CHAPTER V.
THE WHALEBOAT.
A barber's pole protruded beside the ope leading to Captain Coffin'slodgings. It was painted in spirals of scarlet and blue, and at theend of it a cage containing a grey parrot dangled over the footway.
"Drunk again!" screamed the parrot, as I hesitated before theentrance, for the directing-marks just here were so numerous as to beperplexing. To the right of the alley the barber had affixed hissignboard, close above the base of his pole; to the left a flankingslopshop dangled a row of cast-off suits, while immediately overheadwas nailed a board painted over with ornate flourishes and thelegend--
"G. Goodfellow. Carpenter and House-Decorator, &c. Repairs Neatly Executed. Instruction in the Violin. Funerals at the Shortest Notice. Shipping Supplied."
"Drunk again!" repeated the parrot. "Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me, kissme! Oh, you nasty image! Kiss me, kiss me! Who killed thePortugee?"
"He don't mean you," explained the barber, reassuringly, emerging atthat moment from his shop with a pannikin of water for the parrot'scage, which he lowered very deftly by means of a halliard reevedthrough a block at the end of the pole. "He means old Coffin.Nice bird, hey?"
He slipped a hand through the cage-door, and caressed him, scratchinghis head.
"If you please, sir," said I, "it's Captain Coffin I'm looking for."
"Drunk again!" screamed the bird. "Damn my giblets, drunk again!"
"He don't like Coffin, and that's a fact," said the barber.
"He don't appear to, sir," I agreed.
"You'll find the old fellow down the yard. That is, if you reallywant him." The barber eyed me doubtfully. "He's sober enough, justnow; been swearin off liquor for a week. I dare say you know histemper's uncertain at such times."
I did not know it, but was too far committed to retreat.
"Well, you'll find him down the yard--green door to the right, withthe brass knocker. He's out at the back, hammering at his ship, buthe'll hear you fast enough: he's wonderful quick of hearing."
A man, even though he possessed a solid brass knocker, had need to bequick of hearing in that alley. Without, street-hawkers were bawlingand carts rattling on the cobbled thoroughfare; from the entrance theparrot vociferated after me as I went down the passage beneath anopen window whence an invisible violin repeated the opening phrase of"Come, cheer up, my lads!" plaintively and persistently; while fromthe far end, somewhere between it and the harbour side, an irregularhammering punctuated the music.
I knocked, and the hammering ceased. The rest of the din ceased not,nor abated. In about a minute the green door opened--a cautious inchor two at first, then wide enough to reveal Captain Coffin. He worea dirty white jumper over his upper garments, and held a formidablemallet. I observed that either his face was unnaturally white or therims of his eyes were unnaturally red, and that sawdust besprinkledhis hair and collar. I recalled the tavern sawdust which hadbepowdered his hat on the night of our first meeting, and jumped to awrong conclusion.
"Eh? It's Brooks--the boy Brooks! Glad to see you, Brooks!Come inside."
"Thank you, sir," said I, feeling a strong impulse to bolt as heshook me by the hand, so hot was his and so dry, and so feverishlyit gripped me.
"You're sure no one tracked ye here?" he asked, as he closed the doorbehind us.
"There was a barber, sir, at the head of the passage. I stopped toask him the way."
"_He's_ all right, or would be but for that cursed bird of his.How a man can keep such a bird--" Captain Coffin broke off."I had a two-three nails in my mouth when you knocked. Nearly mademe swallow 'em, you did. They was copper nails, too."
I suppose I must have stared at this, for he paused and peered at me,drawing me over to the window, through which--so thickly grimed itwas--a very little light dribbled from the courtyard into the room.Yet the room itself was clean, almost spick and span, with aseaman-like tidiness in all its arrangements--a small room, crowdedwith foreign odds-and-ends, among which I remember a walking-stickeven more singular than the one Captain Coffin carried on his walksabroad (it was white in colour, with lines of small greyindentations, and he afterwards told me it was a shark's backbone);a corner-cupboard, too, painted over with green-and-yellow tulips.
"Copper nails, I tell you. Nothing but the best'll do for yourfriend Coffin." He leaned back, still eyeing me, and tapped me twiceon the chest. "You heard me say that? 'Your friend' was my words."
"Thank you, sir."
"But you made me jump, you did--me being that way given when off theliquor." He hesitated a moment, with a glance over his shoulder atthe tulip-painted cupboard. "Brooks," he went on earnestly, "you andme being met on a matter of business, and the same needin'steadiness--head and hand, my boy, if ever business did--what d'yesay to a tot of rum apiece?"
Without waiting for my answer, he hobbled off to the cupboard, andhad set two glasses on the table and brimmed them with neat spiritbefore I had finished protesting. The bottle-neck trembled on therims of the glasses and struck out a sort of chime as he paused.
"You won't?" he asked, gulping down his own portion; and the liquormust have been potent, for it brought a sudden water to his eyes."Well, so be it--if you've kept off it at your age. But at mine"--he drank off the second glassful and wiped his mouth--"I've hadexperiences, Brooks. When you've heard 'em, you wouldn't besurprised, not if it took a dozen to steady me."
He filled again, and came close to me, holding the glass, yet sotremulously that the rum spilled over his fingers.
"Ingots, lad--golden ingots! Bars and wedges of solid gold!Gems, too, and cath-e-deral plate, with crucifixions and priests'vestments stiff with pearls and rubies as if they was frozen.I've seen 'em lyin' tossed in a heap like mullet in a ground-net.Ay, and blazin' on the beach, with the gulls screamin' over 'em andflappin', and the sea all around. I seen it with these eyes, boy" Hestood back and shivered. "And behind o' that, the Death! But itcomes equal to all, the Death. Not if a man had learned every trickthe devil can teach could he lay his course clear o' that. Could he,now?"
His words, his uncouth gestures, which were almost spasms, and thechanges in his face--from cupidity to terror, and from terror againto a kind of wistful hope--fairly frightened me, and I stammeredstupidly that death was the common lot, and there couldn't be a doubtof it; that or something of the sort. But what I said does notmatter. He was not listening, and before I had done he drained andset down the glass and gripped my arm again.
"I seen all that--ay, an' felt it!" He drew away and stretched outboth hands, crooking his fingers like talons. "Ay, an' I seen_him!_"
"Him?" I echoed. "But you were talking of Death, sir."
"You may call him that. There's men lyin' around in the sand--Did ever you hear, boy, of a poison that kills a man and keeps himfresh as paint?"
"No, sir."
He nodded. "No, I reckon you never did. Fresh as paint it keeps'em, and white as a figure-head. The first heap as ever I dug,believin' it to be the treasure--my reckoning was out by a foot ortwo--I came on one o' them. Three foot beneath the sand I came onhim, an' the gulls sheevoing all the while over my head. _They_knew. And the sea and the dreadful loneliness around us all thewhile. There was three of us, Brooks--I mention no names, youunderstand--three of us, and _him_. Three to one. Yet he got thebetter of us all--as he got the better of the first lot, and _they_must ha' been a dozen. Four of them we uncovered afore we struck theedge of the treasure--uncovered 'em and covered 'em up again prettyquick, I can tell you. Fresh as paint they were, in a manner o'speaking, just as though they'd died yesterday; whereas by Bill'saccount they must ha' lain there for more'n a year. And the faces on'em white and shinin'--"
Here Captain Coffin shivered, and, glancing about him, poured outanother go of rum.
"You wouldn't blame me for wantin' it, Brooks--not if you'd seen 'em.That was on the Keys, as they're called--half a dozen banks tono'thard of the island, and maybe fro
m half a mile to three-quartersoff the shore, which shoals thereabout--sand, all the lot of 'em, andnothin' but sand; sand and sea-birds, and--what I told you. But thebulk lies in the island itself, in two caches; and where the biggercache lies _he_ don't know, and nobody knows but only Dan Coffin."
Captain Coffin winked, touched his breast, and wagged his forefingerat me impressively.
"That makes twice," he went on. "Twice that devil has got the betterof every one. But the third time's lucky, they say. He may be deadafore this; he'll be getting an oldish man, anyway, and life on thatcursed island can't be good for his health. We won't go in a crowdthis time, neither; not a dozen, nor yet four of us, but only you an'me, Brooks. It's the safer way--the only safe way--an' there'll bethe fatter sharin's. Now you know--hey?--why Branscome's givin' melessons in navigation."
He chuckled, and was moving off mysteriously to a back doorway behindthe dresser, but halted and came back to the table beside which Istood, making no motion to follow him.
"Look ye here, Brooks," said be. "If there's anything you don't getthe hang of--anything that takes ye aback, so to speak, in what I'mtellin' you--you just hitch on an' trust to old Dan Coffin; to oldDan, as'll do for you more than ever your godfathers an' godmothersdid at your baptism. You'll pick up a full breeze as you go on.Man, the treasure's there! Man, I've handled it, or enough of it tokeep you in a coach-an'-six, with nothing to do but loll on cushionsfor the rest o' your days, an' pick your teeth at the crowd.And look ye here." He waved a hand around the room. "I'm old DannyCoffin, ain't I? poor old drunken Danny Coffin, eh? Yet cast an eyeabout ye. Nice fittin's, ben't they? Hitch down my coat off the pegthere; feel the cloth of it; take it between finger and thumb.Ay, I don't live upon air, nor keep house an' fixtures upon nothin'at all. There--if you want more proof!" He dived a hand into histrouser-pocket, and held out a golden coin under my nose."There! that very dollar came from the island, and I'm offerin' youthe fellows to it by the thousand. Why? says you. Because, says I,you're a good lad, and I've took a fancy to see you in Parlyment.That's why. An' it's no return I'm askin' you, but just to believe!"
He made for the back door again, and opened it, letting in thesunlight; but the sunlight fell in two slanting rays, one on eitherside of a dark object which all but filled the entrance, blocking outmy view of the back court beyond. It was the stern of a tall boat.
The boat, in fact, filled the small back court, leaving an alley-wayscarcely more than two feet wide along either party-wall. She restedon the stocks, about three-parts finished, in shape very like awhaleboat, and in measurement--so Captain Coffin informed me, with aproprietary wave of the hand--some twenty-nix feet over all, with abeam of nine feet six inches amidships. And even to a boy's eye sheshowed herself a pretty model, though (as I say) unfinished, with afoot and more of her ribs standing up bare and awaiting the topstrakes.
"Designed her myself, Brooks. Eh, but your friend Dan'l Coffin hasan eye for the shape of a boat, though no hand at pencilling, norwhat you might call the cabinet-making part of the job. There's ayoung carpenter lives up the court here--a cleverish fellow.I got him to help me over the niceties, you understand; but on mylines, lad. Climb up and cast your eye over the well I've put inher. That's for the treasure; and there'll be side-lockers round thestern-sheets, and a locker forward big enough to hold a man.The fellow don't guess their meanin', an' I don't let him guess.He thinks they're for air-compartments, to keep her buoyant; saysshe'll need more ballast than I've allowed her, and wants to knowwhat sense there is in buildin' a boat so floatey. _We'll_ ballasther, Brooks; all in good time. We'll ship her aboard the Kingstonpacket, bein' of a size that she'll carry comfortable as deck-cargo;and soon as we get to Kingstown we'll--"
"Avast there, cap'n!" interrupted a cheerful voice; and I glanced up,to see a sandy-haired youth with an extremely good-natured facenodding at us across the coping of the party-wall. "Avast there!Busy with visitors, eh? No? Well, I've been thinkin' it over, andI'll take sixpence an hour."
"I don't give a ha'penny over fippence," answered Captain Coffin,patently taken aback by the interruption.
"Fivepence, then, as a pro-temporary accommodation," said the youth,and, throwing a leg over the wall, heaved himself over and into theback yard. "But it's taking advantage of me; and you know that if Iweren't in love and in a hurry it wouldn't happen."
"You can take fippence, or go to the devil!" said Captain Coffin."By the way, Brooks, this is my assistant, Mr. George Goodfellow."
Poison Island Page 5