Cocos Gold

by Ralph Hammond Innes

The men looked sullen and exhausted.

  “I take it you don’t want to be marooned on Cocos Island?” the captain said quietly. “Well?”

  Stevens was the first to volunteer. The rest followed. Captain Legett picked eight of them. Then he turned to Sir Brian. “If what the boy says is true, we’ve little chance of stopping them from taking the ship. But it’s my duty to do what I can. You’ve four men and yourself. Cut a way through up to The Lookout and make camp. Collect what cocoanuts you can and anything else that’s edible. I’ll give three blasts on the ship’s siren if all’s well.”

  He left then. The remainder stood there, listening, till the hurried sound of their departure was swallowed up by the jungle. “Feeling better?” Sir Brian asked me.

  “Yes, sir,” I replied.

  He gave me some more water and helped me to my feet. I showed them the path down which I had come and they began cutting their way through. It was slow work, for there were only four men, and the weakest of the crew at that. One of them had fallen and twisted his ankle and another, a small, fair-haired lad, was already suffering agony with sunburn. Sir Brian kept them at it with a cheerfulness I was sure he was far from feeling. And all the time we worked our way through that blazing tropical grass a little cockney by name of Gib kept whistling “Tipperary.” He had no teeth in his wizened face and the time came out as an interminable sighing through his gums.

  Twisting and turning, the path led us along ridges, avoiding the deep ravines which cut like nightmare cracks across the hill slope. Then suddenly the grass became more sparse and we came out on to a broad ledge high up on the hill. Ahead for us lay the brilliant blue of the Pacific. And to the left we could see the dark basalt cliffs on the far side of Wafer Bay with the waves breaking leisurely on Boat Rock, just beyond Point Eaton.

  That ledge was a strange place, quite flat and clearly constructed by man, for it was paved with stone and backed by a rampart wall of boulder. From it a steep, sloping path of smooth stone, half covered with jungle creeper, led upwards. At the top we found ourselves on the very summit of The Lookout. The single palm tree stood erect and still in the airless heat. Inland the island rose in a ruthless upheaval of jungle-clad hills. Below us, to the east, the waters of Chatham Bay sparkled coolly in the sun. Sir Brian set the men to clearing a space in the grass. The remains of an old hut were uncovered and Sir Brian said he thought it probable that pirates had camped on The Lookout. “That would explain that ledge,” he said to me. “And the path we came up by. They probably mounted guns up here to defend the entrance to the bay when they were careening their ships.”

  “They must have had good stonemasons,” I said, remembering how well the stones were laid on the ramp.

  He nodded. “There’s all sorts get caught up in a pirate crew,” he said. “And if they made camp up here, then there must be water and food close at hand.” His glance wandered to the palm tree. Great clusters of cocoanuts were outlined against the brilliant sky. He started to climb. But he’d hardly got more than a dozen feet from the ground when he stopped and stared down at the sea.

  A moment later I could see what had attracted his attention. The men saw it, too, and they gathered below the palm tree, their hands raised to shield their eyes.

  Steaming slowly out from behind Breakfast Island appeared the “Sally McGrew,” like a toy ship on a seascape painted much too blue for reality. He watched her as she turned in toward Chatham Bay, sea birds winging in a white cloud round her superstructure. The rattle of her chains as she dropped anchor came up to us as clear as if we were standing on her decks.

  Sir Brian had dropped to the ground again and had his glasses trained on her. He handed them to me. “Take a look at the bridge,” he said. “See if you recognize anyone.” The glasses brought the “Sally McGrew” so close that I felt I could have stretched out my hand and touched her. “Mr. Andrews,” I said. “And The Rigger.”

  He nodded and went up the tree again. This time he went to the very top and shook down all the cocoanuts he could. We found more cocoanuts under the western lip of the hill. And then with the grasses cut from the top of the hill we made mattresses for men to sleep on. We cut down a dozen small trees and with creeper and grass constructed a thatched hut open at the sides. Then, as the sun sank, we split open some cocoanuts. It was a simple meal, but I never wish to enjoy a better one.

  Night came swiftly after the blaze of the sunset. Sir Brian had a small fire kept going to light the captain in. He and the rest of our party arrived shortly before midnight. They were quite exhausted, having had to carry two of their number who had suffered bad falls and being also heavily burdened with stores. The captain looked round at our makeshift encampment and nodded approvingly.

  “I gather you were too late?” Sir Brian said.

  “They were just getting up anchor when we reached the bay,” he replied. “But they’d only taken one of the boats. The other they stove in. Fortunately they forgot she was a lifeboat and had emergency stores: bully beef, tinned milk, ships biscuits, and water containers.”

  “We shan’t starve, at any rate,” Sir Brian murmured. “No. And there’s tobacco, too.” The captain’s gaze wandered to the lights of the “Sally McGrew,” which lay reflected in the flat, shallow swell running into Chatham Bay. “I’m wondering, Sir Brian, whether tomorrow we oughtn’t to move inland. It’s more comfortable here, of course, and there’s always the chance we might sight a passing ship. But with that fire, they’ll know where we are.”

  “They’re hardly like to worry us,” Sir Brian answered. “My guess is they’ll make straight for the treasure. First place they’ll look for the map is in your safe.”

  The captain nodded. “Exactly. And they won’t find it.”

  “But I thought—”

  The captain shook his head. “No,” he said. “I put it somewhere much safer. They’ll burst open the safe and then they’ll wreck my cabin. After that they’ll come after us. There’s only you and myself and the boy here who can tell them where the treasure is.”

  “What about Andrews?” Sir Brian asked. “He was on the bridge when they anchored in Chatham Bay.”

  “Andrews never saw the map,” the captain answered. “There’s just the three of us can help them.” He paused and scratched himself thoughtfully. “They’ll be up here tomorrow. There’s ten of them, counting Andrews, against fourteen of us and a boy. And all we’ve got is two pistols.”

  “And they’ll all be armed?”

  “Probably.” The captain sighed. “Pity it had to be our sparks. If we could have got to the radio—”

  It was that, I think, that gave me the idea. I had been sitting there, feeling very uncomfortable, for the captain had not once so much as glanced in my direction, and in this and other ways he made it plain that he considered it my fault he’d lost his ship. As I lay down on my unyielding grass mattress I felt that the lives of all these men were my responsibility. They didn’t know it, but I was the only one among them who, if given the opportunity, could work the “Sally McGrew’s” radio. It would be a stroke of irony if The Rigger, in his effort to capture my friendship, had taught me the very means of saving us all. With this thought hugged to me I was almost instantly asleep.

  It was still dark when the captain roused the men next morning. One man was set to cook and we breakfasted before the sun was up. It was cool and pleasant, sitting there around the fire, eating fried bully and drinking cocoanut milk. The stars paled rapidly. Then the sun shot up over the horizon and for a moment the sky was a blaze of color and the mists hid the grim jungle slopes. Then the blinding heat was beating down on us. In the bay below us we watched a boat put off from the “Sally McGrew” and row ashore. It grounded on the edge of the surf and we counted eight men climbing out and disappearing into the jungle. We watched for perhaps ten minutes, but they did not return.

  “Are you certain they can’t have discovered that map?” Sir Brian asked the captain. .

  “Quite certain,” he repli
ed.

  The boat was putting off again to the ship. The captain turned and gave orders for all stores to be taken down to the ledge we had discovered and hidden there behind the boulders of the rampart. While this was going on Sir Brian walked to the edge of the grass clearing and stood, sniffing the slight breeze that came out of the northeast. “Captain Legett!” he called suddenly. “Just a minute.”

  The captain went over to him. They talked for a moment and then the captain too sniffed at the breeze. “It’s an idea,” I heard him say as he came back toward us.

  When the stores had all been cached, the captain gave the order to march. But one of the men, named Hughes, stepped forward and said, “We feel we got a right to know where we’re going.” He spoke sullenly and with little deference.

  The captain’s brows dragged down over his eyes. There was a sudden air of tension in the torrid heat. “Questioning my orders, Hughes?” the captain asked and his voice was quieter than usual.

  “It ain’t that exactly, sir,” the man muttered. He hesitated awkwardly. But bolstered up by murmurs from the rest of the crew, he said, “It’s like this. We feel, since we stuck by you an’ Sir Brian, we’d like to be first at the treasure. We don’t want to be beat to it.”

  “You don’t believe in what the Scriptures say—that the only treasure is the treasure in heaven?”

  “We’d like to be there first,” he repeated stubbornly.

  The captain suddenly laughed. It was a great booming laugh that seemed to go throbbing off into the torrid heat. “I’ll let you all into a secret then,” he said. “The mutineers don’t know where the treasure is. They thought they did. But they’ve just discovered that they don’t. The only people who know where it is are with this party. And the mutineers are coming up here now to get it out of us. That’s why we’re moving. If it’s any satisfaction to you, by midday we’ll be standing between them and the treasure cave. Satisfied?”

  The man suddenly grinned sheepishly. “No offense,” he mumbled. “We were just natcherly interested.”

  But as we started off down the way we had come the previous day, I noticed that Hughes fell into step beside Stevens. And I thought then that if we didn’t find the treasure quickly or recapture the “Sally McGrew” we’d have another mutiny on our hands.

  We followed the trail by which we had come up to The Lookout. I found that I ached in every limb from the previous day’s scramble and the heat soon had me stumbling along in a daze. At last we reached the spot where I had joined up with the main party. Here the captain struck east and we began to cut our way through the jungle again. He drove the men hard and they soon began to grumble, all except Gib who continued cheerful with his sibilant whistling of “Tipperary.” Only the fact that the captain and Sir Brian worked harder than any of them kept them at it.

  At last we came upon the dried-up bed of a stream that led downhill in the direction of Chatham Bay. As we scrambled down the steep, boulder-strewn slope a hand gripped my arm. I thought for a moment that one of the men was trying to help me along, for I wasn’t feeling too good. But then a voice in my ear said, “Are we going the right way, young feller?”

  I glanced up. It was Hughes. His stubbly face was all running in sweat and his little beady black eyes gleamed in a way I had begun to fear. “The right way?” I asked.

  “You know what I mean.” His voice was hoarse. “Me an’ the others wants to know whether we’re overhauling that there treasure of yours?”

  “I—I don’t know,” I said. And that was the honest truth, for the heat had driven all thought of it out of my head.

  His grip tightened on my arm. “Come on, now,” he said harshly. “You play fair with us and we’ll play fair with you, see. All we wants ter know is—are we headed in the right direction?”

  I glanced up through the matted canopy of leaves and creeper. “Course is east by nor’east if you’re lookin’ for the sun,” croaked Stevens, who had come up on the other side of me.

  The directions throbbed in my head: Wafer Bay—East —Dry watercourse—Top—Lookout due North—Proceed due East. “Yes,” I said. “We’re going the right way.”

  “How are we to know that’s the truth?” he demanded.

  “You’ll have to take my word for it,” I answered.

  “Now if we was to know the directions—” He looked at me cunningly. “You wouldn’t want the crew to go off an’ leave the cap’n an’ you and Sir Brian, would you now?”

  I thought then that it wouldn’t be any loss to the party if those that were not loyal left it, but I said, “No.” And made it sound as though I was scared, which was true enough.

  “That’s right, now. I knew you was a sensible sort of a fellow. Now suppose you give us the directions, eh?” And as I hesitated, he said, “Come on, now. Fair’s fair. You give it to us an’ we all keep together. Otherwise—without us, you’ll get exhausted and die in this jungle.”

  “All right, I’ll tell you,” I said.

  “Come on, then. Make it snappy.” The eagerness in his voice was violent in that heat.

  “It’s to the right of here,” I said. “You’ll find the main watercourse. Follow it down till you come to a big flat-topped rock, from the top of which you can see Chatham Bay. Two hundred paces due north—” I stopped then.

  “Go on,” he snarled, his fingers biting into the flesh of my arm.

  “There’s a rock the size of a house,” I went on hurriedly. “The cave is in the east corner, low down.”

  He repeated the directions slowly to himself. “Sure that’s right, sonny? ’Cos if it ain’t—” He paused ominously.

  “Yes,” I said. “Yes, it’s exactly as it was on the map.” But I couldn’t stop myself trembling. Treasure is a bug. It eats into your brain. That was what Kean had said. And he was right. I knew it now.

  But my trembling had the advantage that it convinced him I was telling the truth. He and Stevens dropped back and joined a man called Ratty. At this point the captain left the watercourse and struck away to the left through the jungle. I saw Hughes and the .other two with their heads together. A moment later they slipped into the jungle to the right.

  Suddenly I found myself alone in the dark tunnel of the stream bed. To my left I could hear the captain and the remainder of his party cutting their way through the jungle. To the right the men I’d sent on a wild-goose chase were pushing into the wicked tangle of undergrowth. Straight ahead the watercourse led down toward Chatham Bay. If I was to attempt what I had planned, this was my opportunity.

  Quietly I passed the opening the captain had cut up through the jungle on the bank of the stream and went on down the rough, boulder-strewn path. It was a foolish thing to do. I can see that now. It caused Sir Brian and the captain needless anxiety. And yet it was the start of a series of events that was to save us all.

  7. THE MUTINEERS

  My idea was to get on board the “Sally McGrew,” to get to the wireless room and send out an S O S. The idea was all right, as far as it went. But I hadn’t stopped to consider how I was to get on board or how I was to get to the wireless room without being discovered. I think I was half delirious with the heat. I only knew that I just had to do something. And because of that, I stumbled on down the stream bed, dead to thirst and fatigue, dead to everything but the need to get to the radio.

  In places the watercourse simply vanished and I’d continue on through thickets of twisted jungle growth. But somehow I always found the stream again. Then I fell. A big, round stone gave under my foot. I must have fallen a hundred feet before I was brought up by a network of vine. My leg was twisted painfully under me and I was bruised and shaken. For some time I lay quite still, breathing heavily, the sweat trickling down my body. At length I shifted my weight from my leg and sat up. There were no bones broken. I looked up and saw that I had fallen down a bald slope of scree. It looked like the remains of a landslide. I got to my feet, very shaken, and took an uncertain step forward. And then I stopped. I was on a sort o
f ledge formed of wild jungle growth, mostly creeper. It seemed to grow out of nothing. Below it, was a sheer drop to more scree. I was on the lip of a cliff of rock over which the landslide must at one time have poured like a waterfall. It seemed that only the matted interlacing of creeper kept the whole hillside above me from thundering down and tumbling over the ledge. To the left was a perpendicular slope of rock, dazzlingly white in the glare of the sun. My only hope was to work my way along the creeper-covered ledge to the right.

  I began to crawl forward on my hands and knees. Having seen that drop to the scree below I no longer trusted myself to stand upright. It was that which saved me from being seen. I hadn’t crawled more than ten yards when the sound of voices drifted up to me on the slight breeze, which was coming in, heavy with jungle heat, from the direction of Chatham Bay. I stopped and listened. It was a lazy murmur in the insect buzz of the midday heat. I gripped an out-curved limb of creeper and peered through the loose foliage. In the shade at the bottom of the scree slope below was a group of men.

  “I can’t go on, I tell you.” The man’s voice seemed quite disembodied as it floated up to me on the shimmering air.

  “Then you can stay there and rot for all I care.” It was a harsh, contemptuous voice. There was no mistaking it. He stood over one of the men who lay on the ground. Then he turned and stared straight up toward me, mopping the sweat from his red face with a silk handkerchief. It was The Rigger.

  “He’ll never make it.” This was Taffy’s voice. “His leg’s quite swollen, man.”

  “Then leave him,” The Rigger answered. “I’m not being held up now. We must be at their camp by nightfall.”

  “What about the dynamite?”

  “Leave that, too. We can pick it up later if we need it.”

  “All right, Sax,” said one of the others. “We’ll carry you.”

  “The devil you will.” The Rigger laughed. “Don’t be a fool! You can’t carry people on Cocos Island.” He nodded at the scree above me. “Take a look at it.” Then with sudden violence. “Come on now. Get going.”