Pirates' Hope

"You shipwrecked? – and I never heard of it!" she exclaimed. "How long were you here, Dick?"

"Nearly a month. A tramp steamer, blown out of its course between Colon and La Guaira by a hurricane, saw our signals and took us off."

She glanced over her shoulder apprehensively.

"There are no – no savages, are there?" she shuddered.

I shook my head. "Hardly; not in the twentieth century. For that matter, I doubt if there ever were any. The place isn't big enough to support much of a population."

We were walking again now, keeping to the hard sands, and turning our backs resolutely upon the vanishing white phantom which was the ship that was deserting us.

"There are eighteen of us," Conetta said, after a time. "Doesn't that mean starvation, sooner or later?"

"There were six of us who were washed ashore from the Mary Jane," I said. "We lived on shell fish and cocoanuts – just barely, as you might say. There is a tradition that we were not the first, and that the others, the crew of a Spanish treasure ship marooned by the old English sea rovers, did starve."

"Heavens!" she breathed. "The place ought to be full of ghosts! But you don't believe those terrible old tales, do you?"

"They were true enough, doubtless; but we needn't go out of our way to localize them. In the present instance – " I was about to tell her of the remains of the ancient wreck farther down the beach, but I thought better of it and switched – "in the present instance we are not going to starve, for a while, at least. The mutineers have given us a fighting chance by dividing the ship's stores with us. Didn't you hear the launch going back and forth before you were taken off?"

"Yes, I heard it," she acknowledged. "That must have been part of the plan, too." Then she stopped and faced me suddenly. "Where was Bonteck while all the rest of us were being hustled out of the way?"

"He was a prisoner in his stateroom, locked in, and with a man on guard."

She looked me squarely in the eyes after a disconcerting fashion which might have been acquired from her downright aunt.

"Do you know that, Dick? Or is it only a friendly guess?"

"I know it because I was locked in with him. The mutineers had given us our orders – told us that we were down and out, you know."

"And you made no resistance – you two?"

I didn't say anything about my futile attempt to choke Lequat.

"Bonteck seemed to be afraid of a general massacre, or something of that sort, if we should put up a fight."

"I'm not satisfied," she returned promptly. "It is too absurd. Could a thing like this have been planned without some hint of it getting to Bonteck? And then there is Mr. Goff: you don't mean to tell me that that crabbed, sour, shrimmy old piece of New England honesty and prying curiosity could be kept from finding out."

"Bonteck hints that Goff may be heading the mutiny."

"That," said Conetta, with calm conviction, "is simply nonsense. I wouldn't believe it, not if Mr. Goff told me so himself." And then: "Shall we go back to the others now? The storm seems to have blown itself out: and we mustn't forget – you and I – that we have agreed to disagree."

Her use of Aunt Mehitable's phrase touched off that cursed temper of mine again, and if I had made any reply at all it would have been one that I should have repented of. So we walked back to the haphazard landing place in sober silence.

When we joined the main body of castaways it seemed that Van Dyck had contrived by some means to stem the storm of question and reproach and to quiet it, for the time, at least. The women were sitting apart on the boxes of canned things, and Grey and Grisdale, under Bonteck's directions, and with his help, were setting up the three tents which the mutineers' generosity, or chivalry, had included in our dunnage. Somebody had kindled a small fire on the beach, but the night was so warm that, apart from the cheer of it, the blaze served no purpose other than to light up the somber faces turned toward it.

After the tent-pegging – in which I hastened to share a part when I saw what was toward – we four made an attack upon the boxed stores. There were provisions in plenty; meats in canvas and meats in tins, vegetables fresh and vegetables in cans, ship's biscuit, and a variety of the other more ornamental – and less filling – kind; tea, coffee, sugar and evaporated cream; all of the calories to make a balanced ration. Last, but not least, there was a beaker of fresh water, though as to this, there were two good springs on the island, and a rill from one of them was trickling into the lagoon a few yards from our landing place.

Besides the necessary proteins, hydrocarbons and the like, there were a few of the luxuries; a case of liquors, a box of candles, another of cigars, cigarettes and tobacco, soap and towels, and even a couple of mirrors ravished from the bulkheads of the Andromeda– these last, I dare swear, a thought of the dancing-master Lequat's.

For beds there was a bale of canvas hammocks; and somebody's chivalric promptings – Lequat's or another's – had gone the length of including the baggage-hold-stored steamer trunks of the women, though we men had only the clothes we stood in.

Before our amateur camp was fully pitched the dark cloud of dismay and disheartenment began to show rifts here and there. After all was said, we were all alive and well, with plenty to eat and drink, and with no immediate prospect of hardship. Perhaps it was no matter for surprise that Sanford, the absent-minded professor of mathematics, was the first to rise to the philosophical demands of the occasion.

"I dare say there isn't a civilized human being in the world who hasn't, at one time or another, wished to be situated just as we find ourselves at the present moment," he began, after Grey and Billy Grisdale and the Van Tromp girls had goaded him into his proper class-room-lecturer's attitude. "For the time being – which we may very properly hope will not be unduly extended beyond the pleasant and profitable limit – we shall be able to live in a little world of our own making. If we have any resources of our own to fall back upon – and I trust none of us is wholly lacking in that respect – we may prove and try them, and quite possibly we may discover that, after all, environment, the conventions, the social machinery with which our civilization has surrounded us, are by no means strictly necessary to the sane, normal human being. Let us, therefore, eat and drink, and be thankful that things are no worse with us than we are at present finding them."

As if he had been an after-dinner speaker rising to express his pleasure at being among us, the professor was heartily applauded, and, following his suggestion, we had a bed-time snack of biscuits and tea around the handful of camp-fire. And, such is the force of good example, by the time the second pannikin of water was boiling, the younger members were making a jest of the most serious adventure that had ever befallen any of them. Jerry Dupuyster was pouring tea for Beatrice Van Tromp; Conetta had deliberately left her aunt's side to come and sit on the sand between Annette Grey and me; and Madeleine Barclay, as fetchingly beautiful in her white yachting flannels as she had ever appeared in her richest dinner gown, was listening patiently – nay, sympathetically, I thought – to Bonteck's well-worn explanation (which did not explain) of how it had all come about.

To offset these cheerful ameliorations there were a sufficient number of death's heads at the feast, as a matter of course. Major Terwilliger, contemplating a prospect which promised little in the way of his cherished diversions, sat apart and grumbled peevishly because the tea tasted smoky. Holly Barclay, robbed at one sheer stroke of all the little refinements and luxuries which made the sum of his aimless and worthless life, was still in the bickering stage; and Ingerson, with the few restraints which he recognized stricken away, was a plain brute, taking no pains to conceal his angry disgust, and making snappish bids to be let alone when any one was charitable enough to speak to him.

As for the women, the three who would be the first to feel the pinch of any privations that might come upon us were behaving beautifully, putting the major's gloom and Barclay's pettishness and Ingerson's grumpy rage to shame. Mrs. Van Tromp – a most easy-going soul when she could forget for the moment that she had three marriageable, and as yet unmarried, daughters on her hands – had already forgotten her reproachful complainings. Conetta's Aunt Mehitable was arguing peacefully with the professor on the philosophical aspect of the situation, though quite without prejudice, I fancied, to the sharp eye she was keeping upon Conetta in her new juxtaposition between Annette Grey and me. Mrs. Sanford, who, in spite of her motherliness, was a frail little body physically, was apparently regarding the hammock beds with some degree of trepidation; nevertheless, she went on sipping her tea with evident relish, and she found time and the spirit to smile understandingly across the circle at Billy Grisdale and Edie Van Tromp, and to stoop and pat Billy's bull pup, when the dog, finding that his master had no present use for him, wandered from one to another to stick his extremely retroussé nose into any hospitable palm that offered.

"Shall we be able to keep this up, do you suppose?" Conetta whispered to me, between the last two bites of her biscuit.

"I think the moonlight, what there is of it, is entrancingly beautiful, don't you?" I laughed. "'Sufficient unto the day (or night) – ' You know the rest of it. I'm willing to let to-morrow take care of itself. Are you?"

"Maybe I am." Then, with a return to the old-time dartings aside: "What do you imagine Jerry is finding so alluring in Bee Van Tromp? He has never read a book in his life."

"Beatrice isn't all book," I retorted. "On this voyage which has come to such an abrupt halt I have been finding her a very charming young woman. Her eyes, now."

"Shush! Any woman can make eyes at a man. If you'll look around at me, I'll show you."

"Not any more," I said, and the saying was purely in self-defense.

"Wait," she teased. "The island is small – you said it was, didn't you? – and you can't always look the other way." Then: "Can't we even quarrel decently, Dickie Preble?"

Mrs. Van Tromp was rising stiffly and I was saved the necessity of replying.

"Time to go to bed, my dears," said the mother of three with great good-nature. And then to me: "Dick Preble, are you sure you fastened my hammock securely? Because, if you didn't – well, you know – I'm dreadfully heavy. There now! Wild horses wouldn't have dragged that admission out of me at home. Conetta, you rogue, you're laughing at me, but you're blushing, as well, and that's one of the conventions, too. Never mind. I'm afraid every second step will be on a crab, or a scorpion, or some other hideous thing. Good-night, all!"

VIII

INTO THE PRIMITIVE

It was I who told Edie Van Tromp that the name, or legendary name, of our island was "Pirates' Hope," and when she announced it at our first camp breakfast it was acclaimed with a cheerful unanimity which went far to show how, after a night's rest, we were able to make a jest out of what had figured, only a few hours earlier, as a crude calamity.

After breakfast, Van Dyck, throwing off the lethargy which had apparently bound him hand and foot when a little decision might have turned the tables upon the mutineers, took his place energetically and capably as the governor of our little colony. Under his directions a signal was set at the nearer, or western, end of the island, enough of the jungle was cleared to enable us to pitch the tents under the shade of the palms, a cooking camp was established, and a rude thatched shelter was built to protect the stores and luggage.

In these various industries there were only three idlers among the men – the major, Holly Barclay, and Hobart Ingerson; and Edie Van Tromp, volunteering to go with me to start a smoke fire at the signal cape, was furious.

"Wouldn't that set your back teeth on edge, seeing those three able-bodied gentlemen sunning themselves on the beach while everybody else is getting blisters on their hands!" she flamed out, with a fine disregard for the little grammatical inaccuracies. "I'd be ashamed!"

"You shouldn't deny the gentlemen the privilege of smoking their after-breakfast cigars in comfort," I protested, grinning. "Perhaps, after the cigars are all gone, and we come down to just plain pipes and plebeian cut-plug tobacco – "

"I don't care! It's perfectly horrid of them, I think. Mother got us women together this morning while you men were fixing the tents, and we all agreed to do the cooking, taking turns at it. When it comes my turn, I shall tell those three loafing gentlemen that they can undertake to wash the dishes, or go hungry!"

"Good!" I applauded. "You are a real, honest-to-goodness human woman, under the skin, aren't you, Edie?"

She stuck out a pretty under lip at me.