Book 3 - Chapter 1

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_ BOOK III CHAPTER I

Across the scarce-awakened sea,
With white sail flowing,
And morning glowing,
I come to thee--I come to thee.

Past lonely beaches,
And gleaming reaches,
And long reefs foaming,
Homing--homing--
A-done with roaming,
I come to thee.

The moon is failing,
A petal sailing
Down in the west
That bends o'er thee;
And the stars are hiding,
As we go gliding
Back to the nest,
Ah! back to thee.

CHAPTER I

In Which We Gather Shells--and Other Matters.

With Charlie gone, and duck-shooting not being one of my passions, there was nothing to detain me in Andros. So we were soon under way, out of the river, and heading north up the western shore of the big monotonous island. We had some fifty miles to make before we reached its northern extremity--and, all the way, we seldom had more than two fathoms of water, and the coast was the same interminable line of mangroves and thatch palms, with occasional clumps of pine trees, and here and there the mouth of a creek, leading into duck-haunted swamps.

It was evident that the island kept its head above water with difficulty, and that the course we were running over was all the time aspiring to be dry land, right away from the coast to the Florida channel. For miles west and north, it would have been impossible to find more than three fathoms. As I said of the east coast, inside the reef, it was a vast swimming bath, but of greater dimensions, a swimming bath with a floor of alabaster, and water that seemed to be made of dissolved moonstones.

For a while, our going seemed very much as though we were sailing a big toy-boat in an illimitable porcelain bathtub. There were no rocks to look out for, no shoals in what was really one vast shoal, and all was smooth as milk. All the afternoon, till the sun set and the stars came out and we dropped our anchor in a luminous nothingness, a child could have navigated us; but, when the next day brought us up to the northwest corner of Andros, we found ourselves face to face with a variety of difficulties: glimmering sandbars, reaches of moon-white shoals, patches of half-made land with pines struggling knee-deep in the tide; here and there a mile of mangroves, and delusive channels of blue water; beauty everywhere spreading out her sweeping laces of foam--a welter of a world still in its making, with no clear passages for any craft drawing more than a canoe. Loveliness everywhere--again the waving purple fans, and the heraldic fish, and the branching coral mysteriously making the world. Loveliness everywhere!--in fact a labyrinth of beauty with no way out.

And the captain, like nearly every captain I have met in the Bahamas, knew as little about it as I did. Charlie had been right; you must know how to sail your own boat when you hoist your sails in Bahaman waters. I confess that I began to regret Charlie's preoccupation with Tobias--for, in spite of his missing his way that day in the North Bight, Charlie seems to know his way in the dark wherever one happens to be on the sea.

However, there was really nothing to worry us. There was no wind. The weather was calm, and there was lots of time. At last, after studying the chart and talking it over with Tom, who though he had only shipped as cook, was the best sailor on board, we decided to run north, and take a channel described on the chart as "very intricate."

At last we came to a little foam-fringed cay, where it was conceivable that the shyest and rarest of shells would choose to make its home--a tiny aristocrat, driven out of the broad tideways by the coarser ambitions and the ruder strength of great molluscs that feed and grow fat and house themselves in crude convolutions of uncouthly striving horn; a little lonely shore, kissed with the white innocence of the sea, where pearls might secretly make themselves perfect, untroubled by the great doings of wind and tide--merely rocked into beauty by ripple and beam, with a teardrop falling, once in a while, into their dim growing hearts, from some wavering distant star.

It was impossible to imagine a cay better answering to my conchologist's description of Short Shrift Island. Its situation and general character, too, bore out the surmise. On landing, also, we found that it answered in two important particulars to Tobias's narrative. We found, as he had declared, that there was good water there for passing ships. Also, we found, in addition to the usual scrub, that cabbage-wood trees grew there very plentifully, particularly, as he said, on the highest part of the island. Our conjectures were presently confirmed by the captain of a little sponging boat that, an hour after our arrival, put in for water. Yes, he said, it was ---- Cay (giving it the name by which it was generally known, and by which the conchologist had first mentioned it to me). So, having talked it all over with Tom, I decided that here we would stay for a time, and try our luck.

But, first, having heard from the sponging captain, that he was en route for Nassau, I gave him a letter to Charlie Webster, telling him of our whereabouts, in case he should have sudden need of me with regard to Tobias.

It was too late to begin treasure-hunting that day, but Tom and I made an early start, the following morning, prospecting the island--I having set the men to work gathering shells, in the hope of being able to oblige my shell-loving friend. The island was but a small cay compared with that of Dead Men's Shoes,--on which we had so memorably laboured side by side--some five miles long and two broad. It was a pretty little island, rising here and there into low hills, and surprising us now and again with belts of pine trees. But, of course, the cabbage-wood tree was our special tree; and, as I said before, this grew plentifully. All too plentifully, indeed; and cabbage-wood stumps, alas! were scarcely more rare.

The reader may recall that Tobias's narrative, in reference to his second "pod" of one million dollars, had run: "_On the highest point of this Short Shrift Island is a large cabbage-wood stump, and twenty feet south of that stump is the treasure, buried five feet deep and can be found without difficulty._" But which was the highest point? There were several hillocks that might claim to be that--all about equal in height.

We visited them all in succession. There was a "large cabbage-wood stump" on each and all of them! It had seemed an absurdly inadequate direction, even as we had talked the narrative over in John Saunders's snuggery. But, confronted with so many "large cabbage-wood stumps," one began to suspect Henry P. Tobias of having been a humourist, and to wonder whether John Saunders was not right after all, and the whole manuscript merely a hoax for the benefit of buried-treasure cranks like myself.

However, as the high points of the island were only seven in all, it was no difficult matter to try them all out, one by one, as we had plenty of time and plenty of hands for the work. For, of course, it would have been idle to attempt any concealment of my object from the crew. Therefore, I took them from their shell-gathering, and, having duly measured out twenty feet south from each promising cabbage-wood stump, set them to work. They worked with a will, for I promised them a generous share of whatever we found.

Alas! it was an inexpensive promise, for, when we had duly turned up the ground, not only twenty feet, but thirty, forty, and fifty feet, not only south but north, east and west of the various cabbage-wood stumps on the seven various eminences, we were none of us the richer by a single piece of eight. Then we tried the other cabbage-wood stumps on lower ground, and any other likely looking spots, till, after working for nearly a fortnight, we must have dug up most of the island.

And then Tom came to me with the news that our provisions were beginning to give out. As it was, he said, before we returned to Nassau, we should have to put in at Flying Fish Cove--a small settlement on the larger island some five miles to the nor'ard,--for the purchase of various necessities.

"All right, Tom," I said, "I guess the game is up! Let's start out to-morrow morning."

And then I betook myself, like the great philosopher, to gathering shells on the sea-shore, finding some specimens which, to my unlearned eye, seemed identical with that shell so dear to the learned conchologist's heart.

The following afternoon we put in at Flying Fish Cove, a neat little settlement, with a pretty show of sponging craft at anchor, a few prosperous-looking houses on the hill-side, and a sprinkling of white, or half-white, people in the streets. I instructed Tom and the Captain to stock in whatever we needed. We would lie there that night, and in the morning we would make a start, homeward-bound, for Nassau.

"You may as well have your sucking fish back, Tom," I said, laughing in self-disgust. "I shall have no more need of it. I am through with treasure-hunting."

"I'd keep it a little longer, sar," answered Tom; "you never know." _

Read next: Book 3: Chapter 2

Read previous: Book 2: Chapter 8

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