Chapter VII Sunken Gold — Jack’s Career in Sidney
“The cave seems first class,” cried Kep, looking round him delightedly. “We shall be troglodytes now, Adolphus.”
“What are they? some kind of frog aren’t they?”
“No, people who live in caves, although frogs might be troglodytes, and sometimes are.”
They now set to work at once. Though, to begin with, Kep tried Wagner just outside the cave. No snakes came out to dance, but behind them they heard a hissing noise, and found about half a score of the terrible reptiles had come from other rocks to be entertained. So that plan wouldn’t work.
The cave was about half-way up the cliff, so, withered wood being very plentiful, a lot was gathered, and a big fire lighted in the centre of the floor of the place, Kep and Adolph taking good care to get outside when it began to crackle and burn.
But they stood by with fowling pieces, and as the reptiles came hurrying out, they took pot-shots, and killed quite a heap of them.
The ants of the shore picked the bones of these bare in two hours’ time.
When the fire was out, and the cave swept, they set about getting things on shore, principally hammocks, provisions, a small cooking stove, boxes of candles, and in fact everything usually needed to make life enjoyable in tents.
They slept on board that night, and it took all next day to finish furnishing.
They slung hammocks and passed next night in the cave. But I cannot say that, after the light was put out, Kep felt particularly comfortable. He had an eerie creepie-creepie feeling, and more than once ere morning felt sure that serpents were crawling over him. Towards morning he put down his hand and touched something cold and round, He started with a shriek, and next moment heard the thud of something falling on the floor.
He had brought an electric telescope-shaped flashlight with him, and placed it in the hammock, and early in the morning—he hadn’t slept again—he looked down, and saw it lying on the soft floor. So that was Kep’s poisonous serpent.
Only the place seemed so hideously associated with these scaly horrors, that both Adolph and he made up their minds to use it only by day, and continue for a time to bunk aboard at night, taking all risks.
But they slept soundly. The ship had never moved.
It was Kep’s turn next day to be struck with a new idea. He believed it possible, he said, to get out the one remaining boat, and pass her, by means of the davits over the side. Luckily, the latter had been left by the hurricane in good working order.
Kep was very strong and hard for his age, and Adolphus was a man. Yet it took many hours to overcome the difficulties they had to encounter. Things had been terribly jammed and knocked about, but at last the boat hung straight, and clear right over the rocks and then they began cautiously to lower away.
It was found, after all, that the ropes or guys running through the blocks were not long enough. The boat hung twixt heaven and earth, like Mahomed’s coffin.
There was nothing for it but to haul up again, and belay.
But further operations were stayed by fatigue and hunger, so they went on shore to dine in the cave.
Adolphus was cook, and there was some splendid fish to-day, to broil or roast over a clear fire, and they had found some plantains in a grove on the other side of the island. Of course there was very little romance about Adolph just at present, there never is when one is cooking in either cave or camp. But the day was so dreamily beautiful that the glamour of old ocean held Kep spell-bound. There was brightness and music everywhere; the brightness of sun on wave, the azure blue of the cloudless sky, the wild music of seabirds, and the music of the sea itself, breaking listlessly, drowsily on the rocks.
The boy seated himself high on a boulder, that was shaped for all the world like an arm-chair, and the white-winged gulls swept nearer and nearer as he played “Low and sweet, Sweet and low.”
A song of Bret Harte’s came into his mind as he watched the birds. Only a simple thing. As simple and sweet as the soul of the bard himself.
Sauntering hither on listless wings,
Careless vagabond of the sea,
Little thou heed’st the surf that sings,
The bar that thunders, the shale that rings.
Little thou hast, old friend, that’s new,
Storms and wrecks are old things to thee,
Sick am I of those changes too;
Little to care for, little to rue,
I on the shore, and thou on the sea.
Lazily rocking on ocean’s breast,
Something in common old friend have we;
Thou on the shingle seek’st thy nest,
I to the waters look for rest,
I on the shore, thou on the sea.
But Kep now began to think, to dream of home. What a long, long time had elapsed, reckoning by events, since he sailed away from the white cliffs of England. What would his brave, proud father be doing at this moment, and dear Madge and her playmate Bounder; Madge would be missing her letters, she would be praying for him too, every night. Wonder if ever she went up alone to his turret chamber, high above the waving elms. Wonder if Bob, the great white owl, ever came more now to look in of a night, or if he had forgotten Kep entirely. Wonder how long it would take a sea gull to fly to England. If he had wings he wondered if—if——
“Koo—ee—ee!”
He started to his feet. He had fallen asleep in that grey old arm-chair.
“Koo-ee!”
“Coming, Adolph; coming, comrade, coming?”
That dinner was very good to eat.
But now they gat them back to the ship, and it took all the afternoon to lengthen the guys, by splicing on additional pieces, for the work had to be very strong to stand the strain.
The boat was lowered and launched next day, and it really was new life for them to paddle around the coast in her.
The boat was anchored in a little cove every night now, and in her they slept. It was a capital arrangement, and they had no more bother with the snakes.
But on nights when the sea was rough—which was not very often, because when it blew, it did so in dead earnest, and soon had done with it—they hauled her well up on the sand, and slept peacefully as usual.
They went to the hill-top almost every day—but no, no, no, they never saw a sail, and they began to think they would live and die on Great Snake Island.
But as far as the boat was concerned, they grew bolder and bolder.
They stepped a little mast and a brief jib-boom, and set sail therein, and when the wind was favourable went quite a long way out. At last they determined to visit the far off and greater island. So one day, when the wind was favourable, they loaded up with everything needful, hoisted their canvas and started.
They had taken their rifles and plenty of ammunition with them, but Kep prayed that they might not have to use them.
This prayer was heard. But they found no savages on the islands, which they reached at last, nor was there any other land visible all the wide horizon around.
So they slept in their boat as usual, and next day set out to explore, and to climb the hills.
Everything most unsatisfactory. No beauty nor romance anywhere, except that of the sea itself.
So they determined to return next morning. But the wind had died down to a perfect calm, which held for three days, the stars at night blazing with a brilliancy such as Kep had never witnessed before in all his long life, of “fourteen years, and begun again.”
On the third day of their imprisonment on this new island the sun shone with greater fierceness than ever, and Kep, who was a most daring swimmer and diver, stripped and dashed head first from a rock, down, down fathoms and fathoms into a blue-green pool beneath.
For just three minutes this boy had trained himself to hold his breath beneath the water. At the bottom he clutched at and held on to something, and for seconds remained motionless.
But what had he clutched at? Why, it was a piece of shell-encrusted iron—a ring-bolt. He stood on the deck of a sunken ship, and one, too, of olden build, and olden times.
All thought of returning to Great Snake Island was for the time abandoned, and about once an hour, until quite exhausted, Kep dived down, and each time returned to the surface with something strange and stranger to tell. She had sea-worn guns on board. She looked like an old Spanish galleon, or a pirate, or a specie ship.
This last guess proved to be right; for the wreckage about the decks proved that the seamen, whoever they may have been, had tried to save heavy boxes, and from the side of one of these, a piece of gold had fallen, only a small bar, but this the boy took up with him.
He was tremendously excited. “Oh Adolph!” he cried, “we have discovered a treasure ship.”
“You have, Kep, not I.”
“But we shall be rich, Adolph. Rich beyond compare. In that blue-green pool millions may be awaiting us. Are you not glad?”
“We’ll get back to our Island of Snakes, Kep, and when the ship that must come some day, arrives, they will tell us the latitude and longitude, which at present we can’t even guess. Then, some day, perhaps—we may return and raise the gold. But there is many a slip, Kep, twixt the cup and the lip.”
Kep wouldn’t hear of slips and lips; he was very young and very buoyant. Yet he had grit in him. “Look here, Adolph,” he said, “I’m a man of determination. If ever we leave these regions alive, depend upon it we shall return. This is as certain as sunrise. So there!”
Well, the boy really said what he thought, and meant all he said.
A fair wind at last, rather much of it, but life had suddenly become more joyful and hopeful, and they had no fear, when they hoisted their jib and little mainsail, that they would get safely across.
But, alas! the wind changed almost suddenly, and they had to tack. This was slow work, and dangerous too, for they shipped much water, and had they not baled and kept on baling, their boat would have been swamped.
Darkness came on. They had nothing now to guide them, for they had not thought of bringing a compass.
They had the electric lantern, a strong one, and this they flashed from time to time across the awful sea, the waves of which looked doubly dreadful in the darkness.
It must have been some time past midnight, when suddenly Kep clutched at his comrade’s arm.
“Adolph, Adolph! O God! what is that?”
It was a light. No, but lights, steadily advancing towards them.
They shouted now, yelled and shrieked, and flashed their light.
Was it seen? Were they heard? Yes, yes, even as God Himself hears prayer.
In less than ten minutes they were on board a strange Australian-bound ship, and telling their marvellous adventures to passengers and crew. But, it is needless to say, that one portion of their adventures they kept silent about, the discovery of the sunken treasure.
And more of sunken gold, I do believe, lies in the sea, or hidden on islands, than we are aware of.
In dim green depths rot ingot laden ships,
While gold doubloons, that from the drowned hand fell,
Lie nestled to the ocean-flowers’ bell
With love’s gemmed rings once kissed by now dead lips.
And round some wrought-gold cup, the sea-grass whips,
And hides lost pearls, near pearls still in their shell,
Where sea-weed forests fill each ocean dell,
And seek dim sunlight with their countless tips.
But adventures so terrible were not altogether credited by the skipper of the Wampiri, nor by his few passengers either. Else the probability is, that the former would have gone some distance out of his way to salvage a portion of the Macbeth’s cargo.
He was on a passage, and bad weather had blown him considerably out of his way. It would have been folly, therefore, to have delayed.
This ship was outward bound, and had rounded the Horn, and was under all sail for Adelaide and Sidney.
Sidney, why, the very name of the place made Kep’s heart jump for joy. The Breezy might be there!
Both Adolph and Kep lived forward with the men, and were very snugly bunked indeed. They had come to like each other very much, and Kep felt a little sad when he thought that in the ordinary course of things they might soon be parted. In one thing they swore to each other to be true. Namely, that neither should divulge the secret of the ingot-laden ship unless the other consented. Something grand might come of this secret, but it must, for the present, be theirs and theirs only.
Once more, even in the Wampiri, Kep’s flute found him friends. The ship was a clipper of an almost obsolete type, and really belonged to one old man. She was good enough to have had engines put into her, but her owner, who had been at sea himself in his younger days, would not hear of his beautiful white-winged ship being turned into a blessed smoke-jack, and she never would be.
Suffice it to say, she got there all the same, and so Kep and his comrade were at last safely landed at Sidney.
And this beautiful and busy city, with its beautiful and busy great harbour, crowded with the ships of all nations, its streets thronged with well dressed people, its spacious public buildings, and its street cars, what a change all was from life on the lonesome ocean, and the death-life of those inhospitable and barren islands.
How Kep, in his boyish gratitude, thanked God for all He had done for them.
Sidney, but no Breezy.
And yet, somewhere in or about these seas, or on the shore of Eastern Africa, or the coral coast of New Guinea itself, something told Kep that the Breezy was. He had never forgotten the kind smiling face of the young lieutenant, who had taken him down to the wardroom; no, nor the reception that had been accorded him by the crew forward. He still harboured the impression that his fate would be to get appointed to the Breezy in some capacity or another.
But now he remembered that he must seek for employment of some kind. He had some money left, but this he shared with Adolph. He could not see his comrade badly off, and they meant to try hard to get berths in the same ship again.
It would have been easy for Adolph to book as steward’s assistant, or even as steward in some homeward bound ship, but no one seemed to need Kep’s peculiar talents.
His appointment to the Macbeth appeared to him, now, to have been but a fluke. Heigho! would he ever make such a fluke again.
Adolph got a position at last, as waiter in a good hotel, and Keppel Drummond, the son of a lord of an English manor, a place—as what? Why, as a boy to clean the knives and run messages at a neighbouring restaurant.
What a downfall! But really, such downfalls, if in cases such as Kep’s they can be called so, are by no means uncommon in Australia. And, after all, honest work is no disgrace.
So he kept up his heart, and was happy, and even hopeful—wasn’t the Breezy coming some day. He had written to Madge during the voyage in the Wampiri, a mail-bag from which went home by a passing steamer. He had told her all his joys, but never a word about the horrors of the Macbeth. He would not shock her.
He was expecting a letter almost every day, and the time seemed long indeed. But then anything might have happened to prevent the delivery of his own letter to her. The address he had given was simply Poste Restante, Sidney. He went there every day for weeks, and noticing his woe-begone expressive face, a kindly clerk at last took pity on him, and promised in the event of a letter coming, to forward it at once to his lodgings.
But wonders will never cease, and one day, while hurrying to send off a telegram, who should Kep see coming, swinging along the street on the opposite pavement, but Jack Stormalong himself.
What a happy meeting! Kep begged a whole day off, namely, that evening and next forenoon, and he got it too.
“I knew we’d meet, my little friend. By the way, is your name still Bowser. And you haven’t repented yet, and become a prodigal son.”
“Well, I can’t easily be a prodigal son, Jack, on ten shillings a week, and a tip once in a blue moon. But how is Katie and her mother?”
“Splendidiferous sonny, simply splendidiferous. Going to get married at the end of my time.”
“Why, I thought I was going to marry Katie, and that you would marry the mother!”
Jack laughed so heartily that people looked at him and laughed too.
“You precockshious boy! But hold on a few years, my youngkie, and we’ll raise and rear another Katie specially for you.”
“But how came you here, Jack?”
“Well, you know, I couldn’t well walk, and I like this station, so I volunteered like for the Newt, and yonder’s the Newt, two guns, square and trig, and a regular one to jump the seas. And I’m one of the gunners, and good pay too. You’ve just got to wait a bit, and something will turn. Oh yes, sonny, something is sure to turn up. I say, though—I—I—that is, I am overflowing with useless money, lad, can I give you some?”
“Oh, thanks, a thousand times, Jack, but no, it ain’t pride, Jack, it ain’t pride. But I’ve sworn to work up the rigging of life without a helping hand, and I mean to do it. Why, Jack, since I saw you last, I’ve learned another language—the Arabic,” he added.
“Why, you be a freak, sonny, and Jack Stormalong is proud to know you. And you’ve still the little black flute, and its ribbon blue. Strike me lucky, lad, if I don’t think you have a bit of a sweetheart in Old England.”
Kep was merry to-day, madly merry.
“Look here, Jack, I’ve never done such a thing before, but just for a lark, I’ll try the passers-by with a bit of Wagner, and see the effect. You stand by, will you? Don’t laugh, but I’ve charmed snakes before to-day.”
Kep was in beautiful form. He stood a yard or two off the pavement, it was a rather quiet street, and began.
Then goodness me, readers, how the music and melodies of the great composer did bubble and gush, and ripple and rush, from out the little black flute! He had a well-dressed crowd of listeners around him in a brace of shakes.
He finished off with a low, sweet, mournful air, that thrilled the listeners. Then, with downcast eyes and face a little red, he appeared to be putting back the flute in order to walk away.
“Here,” cried a gentlemen in the crowd, “none of that. Over-modesty never pays, boy.”
Off came his straw hat. He tossed a big silver bit into it, Jack threw in a shilling, and in less than a minute at least, five shillings found its way into the boy’s pocket from out that hat.
But Kep’s face was like a burning coal now. He bowed and thanked all hands, and Jack was following Kep, when the same gentleman tapped him on the shoulder.
“You seem to know the lad?”
“Yes, and his story too.”
“Give me his address, there’s a good sailor man.”
Jack did so, and neither he nor Kep thought any more about it.
“By the way,” said the latter, as if it did not matter much whether he received an answer or not, “ever hear anything about the Breezy?”
“Why,” cried Jack, “the Breezy has been on this station for months, or here and hereabouts. She is going to do big licks,” he added, “when the time comes, the Breezy is.”
Well, they spent some jolly hours together, and as long as the Newt was in the harbour, they managed to see each other every evening.
But one day, soon after the street adventure, a gentleman called and asked to see Kep. He was the same who had collected the coin for the boy that day on which he had played on the street.
Very straight and business-like was this Mr. Howe, and concluded the interview in a few minutes.
“Wanted to know if you can manage to come to my house at seven, and play a bit to my wife and me.”
Kep told him he would be very pleased indeed to do so.
“Here is my card then.”
And this is what came of it. Kep was engaged at one of the best music halls in the city, to play solos, and not only this, but to tell in his own simple language, the terribly tragic story of the ship Macbeth, at a salary of three pounds a week.
Few believed the terrible tale. People seldom will believe what is true; but flowing so winningly and well from the lips of the handsome dark-eyed sailor boy, it was a bait.
Kep cleaned no more knives nor boots.
But his music hall career came to a conclusion almost as suddenly as it had commenced. Anyhow, his old pal, Jack Stormalong, had brought him good luck, and things looked brighter now, for he had a letter from his sister, and the Breezy came in.