Doubloons—and the Girl

Grimshaw had come in by the time Drew got back to the shop, and was busy in his office. Winters and Sam were condoling with each other over the amount of work that lay before them.

"It's a whale of a job," complained Winters, looking about the crowded shop.

"Ah kin feel de mis'ry comin' into ma back ag'in," groaned Sam, who had formerly been a piano mover, but had been obliged to seek a less strenuous occupation because of having wrenched his back. "Ah suttinly will be ready fo' de hospital when Ah gits t'rough wid dis movin'."

"Oh, you're just plain lazy, Sam," chaffed Drew. "It won't be half so bad as you think. We'll have a gang of truckmen and their helpers to do most of the heavy work. But I suppose we've got our hands full, packing these instruments so they won't be broken and scratched. And 'hustle' is the word from now on."

"But think of the junk upstairs!" groaned Winters. "Why doesn't the old man call in the Salvation Army and give them the whole bunch on condition that they take it away? He's got the accumulation of twenty years on that top floor, and it's not worth the powder to blow it up. It beats me why Tyke keeps all that old clutter."

"It doesn't seem worth house room," admitted Drew; "and now that we're moving, perhaps we can get rid of a lot of the stuff. I'll speak to Tyke about it. But let's forget the upper floors and get busy on this one. There's a man's job right here."

"A giant's job, to my way of thinking," grumbled Winters, as he looked around him.

It was indeed a varied and extensive stock that was carried on the main floor. To name it all would have been to enumerate almost everything that is used on shipboard, whether driven by wind or by steam. Thermometers, barometers, binoculars, flanges, couplings, carburetors, lamps, lanterns, fog horns, pumps, check valves, steering wheels, galley stoves, fire buckets, hand grenades, handspikes, shaftings, lubricants, wire coils, rope, sea chests, life preservers, spar varnish, copper paint, pulleys, ensigns, twine, clasp knives, boat hooks, chronometers, ship clocks, rubber boots, fur caps, splicing compounds, friction tape, cement, wrenches, hinges, screws, oakum, oars, anchors – it was no wonder that the force quailed at sight of the work that lay before them.

They set to work smartly and had already made notable progress when Tyke stepped out of the private office. He looked around with a melancholy smile.

"Dismantling the old ship, I see," he observed to Drew.

"Right on the job," replied the young man, glad to note that Tyke seemed to have somewhat recovered his equanimity after the trying events of the day before.

Grimshaw watched them for a while, making a suggestion now and then but leaving most of the direction of the work to his chief clerk while he ruminated over the coming change.

At last he roused himself.

"Better leave things to Winters now and come upstairs with me," he said to Drew. "There's a heap of stuff up there, and we want to figure on where we're going to stow it all in the new place."

Drew followed him and they mounted to the second floor. Here the surplus stock was held in reserve, and there was nothing that could be dispensed with. But the third floor held a bewildering collection that made it a veritable curiosity shop. When they reached this, Drew looked about and was inclined to agree with Winters in classifying it as "junk."

All the discarded and defective stock of the last twenty years had found a refuge here. And in addition to this debris there was a pile of sailors' boxes and belongings that reached to the roof. Tyke had a warm spot in his heart for sailormen, especially if they chanced to have sailed with him on any of his numerous voyages; and when they were stranded and turned to him for help they never met with refusal.

In some cases this help had taken the form of money loans or gifts. At other times he had taken care of the chests containing their meagre belongings, while they were waiting for a chance to ship, or perhaps were compelled to go to a hospital.

In the course of a score of years, these boxes had increased in number until now they usurped a great part of the space on that upper floor. Drew had often been on the point of suggesting that they be got rid of, but as long as they did not encroach on the space actually needed by the business this thought had remained unspoken. Now, when they were about to move and needed to have their work lightened as much as possible, the time seemed opportune to dispose of the problem.

Tyke listened with a twinkle in his eye as Allen repeated the suggestion of Winters that the contents of the floor be held for what it would bring or given to the Salvation Army.

"Might be a good idea, I s'pose," he remarked. "Them old things ain't certainly doing any one any good. An' yet, somehow, I've never been able to bring myself to the point of getting rid of 'em. Seems as though they were a sort of trust. Though I s'pose most of the boys they belonged to are dead and gone long ago."

"I don't imagine there's anything really valuable in any of the chests," remarked Drew.

"No, I don't think the hull kit an' boodle of 'em is worth twenty dollars," acquiesced the old man. "Although you can't always tell. Sometimes the richest things are found in onlikely places. But I kind of hate to part with these old boxes. Almost every one of 'em has something about it that reminds me of old times.

"You know I ain't much of a reading man," Grimshaw went on, "an' these boxes make the only library I have. I come up here an' moon around sometimes when I git sick of living ashore, an' these old chests seem to talk to me. They smell of the sea an' tell of the sea, an' each one of 'em has some history connected with it."

Drew scented a story, and as Tyke's tales, while sometimes garrulous, were always interesting, he forebore to interrupt and disposed himself to listen.

"Now take that box over there, for instance," continued Tyke, pointing to a stained and mildewed chest which bore all the marks of great age and rough handling. "That belonged to Manuel Gomez, dead ten year since. He went down in the Nancy Boardman when she was rounding the Cape. Big, dark, upstanding man he was, an' one of the best bo'suns that ever piped a watch to quarters in a living gale.

"An' he was as good a fighting man as he was sailor. Nobody I'd rather have at my side in a scrap. He was right up in front with me when those Malay pirates boarded us off the Borneo coast. Those brown devils came over the side like a tidal wave, an' no matter how many we downed, they still kep' coming on.

"It was nip an' tuck for a while, but we were fighting for our lives, an' we beat 'em off at last an' sent what was left of 'em tumbling into their praus. As it was, they sliced off two of my fingers, an' one fellow would have buried that crooked kriss of his in my neck if Manuel hadn't cut him down jest in time.

"Of course, I was grateful to him for saving my life, an' he sailed with me for several voyages after that. That scrap with the pirates never seemed to do him an awful lot of good. He had pirates on the brain anyway. You see, he come from Trinidad on the Spanish Main, where the old pirates used to do their plundering an' butchering, an' I s'pose he'd heard talk about their doings ever since he was a boy.

"He used to talk about 'em whenever he got a chance. Of course, discipline being what it is on board ship, he couldn't talk as free with me as I s'pose he did with his mates. But once in a while he'd reel off a yarn, an' then he'd hint kind of mysterious like that he knew where some of the old Pirates' doubloons were buried an' that some day, if luck was with him, he'd be a rich man.

"I'd heard so much of that kind o' stuff in my time that I used to laugh at him, an' then he'd get peeved – that is, as peeved as he dared to be, me being skipper. But that wouldn't last long, and after a while he'd be at it again. Jest seemed as though he couldn't get away from the thought of it."

"Perhaps there was something in it after all," said Drew, to whom just now anything that savored of adventure appealed more strongly than usual.

"More likely his brain was a bit touched," replied Grimshaw carelessly. "I lost sight of him for several years when I quit the sea. But just before he went on his last voyage, he wanted me to take charge of this chest of his until he returned. Said he didn't dare trust it with any one else.

"'All right, Manuel. No diamonds or anything of that kind in it, I s'pose?' I says with a laugh and a wink.

"But he didn't crack a smile.

"'Somet'in' wort' more zan diamon's,' he said solemnly, an' went away. I never saw him again, an' a few months later I heard of the Nancy Boardman's going down with all hands."

"Why not examine the chest?" cried Drew eagerly.

The recital of the grizzled veteran had fired his blood. All that he had ever read or heard of the old buccaneers came back to him. In fancy he saw them all, Avery, Kidd, Bartholomew Roberts, Stede Bonnet, Blackbeard Morgan, the whole black-hearted and blood-stained crew of daring leaders ranging up and down the waters of the Spanish Main, plundering, sacking, killing, boarding the stately galleons of Spain, sending peaceful merchant ships to the bottom, wasting their gains in wild orgies ashore capturing Panama and Maracaibo amid torrents of blood and flame. Silks and jewels and brocades and pearls and gold! From the whole world they had taken tribute, until that world – tried at last beyond bearing – had risen in its might and ground the whole nest of vipers beneath its wrathful heel.

Tyke looked at the young man quizzically.

"Thinking of the pirate doubloons, Allen?"

"Why not?" Drew defended himself, albeit a little sheepishly. "Perhaps the key to treasure is right over there in that old chest of Manuel's."

Then Tyke laughed outright.

CHAPTER V

A SETBACK

"I wouldn't bank on finding treasure," Grimshaw advised. "What those old pirates got they spent as they went along. They warn't of the saving kind. 'Easy come, easy go' was their motto."

"That's true enough of the majority of them, no doubt," conceded Drew. "The common sailors got only a small portion of the loot anyway. But some of the leaders were shrewd and far-sighted men. They didn't look forward to dying as pirates. They wanted to save enough to buy their pardons later on and live the rest of their lives ashore in peace and luxury. What was more natural than that they should hide their shares of the plunder on some of the little islands they were familiar with? They wouldn't dare to keep it on their ships, where their throats might be cut at any moment if their crews knew there was treasure aboard."

"That's true enough," admitted his employer.

"And if they did bury it," pursued the young man, encouraged by this concession, "why shouldn't a good deal of it be there yet? Gold and silver and jewels don't perish from being kept underground. And as most of the pirates died in battle, they had no chance to go back and dig the plunder up from where they had buried it."

"But some of the crews must have been in the secret," objected Tyke, "an' after the death of their captains what was to hinder them from going after the doubloons an' getting 'em."

"There might have been a good many reasons," answered Drew. "In the first place, the captains seem to have had a cheerful little habit of killing the men who did the digging and leaving their skeletons to guard the treasure-chests. And even when that didn't happen, what chance would the common sailor have had of going after the loot? He couldn't have got a ship without giving away his secret, and the minute he'd given it away his own life wouldn't have been worth a copper cent.

"And then, too," went on Drew, warming to his subject, "look at all the traditions there are on the subject. Where there is so much smoke there must be some fire. A single rumor wouldn't amount to much, but when that rumor persists and is multiplied by a thousand others until it becomes a settled belief, there must be something in it. The rumors are like so many spokes of a wheel all pointing to a single hub, and that hub is – treasure!"