Cocos Gold
Page 22
The hard rim of a water bottle was pressed against my swollen lips. I gulped the lukewarm liquid. “Feel like talking now?” Sir Brian asked.
I nodded and wriggled closer to the fire, for I suddenly felt cold. Slowly and painfully I told them what had happened. All the time I was struggling to force the words through my swollen throat, nobody moved. They were silent, impersonal shadows gathered around the dull glow of the fire. When I had finished, a sudden fear seized hold of me. “The log?” I cried. “I had it. I had it in my hand when the landslide started. Where’s the log?” My voice must have sounded a bit hysterical, for Sir Brian’s hand closed reassuringly on my arm.
“Here it is, Johnny,” he said.
“Where?” I gasped. “Where? Show me, please.”
“Here.” He pressed the thin, paper-covered book into my hand. “You were still clutching it when we found you. That and this dagger.” I stared down at the little book and the dagger with its gold and silver hilt and the big ruby. And I felt a little glow of happiness steal over me. Kean could lie peacefully in his grave now. The Admiralty would have the log and they would know that what he’d said of the mutiny on the ML was true. I had kept my promise.
There’s not much more to tell now. At my suggestion Captain Legett signaled the ship with his flashlamp, just as The Rigger had done from the top of The Lookout the night before. They got Shorty as the boat ran in on the sand, while his hands were still holding the oars. I remember him sitting in the stem as we pulled out through the surf to the “Sally McGrew.” The dirty woolen cap was still on his head, his long, gorilla-like arms hung limply at his side and there was a dazed expression on his face. “Where’s Nat? Where’s The Rigger?” We told him, but it made no difference. He kept on repeating the question as though he couldn’t believe the man was dead.
When we reached the ship, we found the mate still lying by the davits where he’d been shot. He was in a state of coma. But when they’d got him to his bunk, the captain examined him and said he’d live. We had a meal then—cold things from the refrigerator. I’ll never taste another meal as good as that. And then to sleep in a bunk without being bitten! Only I didn’t sleep. I just lay there, staring into the dark, tropic night, remembering all the things that had happened to me on Cocos Island, hearing the roar of the fire and the thunder of the landslide and seeing Mike stroking the golden surface of the statue with his thick fingers—I’ll never forget those things as long as I live; nor the sight of that wall of stone spilling down over the cliff and obliterating the mutineers one by one as it rolled over them.
The next day Sir Brian took a party of four volunteers back to the island. The captain was taking no more chances and stayed with his ship. They found the body of the second engineer lying on the sands of Wafer Bay, a white skeleton picked clean by the land crabs. They buried it there. And they buried Maynard’s body lying where the cook had shot him. They crossed The Lookout and came down to Chatham Bay by way of the spot where the treasure cave had been. They saw no signs of the cook. And though they called and built a fire for a smoke signal, they saw nothing of Gault or of Stevens and Hughes and the man who had gone with them. I didn’t mind about them. But I was sorry about the cook. “I’d swap all the gold in the world for a quiet, peaceable voyage.” That’s what he’d said. But in the end the desire for treasure had bitten him as it had the rest of them. And I was certain that the landslide had buried him, too, though I hadn’t seen it.
We stayed in Chatham Bay one more night to give any survivors a chance to be taken off. By morning the weather was beginning to break. Captain Legett landed a boatload of stores and erected a wooden cross by the rock called Benito’s Hat to mark Irwin’s resting place. Then, as the storm clouds gathered, we weighed anchor and, with the decks once more vibrating under our feet, the blunt bows of the “Sally McGrew” headed for Valparaiso.
I stood on the bridge with Sir Brian and watched till the conical tip of Cocos Island had dropped below the horizon. I looked round then and there was nothing beyond our rails but the deep blue of the sea flecked with foam as the wind rose. I turned and stared at our deserted decks. That brief search for the Cocos Gold had cost the lives of ten men; a further four were missing, the mate seriously wounded and another in irons for mutiny. The strange thing was that The Rigger’s cat seemed to have disappeared, too, as though it must cease to exist since the man himself was dead.
Sir Brian sighed. “There’ll be more dead men to haunt that island before the last is heard of the Lima treasure,” he said and turned away abruptly as though he didn’t want to think about it any longer.
“The more fools they!” The captain snorted through his nose. “ ‘He that diggeth a pit shall fall into it.’ ”
♦ ♦ ♦
Well, there it is. That’s the story of my visit to Cocos Island. I saw the famous treasure of Lima and I’m probably the only person alive who can say that. And now it’s buried under the landslide. In another hundred years or so, maybe the cliff face will be exposed again. In the meantime, I have the. dagger to remind me of those terrible three days spent on Cocos Island—and the Admiralty has Irwin’s log.
For myself—well, I’ve set all this down now, for probably in the next few years I shall not have much time for writing. I am not going into the Navy after all. Sir Brian has offered me a job, and in a month’s time I leave for Chile to work with him up in the Andes where he is developing a new oil field. But up in those lonely mountains, in the jungles and swamps—wherever my life leads me— I shall remember to the end of my days the fingerless hand of Nat, The Rigger, and the crew of cutthroats crooning over the golden statues of Lima.