Chapter XV: Suspicions

From the Dead Man’s Chest the _Royal James_ headed northwest into the Atlantic. Murray knew that the _Santissima Trinidad_ must have sent the tidings of his feat the length and breadth of the Antilles. By now the Spanish squadrons would have put to sea from San Juan de Porto Rico, Santo Domingo and the Havana, and the Caribbean would be aswarm with _garda costas_; but more to be feared than all the Spaniards’ efforts would be the consequence of the complaint sure to be dispatched to the port admiral at Kingston. The Jamaica frigates would carry a hunting-call to every English cruiser on the West Indian station.

As it was, we were chased by a strange sail in the latitude of southern Hispaniola, whose heaping canvas and lumbering gait bespoke the ship-o’-the-line; and off Cuba we sighted three sail--a frigate and two sloops--who chased us two days and a night to the eastward. And the day after that we encountered the Brazils fleet, under convoy of two sail of the line and half a dozen small fry, but my great-uncle, nothing daunted, displayed his white ensign, fired a salute to the Portuguese admiral and sailed through them.

Then we picked up a smart so’easter and ran our westing down packet-fashion, with never a sail in sight for a week, until a morning when the sun came up at our backs like a burnished copper plaque and we saw the cone of the Spyglass lifting out of the haze ahead. A league or two farther on the whole island shaped itself beneath its spine of hills, and a column of smoke from the Spyglass told us that Flint’s lookout had detected us.

The wind had continued strong through the night, but after dawn it turned puffy and ’twas nearly noon when we passed into Captain Kidd’s Anchorage on the last of the flood. There was a great bustle aboard the _Walrus_, with boats plying to and from the shore, and as our anchor splashed, the longboat put off from her side, Flint’s red coat like a flame in the stern sheets.

“Glory!” exclaimed Moira O’Donnell, her blue eyes wide with delighted horror. “There’s one I’d not need to have pointed out to me to know him a pirate--or the dreadful knaves that do be rowing the oars. My faith, look to the color of them, as red as Indians with the sun, and they without the clothes any heathen would be by way of wearing.”

She clapped her hands.

“But I like the kerchiefs on their heads. See! All red and green and yellow and blue. And the marks they have done in their skins.”

Her father was otherwise impressed. He glowered down at the heap of treasure kegs, chests and packages which Murray had ordered fetched on deck that morning, and then stared off at Flint’s gaudy figure.

“And ’tis to scoundrels like yon ye’ll be trusting the lives of all of us, Andrew Murray!” he snarled. “By times, man, I think there’s a green madness in your brain. Why, the view of that gold and silver below would be sufficient to tempt better men than they to commit murder.”

My great-uncle took snuff.

“Your diagnosis is correct, _chevalier_,” he retorted. “They would cheerfully commit murder for a coveted knife or a sixpence with a hole in it. My design in revealing to them the entire extent of the treasure we carry is to impress them at once with my good faith and benumb their acquisitive faculties by the sight of greater wealth than they ever dreamed of obtaining at one time.”

A snort from Peter diverted attention to the Dutchman.

“You do not agree with me?” inquired Murray mildly.

“_Neen_! A t’ief is a t’ief. He steals to steal.”

“Plausible,” assented my great-uncle. “Your idea is?”

“If Flint has der feel for it it don’t matter what you show him. He wants all.”

“Ah!”

Murray regarded more attentively the boatload of pirates just rounding up to our port quarter.

“I see that Captain Flint has with him John Silver and the red-haired Irish boy he calls his luck. Humph! You may be right, friend Peter. But I should not be greatly concerned over that. In many ways----”

He broke off, considering. Colonel O’Donnell caught him up.

“Yes? Yes? What new deviltry are you planning?”

My great-uncle smiled.

“Certes, ’tis no deviltry to plan in a good cause--in the Good Cause. Eh, Mistress Moira?”

She shook her head.

“You will be took quick with your wits for me to fathom them, Master Murray,” says she. “I am but a young maid that knows no more than that right is right.”

“I protest you underrate yourself,” he answered.

“What Moira thinks is of no consequence,” interrupted O’Donnell. “You have not answered me.”

“True, _chevalier_. I was thinking. My thoughts are not completely shapen, but ’twill do no harm if I reveal that it occurred to me that in many ways it might simplify our problem did Captain Flint resort to force.”

The Irishman counted the gunports in the _Walrus’_ side.

“He seems to carry as heavy metal----”

“But on the sea, as on the land, ’tis the brain which overmatches brute force, _chevalier_. You, who are an engineer, do not need to be reminded of this axiom. However, we are not yet come to the issue, and I am never one for engaging in a search for trouble. All I know clearly at this moment is that we can not afford to wander far afield from the island, with the cruisers of three nations quartering the seas for us.”

“We are in an _impasse_,” reflected O’Donnell gloomily.

“Not at all,” rejoined my great-uncle. “We have played our hand with entire success so far in the game. ’Tis now for us to sit back and await the plays of other participants. What they do must determine our next-- But Captain Flint is come aboard. This conversation is without purpose, since fact must now displace conjecture.”

He eyed us all somewhat gravely.

“I have but one word more to say,” he added. “Whatever happens, leave me to do the talking.”

“Ye’d do it whether we would or no,” growled O’Donnell.

Flint climbed over the bulwarks with a racket of oaths and swaggered up to the poop. Martin dropped a whip from a block on the mainyard, and John Silver was hauled up in its bight, his crutch hanging from his neck. Darby and the rest scaled the side ladder and mingled with the _James’_ crew. Their eyes popped from their heads as they circled the heap of treasure, Long John stumping with them, listening avidly to the accounts of the _James’_ men, hefting the weight of the packages of bullion and painfully deciphering the inscriptions on the kegs and chests of coin.

Their chief was equally frank in revealing the lust of greed the picture wakened in him. His green eyes flickered hotly on either side of his thin, beaked nose, and his blue jowl was bluer than ever, the weather-worn skin over his cheekbones laced with a network of crimson veins that brightened as his excitement increased.

Yet he forgot the treasure the instant his gaze fell upon Peter and me.

“So your hostages returned to ye, Murray? Gut me, ’twas a pretty trick ye played us! Ye’d keep faith wi’ me, ye would! Oh, yes! Ye’d give me two hostages, instead o’ one. You’ll fulfill your contract, you will. There’s no need for it, to be sure, but ye’ll do anything to prove good faith to me! And take both or none, says you. Both or none! Well, ye fooled me that time, Murray, but ye never will again, by thunder--not if my name’s John Flint!”

My great-uncle heard him out in silence, waiting until he had stepped off the poop-ladder and stood facing us.

“I am not responsible for your losing the hostages,” he replied then in his iciest tones. “Stap me, Flint, I warned you your ship was in a disgraceful condition. With all hands drunk, did you think to keep fast two men of strength and intelligence?”

“Drunk or sober, we were promised them,” asserted Flint, a trifle less belligerently. “And sure, ye could ha’ turned ’em back to us--not that that will do me any good for the two men they killed, they or whoever helped ’em to break from the _Walrus_.”

“Nobody from the _Royal James_ assisted them,” said Murray. “You have my word for that. I can not say as much for your own ship, although they told me when they discovered themselves to me, several days after our sailing, that they had acted alone.”

“Alone or not, where’s my two men?” blustered Flint. “Good hands don’t grow on trees.”

“No; aboard the _Walrus_ they stab one another to death,” agreed my great-uncle. “Come, come, you have no proof in support of your charge.”

“No proof?” howled Flint. “These two broke out of my lazaret, and the same night the two men on watch----”

My great-uncle raised his eyebrows.

“Tut, tut! Really, now! ‘Two men on watch!’ What would you have? John Silver and Blind Pew could have escaped from such slender guards, let alone two whole men, one of them the strongest ever I knew.”

“Well, two broke free and two died,” insisted Flint. “And if the two who broke free were not the means----”

“What proof have you of it?”

“Proof?”

“Aye, proof, I said. Their bodies, what of them?”

“Why, we never----”

My great-uncle shrugged his shoulders.

“You see? You have been talking loosely, I fear, my friend. But you must suffer me to repeat that if you left your ship all night with a watch of two men on deck you deserved to lose your hostages and the lives of the watch. At any rate, you’ll not have my sympathy.”

Flint’s fingers twitched on his hanger-hilt.

“I tell ye, Murray, there’s a foul smell about this whole business. You were all for giving me hostages--’twas no idea of mine. And then they no sooner come aboard my ship than they’re away again. I like it not. Here’s trickery or ye may gut me for a preacher.”

“Had I found your hostages on the _James_ before sailing or within a day after, you should have had them back again,” said Murray firmly. “But there is no point to this argument; for hostages or no hostages, you see me returned with the treasure, as I promised.”

“---- me, ye’ve been long enough gone,” complained Flint. “It hath been a month more than ye promised.”

“For that I had excellent reasons,” answered my great-uncle. “I was chased twice on my way hither.”

Flint was impressed by this--also, his eyes strayed, as if lured by a magnet of irresistible power, back to the heap of treasure on the deck below.

“Ye must ha’ had rare success,” he admitted unwillingly. “We ha’ the gold o’ the Indies here!”

He looked up and happened to meet the awe-struck gaze of Moira O’Donnell. A sneer curled his lips.

“But ye carry passengers, I see,” he insinuated. “Gold and women! ’Tis a fine combination, Murray, but there’s a rule in our Articles you were all for establishing. Number Four, eh? It sticks in my crop, for ye called it once on me.

“‘And that there may be less occasion for broils amongst our company, we do further decree that gaming may be prohibited at any time when in the captain’s judgment it becomes dangerous to our harmony, as likewise, that at no time and under no circumstances may women be taken and kept as spoil aboard our vessels or any vessel upon which our company may chance to fare.’

“What d’ye say to that? What of Rule Four now?”

“I wish it was observed as strictly aboard the _Walrus_ as on the _Royal James_” returned Murray. “As to gaming, it seems that you allow your crew full license.”

“I’ll govern my own ship,” responded Flint sourly. “Ye ha’ yet to answer my questions.”

My great-uncle took snuff.

“This lady,” he said, with the slightest emphasis, “is the daughter of my friend here, Colonel O’Donnell, a gentleman who represents in our venture the group of my friends who made it possible for me to intercept the treasure-ship.”

O’Donnell, whose face had been growing redder and redder throughout this conversation, plucked his daughter by the elbow and led her away.

“I’ll be thanking ye to let me know when the time comes there’s an end o’ mangy curs in these parts,” he remarked over his shoulder. “’Tis not to be hearing my daughter insulted and my own self explained to the scum of the sea that I’ll be standing quiet and idle in front of as----”

“Peace, _chevalier_!” interrupted Murray, and there was a ring in his voice that compelled obedience.

Flint’s blue jowl took on a sickly greenish pallor and the tiny veins over his cheekbones commenced to beat.

“---- me for a ---- ---- ---- if I’ll stand for such from any sneaking, longjawed, Irish Papist ----”

“That will do,” said my great-uncle without raising his voice.

Flint subsided.

“Colonel O’Donnell and his daughter are my guests,” my great-uncle continued. “They have played essential parts in our capture of the treasure. I must insist, Flint, that you accord them a courtesy similar to that which I should extend to friends of yours in a like situation.”

“They’re no friends o’ mine,” growled Flint. “This is more o’ your cursed political blethering. Well, I’m sick o’ it, Murray, and I care not who knows it. First, ye carry us north to America, just to crimp two men, with not two hundred pounds in booty to show for the voyage. Next, ye shut me up here for the better part of six months for my men to rot with fever and drink and my ship to foul her bottom----”

“On both these counts you have your own negligence to blame,” put in my great-uncle.

“--and last,” Flint fumed on without heeding him, “ye bring to the Rendeyvoo a man and a woman who are not of our company, and who, for all ye know, may go hence, and loose a King’s ship on us some day when we are careened and helpless.”

“Not you,” returned Murray sarcastically. “You’ll not careen, Flint. That would mean work for your crew. But you concern yourself needlessly. Colonel O’Donnell has reasons for keeping his share in our enterprise under cover. He is more safely to be trusted in the circumstances than many another.”

“I care not who he is or what you may have on him,” cried Flint, working himself into a fury. “Ye ha’ introduced four strangers into our midst without the let or permission of others of our company.”

“I do not recognize the right of any other to tell me what I shall or shall not do,” replied my great-uncle haughtily. “Such as it is, this company is the creation of my efforts, and I venture the assertion, Captain Flint, that it will not long survive my leadership. The four strangers of whom you complain have been essential factors in enabling me to win the treasure before you--which now awaits your convenience for division, according to the terms I originally stipulated.”

If Murray’s last words were intended to stimulate Flint’s cupidity anew they succeeded. The captain of the _Walrus_ opened his mouth to shout defiance, then let his eyes wander again to the pile under the break of the poop.

“How--how much?” he asked, almost fearfully.

“Seven hundred and sixty-three thousand, nine hundred and ninety-five pounds in coin and bullion, without counting a chest of jewels and three chests of plate,” replied my great-uncle promptly. “You will note that I have favored our people in the division, allotting to them all in excess of the million and a half pounds the _Santissima Trinidad_ was expected to carry.”

A cunning look crept into Flint’s face.

“Where’s the rest?” he croaked.

My great-uncle took snuff.

“Quite safely disposed of, I assure you,” he answered.

“Down below?”

“No, ’tis no longer aboard.”

Flint swallowed hard.

“Ye mean it ain’t here? It ain’t aboard the _James_?”

“Precisely, captain.”

“Gut me!” roared Flint. “Ye divided it by your lone? Wi’out a man from the _Walrus_ to stand by and see fair play? I’ll not support it, Murray. Curse me if I will!”

My great-uncle tapped his snuff-box.

“Your suspicions are quite unnecessary,” he said. “Had I intended to defraud you, be sure I would not have enlarged the sum intended for division betwixt the two ships by sixty-three thousand pounds and more. Indeed, figuring in the jewels and plate, there must be an excess of better than one hundred thousand pounds.”

“I know your tricks!” yelled Flint. “May I be ---- ---- for a ---- ---- ---- if any lousy swab of a sea-lawyer politician is a-goin’ to cast dust in my eyes. ’Twould be the very thing you’d do, Murray, to attempt to cozen me into believing seven hundred thousand pounds had been set aside for your ‘friends’ by throwing in an extra hundred thousand pounds for our division. ‘Friends!’ By thunder, the only friend ye know is yourself, ye dried-up wisp of a ----”

“That will do,” said my great-uncle in his still, level voice.

Flint opened and shut his mouth rapidly without a sound issuing forth.

“I bar personalities, captain,” warned my redoubtable relative.

One hand barely touched his sword-hilt.

“I trust there will be no occasion for me to repeat the warning,” he remarked.

Flint’s baffled rage was comic to behold.

“Aye, you and your fine gentleman ways!” he choked. “I know ye! Gut me if I’ll support it to be swindled thus. A woman and strangers aboard! And eight hundred thousand pounds missing! ‘Safely disposed of,’ says you! I’ll warrant. Safe where you can collar it any time you please. I knowed it as soon as I marked the flutter of a petticoat. A woman and gold----”

Long John Silver swung himself up on to the poop from the head of the port ladder and stamped toward us.

“Beggin’ your pardon, Cap’n Murray, sir!” His pleasant voice broke through Flint’s diatribe.

“My duty, Master Ormerod. And Master Corlaer, too. Like old times, ain’t it, gentlemen, all of us together? I hopes as how ye’ll overlook my boldness, Cap’n Murray, but I ha’ a word to speak to Cap’n Flint--fo’csle council, sir.”

My great-uncle took another pinch of snuff.

“Ah, yes,” he observed drily. “I recall that aboard the _Walrus_ the fo’csle council must be heard. I trust that you can instil some common sense into your captain’s head. He hath need of it, Silver.”

Flint glared, but Silver snatched whatever reply he intended out of his mouth.

“Thank ’ee, sir. You just let me an’ Cap’n Flint ha’ a word in private, and maybe we’ll see a way out o’ this tangle.”

“Suit yourself,” said my great-uncle with a shrug.

Silver pulled his forelock, and his large face lighted up as if a considerable favor had been conferred.

“We won’t be no time at all, sir. Thank ’ee kindly.”

He put his free hand under Flint’s elbow, and I marveled to see the ease with which he was able to bend his captain to his will. Accustomed as I was to Murray’s autocratic discipline, it was a revelation to establish contact again with the free-and-easy spirit of the _Walrus_, where any man might become commander if he was able to muster a majority of the fo’csle to raise cutlasses in his behalf. Flint obediently followed his quartermaster to the sta’b’d side of the poop, and there they laid their heads close and collogued for a quarter-glass, Silver at first arguing and Flint resisting him.

“Silver is no man to let hard on four hundred thousand pounds slip through his hands,” I said.

“Andt maybe he says not to let eight hundred thousand pounds get away, needer,” commented Peter. “_Ja_, I t’ink so.”

Murray nodded slowly.

“You are more like to be right than wrong, friend Peter. Of all the _Walrus’_ people he hath the most acute intelligence. A choice knave!”

Colonel O’Donnell stalked back to us from the extremity of the stern with Moira on his arm.

“Did ye put a flea in the rascal’s ear, Murray?” he demanded. “By the Mass, I never thought to hear ye tolerate such impudence on your own deck.”

“I am no man for quarreling without an adequate end in sight,” returned my great-uncle. “Never threaten unless you must, _chevalier_, and then smite with a sure aim.”

“Words!” grumbled the Irishman. “’Tis time we had a little action.”

Moira disengaged herself from her father and came to stand betwixt Peter and me.

“If there’s to be more fighting,” says she, “I will have a pistol and cutlass and do my share. I’ll not stand idly by to be shot at the way I was on the _Santissima Trinidad_--more by reason that if I must sail with pirates I’ll be preferring Captain Murray to the fellow yonder in the red coat.”

There was a high gallantry about her that drew a chuckle even from Peter.

“Some time I take you to der wilderness country, andt we shoot us bears andt scalp Injuns,” he promised.

She clasped her hands.

“I am all for that, Peter,” she cried. “Sure, I’d sooner fight Indians than pirates. But see, Bob! There’s the red-headed boy will be making signals to you from the larboard ladder.”

Darby McGraw’s flaming top-knot projected just far enough above the level of the deck to show his eyes and a hand that jerked mysteriously at me.

“Come up, Darby,” I invited him.

But he shook his head vigorously, so I crossed to his side.

“What is ailing you?” I asked.

“Sorra a trouble in the whole of creation,” he returned in his rich brogue. “But I’d walk my two feet over the galley-stove as soon as stand so near the old devil as yourself, Master Bob. My troth, he’s the terrible cruel feller, and him that ancient old he’d oughter been waked these many years past.”

“He’s no more to be feared than Flint,” I answered, laughing.

“Ah, there’s little ye know to be saying the like of that!” exclaimed Darby. “With Flint ’tis a blow and a curse and ‘take it or leave it!’ But him! He’d put the evil eye on the lot of us if the notion but came into the head of him.”

“I rather be his friend than his enemy,” I admitted. “Do they fear him so aboard the _Walrus_?”

Darby squinted sideways at me.

“Whiles they fear him. And then again when the rum is flowing-- But I’ll be saying what maybe I’ll be sorry for later. I see ye found the elegant young maid that went to the Whale’s Head with ye. My faith, ain’t she the pretty creature! Will she be a pirate, too?”

“No more than Peter and me.”

“Do ye tell me that same! And ye took her along with the treasure, the lads do be saying below. That was the grand haul! But they say, too, a good half of it ye buried on that island Long John do be always singing about.”

“So you have heard that!” I cried.

“Troth, yes. They was telling Long John and me before he come up to speak with Cap’n Flint. God save us, who’d think there was so much money in the world? But here comes John and the cap’n now. I’d better be skippin’.”

He slid down the ladder as he spoke, and I rejoined the group about my great-uncle. Flint strode across the deck, his face like a thunder-cloud. Silver, at his elbow, exhibited a countenance wreathed in smiles.

“We’ll divide what’s below,” said Flint abruptly.

“I rejoice that you have come to your senses,” replied Murray.

Silver spoke up.

“He’s a main jealous cap’n, Cap’n Flint is, sir. Allus has a lookout for the interests o’ his crew. A kind o’ gardeen for us, ye might say. But we’re all mighty beholden to yourself for counting in the _Walrus_ same as the _James_; and speakin’ on behalf o’ the _Walrus_, I make bold to say as we won’t forget it, Cap’n Murray, sir.”

My great-uncle listened to this with the shadow of a smile on his face.

“I thank you, Silver,” he acknowledged blandly. “I was confident you would appreciate the situation. Will you divide at once, Flint?”

Flint growled in his throat, then mastered his temper by a substantial effort.

“We’ll appoint the usual committee o’ six to check over with your men, Murray,” he rasped. “I’ll send my boats to shift our portion.”

And he turned on his heel. John Silver pulled his forelock and nodded to all of us.

“Thank ’ee kindly, Cap’n Murray. My duty, sirs. And the young lady. Mighty nice to ha’ a sweet, pretty face in the cabin, ain’t it? Well, gentlemen, there’s no excuse now for any o’ us if we don’t go home and make them happy as we left for the sea.”

“Not the slightest,” agreed my great-uncle. “I take it you are returning to your dear old mother, Silver--or is it your fondly waiting wife?”

Silver grinned.

“’Tain’t neither, sir. But there’s a sightly gal in St. Pierre in Martinico as I could set up shop with. A bit o’ color in her, but then----”

He swept his arm in a liberal gesture as he stumped off to the ladder and hopped lightly down to the maindeck after his commander.