Silver Shoal Light/Chapter 21
CHAPTER XXI
TREASURE, HO!
JOAN and Garth sat on the edge of the rocks, discussing wind and weather, the way of a ship on the high seas, and the advantages of the early days over a modern time.
"Even so," said Joan, flipping a stone into the water, "I don't see why this wouldn't be a good day for treasure-seeking."
Garth acclaimed the idea with joy.
"Let's!" he agreed. "But where shall we begin? We ought to have a map, or something. Let's make one! It would be lots more fun than just starting to dig anywhere."
"Wot," Joan inquired in the gruff tones of Bo'sun Bogstay, "might that be, sir?"
Garth, in his part instantly, shaded his eyes and looked where she pointed.
"A bottle," said he, "if I'm not a deadeye!"
A bottle it was,—a black one,—and it had been bobbing peacefully in a sheltered pool for some time.
"'T is an uncommon bottle, sir," Joan observed. "As I see it, there's a bit o' sealin'-wax over the cork."
Garth scrambled hastily to the edge of the rock-pool and poked after the bottle with the end of a crutch, for it was a little beyond his reach. Joan pulled it in, and they held it up to the light.
"There's some'at in it, sir," she commented; "a paper, like enough."
"Like enough from a shipwrecked mariner!" Captain Crosstrees suggested gleefully. "Smash it open, Bobstay, quick!"
They broke the bottle against a rock and drew out a wad of paper. It was frayed and smoked at the edges, and much rumpled, but, even so, in marvellously good preservation, considering the date it bore. For, below a skull and cross-bones, the figures 1732 were boldly written, and scrawled beneath:
Pertaining to Ye Brigge Cardiffe.
"H'm," mused Ben Bobstay, while the Captain forgot himself so far as to embrace his shipmate joyfully; "the Cardiff, is it? There's tales I could tell o' her."
A solemn shake of the head and a tantalizing pause taxed the patience of the other treasure-seeker.
"What's all this," he demanded, "here at the bottom?"
Joan read on: "Being a Compleat Charte and Information pertaining to Certaine Islandes and Contente Thereof…"
"Mysterious, they is," Bobstay remarked. "Nothink plain-spoken, sir. Like enough, there's treasure hid on their 'Certaine Islandes.' And what, sir, might this be?"
She indicated the signs at the bottom of the sheet, which ran in this fashion:
"That's what I was asking you about," Garth said. Then, with dawning comprehension: "It's a cipher, mate! What does it mean? Does it mean anything?"
"'Tis writ for us not to understand," Bobstay said gloomily. "Mayhap you might fathom it, sir, you bein' an eddicated man."
"Does it mean something?" the Captain demanded. "Does it—Joan?"
"I shouldn't be surprised if it do," she assented grudgingly. "Anyhow, we're middling certain 'tis writ in English, from what goes afore. Let's go at it, sir."
They went at it, and, for an "uneddicated man," Bobstay solved the cipher in a surprisingly short time. It was discovered that the letters of the alphabet, if arranged in the following figures, could be represented by the curious signs on the paper.
By using one of the angles to signify the first letter in each compartment, and dotting the same angle for the second, all the letters could be reproduced.
The Captain gave Bobstay a most unseaman-like hug.
"How could you, how could a person think of it!" he said.
"'T is an old trick, sir," the mate responded. "Look'ee, now all's plain sailing. Here's their mysterious writings for all to read: Land at a pointe before whyte scarre in rocke twenty paces easte by southe sixteen paces southe southe easte. And then dig, like enough."
"But Ben," the Captain objected, "there's nothing to tell what rock to land at. It might be anywhere."
"Upon my word, sir," Bobstay agreed, "that's true! But look'ee, here's another paper folded together with this one."
They opened it eagerly, but it was, to all appearances, totally blank. As they turned it this way and that, hoping for a clue, there was a footstep on the rock, and Jim joined the adventurers. He took in the situation at a glance.
"Shiver my spare yard-arm!" said he. "What have we here? Treasure?"
They explained the difficulty of the moment.
"Hm," said Jim. "It's not likely that they'd seal up an empty paper. Mebbe 't is writ with inwisible ink."
"A thought I was just thinkin' myself," Joan agreed.
Garth, quite overcome by the thoroughness of this plot, grasped her ecstatically. Jim fished a box of matches from his pocket.
"Do you hang on to my shoulder, Captain Crosstrees, sir," he commanded, "for a windshield, like, whilst I strike a light here."
He lit a match and held the paper over its flame. In a breathless and expectant silence he withdrew it, showing a small wavering line of brown upon the paper. Garth gave a triumphant shout.
"Splice my foretopmast stu'ns'l downhaul!" Jim remarked; "but something's happening!"
Garth flung an appreciative glance at Joan and leaned eagerly over his father's shoulder. The expenditure of seven or eight matches left the paper somewhat smoked, but bearing a perfectly visible map, traced in faint brown.
"There's your map, or I'm a lubber," said Jim. "Well, I'll be off, sirs, and leave you to decipher it. 'Tis drawed uncommon poorly," he added, looking at Joan.
"Have you ever tried to draw with inwisible ink?" she asked mildly. "Milk, mayhap, or such-like?"
"Look'ee here, sir," she said to Garth, when Jim had entered the lighthouse, "do you think likely this is meant for the bay wot the savages hereabout calls Pettasantuck?"
"Like enough," the Captain agreed, poring over the map; "but what for would be all these little dots, Ben?"
"This yere shoal, I takes it," Bobstay proposed; "and where the cross-mark is, there the treasure lies, I'll venture."
"And that's on Trasket Rock! And there is a white streak in the cliff on Trasket. Why didn't I think of that right away! Pipe all hands aboard, Ben. We sail this afternoon!"
The treasure-hunters were ready to set forth soon after luncheon. They had gathered together an outfit which included a compass, a steamer-rug ("to wrap up the doubloons in, I suppose," said Jim, “for I can't think what else you'd need it for"), a lantern, a frying-pan, a jug of water, and assorted provisions.
"'I've a little brown jug that I sometimes lug,
And a little bread and meat for ballast . . .'"
sang Jim, as he made sail on the Ailouros.
"You'll have an easy run up to Trasket to-day," he said; "and I place such trust in you and your seamanship, Bo'sun Bobstay, ma'am, that I've no fears that you'll wreck, maroon, cast away, or lose overboard my only son."
"No fear, sir!" laughed Joan, as she took command of the Ailouros, and Jim climbed out upon the landing.
"We sha'n't expect you back till after supper, then," he said. "Caleb's off on his weekend ashore, so don't do anything that will necessitate my rescuing you! I can't leave the Light after dark, you know, except to save drowning mariners."
"Good luck to you!" Elspeth cried, as she and Jim watched the Ailouros bob into the current and then fill away steadily.
Garth steered and Joan handled the sheet, and they talked about treasure.
"What was the tales of the Cardiff you could tell, mate?" Captain Crosstrees asked, squinting a little as he watched the sunlit head of the sail.
"Oh, naught of great account," Ben Bobstay said, after some consideration, "'cept that I knows the Cardiff. I dealt wi' her an' wi' her blackhearted captain afore ever I signed wi' you, sir. Why, I shipped as cabin-boy on the Cardiff. The year 1739 it were, long afore you was thort of, sir. She were little better nor a pirate, though little I knew o' that when I signed aboard her. I couldn't tell you harf o' the evil doin's upon that ship, but many was the day when I lay flat behind a hatch-coaming, whilst the bullets hopped around me and the cutlasses sang past my ears. For the Cardiff would be grappled to some honest India-man, and the rivers of gold and treasures, sir, that poured into the black ship's hold was as great as the rivers of blood that poured off her decks."
The Captain gave a pleasurable shiver.
"Like enough," he observed, "'tis some o' that treasure we're after now?"
"Like enough," Bobstay agreed; "there was a deal of it. Felipe Astores, the captain's name was—a treacherous Spaniard he were. And his fate and the fate of his black ship came as he deserved."
"How?" said Garth, detaching his eyes from the sail to gaze in admiring worship at his talented shipmate. The narrator reflected.
"Well," she continued, "'t were one night when the Captain had buried some treasures—as black as a pot it wos, sir—that he must needs have a feast to his own glory. And the rum went pretty free, sir, till by the end there was none could rightly manage a ship aboard her. Them in the cabin was at their worst, and me still serving of them, frighted of my life so I dared not refuse, when the watch sings out, 'Breakers ahead!' Mr. Branton, the mate, and two others staggers up on deck, but the orders they gave wos half-crazed, and the men knew not which to obey."
Bobstay warmed to the tale and pointed theatrically landward.
"Right afore us was the white combers dancing on the shoal, and on the Reef towering spouts of water was rising over the rocks. Some of the crew was trying like madmen to get the sail off o' the Cardiff, and some flingin' the wheel this way and that, till the compass under the binnacle-lamp whirled like a thing daft… She's too high, sir," Ben interrupted the tale suddenly, for Garth's own steering was showing signs of daftness. He let the boat fall off, and his companion proceeded:
"But they was too late. She took the reef all standing and come up listed heavy, sobbing and shuddering like a living thing every time the breakers pounded her. But I'd no pity for her. She were as evil as her master, the Cardiff. Lucky enough for me, I, bein' light and nimble, got me ashore by holding to a spar; but what become of all else, I know not, for I never saw them again, dead or living, for which I were full o' thanks."
Garth gave an appreciative sigh.
"Was it these parts she was wrecked in, Ben?" he inquired. "Like enough it might have been her ghost I saw that day up by Trasket."
"Like enough," Bobstay agreed.
"Your sheet's awfully flat, Jo—Ben," the Captain commented.
Joan looked rather abashed and eased the sheet a little.
"You're right, sir," she said; "the water's a bit rougher nor it were." And she attended to the handling of the boat in silence.
The waves were fresh and choppy, running in a rough tumble of indigo along the sides of the Ailouros and smacking her bows with a splash of twinkling spray.
"It's scrumptious!" said Garth, who had taken both hands to the tiller. "I love it when it's like this."
"Let's go on toward Hy Brasail," Joan suggested, "and run back before the wind. It's still very early, and it's not proper to dig treasure before midnight, anyway. We'll have to do it before then, I fear, but we've time for a longer sail."
"Hurrah!" cried Garth. "Let's!"