The Pirate Story Megapack: 25 Classic and Modern Tales

by Robert E. Howard

  Around this were the signs of other labors, and the unmistakable traces of all the toilers, who in succession had labored here. Some pits had caved in, like the original “money-hole.” Others had filled with water. The sand, gravel, and clay, that had been drawn up out of these various excavations, covered a large space. Close by a pit, which lay nearest to the “money-hole,” rose the staging which had attracted them. On examining this, its purpose was at once evident. It was erected so as to allow of the working of pumps by horse-power. The circle was there which the horses traversed, and all the machinery was in perfect order. They understood the purpose of this machine at once from the landlord’s story. It had been intended to reach the bottom of the “money-hole” by a new pit, and this pit was to be kept dry by pumping. The pit must evidently be the one which immediately adjoined the “money-hole.” But how completely this plan had failed, was now evident to them from this pit itself, which, like the others that they had first seen, was full of water. This pit had proved of no avail against “Kidd’s drain.” Horse-power had been weak against the tides of the sea. Here was the melancholy result—a failure complete and utter; a pit flooded; engines useless; costly works deserted. Would the attempt ever be made again? or if so, would steam succeed when pitted against the waters of the ocean?

  They went down into the bowl-shaped cavity which marked the “money-hole,”—they did so cautiously, for they had vague fears of quicksand. But their fears were idle. The ground seemed as hard and as solid as on any other part of the island. They stood there, and stamped, and jumped, but the firm soil yielded not. They could scarcely believe that this was the very central point affected by the waters of the sea. And yet this must be so, for this was the point to which the “drain” had been directed, and far down the waters guarded the treasure from the hand of man.

  After remaining here for a time, they emerged from the cavity, and their attention was next attracted by a hut not far away. To this they directed their steps. They found the door wide open, and entered. Inside they saw two rooms divided by a board partition, with a chimney rising in the middle. This had been the place where the workmen lived, for signs of these occupants were still visible around. The two rooms were filled with spades, and chains, and boxes, and a miscellaneous collection of articles that had probably been used by the last excavators, and had been left here in anticipation of further use. Among these they saw a quantity of ropes in coils of different sizes; and they saw at once that if they wished to go down into any one of the pits, a way of descending was now supplied.

  The chimney at once suggested to their minds the remarks of the landlord about the stone with the inscription. To the boys that stone seemed the most important part of the whole story, and offered a more direct evidence as to its truth than anything else. They wished to see it, and judge for themselves. They accordingly examined the chimney on every side, but, to their very great disappointment, could not see anything of the kind. At length Bart found a place in the chimney from which a portion seemed to have been detached, and he at once declared that this must have been the place where the stone was, and that it had probably been taken away, so as to be made use of for the purpose of affecting the public mind, and inducing people to take stock in the new company.

  The sight of the ropes at once awakened within them a desire to put in practice their intention of descending into one of the pits. It did not seem to them to be dangerous. Bart was as active as a cat in climbing, especially when he had anything to do with ropes; while Pat, though not equal to him in this respect, was still quite able to do any ordinary work of the kind. One of the pits, as they had seen, was dry, but it was a little too far away. They wished to find one which was rather nearer the “money-hole,” where there might be some chance of putting into practice Pat’s idea about the tunnel. No thought of danger entered into their minds, no dread of the treacherous waters which had broken through into the other holes, and flooded them. They prepared to put their scheme into execution as calmly as if it was no more than climbing a tree.

  But first they must seek a pit nearer the “money-hole;” and with this intention they went back to that central spot, where they examined the pits in its neighborhood. To their great joy they soon found one. It was on the side opposite to that where the staging had been erected, and was quite dry. This they knew by dropping stones down, and listening to the sound made when they struck. All of them fell with a dull thud, and without any splashing noise, such as would have been produced had water been there.

  This at once decided them in favor of the pit just mentioned; and the next thing was, how to arrange the rope so as to make the descent. One could not lower the other; and if such a thing had been possible, neither one would have been willing to stay up. There was therefore nothing for them to do but to adopt the simple plan of climbing down by means of a rope secured to the top. First of all they had to select the rope. This they did without much delay. Among the various coils in the hut, one seemed suitable from size and quality. It had been used, like all the others; it seemed perfectly strong enough; and it was also sufficiently soft and smooth to the hands. This coil was therefore selected and brought to the place. A stone was quickly attached to one end, and was thrown down. The rope fell all the way to the bottom without being more than half expended. The rest of the coil lay at the edge of the pit.

  And now how were they to secure this, so as to descend? Something was needed which might bear their weight. At first they thought of tying the upper part of the rope to one of the planks which formed the staying of the sides of the pit; but this did not seem strong enough. They then went off to hunt up something. In the house there was a crowbar, which was strong enough, yet not long enough, to satisfy them. But outside of the house there was a large beam, fully twelve feet long and eight inches thick. This seemed to be the very thing. It was apparently sound and strong, and, as far as they could see, was quite able to support ten times the weight to which it would be subjected. This beam therefore was chosen without the slightest hesitation, and Bart and Pat, taking it up in their arms, carried it to the mouth of the pit; then they laid it across, and tied the rope about it as securely as possible.

  All now seemed perfectly safe, and nothing remained but to make the descent. Bart went first. The planks used for staying around the sides of the pit were far enough apart to offer here and there interstices in which the feet might be inserted, though in many of these places the earth bulged through so as to prevent a foothold. They thus afforded assistance; and Bart, as he began his descent, availed himself of it. As he went down, Pat watched him anxiously from above. Before his head had disappeared, he said,—

  “O, by the way, Pat! throw down that pickaxe.”

  For Pat had brought a pickaxe from the hut, in order to make his tunnel; and it was now lying on the ground, close by.

  “Sure, but I was goin to wait till you got down.”

  “What! and throw it on my head! No, thank you.”

  “Sure an I niver thought of that at all at all,” said Pat; “and it’s lucky for you that you thought of it just now.”

  With these words Pat dropped the pickaxe into the pit, and it fell with a dull thud far down at the bottom.

  Bart now continued his descent, and Pat watched him all the way. At length a voice came up from far below,—

  “All right! Come along!”

  Upon this Pat descended, and went down cautiously and carefully, clinging with feet and hands to the rope and to the sides of the pit. He was not so dexterous as Bart, and once or twice he lost his foothold on the side of the pit, and slid for several feet, the rope cutting his hands; but still he kept on, for Bart was waiting for him, and encouraging him.

  At length, when about thirty feet from the bottom, where Bart was standing, he found a place where he could stick his foot, and waited for a moment to look down through the darkness. He could see nothing. As he looked, his foot slipped from the place, and he fell with a jerk, the rope sliding painfully through hi
s chafed hands. At that very instant it seemed to him that the rope itself was falling. From above there came a dull creaking sound, and from below a cry of horror burst from Bart. At that instant, Pat’s feet touched the bottom of the pit.

  Bart grasped his arm convulsively, and pointed upward.

  “The beam! the beam!” he almost screamed. “It’s broke. O, what shall we do!”

  Pat looked up; and there, clearly defined against the sky, he saw the beam around which the rope was fastened, no longer lying straight across the mouth of the pit, but sagging down in the middle at a sharp angle. It had been rotten in the middle. It had cracked at that last jerk occasioned by his fall from his foothold; and it now hung broken midway, still clinging together by a few fibres, but suspended there above them, like the sword of Damocles, as if by a single hair, and threatening every instant to fall and crush them.

  The rope and the beam had both been rotten, and the jerk which had been given when Pat lost his foothold had cracked the one and broken the other. There, about thirty feet above them, hung the end of the rope where it had parted. The rest of it was still in Pat’s hands.

  CHAPTER XI.

  The other boys rose that morning at the usual hour, and descended leisurely to breakfast. The absence of Bart and Pat was noticed and commented on. It was supposed, however, that they had gone off somewhere to get up an appetite for breakfast, and that they would be along before the meal was over. Time passed, and the breakfast was ended; but still no signs appeared of the absentees. It was now nearly time to start, and they all strolled down to the wharf where the Antelope was, thinking that the two boys might possibly be there. On reaching the place they looked around, but saw no signs of them. Captain Corbet had not seen them, nor had Solomon. Everything was ready, and it was only a few minutes of the time.

  “It’s queer where those fellows can have gone to,” said Bruce.

  “They’ve gone on a walk, of course,” said Arthur; “and I dare say they’ve gone farther than they intended.”

  “O, they’ll be along soon,” said Phil; and won’t they be half starved? Methinks!”

  “It’s a strange thing,” said Tom, “that they should have slipped off in this way. No one knows anything about them. No one at the inn saw them go out. They must have got up precious early.”

  “Well, they’re both rather early risers,” said Arthur; “and they may have gone off fishing.”

  “I dare say they have,” said Bruce. “Bart is crazy about fishing, and if he has got one solitary bite, he’ll give up the expedition to Aspotogon.”

  “And Pat’s as bad, every bit,” said Phil. “Depend upon it, those two have gone out to catch fish for breakfast, and won’t be back till somewhere about evening.”

  “For my part,” said Tom, “I shouldn’t wonder if they’ve both backed out deliberately.”

  “Backed out?”

  “Yes. I don’t believe they cared about going to Aspotogon.”

  “Pooh! nonsense! What makes you think that?”

  “Why, last evening I noticed that they didn’t say a single word. Both of those fellows were as mum as mice, and all the rest of us were in full cry about the expedition. Depend upon it, they didn’t want to go, and have backed out. They didn’t want to say anything about it, for fear we’d tease them to come, but quietly dropped off, leaving us to go without them. O, that’s the way, beyond a doubt.”

  “Now that you mention it, Tom,” said Phil, “I do remember that they didn’t say anything last night, neither of them.”

  “Neither did they,” said Arthur.

  “Fact,” said Bruce; “it looks very much as if they had talked the matter over, and concluded to back out in this quiet way; and I don’t know but what they have concocted some scheme of their own.”

  “O, some fishing scheme, of course. Bart was crazy about it, you know, and he’s persuaded Pat to go with him.”

  “Well, in that case we needn’t wait.”

  “O, we may as well hang on till ten—in case they should turn up after all.”

  Such was the opinion, then, to which the other boys came, about the disappearance of Bart and Pat. It was a perfectly natural one under the circumstances. Bart and Pat were distinguished above all things for their fondness for fishing; their silence during the conversation of the preceding evening really made it seem as though they had no desire to go to Aspotogon, but had some plan of their own. This plan seemed to the boys to be undoubtedly a fishing expedition. There was, therefore, not the slightest feeling of uneasiness in the mind of any of them, nor did even Captain Corbet, who had listened to the conversation, imagine that there was any cause for alarm. To have imagined danger to them in such a place as this, on dry ground, in a civilized country, was out of the question. Notwithstanding this conviction, they thought it possible, however, that the two might yet return in time, and therefore they decided to wait for them till ten.

  The conversation about Bart and Pat was suddenly interrupted by the appearance of the landlord, who brought them another disappointment. He told them that important business had most unexpectedly required him to go up the country for twenty miles or so, and that he should not be able to accompany them. He expressed the greatest possible regret, and the boys expressed still more. They at once offered to postpone their expedition till the following day; but the landlord was not certain whether he should be back by that time or not, and advised them to go without him. He said a friend of his would go, who knew the whole country, and could tell them all that they wanted to know about it.

  Great was the disappointment of the boys at this unexpected occurrence. They had particularly wished to have the landlord’s company, for reasons already stated. He was so genial, so communicative, and so destitute of inquisitiveness, that he seemed the very man whom they might be able to pump to their hearts’ content, without making their purpose apparent to him. One great charm of the expedition lay in their belief that Aspotogon and Deep Cove had been the haunts of the buccaneers, and that the landlord would show them the traditionary place where the treasure had been deposited. They did not think that another man could supply his place; and when, shortly after, the landlord brought his friend along, they were sure of it. For the friend, whose name the landlord gave as Turnbull, was a heavy, dull-looking man, and the last in the world whom they would have chosen in the landlord’s place. However, there was no help for it. It was useless to postpone it, and, consequently, at ten o’clock the Antelope started on her voyage.

  On emerging from the little harbor of Chester into the bay, the scene that presented itself was beautiful in the extreme. Much of it was familiar to their eyes, owing to their previous cruise about the bay on the first day of their arrival; but they now saw it under a somewhat different aspect. On one side arose an island, bare of trees, and covered with grass, of no great size, but conspicuous from its position. In its neighborhood were other islands, some all wooded from the shore to the summit, others showing green meadows peeping forth from encircling foliage. Before them spread the shores of Tancook, all green with verdure, dotted with white houses, and showing, here and there, the darker hue of forest trees, amid the green, grassy meadows. Beyond this, and far out to sea, was Ironbound, which, from this distance, looked dark and repellent. It was more wooded than the other islands, and did not seem popular as a dwelling-place. Naturally so, for at that distance out, it was exposed to the storms and the fogs of the ocean, while those islands within the bay were in the possession of a far more genial soil and climate. On the left, the coast-line ran on beyond a neighboring point, till it terminated in a distant headland; and here, on that line of coast, several miles this side of the headland, the land arose to a wooded eminence, which was no other than the very place which they were seeking—Aspotogon.

  The boys were disappointed, for they had expected something much higher. It did not seem to them to be more than a very ordinary hill, nor did it rise very high above the level of the surrounding land. Still, they were willing to
be pleased, and therefore tried to think that it might really be much higher than it seemed.

  The line of coast ran on, showing cleared fields along the shore, which, farther back, were succeeded by wooded slopes. In this line of shore there did not appear the slightest opening, nor could they imagine how it was possible for a schooner to reach the base of Aspotogon. That there was a passage, however, they were again and again assured by Turnbull, who, though not at all inclined to give any information, was yet capable of answering direct questions, and telling the names of places. The existence of a cove, or strait, in such a place, where there seemed nothing but an unbroken line of coast, gave additional strength to that fancy in which the boys had already been indulging, and made them think that this place, so completely hidden, must be, above all others, the place once chosen as a secure retreat by the buccaneers. This feeling gained strength as they went on. The distance was not far. The wind was fair. The Antelope did her best, and so they gradually drew nearer and nearer. Still, no sign appeared of any opening, nor could they make out any place where an opening might be likely to be found. At last Turnbull remarked that this was the place, and that the Antelope would have to anchor here, as it would be inconvenient, in this wind, to get out of Deep Cove if they were to enter it in the schooner. Down went the Antelope’s anchor, and the boat was hauled up alongside.

  They were not more than a quarter of a mile from the shore. Deep Cove was there,—for so Turnbull said,—and they were about to visit it, yet there was still no more appearance of any opening than before. The shore seemed to run on without any break, and the boys sought in vain to find some place into which a boat might go; but the boat was ready, and this mystery was soon to be solved.