Cursed be the treasure
a glance now and again into the darkness around, and feeling that if
anything lay in wait for me I should be an easy prey. This feeling of
helplessness increased upon me as I pushed further and further into the
night, and felt the first bite of the cold air that warned me I was
coming to the more open parts. How I expected to keep my candle alight
I don't know; but I managed it through the first exposed space, waiting
for a pause in the wind before I crossed, and reaching shelter as a
huge gust raced out of the north and screamed overhead with a hundred
mingled cries of pain and wrath and laughter. I rested a moment, for
somehow my slow passage left me strangely breathless and exhausted,
and I was all a-quiver with nervous apprehension, feeling that I was
stepping deeper and deeper into some unknown snare. In spite of the
crying gale, the air seemed to be tightening around me, the darkness
closing in. Again and again I stopped, peering about me and ahead, and
always it seemed that a luring shadow sank into the blackness as though
dragging me on and still on. But I kept my attention on the flame of
my candle, guarding it as though it were the last spark of my life,
till I came to the stairway. I felt for it with my foot, but couldn't
find it. I took a step forward and felt again, but it wasn't there. I
held out the candle and gazed into the dark. There was no stairway at
all, only a black length of corridor as far as the little light could
pierce, and I began to wonder where I was. I traced over in my mind
the way I had come, with the growing fear at my heart that I was lost
somewhere in that wild ruin in the dead of a tempestuous night. But I
wouldn't give in. Again I felt for the stairs as though they might have
miraculously grown there while I was thinking; and again I retraced in
imagination the way I had come. And then faintly behind me I heard a
low clang as of a closing gate, and the blood ran cold under my feet.
I turned quickly; too quickly; for a breath caught at my candle, and
with a leap and a flutter the flame went out. But with the last of
the light I saw a pale face at my shoulder, very thin and filmy, with
black hollows at the eyes; and as I gazed horror-stricken it faded into
the darkness, and I heard a low sigh breathed so close to me that the
thin breath seemed to fan my hair. For a moment I was too terrified to
move. Then I think a frenzy must have possessed me, for with a courage
not my own I stepped boldly forward and clutched at the empty air. It
yielded to my outstretched hands, and I stumbled and struck against a
wall, but steadying myself I felt my way forward till my fingers closed
on something cold and hard; and again I heard a sad moaning. And then
a sudden horror struck like a knife at my heart, for I was gripping
the fleshless fingers of a skeleton. I shrieked, and fell to the floor
unconscious.
It was in Worthing's room that I came to myself, and Worthing was
throwing water on my brow. The horror was still upon me, for waking to
see his face above me it was as though I were again in that dreadful
corridor with the face of the spectre fading from my eyes. I tried to
scream, but Worthing clapped his hand to my mouth, and bade me be quiet
in a voice of such command that at once I felt in possession of my wits.
I sat up and looked about me.
"That's better," said Worthing; and added, "So you've had enough of
playing the ghost, have you?"
At first I didn't understand, and then I cried indignantly, "Worthing!"
and with my anger my courage came back to me.
"So?" he questioned.
"Do you think...." I began.
"Think?" he retorted.
"I tell you; I swear to you," I blurted out; "I thought I heard you
scream, and I came to you. But I lost my way in the dark, and a door
closed behind me, and my candle went out, and I saw a face, and I felt
a skeleton, and I tell you...."
But he laughed cuttingly into my speech:
"Well, you've had a bad time of it; you'd better lie down and go to
sleep."
It was only after long protestation that I succeeded in persuading him
to believe my story; and then he seemed strangely uneasy.
"There's something I can't understand," he muttered.
"Why, it's the ghost," I said easily.
"Bah!" he scoffed me down.
So we lay down together till the morning, and the wind died away, and
the winter sun shone bleakly over a frozen earth.
But though we spent the day searching the ruins, for it was Sunday and
of course there was no school, we couldn't solve the mystery of the
night. We retraced my path as well as I could judge it, but there was
no skeleton anywhere; and where Worthing had found me--for hearing my
shriek he had come to my aid--there was only a solid wall.
"You must have gone clean through there," he said seriously, "otherwise
you couldn't have lost your way without tumbling head first from the
ruins." But though we shook at it, and examined it for possible springs
and locks, the wall refused to give up its secret. The only thing that
marked it as different from the adjacent masonry was a patch of little
punctures as though a shot-gun had been emptied into it at close range.
So we searched and probed and questioned, but discovered nothing;
nor did we even find my candle which to Worthing was the greatest
confirmation of my story.
We didn't tell my father of the adventure of the night, but somehow
from that hour we felt sworn friends, and I never received again from
Worthing the cold chaff which made him so feared and hated at Rancey
Bridge.
He visited several times at Sunset Towers, and my father was loud
in his praises. He considered him a sane, level-headed fellow, just
the kind of friend to have behind one. But it didn't seem to me that
Worthing felt the same esteem for my father, and this was perhaps the
one shadow on our friendship. And even I, watching the two, realized
how my father needed such a friend himself.
Then the Christmas holidays came, and all except a few of the boarders
went home for the vacation.
CHAPTER X
MY FATHER TELLS A STORY
Christmas was soon upon us; and waking in the morning I felt eagerly
in my stocking, and was delighted beyond measure to find a bright new
pistol, a long-coveted treasure. I was up and dressed in no time, and
out into the frozen air. I soon had a target set up, and regardless of
numbed fingers put to proof the steadiness of my hand and eye; till my
father came out and dragged me unwillingly to breakfast, extracting
from me the promise to put away the deadly weapon till next day, for
there were a few boys left at Rancey Bridge over the holidays, and they
were to come and spend Christmas with me. My father didn't want any
accidents.
It was a cold clear day, and the ground lay a few inches deep in snow.
We had an uproarious time, and ate a magnificent dinner; and in the
evening we gathered round the dining-room fire to hear my father tell a
story before it was time for my friends to tramp back to the school.
Now I was considered something of a story-teller at Rancey Bridge, but
I had always insisted that I was a mere stuttering dummy to my father;
so the excitement was intense as we gathered before the leaping flames,
the only light in the room, and waited for my father to begin. He was
sitting back half in shadow, with the red glow of the fire lighting his
cheeks in swarthy leaps of colour, till his face seemed alternately to
spring at us out of the darkness and sink back into the dusk beyond.
I can't give all his story, for he kept us there two hours or more; and
his words without his accent, always so hushed and tense, as though he
were in the very presence of the things he was describing, would convey
little of the impression he made upon us. For he took us right away
from the life we knew, and we were afloat with a band of adventurers on
the Spanish Main, with our schooner nosing out to El Dorado far across
the sea.
We were all there on board that ship. The dark crafty little captain
with eyes like hard black beads which glowed with an underflush of red
when he was angry, terrified us when we felt his gaze upon us; for he
seemed an evil man, and one without conscience or remorse, and in his
company we couldn't know to what wickedness we might be driven; for
there was no question of disobedience though he should bid us pawn our
souls to the devil. Then there was the burly savage of a mate, a sort
of furious club in the hands of the wicked little captain; a creature
ready and willing for all abominations, but lacking a cunning mind to
plan the atrocities he gloried in committing. His huge wide smile of
evil delight as he listened to some tale of cruel villainy from the
captain, rubbing his great hairy hand relishingly across his mouth, was
a thing to frighten the boldest. And so one by one the crew came before
our eyes, for the most part decent enough fellows, but snared by some
malignant fate into the clutches of that abominable pair. And lastly
there was the priest; a lukewarm superstitious round little fellow, on
the one hand in terror of the captain and his mighty shadow, and on the
other hand in dread of hell-fire; and between the two fears living a
life of haunted terror, torn between cowardice and conscience.
I remember there was a mutiny on board that ship before the golden
coasts were reached. At least, the captain and the mate discovered a
mutiny, probably for their own amusement to relieve the monotony of
the voyage; and then there followed floggings and hangings, while the
captain twitched his cruel and wicked lips, and the mate stripped his
huge arms in brutal anticipation, and Jack Priest knelt and mumbled
prayers, and ventured a timid word of protest, and was sent packing to
his job of saying a Mass for the murdered and seeing them safely tossed
to the sharks.
But the bloodshed was to bear a terrible harvest; and I remember how
my father played upon our expectations, till we were in a fever of
excitement, wondering what was to come of it; for gradually through
the story the note of coming doom was emphasized so subtly, yet so
insistently, that the ship seemed to be moving forward into the closing
shadow of some terrible fate. There were warnings in the wind and in
the sea, and the priest was whimpering with superstitious terror;
and beneath the fear and submission of the daunted crew there were
mutterings and low-hissed threats which were ominous of evil things.
So at length land was sighted; but the wonderful palms that waved
overhead, and the splendid sun setting serenely beyond the tall dark
stems, were but as an ironic smile of the brooding destiny which lay in
wait for that ill-starred crew.
After this there was the search for the treasure, which the rumour that
had led them there said was hidden in some secret tomb of kings in a
lonely valley far away across the hills. But first there were natives
to reckon with; and so followed exciting battles, but with the one
inevitable result: the natives were defeated and enslaved, and driven
in chained gangs before the conquerors for beasts of burden when the
treasure should be found and captured. And then there was a weary
march, with wild beasts to do battle with, and tormenting insects, and
heat by day and cold by night, and fever, till it was a shattered
company which arrived at length at the lonely valley beyond the hills;
and the earth was bare and desolate, and there was no shelter, and for
water only a trickling stream that feebly threaded its way along a
shrunken channel.
But the love of gold was triumphant above the wretched weariness
of the land; and the captain at least was undaunted, giving his
orders like the sting of a snake; and the mate rose enormously and