CHAPTER X

_The Hidden Creek._

I woke just as dawn was waking too, very still and windless; for the threatening nor'easter had changed its mind, and the world was as quiet as though there weren't a human being in it. Near by, stretched the long low coast-line, nothing but level brush, with an occasional thatch-palm lifting up a shock-head against the quickening sky. Out to sea, the level plains of lucent water spread like a vast floor, immensely vacant--not a sail or even a wing to mar the perfect void.

As the light grew, I scanned the sh.o.r.e to see whether I could detect the entrance of the hidden creek; but, though I swept it up and down again and again, it continued to justify the "King's" boast. There was no sign of an opening anywhere. Nothing but a straight line of brush, with mangroves here and there stepping down in their fantastic way into the water. And yet we were but a hundred yards from the sh.o.r.e. Certainly "Blackbeard"--if the haunt had really been his--had known his business; for an enemy could have sought him all day along this coast and found no clue to his hiding-place.

But, presently, as my eyes kept on seeking, a figure rose, tall and black near the water's edge, a little to our left, and shot up a long arm by way of signal. It was Samson; and evidently the mouth of the creek was right there in front of us--under our very noses, so to say--and yet it was impossible to make it out. However, at this signal, I stirred up the still-sleeping crew, and presently we had the anchors up, and the engine started at the slowest possible speed.

The tide was beginning to run in, so we needed very little way on us. I pointed out Samson to the captain, and, following the "King's"

instructions, told him to steer straight for the negro. He grumbled not a little. Of course, if I wanted to run aground, it was none of his affair--etc., etc. Then I stationed the st.u.r.diest of the two deck-hands on the port bow with a long oar, while I took the starboard with another. Very slowly and cautiously we made in, pointing straight for a thick growth of mangrove bushes. Samson stood there and called:

"All right, sar. Keep straight on. You'll see your way in a minute."

And, sure enough, when we were barely fifty feet away from the sh.o.r.e, and there seemed nothing for it but to run dead aground, low down through the floating mangrove branches we caught sight of a narrow gleam starting inland, and in another moment or two our decks were swept with foliage as the _Flamingo_ rustled in, like a bird to cover, through an opening in the bushes barely twice her beam; and there before us, snaking through the brush, was a lane of water which immediately began to broaden between palmetto-fringed banks, and was evidently deep enough for a much larger vessel.

"Plenty of water, sar," hallooed Samson from the bank, grinning a huge welcome. "Keep a-going after me," and he started trotting along the creek-side.

As we pushed into the gla.s.sy channel, I standing at the bow, my eyes were arrested by a tremendous flashing commotion in the water to the right and left of us--like the fierce zigzagging of steel blades, or the ferocious play of submerged lightning. It was a select company of houndfish and sharks that we had disturbed, lying h.e.l.lishly in wait there for the prey of the incoming tide. It was a curiously sinister sight, as though one had come upon a nest of water-devils in council, and the fancy jumped into my mind that here were the spirits of Teach and his crew once more evilly embodied and condemned to haunt for ever this gloomy scene of their crimes.

Samson went trotting along the twisting banks, we cautiously feeling our way after him, for something like a quarter of a mile; and then, coming round a sudden bend, the creek opened out into a sort of basin. On the left bank stood two large palmetto shanties. Samson indicated that there was our anchorage; and then, as we were almost alongside of them, the cheery halloos of a well-known voice hailed us. It was the "King"; and, as I answered his welcome, the morning suddenly sang for me--for there too was Calypso, at his side.

The water ran so deep at the creek's side that we were able to moor the _Flamingo_ right up against the bank, and, when I had jumped ash.o.r.e and greeted my friends, and the "King" had executed a brief characteristic fantasia on the manifest advantages of having a hidden pirate's creek in the family, he unfolded his plans, or rather that portion of them that was necessary at the moment.

The crew of the _Flamingo,_ he said, had better stay where they were for the present. If they were tired of sleeping aboard, there were his two palmetto palaces, with couches of down on which to stretch their limbs--and, for amus.e.m.e.nt--poor devils!--he swept his eyes whimsically around that dreariest of landscapes--they might exercise their imaginations by pretending, after the manner of John Teach, that they were on an excursion to Hades--this was the famous River Acheron--and so on. But, seriously, he ended, we would find some way of keeping them from committing hari-kari and, meanwhile, we would leave them in peace, and stroll along toward breakfast.

At that moment, Sailor rubbed his head against my knee.

"Ah!" said the "King," "the heroic canine! He, of course, must not be left behind. We may very well need you in our counsels, eh, old fellow?"

and he made friends with Sailor in a moment, as only a man who loves dogs can.

I believe I was second in Sailor's affection from that moment of his meeting the "King." But then, who wouldn't have been?

So then, after a rea.s.suring word or two with Tom and the Captain, we went our ways toward breakfast--the "King's" tongue and Sailor's wagging happily in concert every inch of the way.

CHAPTER XI

_An Old Enemy._

Charlie Webster's laconic note was naturally our chief topic over breakfast. "_Tobias escaped--just heard he is on your island. Watch out.

Will follow in a day or two._" The "King" read it out, when I handed him the note across the table.

"Your friend writes like a true man of action," he added, "like Caesar--and also the electric telegraph. We must send word to Sweeney to be on the look-out for him. I will send Samson the Redoubtable with a message to him this morning. Meanwhile, we will smoke and think."

Then for the next hour the "King" thought--aloud; while Calypso and I sat and listened, occasionally throwing in a parenthesis of comment or suggestion. It was evident, we all agreed, that Calypso had been right.

It had been Tobias and none other whose evil eye had sent her so breathless back to me, waiting in the shadow of the woods; and it was the same evil eye that had fallen vulture-like on her golden doubloon exposed on Sweeney's counter.

Now what were we to think of Tobias?--what really were his notions about this supposit.i.tious treasure?--and what was likely to be his plan of action? Had he really any private knowledge of the whereabouts of his alleged ancestral treasure?--or was his first authentic hint of its whereabouts derived from the ma.n.u.script--first overheard while eavesdropping at John Saunders's office, and afterward purloined from John Saunders's verandah?

There seemed little doubt that this second surmise was correct; for, if he had had any previous knowledge, he would have had no need of the ma.n.u.script and long ago he would have gone after the treasure for himself, and found it or not, as the case might be. Probably there was a tradition in his family of the existence somewhere of his grandfather's treasure; but that tradition was very likely the sum of his inheritance; and doubtless it was the mere accident of his dropping into Saunders's office that morning which had set him on the track.

It was also likely, indeed practically certain, that he had been able to make no more out of the ma.n.u.script than I had; that he had concluded that I had somehow or other unearthed more about it than he; and that, therefore, his most promising clue to its discovery would be my actions.

To keep me in sight was the first step. So far so good.

But thus far, it would appear to him, I had had no very positive success. Otherwise, I would not still be on the quest. He had probably been aware of my movements, and may have been lying hidden on the island longer than we suspected. From some of his spies he had heard of my presence in the settlement, and, chance having directed him to Sweeney's store at the moment of Calypso's ringing down that Spanish gold on the counter, he had somehow connected Calypso's doubloon with me.

At all events, it was clear that there were such coins on the island in somebody's possession. Then, when he had watched Calypso on her way home--and, without any doubt, been the spectator of our meeting at the edge of the wood though we had been unable to catch sight of him--there would, of course, be a suspicion in his mind that my quest might at last be approaching success, and that his ancestral millions might be almost in my hands. That there might be some other treasure on the island with which neither he nor his grandfather had any concern would not occur to him, nor would it be likely to trouble him if it did. My presence was enough to prove that the treasure was his--for was it not his treasure that I was after? Logic irrefutable! How was he to know that all the treasure so far discovered was that modest h.o.a.rd--unearthed, as I had heard, in the garden--the present whereabouts of which was known only to Calypso. The "King" had interrupted himself at this point of argument.

"By the way, Calypso, where is it?" he asked unexpectedly, to the sudden confusion of both of us. "Isn't it time you revealed your mysterious Aladdin's cave?"

At the word "cave" the submerged rose in Calypso's cheeks almost came to the surface of their beautiful olive.

"Cave!" she countered manfully, "who said it was a cave?"

"It was merely a figure of speech, which--if I may say so, my dear--might apply with equal fitness, say--to a silk stocking."

And Calypso laughed through another tide of rose-colour.

"No, Dad, not that either. Never mind where it is. It is perfectly safe, I a.s.sure you."

"But _are_ you sure, my dear? Wouldn't it be safer, after all, here in the house? How can you be certain that no one but yourself will accidentally discover it?"

"I am absolutely certain that _no one will,_" she answered, with an emphasis on the last three words which sent a thrill through me, for I knew that it was meant for me. Indeed, as she spoke, she furtively gave me one of those glances of soft fire which had burnt straight through to my heart in Sweeney's store--a sort of blended challenge and appeal.

"Of course, Dad," she added, "if you insist--you shall have it. But seriously I think it is safer where it is, and if I were to fetch it, how can I be sure that no one"--she paused, with a meaning which I, of course, understood--"Tobias, for instance, would see me going--and follow me."

"To be sure--to be sure," said the "King." "What do you think, friend Ulysses?"

"I think it more than likely that she might be followed," I answered, "and I quite agree with Miss Calypso. I certainly wouldn't advise her to visit her treasure just now--with the woods probably full of eyes. In fact," I added, smiling frankly at her, "I could scarcely answer for myself even--for I confess that she has filled me with an overpowering curiosity."

And in my heart I stood once more amid the watery gleams and echoes of that moonlit cavern, struck dumb before that shining princess from whose mouth and hands had fallen those strange streams of gold.

"So be it then," said the "King"; "and now to consider what our friend here graphically speaks of as those eyes in the woods. 'The woods were full of eyes.' Ah! friend Ulysses, you evidently share my taste for the romantic phrase. Who cares how often it has been used? It is all the better for that. Like old wine, it has gained with age. One's whole boyhood seems to be in a phrase like that--Dumas, Scott, Fenimore Cooper. How often, I wonder, has that divine phrase been written--'the woods were full of eyes.' And now to think that we are actually living it--an old boy like myself even. 'The woods were full of eyes.' Bravo!

Ulysses, for it is still a brave and gallant world!"

The "King" then made a determined descent into the practical. The woods, most probably, _were_ full of eyes. In plain prose, we were almost certainly being watched. Unless--unless, indeed, my bogus departure for Na.s.sau had fooled Tobias as we had hoped. But, even so, with that lure of Calypso's doubloon ever before him, it was too probable that he would not leave the neighbourhood without some further investigation--"an investigation," the "King" explained, "which might well take the form of a midnight raid; murdered in our beds, and so forth."

That being so, being in fact almost a certainty--the "King" spoke as though he would be a much disappointed man otherwise--we must look to our garrison. After all, besides ourselves, we had but Samson and Erebus, and their dark brethren of doubtful courage, while Tobias probably had command of a round dozen of doughty desperadoes. On the whole, perhaps, he said, it might be best to avail ourselves of the crew of the _Flamingo_--"under cover of the dark," he repeated with a smile.

Yes! that must be the first step. We must get them up there that night, under cover of the dark; keep them well hidden, and--well! await developments. Charlie Webster might be expected any moment with his reinforcements, and then!--"Lay on, Macduff!"

While we had been talking, Samson had long since been on his way with the word to Sweeney to look out for Webster, and, as he had been admonished to hurry back, it was scarcely noon when he returned, bringing in exchange a verbal message from Sweeney.