They got up, the man still yelling at the top of his voice; for he was sure that some infernal thing had caught at him out of the darkness of the lazarette. The Bo’sun caught the man a hard clip on the side of the head, then made one jump up the ladder and caught a lamp from the next man on the rungs. With this he dropped back into the lazarette and held the light over his head.
There was a clamour of shouts and questionings from the men who were even then coming down. But when they saw the Bo’sun standing there unhurt, they hurried to join him with their lamps, and so in a minute the place was full of light. Thus it was that they were able to see immediately an extraordinary sight; for, lying in a row, but about a fathom apart from each other, were three figures that had begun to wriggle about and emit vague, inarticulate sounds.
“Lord save us!” shouted the man who had first seen the writing on the Mate’s bunk-board. “See theer! See theer!” He pointed excitedly, holding the lamp forward with the other hand. “Yon’s tha Cap’n, an’ Bruikson, an’ th’ lad! Sitha!”
At the Lancashireman’s words there was a general surge forward on the part of the men, led by Dan’l Templet. The three figures on the deck of the lazarette had twisted round to them, and their eyes shone queerly bright out of grimed faces and shocks of matted hair. But none of them could move a yard; for they were not only gagged and lashed hand and foot, but tethered by short lengths of rope to staples driven into the skin of the ship.
The three of them were quickly cut loose and helped up into the cabin above.
“Where’s yon—Maulk!” old Captain Gaskelt had gasped out with an unmentionable oath, as they cut from his mouth the fiercely bitten piece of wood, which had done for a gag during all the weary days in which he had lain below there.
“Gone!” said Dan’l Templet, “and the punt with him!” He stared at the piece of hard teak which the Captain had chewed into the shape of an hourglass. “G’lord! Cap’n!” he added, “this must a’ giv’ you hell! Was it the Mate as done it?”
Captain Gaskelt swallowed a stiff tot of rum and passed the jug round. Then he explained how one night, he didn’t know now how long ago it was, Maulk had come up behind him during his watch, and nearly choked him to death. The next thing he knew, he came to lying in the lazarette, all lashed up, as he said, like a bale.
Bruikson, the man, had much the same thing to tell; he was, however, careful to hide the truth, which was that he had seen Maulk attack the Captain, but had held his tongue, being a thoroughly callous sort, and had later tried to frighten the big Mate into sharing with him whatever he had gained by killing the Captain; for he had never thought but that Maulk had murdered old Captain Gaskelt and dumped his body quietly overside.
The case of the boy was entirely different. He had heard a sound in the lazarette, the key of which Maulk carried always on him. He had heard the sound, like a sort of knocking, whilst he was in his bunk, and had run into the Mate’s cabin to wake him. To his amazement and fear, Maulk had caught him by the throat and threatened to kill him if he uttered a sound. The Mate had then carried him to the trapdoor, unlocked and opened it, and carried him below, where he lashed him up in the same way that he had made the man and the Master fast.
Maulk had not treated his prisoners badly, in many ways. He had fed them twice a day, ungagging each one in turn and attending to their various wants in a grim but not brutal fashion.
But the reason for it all was what bothered the Captain; for, so far as the Bo’sun and the crew could tell him, Maulk had taken no sort of advantage of his temporary command of the ship. The whole of the Mate’s action was inexplicable; and thus it remained until daylight, which began to come, clear and cold and calm, a little before eight bells.
V
Captain Gaskelt had taken charge once more. His old knees trembled a little as he stood near the lee-rail, peering away to port; but though he felt utterly tired, his spirit was indomitable, and he was waiting for the fast-coming daylight to show the punt somewhere within the circle of the horizon. He had a man aloft at each masthead, and had promised a pound of tobacco to the one who should first report the boat. Meanwhile, he studied the sea around through his telescope.
As the daylight strengthened, Captain Gaskelt had something of a shock; for what he had taken to be a heavy bank of clouds to the southward began to resolve itself into something more solid. Even as he realised this, there came the hail almost simultaneously from both mastheads:
“Land on the port beam, Sir!”
The morning light came more strongly, and old Captain Gaskelt gave a little mutter of amazement as he perceived what he was staring at. With a slight shake of his old wrists, he adjusted the glass to his eye and stared. Then in a curious voice he turned and hailed the Bo’sun.
“Dan’l,” he said, “there’s land to loo’ard. Take a look at it an’ tell me what you see…. Lord! To think of it... after all these years!” he added to himself, whilst he waited for the Bo’sun to speak.
“It’s a hiland,” said Dan’l Templet, staring through the telescope. “There’s a great peak, as you c’n see, Sir, to the eastern end of it, and there’s a most unnatcheral lookin’ cross, or the likes of the same, on the side of the peak.” He lowered the glass, and the Captain grabbed it from him, whilst the Bo’sun stared down curiously at the Old Man. “Do you mean to say, Sir,” added Dan’l Templet, “as yon’s the hiland we always thought was a joke of yourn?”
But old Captain Gaskelt never heard him.
“That’s it! That’s it!” he kept saying under his breath. “Oh, Mister Maulk, you great hog, I forgive you…. That’s why you put me away, so as you could take charge an’ steer the ship down here…. An’ me tellin’ you about the island!… An’ you knowin’ all the time…. Lord! Look at the crossbones! Cut as natural as life!… An’ that quiet devil knowed the latitood an’ the longytood all the time! An’ never a word to me, the sly hog—the sly hog! But I guess he overrun the mark, or else the ship’s in a drift, and the current’s brought her down on the island during the night. I shouldn’t wonder….”
He broke off his mutter and spoke to the Bo’sun; still without ceasing to look through the telescope.
“Turn the men to, Bo’sun, clearing out the starboard boat,” he said. “Yon Mister Mate has sure made ashore yon, and we’ll catch him yet for his sins. And maybe we’ll make our fortunes while we’re there, Bo’sun. There’s as much gold hid ashore in the Crossbones, they do say, as would buy Jerusalem…. And to think of all the brasted fools I’ve met while I’ve been fishin’, as was ready to bet there was no such place as the Crossbones!”
He lapsed into brief but subtle profanity, in no wise lacking in vigour, despite its subtlety. The memory of all the men who had laughed at him in many a public-house and saloon in many a seaport came hot upon him. Here was truly a case of he laughs the best who laughs the last.
“And yon devil knew all the time!” he broke out again presently. “Not since I was a boy, Dan’l, have I seen yon blessed sight!” he continued, oblivious of the fact that the Bo’sun had long since gone to assist the men at clearing the big ship’s boat. “Not since I was a boy… They do say there’s a mint of the gold buried under the crossbones itself,” he went rambling on. “To think, all my life I’ve thought of yon, and there it is!… Bo’sun, are they gettin’ that boat cleared?”
VI
Captain Gaskelt beached the boat on a sandy spit of sand that ran out in a long curve, and made a splendid, sheltered landing. The little punt lay there, high and dry where Maulk had hauled it up when he landed some hours before. From the punt there ran a single track of footsteps towards where, some hundred fathoms away, there began the skirt of a dense, gloomy-looking wood, coming surprisingly far down to the beach, and continuing upward over a great rise, which led inward toward the centre part of the island.
“That’s the way yon devil went,” said Captain Gaskelt, pointing at the footprints. “One of you stay by the boat; the others come along with me
.” He glanced up at the sky and the sun, then round the horizon. “I hope the weather’ll hold calm,” he muttered to himself in half-conscious uneasiness.
“Now, lads!” He began to lead the way.
As they neared the place where the sand-spit merged into the upward slope of the island, old Captain Gaskelt’s excitement broke out. He looked back over his shoulder at his five men.
“Get a move on you, lads!” he shouted. “There’s a million fortunes hid on this island. This is the place they’ve been looking for these two hundred years. This is where Galt and Ladd and a dozen of them old pirate devils hid their stuff; and we’re going to get it. Come on!”
And he began to run along the tracks toward where they entered the trees, a little to the side of a low cliff that stood up to their left, all crowned with a chaos of wild bushes.
The men had been incredibly fired by the Old Man’s words, and they pelted after him in a string; and so entered the wood, panting and stumbling over the lacings of undergrowth. Their run dwindled presently into a walk, and soon into a climb; for the side of the island went up very abruptly in that place. Yet the old Captain’s excitement was so great that he managed still to keep the lead; and even found breath to shout back odd phrases of:
“Come along, lads! Hey for the old pirates’ gold! No more going to sea, men! No more turning out on a dirty night! Come along, lads!”
The men answered back with breathless shouts and climbed furiously, the sounds of their gasps and stumblings going curiously clear through the chilly morning air.
“Keep off there!” roared Maulk’s voice suddenly from some unknown place among the trees. “Keep off, Cap’n. I don’t wish you no harm, as you should know; but I’ll blow you to hell an’ out again if you come a step farther!”
“There he is, men!” shouted Captain Gaskelt. “On to him, lads! On to him!”
But as there was no one for them to “on to,” they simply stood in their tracks, staring helplessly about them.
Abruptly, there came the heavy bang of a musket, from somewhere below them, and a bullet went splintering the smaller branches over the men’s heads; and at that, they turned to their left and bolted forthwith through a clearer space among the trees
“I’ll learn you! I’ll learn you!” they heard Maulk shouting in a great voice through the trees; and immediately afterward there came the thud, thud, of two other shots and the zipping of the bullets to right and left.
Old Captain Gaskelt was running with the rest. They had not a weapon among them except their sheath-knives; and so were at the mercy of Maulk, unless they could reach some sort of safe shelter.
“Sitha!” shouted the Northman who had formed one of the boat’s crew. “Yon cave! Yon cave! Coom on!” And he dashed out of the line of flight toward where a great hole showed in the side of a rock face to their left. The others followed, and within a few seconds they were all under cover in a cave that went winding in into an utter darkness, like a sort of gigantic passage.
“ ’E’ll never let us go alive!” said one of the men, after they had stood silent a few minutes, listening desperately for any signs of Maulk. “Us know too bloomin’ much of this ’ere island! There’s the old brig! My oath! I’d give my ’ole bloomin’ payday to be safe aboard ’er this bloomin’ minnit! The Mate’s a bloomin’ madman, that’s wot ’e is!”
From where they stood they could see out over the sea to the north and west, a roughly circular view-field bounded by the mouth of the cave; and across this field of blue water there was drifting slowly the brig, with her sails slatting ever so gently as she rolled a little from time to time.
“G’Lord!” said Captain Gaskelt abruptly, as a tremendous crash of sound went echoing over the island. “Look!” he added, almost in a shriek, as a great jet of water rose between the shore and the brig. “It’s a cannon!”
He broke off into an inarticulate cry as a bright, white shower of splinters shot up into the clear morning air from the starboard rail of the brig.
“ ’E’s goin’ to sink ’er, and then ’e’ll murder us just like shootin’ a lot of dawgs!” said the man who had spoken before. “Let’s out and charge the swine. Maybe we’ll be able to knife ’im before ’e outs us all! ’E don’t mean one of us to leave ’ere alive!”
With the word, he rushed out through the mouth of the cave into the daylight, waving his sheath-knife. A couple of steps he ran, and then pitched headlong, whilst the thud of a musket sounded through the trees. He lay on the ground, piteously still; and no one followed him.
A second and a third shot from the cannon followed at leisurely intervals; but the shooting was not so good, and they both missed the brig. Then the men in the cave began to cheer; for the Bo’sun was hoisting out the remaining boat; and presently he had it ahead of the vessel, and was towing her out of danger as hard as the men could lay to the oars.
There was presently a fourth cannon shot which, however, fell short of the brig by about half a mile; and after that, through the long, silent, breathless-seeming afternoon, no sound in all the island, save the vague, far noise of the surf to the southward and the lonely crying of sea-birds, wheeling high against a sky that was slowly growing leaden.
“I don’t understand ’im ’avin’ that cannon,” said one of the men; “nor powder nor shot nor nothin’ else! What like place is this ’ere hiland, Cap’n?”
“I guess it’s one left here by them damned pirates,” said Captain Gaskelt, eyeing the sky and the general look of the atmosphere anxiously…. Lord! I don’t like the look of the weather! There’s a proper southerly buster brewin’, or I know nothin’!… What powder and shot…. I don’t know; only it looks as if there’s been devilment ashore here not such a mighty long time gone. I’d not be s’prised at anything I found down here. It’s just Satan’s own pet hiding-place for his own spawn! As for the Mate, I’m thinkin’ he must have been mixed up in some rum doings, sometime or other in his wicked life. But I’ve been thinkin’ it must have been years gone, now; and him, maybe, lived decent a bit; but broke loose with the chance to get back to the gold he must ’a’ known to be here. I don’t reckon, somehow, we’ve any but him to bother with; he’d not go shootin’ so free an’ easy if there was others; they’d not want him, and he’d not want them; not if it’s the gold he’s after. We’ll do him yet, if the wind’ll hold off till dark. We’ll make a run for the boats and get away, unless he thinks to stove them…. Good Lord! What’s that?”
In through the cave-mouth there came crawling painfully a limp, white-faced man, dragging his left leg, limp and useless from the hip. As he came there sounded outside the bang of a musket, very near, and the heavy ball knocked a shower of rock chippings from the top of the cave-mouth on to the back of the creeping man.
“It’s Tauless!” said several voices, shouting the name of the man who had been shot outside, and whom all had supposed to be dead. Then half a dozen hands were dragging him in to safety. As they did so, they heard Maulk outside, shouting in a great voice, shaken with a sort of brutal-seeming laughter:
“I’ll learn you! I’ll learn you!” he was shouting. “I’ll make long pig of you before this time tomorrow. I’ve blown the brig to hell, and you’ll go too, as soon as I get at you!”
They heard his laughter going loud and intentionally threatening through the thin, chill air, echoing with a strange, empty sound from some of the naked rocks and boulders that lay huge around the cleared space out of which their cliff sprang. But after the echoes had died away, they heard nothing for hours, and no one spoke except old Captain Gaskelt, muttering nervous comments to himself on the look of the darker-growing sky. Once he broke out with:
“It’s one of the devil’s lies about the brig. She got clean away!” He looked round at the men in the half-darkness of the cave, as if he doubted that he had himself seen the vessel towed out of danger.
“She’s all right, Cap’n,” they assured him. “I wish we was half as right!” One of them crept quietly and cau
tiously near to the mouth of the cave and peered out. He nodded back to Captain Gaskelt. “She’s all right, Cap’n,” he whispered over his shoulder. “The Bo’sun’s getting the sail off her. They—”
But he never finished; for simultaneously with the startling bang of Maulk’s firearm from near by, a heavy bullet struck the rock within a foot of the man’s head; and he rolled backward into the cave, swearing with fright, but unhurt. Evidently Maulk was keeping a close watch.
Presently a certain recklessness took the old Captain, and he wandered back into the darkness of the cave, feeling around him, and striking odd matches. The men sat and whispered together in a depressed fashion, but suddenly they heard the Master calling softly to them from some place in the darkness. Then a match was struck, apparently some fifty yards away, shining like an infinitely small star in an utter gloom. They walked toward it, and as the Captain struck a second light they came up with him.
“Follow along, lads,” said old Captain Gaskelt; and he led them through a long passage which was presently lighted here and there through shafts or blowholes through the rock. They came out in about a minute onto a shelf of rock that stood out from an immense wall of rock which faced to the south, and went down sheer a hundred feet below.
They were looking out over an extraordinary harbour which seemed to be situated somewhere near the centre of the island, being entirely land-locked, to such an extent that not only could they get no view of the sea to the southward, but they were unable to trace the exact position of the hidden mouth of the harbour, which was entered probably by a winding passage through the irregular rocky sides, which towered up all around.
Lying in this harbour, still floating, despite that they appeared to belong to a period a hundred or more years earlier, were three ancient craft, still carrying to the trained eye a tale of rakishness that suggested their history. In each case they had a heavy gun mounted amidships; though in the biggest of the three vessels the gun carriage had rotted away, and the gun lay upon the deck, amid the wreck of its rotted carriage.
The Ghost Pirates and Other Revenants of the Sea Page 32