Spanish Doubloons Part 8

It was an animal, not a human shape. And it was light-footed and swift and noiseless--and it was white. It had, indeed, every distinguis.h.i.+ng trait of Cookie's phantom pig. Only it was not a pig. My brief shadowy glimpse of it had told me that. I knew what it was not, but what it was I could not, as I stood there rooted, even guess,

Would it attack me, or should I only die of fright? I wondered if my heart were weak, and hoped it was, so that I should not live to feel the teeth of the unknown Thing sink in my flesh. I thought of my revolver and after an infinity of time managed to draw it from the case. My fingers seemed at once nervelessly limp and woodenly rigid. This was not at all the dauntless front with which I had dreamed of meeting danger. I had fancied myself with my automatic making a rather pretty picture as a young Amazon--but I had now a dreadful fear that my revolver might spasmodically go off and wound the Thing, and then even if it had meditated letting me go it would certainly attack me. Nevertheless I clung to my revolver as to my last hope.

I began to edge away crab-wise into the wood. Like a metronome I said to myself over and over monotonously, _don't run, don't run_!

Dim legends about the power of the human eye floated through my brain. But how quell the creature with my eye when I could not see it? As for the hopeless expedient of screaming, I hadn't courage for it. I was silent, as I would fain have been invisible. Only my dry lips kept muttering soundlessly, _don't run, don't run_!

I did not run. Instead, I stepped on a smooth surface of rock and slid downhill like a human toboggan until I fetched up against a dead log. I discovered it to be a dead log after a confused interval during which I vaguely believed myself to have been swallowed by an alligator. While the alligator illusion endured I must have lain comatose and immovable. Indeed, when my senses began to come back I was still quite inert. I experienced that curious tranquillity which is said to visit those who are actually within the jaws of death. There I lay p.r.o.ne, absolutely at the mercy of the mysterious white prowler of the forest--and I did not care. The whole petty business of living seemed a long way behind me now.

Languidly at last I opened my eyes. Within three yards of me, in the open rock-paved glade where I had fallen, stood the Thing.

As softly as I had opened my eyes I shut them. I had an annoyed conviction that they were deceiving me--a very unworthy thing for eyes to do that were soon to be closed in death. Again I lifted my lids. Yes, there it was--only now it had put an ear back and was sniffing at me with a mingling of interest and apprehension..

The strange beast of the jungle was a white bull-terrier.

Abruptly I sat up. The terrier gave a startled sidewise bound, but paused again and stood regarding me.

"Here, pup! Here, pup! Nice, nice doggums!" I said in soothing accents.

The dog gave a low whine and stood s.h.i.+vering, eager but afraid. I continued my blandishments. Little by little the forlorn creature drew nearer, until I put out a cautious hand and stroked his ears.

He dodged affrightedly, but presently crept back again. Soon his head was against my knee, and he was devouring my hand with avid caresses. Some time, before his abandonment on the island, he had been a well-brought-up and petted animal. Months or years of wild life had estranged him from humanity, yet at the human touch the old devotion woke again.

The thing now was to lure him back to camp and restore him to the happy service of his G.o.ds. I rose and picked up my pistol, which had regained my confidence by not going off when I dropped it.

With another alluring, "Here, doggums!" I started on my way. He shrank, trembled, hesitated, then was after me with a bound. So we went on through the forest. As we neared the camp the four-footed castaway's diffidence increased. I had to pet and coax. But at last I brought him triumphantly across the Rubicon of the little stream, and marched him into camp under the astounded eyes of Cookie.

At sight of the negro the dog growled softly and crouched against my skirt. Cookie stood like an effigy of amazement done in black and white.

"Fo' de Lawd's sake, Miss Jinny," he burst out at last, "am dat de ghos'-pig?"

"It was, Cookie, but I changed him into a live dog by crossing my fingers. Mind your rabbit's foot. He might eat it, and then very likely we'd have a ghost on our hands again. But I think he'll stay a dog for the present."

"Yo' go 'long, Miss Jinny," said Cookie valiantly. "Yo' think I scared of any ghos' what lower hissel to be a live white mong'ol dog? Yere, yo' ki-yi, yo' bettah mek friends with ol' Cookie, 'cause he got charge o' de grub. Yere's a li'le fat ma'ow bone what mebbe come off'n yo' own grandchile, but yo' ain' goin' to mind dat now yo' is trans formulated dis yere way." And evidently the reincarnated ghost-pig did not.

With the midday reunion my hour of distinction arrived. The tale of the ghost-pig was told from the beginning by Cookie, with high tributes to my courage in sallying forth in pursuit of the phantom.

Even those holding other views of the genesis of the white dog were amazed at his presence on the island. In spite of Cookie's aspersions, the creature was no mongrel, but a thoroughbred of points. Not by any means a dog which some little South American coaster might have abandoned here when it put in for water. The most reasonable hypothesis seemed to be that he had belonged to the copra gatherer, and was for some reason left behind on his master's departure. But who that had loved a dog enough to make it the companion of his solitude would go away and leave it? The thing seemed to me incredible. Yet here, otherwise unaccounted for, was the corporeal presence of the dog.

I had named the terrier in the first ten minutes of our acquaintance. Crusoe was the designation by which he was presented to his new a.s.sociates. It was good to see how swiftly the habits of civilization returned to him. Soon he was getting under foot and courting caresses as eagerly as though all his life he had lived on human bounty, instead of bringing down his own game in royal freedom. Yet with all his well-bred geniality there was no wandering of his allegiance. I was his undisputed queen and lady paramount.

Crusoe, then, became a member of the party in good and regular standing--much more so than his mistress. Mr. Tubbs compared him not unfavorably with a remarkable animal of his own, for which the New York Kennel Club had bidden him name his own price, only to be refused with scorn. Violet tolerated him. Aunt Jane called him a dear weenty pettums love. Captain Magnus kicked him when he thought I was not looking, Cuthbert Vane chummed with him in frankest comrades.h.i.+p, and Mr. Shaw softened toward him to an extent which made me mainly murmur _Love me, love my dog_--only reversed.

Not that I _in the least_ wanted to be loved, only you feel it an impertinence in a person who so palpably does not love you to endeavor to engage the affections of your bull-terrier.

As to Cookie, he magnanimously consented to overlook Crusoe's dubious past as a ghost-pig, and fed him so liberally that the terrier's lean and graceful form threatened to a.s.sume the contours of a beer-keg.

VIII

AN EXCURSION AND AN ALARM

As the only person who had yet discovered anything on the island, I was now invested with a certain importance. Also, I had a playfellow and companion for future walks, in lieu of Cuthbert Vane, held down tight to the thankless toil of treasure-hunting by his stem taskmaster. But at the same time I was provided with an annoying, because unanswerable, question which had lodged at the back of my mind like a crumb in the throat:

By what strange chance had the copra gatherer gone away and left Crusoe on the island?

Since the discovery of Crusoe the former inhabitant of the cabin in the clearing had been much in my thoughts. I had been dissatisfied with him from the beginning, first, because he was not a pirate, and also because he had left behind no relic more fitting than a washtub. Not a locket, not a journal, not his own wasted form stretched upon a pallet--

I had expressed these sentiments to Cuthbert Vane, who replied that in view of the washtub it was certain that the hermit of the island had not been a pirate, as he understood they never washed. I said neither did any orthodox hermit, to which Mr. Vane rejoined that he probably was not orthodox but a Dissenter. He said Dissenters were so apt to be peculiar, don't you know?

One morning, instead of starting directly after breakfast for the cave, Mr. Shaw busied himself in front of the supply tent with certain explosives which were to be used in the digging operations later. The neighborhood of these explosives was a great trial to Aunt Jane, who was constantly expecting them to go off. I rather expected it too, and used to shudder at the thought that if we all went soaring heavenward together we might come down inextricably mixed. Then when the Rufus Smith returned and they tried to sort us out before interment, I might have portions of Violet, for instance, attributed to me. In that case I felt that, like Bill Halliwell, I should walk.

Having inquired of the Honorable Cuthbert and found that for an hour or two the boat would not be in requisition, I permitted the beautiful youth to understand that I would not decline an invitation to be rowed about the cove. Mr. Shaw had left his marine gla.s.ses lying about, and I had been doing some exploring with them. Under the great cliffs on the north sh.o.r.e of the bay I had seen an object that excited my curiosity. It seemed to be the hull of a small vessel, lying on the narrow strip of rocks and sand under the cliff. Now wreckage anywhere fills me with sad and romantic thoughts, but on the sh.o.r.e of a desolate island even a barrel-hoop seems to suffer a sea-change into something rich and strange. I therefore commanded the b. y. to row me over to the spot where the derelict lay.

I lay back idly in the stern as the boat skimmed over the smooth water beneath the strokes of my splendid oarsman. More than ever he looked like the island G.o.d. Every day he grew more brown and brawny, more superb in his physical vigor. But his hands, once so beautiful, were getting rough and hard with toil. There was a great raw bruise on his arm. I exclaimed pityingly.

"Oh, it's nothing. We get knocked about a bit by the sea in the cave now and then."

"You mean you are risking your lives every day for the sake of this legendary treasure that you have no _reasonable_ reason to suppose is there."

"Perhaps not," he admitted, "but then it's such good fun looking, you know."

"That's according to one's idea of fun," I said ironically.

"Oh, well, a chap can't spend his days on flowery beds of ease, of course. Really, I find this story-book kind of thing we're doing is _warm stuff_, as you Americans say. And then there's Shaw--think of the difference it will make to the dear old chap if we find the gold--buy a s.h.i.+p of his own and snap his fingers at the P. & O."

"And you'll go along as cabin-boy or something?" "'Fraid not," he said quite simply. "A chap has his bit to do at home, you know."

The cliffs on the north sh.o.r.e of the cove were considerably higher than on the other side. The wreck lay close in, driven high upon the narrow shelf of rocks and sand at the base of the sheer ascent.

Sand had heaped up around her hull and flung itself across her deck like a white winding-sheet. Surprisingly, the vessel was a very small one, a little sloop, indeed, much like the fragile pleasure-boats that cl.u.s.ter under the Sausalito sh.o.r.e at home. The single mast had been broken off short, and the stump of the bowsprit was visible, like a finger beckoning for rescue from the crawling sand. She was embedded most deeply at the stem, and forward of the sand-heaped c.o.c.kpit the roof of the small cabin was still clear.

"Poor forlorn little boat!" I said. "What in the world do you suppose brought such a mite of a thing to this unheard-of spot?"

"Perhaps she belonged to the copra chap. One man could handle her."

"What would he want with her? A small boat like this is better for fis.h.i.+ng and rowing about the cove."

"Perhaps she brought him here from Panama, though he couldn't have counted on taking back a very bulky cargo."

"Then why leave her strewn about on the rocks? And besides"--here the puzzle of Crusoe recurred to me and seemed to link itself with this--"then how did he get away himself?"

But my oarsman was much more at home on the solid ground of fact than on the uncharted waters of the hypothetical.

"Don't know, I'm sure," he returned uninterestedly. Evidently the hermit had got away, so why concern one's self about the method? I am sure the Light Brigade must have been made up of Cuthbert Vanes.

"Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do or die--"

We rowed in close under the port bow of the sloop, and on the rail I made out a string of faded letters. I began excitedly to spell them out.

"I--s--l--oh, _Island Queen_! You see she did belong here.

Probably she brought the original porcine Adam and Eve to the island."

"Luckily forgot the snake, though!" remarked the Honorable Bertie with unlooked-for vivacity. For so far Aunt Jane's trembling antic.i.p.ations had been unfulfilled by the sight of a single snake, a fact laid by me to the credit of St. Patrick and by Cookie to that of the pigs.