Pieces of Eight Part 3

"You'll find Tom a great cook," said Charlie, patting the old man on the shoulder. "Many a trip we've taken together after duck, haven't we, Tom?" said he kindly.

"That's right, suh. That's right," said the old man, his eyes twinkling with pleasure.

Then came the captain--Captain Jabez Williams--a younger man, with an intelligent, self-respecting manner, somewhat non-committal, business-like, evidently not particularly anxious as to whether he pleased or not, but looking competent, and civil enough, without being sympathetic.

Next came the engineer, a young hulking bronze giant, a splendid physical specimen, but rather heavy and sullen and not over-intelligent to look at. A slow-witted young animal, not suggesting any great love of work, and rather loutish in his manners. But, he knew his engine, said Charlie. And that was the main thing. The deck-hand proved to be a shackly, rather silly effeminate fellow, suggesting idiocy, but doubtless wiry and good enough for the purpose.

While they were busy getting up the anchor of the _Maggie Darling,_ I went down into my cabin, to arrange various odds and ends, and presently came the captain, touching his hat.

"There's a party," he said, "outside here, wants to know if you'll take him as pa.s.senger to Spanish Wells."

"We're not taking pa.s.sengers," I answered, "but I'll come and look him over."

A man was standing up in a rowboat, leaning against the s.h.i.+p's side.

"You'd do me a great favour, sir," he began to say in a soft, ingratiating voice.

I looked at him, with a start of recognition. He was my pock-marked friend, who had made such an unpleasant impression on me, at John Saunders's office. He was rather more gentlemanly looking than he had seemed at the first view, and I saw that, though he was a half-breed, the white blood predominated.

"I don't want to intrude," he said, "but I have urgent need of getting to Spanish Wells, and there's no boat going that way for a week. I've just missed the mail."

I looked at him, and, though I liked his looks no more than ever, I was averse from being disobliging, and the favour asked was one often asked and granted in those islands, where communication is difficult and infrequent.

"I didn't think of taking any pa.s.sengers," I said.

"I know," he said. "I know it's a great favour I ask." He spoke with a certain cultivation of manner. "But I am willing, of course, to pay anything you think well, for my food and my pa.s.sage."

I waived that suggestion aside, and stood irresolutely looking at him, with no very hospitable expression in my eyes, I dare say. But really my distaste for him was an unreasoning prejudice, and Charlie Webster's phrase came to my mind--"His face is against him, poor devil!"

It certainly was.

Then at last I said, surely not overgraciously: "Very well. Get aboard.

You can help work the boat"; and with that I turned away to my cabin.

CHAPTER IV

_In Which Tom Catches an Enchanted Fish, and Discourses of the Dangers of Treasure Hunting._

The morning was a little overcast, but a brisk northeast wind soon set the clouds moving as it went humming in our sails, and the sun, coming out in its glory over the crystalline waters, made a fine flas.h.i.+ng world of it, full of exhilaration and the very breath of youth and adventure, very uplifting to the heart. My spirits, that had been momentarily dashed by my unwelcome pa.s.senger, rose again, and I felt kindly to all the earth, and glad to be alive.

I called to Tom for breakfast.

"And you, boys, there; haven't you got a song you can put up? How about 'The _John B._ sails?'" And I led them off, the hiss and swirl of the sea, and the wind making a brisk undertone as we sang one of the quaint Na.s.sau ditties:

Come on the sloop _John B._ My grandfather and me, Round Na.s.sau town we did roam; Drinking all night, ve got in a fight, Ve feel so break-up, ve vant to go home.

_Chorus_ So h'ist up the _John B._ sails, See how the mainsail set, Send for the captain--sh.o.r.e, let us go home, Let me go home, let me go home, I feel so break-up, I vant to go home.

The first mate he got drunk, Break up the people trunk, Constable come aboard, take him away; Mr. John--stone, leave us alone, I feel so break-up, I vant to go home.

_Chorus_ So h'ist up the _John B._ sails, _etc.,_ _etc._

Na.s.sau looked very pretty in the morning sunlight, with its pink and white houses nestling among palm trees and the masts of its sponging schooners, and soon we were abreast of the picturesque low-lying fort, Fort Montague, that Major Bruce, nearly two hundred years ago, had had such a time building as a protection against pirates entering from the east end of the harbour. It looked like a veritable piece of the past, and set the imagination dreaming of those old days of Spanish galleons and the black flag, and brought my thoughts eagerly back to the object of my trip, those doubloons and pieces of eight that lay in glittering heaps somewhere out in those island wildernesses.

We were pa.s.sing cays of jagged cinder-coloured rock covered with low bushes and occasional palms, very savage and impenetrable. Miles of such ferocious vegetation separated me from the spot where my treasure was lying. Certainly it was tough-looking stuff to fight one's way through; but those sumptuous words of Henry P. Tobias's narrative kept on making a glorious glitter in my mind: "_The first is a sum of one million and one half dollars.... The other is a sum of one million dollars.... The first pod was taken from a Spanish merchant and it is in Spanish silver dollars. The other on Short Shrift Island is in different kinds of money, taken from different s.h.i.+ps of different nations ... it is all good money._"

In fact I found to my surprise that I had the haunting thing by heart, as though it had been a piece of poetry; and over and over again it kept on going through my head.

Then Tom came up with my breakfast. The old fellow stood by to serve me as I ate, with a pathetic touch of the old slavery days in his deferential, half-fatherly manner, dropping a quaint remark every now and again; as, when drawing my attention to the sun bursting through the clouds, he said, "The poor man's blanket is coming out, sah"--phrases in which there seemed a whole world of pathos to me.

Presently, when breakfast was over, and I stood looking over the side into the incredibly clear water, in which it seems hardly possible that a boat can go on floating, suspended as she seems over gleaming gulfs of liquid s.p.a.ce, down through which at every moment it seems she must dizzily fall, Tom drew my attention to the indescribably lovely "sea-gardens" over which we were pa.s.sing--waving purple fans, fairy coral grottoes, and jewelled fishes, lying like a rainbow dream under our rus.h.i.+ng keel. Well might the early mariners people such submarine paradises with sirens and beautiful water-witches, and imagine a fairy realm down there far under the sea.

As Tom and I gazed down lost in those rainbow deeps, I heard a voice at my elbow saying with peculiarly sickening unction:

"The wonderful works of G.o.d."

It was my unwelcome pa.s.senger, who had silently edged up to where we stood. I looked at him, with the question very clear in my eyes as to what kind of disagreeable animal he was.

"Precisely," I said, and moved away.

I had been trying to feel more kindly toward him, wondering whether I could summon up the decency to offer him a cigar, but "the wonderful works of G.o.d" finished me.

"h.e.l.lo! Captain," I said presently, pointing to some sails coming up rapidly behind us. "What's this? I thought we'd got the fastest boat in the harbour."

"It's the _Susan B.,_ sponger," said the Captain.

The Captain was a man of few words.

The _Susan B._ was a rakish-looking craft with a black hull, and she certainly could sail. It made me feel ashamed to watch how quickly she was overhauling us, and, as she finally came abreast and then pa.s.sed us, it seemed to me that in the usual salutations exchanged between us there was mingled some sarcastic laughter; no doubt it was pure imagination, but I certainly did fancy that I noticed our pa.s.senger signal to them in a peculiar way.

I confess that his presence was beginning to get on my nerves, and I was ready to get "edgy" at anything or nothing--an irritated state of mind which I presently took out on George the engineer, who did not belie his hulking appearance, and who was for ever letting the engine stop, and taking for ever to get it going again. One could almost have sworn he did it on purpose.

My language was more forcible than cla.s.sical--had quite a piratical flavour, in fact; and my friend of "the wonderful works of G.o.d" looked up with a deprecating air. Its effect on George was nil, except perhaps to further deepen his sulks.

And this I did notice, after a while, that my remarks to George seemed to have set up a certain sympathetic acquaintance between him and my pa.s.senger, the shackly deck-hand being apparently taken in as a humble third. They sat for'ard, talking together, and my pa.s.senger read to them, on one occasion, from a piece of printed paper that fluttered in the wind. They listened with fallen lower jaws and occasional attempts to seem intelligent.

The Captain was occupied with his helm, and the thoughts he didn't seem to feel the necessity of sharing; a quiet, poised, probably stupid man, for whom I could not deny the respect we must always give to content, however simple. His hand was on the wheel, his eyes on the sails and the horizon, and, though I was but a yard away from him, you would have said I was not there at all, judging by his face. In fact, you would have said that he was all alone on the s.h.i.+p, with nothing to think of but her and the sea. He was a sailor, and I don't know what better to say of a man.

So for companions.h.i.+p I was thrown back upon Tom. I felt, too, that he was my only friend on board, and a vague feeling had come over me that, within the next few hours, I might need a friend.

Fis.h.i.+ng occurred to me as a way of pa.s.sing the time.

"Are we going too fast for fis.h.i.+ng, Tom?" I asked.

"Not too fast for a barracouta," said Tom; so we put out lines and watched the stretched strings, and listened to the sea. After awhile, Tom's line grew taut, and we hauled in a 5-foot barracouta, a bar of silver with a long flat head, all speed and ferocity, and wonderful teeth.