As Mr. Tubbs made his whole-hearted and magnanimous proposal Captain Tony opened his small black eyes and contemplated him with attention. At the conclusion he appeared to meditate. Then he glanced round upon his fellows.

"What say, boys? Shall we ship old Washtubs on the schooner and let him have his fling along with us? Eh?" And as Captain Tony uttered these words the lid of his left eye eclipsed for an instant that intelligent optic.

From the pirates came a scattering volley of assents. "All right—hooray for old Washtubs—sure, close the deal."

"All right, Washtubs, the boys are willing. So I guess, though this island is the very lid of the hot place, and when I come again it's going to be with an iceberg in tow to keep the air cooled off, I guess we better be moving toward that chest of doubloons."

It was arranged that Slinker and a cross-eyed man named Horny should remain at the camp on guard. As a measure of precaution Cookie, too, was bound, and Aunt Jane, Miss Browne and I ordered into the cabin. The three remaining pirates, armed with our spades and picks and dispensing a great deal of jocular profanity, set out for the cave under the guidance of Mr. Tubbs.

Thankful as I was for the departure of Captain Magnus, I underwent torments in the stifling interior of the cabin. Aunt Jane wept piteously. I had almost a fellow-feeling with Miss Higglesby-Browne when she relapsed from her rigidity for a moment and turning on Aunt Jane fiercely ordered her to be still. This completed the wreck of Aunt Jane's universe. Its two main props had now fallen, and she was left sitting solitary amid the ruins. She subsided into a lachrymose heap in the corner of the cabin, where I let her remain for the time, it was really such a comfort to have her out of the way. At last I heard a faint moan:

"Virginia!"

I went to her. "Yes, auntie?"

"Virginia," she murmured weakly, "I think I shall not live to leave the island, even if I am not—not executed. In fact, I have a feeling now as though the end were approaching. I have always known that my heart was not strong, even if your Aunt Susan did call it indigestion. But oh, my dear child, it is not my digestion, it is my heart that has been wounded! To have reposed such confidence in a Serpent! To realize that I might have been impaled upon its fangs! Oh, my dear, faithful child, what would I have done if you had not clung to me although I permitted Serpents to turn me from you! But I am cruelly punished. All I ask is that some day—when you are married and happy, dear—you will remove from this desolate spot the poor remains of her who—of her who—" Sobs choked Aunt Jane's utterance.

"Jane—" began Miss Higglesby-Browne.

"I was speaking to my niece," replied Aunt Jane with unutterable dignity from her corner. Her small features had all but disappeared in her swollen face, and her hair had slipped down at a rakish angle over one eye. But, of course, being Aunt Jane, she must choose this moment to be queenly.

"There, there, auntie," I said soothingly, "of course you are not going to leave your bones on this island. If you did, you know, you and Bill Halliwell might ha'nt around together—think how cozy! (Here Aunt Jane gave a convulsive shudder.) As to my being married, if you were betting just now on anybody's chances they would have to be Captain Magnus's, wouldn't they ?"

"Good gracious, Virginia!" shrieked Aunt Jane faintly. But I went on relentlessly, determined to distract her mind from thoughts of her approaching end.

"All things considered, I suppose I really ought to ask you to put my affairs in order when you get back. If I am carried off by the pirates, naturally I shall have to jump overboard at once, though I dislike the idea of drowning, and especially of being eaten by sharks. Would you mind putting up a little headstone—it needn't cost much—in the family plot, with just 'Virginia' on it? And anything of mine that you don't want yourself I'd like Bess to have for the baby, please. Ask her when the little duck is old enough to tell her my sad story—"

By this time Aunt Jane was sobbing loudly and waving her little hands about in wild beseeching.

"Oh, my precious girl, a headstone! My love, would I grudge you a monument—all white marble—little angels—'From her heart-broken aunt'? Oh, why, why are we not safe at home together? Why was I lured away to wander about the world with perfect strangers? Why—"

"Jane!" broke in Miss Browne again in awful tones. But at that moment the door of the cabin opened and the face of Slinker peered in.

"Say," he remarked, "there ain't no sense in you girls stayin' cooped up here that I see. I guess me and Horny can stand you off if you try to rush us. Come out and cool off a little."

The great heat of the day was over and the sun already dropping behind the peak of the island. Mr. Shaw and Cuthbert had been allowed to sit in the shade, and I thought their wrists were not too tightly bound for comfort. Cookie had been released, and under the eye of Horny was getting supper. Crusoe had earlier in the day received a kick in the ribs from Captain Magnus, fortunately too much occupied with the prisoners to pursue his vengeance further, and had fled precipitately, to my enormous relief. The dog was quite wise enough to know that he would help me best by keeping out of the clutches of our common foe. I hoped he had gone back to his solitary pig-chasing, though I thought I had caught a glimpse of him once at the edge of the wood. But at least he knew better than to venture into the clearing.

I tried to pass in a casual manner close to Mr. Shaw and Cuthbert—who looked more of a crusading Norman than ever—in hopes of a whispered word, but was impeded by Aunt Jane, who clung to me tottering. So I led her to a seat and deposited her, with the sympathetic assistance of Slinker.

"Now, now, old girl, cheer up!" he admonished her. "Between you and me, old Washtubs ain't worth crying over. Sooner or later he'd of give you the slip, no matter how tight a rein you kep' on him."

As Slinker turned away after this effort at consolation he came face to face with Miss Higglesby-Browne. I suppose in the stress of surprising and capturing the camp he had not been struck with her peculiarities. Just now, between the indignity of her captive state and the insubordination of Aunt Jane, Miss Browne's aspect was considerably grimmer than usual. Slinker favored her with a stare, followed by a prolonged whistle.

"Say," he remarked to me in a confidential undertone, though pitched quite loud enough for Miss Browne's ears, "is it real? Would it have bendable j'ints, now, same as you and me?"

Miss Browne whirled upon him.

"'Old your tongue, you 'orrid brute!" she shrieked.

So, in the twinkling of an eye, Miss Higglesby-Browne, fallen forever from her high estate, was strewn in metaphorical fragments at our feet. I turned away, feeling it time to draw the veil of charity upon the scene. Not so Slinker. He looked about him carefully on the ground.

"Lady drop anything?" he inquired solicitously.

What might have transpired, had Miss Higglesby-Browne had time to gather breath, I dare not think, but just then there came from the woods the sound of footsteps and voices, and the three pirates and Mr. Tubbs entered the clearing. A thrill ran through the camp. Captors and captives forgot all else but the great, the burning question—had the treasure been discovered? And I am sure that no one was so thrilled as I, although in my mind the question took another form.

For now I was going to know what had been waiting for me there in the cave, when I stood yesterday at its black entrance, afraid to go in.



XVII

FROM DEAD HANDS

At the head of the file, Captain Tony advanced through the clearing, and what with his flowing black beard, his portly form, and a certain dramatic swagger which he possessed, he looked so entirely Italian and operatic that you expected to hear him at any moment burst out in a sonorous basso. With a sweeping gesture he flung down upon the table two brown canvas bags, which opened and discharged from gaping mouths a flood of golden coins.

His histrionic instinct equal to the high demands of the moment, Captain Tony stood with folded arms and gazed upon us with a haughty and exultant smile.

Slinker and the cross-eyed man shouted aloud. They ran and clutched at the coins with a savage greed.

"Gold, gold—the real stuff! It's the doubloons all right—where's the rest of 'em?" These cries broke from Slinker and Horny confusedly as the gold slid jingling between their eager fingers.

"The rest of 'em is—where they is," pronounced Tony oracularly. "Somewheres in the sand of the cave, of course. We'll dig 'em up to-morrow morning.

"What was the point in not digging 'em all up while you was about it?" demanded Slinker, lowering. "What was the good o' digging up jest these here couple o' bag's and quitting?"

"Because we didn't dig 'em up," responded Tony darkly. "Because these was all ready and waiting. Because all we had to do was to say 'Thankee,' to the feller that handed 'em out."

"I say," interposed one of the party nervously, "what's the good of that kind of talk? They ain't any sense in hunting trouble, that ever I heard of!" He glanced over his shoulder uneasily.

The rest burst out in a guffaw.

"Chris is scared. He's been a-going along looking behind him ever since. Chris will have bad dreams to-night—he'll yell if a owl hoots." But I thought there was a false note in the laughter of more than one.

"Oh, of course," remarked Slinker with indignant irony, "me and Horny ain't interested in this at all. We jest stayed bumming round camp here 'cause we was tired. When you're through with this sort of bunk and feel like getting down to business, why jest mention it, and maybe if we ain't got nothing better to do we'll listen to you."

"I was jest telling you, wasn't I?" demanded Tony. "Only that fool Chris had to butt in. We got these here bags of doubloons, as I says, without havin' to dig for 'em—oncet we had found the cave, which it's no thanks to old Washtubs we ain't looking for it yet. We got these here bags right out of the fists of a skeleton. Most of him was under a rock, which had fell from the roof and pinned him down amidships. Must of squashed him like a beetle, I guess. But he'd still kep' his hold on the bags." I turned aside, for fear that any one should see how white I was. Much too white to be accounted for even by this grisly story. To the rest, these poor bones might indeed bear mute witness to a tragedy, but a tragedy lacking outlines, vague, impersonal, without poignancy. To me, they told with dreadful clearness the last sad chapter of the tale of Peter, Peter who had made me so intimately his confidante, whose love and hopes and solitary strivings I knew all about. Struck down in the moment of his triumph by a great stupid lump of soulless stone, by a blind, relentless mechanism which had been at work from the beginning, timing that rock to fall—just then. Not the moment before, not the moment after, out of an eternity of moments, but at that one instant when Peter stooped for the last of his brown bags—and then I rejected this, and knew that there was nothing stupid or blind about it—and wondered whether it were instead malicious, and whether all might have been well with Peter if he had obeyed the voice that bade him leave the crucifix for Bill—

Vaguely I heard around me a babble of exclamations and conjectures. Murmurs of interest rose even from our captive band. Then came Slinker's voice, loud with sudden fear:

"Say, you don't suppose the—the Bones would of got away with the rest of the coin somehow, do you?" he demanded.

"Got away with it?" Tony contemptuously thrust aside the possibility. "Got away with it how? He sure didn't leave the island with it, did he? Would he of dug it up from one place jest to bury it in another? Huh! Must of wanted to work if he did! Now my notion is that this happened to one of the guys that was burying the gold, and that the rest jest left him there for a sort of scarecrow to keep other people out of the cave."

"But the gold?" protested Slinker. "They wouldn't leave that for a scarecrow, would they?"

"Maybe not," admitted Tony, "but suppose that feller died awful slow, and went on hollering and clutching at the bags? And they couldn't of got that rock off'n him without a block and tackle, or done much to make things easy for him if they had, him being jest a smear, as you may say. Well, that cave wouldn't be a pleasant place to stay in, would it? And no one would have the nerve to snatch them bags away to bury 'em, 'cause a dying man, especially when he dies hard, can have an awful grip. So what they done was just to shovel the sand in on the gold they'd stowed away and light out quick. And what we got to do to-morrow is to go there and dig it up."

If the ingenuity of this reasoning was more remarkable than its logic, the pirates were not the men to find fault with it. Indeed, how many human hopes have been bolstered up with arguments no sounder? Desire is the most eloquent of advocates, and the five ruffians had only to listen to its voice to enjoy in anticipation all the fruits of their iniquitous schemes. The sight of the golden coins intoxicated them. They played with the doubloons like children, jingling them in their calloused palms, guessing at weight and value, calculating their equivalent in the joy of living. Laughter and oaths resounded. Mr. Tubbs, with a somewhat anxious air, endeavored to keep himself well to the fore, claiming a share in the triumph with the rest. There was only the thinnest veil of concealment over the pirates' mockery. "Old Washtubs" was ironically encouraged in his role of boon companion. His air of swaggering recklessness, of elderly dare-deviltry, provoked uproarious amusement. When they sat down to supper Mr. Tubbs was installed at the head of the table. They hailed him as the discoverer who had made their fortunes. From their talk it was clear that there had been much difficulty about finding the cave, and that for a time Mr. Tubbs's position had been precarious. Finally Captain Magnus had stumbled upon the entrance.

"Jest in time," as he grimly reminded Mr. Tubbs, "to save you a header over the cliff."

"Ha, ha!" cackled Mr. Tubbs hysterically, "you boys will have your little joke, eh? Knew well enough you couldn't get along without the old man, didn't you? Knew you was goin' to need an old financial head to square things in certain quarters—a head what understands how to slip a little coin into the scales o' justice to make 'em tilt the right way. Oh, you can't fool the old man, he, he!"

While the marauders enjoyed their supper, the women prisoners were bidden to "set down and stay sot," within sweep of Captain Tony's eye. Mr. Shaw and Cuthbert Vane still held the position they had occupied all afternoon, with their backs propped against a palm tree. Occasionally they exchanged a whisper, but for the most part were silent, their cork helmets jammed low over their watchful eyes. I was deeply curious to know what Mr. Shaw had made of the strange story of the skeleton in the cave. He could hardly have accepted Captain Tony's explanation of it, which displayed, indeed, an imperfect knowledge of the legend of the Bonny Lass. Might not the Scotchman, by linking this extraordinary discovery with my unexplained request of him this morning, have arrived already at some glimmering of the truth? I hoped so, and longed to impart to him my own sure knowledge that the confident expectations of the freebooters for the morrow were doomed to disappointment. There seemed a measure of comfort in this assurance, for our moment of greatest peril well might be that in which the pirates, with the gold in their possession and on the point of fleeing from the island, recalled the respectable because so truthful maxim that dead men tell no tales. Therefore in the postponement of the crucial moment lay our best hope of rescue or escape.

On the other hand, I fancied them returning from the cave surly and disappointed, ready to vent their wrath on us. All, except the unspeakable Magnus, had shown so far a rough good nature, even amusement at our plight, but you felt the snarl at the corner of the grinning lips. You knew they would be undependable as savages or vicious children, who find pleasure in inflicting pain. And then there was always my own hideous danger as the favored of the wolfish captain—

And I wondered, desperately, if I might buy safety for us all at the price of the secret of the Island Queen, if a promise from the five scoundrels around the table would have more meaning than their wild boasts and shoutings now?

And now the night that I unutterably dreaded was upon us. But the pirates still thought of nothing but the gold. They had exhausted their own portable supplies of liquor, and were loud in their denunciations of our bone-dry camp, as they termed it. Mr. Tubbs enlarged upon the annoyance which Mr. Shaw's restrictions in this matter had been to him, and regretted that he had long ago exhausted the small amount of spirituous refreshment which he had been able to smuggle in. Tony, however, was of another mind. "And a good thing, too," he declared, "that you guys can't booze yourselves blind before morning, or there wouldn't be much gold took out of that there cave to-morrow. Once we make port somewheres with that chest of treasure aboard you can pour down enough to irrigate the Mojave Desert if you like."

It was Tony, too, who intercepted a tentative movement of Captain Magnus in my direction, and ordered me into the cabin with my aunt and Miss Browne. Through the walls of the hut we heard loud and eager talk of the morrow and its certain golden harvest as the pirates made their dispositions for the night. Then the voices trailed off sleepily and silence succeeded, broken only by the ceaseless murmur of the waves around the island.



XVIII

OF WHICH COOKIE IS THE HERO

Next morning I came out of the hut in time to see Mr. Shaw and his companion in duress led forth from the sleeping quarters which they had shared with their captors. They were moored as before to a palm tree, by a rope having a play of two or three feet, and their hands unbound while they made a hasty breakfast under the eye of a watchful sentinel. Then their wrists were tied again, not painfully, but with a firmness which made any slipping of their bonds impossible.

While the pirates were breakfasting a spirited dispute took place among them as to who should go to the treasure cave and who stay in camp to guard the prisoners. Slinker and Horny urged with justice that as they had missed all the excitement of the preceding day it was their turn to visit the cave. There not only the probable rapture of exhuming the chest awaited them, but the certain privilege of inspecting "the Bones." This ghastly relic seemed to exercise an immense fascination upon their imaginations, a fascination not unmingled with superstitious dread. The right to see the Bones, then, Slinker and Horny passionately claimed. Tony supported them, and it ended with Chris and Captain Magnus being told off as our guards for the morning.

At this Chris raised a feeble lamentation, but he was evidently a person whose objections nobody was accustomed to heed. Captain Magnus, who might with plausibility have urged claims superior to those of all the rest, assented to the arrangement with a willingness which filled me with boding. I had caught his restless furtive eye fixed gloatingly upon me more than once. I saw that he was aware of my terror, and exulted in it, and took a feline pleasure in playing me, as it were, and letting me realize by slow degrees what his power over me would be when he chose finally to exert it. My best hope for the present, once the merciful or prudent Tony was out of sight, lay in this disposition of my tormentor to sit quiescent and anticipate the future. Nevertheless, in leaving the cabin I had slipped into my blouse a small penknife which I had found in Aunt Jane's bag. It was quite new, and I satisfied myself that the blades were keen. My own large sheath-knife and my revolver I had been deprived of at the suggestion of the thoughtful Magnus. I had surrendered them unprotestingly, fearful of all things that my possessions might be ransacked and Peter's diary, though hidden with much art at the bottom of a bag, be brought to light. For I might yet sell the secret of the Island Queen at a price which should redeem us all.

Unobtrusively clutching for comfort at the penknife in my blouse, I watched the departure of the pirates, including my protector Tony. They had taken Mr. Tubbs with them, although he had magnanimously offered to remain behind and help guard the camp. Evidently his experience of the previous day had not filled him with confidence in his new friends. It might be quite possible that he intended, if left behind, to turn his coat again and assist us in a break for liberty. If so, he was defeated by the perspicacious Tony, who observed that when he found a pal that suited him as well as Washtubs he liked to keep him under his own eye. With a spade over his reluctant shoulder, and many a dubious backward glance, Mr. Tubbs followed the file into the woods.

Aunt Jane had a bad headache, and as nobody objected she had remained in the cabin. Miss Browne and I had been informed by Tony that we might do as we liked so long as we did not attempt to leave the clearing. Already Violet had betaken herself to a camp-chair in the shade and was reading a work entitled Thoughts on the Involute Spirality of the Immaterial. Except for the prisoners tied to the palm tree, the camp presented superficially a scene of peace. Cookie busied himself with a great show of briskness in his kitchen. Because of the immense circumspection of his behavior he was being allowed a considerable degree of freedom. He served his new masters apparently as zealously as he had served us, but enveloped in a portentous silence. "Yes, sah—no, sah," were the only words which Cookie in captivity had been heard to utter. Yet from time to time I had caught a glance of dark significance from Cookie's rolling eye, and I felt that he was loyal, and that this enforced servitude to the unkempt fraternity of pirates was a degradation which touched him to the quick.

I had followed the example of Miss Higglesby-Browne as regards the camp-chair and the book. What the book was I have not the least idea, but I perused it with an appearance of profound abstraction which I hoped might discourage advances on the part of Captain Magnus. Also I made sure that the penknife was within instant reach. Meanwhile my ears, and at cautious intervals my eyes, kept me informed of the movements of our guards.

For a considerable time the two ruffians, lethargic after an enormous breakfast, lay about idly in the shade and smoked. As I listened to their lazy, fragmentary conversation vast gulfs of mental vacuity seemed to open before me. I wondered whether after all wicked people were just stupid people—and then I thought of Aunt Jane—who was certainly not wicked—

As the heat increased a voice of lamentation broke from Chris. He was dry—dry enough to drink up the condemned ocean. No, he didn't want spring water, which Cookie obsequiously tendered him; he wanted a drink—wouldn't anybody but a fool nigger know that? There was plenty of the real stuff aboard the schooner, on the other side of the—adjective—island. Why had they, with incredible lack of forethought, brought along nothing but their pocket flasks? Why hadn't they sent the adjective nigger back for more? Where was the bottle or two that had been rooted out last night from the medical stores? Empty? Every last drop gone down somebody's greedy gullet? The adjectives came thick and fast as Chris hurled the bottle into the bay, where it swam bobbingly upon the ripples. Captain Magnus agreed with the gist of Chris's remarks, but deprecated, in a truly philosophical spirit, their unprofitable heat. There wasn't any liquor, so what was the good of making an adjective row? Hadn't he endured the equivalent of Chris's present sufferings for weeks? He was biding his time, he was. Plenty of drink by and by, plenty of all that makes life soft and easy. He bet there wouldn't many hit any higher spots than him. He bet there was one little girl that would be looked on as lucky, in case she was a good little girl and encouraged him to show his natural kindness. And I was favored with a blood-curdling leer from across the camp, of which I had put as much as possible between myself and the object of my dread.

But now, like a huge black Ganymede, appeared Cookie, bearing cups and a large stone crock.

"It suhtinly am a fact, Mistah Chris, sah," said Cookie, "dat dey is a mighty unspirituous fluidity 'bout dis yere spring watah. Down war I is come from no pussons of de Four Hund'ed ain't eveh 'customed to partake of such. But the sassiety I has been in lately round dis yere camp ain't of de convivulous ordah; ole Cookie had to keep it dark dat he got his li'le drop o' comfort on de side. Dis yere's only home-made stuff, sah. 'Tain't what I could offah to a gennelmun if so be I is got the makin's of a genuwine old-style julep what is de beverage of de fust fam'lies. But bein' as it is, it am mighty coolin', sah, and it got a li'le kick to it—not much, but jes' 'bout enough to make a gennelmun feel lak he is one."

Cookie's tones dripped humility and propitiation. He offered the brimming cup cringingly to the pale-eyed, red-nosed Chris, who reached for it with alacrity, drank deep, smacked his lips meditatively, and after a moment passed the cup back.

"'Tain't so worse," he said approvingly. "Anyhow, it's drink!"

Magnus suddenly began to laugh.

"S'elp me, it's the same dope what laid out the Honorable!" he chortled. "Here, darky, let's have a swig of it!"

Cookie complied, joining respectfully in the captain's mirth.

"I guess you-all is got stronger haids den dat young gennelmun!" he remarked. "Dis yere ole niggah has help hissef mighty freely and dat Prohibititionist Miss Harding ain't eveh found it out. Fac' is, it am puffeckly harmless 'cept when de haid is weak."

False, false Cookie! Black brother in perfidy to Mr. Tubbs! One friend the less to be depended on if a chance for freedom ever came to us! A hot flush of surprise and anger dyed my cheeks, and I felt the indignant pang of faith betrayed. I had been as sure of Cookie's devotion as of Crusoe's—which reminded me that the little dog had not returned to camp since he fled before the onslaught of the vengeful captain.

Cookie refilled the pirates' cups, and set the crock beside them on the ground.

"In case you gennelmun feels yo'selfs a li'le thursty later on," he remarked. He was retiring, when Captain Magnus called to him.

"Blackie, this ain't bad. It's coolin', but thin—a real nice ladylike sort of drink, I should say. Suppose you take a swig over to Miss Jinny there with my compliments—I'm one to always treat a lady generous if she gives me half a chance."

Obediently Cookie hastened for another cup, set it on a tray, and approached me with his old-time ornate manner. I faced him with a withering look, but, unmindful, he bowed, presenting me the cup, and interposing his bulky person between me and the deeply-quaffing pirates. At the same time his voice reached me, pitched in a low and anxious key.

"Fo' de Lawd's sake, Miss Jinny, spill it out! It am mighty powerful dope—it done fumented twice as long as befo'—it am boun' to give dat trash de blind-staggahs sho'tly!"

Instantly I understood, and a thrill of relief and of hope inexpressible shot through me. I raised to the troubled black face a glance which I trust was eloquent—it must needs have been to express the thankfulness I felt. Cookie responded with a solemn and convulsive wink—and I put the cup to my lips and after a brief parade of drinking passed it back to Cookie, spilling the contents on the ground en route.

Cookie retired with his tray in his most impressive cake-walk fashion, and in passing announced to Captain Magnus that "Miss Jinny say she mos' suhtinly am obligated to de gennelmun to' de refreshment of dis yere acidulous beverage." Which bare-faced mendacity provoked a loud roar of amusement from the sentinels, who were still sampling the cooling contents of the stone crock.

"Learning to like what I do already, hey?" guffawed the captain, and he called on Chris to drain another cup with him to the lady of his choice.

I have believed since that dragging, interminable time which I now lived through, that complete despair, where you rest quite finally on bedrock and have nothing to dread in the way of further tumbles, must be a much happier state than the dreadful one of oscillating between hope and fear. For a leaden-footed eternity, it seemed to me, I oscillated, longing for, yet dreading, the signs that Cookie's powerful dope had begun to work upon our guards—for might not the first symptoms be quite different from the anticipated blind staggers? Fancy a murderous maniac pair reeling about the clearing, with death-vomiting revolvers and gleaming knives!

And then suddenly time, which had dragged so slowly, appeared to gallop, and the morning to be fleeing past, so that every wave that broke upon the beach was the footfalls of the returning pirates. Long, long before that thirsty, garrulous pair grew still and torpid their companions must return—

And I saw Cookie, his stratagem discovered, dangling from a convenient tree.

Gradually the rough disjointed talk of the sailors began to languish. Covertly watching, I saw that Chris's head had begun to droop. His body, propped comfortably against a tree, sagged a little. The hand that held the cup was lifted, stretched out in the direction of the enticing jar, then forgetting its errand fell heavily. After a few spasmodic twitchings of the eyelids and uneasy grunts, Chris slumbered.

Captain Magnus was of tougher fiber. But he, too, grew silent and there was a certain meal-sack limpness about his attitude. His dulled eyes stared dreamily. All at once with a jerk he roused himself, turned over, and administered to the sleeping Chris a prod with his large boot.

"Hey, there, wake up! What right you got to be asleep at the switch?" But Chris only breathed more heavily.

Captain Magnus himself heaved a tremendous yawn, settled back in greater comfort against his sustaining tree, and closed his eyes. I waited, counting the seconds by the beating of the blood in my ears. In the background Cookie hovered apprehensively. Plainly he would go on hovering unless loud snores from the pirates gave him assurance. For myself, I sat fingering my penknife, wondering whether I ought to rush over and plunge it into the sleepers' throats. This would be heroic and practical, but unpleasant. If, on the other hand, I merely tried to free the prisoners and Captain Magnus woke, what then? The palm where they were tied was a dozen yards from me, much nearer to the guards, and within range of even their most languid glance. Beyond the prisoners was Miss Browne, glaring uncomprehendingly over the edge of her book. There was no help in Miss Browne.

I left my seat and stole on feet which seemed to stir every leaf and twig to loud complaint toward the captive pair. Tense, motionless, with burning eyes, they waited. There was a movement from Captain Magnus; he yawned, turned and muttered. I stood stricken, my heart beating with loud thumps against my ribs. But the captain's eyes remained closed.

"Virginia—quick, Virginia!" Dugald Shaw was stretching out his bound hands to me, and I had dropped on my knees before him and begun to cut at the knotted cords. They were tough strong cords, and I was hacking at them feverishly when something bounded across the clearing and flung itself upon me. Crusoe, of course!—and wild with the joy of reunion. I strangled a cry of dismay, and with one hand tried to thrust him off while I cut through the rope with the other.

"Down, Crusoe!" I kept desperately whispering. But Crusoe was unused to whispered orders. He kept bounding up on me, intent to fulfil an unachieved ambition of licking my ear. Cuthbert Vane tried, under his breath, to lure him away. But Crusoe's emotions were all for me, and swiftly becoming uncontrollable they burst forth in a volley of shrill yelps.

A loud cry answered them. It came from Captain Magnus, who had scrambled to his feet and was staggering across the clearing. One hand was groping at his belt—it was flourished in the air with the gleam of a knife in it—and staggering and shouting the captain came on.

"Ah, you would, would you? I'll teach you—but first I settle him, the porridge-eatin' Scotch swine—"

The reeling figure with the knife was right above me. I sprang up, in my hand the little two-inch weapon which was all I had for my defense—and Dugald Shaw's. There were loud noises in my ears, the shouting of men, and a shrill continuous note which I have since realized came from the lungs of Miss Higglesby-Browne. Magnus made a lunge forward—the arm with the knife descended. I caught it—wrenched at it frantically—striving blindly to wield my little penknife, whether or not with deadly intent I don't know to this day. He turned on me savagely, and the penknife was whirled from my hand as he caught my wrist in a terrible clutch.

All I remember after that is the terrible steely grip of the captain's arms and a face, flushed, wild-eyed, horrible, that was close to mine and inevitably coming closer, though I fought and tore at it—of hot feverish lips whose touch I knew would scorch me to the soul—and then I was suddenly free, and falling, falling, a long way through darkness.



XIX

THE YOUNG PERSON SCORES

My first memory is of voices, and after that I was shot swiftly out of a tunnel from an immense distance and opened my eyes upon the same world which I had left at some indefinite period in the past. Faces, at first very large, by and by adjusted themselves in a proper perspective and became quite recognizable and familiar. There was Aunt Jane's, very tearful, and Miss Higglesby-Browne's, very glum, and the Honorable Cuthbert's, very anxious and a little dazed, and Cookie's, very, very black. The face of Dugald Shaw I did not see, for the quite intelligible reason that I was lying with my head upon his shoulder.

As soon as I realized this I sat up suddenly, while every one exclaimed at once, "There, she's quite all right—see how her color is coming back!"

People kept Aunt Jane from flinging herself upon me and soothed her into calm while I found out what had happened. The penknife that I had lost in my struggle with Captain Magnus had fallen at the Scotchman's feet. Wrenching himself free of his all but severed bonds he had seized the knife, slashed through the rope that held him to the tree, and flung himself on Captain Magnus. It was a brief struggle—a fist neatly planted on the ruffian's jaw had ended it, and the captain, half dazed from his potations, went down limply.

Meanwhile Cookie had appeared upon the scene flourishing a kitchen knife, though intending it for no more bloody purpose than the setting free of Cuthbert Vane. Throughout the fray Chris slumbered undisturbed, and he and the unconscious Magnus were now reposing side by side, until they should awake to find themselves neatly trussed up with Cookie's clothes-lines.

But my poor brave Crusoe dragged a broken leg, from a kick bestowed on him by Captain Magnus, at whom he had flown valiantly in my defense.

So far so good; we had signally defeated our two guards, and the camp was ours. But what about the pirates who were still in the cave and would shortly be returning from it? They were three armed and sturdy ruffians, not to include Mr. Tubbs, whose habits were strictly non-combative. It would mean a battle to the death.

Our best hope would be to wait in ambush behind the trees of the clearing—I mean for Dugald Shaw and Cuthbert Vane to do it—and shoot down the unsuspecting pirates as they returned. This desperate plan, which so unpleasantly resembled murder, cast gloom on every brow.

"It's the women, lad," said the Scotchman in a low voice to Cuthbert. "It's—it's Virginia." And Cuthbert heavily assented.

Seeing myself as the motif of such slaughter shocked my mind suddenly back to clearness.

"Oh," I cried, "not that! Why not surprise them in the cave, and make them stay there? One man could guard the entrance easily—and afterward we could build it up with logs or something."

Everybody stared.

"A remarkably neat scheme," said Mr. Shaw, "but impossible of application, I'm afraid, because none of us knows where to find the cave."

I shook my head.

"I know!"

There was a lengthy silence. People looked at one another, and their eyes said, This has been too much for her!

"I know," I impatiently repeated. "I can take you straight there. I found the tombstone before Mr. Tubbs did, and the cave too. Come, let's not waste time. We must hurry—they'll be getting back!"

Amazement, still more than half incredulous, surged round me. Then Mr. Shaw said rapidly:

"You're right. Of course, if you have found the cave, the best thing we can do is to keep them shut up in it. But we must move fast—perhaps we're too late already. If they have found the chest they may by now be starting for camp with the first load of doubloons."

Again I shook my head.

"They haven't found the gold," I assured him.

The astonished faces grew more anxious. "It sho' have told on li'le Miss Jinny's brain," muttered Cookie to himself.

"They haven't found the gold," I reiterated with emphasis, "because the gold is not in the cave. Don't ask me how I know, because there isn't time to tell you. There was no gold there but the two bags that the pirates brought back last night. The—the skeleton moved it all out."

"My Lawd!" groaned Cookie, staggering backward.

"Virginia! I had no idea you were superstitious!" quavered Aunt Jane.

"I say, do take some sleeping tablets or something and quiet your nerves!" implored Cuthbert with the tenderest solicitude.

In my exasperation I stamped my foot.

"And while we are arguing here the pirates may be starting back to camp! And then we'll have to kill them and go home and give ourselves up to be hanged! Please, please, come with me and let me show you that I know!" I lifted my eyes to the intent face of Dugald Shaw.

"All right," he said tersely. "I think you do know. How and what, we'll find out later." Rapidly he made his plan, got together the things needful for its execution, looked to the bonds of the still dazed and drowsy prisoners, posted Cookie in their neighborhood with a pair of pistols, and commanded Aunt Jane to dry her tears and look after Miss Higglesby-Browne, who had dismayed every one by most inopportunely toppling over in a perfectly genuine swoon.

Then the Scotchman, Cuthbert Vane and I set off through the woods. The men were heavily armed, and I had recovered my own little revolver and restored it to my belt. Mr. Shaw had seen to this, and had said to me, very quietly:

"You know, Virginia, if things don't go our way, it may be necessary for you to use it—on yourself."

And I nodded assentingly.

We went in silence through the green hush of the woods, moving in single file. My place as guide was in the van, but Mr. Shaw deposed me from it and went ahead himself, while Cuthbert Vane brought up the rear. No one spoke, even to whisper. I guided Dugald Shaw, when needful, by a light touch upon the arm. Our enterprise was one of utmost danger. At any moment we might hear the steps and voices of the returning pirates. Thus fore-warned, we might of course retreat into the woods and let them pass, ourselves unseen. But then, what of those whom we had left in camp? Could we leave them undefended to the vengeance of Captain Magnus? No, if we met the pirates it was their lives or ours—and I recall with incredulity my resolution to imbed five of my six bullets in a pirate before I turned the sixth upon myself. I reflected with satisfaction that five bullets should be a fatal dose to any pirate unless an exceptionally tough one. And I hoped he would not be tough—

But I tell myself with shudders that it was not I, but some extraordinary recrudescence of a primitive self, that indulged these lethal gloatings.

No steps but our own, no voices but of birds, broke the stillness of the woods. We moved onward swiftly, and presently the noise of the sea came to us with the sudden loudness that I remembered. I paused, signaled caution to my companions, and crept on.

We passed the grave, and I saw that the vines had been torn aside again, and that the tombstone was gone. We came to the brink of the cliff, and I pointed silently downward along the ledge to the angle in which lay the mouth of the cave. My breath came quickly, for at any instant a head might be thrust forth from the opening. Already the sun was mounting toward the zenith. The noontide heat and stillness was casting its drowsy spell upon the island. The air seemed thicker, the breeze more languid. And all this meant meal-time—and the thoughts of hungry pirates turning toward camp.

My hope was that they were still preoccupied with the fruitless search in the cave.

Mr. Shaw and Cuthbert dropped down upon the ledge. Though under whispered orders to retreat I could not, but hung over the edge of the cliff, eager and breathless. Then with a bound the men were beside me. Mr. Shaw caught my hand, and we rushed together into the woods.

A quake, a roar, a shower of flying rocks. It was over—the dynamite had done its work, whether successfully or not remained to be seen. After a little the Scotchman ventured back. He returned to us where we waited in the woods—Cuthbert to mount guard over me—with a cleared face.

"It's all right," he said. "The entrance is completely blocked. I set the charge six feet inside, but the roof is down clear to the mouth. Poor wretches—they have all come pouring out upon the sand—"

All three of us went back to the edge of the cliff. Seventy feet below, on the narrow strip of sand before the sea-mouth of the cave, we saw the figures of four men, who ran wildly about and sought for a foothold on the sheer face of the cliff. As we stood watching them, with, on my part, at least, unexpected qualms of pity and a cold interior sensation very unlike triumph, they discovered us. Then for the first time, I suppose, they understood the nature of their disaster. We could not hear their cries, but we saw arms stretched out to us, fists frantically shaken, hands lifted in prayer. We saw Mr. Tubbs flop down upon his unaccustomed knees—it was all rather horrible.

I drew back, shivering. "It won't be for long, of course," I said uncertainly, "just till the steamer comes—and we'll give them lots to eat—but I suppose they think—they will soon be just a lot more skeletons—" And here I was threatened with a moist anticlimax to my late Amazonian mood.

Why should the frequent and natural phenomena of tears produce such panic in the male breast? At a mere April dewiness about my lashes these two strong men quaked.

"Don't—don't cry!" implored Cuthbert earnestly.

"It's been too much for her!" exclaimed the once dour Scot in tones of anguish. "Hurry, lad—we must find her some water—"

"Nonsense," I interposed, winking rapidly. "Just think of some way to calm those creatures, so that I shan't see them in my dreams, begging and beseeching—" For I had not forgotten the immensity of my debt to Tony.

So a note was written on a leaf torn from a pocketbook and thrown over the cliff weighted with a stone. The captives swooped upon it. Followed then a vivid pantomime by Tony, expressive of eased if unrepentant minds, while Mr. Tubbs, by gestures, indicated that though sadly misunderstood, old H. H. was still our friend and benefactor.

It was an attentive group to which on our return to camp I related the circumstances which had made possible our late exploit of imprisoning the pirates in the cave. The tale of my achievements, though recounted with due modesty, seemed to put the finishing touch to the extinction of Violet, for she wilted finally and forever, and was henceforth even bullied by Aunt Jane. The diary of Peter was produced, and passed about with awe from hand to hand. Yesterday's discovery in the cave had rounded out the history of Peter to a melancholy completion. But though we knew the end we guessed in vain at the beginning, at Peter's name, at that of the old grandfather whose thrifty piety had brought him to Havana and to the acquaintance of the dying mate of the Bonny Lass, at the whereabouts of the old New England farm which had been mortgaged to buy the Island Queen, at the identity of Helen, who waited still, perhaps, for the lover who never would return.

But even our regrets for Peter did not chill the exultation with which we thought of the treasure-chest waiting there under the sand in the cabin of the Island Queen.

All afternoon we talked of it. That, for the present, was all we could do. There were the two prisoners in camp to be guarded—and they had presently awakened and made remarks of a strongly personal and unpleasant trend on discovering their situation. There was Crusoe invalided, and needing petting, and getting it from everybody on the score of his romantic past as Benjy as well as of his present virtues. The broken leg had been cleverly set by Dugald—somehow in the late upheaval Miss and Mister had dropped quite out of our vocabularies—with Cuthbert as surgeon's assistant and me holding the chloroform to the patient's nose. There was the fatigue and reaction from excitement which everybody felt, and Peter's diary to be read, and golden dreams to be indulged. And there was the delicate question to be discussed, of how the treasure should be divided.

"Why, it all belongs to Virginia, of course," said Cuthbert, opening his eyes at the thought of any other view being taken but this obvious one.

"Nonsense!" I hastily interposed. "My finding the diary was just an accident; I'll take a share of it—no more."

Here Miss Browne murmured something half inaudible about "—confined to members of the Expedition—" but subsided for lack of encouragement.

"I suggest," said Dugald, "that our numbers having most fortunately diminished and there being, on the basis of Peter's calculations, enough to enrich us all, that we should share and share alike." And this proposal was received with acclamations, as was a second from the same source, devoting a certain percentage of each share to Cookie, to whom the news of his good fortune was to come later as a great surprise.

As an earnest of our riches, we had the two bags of doubloons which the pirates had recovered from the fleshless fingers of the dead man. They were old worn coins, most of them, many dating from the seventeenth century, and bearing the effigies of successive kings of Spain. Each disk of rich, yellow Peruvian gold, dug from the earth by wretched sweating slaves and bearing the name of a narrow rigid tyrant, had a history, doubtless, more wild and bloody than even that we knew. The merchant of Lima and his servant, Bill Halliwell, and afterward poor Peter had died for them. For their sake we had been captives in fear of death, and for their sake now four wretched beings were prisoners in the treasure-cave and two more cursed, fate and their bonds within hearing of our outraged ears. And who knew how much more of crime and blood and violence we should send forth into the world with the long-buried treasure? Who knew—and, ah, me, who cared? So riotous was the gold-lust in my veins that I think if I had known the chest to be another Pandora's box I should still have cried out to open it.

Shortly before sundown Cuthbert and Cookie were despatched by Dugald Shaw to the cliff above the cave with supplies for the inhumed pirates. These were let down by rope. A note was brought up on the rope, signed by Mr. Tubbs, and containing strangely jumbled exhortations, prayers and threats. A second descent of the rope elicited another missive, neatly folded and addressed in the same hand to Miss Jane Harding. Cuthbert gave this privately to me, but its contents must forever be unknown, for it went, unread, into Cookie's fire. I had no mind to find Aunt Jane, with her umbrella as a parachute, vanishing over the cliffs to seek the arms of a repentant Tubbs.

The fly in the ointment of our satisfaction, and the one remaining obstacle to our possession of the treasure, was the presence of the two pirates in our midst. They were not nice pirates. They were quite the least choice of the collection. Chris, when he was not swearing, wept moistly, and so touched the heart of Aunt Jane that we lived in fear of her letting him go if she got the opportunity. He told her that he had lost an aunt in his tender youth, of whom she reminded him in the most striking way, and that if this long-mourned relative had lived he felt he should have been a better man and not led away against his higher nature by the chance of falling in with bad companions. Aunt Jane thought her resemblance to Chris's aunt a remarkable coincidence and an opportunity for appealing to his better self which should be improved. She wanted to improve it by untying his hands, because he had sprained his wrist in his childhood and it was sensitive. He had sprained it in rescuing a little companion from drowning, the child of a drunkard who had unfeelingly thrown his offspring down a well. This episode had been an example to Chris which had kept him from drinking all his life, until he had fallen into his present rough company.

Aunt Jane took it very hard that the Scotchman seemed quite unfeeling about Chris's wrist. She said it seemed very strange to her in a man who had so recently known the sorrows of captivity himself. She said she supposed even suffering would not soften some natures.

As to Magnus, his state of sullen fury made him indifferent even to threats of punishment. He swore with a determination and fluency worthy of a better cause. For myself, I could not endure his neighborhood. It seemed to me I could not live through the days that must intervene before the arrival of the Rufus Smith in the constant presence of this wretch.

More than all, it made Dugald and Cuthbert unwilling to leave the camp together. There was always the possibility that the two ruffians might find means to free themselves, and, with none but Cookie and the women present, to obtain control of the firearms and the camp. For the negro, once the men were free, could not surely be depended on to face them. Loyal he was, and valiant in his fashion, but old and with the habit of submission. One did not see him standing up for long before two berserker-mad ruffians.

What to do with the pirates continued for a day and a night a knotty problem.

It was Cuthbert Vane who solved it, and with the simplicity of genius.

"Why not send 'em down to their chums the way we do the eats?" he asked.

It seemed at first incredibly fantastic, but the more you thought of it the more practical it grew. It was characteristic of Cuthbert not to see it as fantastic. For him the sharp edges of fact were never shaded off into the dim and nebulous. Cuthbert, when he saw things at all, saw them steadily and whole. He would let down the writhing, swearing Magnus over the cliff as tranquilly as he let down loaves of bread, aware merely of its needing more muscular effort. Only he would take immense care not to hurt him.

Dire outcries greeted the decision. Aunt Jane wept, and Chris wept, and said this never could have happened to him if his aunt had lived. Oaths flowed from Captain Magnus in a turgid stream. Nevertheless the twain were led away, firmly bound, and guarded by Dugald, Cuthbert and the negro. And the remarkable program proposed by Cuthbert Vane was triumphantly carried out. Six prisoners now occupied the old cave of the buccaneers.

With the camp freed from the presence of the pirates all need of watchfulness was over. The prisoners in the cave were provided with no implements but spades, whereas dynamite and crowbars would be necessary to force a way through the debris which choked the mouth of the tunnel. A looking over of the ground at the daily feeding time would be enough.

To-morrow's sun would see our hopes crowned and all our toil rewarded by the recovery of the treasure from the Island Queen.



XX

'TWIXT CUP AND LIP

Next morning an event occurred sufficiently astonishing to divert our thoughts from even the all-important topic of the Island Queen. Cookie, who had been up on the high land of the point gathering firewood, came rushing back to announce that a steamer had appeared in the offing. All the party dropped their occupations and ran to look. That the Rufus Smith had returned at an unexpectedly early date was of course the natural explanation of the appearance of a vessel in these lonely seas. But through the glass the new arrival turned out to be not the tubby freighter but a stranger of clean-cut, rakish build, lying low in the water and designed for speed rather than carrying capacity.

A mile offshore she lay to, and a boat left her side. Wondering and disquieted, we returned to the beach to await her coming. Was it another pirate? What possible errand could bring a steamer to this remote, unvisited, all but forgotten little island? Had somebody else heard the story of the Bonny Lass and come after the doubloons, unknowing that we were beforehand with them? If so, must we do battle for our rights?

The boat shot in between the points and skimmed swiftly over the rippling surface of the cove, under the rhythmic strokes of half a dozen flashing oars. The rowers wore a trim white uniform, and in the stern a tall figure, likewise white-clad, turned toward us a dark face under a pith helmet.

As the oarsmen drove the boat upon the beach the man in the stern sprang agilely ashore. Dugald Shaw stepped forward, and the stranger approached, doffing his helmet courteously.

"You are the American and English party who landed here some weeks ago from the Rufus Smith?"

His English was easy and correct, though spoken with a pronounced Spanish accent. His dark high-featured face was the face of a Spaniard. And his grace was the grace of a Spaniard, as he bowed sweepingly and handed Mr. Shaw a card.

"Senor Don Enrique Gonzales," said Dugald, bowing in his stiff-necked fashion, "I am very happy to meet you. But as you represent His Excellency the President of the Republic of Santa Marina I suppose you come on business, Senior Gonzales?"

"Precisely. I am enchanted that you apprehend the fact without the tiresomeness of explanations. For business is a cold, usually a disagreeable affair, is it not so? That being the case, let us get it over."

"First do us the honor to be seated, Senor Gonzales."

Comfortably bestowed in a camp-chair in the shade, the Spaniard resumed:

"My friend, this island belongs, as of course you are aware, to the republic of which I have the honor to be a citizen. All rights and privileges, such as harvesting the copra crop, are strictly conserved by the republic. All persons desiring such are required to negotiate with the Minister of State of the Republic. And how much more, when it is a question of treasure—of a very large treasure, Senor?"

The Scotchman's face was dark.

"I had understood," he replied, without looking in the direction of Miss Higglesby-Browne, who seemed in the last few moments to have undergone some mysterious shrinking process, "that negotiations in the proper quarter had been undertaken and brought to a successful conclusion—that in short we were here with the express permission of the government of Santa Marina."

This was a challenge which Miss Browne could not but meet.

"I had," she said hoarsely, "I had the assurance of a—a person high in the financial circles of the United States, that through his—his influence with the government of Santa Marina it would not be necessary—in short, that he could fix the President—I employ his own terms—for a considerable sum, which I—which my friend Miss Harding gave him."

"And the name of this influential person?" inquired the Santa Marinan, suavely.

"Hamilton H. Tubbs," croaked Miss Browne.

Senor Gonzales smiled.

"I remember the name well, madam. It is that of the pretended holder of a concession from our government, who a few years ago induced a number of American school-teachers and clergymen and other financially innocent persons to invest in imaginary coffee plantations. He had in some doubtful fashion become possessed of a little entirely worthless land, which formed the basis of his transactions. His frauds were discovered while he was in our country, and he was obliged to leave between two days, according to your so picturesque idiom. Needless to say his application for permission to visit Leeward Island for any purpose would instantly have been refused, but as a matter of fact it was never made."

In a benumbed silence we met the blow. The riches that had seemed within our grasp would never be ours. We had no claim upon them, for all our toil and peril; no right even to be here upon the island. Suddenly I began to laugh; faces wearing various shades of shocked surprise were turned on me. Still I laughed.

"Don't you see," I cried, "how ridiculous it all is? All the time it is we who have been pirates!"

The Spaniard gave me a smile made brilliant by the gleam of smoldering black eyes and the shine of white teeth.

"Senorita, with all regret, I must agree."

"Miss Virginia Harding," said Miss Browne with all her old severity, rejuvenated apparently by this opportunity to put me in my place, "would do well to consult her dictionary, before applying opprobrious terms to persons of respectability. A pirate is one who commits robbery upon the high seas. If such a crime lies at the door of any member of this expedition I am unaware of it."

"What's in a name?" remarked Dugald Shaw, shrugging. "We were after other people's property, anyway. I am very sorry about it, Senor Gonzales, but I would like to ask, if you don't mind telling, how you happened to learn of our being here, so long as it was not through the authentic channels. On general principles, I tried to keep the matter quiet."

"We learned in a manner somewhat—what do you say?—curious," returned the Spaniard, who, having presented the men with cigars and by permission lighted one himself, was making himself extremely at home and appeared to have no immediate intention of haling us away to captivity in Santa Marinan dungeons. "But before I go further, kindly tell me whether you have had any—ah—visitors during your stay on the island?"

"We have," Mr. Shaw replied, "very troublesome ones."

The Spaniard smiled.

"Then answer your own question. These men, while unloading a contraband cargo in a port of Mexico near the southern border, grew too merry in a wineshop, and let it be known where they were bound when again they put to sea. The news, after some delay, found its way to our capital. At once the navy of the republic was despatched to investigate the matter. It is the navy of Santa Marina, ladies and gentlemen, which at this moment guards the entrance of the bay." And Senor Gonzales waved an ironic hand in the direction of the little steamer lying off the island,

"On the way here I put in at Panama, where certain inquiries were satisfactorily answered. There were those in that port who had made a shrewd guess at the destination of the party which had shipped on the Rufus Smith. I then pursued my course to Leeward. But admit, my friends, that I have not by my arrival, caused you any material loss. Except that I have unfortunately been compelled to present you to yourselves in the character of—as says the young lady—pirates—madam, I speak under correction—I have done you no injury, eh? And that for the simple reason that you have not discovered what you sought, and hence can not be required to surrender it."

We looked at one another doubtfully. The ambiguous words of the Spaniard, the something humorous and mocking which lay behind his courtly manner, put us quite in the dark.

"Senor Gonzales," replied the Scotchman, after a moment's hesitation, "it is true that so far only a negligible amount of what we came to find has rewarded us. But I can not in honesty conceal from you that we know where to look for the rest of it, and that we had certainly expected to leave the island with it in our possession."

The dark indolent eyes of our visitor grew suddenly keen. Half-veiled by the heavy lashes, they searched the face of Dugald Shaw. It seemed that what they found in that bold and open countenance satisfied them. His own face cleared again.

"I think we speak at cross-purposes, Mr. Shaw," he said courteously, "and that we may better understand each other, I am going to tell you a little story. At about this season, two years ago, the navy of Santa Marina, the same which now lies off the island, was making a voyage of inspection along the coast of the republic. It was decided to include Leeward in the cruise, as it had been unvisited for a considerable time. I hold no naval rank—indeed, we are not a seafaring people, and the captain of La Golondrina is a person from Massachusetts, Jeremiah Bowles by name, but as the representative of His Excellency I accompanied La Golondrina. On our arrival at Leeward I came ashore in the boat, and found to my surprise a small sloop at anchor in the cove. About the clearing were the signs of recent habitation, yet I knew that the old German who had had the copra concession here had been gone for some time. There were no personal trifles left in the hut, however, and indeed it was plain that weeks had passed since there had been any one about. No one responded to our shouts and calls.

"I turned my attention to the sloop. In the cabin, besides a few clothes, I found something that interested me very much—a large brass-bound chest, of an antique type such as is common enough in my own country.

"Of course I had heard of the many legends of treasure buried on Leeward Island. Consequently I was somewhat prepared to find in the chest, what in fact I did find there, over a million dollars in old Spanish coins.

"These coins, which were packed in strong canvas bags, were, as you may fancy, very quickly transferred to the cutter. We did not trouble ourselves with the unwieldy chest, and it remains, I suppose, in the cabin of the sloop, which I observed as we crossed the cove to have been washed up upon the rocks.

"As my curiosity was extremely piqued regarding the owner of the sloop, the manner in which he had discovered the treasure, and still more his extraordinary disappearance, I should have wished to make a thorough search of the island. But the season for storms was shortly to begin, and already the weather signs were so threatening that Captain Bowles was reluctant to remain longer in the neighborhood of the island, which has a bad name for dangerous shoals and reefs. For the same reason it was thought unwise to risk a man or two aboard the sloop to sail her to the mainland. Indeed, we ourselves were glad to get safely home with our doubloons in the teeth of a tropical gale."

"This is a very interesting story, Senor Gonzales," said Dugald Shaw quietly, "and as you say, your visit here deprives us of nothing, but merely saves us further unprofitable labor. We are grateful to you."

The Spaniard bowed.

"You do me too much honor. But as you remark, the story is interesting. It has also the element of mystery. For there remains the question of what became of the owner of the sloop. His final preparations for leaving the island had evidently been made, his possessions removed from the hut, provisions for the voyage brought on board the sloop—and then he had vanished. What had befallen him? Did the gold carry with it some deadly influence? One plays, as it were, with this idea, imagining the so melancholy and bloody history of these old doubloons. How, in the first place, had he found them? Through chance—by following some authentic clue? And then, in the moment of success, he disappears—pouf!" And Senor Gonzales disposed of the unknown by blowing him airily from the tips of his fingers.

"However, we have the treasure—the main point, is it not? But I have often wondered—"

"If you would like to hear the rest of the story," said Mr. Shaw, "we are in a position to enlighten you. That we are so, is due entirely to this young lady, Miss Virginia Harding."

The Spaniard rose, and made obeisance profoundly. He resumed his seat, prepared to listen—no longer the government official, but the cordial and interested guest and friend.

The story, of course, was a long one. Everybody took a hand in the telling, even Cookie, who was summoned from his retirement in the kitchen to receive the glory due him as a successful strategist. The journal of Peter was produced, and the bags of doubloons handed over to the representative of the little republic. I even offered to resign the silver shoe-buckle which I had found in the secret locker on the Island Queen, but this excess of honesty received its due reward.

"The doubloons being now in the possession of the Santa Marinan nation, I beg that you will consider as your own the Island Queen and all it may contain," said Don Enrique to me with as magnificent an air as though the sand-filled hulk of a wrecked sloop were really a choice gift to bestow on a young woman.

Plans were discussed for transferring the pirates from the cave to the cutter, for they were to be taken to Santa Marina to meet whatever punishment was thought fit for their rather indefinite ill-doing. They had not murdered us, they had robbed us of nothing but the provisions they had eaten, they had, after all, as much right on the island as ourselves. Yet there remained their high-handed conduct in invading our camp and treating us as prisoners, with the threat of darker possibilities. I fancy that Santa Marinan justice works mainly by rule of thumb, and that the courts do not embarrass themselves much with precedents. Only I hope they did not shoot the picturesque Tony against a wall.[*]

The power-schooner, manned by a crew from the cutter, was to be taken to Santa Marina also. Senor Gonzales remained with us for the day as our guest, and on the next the boats from the cutter took off the pirates from the cave. We did not see them again. Through the convenient elasticity of Santa Marinan procedure, Mr. Tubbs was herded along with the rest, although he might plausibly, if hypocritically, have pleaded that he had complied with the will of the invaders under duress. Aunt Jane wept very much, and handed me Paeans of Passion with the request that she might never see it again.

We parted from Senor Gonzales not without regrets. It was an impressive leave-taking—indeed, Senor, Gonzales in his least word and gesture was impressive. Also, he managed subtly and respectfully to impart to me the knowledge that he shared Titian's tastes in the matter of hair. On his departure he made a pretty little speech, full of compliments and floral specimens, and bestowed upon me—as being mine by right, he earnestly protested—the two bags of Spanish doubloons.

[*]Since the above was written, Mr. Shaw has run across Tony on the San Francisco water-front. Tony tells him that they got off with three months' imprisonment. The American consul interested himself and the schooner was restored to her owners, who were Tony's relations and hence did not prosecute. Before the discharged prisoners left the republic Captain Magnus was stabbed over a card game by a native. Mr. Tubbs married a wealthy half-caste woman, the owner of a fine plantation, but a perfectly genuine Mrs. Tubbs from Peoria turned up later, and the too much married H. H. was obliged to achieve one of his over-night flittings.



XXI

THE BISHOP'S CHEST

W3 waited nine days for the coming of the Rufus Smith. During that time an episode occurred as a result of which I sat one morning by myself on the rocks beside the sloop, on which such ardent hopes had been centered, only like the derelict itself to be wrecked at last. It was a lonely spot and I wanted to be alone. I felt abused, and sad, and sore. I realized that I was destined to do nothing but harm in this world, and to hurt people I was fond of, and be misunderstood by every one, and to live on—if I wasn't lucky enough to meet with a premature and sudden end—into a sour, lonely, crabbed old age, when I would wish to goodness I had married anybody, and might even finish by applying to a Matrimonial Agency.

As I sat nursing these melancholy thoughts I heard a footstep. I did not look up—for I knew the footstep. I should have known it if it had trodden over my grave.

"I take it you are not wanting company, you have come so far out of the way of it," said Dugald Shaw.

Still I did not look up.

"Nobody seemed to want me," I remarked sulkily, after a pause. He made no reply, but seated himself upon the rocks. For a little there was silence.

"Virginia," he said abruptly, "I'm thinking you have hurt the lad."

"Oh," I burst out, "that is all you think of—the lad, the lad! How about me? Don't you suppose it hurt me too?"

"No," he made deliberate answer. "I was not sure of that. I thought maybe you liked having men at your feet."

"Liked it? Liked to wound Cuthbert—Cuthbert? Oh, if only it had not happened, if we could have gone on being friends! It was all my fault for going with him into the cave. It was after you had buried the skeleton, and I wanted to see poor Peter's resting-place. And we spoke of Helen, and it was all frightfully melancholy and tender, and all at once he—he said it. And I meant he never should!" In the soreness of my heart I began to weep.

"There, lassie, there, don't cry!" he said gently. "The boy didn't speak of it, of course. But I knew how it must be. It has hit him hard, I am afraid."

"I suppose," I wept, "you would have had me marry him whether I wanted to or not, just to keep from hurting him."

"No," he answered quickly. "I did not say that—I did not say that I would have had you marry him. No, lass, I did not say that."

"Then why are you scolding me?" I asked in a choked whisper.

"Scolding you? I was not. It was only that—that I love the lad—and I wish you both so well—I thought perhaps there was some mistake, and—it would not matter about me, if I could see you both happy."

"There is a mistake," I said clearly. "It is a great mistake, Dugald Shaw, that you should come to me and court me—for some one else."

There was silence for a while, the kind of silence when you hear your heartbeats.

When he spoke his voice was unsteady.

"But the boy has everything to offer you—his ancient name, his splendid unstained youth, a heart that is all loyalty. He is strong and brave and beautiful. Virginia, why couldn't you love him?"

"I could not love him," I replied, very low, "because my love was not mine any more to give. It belongs to—some one else. Is his name ancient? I don't know. It is his, and he ennobles it. Cuthbert has youth, but youth is only promise. In the man I love I find fulfilment. And he is loyal and brave and honest—I am afraid he isn't beautiful, but I love him the better for his scars—"

After that I sat quite still, and I knew it depended on the next half minute whether I went all the days of my life crowned and glorious with happiness, or buried my shame and heartbreak under the waters of the cove.

And then Dugald Shaw took me in his arms.

By and by he said huskily:

"Beloved, I had no right to ask you to share such a life as mine must be—the life of a poor sailor."

At this I raised my head from its nestling-place and laughed.

"Ask me? Silly, I asked you! Of course you could have refused me, but I depended on your not having the courage."

"And indeed that is a charge I'll not allow—that I am so little of a man as to let my courting be done for me. No, no, it was my love compelling you that made you speak the words you did—the love of a selfish man who should have thought only of shielding you from the hardships of such a wandering, homeless life as mine."

"Well, Heaven reward you for your selfishness," I said earnestly. "I am thankful you were not so noble as to let me throw myself at your head in vain. I have been doing it for ever so long, in fact, but it is such a thick Scotch head that I dare say I made no impression."

"Sweet imp! You'll pay for that—oh, Virginia, if I had only something to offer you!"

"You can offer me something that I want very much, if you will, and at no cost but to your strong right arm."

"It is an arm which is at your service for life—but what am I to do with it now? And indeed I think it is very well employed at this moment."

"But it must be employed much more strenuously," I remarked, moving a little away, "if you are to get me what I want. Before you came, I was meditating possible ways of getting it for myself. I wanted it for a melancholy relic—a sort of mausoleum in which all my hopes were buried. Now its purpose is quite different; it is to be my bride's chest and hold the dowry which I shall bring to one Dugald Shaw."

"You mean the chest—the chest that held the Spanish doubloons—that lies under the sand in the sloop?"

"Exactly. And now I shall know whether you are the true prince or not, because he always succeeds in the tasks he undertakes to win the princess."

It was low tide, such a tide as had all but lured me to my death in the cave. One could go and come from the beach along the rocks, without climbing the steep path up the cliff. It was not long before Dugald was back again with spade and pick. He tore off the shrunken, sun-dried boards from the cabin roof, and fell to work.

It was not, after all, a labor of Hercules. The cabin was small and the chest large. I watched with the pride of proprietorship the swift ease with which the steel-sinewed arms of the Scot made the caked sand fly. Then the spade struck something which sent back a dull metallic sound through the muffling sand.

I gave a little shriek of excitement. Hardly could I have been more thrilled if I had believed the chest still to contain the treasure of which it had been ravished. It was filled to its brass-bound lid with romance, if not with gold.

A little more and it lay clear to our view, a convex surface of dark smoky brown, crossed by three massive strips of tarnished brass. Dugald dug down until the chest stood free to half its height; then by its handles—I recognized the "great hand-wrought loops of metal," of the diary—we dragged it from its bed, and drew it forth into the cockpit.

For a little while we sat before it in happy contemplation. It was indeed for its own sake quite well worth having, that sturdy old chest. Even in an antique shop I should have succumbed to it at once; how much more when we had dug it up ourselves from a wrecked sloop on a desert island, and knew all its bloody and delightful history.

At length, kneeling before it, I raised with an effort the heavy lid.

"Empty, of course—no more brown bags. But oh, Dugald, had ever a girl such a wonderful bride's chest as this? O—oh!"

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing, only there is a crack in the bottom, running all the way along where it joins the side."

"Warped a bit, I suppose. No matter, it can be easily repaired—crack? I say, lassie, look here!"

Under the pressure of Dugald's fingers the floor of the chest was swinging upward on an invisible hinge. Between it and the true bottom was a space of about three inches in depth. It seemed to be filled with a layer of yellowed cotton-wool.

For a long moment we held our breath, gazing at each other with eyes which asked the same question. Then Dugald lifted a corner of the sheet of cotton and plucked it away.

At once all the hues of the rainbow seemed to be flashing and sparkling before us. Rubies were there like great drops of the blood that the chest and its treasure had wrung from the hearts of men; sapphires, mirroring the blue of the tropic sky; emeralds, green as the island verdure; pearls, white as the milk of the cocoanuts and softly luminous as the phosphorescent foam which broke on the beach in the darkness. And there were diamonds that caught gleams of all the others' beauty, and then mocked them with a matchless splendor.

Some of the stones lay loose upon their bed of cotton; others were in massive settings of curious old-time workmanship. Every gem was of exceptional size and beauty, the pearls, I knew at once, were the rarest I had ever looked upon. They were strung in a necklace, and had a very beautiful pendant of mingled pearls and diamonds.

There were nine heavy bracelets, all jewel-set; twenty-three rings, eight of them for the hand of a man. Some of these rings contained the finest of the diamonds, except for three splendid unset stones. There were numbers of elaborate old-fashioned earrings, two rope-like chains of gold adorned with jewels at intervals, and several jeweled lockets. There was a solid gold snuff-box, engraved with a coat of arms and ornamented with seventeen fine emeralds. There were, besides the three diamonds, eighty-two unset stones, among them, wrapped by itself in cotton, a ruby of extraordinary size and luster. And there was a sort of coronet or tiara, sown all over with clear white brilliants.

There is the inventory, not entirely complete, of the treasure which we found hidden under the false bottom of the chest, a treasure whose existence none of those who had striven and slain and perished for the sake of the Spanish doubloons can have suspected. The secret of it died with the first guardian of the chest, the merchant of Lima who went overboard from the Bonny Lass on that stormy night ninety years ago. Now sea and sun and sand had done their work and warped the wood of the chest enough to make us masters of its mystery. And we sat in the sand-heaped cock-pit of the wrecked sloop, playing like children with our sparkling toys.

Ours? Yes, for whether or not there were an infection of piracy in the very air of the island, so that to seize with the high hand, to hold with the iron grasp, seemed the law of life, we decided without a qualm against the surrender of our treasure-trove to its technical owners. Technical only; for one felt that, in essence, all talk of ownership by this man or that had long ago become idle. Fate had held the treasure in fee to give or to withhold. Senor Gonzales had had his chance at the chest, and he had missed the secret of the hidden hoard, had left it to lie forgotten under the sand until in some tropic storm it should be engulfed by the waters of the cove. More than this, had he not most specifically made over to me the Island Queen and all that it contained? This was a title clear enough to satisfy the most exacting formalist. And we were not formalists, nor inclined in any quibbling spirit to question the decrees of Fortune. As treasure-hunters, we had been her devotees too long.

So after all it was not my scornful skepticism but the high faith of Miss Higglesby-Browne which was justified by the event, and the Harding-Browne expedition left the island well repaid for its toils and perils. Plus the two bags of doubloons, which were added to the spoils, the treasure brought us a sum so goodly that I dare not name it, for fear of the apparition of Senor Gonzales and the Santa Marinan navy looming up to demand restitution. Like true comrades, we divided share and share alike, and be sure that no one grudged Cookie the percentage Which each was taxed for his benefit.

Certain of the rarest; jewels were not sold, but found their way to me as gifts of the Expedition severally and collectively. The brightest of the diamonds now shines in my engagement ring. Cuthbert, by the way, showed up so splendidly when I explained to him about the engagement—that the responsibility was entirely mine, not Dugald's—that I earnestly wished I were twins so that one of me could have married the beautiful youth—which indeed I had wished a little all the time.

And now I come to the purpose of this story—for though well concealed it has had one from the beginning. It is to let Helen, whoever and wherever she may be, if still of this world, know of the fate of Peter, and to tell her that when she asks for them she is to have my most cherished relics of the island, Peter's journal and the silver shoe-buckle which he found in the sand of the treasure-cave and was taking home to her.

Only, she must let me keep Crusoe, please.

THE END