"Not a friend of yours, I hope?" said Mr. Chalk, at last.
"Who?" inquired the captain, starting from his reverie.
"The dead man atop of the treasure," replied the other.
"No," said the captain, briefly.
"Is it worth much?" asked Mr. Chalk.
"Roughly speaking, about half a million," responded the captain, calmly.
Mr. Chalk rose and walked up and down the room. His eyes were bright and his face pinker than usual.
"Why don"t you get it?" he demanded, at last, pausing in front of his host.
"Why, it ain"t mine," said the captain, staring. "D"ye think I"m a thief?"
Mr. Chalk stared in his turn. "But who does it belong to, then?" he inquired.
"I don"t know," replied the captain. "All I know is, it isn"t mine, and that"s enough for me. Whether it was rightly come by I don"t know. There it is, and there it"ll stay till the crack of doom."
"Don"t you know any of his relations or friends?" persisted the other.
"I know nothing of him except his name," said the captain, "and I doubt if even that was his right one. Don Silvio he called himself-a Spaniard.
It"s over ten years ago since it happened. My ship had been bought by a firm in Sydney, and while I was waiting out there I went for a little run on a schooner among the islands. This Don Silvio was aboard of her as a pa.s.senger. She went to pieces in a gale, and we were the only two saved. The others were washed overboard, but we got ash.o.r.e in the boat, and I thought from the trouble he was taking over his bag that the danger had turned his brain."
"Ah!" said the keenly interested Mr. Chalk.
"He was a sick man aboard ship," continued the captain, "and I soon saw that he hadn"t saved his life for long. He saw it, too, and before he died he made me promise that the bag should be buried with him and never disturbed. After I"d promised, he opened the bag and showed me what was in it. It was full of precious stones-diamonds, rubies, and the like; some of them as large as birds" eggs. I can see him now, propped up against the boat and playing with them in the sunlight. They blazed like stars. Half a million he put them at, or more."
"What good could they be to him when he was dead?" inquired the listener.
Captain Bowers shook his head. "That was his business, not mine," he replied. "It was nothing to do with me. When he died I dug a grave for him, as I told you, with a bit of a broken oar, and laid him and the bag together. A month afterwards I was taken off by a pa.s.sing schooner and landed safe at Sydney."
Mr. Chalk stopped, and mechanically picking up the pieces of his pipe placed them on the table.
"Suppose that you had heard afterwards that the things had been stolen?"
he remarked.
"If I had, then I should have given information, I think," said the other. "It all depends."
"Ah! but how could you have found them again?" inquired Mr. Chalk, with the air of one propounding a poser.
"With my map," said the captain, slowly. "Before I left I made a map of the island and got its position from the schooner that picked me up; but I never heard a word from that day to this."
"Could you find them now?" said Mr. Chalk.
"Why not?" said the captain, with a short laugh. "The island hasn"t run away."
He rose as he spoke and, tossing the fragments of his visitor"s pipe into the fireplace, invited him to take a turn in the garden. Mr. Chalk, after a feeble attempt to discuss the matter further, reluctantly obeyed.
CHAPTER III
Mr. Chalk, with his mind full of the story he had just heard, walked homewards like a man in a dream. The air was fragrant with spring and the scent of lilac revived memories almost forgotten. It took him back forty years, and showed him a small boy treading the same road, pa.s.sing the same houses. Nothing had changed so much as the small boy himself; nothing had been so unlike the life he had pictured as the life he had led. Even the blamelessness of the latter yielded no comfort; it savoured of a lack of spirit.
His mind was still busy with the past when he reached home. Mrs. Chalk, a woman of imposing appearance, who was sitting by the window at needlework, looked up sharply at his entrance. Before she spoke he had a dim idea that she was excited about something.
"I"ve got her," she said, triumphantly.
"Oh!" said Mr. Chalk.
"She didn"t want to come at first," said Mrs. Chalk; "she"d half promised to go to Mrs. Morris. Mrs. Morris had heard of her through Harris, the grocer, and he only knew she was out of a place by accident.
He-"
Her words fell on deaf ears. Mr. Chalk, gazing through the window, heard without comprehending a long account of the capture of a new housemaid, which, slightly altered as to name and place, would have pa.s.sed muster as an exciting contest between a skilful angler and a particularly sulky salmon. Mrs. Chalk, noticing his inattention at last, pulled up sharply.
"You"re not listening!" she cried.
"Yes, I am; go on, my dear," said Mr. Chalk.
"What did I say she left her last place for, then?" demanded the lady.
Mr. Chalk started. He had been conscious of his wife"s voice, and that was all. "You said you were not surprised at her leaving," he replied, slowly; "the only wonder to you was that a decent girl should have stayed there so long."
Mrs. Chalk started and bit her lip. "Yes," she said, slowly. "Ye-es. Go on; anything else?"
"You said the house wanted cleaning from top to bottom," said the painstaking Mr. Chalk.
"Go on," said his wife, in a smothered voice. "What else did I say?"
"Said you pitied the husband," continued Mr. Chalk, thoughtfully.
Mrs. Chalk rose suddenly and stood over him. Mr. Chalk tried desperately to collect his faculties.
"How dare you?" she gasped. "I"ve never said such things in my life.
Never. And I said that she left because Mr. Wilson, her master, was dead and the family had gone to London. I"ve never been near the house; so how could I say such things?"
Mr. Chalk remained silent.
"What made you think of such things?" persisted Mrs. Chalk.
Mr. Chalk shook his head; no satisfactory reply was possible. "My thoughts were far away," he said, at last.