Halfway down, the cook glanced over his shoulder at me and then paused. “Now’s your chance, sonny,” he hissed. His voice was trembling and his eyes shone eagerly. “Now’s your chance,” he repeated. “They ain’t got a thought in their heads outside of treasure. You take my advice, sonny, and slip off quiet-like into the jungle.”
“I can’t.” My voice was parched and hoarse.
“You ain’t scared of the jungle, are you?”
“No.”
“Well, take the chance. You may never get another.” He jerked his head toward The Rigger. “They’re killers, all the lot of them. Soon as they see that gold, they’ll go crazy. Now be sensible, me lad, and slip away.”
“I can’t,” I repeated. “There’s something I’ve got to get out of that cave.”
His brows furrowed. “You ain’t got bit by the gold bug, too, have you?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t ever want to touch that treasure. But there’s something I’ve got to get.”
He seemed about to argue. But he turned abruptly and hurried after the others. Over his shoulder he said, “You’re a fool, sonny. They’ll kill you, sure as my name’s Joe— Rigger or no Rigger. You watch out for yourself, now.” And he plunged on, down the treacherous, jungle-clad slope. Ahead of us I could hear Mike and Taffy crashing through the undergrowth, maddened by the thought of the wealth so nearly in their grasp. And- as I hurried after them I thought of the poor devil working alone down there under the cliff and a shudder ran through me, as though someone had walked across my grave.
10. THE LANDSLIDE
We came out of the jungle at the foot of the scree and started up in a diagonal line. The scree was very steep and the loose stones cut through my broken boots, tearing at my feet. Above us rose the sheer white wall of the cliff, the upper half of the landslide beetling to the creeper-covered edge. Perhaps because I was lighter I was able to climb faster than the others. By the time we were halfway up the slope, I had passed the cook and Gault and was just behind The Rigger, Taffy, and Mike, who were all in a bunch, scrambling, slipping, cursing as they struggled up the heat-baked shale. We must have made considerable noise, for the man working at the base of the cliff suddenly appeared. Only his head and shoulders were visible. It was Sax.
His face was almost unrecognizable. It was cracked and bleeding and covered in rock dust. In this parched mask his eyes burned with madness. “Get back!” he screamed “Get back! Do you hear? It’s mine.” I don’t think he recognized us. He was crazed with thirst and greed and the terrible work he’d done in this blazing heat trap. “Get back!” He came up out of the pit he had dug. He had a gun in his hand.
I don’t know who fired first—Sax or Mike. Maybe they fired together. It seemed like one crash of fire that split the stillness of the place. Stones rattled down from the cliff top. Sax’s mouth fell open, a gaping, meaningless cavity in his dust-white face. The gun slid from his hand. He seemed to sag. Then he straightened up, turned quickly and disappeared from view as though he had fallen headlong.
Mike went on like a bulldozer, his long legs driving him up the slope. He was breathing through his teeth so that it sounded as though he were whistling some unending, tuneless song. At the top we found Sax, struggling to close the huge rock door that he had labored so hard to open. He was standing in a pit about four feet deep that he’d scraped out with his bare hands. His body was braced slackly against the door, blood dripping from his chest on to the darker shale at the bottom of the pit. Mike thrust him away with one great paw like a bear. Then he and Taffy and The Rigger flung their weight against the inside of the door, crushing it back against the gently clawing body of Sax. That door! It was solid rock, a foot thick, the marks of the stonemason’s chisel still clear on the inner edge. How Sax had managed to shift it on his own, I don’t know. The madness of his desire must have given him colossal strength.
As the door swung back, the big Irishman lunged into the dark, rectangular gap. I heard him shout—an exclamation of surprise and delight, of greed and fear. The others plunged in after him. I saw The Rigger pause an instant in the yawning gap as though taking in the sight that met his eyes. Then he, too, had gone and I heard shouts and wild laughter and the clink of coin.
I climbed down hesitantly into the pit. Sax was struggling, digging frantically with his hands to clear his foot which had been horribly crushed by the weight of the door. He was breathing in great, gurgling sobs and bleeding badly. At the sight of the blood and his staring eyes, I felt suddenly sick. I turned away, bewildered, and peered through the open doorway into the gaping darkness beyond.
Somebody yelled to me to get out of the light. The cook scrambled down beside me. “Is the treasure there, sonny?” he gasped. “Is it there?” Then he caught the jingle of metal and with a quick intake of breath, he pushed roughly by me.
I followed him slowly, not knowing quite what I was doing, wondering what I should find inside. My foot stumbled against something in the darkness. It rattled drily. I got clear of the doorway and looked down. What I saw made me cry out in sudden terror. Lying at my feet was a skeleton. The bones looked very white in the bright light that came through the rock doorway. A few rags of rotten clothing still clung to the dry bones. Two piles of gems, glittering with all the fires of the rainbow, were on either side of him, fallen from the rotted pockets of his jacket, and the crooked fingers of his right hand still loosely held a gold-hilted dagger with a broken blade—the dagger with which in desperation he had sought to cut his way out through the closed rock. A little further back was another skeleton. The skull gleamed against the gloom of the cavern walls. Beyond, I could see the mutineers, vague shapes whose hands dripped gold. The little Welshman had torn off the rotten top of a keg and was thrusting his arms deep into it and pulling out great handfulls of gleaming, jingling, golden coins and letting them run through his fingers. Mike was tearing at the lid of a great treasure chest, grunting and crooning in his excitement. Old Walrus just stood and stared, as though dazed by all that wealth.
Suddenly Mike stood up with a curse. “Can’t open it,” he grunted. “Where’s them statues?”
“Still here, Mike.” The Rigger stood watching them, his lips drawn back in a smile that frightened me. In that moment he seemed to me a satanic figure, remote from the childish greed of the others, yet a part of it all—the prime mover.
“Where?” Mike gasped. “Where? Do you see them, Taffy?”
“Yes. Yes indeed. Over there against the wall at the back.”
I followed his pointing finger. And there, gleaming and lifelike in yellow metal, stood the Virgin Mary, a gentle, detached smile on her chiseled lips.
“Jeeze!” It was all Mike said. He stood still and gazed in wonder at the gold.
“Isn’t it wonderful, man!” Taffy whispered in awe.
And The Rigger laughed. It was a chilling sound in that cold cavern. “Wait till you’ve carried it down to the beach,” he said, and laughed again.
They scrambled over the rotting treasure chests and the kegs that crumbled under their feet, spilling rivulets of gleaming coin. They waded knee-deep in that glittering treasure, scrambling over the piled wealth of Lima to get to the statue, to touch the gold mantle of the Virgin. The cook was with them. And The Rigger stood there and laughed, a wicked, devilish sound.
Then I remembered something. I turned quickly, searching for the place where Irwin had placed his log. My heart thudded in my chest. I had to get away before they turned their attention to me. I stepped over the nearest skeleton and searched in the darkness beyond. I was afraid that Sax or the others might have covered the log with a heap of coin. But I found it almost immediately. It was on the top of a keg that was still sound, fixed there by a dagger, the hilt of which was silver inlaid with gold and topped by a blood-red ruby the size of a walnut. The log was an ordinary, lined exercise book. I pulled out the dagger and opened the cover of the book. The pages inside were yellow, the ink already faded. But there on the first
page was the name: “Philip George Irwin.” And underneath: “Log of the Mutiny on ML 615.”
I glanced quickly at the others. The two men had reached the statue and were pawing at it. Taffy picked up a sword and struck it. “It’s solid!” he cried. “Nat! It’s solid gold. Solid, I tell you, man.” And he struck the statue again, crooning to himself in Welsh.
I turned then and scuttled for the door. But Sax’s body filled the opening. I almost ran into him in my terrible eagerness to get out of the cave. He flung me from him, so that I sprawled on the loose shale of the pit at the opening. I looked up at him. He was staring into the cave, his face working crazily, the blood trickling out of the wound in his chest and glistening horribly red in the sunlight. “It’s mine!” he screamed. “It’s mine, I tell you. I found it.” His voice was high and throaty with blood.
Somebody inside cursed him, voice magnified to a low boom by the cavern. “Here. Take this and get out.” It was The Rigger’s voice and a shower of coins was flung at him. They fell all about his feet.
His jaw had fallen open. “What about my share?” he cried. “I got my rights. Equal shares it was.”
“You can have what you can carry down to Chatham Bay,” The Rigger said. And then Mike’s voice began cursing the poor wretch. “Go on, beat it!” he shouted. “You ain’t no use to us any more.” Gault, who had been hovering fearfully at the edge of the pit, turned and disappeared.
Sax stood for a minute, quite still, his breath coming heavily. Then he began mumbling to himself. His lips were loose, and blood showed on his teeth. His eyes were wild and staring. “You won’t get it then,” he cried. “You won’t get it.” And he turned and scrambled clumsily up out of the pit, trailing his smashed leg behind him. He seemed possessed in that moment with incredible strength. He had no apparent sense of pain or of the wound that bubbled in his chest. He moved sideways on his two hands and one leg, an ungainly, frightening creature, his face set, his eyes glaring, driven by some hideous purpose of his own.
Till then I had been too stunned by the spectacle of Sax to move from where he’d flung me. But as he disappeared from view, my legs seemed to come to life and I stumbled up out of the pit into the blazing sun of the scree slope. Sax was already halfway down, moving fast like an ungainly chimpanzee. Gault was at the bottom. He gave one frightened, backward glance and disappeared into the jungle.
I began to slither down the slope. From the cave I heard Taffy say, “Where’s Sax gone to?” And Mike answered, “He can’t do nothing. Here, Taffy—look at this! In this chest. Diamonds!”
“I tell you he’s up to something,” Taffy repeated. And The Rigger said, “Don’t worry. I’ll attend to Mister Sax.” The casual, cold-blooded way he said it sent me slithering down the scree slope toward the safety of the jungle. I had what I wanted and now my one thought was to get away, to get back to the captain and Sir Brian.
I heard The Rigger call to Sax. I glanced back. The Rigger was standing on the edge of the pit, his big face burned red by the sun and streaked with black, his white shirt smoke-grimed and torn open to the waist. Sax was at the edge of the jungle now, at the spot where I’d spoken to him the previous day. He bent down and fumbled in a bag. The next moment he was coming up the slope again, thrusting himself forward with his long, powerful arms and trailing his useless leg behind him. The thing he had picked up was clamped between his teeth—a buff-colored tube already marked with blood.
I hurried on, the scree sliding me quickly toward the safety of the undergrowth. I slanted away to the left, keeping well clear of Sax as he climbed.
When I was at the very edge of the jungle I heard him call out. I couldn’t understand what he said. Then he laughed. It was a wild, frightening sound. It wasn’t human. It brought me to a stop. I turned and stared back up the shimmering slope. He was halfway up, balanced on one leg. High up under the cliff face, the Rigger had been joined by the others. I saw Old Walrus start down the slope. The Rigger shouted at him. Mike had his gun in his hand. The barrel glinted dully. My stomach curled up inside me, braced for the impact of the shot. Suddenly Taffy seized hold of Mike’s arm. He was pointing at Sax.
Sax was laughing again, crazily. I saw him strike a match. He held it to something in his hand. It sputtered. The flame was invisible, but a little spiral of blue smoke showed in the sunlight. He swung back his arm and in that instant The Rigger fired.
Sax jerked back on his heel as though the crashing impact of the sound had hit him in the stomach. His laughter broke off short, the sound of his voice suddenly disconnected. His body began to sag, but he steadied himself. His arm swept back. The Rigger and Mike fired together. But the arm swung up and over, trailing a line of blue smoke. That little trailer of smoke arched in the air as Sax slowly crumpled up on to the scree and began to roll slackly down the slope.
The Rigger shouted something to the others and dived into the pit at the cave entrance as the thinly smoking thing landed ten or more yards short of them. The others followed, flinging themselves headlong into the dark cave mouth. Old Walrus was running down the slope, slithering and stumbling, taking a wave of moving scree with him. The thing that Sax had thrown sizzled gently in the sunlight. I could hear it above the rattle of the stones falling from the cliff top and the sound of the cook sliding downward.
Suddenly there was a great flash. The scree face seemed to leap upwards and outwards in the sunlight. The roar of the explosion went rattling along the cliff. It was still sounding through the hills and gullies inland long after the mushroom burst of stones had fallen. The Rigger came up out of the cave. I saw him there for a moment, staring down at the drifting cloud of dust and the crater blown in the scree. Rocks were clattering down from the cliff above him. He called to Mike. Then his voice was drowned by a low rumble like thunder.
I saw him glance up, his big face quite clear in the hot sun. Then I, too, looked up. I don’t know what I expected. Some freak storm, something out of the sky, for that’s where the sound came from. But the sky was a serene vault of brilliant blue. There was not a cloud. The sun blazed down. Yet the sound persisted and grew in volume till it was a great, thunderous roar. And high up, on the hillside above the cliff top, a great storm of dust was rising, a choking cloud against the sky. I felt the ground, tremble.
The landslide! The whole hillside above the cave was on the move. I can see it now: a giant wave of loose stone piling up toward the cliff edge.
The Rigger must have understood, for he began to run. The others flung themselves down the slope after him.
But they were too late. The piled-up wave of rocks broke over the cliff edge with a mighty roar. It was like the bursting of a dam. It came surging over the edge of the cliff, smooth like a giant fall, raising a great cloud of dust. And when it hit the ground at the base of the cliff it seemed to build up in a moment and then come thundering on.
For a second I stood rooted to the spot. I saw the forward spill of the stones trip Taffy by the heels and roll over his fallen body. Then Mike. Then The Rigger. It seemed to trip them and then wipe them out. The noise was colossal. Dust blotted out the sunlight. The ground was leaping under my feet. It built up like a tidal wave and flung itself down over Sax’s still body.
Then I turned and ran, forcing my way through the jungle, tearing at the dense undergrowth, tripping, stumbling, fighting my way through in my sudden panic of fear.
How long I scrambled and struggled through the jungle I don’t know. But suddenly all was quiet behind me. The air was still and the only sound was the murmur of insects and the gentle hiss of the surf rolling into Chatham Bay. I stopped. My breath was coming in great sobs. My arms and legs were bleeding. I was in a queer, choking world where the colors were all sepia and there was no real light.
My throat and mouth were dry and filled with the dust which hung like a blanket between the jungle and the sun. The big, tropical .leaves of the plants were white with a film of rock dust.
I sat down and was sick again. Nothing ca
me up. I just lay on the ground, clinging for support to a trailing rope of liana, and retched. And each time I retched it was like a knife being plunged down my parched and swollen throat. The pores of my skin were all prickling with the desire to sweat, but there was not a drop of moisture left in me. I felt old and shriveled, like a mummy.
I must have passed out. Or perhaps I slept through sheer exhaustion. I don’t know. But when I looked about me again I was lying in a shaft of burning sunlight. The sky was blue overhead and there was not a sound in all the world save the lazy murmur of insects and surf blended into an audible expression of the heat. Only the white coating of dust over the jungle still remained to show what had happened.
I got up and stumbled on. I had lost all sense of direction. My brain seemed numbed. All strength was drained out of me, so that I went on in a kind of daze, always going downhill, remembering only that I must find Sir Brian. I tried to call out. But no sound came through my swollen throat. And then in a clearing I caught a glimpse of Chatham Bay and the “Sally McGrew” lying there just as she had been before we found the cave.
And then the sound of voices penetrated slowly to my dazed brain. They were quite close. Somehow I managed to call Sir Brian’s name. It was a queer, unrecognizable sound I made. There was an answering shout and the chop of bush knives cutting through the jungle grew nearer. The voices came closer. At last Sir Brian’s hand closed on my arm. I remember muttering incoherently, trying to tell him what had happened. Then I fainted.
When I came to, it was night. A fire blazed on a stretch of white sand. The smoke of it curled up, curtaining the brilliance of the stars with a thin veil. I was lying on my back. Close by me I heard Sir Brian’s voice say, “He’s coming round at last.”
And the captain said, “Thank God!”—as though his prayers had been answered. There was a steady roaring in my ears. For a moment I thought it was the landslide again and I sat up with a quick cry. Then my panic left me. On the edge of the firelight a gleam of white showed, and beyond it, the lights of a ship. I was looking at the surf running into Chatham Bay and the lights of the “Sally McGrew” as she rode at anchor.
Cocos Gold Page 21