CHAPTER XVI

THE LOST TREASURE

All the week or more that the Captain was sick, he never, even in his few conscious moments, asked about his ship or where he was. He seemed just to take everything for granted and to have no curiosity about things round him.

Madame Carreau said that sometimes, when he was delirious, he called out orders to his men, but they were always in regard to handling his vessel, and mostly incomprehensible to the Carreaus. Once he muttered something about maps and Morgan, and Madame told us afterward her heart almost stopped beating for sheer excitement. But he only trailed off into grunts and broken words.

After the crisis was past however, and he had begun to pick up strength more and more surely with each day, we all worried a little how we were to break the news to him about his crew’s desertion, and the loss of his ship. When the time came, however, it all happened quite simply and without fuss of any sort.

Madame had brought up his breakfast tray with his first real breakfast of eggs and coffee on it, and he was propped up in the pillows, enjoying every mouthful like a hungry schoolboy, when he turned his head suddenly toward her.

“Sort of funny ain’t it, Anderson and some of the others haven’t been up to see me ’fore this?” he asked thoughtfully. “Or wouldn’t you let ’em in?” Anderson was his first mate. We’d met him at our breakfast party on the Captain’s first visit to the Island.

Madame says she hesitated just a moment, and I guess the Captain’s eyes were pretty sharp, and his wits too.

He drew a quick breath, looking away from her toward the window and then back.

“It would be like Anderson to give me the slip,” he said without any sort of emotion in his tone. “He’s been kind of itchin’ to have a command of his own for some time now. And in this game it’s every man for himself. He wouldn’t find much loyalty in that bunch of swabs we call a crew to hinder him stealin’ the ship, if he was minded that way.” He stared at Madame keenly. “That’s what he done, ain’t it, mam?” he asked. “You got it writ all over your face. I guess you couldn’t lie even if you wanted to, nohow.”

Madame nodded, a little frightened now the secret was out, but he said nothing more except: “You folks here on the Island got a schooner, ain’t you? Calls here every so often?”

She nodded again, and he went on as if he were thinking it all out: “Well, mebbe her cap’n’ll give me a chance to work my passage back to the States. Don’t care much what port.” He gave a long sigh and lay back on his pillows, pushing the tray away. “It ain’t the furst time I’ve been double-crossed, lady,” he told Madame, grinning at the sight of her puzzled expression. “I’ll win out again somehow, an’ then I’ll see that Anderson an’ some of them others sweat for this. But you folks have been real white to me. I won’t forgit that neither.”

He fell asleep after that, so Madame hurried downstairs, and repeated what had passed between them on the subject.

“He’s a rough customer,” Uncle Charles said drily, “and I, for one, wouldn’t care to incur his ill will. I’d hate to be in Anderson’s boots, when he’s well and about again. But I believe the man’s capable of gratitude--perhaps. We won’t trust him too far, but we’ll hope for the best. When he’s able to get outdoors, I propose to tell him frankly our theory about the treasure, and perhaps make up a party to visit the cave and take him along. Just as well to rid his mind of any hankerings after those gold pieces right now, and I guess Gay here, and Madame--not to speak of Mollie and Red, will all be interested in coming too.”

Of course we were enthusiastic about the plan, and Madame was given permission to broach the subject to the Captain, and tell him what we had in mind. She later reported to us that he had been sort of shame-faced when she first spoke of the map, and tried to pass off his action in taking possession of it, as a joke. He pretended to believe that he’d thought the map some play gotten up by the boys and myself to fool Reddy.

Madame let the matter rest at that, without questioning his explanations, but insisted on telling him the whole story, showing him Rosemary’s diary--which made him open his eyes very wide with a kind of blue gleam of excitement she didn’t much care for, she said--and then wound up frankly with the account of our locating the cave of the stream, the old boat, and finally the effect the earth-shocks, and Mt. Pélée’s eruption had had on the cave bed.

“So it’s down there, maybe several hundred fathom,” he had said sort of musingly, when she finished. “Well, life’s a funny business. It ain’t doin’ nobody any good, neither, where it is. And there’s quite a lot of us could use it, if it was in reach, couldn’t we?” He appeared to count himself in as a sharer of the treasure if it were found, though it didn’t seem to us as if he had much to base his rights on.

When he was able to dress and walk downstairs, we found him a very quiet, unobtrusive visitor, anxious to do what he could to save trouble, and expressing himself several times a day as honestly grateful to us for saving his life--that’s what he called it, and what it really was, though the credit for it was due mostly to Madame and Monsieur Carreau.

The first thing he had done, when he could walk about his room, was to rip open the inner lining of his big sea carryall, that the men had brought his clothes ashore in, and bring out the lost map. He had handed this over to Madame Carreau with another apologetic reference to “fooling.” But, as we all agreed privately after she’d told us of his act, he had certainly hidden it pretty securely away for something he regarded as just a children’s joke.

Before either the Captain or my ankle were in traveling trim for the second expedition to the caves, the _Myra_ returned, and with a long sigh of relief all round we shifted our responsibility in the matter of Captain Rawson to Uncle Joe’s shoulders.

Uncle Joe grunted sort of non-committally when he’d listened to the story of the Captain’s return, the way we’d nursed him through pneumonia, and his present expressions of being grateful.

“Maybe he is--for the present, anyhow,” he said with a little shrug. “We won’t strain his gratitude too far. I’ll see he gets a chance to work his way north on the _Myra’s_ next trip--and we won’t put that off too long either, while we’re about it.”

He endorsed heartily Uncle Charles’ plan of showing the Captain the cave of the stream as proof of our story, and two or three days after the _Myra’s_ sails had flashed between the reef-opening, we might have been seen one morning just at sunrise, paddling up the lagoon in the _Myra’s_ dinghy and the green canoe, with plenty of lanterns aboard, and a picnic breakfast to eat in the cave.

Everyone in the family went, even Aunt Mollie, Monsieur and Madame Carreau and little Red. And of course the Captain who appeared in high spirits. As Syd whispered to me on the way, he thought the Captain, in spite of our tale of earthquakes and volcanoes, fully expected by superior cleverness to discover the treasure, and claim at least nine-tenths as a reward for doing it.

Maybe we did him an injustice, but if so we’ll never know it now, for the temptation to show himself in his blackest colors didn’t present itself.

We had no trouble in locating the inlet, or--with the help of all those muscular arms on board--of dragging both the canoe and dinghy across the sand bar in no time at all, and launching them on the other side.

Then we all embarked again, and the journey up the stream began. Aunt Mollie, Madame and Andy were in ecstasies over the beauty of the flowering jungle vines that shut in both sides of the stream, and the effects of light and shadow the interlacing of the trees overhead made on the water. But the boys and I were impatient to get to the cave. We had all been over this route before, and were far too excited to put our minds on the beauties of Nature at the moment.

When we swung around the final bend I found it had suddenly become hard to breathe, and my fingers were clinched so tightly on the edge of the dinghy they were sore for days afterward.

There was the low, black mouth of the cave just before us as I remembered it that first time with Syd. The canoe, which was leading the way with Uncle Joe, Syd, Dan and Monsieur in it, was already disappearing through the cave opening and our dinghy was just behind.

The dinghy, being so much more heavily loaded than the canoe, ran aground about twenty feet before the canoe did. In fact we found, by prodding the bottom with the oars, that we hadn’t grounded on the old jolly boat at all, but upon the floor proper of the cave itself. By the time we’d settled this fact to our own satisfaction the canoe was perched on the overturned bottom of the old boat, and we all proceeded to climb out--all of us, that is, except Aunt Mollie, and Madame, who preferred to keep their feet dry, and look on.

Even Andy, who used to think more of her clothes than being a good sport, forgot herself entirely, and sprang out into the shallow water as quickly as Syd or Dan. It flashed over me as I saw her, that Andy was quite a different girl from the one we knew in Braeburn. She didn’t talk much more, but she was usually ready now for any expedition or fun we others had on foot, and she didn’t hang back, or complain if things went wrong and we got tired or hungry.

And the Andy who came down with us on the _Myra_ nearly a year ago, and who had cried on the lagoon beach when we landed on Sunset Island because she was afraid of snakes, must have had a big fight with herself before she could clamber so unconcernedly out of the dinghy now into cold, black water nearly to her knees, in a dark, underground cave, and never give a thought to possible sea animals under foot. I felt awfully proud of her, all at once.

First of course we explored the cave of the stream, and crept cautiously up onto the overturned boat, to listen to the faint, far-off sound of falling water underground, going down, down into the depths of the sea where Sir Henry Morgan’s treasure lay.

Straightening up from my turn at listening, I found Captain Rawson beside me, his face wearing in the lantern light an expression of disappointment as open and unashamed as Reddy himself might have worn.

“So it was true, after all,” he said. “It’s down there now--millions just waitin’ to be picked up. An’ not a soul can touch a penny of it!”

I felt sorry for him because I knew by my own disappointment what he was feeling.

“I guess it’s there all right,” I said as cheerfully as I could. “And what’s more I guess it’ll stay there.”

He grunted. “A lot of good that does us to know.”

“Come on,” I urged, “the others are going on to the outside caves. Syd says we can squeeze through where the passage is blocked. I guess Madame’ll want to go with us, she’s crazy about this treasure-hunt business. Her son used to take her with him when he was alive.”

“I’ll take care of the little French lady,” Captain Rawson said unexpectedly. His face had softened as much as its natural make-up allowed. He didn’t look quite so villainous when he smiled like that, and for a moment I almost forgot his roughness with poor Reddy, and how he had planned to rob us if the doubloons were found. I guess it’s true after all, that there’s some little hidden-away soft spot in even the cruelest and wickedest folks if you can only find it. I knew then that Captain Rawson’s gratitude was quite genuine as far as Madame was concerned.

She was awfully pleased and touched when he went up to her and asked if he could help her into the other caves, if she wanted to go.

“You don’t weigh no more’n a baby, mam,” he told her, grinning. “You jus’ let me carry you on my shoulder where the walkin’s bad, an’ I’ll promise you you won’t wet the tip of your shoe, nor bump agin nothin’ in the dark.”

She held out her arms to him as trustingly as a baby, saying only, “Thank you, Captain, I am sure you will take good care of me,” and he put her up on his shoulder the way Uncle Joe had carried me when I sprained my ankle.

Syd and Uncle Joe went first, with the lanterns, and the rest of us straggled carefully behind. We made a funny procession, plodding along in that twisty, dark passage, climbing carefully over fallen rocks, and stubbing our toes against crevices in the passage floor.

But after about fifty yards or more of the roughest kind of going, we saw a little glimmer of light ahead. Just in front of us was the hardest blockade to pass we’d struck yet, but we managed it at last, and came through into the inner cave where Andy, Aunt Mollie and I had slept so long ago, and where I had found Rosemary’s locket.

Aunt Mollie, and little Red who was tired, elected to go home by way of the beach, through the outer cave, but the rest of us returned by the passage to the Cave of the Stream, and the waiting boats.

“Syd,” I whispered anxiously, as we passed over the upturned bottom of the old boat, “Syd, don’t you think you could scrape me off a piece of the old jolly boat just for a souvenir?”

He nodded good humoredly and bent down, but, as I had also found it on a former occasion, that half-rotted old wood was slippery flooring to keep your balance on, and with a little exclamation he slid to his knees in the water, dropping his knife.

“And it was my prize whittling knife,” he grumbled in disgust. “Here’s your sliver of souvenir, Sis. Now be a good sport, in return, and help me feel for Old Trusty. It’s bound to be somewheres around.”

Dan, seeing us rooting in the water, came to our help, finally suggesting that we get our hands under the edge of the boat and lift it enough to make anything on top of it slide off into the shallow water. “Only take care to tilt it this way,” he added with a laugh, “or your precious knife will go slipping down to join Morgan’s pieces of eight at the bottom of the sea. The deep hole’s on the other side.”

After maneuvering about a bit, we decided to work our way to the end of the boat, and try to tilt it from there. Uncle Joe and Captain Rawson lent their arms also, and after a good deal of heaving and puffing, we felt the old hulk move. Then I gave a startled scream, as a crumbling piece of the wooden thwart broke off in my hand, and I stumbled backward holding something oblong and heavy.

Examining my catch by the light of the nearest lantern I found that it seemed to be a box, about the size of a quart measure, made of some heavier kind of wood than the jolly boat. It was bound with an iron rim and hoops, and was somehow attached to the piece of wood I had broken off.

“Syd! Uncle Joe! Dan!” I shrieked, as my mind slowly took in the fact of what I was holding. “It’s a box--caught under the edge of the old boat! Bring more light, somebody, please!”

They were round me then, in a second; nobody speaking, but with a circle of curious eyes riveted on the slimy, brown object.

I passed it over to Uncle Joe. “You see,” I begged. “I’m--I’m sort of scared----”

Well, after a while we calmed down enough to pry the rotted wood free of the old hasps, and so, after perfect ages of time to our impatience, got the box open.

The flickering lanterns showed gleams of gold, and other things that were small and hard and sparkled in gay colors where the light fell on them. Pieces of eight--doubloons--some few bits of jewels set in ancient, chased gold and silver pins, a bracelet or two and some rings.

“Watch Rawson,” Uncle Joe said in a whispered aside to the boys and Uncle Charles; but after all, there was no need. It wasn’t a real fortune in that small package, just a few odds and ends of the great pirate’s loot, that had somehow wedged in the bow of the boat when it was overturned, or--as Uncle Joe pointed out was more likely--been secreted there by one of the buccaneers who hoped later to return and retrieve it on the sly.

Anyhow, it proved beyond a doubt to us, the way the rest of the treasure had gone, and after admiring our find a long time in the light of the lanterns, we carried it out to the cave’s mouth, and inspected it all over again in the sunlight.

Uncle Joe held out his two big hands to us filled with the lovely, flashing things.

“First choice to the little lady who found them. Here, Gay-girl--what do you want?”

I drew in my breath and looked--and _looked_. Rubies, and the green of emeralds, and golden coins, all heaped together in Uncle Joe’s familiar sun-browned hands. It was like a story after all--or the nice kind of dream you hate to wake up and leave.

And then I put out one finger and touched the loveliest thing of all there. It wasn’t the most valuable, or I wouldn’t have been selfish enough to claim it.... A little pink pearl, set in a carved ring that had a dragon’s wings round the finger part, and the pearl itself held in the beast’s mouth. It just fitted my middle finger--not too snugly, perhaps, but Aunt Mollie wouldn’t want me to wear it, I knew, till I was older.

“I wonder,” I said, with a sudden shiver at the thought, “who owned it originally, Uncle Joe?”

“Never mind, honey,” he said quickly, “whoever she was, she’s over all her troubles now, poor soul. And perhaps,” he added smiling, “it never belonged to anyone in especial. It’s quite likely it was part of some big merchant’s stores being brought out to New Spain, when Morgan took them. Now, all the rest of you, make your various choices. There’s just enough to go round.”

So we chose and chose, and exchanged, and made up our minds all over again, until nothing was left but the golden doubloons--worth, Uncle Joe figured, about three hundred dollars.

Then Madame did a surprising thing. But she went over first to whisper in Uncle Joe’s ear, and after a moment of close attention, he nodded back, and laid the doubloons in her hands.

“Captain Rawson,” Madame said clearly, with her pleasant little smile, beckoning him nearer, “you have lost your ship, and are starting life all over again. And you have been very kind to me today. As kind, and as strong as my Raoul could have been. We have all made our choice of the treasure trove, and we’d like these pieces of eight to be your share.”

She put them in his hands, and closed his big fingers down over the coins.

“Now,” she said, with a tired little sigh, “let’s all go home. It has been a wonderful day.”

* * * * *

It would surely be what I’ve seen writers describe as an anti-climax, to carry this journal of Sunset Island beyond our finding the jewels and the pieces of eight in the cave that morning. Of course there’s a lot more that I could tell, like Captain Rawson leaving us on the _Myra_, our getting a great avalanche of orders from New York for our candied peel and all of us plunging into a regular orgy of boiling and beating. Then there were Syd’s successful experiments in gardening that produced some brand new types of vegetables for our table, and Andy’s developing a positive genius in making over the old frocks and petticoats in Rosemary’s chest into pretty, every-day clothes for herself and me. Things like that--not really exciting except to ourselves, but making life on the Island so busy and interesting we never knew where the days went to.

There was a storm blowing up from the east when I sat down to finish this journal, and sitting at the desk by my window I could see the surf dashing over the reef and hear the wind singing a high note through the palms.

But while I’ve been writing, the wind has veered round again suddenly, and now there’s the fragrant little Island breeze I love blowing across my room, smelling of desert islands and jungle flowers and hot sunshine on tropical gardens. I wish you could smell it too--and open your own windows, every one of you, to see Sunset Island lying just outside, in a blue, blue ocean.

THE END

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Perceived typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.