The Wings of the Morning Part 12

It was burnt black. She prepared a fresh supply. When it was ready, Jenks was himself again. They ate in silence, and shared the remains of the bottle. The man idly wondered what was the _plat du jour_ at the Savoy that evening. He remembered that the last time he was there he had called for _Jambon de York aux epinards_ and half a pint of Heidseck.

"_Coelum non animum mutant, qui trans mare currant_," he thought.

By a queer trick of memory he could recall the very page in Horace where this philosophical line occurs. It was in the eleventh epistle of the first book. A smile illumined his tired face.

Iris was watchful. She had never in her life cooked even a potato or boiled an egg. The ham was her first attempt.

"My cooking amuses you?" she demanded suspiciously.

"It gratifies every sense," he murmured. "There is but one thing needful to complete my happiness."

"And that is?"

"Permission to smoke."

"Smoke what?"

He produced a steel box, tightly closed, and a pipe, "I will answer you in Byron's words," he said--

"'Sublime tobacco! which from east to west Cheers the tar's labour or the Turkman's rest.'"

"Your pockets are absolute shops," said the girl, delighted that his temper had improved. "What other stores do you carry about with you?"

He lit his pipe and solemnly gave an inventory of his worldly goods.

Beyond the items she had previously seen he could only enumerate a silver dollar, a very soiled and crumpled handkerchief, and a bit of tin. A box of Norwegian matches he threw away as useless, but Iris recovered them.

"You never know what purpose they may serve," she said. In after days a weird significance was attached to this simple phrase.

"Why do you carry about a bit of tin?" she went on.

How the atmosphere of deception clung to him! Here was a man compelled to lie outrageously who, in happier years, had prided himself on scrupulous accuracy even in small things.

"Plague upon it!" he silently protested. "Subterfuge and deceit are as much at home in this deserted island as in Mayfair."

"I found it here, Miss Deane," he answered.

Luckily she interpreted "here" as applying to the cave.

"Let me see it. May I?"

He handed it to her. She could make nothing of it, so together they puzzled over it. The sailor rubbed it with a mixture of kerosene and sand. Then figures and letters and a sort of diagram were revealed. At last they became decipherable. By exercising patient ingenuity some one had indented the metal with a sharp punch until the marks a.s.sumed this aspect (see cut, following page).

Iris was quick-witted. "It is a plan of the island," she cried.

"Also the lat.i.tude and the longitude."

"What does 'J.S.' mean?"

"Probably the initials of a man's name; let us say John Smith, for instance."

"And the figures on the island, with the 'X' and the dot?"

"I cannot tell you at present," he said. "I take it that the line across the island signifies this gap or canyon, and the small intersecting line the cave. But 32 divided by 1, and an 'X' surmounted by a dot are cabalistic. They would cause even Sherlock Holmes to smoke at least two pipes. I have barely started one."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

She ran to fetch a glowing stick to enable him to relight his pipe.

"Why do you give me such nasty little digs?" she asked. "You need not have stopped smoking just because I stood close to you."

"Really, Miss Deane--"

"There, don't protest. I like the smell of that tobacco. I thought sailors invariably smoked rank, black stuff which they call thick twist."

"I am a beginner, as a sailor. After a few more years before the mast I may hope to reach perfection."

Their eyes exchanged a quaintly pleasant challenge. Thus the man--"She is determined to learn something of my past, but she will not succeed."

And the woman--"The wretch! He is close as an oyster. But I will make him open his mouth, see if I don't."

She reverted to the piece of tin. "It looks quite mysterious, like the things you read of in stories of pirates and buried treasure."

"Yes," he admitted. "It is unquestionably a plan, a guidance, given to a person not previously acquainted with the island but cognizant of some fact connected with it. Unfortunately none of the buccaneers I can bring to mind frequented these seas. The poor beggar who left it here must have had some other motive than searching for a cache."

"Did he dig the cave and the well, I wonder?"

"Probably the former, but not the well. No man could do it unaided."

"Why do you a.s.sume he was alone?"

He strolled towards the fire to kick a stray log. "It is only idle speculation at the best, Miss Deane," he replied. "Would you like to help me to drag some timber up from the beach? If we get a few big planks we can build a fire that will last for hours. We want some extra clothes, too, and it will soon be dark."

The request for co-operation gratified her. She complied eagerly, and without much exertion they hauled a respectable load of firewood to their new camping-ground. They also brought a number of coats to serve as coverings. Then Jenks tackled the lamp. Between the rust and the soreness of his index finger it was a most difficult operation to open it.

Before the sun went down he succeeded, and made a wick by unraveling a few strands of wool from his jersey. When night fell, with the suddenness of the tropics, Iris was able to illuminate her small domain.

They were both utterly tired and ready to drop with fatigue. The girl said "Good night," but instantly reappeared from behind the tarpaulin.

"Am I to keep the lamp alight?" she inquired.

"Please yourself, Miss Deane. Better not, perhaps. It will only burn four or five hours, any way."

Soon the light vanished, and he lay down, his pipe between his teeth, close to the cave's entrance. Weary though he was, he could not sleep forthwith. His mind was occupied with the signs on the canister head.

"32 divided by 1; an 'X' and a dot," he repeated several times. "What do they signify?"

Suddenly he sat up, with every sense alert, and grabbed his revolver.

Something impelled him to look towards the spot, a few feet away, where the skeleton was hidden. It was the rustling of a bird among the trees that had caught his ear.

He thought of the white framework of a once powerful man, lying there among the bushes, abandoned, forgotten, horrific. Then he smothered a cry of surprise.