His Unknown Wife

Suddenly she stopped, and something in her manner arrested the others.

“I don’t think I’m mistaken,” she said, “but are not those two points the flanks of these islands?”

“There can be little doubt of that,” agreed Maseden, following her glance towards the gap some three or four miles in front. It was difficult to estimate distance accurately in that region of vast solitudes.

“Then, if that is so,” she went on in a puzzled tone, “where does the remainder of the land go to? The cliffs end not so very far away. Why don’t we see other bits sticking out?”

The underlying sense of the question was clearer than its form. For some undetermined cause the passage between the islands evidently widened considerably before it closed in at the ultimate southern exit. Hopefulness is often a close blend of curiosity and expectation. They pressed on more rapidly, eager as children to see what lay around the corner.

They were soon enlightened, and most agreeably so. They entered a spacious amphitheatre—in its way, almost a place of beauty. Not only were the hillsides clothed with pines and other trees, but, rarest sight of all along that stark coast, strips of white sand bordered the foreshore.

The tidal water, now near the lowest ebb, was placid as a lake, and on its surface disported flocks of many varieties of wild fowl. Moreover, wreckage began to line the beach at high-water mark. They found the planks and spars of many ships, some quite fresh, and evidently the remains of the Southern Cross; others weather-beaten, even crumbling with age.

Remains of the raft were discovered, and Nina shrieked with joy at sight of the ship’s flag, hardly damaged, lying on its halliard alongside the broken topmast.

Madge claimed the most remarkable bit of flotsam—nothing less than the brandy bottle, unbroken, but nearly full of salt water, half buried in sand.

It was their only drinking utensil, and therefore prized very highly. How it had passed through the turmoil of the rapids was one of those mysteries which voyaging bottles alone can solve; and they, if sometimes eloquent of humanity’s adventures, are invariably silent as to their own.

The skins of the sea-lion and seals had vanished. Indeed, a very close search of a three-mile semi-circular beach, conducted for reasons which shall presently appear, yielded no trace of them.

There was a dramatic fitness in thus reaching a land of plenty after enduring the horrors of the pass.

“It’s like a fairy tale,” cried Nina joyously. “This is the enchanted realm, guarded by dragons which must be slain ere the prince can enter.”

“Gosh!” grinned Sturgess, “she’s calling you a prince now, Alec. Say, Madge, can’t you invent a name for me?”

“Yes, you’re the Ugly Duckling which grew into a Swan.”

“Huh! I’ll think that over. Far be it from me, fair maid, to dispute your views as to my future plumage. Now, Alec, your turn. It’s up to you to christen Nina.”

“Cinderella, maid of all work,” said Maseden promptly. “So, let’s get busy, the lot of us. Girls, you’ll probably find an oyster-bed on that reef over there. Sturgess and I will hunt for water, and bring you a bottleful. Then we must set to work and build a shack above high-water mark before night. We’re going to stop here and launch a more navigable craft next time.”

“Your highness has forgotten one thing,” said Nina, with sudden gravity.

“What is that?”

“It is still Sunday.”

With one accord they dropped to their knees and thanked Providence for the mercy which had been shown them. Such prayers are the spontaneous tribute of the overflowing heart. They are not to be uttered aloud or recorded in the written word.

The men had no difficulty in locating a stream, owing to the “creek,” as Madge had phrased it, which marked the approach of each torrent to the sea. Here, too, were oysters in abundance. Whether or not the bivalves liked a certain admixture of fresh water and brine, their enthusiastic admirers did not know; but certainly the best-stocked beds were invariably situated near the mouth of a mountain stream.

With a plentiful supply of shaped planks, cordage, even rusty nails, they soon knocked together a low hut, not more than breast high, and closed at one end. The ship’s flag curtained off the inner section, which was allotted to the two girls, while the men could sleep, on guard, as it were, in the outer part.

As night came on they started a fire and cooked two birds of the penguin type, which allowed themselves to be chased and captured. The flesh was tough and none too well flavored, but the feasters were not hard to please. When the repast was ended, and they sat on piles of soft sand looking out over the darkening expanse of waters, for the tide was high again, Maseden electrified Sturgess by saying:

“Do you smoke, C. K.?”

“Does a duck swim?” was the prompt reply.

Maseden produced from his coat pocket a pipe and tin of tobacco.

The other eyed them with downright amazement.

“Well, can you beat it?” he cried. “What else have you got in your pocket, old scout? A bottle of rye whisky and a box of chocolates for the girls, or what?”

“I’ve reached the end of my resources now,” laughed Maseden. “I resolved to keep this small stock of tobacco till the time came when we might regard half our troubles as ended. I think we’ve reached that stage to-night. After this morning’s escape I shall never again lose hope until the light goes out forever.”

“Oh, please, don’t put it that way,” said Nina.

“I mean it as an optimist,” he exclaimed. “If I have to swim in the open sea, or am buried under a landslide, I shall still believe, while my senses last, that Providence will see me through. Do you know why? You might supply many good reasons, but not the reason. Ten minutes after we climbed under that overhanging rock, it fell. I happened to look back, and saw it collapse. None of us heard the crash, because we were close to a rather noisy rapid at the moment. But I actually saw the thing happen.”

“Why didn’t you tell us at the time?” inquired Madge.

“I thought our nervous systems, collectively, had borne enough strain just then.... Here you are, C. K. I give you first turn with the pipe.”

“Not on your life!” vowed Sturgess, flaming into volcanic energy. “If I never smoke again, I’ll not touch that pipe until you’ve gone right through a packed bowl-full.”

Maseden knew that his friend meant what he said, so filled and lighted the pipe immediately.

“It’s a moot point,” he commented philosophically, “whether you don’t enjoy smoking more in anticipation than I in actuality. I haven’t smoked now during sixteen days, and I believe I could give it up for sixteen years if need be.”

“Good gracious!” tittered Madge. “Poor C. K. will have only two years of his beloved New York.”

It was a subtle thrust. Sturgess himself was the first to see its point.

“Gosh!” he said. “S’pose we four had to live here straight on for sixteen years!”

Nina Forbes seemed to have a keener sense of the dangerous trend of such careless talk than her sister.

“I do wish you two wouldn’t babble,” she broke in sharply. “Alec is simply chock full of information. I can see it in his calculating eye. For instance—”

Maseden took the cue readily.

“For instance,” he said. “This inland lagoon explains the rush of the tide this morning. The greater part of the water which runs through the pass never goes back. It floods this immense area, is held up by the tide from the south, but goes out that way, because, by some irregular tidal action, the ebb begins in that direction. Therefore, an ideal backwash is set up, which accounts for all the wreckage strewed on the beach. Parts of ships which were lost a century ago will be stored here. The place is a maritime museum.”

“We may find a whole ship,” exclaimed Madge.

“What? After coming through the hell-gate we have left behind?”

“The bottle came through,” she persisted.

“Though it’s a black bottle it must have been white with fear many a score of times. Have you noticed the way in which the logs of our own raft were battered and bruised?... No, the way in was vile, and, I had better warn you now, the way out may be worse.”

“Oh, why?” cried both girls.

“Because of the absence of Indians. Consider what an ideal site this would be for a colony of savages. Plenty of fish, birds and oysters—sand—even a few level strips which might be cultivated—if the South American Indian ever does till the land. The logic of the situation is clear. Our refuge is inaccessible. That is just the difference between romance and reality. In the fairy tale, once you slay the dragons guarding the enchanted palace the remainder is a compound of nectar and kisses. In real life, having stormed the fortress, you find yourself besieged.”

None disputed his conclusions. They were learning to think like him, and each had been struck by the virgin solitude of this land-locked sea-lake, which must compare favorably with the most fertile and exceedingly scarce localities of the kind in an area of many scores of thousands of square miles.

“Anyhow, while you finish your pipe, it’s up to me to fix the fire,” said Sturgess blithely, leaping to his feet, and beginning to arrange a number of big flat stones around and above a pile of glowing charcoal in such wise that rain could not extinguish it, and a few twigs placed among the embers next morning would quickly burst into a blaze.

They had taught themselves these minor aids to comfort. Madge had constructed a very creditable field oven, and Nina, with a bit of sharpened wire and a supply of dried sinews, could sew a skin as a cobbler stitches the sole on to a boot. Physically all four were in splendid condition, so it was a sheer impossibility that they should remain downcast in spirit. Maseden knew that quite well when he recited the trials they must yet face and conquer. He addressed them as co-workers, not as pampered young people who must be humored into putting forth the necessary efforts if they would win through finally.

They slept that night as soundly as though the morning’s tribulation was something they had read in a book. Rain pounded on their shelter, but it was roofed with pine branches above the planks, and not a drop entered. They awoke into a world of blue sky and sunshine, and, after breakfasting on oysters, cold fowl, and good water, spent an idle hour in watching the tidal race from the north.

Then, after tending the fire, they set off on a tour of the shore, meaning to note every scrap of wreckage which might be of value. Moreover, Maseden was specially anxious to have a peep at the southern exit.

And thus they made the great discovery.

CHAPTER XV

Lastly, there was Nina, who literally demanded an explanation of a long, low strip of taut canvas visible above a small sand hill on which tufts of coarse grass were struggling for life.

The simplest way out of the difficulty was to admit that sheer, unadulterated good luck brought about an incident which probably changed the whole course of events, though a white and shining patch of skin on Sturgess’s left leg testifies to this day that his accident was primarily responsible for it.

Two fair-sized streams ran from the hills into the straits on that side. Near the first was pitched the camp. Well hidden near the second was the boat.

Now, these rivulets, though fairly deep and swift, were not torrents; that is to say, they drained a watershed by no means so steep as Hanover Island. Their volume was more regular, inasmuch as they were not wholly the outcome of the latest downpour of rain. To avoid the necessity of fording them, one had to walk a long way seaward until their waters began to spread over the reef in a hundred little runnels, and one could leap from rock to rock.

Indeed, it was while Sturgess was so doing that he barked his shin, a most painful if not dangerous operation; in this instance, it evoked language which the girls pretended not to hear.

Having crossed the stream, however, Madge examined the damage, and would have it that the sufferer take off his boot and sock, and forthwith lave the wound in fresh water.

What he really wanted to do was to wander away out of earshot and relieve his feelings by the spoken word. He obeyed, however, and all four went up the right bank (which, as Sturgess and Madge jointly cited in their contention, they certainly would not have done otherwise) to a point where the river was free of salt-water.

In the result, curiously enough, Sturgess’s excoriated wound was left absolutely to its own devices. Both he and Madge, not to mention the other two, were startled out of any further thought of such a minor casualty by coming full tilt on to a ship’s boat, trimly sheeted in gray canvas, dry-docked, one might say, behind a sandhill.

After an incredulous stare, Maseden answered Nina’s eager question.

“It is one of the life-boats of the Southern Cross,” he said, and his voice was hushed, almost reverent. “There is her number, with the ship’s name. She was carried on the starboard side, just behind the forward rail on the promenade deck. I used to look up at her and admire her lines.”

By this time they had raced up alongside the craft. She appeared to be undamaged. Maseden unlaced a portion of the canvas cover. She was dry as a bone inside.

“Say, Alec, d’you know that every boat was stocked with provisions and water for twenty people for fourteen days? I heard the captain give the order.”

Sturgess was so excited that he almost yelped the words.

“I saw the stewards putting the stuff on board,” said Maseden.

“There’s tea, and coffee, and condensed milk, and butter, and tins of meat and jam,” cried Nina.

“And ship’s biscuits, and a spirit stove, and matches, and barrels of water,” chimed in Madge.

Maseden was tapping the planks and peering at so much of the keel as was visible, but he could find no sign of injury. The smart white paint had been badly scraped amidships and in the bows, but the wood was not splintered. To the best of his belief the craft was thoroughly seaworthy. She carried her full complement of oars, a mast, and lugsail. In fact, she was almost in the exact condition in which she had left the ship.

Two pulleys and a part of a broken davit showed how she had been wrenched bodily from her berth and flung into the sea by the first great wave that crashed over the Southern Cross when the steamship swung broadside on to the reef under the pull of the aft anchor.

“Come along, everybody!” shouted Maseden, and the ring of triumph in his voice revealed the depth of his feelings. “We start building a new camp at once. Within less than a fortnight the spring tides which brought her here will be with us again, and we must be ready for them.”

“Can’t we launch her on rollers?” demanded Sturgess.

“I doubt it. She was docked here by a backwash which does not occur very often, judging by the herbage growing among the sand. She is a heavy craft, too. I don’t think the four of us could move her. We’ll have rollers in readiness, of course, but we must cut a channel for the tide, and so make sure of floating her.... By Jove! What a piece of luck!”

It took them an hour or more to sober down. For once, Maseden’s orders were tacitly ignored, even by himself. Instead of helping in the construction of another hut the girls were busy with the lashings of the canvas cover. Every true woman has the instinct of the good housewife, and these two could not rest content until they had examined and classified the stores.

None of them could resist the temptation of a bottle of coffee extract, some condensed milk and a tin of biscuits. The spirit-stove was lighted, some water boiled and they drank hot coffee and ate wheat for the first time in seventeen days.

Their greatest surprise was the quantity and variety of stores on board. There were knives and forks, enameled plates and cups, even such minor requisites as salt, pepper and mustard.

Of course, the chief steward of the Southern Cross had been given many hours in which to make preparations. Being a resourceful man, when the lockers were packed with their regulation supplies he stuffed “extras” into odd corners.

Poor fellow! The pity was that an adverse fate had denied him any benefit from his own foresight.

Although the castaways entered with good heart upon their second campaign against the forces of nature, the immense advantages now enjoyed as compared with their condition on Hanover Island did not blind them to the difficulties yet to be faced and conquered ere the haunts of civilized man might be reached. There was no gainsaying the cogency of Maseden’s logic; the absence of aborigines from a spot so favored as Rotunda Bay (the name allotted to their new location), supplied positive proof of the impracticable nature of all approaches by sea.

How far the barriers might extend they had no means of knowing. They could guess how forbidding they were from the character of the northerly channel, and it was easy to believe that one such dangerous passage alone would not have deterred tribesmen accustomed to navigate these perilous waters.

So, in the intervals of labor, they gave close heed to the tides and their action. For instance, Maseden would knock together a small raft, launch it at high water and watch its subsequent course. He found, at first, that it stranded invariably. Then he took it to the tiny estuary of the second river, waited until the ebb was well established, and let it swing out with the current.

This time, as he anticipated, it was carried swiftly southward, and was seen no more, thus confirming his belief that the rise and fall of the tide set up a circular movement of an immense body of water always tending in the same southerly direction, retarded during the flow, with resultant acceleration during the ebb.

One day, when observation farther afield was desired, they all four set off soon after dawn, and were close to the southern narrows at high water. Then, as the shore gradually became practicable, they followed the receding tide until farther advance became dangerous. Seen from a distance, one of the cliffs offered a not impossible climb, and closer inspection showed that, by hard work, and some roping, they could reach the summit.

The girls, who had positively refused to be left “at home,” were now equally determined to make the ascent. The soles of their light boots had long since given out, but each and all now wore moccasins of sealskin, and very serviceable and comfortable footgear these proved, being impervious to the jars of the roughest rock surface, and most excellent for climbing.

After an hour’s hard work they stood on a narrow saddle overlooking a seaward precipice, and the vista before their eyes was at once awe-inspiring and disheartening. Mile after mile, nothing but broken water met the eye. The reefs were countless. In fact, the resistance they offered to the incoming tide direct from the Pacific was such that, in all likelihood, it accounted for the delay which set up the extraordinary race past Hell Gate.

Even Sturgess was upset by the far-flung chaos. A strong wind was blowing up there, and he sank his voice in the hope that his words would reach Maseden only.

“Rotten!” he said. “It would knock the stuffing out of a brass dog.”

“No secrets, please,” cried Madge promptly. “What did you say, C. K.? Are you telling Alec that there is no way out?”

“Yep,” was the disconsolate reply.

“We have not quite determined that fact yet,” said Maseden coolly. “Having done a stiff climb, suppose we get our money’s worth, and sit down? Never mind the unpleasant prospect in front. Let’s keep a sharp look-out for a log traveling in mid-stream, and watch it as long as possible.”

Nina, who was endowed with excellent good sight, was the first to detect a nearly submerged tree-trunk bobbing about in the channel, nearly a mile distant. The atmosphere happened, however, to be unusually clear that day, so they could follow the progress of the derelict for another mile or more. As soon as it emerged from the actual channel between the two headlands, it swung away to the left, or eastward, and kept on that course until lost in the waste of waters.

Maseden whistled in sheer vexation when he gave up the attempt to follow this floating index any longer.

“What is it now, son?” inquired Sturgess.

“The worst,” snapped the other vindictively.

“Great Scott! Didn’t you like the look of that log. I thought it lolloped along in a devil-may-care style that was rather attractive.”

“But it turned towards the land, and not towards the sea.”

“I guess that’s so.”

“And doesn’t that convey any meaning to you?”

“Sure. The tides hereabouts go all ways for Sundays. Before that thing reaches Nelson Straits it has to round the eastern end of the island opposite.... Yes, yes, Alec. You’ve wised me up on heaps of things I didn’t give a hooraw in Hades for at one time. I can tell the time by the sun, skin an eel, or a seal, or a teal, open oysters like a bar-keep, and read an eddy like a Mississippi pilot. And, to my reckoning, our boat, or any boat, has as much chance of winning through that proposition out there as a lump of butter in a fiery furnace. I never did hold very strongly by that story about Shadrack, Mesack and Abednego. I’ve a notion we haven’t got the complete facts. One day in Pittsburg—”

“Silence, please, for the passing of the next log, which happens to be a boat!”

Nina’s voice rang out clearly. She well knew the astounding significance of the words, but the daily round of hardship and adventure were molding her character on new and stronger lines. She was not, nor ever could be again, the somewhat conventional young lady who had sailed from San Juan little more than a month ago. She could face now, with an unflinching and critical eye, perils which then would have blanched her cheek and set the blood pulsing in her veins.

Even her sister, who had not made out the object to which Nina had called attention, put an alarming question quite calmly.

“A boat!” she cried. “Oh, Nina, not our boat?”

So many seemingly impossible things had occurred that the stout life-boat they left tied securely in a small dock which was flooded by each tide might conceivably have broken loose.

“No,” came the reassuring answer. “Not our boat. It looks like one of the native coracles Alec has told us of. But it is empty. At any rate, there is no one sitting upright in it.”

By this time the others had seen the craft, which she was the first to detect. In their anxiety and excitement they stood up, one by one, as though the couple of feet thus gained would give a better view-point. There could not be the least doubt that they were looking at a roughly-fashioned but distinctly seaworthy boat, which danced along on the crest of a rapid current, and whirled around, as though in sport, when some black rock thrust its obstructing fangs into the tide-way. Apparently, it was traveling quite safely.

Then, as if to give them a really useful object lesson, it was caught between two rocks and turned clean over. A second somersault righted it, and, like the log, it sped away to the east.

Maseden brought back the dazed and troubled wits of his companions to the particular business in hand.

“See that you are properly roped,” he said. “We’re heading for camp, as quickly as we can get there. Don’t hurry over the first part of the descent, however. There are two bad places on the rock face.”

They reached the shore safely, unroped, and set off to walk three hard miles in record time. As they neared their refuge they saw the boat, now aground in its tiny canal. Near at hand were the white embers of their fire, which would soon be ablaze when fresh logs were added. Some washing, stretched on a line, lent a strangely domestic touch to the encampment.

But the one profoundly relieving fact was self-evident. No party of marauding Indians had swooped down on their ark and its stores. Wherever the derelict boat had come from, its occupants were not to be seen in any part of Rotunda Bay. As Maseden put it tersely:

“We found it hard enough to get here. Others seemed to have tried and failed.”

Still he and Sturgess decided to mount guard that night. The girls were not supposed to know of this new arrangement, until Maseden was about to awaken Sturgess for his second spell of sentry-go. Then Nina emerged from the rear portion of the shack.

“Lend me your watch, Alec,” she said pleasantly. “I’ll take these two hours.... No, you mustn’t argue, there’s a dear—fellow—” the concluding word was added rather hurriedly, being an obvious afterthought. “I’ll call Madge next, and it will be broad daylight by the time her spell is ended.”

“I’m not sleepy,” he murmured, sinking his voice so as not to disturb the others. “I was only going to rouse C. K. because he will be annoyed if I don’t stick to schedule.”

“I haven’t slept at all,” the girl confessed. “If you’re not going to rest, let us talk. Or, perhaps, that is not quite the right thing to do.”

“Not if there was any real fear of an attack,” said Maseden, leading her to the small sand hillock near the boat. “I am convinced we are safe enough, but I should never forgive myself if the camp were rushed owing to our negligence.... Sit here. The tide is rising. We can distinguish the water-line, and remain unseen ourselves. Of course, we should speak hardly above a whisper.”

Some inequality in the sloping surface brought them rather close together when they sat down. Nina moved, with a little laugh of apology. Her action was quite involuntary, but it nettled Maseden.

“I don’t want to flirt with you, if that is what you are afraid of,” he grunted. “In present conditions spooning would be rather absurd. Not that my particular sort of marriage tie would restrain me. Don’t think it. Enforced obedience of that sort is foreign to my nature.”

“I gather that you really want to quarrel with me,” was the glib answer.

Of course, any woman of average wit could have put a man in the wrong at once with equal readiness though given a far less vulnerable opening, but Maseden realized his blunder and drew back.

“A too strenuous life seems to have spoiled my temper,” he said. “I used to be regarded as a somewhat easy-going person.”

“Probably that was because you had things all your own way.”

“You may be right. A man is the poorest judge of his own virtues or faults. For instance, I have always prided myself on a certain quality of quick decision, once my mind was made up. But of late I find myself lacking even in that respect.”

“Isn’t it possible you are not actually sure of your own mind?”

“Shall I submit the case to you?”

“Would that be wise? I would remind you of your own phrase—in present conditions.”

“But I think you ought to know,” he persisted. “Weeks ago, on the day you shot the sea-lion, in fact, C. K. told me he meant to marry Madge, if the lady is willing, that is. The statement startled me, to put it mildly. I rather scoffed at it, which nettled him, naturally. I was on the point of acquainting him with the facts, but was stopped by the gun-shot. Since then he has never mentioned the matter again, and I have been averse from pulling it in by the scruff of the neck—”

“Why do so now?” put in the girl quickly.

He could not see her face, but the note of alarm in her voice was not even disguised.

“Because, day by day, I see more and more clearly that our friend’s love of your sister is a very real thing. I see, too, or think that I see, a response on her part. From a common sense point of view, what else could one expect? Two young people, each eminently agreeable, are thrown together by fate in circumstances of great and continuous personal danger. The artificial intercourse of civilized life is impossible from the outset. They see each other as they really are. Each has to depend on real characteristics, not on shams. Can one imagine a more ideal method of choosing one’s future partner than those in which we have lived during the past month?”

This was what lawyers call a leading question, and Nina shied at it instantly.

“Everything you have said may be true, Alec,” she said, “but you have advanced no reason whatever for disturbing our pleasant relations. Surely all these problems may be allowed to settle themselves when, if ever, we re-enter the everyday world?”

“That is just my difficulty,” continued Maseden doggedly; he was resolved now to have an irritating hindrance to pleasant relations settled once and for all. “Is it fair to Sturgess to let him believe there is no bar to his wooing? Of course, my marriage was a farce, and can be dismissed as such. But what will C. K. think, what will he say, when he hears of it? Won’t our silence—yes, our silence—you cannot shirk a part of the responsibility—be open to misinterpretation? May it not bring about the very catastrophe we want to avoid?”

“I really don’t understand,” said the girl in a frightened way.

“Then I must make my meaning clear, even though it hurts,” he said determinedly. “If I tell Sturgess now about the Cartagena ceremony, though rather late in the day, it is not too late; whereas, if I wait till we reach New York, how astounded and mystified he will be by the legal process which I must set on foot to secure your sister’s freedom and my own! Why, the result might be tragic. If C. K. knows now, he can, if he chooses, seek from Madge an explanation of the whole mad business. She may give or withhold it—that is for her to decide. But at least we shall all be acting squarely and above-board. I put it to you strongly, for the sake of each one of us, that Sturgess should be told the whole truth.”

For a little while there was silence. Nina seemed to be weighing the pros and cons of the matter with much care.

“I think you are right,” she said at last. “I differ from you only in a small but—to a woman—very important particular. Madge, not you, should tell C. K. what happened in Cartagena. It is her privilege. It will come better from her. In the morning, when opportunity offers, she and I will talk things over. I am sure I can persuade her as to the course she should adopt.

“Leave it to me, Alec. Before to-morrow evening C. K. shall have heard the full story of that unfortunate marriage. He will tell you so himself. After that, I suppose, your troubled conscience will be at rest, and the matter need not be discussed further until it comes before the courts.”

“I seem to have annoyed you pretty badly by raising the point now,” said Maseden.

“No, indeed! It is not so. In a sense, I am glad. My sister and I are very dear to one another, Alec, and no one likes to parade the family skeleton, even in such a remote place as Rotunda Bay.”

Maseden felt that he had bungled the whole business rather badly, but he saw no advantage in leaving anything unsaid.

“What I cannot make out,” he muttered savagely, “is how I ever came to regard you and Madge as being so much alike. Of course, you resemble each other physically, but in temperament you are wide apart as the poles.”

“Dear me! This is really interesting. In what respects do we differ?”

“Madge is emotional, you are self-contained. She would have cried had I spoken to her about you as I have spoken of her to you, but you survey the problem coolly, and solve it, probably on the best lines. Sometimes, you puzzle, at others, vex me. You are ready and willing to confide in Sturgess, but refuse me your confidence. I find Madge easy to read; you remain an enigma. I believe you would almost die rather than enlighten me as to the true history of my marriage.”

“Oh, bother your marriage! Can’t you talk of something else?”

“I am prepared to talk about you during the next hour.”

“How boring for both of us.”

“Only a minute ago you welcomed my efforts as an analyst.”

“I was mistook, as the children say. These personal matters seem ineffably stupid when one sees the dawn appearing over the walls of our prison. We may never get away from here, or lose our lives in the attempt. It will be of very small significance then as to why a sorely-tried girl agreed to marry a man she had never seen, and who was under sentence to die before the ink was dry in the register.... Still, Alec, I’m pleased we have had such a candid discussion. I have come round to your point of view, too. It is not fair to C. K. to keep him in the dark. To-morrow, as ever is, if you don’t work us so hard that we have no time for chatter, I promise you that Madge shall tell him everything.”

“And me nothing?”

“That is implied in the bargain, is it not? Does it really concern you? You were speaking for C. K., not for yourself.... Oh, no, we’re not going to re-open the argument. Just let matters remain where they are, please. I want you to satisfy a woman’s curiosity on a matter of more immediate importance. When do you purpose leaving here? Shouldn’t we start soon? At this season we have fine weather of a sort. Don’t we incur a good deal of risk by each week of delay?”

“Hullo, you two!” came a cherry voice. “A nice bunco game you’ve played on me! There was I, snoring like a hog, while you were spooning under the stars. Wise Alec and Naughty Nina! But wait till I tell your poor deluded sister. A whole tribe of Indians could have crept up and tomahawked you where you sat.”

They started apart, almost guiltily. Each shared the same thought. How much, or how little, had Sturgess heard?

CHAPTER XVI

“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.