TREASURE OF KINGS.

by Charles Gilson.

CHAPTER I--JOHN BANNISTER

I shall never forget the day on which I first set eyes upon John Bannister. I was then a boy--sixteen years of age, if I remember rightly--and I stood before him, tongue-tied by the questions that he asked me, wondering how he had come by the great ugly, horrid scar upon his face, awed--indeed, I think, a little frightened--by the great muscles in his forearms, naked to the elbows, his rough weather-beaten face with skin like leather, and above all else by the stature of the man.

For he was a giant--a giant such as I had dreamed of when a child. As some such figure had I pictured Giant Despair, when my mother had read to me from _Pilgrim's Progress_: "And Giant Despair was in one of his fits again." I had pictured Strength and Madness let loose amid a thunderstorm of wrath. And when I first looked upon him who was to be my champion and my comrade. I forgot his soft, kindly words and pleasing smile, and could only think how terrible he must be in anger.

There is a strip of beach upon the Suss.e.x coast, so many miles from nowhere, where the sand-snipe gather and seldom a human being may be seen. There, as a lad, I would love to roam, with no certain object in view, but just to find what I could, to observe what chanced to come my way, and, when wearied of wandering, to sit upon the shingle over and above those plains of wet, grey sand and think of all manner of things as my boyish fancy pleased.

I was seated thus one April morning, far from home, and wondering how my tired legs would carry me back to dinner, when my attention was attracted to two strange birds, of a kind that I could not remember to have seen before. The sea was calm as gla.s.s, the sun hot as August.

They were large birds, and were engaged--so far as I could see at a distance of more than a hundred yards--in dragging from the shallow water what might have been the carca.s.s of a fish.

I watched them, greatly interested, forgetful even of my appet.i.te, possibly for five minutes; and then there came a heavy step upon the shingle at my back.

I turned quickly, to behold the figure of John Bannister. Like some great beast of prey, he had broken his way quite noiselessly through a thick brake of that shrub which, I think, is called sea-buckthorn--though I never knew one tree from another. And he stood regarding me, with his hands upon his hips.

I got to my feet, thinking that such a man might be up to no good in so lonesome a place, and I might find it advisable to take to my heels.

But, quite suddenly, he laughed; and at the sound of his laughter I knew at once that I, for sure, had nothing to fear. Since that memorable day I have learned in the world many true and singular things, but none truer than that you may know always an honest man by his laughter and the shake of his hand.

"I startled you," he said.

"I wondered who it was," I faltered sheepishly.

"And you are still none the wiser," he answered.

And at that, he seated himself by my side.

He told me that the strange birds were hooded crows. He told me also how they bullied the rooks, robbed the gulls; how they were cleverer and more evil than any other bird, foes of all and feared by all--thieves and murderers. He talked like a book; he had the science of the matter at his finger-tips, and he could, at the same time, paint pictures, as it were, with words. With him the hooded crow was in a single sentence _corvus cornix_, and the "highwayman of the air."

And as he talked to me, I wondered the more concerning him, and thought the less of the hooded crows. Who was he, whence had he come, and what was he doing there in such a lonely place, in his shirt sleeves, in the warm April sunshine? These were questions that he himself was to answer. I cannot say why he took me straightway into his confidence, and afterwards into the very chamber of his heart--but he did; else I would now have naught to write about.

Let me confess that I have taken the whole tenour of my life from this man's greatness. I have tried my best, all my long years, to bear in mind his strength, his wisdom, and his courage, that I might walk humbly in the shadow of a glorious example. But, more than all besides, I know that I owe to him the restless spirit of adventure, the love of action, the joy of wandering, that has led me so often to strange and distant places where I have found myself in even stranger company.

I cannot tell you of all he said to me upon the morning of our meeting.

He spoke of many things, of the world he had seen, the dangers he had faced, the people he had known. As I had no longer feared him after his first word and his open, kindly smile, so after five minutes of his talking did I feel that I had known him all my life. For his words were magic. Wondrous pictures framed themselves before my eyes upon the calm surface of that English sea--pictures of wild men, of treeless deserts, of savage forests and inhospitable hills; and I longed then to follow in the footsteps of this heroic man, whose hairy arms were those of Vulcan and whose voice was soft as that of the mother whom I loved.

I forgot my dinner. I hungered only for adventure. I sat upon the shingle, wondering what lay beyond the vague horizon where grey sea and sky were blended, where I could just discern the smoke of a solitary and distant steamer, the only sign of life or movement upon that desert sea--for we in the West of Suss.e.x lay well away from the track of the Channel shipping.

On a sudden, I asked him the time; and with a glance at the sun he told me it was two. At that, I jumped to my feet.

"But I am late!" I cried.

"Not for the first time," said he. "I can remember my own boyhood."

"My dinner was at one."

"Then you dine with me; for I eat when I have time and appet.i.te, sleep when I will, and live as Nature meant me to."

He led me back from the beach across some sand-hills to a place where the gorse was like a wave of gold. And there was a wooden hut--or, rather, shed, for it was walled upon three sides only. And within were all sorts of things: a sleeping-bag made of the skins of some small animal with fur soft as a mole's, which he said had come from the south of Africa; an iron cooking-pot, an evil-looking affair which he had brought with him from the Amazon; skins painted by North American savages; moca.s.sins; a Malay sarong, a kind of towel worn around the waist; and more curiosities and rude, primitive utensils than I could well describe within the s.p.a.ce of a page of the smallest print.

And yet, I dined like a prince: a soup of fish, plover roasted upon a spit, and in place of bread, flour and water fried in a pan after the custom of the Afghans. It may have been the novelty of it all, or the fact that by then I was well-nigh famished, but I never ate more heartily, and I have never forgotten that meal, though I have had many such since then.

In answer to my questions, he told me more concerning himself. Though he had lived a life of adventure, exploring wild countries, sleeping beneath the stars, in constant peril of his life from savage beasts and scarce less savage men, I could not of myself comprehend why he should in peaceful England bury himself miles from the abodes of his fellow human beings. For I write--you must remember--of many years ago, of the mid-Victorian time, as it is called--and good days they were, as we know full well who have lived to see these unsettled, troublous days. To-day, from the spot where John Bannister and I first met, you may catch a glimpse to the west along the coast of the red roofs of bungalows, where week-end visitors may come from London to set up bathing-huts upon the beach, whilst from the east, perhaps, a pair of lovers may wander from across the golf course at Littlehampton in search of desirable seclusion. For that stretch of coast is desolate still; but in those days it was a kind of No Man's Land, with no sign of life but the gulls and the sand-snipe, the smoke from John Bannister's camp-fire, and the hooded crows.

Well, the truth was, he who feared neither beast of prey nor painted cannibal was afraid of civilised men. He went once a week to the little inland village a few miles distant to purchase groceries and stores.

There--as I found out afterwards--they thought him a madman, though he was always courteous in his manner and paid without question for what he bought. He had few words for any man, and none ever for a woman.

Later, when my mother came to learn of my new-found friend who lived alone among the sand-hills, she was anxious to see him, more for my own welfare than from curiosity; but he told me flatly that he had never known any civilised woman save his own mother, who had died when he was young, and he would rather face a wounded lion than pretend to talk to one.

"For it comes to this," said he; "I have gone back, as it were, upon the centuries; I have learned to live as men lived in ancient times. Though I have read much and thought more, and have some claim, I suppose, to be called a scholar, in many ways I am no better than a cave-man. I have forgotten all the niceties of culture. I have neither small-talk nor table manners. So I prefer to live as I do, in my own way; and I offer no welcome to visitors. The farmer who owns this land is glad enough of the little I pay him in the way of rent; but, beyond that and my weekly shopping, I seek no intercourse with strangers. I am content to be alone."

I asked if he were not often lonely, and he laughed.

"Even here," said he, "in Suss.e.x, Nature is a living force. The sea changes almost hour by hour. Birds come and visit me. Even the rabbits in the brake have already learned to know me. They all seem to know--these little, wild things--that I am one of them, and soon cease to fear me. They are my companions and my friends, and I have also books and memory. And I have health and air, the smell of the salt sea and the seaweed, and the sunrise to awaken me before your street-bred friends are stirring. The wind, the rain, and the sun--I welcome each as it comes. Did I want other comrades, I should go and seek them; but I prefer to live like this."

"And yet you talked willingly to me?" I asked.

"Because," he answered slowly--and his words came to me as a surprise--"because you are a cave-man, too."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'BECAUSE,' HE ANSWERED SLOWLY, 'BECAUSE YOU ARE A CAVE-MAN, TOO.'"]

"I!" I exclaimed.

"Every boy," said he, "every healthy, happy boy. It was the savage in you--though you may not realise it--that brought you out here alone, that took you right away from red bricks and shops and dinner."

I cannot say whether I have conveyed to the reader in the s.p.a.ce of this short chapter a true conception of the character of John Bannister, as he was when I knew him first. Of his personal appearance I have yet to write; and if it be a simple matter to describe that which is outwardly apparent, it is by no means easy either to fathom or to portray a man's soul and mind.

Do not imagine that I myself knew aught of him until after we had sojourned together for months, faced the same dangers, stood side by side throughout the great adventure of which I have to tell. I knew from the first that he was wise and generous and kind: I could see with my eyes that he was strong, and his talk charmed the imagination of a dreamy, active boy. In spite of all he knew, of the experiences he had had in all parts of the world, he was one of the simplest men that ever lived. And there was something in him of the poet. I do not mean that he ever tried to set down his thoughts in verse, but that he lived in love with all things beautiful. I have seen him stand stock-still like one transfigured, with eyes illumined, gazing in wonderment upon a purple sunset upon the snow-capped crestline of the distant Andes--and that at a moment when his own life, as well as mine, was not worth a full day's purchase.

Judge all men by their deeds and not their words. Hear this history to the end, and see what like of man was he whose charm and peril led me forth from green and sleepy Suss.e.x to adventure in the darkness of those tropic forests that shut out the source of the great River of Mystery, where there are poison, black ignorance, and fell disease, and a man may no more count the dangers that encompa.s.s him than the myriads of stinging insects that drone about his ears.

And one thing more: my own life has not been lived without event. It has been my fate to tell a score of times of the enterprise of others; but of all men of action I have ever known, read or written of, I rank John Bannister as first. Perhaps that may be because I can now seat myself of a winter's evening before my study fire and see him in my fancy as he was in all his strength and manhood, pa.s.s through again the dangers and the hardships, and live once more the glorious days that it was my privilege to pa.s.s with him, and remember that, had it not been for him, I might have lived all my life in Suss.e.x and seen nothing of the world. But how can I set down the debt I owe him? For I owe him life itself.

CHAPTER II--THE COMING OF AMOS

After that morning, throughout the summer months when I was at school, there was seldom a Sat.u.r.day or a Wednesday afternoon when I was not to be seen hastening eastward along the beach to see John Bannister and to listen to his talk.

During those days I learned much of him, of his travels and adventures; but there were certain matters upon which he would never speak in any detail. He would never tell me, for instance, the full story of how he had come by the great scar upon his face--a disfigurement so p.r.o.nounced as to be at once pathetic and repulsive, which had aroused my boyish curiosity from the first. Had it not been for that scar, Bannister would have been a handsome man, as indeed he was when the left side of his face was to be seen in profile. He had deep-set steel-grey eyes that looked clean through you, and the forehead of a thinker; his hair, in those bygone days, was black, no more than touched with white upon the temples and about the ears, and his moustache the longest I have ever seen. Though there was never a man, I should suppose, who had less of vanity in his composition, I think he grew it thus to hide in part the record of the terrible wound that had extended from his right ear to the corner of his mouth--a scar that was always rough and white, though his face was burnt by the sun to the colour of tan.

"I came by that," he once said to me in answer to my question, "in what might be called an honest cause. A thousand miles from nowhere, where there is neither Law nor Right nor Wrong nor Justice, one--who may or may not have learned the Lord's Prayer at his mother's knee--would have put to death some score of helpless human creatures, slaughtered them like sheep."