Cursed be the treasure
awoke from my doze he was pacing the hut, or turning the clothes before
the fire.
I had one longer spell of wakefulness while it was still dark. The wind
had dropped, and my father had ceased to prattle. The complete silence,
together with the cutting pressure of cold air against my cheek, had
probably aroused me more alertly than usual, for of a sudden I felt
wide-awake. I looked round for my father, but he wasn't in the hut. The
lantern was no longer alight, and the fire was smouldering low. The
door stood open, and the utter blackness of the woodland seemed banked
up against it like a barricade. For a moment the fear of loneliness was
upon me, and I would have cried out, but just then my father returned
with a bundle of faggots, which he tossed on to the failing fire. There
was a smother of smoke and steam and a loud hissing, before the red
flames broke through again.
"What! Awake, Tommy?" said my father, seeing me rub my eyes, which were
smarting from the fumes.
"Awake, daddy," I said, blinking up at him with a smile.
He shut the door, and carefully secured it with a stout piece of
timber. I noticed too that he had hung his cloak, now dry, over the
little solitary pane of glass which was all the hut possessed in the
way of a window.
"Time to dress, Tommy," he said, helping me pull on my stockings,
which were almost toasted by the fire and felt comfortingly warm. I
reached for my shirt and breeches, and slowly drew them on, my eyes
half shut, for I would willingly have lain down again for a further
spell of sleep. I pushed my arms into my jacket, and looking round for
my cloak saw it hanging on the wall opposite the door. I was rising
to get it when my father said, "Ah, not that just yet. We won't start
till morning, but best be ready." He added, "There's a big hole there,
Tommy. Keeping out the wind; the cold wind, Tommy, with the sharp white
teeth. It's there behind your cloak, all ready to bite."
He snapped his teeth and shuddered, while I threw my head on his arm as
he sat beside me, and chuckled delightedly. For it was always in this
way that he spoke of the simplest things; never to frighten, but to
give just that touch of dramatic and imaginative charm which childhood
thirsts for. And it was this magic spell which he cast over our life of
hard wanderings and sudden flights that changed a bitter reality into a
wonderful game.
He was off again with some story or other, and though I tried to keep
awake so as not to miss the precious recital, yet sleep was still
heavy in my eyes, and my head nodded. I must have been tired indeed,
for my father could tell a story with such thrill and vigour, his
expression changing with every phase and mood, that the thing became
a living picture. At least it was so to me, and bed had no attraction
while I was away with my father seeking treasure on far-away seas. But
this night I missed the better part of the story. I only heard a word
here and there. I remember there was a cave, and a conspiracy, and
a terrible crime, but how the story went I couldn't follow. And then
in a more wakeful moment I heard my father saying, "This is how he
looked at me." I blinked a sleepy eye up at him, and suddenly started
into complete consciousness, for used as I was to his extraordinary
facial contortions when dramatizing his incidents, I had never seen
him wear such a look of frightfulness as he wore now. His hair was
standing up stupidly, with one lank lock pulled slantwise across his
forehead, almost hiding one eye. His lips, usually so full of laughter,
had slipped to a loose and slobbering imbecility. His cheeks were
drawn in haggard lines, pulling down the flesh beneath his eyes, which
contrasted raw and red with the staring whites. The whole expression
was one of blank idiocy, except for a tell-tale glitter of devilish
cunning which lurked in the corners of his upturned eyes.
I stared at him in horror. In all his many disguises I had seen him in
nothing that had suggested that his face could be distorted to such a
hideous caricature of itself. And yet it was hardly a caricature, for
it was all but unrecognizable. I believe that no other eyes but mine
could have penetrated that mask. It was only his even voice repeating,
"This is how he looked at me," that reassured me somewhat.
"But who?" I asked, clutching him.
"Who? The Mad Captain. I was telling you, Tommy."
"Yes, yes," I said eagerly, hoping to pick up the thread of the story
as he continued.
My father's face gradually righted itself as he proceeded:
"You see, Tommy, he had left them alone there to die; and that was
a terrible thing." His voice was hushed and tense in a way I can't
describe, but which held me in a spell of expectation. "And he knew
they could never get away. And they had no food, and they would starve.
And that's a horrible slow death, Tommy. And if they cried out, no one
would hear them. Their voices would be like whispers from the stars."
"Ah," I said, "the treasure," trying to link on to the lost fragment
without my father's needing to repeat it, for I knew he hated to
return upon his narrative when once well under way. I can see now how
necessary it was for him to live in his incident, and repetition spoilt
his dramatic flow.
So there we sat together, gazing into the red flames, with the night
outside very hushed and secret, far away from the world, with somewhere
behind us our baffled pursuer scenting along a false track, and my
father in his tense and vivid voice telling an old story of crime and
madness and remorse.
"Yes, treasure, Tommy," he answered me. "They were there with the gold
and the rubies and the diamonds, trapped in the cave, with twenty tons
of rock at its mouth, and with nothing to eat, and hunger gnawing like
wolves inside them, and no one to hear them crying day after day; and
their voices growing weaker and dryer, just like croaking birds, Tommy,
till one by one they dropped down to die. It must have been terrible
all alone there, Tommy. Can't you see them, with bruised torn hands,
beating at the rock, tugging and beating? And the gold lying quiet
there, how it must have said to them, 'Fools! Fools! Fools!' And the
last man, Tommy, when the rest were all dead! I think he must have gone
mad. Can you see him, groping from body to body, and crying pitifully
because they wouldn't move or speak to him; all lying so sad and still
and saying not a word? And how he must have sprung away from them and
hammered at that rock, and fallen down faint and beaten, and wrung his
battered hands, laughing like a madman, pulling at his hair. The last
man, all alone, with the treasure and the secret and the dead men; till
he grew thin and faint and tired, and lay down with the rest."
"And the Mad Captain?" I asked, thirsting for details.
"Ah, he!"--and my father's face, which had softened, became rightful
again, till for very face I crept closer to him, and gripped him
convulsively. He went on in his hushed, tense voice: "It was like this
he looked at me when he told me the story. For you see, Tommy, he could
hear the voices calling to him; and if he shut his ears against them,
there were terrible curses screaming inside his head, for he knew he
had left them there to die. And in the night he saw them there, growing
thinner and whiter and all wasted with hunger. And he counted the days,
and said, 'Now they must be dead!' But still he heard them crying to
him; most terrible and piteous it was. And he knew they were dead
and were following him, and he couldn't hide from them anywhere. And
sometimes they screamed at him, and sometimes they laughed; a hollow
wicked laughter, he told me, and wondered I couldn't hear it. And then
he knew he could never rest again, but must up and away day after day
and night after night, with the dead men chasing him and crying to him
and mocking his madness. And so he was whipped on from place to place,
never resting. For the terrible voices broke into his sleep like a cry
of hounds, and the dead faces peered horribly at him through the dark,
and the room was always full of moaning and knocking and a shuffling of
feet."
If I felt frightened at this strange recital in the gloom of our
wayside hut, lit fitfully as it was by the red leaping flames of
the fire, which threw distorted shadows on the walls which a boy's
imagination might work into terrible fantasies--if I felt frightened
it was with a pleasing fear; for I delighted to feel the stirring of
unseen things about me, when safe in the comforting security of my
father's presence. I remember glancing cautiously around me into the
shadowy corners, half hoping to see some white and horrible face
gazing out at me; and I strained my ears to catch some echo of the
cryings and moanings which my father had been speaking of. The wind
had quite dropped, and the night was perfectly still, with a sort of
waiting uneasy stillness; and I thought I could hear a movement in the
darkness outside. But my father was continuing: "And when he lit his
lamp the blackness through the window was full of beckoning hands,
and when he blew the lamp out for very fear the room was alive with
creeping feet. And sometimes he felt cold fingers on his neck, and
sometimes breath in his hair, and sometimes...."
At this moment there was a tapping at the window.
My father looked round sharply, and the words died on his lips.
He clutched my arm with a hard grip, and I knew my part was to be
perfectly still. And then suddenly he let out a bitter cry, and under
cover of it had pushed me behind my cloak and through the hole in the
wall. The cloak followed, and he hung his own coat in its place; and a
moment later the knapsack was bundled after me. I crouched motionless
in the cold, with my cloak pulled about my shoulders; and still my
father was crooning in a kind of unearthly sob, broken now and again
by short little dry chucklings. I summoned courage to widen with my
fingers a slit in his coat through which I could peep into the hut. I
caught one glimpse of my father's face in the firelight; again it was
drawn with haggard madness, but I thought the cunning in the eye was
sharper than before. He was sitting in front of the fire with his knees
huddled up to his chin, peering slantwise behind him towards the door.
I looked towards the door; the barrier was down.
Again there was a tapping at the window. The sound came to me from
the outside. And then I heard a low wail, "For the mercy of heaven,
let me in, let me in." My father moaned in reply, hugging himself
convulsively, and finishing on a shriek that broke into a hideous
laughter.
All this was a new game on me, and curiosity rather than fear was the
uppermost feeling in my mind. Indeed, the most frightening thing was
the stillness of the woodland behind me. It seemed as though a great
hand had the world in its grip, and a loosening of the fingers would
set the air into sudden and startling motion.
I heard a shuffling at the other side of the hut, and the wall shook as
though a body had fallen against it. I looked through the slit in the
coat; the door was slowly opening.
CHAPTER II
BITE-IN-THE-DARK
What I expected to see I hardly know. I think probably I expected
nothing visible, but merely that the hut would suddenly fill with
wailings and demoniac cries, for the Mad Captain with his unseen
tormentors was still beating in my mind. And something like a doubt
crossed my thoughts that perhaps my father too was fleeing from some
such spirits of remorse and retribution. But certainly I wasn't
expecting the miserable and decrepit hag who crawled out of the
blackness in through the open doorway, delaying on the threshold to