Part 18

It was Jerry Dupuyster who gave us the first word of encouragement. At the risk of losing his balance and going overboard he had laid an ear against the _Andromeda's_ side plating. "They're working on it," was the whispered word that came back to us in the breathless suspense; and a little later the coaling port began to open by cautious inchings to show us a widening breach in the yacht's side.

It may easily say itself that there were thrillings and breath-catchings a-many to go with that desperate midnight unloading of the crowded launch through the bunker opening in the _Andromeda's_ side. The coal port was fully man-head high above the water line, and we had no anchorage save our finger holds upon the edge of the opening. How we managed it I hardly know. The women had to be lifted and passed up one by one, and I remember that it took two of us, Ingerson and myself, to get Mrs. Van Tromp hoisted up to the rescuing hands thrust out of the opening. I don't suppose she weighed much above two hundred pounds--no great weight for two able-bodied men to handle--but our insecure footing easily added another two hundred to the effort. While we labored, the increasing shore clamor told us that our time was growing critically short, and in the fiercer spurt of haste that ensued we came within an ace of swamping our frail foothold.

"Quick!" said Bonteck, leaning far out to give me a hand when I was the last man left in the launch. But I had another thing in mind.

"Elijah Goff has set a good example and I'm going to follow it," I whispered hurriedly. "There is a chance that I can get this pushboat back to the beach before the Frenchman finds out that it is gone. If I succeed, you can take him unawares when he comes off to the yacht and have the advantage of a complete surprise. I'll be with you when the clock strikes--if I don't get killed too soon." And I shoved off before he could reach down and grab me, as he tried to do.

With the silent electric drive turning at its slowest speed, I edged the launch seaward, and after a little distance was gained, gave the propeller its full power. In our many patrollings of the beach I had marked an opening through the barrier reef at the extreme eastern end of the island, and through this passage I presently drove the launch, heading it down the lagoon toward the pirates' landing place.

Hugging the shore, I made the approach as cautiously as might be. Everything favored the undertaking. The bonfire had been built a few yards down-beach from the long-boat, and its blaze served to make objects less easily discernible in the wan moonlight outside of the ruddy zone of firelight. The treasure diggers were carrying the last of the precious cargo down from the wood, and Le Gros himself was directing its loading with many gesticulations and a babblement of shrill oaths. Slowly the launch drifted up to the stern of the long-boat and I crawled forward and made the painter fast. The thing was done.

It was done none too soon. There was barely time for me to flatten myself in the bow of the launch before the mutineers began to crowd into the bigger boat. I had only time to make sure that Goff was not among them before the popping engine set up its clamor, and the fat chief flung himself down beside the tiller, so near that I could have reached up and touched him.

"Shove off, then, _mes braves_!" he yelled; and in some confusion we got away and headed for the yacht, the long-boat towing the presumably empty electric launch.

Taking it as a matter of course that Van Dyck and the others, with the help of Haskell and the liberated prisoners, had by this time gained possession of the _Andromeda_, I had an exceedingly bad half-minute when, as the long-boat lost way at the foot of the accommodation ladder, Le Gros got up, stumbled forward, and climbed the ladder to the yacht's deck, unopposed, and, taking his place at the rail, began to screech out his orders to the boat's crew. What had happened during my brief absence? Had somebody discovered the presence of our boarding party and clapped the hatch down upon it before Van Dyck could lead it out of the bunker hold? It looked very much that way.

Meanwhile, my own situation had suddenly become embarrassing, not to say perilous. I had confidently expected to see the fat villain surrounded and overpowered the moment he set foot on the yacht's deck. Since nothing of the kind had taken place, I knew it could be only a few minutes at the farthest before I should be discovered and either summarily knocked on the head or thrown to the sharks--or both. Yet there was nothing to be done, or if there were, it didn't occur to me, though, as the dullest imagination would prefigure, I was trying mighty hard to make it occur.

While I crouched and cowered in the bottom of the launch, endeavoring to make myself look as much as possible like a heap of cast-off clothes, the unloading of the gold bars was begun, with the fat fiend leaning over the yacht's rail to shrill curses at his men. This time there was no roustabout procession. _Sacré_-ing and swearing like a man possessed, Le Gros got his crew strung out in a long line leading from the accommodation grating up the ladder and forward to some point on the yacht's fore-deck, and along this line the gold ingots were passed from hand to hand. Judging from the internal thunderings that began when the mounting stream of heavy chunks of metal got fairly in motion, I gathered that the fore-hold was to be made to serve as the pirates' strong-room. And still our attacking party, if we had one, made no move.

I was sweating like a patient in the hot room of a Turkish bath when the last of the apparently interminable string of gold bars went up the ladder and the fat bandit gave the order which proved his calculated perfidy, and, incidentally, let me know that my time was come.

"Br-ring dose boat to ze davit and 'oist dem aboard!" he commanded; and then, as if this final order had been the signal for which it had been waiting, pandemonium broke loose on the _Andromeda's_ fore-deck. A confused clamor of shots, yells, curses and bludgeon blows rose upon the midnight air, and, hasten as I might and did, the battle was as good as fought and won before I could clamber over the long-boat and dart up the ladder and hurl myself into it.

Upon reaching the deck I saw that I might have spared myself a large share of the anxieties if I had had a little more confidence in Van Dyck's gift of leadership. Like a good general he had been merely waiting for the propitious moment. He had posted his force, which included, besides the engineers and firemen, a good handful of the Provincetown Portuguese who had yielded only to force of numbers when the mutineers took the yacht, at various points of advantage, and choosing the instant when, with its job completed, the long-boat's crew was hurrying forward to man the hand winch and get the anchor up, the yacht's searchlight was turned on and the rush was made. When I got in, the _Andromeda's_ fore-deck was--well, not exactly a shambles, perhaps, but something resembling a bull-ring after the banderilleros and picadores and chulos have been tossed hither and yon and butted and horned into cowering submission, with Van Dyck just tackling the fat chief in a whirlwind grapple that brought assailed and assailant to the deck with a crash that was like the fall of a house.

"What have you done with Captain Goff?" bellowed the victor in the grapple, with his knee in the fat one's stomach; and from the gurgling sounds that issued we gathered that the stout-hearted old Gloucesterman had been made to pay a bitter penalty for his loyalty to us.

"'Ee is mak' us to deeg wiz ze peek-axe in ze wr-rong places!" gasped the fat bandit in extenuation.

Van Dyck got up and turned Le Gros over to Haskell and two of the Portuguese, who proceeded to tie him and truss him like an enormous fowl.

Bonteck wheeled upon me.

"Dick, take a couple of our men in the launch and go after the old skipper. If they've killed him, I'm going to be judge, jury and sheriff for this fat devil and every man who stood in with him!" he raged. And I went quickly, taking two of Haskell's men to help.

Fortunately for Le Gros and his accomplices, upon whom I am sure Van Dyck would have wreaked a swift and terrible vengeance, Goff was not dead. So far from it, when we reached the inland glade, where the forgotten ship's lantern still spread its little circle of yellow light, we found the old man on his knees in one of the numerous shallow holes dug by the gold-seekers, clawing the earth with his bare hands like a crazy old marmot. He had been brutally mishandled and was covered with blood, but when we laid hold of him and dragged him out of his burrow, he fought us madly to get back.

"Mr. Van Dyck's gold--it's gone, slick and clean!" he croaked. "I cal'late I've got to find it afore I c'n go aboard."

My two helpers took his mutterings for the ravings of a man who had been beaten and left for dead--as they were in good part--and among us we pacified him and got him down to the launch. Van Dyck was at the foot of the accommodation ladder when we reached the yacht, so I had a chance to give him a cautionary word.

"Keep the old man quiet until he comes to himself," I warned. "If you don't, he'll publish your little gold-bar plot to the whole ship's company," and I briefed the pathetic little scene we had broken in upon when we found Goff.

"Plucky old duffer!" said Bonteck warmly, when Quinby and his mate had half led and half carried Goff up the ladder. "I've been telling you all along that he was the right sort. But come aboard. We're going to hold a drumhead court-martial and try these amateur pirates right here and now."

"You don't need me for that," I objected. "Let me have a couple of the Portuguese sailormen and I'll take the long-boat and go around to our abandoned camp for the dunnage we left behind."

"Oh, damn the dunnage--let it go!" he broke out impatiently; but he changed his tune when I reminded him that since the abandoned luggage was made up chiefly of the women's steamer trunks, it would be wise for us to salvage it if only in the interests of peace and quietness.

"All right; go to it," he yielded; and after I had picked my crew of two, I took the long-boat and set about the salvaging.

It was a short horse, soon curried. The gasoline boat was fairly speedy, and the run down the lagoon was quickly made. With two huskies to do the porterage, little time was lost in stripping the camp of everything that was worth carrying away, and well within the hour we were back at the _Andromeda's_ accommodation ladder. Waiting only long enough to see the trunks going overside in a whip tackle that had been rigged for the purpose, I went aboard and found that the sea court had been in session, that the yacht's anchor was catted, and that the stage was set for the final act in the drama of the night of alarms.

"We were waiting for you--or rather for that long-boat," said Van Dyck, after I had climbed to the bridge from which he was directing the luggage bestowal.

"What are you going to do?" I asked.

"Wait and you will see," he replied; and then he told me the findings of the drumhead court. The mutineers, with Le Gros for their leader, were members of a Central American revolutionary junta which had its headquarters in New York. At first, the intention had been to capture the _Andromeda_ and use her as a means of transportation for arms and ammunition, and, as Goff had told us, one cargo of the munitions had already been carried and landed. But the secret of Van Dyck's buried gold--which, as it appeared, was no secret at all so far as Lequat and the bandit chief were concerned--had brought them back to the island.

"Goff says they made no bones about telling him that they were killing time in the ammunition shipment, with the cold-blooded purpose of letting us starve in the interval," Van Dyck said in conclusion. "It was not Le Gros's intention to give us any provisions at all when we were marooned, but Goff, who was shrewd enough not to make any resistance when he found it would be useless, overpersuaded him."

"How could he do that?"

"Very easily. He told Le Gros about my silly plot, and showed him how, if that plot were carried out exactly as it had been planned, the secret of the real mutiny could be kept indefinitely. He argued, quite plausibly, as you will see, that in due course of time I would be obliged to confess my plot, in which case, even if we should chance to be rescued by some passing ship, the onus would still rest upon me."

I laughed. "The old skipper is something of a plotter himself, and we all owe him a lot more than we can ever pay. What are you going to do to these pirates?"

"I gave Gustave his choice; to be landed, with his fellow bandits, at the nearest port of call where his country has a consul, or to be set ashore here on the island."

"Good Lord!" I ejaculated. "Surely it didn't take him long to decide against the excellent chance of starving to death in this horrible death trap!"

Van Dyck's smile was grim.

"No; the deciding part of it didn't take him long." He led me to the starboard bridge-end and pointed to the accommodation ladder, where the mutineers, in single file, and each man carrying his allotment of provisions in a sack, were descending to take their places in the long-boat--this under an armed guard with Haskell and Quinby in command.

"They know the tender mercies of their countrymen," Bonteck went on, "and they elected, very promptly, to take the chance they made us take, rather than to be turned over to the authorities. The name of the island fits, after all; it is still 'Pirates' Hope,' you see. Just the same, I'll drop a word somewhere to have them picked up after they've served their time for stealing my yacht."

The anchor, broken out by the hand capstan, was apeak, and the blowers were roaring in the _Andromeda's_ tall funnels when the long-boat returned, to be quickly hoisted to its chocks on the roof of the deck-house. Van Dyck had the wheel, and at his signal to the engine-room the big propellers began to thrash in the backward motion and the yacht drew away from her late anchorage. I stood by until the miniature liner was set upon her course and was leaving the island astern. Then I took the wheel forcibly out of Bonteck's hands.

"You've had it harder than any of us, and I couldn't go to sleep if my life depended upon it," I told him. "If you'll give me the course, I'll take the first trick and you can relieve me after you've had your forty winks."

He protested generously, of course, but yielded at last when he found me obstinate. After he left me, I signaled the engine-room for full speed ahead and a few minutes later turned the wheel over to one of our Portuguese loyalists whom Van Dyck had sent up to act as my steersman. Freed thus from the mechanical duty, I took time for a backward look. The white ribbon of beach, with its dot of fire surrounded by a huddle of motionless figures, had disappeared, and the island itself was becoming a mere blot dimly outlined in the pale moonlight. It was like the waving of the magic wand in an extravaganza. By a few score revolutions of the _Andromeda's_ twin screws we had been whisked out of the age of romance and daring-do to be set down once more among the common-places--and conventions--of the twentieth Christian century.

XIX

THE FORWARD LIGHT

DAWN was just breaking over a sea that was like a caldron of half-cooled molten metal for its colorings when Van Dyck came to take his turn on the _Andromeda's_ bridge, and he rated me soundly for not having called him earlier.

"It is one thing to be generous, and quite another to be a self-immolating ass," was one of the compliments he handed me. Then: "By a streak of luck, one of our Portuguese fishermen turns out to be a passable cook. Get below and you'll find breakfast of a sort waiting for you in the saloon. Fill up, and then go to bed and sleep until you've caught up with the procession."

Being by this time in a receptive mood on both counts, I obeyed the double injunction literally, and ten seconds after rolling, full-stomached, into the comfortable bunk in the stateroom which had been mine before the age of romance took us in hand, I was dead to the world and so continued while the clock-hands made a complete revolution, with some hour or so added thereto.

When I awoke it was pitch dark in the little stateroom cabin, and somebody was knocking at the door. It proved to be Fernando, the new cook, and he was telling me in broken English that he had my dinner on a tray, by which I was made to understand that I had slept past the regular dinner hour.

Turning out for a bath, a shave, and the first change of clothing that had been vouchsafed me in many a long day, I ate the hand-in dinner with the ravenous appetite of the half-famished, and fared forth. Stepping into the brightly lighted saloon, it was hard to realize that Pirates' Hope and all that it stood for in the lives of eighteen of us had ever existed.

If the mutineers had left any traces of their short reign in our dining saloon they had all been carefully expunged. At one of the sections of the divisible dining-table Mrs. Van Tromp, Aunt Mehitable, Madeleine Barclay's father and Ingerson were playing bridge. Through the open door of the smoking-room opposite I could see Major Terwilliger lounging at ease in the deepest wicker chair, with a glass and a bottle and the ingredients for mixing his favorite after-dinner beverage on the card table at his elbow. At another section of the divisible dining-table the professor and his wife were at work classifying a lot of leaves and roots gathered on the island.

Down the companion stair came the tinkle-tinkle of Billy Grisdale's mandolin to tell me that the younger members of the ship's company had already slipped back into the aforetime habit of whiling away the evenings under the after-deck awning. I smiled as I went forward to look for Van Dyck, and the smile wasn't as cynical as it might have been on the other side of the island avatar. The prompt rebound to the normal and the conventional was merely an example of human nature at its most resilient--and best.

Van Dyck was on the bridge, or, more strictly speaking, in the little chart room, pricking out the yacht's course with a pair of dividers, and one of the Provincetown loyalists was at the wheel.

"You, Dick?" Bonteck said, when I drifted in and took the stool across from him. "Had a good nap?"

"If I haven't, it wasn't your fault," I returned. "Whereabouts are we by this time?"

"Off the Venezuelan coast, and only a few hours run from La Guaira. It's the majority vote of the ship's company that we ought not to be cheated out of the best part of our winter cruise, and we'll put in at La Guaira and take a run up to Caracas while Goff is refitting the yacht and laying in stores. I hope that falls in with your notion."

I let my vote stand over until I could ask about Goff.

"Uncle Elijah isn't out of commission, then?"

"Uncle Elijah is made of better stuff than most of us younger fry. He'll be up and around in a day or so; wanted to get up to-day and take over his job, but I wouldn't let him. But how about you? Will the La Guaira stop fit in with your longings?"

"Admirably. There is a revived copper mining prospect about to be exploited near Aroa, and with your kind permission I'll quit you at La Guaira and run over to Tucacas. There's a railway from that port to Aroa, and I heard, while I was waiting for you in New Orleans, that there might be an opening for an American engineer."

"Um," he grunted, without looking up, "so you're planning to desert, are you?"

"If you call it desertion, yes. I know when I've had enough, Bonteck."

"I don't think you do," he said with a queer grimace. "But let that stand over for a minute or so. Don't you want to be brought up to date in the treasure-trove adventure? I should think you would."

"If there is anything remaining that I haven't seen and felt and tasted," I returned.

"There is," he chuckled. "As the older novelists would remark, the half has not been told. Item Number One is a small problem in arithmetic. You helped me dig up Madeleine's ransom, and you counted the pieces, didn't you?"

"I did."

"You'd be willing to go into court and swear that there were forty of the gold bars; no more and no less; wouldn't you?"

"I should."

"And we dug them all out--all there were in that particular spot, didn't we?"

"I thought we did."

"Good. So did I. Yet the fact remains that there are eighty-three gold bars safely stowed away in the yacht's fore-hold; forty of one kind and forty-three of another. How do you account for that?"

I laughed. "It simply means that Le Gros was more thorough than we were. He found your planting, as well as that of the _Santa Lucia's_ crew."

"He did. But the double find was due to Goff's effort to gain time for us, rather than to the fat bandit's thoroughness. When we left Goff waiting for his recapture, the first thing he did was to heave the chunk of coral out of the way so that there wouldn't be any landmark. Then, when Le Gros and his men came, Goff pointed out first one place and then another, until he had them digging all over the glade. That is why they beat him so savagely; and it was after he was knocked out that they stumbled upon both hoards."

"Both in the same place?" I asked.

"Goff says they were not. He was just coming back to consciousness when they were starting to carry the stuff down to the beach. There were two heaps of it. In his battered condition Goff didn't realize the truth; he merely thought he was seeing double. Afterward, so he says, he got a crazy notion in his head that the pirates hadn't found my gold at all, and that it was up to him to find it. That was what he was trying to do when you went after him."

"I know," I said; "Are there any more knots in the tangle?"

"Just one. When I went below last night to turn in, Billy Grisdale was waiting for me with tears in his eyes; said he'd lost all his hopes of heaven, and begged me to turn back to the island and let him have men enough to go ashore and dig some more in the gold plantation--that we were leaving Edie's dowry behind. I asked him what he meant, and he told me. He and Edie had been the first to take fire when I told the old story of the Spanish treasure ship, and they had gone about looking for landmarks and digging haphazard in one place and another."

"And, of course, they stumbled upon the chunk of coral, rolled it away, and dug under it," I filled in, recalling instantly what Billy had said to me about buried treasure and the ownership thereof on the night of Ingerson's attempted suicide.

"You've said it. Naturally, it was my planting that they uncovered--not the Spaniards', but never having so much as heard of my earlier visit to the island, there was nothing to make them suspect that it was not the _Santa Lucia_ hoard that they had unearthed. Their first impulse was to run back to camp and shout the good news; but the cannier second thought prevailed. They reburied the stuff in the hole they had made, marked the place as well as they could--but not with the chunk of coral they had rolled aside,--and came away and left it, meaning to part with their secret only when a rescue ship should come along."

"What did you tell Billy?"

He grinned. "I took him into the fore-hold and showed him the pile of gold bars. As you would imagine, he was paralyzed when he counted and found there were eighty-three of them. 'There were forty-three--I'm sure there were only forty-three,' he kept saying over and over."