Richard le Gallienne - Pieces of Eight

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And the captain, like nearly every captain I have met in the Bahamas,
knew as little about it as I did. Charlie had been right; you must know
how to sail your own boat when you hoist your sails in Bahaman waters. I
confess that I began to regret Charlie's preoccupation with Tobias--for,
in spite of his missing his way that day in the North Bight, Charlie
seems to know his way in the dark wherever one happens to be on the sea.

However, there was really nothing to worry us. There was no wind. The
weather was calm, and there was lots of time. At last, after studying
the chart and talking it over with Tom, who though he had only shipped
as cook, was the best sailor on board, we decided to run north, and take
a channel described on the chart as "very intricate."

At last we came to a little foam-fringed cay, where it was conceivable
that the shyest and rarest of shells would choose to make its home--a
tiny aristocrat, driven out of the broad tideways by the coarser
ambitions and the ruder strength of great molluscs that feed and grow
fat and house themselves in crude convolutions of uncouthly striving
horn; a little lonely shore, kissed with the white innocence of the sea,
where pearls might secretly make themselves perfect, untroubled by the
great doings of wind and tide--merely rocked into beauty by ripple and
beam, with a teardrop falling, once in a while, into their dim growing
hearts, from some wavering distant star.

It was impossible to imagine a cay better answering to my conchologist's
description of Short Shrift Island. Its situation and general character,
too, bore out the surmise. On landing, also, we found that it answered
in two important particulars to Tobias's narrative. We found, as he had
declared, that there was good water there for passing ships. Also, we
found, in addition to the usual scrub, that cabbage-wood trees grew
there very plentifully, particularly, as he said, on the highest part of
the island. Our conjectures were presently confirmed by the captain of a
little sponging boat that, an hour after our arrival, put in for water.
Yes, he said, it was ---- Cay (giving it the name by which it was
generally known, and by which the conchologist had first mentioned it to
me). So, having talked it all over with Tom, I decided that here we
would stay for a time, and try our luck.

But, first, having heard from the sponging captain, that he was en
route for Nassau, I gave him a letter to Charlie Webster, telling him of
our whereabouts, in case he should have sudden need of me with regard to
Tobias.

It was too late to begin treasure-hunting that day, but Tom and I made
an early start, the following morning, prospecting the island--I having
set the men to work gathering shells, in the hope of being able to
oblige my shell-loving friend. The island was but a small cay compared
with that of Dead Men's Shoes,--on which we had so memorably laboured
side by side--some five miles long and two broad. It was a pretty little
island, rising here and there into low hills, and surprising us now and
again with belts of pine trees. But, of course, the cabbage-wood tree
was our special tree; and, as I said before, this grew plentifully. All
too plentifully, indeed; and cabbage-wood stumps, alas! were scarcely
more rare.

The reader may recall that Tobias's narrative, in reference to his
second "pod" of one million dollars, had run: "_On the highest point of
this Short Shrift Island is a large cabbage-wood stump, and twenty feet
south of that stump is the treasure, buried five feet deep and can be
found without difficulty._" But which was the highest point? There were
several hillocks that might claim to be that--all about equal in height.

We visited them all in succession. There was a "large cabbage-wood
stump" on each and all of them! It had seemed an absurdly inadequate
direction, even as we had talked the narrative over in John Saunders's
snuggery. But, confronted with so many "large cabbage-wood stumps," one
began to suspect Henry P. Tobias of having been a humourist, and to
wonder whether John Saunders was not right after all, and the whole
manuscript merely a hoax for the benefit of buried-treasure cranks like
myself.

However, as the high points of the island were only seven in all, it was
no difficult matter to try them all out, one by one, as we had plenty of
time and plenty of hands for the work. For, of course, it would have
been idle to attempt any concealment of my object from the crew.
Therefore, I took them from their shell-gathering, and, having duly
measured out twenty feet south from each promising cabbage-wood stump,
set them to work. They worked with a will, for I promised them a
generous share of whatever we found.

Alas! it was an inexpensive promise, for, when we had duly turned up the
ground, not only twenty feet, but thirty, forty, and fifty feet, not
only south but north, east and west of the various cabbage-wood stumps
on the seven various eminences, we were none of us the richer by a
single piece of eight. Then we tried the other cabbage-wood stumps on
lower ground, and any other likely looking spots, till, after working
for nearly a fortnight, we must have dug up most of the island.

And then Tom came to me with the news that our provisions were beginning
to give out. As it was, he said, before we returned to Nassau, we should
have to put in at Flying Fish Cove--a small settlement on the larger
island some five miles to the nor'ard,--for the purchase of various
necessities.

"All right, Tom," I said, "I guess the game is up! Let's start out
to-morrow morning."

And then I betook myself, like the great philosopher, to gathering
shells on the sea-shore, finding some specimens which, to my unlearned
eye, seemed identical with that shell so dear to the learned
conchologist's heart.

The following afternoon we put in at Flying Fish Cove, a neat little
settlement, with a pretty show of sponging craft at anchor, a few
prosperous-looking houses on the hill-side, and a sprinkling of white,
or half-white, people in the streets. I instructed Tom and the Captain
to stock in whatever we needed. We would lie there that night, and in
the morning we would make a start, homeward-bound, for Nassau.

"You may as well have your sucking fish back, Tom," I said, laughing in
self-disgust. "I shall have no more need of it. I am through with
treasure-hunting."

"I'd keep it a little longer, sar," answered Tom; "you never know."

CHAPTER II

_In Which I Catch a Glimpse of a Different Kind of Treasure._

I had, as I have said, made up my mind to start on the homeward trip
early the following morning, but something happened that very evening to
change my plans. I had dropped into the little settlement's one store,
to buy some tobacco, the only kind that Charlie Webster--who carried his
British loyalty into the smallest concerns of life, declared fit to
smoke--some English plug of uncommon strength, not to say ferocity, a
real manly tobacco such as one might imagine the favourite chew of
pirates and smugglers.

I stayed chatting with the storekeeper--a lean, astute-looking
Englishman, with the un-English name of Sweeney--who made a pretty good
thing of selling his motley merchandise to the poor natives, on the good
old business principle of supplying goods of the poorest possible
quality at the highest possible prices. He was said to hold a mortgage
on the lives of half the population, by letting them have goods on
credit against their prospective wages from sponging trips, he himself
being the owner of three or four sponging sloops, and so doubly insured
against loss. His low-ceilinged, black-beamed store, dimly lit with
kerosene lamps, was a wilderness of the most unattractive merchandise
the mind of man can conceive, lying in heaps on trestles, hanging from
the rafters, and cluttering up every available inch of space, so that
narrow lanes only were left among dangling tinware, coils of rope,
coarse bedding, barrels in which very unappetising pork lay steeping in
brine, other barrels overflowing with grimy looking "grits" and sailors'
biscuits, drums of kerosene and turpentine, cans of paint, jostling
clusters of bananas, strings of onions, dried fish, canned meats, loaves
of coarse bread, tea and coffee, and other simple groceries.

Two rough planks laid on barrels made the counter, up to which from time
to time rather worn-looking, spiritless negro women and girls would come
to make their purchases, and then shuffle off again in their listless
way. Once in a while a sturdy negro would drop in for tobacco, with a
more independent, well-fed air. The Englishman served them all with a
certain contemptuous indifference in which one somehow felt the presence
of the whip-hand.

While he was thus attending a little group of such customers, I had
wandered toward the back of the store, curiously examining the thousand
and one commodities which supplied the strange needs of humanity here in
this lost corner of the world; and, thus occupied, I was diverted by a
voice like sudden music, a voice oddly rich and laughing and confident
for such grim and sinister surroundings. It was one, too, which I seemed
to have heard before, and not so very long ago. When I turned in its
direction, I was immediately arrested, as one always is by any splendour
of vitality; for a startling contrast indeed--to the spiritless, furtive
figures that had been coming and going hitherto--was this superb young
creature, tall and lithe with proudly carried head on glorious
shoulders. Her skin was a golden olive, and it had been hard to say
which was the more intensely black--her hair, or the proud eyes which,
turning presently in my direction, seemed to strike upon me as with an
actual impact of soft fire. I swear I could feel them touch me, as it
were, with a warm ray, the radiating glow of her fragrant vitality
enfolding me as in a burning golden cloud.

I wondered whether her glance enfolded everything she looked on in the
same way. Perhaps it was but the unconsciously exerted force of her
superb young womanhood intensely alive. Yet--there was too a significant
wild shyness about her. My presence seemed at once to put her on her
guard. The music of her voice was suddenly hushed, as though she had
hurriedly, almost in terror, thrown a robe of reticence about an
impulsive naturalness not to be displayed before strangers. As for the
storekeeper, he was evidently a familiar acquaintance. He had known
her--he said, after she was gone--since she was a little girl.

While he spoke, my eyes had accidentally fallen on the coin still in his
hand, with which she had just paid him.

"Excuse me," I said, "but that is a curious-looking coin."

I thought that a shade of annoyance passed over his face, as though he
had been better pleased if I had not noticed it. However, it was too
late, and he handed it to me to examine--a large antique-looking gold
coin.

"Why!" I said, "this is a Spanish doubloon!"

"That's what it is," said the Englishman laconically.

"But doesn't it strike you as strange that she should pay her bills with
Spanish doubloons?" I asked.

"It did at first," he answered; and then, as if annoyed with himself, he
was attempting to retrieve an expression that carried an implication he
evidently didn't wish me to retain, he added: "Of course, she doesn't
always pay in Spanish doubloons."

"But she does sometimes?"

"O! once in a great while," he answered, evasively. "I suppose they have
a few old coins in the family, and use them when they run out of
others."

It was as lame an explanation as well could be, and no one could doubt
that, whatever his reason for so doing, he was lying.

"But haven't you trouble in disposing of them?" I enquired.

"Gold is always gold," he answered, "and we don't see enough of it here
to be particular as to whose head is stamped upon it, or what date.
Besides, as I said, it isn't as if I got many of them; and you can
always dispose of them as curiosities."

"Will you sell me this one?" I asked.

"I see no harm in your having it," he said, "but I'd just as soon you
didn't mention where you got it."

"Certainly," I answered, disguising my wonder at his secretiveness.
"What is it worth?"

He named the sum of sixteen dollars and seventy-five cents. Having paid
him that amount, I bade him good-night, glad to be alone with my eager,
glowing thoughts. These I took with me to a bit of coral beach made
doubly white by the moon, rustled over by giant palms, and whispered to
by the vast living jewel of the sea. Surely my thoughts had a brightness
to match even this glitter of the night. I took out my strange doubloon,
and flashed it in the moon.

But, brightly as it shone, it hardly seemed as bright as it would have
seemed a short while back; or, perhaps, it were truer to say that in
another, newer aspect it shone a hundred times more brightly. The
adventure to which it called me was no longer single and simple as
before, but a gloriously confused goal of cloudy splendours, the burning
core of which--suddenly raying out, and then lost again in
brightness--were the eyes of a mysterious girl.

CHAPTER III

_Under the Influence of the Moon._

My days now began to drift rather aimlessly, as without apparent purpose
I continued to linger on an island that might well seem to have little
attraction to a stranger--how little I could see by the mystification of
the good Tom, in whom, for once, of course, I could not confide. Yet I
had a vague purpose; or, at least, I had a feeling that, if I waited on,
something would develop in the direction of my hopes. That doubloon
still suggested that it was the key to a door of fascinating mystery to
which Chance might at any moment direct me.

And--why not admit it?--apart from my buried treasure, to the possible
discovery of which the doubloon seemed to point, I was possessed with a
growing desire for another glimpse of those haunting eyes. They needed
not their association with the mysterious gold, they were magnetic
enough to draw any man, with even the rudiments of imagination, along
the path of the unknown. All the paths out of the little settlement were
paths into the unknown, and, day after day, I followed one or another
of them out into the wilderness, taking a gun with me, as an ostensible
excuse for any spying eye, and bringing back with me occasional bags of
the wild pigeons which were plentiful on the island.

One day I had thus wandered unusually far afield, and at nightfall found
myself still several miles from home, on a rocky path overhanging the
sea. The coast-line had been gradually mounting in a series of
precipitous headlands, at the foot of which the sea made a low booming
that suggested hidden caves. Looking over the edge in places, one could
see that it had hollowed out the porous rock well under the base of the
cliffs, and here and there fallen masses of boulder told of a gradual
encroachment which, in course of time, would topple down into the abyss
the precarious pathway on which I stood. Inland the usual level scrub
gave place to a stretch of wild forest, very dense, and composed of
trees of many varieties, loftier than was usual on the island.

There was no sign of habitation anywhere. It was a wild and lonely
place, and presently over its savage beauty stole the glamour of the
moon rising far over the sea. I sat down on a ledge of the cliffs, and
watched the moonlight grow in intensity, as the darkness of the woods
deepened behind me. It was a night full of witchcraft; a night on which
the stars, the moon, and the sea together seemed hinting at some
wonderful thing about to happen.

Far down in the clear water I could see the giant sea-fans waving in a
moony twilight, touched eerily in those glassy depths with sudden rays
of the spectral light; soft bowers of phosphorescence spread a secret
radiance about dimly branching coral groves. And, all the while, the
path of the moon over the sea was growing stronger--laying, it would
seem, an even firmer pathway of silver stretching to the very foot of
the cliff-side.

I am not given to quoting poetry, but involuntarily there came to my
mind some lines remembered from boyhood:

If on some balmy summer night
You rowed across the moon-path white,
And saw the shining sea grow fair
With silver scales and golden hair--
What would you do?

"What would you do?" I repeated dreamily, thinking very likely as I said
them, of two eyes of mysteriously enfolding fire; and then, as if the
fairy night were matching the words with a challenge, what was this
bright wonder suddenly present on one of the boulders far down beneath
me?--a tall shape of witchcraft whiteness, standing, full in the moon,
like a statue in luminous marble of some goddess of antiquity. Only once
before, and but for a moment, had I seen a woman's form so proudly
flowerlike in its superb erectness!

My eyes and my heart together told me it was she; and, as she hung
poised over the edge of the water, in the attitude of one about to dive,
a turn of her head gave me that longed-for glimpse of those living eyes
filled with moonlight. She stood another moment, still as the night, in
her loveliness; and the next, she had dived directly into the path of
the moon. I saw her eyes moon-filled again, as she came to the surface,
and began to swim--not, as one might have expected, out from the land,
but directly in toward the unseen base of the cliffs. The moon-path
_did_ lead to a golden door in the rocks, I said to myself, and she was
about to enter it. It was a secret door known only to herself; and then,
for the first time that night, I thought of that doubloon.

Perhaps if I had not thought of it, I should not have done what then I
did. There will, doubtless, be those who will censure me. If so, I am
afraid they must. At all events, it was the thought of that doubloon
that swayed the balance of my hesitation in taking the moon-path in the
track of that bright apparition. The pursuit of my hidden treasure had
long been so fixed an idea in my mind that a scruple would have had to
be strong indeed to withstand my impulse to follow up so exciting a
clue. (When, alas! has the pursuit of gold heeded any scruples?) Or it
is quite possible that a radically different inclination held this
materialistic excuse as a cloak for itself. A moment of such glamorous
excitement may well account for some confused psychology.

I leave it to others who, less fortunate than I, were not exposed to the
breathless enchantments of that immortal night, those sorceries of a
situation lovely as the wildest dreams of the heart. I looked about for
a way down to the edge of the sea. It was not easy to find, but after
much perilous scrambling, I at length found myself on the boulder which
had so lately been the pedestal of that Radiance; and, in another
moment, I had dived into the moon-path and was swimming toward the
mysterious golden door.

Before me the rocks opened in a deep narrow crevasse, a long rift,
evidently slashing back into the cliff, beneath the road on which I had
been treading. I could see the moonlit water vanishing into a sort of
gleaming lane between the vast overhanging walls. In a few moments I was
near the entrance, but, as yet, I could not touch bottom with my feet,
and so I swam on into the giant portal, into a twilight which was still
luminous with reflections, and to which my eyes readily accustomed
themselves.

Presently I felt my feet rest lightly on firm sand, and, still shoulder
deep in the water, I walked on another yard or two--to be brought to a
sudden stop. There she was coming toward me, breast high in that watery
tunnel! The moon, continuing its serene ascension, lit her up with a
sudden beam. O! shape of bloom and glory!

For a moment we both stood looking at each other, as if transfixed. Then
she gave a frightened cry, and put her hands up to her bosom; as she did
so, a stream of something bright--like gold pieces--fell from her mouth,
and two like streams from her opened hands. Then, as quick as light, she
had darted past me, and dived into the moon-path beyond. She must have
swam under the water a long way, for when I saw her dark head rise again
in the glimmering path, it was at a distance of many yards.

I had no thought of following her, but stood in a dream among the watery
gleams and echoes.

So, once in a lifetime, for a few fortunate ones, all the various magics
of the earth, all the mysterious hints and promises of her loveliness
that make the heart overflow with a prophetic sense of some supernatural
happiness on the brink of coming to pass, combine in one supreme shape
of beauty, given to us by divine ordering, on the starlit summit of one
immortal hour.

For me had come that hour of wonder; for me out of that tropic sea, into
whose flawless deeps my eyes had so often gone adream, had risen the
creature of miracle.

O! shape of moonlit marble! O! holiness of this night of moon and stars
and sea!

CHAPTER IV

_In Which I Meet a Very Strange Individual._

Yes! I was in love. Yet I hope, and think, that the reader will not
resent this unexpected incursion into the realms of sentiment when he
considers that my sudden attack was not, like most such sudden attacks,
an interruption in the robuster course of events, but, instead,
curiously in the direct line of my purpose. Because the eyes of an
unknown girl had thus suddenly enthralled me, I was not, therefore, to
lose sight of that purpose.

On the contrary, they had suddenly shone out on the pathway along which
I had been blindly groping. But for the accident of being in the dirty
little store at so psychological a moment, hearing that strangely
familiar voice and catching sight of that mysterious doubloon as well as
those mysterious eyes, I should have set sail that very night, and given
up John P. Tobias's second treasure in final disgust. As it was, I was
now warmly on the track of some treasure--whether his or not--with two
bright eyes further to point the way. Never surely did a man's love and
his purpose make so practical a conjunction.

When I reached my lodging at last in the early morning following that
night of wonders, my eyes and heart were not so dazed with that vision
in the cave that I did not vividly recall one important detail of the
strange picture--those streams of gold that had suddenly poured out of
the mouth and hands of the lovely apparition.

Need I say that over and over again the picture kept coming before
me?--haunting me like that princess from my childhood's fairy-book, from
whose mouth, as she spoke, poured all manner of precious stones. We all
remember that--and had I not seen the very thing itself with my own
grown-up eyes? No wonder it all seemed like a dream, when, late next
forenoon, I woke from a deep sleep that had been long in overtaking me.
Yet, there immediately in my mind's eye, without any shadow of doubt,
was the beautiful picture once more, vivid and exact in every detail.
Without doubting the evidence of my senses, I was forced to believe
that, by the oddest piece of luck, I had stumbled upon the hiding-place
of that hoard of doubloons, on which my fair unknown drew from time to
time as she would out of a bank.

But who was she?--and where was her home? There had seemed no sign of
habitation near the wild place where I had come upon her, though, of
course, a solitary house might easily have escaped my notice hidden
among all that foliage, particularly at nightfall.

To be sure, I had but to enquire of the storekeeper to learn all I
wanted; but I was averse from betraying my interest to him or to any one
in the settlement--for, after all, it was my own affair, and hers. So I
determined to pursue my policy of watching and waiting, letting a day or
two elapse before I again went out wandering with my gun.

Probably she would be making another trip to the settlement, before
long. Doubtless, it was for that purpose that she was visiting her very
original safety-deposit vault when I had come so embarrassingly upon
her.

However, inaction, in the circumstances, was difficult, and when two
days had gone without bringing any sign of her, I determined to follow
the trail of my last expedition, and find out whether that strip of
rocky coast, with its hidden cavern, actually did stand firm somewhere
on the solid earth, or was merely a phantom coast fronting

"The foam of perilous seas in faery-land forlorn."

As a matter of fact, I did find it, after having lost my way in the
thick brush several times before doing so. I reckoned, when at last I
emerged upon it, that it was a distance of some six or seven miles from
the settlement, though, owing to my ignorance of the way, it had taken
me a whole morning to cover it. Did _she_ have to thread these thorny
thickets every time she came to the little town? No; doubtless she was
acquainted with some easier and shorter path.

However, here was the cliff-bastioned sea-front, and down there was the
boulder on which she had stood like a statue in the moonlight. I craned
my neck over the edge of the cliffs to catch sight of the entrance to
her cave--but in vain. Nor was there apparent any way of reaching it
from above. Evidently it was only approachable from the sea.

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