The Pirate Story Megapack. R.M. Ballantyne

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      “The fibers,” said the girl, “represent currents and sailing courses; the shells are islands. The trip has to be taken at a certain time of the year when certain winds prevail and certain constellations are above the horizon.

      “On the strength of it my father persuaded my uncle, Mr. Foster, who was just beginning to make money then, to go shares in the expedition. They needed a ship and ships were scarce at that time, three years ago, when the war used every available bottom. They wouldn’t take father for the war because of his age but he was in wonderful health and strength, really in his prime. They got a small shipbuilder father knew in Maine to build the Golden Dolphin, Mr. Foster thought a ship a good investment aside from the treasure hunt, and he believed in that. His son was at Camp Devens.”

      “Until the armistice,” put in Lynda Warner.

      “So the ship was built and launched. I christened it. I saw it built from the laying of the keel. Father almost lived at the yard. All his love of the sea returned. I begged for him to take me but he said the trip was too hazardous, especially with the added risks of German raiders. Only he and I knew the secret place where he intended to keep the pearls after he had got them. They were to visit Mafulu’s island first, and if possible, recruit native divers, though they carried modern apparatus.

      “It was hard work to get a crew at all. There was the draft and high wages for those who stayed ashore. Father was not satisfied with those he got. He said they were a rascally lot of longshore riffraff, but that he would make sailors out of them before they came back. At that, he was forced to sail short-handed, expecting to fill the complement with natives. So—they sailed.”

      The girl ceased talking and sat with her hands idle in her lap, lost in recollection. A tall clock ticked woodenly, wheezed and struck seven, arousing her.

      “Lynda told me about you finding that skeleton,” she said. “It was not my father. I do not know who it could have been. But it was thoughtful of you to ask my cousin to break it to me. I know this, that father delivered Mafulu’s ashes and that they held ritualistic ceremonies over them. In gratitude many islanders shipped with him. I know that he found the island and the pearls. He wrote from Viti Levu in the Fijis. He was on his way home, and he was having trouble with his men. He did not think that it was serious or he would not have written me about it, and he has handled many a rough crowd before. I’ll read you a part of that letter.”

      She got it from a lacquered box inlaid with mother of pearl, several sheets covered in distinctive writing. The date she read was twenty-seven months old.

      * * * *

      “I can trust my Bioto boys absolutely (Mafulu’s men) but I shall be glad to get rid of some of the others. Tomlinson has been slack in discipline throughout and, if he were not a good navigating officer and hard to replace these days, I would have got rid of him. He is too friendly with the crew; I mean not only the whites but the other natives. It is much the same with Harvey, a first-class steward when he is sober, but drunk whenever he can get the chance and an inveterate smuggler aboard of liquor. Bird is a weakling. I have made fairly good sailors out of those longshoremen, but it has not been willing service. You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, but you can use it as a receptacle in a pinch. One would think they would all be happy as clams at high tide on this return voyage with the pearls aboard, looking forward to the bonuses promised them. But they are a surly lot. I should like to discharge them at Tahiti if there is any chance. You know Tahiti is the great pearl market, and I shall get ours appraised there, and possibly dispose of some of them. But I should soon glut the market. We had wonderful luck. I could go back and get as many more and then again, but it would take long weeks and I am anxious to get home. And we are rich. We must have almost a million dollars worth of fine gems aboard—safely stowed where only you and I know. So I shall soon see you again and then for a trip to Europe as soon as the war ends.

      “The Germans have all been driven out of the Pacific, thanks largely to the British cruisers. Our boys are nearer home or in the Atlantic waters, I understand. I am writing your uncle by this mail. The Bioto boys are to be sent home from here. Good, faithful lads and I hate to part with them.”

      * * * *

      “The rest,” concluded the girl, folding up the sheets and putting them away, “is personal and various remembrances. Tomlinson was a man who shipped as first mate. He applied for the job when father was almost despairing of filling it. He recommended Harvey and Harvey brought two or three men that he rounded up. Bird was second mate. They got him at Colon. He was an older man.

      “So you see they started for home. I have imagined all sorts of happenings—storm, a German raider, fire at sea, even mutiny, but I have always been positive that father would come through. If you knew him you would think so too, Mr. Lyman.”

      “I am sure I hope so. But he was not with the ship. Would he have left the pearls behind him? If I found no trace of him—”

      “You were on the island only a short time and then in the jungle. The weather was cloudy. They might have been on the other side. They might have been ill, away on a trip to that highland you spoke of seeing. A hundred things might have happened; there might be a thousand traces if one searched. And I will scour the island for him. Suppose he is there, waiting for succor? I cannot be dissuaded.”

      She spoke imperiously, passionately. It hardly needed the covert sign Lynda Wagner made him for Jim to keep silent. Yet he could not help but feel that a man of Captain Whiting’s character and experience would have left the lonely isle, if not in his own ship’s boats then in some craft he would build from the forest timbers. Only, it would have been the easiest thing to reconstruct a smaller vessel from the ship itself. The mystery deepened, the more one tried to solve it. And he could understand the love of the girl for her father refusing to pass over the one tangible clue.

      In the back of his mind the thought of mutiny grew, the revolt of men who knew they carried a treasure aboard in which they held but slight shares compared with the possibility of even distribution. Piracy was not dead. He admired her pluck and beauty; he was amazed when he saw reaction suddenly set in. Her lip quivered; her eyes filled with tears that she made vain effort to stem; then her slim, lithe body was wrenched by sobs that were muffled on her cousin’s flat but comforting breasts. Lynda Warner nodded to him over the girl’s bowed head to remain, then led the girl from the room, leaving Jim alone with his cigar.

      The clock ticked on solemnly as he went over and over the strange story, the swift turn of events in which he had become involved. He felt impelled to offer his service, keen to undertake any fool’s errand in company with such a girl, yet his innate honesty battled against his giving any suggestion of success that his common sense told him was remote. As for the offer of money, he had forgotten that entirely. The matter that had caused the girl’s grief was paramount. For twenty-seven months she had fought despair and now, clutching at the straw of hope, revulsion had come, perhaps because in spite of faith she realized the frailty of what she grasped.

      The bell tinkled. He heard footsteps descending the stairway, the rustle of a gown. Then men’s voices as the outer door was opened, one sharp, deep, and incisive, the other drawling. The Fosters had arrived.

      III

      Conspiracy

      Jim rose as the four entered the room. Kitty Whiting—her cousin had called her Kitty and Jim henceforth thought of her as that—had with feminine magic removed all traces of tears. It was plain that she was not on excessively friendly terms with her uncle by marriage. She treated her cousin, a blood relation, more affably, though Jim formed a dislike to Newton Foster at first sight, an antipathy that he immediately СКАЧАТЬ