CHAPTER XXIX
"I could scarce believe it wasn't a dream still, when, having beencalled half-an-hour after daybreak, I first saw the change in theappearance of things all about us. The horizon lay round as clear asheart could wish--not a speck in sight save the little dingy islets at adistance; the broad blue ocean sparkling far away on one side, and thewater to windward, in the direction we had come, showing the samebrownish tint we had seen the day before, while it took the islandbefore us in its bight, and turned off eastward with the breeze till itspread against the open sky. The top of the land was high enough to shutout the sea-line, and being low water at the time, it was plain enoughnow why Jones wished to keep the white streaks overnight; for, where thedingy-coloured ripples melted on the other side towards the blue, youcould see by the spots of foam, and the greenish breaks here and therein the surface, that all that coast of the island was one network ofshoals and reefs, stretching out you didn't know how wide. White-waterIsland, in fact, was merely the head of them--the milky stream that hadso startled us just washing round the deep end of it, and edging fairalong the side of the reefs, with a few creeks sent in amongst them, asit were, like feelers, ere it flowed the other way: we couldn'totherwise have got so near as we were. But the island itself was thesight to fasten you, as the lovely green of it shone out in the morningsun, covering the most part of it close over, and tipping up beyond thebare break where it was steepest, with a clump of tall cocoas shootingevery here and there out of the thick bush; indeed, there was apparentlya sort of split lengthways through the midst, where, upon only walkingto the schooner's bow, one could see the bright greenwood sinking downto a hollow out of sight, under the clear gush of the breeze off a darkblue patch of the sea that hung beyond it like a wedge.
"As the tide made over the long reefs, till the last line of surf onthem vanished, it went up the little sandy cove opposite us with a plashon the beach that you could hear; the place was just what a sailor mayhave had a notion of all his life, without exactly seeing it till then;and though as yet one had but a rough guess of its size, why, itcouldn't be less than a couple of miles from end to end, with more thanthat breadth, perhaps, at the low side toward the reefs. Not a soulamongst the man-o'-war's men, I daresay, as they pressed together in theschooner's bows to see into it, but would have taken his traps thatmoment, if I'd told him, and gone ashore on the chance of passing hisdays there; so it wasn't hard to conceive, from the state it seemed toput their rough sunburnt faces in, honest as they looked, how a similarfancy would work with Master Harry Foster, even if it tried his virtue alittle.
"I had no more doubt in my mind, by this time, of its being the fellow'sintended 'hermitage,' than I had of its being the same White-waterIsland I had heard of myself, or the spot which Jones seemed to know sowell; 'twas likely the foremast-man had got an inkling of it somewhat inthe way I did; and, lying, as it happened to do, between no less thanthree channels which the Indiaman might take, after dodging us in thisfashion round the long cluster of the Maldives, she couldn't makenorth-westward again for the open sea without setting Foster and hismates pretty well upon their trip.
"Indeed, if she were to eastward of the chain at present, as I wasgreatly inclined to believe, the course of the breeze made it impossiblefor her to do otherwise; but there was one thing always kept lurkingabout my mind, like a cover to something far worse that I didn'tventure to dwell upon--namely, that Captain Finch might get wind oftheir purpose, and drive them on another tack by knocking it on thehead, either at the time or beforehand, without the courage to settle_them_. Nothing in the world would have pleased me better than to pounceupon ugly Harry at his first breakfast ashore here; but the barehorizon, and the quiet look of the island since ever we hove in sight ofit, showed this wasn't to be. At any rate, however, I was bent on seeinghow the land lay, and what sort of a place it was; so, accordingly, assoon as the hands had got breakfast, Westwood and I at once pulledashore, with a boat's-crew well armed, to overhaul it. We found thesandy beach covered, for a good way up, with a frothy slime that nodoubt came from the water on that side, with ever so many differentkinds of blubber, sea-jelly, starfish, and shell, while the rocky edgeround to windward was hung with weed that made the blocks below it seemto rise out of every surge, like green-headed, white-bearded mermenbathing. Glad enough we were to get out of the queer sulphury smell allthis stuff gave out in the heat, letting the men take every one his ownway into the bushes, which they enjoyed like so many schoolboys, andmaking ourselves right for the highest point. Here we saw over, throughthe cocoa-nut trees and wild trailing-plants below, down upon a broadbushy level towards the reefs.
"It was far the widest way of the island; indeed making it apparentlyseveral miles to go round to the different points; and as the men wereto hold right to windward, and meet again after beating the entireground, Westwood and I struck fair through amongst the tangle of wood,to see the flat below.
"We roused out a good many small birds and paraquets, and several goatscould be noticed looking at us off the grassy bits of crag above thetrees, though they didn't seem to know what we were. As for most of thewood, it was mainly such bushes and brush as thrive without water, witha bright green flush of grass and plants after the rain at the monsoon,the prickly pear creeping over the sandy parts, till we came on a trackwhere some spring or other apparently oozed down from the height,soaking in little rank spots amongst the ground leaves, with here andthere a small rusty plash about the grass-blades, as if there were taror iron in it. Here there were taller trees of different kinds on bothsides, dwindling off into the lower bush, while, to my surprise, some ofthem were such as you'd never have expected to meet with on an island ofthe size, so far off the land--bananas, mangoes, a shaddock or two, anda few more, common enough in India; though here they must evidently havebeen planted, the cocoas being the only sort natural to the place, andof them there were plenty below. Suddenly it led down into a shadyhollow, out of sight of the sea altogether, where we came on what seemedto have been a perfect garden some time or other; there were two orthree large broad-leaved shaddock-trees, and one or two others, with aheap of rubbish in the midst of the wild Indian corn and long grass,some broken bamboo-stakes standing, besides a piece of plank scatteredhere and there about the bushes.
"Right under the shade of the trees was a hole like the mouth of adraw-well, more than brimful at the time with the water from the spring,for, owing to the late rains, it made a pool close by the side, and wenttrickling away down amongst the brushwood. Every twig and leaf grewstraight up or out, save in a narrow track toward the rising ground--nodoubt made by the goats, as we noticed the prints of their hoofs on thewet mud. 'Twas evident no human being had been there for heaven knew howlong, since, by the care that had been taken with the place, it wasprobably the only spring in the island--perhaps for leagues and leaguesround indeed. Trees, branches, green grass, and all--they had such astill, moveless air under the heat and light, in the lee of the highground, with just a blue spot or two of the sea seen high up through thesharp shaddock-leaves, and the cool-looking plash of water below them,that Westwood and I sat down to wait till we heard the men. Still, therewas a terribly distinct, particular cast about the whole spot, which,taken together with the ruin and confusion, as well as the notion ofFoster and his shipmates actually plotting to come there, gave onealmost an idea of the whole story beforehand, dim as that was--thelonger you looked the more horrid it seemed. Neither natives nor asingle man could have brought the different trees to the island, orcontrived a tank-well of the kind, seeing it was apparently deep enoughto supply a ship's casks, while at the same time I couldn't helpthinking someone had lived there since it was made, or perhaps muchused.
"By the space taken up with the hut that had been there, and the littlechange in the wild state of things, most likely it was by himself he hadbeen, and for no short time. It looked, however, as if he had beencarried off in the end, otherwise his bones would have been hereabouts;probably savages, as Westwood and I conclu
ded from the scatter they hadmade of his premises. For my own part, I wondered whether Jones mightn'thave been the man, in which case most of that disturbed mind he showedlately might come of remembering the dreary desolate feeling one musthave, living long on a desert island. No doubt they had 'marooned' himfor something or other, such as not being a bloody enough captain; and Icould as easily fancy one having a spice of madness in him, after yearsashore here, as in Captain Wallis after a French prison. Still itstartled one to see one's face in the black of the well; and we couldn'tmake up our minds to drink out of it. Even the pool at its side had aqueer taste, I thought--but that may have been all a notion. All atonce, by the edge of this same pool, Westwood pointed out two or threemarks that surprised us both, being quite different from what the goatscould have made; and on observing closer, they were made out to be morelike the paws of a wild beast stamped in the mud. 'By Jove!' I said, 'nowolves on the island, surely!' 'All of them seem to stick to the pool inpreference to the well, at any rate,' said Tom; 'they appear to have thesame crotchet with ourselves, Ned!' 'Strange!' said I, 'what the devilcan it be?'
"Westwood eyed the prints over and over. 'What do you think of--a_dog_?' he asked. 'Good heavens!' exclaimed I, looking down--'yes!' andthere we sat gazing at the thing, and musing over it, with somehow orother a curious creeping of the blood, for my part, that I can'tdescribe the reason of. At last we heard the men hallooing to each otheron the level beneath, when we hurried down, and coasted round till wecame upon the boat again, where the coxswain was amusing himselfgathering shells for home--and we pulled back to the schooner.
"My first resolve after this was to keep before the breeze again, try toget sight of the ship, and tell Finch out and out, as I ought to havedone at once, what was afoot amongst his crew; or else to let SirCharles Hyde know of it, and make him a bold offer of a passage toCalcutta. However, I soon saw this wouldn't do; and a regular puzzle Ifound myself in, betwixt inclining to stick to the island and catchFoster if he came, and wishing to know how the Indiaman stood on hercourse if he didn't. Jones must have read my thoughts as I leant uponthe capstan, looking from White-water Island to the horizon and backagain; for he stepped aft, and said in a low voice, 'Lieutenant Collins,there's one thing I didn't tell you about that island before, because,as I said, I wasn't at first sure it was the one the men meant; it mayhelp to decide you, sir,' said he gravely. 'Ah?' I said. 'In thatisland,' he went on, his ordinarily dark face as pale as death, 'thereis enough gold, at this moment, to buy half an English county--ay, andbetter than gold, seeing that only one man knows the spot where it is,and _he_ would rather sail round the world without a shirt to his backthan touch one filing of the--hell's dross!'
"I looked at Jones in perfect amaze as he added, 'You may fancy now, MrCollins, whether if a man of the kind happened to get wind of this, hewould not stir heaven and earth to reach the place? But, rather thanthat gold should come into living hands,' said he fiercely, 'I would_wait for them_ by myself--ay, alone--alone'; and a shudder seemed torun through him again as he gave another glance to the island. For mypart, I drew a long breath. What he mentioned had all at once relievedmy mind wonderfully; for if this was Master Foster's cue, as I now sawit must have been the whole voyage over, why, he would be just as surenot to spread the thing widely, as he would be to get here some time, ifhe could. On second thoughts, it wasn't so plain how the rest of thecrew might work with it, on the least inkling; but inclined as Inaturally was to look upon the best side of the matter, you needn'twonder at my making up my mind as I did. The short and the long of itwas that, in an hour more, Jones and myself, with Jacobs and four othergood hands--and, somewhat to my annoyance, Mr Rollock, who persisted incoming--were pulling back for the island; while the schooner, under careof Westwood and Snelling, was hauled on a wind to stand up across theNine Degrees Channel, which the Indiaman would no doubt take as thesafest course for Western India, if all went well, and supposing I hadreckoned correctly why we missed her so long. In that case, three orfour days at most couldn't fail to bring her up; and on first sightingher at the horizon, they could easily enough strip the schooner to hersticks, keeping her stern on so as to let the ship pass without noticingthe loom of so small a craft; whereas if they didn't see her at all, inthat time, they were to bear up before the wind again for the island. Ofall things, and every circumstance being considered, I agreed withWestwood it was best not to come across her again, if we could help it.
"For our own part, in the boat, we were fully provisioned and armed forall the time we could need, not to speak of what the island itselfafforded; and after watching the schooner stand heeling off to sea,round the deep end of it, we cruised close along, not for the beach thistime, but seeking for a cove in the rocks where the boat could be hauledup out of sight, and safe from the surf at high water. This we weren'tvery long of finding behind some blocks that broke the force of thesurge, where the wild green trailers from above crept almost down to theseaweed; and after helping them a little to hide her perfectly, thewhole of us scrambled ashore. The first thing was to post a look-out onthe highest point, the sharp little peak next to the reef-side,overlooking the spring and the level ground between; on the other sideof the long green valley, full of bush in the midst, was the flat-toppedrise towards the brown water, from which I and the planter watched theschooner softening for an hour or two, till she reached the bluesea-gleam, and lessened to a speck. By that time, the men had pitched alittle canvas tent on the slope opposite to us, over the hollow--Jonesevidently being anxious to keep clear of the spot, which somebody elsehad picked out beforehand; in fact the highest ground was betwixt us andit; and on coming down through the thicket to our quarters, after astroll in which Rollock shot a couple of rose-coloured paroquets,declaring them to be splendid eating, we found Jones had had to sendover the other way for water.