"This chap I was speaking about,--the fellow who told me so much about this region," said Gavin, "told me there is supposed to be pirate gold buried in more than one of these keys."
"Rot!" snorted Milo with needless vehemence. "All poppyc.o.c.k!
Look at it sanely for a minute, and you"ll see that all the yarns of pirate gold-including Captain Kidd"s--are rank idiocy. In the first place, the pirates never seized any such fabulous sums of money as they were credited with. The bullion ships always went under heavy man-o"-war escort. When pirates looted some fairly rich merchant ship there were dozens of men to divide the plunder among. And they sailed to the nearest safe port to blow it all on an orgy. Of course, once in a blue moon they buried or hid the valuables they got from one ship while they went after another. And if they chanced to sink or be captured and hanged during such a raid the treasure remained hidden. If they survived, they blew it.
That"s the one off-chance of there ever being any buried pirate treasure. And there would be precious little of it.
at that. A few hundred dollars worth at most. No, Brice.
this everlasting legend of buried treasure is fine in a sea-yarn. But in real life it"s buncombe."
"But this same man told me there were stories of bullion ships and even more modern vessels carrying a money cargo that sank in these waters, during storms or from running into reefs,"
pursued Brice, with no great show of interest, as he leaned far overside for a second glimpse at a school of five-foot baracuda which lay basking on the snowy surface of the sand.
two fathoms below the boat. "That, at least, sounds probable.
doesn"t it?"
"No," snapped Milo flushing angrily and his brow creasing, "it doesn"t. These water are traversed every year by thousands of craft of all sizes. The water is crystal clear. Any wrecked ship could be seen at the bottom. Why, everybody has seen the hull of that old tramp steamer a few miles above here. It"s in deep water, at that. What chance--?"
"Yet there are hundreds of such stories afloat," persisted Brice. "And there are more yarns of buried treasure among the keys than there are keys. For instance didn"t old Caesar, the negro pirate, hang out here, somewhere?"
Milo laughed again, this time with a maddening tolerance.
"Oh, Caesar?" said he. "To be sure. He"s as much a legend of these keys as Lafitte is of New Orleans. He was an escaped slave, who sc.r.a.ped together a dozen fellow-ruffians, black and white and yellow--mostly yellow--about a century ago, and stole a long boat or a broken-down sloop, and started in at the trade of pirate. He didn"t last long. And there"s no proof he ever had any special success. But he"s the sea-hero of the conchs. They"ve named a key and a so-called creek after him, and in my father"s time there used to be an old iron ring in a bowlder known as "Caesar"s Rock." The ring was probably put there by oystermen. But the conchs insisted Caesar used to tie up there. Then there"s the "Pirates"
Punchbowl," off Coconut Grove. Caesar is supposed to have dug that. He--"
An enormous sailfish--dazzlingly metallic blue and silver--broke from the calm water just ahead, and whirled high in air, smiting the bay again with a splash that sounded like a gunshot.
"That fellow must have been close to seven feet long,"
commented Milo as the two men watched the churned water where the fish had struck. "He"s the kind you see when you aren"t trolling. He"s after a school of ballyhoos or mossbunkers .... There"s Roustabout Key just ahead," he finished as their launch rounded an outcrop of rock and came in view of a mile-long wooded island a bare thousand yards off the weather bow.
A mangrove fringe covered the sh.o.r.eline, two thirds of the way around the key. At the eastern end was a strip of snowy beach backed by an irregular line of coconut palms, and with a very respectable dock in the foreground. From the pier a wooden path led upward through the scattering double row of palms to a corrugated iron hut, with smaller huts and outbuildings half seen through the foliage-vistas beyond.
"I"ve some fairly good mango trees back yonder," said Standish as he brought the launch alongside the dock"s wabbly float, "and grapefruit that is paying big dividends at last. The mangoes won"t be ripe till June, of course. But they"re sold already, to the last half-bushel of them."
""Futures," eh?" suggested Gavin.
""Futures,"" a.s.sented Milo. "And "futures" in farming are just about as certain as in Wall Street. There"s a mighty gamble to this farm-game."
"How long have--?" began Gavin, then stopped short and stared.
One or two negro laborers had drifted down toward the dock, as the boat warped in at the float. Now, from the corrugated iron hut appeared a white man, who, at sight of the boat, broke into a limping run and was in time to catch the line which Milo flung at him.
The man was spa.r.s.ely and sketchily clad. At first, his tanned face seemed to be of several different colors and to have been modeled by some bungling caricaturist. Yet, despite this eccentricity of aspect, something about the obsequiously hurrying man struck Brice as familiar. And, all at once, he recognized him.
This was the big beach comber with whom Gavin had fought barely twenty-four hours earlier. The man bore bruises and swellings a-plenty on his rugged features, where Brice"s whalebone blows had crashed. And they had distorted his face almost past recognition. He moved, too, with manifest discomfort, as if all his huge body were as sore as his visage.
"h.e.l.lo, Roke!!" hailed Milo genially, then in amaze, "what in thunder have you been doing to yourself? Been trying to stop the East Coast Flyer? Or did you just get into an argument with one of the channel dredges?"
"Fell," said Roke, succinctly, jerking his thumb back toward the corrugated iron hut. "Climbed my roof to mend a leak.
Fell. My face hit every b.u.mp. Then I landed on a pile of coconuts. I"m sore all over. I--"
He gurgled, mouthingly, as his swollen eyes chanced to light on Gavin Brice, who was just following Milo from the launch to the float. And his discolored and unshaven jaw went slack.
"Oh, Brice," said Standish carelessly. "This is my foreman here, Perry Roke. As a rule he looks like other people, except that he"s bigger, just now his cravings for falling off corrugated roofs have done things to his face. Shake hands with him. If you like the job I"m going to offer you he and you will be side-partners over here."
Gavin faced his recent adversary, grinning pleasantly up at the battered and scowling face, and noting that the knife sheath at Roke"s hip was still empty.
"h.e.l.lo!" he said civilly, offering his hand.
Roke gulped again, went purple, and, with sudden furious vehemence, grabbed at the proffered hand, enfolding it in his own monstrous grip in an industrious attempt to smash its every bone.
But reading the intent with perfect ease. Brice shifted his own hand ever so little and with nimbly practised fingers eluded the crushing clasp, at the same time slipping his thumb over the heel of Roke"s clutching right hand and letting his three middle fingers meet at the exact center of that hand"s back. Then, tightening his hold, he gave an almost imperceptible twist. It was one of the first and the simplest of the tricks his jiu-jutsu instructor had taught him. And, as ever with an opponent not prepared for it, the grip served.
To the heedlessly watching Standish he seemed merely to be accepting the invitation to shake hands with Roke. But the next instant, under the apparently harmless contact, Roke"s big body veered sharply to one side, from the hips upward, and a bellow of raging pain broke from his puffed lips.
"Oh, I beg your pardon!" cried Brice in quick contrition: "You must have hurt your hand when you fell off that roof. I"m sorry if I made it worse."
Nursing his wrenched wrist. Roke glowered hideously at the smiling Gavin. Brice could feel no compunction for his own behavior. For he remembered the hurled knife and the brutal kicking of the dog. Yet he repented him of the hand-twisting trick. For if he and Roke were expected to work together as Milo had said, he had certainly made a most unfortunate beginning to their acquaintanceship, and just now he had added new and painful aggravation to his earlier offense.
Milo was surveying the sufferer with no great pity, as Roke bent over his hurt wrist.
"Too bad!" commented Standish. "I suppose that will put a crimp in your violin-playing for a while."
Turning to Gavin who looked in new surprise at the giant on hearing of this unexpected accomplishment. Milo explained:
"I hired Roke to run this key for me and keep the conchs and the c.o.o.ns at work. But I"ve got a pretty straight tip that, as soon as my back is turned, he cuts indoors and spends most of his day whanging at that disreputable old violin of his. And when Rodney Hade comes over here. I can"t get a lick of work out of Roke, for love or money. Hade is one of the best amateur violinists in America, and he"s daft on playing. He drops in here, every now and then--he has an interest with me in the groves--and as soon as he catches sight of Roke"s violin, he starts playing it.
That means no more work out of Roke till Hade chooses to stop.
He just stands, with his mouth wide open, hypnotized. Can"t drag him away for a second. Hey, Roke?"
Roke had ceased nursing his wrist and had listened with sheepish amus.e.m.e.nt to his employer"s guying. But at this question, he made answer:
"I"m here now."
He jerked the thumb of his uninjured hand toward a spic-and-span launch which lay moored between two sodden scows, and then nodded in the direction of the corrugated iron hut among the trees.
Listening--though the wind set the wrong way for it--Brice could hear faintly the strains of a violin, played ever so softly and with a golden wealth of sweetness. Even at that distance, by listening closely, he could make out a phrase or so of Dvorak"s "Hiawatha" music from the "New World Symphony."
Milo"s loud laugh broke in on his audition and on the suddenly rapt look upon Roke"s bruised face.
"Come along!" said Standish, leading the way toward the house.
"Music"s a fine thing, I"m told. But it doesn"t spray a grapefruit orchard or keep the scale off of mango trees. Come up to the house. I want to show you over the island and have a chat with you about the job I have in mind."
As Milo strode on the two others fell in step behind him.
Brice lowered his voice and said to the sulking Roke:
"That collie belongs to Mr. Standish. I did you a good turn it seems by keeping you from stealing him. You"d have been in a worse fix than you are now, if Mr. Standish had come over here to-day and found him on the island."
Roke did not deign to reply, but moved a little farther from the speaker.
"At this rate," said Brice pleasantly, "you and I are likely to have a jolly time together, out here. I can"t imagine a merrier chum for a desert island visit. I only hope I won"t neglect my work chatting with you all day."
Roke eyed him obliquely as he plodded on, and his battered lip-corner lifted a little in what looked like a beast snarl.
But he said nothing.