CHAPTER XXXI.
SOME LIGHT UPON THE PAST
Her name was Barbara Alderly! This girl whose beauty was as fresh and pure as her mind was innocent, the girl who-in spite of being able to shoot birds for her food and cook them too, or to sail a boat as well as Reginald himself could do-looked as delicate as any girl brought up in an English country house, was Barbara Alderly, his, the pirate's, descendant! It seemed impossible-impossible that she could claim relationship with such as he had been; yet it was so!
A week passed from the time she had divulged her name, a week in which they were always together during the daytime-he going to his boat at night, and joining her again in the early morning-and in that week each had told the other their story, Barbara being the first to relate hers. But in justice to Reginald it must be said that, never from the moment he had heard who she was, had he had one thought of keeping back from her the secret of where the treasure was hidden, or of depriving her and her relations of one farthing of it.
"It must all be theirs," he said to himself, "all, all. I could not go away from this island with one penny of it in my pocket and continue to think myself an honest man."
But first he had to hear her family story-in itself a romance, if ever there was one-she telling it to him a few days after their acquaintance, as they sat on the verandah, while he drank some water from one of the calabashes, flavoured with a dash of whisky brought up by him from the Pompeia, and she played with her inseparable companion, the dog, Carazo.
"You must know," she began, "that it was not until some years after Simon Alderly-who was the man I think to have been a pirate-failed to return to Port Royal, where he lived, that his still young wife, Barbara-her name being the same as mine-found the paper telling her of the treasure in this island."
"Barbara!" Reginald interrupted, memory recalling Nicholas's words once more. "Barbara! A portrait of a girl with blue eyes, red gold hair, and a sweet mouth!"
"What do you mean, sir?" exclaimed his young hostess, looking at him for the first time with something like surprise, if not alarm. "How do you know she was like that? She has been dead for," and she counted rapidly on her fingers-"for one hundred and seventy years!"
"Miss Alderly," Reginald replied, "will you believe me if I tell you that I think I shall be able to throw some light upon your family history when I have heard it? I have something to tell you as well as to listen to."
"Then," said the girl, "your presence here is not due to accident. You have come purposely to this island in connection with the hidden wealth it is supposed to contain."
"Yes!" he said, "yes, I could not tell you an untruth. I have come purposely here to find out about that wealth. Believe me, my presence bodes no harm to you or yours, no deprivation of what belongs rightly to you."
"Oh!" she said, "how happy that will make father. But will you not tell me-"
"With your permission," he replied, "I will not tell you anything until you have told me your story. Then I will keep nothing back from you-I will, indeed, help you to recover that which has been sought for so long-"
"You know where it is?"
"I think so. I discovered the secret in England, and I came out here to dig-"
"But," she again interrupted, "if you discovered the secret, then this treasure is yours, not ours."
"No," he said hastily, "no; it would have been mine had I not found that there were people in existence who are more righteously entitled to it. Now I shall find it, if I can, for you. Pray continue your tale. When that is concluded I will begin mine."
For some time he could not bring her to do so, his words having caused her much excitement; but at last she took up the thread of her narrative-the narrative interrupted so early in its commencement.
"This Barbara," she said at last-while all the time her clear eyes had a searching, almost troubled, look, as she kept them fixed on him-"this Barbara of whom you seem to know, or to have guessed the appearance, though I cannot say if it is a correct one, had herself a strange history. Simon Alderly had found her, a child of about four years old, alone and deserted on one of the Lucayos group, and, since there was a boat washing about on the coast of the island, he thought that possibly she had drifted ashore in it, while her parents, or those who had saved her, had fallen into the sea from the boat after escaping from some sinking ship. He took her off, however, carried her to Port Royal, and, after bringing her up, married her when she was fifteen. Then he left her in charge of his house there, while he, following the calling of a sea-captain, was frequently away from home, sometimes for weeks at a time, sometimes for months, sometimes for more than a year. But whenever he returned he always brought a great deal of money-generally composed of the coins of several different nations-half of which he always gave to her for future household expenses, spending the remainder in great rejoicing while he stayed on shore."
"This is, of course, family history," Reginald hazarded, "handed down from generation to generation? Is it not?"
"You shall hear, though you have guessed right. Our family records since that time have been carefully kept."
"I beg your pardon for interrupting you," Reginald said. "Pray go on."
"However," the girl continued, stroking Carazo's ears all the while as she did so, "the time came when he returned no more; he disappeared finally in 1687."
"Ah!" exclaimed Reginald involuntarily.
Again her soft hazel eyes stared full at him as she exclaimed, "You are aware of that; you know it as well as I do!"
"Yes," he answered, "I know it. Once more forgive me."
"Perhaps," she said, "you know as much, or more than I do!"
"No," he replied, "after that I know no more. After the year 1687 down to this period I know nothing further of Simon Alderly-indeed I did not even know that his name was Simon; what you tell me of incidents after that period will be new to me."
"And you will tell me all you know when I have finished?" she asked, looking at him with such trusting eyes that no man, unless he were a scoundrel, could have had one thought of obtaining her confidence and yet holding his own.
"On my honour I will," he answered, "even to telling you where I believe your wealth is hidden."
She made a gesture as though deprecating the word "your," and then, seeing he was waiting eagerly for her to continue, she did so.
"He disappeared finally in 1687-Barbara never heard of him again. Then as time went on she grew very poor. There had been a son born to them whom she had brought up to be a sailor, too, hoping thereby that, when he also became a roamer, he might somehow gather news of his father; and by turning the house into an inn, she managed to exist. In that way years passed and she began to grow old, while her son still followed the sea, though never rising to be anything more than a humble seaman. But more years after, when she was getting to be quite an old woman, her house was blown down in a hurricane-though it had survived the terrible one of 1722, when all the wharves at Port Royal were destroyed-and then-she found something."
"What?" asked Reginald. "What was it?" He remembered what David Crafer had found under circumstances not dissimilar, and, perhaps, because he was a sailor-and thereby given even in these modern days to belief in strange and mysterious things-he wondered if the hand of Fate had pointed out to that old Barbara some marvellous clue to where the treasure was. Yet he knew that it could scarce have told her of the removal of the chests of treasure from the island to the Key.
"She found," went on the Barbara of to-day, "a little walled-up wooden cupboard-"
"Great Heaven!" he muttered beneath his breath, so that, this time, she did not hear him.
"Close to the place where he used to sit and drink when at home, but of the existence of which she was ignorant. Yet, she remembered, he had often told her that there were secret hiding-places in the house, and that, if he died suddenly or never came back, she was to search diligently and she would find them. Especially he bade her search in that room; but, what with waiting and watching for his return, she had forgotten his instructions. And now that it was burst open, the wall that secured it being only a plank of wood which fell out at the first violence of the hurricane, she found this cupboard full of various pieces of money, gold and silver, and a paper in his writing telling her of his treasure in this island."
"Then it was his!" exclaimed Reginald.
"By discovery. He wrote that he had put into Coffin Island-as it was called even so long ago as his time-in a storm, and that, while roaming about the place, he and his comrades had come upon a hut, old and long since built, but quite deserted now. Then he went on to write-my father has the paper now, and I have often seen it-that the sloop he had was sent to Tortola to fetch provisions-"
"Was it in charge of a man named Martin, by any chance?" asked Reginald.
But now he saw how imprudent he was. As he mentioned that name the girl started from her seat and retreated from him to the other end of the verandah.
"You frighten me," she said. "I do not understand. How do you know this?"
"Do not be alarmed, I beg," he answered in return. "When you have told your story I will put into your hands a paper that has been found, written by a forerunner of mine who knew Simon Alderly. Then you will see how I know what I do. Pray feel no alarm. I mean you nothing but goodwill, nothing. The treasure shall be yours and no one else's. Will you trust in me?"
"Yes," she said, once more calmed. "Yes, I will." Then she seated herself again and at his persuasion continued the narrative, while Reginald could not but reflect how little fear Nicholas need have had of "Martin coming back with the sloop."
The bewildered mind of the drink-inflamed pirate had mixed up two separate sojourns in Coffin Island!
"The sloop went to Tortola to purchase provisions, and, since they were short-handed, there being but three men excepting my ancestor, all went in her but him. And then it was he found the treasure, it being in a vault or cavern beneath the floor of the hut. It was the simplest way in which he unearthed it, he wrote, and had he not been alone it must have been discovered by the others as well as he. There was a trap-door in the flooring, with a great ring to it, quite visible to anyone, and opening easily. And when he went down some steps into the cavern he found it all-all! Only he had no chance to take it away then, he wrote to his wife; so, putting a vast number of gold pieces in his pocket, he carefully closed the trap-door up again and covered it over with earth, which he stamped down with his feet so that his companions should observe nothing. And in the paper which he left, giving such instructions as were necessary, which were not many-the place was so easily to be found-he wrote down that he had since, whenever opportunity offered, paid visits to Coffin Island, but, being always accompanied by comrades, he never yet had had a chance of removing it. And, he said, if he never brought it home and she found the paper, then she must go to Coffin Island after his death and get it for herself. It was a large treasure, a great fortune, he wrote, it must not be lost."
"So," said Reginald, "she came here?"
"She came here," the girl continued, "and with her came her son and a woman he had married, a Barbadian. But through all the generations from the day she came-which was in the year 1723-and I am the eighth in descent from her, they have never found the treasure. The vault was there, but there was nothing in it."
"Yet your family have continued to seek for it," exclaimed Reginald. "I should almost have thought they would have desisted."
"No," Barbara replied, "they never desisted. For first, they thought that Simon might have changed the hiding-place after he had left the paper in Jamaica-the life he led would probably necessitate his doing so, since his companions might otherwise have also found the vault-and, next, the island had become their home. Simon's son bought it for half-a-crown an acre, his wife having some little money, and we have lived here ever since, while every man who has succeeded to it has made further search."
So the tale was told, and now the time had come for Reginald to tell his.
And as that night he took farewell of Barbara, he said-
"To-morrow I shall tell you why the treasure has never been found by your family. To-morrow I shall bring you a narrative left by that connection of mine, saying where the treasure is hidden. He knew Simon Alderly, and he found out the hiding-place."
"And was Simon indeed a pirate?" Barbara asked.
"Would it grieve you to hear he was?"
She thought a moment before replying, and then she said-
"No, for we have always thought him to be one. No, not if it will not make you think worse of me for having descended from him."
"I knew that was so," Reginald replied, "when you told me your name. And I do not think I showed by my manner that I thought any the worse of you."
CHAPTER XXXII.
THE SOLITUDE IS INTERRUPTED
The weather had changed, and, as is always the case in the tropics, the change was extreme.
The wind blew now from the northeast, dashing the sea up in mountains on to the strip of beach around that quarter of Coffin Island, hurling it with a roar like great claps of thunder over the beach on to the vegetation beyond it, crashing down trees and saplings, and entirely obliterating for a time the three little Keys, in the middle one of which was Simon Alderly's treasure. This Key Reginald had gazed upon more than once since he had been in the island; he had even pointed it out to Barbara on the morning after she had told her tale, and had added the few missing links to the knowledge she already possessed; and he had also informed her that therein lay her fortune.
"So," the girl said on that morning, as she gazed down from the cliff on which they stood to where the already fast-rising waves were washing over the spot in question, "it is there they ought to have searched. It has laid there all the time! Yet no one ever thought of those little islets. Well! I am glad!"
"Why?" asked Reginald, as he looked round at her. He had given her his arm to steady her against the fierce wind blowing now under the purple, sun-coloured clouds rolling up from the northeast, and she had taken it. Yet, as she did so, she scarcely knew why she should accept that proffered arm. She was used to all changes of weather in this, her island; she could stand as easily upon the tallest crags that it possessed as any of her goats, or even the sea-birds that dwelt upon them, could do. Yet, still, she had taken it!
"Oh! I don't know," she replied in answer to his question; "yet-yet, I think I am. Because-" she paused again, and then went on. "Because, you see, if any of my people had found it before now-before you came here-why, you would have found nothing yourself when you arrived, after you had made so long a journey. And, we should have been gone-you and I would never have met."
Something in the sailor's nature tingled as she said those words in her simplicity-something, he knew not what. Still, in response, he turned his eyes on her, and gazed into those other clear eyes beside him, shaded with their long, jet-black lashes. Then he said-
"For us never to have met would have been the worst thing of all, Barbara."
It seemed absurd to call her Miss Alderly, here in this wild tropical garden inhabited only by themselves; to give her the stilted prefix that would have been required in the midst of civilisation. So, not for the first time, he had addressed her by her Christian name. And to her-who perhaps in her schooldays only, in Antigua, had ever known what it was to be spoken of as Miss Alderly-it appeared not at all strange that he should so address her.
"But," he went on, "as for the treasure, as for the finding of it-that might as well have happened fifty or a hundred years ago as now. It is yours and your family's; not a farthing of it belonged to my relative, nor belongs to me."
"That shall never be," she replied. "My father, although a rough, simple sailor, is an honest, straightforward man; he, at least, would never hear of such a thing as your not having your share. And for my brother-" but here she paused.
"Why," asked Reginald, after a moment had elapsed-"why do you hesitate at the name of your brother?"
"Because," she replied, "he is different. He is," and she buried her face in her hands for a moment and then uncovered it again-"he is a cruel, grasping man, selfish and greedy. He rules us more as if he were father than father himself, and he tyrannises even over him. He takes all the money they both earn while they are away together, and, generally, he spends it. When they went to Aspinwall, at the time they were so busy about the Canal, he took all they had both earned and spent it at the Faro and Monte tables, as they call them down there. And once he struck father before me, when they were both at home, because he wanted to go over to Porto Rico, where the Spaniards gamble day and night, and father would not give him the money for some goats he had sold to a Tortola dealer. Oh!" she continued, "he is terrible! and when he takes his share of what is in the Key, I dread to think of what he will do with it."
As she finished, the storm increased with such violence that it was necessary for them to leave the crag on which they stood-otherwise they would possibly be blown off it ere many moments had elapsed. Moreover, the hot rain was beginning now-and in these regions only a few moments elapse between the fall of the first drop and the drenching downpour of a tropical storm; it was time for them to seek the refuge of Barbara's home. The thunder, too, was very near now, so at once they hurried onwards, gaining the desired shelter before the worst of the storm had set in.
It was to-day-the day following Barbara's account of Simon Alderly-that Reginald had promised to read to her Nicholas's narrative. He had it in his pocket now; indeed he regarded it as too precious a thing to leave carelessly about, and consequently it was always with him, and to-day he proposed ere leaving her to get through some portion of it. He meant to read it all through, partly as a story that he thought would interest the girl, partly as a justification of Nicholas. For, he considered, if, since she already believed her ancestor to be a pirate, he proved to her that he was indeed such, then Nicholas must be acquitted in her mind for having himself removed and hidden away that which did not belong to him. So they, having reached the house, sat themselves down to the narrative, he to read and she to listen. They were no longer able to sit upon the verandah since the rain now beat down pitilessly and as though it never meant to cease, and the wind, even in the middle of the little island, was very boisterous. And so, when the jalousies had been fastened tightly to prevent the flapping they had previously made, Reginald began Nicholas's story, prefacing it with the account of how it had been found.
It was about ten o'clock in the day when this young couple, who had so strangely been brought together in this island, began that story-for they met and parted early; it was nearly nightfall when Reginald arrived at the description of how Alderly died singing his drunken song. And amidst the swift-coming darkness-a darkness made more intense by the heavy pall of clouds that hung above the island-there seemed to come over them both that feeling of creepiness, of melancholy horror, which Nicholas had described himself as becoming overwhelmed with.
The girl seemed far more overcome by this feeling than Reginald was. She started again and again at every fresh gust that shook the frail fabric in which she dwelt, her eyes stared fixedly before her as though she saw the spectre of her pirate ancestor rising up, and once she begged him to desist for a moment from his reading.
"It was below here," she whispered, "below the very spot where we sit, that that wretch, that murderous villain, died in his sin. Oh! it is horrible! horrible to think that we have all lived here so long, that I was born here. Horrible!"
"Barbara," said Reginald, "do not regard it so seriously. I was wrong to read you all I have-yet, think. Think! It is two hundred years since it all happened-we have nothing to do with that long-buried past."
"Yes, yes," she said. "I know that we have not. Yet-yet-this is the very spot-the very place. That makes it all so much more horrible, so much more ghostly. And to-night, I know not why, I feel as I have never felt before, nervous, frightened, alarmed, as though at some danger near at hand. Let me light the lamp ere you continue."
"It is the storm has made you nervous," he replied, trying to soothe her while he assisted her to arrange the lamp. "The air, too, is charged with electricity-that alone will unstring your nerves, to say nothing of the darkness and the noise of the tempest. I have done wrong, Barbara; I have selected the worst time for reading this horrible story to you. I should have chosen one of the bright days when we could sit on the crags and have nothing but the brilliant sun about and over us."
She glanced up at him with a smile in her clear eyes-the smile that never failed to make him think that he had lit on some woman belonging to another world than his, it was so full of innocence as well as a simple trust that would have well befitted a little child-and laid her hand upon his arm as though to assure him that he had done nothing to affright her. But, as she did so, there came a terrific flash of lightning which illuminated all the tropical wood outside-as they could see through the slats of the jalousie-and then a roar of thunder that made the girl scream and let fall the lamp just lighted.
But Reginald caught it deftly, and placing it on the table said with a smile-
"It would never do for another lamp to be overturned here as one was so long ago. Come, Barbara, cheer up, take heart! We will read no more to-night."
"Yes, yes," she exclaimed. "Read. Go on reading and finish your story. Besides, we must do something to pass the night-you cannot go to your yacht, and I-I-; for the first time in my life I fear to be alone. I dread, though I know not what. I have been alone night after night here for even weeks and months together, and never feared anything. Yet, now, I am afraid. Pray, do not leave me to-night."
He looked at her, admiring, almost worshipping her for the innocence she showed in every word she spoke, and then he said-
"Have no fear, I will not leave you if you wish it. But, Barbara, we must do something else to pass the hours away than read old Nicholas's story. What shall we do? Let us have a game of cards."
There were some packs in her house that they had played with before now-cards brought from other islands by her dissolute brother, with which to pass the long nights in, as she frankly owned, trying to get the better of his father; but she would not play now.
"No," she said. "Let us come to the end of the tale. I cannot rest until I have heard it all. Do, do finish it."
"Very well, if you will," he answered. "And, at any rate, the worst is told. There is nothing more to shock or affright you. Nothing but the burying of the treasure in the spot where it now lies, and where we will dig it up."
The jalousies rattled as he spoke-yet at this moment the wind had ceased, and nought was heard but the steady downpour of the rain.
But, perhaps because of the incessant noise the storm had made for some hours, neither of them noticed this peculiar incident, though Reginald glanced up as the blind stirred.
Then he began again, reading on through Nicholas's strange story, and doing so with particular emphasis, so that she might grasp every word of his description as he told how the measurements were to be taken in the middle Key. And Barbara sat there listening silently. Yet, as he turned a leaf-having now got to that part of the account where Nicholas was picked up by the Virgin Prize-he paused in astonishment at the appearance of her face.
For she was gazing straight before her at the jalousie, her eyes opened to their widest, her features drawn as though in fright, her face almost distorted.
"Look! Look!" she gasped. "Look at the blind."
And he, following her glance, was for the moment appalled too.
A large hand was grasping half-a-dozen of the slats in its clutch; between those slats a pair of human eyes were twinkling as they peered into the room.
As Reginald rose to rush at the intruder, whoever he was, Barbara gave another gasp and fell back fainting into her chair; and then, before her companion could ask the owner of those eyes what he meant by his intrusion, the blinds were roughly thrust aside, and, following this, there came a man of great size, from whom the water dripped as from a dog who had just quitted a river-a man whose face was all bruised and discoloured as though he had been badly beaten.