The Mystery Boys and Captain Kidd's Message

by Van Powell

  CHAPTER II ONE HALF OF A CIPHER

  That the old crone was very much “worked up” was easily to be seen. Tomand Nicky, watching uneasily, saw her fumble in her old bag and draw outwith her bony fingers three queer objects.

  These were small figures, made rudely of clay or mud. Tom and Nickystarted and stared at them. They were made in the shape of small humanfigures, with heads a little larger than peas, and with dented places tomark out the arms and legs.

  “What do you think those things are?” Tom whispered. “I don’t like this.Remember what Mr. Neale said about this woman?”

  “Yes,” Nicky answered softly. “He said Ma’am Sib is a Voodoo woman andthat the colored people are afraid of her. But I’m not! I want to seewhat she is going to do.”

  That was quickly seen. She laid the little objects in a row on thedoorsill; all of them had their tiny heads pointed out from the shade ofthe roof, so that the heads were in the sunshine.

  She scowled at Nicky and Tom, then muttered under her breath and glancedup toward the sun, then back at the boys.

  “I know it’s just imagination,” Tom told his chum, “but I feel sort ofqueer——”

  Nicky made a practical suggestion.

  “I think she’s trying to scare us away by making us believe that she hasbewitched us or something,” he said, “It’s something that the sun willdo to us. If you’re uneasy, go and stay in the cabin shade at the side.”

  Tom looked sheepish and uncomfortable, but after hesitating for a whilehis fears overcame his good sense and he went out of sight.

  Nicky did not follow; instead, he made an unexpected move.

  Quick as a flash he leaped forward, bent and made a scooping movement ofhis fingers. When he dodged back out of reach of the irate old woman’scane, his hand was closed over the mud images.

  “I’ll keep these,” he said, trembling a little with natural uncertaintyas to the outcome of his bravado.

  “Here comes Cliff with Mr. Neale!” called Tom from beside the cabin,while the colored boy poked his head out through the door and made hiseyes roll in his excitement.

  Cliff and the young archaelogist were climbing the fence. They hurriedover and confronted the woman.

  “What does this mean, Ma’am Sib?” asked Clarence Neale quietly. Heshowed no anger, only curiosity. The old woman looked up at the tall,clean-cut young fellow, not much more than twenty-two or so, andfrowned.

  “White boys not to dig! I order them to go yesterday. They come back!I—” she made a gesture toward Nicky who unclosed his hand. The moistureof his palm was already breaking up the shape of the figures.

  “Cliff’s father told us about the Egyptians doing this like this,” Nickysaid. “They used to make little images of wax, he said, and put spellson them to injure the magicians’ enemies—then when they stuck pins inthe wax, or burned it, the enemies were supposed to suffer with pain.But I didn’t know they did that sort of thing in Jamaica.”

  “Sometimes,” Mr. Neale admitted. “But why did you come back to dig whenMa’am Sib ordered you away?”

  “It isn’t her field,” Cliff answered. “I asked father. And, besides,there is another trench started. See! Over there.” He pointed to thedigging that had been done at a point closer to the cabin.”

  “Can they really hurt you—these voodoo people?” Tom asked. “I began tofeel sort of uneasy——”

  Mr. Neale spoke quietly in reply. “The boy was told to do as he did soas to suggest an idea to you,” he explained. “You see, all sorts ofmagic depend on our being afraid. We are afraid of things we do notunderstand. Because we don’t understand them we think ‘maybe they dohave power to hurt us.’”

  “It’s just the same as if I came to Tom some morning and looked at himas if something was wrong, and then asked him what’s the matter,” Cliffsaid. “He’d wonder and then begin to think that something was wrong andhe would begin to feel sick, if he kept thinking about it long enough.”

  “Exactly,” Mr. Neale replied. “Voodoo depends on ignorance and fear.Because people are ignorant and afraid, their own minds work againstthem. Tom let himself imagine there was danger——”

  “I knew it,” Tom said, shamefacedly, “but it got the best of me.”

  “But why did she do it?” demanded Nicky. “Not just because we didn’tobey her and stop digging——”

  “I claim there must be something hidden here that she knows about andshe tried, the way she is used to doing, to drive us away,” Cliffdeclared.

  “There isn’t anything buried here that I have heard about,” ClarenceNeale responded. He turned to the woman, “Ma’m Sib, what induced you totry to frighten these friends of mine?”

  “Perhaps I can help you?” inquired a voice behind them. So absorbed hadthey all been in the discussion that they had not noticed the arrival ofa slender colored fellow of nineteen. He stood just back of them,smiling pleasantly. He was as black as ebony, with perfect, white teethwhich showed in strong contrast when he gave his good-natured smile. Hespoke without the Southern Negro’s dialect, as is the custom of all theJamaica inhabitants whose speech is often of the very best English, withonly a few colloquial bits of dialect.

  Mr. Neale turned. He recognized the grandson of old Ma’am Sib.

  “Your grandmother has been voodooing my young assistants, Sam,” he saidpleasantly. “They were digging and she must have thought that voodoo waseasier than the natural way—to come and ask me to keep them away.”

  The young Negro shrugged his shoulders. He had been sent to a school inthe United States and he was better educated than was his ancientgrandmother.

  “No harm is done, anyhow, sar,” he replied. “I ask you to forgive.”

  “Done!” answered the white man, “but I am curious to know just what isso important that she should take that sort of measure to drive off ourdigging comrades.”

  “She thought that there was something buried here,” explained thecolored fellow. “She knew that I have been doing some exploring in myspare time. But I found what I was looking for—and I was so disappointedthat I did not even bother to tell her, sar.”

  “Disappointed?”

  “Yes, sar. There is an old legend in our family and my grandmother hadtold me and I was searching for a letter. When Captain William Kiddtraded between New York and these islands, before he was really apirate, he was much friends with our Governor. In those days theGovernor was kind to pirates. He let them come into harbor and he didnot give them to the law for punishing.”

  Nicky and his friends became alert. Nicky thought of the old paper socarefully preserved by his family, although no one thought it would everamount to anything. Cliff and Tom were intensely interested because thiswas becoming a living story, linking the present with the old, piraticaldays and their natural love of adventure was whetted by the suave wordsof the colored man.

  “You may not know about Captain Kidd,” Sam continued. Nicky knew a greatdeal but he remained silent, listening eagerly. “He was really not asbad as the story books have made him. He was not one of the terriblepirates. But he did wrong and finally he was made a prisoner in America,and was kept in prison until he could be sent to England to be tried.”

  He became very earnest and they all drew closer.

  “While he was in prison he sent a letter to his friend, the Governor ofJamaica, who had a house not far from this place. That was the owner ofthis field and his family holds it yet. We are descendants of old familyservants of that Governor. Well, sar, the letter came one day and theGovernor began to brag about finding great treasure soon; one of my racewho was his body-servant thought the letter must tell about the treasureand so he stole it. But he became disgusted and buried the despatch box.I do not know why. At least, I did not know why until I dug it up lastnight!”

  They were all tense with suspense as he reached into his pocket andpulled out a folded paper. Holding his hands around it until he madesure that it was the righ
t one, his eyes rolling with the colored race’slove for being the center of the interest, he slowly opened the paper,holding it down low so that they could all see the surface.

  It was dirty and brown with age and the ink on it was faint and faded toa faint brownish tint.

  They all craned their necks.

  What they saw was disappointing, as Sam had said. There were threesmall, irregular shaped circles toward the top of the paper, in such arelation to one another that if a line had been drawn between each pairso as to connect them, they would have been at the points of a triangle.

  At one side, and a little lower down, was the regulation, old-fashionedrepresentation of a compass to show direction.

  Further down, there was part of a word which they made out to be “per.”Still further down, was a mass of tiny dots and marks, too faint to begiven any meaning, they were not in the form of letters, but were justlike the blotches that break out on the skin during measles-here, thereand everywhere. But at the left side they went right to the edge of thepaper, and there was a very dim line starting there and running a littleway in among the blotches.

  Just beneath was a nautical bearing: “25—30—13 N.”

  “You can see,” said Sam, his finger running along the left hand edge,“this paper is torn off. It is only half of a cipher, sar.”

  Mr. Neale, Cliff and Tom nodded.

  “So it is of no good.” said Sam, but he returned it to his pocket. “Itmay come that the other half will be found. I hope so.”

  Then he turned and looked, with surprise, toward Nicky.

  “Can it be,” muttered Sam, “that Ma’am Sib’s voodoo has worked, afterall?”

  Nicky was turning somersaults and rolling about like a boy who has gonemad!