Chapter 6

The dog gave a low whine and stood shivering, eager but afraid. I continued my blandishments. Little by little the forlorn creature drew nearer, until I put out a cautious hand and stroked his ears. He dodged affrightedly, but presently crept back again. Soon his head was against my knee, and he was devouring my hand with avid caresses. Some time, before his abandonment on the island, he had been a well-brought-up and petted animal. Months or years of wild life had estranged him from humanity, yet at the human touch the old devotion woke again.

The thing now was to lure him back to camp and restore him to the happy service of his gods. I rose and picked up my pistol, which had regained my confidence by not going off when I dropped it. With another alluring, "Here, doggums!" I started on my way. He shrank, trembled, hesitated, then was after me with a bound. So we went on through the forest. As we neared the camp the four-footed castaway's diffidence increased. I had to pet and coax. But at last I brought him triumphantly across the Rubicon of the little stream, and marched him into camp under the astounded eyes of Cookie.

At sight of the negro the dog growled softly and crouched against my skirt. Cookie stood like an effigy of amazement done in black and white.

"Fo' de Lawd's sake, Miss Jinny," he burst out at last, "am dat de ghos'-pig?"

"It was, Cookie, but I changed him into a live dog by crossing my fingers. Mind your rabbit's foot. He might eat it, and then very likely we'd have a ghost on our hands again. But I think he'll stay a dog for the present."

"Yo' go 'long, Miss Jinny," said Cookie valiantly. "Yo' think I scared of any ghos' what lower hissel to be a live white mong'ol dog? Yere, yo' ki-yi, yo' bettah mek friends with ol' Cookie, 'cause he got charge o' de grub. Yere's a li'le fat ma'ow bone what mebbe come off'n yo' own grandchile, but yo' ain' goin' to mind dat now yo' is trans formulated dis yere way." And evidently the reincarnated ghost-pig did not.

With the midday reunion my hour of distinction arrived. The tale of the ghost-pig was told from the beginning by Cookie, with high tributes to my courage in sallying forth in pursuit of the phantom. Even those holding other views of the genesis of the white dog were amazed at his presence on the island. In spite of Cookie's aspersions, the creature was no mongrel, but a thoroughbred of points. Not by any means a dog which some little South American coaster might have abandoned here when it put in for water. The most reasonable hypothesis seemed to be that he had belonged to the copra gatherer, and was for some reason left behind on his master's departure. But who that had loved a dog enough to make it the companion of his solitude would go away and leave it? The thing seemed to me incredible. Yet here, otherwise unaccounted for, was the corporeal presence of the dog.

I had named the terrier in the first ten minutes of our acquaintance. Crusoe was the designation by which he was presented to his new associates. It was good to see how swiftly the habits of civilization returned to him. Soon he was getting under foot and courting caresses as eagerly as though all his life he had lived on human bounty, instead of bringing down his own game in royal freedom. Yet with all his well-bred geniality there was no wandering of his allegiance. I was his undisputed queen and lady paramount.

Crusoe, then, became a member of the party in good and regular standing--much more so than his mistress. Mr. Tubbs compared him not unfavorably with a remarkable animal of his own, for which the New York Kennel Club had bidden him name his own price, only to be refused with scorn. Violet tolerated him. Aunt Jane called him a dear weenty pettums love. Captain Magnus kicked him when he thought I was not looking, Cuthbert Vane chummed with him in frankest comradeship, and Mr. Shaw softened toward him to an extent which made me mainly murmur _Love me, love my dog_--only reversed. Not that I _in the least_ wanted to be loved, only you feel it an impertinence in a person who so palpably does not love you to endeavor to engage the affections of your bull-terrier.

As to Cookie, he magnanimously consented to overlook Crusoe's dubious past as a ghost-pig, and fed him so liberally that the terrier's lean and graceful form threatened to assume the contours of a beer-keg.

VIII

AN EXCURSION AND AN ALARM

As the only person who had yet discovered anything on the island, I was now invested with a certain importance. Also, I had a playfellow and companion for future walks, in lieu of Cuthbert Vane, held down tight to the thankless toil of treasure-hunting by his stem taskmaster. But at the same time I was provided with an annoying, because unanswerable, question which had lodged at the back of my mind like a crumb in the throat:

By what strange chance had the copra gatherer gone away and left Crusoe on the island?

Since the discovery of Crusoe the former inhabitant of the cabin in the clearing had been much in my thoughts. I had been dissatisfied with him from the beginning, first, because he was not a pirate, and also because he had left behind no relic more fitting than a washtub. Not a locket, not a journal, not his own wasted form stretched upon a pallet--

I had expressed these sentiments to Cuthbert Vane, who replied that in view of the washtub it was certain that the hermit of the island had not been a pirate, as he understood they never washed. I said neither did any orthodox hermit, to which Mr. Vane rejoined that he probably was not orthodox but a Dissenter. He said Dissenters were so apt to be peculiar, don't you know?

One morning, instead of starting directly after breakfast for the cave, Mr. Shaw busied himself in front of the supply tent with certain explosives which were to be used in the digging operations later. The neighborhood of these explosives was a great trial to Aunt Jane, who was constantly expecting them to go off. I rather expected it too, and used to shudder at the thought that if we all went soaring heavenward together we might come down inextricably mixed. Then when the Rufus Smith returned and they tried to sort us out before interment, I might have portions of Violet, for instance, attributed to me. In that case I felt that, like Bill Halliwell, I should walk.

Having inquired of the Honorable Cuthbert and found that for an hour or two the boat would not be in requisition, I permitted the beautiful youth to understand that I would not decline an invitation to be rowed about the cove. Mr. Shaw had left his marine glasses lying about, and I had been doing some exploring with them. Under the great cliffs on the north shore of the bay I had seen an object that excited my curiosity. It seemed to be the hull of a small vessel, lying on the narrow strip of rocks and sand under the cliff. Now wreckage anywhere fills me with sad and romantic thoughts, but on the shore of a desolate island even a barrel-hoop seems to suffer a sea-change into something rich and strange. I therefore commanded the b. y. to row me over to the spot where the derelict lay.

I lay back idly in the stern as the boat skimmed over the smooth water beneath the strokes of my splendid oarsman. More than ever he looked like the island god. Every day he grew more brown and brawny, more superb in his physical vigor. But his hands, once so beautiful, were getting rough and hard with toil. There was a great raw bruise on his arm. I exclaimed pityingly.

"Oh, it's nothing. We get knocked about a bit by the sea in the cave now and then."

"You mean you are risking your lives every day for the sake of this legendary treasure that you have no _reasonable_ reason to suppose is there."

"Perhaps not," he admitted, "but then it's such good fun looking, you know."

"That's according to one's idea of fun," I said ironically.

"Oh, well, a chap can't spend his days on flowery beds of ease, of course. Really, I find this story-book kind of thing we're doing is _warm stuff_, as you Americans say. And then there's Shaw--think of the difference it will make to the dear old chap if we find the gold--buy a ship of his own and snap his fingers at the P. & O."

"And you'll go along as cabin-boy or something?" "'Fraid not," he said quite simply. "A chap has his bit to do at home, you know."

The cliffs on the north shore of the cove were considerably higher than on the other side. The wreck lay close in, driven high upon the narrow shelf of rocks and sand at the base of the sheer ascent. Sand had heaped up around her hull and flung itself across her deck like a white winding-sheet. Surprisingly, the vessel was a very small one, a little sloop, indeed, much like the fragile pleasure-boats that cluster under the Sausalito shore at home. The single mast had been broken off short, and the stump of the bowsprit was visible, like a finger beckoning for rescue from the crawling sand. She was embedded most deeply at the stem, and forward of the sand-heaped cockpit the roof of the small cabin was still clear.

"Poor forlorn little boat!" I said. "What in the world do you suppose brought such a mite of a thing to this unheard-of spot?"

"Perhaps she belonged to the copra chap. One man could handle her."

"What would he want with her? A small boat like this is better for fishing and rowing about the cove."

"Perhaps she brought him here from Panama, though he couldn't have counted on taking back a very bulky cargo."

"Then why leave her strewn about on the rocks? And besides"--here the puzzle of Crusoe recurred to me and seemed to link itself with this--"then how did he get away himself?"

But my oarsman was much more at home on the solid ground of fact than on the uncharted waters of the hypothetical.

"Don't know, I'm sure," he returned uninterestedly. Evidently the hermit had got away, so why concern one's self about the method? I am sure the Light Brigade must have been made up of Cuthbert Vanes. "Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do or die--"

We rowed in close under the port bow of the sloop, and on the rail I made out a string of faded letters. I began excitedly to spell them out.

"I--s--l--oh, _Island Queen_! You see she did belong here. Probably she brought the original porcine Adam and Eve to the island."

"Luckily forgot the snake, though!" remarked the Honorable Bertie with unlooked-for vivacity. For so far Aunt Jane's trembling anticipations had been unfulfilled by the sight of a single snake, a fact laid by me to the credit of St. Patrick and by Cookie to that of the pigs.

"Snakes 'd jes' be oysters on de half shell to dem pigs," declared Cookie.

As we rowed away from the melancholy little derelict I saw that near by a narrow gully gave access to the top of the cliff, and I resolved that I would avail myself of this path to visit the _Island Queen_ again. My mind continued to dwell upon the unknown figure of the copra gatherer. Perhaps the loss of his sloop had condemned him to weary months or years of solitude upon the island, before the rare glimmer of a sail or the trail of a steamer's smoke upon the horizon gladdened his longing eyes. Hadn't he grown very tired of pork, and didn't his soul to this day revolt at a ham sandwich? What would he say if he ever discovered that he might have brought away a harvest of gold instead of copra from the island? Last but not least, did not his heart and conscience, if he by chance possessed them, ache horribly at the thought of the forsaken Crusoe?

Suddenly I turned to Cuthbert Vane.

"How do you know, really, that he ever did leave the island?" I demanded.

"Who--the copra chap? Well, why else was the cabin cleared out so carefully--no clothes left about or anything?"

"That's true," I acknowledged. The last occupant of the hut had evidently made a very deliberate and orderly business of packing up to go.

We drifted about the cove for a while, then steered into the dim murmuring shadow of the treasure-cavern. It was filled with dark-green, lisping water, and a continual resonant whispering in which you seemed to catch half-framed words, and the low ripple of laughter. Mr. Vane indicated the point at which they had arrived in their exploration among the fissures opening from the ledge.

The place held me with its fascination, but we dared not linger long, for as the tide turned one man would have much ado to manage the boat. So we slid through the archway into the bright sunshine of the cove, and headed for the camp.

As we neared the beach we saw a figure pacing it. I knew that free stride. It was Dugald Shaw. And quite unexpectedly my heart began to beat with staccato quickness. Dugald Shaw, who didn't like me and never looked at me--except just sometimes, when he was perfectly sure I didn't know it. Dugald Shaw, the silent, unboastful man who had striven and starved and frozen on the dreadful southern ice-fields, who had shared the Viking deeds of the heroes--whom just to think of warmed my heart with a safe, cuddled, little-girl feeling that I had never known since I was a child on my father's knee. There he was, waiting for us, and splashing into the foam to help Cuthbert beach the boat--he for whom a thousand years ago the skalds would have made a saga--

The b. y. hailed him cheerfully as we sprang out upon the sand. But the Scotchman was unsmiling.

"Make haste after your tools, lad," he ordered. "We'll have fine work now to get inside the cave before the turn."

Those were his words; his tone and his grim look meant, _So in spite of all my care you are being beguiled by a minx_--

It was his tone that I answered.

"Oh, don't scold Mr. Vane!" I implored. "Every paradise has its serpent, and as there are no others here I suppose I am it. Of course all lady serpents who know their business have red hair. Don't blame Mr. Vane for what was naturally all my fault."

Not a line of his face changed. Indeed, before my most vicious stabs it never did change. Though of course it would have been much more civil of him, and far less maddening, to show himself a little bit annoyed.

"To be sure it seems unreasonable to blame the lad," he agreed soberly, "but then he happens to be under my authority."

"Meaning, I suppose, that you would much prefer to blame _me_," I choked.

"There's logic, no doubt, in striking at the root of the trouble," he admitted, with an air of calm detachment.

"Then strike," I said furiously, "strike, why don't you, and not beat about the bush so!" Because then he would be quite hopelessly in the wrong, and I could adopt any of several roles--the coldly haughty, the wounded but forgiving, etc., with great enjoyment.

But without a change in his glacial manner he quite casually remarked:

"It would seem I had struck--home."

I walked away wishing the dynamite would go off, even if I had to be mixed with Violet till the last trump.

Fortunately nobody undertook to exercise any guardianship over Crusoe, and the little white dog bore me faithful company in my rambles. Mostly these were confined to the neighborhood of the cove. I never ventured beyond Lookout ridge, but there I went often with Crusoe, and we would sit upon a rock and talk to each other about our first encounter there, and the fright he had given me. Everybody else had gone, gazed and admired. But the only constant pilgrim, besides myself, was, of all people, Captain Magnus. Soon between us we had worn a path through the woods to the top of the ridge. The captain's unexpected ardor for scenery carried him thither whenever he had half an hour to spare from the work in the cave. Needless to say, Crusoe and I timed our visits so as not to conflict with his. A less discreet beast than Crusoe would long ere this have sampled the captain's calves, for the sailor missed no sly chance to exasperate the animal. But the wise dog contented himself with such manifestations as a lifted lip and twitching ears, for he had his own code of behavior, and was not to be goaded into departing from it.

One day, as Crusoe and I came down from the ridge, we met Captain Magnus ascending. I had in my hand a small metal-backed mirror, which I had found, surprisingly, lying in a mossy cleft between the rocks. It was a thing such as a man might carry in his pocket, though on the island it seemed unlikely that any one would do' so. I at once attributed the mirror to Captain Magnus, for I knew that no one else had been to the ridge for days. I was wondering as I walked along whether by some sublime law of compensation the captain really thought himself beautiful, and sought this retired spot to admire not the view but his own physiognomy.

When the captain saw me he stopped full in the path. There was a growth of fern on either side. I approached slowly, and, as he did not move, paused, and held out the mirror.

"I think you must have dropped this, Captain Magnus. I found it on the rocks."

For an instant his face changed. His evasive eyes were turned to me searchingly and sharply. He took the glass from my hand and slipped it into his pocket. I made a movement to pass on, then stopped, with a faint dawning of discomfort. For the heavy figure of the captain still blocked the path..

A dark flush had come into the man's face. His yellow teeth showed between his parted lips. His eyes had a swimming brightness.

"What's your hurry?" he remarked, with a certain insinuating emphasis.

I began to tremble.

"I am on my way back to camp, Captain Magnus. Please let me pass."

"It won't do no harm if you're a little late. There ain't no one there keepin' tab. Ain't you always a-strayin' off with the Honorable? I ain't so pretty, but--"

"You are impertinent. Let me pass."

"Oh, I'm impert'nent, am I? That means fresh, maybe. I'm a plain man and don't use frills on my langwidge. Well, when I meets a little skirt that takes my eyes there ain't no harm in lettin' her know it, is there? Maybe the Honorable could say it nicer--"

With a forward stride he laid a hand upon my arm. I shook him off and stepped back. Fear clutched my throat. I had left my revolver in my quarters. Oh, the dreadful denseness of these woods, the certainty that no wildest cry of mine could pierce them!

And then Crusoe, who had been waiting quietly behind me in the path, slipped in between us. Every hair on his neck was bristling. The lifted upper lip snarled unmistakably. He gave me a swift glance which said, _Shall I spring_?

Quite suddenly the gorilla blandishments of Captain Magnus came to an end.

"Say," he said harshly, "hold back that dog, will you? I don't want to kill the cur."

"You had better not," I returned coldly. "I should have to explain how it happened, you know. As it is I shall say nothing. But I shall not forget my revolver again when I go to walk."

And Crusoe and I went swiftly down the path which the captain no longer disputed.

IX

"LASSIE, LASSIE. . ."

Two or three days later occurred a painful episode. The small unsuspected germ of it had lain ambushed in a discourse of Mr. Shaw's, delivered shortly after our arrival on the island, on the multifarious uses of the cocoa-palm. He told how the juice from the unexpanded flower-spathes is drawn off to form a potent toddy, so that where every prospect pleases man may still be vile. Cookie, experimentally disposed, set to work. Mr. Vane, also experimentally, sampled the results of Cookie's efforts. The liquor had merely been allowed to ferment, whereas a complicated process is necessary for the manufacture of the true arrack, but enough had been achieved to bring about dire consequences for Cuthbert Vane, who had found the liquid cool and refreshing, and was skeptical about its potency.

Aunt Jane took the matter very hard, and rebuked the ribald mirth of Mr. Tubbs. He had to shed tears over a devastating poem called "The Drunkard's Home," before she would forgive him. Cookie made his peace by engaging to vote the prohibition ticket at the next election. My own excuses for the unfortunate were taken in very ill part. My aunt said she had always understood that life in the tropics was very relaxing to the moral fiber, and mine was certainly affected--and besides she wasn't certain that barons wore coronets anyhow.

Mr. Shaw was disturbed over Cuthbert, who was not at all bad, only queer and sleepy, and had to be led away to slumber in retirement. Also, it was an exceptionally low tide and Mr. Shaw had counted on taking advantage of it to work in the cave. Now Cuthbert was laid up--

"You and I will have to manage by ourselves, Magnus."

"Nothing doing--boat got to be patched up--go out there without it and get caught!" growled the captain.

"Well, lend a hand, then. We can be ready with the boat inside an hour."

The captain hesitated queerly. His wandering eyes seemed to be searching in every quarter for something they did not find. At last he mumbled that he thought he felt a touch of the sun, and had decided to lay off for the afternoon and make his way across the island. He said he wanted to shoot water-fowl and that they had all been frightened away from the cove, but that with the glass he had seen them from Lookout thickly about the other bay.

"Very well," said the Scotchman coldly. "I suppose you must suit yourself. I can get the boat in shape without help, I dare say." I saw him presently looking in an annoyed and puzzled fashion after the vanishing figure of the sailor.

Mr. Tubbs and the umbrellas soon disappeared into the woods. I believe the search for Bill Halliwell's tombstone was no longer very actively pursued, and that the trio spent their time ensconced in a snug little nook with hammocks and cushions, where Mr. Tubbs beguiled the time with reading aloud--Aunt Jane and Violet both being provided with literature--and relating anecdotes of his rise to greatness in the financial centers of the country. I more than suspected Mr. Tubbs of feeling that such a bird in the hand as Aunt Jane was worth many doubloons in the bush. But in spite of uneasiness about the future, for the present I rested secure in the certainty that they could not elope from the island, and that there was no one on it with authority to metamorphose Aunt Jane into Mrs. Hamilton H. Tubbs.

The waters of the cove had receded until a fringe of rocks under the high land of the point, usually covered, had been left bare. I had watched the emergence of their black jagged surfaces for some time before it occurred to me that they offered a means of access to the cave. The cave--place of fascination and mystery! Here was the opportunity of all others to explore it, unhampered by any one, just Crusoe and I alone, in the fashion that left me freest to indulge my dreams.

I waited until the Scotchman's back was safely turned, because if he saw me setting forth on this excursion he was quite certain to command me to return, and I had no intention of submitting to his dictatorial ways and yet was not sure how I was successfully to defy him. I believed him capable of haling me lack by force, while tears or even swoons left him unmoved. Of course he would take the absurd ground that the cave was dangerous, in the face of the glaring fact that a girl who had come to this island solely to protect Aunt Jane ought certainly to be able to protect herself. Besides, what right had he to care if I was drowned, anyhow?

But of course I was not going to be.