CHAPTER XXX

THE CAPTAIN MAKES A PROPOSAL

‘Mr. Ruddiman and I got ashore and walked a little way up the beach, to see what sort of spot we had been cast away on. It was a small island, betwixt two and three miles long, and about a mile wide in the middle of it. There were no natives to be seen. We might be sure that it was uninhabited. There was nothing to eat upon it, and though we spent the hours till it came on dark in searching for fresh water, we found none. This made us resolve to land all we could out of the brigantine when daylight should arrive. The weather cleared at midnight, the stars shone, and the sea smoothed down with a light swell from the north-west, which the trend of the reef shouldered off and left the water about the stranded craft calm. As soon as daylight came we got aboard, and rigged a whip on the fore-yardarm, and by noon we had landed provisions enough, along with fresh water and wines and spirits in jars, to last us two men for three months; but that didn’t satisfy us. There was no other land in sight all round the horizon; we were without a boat; and though, if the vessel broke up, we had made up our minds to turn to and save as much of her as we could handle that might wash ashore, so as to have the materials for a raft at hand if it should come to it, we hadn’t the heart to talk of such a thing then, in the middle of that wide ocean, with such a sun as was shining over our heads all day, and the sure chance of the first of any squall or bit of dirty weather that might come along adrowning of us. So we continued to break out all we could come at. We worked our way out of the hold into the lazarette, and after we had made a trifle of clearance there, we came across three chests heavily padlocked and clamped with iron. “What’s here?” says Mr. Ruddiman. “If these ain’t treasure-chests like to what the Spanish marchants sends away gold in along the coast my eyes ain’t mates,” he says. He went away to the carpenter’s chest, and returned with a crow and a big hammer, and let fly at one of the padlocks, and struck a staple off short. We lifted the lid, and found the chest full of Spanish pieces of gold. The other two was the same, full up with minted gold; and we reckoned that in all three chests there couldn’t be less in the value of English money than a hundred and eighty to two hundred thousand pounds! It wasn’t to be handled in the chests; so we made parcels of it in canvas wrappers; and by the time the dusk drew down, we had landed every farden of it.’

Once more he broke off and went to the drawer. I watched him with profound anxiety, incapable of imagining what he was about to produce, and collecting all my faculties, so to speak, ready for whatever was to come. He took from the drawer, however, nothing more alarming than a piece of folded parchment, round which some green tape was tied. This he opened with trembling hands, smoothed out the sheet of parchment upon the table, and invited me to approach. The outline, formed of thick strokes of ink, represented an island. Its shape had something of the look of a bottle with the neck of it broken away. It lay due north and south according to the points of the compass marked by hand upon the parchment; and towards the north end of it, on the eastern side, there was a somewhat spacious indent, signifying, as I supposed, a lagoon. Over the face of this outline were a number of crosses irregularly dotted about to express vegetation. In the centre of the lagoon was a black spot like a little blot of ink, with an arrow pointing from it to another little blot in the heart of the island bearing due east from the mark in the indent or lagoon. In the corner of the sheet of parchment were written in a bold hand the figures, Long. 120° 3′ W.; Lat. 33° 6′ S.

‘This,’ said he, in a voice vibratory with excitement and emotion, ‘is the island.’ I inclined my head. ‘You see how it lies, sir,’ he continued, pointing with a shaking forefinger to the latitude and longitude of the place in the corner. ‘Easter Island bears due north-east from it. That will be the nearest land. Supposing you start from Valparaiso, a due west-by-south course would run you stem on to the reef.’

I waited for him to proceed. He drew away by a step, that he might keep his eyes upon my face, whilst he continued to hold his trembling forefinger pressed down upon his little chart.

‘We agreed to bury the gold,’ he said; ‘to hide it somewhere where we should be easily able to find it when we came to look for it, if so be as providence should ever allow us to come off with our lives from this destitute reef. D’ye see this hollow, Mr. Dugdale?’

‘A lagoon, I suppose?’ said I.

‘Yes. This here mark amidships of it’—he turned his dead black eyes upon the chart—‘signifies a coral pillar about twice as thick as my mainmast, rising out of the water to about fourteen foot. We reckoned that there was no force in nature outside an airthquake to level such a shaft as that, and Mr. Ruddiman and me took it for a mark. We landed the brigantine’s compass, and having hit on a clump of trees, found they bore east three-quarters south from that there coral pillar. We fixed upon a tree, and after trying again and again, made it exactly two hundred and eight paces from the wash of the water in the curve of the lagoon. There we buried the money, sir.’

‘And there it is now, I suppose?’ said I.

‘Hard upon two hundred thousand pounds,’ he exclaimed, letting the words drop from his lips as though they were of lead. ‘Think of it, sir.’

He folded up the sheet of parchment, always with a very trembling hand, replaced it in the drawer, which he locked; and then, after steadfastly gazing at me for some little while, an expression of energy entered his face, and he seemed to quicken from his eyes to his very toes.

‘All that money is mine,’ said he, ‘and I want you to help me recover it.’

‘I!’

‘Yes, you, Mr. Dugdale. You and me’ll do it between us. And I’ll tell ye how, if you’ll listen’——

‘But, my dear sir,’ I exclaimed, ‘I suppose you recollect that you are under a solemn promise to Miss Temple and myself to transfer us to the first homeward-bound ship we meet.’

‘I can’t help that,’ he cried with a hint of ferocity in his manner. ‘There’s this here fortune to be recovered first. After we’ve got it, home won’t be fur off.’

Come, thought I, I must be cool and apparently careless.

‘It is very good of you, Captain Braine, to wish me to participate in this treasure; but really, my dear sir, I have no title to any portion of it; besides, I am a man of independent means, and what I possess is quite as much as I require.’

‘Ye’ll not refuse it when ye see it,’ he exclaimed. ‘Money’s money; and in this here world, where money signifies everything,—love, happiness, pleasure, everything you can name—who’s the man that’s agoing to tell me he can get too much of it?’

‘But you haven’t completed your story,’ said I, strenuously endeavouring to look as though I believed in every word of the mad trash he had been communicating.

‘As much as is necessary,’ said he. ‘I want to come to business, sir. I could keep you listening for hours whilst I told ye of our life aboard that island, how the brigantine went to pieces, how one day Mr. Ruddiman went for a swim in the lagoon, and how the cramp or some fit took him, and he sunk with me a-looking on, being no swimmer, and incapable of giving him any help.’

‘And how long were you on the island?’ said I.

‘Four months and three days. It was one morning that I crawled from the little hut we had built ourselves out of some of the brigantine’s wreckage that had drifted ashore, and saw a small man-of-war with her tops’l aback just off the island. She was a Yankee surveying craft, and a boat was coming off when I first see her. They took me aboard, and landed me at Valparaiso two months later. But all that’s got nothing to do with what I want to talk to ye about. I’ve got now to recover this money, and I mean to have it, and you’ll help me to get it, Mr. Dugdale.’

‘But why have you waited all this time before setting about to recover this treasure?’ said I.

‘I never had a chance of doing it afore,’ he replied; ‘but it’s come now, and I don’t mean to lose it.’

‘What is your scheme?’

‘As easy,’ he cried, ‘as the digging up of the money’ll be. I shall head straight away for Rio, and there discharge all my crew, then take in a few runners to navigate the vessel to the Sandwich Islands, where I’ll ship a small company of Kanakas, just as many as’ll help us to sail the _Lady Blanche_ to my island. I shan’t fear _them_. Kanakas ain’t Europeans; they’re as simple as babies; and we can do a deal that they’ll never dream of taking notice of.’

I listened with a degree of astonishment and consternation it was impossible for me to conceal in my face; yet I managed to preserve a steady voice.

‘But you have a cargo consigned to Port Louis, I presume?’ said I. ‘You don’t mean to run away with this ship, do you? for that would be an act of piracy punishable with the gallows, as I suppose you know?’

He eyed me steadily and squarely.

‘I don’t mean to run away with this ship,’ he answered; ‘I know my owners, and what they’ll think. It’ll be a deviation that ain’t going to interfere with the ultimate delivery of my cargo at Port Louis, and I don’t suppose it’ll take me much time to fix upon a sum that’ll make my owners very well pleased with the delay, and quite willing that I should do it again on the same tarms.’

‘But why do you desire to bring me into this business?’ I exclaimed, startled by the intelligence I found in this last answer of his.

‘Because I can trust ye. You’re a gentleman, and you’ll be satisfied with the share we’ll settle upon. Where am I to find a sailor capable of helping me to navigate this ship that I could feel any confidence in, that I could talk to about this here gold with the sartinty that he wouldn’t play me some devilish trick? _Can’t_ ye see my position. Mr. Dugdale?’ he cried with a wild almost pathetic air of eagerness and pleading. ‘I can’t work out such a traverse as this alone. I must have somebody alongside of me that I can confide in. Once the money’s aboard, we can rid ourselves of the Kanaka crew, and ship a company of white men for the run to the Mauritius. The gold’ll be aboard, and it’ll be my secret and yourn.’

Though I never doubted for a moment that all this was the emission of some mad, fixed humour, I was yet willing to go on questioning him as if I was interested, partly that he might think me sincere in my profession of belief in his tale, and partly that I might plumb his intentions to the very bottom; for it was certain that, lie or no lie, his fancy of buried treasure was a profound reality to his poor brains, and that it would influence him, as though it were the truth, to heaven alone knew what issue of hardship and fatefulness and even destruction to Miss Temple and me.

‘I presume,’ said I, assuming an off-hand manner, ‘that your men have signed for the run to Port Louis and back?’

‘Well, sir?’

‘How are you going to get rid of them at Rio?’

‘Half of them will run, and the rest I shall know how to start.’

‘But what excuse will you have for putting into Rio?’

‘Want of a chief mate,’ he answered, in a deep sepulchral voice.

This threw me all aback again, and thoroughly confounded me. Indeed, I was well enough acquainted with the sea to guess that he was within the truth when he spoke of an easy quittance of the crew at Rio; and assuredly in the want of a chief mate he could find a reason for heading to that South American port, against which it would be impossible for his sailors to find anything to urge, supposing, a thing not to be taken into account, that they had it in their power to insist upon his sailing straight for Mauritius.

But even as I sat looking at him in an interval of silence that fell upon us, a thought entered my head that transformed what was just now a dark, most sinister menace, into a bright prospect of deliverance. As matters stood—particularly now that I had his so-called secret—I could not flatter myself that he would suffer me to leave his ship for a homeward-bound craft, or even for the _Countess Ida_ herself, if we should heave her into sight. Consequently, my best, perhaps the only, chance for myself and the girl who looked to me for protection and safety must lie in this madman making for a near port, where it would be strange indeed if I did not find a swift opportunity of getting ashore with Miss Temple. I saw by the expression in his own face that he instantly observed the change in mine. He extended his hand.

‘Mr. Dugdale, you will entertain it? I see it grows upon ye.’

‘It is a mighty unexpected proposal,’ said I, giving him my fingers to hold. ‘I don’t like the scheme it involves of running away with the ship—the deviation, as you term it, which to my mind is a piratical proceeding. But if you will sign a document to the effect that I acted under compulsion, that I was in your power, and obliged to go with you in consequence of your refusal to transfer me to another ship—if, in short, you will draw up some instrument signed by yourself and witnessed by Miss Temple that may help to absolve me from all complicity in this sotermed deviation, I will consent to accompany you to your island. But I must also know what share I am to expect?’

‘A third,’ he cried feverishly. ‘I’ll put that down in writing, too, on a separate piece of paper. As to t’other document, draw it up yourself, and I’ll copy it and put my name to it, for I han’t got the language for such a job.’ He paused, and then said, ‘Is it settled?’

‘It will be settled,’ I answered, ‘when those two formal documents are made out and signed.’

‘That can be done at once,’ he cried, with profound excitement working in every limb of him, and agitating his face into many singular twitchings and almost convulsive dilatations of the sockets of his eyes.

‘Give me leave to think a little,’ said I. ‘I will have a talk with Miss Temple and settle with her the terms of the absolving letter you are to write and sign.’

‘How long will it take ye?’ he asked with painful anxiety.

‘I shall hope to be ready for you before noon to-morrow,’ I replied.

‘All right,’ said he; ‘the moment it _is_ settled I’ll change my course.’

I took his track-chart and opened it, and with a pair of compasses that lay on the table measured the distance betwixt the point at which we had arrived at noon and Rio. Roughly speaking, and allowing an average of a hundred and fifty miles a day to the barque, I computed that the run would occupy between ten and twelve days.

‘What are ye looking for?’ he asked suspiciously.

‘To see how far Rio is from us,’ I answered.

‘Well, and what d’ye make it?’

‘Call it fifteen hundred miles,’ I responded. He nodded in a sort of cunning emphatic way. ‘Nothing remains to be said, I think?’ said I, making a step to the door.

‘Only this,’ said he. ‘I _was_ thinking of asking ye to keep my lookout, acting, as you will be, as my chief mate, but on consideration I believe it’ll be best to wait till we’ve got a new crew afore ye take that duty. Not that the men could object to my calling into Rio on the grounds that you’re aboard and are good enough as a navigator to sarve my turn; because they reckon that you’re to be transhipped along with the lady at the first opportunity. But it’ll be safest, I allow, for you to remain as ye are this side of Rio.’

‘Very well,’ said I; ‘but I can continue to take observations if you like.’

‘Oh yes; there can be no harm in that,’ he answered.

I opened the door.

‘Mr. Dugdale,’ he exclaimed, softening his voice into a hoarse whisper with a sudden expression of real insanity in the gloomy, almost threatening look he fastened upon me, ‘ye’ll recollect the oath you’ve taken, if you please.’

‘Captain Braine,’ I replied with an assumption of haughtiness, ‘I am a gentleman first of all, and my oath merely follows;’ and slightly bowing, I closed the door upon him.

By this time it was nearly dark. I had scarcely noticed the drawing down of the evening whilst in the captain’s cabin, so closely had my attention been attached to him and his words. Indeed, the man had detained me an hour with his talk, owing to his pausings and silent intervals of staring; though the substance of his speech and our conversation could have been easily packed into a quarter that time. I went half-way up the companion steps, but feeling thirsty, descended again to drink from a jug that stood upon a swinging tray. Whilst I filled the glass, my eye at the moment happening to be idly bent aft, I observed the door of the cabin adjoining that of Captain Braine’s to open and a man’s head showed. It instantly vanished. It was too gloomy to allow me to make sure. However, next moment the young fellow Wilkins came out, no doubt guessing that I had seen him, and that he had therefore better show himself honestly.

I was somewhat startled by the apparition, wondering if the fellow had been in the berth throughout our talk, for if so, it was not to be questioned but that he had overheard every syllable, for there was nothing between the cabins but a wooden bulkhead, and the captain’s utterance had been singularly clear, deep, and loud. But a moment’s reflection convinced me that even if he had heard everything, his knowledge (supposing he carried the news forward) would only help to persuade the men that Captain Braine was a madman, and facilitate any efforts I might have to make to deliver myself and Miss Temple from this situation, should Braine’s craziness increase and his lunatic imagination take a new turn. So, that the fellow might not think that I took any special notice of his coming out of that cabin, I asked him in a careless way when supper would be ready. He answered that he was now going to lay the table; and without further words I went on deck.

It was a hot and lovely evening, with a range of mountainous but fine-weather clouds in the west, whose heads swelled in scarlet to the fires of the sun sinking into the sea behind them. In the east the shadow was of a deep liquid blue, with the low-lying stars already coming into their places. The breeze blew softly off the starboard beam, and the barque, clothed in canvas to the height of her trucks and to the outmost points of her far-reaching studding-sail booms, was floating quietly and softly, like some spirit-shape of ship, through the rich and tender tropic blending of nightdyes and westering lights.

Miss Temple stood at the rail, leaning upon her arms, apparently watching the water sliding past. She sprang erect when I pronounced her name.

‘I was beginning to fear you would never come on deck again,’ she exclaimed as she looked at me with a passionate eagerness of inquiry. ‘How long you have been! What could he have found to say to detain you all this while?’

‘Softly!’ I said, with a glance at old Lush, who was patrolling the forward end of the poop athwartships with his hands deep buried in his breeches’ pockets, and with a sulky air in the round of his back and the droop of his head. ‘I have heard some strange things. If you are not tired, take my arm, and we will walk a little. We are less likely to be overheard in the open air than if we conversed in the silence of the cabin.’

‘You do not look miserable,’ she exclaimed. ‘I expected to see you emerge with a pale face and alarmed eyes. Now, please tell me everything.’

There was something almost of a caress in her manner of taking my arm, as though she could not suppress some little exhibition of pleasure in having me at her side again. Also she seemed to find relief in the expression on my face. She had been full of dark forebodings, and my light smiling manner instantly soothed her.

I at once started to tell her everything that had passed between Captain Braine and myself. I contrived to recite the skipper’s yarn as though I fully believed it, always taking care to sober my voice down to little more than a whisper as we alternately approached the fellow at the wheel and the carpenter at the other end in our pendulum walk. Her fine eyes glowed with astonishment; never did her beauty show with so much perfection to the animation of the wonder, the incredulity, the excitement raised by the narrative I gave her.

‘So _that_ is his secret?’ she exclaimed, drawing a breath like a sigh as I concluded, halting at the rail to gaze at her with a smile. ‘I presume now, Mr. Dugdale, that you are satisfied he is mad?’

‘Perfectly satisfied.’

‘You do not believe a word of his story?’

‘Not a syllable of it.’

‘And yet it might be true!’ said she.

‘And even then I would not believe it,’ I answered.

‘Did he explain how it was that all that gold lay hidden in a poor ship like the Spanish brigand—brig—whatever you call it?’ she asked, her curiosity as a woman dominating for a moment all other considerations which might grow out of that yarn.

‘No,’ said I; ‘nor would I inquire. It is giving one’s self needless trouble to dissect the fabric of a dream.’

‘Poor wretch! But how frightful to be in a ship commanded by a madman! What object has he in telling you this secret?’

‘He wants me to help him recover the treasure;’ and I then related the man’s proposals.

She gazed at me with so much alarm that I imagined her fear had rendered her speechless.

‘You tell me,’ she cried, ‘that you have consented to sail with him to this island of his in—in—the Pacific? Are you as mad as he is, Mr. Dugdale? Do you forget that I look to you to protect me and help me to return home?’

Her eyes sparkled; the colour mounted to her cheek, her bosom rose and fell to the sudden gust of temper.

‘I am surprised that you do not see my motive,’ I exclaimed. ‘Of course I feigned to fall in with his views. My desire is to get to Rio as soon as possible, and ship with you thence for England.’

‘To Rio? But I’m not going to Rio!’ she cried. ‘The captain solemnly promised to put me on board the first ship going home. Why did you not insist upon his keeping his word?’ she exclaimed, drawing herself up to her fullest stature and towering over me with a flashing stare.

‘He’ll not tranship us now,’ said I. ‘I’m like Caleb Williams. I have his secret, and he’ll not lose sight of me.’

‘Oh, what miserable judgment!’ she exclaimed. ‘You are frightened of him! But were he ten times madder than he is, I would _compel_ him to keep his word. Rio indeed! He shall put us on board the first ship we meet, and I’ll tell him so when I see him.’

‘You will do nothing of the kind,’ said I. ‘If you open your lips or suffer your temper to come between me and any project I have formed, I will wash my hands of all responsibility. I will not lift a finger to help ourselves. He shall carry us whithersoever he pleases.’

‘How can you talk to me so heartlessly! I have no friend but you now, and you are turning from me, and making me feel utterly alone.’

‘I am so much your friend,’ said I, ‘that I do not intend you shall alienate me. My judgment is going to serve me better than yours in this dilemma. I know exactly what I am about and what I intend, and you must keep quiet and be obedient to my wishes.’

‘Oh, I should abhor you at any other time for talking to me like that!’ she exclaimed. ‘There was a time—— I shall _not_ go to Rio! He has promised to put us on board a ship going home.’

‘Miss Temple, you talk intemperately. You are in an unreasonable mood, and I will not converse with you. We will resume the subject by-and-by;’ and I half turned, as though to walk off, humming an air betwixt my teeth.

She grasped my arm. ‘You must not leave me. I have been long enough alone. I believe you will drive me as crazy as the captain.’

‘I will see you safely to England first,’ said I, ‘and then you shall fall crazy.’

The tears suddenly gushed into her eyes, and she turned seawards to hide her face. I moved away, but before I had measured half-a-dozen paces, her hand was again upon my arm.

‘I am sorry,’ she said softly, hanging her stately head, ‘if I have said anything to vex you.’

‘I desire but one end,’ said I, ‘and that is your safety. To ensure it needs but a little exercise of tact on your part and a resolution to trust me.’

‘I do trust you,’ she exclaimed; ‘but am I wholly wanting in brains, that you will not suffer me to offer an opinion, nay, even to express a regret?’

‘You would be able to do nothing with this mad sailor,’ said I. ‘Rio is within a fortnight’s sail, and our safety depends upon our getting there.’

‘A fortnight!’ she cried—‘another fortnight of this horrible ship!’

‘Yes; but England is a long way off from where we are. Were you to get on board another vessel, you might be fully as uncomfortable as you are here, unless she should prove a passenger craft with ladies in her. A fortnight more or less could not signify. At Rio you will be able to purchase such articles as you immediately need, and there will be a choice of ships to carry us home in comfort.’

‘I believe you are right,’ said she, after a little pause, with something of timidity in the lift of her eyes to my face. ‘I was shocked and made irritable by alarm. I am sorry, Mr. Dugdale.’

The answer I was about to make was checked by Wilkins calling to us from the companion way that supper was ready.