Chapter XIV A Glimpse of the Winning-Post
There was no digging done the next morning, for both we and the rival camp spent all our time wandering about in the forlorn hope of finding poor Strong—wounded, but perhaps still alive—left by the lion, who, we hoped but scarcely believed, might have been terrified by our shouts and by the shots we fired for the purpose of frightening the brute, and have dropped his victim and departed.
James Strong, though frequently within speaking distance of us, neither spoke to us nor looked at us, excepting now and again to scowl fiercely as his way, in the searching, crossed ours. But Clutterbuck spoke to me several times and to Jack also, entreating us, for the love of Heaven, either to provide him with firearms, or to take him at nighttime under our protection. If he had to pass another night unarmed, he said, after this, he should certainly go mad.
We promised, however, to protect the unfortunate fellow, and this soothed him wonderfully.
That night both James Strong and Clutterbuck were encamped close to our fire, between their own and ours, the two fires being built up within ten yards of one another. Strong was too proud to ask for protection as Clutterbuck had, but anyone could see that he was glad and greatly relieved when we came and made our camp near theirs. I was sorry for the fellow, rogue though he was, and thought that it was certainly the least we could do to take him under our wing, since we had deprived him of the means of protecting himself.
As for his brother’s death, I do not take any share of responsibility for that misfortune. For, as we learned afterwards from Clutterbuck himself, in all probability no shot would have been fired even if the three men had still been in possession of their rifles.
According to Clutterbuck’s narrative, the thing happened something like this: He, Clutterbuck, had been deputed to watch for the first three hours of the night, the two Strongs sleeping meanwhile. But Clutterbuck himself fell asleep, and allowed the fire to languish and almost die out, when of a sudden the roaring of the lion awoke not only him but the Strongs also. Then all three men rushed about, getting brushwood and sticks to make a blaze that would keep the lion at a distance; but while poor Charles Strong was ten yards away in the bush there was a sudden roar and a scuffle, and a shriek for help from him, and that was all that either Clutterbuck or James Strong knew of the matter. Neither of them had seen the lion.
All this Clutterbuck himself told me as we lay awake together on the first night after the mishap, during my watch. The poor fellow, naturally a timid creature, was far too frightened to sleep, and was, I think, grateful for being allowed to talk.
The lion did not come near us, neither did he treat us, even at a distance, to any of those terrible roars which I had found so unmanning. Clutterbuck was even more communicative to Jack when his watch came round; he told Jack many interesting things, and among others this—which I suspect the artful Henderson gradually wormed out of him—that he found himself a companion and partner of the Strongs, whom he disliked, by the stress of circumstances rather than of deliberate choice.
Our suspicions as to the affair near Las Palmas were well founded, said Clutterbuck; for it was the simple truth that the Strongs and he himself set out that day with the deliberate purpose of murdering us. It was James Strong’s idea, he declared, and his brother had accepted it readily. He, Clutterbuck, had pretended to do so, but in reality had had no intention of hurting us.
“No, no, Clutterbuck, that won’t do!” said Jack at this point of the narrative; “for we counted the shots fired, and there was at least one volley of six shots! You fired with the rest, man; I am not so easily taken in!”
“That’s true enough,” said Clutterbuck; “but did I hit you?”
“No, that you certainly did not,” replied Jack; “but then you are a very poor shot, my friend!”
“I fired wide on purpose, I’ll swear to it!” said Clutterbuck.
After this, Jack inquired about the crocodile, and found that here, too, the Strongs had cherished amiable intentions with regard to us. They saw the brute right enough, and that was why they left us to ford the river and themselves stayed behind.
“You ought to have warned us somehow,” said Jack.
“I dared not,” said the other. “James is an awful fellow, and his brother is nearly as bad—was, I mean—poor chap!”
As for the spiking of my revolver and the changing of the map, Clutterbuck knew nothing of either. It was done in the state-room, and he was not there to see.
“You would probably have been shot as you forded the river,” he continued, “if you hadn’t rather frightened the Strongs by what you said a moment before—that you were a crack shot, and would have no mercy if they missed you.”
“So you see, Peter,” concluded Jack, telling me all this afterwards, “it pays to blow your own trumpet sometimes. They wouldn’t have hit us, probably, but then we should have been obliged to make three bull’s-eyes of them, and that would have been unpleasant too!”
But all this while the treasure still lay hid in the bosom of the veldt. Charles Strong’s death was very terrible, but I must dig, dig. Regrets and sentiment are mere waste of time with one hundred thousand pounds waiting to be dug out of the earth!
Whatever measure of grief James Strong may have felt for his unfortunate brother, his sorrow did not prevent him betaking himself very seriously to his digging work as soon as day dawned on the second morning after the mishap. He went about his business in grim silence, vouchsafing us, as before, neither word nor look.
Neither were we dilatory. I went back to my digging with back and shoulders still stiff from the labours of the first day, while Jack expressed his intention to search about for the fourth post.
“Either there’s some trick about the position of that post,” he said, “or it has got moved away by an accident; some elephant or other big brute has used it for a scratching-post, or knocked it down and perhaps rolled it away; in any case, we ought to know where it was.”
I still thought that in all probability the fourth post had simply completed the square suggested by the other three, and that it had been in some way removed from its place—perhaps by an elephant, as Jack said, or more likely by a gust of wind. I did not consider the question at all important.
As it proved, Jack was right. He found the fourth post twenty yards at least out of the square, and planted right in the middle of a prickly-pear bush. But though I extended my operations to the new ground introduced by the change of area, and though the two other men and I together dug it superficially over, so that the entire space between the four posts had now been dug up—to a certain depth—the result of the day’s work was “nothing to nobody,” as Jack facetiously expressed it. Indeed, I, for one, began to wonder whether we had embarked upon a wild-goose chase, and whether the hundred thousand pounds ever existed save in the imagination of old Clutterbuck; and again, whether, supposing the money to have actually existed, the old miser had not purposely so hidden his treasure that no other human eye should ever behold it, since he himself could no longer gloat over it. But when I communicated these views to Jack Henderson, he said—
“Bosh! man; don’t be a fool. Dig for all you’re worth!”
If real hard work could have insured success, it would have been a difficult matter to judge between James Strong and myself as to who should bear away the prize. Clutterbuck laboured away too, after his kind; but he was of a different kidney from ours, and I think I turned up more soil in an hour than he did in half a day.
For the best part of a week we vied thus with one another, toiling day-long in the sweat of our brows and meeting with no success.
On the evening of the sixth day Jack said to me, as we walked together towards our camp fire—
“Do you believe in second sight and that kind of thing, Peter?”
“No,” I said, “I don’t. Why?”
“Because I have a kind of idea that I know where the treasure may be,” said Jack unexpectedly.
I laughed.
“I too am beginning to have a pretty firm conviction as to where it is,” I said.
“Tell me where you think first,” continued my friend; “and then I’ll tell you my idea.”
“Nowhere,” said I; “at least, nowhere that you or I, or anyone else, will ever know of.”
“Well, now listen to my idea; you can act upon it or not, as you like. Have you thought of removing the posts and looking into the holes?”
“No, I haven’t,” I said; “but I’ll do it.”
“Do it when the others are asleep to-night,” Jack rejoined.
“Why, what’s the hurry?” I asked. “Must I grope about in the dark, and all among the hyenas and lions? Hang it all, let me wait till morning!”
“The thing is, it’s a new idea; and if Strong sees you removing one post, he’ll remove another, and Clutterbuck a third, and you split your chances. They may look under the right post while you are busy unearthing the wrong one!”
“You seem to be very cocksure of your posts, old chap!” I said, laughing.
Jack’s answer astonished me.
“Do as I tell you,” he said; “and begin with the erratic post in the thorn bush. I have a very strong idea about that post.”
“Why—have you seen anything?” I gasped. Jack’s manner impressed and excited me.
“It’s like this,” he said; “and, of course, my idea may be worth nothing. The post is not very tightly fixed in the ground, and to-day I shook it about and up and down. Well, it seems to rest upon something hard and smooth, that’s all. I left it for you to pull up.”