Читать книгу Ruth Fielding Treasure Hunting - W. Bert Foster - Страница 5

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Tom Cameron first of all indicated his desire for several of the toys the man had in his basket, besides the one he was completing in his hand. Tom did this with premeditation. Any man may have his softer side.

“So you did not get that wooden leg from falling from aloft—or having it bit off by a shark?” the young fellow advanced, smiling at the mariner.

“No, sir. You’re mighty right I didn’t. I got me that timber-toe after that row in Portygee Pedro’s place in Nassau. And a nasty time that were, sir, if you’ll believe me.”

“I’ll believe you if you’ll tell me about it,” answered Tom. “You can’t scare me.”

“I see, mate. You want to be amused, do you?” said the toymaker.

“I like to hear adventures. I’ve had some myself, but I haven’t the gift of language and can’t talk about them.”

“Aye, aye,” said the other understandingly. “Lots of you young fellers seen more adventure over there in Europe than the ordinary sailor sees in a lifetime. But it’s different.”

“You bet it’s different!” exclaimed Tom. “I’ve seen some fighting—and some close-up work when we used to smoke Fritz out of his dug-outs. But how about this row in Portygee Pedro’s? You say there were six against you?”

“Six. Black ones, too. Them that didn’t have black faces had black hearts. Them Bahamas spongers and wreckers are bad eggs—believe me.”

“This did not happen recently?” said Tom, settling himself to enjoy the yarn.

“Thirty years ago. Nassau and the Bahamas have changed since then they tell me. She warn’t no winter resort for rich people in them days. She was just a little, half-caste town, with as many pirates in her—small-fry pirates—as there was in Blackbeard’s day or the times of Sir John Morgan. Believe what I’m a-telling of you.

“I was a young and hot-headed man in them days, Mister. Not the old hulk you see me now. Nothing like stumping around on a timber-toe to make a man cry small. In them old days I’d gone up against an army single-handed, I was that confident of my own powers. And brash! Say! I faced a buckoo mate, single-handed, and licked him on his own deck. That I did.”

The old man shook his head thoughtfully, grinned, and, flashing a sidewise glance at Tom, added:

“That’s how I come to be footloose and alone in Nassau that time. After turning the mate of the Peachtree, square-rigger, inside out I had to slip overboard after dark and beat the sharks to the shore.

“I was beachcombing two weeks, and nothing come my way that I wanted to sign up with. You see, I didn’t darest go to the agents, for they all knowed about my fight with Bully Trevan of the Peachtree.

“I fell in with a little, cross-eyed Spaniard, as dark in his face as he was in his ways. But I thought he was just cap’n of a trading schooner, called the Cap-a-pie. Gosh, man! she could sail. I liked her shape when I first seen her drift into the harbor before just a sigh of wind.

“Well, I had a smattering of navigation and was handy with my fists, as I tell you. I shipped with this Spaniard, thinking he was an innocent trader. I’d ought to knowed better, however, when we sailed in the dead of night and without no papers.

“The Spaniard, Captain Gomez—which is just as common a name among them as Smith is among English folks—come out from shore at the last minute, when we’d tripped the anchor and had the sheets loosened, and he brought with him a thundering heavy chest that we hoisted aboard in the boat. There was a smart breeze, and we got away without arousing the port officers.

“I was as innocent as a babe at first. Sure I was. I knowed there was trading goods in the hold and provisions in the lazaret, and expected we’d go drifting along among the islands, picking up sponges (which is a stinking cargo, if you ask me) and shell and such clutter. But good money in ’em, mind you.

“But Cap’n Gomez didn’t do no trading while I was with him—no, sir! After he got that chest stowed in his own cabin, he just sailed in and out among the keys looking for something, I didn’t know what. By and by I come to the conclusion he was looking for a likely and lonesome key for some partic’lar purpose, and I begun to smell a rat.

“I soon figgered there warn’t nobody in his secret but the two mulattoes who had come off with him in the small boat—and they bunked forward with the crew. They was mebbe in his secret, but they weren’t his friends. I could see that, too.

“Well, one evening we come to what Captain Gomez had likely been looking for. I marked the island well. There’s landmarks you couldn’t miss, and in a rough way I got the position of the ship from the shot we’d taken at the sun that noon. But I kept it to myself.

“We dropped anchor for the night. The skipper passed out rum to all hands, and drank himself. So did the two mulattoes. But them three drank out of another bottle. I stood at the rail and tipped my rum overboard, willing enough for the fishes to be doped, but not for me!”

“He wanted to put you all to sleep, did he?” said the listener.

“You get it, sir. That was his game. When I see the crew getting dopy, I pretended to do the same, and I camped right down on the deck as I always did. You couldn’t have hired me to sleep below. I’d been eat up by bugs!

“Well, ’long about midnight Gomez and his two men brought the chest up and swung out the boat. Gomez come and kicked me in the ribs to make sure I was asleep for fair. I was,” and again the old sailor winked at Tom.

“I see,” observed the latter.

“They went ashore. I slipped down to the captain’s cabin and got his night-glass. I could see ’em carry the chest up the beach and into the patch of that spiky pampas grass, or whatever they call it, that covered that end of the island under the palms. They was gone three hours.

“When they come back I had returned the night-glass to its beckets and was still asleep. So was every other soul aboard. In the morning we up anchor and sailed for Jamaica.

“We stayed idle there a week and he got rid of the mulattoes—somehow. I never asked how. I didn’t want to know,” pursued the old sailor. “Then he picked a quarrel with me and give me the sack. I reckon he suspected me. Anyway, he sailed without me and I was on the beach again.

“But I was mighty interested in the game by then, sir. I worked my way back to Nassau on a fruit boat. I could have gone on to the States, but I had it in my mind to find out what Gomez had done at Nassau, where that chest come from, and what was in it.

“I got a whole cargo of news when I landed—more’n I expected. Gomez lay in an undertaker’s shop—shot dead on the dock the day before I landed. Nobody knowed by who or what for. I could guess.

“But I wanted to go back of it all; and after a time, looking in the papers and asking some questions at a runner’s joint, I heard tell of a big robbery the very night the Cap-a-pie had left Nassau the last time—the time I sailed with her as mate.

“A private bank owned by one of Gomez’s countrymen had been cleaned out of the very last peso in the strong-box. Hard cash, sir—hard cash. And Gomez had been the banker’s personal friend.

“That Gomez would have robbed his grandmother, let alone his friend. I figgered he had got the depositors’ money and jewels and such in that chest, and the chest had been buried on the lonesome key I was telling you about.”

“And you went back and dug it up?” asked Tom, with a smile.

The toymaker stopped whittling and looked at him. He shook his head.

“You reckon I’d be here on this dock, if I had?” he demanded. “I’d be livin’ up on that Riverside Drive and riding around in one o’ them big autos that you see around town. That would ha’ been me, mate.”

“I see,” repeated Tom, nodding. “Well, why didn’t you?”

“’Cause I was set upon by them six I told you about. They was most of ’em members of Gomez’s old crew. But the mulattoes warn’t among ’em. I always believed Gomez had put them out of the way before he was shot hisself.”

“And the secret died with the three?” said Tom.

“All but my part of it. I knowed the island. I had the figgers on it. Some of that old crew of the Cap-a-pie thought mebbe I had a map of the place where the buried treasure was.”

“Oh! A map?” said Tom, thinking that the matter was coming to a familiar outcome. “And you want to sell that map?”

The old man chuckled. He favored Tom with another very shrewd glance.

“I didn’t need no map. I got it all in my head, and I ain’t never set it down on paper. No, sir! Them fellers that pitched onto me at Portygee Pedro’s searched me to the skin, and would have killed me in the bargain if I hadn’t got my second wind and fought ’em off with my knife,” he made a savage jab with it in the air, “until the coppers broke in the door.”

“I went to the hospital, got gangrene in my leg, and had to have it sawed off. Then I got back to New York by the help of the Seaman’s Union. And I’ve been just half a man all these years,” and the old man shook his head.

He had finished the toy. Tom gathered up the several articles he had purchased and paid for them. Then he hesitated and finally drew a crisp ten dollar note from his wallet.

“Here,” he said. “That story is worth something, too. Take this, old man, and thank you for the entertainment.”

“I’m blamed if you ain’t the liberalest gent that I ever came across!” exclaimed the old sailor. “Just for that I’ll draw you a map of that place, showing you the location of the island, and send it to you. What’s your address, Mister?”

Tom was not sure that this was not opening a way for the old fellow to reach him and perhaps make some further claim on his generosity. But he was interested and was curious to see what kind of map the man could produce.

So he gave the old toymaker a card with his New York business address upon it, shook hands with him, and strolled back to the office. On his desk he found a letter from his sister.

The letter was a long one, and among other things it told of Uncle Jabez’ illness, and of how that illness had brought to an abrupt conclusion Ruth’s effort to get the old miller to back her in producing the motion picture she wished to make. Helen had much to say about this.

Tom thought it over, had a long conference with his father, and went up to Cheslow for the week-end. He thought something of importance might come of his visit at this time.