Poison Island

by Arthur Quiller-Couch

  CHAPTER XXV.

  I TAKE FRENCH LEAVE ASHORE.

  In a sweating hurry I helped Mr. Rogers and Mr. Goodfellow to furlsail, coil away ropes, and tidy up generally. After these tediousweeks at sea I was wild for a run ashore, and, with the green woodsinviting me, grudged even an hour's delay.

  We had run down foresail and come to our anchor under jib andhalf-lowered mainsail. I sprang forward to take in the jib and carryit, with the foresail, to the locker abaft the ladies' cabin, whenCaptain Branscome sang out to me to be in no such hurry, but to foldand stow both sails neatly without detaching them--the one along thebowsprit, the other at the foot of the fore-stay, when they could bere-hoisted at a moment's notice.

  These precautions were the more mysterious to me because a momentlater he sent me to the locker to fetch up a tarpaulin cover for themainsail, which he snugged down carefully, to protect it (as heexplained) from the night dews--so carefully that he twiceinterrupted Mr. Goodfellow to correct a piece of slovenly tying.The sail being packed at length to his satisfaction, we laced thecover about it carefully as though it had been a lady's bodice.

  Our next business was to get out the boats. The _Espriella_possessed three--a gig, shaped somewhat like a whaleboat; a useful,twelve-foot dinghy; and a small cockboat, or "punt" (to use our WestCountry name), capable, at a pinch, of accommodating two persons.This last we carried on deck; but the larger pair at the foot of therigging on either side, whence we unlashed and lowered them by theirfalls. The punt we moored by a short painter under the bowsprit, sothat she lay just clear of our stem.

  This small job had fallen to me by the Captain's orders, and Iclambered back, to find him and Mr. Rogers standing by theaccommodation ladder on the port side, and in the act of steppingdown into the dinghy. Indeed, Mr. Rogers had his foot on the ladder,and seemed to wait only while the Captain gave some instructions toMr. Goodfellow, who was listening respectfully.

  "Are we all to go ashore in the dinghy?" I asked.

  The Captain turned on me severely, and I observed that he and Mr.Rogers had armed themselves with a musket apiece, each slung on abandolier, and that Mr. Rogers wore an axe at his belt.

  "Certainly not," said the Captain. "Mr. Rogers and I are going onshore to prospect, and I was at this moment instructing Mr.Goodfellow that nobody is to leave the ship without leave from me."

  "But--" I began, and checked myself, less for fear of his anger thanbecause I was actually on the verge of tears. I looked around forthe ladies, but they had retired to their cabin. Oh, this washard--a monstrous tyranny! And so I told Mr. Goodfellow hotly as thedinghy pushed off and, Mr. Rogers paddling her, drew away up thecreek and rounded the bend under the almost overhanging trees.

  "When are they coming back?" I demanded.

  "Captain didn't say."

  "You seem to take it easily," I flamed up; "but _I_ call it aburning shame! Captain Branscome seems to think that this Islandbelongs to him; and you know well enough, if it hadn't been for me,he'd never have set eyes on it. What are you going to do?"

  "Smoke a pipe," said Mr. Goodfellow, "and watch the beauties o'Nature."

  "Well, I'm not," I threatened. "Captain Branscome may be a very goodseaman but he's too much of an usher out of school. This isn'tStimcoe's."

  "Not a bit like it," assented Mr. Goodfellow, feeling in hispockets.

  "And if he thinks he can go on playing the usher over me, he'll findout his mistake. Why, look you, whose is the treasure, properlyspeaking? Who found it?"

  "Nobody, yet."

  Mr. Goodfellow drew forth a pipe and rubbed the bowl thoughtfullyagainst his nose.

  "Well, then, who found the chart? Who put you all on the scent?Who was it first heard the secret from Captain Coffin? And this mandoesn't even consult me--doesn't think me worth a civil word!I'll be shot if I stand it!" I wound up, pacing the deck in myrage.

  Just then Plinny's voice called up to us from the cabin, announcingthat dinner was ready.

  "But," said she, "one of you must eat his portion on deck while hekeeps watch; that was Captain Branscome's order."

  "More orders!" I grumbled; and then, with a sudden thought, Inodded to Mr. Goodfellow, who was replacing his pipe in his pocket."_You_ go. Hand me up a plate and a fistful of ship biscuit, andleave me to deal with 'em. I'm not for stifling down there underhatches, whatever your taste may be."

  "'Tis a fact," he admitted, "that a meal does me more good when Isquare my elbows to it."

  "Down you go, then," said I; "and when you're wanted I'll call you."

  He descended cheerfully, reappeared to pass up a plate, and descendedagain. I gobbled down enough to stay my appetite, crammed my pocketfull of ship biscuit, and, after listening for a moment at thehatchway, tiptoed forward and climbed out upon the bowsprit.Then, having unloosed the cockboat's painter, I lowered and letmyself drop into her, and, slipping a paddle into the stern-notch,sculled gently for shore.

  The _Espriella_, of course, lay head-to-tide, and the tide by thistime was making strongly--so strongly that I had no time to getsteerage way on the little boat before it swept her close under theopen porthole through which I heard Miss Belcher inviting Mr.Goodfellow to pass his plate for another dumpling. Miss Belcher'svoice--as I may or may not have informed the reader--was a baritoneof singularly resonant _timbre_. It sounded through the porthole asthrough a speaking trumpet, and I ducked and held my breath as theboat's gunwale rubbed twice against the schooner's side beforedrifting clear.

  Once clear, however, I worked my paddle with a will, thoughnoiselessly; and, the tide helping me, soon reached and rounded thefirst bend. Here, out of sight of the ship, I had leisure to drawbreath and look about me.

  Ahead of me lay a still reach, close upon half a mile in length, andnarrowing steadily to the next bend, when the two shores overlappedand mingled their reflections on the water. On my right the redcliffs, their summits matted with creepers, descended sheer intowater many fathoms deep, yet so clear that I could spy the fishplaying about their bases where they met the firm white sand.On my left the channel shoaled gradually to a beach of this samewhite sand, which followed the curve of the shore, here and againflashing out into broad sunshine from the blue shadow cast by theoverhanging forest.

  Between these banks the breeze could scarcely be felt, yet, thoughthe sun scorched me, the heat was not oppressive. The woods, denseand tangled though they were, threw up no exhalations of mud orrotting leaves, but a clean, aromatic odour. It seemed to give thema substance without which they had been but a mirage, a scene paintedon a cloth, so motionless and apparently lifeless they stood, withthe long vines hanging from their boughs, and the hot, rarefied airquivering above them.

  At first their silence daunted me; by-and-by I felt (I could hardlybe said to hear) that this silence was intense, and held a sound ofits own, a murmur as of millions of flies and minute winged things--or perhaps it came from the vegetation itself, and the sap pushingleaf against leaf and ceaselessly striving for room.

  With scarcely more noise than the forest made in growing, I let thecockboat float up on the tide, correcting her course from time totime with a touch of the paddle astern; and so coming to thesecond bend, began to search the shore for a convenient landing.The Captain and Mr. Rogers, no doubt, had rowed up to the very headof the creek, and would by this time be prospecting for the clump oftrees which were the key to unlock No. 3 cache. To escape--or, atany rate, delay--detection, I must land lower down, and preferably atsome point where I could pull up the boat and hide it.

  With this in my mind, scanning the woods on the north bank for anopening, I drifted around the bend, and with a shock of surprisefound myself in full view of the end of the creek. Worse than this,I was bearing straight for the _Espriella's_ dinghy, which lay justabove water on the foreshore, with her painter carried out to a treeabove the bank. Worst of all, some one at that instant stepped backfrom the bank and under the shadow of the tree, as if to await methere. . . . Mr. Rogers, o
r the Captain? . . . Mr. Rogers certainly;for I remembered that the Captain wore white duck trousers, and, bymy glimpse of him, this man's clothes were dark. His height andwalk, too! Yes; no doubt of it, he was Mr. Rogers.

  I stood--a culprit caught red-handed--and let the boat drift me downupon retributive justice. A while ago I had been mentally composinga number of effective retorts upon Captain Branscome for histyrannical behaviour. Now, of a sudden, all this eloquence desertedme: I felt it leaking away and knew myself for a law-breaker.One lingering hope remained--that the Captain had pushed ahead intothe woods, and that, as yet, Mr. Jack Rogers (whose good nature Imight almost count upon) had alone detected me and would pack me hometo the ship with nothing worse than a flea in my ear.

  His silence encouraged this hope. Half a minute passed and still heforbore to lift his voice and summon me. He stood, deep in theshadow, his face screened by the boughs, and made no motion toadvance to the bank.

  Then suddenly--at, maybe, two hundred yards' distance--I saw him takeanother pace backwards and slip away among the trees.

  "Good man!" thought I, and blessed him (after my first start ofastonishment). "He has pretended not to see me."

  At any rate he had given me a pretty good hint to make myself scarceunless I wished to incur Captain Branscome's wrath. I slipped mypaddle forward into a rowlock, picked up the other, and, droppingupon the thwart, jerked the cockboat right-about-face to head herback for the schooner.

  But after a stroke or two I easied and let her drift backstern-foremost while I sat considering. Mr. Rogers had behaved likea trump; yet it seemed mean to deceive the old man; and, moreover, itamounted to striking my colours. I had broken orders deliberatelyand because I denied his right to give such orders. I might be ayoungster; but, to say the least of it, I had as much interestin the success of this expedition as any member of the company.The shortest way to dissuade Captain Branscome from treating me as achild was to assert myself from the beginning. I had started withfull intent to assert myself, and--yes, I was much obliged to Mr.Rogers, but this question between me and Branscome had best besettled, though it meant open mutiny. I felt pretty sure that MissBelcher would support the tyrant; almost equally sure that Plinnywould acquiesce, though her sympathy went with me; and strangelyenough, and unjustly, I felt the angrier with Plinny. But evenagainst Miss Belcher I had a card to play. "Captain Branscome may bean excellent leader," I would say; "but I beg you to remember thatyou gave me no vote in electing him. I will obey any leader I havemy share in choosing, but until then I stand out." And I had aninkling that, though the public voice would be against me, I shouldestablish my claim to be taken into any future counsels.

  "In for a lamb, in for a sheep," thought I, and began to back thecockboat towards the corner where the dinghy lay. As I did so itoccurred to me to wonder why the Captain and Mr. Rogers had been sodilatory. They must have started a full hour ahead of me; they hadleft the schooner at a brisk stroke, whereas I had merely floated upwith the tide. Yet either I had all but surprised them in the act ofstepping ashore, or, if they had landed at once, why had Mr. Rogersloitered on the bank until I was close on overtaking him?

  They had landed at the extreme head of the creek. Therefore(I argued) their intent was to follow up the stream here indicated onthe chart and search for the clump of trees which guarded the secretof No. 3 _cache_.

  Sure enough, having beached my boat alongside the dinghy and climbedthe green knoll above the foreshore, I spied their footprints on thesandy edge of the stream which here fetched a loop before joining thetidal waters of the creek. They led me along a flat meadow ofexquisitely green turf, fringed with palmetto-trees, to the entranceof a narrow gorge through which the stream came tumbling in a seriesof cascades, spraying the ferns that overhung it. The forest withits undergrowth pressed so closely upon either bank that afterscrambling up beside the first waterfall I was forced to take offshoes and stockings and work my way up the irregular bed, now wadingknee-deep, now clambering or leaping from boulder to boulder; and,even so, to press from time to time through the meeting boughs,shielding my face from scratches. So, for at least a mile, I climbedas through a narrow green tunnel, and at the end of it found myselfwet to the skin. Five waterfalls I had passed, and, beside thefourth, where the bank was muddy, had noted a long, smooth mark, andrecent, such as a man's foot might make in slipping; so that I feltpretty confident of being on my companions' track, though I wonderedhow the Captain, with his lame leg, could sustain such a climb.

  But above the fifth waterfall the stream divided into two branches,and at the fork of them I stood for a while in doubt which to choose.So far as volume of water went, there was, indeed, little or nothingto choose. If direction counted, the main stream would be that whichcame rushing down the gorge straight ahead of me--a gorge which,however, as my eye followed the V of its tree-tops up to thesky-line, promised to grow steeper and worse tangled. On the otherhand, the tributary (as I shall call it), which poured down from alateral valley on my left, ran with an easier flow, as though drawingits waters from less savage slopes. I could not see these slopes--abend of the hills hid them; but I reasoned that if a clump of trees,separate and distinguishable, stood anywhere near the banks ofeither stream, it might possibly be found by this one. The othershowed nothing but a close mass of vegetation.

  Accordingly I turned my steps up the channel to the left, and wasrewarded, after another twenty minutes' scramble, by emergingupon a break in the forest. On one side of the stream rose areddish-coloured cliff, almost smooth of face and about seventy oreighty feet high, across the edge of which the last trees on thesummit clutched with their naked roots, as though protestingagainst being thrust over the precipice by the crowd behind them.The other bank swelled up, from a little above the water's edge, to afair green lawn, rounded, grassy, and smooth as a glade in an Englishpark. At its widest I dare say that, from the stream's edge back tothe steep slope where the forest started again and climbed to a tallridge that shut in the glen on the south side, it measured somethingover two hundred yards.

  "Here," thought I, glancing up the glade towards the westering sun,"is the very spot for our clump of, trees;" and so it was--only noclump of trees happened to be in sight. The glade, however,stretched away and around a bend of the stream, and I was moving tothe bank to explore it to its end when my eyes were arrested bysomething white not ten paces away. It was a piece of paper caughtagainst one of the large boulders between which, as through a brokendam, the water poured into the ravine. I waded towards it andstooped, steadying myself against the current.

  It was a paper boat.