Across the Spanish Main - Harry Collingwood (best novels for beginners TXT) 📗

is hidden; but the spy got to hear that all was known, and sprang over the side, intending, of course, to swim ashore. But as he went he was followed by a shower of bullets, and we saw him no more; so I feel very certain that he lies at the bottom of the bay, and that Alvarez did not get the cipher he wanted.”

Thought Roger to himself: “I’m pretty certain he did, and, what is more, I know now that he had it in his cabin aboard the Gloria del Mundo, and this man little thinks that I have the very paper he is talking about in my pocket at this very moment; for it must be the same.” He said nothing, however; and the dying man resumed:

“You have therefore no rival to fear except José himself; and if you should destroy his ship and himself—as I hope your captain will do when you have told him my story—you will be certain of vast wealth, provided that you can translate the cipher, which I believe you will certainly be able to do, for all that José says as to its impossibility without the key. Now I am exhausted with talking so much. Please give me a little more brandy.” Roger did so, finding the man too weak to lift the mug to his lips, and almost too far gone to swallow. Having recovered somewhat, he continued in a weak voice, taking a packet from his pocket: “And now, here is the packet of papers, and the cipher is with them. Keep them safely by you, and part with them under no circumstances or conditions whatever. If you do this your fortune is certain.”

He ceased speaking, and his head fell heavily back on his hard couch.

Roger sprang for more brandy, and lifted the poor fellow’s head, but he appeared lifeless. Roger wetted his lips with the spirit, and presently they parted sufficiently to enable the lad to pour a little into his mouth. This was gradually swallowed, and Roger poured in a little more, which was also taken; and in a few seconds a heavy sigh escaped the lips of the sufferer, and his eyes opened. But there was a glaze over them that told its own tale. The white lips opened, and Roger, bending down, heard the last words that Evans ever spoke.

“God bless you, sir,” he said, “and keep you safe! Keep your promise to me, sir. Good-bye! I die now, and am glad!” The eyes went duller still, the lips ceased to move, the body seemed to stiffen, and grew suddenly cold. Roger knew that the end had come, that the poor fellow’s troubles were at last over, and that he was at rest.

Roger remained for some moments sitting, and lost in thought; then, rising, he placed the blanket over the dead man’s face and went outside the hut. He determined to go and find his two sailors, and inform them of what had happened, so that they might come and assist him in burying the body at once; for in that climate it was necessary to bury a body as soon as possible after death, for sanitary reasons.

The lad had not gone very far from the hut when he remembered that he was still holding the packet of papers in his hand; so he slipped them into the pocket where he always kept the other cipher. But as he did so he paused for a moment and then drew the papers forth again, determined there and then to compare the two ciphers, for he felt almost positive in his own mind that the two ciphers would be found to be identical. He therefore sat down at the foot of a palm-tree in the shade, and, undoing the packet, compared the two papers, finding, as he anticipated, that the ciphers were written in exactly the same terms. “Therefore,” thought Roger, “the spy of Alvarez managed after all to evade the musket-balls fired at him, and succeeded in conveying the cipher to Alvarez. No wonder that the Spaniard was so anxious to find his papers that day in the cabin of the Gloria del Mundo!”

Having satisfied himself on this point, he returned the papers to his pocket, buttoned up his jacket again, and continued on his way to find the sailors. They presently made their appearance, thus saving him the trouble of searching for them, and he saw that they were laden with as much fish as they could carry. They explained that they had caught far more than was necessary for present use, but that they intended to try the experiment of drying it in the sun, even as they had done with the turtle’s flesh, thus—in the event of success—providing a store of food against any contingency that might arise.

Roger, of course, returned with the men, and on the way back recounted to them the fact of poor Evans’s death, and of his desire to bury the body at once.

The three were soon back at the hut, and, choosing a spot at some distance from it, dug a grave in the sand with sharpened pieces of wood, as they had no other implements. The hole having presently been made sufficiently deep, they returned to the palm-grove, and laying a blanket on the floor, placed the inanimate body thereon. Then, Bevan taking one end of the blanket and Irwin the other, they carried the corpse away to its lonely grave, and reverently laid it therein. This done, Roger, kneeling by the grave-side, said a prayer, whilst the seamen stood by with bared heads, after which the sand was shovelled back, and a small mound raised over the grave.

The death of Evans affected the three survivors more or less during the remainder of the day; they were all very silent and thoughtful, and turned in early to sleep. About midnight Roger awoke with a vague sense of some impending evil. He turned and turned again upon his hard couch, but found it impossible to sleep. After a time he began to feel that there was a something missing to which he had been accustomed. He racked his brain over and over again, vainly trying to remember what it was, but for some time without success. Then it came suddenly upon him that the usual faint reflection of the glow which the big fire at the beach had been wont to throw round the hut was absent. Quickly getting into a few clothes, he stepped out of the hut, and saw that the moon in her first quarter was rising high in the heavens, giving just sufficient light for him to distinguish objects faintly. He therefore did not take the lantern with him, but at once walked away down to the beach, where he found the fire out and cold. They had forgotten to replenish it before turning in for the night. He took out his tinder-box, in order to get a light, when he happened to look up, and to seaward. And there, before his astonished gaze, he saw a vessel riding at anchor about two miles from the shore. In the first paroxysm of his joy, Roger was about to call aloud, imagining the craft to be one of the vessels of Cavendish’s squadron; but on looking again, and studying the craft more closely, he saw that she was altogether different from any of the vessels in the fleet. He was wondering who or what she could be, when Evans’s description of a certain ship flashed across his mind. Yes, there she certainly was, exactly as Evans had described—the black, long, and low-lying hull, the flush deck, the schooner rig, and the enormously tall, tapering, and raking spars! Yes, in that moment Roger knew her for what she was.

She was the pirate schooner of José Leirya!

The man had doubtless missed his papers, and, guessing who had taken them, had come back to secure them. Evidently knowing the bad landing, Leirya was waiting for daylight before attempting to send his boats ashore.

“Six hours more of darkness!” thought Roger, and he bounded back to the hut as fast as he could go. He awoke the two seamen, and told them all in a few words. They were naturally overwhelmed with consternation, not knowing what to do. But said Roger: “I have a plan that may possibly save us. We must put all our provisions back in the casks, and bury them in the sand. Then we must hide everything that we brought ashore, leaving out only poor Evans’s belongings. The new hut we must, of course, leave—they will think that Evans built that himself,—but we must remove from it every trace of our own presence on the islet. Then, poor fellow, we must unearth his body and lay it in the hut, covering him up. When they come ashore in the morning, as of course they will, they will see that he is recently dead, and will not dream that he has been once buried already, if we are careful to remove all traces. It will naturally be thought that he died here alone and untended. We must be very careful to efface every sign of our presence here, and leave only such things as Evans had when we arrived, or may be reasonably supposed to have collected from the beach. Then, as to hiding ourselves— At the extreme seaward end of the rocks, where you to-day caught your fish, there is a hollow big enough to conceal a dozen men; I particularly noticed it when I was on the spot. We must take some food and water, and hide there until the pirates leave. They will not attempt to land at that place, for the reason that a boat could not be safely put alongside the rocks; and if we carefully hide everything belonging to ourselves they will not suspect that anyone else is here, and will not search. Now we must be quick, for our lives depend upon it. If we are found we shall certainly die horribly. Quick now, men! we must do everything that has to be done, and be safely hidden before daybreak, or we shall be seen.”