The Adventures of Billy Topsail

by Norman Duncan

  CHAPTER XXIV

  _In Which a Pirate's Cave grows Interesting, and Two Young Members of the Ethnological and Antiquarian Club of St. John's, Undertake an Adventure under the Guidance of Billy Topsail_

  THERE landed in Ruddy Cove, that summer, two youngsters from St.John's on a vacation--city schoolboys both: not fisher lads. They werepleasant fellows, and were soon fast friends with Billy Topsail and thelads of the place, by whom they were regarded with some awe, but stillwith great friendliness.

  "Hello!" the visitors exclaimed, when they clapped eyes on Billy."Where you going?"

  "Fishin'."

  "Take us, won't you, please?"

  Billy Topsail grinned.

  "Won't you?"

  "I don't know," said Billy. "I 'low so."

  They went to the grounds; and the day was blue, and the sea was quiet,and Billy Topsail and the schoolboys had a marvellously splendid time;so they were all friends together from that out.

  Tom Call and Jack Wither were members of what they called, with nolittle pride, "The Ethnological and Antiquarian Club of St. John's."The object of this club of lads was, in the beginning, to preserverelics of the exterminated Beothuk tribe; but to the little collectionsof stone implements and flint-lock guns were soon added collectionsof mineral specimens, of fossils, of stamps, of fish and shells andsea-weeds, of insects, of old prints and documents--in short, ofeverything to which an inveterate collector might attach a value.

  Wherever they went in the long vacation, whether to the coast or tothe interior, not one of them but kept an eye open for additions tothe club collections; and, though much of what they brought back hadto be rejected, it was not long before they had the gratificationof observing an occasional reference to "the collections of theEthnological and Antiquarian Club" in the city newspapers.

  All this accounts for the presence of Tom Call and Jack Wither in theLittle Tickle Basin, in the thick of the islands off Ruddy Cove, onevacation day, and for their interest in a rusted iron mooring-ring,which was there sunk in the rock.

  "And nobody knows who put it there?" Tom asked, curiously fingering theold ring.

  "No," replied Billy Topsail, who had taken them over; "but they says'twas the pirates put it there, long ago."

  "Pirates!" cried Tom. "Do they say that?"

  "'Twas me grandfather told me so."

  It may be that pirates harboured in the Little Tickle Basin in the dayswhen they made the Caribbean Sea a fearsome place to sail upon. Whenthe Newfoundland coast was remote, uninhabited, uncharted, no saferhiding place could have been found than that quiet little basin, hiddenaway among the thousand barren islands of the bay. If, as they say,every pirate had his place of refuge, the iron ring is some evidence,at least, that a buccaneer was accustomed to fly to the basin whenpursuit got too persistent and too hot for him.

  "Of course!" said Tom, when they were sailing back to Ruddy Cove. "Howelse can you account for that ring? I bet you," he concluded, "thatdozens of pirates had dens on this coast."

  "Now, Tom," said Jack, "you know as well as I do that that's just alittle too----"

  "Well," he interrupted, "everybody knows that pirates used to comehere. You'll find it in the histories. It wouldn't surprise me to learnthat there is a cave around here."

  "There is," said Billy Topsail.

  "There!" cried Tom, his eyes shining. "I told you so!"

  "'Tis a wonderful curious place, too," Billy went on. "You has t'crawl through a hole t' get inside. Sure, the hole is no bigger than ascuttle. You could close it with a fair sized rock. But once you getsthrough, the cave is as big as a room. 'Twould hold a score o' men verycomfortable."

  Tom gave Jack a meaning glance. Then he turned to Billy Topsail.

  "Can you take us there?" he asked.

  "I don't know as I could. I've only _heered tell_ they was a cave likethat."

  "And you've never been there?"

  "Not me."

  Tom's face fell--fell so suddenly and to an expression so woeful thatJack laughed outright, though he sympathized with Tom's disappointment.

  "But I knows a man that _has_ been there," Billy continued. "He's theman that found it. 'Tis like, now, that he's the only man that's everbeen inside."

  "Then the place isn't well known?"

  "So far as I can tell, nobody knows it but ol' Joe West."

  When they ran Billy's punt to old Joe West's stage, at Ruddy Cove, thatnight, Joe was inside, splitting the day's catch of cod. They broachedthe object of their visit without delay. Would he guide them to thecave at Little Tickle Basin? But Joe shook his head. The squid were inthe harbour, and the fish were taking the bait in lively fashion. Theloss of a day's catch was "beyond thinkin' of."

  "Do you know the bearings?" Tom asked.

  "T' be sure. 'Tis very simple t' get near the spot; but 'tis wonderfulhard t' find the hole. 'Tis all overgrown. You might hunt for a year,I'm thinkin', an' never find it. When you does find it, it takes a dealo' nerve t' crawl in. 'Tis that dark an' damp! You keeps thinkin' allthe time, too, that something will fall over the hole an' shut you in.If you crawls through," Joe concluded, impressively, "be sure one o'you stays outside."

  "But we've no chart of the place," Tom complained.

  "If you've paper an' a bit o' pencil," said Skipper Joe, "I'll draw youone."

  Here is what he drew:

  Skipper Joe, of course, carefully explained his drawing. "Does you seewhere the arrow points?" said he. "Well, 'tis there. You gets the heado' that little rock in line with the point, at high water, an' thereyou are. The cliff is rough, an' covered with a growth o' spruce. Thehole is about half way up, openin' off a mossy ledge. You'll have t'pry around a wonderful lot t' find it."

  "What's it like inside?" Tom asked, eagerly.

  "Well, they is a deal o' birch bark scattered around, an' a lot o'broken rock. I saw that by the light of a match; but I was too scaredt' stay long, an' I haven't never been there since."

  Billy Topsail agreed to sail the sloop to Little Tickle Basin on thenext day. Then the boys walked home by the road, much excited. Indeed,Tom, who was of an imaginative and enthusiastic turn, was fairlytransported. No flight of fancy was too high for him--no hope too wild.The chart passed from his hand to Jack's and back again a hundredtimes. The crude, strange drawing, with its significant arrow, touchedall the pirate tales with reality.

  "If it had been only a cave, without a rusted mooring-ring, it wouldn'thave been so much," said Tom. "But with the ring--_with_ the ring, myboy--a narrow, hidden passage to a cave means a great deal more."

  Jack asked Tom what he was "driving at."

  "I think," said he calmly, "that there is buried treasure there."

  Jack scoffed.

  "Very well," said Tom; "but you must remember that these discoveriescome unexpectedly. They're _stumbled_ on. You can't expect to find asign-post near buried treasure."

  That night they lay awake for a long time. Tom and Jack werebed-fellows at Ruddy Cove. Struck by a simple idea, Jack awoke hisfriend.

  "Tom," said he, "I think we'll find something there."

  "Spanish gold or English?" Tom asked, sleepily.

  "It will be _something_," Jack replied. "Something we want."