren’t the chap for makin’ objections!” cried the Captain. “Spades! We’ll have to make ’em. We can tear some of that old deck planking down and use the boards. We’ll find spades enough, even if we’re driven to dig with our hands. There’s not much sand to be turned over. If the stuff is here, it’s between the stern-post and midships. Come, it’s gettin’ full dark, and a bit of a fire will liven us up.”

We gathered what bits of wreck-wood we could find, and there was plenty half-buried in the sand, and carrying them, returned to the beach of the island.

From the western beach where we were, a thick growth of bay-cedar bushes stretched right across the island to the beach on the east. There was a lot of this brushwood dead and dry as tinder. We cut it, and soon had a blazing fire round which we sat, whilst Jam served out the provisions and water.

“You needn’t be sparin’ with the water,” said the Captain. “There’s a spring, back there amongst the bushes. Good thing we’ve no mosquitoes. Down on the Cuban coast I’ve lit on islands where the mosquitoes were that thick you couldn’t see the sand for them—striped like tigers they were, and each one of them as big as a wasp.”

“They must a’ been a fair big size,” said Blower, “judging by the mosquitoes I’ve seen.”

“Well, maybe they was only half as big as wasps, but they was big enough anyway, when half a hundred of them laid for a man. Now then, let’s get the boat sail rigged up between two of them trees. It’s no good sleepin’ in the moonlight of these parts if you can get a shadow to lie in.”

We fetched the sail from the boat, and hung it between two of the coconut trees that grew near us. A couple of oars stuck in the sand helped to prop it out, so that in the light of the moon which had now risen, it cast a shadow that would at least protect our heads and shoulders. There is a superstition among sailors that if you sleep with the tropic moon on your face, you will wake up with your face all drawn to one side. Some say it drives you mad. I do not know what truth there may be in this, for I have never met with anyone to whom it has happened, and, indeed, on that night I was so tired and so glad to have firm ground to rest on, that moonlight or shadow would have been all the same to me. No sooner did I lie down, than I fell fast asleep, and slept without stirring till the first rays of the sun awoke me.

I sat up and saw the sunlight on the white sand and the boat hauled up. The blue sea was coming in gently on the beach.

What little wind there was came hot from the south, lifting and shaking the palm fronds, and making their shadows dance on the sand. Jam was already at work taking stores from the boat and bringing them to the shelter of the sail, whilst Blower and the Captain were walking along by the sea-edge, evidently engaged in talk. I was not long in joining Jam and helping him in his work.

On board the boat we had been condemned to biscuits and boiled pork, but now there was a chance of something better. Jam was a genius in his way, and on getting the order to victual the boat, he had forgotten nothing. Beside the biscuits, he had brought a sack of sweet potatoes, a pound tin of coffee, a small bag of sugar, brown and heavy, such sugar as you only get in the West Indies. He had packed some of the pork from the harness cask into a small barrel about the size of a water-breaker, only round instead of oval, and he had ladled some of the pickle into the barrel, so as to preserve the pork, and, what is more, got it away in the boat without spilling it. He had brought some of the tin plates and a pannikin or two, the frying-pan he used for special cooking on board ship, and a hook-pot holding about a quart.

We set to work to build a small fire, and when it was crackling and blazing, we got the hook-pot nearly full of water for the coffee, and I heated it, sitting on the sand and holding it over the fire on the end of the boat-hook, whilst Jam cut up potatoes and pork and put the slices in the frying-pan.

We had no coffee-pot, but you can make splendid coffee in any old can. You bring the water to a boil, or as near a boil as you can get it, put in your coffee, stir it round with a piece of stick, and boil again, then you wait for the grounds to settle.

Then Jam came along with his frying-pan, and in five minutes the beach smelt better than it had smelt for years, perhaps, what between the smell of the fried pork and the coffee. Captain Horn and Blower drew up, and we all sat down to such a breakfast as I never had before and never have had since.

When we had finished, we turned to and helped to put everything in the shelter of the sail, then we started off for the wreck.

I had felt despondent the night before, but this morning, in the bright sunshine, my spirits rose, so that I could have shouted. I felt as sure as the Captain about the whole business, most certain that somewhere under that white sand we would discover what we were searching for, and what a find it would be! Hunting for anything is interesting work, even for mushrooms in a field, but here we were hunting for bars of solid gold, each one enough to make a man rich for life.

We had brought the bottom boards from the boat to help us in the digging. The Captain’s suggestion that we should secure some of the deck planking from the wreck was impracticable, for we had no saw to cut it up into the semblance of spades; besides, to get at it would have been a risky business, so we set to with the bottom boards, scraping away the sand, working from the stern-post along the larboard side of the wreck, and of all the hopeless, heartbreaking and back-aching businesses I have ever come across, that was the worst.

Sand, at the best, is terrible stuff to deal with, especially dry coral sand—powdery stuff that sizzles off your piece of board, so that when you raise your back to heave it away, half of it is gone back in the place you have taken it from. We took it in turns and said nothing. Never were there a more silent and depressed lot of people than we after half an hour of this work. After an hour we were exhausted, all but the Captain. He was as tired as anyone of us, and pretty nearly as hopeless perhaps; but his heart would not give in.

Towards eleven o’clock in the morning, with the sun becoming fierce overhead and the sea glaring at us like a blue furnace through the bones of the wreck, we dropped work for a spell, and went back to the beach and the shelter of the sail.

Thirsty! It was no name for it. We drank the remains of the water in the breaker, and then sent Jam to fill it at the spring. We determined to lie off all during the hot part of the day, and to work only in the morning and the evening. Then we began to review what we had already done, and it was briefly this: We had scraped a hole about four feet long and three feet broad down to the basement coral of the reef, and we calculated roughly that about forty or fifty of such holes would enable us to explore all the sand about the wreck where gold might possibly be. We had a terrible prospect of hard labour before us. It would take us at least twenty days, working morning and evening, to complete the job thoroughly.

“Put it at a month,” said Blower, “and all I say is, that if we find the stuff we shall have ’arned it.”

“There you are,” said the Captain, “always looking on the blackest side of things. A month! Why, man alive, any moment we may strike the stuff—to-night, to-morrow morning, next day; it’s not as if we had to go on workin’ for a month whether or no. Every hole we sink is like a ticket in a blessed lottery, and what’s the prize? Near a million worth of gold.”

“That’s true,” said Blower. “I’m not complainin’. We’re in for the job, and we’ll have to go through with it; but this strikes me—digging was not in our contract, and should we find the stuff, our shares ought to be raised.”

“What do you mean?” said the Captain.

“I mean,” said Blower in answer to Captain Horn, “that we started on this here business to lift gold off a wreck—an easy job enough—and now that we get to work, we find it’s not lifting gold off a wreck, it’s digging up acres of sand with nought to help us but the bottom boards of a boat, and what I says is, our shares with the owners ought to be raised.”

“I’m not denyin’ what you say,” replied Captain Horn. “We’ve struck a tougher job than we thought for by a long sight. Now see here what I propose is this. Since the Albatross is gone, and since we’ve taken on this job at our own venture and at the risk of our lives, it seems to me the old contrack I signed with Simon Bannister is gone like the Albatross. How does that seem to you, Dick? You’re Simon Bannister’s nevvy, and you stand for the owners, and you know the facts.”

“Yes,” said I, “I think that when the Albatross sank, and when we refused to go on board the schooner and chose to risk our lives, we started on a venture of our own. I think no one can deny that.”

“Good,” said the Captain. “I’m ready and willing to do everything fair by Simon Bannister, and everything fair by ourselves; what I want to arrive at is, what is fair. I brought the information to Simon Bannister, he fitted out the ship, half trading voyage, half treasure hunt. The ship’s gone, the expedition is broke off, and we start a new one of our own. Well, it seems to me if we split what we find in two parts, give Simon Bannister one half and divide the rest amongst ourselves, that would meet the case. What do you say, Dick, speaking for the owners?”

“Yes,” I said, “I think that’s fair enough, especially considering that any money I get I will give to my uncle.”

“That’s as may be,” replied the Captain. “You can do what you please with your own money. Well, Blower, what have you to say to the idea of half shares with Simon Bannister?”

“It seems to me more than he’s earned,” replied the bos’n, “but I’m not a grudging man. The old bloke fitted out the ship, and it wasn’t him that sent her to the bottom; but there you are, he fitted her. Another thing, it seems to me, if we do lay claws on the stuff, that bar gold is as much good as pig-iron to sailor-men like us when we set to dispose of it. Simon Bannister is our man for that job, unless we take it to a Jew in the Highway, and sell it for the price of old truck. Simon Bannister is an honest man, I’ve heard tell. He’s been talked of in the fo’c’sle, and I’ve heard well of him times and again. And I tell you this, on a job like ours, an honest man’s as needful as a derrick when you want to unload cargo. That is to say, an honest man who is so placed with bankers and such-like that he can get rid of the stuff.”

“Well, I’m blest if there ain’t some glimmering of sense in your noddle!” cried the Captain. “You’ve just struck on the point that might bring us to shipwreck right in port. For suppose we was a lot of scallawags, and froze out Simon Bannister’s just claim, and tried to dispose of the stuff ourselves, where in the world would we find a man to help us? You can’t peddle gold around in a coster’s barrow, and take it to one of those banker chaps; and what would he say first but ‘Where did you get it?’ ‘Found it on an island,’ sez you. ‘Likely yarn,’ says he, and off he sends for the police. Suppose you bring the stuff in regular and declares it to the Customs, then the Government takes hold of it, and when the lawyers have done with it in fifty years hence, you won’t have enough to pay for your funeral. No, by Jimminy, we’ll go straight, and when we find it we’ll cache it in the sand, and when a ship comes along and takes us off back, we’ll go to Simon Bannister and get him to fetch it off for us. We can take a chunk of it back with us, enough to pay for a new expedition, but the most of it we’ll cache.”

“Well,” said Blower, “now that we’ve fixed what Simon Bannister’s share will be, what about ours?”

With that we fell to discussing how we would split up our share of the still imaginary treasure, and it seems to me now, as I look back at us all sitting in the shade of the boat sail and dividing up the wealth that still lay only in our dreams, that we were just like children, and I am sure that men in wild positions like ours grow for the while like children imagining and often daring the most seemingly impossible things.

After a long while of talking we decided that the Captain should have a half share of whatever came to us after Simon Bannister’s claims were satisfied, and that the other half would be divided equally between the bos’n, Jam, and myself. I saw it went hard with Blower to admit that Jam, being a negro, had an equal claim in the matter, but Jam was so good a creature, and had worked so loyally and well with us, that no man could have gone against him, much less Blower, who, taking him all round, was as decent a sailor-man as I have met in a long lifetime.

“Well,” said the Captain, when we had finished, “that’s settled and done with. The question that’s getting at me now is, What’s become of the Sarah Cutter? She started for here right enough. She can’t have lost the direction; old man Cutter is too wide-awake a bird for that. Besides, he knows these seas same as a man knows his back-garden. There’s been no storms. Well, then, unless he’s struck another derelict, same as we struck, what’s become of him?”

“He can’t have been here and gone, d’ye think?” replied Blower. “Snuffed at the old wreck, and gone off at the sight of her.”

“Not if he’s anythin’ like what he used to be,” replied Captain Horn. “Why that man would stop to rob a dead horse of its shoe-nails, to say nothin’ of its hide and taller. He’d have dug up the sand, sure, same as we’re doing. He wouldn’t have come all this way for nothing. And the bothering thing is I had counted on his being here certain, and on our nailing the old Sarah Cutter and getting away in her. As it is, if she doesn’t heave in sight, the best thing we can do, if we find the stuff, is to cache it, as I said, and take to the boat for the nearest trade track, for this island lies clear out of the way of ships—that’s to say, deep-water ships. I don’t say there aren’t plenty of mud-grubbin’ schooners pokin’ about in all the odds and out-o’-the-way waters of these parts; but chances are it may be a long while before any of them happen along.”

“There I’m not with you,” said Blower, “and I’d advise stickin’ to the land, and not huntin’ for trade tracks in no open boats. I’ve had enough of open boats, and I bet you this island is visited frequent. For why? There’s the spring of water. I bets you lots of them schooners and jackass-barques come here to water, and I vote we stick where the water is. That spring is a long sight better’n a signal fire for attracting ships.”

“Well, there’s somethin’ in what you say,” replied Captain Horn; “anyhow, we have time to talk it over between now and then.”

We had dinner, and then went asleep in the shadow of the sail, and about four in the afternoon, we started off for work again.

The hole we had made in the sand during the morning looked pitiably small when we reached it. However, looking at it would make it no bigger, and we were just getting to work again when we were stopped by Jam.

“Capt’in Horn,” said Jam, “s’pose de gold hid in de sand, why not prod de sand with a cutlass; maybe point o’ de cutlass hit de gold.”

“Upon my word,” said the Captain, “there’s somethin’ in that. We may try it, anyhow. Go on diggin’ away, you chaps; and, Jam, you run and fetch one of the cutlasses, and I’ll have a try.”

Jam went off, and in a few minutes returned, racing towards us, whirling the cutlass round his head and whooping.

It was not a very successful business; the point of the cutlass entered the sand easily enough for the first few inches; after that it became more difficult. A thin iron rod, like a spit, would have done better.

However, Jam’s attempt was successful enough in one way. He had prodded the sand in several places, getting only about half a foot deep, when all of a sudden he gave a whoop. The cutlass point had struck something hard at a depth of about six inches, something that was either rock or metal, and he knew that the coral rock lay at least three feet deep. I’ll never forget Jam’s face as it slewed round on us and absolutely split in two with a grin. His wool seemed to stick up straighter on his head.

“I’ve struck de gold!” he yelled. “Jam’s hit it! What you say, Massa Johnson, to dat? Jam’s landed de money dis time, sure.”

He had not time to say more before he was shoved away, and with our hands and the bottom board of the boat we sent the sand flying.

Never shall I forget those moments, nor that wild excitement that made us dig like dogs, the sweat running from our faces, and the sand flying up in a shower.

Jam had struck metal right enough, but it was not gold; it was iron—a broad plate of iron, under which we put our fingers in a mad attempt to lift it, which failed.

Then in a flash we recognised what it was—the iron surface of a spade, the haft and handle of which was still buried in the sand.

Our disappointment at not finding what we sought was almost forgotten at this discovery. In five minutes we had it out of the sand. It was a broad-bladed, strongly made spade, so broad-bladed and so sunk in the middle of the blade that one might have called it a shovel. It was the very thing we needed for clearing away the sand.

“Well, if this ain’t luck,” said Blower, “then I’m blest if I know what you call luck!”

“Yes, sar,” said Jam; “it’s luck, shore enuff. Soon get de gold now.”

But Captain Horn said nothing. He was looking at the spade, examining it carefully as though he had never seen a spade before.

“Someone has been here digging.”

Then he broke out:

“Boys, this is bad; this here spade hasn’t been in the sand more’n a short time. Someone has been here diggin’, and that not long ago—maybe only a few months. And what did they come here diggin’ for—turnips? No; you may lay they’ve been after the gold.”

His face was a picture as he stood, with the spade in his hand, gazing down at the hole in the sand from where it had come.

Then all of a sudden, and without another word, he began digging, as if to see what else he might find; and he had not turned up more than a dozen spadefuls of sand when he brought to light a bone. It was the bone of a man’s arm, so the Captain said, and more bones were turned up as he went on digging till he came to another spade. Just by it were lying a few brass buttons and a sailor’s tobacco-box, made of iron and scarcely rusted, so well had the sand protected it from the weather.

There was nothing in the box, but on the lid we made out some letters roughly scratched on the metal.

Blower took the box and polished it up with some of the sand, and then we saw clearly enough that the letters formed a name:

You could just read them, the very ghost of writing, so to say. But they told us the name of the owner of the box, and most probably of the owner of the skeleton.

Captain Horn put the box in his pocket after he had examined it attentively.

“It’s worse than the spades,” said he, “that’s a Spaniard’s name, and Spaniards have been here digging, and one’s been murdered, most like. It’s all as bad as can be, and this is the hang of it, as far as I can see: Spaniards landed here and made out the name of the wreck before it was washed away by the weather; it was on the taffrail, wrote plain; and if they were Spaniards from Havana, they’d know the old Santissima Maria was lost at sea with a power of gold aboard her. Then they’d come here and dig and search, and you bet they didn’t dig for nothing. It’s gone. I see that clear. It’s gone, and we’ve been fooled.”

He sat down on the sand by the hole, nursing his chin on his knees, and staring at the ribs of the wreck.

He who held us all together and had spurred us on was now the most dejected of the lot of us. All hope seemed to have gone out of him, and all spirit.

But now a most surprising thing happened. Blower, who up to this had been the doubting one of the party, turned round completely, and began cheering us up. He was an obstinate man, and liked nothing better than having an opinion of his own and defending it, and that was why, perhaps, seeing the Captain going one way, he turned the other.

“See here,” said Blower, “I don’t see no sense in being cast down because of a lot of old bones and a baccy-box that some jack-fool of a Spaniard has left behind him. Here we have spades, and arms to work them—well, what I says is, let’s get to work.”

The Captain got up on his feet all in one piece, so to speak. Blower’s words may not have given him hope, but they made him think shame of himself for having given in even for a moment.

“Come on,” said he, picking up a spade. “Even if the stuff ain’t here, there’s one comfort, and that is, it hasn’t been lifted by that sculpin’ of a James Prentice.”

They set to work, he and Blower, on the first shift, and it was wonderful to see the different work they made of it, using the shovels instead of the old pieces of board we had been using up to this.

Now and again the spades would bring up with the sand old pieces of iron, ring bolts and rusty nails and so forth, all proving the truth of the Captain’s statement that metal would find a home in the sand, whereas lighter things would be washed away.

When the Captain and Blower had been working for half an hour, they stopped, and Jam and I took on the business, and so we went on in turns till after dark.

Our plan was to make a trench along the larboard side of the wreck, right from the stern-post to midships. When that was done, and if nothing was found, we would fill it in and make another trench parallel to it, and so on, till all the sand had been examined for a space of twenty-five feet broad. Having done this we would have to conduct like operations on the starboard side.

When we knocked off, our trench extended from the stern-post half-way to midships, and we felt satisfied enough. Working with the pieces of board, we calculated it would have taken us several days to have made as much progress.

Then we had supper, and after supper we sat round the fire, yarning, whilst the moon rose up and filled the sea with light. As we sat talking, suddenly from the sea came a sound like the report of a cannon.

We all jumped to our feet, for such a sound coming in that lonely place was enough to startle the bravest man.

Scarcely had we done so when, a mile away to westward out on the moonlit sea, we saw a spurt of foam, and almost immediately after it the sound was repeated.

“Blessed if we ain’t being fired over by a man-o’-war,” cried Blower, “and that’s the shot striking the water!”

He wheeled as he spoke, and gazed to eastward. But the sea was clear to eastward, with not a sign of a sail, and scarcely had he turned when “Boom!” another spurt of foam showed up on the sea, followed by another report.

We were lost in astonishment and still gasping, when Jam gave a shout.

“I know, sar,” cried Jam, addressing the Captain. “Dey’s debble-fish jumpin’.”

“Devil-fish!” cried the Captain. “Well, I’ve heard yarns of them, and put them down for lies; but seein’ is believin’.”

Scarcely were the words out of his mouth than over the deep water a couple of hundred yards from the shore the water boiled, and out of the sea rose a thing as broad almost as the mainsail of a ship, and as thick as half a dozen mattresses piled one on the other. It was an enormous flat fish, and it must have weighed a ton if it weighed an ounce.

Out of the sea rose a thing as broad almost as the mainsail of a ship.

We could see in the moonlight its frilled edges flapping and vibrating like wings as it rose clear out of the water, absolutely as a bird rises, and hung in the air for the space of half a minute, and at least six feet above the surface of the sea. Then all of a sudden it dropped with a bang like the report of a cannon, the foam shot up in a spurt, the water heaved and boiled, and the sea became calm again.

“Well, that beats all!” said Blower. “There must be a school of them playin’ about the island. Keep your eyes skinned; there’s sure to be more of ’em.”

But that was the end of the performance; the great school of devil-fish must have been passing to the south, for we heard one or two faint reports brought up from the southward on the wind. Then all was still, and we took ourselves off to the shelter of the sail, to sleep and to dream of the sight we had seen.

Jam had told me before about these fish and years after I had another acquaintance with them off the Florida coast. The name “devil-fish” suits them well enough, but they are really a species of ray. I have seen one caught measuring fourteen feet across, and weighing twelve hundred pounds; and I can quite believe the yarns the Seminole Indians tell of them—how that they have fouled ships’ anchor-chains and dragged ship and anchor out to sea.

Jam told me afterwards that when at play these fish swim round and round, chasing one another, in a circle half a mile wide; and he said they were harmless enough if left alone, despite even their horrible appearance.

I was roused next morning by a shout from Blower, and when I crawled out from under the sail, I found the beach in commotion.

I was not long in finding out the cause of the excitement. Away on the south-western horizon lay a sail.

“The wind’s with her,” cried the Captain, “and she’s headin’ this way straight, I do believe; but give her time, and we’ll soon tell. It’s like our luck for a vessel to heave in sight, and our job not a quarter done, and like my luck to go leavin’ my glass aboard the brig.”

He stood with both hands sheltering his eyes, for though the sun was almost behind us, the glitter of the sea dazzled the sight.

“She’s square-rigged in the fore-part,” said Blower, “and from her size I’d judge her to be a barque, or may be a tops’l schooner; one of these island wind-jammers that trades about these parts. But we’ll soon know, for she’s comin’ up quick.”

Leaving the Captain and Blower to observe the vessel, Jam and I set to get breakfast ready. When the coffee was boiling and the pork and potatoes fried, the others tore themselves away from the sea-edge and sat down.

“If she ain’t a barque, I’ll eat my hat,” said Blower, seated, with a tin pannikin of coffee in one fist and his knife in the other; “and if that barque ain’t the Sarah Cutter, I’ll eat my boots after I’ve swallowed my hat.”

“It’s too far off to judge yet,” replied Captain Horn; “but I tell you this—I’d sooner than fifty pounds in my hands she was the Sarah Cutter. The only thing that hits me is this: if she is, what’s she been doin’ all these days? She’s a faster sailer than the old Albatross, and the Albatross started a good twelve hours after her, besides bein’ sunk and us taking to the boats. I reckon, if it is the Sarah Cutter, she’s all two days and a half late. Well, what I want to know is, what’s she been doin’ with herself?”

“You’re all for fightin’ if it is her?”

“I’m all for takin’ her,” replied Captain Horn, “and if we have to fight, we’ll fight. But you see, the position is easier now than if we’d come up in the boat and found her anchored. Here we are ashore, and when they drops anchor and lands, we’ll hold them under our pistils and make prisoners of the landin’ party. Then we’ll leave ’em tied up here on the sand, row out, and take possession of the barque. They won’t offer no opposition the chaps on the barque, not when they see the pistils. If they do, why, then we’ll board them with the cutlasses, British navy fashion.”

“It seems pretty plain sailin’,” replied the bos’n. “Question is, what will we do with ’em whilst we’re workin’ diggin’ up that there sand?”

“What will we do with ’em whilst we’re working?” cried the Captain. “We workin’ and those sculpins idling? Not by a long sight! They’ll do the work, and do it hard in two gangs, one off and one on, and we sitting over them with the pistils, same as the prisoners are treated ashore.”

“They’ll want a lot of watching,” said the bos’n dubiously.

“And they’ll get it,” replied the Captain.

When we had finished breakfast, the vessel had hauled closer, and the Captain, after a long glance at her, ordered the arms and ammunition to be taken from the boat, and the pistols loaded; then the pistols and cutlasses were put back in the boat, so as to be out of sight.

She had been coming bow on to us up to this, and we could see she was square-rigged in the fore-part; but whether she was barque, barquentine, or brig, we could not make out till a shift of wind made her trim her sails, and this was done in such a bungling, slow manner that she lost way and went off her course, so that we could see her rig more distinctly.

“She’s a barque,” cried Blower.

“And she’s the Sarah Cutter right enough,” said the Captain. “But will you look how they’re handling her? Are they drunk or crazy?”

“Short-handed,” said Blower, “that’s what’s the matter with her; and she started with a full crew, not to speak of James Prentice for an extra hand.”

“But what’s happened to her?” asked the Captain. “The weather’s been fair, and all her sticks are standing. Where’s the hands gone to, unless there’s been a mutiny aboard her?”

“Maybe there has,” replied Blower, “or maybe there hasn’t, but there’s the fac’s—short-handed and wellnigh derelict, and sarve her right!”

We continued watching the barque now drawing steadily nearer. She was the Sarah Cutter, without any manner of doubt, and as she came stealing along before the five-knot breeze, she seemed ashamed of herself, as though she knew of all the treachery and deceit of her owners and crew.

A quarter of a mile off we could see a leadsman casting the lead, and a little under a quarter of a mile the helm was shifted, the wind shook out of her sails, and we heard the roar of the anchor-chain through the hawse-pipe.

A moment after a flag was run up. It broke out, and we saw the Jack; it was flying wrong ways up; then it was lowered to half-mast.

“Well, I’m blest!” said Blower. “Half-mast and upside down. But can it be she’s got Yellow Jack aboard her?”

The very name of yellow fever was worse than pirates in the West Indies just then, and is still, for the matter of that, and the words of the bos’n struck us all of a heap, as they say—that is, Jam and I and Blower. The Captain did not seem to mind.

“Look!” said he. “There’s a chap leaning over the starboard bow, wavin’ something to us. Come, out with the boat, and we’ll go and see. I believe it’s all a trick to lure us off and get us aboard. I wouldn’t trust that crowd with two brass farthin’s. Yellow Jack! I don’t believe Yellow Jack would trust hisself aboard her. Anyhow, we’ll row to windward of her and have a parley.”

We went to the boat and got her by the gunwales, Jam and I on one side, the Captain and Blower on the other. The sea was coming in as smooth as oil but for the wind ripples, and the waves falling on the sand were not more than a foot high. Before she was fully water-borne Jam and I scrambled in and got a pair of oars out; then the Captain and Blower got her afloat and scrambled after us, and in a minute we were heading for the Sarah Cutter, or, rather, heading for a point a hundred yards astern of her, so that we might row round to windward, and so keep free from any breath of yellow fever if it was aboard her.

As we rowed I saw two forms on board the barque, a man and a boy. The boy was Jack Cutter, and the man was evidently one of the crew. He wore a red cap, and was narrower in build than Jim Prentice, besides being darker. They were leaning over the larboard quarter, and when they saw our intention, they changed over to the starboard side and leaned there waiting our coming.

A hundred yards, or maybe less, to windward of them we lay on our oars and hailed them.

“Barque ahoy!”

“Ahoy!” came the reply in the boy’s voice.

“Is that the Sarah Cutter?” The name was written on the taffrail clear enough for a blind man to read.

“Yes.”

“What ails you?”

“Crew and Captain poisoned by eating fish.”

“Poisoned?”

“Ay, poisoned.”

“Poisoned,” said the Captain, turning to Blower. “Did you ever hear the like of that? It’s a yarn, that’s what it is. They’ve got yellow fever aboard; but put her a few strokes closer, so’s I may see the chap’s face clearer.”

We rowed a few strokes, and then the Captain hailed the barque again.

“You’ve got Yellow Jack aboard you?”

“No, we haven’t,” came the reply. “It’s fish poisonin’. Wish I may die if it ain’t!”

It was Jack who was speaking, and his voice came shrill across the water; there was truth in the tone of it, too, and I saw that the Captain was beginning to believe him.

“How many have you lost?” cried he.

“No one yet,” replied Jack; “but they’re all stricken down, and some of them like to die. Come on aboard and give us a hand to get ’em off to the land.”

“Where’s James Prentice? Is he struck down with the rest?” asked the Captain.

“No; he’s all right,” replied the boy.

“Where is he, then?”

“In the fo’c’sle, I believe.”

“Go and fetch him, then.”

“Why, if it ain’t Cappen Horn!”

Jack turned away from the side and went forward to the fo’c’sle; he dived down the fo’c’sle-hatch and disappeared. The man who had been leaning with him over the side still continued in that position. He was a Spaniard named Lopez, we afterwards discovered, and spoke only a few words of English.

After a minute or two we saw Jack’s head rising above the fo’c’sle-hatch. He was followed by Prentice.

Prentice came to the barque’s side.

“Hullo!” cried he. “Why, if it ain’t Cappen Horn! Why, Cappen, what in the name of wonder are you doin’ here, and what’s become of the old Albatross?”

“I’ll jolly well show you what I’m doing here when I clap hands on you!” cried the Captain. “What did you mean by deserting from me, hey? What have you done with that chart you stole, you white-livered sculpin! Never mind now; you’ll be able to speak for yourself when I takes you ashore and tries you. You’ll have justice, you may bet on that. What I wants to know now is, have you yellow fever aboard you, or is the boy speaking truth when he says it’s fish poisonin’?”

“I don’t know nuthin’ about no chart,” replied Prentice. “Yes, the boy’s speakin’ truth. Old man Cutter and the whole ship’s com’any, except me and Jack and this Spanish chap, is all laid on their backs. It’s fish poisonin’, right enough. They ate some of them gropers Jack caught in Havana Harbour, and every man that ate ’em is laid down. But you can come aboard and see for yourself. I guess you knows the look of yellow fever when you see it.”

“Right-ho,” replied the Captain; “and if it’s yellow fever, you’ll hang.”

We laid to the oars and got the boat alongside the Sarah Cutter, Jam clawing on to a channel-plate with the boat-hook, whilst we scrambled aboard, the pistols in our belts.

Prentice had never given me a word, and even now, when we were on the deck beside him, he quite ignored my presence. When I thought of the scene in the garden at Havana, and how the last I had known of him was his fist battering me senseless, I could have whipped one of the pistols from my belt and shot him for the dog he was. Heaven help me, I am no killer of men, but the face of this would-be murderer, with its narrow look and close-set eyes, still lives with me and troubles my mind when I think of it.

We went aft to the deck-house, and there, sure enough, was old man Cutter lying on his back in his bunk, and looking for all the world like death. He could not speak—or at all events, he pretended not to be able to speak. The Captain, when he had examined him, shook his head, and, leading the way out, went to the fo’c’sle.

The fo’c’sle of the Sarah Cutter was out of words more dingy and dark and bad smelling than the fo’c’sle of the Albatross, or any other ship I have known, and here in their bunks we found the two Spaniards, who with Lopez and Jack formed the crew of the barque. They were in just as bad a case as Captain Cutter, and, having done all we could for them, we came on deck.

“They can’t be moved,” said Captain Horn. “How’d you ever get ’em over the side in their condition? You leave ’em where they are with this Spanish chap” (pointing to Lopez) “to tend them, and I’ll put Jam aboard to help; and you, Mr. Jim Prentice, able seaman, into the boat with you, for you’re comin’ ashore to be tried, and maybe to be tried for your life. The boy goes, too, as witness. What’s your name?”

“Jack Cutter,” replied Jack; “but I ain’t going ashore not whiles father is bad as he is.”

“Oh, you ain’t, ain’t you?” replied Captain Horn. He laughed. “And what’ll you say if we bundles you into the boat and takes you ashore?”

“I’ll say you’re a mean lot of scoundrels,” said Jack, “to take a chap away from his father, and him lyin’ dyin’, maybe.”

“Upon my soul, but this chap’s got grit in him!” said the Captain. “Well, stay with your dad and look after him. You’ve everythin’ you want on board, and give us a hail with the flag if you wants us by any chance. Now, then, Jim Prentice, into the boat with you.”

“I sticks to the ship,” said Jim. “You ain’t got no right to land me ag’in my will.”

“Oh, you sticks to the ship!” said Captain Horn, taking in his breath.

“Yes.”

I have never seen anything done more suddenly or neatly. In a flash, seizing him by the collar of his coat and the slack of his trousers, the Captain had his man over the side. The strength used must have been tremendous, for Prentice seemed no more than a child in that powerful grip. Flung into the boat and half stunned, he gathered himself up and sat without speaking; whilst Captain Horn, grim, without a word, followed, and we pushed off.

When we had beached the boat, Captain Horn bundled his prisoner out, and we ran her up on the sand.

Then, taking the prisoner by the arm, the Captain led him up to the palm-trees where the sail was spread.

We sat down on the sand in the shelter of the sail. Prentice, who was wearing a white hat that protected him from the sun, was ordered to stand before us; and then began one of the quaintest trials in the world, the Captain acting both as prosecutor and judge.

“Now, then,” said the Captain, “you’re here to be tried for bein’ what you are—a white-livered hound and no man; you’re here to be tried for deserting from my ship and stealing my chart, and you’re here to be tried for trying to murder this boy, Dick Bannister, by throwing him down a well and knockin’ his brains out.”

“I’m here to be tried, am I?” replied Prentice, who seemed to have quite recovered himself. “Well, then, all I asks is a fair trial and no favour, and all I will say is, I can understand you talking about deserting, but as for the rest, I don’t know what you’re driving at no more than Adam.”

“You shut up about Adam,” replied the judge. “You’ve no call to talk of your betters. Adam was a man if he weren’t anything else. Now, then, what have you to say? Did you desert from my ship, or did you not?”

“I did,” replied James, as bold as brass. “I’m here to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nuthin’ but the truth. Let’s have everythin’ fair and square. You asks me, Did I desert from the Albatross? And I tells you, fair and square, I did.”

Considering that by no possible means could he deny having deserted, this frank admission had small value as a test of honesty. But he did not give us time to meditate on this; he went straight ahead.

“I didn’t desert for no bad purpose; d’ye think I’d be such a fool to say I’d deserted if I’d anythin’ to hide? Why, that’d be puttin’ my head in the noose and kickin’ away the bucket. I don’t say I’m no saint. I never set up to be a saint. I’ve done things often I’ve been ashamed of in quiet moments. But I’ve always tried to keep a clean sheet, ever since I was a boy at Wappin’, left on my lone with no father and mother, nor sister nor brother, and nuthin’ to hope for but the workhouse—an orphan, as you may say. Well, then, I finds myself on the Albatross, a good enough ship and a good enough Captain, but with no chance for a sailor-man——”

“Will you close your head?” cried Captain Horn. “You admits desertin’; well, that’s settled. Now to the question of that chart. Did you steal my chart, or did you not? Answer straight, and no sea lawyerin’.”

“D’you mean a chart of this here island, with a yarn of gold hid in a ship tacked on to it?”

“I do.”

“Ah! Then that’s what I’m accused of,” said Prentice, heaving a deep breath. “I see the whole thing now.” Then he turned on me.

“Dick Bannister, I’m in your hands; own up to this business and tell the truth. Remember, I’ve been your friend first and last ever since you joined the Albatross. Who was it taught you any seamanship you know if it wasn’t James Prentice? Act fair now, and own up. You told me of this here chart first. Is that so, or is it not? Answer up as man to man.”

The scoundrel had caught me, and all by my own fault. Long ago I ought to have made a clean breast of the whole business to the Captain, and this was the punishment of my cowardice. There was nothing to be done but make a clean breast now.

“What you say is right,” replied I. “I told you of the chart.”

“You what?” cried Captain Horn, turning on me.

“I told him of the chart,” replied I; “but I did not mean to tell him. If you’ll let me explain, I’ll tell you what occurred.”

“Explain!” cut in Prentice. “You’re sharp enough to explain anything away. But you’ve let out the truth this time, and there’s no explainin’ that away. Just you wait till I go on with my story, and tell the rest; then you can contradict me if you like. Answer me, now; didn’t you propose to me that we should hook it with the chart, and go shares in the profits, and didn’t I say I’d be hanged if I’d do any such thing?”

“Oh, you scoundrel!” I cried.

I could say nothing more. I could not have believed that anyone was capable of such base wickedness. Even the attack upon me in the garden at Havana seemed a small thing compared to this attack upon my honour.

“And when we landed for the liberty day ashore, didn’t you go on with your arguments and suggestions? And didn’t you say to me, ‘Prentice, it’s a safe thing, and we’ll be rich men rolling in our carriages,’ says you, ‘and glad I’ll be to get even with my old swab of an uncle,’ says you? Come now, answer up!”

Captain Horn had been listening to all this with his eyes fixed on Prentice. Before I could reply, the Captain turned on me.

“Dick,” said he, “give me the truth from the beginning, for I don’t believe a single blest word this sculpin’ says. Out with it now, the whole thing, and give me the worst of the matter as against yourself. You’ll have a lambastin’ anyway for hiding things from me, so just unstopper your tongue and give us the facts.”

“I’ll tell you everything,” said I; “and I should have told you before, only I was a coward and thought there would be no good talking and getting myself into trouble.”

Then I told all. How I had talked in my sleep; how Prentice had heard me and cross-questioned me, and got to know the whole matter; how I had landed with him, and he had suggested my going on board the Sarah Cutter with him; and how he had, on my trying to snatch the chart, chased me, knocked me senseless, and thrown me down the well. “I know,” said I, “that I ought to have told you everything from the beginning when I returned to the ship that night, but you had just discovered for yourself the loss of the chart, and you knew that James Prentice had taken it, so I just told you what had happened in the garden, without saying it was my fault he came to know about the chart.”

“Well,” said Captain Horn, “I don’t know that it would have mattered a button my knowing that you had blabbed the matter in your sleep, and this scoundrel had wormed the rest out of you; but I do know you ought to have told everything from the very beginning. I’m here to do justice”—he took a knife from his pocket and cut a good arm’s length from a piece of rope beside him—“and justice shall be done, as sure as my name’s Horn. First of all, Dick Bannister, you’ll get a wallopin’, and, second of all, James Prentice, able seaman, you’ll do such a bit of hard labour as you’ve never done in your life before, and then you’ll be marooned here with vittles enough to keep you alive till a ship comes along. You’ll think of your sins, maybe, when you’re alone, and repent of ’em.”

He rose up with the rope’s end in his hand, and next moment I was spinning like a top about the sand, and shouting.

I could not help shouting, the rope’s end cut so, and he gave me a round two dozen—the best dressing-down I ever got in my life, and a fine reminder to act straight in everything, no matter what, from start to finish.

With the last blow he flung the rope away and held out a big fist. We shook hands.

“And now,” said he, “we’ve a clean slate, and no throw-backs. It’s forgot from this minute, same as if it’d never been.”

Then he turned to Prentice.

“If I thought you was a man,” said he, “I’d treat you the same. Man! You ain’t the shadow of a man. You’re only a what’s-its-name, and fit only for a what’s-its-name’s work. Come, go afore me!”

He drove him along towards the wreck, the bos’n and I following.

When we reached the sand-pit beside the wreck, Captain Horn pointed to one of the spades.

“Come,” said he; “in with you and dig. You’ll dig up the whole of this here sand, whilst honest men look on and take their ease. We’ve lots o’ time, now the Sarah Cutter’s here, and if it takes you three months, you’ll do it.”

“I’ll be blowed if I do!” said James. “You’ve put yourself outside the law—wait till I gets the courts on you. You take me to England and try me for desertin’, if you like; but you ain’t no right to turn me into a galley slave. I tell you, you’re putting yourself outside the law—before witnesses, too.”

“Law!” cried Captain Horn. “Hark at this murderer talking of the law! Law! Dick, run and fetch me that end of rope, and I’ll teach him law.”

I ran for the rope with all the pleasure in the world.

“Now,” said the Captain, taking it in his hand, “are you goin’ to dig, or are you not? Down with you and dig, or I’ll give you this about your shoulders.”

Prentice did not wait for it; he seized the shovel and started to work.

“Now,” said the Captain, “at it you are, and keep at it, for it’s my intention to treat you same as if you was on the hulks. You’ve seen Dick Bannister get his punishment, and you know just the sort of man I am, and just the sort of man you have to deal with.”

We sat down at the Captain’s command, and watched the condemned one at work. I hope I am not an unchristian man, but I will say I never enjoyed anything more than seeing the villain digging away in the hot sun, pale, furious, yet not daring to say another word.

Sometimes he would shovel up a bit of old iron with the sand, and the Captain would pounce on it and examine it; and so it went on for an hour, when he was given ten minutes’ rest.

As he was starting again, the bos’n who had cast his eyes towards the Sarah Cutter, drew our attention to the flag. It had been hauled down when we boarded the barque; now it was up again at half-mast.

“It’s a signal,” said the Captain. “Come, we’ll go off to her and leave this chap at work. They want assistance for something. Maybe old Cap’n Cutter has slipped his cable.”

We left Prentice at work under threats from the Captain of a rope-ending if he left off, and, going to the boat, got away. We made one mistake, however; we forgot that Prentice, though a scoundrel, was a very clever man—much too clever a man to be trusted alone, even on a desert island, so long as there was a chance of finding treasure.

As we approached the Sarah Cutter, we saw Jam looking over the side. He helped us to secure the boat.

“Old man Cutter’s gone, sar,” said Jam. “He done—departed—dis life.”

“Gone, is he?” said Captain Horn. “Well, I’m sorry to hear it for the boy’s sake. Where is he, Jam?”

“He’s in de deck-house, sar. He been cuttin’ up powerful bad, but he pretty well consolidated now.”

“Consolidated!”

“Yes, sar. He’s left off cryin’, and says dere’s nothin’ to be done on’y bite on de bullet.”

“Oh, consoled, you mean! Well, we’ll go and see him.”

We found Jack Cutter in the deck-house, his grimy face all runnelled where tears had been running down it. The sight of him, in his grief, softened my heart to the Sarah Cutter and her crew, and I expect the Captain felt pretty much the same, for he spoke kindly to the boy, and told him to bear up. Then he glanced at the dead man in the bunk, and covered the corpse with the blanket. Then he led us out on deck, and he and I and Blower went forward and had a consultation, leaving Jam and the boy by the deck-house door.

“We must bury him,” said the Captain. “It’s a question of stitching him up in a sail, and sinking him in deep water a mile out; so you fetch an old sail and a needle, and we’ll do the thing ship-shape and Bristol fashion. He was a sailor-man, and he shall have a sailor’s burial.”

The business took an hour and a half, and when we returned to the barque, we were greeted with the news that the two Spaniards were dead.

We buried them then and there, the Captain repeating the same service which he had given Captain Cutter.

It was now sundown nearly, and we determined to go back to the island, leaving Lopez in charge of the barque.

Jack Cutter went with us without question or resistance. When we landed, we found Prentice had knocked off work digging, and was lighting a fire.

Prentice’s manner had quite changed. It was now a queer mixture of respectfulness and jauntiness.

“I thought I’d be getting the fire alight, Cappen,” said Prentice. “I’ve turned over a mortal sight of sand since here you left me, and nought to find but a ring-bolt and the brace of a lockin’-bar.”

“Oh, you thought you’d get the fire alight, did you?” replied Captain Horn. “And who told you to set your hand to any job what you wasn’t ordered to do? And you found only a ring-bolt and a lockin’-bar, did you? Well, I’ll tell you this: you’ll work to-morrow till you find somethin’ better; and if you don’t, you’ll get a rope’s-end round your ribs. Away with you, and mess by yourself; you ain’t fit company for honest sailor-men, and you’ll keep your place whilst we’re on this here island, or else you’ll l’arn to!”

Prentice went off and walked along the beach. He didn’t seem in the least cast down. He took his seat by the sea-edge, and waited whilst we cooked supper; and then Jam took him his food, which he ate sitting by himself.

It was ridiculously like a naughty boy who has been put in a corner, to see him sitting there at his supper, and we round the fire, the most of us with our backs to him. I could have pitied him, only that I knew him for what he was—a traitor and a murderer at heart.

It was not till after supper that we got the story from Jack Cutter of all that had happened since the sailing of the barque from Havana.

“It was all along of them fish,” said he, “and that tom-fool Spaniard who did the cookin’. D’ye think I don’t know a poison fish when I sees one? I’d ’a’ flung ’em back into the water if they hadn’t been right, but they was right enough. It was the cook. I told him how to clean ’em and cut ’em up, but he was a Spaniard, new to these waters, and I reckon he didn’t follow what I told him, or he let ’em get tainted or something. Anyhow, there you are: every man who eat ’em has died. And there were we, short-handed, and trying to work the barque, and not one of us knowin’ anything about navigation. Dad would drag himself out and take a sight and give us directions as well as he could, but it was more by accident, I reckon, than anything else, that we fetched the island.”

He had asked us earlier in the day as to the fate of the Albatross, and in exchange for his news, we gave him fuller particulars now. Captain Horn had never questioned him about Jim Prentice, nor did he question him now, looking on Jack, I suppose, as only a boy, who would have no knowledge of the matter, or perhaps not troubling now about details, convinced as he was that Prentice was a rascal. But presently Jack and I, leaving the men to smoke over the fire, wandered along the sand towards the wreck.

The ribs of the Santissima Maria standing up in the moonlight showed like black bars against the silver sea.

“So you’ve found no treasure?” questioned Jack.

“What treasure?” asked I.

He laughed.

“There’s no use pretending with me,” said he. “I know all about it. The night we sailed I heard dad and Prentice talking together, and I climbed on top of the deck-house, and every mortal word they said I heard through the scuttle—all about the wreck and the gold aboard her, and how he’d got to the windward of all your people. I say, don’t you think that he’s a Jonah?”

“Who?”

“Why, Jim Prentice.”

“Why?”

“Why? Look at us—the old man gone, and two of the crew. And look at the Albatross.”

“But he wasn’t aboard the Albatross.”

“No, but he had been. I think he’s a Jonah. I don’t like him, though I’m friendly enough with him.”

We took our seats on a lump of the reef coral, and fell to yarning. Jack, however sorry he may have been for the loss of his father—and I believe he was grieved to the heart—showed nothing of it. He had learned to keep a stiff upper lip and hide his feelings, and the chances and changes of life had less effect on him than on another, for he had been born at sea and bred at sea, and, though only fifteen or so, had seen men die violent deaths, and had escaped times out of number from all sorts of disasters. He had helped to run contraband cargoes, and he had helped his father in the slaving business, for the Sarah Cutter had gone in for it in a small way. He pitied the slaves, but he said he reckoned they were born to be sold. He had the deepest contempt for a cheat, yet he thought nothing of cheating a Government, because he said Governments were cheats, anyhow, and it was only meeting them at their own game. His language had a queer touch of the speech of the new American colonists.

“I think Cappen Horn’s a fair-good man,” said he. “The way he took all that trouble over father. Yes, I think he’s good, and I ain’t goin’ to forget it to him. But he’s losin’ his time here digging up all that sand. Treasure! There ain’t none. Father was always against treasure huntin’; he said selling negroes and tobacco was good enough treasure for him. Not but that we haven’t picked many a ship. Why, look here, there was a big ship wrecked on the Dry Tortugas this time last year, a full-rigged ship, and there she was lying broken open, as you may say, and not a soul aboard her. We thought the crew had been taken off. Anyway, we came cruising round, and dad says, ‘Let’s go and overhaul her.’ We got the long boat out and made a landing in a little creek, and then we crawled over the rocks to her; and such a sight you never did see, for she hadn’t been wrecked more’n a week, and everything was fresh and nothing spoiled. We got into the Captain’s cabin, and there we found the ship’s papers; and when father put eyes on them, he said: ‘There’s been no rescue of the crew—she’s been swept by the sea, and every soul drowned, else the ship’s papers wouldn’t have been left.’ And, sure enough, in a tin box we found all the ship’s money—two hundred and fifty golden guineas—and there was wine and tobacco enough to fill a bar; and clothes—why, these old things I’m wearing now came off her. There was enough clothes to do us for a hundred years. And we got the chronometers and all the instruments. It took us two days to get all the stuff off, and we found we’d made five hundred guineas on the whole business.”

“Jack,” said I, for we were now as familiar as though we had known each other for years, “who does the Sarah Cutter belong to now that your father is gone?”

“Why, who but me?” replied Jack. “Aren’t I the only one of the family left? I expect I ought to be rich. Dad has lots of money in the bank at Havana, and that’s mine, too. Why, look here, he’s been trading for over of forty years, and never anything to pay for living; the old Sarah has been our house and home, and as for food, leave dad alone to get it for nothing. He told me had upwards of ten thousand guineas in the Havana bank. Mayhap he was boasting, and mayhap not; but you can think it out for yourself, for he was a saving man, and the quickest man to make money in all these seas.”

I could scarcely credit him. Yet, thinking it over, I saw the likelihood of it.

“What will you do with your money when you get it?” asked I.

“I dunno,” said Jack. “I expect it’s not much use to me. I’m so used to the sea, I can’t abide by land not for more than a week. I don’t smoke, and I have never tasted rum. Rum is the ruin of these seas, and I’ve heard it kills more men than the fever. There’s nothing I care much for but fishing. I expect I’ll fit out the old Sarah and go fishing. I never could get much fishing when father was alive, except in the harbours and places. Now I can get as much fishing as I want, now he’s gone”—and he began to cry.

Poor Jack! He was feeling what many a grown man has come to feel: that money and freedom to do what you like, and everything in the whole wide world, is only trash if you are alone, with no one to love or care for.

I clapped him on the back and told him to cheer up, and when he had dried his eyes, I joked him about his money and made him savage, so that we were near fighting, which was the best way to get his mind off his troubles.

Page 200.—The brute was shooting its feelers across the sand.

We had been sitting talking a good while. The tide was going out, and the sound of the water slobbering round the reef was the only sound we could hear, for though we could see the spark of the camp fire on the beach, it was too far to hear the voices of the men round it.

We were sitting for a moment in silence, when all at once a slight splashing sound caught our ears.

Jack glanced up, and then he caught my arm. I followed the direction of his gaze, and I saw something heaving itself out of the sea on to the reef to southward, and about twenty yards distant or less—something large and dark and formless, something the very sight of which caused me to gulp and clutch at Jack.

Like a great black slug, the creature, whatever it was, had now freed itself from the water.

It was as big as a barrel, and against the blackness of it we could see two discs of light, big as coach lamps, dimly shining as phosphorus shines in the dark. Jack rose to his feet, and, still with his grip on my arm, whipped me away from where we were sitting.

“It’s a cuttle-fish,” said he. “If it hadn’t splashed, we’d have been done for. It’s come up with the low tide after crabs and such-like. Look at its feelers!”

The brute was shooting its feelers across the sand. They looked like two black snakes thirty or forty feet long if an inch, and tapering from a foot thick at the base to maybe half an inch at the top.

“Do you mean to say it would have seized us?” asked I.

“I do,” said Jack. “That chap would seize an ox and drown it, too; it’s the worst sort. Look at it!”

As I learned afterwards, the creature was of the order of barrel-shaped cuttle-fish, possessing ten arms—eight comparatively short, and two immense, sometimes reaching to a length of thirty feet from the body. Had we not seen it in time, there is no doubt that it would have seized us, and, once caught in the grip of those terrible tentacles, all would have been over with us, except, as Jack said, for the squealing.

We ran back to the fire to tell the others, who came promptly enough, armed with the pistols, to have a shot at the monster.

But when they arrived at the scene, the thing was gone. It had scuttled back into the water, alarmed, perhaps, by some instinct that told it of danger. At all events, it was gone, and the only satisfaction we got was to be discredited, and jeered at by the bos’n.

You see, neither he nor Captain Horn had ever laid eyes on a cuttle-fish of this size, and not seeing is not believing with most people; and it was a chance in a million that brought the sight to Jack and me, for these brutes are very shy to being seen, hiding in deep water during the day, and only coming ashore at night, and that on the most lonely reefs.

Next morning, after breakfast, Prentice, who still kept apart from us and had to camp by himself, was set to digging again. It was arranged that the workers should be divided into two shifts—the Captain and Jam in one, Prentice and Blower in the other. Much as the Captain would have liked to make Prentice do the job single-handed, time was a consideration; but he made up for having to help him by giving him the hardest part of the work. Jack and I were let off. The job wanted a full man’s strength, and we were only in the way, so the Captain said.

Having nothing to do, we rowed off to the barque, and Jack got his fishing lines. Then we landed and beached the boat, and made for the northern extremity of the island, where a spur of coral ran out into six-fathom water, and Jack said the fishing was sure to be good. The northern part of the island was the nesting-place of the gulls. In the nesting season it would be alive with birds, but now there was nothing but a few broken eggs and some whole ones, and the places where the nests had been.

The bay-cedar bushes stopped short a few yards from the nesting-place, just as if a line had been drawn across the island, marking off the gulls’ territory from the rest, and a few feet from the bay-cedar bushes grew a palm-tree, the tallest tree on the island, and the most northerly.

We were just stepping from the bushes on to the sand, when Jack stopped dead. His quick eye had caught sight of something that I would have passed without notice. Driven into the palm-tree bole on its northern face, and about a foot from the ground, was a rusty nail, and round the nail was a bit of string. He got down on his knees and unfastened the string; then he examined the nail. Then he rose up with the string in his hand. It was only two inches long, good white cord, smaller than lanyard cord, and evidently new.

“Now, what on the earth is the meaning of this?” said Jack, staring at the bit of cord in his hand.

“What?” asked I.

“What? Why, here’s an old rusty nail has been in the tree for years, maybe, and here’s a bit of cord that’s been round the nail only a day or two, and has been cut off. Look at that end—cut off clean with a knife. And that’s not all—it’s my cord.”

“Yours?”

“I gave Prentice a fathom of that same cord only a day or two ago, just after dad was took ill. He wanted it for something, and I saw him put it in his pocket, and then there was so much trouble aboard that he must have forgot it, and now look—what’s he been doin’ here? And that’s not all. Last night I woke up and saw him—you know from them trees where the camp is you can see right over here nearly—well, I saw him down here, and I didn’t trouble to think about it, but just turned over on the other side and went asleep.”

He stopped speaking, put the bit of cord in his pocket, and stood for a moment staring at the nail in the tree.

Then he turned away and walked to the spur of coral, I following.

Here we sat down with our legs overhanging the water, so that the swell slobbered sometimes over our feet. We had taken our shoes off when we sat down, and placed them beside us; also the piece of pork Jack had brought for bait.

“Aren’t you going to fish?” asked I.

“That’s just what I am doing,” said Jack. “I’m fishing for the meaning of this thing. Look here, Dick Bannister, that nail has been in the tree mayhap a year, mayhap two; well, then, how did Prentice know it was there? He must have known it was there, else he wouldn’t have come and tied the string to it.”

“That’s true,” said I. “I never thought of that before. Someone must have told him.”

“Then, again,” said Jack, “who put that nail there? People don’t drive nails into trees for fun, ’specially that distance from the ground. No, it’s been put there for a purpose.”

He slapped his knee with his hand, and his face flushed up suddenly.

“I see it now!”

“What?” asked I.

“There’s a cache.”

“What’s that?”

“You, with all your book learning, not to know what a cache is! It’s a hiding-hole where they bury stuff that’s valuable. Can’t you see?”

“No,” said I, “I can’t.”

His quick eye had caught sight of something.

“Well, then, you’re blind. It’s as plain as day. What did he tie that string to the nail for it if weren’t to measure from the nail? See?”

“To measure!”

“Why, o’ course. He’s got some direction to go by. How he got it, I don’t know, but there you are. But putting the nail and the string together, I’m as certain as day that he’s found some paper or summat in the sand that’s given him directions where to find this treasure, and I’m as certain as certain this paper said to him, ‘Go to the most northerly tree on the island, and look for a nail sticking in the bark, and then measure from the nail so many feet, this way or that way, and you’ll find something.’ I’m certain of that, as certain as can be, and if you’ll turn it over in your head, you’ll be as certain as me.”

He was right. A very little reflection made me, not absolutely certain, but pretty sure that Jack was on a right scent, and the thing that struck me most was his sagacity. You see, he had been always used to putting two and two together, and, as I afterwards found, he had the gift of imagination. When I say the gift of imagination, I do not mean the gift of telling stories, though the imaginative man is always good at that. I mean the gift of being able to construct with his mind what has been, or, to put it in better words, to construct out of just a fragment of evidence the most likely story of what has been.

Jack hit on the main point at once. How did Prentice know of the presence of this old nail sticking in the tree?

The person who put the nail there, and who left evidence of the fact in writing or by word of mouth, must have had a strong reason to do so; and he must have left the evidence, else Prentice would not have found the nail. We knew he had found it by the fact of the string being tied round it, and the only possible explanation of the string being there was that it had been used for measuring a given distance in some given direction.

When I put all these things together in my mind, I saw at once the high probability of the idea that the treasure, instead of being in the sand by the wreck, was here, safely cached, and somewhere near the tree. I remembered the shovels we had found in the sand by the wreck, and the human bones, all helping to testify that the gold had been found and reburied. I can tell you, I was excited.

“Look here,” said Jack, breaking from a long silence, during which he had been staring into the depths of the water beneath us; “he had no compass.”

“How do you mean?” said I.

“I mean that if Prentice had been measuring, he must have been measuring to some point of the compass—to north, or nor’-nor’-east, or east, or west, for the matter of that. He must ’a’ done it last night by moonlight, and he must ’a’ done it without a compass, which he couldn’t.”

“But surely,” said I, “one can tell the north or north-east without a compass?”

Jack laughed.

“You try and lay a course direct north or direct nor’-nor’-east without a compass, and see where’ll you be. No, it ain’t possible. You can make it towards the north, but that ain’t fine enough. But that doesn’t trouble me. Most likely the chaps that hid the stuff hadn’t a compass either; so what would they do? They’d lay their line right out from the tree in the direction the nail was pointing. Nothing easier than that.”

“It’s probable,” said I.

“It’s the nearest thing to it,” said Jack; “at least, the nearest I can think of.”

“It’s wonderful,” said I in a fit of enthusiasm. “How did you ever think it all out the way you’ve done? I’d never even have seen the nail.”

“I expect if you’d had a dad like mine you would,” he replied. “He never gave you very much for book learning; but if a chap didn’t use his eyes, he was down on him like a whip on a coach-horse. He’d teach you so that you’d see a needle inside a leather bottle, and know who put it there, and why he put it there, and his name, and the name of his granddam. That’s how he made his fortune, by keeping his eyes about him. Well, there the thing is. We’ve got a word of the gold, I believe, between us, and what makes me more certain than anything is Prentice himself.”

“How do you mean?”

“Didn’t you leave him digging when you came aboard to help me with dad, and didn’t he dig all day, and wouldn’t any man who was set to such a job look blackavized? Well, when we landed, there he was, lighting the fire as jolly as he could be!”

“So he was.”

“He must have found the indication of where the gold was when he was digging. You see, that chap has eyes all about his head, and every eye is twice worth another man’s. You told me there was bones found where you found the spades.”

“Yes, and an old tobacco-box, with the name of a Spaniard on it.”

“What was the name?”

“I forget.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter; but the thing’s clear enough to my mind. Someone’s been here and found the gold and cached it, and then died before they could get away. Died of hunger, maybe, waiting for a ship that never came to take them off; and feeling they were dying, wrote the whereabouts of the cache on a bit of paper or something. Prentice found it, and that’s the whole story.”

It seemed probable enough, and my imagination pictured the lonely wretch dying of hunger, with the wealth of kings at his elbow, the sea-gulls crying above him, and the waves washing the sands at his feet.

“Well,” said I, “what are you going to do now?”

“Fish,” replied Jack.

“Aren’t you going to dig for the stuff?”

“You wait,” he replied, baiting a hook, “and don’t be in such a flame. Suppose I was to go now and ask for a shovel to dig with, what would they do but ask me what I wanted it for? And then I’d tell them my tale, and what would they do but laugh at me? Besides, I don’t know where to dig yet. I’ve got to do a mort of thinking yet.”

“But you know it’s right out from the nail.”

“Yes, but how far? A fathom, or a foot, or five fathoms? How do I know?”

“Ah!” said I. “We ought to have searched.”

“Searched what?”

“The sand, to find if there was any indication where he was digging.”

“Why, you butter-headed booby, d’you think Prentice would leave signs like that? And do you think if he left signs, I wouldn’t have spied them? And don’t you know that on this exposed bit of beach the sand’s always adrift on the surface with the wind, and wiping out any marks? ’Od’s truth, you talk like an old woman.”

He flung the line, with the sinker and hook attached, into the deep water.

There was great fishing to be had here, and before the line had been down two minutes the first tug came. It nearly had Jack into the water, and then, fighting against its fate, the great fish was hauled on to the rock. It was a small tuna. I have seen tuna thrice and four times its size; yet it gave us trouble enough to land. A larger fish would have beaten us, for we had no gaff.

Several more fish of different sorts were hauled up, so that at the end of half an hour or so we had enough. Jack pulled in his line and rolled it round the piece of stick to which it was tied, and then, carrying the fish by the gills, we returned to the camping-place.

The men had knocked off work, a fire was lit, and we cooked the fish for dinner. Prentice still had to live and have his food by himself, but he did not seem to mind. I watched him closely, and, with the remembrance of Jack’s words in my mind, it seemed to me that Jack was right. The man seemed absorbed by some thought which kept his spirits up, despite the galley-slave labour to which he was condemned and the way he was isolated.

After dinner the men turned in for a rest. No one could work in the heat of the day. Midday on the island was terrific, the sands flinging back the sunlight like a white sheet of flame, and the sea beyond the sands blinding one with its dazzle. Sufficient sail-cloth had been brought from the Sarah Cutter to make an awning big enough to shelter all of us, Prentice being given the boat sail, which was rigged for him between two trees twenty yards from the encampment.

At four o’clock work was resumed, Jack and I being set to tidy up things at the camp, and cut some dry brushwood for the fire. When the others were out of sight, Jack turned to me.

“I’ve got it,” said he.

“What?” said I.

“What I’ve been trying to find out all day, and that’s the distance from the tree where the stuff is hid.”

“How did you find it out?”

“I haven’t found it yet, but I’ve as good as found it. See here! If Prentice made his measurement, say ten feet out, or fifteen feet, or whatever it might be, he had no measuring-tape to do it with; but a sailor don’t want a measuring-tape to guess a foot length of rope or cord, so he’d have guessed his ten or fifteen feet on the cord and made a knot or cut it off. Do you see?”

“Yes.”

“Well, he’s got the cord still in the pocket of his coat, and if we get hold of the cord, it will tell us everything.”

“But how are we to get hold of it?”

“Blest if I ever met a chap like you for asking questions! I’m going to get hold of it. Don’t he take his coat off when he’s working? Well, I’m going to put my hand in his pocket and take it, that’s how. And I’m going to do it now. Come, you get on and be cutting brushwood, or they’ll say we’ve done no work. I’ll be back in five minutes.”

Off he went towards the wreck, and off I went amid the bay-cedars, cutting dead bushes and carrying the sticks to the camp. It was back-breaking work, for the wood was tough and the knife not over-sharp, but I had no thought for anything but the business Jack had gone on. It was ten minutes before he returned, and then I could not tell by his face whether he had been successful or not.

He looked with a nod of approval at the pile of brushwood I had made; then he helped me put the stores in order. I was dying to know the result of his attempt, but as he said nothing I said nothing, for the fact of the matter is, my pride was beginning to kick. Here was a boy younger than myself, if anything, and without education or decent schooling—a boy I had looked down upon and pitied only a few days ago in Havana Harbour; yet this boy had proved himself immeasurably my superior in sharpness and brain-power. Unable to read a book, he had read all the indications that might yet give us the treasure, and whether he was right or wrong, I had to admit that his reasoning on the question was masterly, and much above what I could have done.

You see, he had been taught to use his brain and to think for himself, to keep his eyes open and notice everything, and to put two and two together.

When we had finished and everything was tidy, Jack glanced towards the wreck; then, turning on his heel, he walked off amidst the bushes, calling on me to follow. By the water-source there was a clearing among the bushes; he sat down here, and I did the same, so that we were completely hidden, should any of the others return to the camp.

“Look here,” said Jack.

He produced about twenty yards of white cord wound upon a piece of stick.

“You’ve got it!” cried I.

“Looks like it,” said he.

Without a word he began to unwind the cord. About eleven feet or so from the cut end he came on a knot.

“That’s what I was looking for,” said he, “and if I ain’t mistaken, that’s the measurement from the tree.”

It seemed like magic; just by the power of his reason Jack had expected to find a knot on the cord, and here it was, sure enough. But he was not satisfied yet. He had to unwind the whole length of the cord and search for more knots before he was certain. He did so. There were no more knots and with a sigh of contentment he began to wind the cord on the stick again.

“Well,” he said, “that’s pretty clear—almost sure certain; but that’s not all.”

He produced from his pocket a piece of paper, yellow and dirty looking, with characters inscribed on it in ink.

“I made a good rummage of his pockets whilst I had the chance,” said he. “His coat was lying on the sand, so I sat down beside it; pretending my foot was bad, I took off my shoe with one hand and hunted in the pockets with the other. I found this.”

He handed it to me.

“Looks like as if it had been buried in the sand a long time,” said he, “and it’s all chances it’s the indication which he must have found when he was digging. I can’t read; you can. What does it say?”

I spread out the paper, feeling pretty cocky, for here, at least, I had the weather-gauge on Jack. To my bitter disappointment, however, I could make neither head nor tail of it. It was written in a foreign language—probably Spanish.

“I can’t read it,” said I.

“Why, you told me you could read!”

“Yes. I can read English, but this isn’t English. It’s Spanish, I should think.”

“Bother!” said he. “Well, it don’t matter much; we have the thing clear enough as it is, and the old writing can’t tell us much more. Prentice knows Spanish, for I heard him yarning with the chaps on board, and I expect he can read it as well as speak it. There’s nothing much that chap can’t do. Now I’m going to put the things back in his pocket, for there’s no use in letting him know our game till we have our hands on the stuff. Not that he could do much against all of us; but he’s a rum customer, and the more we keep his suspicions off us the better.”

“I say,” said I, “wouldn’t it be a good thing to tell Captain Horn about this?”

“Yes, when we’ve got hold of the stuff. We must do that by our own two selves, else there’ll be no fun in the thing; all the fun in fishing is landing the fish yourself. Just think of their faces if we pull it through without anyone’s help!”

“Well,” said I, “why not let us go at once and search? We could dig up the sand with our hands.”

“Mighty lot of digging you’d do with your hands; besides, ten to one we’d be seen. No. You wait till to-night when everyone is asleep—that’s the time for us. We can get hold of the shovels to help us, too, and if we’ve any luck we ought to have the whole of the stuff out by morning, and ready for breakfast. Can’t you see Prentice’s face when he finds we’ve done him—and Cappen Horn’s!—when he sees the stuff lying on the sand only waiting to be taken?”

I could, or imagined I could. It seemed a good idea to do the business by night, and I fell in with it.

Then we set-to to make and light the fire for supper, and half an hour later, when the workers had returned, we were all sitting round it, with the exception of Prentice, who was eating his supper by himself, and out of earshot.

The men were dispirited, for the whole day’s digging had brought nothing to light, with the exception of some scraps of iron and useless truck like that.

“I don’t believe we’re on the right track,” said Blower. “Either the stuff’s been took off the island, or it’s hid somewheres else.” Jack, who was sitting beside me, gave me a nudge with his elbow. “I don’t say,” he went on, “I wasn’t for digging, and I don’t say I’m not for going on, but I feel it in my bones the stuff ain’t there.”

“Blow your bones,” said Captain Horn. “If the stuff isn’t there it’s nowhere. It may have been took off the island, but what I say is, if it’s here, it’s by the wreck.”

“Well,” said Blower, “we’ll see.”

“We will,” replied the Captain, “and if it ain’t there, I’ll dig up the whole blessed island—not in any hopes of finding anything, but just to give Prentice exercise. I believe the swine is laughing at us all the time, and I know jolly well every spadeful of sand he turns up without finding anything is nuts to him. I saw him grinning to-day to himself when you struck that lump of coral and yelled out that you’d hit the stuff.”

“Did he?” said Blower. “Well, I reckon I’ll make him grin on the other side of his head before I’ve done with him.”

And so the talk went on, Jack and I hugging ourselves to think of what was going to happen that night, and of the faces of Captain Horn and the bos’n when they saw the results of our work.

We finished supper, and the digging was resumed for an hour till after sundown. We turned in before moonrise, and ten minutes later the whole camp was asleep, so sound that I do not doubt the Spaniard on board the Sarah Cutter could have heard the snoring of Jam and Blower and the Captain. Jack was lying by my side, and after ten minutes or so I nudged him.

“It ain’t time yet,” he whispered. “Give Prentice a chance to get well asleep. You just lay still for another hour.”

He suddenly stopped dead.

I did, and it was the longest hour I have ever spent. I saw the moonlight strike the sea and the spars of the Sarah Cutter, and I heard the turn of the tide; I listened to the snoring of my companions, and I was on the point of dropping off to sleep myself when Jack’s elbow touched me on the ribs.

“Now’s our time,” whispered he.

We slid out from under the shelter of the canvas like eels, and next moment were standing in the moonlight.

The island lay dead asleep under the moon, the sea glassing round it in a dead calm, except for the long heave of the swell that broke at minute-long intervals on the reef. The Sarah Cutter looked further off than by daylight, and we could see the spark of the lantern which the Spaniard had rigged as an anchor light, more for something to do than any other reason, seeing that there was little chance of a collision with another ship in that desolate anchorage.

We could see Prentice’s tent-cloth in the distance, and concluded that he was asleep under it, as there was no sign of him in the open.

Jack led the way to the wreck.

Very desolate and grim it looked in the moonlight, with the hole in the sand beside it like a great grave.

The shovels were lying by the hole, and taking one each, we started back again, Jack leading. We passed along the sands by the tent, and then dived amidst the bay-cedars so as to give Prentice a wide berth.

Jack was leading still, and as we approached the tree upon which all our hopes were fixed, he suddenly stopped dead and waved me back with his hand.

I saw him creeping forward cautiously for half a dozen paces, then he turned and came as cautiously back.

He did not say a word, but I guessed by his face, lit full by the moonlight, that something had happened.

Motioning me to follow him, he led the way back till we reached the clear space surrounding the spring.

Here we sat down.

“Prentice is there,” said Jack. “He’s sitting with his back to the tree asleep; he’s found out we know about the stuff, and he’s on guard, and it’s all my fault.”

“Your fault! How is it your fault?” asked I.

“How? Why, I ought to have tied that tag o’ cord round the nail again. Can’t you see? He’s been there, and the first thing he’d have noticed was that the cord was gone. Of course he wouldn’t have known who took it, but he’d have got suspicions. Anyhow, there he is asleep and we can’t disturb him.”

“Bother!” said I.

“You may well say it. Dad would have kicked me for forgetting to put back that cord. Anyhow, there’s nothing to be done to-night, that’s certain. Come, let’s put the shovels back in their places and get to bed. I’ll have to think of some plan to-morrow. I’ll be quits with him yet or my name’s not Jack Cutter.”

We rose up and took our way back to the wreck, where we put the shovels down exactly as we had found them. Then we came to the tent and crawled under the shelter of it, but we need not have taken so many precautions, for a trumpet would have scarcely awakened our companions from their sleep, even if they could have heard it through their snoring.

I was bitterly disappointed, and even the fact that it was Jack’s fault, not mine, gave me little comfort.

You can’t think what it is to be thwarted in a game like this, just when you fancy you have all the cards and nothing to do but put them on the table to win.

However, disappointment even could not fight against the tiredness which was now weighing on my eyes, and presently, following Jack’s example, I was snoring as loudly as any of the others.

Next morning after breakfast Captain Horn sent Jack and me off in the boat to the Sarah Cutter for more provisions. We had enough ashore to last us for a fortnight, but the Captain said that it had occurred to him that should a hurricane suddenly spring up or anything unforeseen happen to the barque, we would be in a bad way. He was a careful and far-seeing man; having used the sea all his life, he knew full well that the sea was not to be trusted, and this care and forethought of his saved us afterwards from a most difficult position, as will appear later on.

As we rowed to the barque, Jack, who had the stroke oar, paused for a moment when we were half-way from the beach to the vessel.

“Look here,” said he, “I believe I’ve found a way to fix Prentice.”

“What’s that?” asked I.

“Well, you see, as long as he’s on the island he’ll sleep every night, just as he did last, with his back to that tree on guard. Well, do you know what I’m going to do?”

“What?”

“Get him off the island.”

“How?”

“How? Why, I’ll just go to the Cappen straight and ask him to send Prentice aboard to take charge of the ship, and bring the Spanish chap ashore to do the digging.”

“But will he?”

“He will do it right enough if I put it to him properly. The thing is, I don’t want to tell him of what we’ve found out. I want to uncover that stuff myself. I think I can fix it up about Prentice, though, if you’ll back me.”

“I’ll do whatever you wish.”

“Right. Let me do the talking, and you just back me in whatever I say.”

“I will, as long as you say what’s the truth.”

“Truth! Who says I’m not going to say the truth? Who are you to be yarnin’ to me about the truth? I expect you’ve told as many lies in your time as anyone else.”

He was so put out that I apologized there and then, and we continued rowing; but even still I could see by his silence and the way he handled his oar, he was still put out, and it was not till we were rowing back to the beach that he consented to say another word.

We hallooed for Jam, who came and helped us to beach the boat and dispose of the stores, and then, Jack leading the way, we made for the wreck.

“You wait here,” said Jack, “and I’ll go and fetch the Cappen on some pretence about the stores. I won’t be a minute.”

I saw him go up to Captain Horn; then they both came to where I was standing.

“Well,” said the Captain when they reached me, “what’s all this you say about Prentice?”

“I was telling the Cappen it would be better to get Prentice aboard the barque,” said Jack.

“Yes, you was telling me,” replied Captain Horn; “but who are you to be telling me what to do—and what’s the meaning of it, anyway? Come, out with your yarn and tell me the meaning of all this.”

“Cappen,” said Jack, “I can’t tell you. I’m not meaning any disrespect, but it’s a secret between me and Dick. Honest bright, we mean everything for the best, and if you’ll just do as we asks you it’ll be the best in the end.”

“Dick,” said the Captain, “you know me, and you know what I can do with a rope’s-end. Come, open your mouth, and let’s have the meaning of this business, fair and square.”

“Captain,” said I, “it’s Jack’s business, and I’m sure you wouldn’t thrash me into telling you what it’s not my business to tell. But I will say this. Jack means right, and, if you’ll do what he asks you, it will be the best for all of us.”

The Captain scratched his head, but before he could say a word Jack cut in.

“See here, Cappen,” said he, “you know the work Prentice is put to; well, wouldn’t he be jumping and willing to knock off and go and have a rest on the barque, if you told him?”

“O’ course he would,” replied the Captain. “Lazy sculping. But I ain’t going to tell him.”

“Well,” said Jack, “I put it to you this way, Cappen. I only ask you to speak to Prentice and ask him wouldn’t he like to knock off work and take the Spaniard’s place on the barque for a day or two. If Prentice has no reason for wanting to stick here and do us an injury he will say ‘yes,’ and if he does want to stick here and maybe spoil everything, he will say ‘no.’ ”

“I s’pose you’re driving at something that’s out of my sight,” replied Captain Horn. “Well, if you’re fooling me by any chance, I reckon you’ll pay for it handsome.”

He turned on his heel without another word and walked off towards the wreck, we following him.

Prentice and Jam were at work, whilst Blower was sitting by resting. We went and sat down by Blower, whilst Captain Horn, with his hands in his pockets, stood watching the workers.

“Prentice!” cried the Captain suddenly.

Prentice straightened himself and looked round.

“I’m thinking of sending you to kick your heels on board the barque for a day or two; you want a rest, and the sun’s spoiling your complexion.” The Captain spat on the sand and looked grimly over Prentice from head to foot. “Your beauty is being sp’iled. Well, you sculping, where’s your thanks?”

“Why, since you brought me here and set me to this work, here I wishes to stick,” replied James. “I’m fonder of working in company than being alone.”

“Oh, you’re fond of company, are you?” replied the Captain. “Well, you’ll find lots of rats and black-beetles to keep you company on board of the Sarah Cutter, if she’s anything like as dirty as she used to be a couple o’ years ago. But it’s not what you’re fond of in this world as is best for you, James. I’m thinking of what’s good for you just the same as if I was your mother, which I’m glad to say I ain’t, and my decision is that you goes aboard the Sarah this evening, and there you stick for a day or two.”

“Cappen,” said James, “don’t send me aboard that there barque. I ain’t afraid of hard work, but, plump and plain, I’m afraid of being by myself.”

“Why, James,” cried Captain Horn, with an air of mock affability, “what are you afraid of?”

“I’m afraid of being by myself,” replied James.

“Is it your conscience that’s troubling you?”

“Maybe it is,” replied Prentice.

“Then you may make your mind easy. I don’t press the point.”

“Then I stays ashore?” asked Prentice, with a relieved air.

“No, you don’t; you goes aboard at sundown; but I’ll leave Lopez, what’s his name?—that Spanish chap—to keep you company aboard.”

“Cappen,” said Prentice, “I can’t stick that chap nohow. Let me just stay where I am and work as I’m working, and I won’t grumble.”

“Much I care whether you grumble or not,” replied Captain Horn; “you go aboard at sundown, so just shut your head and go on working, and trust in me to know what’s best for you. A couple of days’ rest is what you want. I’m no galley-slave driver. And a couple of days’ rest you shall have.”

He turned on his heel and walked away.

Prentice’s dislike of leaving the island seemed to have convinced the Captain that Jack and I had some very good reason for our request. But he did not say another word to us on the subject. But you should have seen Blower’s face when he heard the Captain recommending Prentice to take a rest. The bos’n, of course, knew nothing of our plans, nor of what we had said to Captain Horn, and he just sat dumbfounded whilst the conversation between the Captain and Prentice was going on. Then when the former walked away he broke out, addressing Prentice and us and Jam, who could scarcely work for grinning.

“By jimminy, but this beats all. So your complexion is being sp’iled by the sun! If I’d a’ known I’d a’ brought a stock o’ veils along. Or maybe you’d like some cold cream and powder same as the gals use in the Highway? And so you’re to lay off, are you? Feared o’ sp’iling your hands, are you? Get on with your work, you sculping, or I’ll be sp’iling you with my boot. Well, if this don’t beat all.”

And so he went on, at one moment commiserating with Prentice on the delicacy of the latter’s complexion and the tenderness of his hands, and the next moment flying out at him till we did not know which way to turn for laughter.

Now I hate to see anyone baited; ridicule is a low-down thing at best, and you will never find a gentleman using it so as to hurt anyone. But Prentice was a person you could not hurt much with anything, except, maybe, a stick, so I take no shame for our laughter, especially as we knew the man’s anger was chiefly caused by the decision of the Captain to turn him off the island. He went on working with a face as black as thunder, and without saying a word, so that Blower, having to do all the talking, soon talked himself out, and, for the want of something better to do, set us to work clearing away the sand that had been shovelled up out of the pit, which now extended right from the stern-post to midships of the wreck.

At dinner Blower tackled Captain Horn on the question, but the Captain would give him no word or reason.

“You leave me to mind my affairs,” said he. “Maybe I know what I’m doing, and maybe I don’t. The chap’s going on board the barque at sundown, and if you want any reason why he should go, why, what better reason could you have than the fact that he doesn’t want to go?”

“That’s true enough,” replied Blower. “He’s set against it. Well, it’s no business of mine, but if I had my way I’d keep him tight close to us, for if he’s left alone on the barque there’s no knowing what he mayn’t be after. He’d do anything to spike our gun.”

“He can’t do anything alone there by himself,” replied Captain Horn. “He can’t get the anchor up nor get her away, so there’s the end of it. Jack, give me another tater.”

After dinner and before we lay down for our rest, the Captain drew me aside on some pretext.

“Dick,” said he, “I can see clear enough that Prentice is up to some game and you’ve found it out, you and Jack between you; and I ask you, man to man, to tell me the whole business if you think there’s any danger in it, for if so, it’s a man’s job, and will need the whole lot of us to meet it. Answer up, now, and be straight.”

“Captain,” said I, “it’s this way. Prentice isn’t plotting anything against our safety, but Jack thinks he’s got a way of finding out where the gold is hidden, and he wants Prentice off the island so that he may work his plan. Jack’s a queer chap, and he wants to work out his plan himself without anyone to help him but me. He says it’s like fishing, and he wants to land this fish single-handed, or, at least, with only my help; and I’ll tell you this much more—he’s sure Prentice knows where the treasure is hid.”

“Well, you’ve answered me straight,” replied the Captain, “and I’ll treat you likewise. You can have a clear hand in the business and hunt as much as you please on your own, with the clear understanding you’ll have a thundering good rope’s-ending, the pair of you, if you don’t make good what you say after ’listing me in the business and making me send this chap aboard ship.”

With that he walked off, and I followed him to the encampment where Blower had already taken his place under the shelter of the sail.

At sundown, when the day’s work was finished, the Captain ordered the boat to be manned to take Prentice aboard the barque. Jam and Blower were to do the rowing whilst the Captain steered, and Prentice was ordered to take his place in the stern-sheets beside the Captain.

He looked black as thunder, though he never said a word; but just at the moment when the boat was water-borne and he was tumbling into it, he shot a glance at Jack and me venomous enough to make one shudder.

“He’s guessed we’ve had a finger in it,” said Jack as the boat shot out from the beach. “Did you ever see the like of that look? And he’s always so civil spoken and wishing to please. Dad always used to say he never trusted that sort, and I reckon he was right.”

“I wouldn’t care to be left on the island alone with him,” said I. “Well, now he’s gone anyhow, and we have the coast clear. When do you propose digging for that stuff?”

“To-night when they’re all asleep,” replied Jack. “If it’s there we will have it out in no time, and if it isn’t and we’ve been fooled, why there’s no one to know of our being fooled but our two selves. But it’s there all right. Prentice wouldn’t have been so keen to stay here and work in that sand-hole if it wasn’t here.”

We saw the boat reaching the ship and Prentice scrambling on board; Lopez the Spaniard was taken off, and then the boat started back over the sea, which was as smooth as a looking-glass, and all buttercup-coloured with the sunset.

After supper the Captain and Blower sat smoking their pipes before turning in, but not a word did they say about Prentice. I noticed that the Captain was more silent than usual, and I noticed that his eye travelled often in the direction of the barque lying like a phantom ship under the light of the stars.

As he was tapping the ashes out of his pipe he took another look at her. He seemed disturbed in his mind.

“That chap hasn’t put out an anchor light,” said he—“lazy swab.”

“I hope he will get to cutting no shines,” replied Blower. “He was proper spiteful by the look of him when he clumb over the side.”

“He can’t do anything,” replied the other. “What can he do? It’s not as if he had anyone to help him. He can’t cut a chain cable, and even if he had hands enough to man the capstan the first click o’ the pawls would bring us aboard. All the same, I’ll have him back here to-morrow. And I’ll tell you what, Blower, just for safety I’ll set a watch.”

“Oh, confound him,” said the bos’n; “I don’t want to be woke up to keep no watch. I reckon I was ag’inst the business all along, and I don’t see why I should have to pay for it. I’m as tired as a dead dog, and I wants my nine hours’ sleep to make me fresh for working to-morrow.”

“Well, take it,” replied the Captain. “Jam and me and one of them boys will keep watch turn about. I’ll take first watch, and Jam will follow me. It’s well to be on the safe side.”

You may guess what Jack and I felt at this. Here was a chance that our plans would be spoiled again, but we could say nothing, for we knew quite well from the Captain’s manner that he was in no mood for being spoken to, and that he was in a temper with both of us for having led him into this.

We lay down in the shelter of the sail, and in no time Blower and Jam and the Spaniard were asleep. The Captain had lain down too, reckoning that he could keep his watch in that position as well as in any other, and more comfortably. And he did for twenty minutes or so, when, overcome by the powerful air and the tiredness of the day, he went as sound asleep as any of the others.

Jack nudged me. Then I felt him crawling slowly out from beside me. I waited till he was outside, and then I followed him, taking plenty of care, as you may imagine, not to wake the Captain.

“Now then,” whispered Jack, “the coast’s clear at last; follow me.”

We walked cautiously away from the camp, and then we raced along the sand in the moonlight towards the wreck. We seized the shovels and with them on our shoulders returned, skirting the camp by sticking to the sea-edge, and then through the bushes we came to the tree, where we cast our shovels down and took breath.

Without a word Jack took the piece of fishing line, with which he had measured Prentice’s cord from the end to the knot, from his pocket. He tied the end to the nail in the tree trunk, and then he measured off with the cord to its full length straight out from the nail.

He made a mark in the sand at the spot to where the cord reached, and then, seizing the shovels, we set-to to dig. I have gone through many exciting moments, but none to approach that.

The moon gave us good light to dig by, but at times I could scarcely see the sand. So excited was I that the dazzle of the moonlight on the white coral dust blinded me like strong sunlight.

Then, little by little, the exercise of digging began to tell, and my excitement left me. I had started feeling sure that we would come on the treasure almost at the first dig of the spade, and now, after the first five minutes of fruitless work, I felt almost as sure that we had been fooled.

Then I went on working mechanically, scarcely thinking, and without a word to Jack. Yes, we had been fooled, or, rather, we had fooled ourselves—half an hour’s labour told us that. We had hit the coral rock and cleared away the sand from it for a space of four square feet. If we had been right in our calculations the treasure would have been unearthed by this, and we stood resting on our shovels in the moonlight and contemplating our work, and I do not know which of us was the more dispirited or disgusted.

Jack, after the first moment, cast his shovel away, and sat down on the sand, with his hands clasping his knees.

“I ain’t used to being set back like this,” said he. “I was as certain as certain I’d got my indications right; everything pointed the one way, and everything points the one way still. It’s not the indications as are wrong. No, it’s we that’s wrong; we’ve made some mistake. Yes, we’ve made some mistake, and I’m going to find out what it is. We’ve measured out in a straight line from the nail—the indications pointed to that—and we’ve measured the length of the cord up to where it was knotted.” He was silent for a moment, and then: “I’ve got it,” said he.

“How?”

“Look here. Prentice tied a knot on his cord to give him the measure of a distance, didn’t he? It’s just about ten foot, as near as possible. That length he measured on his cord, but that doesn’t say the treasure lies ten foot from the tree. No, it only says he measured off ten foot to have a measure to go by. You see it’s easy enough to guess ten foot of cord, but it’s a lot more difficult to guess twenty foot or thirty foot. So if the paper had said the stuff lies thirty foot from the tree, what would he have done? He wouldn’t have tried to measure off thirty foot of cord. No, he’d have measured off ten, and tied a knot at the measurement; then he’d have tied the end of the cord to the nail, then he’d have doubled up his cord in his hand, measuring off on it the distance from the knot to the nail, and from the nail to the knot, till he’d got thirty foot in hand, and then he’d have continued his line for thirty foot out instead o’ ten.”

“I see.”

“I don’t say he measured thirty foot, but I’m dead sure it was either double, or three times, or four times of the ten; so I’m going to try double, first—that’s twenty foot.”

He took some more fishing line from his pocket and, taking the cord we had already used from the nail, he measured off twice its length on the new line. Then, tying the new line to the nail, he walked off till he had reached the end of this new measurement. Here he made a mark on the sand, and, fetching the shovels, we began digging.

I confess the whole thing seemed to me hopeless. Left to myself I would have given up the business in despair. But Jack had that quality which leads men to do great things. He believed in himself. He knew that his train of reasoning was good, he knew that everything pointed in one direction, and he knew that our failure was caused not because the indications were faulty, but because we had missed some point in them. Great was his triumph. We had not been digging five minutes when the edge of his spade struck something that was not rock.

In a moment Jack was down on his knees digging with his hands just as a dog digs. Flinging my spade down, I watched him, mad with excitement, and quite unable to move. I can see him still, on his knees in the moonlight, the white sand flying about as he cast it up, delving for all he was worth, as they say, and at last capturing and wrestling with something that seemed loath to be brought to light.

Then he lugged it out on the sand. It was a thing shaped like a brick, black in colour, and the sight of it made my heart sink into my boots.

If Jack hadn’t been there to see me, I believe I would have broken down and cried. I had been expecting gold, good yellow gold, and the sight of this black lump of iron was too much for me. Then I almost forgot it on account of Jack. I thought he had gone mad. He was rolling about on the sand, laughing and kicking just as if someone were tickling him; then he cast himself on his face, clutched the lump of iron, lifted it as if to feel its weight, and then sat up with it in his lap.

Then I began to understand.

“What is it?” said I, and my voice was broken and hoarse so that I scarcely knew it.

“Gold,” said Jack; “and there’s tons more. Feel it, look at it. We’ve done ’em.”

“But it’s black!”

“Black as a nigger. Oh, lend me your knife.”

I gave him my knife.

He scraped a corner of the brick and the metal showed through bright in the moonlight.

“Look!” said he, and he dented the brick with the knife point. Nothing but gold or lead would have given like that to the steel, and it was not lead but gold; a brick of solid gold, blackened on the outside by years of lying hidden in the sand.

I scarcely remember what happened for the next few minutes. I dare say Emperors sometimes feel as we felt, but I am sure no Emperor was ever more deliriously happy. Then we got the shovels and began digging away the sand and unearthing more bricks as we dug. We piled them beside the sand-hole; it took us two hours and more; there were forty-five of them, some much bigger than the one we discovered first.

When we had finished, we sat down exhausted and looked at our treasure. It was not the gold, so much as the fact that we had got it without anyone else’s help that made us so elated. And I will say for myself that I had not one bit of jealous feeling towards Jack. It was the other way about. I felt pretty nearly as though I could have worshipped him for his cleverness and insight. For, think of it, just seeing a nail sticking in a tree with a bit of cord tied to it, he had gone on from point to point unaided, and led only by his own mind, till this was the result!

“Jack,” said I, “will you keep it till the morning, or tell it now?”

“I’m going to wake ’em up and tell ’em right away,” said Jack. “I couldn’t sleep if I lay down and I ain’t going to lie awake with this on my mind. Come on.”

He rose up and led the way back to the camp, I following. The Captain and the rest of them were snoring under the canvas just as we had left them, and Jack, going up within a foot of them, stuck his head under the sail-cloth and shouted “Cappen!”

I never saw men roused quicker than that lot. The Captain, Jam, and Blower had gone to sleep with Prentice on their mind, and I suppose the sudden hail even in their dreams had started the idea that Prentice had got the weather-gauge of them somehow. At all events, in two seconds the whole lot were out in the open, rubbing their eyes and staring about them, all except the Spaniard Lopez, who snored on undisturbed.

“Hullo!” cried the Captain. “Why, blest if it ain’t Dick. What’s up—where’s Prentice?”

“Captain!” cried I. “We’ve found it!”

“Found what?” asked he.

“The gold,” I replied.

Next moment he had me by the collar.

“You’ve found the gold? Where have you found the gold? If this is a joke, Dick Bannister, I’ll fling ye straight forward into the sea. I’ll teach you. Is it a joke—is it a joke, or are you speakin’ real?”

“It’s no joke. Let go—you’re choking me. Do you think I’m such a fool to go playing jokes like that?”

He released my collar and stood for a moment speechless. He knew I was speaking truth, and I have never seen a strong man so suddenly turned to wax.

“Blower,” said he, “I’m shook up; lend me your arm. I ain’t used to this.”

“Steady so,” said Blower, giving him his arm to hold by; “we ain’t got the gold yet. Now you’re better. Dick Bannister, give us a lead; where’s the stuff lying you found? Maybe it ain’t gold. Howsomever, lead us to it.”

I started off, the others following, the Captain still leaning on Blower. You see, this treasure had been the dream of his life for the last seven years; he believed that he had lost it, and to be suddenly awakened at dead of night with the news that it was found was too much for him.

When I reached the hole in the sand with the heap of black bricks, or what looked in the moonlight like black bricks, lying beside it, I stood waiting for the others.

“Why, what do you call this?” cried Blower. “Gold? Why, that ain’t gold!”

“Ain’t it?” cried Jack. “You feel one of ’em—lift one of ’em. Here’s my knife—scratch one of ’em; you can see the yellow. Here, Cappen, take my knife.”

The Captain on his knees, with Jack’s knife in his hand, was cutting at one of the bricks. Then he looked up and gave a great shout.

“Gold!” cried he.

The cry rang across the island—a strange sound in that desolate place where the silent wreck stood by the booming sea, whilst the moon cast her quiet light on sea, wreck, and treasure-seekers.

“Gold!” cried he again—“pure gold! Hundredweights of it! Feel it, lift it! Boys, it’s a fortune ten times over!”

He sat down on the sand, with a gold brick in his lap; then he began to laugh and shout and rave and cry. I never did see such a sight, which was only matched by Blower and Jam.

The negro and the bos’n, clasping one another round the waist, were dancing round the treasure. Then the bos’n, freeing himself from Jam, and giving him a punch in the ribs, danced, alone, a hornpipe, till Jack and I, what between the antics of Blower and the Captain, sat and laughed till our sides ached and the tears rolled down our faces.

Then we pulled ourselves together. Human beings cannot know extreme delight for more than a very few minutes. The Captain, strange to say, though the most affected of us all, was the first to recover.

“Well,” said he, drawing a long breath, “this is a sight I never did think to see, for I tell you, boys, I’d as good as given up the whole business. I’m not denying I’d have kept on digging till I burst, but my heart was near broke over it—and here we are, safe and sound, with the stuff in our hands. Dick Bannister, how came it that you hit on it?”

“It wasn’t me,” said I. “It was Jack. Only for Jack we’d never have found it.”

“Jack?” said Captain Horn.

“Gold!” cried he.

“Yes, Jack. Speak up, Jack, and tell us about it.”

But Jack was as dumb as a fish. He would not say a word, so I started in and told the tale better, perhaps, than he would have done. I told how he had discovered the nail in the tree with the bit of string tied to it, and how he had gone on from one thing to another, till he had located the treasure. It really was a marvellous tale, such a starting from almost nothing and such a triumphant ending, and I can tell you, when I had finished, the eyes of Blower and the Captain and Jam were round enough.

“Well, I’m blest!” cried the Captain. “If that ain’t the cleverest start I ever come across, call me another. It’s more than natural. Jack Cutter, you’re the biggest man of the lot of us, and you’ll have the biggest share of the lot of us, or my name’s not Horn.”

“So shall he,” said Blower, “if I have to go without.”

“I ain’t done nothing,” said Jack, as if he were defending himself against some accusation. “What are you going on at me for? I finds an old nail with a string tied to it, which ain’t a natural thing to find, and I’d ’a’ been a fool if I hadn’t gone on till I got the stuff.”

“Fool or no fool, you found it, my son,” replied the Captain, “and yours is the biggest share by right.”

“I don’t want nothing,” replied Jack. “I reckon I’ve had the fun of finding it, and I’ve money enough in the bank at Havana now dad’s gone.”

“Well, you chaps are the rummiest lot,” said Blower. “Here you go on disputing about the stuff, and it not landed safe ashore yet in a Lunnon bank. I reckon the hardest part of the job is before us now, and I reckon we’d better be settin’ to work to think what we ought to do. First, there’s that blessed Spaniard we left snoring under the sail-cloth; we’d better keep it hid from him, for Spaniards on a job like this ain’t to be trusted. Then there’s Prentice. He’s the crooked stick of the business. How are we going to get the stuff aboard without his knowing?”

“You trust me for that,” said the Captain. “I’m going to take it aboard right under his nose, make him touch it and smell it, too.”

“Yes, and when we get to Lunnon, won’t he round on us? D’you think he’s going to sit quiet and let himself be took in like that?”

“Oh, my aunt!” cried the Captain. “Who’s talking of taking him to London?”

“Then what are you going to do with him?”

“What am I goin’ to do with him? Why, I’m goin’ to leave him here.”

“Maroon him?”

“That’s it.”

Blower considered the question for a while in silence.

“And suppose,” said he, “you leave him here, and suppose a ship comes along and takes him off, won’t he blow on us first thing?”

“I can fix him for that,” replied Captain Horn. “You leave everything to me and keep your head shut. The question is, the old Sarah Cutter belongs to Jack here, and the question is, are you willin’, Jack, we should take the old hooker to London?”

Jack considered for a minute.

“Well,” said he, “I’m agreeable, but if you’ll take my advice, you’ll sail right back for Havana with the stuff aboard and refit and revictual. I reckon the old barque can do the voyage to England all right. Dad said he could sail her round the world and be a lot safer in her than in a ship twice her size.”

“There’s something in that,” replied the Captain.

“And see here,” said Jack, “my advice is you get the stuff aboard—it looks more like pig-iron than anything else—we can stow it anywhere and the customs’ people won’t bother about it. Well, when we get to Havana, you get a cargo aboard for London. Dad’s cousin on my mother’s side—his name is Planter, and he’s trading a lot in tobacco—he will give us a cargo right enough. I’ll tell him, now dad’s dead, I’m goin’ in for private trading. I’ll be owner, and you’ll be Captain, with papers all made out regular, so that when we get to the Lunnon Docks everything will be right and straight. The Sarah Cutter, bound from Havana for Lunnon, with a cargo of tobacco. That’s straight enough.”

“True for you,” said the Captain. “What’s troubling me is how to get the stuff out o’ the docks; what’s troubling me is them chaps at the dock gates. We might take the stuff brick by brick ashore, but suppose they see a sailor-man with something stuck under his coat, wouldn’t they overhaul him right away? That they would!”

“What’s to hinder you flinging the stuff in the bottom of a boat as boat-ballast, and rowing down to Barking Creek?” said Blower. “We’d slip it ashore there in no time.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” replied the Captain. “And we can work it out later. But the first thing is to get it to the docks. I’m for Jack’s plan—back to Havana and fill up with tobacco, then for Lunnon Docks.”

“I’m with you,” said Blower.

“Right,” said the Captain. “And now let’s cover this stuff over with sand. I don’t want Lopez to see it, and the beggar may wake up and take a stroll this way any minit if he takes the idea in his head.”

We rose up and, replacing the bricks in the hole, shovelled the sand over them with the spades.

When we had finished, dawn was just breaking over the sea.

We were far too excited to lie down again so we set to and roused Lopez. Almost before he was on his legs the rim of the sun was over the sea-line and the sky above, that had been covered with stars only a quarter of an hour ago, blue with day.

We had brought the shovels back from the treasure-hole, and Captain Horn set Lopez to digging again beside the wreck, so that he might have no suspicions, and me to help him, whilst the rest of them made preparations for getting breakfast.

It was the strangest work digging away in that sand for nothing, and having to keep up appearances by digging hard; and I was heartily glad when the hail came that breakfast was ready, and I was able to fling down my shovel, assured in my mind that I would not have to pick it up again.

When breakfast was over, the Captain ordered me and Lopez and Blower to man the boat. We shoved her down to the waterline, he got aboard, and then, having floated her, we took to the oars and rowed off to the Sarah Cutter.

As we approached the barque we saw Prentice leaning on the starboard bulwarks, watching our approach, and as we drew up to the vessel’s side he flung down a ladder for us.

“Now then,” said the Captain to Lopez, “up you go; and you, Prentice, down with you, for I have something to say to you ashore.”

Lopez went up the ladder and Prentice came down.

“Well,” said he, as his foot touched the boat, “and what is it you have to say to me?”

“You wait, my son, till I get you ashore,” replied Captain Horn; “you’ll learn soon enough. Now then, out oars and lay into it.”

We did, and in less than five minutes the boat was burying her nose in the sand, and we were hauling her up on the beach.

“Now we can talk free without Lopez to listen,” said the Captain. “Sit you all down on the sand, and you, Prentice, sit you before me. So you marked down the place where the gold was hid, did you, and you’d have boned it unbeknownst to us, would you?”

“I saw you last night,” replied Prentice. “I saw you all digging away; I guessed what you were after. Would I have boned it unbeknown to you? I would, that’s straight, and so would any man after the way you treated me. What did you do? Drove me out from amongst you, made me mess alone, worked me like a horse, and used me like a dog, that’s what you did. Yes, I found the gold by my own brains, and it’s mine by all the laws of the land.”

“What land?” asked the Captain.

The glib-tongued rascal was checked up by this question, but only for half a minute.

“England, if you want to know,” replied he. “England, where you’ll have to take the stuff if you ever want to turn it into minted money and spend it.”

“My son,” said Captain Horn, “you’re going too fast; there’s law enough in England to hang you for the murdering thief you are; besides, you’re not goin’ back to England—yet awhile, at all events. Now you listen to me. We’ve tried you and condemned you, and found you unfit for our company. We ain’t much, but we draws the line at such as you.”

“Oh, do you?” replied Prentice. “Well, I draw the line at such as you, and if I ain’t going to have my lawful share of that stuff, I’ll blow on you—that’s straight.”

“And who will you blow to?” asked the Captain. “Them palm-trees, or that old wreck, maybe.”

“What you mean?” said Prentice.

“I mean that we’re goin’ to leave you behind us, that’s what I mean; there’s provisions enough here to keep one man six months, and there’s water enough in the spring to keep you for ever; you can keep the sail-cloth to make a tent of, and it’s ten to one you’ll be taken off by some ship inside of a fortnight.”

“You mean you’re going to cut me adrift and maroon me?”

“That’s what I mean,” replied the Captain.

“Well, then,” said Prentice, “where’ll you gain by that?”

“By what?”

“By leaving me here; for directly I’m taken off what’ll I do but the first port I reach lay an information against the lot of you, Captain Horn of the brig Albatross and now of the Sarah Cutter, and you and your gold will be pinched wherever you are, and not only pinched but jugged for leaving a man on a desolate island. I’ve got you there, I think—got you in a clove hitch, the whole lot of you.”

And handed it to Prentice.

“When you’re took off from here you won’t say a word,” replied the Captain.

“Won’t I?”

“Not a word. And I’ll explain my meanin’ before we start. Now, then, all of you, up with you and get the stuff into the boat; there’s a nor’-east breeze, and I don’t propose hangin’ about here not a minit longer now that our work is done.”

Prentice stood with his arms folded on his breast. Not a word did he say as we got two of the provision sacks and a spade and transported the stuff to the boat. We could only take off a sackful at a time to the Sarah Cutter. Lopez was nowhere to be seen on deck; he was in the caboose cooking some food for himself, and we managed to get the whole lot aboard without his seeing what we were doing, a fact which saved us from a heap of trouble afterwards, for if he had suspected anything we should have had to take him into our confidence and buy his secrecy, and even then we should have been in danger, for Spaniards, at all events in those days, were not people to be trusted.

When the whole lot was safely stowed in the Captain’s cabin, we rowed ashore again to take leave of Prentice.

He was walking up and down on the beach, and when he saw us approaching he took his stand again with his arms folded. I never saw a more malignant expression on anyone’s face than that which lay on his.

When the boat was beached and we were all on the sand, the Captain approached him.

“Now see you here, Prentice,” said he. “I’m goin’ to deal with you fair as man to man. You say you’ll blow on us when you’re took off. Well, I say you won’t. And I’ll tell you why you won’t, just for this reason—it wouldn’t be to your advantage. You know the sum the owner’s contracted to pay each man for this business. Well, I’m not going to pay you that; I’m going to give you something that will make you rich for life, and shut your mouth for life; I’m not giving it to you because I love you—but just to get shut of you.”

He took one of the gold bricks from the enormous pocket of his coat and handed it to Prentice.

I have never seen a man so completely taken aback as Prentice. He stood open-mouthed and staring at us, holding the thing in his hands. Then he began to grin, realizing that the Captain was in earnest.

“Now you see what I mean,” said Captain Horn. “You’re paid handsome just because you’re such a villain. It ain’t justice—you ought to be hanged and you’re made rich for life; but mind that gold don’t hang you yet, for gold is dangerous stuff in the hands of such as you. There’s one thing certain, though, you’ll never peach, for if you did the Spaniards that have been hunting for that gold and hid it in the cache would knife you; besides, it wouldn’t pay you to have the thing raked over and get us into trouble as well as yourself.”

“Boys,” said the Captain as we rowed back to the barque, “I had to do it; it’s fifty times his share, but it’s worth it, for it puts him out of count.”

When the anchor was up and the sails were drawing, we looked back, and there was Prentice on the beach, lying on his stomach with the gold brick before him, playing with it quite contented, just as a child plays with a toy.

We never heard of him again.

We touched at Havana and took a cargo of tobacco on board, and two months later, one black and windy day, we found ourselves in London Docks, moored to the self-same wharf from which the old Albatross had started. We had cleared the customs; and leaving Jam on board to guard the treasure which was lying like lumps of pig-iron in the after-house, the Captain and I made on foot for Cornhill.

Never shall I forget that return to the streets of London, and how strange all the common things seemed after the far-distant lands and seas that lay between me and the last time I sighted them.

The Sign of the Spyglass was there just as of old, the shop looked just as trim and neat, and as we pushed the glass door aside and entered my heart felt as though it were trying to climb into my mouth.

There was no one in the shop.

Leaving Captain Horn standing at the counter, I made for the parlour, pushed the door open, and peeped in.

My uncle was seated in his armchair, a silk handkerchief over his face, and an empty wine-glass by his side on the table. He was fast asleep, but even as I looked at him he stirred, awoke, the handkerchief slipped from his face, and he sat up.

How old he looked—old and worn and troubled. He gazed at me like a man who sees an apparition.

“Dick!” said he.

“Uncle!” cried I, and the next moment I was in his arms blubbering. I take no shame for it. He was everything to me—father, mother, sisters, and brothers—and the sight of him looking so worn and old broke me down.

“The Albatross is gone,” said I when I could recover breath—“sunk; but I have news for you, uncle——”

“Not a word, not a word,” said he; “don’t tell me anything, for nothing but bad news comes to me now. Ah, there’s Captain Horn. Come in, Captain; you see a broken old man; you are just in time to see the last of the shop. We’re ruined, Captain. Slimon has ruined me.”

I was about to speak, but the Captain cut me short with a look.

“So that chap has played you crooked,” said he; “just the same trick he played me about the stores. Well, Mr. Bannister, you ain’t the first good man ruined by a rascal. But give us the lie of it. No, sit you down, and I’ll take this here chair, and not a word out of you, Dick, till I gives the word.”

My uncle began his story. How Slimon had speculated with the money of the firm, forged my uncle’s name to bills of exchange, and made such havoc of the affairs of the factory and shop that there was nothing before the firm of Bannister but bankruptcy.

“He did all that, did he?” said Captain Horn.

“He did.”

“And what did he get for it?”

“The unfortunate man has been transported,” replied my uncle—“transported for life.”

“Well,” said the Captain, “I calls him a fortunate man, for if I’d been the judge I’d a’ hanged him. And so he’s brought you to ruin, has he?”

“He has indeed. Look around you. Everything here must be sold off. Ah, Captain Horn, I am an unlucky man. The Albatross gone, the business gone, my money gone—it has all come in a clap. Well, well, well, it might have been worse, for Dick’s been saved, and you too.”

“Tell me,” said the Captain, “was she insured?”

“Who?”

“The Albatross.”

“No, there was no insurance; Slimon’s fault again.”

“Tell me,” said the Captain, “how much would this here Slimon have got out of the venture, supposing we’d been successful?”

“As a partner of the firm, he’d have got half the profits.”

“Half the profits, would he?”

“Yes, half the profits.”

“Well,” said the Captain, “it’s a good thing: he won’t get nothing now.”

“No, he won’t get anything now. But tell me of the disaster—was the ship sunk before you got to the island? How many were drowned?”

“She was sunk before we got to the island, and not a man Jack was drowned,” replied the Captain. Then, leaning forward in his chair and speaking with great solemnness: “Mr. Bannister, are you prepared to hear some good news?”

“Good news!” cried my uncle in a startled manner. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that you ain’t ruined.”

“Not ruined?”

“I mean that you’re one of the richest men in London. Smell that.”

He took from the pocket of his great-coat one of the gold bricks, which he had cut with a knife so that the gold showed through the tarnish, and placed it on the table.

My uncle gazed at it, touched it, lifted it, and then cried out.

“Gold,” said the Captain, “that’s what it is. Pure gold, and there’s forty or fifty of ’em lying in the after-house of the Sarah Cutter.”

“Gold!” cried my uncle. “Is this the gold?”

“That’s the gold.”

“You were successful?”

“We were that. Oh, you’ll hear the yarn sure enough. Now, don’t take on——”

The poor old man, overcome, saved in the midst of his ruin, face to face with fortune, when a moment ago he had been face to face with disaster, had sunk into his chair.

“Dick,” cried the Captain, “spirits!”

I rushed round the room, but could only find a bottle of port in the chiffonier. We filled him out a glass, and held it to his lips, and he drank it.

Then he came to. He belonged to a good old fighting stock, and even good fortune could not quite floor him. In a minute his cheeks were full of colour and his eyes sparkling, and he was laughing like a boy. He slapped the gold with the palm of his hand, and then he rose up and went over to the chiffonier and produced more glasses, got the tobacco-pot from the mantel, made Captain Horn charge his pipe and light it, and then, telling me to call Mrs. Service to close the shop, waited to hear our story. Mrs. Service was as delighted to see me as I to see her, and when I got back there I found Captain Horn and my uncle sitting face to face, each smoking his pipe, the decanter between them, and the fire blazing up merrily.

Before he would let Captain Horn begin, however, my uncle sent me out to tell Mrs. Service to prepare the best supper she could get, enumerating amongst other things a lobster, a dish of prawns, and some pressed beef from the shop at the corner.

Then I closed the door, and the Captain began his yarn.

As I listened, I could see the whole of our adventures over again—Havana Harbour, and my struggle with Prentice in the garden of the villa, the derelict which broke the brig passing us bottom up in the green sea, the island and the moonlight on it, and the Sarah Cutter anchored off shore; I could hear the sound of the surf on the reef, and the crackling of the fire on the beach, and the calling of the sea-gulls from the sea; I helped Captain Horn to thread together and tell the story of how Jack had discovered the real whereabouts of the treasure, and when we had finished, though it was daylight when we began, we could hear through the sound of late hackney-coaches in Cornhill the voice of the watchman taking up his first cry, “Ten o’clock of a cold and windy night—all’s well.”

When we had finished, my uncle rang the bell for supper, and it was brought in. He went down to the cellar, armed with a bunch of keys and a tallow candle, and in some five minutes or so returned with cobwebs on his shoulders and elbows, and a bottle in his right hand. It was a bottle of Madeira of the year—I forget which; but it was as valuable as gold, and he only had three bottles remaining of the dozen that had been given him by some alderman of the city dead before I was born; and we drank the health of the fortune in it—at least, Captain Horn and my uncle did—and my uncle made a little speech, standing with his half-empty wine-glass slanted in his hand. I can see him still, the flush on his old face and the brightness in his eye, and he talking as though he were addressing a full room of people, and Captain Horn listening, nodding, interrupting with ejaculations of “Here’s to you,” “Just so,” “Them’s my sentiments,” and tapping with the bowl of his pipe on the table by way of applause when the orator sat down.

That was the happiest evening of my life, and I would like to close my yarn with it, only that there are a few tags and details that call for mention.

First, we got the treasure safe and sound out of the docks and into the Sign of the Spyglass and from there to a foreign land, by processes and means known only to my uncle, who had a large connection in the city and several good friends quite willing and able to help him in this difficult task.

Then as to Jack. He went back to Havana in the Sarah Cutter, Captain Horn sailing it for him; and Jack used his money and his brains so well that he turned out to be one of the richest men in the West Indies, and the last I saw of him was when he came to London two years ago and we dined together at the Ship and Turtle. He was very stout, and he flung his guineas about in fine style, for with all his wealth and cleverness, he had kept that which so many men lose with success—generosity.

As for Jam, he invested his share of the treasure in a business that failed; then he started a fried-fish shop, and that failed. I met him one day in Fleet Street in tatters and a yellow waistcoat, and took him into my service. He is with me still, and not a day older than on the day I saw him first, though his wool is as white as snow.

THE END

TRANSCRIBER NOTES

Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple spellings occur, majority use has been employed.

Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors occur.

Illustrations have been relocated due to using a non-page layout.

Alt descriptions have been added to illustrations.

Page numbers have been removed due to a non-page layout.

[The end of Bird Cay, by Henry de Vere Stacpoole]