Clutterbuck's Treasure

"Count the shots they fire," I said; "then we shall know how many of them are in it."

"Now," whispered Jack, "we'll draw their fire with the cap once more; and the instant you hear the shot run for all you're worth to the base of the cliff. Do you understand?"

I nodded my head. I was horribly frightened, I confess. I do not think I am a coward when I can hit back if assailed, but I always lose heart when helpless. To cut and run for other fellows to shoot at you is, to a reflective mind, one of the most unpleasant things a man can be called upon to do.

However, there was nothing else to be done. Jack held up the cap; two shots were fired at it, and away we ran.

Three more reports rang out as we raced across the open, and, to my horror and despair, Jack fell. All my terror vanished at the sight, and only rage remained. I seized Jack's feet with an exclamation—it may have been an oath and it may have been a prayer—and dragged him along on his back in a manner which must have been dreadfully trying to a wounded man. One more shot was fired, but it flew over our heads; I heard the whistle of it distinctly. I deposited my burden at the foot of the cliffs,—the whole affair did not last four seconds,—and to my astonishment and intense relief the victim rose to his feet and laughed consumedly, though not noisily.

"I'm awfully sorry I frightened you, old man," he said, "but it was part of the game; I only invented it on the spot, or I would have warned you."

"Aren't you wounded?" I gasped.

"Not a bit of it!" said Jack. "I shammed on purpose. I'm hoping they'll come down now they imagine there's only one to deal with. If they do, there'll be 'ructions'!"

I cordially agreed with Jack on this point. I would not mind all three nephews, and would gladly throw in the cousin as well, at close quarters and in equal fight. Any fool can frighten me if he shoots at me from an ambush.

But though we waited in silence for some little while the enemy made no sign, and we came to the conclusion that the risk of being seen and recognised weighed more with them than the desire to wipe me off the face of the earth at any hazard.

"They've got to deny all knowledge of this little affair when we meet on board ship, you see," explained Jack.

"But they are sure to have another shot at us before they leave us," I rejoined. "Even if we creep along under the lee of the cliffs they'll find some place where they can sight us, confound them!" I looked up and around uncomfortably. I hated the position.

"We won't let them 'draw a bead' on us if we can help it," said Jack. "What say you to creeping quietly along for half a mile, and then trying to scale the cliffs? I'd give something to surprise the rogues, and have a shy at them at close quarters as they come along!"

This very distinctly met my views, and we started at once, creeping over rocks, springing quickly over level stretches of sand, wading here and there,—getting rapidly over the ground one way or another,—and all so close to the steep cliffs that unless a man lay on his waistcoat at the top and looked over the edge he could not have seen us. But we came to no place where the rocks looked climbable or anything like it; and we reached, instead, a spot where the sea had advanced to the foot of the rocks, and was breaking against them at a depth of a few inches.

"By George! how the tide has come up!" said Jack, looking serious; "we must dash through this, and hope that it will be all right beyond."

But though we plunged and waded for a couple of hundred yards beyond the corner, we found that the water became deeper rather than shallower, and that unless we returned at once we should have to swim back to the dry beach. There was no disguising the fact—we were cut off by the tide!

I am afraid we both used strong language when, after wading back to the beach, we realised what this misfortune meant for us. It meant, of course, that in all probability we should be left behind by the Chepstow Castle, for it was now past five o'clock, and likely enough the tide was still coming in. It was too excruciatingly cruel for anything excepting naughty words, and we must be forgiven if one or two of these slipped out in a moment of bitter disappointment.

There was, however, no actual danger in our position. As we could see by the mark of high water on the cliffs, we should not, in any case, get much more than a foot-bath if we remained where we now stood. That was a comfort, so far as it went, and something to be thankful for. But to think that those rascals—the Strongs, and the rest of them—would gain a week's start in the race for Bechuanaland! It was too bitter to speak of, and for the first hour or two we dared not trust ourselves to mention the grievance, lest the fires that smouldered within should burst forth and consume us.

We employed our time in making frantic efforts to scale the cliffs, and we succeeded in getting ourselves, each in turn, into positions of unique and unparalleled peril, out of which each had to be rescued by the other; but as for climbing the cliff, we never reached anywhere within hail of the top, and if we had persevered from that day to this we should never have succeeded in attaining thereunto.

Sorrowfully we came to the conclusion, at last, that there was nothing for it but to wait for the fall of the tide with all the patience and philosophic calm we could command; and these, I fear, were qualities which no known instrument could measure, for there was scarcely a microscopical trace of either in the pair of us.

At seven o'clock by my watch, punctually, we heard the booming signal of the Chepstow Castle, and we knew what that meant only too well. It meant that the steamer was leaving the anchorage, having on board my rival competitors, as well as our rifles and ammunition and revolvers, and everything we possessed, and that for a week or so after reaching Cape Town these men would be adding every hour and every minute to the odds against me in the race for old Clutterbuck's treasure.

"We shall meet them coming home with the money-box," said I presently, following the train of my own thoughts, "about half-way to Vryburg; and we can't well scrag them at sight, for we have no absolute evidence that it was they who shot at us."

"If we had," Jack assented, "we could relieve them of the money-box, and all would be well. However, they may not have found it by the time we reach the spot. We don't stand to win, I confess, but we won't quit the field till we are beaten hopelessly out of it."

"We shall have to keep our eyes open in the veldt as we go," I said, "for evidently the fellows are not particular."

"They wouldn't dare murder us there," rejoined Jack. "There was not much risk here, you see. Oh, what wouldn't I give to have the rascals just exactly here now, where my fist reaches!"

I agreed that this would be sweetly consoling. One might spend a quarter of an hour, I said, very happily in pummelling Messrs. Strong and Clutterbuck; but obviously there were few things less likely than that we should see either or any of them again this side of Vryburg, so that there was not much use in hoping for it.

It was nine in the evening before we found ourselves able to return to the spot at which we had landed, and when we reached it we learned from an Englishman who was about to return in his boat to Las Palmas, whence he had come during the day on sport intent, that we were too late.

The Chepstow Castle had sailed, as Captain Eversley had declared he would, at seven o'clock.

CHAPTER VII

GHOSTS

Our new friend professed the utmost sympathy when we somewhat shamefacedly explained that we had been caught by the tide, and concealed a smile; but he proved a good fellow by offering to put us up for a few nights until the arrival of the next steamer going Capewards, an offer which we gladly and gratefully accepted. This good fellow informed us that he had seen the last boatful of passengers taken on board at about six o'clock or half-past, and in reply to my inquiry added that the last to arrive had been a party of three with guns; they had a few seagulls with them, he said, and had declared that no one else remained on shore so far as they were aware.

"And when are we likely to get on from here?" asked Jack; to which our host replied that it might be a fortnight and might be a week, and possibly a steamer might arrive this very night. There was a cargo steamer overdue now that was to touch here on her way south.

In the morning there was a joyful surprise awaiting us; for when we awoke and looked out upon the bright waters of the Las Palmas harbour, there—black and ugly in the morning sunshine, but of all sights the most beautiful in our eyes to-day—floated a big English cargo-steamer, already busily engaged in discharging that portion of her cargo which had been consigned to Las Palmas. Needless to say, we lost no time in going on board, and as little in settling with the captain to take us on to Cape Town, for a consideration. We would have paid ten times the price with pleasure if he had asked it.

The Panther, our new vessel, was to sail by sunset that very evening, so that—by a happy turn of Fortune's wheel—we should, after all, have waited but twenty-four hours in this place. The Panther would travel considerably slower than the Chepstow Castle, however, so that we must still lose another day or two in time before Cape Town should be reached; but, under the circumstances, things might have been so very much worse that we were inclined to be perfectly contented for the moment, though we suffered many an hour of mental torture before arriving at the great southern city.

For the trusty ship Panther bore us at a uniform rate of about twelve knots per hour, and we realised as we neared Cape Town that the Chepstow Castle must be several days ahead of us: we had hoped and expected to travel faster than this. Nevertheless the unforeseen occasionally happens, and a pleasant surprise was in store for us on our arrival; for when Jack and I sought out the local offices of the company to which the last-named steamer belonged, in order to claim our goods and be off northwards as quickly as possible, we were informed, to our huge delight, that the Chepstow Castle had not yet arrived. She had had trouble with her propeller, the clerk informed us, and had been delayed, first at Las Palmas and afterwards at Walfisch Bay.

Then that clerk nearly had a fit, because Jack and I manifested the wildest delight and roared with laughter; I am not sure that we did not execute a step or two of an improvised skirt dance. The clerk smilingly observed presently that if we were in hopes that somebody we expected in the Chepstow Castle was going down to the bottom, or anything of that sort, it was his duty to disappoint us, because the steamer was all right and perfectly safe, and would arrive this evening.

"Oh no," said Jack very heartlessly; "our rich uncles and aunts are not on board!"

"I thought they must be," said the clerk, "as you seemed so pleased to hear of the ship's accident." He eyed us as though doubts as to our sanity had begun to dawn in his mind.

"Why, man," said Jack, "we are passengers ourselves—that's the joke of it!"

"Passengers on board what ship?" asked the clerk.

"The Chepstow Castle" exclaimed Jack.

Then the doubts as to our sanity which had dawned in that clerk's mind ripened into certainty, and he began to look about for a safe place; he also grasped his ruler in case of emergency, resolved, no doubt, to sell his life dearly.

"We got out at Las Palmas," I explained. I made the remark in sympathetic sorrow for that clerk's agony of mind. But my explanation did not reassure him much.

"You can't be in two places at once," he said. "If you got out at Las Palmas, you are there still. Besides, if you got out you surely knew enough to get in again?"

"We'd have got in again if we could," I said, "but we missed the boat and had to come on by the Panther, which arrived this morning. Here are our tickets—they will prove that we started by the Chepstow Castle."

The clerk examined our tickets and wiped his forehead; then he looked us over, laughed almost as loud as we did, and said it was rather funny that we should have turned up first after all. If he had known what a poor joke it was for some others on board the Chepstow Castle, I daresay he would have laughed still more. As it was, he entered so heartily into the spirit of the thing that he obtained permission for us to board the steamer in the company's tug so soon as the ship should arrive in sight, a permission which we were right glad to have, because we were somewhat anxious as to our property on board, in case certain persons should have found means during our absence to possess themselves of that which was not theirs.

There was also another reason for our desire to go on board in the darkness and unexpected. We desired to do a little spiritualism in real life, and to appear before our friends the Strongs in the morning as though we had never left the ship.

"Nothing like playing the ghost for getting at the truth of things," said Jack, as we left the office. "We shall see by the rascals' faces, when they catch sight of us, whether it was really they who fired the shots at us!"

That shipping clerk was of the greatest service to us in another way, for he gave us much excellent advice as to how best to proceed in our journey up-country, what natives to engage, how many oxen to purchase, and the best kind of waggon, together with a quantity of other useful information as to roads and the chances of sport to be obtained. It was dusk by the time the Chepstow Castle arrived in the offing, and we boarded her during the dinner-hour, when of passengers there were none on deck. Captain Eversley was on duty, however, and our ghostly reappearance began propitiously with that cordial officer, who first stared at us in a bewildered manner and afterwards burst into laughter.

"Well, you are nice sort of young fellows," he said; "you ought to be still vegetating at the Grand Canary if you had your deserts! What became of you?—lose yourselves?"