Island Gold/Chapter 10
CHAPTER X
THE GRAVE IN THE CLEARING
“Till Monday, then!” said Garth as Lawless stepped into the launch.
“To-day week it is, sir!” returned the Captain as Carstairs cast him the painter.
“You might fire the gun to let us know you're back,” cried the baronet.
“Right-o!”
Lawless turned to bend over the engine. Then he looked round quickly and grinned.
“Good luck!” he cried, “and good hunting!” and waved a friendly hand. With that he pushed over the lever and with a mighty flurry of propeller and vast bustle among the sea-birds on the foreshore, the Naomi's launch throbbed her way out into the bay towards where, spanning as it seemed the harbour's narrowest part, a creamy band of white spume marked the surf-line. Silently we watched the pretty craft, her paint and brass-work flashing in the morning sun, gliding through the green water. Then Lawless raised an arm in a parting greeting and the white launch melted into the spume and spray of the open sea.
We stood on a long sloping beach of gleaming white sand shut in on all sides save the sea by lofty grey rocks. Their jagged points out-topped the bright-green fronds of the waving palm-trees which grew almost down to the water's edge. Their column-like appearance, coupled with the singular silence of the island, gave me a queer sort of solemn feeling like being in a cathedral.
Some three hundred yards from where the foam-crested rollers beat their thunderous measure on the beach, the ground rose abruptly. The sand ended and became merged in a tangle of coarse grass. Alternating with a wild and luxuriant undergrowth of a great variety of tree ferns and other plants, it formed a kind of tasselling to a great curtain of greenery which seemed to rise sheer from the sea.
The verdure was so dense that it completely hid the bases of the pointed cliffs which, clustered together like a faggot of wood, formed the high central part of the island. From some hidden source a clear, cold stream of water came plunging down from the cliff, rushing and gurgling until it lost itself in the sea.
It was the first time I had ever set foot on an uninhabited shore. It was a curious sensation. The sea-birds wheeled aloft with their harsh, melancholy cries; among the trees above the beach there was sometimes the flash of a brilliantly plumaged bird and here and there some animal rustled in the undergrowth. But otherwise a deep silence seemed to brood over the island. There was an atmosphere of expectancy about the place which rather intrigued me.
I lost no time in setting about choosing a site for our camp. The appearance of the foreshore, exposed to the full force of the wind in unfavourable weather, did not impress me favourably, nor, owing to the danger from lightning in the thunder storms that spring up so suddenly in these climes, did the obvious solution of erecting our huts under the shelter of the trees higher up on the shore commend itself. Moreover, I knew very little about conditions on Cock Island, and, were there any wild animals about, it would be as well, I reflected, to pitch our camp in some spot not easily accessible to attack.
After exploring round a bit, I came upon, behind a mantle of hanging creeper, the mouth of a cave. Set in the lofty grey rocks, dominating the beach, it was well clear of high tide-level and clean and dry into the bargain. The roof sloped somewhat, but there was ample clearance for Garth's six feet when he stood erect, and the cave ran back for some twenty feet into the rock.
So we plumped for the cave. Having stripped to vest and trousers, Garth and I started carrying up our stores from where the launch of the Naomi had deposited them on the beach. While we stacked the various boxes neatly at the back of the cave, Carstairs was busy fitting up what he called his “field kitchen.” Higher up the rock, in a little cavity well sheltered from the wind, he in stalled his Primus stove, his cook-pots, and other impedimenta.
It was with the utmost reluctance that I spared the time for this tiring but necessary fatigue. I was on fire to be off into the interior of the island and locate the grave. Garth, too, was as keen as mustard and fairly jumped at my proposal that, as soon as the stores were stowed away, we should set forth on a voyage of discovery.
It was a long job, for the cases were heavy and the going bad, but when I stood on the beach below and, with the roar of the ocean in my ears, looked up at our temporary home, I felt rather pleased. Absolutely no trace of our presence was discernible. Though I was aware that perhaps not one vessel in two years called at the island, I have always had a very healthy respect for the long arm of coincidence. I did not wish my investigations at Cock Island to become the mark of prying eyes.
It was past three o'clock and the sun very warm when Garth and I set out. We took with us a flask of cold tea apiece, some biscuits and some dates, and a shot-gun each. With a wave of the hand to Carstairs, our guns slung across our backs, we plunged into the tangle of steep woods growing down to the shore.
The climate of the island seemed to be temperate enough. The air was a little steamy, but mild, and at first there was a pleasant breeze off the sea to cool us. To be equipped for the rocky nature of the island both of us had brought stout hob-nailed boots, and we praised our circumspection when we realized that only by boulder-climbing should we gain access to the higher parts of the island.
The climbing was arduous (for neither of us was in form), but not too difficult. I kept a sharp lookout for any traces of former visitors. Once I found some sheep droppings and again a large bleached bone which looked as if it might have come from a sheep. But of man there was no trace.
The scrub soon gave place to forest and for a good half-hour we toiled up the jungle-clad slopes. Great trees formed an almost impenetrable roof over our heads through which the sunshine fell but sparsely. We went forward in a dim and mysterious twilight with no sound in our ears but the swift rushing of the stream which gave us our direction, our laboured breathing, and the rattle of our nailed boots on the boulders. It was an eerie place which somehow filled me with misgivings.
Suddenly Garth, who was leading, gave a shout. He stood on the flat top of a rock a dozen feet above my head and pointed excitedly in front of him. I scrambled to his side.
We were looking down into a deep circular depression shaped like a basin. It reminded me of a quarry, but I imagine it was in reality the crater of some small extinct volcano. What had brought the shout to Garth's lips was the sight of a ruined hut which thrust its broken roof from out a tangle of gigantic ferns.
So breathless were we with our climb that we were past speech. In silence we slithered and scrambled down into the hollow, the long tendrils of the plants twisting themselves round our legs and the thorns catching in our coats.
It was a rude timber shack with a door and a window, the interior choked roof-high with growing ferns. The timber flooring had rotted away, and through the mouldering planks the jungle had thrust its shoots profusely as though to claim its own. But in one corner, where a roughly carpentered bedstead of timber stood, some attempt had apparently been made to thin out the ferns for a space. On the bed there lay a rotting blanket; on the floor close by some empty canned beef tins red with rust. The blanket practically fell to pieces at the touch. It was not marked, and, though we groped pretty thoroughly among the ferns, that was all we found in the hut.
“There's nothing here,” I said at last. “Let's have a look round outside. I am wondering...”
The words died away on my lips. I had reached the hut door, my face turned towards the farther edge of the crater, the opposite side from that by which we had descended. A hundred and fifty yards from where I stood a large timber cross was planted in the ground. Between it and the hut lay a great isolated boulder which had probably concealed the cross from our view when we had climbed down into the hollow.
For a moment I could hardly speak. I have seen the proud loneliness of Cecil Rhodes's resting-place in the Matoppos; I have stood (like everybody else) in the amber light that bathes Napoleon's tomb “on the banks of the Seine amid this people I have loved so well.” But I have never seen a sight more impressive than that solitary grave on that desert island set down beneath the little round canopy of blue sky which seemed to be borne by the lofty frowning cliffs towering all about. Beneath that plain wooden cross, I told myself, in a silence unbroken by man lies the Unknown. It was a mighty impressive thought.
A rudimentary path, still to be discerned through the all-pervading undergrowth, led, round the boulder of which I have spoken, to the cross. The grave lay out in the open in a little patch which had been cleared of ferns. As we came up to it, I noted, with an odd little trick of the memory, that the grey and weather-beaten surface of the cross was highly polished, even as the beach-comber had described, by the action of the sand grains blown by the wind from the seashore.
Fashioned out of two baulks of timber wired together and solidly implanted in the ground, the cross stood at the head of a long low hillock of earth. On the grave lay face upward a small round mirror and, a little beyond it, an empty bottle, uncorked, which had fallen on its side.
“You see,” I remarked to Garth, “it's just as Adams said!”
I stooped to pick up the mirror. Then to my surprise I saw that it was wired to a timber crosspiece which ran out from the cross as a support. It was a little glass set in a metal frame.
“It looks like a shaving-glass!” said Garth.
I did not undeceive him. I am not a secretive person by nature, but by training. The very character of Intelligence work—the careful sifting of every apparently insignificant scrap of evidence, the lengthy process of surmise and deduction—tends to make one discreet even when dealing with one's familiars until a plain statement of fact can be drawn up. So I did not enlighten my host to the fact that, the moment I saw that the glass was attached to the cross, my brain leaped at the first clear clue to the Unknown's baffling cipher.
For the sight of the mirror, loosely wired so that it faced the foot of the grave, immediately brought into my mind the first line of that bewildering doggerel:
“Flimmer, flimmer, viel.”
The reference to flashing surely indicated that the mirror was to be used as a heliograph. The next line—that about “the garrison of Kiel”—still utterly floored me; but, I reflected, since we had a heliograph, the following lines which I surmised to give a compass bearing of twenty-seven degrees (“The Feast of Orders” i.e., Jan. 27) might well furnish the direction in which—for reasons still unknown to me—the sun's rays were to be flashed. The wiring of the mirror to the timber indicated the direction in which the bearing was to be taken. It looked to me as though the Unknown had set up his own cross and wired the mirror to it before he died.
I opened the little leathern case which hung at my belt and drew out my prismatic compass, trusty friend of my campaigning days in France. The grave faced practically due north. I laid the comass on the mirror and took a bearing of twenty-seven degrees. The white arrow on the floating centre of the compass swung round. The mark of the twenty-seventh degree pointed towards a gaunt and barren pile of rock on the far side of the crater. I took as my line of direction a tall bush aflame with some gorgeous flower on the edge of the clearing.
Some cautious instinct made me detach the mirror. Holes had been bored on either side of the frame through which strands of copper wire were passed and knotted to holes bored in the timber cross-piece. I removed wire and all and slipped the mirror into my pocket. Garth did not notice the action, for he was busy pottering about the clearing. From the luxuriant undergrowth he ultimately collected a cigar-box which, I make no doubt, was the identical one from which the man Dutchy had established the fact that Black Pablo and his friends had visited the island. It was curious to find everything in the same state as it had been left more than a year ago. I felt rather as a man must feel who violates a grave.
“There's a path beyond,” Garth said, pointing over to the left. “It leads to the spring. I found an old bucket on the bank. But otherwise there's no sign of our unknown friend here. In fact the whole place looks as if it had been undisturbed since the Flood! Whew! but it's hot! Okewood, I believe we're going to have a storm!”
The air was indeed strangely oppressive. The patch of sky which thatched the clearing was now flecked with daubs of white cloud and there was a curiously menacing stillness in the atmosphere. On trees and bushes the leaves hung motionless without even a tremor. We sat down to cool off a bit.
“It doesn't look too good to me,” I answered. “Garth, I shouldn't wonder if we were in for a soaking to-night!”
Sir Alexander Garth, Bart., who had never slept out in the rain in his life, smiled in rather superior fashion.
“I shouldn't wonder,” he returned. “As a matter of fact, I rather like roughing it. It's a devilish healthy life, my boy! What's the next move? Has the grave given you any ideas for the location of the treasure?”
I pointed at the scarlet bush.
“Do you see that plant with the red flowers?” said I. “I have a fancy to take a stroll in that direction and see how far we can get up the cliff.”
Garth struck his palm with his clenched fist.
“Okewood!” he exclaimed, “By Jove! I believe you're on to something!”
“I am!” I answered rashly and cursed myself for a blabbing fool. For Garth, his curiosity afire, forthwith plied me with questions.
“Don't press me just yet!” I countered. “I'm still groping in the dark. You shall know all in good time!”
But he would not be pacified. Two heads were better than one, he urged, and very often a clear-sighted, shrewd man of business could see a deal farther than an expert.
“Well,” I said, “for all that, I think I'll keep my own counsel until we've looked round a bit more!”
At that Garth became huffy. We were partners in this venture, he reminded me, and we must have no secrets. He did not think he should have to recall that fact to my mind.
The stifling heat and the fatigue of our long climb had made us both a bit cross, I suppose. At any rate, I was pretty short with him.
“My dear fellow,” I said, and rose to my feet by way of putting an end to the conversation, “all in good time. In this sort of work one must work alone, at any rate, in the initial stages. Give me a little breathing space!”
Garth followed my example and stood up.
“Shall we go on?” he asked.
He spoke without heat, but there was a look in his face which reminded me that, at our first meeting, I had noticed signs of temper about his nose and mouth. Garth was a man who obviously did not like to be thwarted. Now I thought I knew where Marjorie got her proud temper.
A little puff of hot wind came whirling into the hollow. The trees swayed to it as it rustled through the leaves with a melancholy sound.
“We don't want to go too far,” remarked Garth, cocking an eye at the sky, “or we shall have this storm on us before we can get under cover at the camp.”
At the first blush the cliff on the far side of the hollow looked perfectly inaccessible. But handy to my bush with the red flowers a succession of flat boulders, like a giant's staircase, enabled us to scramble up until we found ourselves on a plateau of rock dominated on one side by an immense crag which towered above our heads in a succession of shelving ledges. In front of us the ground dropped to a steep nullah from which rose a sheer wall of rock and barred the way.
It was a desolate scene. Neither tree nor shrub nor anything green grew in this barren landscape of grey and friable volcanic rock. The bare and frowning heights oppressed me. I turned to Garth.
“This looks like the end of things,” said I, “unless we can find a way up by these terraces. What do you say? Shall we have a try?”
“If we could manage to reach that first shelf,” my companion answered, “we could, at any rate, get a view. There's nothing to be seen from here.”
I had to give Garth a back to do it, and his sixteen stone, I feel convinced, punched a pretty pattern of his hobnails into my skin. However, at the cost of my back and sundry abrasions of his hands and knees, Garth at last gained a footing on the sheer face of the rock, and then, giving me a hand, swung me up beside him. After a vertiginous climb which at one time brought us on to a ledge from which we looked down a hundred feet into the nullah below, we struck something like a steep track which eventually landed us on the first terrace.
The view was disappointing. We were still too low to clear the frowning cliffs encircling the nullah and we looked forth on the same gloomy prospect of grey volcanic peaks we had seen from below. The shelf on which we stood was only about thirty feet wide and ran for a distance of sixty yards across the face of the cliff and then stopped abruptly. It had obviously been cut by the hand of man out of the friable rock, for a number of caves scooped out of the back wall showed that cave-dwellers must have lived here in that remote period when the island had been inhabited. The ledge was in fact nothing but a street for communication between the different cave-houses. The caves were low-roofed and empty. By craning our necks upwards, we saw that the whole face of the cliff was thus honeycombed with cave-dwellings in a succession of terraces. At the far end the steep track by which we had gained access to the first terrace wound its way upward to the higher levels. There were three terraces in all.
We rested for a while on our rocky shelf and ate some biscuits and chocolate. From our post of vantage we looked down on the grave in the clearing. The sun had gone in, but it was still oppressively sultry. The sky had assumed a forbidding leaden tinge. It looked like some great furnace door radiating a fierce heat from the fire within.
Whilst we ate our frugal lunch we discussed our plans. We decided that, in view of the weather, we would break off our exploration for the day, return to camp, and get comfortably installed, and make an early start the next morning in order to visit the upper ledges of the rock. Garth had apparently quite recovered his equanimity after our little breeze.
The descent from the rock was a thrilling business. In places the track had crumbled away, and more than once we found ourselves, held only by the nails in our boots, on a slippery slope overhanging a sheer deep drop. I have a poor head for heights, and to me it was a nightmare experience. The result was that our progress was slow and it took us a full hour to make the descent. By the time we reached the rocky plateau, the wind was whirling the grey volcanic dust in great pillars about our heads. The sky had grown perceptibly darker with an eerie yellow glow and a few big drops of rain plashed down on the bushes. With startling suddenness a long-drawn-out rumble of thunder awakened a thousand echoes as it reverberated among the lonely island peaks.
“By George,” said Garth, turning up his coat collar, “we're going to catch it, Okewood. We'll have to steer clear of these trees!”
“We'd better make a bolt for the hollow,” I counselled. “The hut is out in the open. If it stands the wind, it will give us some shelter!”
We started to run while the light perceptibly diminished, like a lighting effect on the stage. We were actually crossing the hollow when the storm broke. There was a blinding glare of lightning, a deafening peal of thunder, and the light went out, while, with a whooshing and rushing and crashing, the rain suddenly descended in what seemed to be a dense sheet of water.
“The hut!” I shouted in Garth's ear.
Well it was that we were just upon it or in that inky darkness we should never have found it. Over the wooden bedstead in the corner the roof was whole and solid, and it kept the worst part of the rain off us, though we were splashed by the cataract of water which poured off the roof into the centre of the hut. The air was so highly charged that one could almost smell the electricity in the atmosphere as the lightning rent the sky in blinding flashes which illuminated the whole clearing and the trees and cliffs all round with the brightness of daylight.
The storm was at its height; the thunder was echoing in and out of the rocky hollows of the island, and in the moments of stillness the gurgling and splashing of the rain filled our ears. Then came a blinding lightning flash, brighter and more enduring than the rest. It lit up the whole clearing, and revealed the cross over the grave of the Unknown standing out hard and black against a fantastic background of bending, straining tree-trunks with branches and leaves blown out in the wind. And by its light, before the brightness died, I saw the figure of a man standing with bowed head at the grave.