Part 9

For once, old Jack--generally so much more to be depended upon than I, being a more gifted person all round, and infinitely smarter and more wide awake than your humble servant, the present scribe--old Jack, the acute, was caught napping. It was his watch, and he ought, undoubtedly, to have been awake--wide awake. Instead of that he was asleep--fast asleep--when, as he described the event afterwards, he was awakened by being stirred in the ribs by someone's foot.

Assuming that it was I who took this liberty with him, Jack lashed out with his own foot, and hacked someone violently upon the shin, eliciting an oath which, I am glad to say, Jack instantly realised could not have proceeded from lips so refined as mine.

"Come, sit up!" said a strange and yet familiar voice, with added expletives which I omit. It may be taken as understood that in the subsequent conversation there was an oath to every three words of one of the speakers, for this was a person who, I may tell you, was quite unable to speak the Queen's English without a large admixture of strong language: there are such people--more than are needed.

Jack opened his eyes with a start, and recognised James Strong. Then he twisted round and felt for his rifle, which lay at his side ready for emergency; but he could not find it.

Strong, who held a revolver in his left hand, laughed aloud.

"No, no," he said; "I've seen to it; you taught me that trick, you know. See there!"

Jack followed Strong's eyes to the fire, and there he beheld the butts of our two rifles blazing merrily among the twigs and logs.

"Burn nicely, don't they?" said Strong. "Now chuck that revolver of yours in. No, no! none of that, my lad; if you turn the muzzle anything like in my direction I shoot. I can get mine off long before yours is pointed my way. Drop it out of the pouch, anyhow it comes. You needn't touch it. Open the pouch and shake it out--so!"

Jack was obliged to obey, for Strong's revolver covered him all the time, and Strong was a man to shoot in a moment if it suited him. Jack's revolver fell at his feet.

"Kick it towards me!" said Strong, and Jack was obliged to do so. Strong kicked it into the fire.

"Now then," he said, "that little matter being settled, hand me up the letter you took from Clutterbuck's tin box."

"I haven't it," said Jack; "Godfrey has it."

"Turn out your pockets," said Strong. "You took a copy; I saw you do it. Now, please, no shilly shally--out with everything."

Strong turned over with his foot the few articles which Jack produced from the pocket of his Norfolk jacket. The copy of our precious document was not there.

"Take off that waistcoat," said Strong; "Or, stay, what do I care where you have hidden the blessed thing? Look here, I give you one minute to produce it."

There was nothing to be done. Poor Jack was obliged to reveal the secret places of his waistcoat lining, and to bring out the required document. What else could he do? The man with the revolver is bound to have the last word. If I had been awake, instead of sleeping like a pig by the fire, we might have had him; as it was, Jack was at his mercy.

"Now," said Strong, "go away into the bush; step out one hundred yards, and stay there while I negotiate this snoring tomfool here!"

Jack, feeling, as he said afterwards, that a worm would have appeared a dignified creature in comparison with himself, stepped out his hundred yards, or pretended to; as a matter of fact he remained behind a thorn bush about seventy paces away, determined to rush in at any risk if the fellow threatened me any harm.

Then Strong woke me as he had awakened Jack, by stirring me with his foot, and I am thankful to think that I too "landed him one" for his trouble; for I lashed out just as Jack did, and my foot certainly encountered some portion of his frame, and as certainly elicited flowers of speech which I omit.

"Come, get up!" he said sulkily; "the game's played out."

I started to my feet, feeling for my rifle; it was gone, as the reader knows. Only half awake, I stared at Strong; then I looked round for Jack, who had disappeared.

Strong's revolver covered me all the while, just as he had held Jack in peril of instant death.

"Jack!" I screamed. I do not know what I thought. I believe I had an awful fear that Strong had murdered and buried him. "Jack, where are you?" To my intense relief Jack shouted back--

"All right, Peter; do as he tells you, just now!"

Strong laughed loudly, and swore atrociously.

"D'you hear that?" he said. "You are to do just as I tell you; the captain says so. If you don't, your brains will fly in about two seconds. Your rifles are burnt, so is your revolver; your smart friend wasn't quite acute enough to-night, and he's a prisoner. Hand up the letter, or cheque, or bank order, or whatever it may be that you took out of Clutterbuck's tin box that night. You thought I was asleep, curse you, but that's where you spoiled yourselves."

I handed Strong the document he asked for. "There goes," I thought, "my chance of the treasure!"

Strong glanced at it and pocketed the paper.

"Any bank-notes in that pocket-book?" he said; "if so, hand them over." I had thirty pounds in cash, which he took. I had subscribed the rest to make up Clutterbuck's two hundred pounds.

"Now," resumed Strong, "if you move a finger while I'm in sight I shoot. Come, hands up! Stand!"

He left me standing like a confounded statue, with my hands over my head. Then he laughed, swore a disgusting oath at me, loosened the bridle of his horse, which was tied to a tree quite close at hand, and started to ride away.

*CHAPTER XXIV*

*STRONG SPRINTS AND GAINS A LAP*

Jack was at my side in a moment.

"Quick," he whispered "let's mount and be after him; I shall never be happy again until I have kicked that fellow within an inch of his grave!"

We dashed into the wood for our horses--they were not where we had left them. Of course they were not; the man would have been a fool to leave us our horses--we might have raced into Vryburg before him, and got him arrested! Strong was about as perfect an example of a scoundrel as you would find in Africa or any other continent, but no fool!

We stood and stamped and murdered our native language, diving to the lowest depths of our vocabularies for expressions of hatred and rage and of abuse, and the promise of future dire vengeance. We still stood and raged, when suddenly Strong came riding back.

"You have disobeyed orders," he said; "don't blame me for enforcing discipline. Go back to your place, you--Henderson, or whatever your name is!--hands up, you other!"

"I shall have it out of you, one day, for this, you infernal scoundrel," said Jack, whose temper was now beyond his control. "Get down and fight me on the ground--you may have your revolver, I'll use my fists."

"You fool!" rejoined Strong with an oath; "a man does not ask a leopard to spit out his teeth before attacking him. Go back to your place, I tell you, or I fire!"

Jack did not move.

"You are a murderer already," he said, "and you know it. What have you done with Clutterbuck and his money, you scoundrel? That's his pistol you hold; do you think I don't know it? Never fear, you shall hang one day, my friend!"

For answer James Strong fired his revolver straight at Jack's head. I do not think he had intended from the beginning to murder us. Either he had calculated that his plans would work out without the need of killing us; or he had reflected that his own skin would be the safer, when in England, if he spared ours; for inquiries would certainly be set on foot if Henderson disappeared though few would know or care whether poor I disappeared or not.

But when Jack accused him of murdering Clutterbuck, his comrade--a crime which in all probability he had actually committed, though Jack only drew his bow at a venture--Strong changed his mind and suddenly determined that it would be the safer plan to shoot us both down. Accordingly, he first fired at Jack and missed him clean. Then he fired another shot and missed again, and swore, and turned his pistol on me and fired three shots at me; at the third I fell, feeling a sharp pain in my shin-bone--my leg would not support me.

Jack had drawn a log from the fire and was about to hurl it at Strong when he fired his last shot, at Jack this time, and rode away into the grey of the early morning, before the last named could launch his clumsy missile at him. The shooting of the six shots did not occupy altogether more than ten seconds.

Jack sprang to my side, white and terrified.

"For Heaven's sake, Peter, where are you hurt?" he gasped. "Can you speak? Are you dying? Where is the pain?"

"My leg," I said, writhing, for the pain was very severe. "It's only a broken leg--but it'll lose us the race!"

As a matter of fact, my leg was not broken, as the term is generally understood--there was no bone setting required; but the bullet had carried away a splinter of my shin-bone, having all but missed me, but taking, as it were, a little bite out of me as it passed.

Nevertheless, trivial as the wound was, this misfortune delayed us three weeks at Vryburg; for though Jack doctored me with all the devotion and skill that he could command, the weather was hot, and I suppose there were some wretched little bacilli about of the kind "to play old gooseberry with open wounds," as Jack learnedly expressed it; for my shin became very painful and inflamed before we reached Vryburg, and I was obliged to take to my bed at the hotel there and remain in it for a tantalising spell of three weeks.

As for our journey to Vryburg, I performed it in the waggon. Jack carried me, or half carried me, back to a village on the highroad which we had passed through on the previous evening without stopping, and there we awaited the arrival of the waggon, sleeping in a native hut and collecting, I suppose, the bacilli that were destined to play the part with my wound which Jack described as "old gooseberry." Had we stayed in that village on the previous evening we should have learned that a white man had been living in the place for a month, waiting for friends to come down from Bulawayo, and that he was living there still. This was, of course, our friend Strong, who had deliberately waited a month for us, in ambush, and had sallied after us when we passed through, and caught us napping, as described, over our camp fire.

But we learned another significant fact bearing upon this matter. When the white man originally came to the village a month ago, he was, we were told, accompanied by a friend who lived with him in a hut which the white men made for themselves. But after about a week the little white man disappeared, and the big white man explained that he had gone on to Cape Town, being tired of waiting.

But after another week--that is, a fortnight ago--Umgubi, who was a kind of village herdsman, and looked after the cattle belonging to the chief men of the place, came upon the body of the little white man in a nullah with steep banks two miles or so off the road. Then the big white man said that the little one must have gone astray and fallen down into the nullah, or else an eland or some other big animal had attacked him and pushed him down; and all the natives of the village said that he must have terribly offended his gods for so great a misfortune to have happened to him, and that doubtless an eland had pushed him over into the nullah, or else he had fallen over by himself without the eland.

Only, if that was the case, said our informant innocently, why was there a bullet-hole in the back of his head!

It was when M'ngulu and the nigger had arrived with our waggon and translated the tale for us that we heard the details of this story of Strong's villainy; and I may honestly say that, though shocked to hear of poor Clutterbuck's end, I was not altogether surprised. It was a comfort to think that we had done our best for him by furnishing him with a pistol, while Strong was left quite unarmed. If Clutterbuck, with so great an advantage, was unable to retain the upper hand, there could be, after all, no one to blame but himself.

How Strong dispossessed him of the revolver; by what stratagem or plausible arguments or threats he succeeded in persuading Clutterbuck to part with all that stood between himself and his murderous companion; and how, when he had obtained the weapon, he used it for his fell purpose, will, I suppose, never be known. Perhaps the dark tale of deceit and murder will be revealed at the last tribunal of all; but it is certain that the tragedy must remain one of the mysteries in this life.

Meanwhile, where was the murderer? Half-way towards Hogland and my hundred thousand pounds?

As for ourselves, we determined to collect what evidence we could in order to bring the miscreant before the judges at Cape Town, if we could catch him there; but events proved that the fox was not to be so easily run to earth as we had hoped.

To this end we telegraphed from Vryburg, just a week after our own interview with James Strong, explaining that we had evidence of his connection with a murder, and giving his name and appearance.

But when, three weeks later, we reached Cape Town, we found to our disappointment that the police had utterly failed to find Strong. No person of that name, or answering to the description, had either been seen or had taken passage by any of the late steamers bound for home. The nearest approach to our description of the man "wanted" was of one Julius Stavenhagen, who had sailed in the _Conway Castle_ before our telegram was delivered.

Jack and I looked at one another on receiving this information. If this were Strong himself--and we had a firm conviction that such was the case--then he had not only escaped just chastisement for his crime, but he had also obtained a three weeks' start of us in the race for Clutterbuck's Treasure.

*CHAPTER XXV*

*LAPPED, BUT STILL IN THE RACE*

It may strike some of those who read this narrative that, considering the fact that we had (in a cowardly manner, as they may deem it, and with far too much regard for the safety of our skins) surrendered to James Strong not only our invaluable map of the spot to which we were directed by old Clutterbuck's "message from the tomb," but also the copy of that document which we had been prudent enough to make in case of emergency--that, considering these facts, it did not really matter very much whether Strong sailed for England with one day's start of us or one year's; for he now possessed every available clue to the discovery of the treasure, while we had none whatever.

Our game was played out and lost. Strong had won. We might sail for England to-morrow or this day five years, but James Strong would now both possess himself of and retain the hundred thousand pounds for which we had toiled and travelled and suffered, simply because we were ignorant where to look for either the treasure or for him.

Yet this was not the case, for we--Jack and I--had been in this matter craftier than the fox and wiser than the eagle; and each independently of the other, too.

We discovered this on the morning after Strong's checkmate of us, as I lay by our camp fire, when, intending to spring a mine of surprise and delight upon Jack, I started bewailing the shipwreck of our hopes to find the treasure. Strong had stolen from us, with fiendish cunning, both the plan and the copy. I dwelt upon this disastrous fact because I intended presently to send Jack into ecstasies of admiration for my sagacity by informing him that it did not really matter a bit, seeing that I had committed the whole letter to memory, and knew by heart every jot and tittle of plan and instructions.

But Jack spoiled my little game by saying--

"Oh, I don't think you need worry, old man, about the loss of the 'message from the tomb.'"

"Why not?" I asked.

"I know it by heart," he said, "every word of it; and the plan too--I could draw it exactly. Look here!"

This was disappointing, for I really had thought I was going to score for once over my acute one!

However, we praised one another, and came unanimously to the conclusion that any two foxes would have to take a back seat for cunning if he and I were to drop treasure hunting and take to robbing farmyards! And that is how it came about that the loss of our papers was not so serious a disaster for us as it might have been if we had been "other than we were"--_i.e._ less clever.

So three weeks after Mr. Julius Stavenhagen's departure, or, if you prefer it, Mr. James Strong's, Jack Henderson and I sailed at last from Cape Town; a bad second, of course, but still not without hope that Strong might hitherto have failed to find the treasure when we should have reached the island of Hogland, or Hochland; indeed, it might even prove that, fearing lest we should have remembered the name of the island, he might have hesitated to visit the place at all, in case we should follow and denounce him for the murderer he was.

I did not greatly rely on this last faint hope, however, for Strong was not the kind of man to surrender an undoubted advantage for any consideration of craven expediency. He would rather occupy the island of Hogland, and shoot us if we appeared to disturb him; and that was what we must look out for, supposing that we ever found the island with Strong in possession.

"It would simply amount to a shooting match in that case," said Jack; and I think he just about expressed it.

My leg was quite cured by this time, and my only trouble on the voyage to England was that the _Bangor Castle_, which is one of the fastest passenger steamers afloat, did not travel quickly enough. I was beginning to consume my soul in anxiety to be even with James Strong for his smart trick upon us, and to be "one point ahead" in the matter of the treasure.

But we reached England in due time, and I journeyed straight up north to Hull, in order to lose not a moment in making arrangements for our departure; while Jack took the train at Paddington for Gloucestershire, binding himself first by a solemn promise to come up north the instant I telegraphed for him.

My faithful old friend had vowed to see me through with this treasure hunt, and declared, moreover, that he considered himself under a solemn obligation to discover James Strong and see him thoroughly well hanged for his misdeeds.

So away went Jack for Gloucestershire, and I travelled northwards to Hull and interviewed without delay the shipowners, Messrs. Wilcox, who, I found, ran a line of regular steamers from this port to St. Petersburg and Cronstadt. And first I inquired, with not a little anxiety as to the reply, whether there really existed in the Gulf of Finland any such island as Hogland. The clerk's answer was encouraging.

"Why, certainly!" he said. "Here, Captain Edwards, you can tell this gentleman all about what he wants to know far better than I can. Captain Edwards has just returned from a trip to Cronstadt, and must have passed this very Hogland a few days since."

"At five forty-five last Sunday afternoon," said the captain, a quiet and most gentlemanly little man, who, I was afterwards to learn, was a pronounced favourite not only with his employers but also with every passenger who had the good luck to take the trip in his fine steamer, the _Thomas Wilcox_.

"Do passengers ever land there?" was my next question.

"Well, they don't get a chance, as a matter of fact," said Captain Edwards; "for we never stop. There is nothing particularly attractive in the island to cause passengers to wish to land and explore it. Stay, though; I have heard of one visitor to the place--in fact, I took him off the island eventually, though it was not I that landed him."

"Not just now--this month?" I blurted. The communication gave me a shock, for it struck me that the passenger referred to could be no other than James Strong, who, if he had already visited and left the island, must have taken the treasure with him.

"Now? Dear, no!" said Edwards. "Four years since, at least--if not five. An old fellow--cracky, I should say. He gave out on board the _Rinaldo_, tripping from Hull to Cronstadt, that he was in search of an island to bury treasure in, and asked to be landed in Hogland when he passed it. You remember the story, Mr. Adams?"

Mr. Adams laughed, and said he had heard about it.

I laughed too, to hide my deeper emotions. This was delightful confirmation of my best hopes!

"Was he landed there?" I asked. The captain's first words rather staggered me.

"No, he wasn't," he replied. "He couldn't be without permission from the Russian Government. But he went on to St. Petersburg, got his permission, and was landed by the _Rinaldo_ on her return journey. I took him off and brought him home. Dotty, I should say, decidedly. He was in the rarest spirits, and declared that he had tricked his blackguards of heirs, as he called them. They were not going to touch his money, he said, before they had sweated a bit to earn it--just as he had. Nobody believed he had a farthing to leave. He was dressed like a pauper, and disputed his steward's bill."

Nothing could have portrayed my late revered acquaintance more realistically than these words.

"It's sport, I suppose, isn't it?" continued Captain Edwards. "I am told that numbers of wolves, foxes, and game birds of all kinds come over the ice in winter, and some are caught there when the thaw sets in. You might have a pleasant week--lonely, though; only a few fisherfolk and the lighthouse people. The island is five or six miles in length."

I blushed, and declared that sport was--in part, at least--the object of my visit; but that my main idea was to make some investigations in the hope of finding coal and iron, which were supposed to exist in the islands of the Gulf of Finland as on the mainland of Esthonia on the Russian side of the water.

"Oh, I see!" said Captain Edwards. "Well, look out for my old friend's treasure if you get digging. Who knows you mayn't hit upon something that will pay you even better than coal and iron!"

Captain Edwards laughed merrily at his little joke; he did not dream how near he came to touching the truth.

"Get yourself ready in a week," he added, "and I'll take you out. You'll have to get leave, though, before you can land. Try the Russian Consul; he's a sensible chap, and isn't likely to refuse anyone with commercial intentions that might benefit his country."

I thanked Captain Edwards, and left the ship-owners' office to digest what I had heard.

James Strong had apparently not sailed for Hogland from Hull; or, if he had, he had not revealed his intention to land before sailing. If that was the case, then he would not be landed at all--unless, indeed, he relied upon getting permission from the authorities in St. Petersburg to visit the island, and then returning thence to the spot.

After all, thought I, he would scarcely be so rash as to give himself away by announcing who he was, and why he desired to visit the island of Hogland. He would reflect that the first thing we should do on reaching England would be to travel up to Hull and inquire after his movements; and whether our designs upon him should prove to have reference to the treasure or to the welfare of his neck, he would naturally prefer to keep his whereabouts a secret. He would guess that, though we had lost our maps, we might at least remember the name of Hogland, and that it lay somewhere between St. Petersburg and Hull.

*CHAPTER XXVI*

*HOW WE PROSPECTED FOR COAL*