His Unknown Wife
- -
- 100%
- +
“What is it now, son?” inquired Sturgess.
“The worst,” snapped the other vindictively.
“Great Scott! Didn’t you like the look of that log. I thought it lolloped along in a devil-may-care style that was rather attractive.”
“But it turned towards the land, and not towards the sea.”
“I guess that’s so.”
“And doesn’t that convey any meaning to you?”
“Sure. The tides hereabouts go all ways for Sundays. Before that thing reaches Nelson Straits it has to round the eastern end of the island opposite… Yes, yes, Alec. You’ve wised me up on heaps of things I didn’t give a hooraw in Hades for at one time. I can tell the time by the sun, skin an eel, or a seal, or a teal, open oysters like a bar-keep, and read an eddy like a Mississippi pilot. And, to my reckoning, our boat, or any boat, has as much chance of winning through that proposition out there as a lump of butter in a fiery furnace. I never did hold very strongly by that story about Shadrack, Mesack and Abednego. I’ve a notion we haven’t got the complete facts. One day in Pittsburg – ”
“Silence, please, for the passing of the next log, which happens to be a boat!”
Nina’s voice rang out clearly. She well knew the astounding significance of the words, but the daily round of hardship and adventure were molding her character on new and stronger lines. She was not, nor ever could be again, the somewhat conventional young lady who had sailed from San Juan little more than a month ago. She could face now, with an unflinching and critical eye, perils which then would have blanched her cheek and set the blood pulsing in her veins.
Even her sister, who had not made out the object to which Nina had called attention, put an alarming question quite calmly.
“A boat!” she cried. “Oh, Nina, not our boat?”
So many seemingly impossible things had occurred that the stout life-boat they left tied securely in a small dock which was flooded by each tide might conceivably have broken loose.
“No,” came the reassuring answer. “Not our boat. It looks like one of the native coracles Alec has told us of. But it is empty. At any rate, there is no one sitting upright in it.”
By this time the others had seen the craft, which she was the first to detect. In their anxiety and excitement they stood up, one by one, as though the couple of feet thus gained would give a better view-point. There could not be the least doubt that they were looking at a roughly-fashioned but distinctly seaworthy boat, which danced along on the crest of a rapid current, and whirled around, as though in sport, when some black rock thrust its obstructing fangs into the tide-way. Apparently, it was traveling quite safely.
Then, as if to give them a really useful object lesson, it was caught between two rocks and turned clean over. A second somersault righted it, and, like the log, it sped away to the east.
Maseden brought back the dazed and troubled wits of his companions to the particular business in hand.
“See that you are properly roped,” he said. “We’re heading for camp, as quickly as we can get there. Don’t hurry over the first part of the descent, however. There are two bad places on the rock face.”
They reached the shore safely, unroped, and set off to walk three hard miles in record time. As they neared their refuge they saw the boat, now aground in its tiny canal. Near at hand were the white embers of their fire, which would soon be ablaze when fresh logs were added. Some washing, stretched on a line, lent a strangely domestic touch to the encampment.
But the one profoundly relieving fact was self-evident. No party of marauding Indians had swooped down on their ark and its stores. Wherever the derelict boat had come from, its occupants were not to be seen in any part of Rotunda Bay. As Maseden put it tersely:
“We found it hard enough to get here. Others seemed to have tried and failed.”
Still he and Sturgess decided to mount guard that night. The girls were not supposed to know of this new arrangement, until Maseden was about to awaken Sturgess for his second spell of sentry-go. Then Nina emerged from the rear portion of the shack.
“Lend me your watch, Alec,” she said pleasantly. “I’ll take these two hours… No, you mustn’t argue, there’s a dear – fellow – ” the concluding word was added rather hurriedly, being an obvious afterthought. “I’ll call Madge next, and it will be broad daylight by the time her spell is ended.”
“I’m not sleepy,” he murmured, sinking his voice so as not to disturb the others. “I was only going to rouse C. K. because he will be annoyed if I don’t stick to schedule.”
“I haven’t slept at all,” the girl confessed. “If you’re not going to rest, let us talk. Or, perhaps, that is not quite the right thing to do.”
“Not if there was any real fear of an attack,” said Maseden, leading her to the small sand hillock near the boat. “I am convinced we are safe enough, but I should never forgive myself if the camp were rushed owing to our negligence… Sit here. The tide is rising. We can distinguish the water-line, and remain unseen ourselves. Of course, we should speak hardly above a whisper.”
Some inequality in the sloping surface brought them rather close together when they sat down. Nina moved, with a little laugh of apology. Her action was quite involuntary, but it nettled Maseden.
“I don’t want to flirt with you, if that is what you are afraid of,” he grunted. “In present conditions spooning would be rather absurd. Not that my particular sort of marriage tie would restrain me. Don’t think it. Enforced obedience of that sort is foreign to my nature.”
“I gather that you really want to quarrel with me,” was the glib answer.
Of course, any woman of average wit could have put a man in the wrong at once with equal readiness though given a far less vulnerable opening, but Maseden realized his blunder and drew back.
“A too strenuous life seems to have spoiled my temper,” he said. “I used to be regarded as a somewhat easy-going person.”
“Probably that was because you had things all your own way.”
“You may be right. A man is the poorest judge of his own virtues or faults. For instance, I have always prided myself on a certain quality of quick decision, once my mind was made up. But of late I find myself lacking even in that respect.”
“Isn’t it possible you are not actually sure of your own mind?”
“Shall I submit the case to you?”
“Would that be wise? I would remind you of your own phrase – in present conditions.”
“But I think you ought to know,” he persisted. “Weeks ago, on the day you shot the sea-lion, in fact, C. K. told me he meant to marry Madge, if the lady is willing, that is. The statement startled me, to put it mildly. I rather scoffed at it, which nettled him, naturally. I was on the point of acquainting him with the facts, but was stopped by the gun-shot. Since then he has never mentioned the matter again, and I have been averse from pulling it in by the scruff of the neck – ”
“Why do so now?” put in the girl quickly.
He could not see her face, but the note of alarm in her voice was not even disguised.
“Because, day by day, I see more and more clearly that our friend’s love of your sister is a very real thing. I see, too, or think that I see, a response on her part. From a common sense point of view, what else could one expect? Two young people, each eminently agreeable, are thrown together by fate in circumstances of great and continuous personal danger. The artificial intercourse of civilized life is impossible from the outset. They see each other as they really are. Each has to depend on real characteristics, not on shams. Can one imagine a more ideal method of choosing one’s future partner than those in which we have lived during the past month?”
This was what lawyers call a leading question, and Nina shied at it instantly.
“Everything you have said may be true, Alec,” she said, “but you have advanced no reason whatever for disturbing our pleasant relations. Surely all these problems may be allowed to settle themselves when, if ever, we re-enter the everyday world?”
“That is just my difficulty,” continued Maseden doggedly; he was resolved now to have an irritating hindrance to pleasant relations settled once and for all. “Is it fair to Sturgess to let him believe there is no bar to his wooing? Of course, my marriage was a farce, and can be dismissed as such. But what will C. K. think, what will he say, when he hears of it? Won’t our silence – yes, our silence – you cannot shirk a part of the responsibility – be open to misinterpretation? May it not bring about the very catastrophe we want to avoid?”
“I really don’t understand,” said the girl in a frightened way.
“Then I must make my meaning clear, even though it hurts,” he said determinedly. “If I tell Sturgess now about the Cartagena ceremony, though rather late in the day, it is not too late; whereas, if I wait till we reach New York, how astounded and mystified he will be by the legal process which I must set on foot to secure your sister’s freedom and my own! Why, the result might be tragic. If C. K. knows now, he can, if he chooses, seek from Madge an explanation of the whole mad business. She may give or withhold it – that is for her to decide. But at least we shall all be acting squarely and above-board. I put it to you strongly, for the sake of each one of us, that Sturgess should be told the whole truth.”
For a little while there was silence. Nina seemed to be weighing the pros and cons of the matter with much care.
“I think you are right,” she said at last. “I differ from you only in a small but – to a woman – very important particular. Madge, not you, should tell C. K. what happened in Cartagena. It is her privilege. It will come better from her. In the morning, when opportunity offers, she and I will talk things over. I am sure I can persuade her as to the course she should adopt.
“Leave it to me, Alec. Before to-morrow evening C. K. shall have heard the full story of that unfortunate marriage. He will tell you so himself. After that, I suppose, your troubled conscience will be at rest, and the matter need not be discussed further until it comes before the courts.”
“I seem to have annoyed you pretty badly by raising the point now,” said Maseden.
“No, indeed! It is not so. In a sense, I am glad. My sister and I are very dear to one another, Alec, and no one likes to parade the family skeleton, even in such a remote place as Rotunda Bay.”
Maseden felt that he had bungled the whole business rather badly, but he saw no advantage in leaving anything unsaid.
“What I cannot make out,” he muttered savagely, “is how I ever came to regard you and Madge as being so much alike. Of course, you resemble each other physically, but in temperament you are wide apart as the poles.”
“Dear me! This is really interesting. In what respects do we differ?”
“Madge is emotional, you are self-contained. She would have cried had I spoken to her about you as I have spoken of her to you, but you survey the problem coolly, and solve it, probably on the best lines. Sometimes, you puzzle, at others, vex me. You are ready and willing to confide in Sturgess, but refuse me your confidence. I find Madge easy to read; you remain an enigma. I believe you would almost die rather than enlighten me as to the true history of my marriage.”
“Oh, bother your marriage! Can’t you talk of something else?”
“I am prepared to talk about you during the next hour.”
“How boring for both of us.”
“Only a minute ago you welcomed my efforts as an analyst.”
“I was mistook, as the children say. These personal matters seem ineffably stupid when one sees the dawn appearing over the walls of our prison. We may never get away from here, or lose our lives in the attempt. It will be of very small significance then as to why a sorely-tried girl agreed to marry a man she had never seen, and who was under sentence to die before the ink was dry in the register… Still, Alec, I’m pleased we have had such a candid discussion. I have come round to your point of view, too. It is not fair to C. K. to keep him in the dark. To-morrow, as ever is, if you don’t work us so hard that we have no time for chatter, I promise you that Madge shall tell him everything.”
“And me nothing?”
“That is implied in the bargain, is it not? Does it really concern you? You were speaking for C. K., not for yourself… Oh, no, we’re not going to re-open the argument. Just let matters remain where they are, please. I want you to satisfy a woman’s curiosity on a matter of more immediate importance. When do you purpose leaving here? Shouldn’t we start soon? At this season we have fine weather of a sort. Don’t we incur a good deal of risk by each week of delay?”
“Hullo, you two!” came a cherry voice. “A nice bunco game you’ve played on me! There was I, snoring like a hog, while you were spooning under the stars. Wise Alec and Naughty Nina! But wait till I tell your poor deluded sister. A whole tribe of Indians could have crept up and tomahawked you where you sat.”
They started apart, almost guiltily. Each shared the same thought. How much, or how little, had Sturgess heard?
CHAPTER XVI
THE DOWRY
Both Maseden and Nina looked and felt like tongued-tied children, and Sturgess was not slow to note their confusion.
“Gee, if there was an orchard anywhere around, I’d think you two had been stealing apples,” he cried. “Sorry, Nina, if I’ve butted in on a heart-to-heart talk, but it’s not often I can josh our wise Alec, so I’m bound to take the few chances that come along.”
He little knew evidently how closely their talk had concerned him, and the fact that he had not overheard anything which would supply a clue to the topic under discussion was, in itself, a great relief.
“Nina appeared when I was about to call you,” said Maseden quietly. “She demanded her share of the watch, and as I was not inclined for sleep I remained on duty. Of course that is no excuse for an inattentive sentry. I propose that you shoot me straight off and imprison Nina for the remainder of her natural life.”
“I sentence the pair of you to rest until breakfast is ready. There’s no appeal from the court. About, turn! Quick, march!”
Nina hurried away. Maseden, thinking he would not be able to close an eye, followed her slowly, lay down, and was soon asleep.
The boat’s stores had revealed neither soap nor towels, so the early morning wash remained a primitive affair. A pool in the stream was set apart for the girls, while the men scrubbed among the rocks. Sturgess aroused Maseden a few minutes before breakfast was ready.
“Come this way,” he said, nodding in the direction of the boat. “I want to show you something.”
Maseden noticed that the other man’s hands and moccasins were soiled with the whitish-brown deposit through which a channel for the boat had been delved. Then he saw that no small part of the said channel was blocked by the débris of a fresh excavation.
Now, among the treasures on the boat were a couple of axes. Given an ax, some spice of ingenuity and a fair stock of patience, and any man can fashion an astonishing variety of useful articles. Singularly enough, Sturgess, who was gifted with the artist’s sense of proportion, could hew a spade out of a plank more skillfully than Maseden, and he was inordinately proud of the achievement.
“What the deuce have you been up to?” demanded Maseden at sight of so much misdirected industry.
“You wouldn’t guess in a week,” was the complacent answer. “This morning I was standing around doing nothing, when, as the tide fell, I spotted a bulge in the right bank of our canal. I wondered what had caused it, after our trouble in lining the walls with stakes, so I nosed around with a shovel. Then I got all fussed up, and didn’t care where I threw the dirt… See what I’ve found, old scout!”
By this time they were in the trench, from which the tide had only recently receded. Sturgess’s zeal had cleared away some two cubic yards of silt, and Maseden saw at once that a part of the hull of a small vessel of some sort had been laid bare. Moreover, a few blows with an ax had removed sufficient of the rotting timbers to give access to the hulk’s interior.
It was a most interesting find. An old-time craft had been brought to her last resting-place within a few feet of the spot where the Southern Cross’s life-boat was embedded. Evidently in the course of years she had sunk in the soft deposit, and probably formed a nucleus for a new sand-bank. At any rate, she was completely covered, and lay there keel uppermost.
“Have you been inside?” said Maseden, eyeing the doorway broken by the ax.
“You bet your life,” said Sturgess.
“Was the air foul?”
“Fine. I guess the lime hereabouts attended to that. Anyhow, I carried in a blazing stick, and it burned all right.”
“Skeletons on board?”
“Not a bone that I could see.”
“What are you keeping back, then? You can’t humbug me, C. K. There’s something on your chest. Get it off!”
Sturgess craned his neck over the edge of the channel to make sure that neither of the girls was near.
“From hints I’ve picked up now and then, when Madge felt she must either talk or bust, I’ve come to the conclusion that old man Gray’s death means poverty to that small bunch,” he said. “Now, I’m pretty well fixed, and I guess you’ll never be hard pushed to buy a food ticket, so I want your brainy assistance to arrange things for the girls’ benefit. See? It should – kind of – make matters easy – when it comes to a show-down.”
“What have you come across? Spanish treasure?”
Maseden peered into the dimly lighted interior of the wreck. Apparently the inverted deck was about four feet below the level of the opening, and Sturgess had broken into the after part of the hull.
“Let me go ahead and pass out the boodle,” said Sturgess. “I found it in a wooden box, which is clamped with iron, but it has nearly fallen to pieces.”
He lowered himself to what had been the ceiling of a cabin, and moved cautiously among a litter of rotting wood, evidently the furniture which had once rendered the tiny apartment habitable. He came back with laden hands, and passed out a curiously shaped jug, or flagon.
Maseden examined it critically.
“By Jove!” he cried; “this is Aztec work, and hammered out of solid gold!”
“There’s five more of the same sort,” said Sturgess, in a voice cracked with excitement. “And this strikes me as something worth while.”
He produced a crudely modeled figure of a puma, the body in silver and the head, feet, and tail in gold. The eyes and claws were of polished quartz, and were bright as when the ornament left the hands of the Mexican lapidary who fashioned it. The metals, of course, were tarnished, the silver being black with age, but both men realized that they were gazing at a splendid specimen of a long-forgotten art.
“How much of this sort of stuff is there?” said Maseden, his imagination running riot as to the possible history of this unrecorded argosy.
“Twelve pieces altogether,” chuckled Sturgess. “Six gold pitchers, four animals and two carved dishes, each of gold. I’ve rummaged around carefully, and that’s the lot. For’ard of this section is a hold, and, from what I can make out, it was loaded with furs and cloth, but the cargo is all mussed up with salt and lime.”
“Show me one of the dishes.”
Sturgess brought forth an oval-shaped dish, made, like the vessels, of solid gold. On its broad rim were chased twelve weird-looking creatures which reminded Maseden of the signs of the Zodiac; in the sunken center appeared a very elaborate design consisting of four trees, a bird perched on the topmost branches of each. Long afterwards he learned that this cartoon represented, in Aztec picture-writing, the four famous chiefs who founded the Aztec dynasty.
At any rate, he knew at the time that the hoard which Sturgess had discovered was of great archæological interest, apart from the intrinsic value of the precious metals, itself no small sum.
“We ought to devote the necessary time to a thorough survey of the wreck,” he said thoughtfully. “Meanwhile what have you at the back of your head about Nina and Madge? What did you mean by saying it would make matters easier?”
“Well, suppose you and I agree to give ’em the proceeds of the sale,” and Sturgess handled one of the jugs lovingly. “There’s sixty ounces of pure specie in this pretty thing alone, I’ll bet. Then, if it dates away back, the price goes up like a rocket.”
Maseden knew that the really important part of his question had been avoided.
“We must think it over,” he said.
“Think what over?”
Sturgess, whose face was on a level with Maseden’s knees, scowled up at his friend with such an air of indignant surprise that the other man laughed.
“I am not planning a daylight robbery of two fatherless orphans,” explained Maseden. “Our difficulty will be to persuade these two to accept their legitimate half share, let alone the whole of the plunder. Shan’t we give them a hail, and let them see the pirate’s cache before breakfast? Because that is what it is. These things were stolen from some Aztec shrine.”
“Why Aztec?”
“Why not?”
“Peru is a far more likely place.”
“Yes, if these utensils were not of Mexican origin. The signs on the dishes are the animal-names used in the Aztec calendar.”
“Crushed again!” said Sturgess, clambering out of the wreck. “But say, professor, how did you ever manage to stow away those odds and ends of information? I’m your age, and not exactly a fool, but I never had time to read.”
“You never made time, you mean. If you had lived seven years on a solitary ranch you would be forced to buy books and read them. My inclination turned naturally to the records of the country I lived in. The stories of the Spanish invaders in Mexico to the north and Peru to the south were more romantic than any novel. You’ve heard of Captain Kidd, the buccaneer, of course, but I suppose you know nothing of the Welshman Henry Morgan, and his exploits on the Spanish Main?”
“Not as much as would go on a dime in big type.”
“Well, Morgan would have made Kidd shine his boots if they had ever met.”
“Gee whiz! Hennery must have been some Thug… Hi, Madge. Where’s Nina?”
“You two ought to have been washed quarter of an hour ago,” came Madge’s wrathful cry. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere. Breakfast will be spoiled!”
“Madge is quite right,” said Maseden. “Breakfast is more important than loot. Eat first, and discuss the pile afterwards.”
This sound advice availed him or Sturgess little afterwards. Both girls were vexed that the discovery was kept from them even during that short space of half an hour. They were placated, however, by being allowed to share in the labor of clearing a sufficient area around and above the wreck to permit of its exact size being ascertained. It was only a small craft, the keel measuring some fifty feet in length, yet, as Maseden was careful to point out, the early navigators deemed such vessels large enough to cross the mighty Atlantic.
When the tide rose, and the wreck was flooded again, it floated. This was foreseen, and the expectant watchers had a number of stout poles in readiness, with which they under-pinned the hull on one side. Thus it was rendered much easier of access later.
Beyond a couple of beautifully carved and chased rapiers, the blades of which were largely protected by leather scabbards hardened by salt water, and a number of copper cooking utensils, they found nothing more of value. The cargo, which appeared to have been furs and mats of painted reeds, was wholly destroyed. The vessel had carried two masts, whose stumps, broken off short near the deck, seemed to indicate the mischance which had befallen her in the Pacific. There were no cannon or other arms of any sort in or under the wreck, but as she had surely come there by way of Providence Beach and Hell Gate, she had probably rolled over countless times during the journey.
She was built of oak. The bluff bows and high-pitched forecastle and poop dated her as a product of the early seventeenth century. No trace of a name was discernible, but the bulwarks had been torn off. The absence of an elaborate figurehead was significant. She was a strongly constructed, but not highly finished little ship.