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.
As to her history or nationality, the only reliable tokens were the swords, which were Spanish, with Toledo blades. The copper cooking-pots were Mexican. In a word, she was ostensibly a trader, and Maseden believed that the iron-clamped box containing the treasure had been hidden beneath the floor of the cabin, because the planks were broken where the heavy package had apparently fallen through.
One thing was certain. The similarity of the six flagons, the two dishes and the four animal figures showed that they came from an Aztec teocalli, or temple, of great wealth and importance. It was highly improbable that any town on the west coast of Mexico contained any such fame. If, therefore, they had been looted from the interior of the country, a reasonable assumption was that some band of Spanish adventurers, finding the way hopelessly blocked to the east, fought their way westward, and actually built the vessel which should convey them to far-off Cadiz.
It was a strange hap that laid bare their plunder to the eyes of four descendants of the race which was destined to sweep them and their barbarous methods off the high seas.
After a day of hard work and many thrills, Maseden was moved to accept the discovery as a good omen.
“I had in my mind to suggest that we should renew our voyage by to-morrow’s first tide,” he said, as they sat near the camp-fire after the evening meal. “Just as the Romans consulted the oracle before starting on any great undertaking, so have we been given a happy augury by having thrust into our hands, so to speak, a notable treasure. Friends, I propose that we accept the decision of the gods, and weigh anchor in the morning.”
For no assignable reason, the suddenness of this resolve seemed to startle the others.
“Have you made up your mind, then, that the channel is practicable?” inquired Sturgess after a marked pause.
“The only channel we know is practicable,” said Maseden.
“Do you mean that we should return the way we came?” put in Nina in an awed tone.
“It offers our only means of escape,” was the grave answer. “To my mind, if we attempt the southern exit we go to certain death. We have a roomy boat, a sail, and oars. By putting off slightly before high water we can reach the mouth of the gorge just on the turn of the tide. I think we can get through without any real difficulty, and even beach our boat in the open and shallow channel of Hanover Island which we were making for when the raft was swept out of its course. We have discussed the tides many times, and we all believe that we shall find ourselves in the main tidal stream again on the other side of that island opposite,” and he pointed to the mass of black hills outlined against the eastern sky. “It is only the ‘lesser of two evils,’ I admit, but it yields a possibility; whereas I regard any attempt to navigate the southern avenue as absolutely fatal.”
“Why the rush for the morning tide?” queried Sturgess.
Then Maseden laughed.
“You have fallen a victim to the prospecting mania,” he said cheerfully. “Having made a good strike, you want to follow it up. I don’t blame you. I believe this beach would pay well for digging. Before you were through with the search you would have a fine collection of odds and ends. But I’m minded to be superstitious for once. That puma with the glistening eyes has seemed to wink at me all day and say ‘Get me and yourself out of this quick!’ I don’t want to impose my wishes on you others, but my advice is: Start to-morrow!”
Madge, listening intently, nodded.
“You are always right,” she said emphatically. “‘Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest—’”
She hesitated, as though conscious that her tongue was running away with her. The quotation, though apt, was peculiarly infelicitous. It did not please Sturgess; it reminded Maseden of an extraordinary relationship which he had tried in vain to ignore; it jarred on Nina Forbes’s sensitiveness, because it recalled the promise she had made at dawn but had not had any opportunity of fulfilling.
She it was who broke up the conclave abruptly by springing to her feet.
“If we’re going sailing the angry seas to-morrow, it’s high time we were trying to sleep,” she said. “Come, Madge.... By the way, is there to be any more guard-mounting to-night?”
“Yes, and you have no concern therein,” said Maseden firmly.
“Who’s keeping guard?” inquired Madge. “This is the first I’ve heard of it.”
“Alec has had an attack of the fidgets ever since he saw that empty coracle,” said Nina. “But I’m the worst sort of sentry, anyhow, and you would be no better, dear, so let us snooze selfishly, and be ready to help the men in to-morrow’s hard work.”
“I’ve never before known a verse from the Bible break up a meeting like that,” commented Sturgess thoughtfully when the girls had gone. “Somebody might have heaved a tin of kerosene into the fire, the way Nina jumped up.”
“The words may have evoked distressing memories,” said Maseden incautiously.
“As how?”
Sturgess’s alert brain was very wide awake at that moment, but Maseden contrived to extricate himself.
“That famous phrase of Ruth’s contains the essence of an otherwise uninteresting Biblical story,” he said. “If Ruth had not been so faithful to her mother-in-law we might never have heard of her.”
“Was Naomi her mother-in-law?”
“Yes. Ruth, herself a widow, married Boaz.”
“I guess I was sort of mixed up about it.”
“Lots of people are,” said Maseden dryly, and the subject dropped.
They were astir early and, when the tide served, put off with as little ceremony as though they were going on a river picnic.
The boat, of course, was far more easily managed than the raft. By keeping in the slack water inshore they contrived to reach the mouth of the gorge about the beginning of the ebb, and their calculations were completely verified by the smoothness and safety of their subsequent passage.
Maseden stood in the bows with an oar in readiness to sheer away from any obstruction in mid-stream. The two girls each took an oar, and Sturgess steered, also with an oar, as the broad-bladed rudder ran a foot deeper than the keel, being intended to act as a center-board when the sail was in use.
So preoccupied were they with their task that they hardly noticed the spot where the cliff had fallen away soon after they had passed beneath. Even the canopied rock on which they found sanctuary after the loss of the raft merely attracted a momentary glance. Madge, eyeing the fissure which had so terrified her, was about to say something when a warning shout from Maseden caused her to pull a few vigorous strokes.
They sheered past a flat boulder. A couple of vultures, scared by the unwonted apparition of a boat, flapped aloft, and they all saw, stretched on the rock, some portions of a human skeleton which most certainly had not been there when they came that way little more than a fortnight earlier.
The uncanny sight vanished as swiftly as it came. None spoke. The pace of the stream was quickening, and each had to be in instant readiness to obey orders.
At this stage Maseden asked the girls to reverse their positions and pull steadily. In consequence they were backing water, and thus checking the boat’s way appreciably. By this means they rounded an awkward corner without any trouble, and again their eyes dwelt on the towering hills and wooded slopes of Hanover Island.
Maseden and Sturgess now began to press laterally towards the eastern channel. Two possible openings were abandoned because of the ugly reefs sighted only a couple of hundred yards away. At last, when practically in the center of a two-mile-wide passage between the three islands, Maseden saw a long stretch of open water.
Shipping a pair of oars, and leaving the steering and general look-out to Sturgess, he called on the girls to pull in the orthodox way. The three bent to the task. After ten minutes of really strenuous effort they were sensible of a greatly diminished drag in the current. Five minutes later they were in slack water, and speedily thereafter the boat ran aground.
“Hooray!” yelled Sturgess, who alone had any breath left to celebrate their victory. Somehow, little as they had gained in actual distance, since Providence Beach was only three miles away, they all felt that their chief enemy was conquered. They had profited by the initial mistake of keeping in mid-channel; they had learned a great deal about the tricks and changes of the Pacific tides; they had secured a first-rate boat, and, lodged in skins as a portion of the ballast, was a treasure of no mean proportions.
Small wonder that they were elated, or that Maseden’s strong face softened into a smile of satisfaction as he drove the boat’s anchor securely into a crevice in the rocky beach.
But he neither forgot the skeleton on the rock in Hell Gate nor failed to interpret correctly its sinister message, so it was his careful scrutiny that first revealed a figure lying on the shore at high-water mark about a quarter of a mile to the east. He surveyed it steadily for a while until the others, too, saw it. Then he made up his mind as to the only practicable course of action. He unhooked the anchor.
“All hands overboard,” he said quietly. “We must get the boat afloat.”
They obeyed instantly. The girls returned on board, their task being to steady the boat with the oars. Maseden took a cudgel, which he preferred to a sword, and hurried towards the prone figure. Sturgess followed, some fifty yards behind, with the rifle, his mission being to cover the retreat, if need be.
Neither Nina nor Madge uttered a word. They were becoming hardened to danger. They knew full well that, for some unimaginable reason, a territory hitherto closed to Indians was now open to them, and Maseden had left his companions under no delusions as to the characteristics of the wretched tribes which infest the lower coast and islands of Chile.
But the particular business of the women at the moment was to keep the boat in such a position that the men could jump in and shove off into deep water without delay, and they attended to that and nothing else.
War makes soldiers, and the struggle for life had assuredly made these two girls brave women.