Part 20

These amazing figures dizzied Mr. Butts, and his face revealed his feelings. He blinked from one party to the other with swiftly calculating gaze. Looking at the angry Hiram, he backed away two steps. After staring at the unkempt members of the Smyrna fire department, ranged behind their foreman, he backed three steps more. And then reflecting that the man of the piratical countenance had unblushingly confessed to the present possession of the disputed fortune, he clasped his hands to his own money-belt and hurried over to Colonel Ward's rock, his men scuttling behind him.

"Don't you believe their lies," bellowed the Colonel, breaking in on Hiram's eager explanations of the timber-land deal and the quest of the treasure they had come to Cod Lead to unearth. "I'll take you right to the hole they sold to me, I'll show you the plank cover they made believe was the lid of a treasure-chest, I'll prove to you they are pirates. We've got to stand together." He hastened to Mr. Butts and linked his arm in the seaman's, drawing him away. "There's only two of us. We can't hurt you. We don't want to hurt you. But if you stay among that bunch they'll have your liver, lights, and your heart's blood."

Five minutes later the Ward camp was posted on a distant pinnacle of the island. Cap'n Sproul had watched their retreat without a word, his brows knitted, his fists clutched at his side, and his whole attitude representing earnest consideration of a problem. He shook his head at Hiram's advice to pursue Mr. Butts and drag him and his men away from the enemy. It occurred to him that the friendliest chase would look like an attack. He reflected that he had not adopted exactly the tactics that were likely to warm over the buried embers of friendship in Mr. Butts's bosom. He remembered through the mists of the years that something like a kick or a belaying-pin had been connected with Mr. Butts's retirement from the _Benn_.

And until he could straighten out in his mind just what that parting difficulty had been, and how much his temper had triumphed over his justice to Butts, and until he had figured out a little something in the line of diplomatic conciliation, he decided to squat for a time beside his own fire and ruminate.

For an hour he sat, his brow gloomy, and looked across to where Colonel Ward was talking to Butts, his arms revolving like the fans of a crazy windmill.

"Lord! Cap'n Aaron," blurted Hiram at last, "he's pumpin' lies into that shipmate of yourn till even from this distance I can see him swellin' like a hop-toad under a mullein leaf. I tell you, you've got to do something. What if it should come calm and you ain't got him talked over and they should take the boat and row over to the mainland? Where'd you and your check be if he gets to the bank first? You listen to my advice and grab in there or we might just as well never have got up that complicated plot to get even with the old son of a seco."

"Hiram," said the Cap'n, after a moment's deliberation, the last hours of the _Aurilla P. Dobson_ rankling still, "sence you and your gang mutinied on me and made me let a chartered schooner go to smash I ain't had no especial confidence in your advice in crisises. I've seen you hold your head level in crisises on shore--away from salt water, but you don't fit in 'board ship. And this, here, comes near enough to bein' 'board ship to cut you out. I don't take any more chances with you and the Smyrna fire department till I get inland at least fifty miles from tide-water."

Hiram bent injured gaze on him.

"You're turnin' down a friend in a tight place," he complained. "I've talked it over with the boys and they stand ready to lick those dagos and take the boat, there, and row you ashore."

But his wistful gaze quailed under the stare the Cap'n bent on him. The mariner flapped discrediting hand at the pathetic half-dozen castaways poking among the rocks for mussels with which to stay their hunger.

"Me get in a boat again with that outfit? Why, I wouldn't ride acrost a duck pond in an ocean liner with 'em unless they were crated and battened below hatches." He smacked his hard fist into his palm. "There they straddle, like crows on new-ploughed land, huntin' for something to eat, and no thought above it, and there ain't one of 'em come to a reelizin' sense yet that they committed a State Prison offence last night when they mutinied and locked me into my own cabin like a cat in a coop. Now I don't want to have any more trouble over it with you, Hiram, for we've been too good friends, and will try to continner so after this thing is over and done with, but if you or that gang of up-country sparrer-hawks stick your fingers or your noses into this business that I'm in now, I'll give the lobsters and cunners round this island just six good hearty meals. Now, that's the business end, and it's whittled pickid, and you want to let alone of it!"

He struggled up and strode away across the little valley between the stronghold of Colonel Ward and his own hillock.

Colonel Ward stood up when he saw him approaching, and Butts, after getting busy with something on the ground, stood up, also. When the Cap'n got nearer he noted that Butts had his arms full of rocks.

"Dunk," called Cap'n Sproul, placatingly, pausing at a hostile movement, "you've had quite a long yarn with that critter there, who's been fillin' you up with lies about me, and now it's only fair that as an old shipmate you should listen to my side. I--"

"You bear off!" blustered Mr. Butts. "You hold your own course, 'cause the minute you get under my bows I'll give you a broadside that will put your colors down. You've kicked me the last time you're ever goin' to."

"I was thinkin' it was a belayin'-pin that time aboard the _Benn_," muttered the Cap'n. "I guess I must have forgot and kicked him." Then once again he raised his voice in appeal. "You're the first seafarin' man I know of that left your own kind to take sides with a land-pirut."

"You ain't seafarin' no more," retorted Mr. Butts, insolently. "Talk to me of bein' seafarin' with that crowd of jays you've got round you! You ain't northin' but moss-backs and bunko-men." Cap'n Sproul glanced over his shoulder at the men of Smyrna and groaned under his breath. "I never knowed a seafarin' man to grow to any good after he settled ashore. Havin' it in ye all the time, you've turned out a little worse than the others, that's all."

Mr. Butts continued on in this strain of insult, having the advantage of position and ammunition and the mind to square old scores. And after a time Cap'n Sproul turned and trudged back across the valley.

There was such ferocity on his face when he sat down by his fire that Hiram Look gulped back the questions that were in his throat. He recognized that it was a crisis, realized that Cap'n Sproul was autocrat, and refrained from irritating speech.

XXIV

By noon the sun shone on Cod Lead wanly between ragged clouds. But its smile did not warm Cap'n Sproul's feelings. Weariness, rheumatism, resentment that became bitterer the more he pondered on the loss of the _Dobson_, and gnawing hunger combined to make a single sentiment of sullen fury; the spectacle of Colonel Ward busy with his schemes on the neighboring pinnacle sharpened his anger into something like ferocity.

The wind had died into fitful breaths. The sea still beat furiously on the outer ledges of the island, but in the reach between the island and the distant main there was a living chance for a small boat. It was not a chance that unskilful rowers would want to venture upon, but given the right crew the Cap'n reflected that he would be willing to try it.

Evidently Mr. Butts, being an able seaman, was reflecting upon something of the same sort. The Portuguese sailors, the last one of the departing four dodging a kick launched at him by Mr. Butts, went down to the shore, pulled the abandoned dingy upon the sand, and emptied the water out of it. They fished the oars out of the flotsam in the cove. Then they sat down on the upturned boat, manifestly under orders and awaiting further commands.

"Then ye're goin' to let 'em do it, be ye?" huskily asked Hiram. "Goin' to let him get to the bank and stop payment on that check? I tell you the boys can get that boat away from 'em! It better be smashed than used to carry Gid Ward off'm this island."

But Cap'n Sproul did not interrupt his bitter ruminations to reply. He merely shot disdainful glance at the Smyrna men, still busy among the mussels.

It was apparent that Mr. Butts had decided that he would feel more at ease upon his pinnacle until the hour arrived for embarkation. In the game of stone-throwing, should Cap'n Sproul accept that gage of battle, the beach was too vulnerable a fortress, and, like a prudent commander, Mr. Butts had sent a forlorn hope onto the firing-line to test conditions. This was all clear to Cap'n Sproul. As to Mr. Butts's exact intentions relative to the process of getting safely away, the Cap'n was not so clear.

"Portygees!" he muttered over and over. "There's men that knows winds, tides, rocks, shoals, currents, compass, and riggin' that don't know Portygees. It takes a master mariner to know Portygees. It takes Portygees to know a master mariner. They know the language. They know the style. They get the idee by the way he looks at 'em. It's what he says and the way he says it. Second mates ain't got it. P'r'aps I ain't got it, after bein' on shore among clodhoppers for two years. But, by Judas Iscarrot, I'm goin' to start in and find out! Portygees! There's Portygees! Here's me that has handled 'em--batted brains into 'em as they've come over the side, one by one, and started 'em goin' like I'd wind up a watch! And a belayin'-pin is the key!"

He arose with great decision, buttoned his jacket, cocked his cap to an angle of authority on his gray hair, and started down the hill toward the boat.

"He's goin' to call in his bunko-men and take that boat," bleated Mr. Butts to Colonel Ward.

"Wild hosses couldn't drag him into a boat again with those human toadstools, and I've heard him swear round here enough to know it," scoffed the Colonel. "He's just goin' down to try to wheedle your sailors like he tried to wheedle you, and they're your men and he can't do it."

And in the face of this authority and confidence in the situation Mr. Butts subsided, thankful for an excuse to keep at a respectful distance from Cap'n Aaron Sproul.

That doughty expert on "Portygees" strode past the awed crew with an air that they instinctively recognized as belonging to the quarter-deck. Their meek eyes followed him as he stumped into the swash and kicked up two belaying-pins floating in the debris. He took one in each hand, came back at them on the trot, opening the flood-gates of his language. And they instinctively recognized that as quarter-deck, too. They knew that no mere mate could possess that quality of utterance and redundancy of speech.

He had a name for each one as he hit him. It was a game of "Tag, you're it!" that made him master, in that moment of amazement, from the mere suddenness of it. A man with less assurance and slighter knowledge of sailorman character might have been less abrupt--might have given them a moment in which to reflect. Cap'n Aaron Sproul kept them going--did their thinking for them, dizzied their brains by thwacks of the pins, deafened their ears by his terrific language.

In fifteen seconds they had run the dingy into the surf, had shipped oars, and were lustily pulling away--Cap'n Sproul in the stern roaring abuse at them in a way that drowned the howls of Mr. Butts, who came peltering down the hill.

But Hiram Look was even more nimble than that protesting seaman.

Before the little craft was fairly under way he plunged into the surf waist-deep and scrambled over the stern, nearly upsetting the Cap'n as he rolled in.

And Imogene, the elephant, a faithful and adoring pachyderm, pursued her lord and master into the sea.

Cap'n Sproul, recovering his balance and resuming his interrupted invective, was startled by the waving of her trunk above his head, and his rowers quit work, squealing with terror, for the huge beast was making evident and desperate attempts to climb on board and join her fleeing owner. It was a rather complicated crisis even for a seaman, accustomed to splitting seconds in his battling with emergencies. An elephant, unusual element in marine considerations, lent the complication.

But the old sea-dog who had so instantly made himself master of men now made himself master of the situation, before the anxious Imogene had got so much as one big foot over the gunwale. He picked up the late-arriving Jonah, and, in spite of Hiram's kicks and curses, jettisoned him with a splash that shot spray over the pursuing elephant and blinded her eyes.

"Row--row, you blue-faced sons of Gehenna, or she'll eat all four of you!" shrieked the Cap'n; and in that moment of stress they rowed! Rowed now not because Cap'n Sproul commanded--nor ceased from rowing because Mr. Butts countermanded. They rowed for their own lives to escape the ravening beast that had chased them into the sea.

Cap'n Sproul, watching his chance, took a small wave after the seventh big roller, let it cuff his bow to starboard, and made for the lee of Cod Lead, rounding the island into the reach. He was safely away and, gazing into the faces of the Portuguese, he grimly reflected that for impressed men they seemed fully as glad to be away as he. They rowed now without further monition, clucking, each to himself, little prayers for their safe deliverance from the beast.

It was not possible, with safety, to cut across the reach straight for the main, so the Cap'n quartered his course before the wind and went swinging down the seas, with little chance of coming soon to shore, but confident of his seamanship.

But that seamanship was not sufficient to embolden him into an attempt to dodge a steamer with two masts and a dun funnel that came rolling out from behind Eggemoggin and bore toward him up the reach. He was too old a sailor not to know that she was the patrol cutter of the revenue service; wind and sea forced him to keep on across her bows.

She slowed her engines and swung to give him a lee. Cap'n Sproul swore under his breath, cursed aloud at his patient rowers, and told them to keep on. And when these astonishing tactics of a lonely dingy in a raging sea were observed from the bridge of the cutter, a red-nosed and profane man, who wore a faded blue cap with peak over one ear, gave orders to lower away a sponson boat, and came himself as coxswain, as though unwilling to defer the time of reckoning with such recalcitrants.

"What in billy-be-doosen and thunderation do you mean, you weevil-chawers, by not coming alongside when signalled--and us with a dozen wrecks to chase 'longshore?" he demanded, laying officious hand on the tossing gunwale of the dingy.

"We're attendin' strictly to our own business, and the United States Govvument better take pattern and go along and mind its own," retorted Cap'n Sproul, with so little of the spirit of gratitude that a shipwrecked mariner ought to display that the cutter officer glared at him with deep suspicion.

"What were you mixed up in--mutiny or barratry?" he growled. "We'll find out later. Get in here!"

"This suits me!" said Cap'n Sproul, stubbornly.

The next moment he and his Portuguese were yanked over the side of the boat into the life-craft--a dozen sturdy chaps assisting the transfer.

"Let the peapod go afloat," directed the gruff officer. "It's off the _Polyhymnia_--name on the stern-sheets--evidence enough--notice, men!"

"I'm not off the _Polyhymnia_," protested Cap'n Sproul, indignantly. "I was goin' along 'tendin' to my own business, and you can't--"

"Business?" sneered the man of the faded blue cap. "I thought you were out for a pleasure sail! You shut up!" he snapped, checking further complaints from the Cap'n. "If you've got a story that will fit in with your crazy-man actions, then you can wait and tell it to the court. As for me, I believe you're a gang of mutineers!" And after that bit of insolence the Cap'n was indignantly silent.

The cutter jingled her full-speed bell while the tackle was still lifting the sponson boat.

"They're ugly, and are hiding something," called the man of the faded cap, swinging up the bridge-ladder. "No good to pump more lies out of them. We'll go where they came from, and we'll get there before we can ask questions and get straight replies."

Cap'n Sproul, left alone on the cutter's deck, took out his big wallet, abstracted that fifteen-thousand-dollar check signed by Gideon Ward, and seemed about to fling it into the sea.

"Talk about your hoodoos!" he gritted. "Talk about your banana skins of Tophet! Twice I've slipped up on it and struck that infernal island. Even his name written on a piece of paper is a cuss to the man that lugs it!"

But after hale second thought he put the check back into his wallet and the wallet into his breast pocket and buttoned his coat securely. And the set of his jaws and the wrinkling of his forehead showed that the duel between him and Colonel Ward was not yet over.

As the steamer with the dun smoke-stack approached Cod Lead he noted sourly the frantic signallings of the marooned. He leaned on the rail and watched the departure of the officer of the faded blue cap with his crew of the sponson boat. He observed the details of the animated meeting of the rescuers and the rescued. Without great astonishment he saw that Hiram, of all the others, remained on shore, leaning disconsolately against the protecting bulk of Imogene.

"It's most a wonder he didn't try to load that infernal elephant onto that life-boat," he muttered. "If I couldn't travel through life without bein' tagged by an old gob of meat of that size, I'd hire a museum and settle down in it."

Cap'n Sproul, still leaning on the rail, paid no attention to the snort that Colonel Ward emitted as he passed on his way to the security of the steamer's deck. He resolutely avoided the reproachful starings of the members of the Smyrna fire department as they struggled on board. Mr. Butts came last and attempted to say something, but retreated promptly before the Cap'n's fiendish snarl and clicking teeth.

"That man there, with the elephant, says he can't leave her," reported Faded Cap to the wondering group on the bridge.

"A United States cutter isn't sent out to collect menageries accompanied by dry-nurses," stated the commander. "What is this job lot, anyway--a circus in distress?"

"Says the elephant can swim out if we'll rig a tackle and hoist her on board. Says elephant is used to it."

Something in the loneliness of the deserted two on Cod Lead must have appealed to the commander. He was profane about it, and talked about elephants and men who owned them in a way that struck an answering chord in the Cap'n's breast. But he finally gave orders for the embarkation of Imogene, and after much more profanity and more slurs which Hiram was obliged to listen to meekly, the task was accomplished, and the cutter proceeded on her way along coast on further errands of mercy.

And then the Cap'n turned and gazed on Hiram, and the showman gazed on the Cap'n. The latter spoke first.

"Hiram," he said, "it ain't best for you and me to talk this thing over, just as it stands now--not till we get back to Smyrna and set down on my front piazzy. P'r'aps things won't look so skeow-wowed then to us as they do now. We won't talk till then."

But the captain of the cutter was not as liberal-minded. In the process of preparing his report he attempted to interview both the Cap'n and Colonel Ward at the same time in his cabin, and at the height of the riot of recriminations that ensued was obliged to call in some deck-hands and have both ejected. Then he listened to them separately with increasing interest.

"When you brought this family fight down here to sprinkle salt water on it," he said at last, having the two of them before him again, with a deck-hand restraining each, "you didn't get it preserved well enough to keep it from smelling. I don't reckon I'll stir it. It doesn't seem to be a marine disaster. The United States Government has got other things to attend to just now besides settling it. Listen!"

He held up a forefinger.

"Smyrna isn't so far away from the seashore but what I've had plenty of chances to hear of Colonel Gideon Ward and his general dealings with his neighbors. For myself, I'd rather have less money and a reputation that didn't spread quite so far over the edges. As for you, Cap'n Sproul, as a seaman I can sympathize with you about getting cheated by land-pirates in that timber-land deal and in other things. But as a representative of the Government I'm not going to help you make good to the extent of fifteen thousand dollars on a hole and a Cap Kidd treasure fake. Hands off for me, seeing that it's a matter strictly in the family! This cutter is due to round to in Portland harbor to-morrow morning a little after nine o'clock. I'll send the two of you in my gig to Commercial Wharf, see that both are landed at the same time, and then--well"--the commander turned quizzical gaze from one to the other with full appreciation of the situation--"it then depends on what you do, each of you, and how quick you do it."

The Cap'n walked out of the room, his hand on his breast pocket. Colonel Ward followed, closing and unclosing his long fingers as if his hands itched to get at that pocket.

At the first peep of dawn Cap'n Aaron Sproul was posted at the cutter's fore windlass, eyes straight ahead on the nick in the low, blue line of coast that marked the harbor's entrance. His air was that of a man whose anxiety could not tolerate any post except the forepeak. And to him there came Hiram Look with tremulous eagerness in his voice and the weight of a secret in his soul.