Clutterbuck's Treasure

"Caught by tide," Jack explained, "and brought on by a freighter."

"Come for your things, I suppose?" said the captain. "All right; I had them removed from your cabin because two second-class passengers asked to be allowed to pay the difference and come in when there was room. The steward has your property. They're all at dinner below; you'd better join them—they'll take you for ghosts."

"Who are the fellows in our cabin?" I inquired.

"Brothers, I believe, called Smith," said Eversley. "They have a friend among the second-classers; they have not been popular among the state-room people. We have wished you back more than once."

We thanked the captain and retired, as he had suggested, below. Here our sudden appearance caused first a dead silence of amazement, followed by the uproar of a dozen or two tongues speaking at once; and then, to add to the dramatic interest of the situation, one of the passengers rose from his seat at the lower end of the table as though to leave the room, uttered a kind of groan, and fainted. I saw him and recognised him in a moment—it was Charles Strong. His brother, seated beside him, quickly dragged his unconscious relative away.

A word or two of explanation soon convinced our late fellow-travellers that we were not ghosts, and in order to reassure them more fully as to our substantiality we both sat down and made a remarkably good dinner. I am sorry to say that it was the unanimous opinion of all present that, had we been still looking out for a sail at Las Palmas instead of comfortably dining almost within the harbour of Cape Town, we should have had nothing but our own foolishness to thank for it.

As for the Strongs, or Smiths, no one had a good word to say for them. They never spoke, we were told, at meals, and they spent all their time conspiring and whispering together over maps and papers on the second-class deck, where they had a fellow-mystery. They were set down by universal consent as miners or gold-diggers who had received a "tip" as to some rich spot, which they intended to find and exploit. Universal consent had not made such a very bad guess, as it turned out.

CHAPTER VIII

NECK AND NECK FOR THE FIRST LAP

When we went to claim our property afterwards from the steward's pantry—which we did in some anxiety, seeing who our successors in the cabin had been (for we naturally concluded that the Strongs would not have paid money for the pleasure of occupying our berths unless they had had designs upon something we might have left there), we missed my small handbag.

"Were these new fellows in the cabin before our things were removed?" we asked of the steward.

"Oh no, sir," said that functionary; "one of them looked in to see if it would suit, but he wasn't there five minutes; you wouldn't surely suspect the gentleman of"—

"Oh dear, no!" I said, "certainly not, steward; probably my little bag escaped your notice and his too. Go and ask for it, like a good man; it was under the sofa when we were in the cabin, and it's probably there now."

The steward went off on his mission somewhat flustered; for it was a reflection upon his carefulness that the bag had been left behind. When I said that it might have escaped Strong's notice as well as his own, I really meant what I said, though the sceptical Jack grinned at my "innocence," as he called it. The bag contained, as Jack knew, a few exceedingly important articles—namely, my slender stock of ready money (about thirty-five pounds), a copy of the all-important map and instructions for finding Clutterbuck's treasure, my revolver, and a few other things of less importance.

Nevertheless, when the steward brought the bag to me a few minutes later with "Mr. Smith's" apology, and declared that the latter gentleman said that neither he nor his brother had seen or touched it, I believed him. I was the more disposed to acquit the Strongs when I opened the bag and found money, map, revolver, and everything else still within it just as I had left them; but subsequent events proved that Jack's scepticism was in the right after all, though we did not discover this until later.

We saw no more of the Strongs that evening, and when—very early in the morning—we went on deck to see the ship moored in dock, we found that our friends had already departed.

"We can afford to make a good breakfast and give them that much start," said Jack; "for they will probably have a lot to buy and to arrange before they can start, while most of our preliminary arrangements were made yesterday." Therefore we made a good breakfast.

The train, we found, would take us as far as Vryburg, after which we should have to purchase horses and push along over the Chartered Company's road towards Bulawayo. Our destination was several days' journey short of that town, however, and lay some way to the east of the pioneer waggon-road used by the company during the first Matabele campaign. At Vryburg we encountered the Strongs and Clutterbuck at a horse-dealer's yard. They, like ourselves, had come to buy horseflesh, and we surprised them in the midst of their bargaining.

There was no particular reason for pretending that I did not recognise them, for it was likely enough that we should be near neighbours when it came to digging, and we were all encamped upon a couple of acres of land. I therefore addressed them, and bade them good-morning, by name.

They growled an unwilling greeting in return.

"We're all here, I see, excepting Mr. Ellis," I continued. "I suppose he is to follow later?"

"I know no more about him than you," said James Strong surlily. "Who's this, may I ask, with you, and what right has he to come digging for our treasure?"

"Is he digging for our treasure?" I asked.

"That's what he's here for, you bet," said Strong; "if he finds it, let me tell you, your claim won't stand, remember that."

"My good man," said Henderson exasperatingly, "do wait until you have caught me at it! As my friend suggests, I am not thinking of digging; I am here to keep him company, and to act as a kind of bodyguard."

"Can't the poor fellow take care of himself?" said Strong, laughing rudely; "what's he afraid of? We are all respectable people here!"

"You see," said Jack, with exasperating coolness, "in some countries the bullets fly very promiscuously; people have been known to shoot at seagulls and to hit men. Now only the other day, at an island called Graciosa"—at this point the second Strong dragged his brother away to look at a horse, and as the proprietor of the establishment beckoned us mysteriously aside at the same moment, we saw no more of our friends at this time; when we returned to the yard they had taken their departure. The horse-dealer's object in beckoning us aside was, it appeared, to inform us that—if we liked to pay for them—he had a horse or two which would be likely to suit gentlemen like ourselves much better than this rubbish.

We were quite ready to pay for a good article—delighted; at least Jack was, and I was quite glad that he should. After all, if the fellow mounted us better than the Strongs & Co., the privilege would be well worth paying for.

We certainly paid for it, at anyrate; but whether our horses were really much, or any, better than the "rubbish" that fell to Strong's lot is a question. Possibly Strong squared the horse-dealer before we came; if so, he was no fool, and perfectly within his rights.

We had bought our waggon and oxen, seasoned or "salted" animals chosen without regard to expense, and had engaged a Kaffir driver and a native of Bechuana or Somali land to act as huntsman, in case we should find the treasure and have time upon our hands for some big-game hunting afterwards.

All these matters had been arranged before we left Cape Town, and our party were even now trekking slowly northwards towards the appointed rendezvous on the Bulawayo road, at the point, in fact, where—as per map—our side route branched off from the main road.

We had left the heavy rifles and most of our ammunition to be brought on after us by the waggon, and we hoped that by the time the question of the treasure had been decided we should find our property waiting for us at the rendezvous. Jack said we should "do a bit of sporting" whether we dug up the treasure or no.

So that we had not much in the way of impedimenta actually with us. Each carried a light spade, a blanket, a waterproof coat, a light rifle, a revolver, cartridge-belt and case, saddle-bags with tinned food and biscuits, a bottle of brandy as medicine, and little else besides. Thus equipped, however, we both felt that we could easily and comfortably spend a week or two without any more of the comforts of civilisation than we carried about us, and we set out upon our hundred-mile ride in the highest possible spirits, even though we were well aware that "the enemy" were on the road before us.

"I don't want to kill anybody if I can help it, you know, Peter," Jack had said (he always called me Peter, though my name is Godfrey; I was called Peter at school, for some inscrutable schoolboy reason!), "but I'm hanged if I am going to let these fellows have any more shots at me gratis. If any fellow lets fly at me again and misses, he's a dead man if I can make him one!"

I quite agreed with Jack that we would not again play at being targets without taking our turns at the shooting afterwards. I do not relish the idea of shedding human blood any more than Jack, but one must draw the line somewhere, and we were going to draw it at those who took shots at us from an ambush; for such we would have no pity.

On the evening of the first day we came up with our friends the Strongs. They were encamping on the banks of a river over which there was a ford.

Our horses were not tired, we had not ridden very hard, and we agreed that this would be a good opportunity to push on and obtain a good start of the Strongs. The complacency with which these men had settled down in this place and were, apparently, prepared to see us pass them in the race, perplexed and puzzled us not a little. We were suspiciously inclined towards them, and it appeared to us that they would not allow us to get ahead so easily without a good reason. However, it was unlikely that we should learn their reason by asking for it, and we did not desire more of their society than was absolutely necessary; we therefore agreed to push on—to play our game and allow them to play theirs. We could take care of ourselves, though they were three to two.

So we proceeded to ford the river, the Strongs watching us intently, though they pretended to be taking little notice of us. Jack's horse led the way, and was wading in the water considerably over his knees, when something floating in mid-stream caught my eye, and I invited Jack to stop a moment and look at the object. Jack pulled up at once and stared with me at the dark-looking thing floating slowly with the current.

"I should say it was a log of wood if I did not happen to know that crocodiles abound here," he said.

"If it's a log of wood it's a nimble one," I rejoined; "for see, Jack, it is coming this way, partly against current."

For reply, Jack wheeled his horse round and plunged madly for the land.

"Back to the shore, Peter, quick!" he shouted, "for your life!"

CHAPTER IX

MORE TREACHERY

When we reached the bank and looked round, the dark object had disappeared, but almost immediately it reappeared within five yards of us. We could see it plainly now—a huge, scaly head, half out of the water, and a wicked little eye looking straight at us as though gloating over the feast it had just lost by a hair's-breadth. It was horrible.

"Oh, the cruel-looking, bloodthirsty, gaol-bird brute!" muttered Jack, raising his rifle. "Thank Heaven we were not a quarter of a minute later, Peter! Now watch—this is for his eye-socket."

As the little rifle sent out its message with a light, ping-like report, there was a strange upward lift of the great head, a vast commotion for a moment of the water, then the tail went up and the head went down; there was a little reddening of the mudded stream, the crocodile disappeared, and the tragedy was over.

To my surprise, Jack immediately turned and made for the group of men—the two Strongs and Clutterbuck—sitting by their camp fire and watching us; he still held his rifle in his hand—his little double-barrelled sporting weapon. I took my revolver and followed him, for I did not know what he meant to do. Henderson strode right up to the group and addressed them without any kind of preface.

"If I were certain you fellows were aware that the crocodile held the ford," he said, "I'm hanged if I wouldn't chuck you in after him, one by one."

"Words don't cost much," said James Strong; "we are three to your two. It is foolish to boast of what you would do if you were strong enough."