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Pirate Island: A Story of the South Pacific

<h3>Chapter Seventeen.</h3> <h4>Bob wants to be rich.</h4> The problem as to the working of the gold mine being so far satisfactorily solved, it only remained to ascertain how the arrangements would answer when put into practice, and this the ladies did without loss of time. Their plan was that one of them should remain at home to look after Bob and little May, while the other two devoted a few hours of the day to the cave. As they took it in turns to remain at home in the capacity of nurse, each of them had two days in the cave to one at the cottage. In the meantime, thanks to Lance’s skill and the careful nursing of the ladies, Bob was making steady progress toward recovery, and within a month of the occurrence of his accident was beginning to ask how much longer he was going to be kept a prisoner. He had been made aware of the gold discovery, by occasional references to it on the part of the others in his presence, but he had never heard the complete story; so one day, when it was Blanche’s turn to remain at home, he asked her to give him the entire history; which she did. He listened most attentively; and when the story was over remained silent, apparently wrapped in profound thought, for several minutes. Looking up at last, with a flush of excitement on his face, he exclaimed— “Why, there must be gold enough there to make millionaires of every one of us!” “Yes,” said Blanche, “I believe there is; at least Lan— Mr Evelin says so, and I have no doubt he knows.” “Oh yes,” exclaimed Bob enthusiastically, “he knows. I believe he knows everything. And what a splendid fellow he is, isn’t he, Miss Lascelles?” This last with a sly twinkle in his roguish eye. Blanche appeared to think it unnecessary to comment upon or reply to this remark; at all events she remained silent. But the window-curtain somehow needed adjustment just at that moment, and the haste with which she rose to attend to this little matter—or something else—caused a most lovely pink flush to overspread her cheeks. Bob saw it; perhaps he knew exactly what caused it; but if he did he was too much of a gentleman to show that he had noticed it. So when Blanche had adjusted the curtain to her satisfaction he remarked with a heavy sigh— “Oh dear! I wish I was well enough to be out and at work again. I long to have the handling of some of that gold.” “You must have patience, Robert,” said Blanche. “The worst part of your illness is now over, and in due time you will no doubt be able to take your share of the work once more. But whether such is the case or not, you may rest satisfied that you will have your share of the gold. Whatever there may be, whether it be much or little, I know the gentlemen have decided that it shall be divided equally among us, even to little May.” “I am sure it’s very kind of them,” said Bob with a touch of impatience in his tone; “but I want to be up and able to work at it—to gather it in and see it accumulate. I want to be a really rich man.” “For shame, Robert,” said Blanche, with just the faintest feeling of disgust—the first she had ever experienced toward Bob. “If you talk like that I shall leave you. I am disappointed in you; I should never have suspected you of being mercenary.” “Well, I am then,” returned Bob, quite unabashed. “I am mercenary, if that means being anxious to be rich. And so would you be, Miss Lascelles, if you had seen as much misery as I have; misery, too, which could be cured by the judicious expenditure of comparatively trifling sums of money. Only think how jolly it would be to go up to every poor hungry man, woman, and child you met, clap a sovereign in their hands, and say, ‘There, go and enjoy the luxury of a good unstinted meal for once in your life.’ But a rich man’s power goes a great deal further than that. If ever I am rich I shall not be satisfied with the bestowal of relief of such a very temporary kind as a solitary meal amounts to; I shall hunt up some really deserving cases and put them in the way of earning their own livings. Real relief consists, to my mind, of nothing short of the stretching out of a helping hand and lifting some poor soul clean out of that miserable state where one’s very existence depends upon the fluctuating charity of one’s fellow-creatures. I’ve seen it, and I know what it means. There’s any amount of real misery to be met with in the neighbourhood of the Docks, ay, and all over London, for that matter, if one only chooses to keep one’s eyes open. Of course I know that many of the beggars and match-sellers, and people of that kind are rank loafers, too idle to work even when they have the chance—people who spend in drink every penny that’s given them—and in my opinion they richly deserve all the misery they suffer. But there are plenty of others who would be only too happy to work if they could; and they are the people I should seek out and help, the poor women and children, you know. It makes me fairly sick, I give you my word, Miss Lascelles, when I think of the vast sums of money that are squandered every year in ways which leave nothing to show for the expenditure. Take gambling for instance. I’ve heard that thousands of pounds are lost every year at card-playing and horse-racing. The money only changes hands, I know; but what good does it do? If a man can afford to part with a thousand pounds in such a way, how much better it would be for him and everybody else if he would expend it in furnishing a certain number of persons with the means to earn their own living. I don’t believe it’s right for people to squander and waste their money; I believe that money is given to people in trust, and that everybody will have to answer for the way in which they discharge that trust; don’t you, Miss Lascelles?” “Certainly I do, Robert,” answered Blanche, very gravely. “But I must admit that I have never until now viewed the matter in the serious light in which you put it. I must beg your pardon, and I do most sincerely, for the way in which I spoke to you just now. I had no idea that you had any such good reasons as you have given for desiring to be rich. But what would you be able to do single-handed, no matter how rich you might be?” “Ah!” ejaculated Bob with a gesture of impatience, “that’s just what everybody says, and that’s exactly where the mischief lies; they don’t do anything because they can’t do everything, and because they can’t get others to join them. But I shouldn’t look at it like that; I should just do my duty, whether other people did theirs or not; if others choose to shirk their duty it is their own look-out, it affords no excuse for me to shirk mine. But there—it’s no use for me to talk like this; perhaps I never shall be rich; the gold is there, you say; but that is a very different thing from having it banked in England. How do they think we are going to get it away from the island without discovery? You may depend upon it that, whenever we go, it will be all in a hurry.” Blanche explained Captain Staunton’s plan as to the carrying off of the gold; but Bob shook his head dubiously. “It is a capital plan, I admit,” he said, “but its success depends upon everything turning out exactly as arranged, and—you mark my words—things won’t turn out that way at all; they never do. Will you do me a favour, Miss Lascelles?” “Certainly I will, Robert, provided of course that it is in my power,” answered Blanche. “Thank you,” said Bob. “You can do it easily enough. Bring home here—and get the other ladies to do the same—every day when you return from the cavern, as many nuggets as you can conveniently carry—say two or three pounds’ weight each of you, you know—and hand them over to me. I’ll contrive to find a safe hiding-place for them, and when the moment comes for us to be off I’ll see that they go with us if such a thing is at all possible; then we shall not be quite destitute if after all we have to leave the heap in the cave behind us. But don’t say anything about this to the gentlemen; Captain Staunton might not like it if he heard that I doubted the practicability of his plan.” Blanche readily gave the desired promise, and there the matter ended for the time. Meanwhile the work went steadily forward at the shipyard, and by the time that Bob was once more able to go on duty the framework of the schooner was complete, and the planking had been begun, whilst the battery was in so forward a state that another fortnight would see it ready to receive the guns. Ralli was in a high state of delight; but Bob had not been at work many days before he discovered that things were no longer as they had been when he received his hurt. The Greek had never been courteous in his behaviour to the Galatea party, but now he was downright insolent, and his insolence seemed to increase every day. At the outset of the work the gentlemen of the party, that is to say, Captain Staunton, Lance, and Rex, had been required to look on and direct the progress of the work only, but now Lance was the only one to whom this privilege was granted, a privilege which he scorned to accept unshared by the others, and accordingly when Bob once more joined the working party he found his friends with their coats off and sleeves rolled up to the shoulders performing the same manual labour as the rest. Seeing this, he of course did the same, and thus they all continued to work until—the end came. Bob was greatly surprised at this state of things; so much so that he sought an early opportunity to inquire of Lance the meaning of it. Neither Lance nor anyone else in the party were, however, able to give any explanation of it; all they could say with regard to the affair was that Ralli had been gradually growing more insolent and tyrannical in his treatment of them until matters had reached the then existing unpleasant stage. But he was earnestly cautioned by Captain Staunton not to mention a word respecting it to the ladies, as it was extremely desirable that they should be kept for as long a time as possible quite free from all anxiety of every kind. “But can nothing be done to make this fellow mend his behaviour?” inquired Bob of the skipper as they separated from the rest of the working party and walked toward the cottage on landing from the boats that night. “I fear not,” was the reply. “While the schooner and the battery were still to be built we had the man to some extent in our power; but now that the battery is so near completion, and the hull of the schooner fully modelled, he is independent of us, and he has sense enough to know it. His own people are quite capable of finishing off the schooner now that her framework is complete, so that threats on our part would be useless—nay, worse than useless—since they would only irritate him and lead to increasing severity toward us.” Bob lay awake a long time that night, quite satisfied that the time had arrived when something ought to be done, but what that something should be he puzzled his brain in vain to discover. About a fortnight after this a serious accident occurred at the shipyard, or rather at the battery. This structure was now so far advanced that it was ready to receive the guns which were intended to be mounted in it. The armament was to consist of six 24-pounder iron muzzle-loaders of the ordinary old-fashioned type, to which Johnson had helped himself in some raid on the Spanish-American coast; and on the morning in question a gang of men was told off to hoist these guns up the cliff into the battery. Lance had, as a matter of course, undertaken the supervision of this operation; but the work had hardly commenced when Ralli made his appearance on the scene, announcing his intention to himself direct operations at the battery, and roughly ordering Lance to return at once to his work on the schooner, “and to be quick about it too, or he (Ralli) would freshen his way.” Evelin of course returned at once to the shipyard without condescending to bandy words with the Greek, and the work went forward as usual. Ralli soon had a pair of sheers rigged, and in due time one of the guns was slung ready for hoisting. Lance had been watching Ralli’s operations, first with curiosity and afterwards with anxiety, for he soon saw that the man knew nothing whatever about handling heavy guns. He now saw that the gun which was about to be hoisted was wrongly slung, and that an accident was likely enough to result. So, forgetting his former rebuff, he threw down his tools and hurried to the place where the men were working about the gun and told them to cast off the slings. “You have slung it wrong, lads,” said he, “and unless you are very careful some of you will be hurt. Cast off the slings, and I will show you the proper way to do it.” The men, accustomed to working under his directions, were about to do as he bade them, when Ralli looked over the parapet and angrily ordered them to leave the lashings as they were and to sway away the gun. “As for you, mister soldier,” he said, shaking his fist at Lance, “you have left your work contrary to my orders, and I will seize you up to a grating and give you five dozen to-night as a lesson to you. Now go.” Lance turned on his heel and walked away. Things had come to a crisis at last, he thought; and he began to wonder how the crisis was to be met; upon one thing he was quite resolved, and that was that he would never submit to the indignity of the lash; Ralli might kill him if he chose, but flog him—never. His sombre meditations were brought to an abrupt ending by a sudden crash accompanied by a shout of consternation in the direction of the battery. Looking that way he saw the tackle dangling empty from the sheers, with the lower block about half-way up the cliff face, and at the base of the cliff were the men grouped closely together about some object which was hidden by their bodies. Suddenly one of the men left the rest and ran toward the shipyard, shouting for help. “There has been an accident,” thought Lance. “The gun has slipped from the slings, and likely enough somebody is killed.” “Muster all the crowbars and handspikes you can, lads,” said he, “and take them over to the battery; there has been an accident, I fear.” A strong relief gang was soon on the spot, only to find Lance’s fears confirmed. The gun had been hoisted nearly half-way up the cliff when the guide-rope had fouled a rock. The armourer had stepped forward to clear it, and in doing so had given it a jerk which had canted the gun in its slings, and before the unfortunate man had realised his danger the gun had slipped and fallen upon him, crushing both his legs to a jelly. There was an immediate outcry among the men for Lance, an outcry which Ralli would have checked if he could; but his first attempt to do so showed him that the men were now in a temper which would render it highly dangerous for him to persist, so he gave in with the best grace he could muster and ordered one of the men to fetch Evelin to the spot. On receiving the message Lance of course at once flung down his tools and hastened to the assistance of the injured man. When he reached the scene of the catastrophe he found all hands, Ralli included, crowded round the prostrate gun, and everybody giving orders at the same time, everybody excited, and everything in a state of the direst confusion. As he joined the group Ralli stepped forward with a smile on his lips, which in nowise cloaked his chagrin at being obliged to yield to the demands of the men, and began— “You see, mister soldier, we cannot do without you it seems, after all. Just lend the men a hand to—” But Lance brushed past him without deigning the slightest notice; and, pushing his way through the crowd, called upon a few of the men by name to assist him in relieving the unfortunate armourer from the ponderous weight of the gun, which still lay upon the poor fellow’s mangled limbs. Such implicit confidence had these men in him, prisoner among them though he was, that his mere presence sufficed to restore them to order; and in a few minutes the armourer, ghastly pale, and with every nerve quivering from the excruciating pain of his terrible injuries, was safely withdrawn from beneath the gun. “Now, make a stretcher, some of you—ah, Dickinson, you are the man for this job; just make a stretcher, my good fellow—the same sort of thing that you made for the lad Bob, you know—and let’s get our patient into a boat as quickly as possible; I can do nothing with him here,” said Lance. “Ay, ay, sir,” answered Dickinson promptly; and away he went with two or three more men to set about the work, Lance plying the injured man frequently with small doses of rum meanwhile. Ralli stood upon the outskirts of the crowd angrily watching the proceedings. He could not shut his eyes to the fact of Lance’s popularity with the men, and he vowed within himself that he would make him pay dearly for it before the day was done, even if he were compelled to seize him up and flog him himself. The stretcher was soon ready, and the armourer having been placed upon it, was carried as carefully as possible down to the boat. As the procession passed the shipyard Lance beckoned to Captain Staunton, saying— “I shall need your assistance in this case. It will be a case of amputation unless I am greatly mistaken, and if so, I shall require the help of someone upon whose nerve I can depend.” Captain Staunton, upon this, hurried back for his coat, and rejoined Lance just as the party was on the point of embarking in the boat. As the men propelled the craft swiftly across the bay Lance related in a loud tone to the skipper Ralli’s behaviour during the morning, and his threat. They were still discussing the matter anxiously together when Dickinson, who was pulling stroke-oar, and who doubtless guessed from catching a stray word or two what was the subject of their conversation, broke in upon their conference by inquiring of Lance whether he thought the armourer would recover. “It is impossible to say yet,” answered Lance cautiously. “Of course we shall do our best for him, poor fellow, but he will require more attention than I fear Ralli will allow me to give him.” “If that’s all,” remarked Dickinson, “I think you needn’t trouble yourself, sir; the Greek knows too well what he’s about to interfere with you when it comes to doctoring a hinjured man—a man as was hurt too all along of his own pride and obstinacy. And as to that other matter—the flogging, you know, sir—axing your pardon for speaking about it so plain, sir—don’t you trouble yourself about that. He sha’n’t lay a hand upon you while me and my mates can pervent it—shall he, mates?” “No, that he sha’n’t, bo’,” was the eager answer. “No, he sha’n’t,” coincided Dickinson. “We can’t do much to help you, you see, sir,” he added, “’cause, worse luck, we don’t all think alike upon some things; but we’ve only got to say the word to the rest of the hands, and I knows as they won’t hear of you bein’ flogged. There isn’t one of us but what respects you, sir, but what respects you gentlemen both, for that matter; you’ve always had a good word for everybody, and that goes a long way with sailors sometimes—further than a glass o’ grog—and you may make your mind easy that the Greek won’t be let to—to—you know what, sir.” “Thank you, Dickinson,” said Lance with outstretched hand, “thank you with all my heart. You have relieved me of a heavy load of anxiety; for, to tell you the truth, I had quite made up my mind not to submit to the indignity; and if Ralli attempts to carry out his threat it will probably lead to precipitate action on our part, which at the present time would be simply disastrous.” “So ’twould, sir; so ’twould,” agreed Dickinson. “You needn’t say another word, sir; we understands. Only we’d like you to know sir—and this here’s a very good opportunity for us to say it—that whenever the time comes you may reckon upon all hands of us in this here boat.” “How do you mean?” ejaculated Lance, considerably startled. “I really do not understand you.” “Oh, it’s all right, sir,” returned Dickinson cheerfully. “We warn’t born yesterday, ne’er a one of us, and you don’t suppose as we believes you’ve all settled down to stay here for the rest of your nateral lives, do you? Lord bless you, sir, we knows you must have got some plan in your heads for getting away out of this here hole; and the long and the short of it is this:—When you’re ready to go, we’re ready to lend you a hand, perviding you’ll take us with you. We’re sick and tired of this here cursed pirating business; we wants to get away out of it; and we’ve been talking it over—me and my mates—and we’ve made up our minds that you’re sartain to be off one of these fine days, and we’d like to go with you, if you’ll have us. We want to give the world another trial, and see if we can’t end our days as honest men; ain’t that it, mates?” “Ay, ay, Bill; that’s it and no mistake; you’ve put it to the gentlemen just exactly as we wanted it; what you says, we’ll say, and whatever promises you makes we’ll keep ’em; we wants another chance, and we hopes that if so be as these here gen’lemen are thinking of topping their booms out of this they’ll just take us along with ’em,” replied the man who was pulling the bow-oar, the others also murmuring an assent. “But what makes you think we have an idea of effecting our escape? And how many others of you have the same opinion?” inquired Captain Staunton. “Well, I don’t know as I can rightly say what makes us think so; but we do,” answered Dickinson. “P’raps it’s because you’ve took things so quiet and cheerful like. As to how many more of us thinks the same as we do—why, I can’t say, I’m sure. I’ve only spoke about it to some half a dozen or so that I knowed would be glad of a chance to leave, like myself.” “Well,” said Captain Staunton after a pause, “I really do not think we can say anything to you, either one way or another, just now. What you have just said has been so utterly unexpected that we must have time to think and talk the matter over among ourselves; but I think we may perhaps be able to say something definite to you to-morrow in answer to your proposition. Don’t you think so, Evelin?” “I think so,” answered Lance. “Very well, then,” said the skipper. “Let the matter rest until to-morrow, and we will then tell you our decision. In the meantime it must be understood that none of you say a word to anyone else upon the subject until you have our permission.” A promise to this effect was readily given by each of the men, and then the matter dropped, the boat shortly afterwards reaching the landing-place at the bottom of the bay. The armourer was at once taken out of the boat and carried by Lance’s directions up to the building in which he slept. The miserable man was by this time in a dreadfully exhausted condition; but on the arrival of the medicine-chest Lance mixed him a powerful stimulating draught, under the influence of which he revived so much that Evelin felt himself justified in attempting the operation of amputation. This, with Captain Staunton’s assistance, was speedily and successfully performed; after which the patient was placed in his hammock, and Lance sat himself down near at hand, announcing his intention of watching by the poor fellow until next morning. The operation successfully performed, Dickinson and his three companions returned to the shipyard, maintaining an animated and anxious consultation on the way. The result of this consultation was that when the four men resumed work they had a great deal to say—after answering numberless anxious inquiries as to the state of the wounded man—upon the subject of Ralli’s treatment of Lance and his threat to flog him. They denounced this conduct as not only unjust but also impolitic to the last degree, dwelling strongly upon the unadvisability of offending a man so skilled as Lance in medicine and surgery, and impressing their audience with the necessity for discouraging—and, if necessary, interfering to prevent—the carrying out of the threat. And as sailors are very much like sheep—where one jumps the rest jump also—they had not much difficulty in arranging for a general demonstration of popular disapproval in the event of Ralli’s attempting the threatened indignity. Fortunately for himself—fortunately also in all probability for those in whom we are chiefly interested—he allowed the affair to pass over; in going about among the workers that day he overheard enough to feel assured that, for the moment at all events, he was an unpopular man, and as among such turbulent spirits as those with whom he had to deal, unpopularity means loss of power, his own common sense suggested to him the extreme impolicy of pitting himself against them while they continued in so antagonistic a mood. But he was quite resolved that if he could not have in one way what he called his “revenge,” he would have it in another; and from that day forward his insolence and tyranny of demeanour toward Lance and his friends grew more and more marked, until at length it became so unbearable that they were driven to the very verge of desperation. Meanwhile Lance, sitting there watching his patient, soon saw that he was about to have his hands full. The hectic flush of fever began to chase away the deadly pallor from the sufferer’s cheek; his eyes glittered and sparkled like coals of fire; and as feeling began to return to his hitherto benumbed limbs, and the smart of his recent operation made itself felt, he tossed restlessly in his hammock, tormented with an unquenchable thirst. “Water! water!” he muttered. “For the love of God give me water!” Lance gave him some in a tin pannikin. In an instant the vessel was glued to the unfortunate man’s lips, and in another instant it was drained to the last drop. “More—give me more,” he gasped, as soon as he had recovered his breath. But this Lance declined to do. Bidding the poor fellow be patient for a few minutes, he went to the medicine-chest and mixed him a cooling draught. This also was swallowed with avidity; and then the armourer lay quiet for a few minutes. Not for long, however; he soon began to toss restlessly about once more; and by the time that the hands returned from their day’s work at the shipyard he was in a raging fever—raving mad in fact; and Lance was at last compelled to have him laced up in his hammock to prevent him from doing himself a serious injury. Lance Evelin will probably remember that night as long as he lives. In the delirium of the fierce fever which consumed him the unhappy armourer was visited by visions of all the evil deeds of his past life; and Lance’s blood curdled in his veins as he listened to his patient’s disjointed ravings of murder, rapine, and cold-blooded cruelty of so revolting a character that he wondered how any human mind could conceive it in the first instance, and how, after it had been conceived, human hands could bring themselves to perpetrate it. And then the man’s guilty conscience awakened from its long torpor, and, acting upon his excited imagination, conjured up a thousand frightful punishments awaiting him. He writhed, he groaned, he uttered the most frightful curses, and then, in the same breath shrieked for forgiveness and mercy. It was perfectly appalling; even his comrades—those who had shared with him in the dreadful deeds about which he raved—found the scene too trying for their hardened and blunted feelings; and such of them as had their hammocks slung in the same dormitory abandoned them and slept in the open air rather than remain to have their souls harrowed by his dreadful utterances. This terrible state of things existed until the afternoon of the following day—rather more than twenty-four hours after he had received his injuries—and then the fever subsided, but only to leave the once powerful man in the last stage of exhaustion. So completely prostrate was he that he had no power to so much as lift his hand, and he was only able to speak in the merest whisper. Now was the time when all Lance’s skill was most urgently required. Fagged as he was by his long night of watching, he tended his patient with the most unremitting assiduity, administering tonics and stimulants every few minutes; and racking his brain for devices by which he might help the man to tide over this period of extreme prostration. But it was all of no avail; the poor fellow gradually sank into a state of stupor from which all Evelin’s skill was unable to arouse him; and at length, about eight o’clock in the evening, after a temporary revival during which all the terrors of death once more assailed him, his guilty soul passed away without opportunity for repentance; prayers and curses issuing from his lips in horrible confusion up to the last moment of his existence. His death was witnessed by several of his companions in crime; and, while some tried to laugh and scoff away the unwelcome impression which the scene produced upon their minds, there were others who went into the open air and wandered away by themselves to ponder upon this miserable ending of a crime-stained life. <hr></div> <div class="bodytext"> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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