“And did they find the treasure?” I asked as he paused.
“Nobody knows,” he answered. “That’s the trouble with Cocos Island. The ‘Edgcombe’ was there a century ago— that was in the days of the industrial revolution, when railways were being built and there were already plenty of newspapers. Yet as far as I can find out nobody ever heard of their bringing back treasure. Maybe’ they located it. Maybe they had trouble with their crew or with the two deserters from an American brig they found living on the island. The interesting thing is that on their return Keating gave orders for the building of a 120-ton clipper schooner. That would have cost money and you must remember that Keating was only an ignorant fisherman. The ship was named the ‘Red Gauntlet,’ and that’s a name that puzzled me. Why the ‘Red Gauntlet’? Has that any bearing on the treasure or was the idea that it was a gory, pirate’s glove slapped in the face of Fate—a kind of challenge, like this.” And he held up his dummy hand.
He wasn’t looking at me. His voice had become very excited and I realized then that he was telling the story for his own benefit, not mine. “The ‘Red Gauntlet’ never came back to Nova Scotia. She was lost with all hands rounding the Horn. But here’s the interesting thing: before she sailed for home, Keating had deserted at Panama. Now why did he do that? Some say that he never found the treasure, that it was Boag who found it and that when Keating saw the captain’s pockets all bulging with gold and precious stones he pushed him into the sea and drowned him. Others that he shut him in the cave itself. At all events there’s doubt about whether Boag was alive when the ‘Red Gauntlet’ left Cocos for her ill-fated voyage round the Horn. But there’s no doubt about one thing—Keating returned home with some of the treasure. And in 1846 he sailed again for Cocos Island. That was his last expedition. He died in 1882.”
Sparks paused to throw his cigarette out the window and then turned to me. “That’s three expeditions Keating made, and they must have cost him a pretty packet. Yet a Judge Prowse tells how Keating, from being a poor man, came to buy one of the finest business premises in St. John’s and a large farm. He also tells how he’d heard people describe the astonishment of Keating’s wife when he threw a heap of gold and jewels on the bed for her to see. The old devil never told his wife or his family where the treasure was hidden. Maybe he never knew. But he left a chart behind that has since proved to be false. This chart was given to a Captain Hackett who was busy fitting out a ship to be called the ‘Mary Dyer’ just before Keating died. It was to be a final expedition. But Hackett died of yellow fever in Havana. His son, however, made an expedition with Keating’s widow in 1894. But they found nothing. The information he’d given his wife led them to a cavity under a hollow tree. There was nothing in it. The only other person who seems to have had any luck with Cocos Island was a sailor who claims he hit on the cave by accident. Inside were gold ingots, a keg of gold coins, and statues of gold and silver. He took some coins and a bearing by his watch. But his bearings are vague and he doesn’t seem to have done much about it afterwards.” Sparks paced up and down for a time, his brows drawn together in thought, his big, florid face thrust slightly forward. At length he sighed. “Well, that’s the story of the treasure of Lima, Johnny.” And he lit another cigarette.
“What about the other treasures?” I asked.
“Benito Bonito? He was an old Portuguese pirate, skipper of a brig called the ‘Ralampago.’ His caches are supposed to be in caves around Wafer Bay. It was just about the time Thompson was making his haul—a little before, perhaps. Bonito was raiding along the coast and he’s supposed to have made one very big haul, ambushing a mule train bearing government silver from Mexico City to the coast for shipment. The old pirate is believed to have cached at one time 300,000 pounds of silver and at another time some 700 gold bricks and a lot of knickknacks, including more than 250 swords, gold-hilted and begemmed. That’s not counting other smaller caches and what his men buried as their share. Though they’re said to have mutinied.”
“But there’ve been a lot of expeditions to Cocos, haven’t there?” I asked.
“Any number.”
“Then surely if there was so much treasure there, some one must have located it?”
He laughed. It was a mirthless sound. “You wait till you see Cocos Island,” he said. “There’s the jungle, for instance. And that’s a strange thing. When Thompson buried his treasure there, Cocos Island was what its name implies, an island of cocoanut palms. Then the jungle came and within a few years it had become almost impenetrable. It’s not more than seven miles square, yet most of it is still unexplored. Jungle and precipitous-hills, that’s what’s beaten the treasure hunters. It rains eight months of the year there. And the torrents have undermined the cliffs. The place where they think Bonito’s main treasure lies is now covered by a big landslide and it’s reckoned that twelve months’ hard labor would be required to dig it out —if it’s there. That’s the trouble. Nobody’s certain. Costa Rica had a convict colony on the island for a time. They could have used the convicts to clear it, if they’d thought it worth while.” He turned away and stood for a while, staring out of the window.
At length he said, “It’s hard to believe that at long last we’re really going to lift the treasure out of Cocos Island, So many have tried and failed. They’ve dug and blasted, and sold their boats in Costa Rica to pay their passage home. Nobody’s got anything out of the place since Keating died, except for a few odd coins.”
“Has anyone tried recently?” I asked “Since the war? I don’t know. Before the war there were any number of expeditions. Sir Malcolm Campbell, the racing motorist, was there, blowing the tops off rocks. He wrote a book about his experiences. So did Plumpton. There was an absolute spate of expeditions around the thirties, even two women. And further back there was an English admiral called Palliser blasting away tons of rock.” He laughed mirthlessly. “Nature beat ’em every time.” He turned suddenly and looked at me questioningly. “How exactly did you come by this map?” he asked.
There was no point in concealing the details from him since the captain had told him so much. And when I mentioned how the map had been scratched on the engine mounting of the ML, he cursed once and then fell to laughing. “This man Irwin must have had a sense of humor,” he muttered. “The mutineers living on the beached ML, and the map there on board with them all the time. And Kean knew about it and didn’t tell them.” He was silent for a long time. Then he said, “Seems like they were always killing the one that had the map. Perhaps it’s as well the captain’s got it tucked away in his safe. But I suppose you remember the details of it?”
“Yes,” I said. “I could draw it any time.”
“With the directions?”
“Certainly.”
He grinned at me approvingly. “You’re a smart one, Johnny. Memory is better than a safe.”
I got up and went over to the porthole. A homeward-bound freighter stood out sharp against the glitter of sun on water. Balboa and the heat-baked hills of Panama were gone. Ahead of us stretched the Pacific, oily calm, an endless lake reaching to the horizon. It was like a brazen sheet of metal, and the glare of it hurt my eyes.
“When do you think we’ll reach Cocos Island?” I asked. “Tomorrow evening,” he replied.
“Then we’ll go straight to the cave,” I murmured. I was thinking how all those other people who’d tried and failed would envy us.
“Straight to the cave!” He gave a mirthless laugh. “Wait till you see Cocos Island,” he said again.
6. COCOS ISLAND
Next morning I was up on deck early, eager for my first sight of Cocos Island. The sea was a flat, leaden sheet, waiting for the sun. All round us it stretched, right to the horizon, an empty void without sign of ship or land. The sun came up out of the east. The sea turned pink, then blood red; and in an instant it had become a dazzling sheet of brass shot with all the colors of the rainbow. Then the glitter deadened to the blazing heat of a new day. The horizon becam
e a straight line, like a circle drawn round the ship. Disappointed, I went below to the galley.
Old Walrus looked up from the pan he was stirring. “See we’re sailing sou’west, sonny,” he said. “There’s rumors buzzing about, the men’s quarters like wasps in a honey jar.” I didn’t say anything, and he went on stirring. “We’re off course for Valparaiso,” he said after a pause, “and the rumors say that you’re the cause.”
“Perhaps,” I answered. The way he put it made me feel important.
“Sou’west of Balboa lies Cocos Island.”
He said Cocos Island as though it were the mortuary. But I was too excited to be depressed. “The crew think we’re sailing to Cocos Island, do they?” I asked, remembering what the captain had said about picking up any gossip there was.
He nodded slowly. “There’s talk that we’re sailing after the Cocos Island treasure and that you have a map.” He laid his spoon down and put the lid back on the pot. Then he stared at me sadly. “You should have took my advice, sonny,” he said. “I been forty years at sea and I’d swap all the gold in the world for a quiet, peaceable voyage. Talk of treasure only stirs up trouble.”
I told the captain what the cook had said when I took him his breakfast. He nodded. “The cook’s right,” he said.
That morning all hands were called aft, including the engine-room staff, and Captain Legett addressed them from the bridge. And as he explained to the men the reason for our visit to Cocos Island, it seemed to me that their eyes glittered hungrily in the blazing sun as they stared up at me. When he had finished there was a moment’s hush of excitement. Then somebody raised a cheer. And in a moment they were shouting their heads off, and the cheers were for me. I stepped back quickly out of sight. There was a frenzy of excitement in the way they cheered that scared me.
Little work was done on the ship that day. The crew stood about in small groups, talking in whispers. And whenever I appeared on deck, their eyes seemed to follow me. But I couldn’t stay below. The atmosphere of excitement that pervaded the ship kept me constantly running up on deck to see if the island was in sight. All through the violent heat of the day, the screws thumped steadily, matching the throb of the blood in my veins. And shortly after four in the afternoon the cry of “Land, ho!” was raised. And there, far ahead of us, the shimmering line of the horizon was broken by a little pinnacle of land.
We beat our way across the lazy ocean toward it and by evening Cocos Island stood out black and close against the flaring red of the setting sun. At each end the island rose sheer out of the water, climbing to twin bastions, then falling away and climbing again to a central summit higher than either of the others. The whole place was clad in a dense matting of jungle growth. The crew lined the rail for’ard, staring at it in hungry silence. Then the sun dipped below the rim of the horizon and a few minutes later the island faded like a mirage and was lost in the darkness of the night.
Sir Brian called me up to the bridge and showed me a chart of the place. Point Dampier, Goodman Point, Point Colnett, Breakfast Island, Chatham Bay, Wafer Bay—I can remember them all, the names given to parts of the island by men who surveyed it back in the years shortly after Thompson brought the treasure there. Then the moon came up and we could see the island again, quite close now, a pale, ghostly land of dark rock and darker jungle. Captain Legett came on to the bridge and we altered course to clear Goodman Point. The “Sally McGrew” began to roll very gently to a long, flat swell. And when we had turned Breakfast Island and Point Colnett, at the western tip of Chatham Bay, I could hear the surf beating relentlessly at the shore. We passed Cascara Island at dead slow with the leadsman chanting the depth from the bows, and shortly afterwards dropped anchor off Wafer Bay. Clouds of sea birds, disturbed by the rattle of our anchor chain, flapped around the ship, making a great deal of mournful noise.
I was sleepy after the long day yet too excited to bring myself to go below. For ages I stayed there on the bridge staring at the white fringe of the surf and the dense shadows of the jagged, rocky hills, all overgrown with jungle. To the left of the bay a hill stood out from the rest, a conical peak about seven hundred feet high. It was bare of jungle at the top, and on a little plateau at the summit stood a single ragged palm tree. This was the hill marked on my map as The Lookout. It was up there, behind that hill that we had to go. All the time I stood there by the rail the deck was never empty. The crew moved about in little huddles and the whisper of their voices was everywhere. It was a long time before sleep descended on the ship. And long before dawn, it seemed, the “Sally McGrew” came to life again. Ten men had been picked by Captain Legett for the initial expedition. He had explained that it was purely a reconnoitering party. But when dawn broke the whole crew was on deck and scrambling into the boats. Captain Legett took in the situation at a glance as he came up from his cabin where he had breakfasted alone as usual. “Mr. Andrews,” he boomed. “Clear the boats.”
But though the mate ordered them back on to the deck, the crew remained sullenly in the boats. It was my first sight of the way men can be demoralized by greed. Captain Legett’s face was set with anger. He glanced at Sir Brian, but said nothing. Then he turned to the chief engineer. “Mr. Meadows. Get your men to the engine room.” He looked across at the boats. “Men,” he said, “unless all of the boats are cleared right away, I’ll up anchor and sail straight for Valparaiso.”
A man stood up in one of the boats. “Captain Legett, sir.” It was the Irishman called Mike. “It’s no offense we mean. But the men feel that where it’s a case of treasure, in which we all have a third interest—as you yourself have stated, sir—then they feel they should all be along.” There was a murmur of agreement from the boats. “It’s just that we’re all kind of excited, that’s all,” he added.
Sir Brian stepped across to the captain and I heard him say, “Let them come if they want to, Captain Legett. They’ll soon get their excitement sweated out of them in that jungle.”
“It’s bad for discipline,” Captain Legett answered shortly.
“Yes, but it’s good psychology.”
The captain stared hard at Sir Brian. “All right,” he snapped. “Mr. Andrews. See that all men have a day’s rations. Issue what hatchets we have for clearing our way through the jungle. Mr. Meadows, you and Mr. Danner will remain here with Mr. Andrews in charge of the ship.” He turned again to the boats. “Men,” he said. “I’ve no desire to stand in the way of any man who wishes to accompany the reconnoitering party. But I must warn you that clearing a way through this jungle is not going to be easy. It would be better to work in two parties. With one party, it means double work for everybody. Is that understood?”
There was an excited murmur of agreement.
As Mr. Andrews busied himself with issuing rations, I heard the captain say to Sir Brian, “It’s clearly understood, I hope, that it’s your responsibility that the ship is left without adequate crew. If a storm blew up—”
“Please understand, Captain Legett,” Sir Brian said, “that I take full responsibility for everything. Everything,” he repeated.
Shortly after that the boats were got away. I went with the captain and Sir Brian. Saunders, the second mate, was in charge of the other boat. Sparks went with him. The sun came up as we pulled away from the ship and in a moment the water was a dazzle of blinding light. By comparison the island looked cool and green, the dark clefts of the valleys shrouded in mist. The sea birds—gulls, petrels, and cormorants—flew curiously around the boats. The triangular fins of a dozen sharks followed us in. Wafer Bay looked beautiful in the early sunlight, the white sand of the shore sparkling under its fringe of cocoanut palms. A stream ran down into the bay and near it were the remains of old huts, where previous treasure seekers had camped. But behind the shore the island rose in sheer cliffs and gullies hung with creeper and thick jungle growth. Only to our left, on The Lookout, did the undergrowth cease. The hill was a bald cone of grass and looked fairly easy to climb, though very steep in p
laces. I could see the mark of what looked like a path at one point, and on the top, like a ragged flag, stood the solitary palm.
The flat, glassy swell took us in through a white foam of surf and deposited us gently on the beach, close by the; stream. We pulled the boats high up the beach. The captain, I think, realized the futility of ordering men to stay behind with them. Close by was an age-old palm with the names of ships cut in its bark. I saw the names “Indian-chief” and “Uncas” among the pirates, whalers, and treasure seekers who had listed themselves on this strange log, and I knew that this was the place where Sparks had landed.
The stream broadened out into a pool just above the tidemark. It was a pretty place of green fronds and strange tropical flowers, entirely spoiled for me by the sight of huge land crabs as big as a man’s skull scuttling into their holes. Captain Legett led the way along the beach, till we were close under the steep slopes of The Lookout. Here we started up the boulder-strewn bed of a stream.
The captain and Sir Brian led. I was close behind them. The rest straggled out behind, laughing and chattering. But as we climbed, the stillness and the heat of the place silenced them. The stream bed was steep, a dazzling path of stone and running water steaming gently in the blazing sun. On either side the banks rose steeply into dense growth where lurid orchids drank in the humid heat and seemed to grow as we looked. Occasionally an opening in the wild interlacing of creeper and liana would give a glimpse of dark caverns of shade, tepid and sultry. Soon there was no sound but the gurgling of the water and the hollow clatter of stone against stone as boulders were displaced by our feet. And behind us was the endless sigh and hiss of the surf running into Wafer Bay.
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