FOUR FOR A ukfc-t ^ FOUR FOR si FORTUNE A TALE. By ALBERT LEE Author of "Tommy Toddles" ILLUSTRATED By F. C. YOHN NEW YORK AND LONDON HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 1898 Every book is, in an intimate sense, a circular letter to the friends of him who writes it. They alone take his meaning; they find private messages, assurances of love, and expressions of gratitude dropped for them in every corner. The public is but a gene rous patron who defrays the postage. ROBERT Louis STEVENSON. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGB FOREWORD i I. A DINNER AT CHIFFARD'S .... 5 II. A HALF -BURNED CHART AND ITS STORY 17 III. INVESTIGATION AND SPECULATION . 33 IV. DEDUCTIONS AND CONCLUSIONS . . 44 V. THE FINGER OF FATE 53 VI. A PECULIAR PARTNERSHIP .... 69 VII. A MOVE IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION . 77 VIII. A PLAN OF OPERATIONS 89 IX. EXPLANATIONS AND NEGOTIATIONS . 99 X. THE CAPTAIN OF THE MERRY MADGE in XI. A CONTRACT 122 XII. A VOYAGE OVER-SEAS 130 XIII. A BAD START 141 XIV. THE SUMMIT OF AN ISLAND PEAK . 152 XV. A PROBLEM IN GEOMETRY .... 163 XVI. A DAY OF TOIL 174 CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE XVII. THE SECRET OF THE CHART . . 182 XVIII. FORTUNES FOR FOUR 194 XIX. THE LAST LOAD 206 XX. HOMEWARD BOUND 215 XXI. AN UNEXPECTED OUTBREAK. . . 224 XXII. THE FATE OF THE MERRY MADGE 243 XXIII. A TREASURE LAUGHED AWAY . . 255 XXIV. CONCLUSION. THE YARN OF THE NOTRE DAME 263 ILLUSTRATIONS I CONSENTED TO THRUST MY HEAD INTO THE HOLE Frontispiece THE CHART Facing p. 2O WE: ALL GAZED IN SILENCE AT THOSE FEW SQUARE INCHES OF CHARRED PAPER ... " 24 WE WALKED SLOWLY HOMEWARD " 34 "WE HAVE STRUCK IT AT LAST!" HE CRIED . " 64 A SMALL BOY GUIDED US THROUGH THE DARKNESS " QO IN THE CABIN OF THE MERRY MADGE . ... " 124 I THOUGHT THATCHER HAD GONE MAD. . . " 158 WE CARRIED OUR COINS DOWN IN BASKETS . " 212 I FIRED BOTH PISTOLS AT ONE TIME. ... " 240 A GREAT DARK OBJECT ROSE UP OUT OF THE SEA " 248 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE A MAJORITY of those who read this story will set it down as fiction. They will refuse to believe that any such events as are here narrated could occur at the close of the nineteenth century without some knowledge of them coming to the au- thorities, and through them to the news- papers and to the public. There are some, however, under whose eyes these pages may come who will know that this is his- tory ; that everything told of, and more too, actually happened ; and that only the names of individuals are changed in some cases merely disguised. Others will find here a partial explanation of certain FOUR FOR A FORTUNE strange occurrences with which they were innocently more or less connected. Chiffard is alive and thriving, and goes about his business in New York as quiet- ly and earnestly as if he had never stabbed a man and thrown his body into the sea. Carquemort (thank Heaven!} is dead, and may the Devil never send his like to earth again. Good Captain McLeod is no long- er of the living ; but Glen, I hear, has prospered and is married. Thatcher looked over this manuscript before it left my hands, and although he hesitated at first over the possible results of the publication of the story, he soon came to view the situation much as I do, and he is now convinced that no one will believe in what I have written. But let him who is not interested in brawl and battle, in the smell of the sea, in treasure - hunting and the staking of human life for gold ; in treachery and hate; in perseverance and daring let him. FOUR FOR A FORTUNE / say, put this book aside. For from the moment Carquemorfs 'mysterious, hypnot- ic, half-burned chart came into our lives, we were all of us swept along in an irre- sistible current made up of just those wretched human passions; and the tale of our adventures is but a record of their workings to the ultimate logical end. How the chart actually came into Carquemort's possession I do not know. He said he found it in an old strong- box that had belonged to his grandfather; but in this statement he lied, as was after- wards conclusively proven -for he never had a grandfather. It is more than prob- able that he stole it ; and if he did not murder the previous owner, the latter should be devoutly thankful and go at once to his little seaport shrine and burn three candles upon the altar of Our Lady. Yet, in whatever manner he became pos- sessed of it, certain it is that Carquemort had the chart when we Jirst met him one 3 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE stormy night in April, in the year of our Lord 1894. As I look back upon it now, it seems the bitterest kind of irony to call that the ""year of our Lord" ; for if ever Satan had a year, or a portion of a year, to himself, it was that same summer of 1894. But that is a matter aside. CHAPTER I A DINNER AT CHIFFARD'S IT WAS in April, 1894 (as I have said), that we met Carquemort. All the afternoon the rain had been coming down in streaks from a mass of dark, woolly clouds overhead, and humanity was soaked in discontent. Earlier in the day we had agreed, Thatcher and I, to brighten the evening with a modest meal at Chiffard's; and thus the dinner-hour found us picking our way over the glis- tening, puddly pavements of South Fifth Avenue towards Washington Square. Near Fourth Street we turned into a narrow doorway that broadens out into a dark, square hall damp, stone -paved, and heavy with an odor of cooking and FOUR FOR A FORTUNE entered the cheerful little French restau- rant that occupies the lower floor of the dingy tenement. The two small rooms, set with a dozen white tables, were warm and well lighted; but it was a bad night for business, and only three guests had preceded us. The violinist and his wife sat in the corner as usual, and across the room was a bearded, broad - shouldered fellow who scarcely glanced up as we en- tered. He appeared thoroughly uncon- scious of any one's else presence, and punctuated his indifference with a noisy mouthing of his pot-au-feu. Madame Chiffard, who was at her post behind the little marble counter, placidly hemming a new dozen of napkins, smiled benignly as the door opened before us, and exclaimed in her most gracious man- ner: "Ah, messieurs, mats vous avez choisi du bien mauvais temps pour venir nous voirT 6 A DINNER AT CHIFFARD'S Then, turning her head in the direction of the shaft where the rickety little dumb- waiter rattled incessantly in its excur- sions to the lower regions, she called out: "Philippe ! Ces messieurs sont la!" I do not know whether we were the only messieurs who patronized Chiffard's, or whether Madame had in her heart a softer spot for us than for her other cus- tomers ; but whenever she announced to Chiffard, who watched over the pots and kettles below, that " ces messieurs" were "la" we could always confidently look forward to the enjoyment of an unusual- ly well-cooked dinner. Thatcher was ex- ceedingly jealous of this preference, and he had long ago made me promise never to bring any one to dine at Chiffard's, or even to tell my friends of the little restaurant's existence. He may have been justified in this secretiveness, for, as he explained when he exacted the promise: " It is bad enough to sit around and FOUR FOR A FORTUNE dine with a lot of newspaper men and Bohemians" (all the same, Thatcher num- bered many a good friend and cherished companion among these same newspaper men and Bohemians !), " but when they take their privacy and sell it at space rates, it is time to retire from their com- pany. There is no telling when you yourself will be taken as a subject for a Sunday special. You know how good Binetti's was, two years ago ? And you remember those jolly summer evenings we used to spend at Dagorre's ? Well, those fellows had to go and write about it all, didn't they ? And reprint pictures stolen from the Paris weeklies to give their stories ' local color ?' Bah ! And now Binetti's is full of dry-goods clerks and addle-pated youths who call nightly for Chianti (which they never get !) ; and Dagorre's has had such a run of the herd that I would not stall my horse there if I had one !" 8 A DINNER AT CHIFFARD'S Fortunately Thatcher's autocratic boy- cott of Bohemians and newspaper men did not seem to injure Chiffard's busi- ness. He derived a good trade from the French folk of the quarter, and pros- pered. One day he consulted with Thatcher about advertising in an after- noon paper. Thatcher nearly fainted at the suggestion, and forthwith painted the results of newspaper advertising in such black colors that the frugal French- man at once gave up all idea of ever see- ing his name in print. " The day will come soon enough," Thatcher said to me afterwards, "when Chiffard will believe himself the only restaurant-keeper who ever successfully boiled a bouillabaisse south of the Arch. Then he will move up into the Tender- loin, hire a place with a white - painted front and plate-glass windows and fail !" Thatcher was at times inclined to be cynical. FOUR FOR A FORTUNE But to return to this eventful evening of the year of the Devil 1894. By the time the coffee and cheese were placed upon the table, it was near nine o'clock. It was improbable any more customers would come in. Madame stepped down from her high perch behind the counter and brought her sewing to our table, where her husband had already joined us. He wore his immaculate cook's hat on the back of his head, and the sleeves of his spotless white coat were turned well up so as to display a pair of well- developed tattooed arms, for Chiffard had served in the French Navy. He rolled cigarette after cigarette and puffed the room full of light-blue smoke, while we all talked and laughed and told stories, as you always do at Chiffard's, and drank pretty-colored, queer-named liqueurs out of funny little thimble -like glasses, and Thatcher said "SacreT at most inoppor- tune moments and altogether we had a A DINNER AT CHIFFARD'S very good time. Our conversations in the little restaurant were, of course, al- ways carried on in French; but as this is neither a stenographic report nor a dialectic essay, I shall not attempt to reproduce the cook's wild rhetoric or Thatcher's utter disregard of the rules set down by Noel and Chaptal. The topics we discussed ranged from soup to politics, with eloquence for the former and true Gallic vehemence for the latter, for Chiffard was what Stevenson would have described as a veritable petard of a fellow, although by no means worn to skin and bone, like the host of the inn at Origny-Sainte-Benoite. Our host was fat. His petardism was at times trying to my nerves ; but Madame, who was a quiet little body herself, used to notice this ; and I think she sympathized with me, for frequently, with one hand placed upon her spouse's brawny arm, she would adroitly turn the drift of the conversation FOUR FOR A FORTUNE from politics back again to soup. And I was duly grateful. On this particular rainy evening, how- ever, the petard appeared distracted and thoughtful. He did not talk so boister- ously as of wont, and he acted as a man does whose mind is set upon another matter. Frequently he looked over his shoulder at the bearded guest in the other room. The fellow had finished his dinner and sat, pipe in mouth, reading the French newspapers. The violinist and his wife had left long since, and I wondered why the stranger lingered. After a while Chiffard said : " That man used to be a quartermaster in the French Navy." " He looks more like a pirate," said Thatcher. " I think he deserted," continued Chif- fard. " He does not say much about it. I knew him ten years ago on the Cuver- ville, and befriended him once." A DINNER AT CHIFFARD'S " I suppose he wants a meal on the strength of his reminiscences," I sug- gested. " No. He pays. It is not that he wants." Chiffard glanced over his shoul- der again, and then leaning forward to us, he whispered : " He showed me a chart !" This statement evidently did not im- press either Thatcher or me as much as ChirTard had intended it should. " Is there anything particularly odd about a sailor having a chart ?" I asked, noticing his disappointment. " You do not understand," whispered Chiffard again. "It is gold it is treas- ure !" " Oho !" exclaimed Thatcher, laughing. "Mr. Bunco, eh? How much did he want you to invest in the chart?" " Ah, it is not that. He will not sell the map. He does not know where the place is. He wants me to tell him of some one who can help him to find out." 13 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE " Well, bring him over here," suggested Thatcher, " and tell him I am an authori- ty on Captain Kidd and buried treasure and mysterious islands. Tell him I'll find the gold for him if he will give me half the spoils !" " I fear he will not trust you Ameri- cans," said Chiffard, who seemed to take the treasure chart most seriously. " You see, he waits for you to go. He wants to come and talk to me again." We urged Chiffard to invite the stran- ger to our table, and although he de- murred considerably at first, he finally turned towards the man and said : "E/i t Monsieur Carquemort ! Venez done prendre quelque chose avec nous" Carquemort looked up from his pa- per, grunted something that sounded like " Merci bien" and went on reading again. " What a bear !" remarked Madame. " You see, he will not," said Chiffard, 14 A DINNER AT CHIFFARD'S shrugging his shoulders. But Thatcher was not to be so easily denied. He called upon our host to go over and per- suade the seaman to join us, and when Chiffard persistently objected Thatcher threatened to go and get him himself. Thereupon Chiffard rose reluctantly and went over to Carquemort and sat down beside him. They talked for several min- utes in undertones. " All that fellow needs to make him look like a genuine pirate," observed Thatcher, as we watched them, " is a red handkerchief tied around his head, a cut- lass in his hand, and a brace of pistols in his belt." I looked at him again, and could not but appreciate the force of the remark. Little did I suspect that under three months I should see this same Carque- mort in practically the outfit suggested by Thatcher, standing on the deck of a vessel at sea, cursing and fighting a real 15 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE pirate in appearance and at heart, if ever there was one. The greatest blessing Divine Providence has wasted on hu- manity is ignorance of the future. After ten minutes of conversation with Chiffard, Carquemort consented to ac- cept our hospitality. When Madame saw him coming, she gathered up her napkins and bade us good-night, saying she found no pleasure in the society of the villains her husband was occasionally forced to entertain. CHAPTER II A HALF-BURNED CHART AND ITS STORY THERE have been moments when I felt convinced that Carquemort possessed not a single redeeming virtue, but if only for the sake of ruining his chance to prior- ity in hell, I must concede him one. He always came directly to the point, what- ever might be the subject under discus- sion. This is unusual with a French- man, especially with a Frenchman of his class, or with any man of his nature, if his mate exists on earth unhanged. There was never any beating about the bush with Carquemort ; and he had what was sometimes a most objectiona- ble habit of calling a spade a spade. The night of our first meeting he H 17 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE pulled a chair up to the table after the formal introductions had been made, and, looking first at one of us and then at the other with his small, heavy-browed, beady eyes, he said : " Chiffard has told you that I have a chart, and you want to see it ?" " That's about the size of it," answered Thatcher, lightly ; but Carquemort glared at him in a manner which plainly show- ed he did not like this levity, and I real- ized at once we must go about it care- fully if we wished the man to talk. I kicked Thatcher under the table. Then I said : " Chiffard has told us about the chart, but not much. As I understand it, you have a map on which is designated the location of hidden treasure. Such things are always interesting, of course ; but one does not run across hidden treasure very frequently nowadays, and it will require some proof to persuade us that your 18 A HALF-BURNED CHART AND ITS STORY chart is not a blagiie. If you can do that, we may be able to aid you." " You speak well," answered Carque- mort. " Chiffard assures me that, al- though Americans, you are both men of honor, and that if I show you the chart you will put your knowledge of its con- tents to no other use but that which may be agreed to between us. As to wheth- er it is a blague it will not take you long to determine that for yourself." He spoke as a man rilled with confi- dence, and I admit I was impressed by his manner. We readily agreed to make no use of information we might derive from the chart, for all we wanted of it, and of him, was an evening's entertain- ment. Chiffard sat by in silence, leaning forward on both elbows, eagerly attentive, and Thatcher had assumed a gravity of demeanor which seemed to reassure Car- quemort, and which apparently inspired him with confidence in Thatcher's integ- 19 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE rity. He felt in the inner pocket of his double-breasted sailor -jacket and pulled out a dark - leather pocket - book, from which he took a well - worn, blue - linen envelope. From this he extracted the chart and laid it on the table. I cannot analyze the peculiar feelings which came over me the instant I saw that piece of paper. They were a mixt- ure of fear, greed, hope, and determina- tion. There was no sensation of doubt, and none of joy. I have tried many times to explain to Thatcher just how I felt, and he has tried to do the same concerning himself, for me ; but neither of us has been very successful. We both agree that our brains swam in a kind of feverish excitement. As for me, I was satisfied at a glance that the map was a very an- cient one, and my interest was at once bound up in it. Thatcher, from scoffer, turned champion aye, fanatic so won- derful was the influence of that bit of THE CHART A HALF-BURNED CHART AND ITS STORY brown paper on him. There was some- thing uncanny in this fascination, some- thing weird and of the supernatural ; and it was exerted over every one who ever ^aw the chart. I could well understand why Chiffard had felt so restless and un- easy earlier in the evening. It was a small piece of brown paper, so thick that I took it at first to be parchment. It had originally been ob- long in form, about three inches by five ; but when we first saw it a portion had been burned away, leaving the top and the right-hand edge of the paper charred and irregular. Across the upper portion these words, prefixed by a cross in red ink, remained of what had been written: X Ici son oooo . . . environ en or pieces et . . . The cross referred to a similar red mark on one of a group of islands carefully outlined in the centre of the sheet. The FOUR FOR A FORTUNE name of the group had evidently been written down, for near the charred edge of the paper appeared these fragments of words in capital letters : ILE SAI MI The remaining space was taken up with what appeared to be a kind of ex- planatory inscription, fully half of which had been destroyed in the burning. This much had been spared : Pour trouver la each on se met le dos centre le mat Ton marche directe ver croix sur chiens u de 25 pa la pierr creuse 22 A HALF BURNED CHART AND ITS STORY A much better conception of what the document looked like may be obtained from the picture given herewith, which is taken from a photograph of the original. But no reproduction or description can ever convey the slightest idea of the won- derful fascination the original chart itself had upon all those who saw it or who came in contact with it. Chiffard said it was bewitched, and he may be right. I used to scoff at any belief in supernat- ural agencies or influences ; but I have gotten over that now. We all four sat there in silence gazing at those few square inches of yellow pa- per, the fever burning in our pulses and our heads throbbing. Finally, Carque- mort knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and this pounding on the table brought us back to our senses. Thatcher was the first to speak : " Where are these islands ?" he asked. " I do not know," replied Carquemort. 23 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE " That is what he wants you to find out," put in Chiffard, nervously. " But there are a good many islands in this world," said I, picking up the chart and scrutinizing it carefully ; " and there is not much of a clew to the whereabouts of this particular group to be found in this map. How did it come to get burned ?" " I cannot tell," said Carquemort. " It was so when I got it." " And where did you get it ?" He hesitated a moment, then replied : " It came to me when my grandfather died. But that is unimportant. Here is the chart. We will talk of that." His tone plainly forbade further inquiry. But I was athirst for facts. " I don't want to ask unreasonable questions," I said, " but there are some things we must know." Carquemort's face twitched slightly, and he started to speak ; but I raised my hand and shut 24 A HALF-BURNED CHART AND ITS STORY him off. " Wait a moment. We are in- terested in this map very much interest- ed, as you no doubt see. I don't care so far as you, personally, are concerned where or how you got it ; but I want some ex- planation of how it came to light after apparently having been hidden away for so many years. Do you understand what I mean ?" " I do," said Carquemort, somewhat sul- lenly. " Don't you see," I continued, persua- sively, " that, unless we can satisfy our- selves that no one else has had posses- sion of this map in a way to know its value, there is no use of our spending our time in seeking out these islands ?" " I do not believe the existence of the paper has been known of for over a hun- dred years," answered Carquemort, slow- ly, and with much apparent effort. "The paper was locked in a box. I opened the box three years ago in St. Malo. A lad 25 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE read to me the writing on the paper, and I kept it without telling any one of it. The lad was much excited and deeply affected by what he read, just as you have been and as I was when he repeated it to me ; but he promised to tell no one of it, and I believe he kept his word. At any rate, he had little time to speak much of it, for we sailed away on the same bark the Sainte Genevieve three days later, he as mousse and I as second mate." Here Carquemort paused for a mo- ment and inhaled a cloud of smoke. " He was the only one besides myself who knew of the existence of the chart," he continued. " He was washed over- board one night." He spoke in hoarse tones, and his voice grew fainter as he told the story. The last words were almost whispered as he leaned far over the table, looking at none of us, and they could not conceal 26 A HALF-BURNED CHART AND ITS STORY the truth. I shuddered and closed my eyes, but so great an impression did the story make upon my mind that I have since frequently wakened from a sound sleep at hearing that boy's cry as he was " washed overboard " in the night. There was another brief silence, broken at last by Thatcher. " You can't read, then ?" " No, sir." " That's why you showed the map to the boy ?" " Yes." " And who else has seen it since ?" " No one until to-day. I showed it then to Chiffard." " Why did you keep it so secret for three years ?" I interrupted, somewhat impatiently. " You said it was three years ago you got it in St. Malo, didn't you ?" " Yes," he answered, sitting up straight and raising his voice until it sounded al- 27 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE most like a hoarse yell in the quiet little room. " Three years I kept it. I could not use it. There seemed to be a curse upon it. I was superstitious, perhaps." Then his voice lowered, and there was an expression of almost savage greed in the depths of his eyes. " But I must use it now. I might as well die finding the gold as die for fear of it ! Ask me no more I have answered your question. It is certain that nobody has seen this chart since it was made and hidden away, and I believe it must have been in exist- ence a hundred years or more." " But there is one more point upon which we must be satisfied," I insisted, " and after that we can let the past be gone. How came you here, having sailed from St. Malo three years ago ?" " The Sainte Genevi^eve was bound for Cayenne, French Guiana," proceeded Car- quemort, straightforwardly, now some- what calmed. " We had bad weather from 28 A HALF-BURNED CHART AND ITS STORY the start, and at the end of four months were blown upon the desert island of Trinidad, off Brazil. The bark went to pieces on the rocks and two of the men died. The rest of us were taken off at the end of six weeks by a British tramp, that landed us in Buenos Ayres. The French Consul there finally put us aboard a steamer for London, but we broke down and had to put into Rio. There I left my mates and shipped on a coffee-trader for New Orleans. We lay three months at Santos (where the men were dying like flies with yellow - fever) before we could get a cargo ; and when at last I got to New Orleans, a month ago, with fifty dollars in my pocket, I made up my mind that as soon as we could clear quar- antine I'd come to New York and see if I could not get a change of luck. This chart is all I have, and I'm going to find these islands if I can get any help; it's the last card I have to play !" 29 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE " Well," said I, " exactly what do you wish to do if by any means we should discover the location of these islands ?" " Go there," said Carquemort, curtly. " But that will cost money," said Thatcher. " I furnish the chart ; you furnish the money." " And then what ?" I asked. 14 About the treasure ?" " Yes." " We divide." u If we furnish money enough to get to these islands wherever they may be and find the treasure, you will share equally with us anything that may be un- earthed?" " I will agree to that," said Carque- mort. " I should like to think this over a lit- tle," I said, in an undertone, turning to Thatcher. " Of course," he replied ; " but I wanted 30 A HALF-BURNED CHART AND ITS STORY to know what kind of a deal he was willing to make." " And me ?" exclaimed the cook, anx- iously " and me ? Where am I in here?" " We shall have to see about that, Chif- fard," answered Thatcher, smiling. "We will dine here again to-morrow night, and then perhaps we can talk more seriously about this." " That is all very well," said I ; " but how can we talk about it if we don't know where the islands are ? How is that to be learned ?" And I turned in- quiringly towards Carquemort. He shrugged his shoulders after the fashion of his race, and asked if there was not enough written on the chart to show where the treasure was hidden. He seemed incredulous when we told him that there were only a few letters that gave the slightest clew to the identity of the islands. " But there may be enough," added 31 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE Thatcher; "and after we have set to work in earnest we may be able to decipher the enigma. I don't intend to throw up my hands yet." I had never seen him so en- thusiastic. It was some time before we could per- suade Carquemort to let us have a copy of the chart; but we finally convinced him that no harm could possibly come of it, and that we must have some such data to aid us in working out the problem that must be solved before any further steps could be taken. And so, after the map and the writing had. been carefully traced upon a thin sheet of paper, Carquemort put the precious documents away in his pocket again, and we parted for the night. CHAPTER III INVESTIGATION AND SPECULATION IT was late when we left Chiffard's. The rain had ceased, and as we walked slowly homeward over the dappled pave- ments we discussed the unusual events of the evening. We both frankly admitted to each other being deeply affected by what we had seen and heard, and neither concealed his anxiety to get to work at the deciphering of the mysterious chart an undertaking which must now seem to any sane person an absolutely impossi- ble task. But the sane person is not un- der the influence which overpowered us at that time. " Let us be systematic, and, at least, be- gin at the beginning," I suggested, as we c 33 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE laid the tracing out on the table. " The first sentence we find somewhat the worse for wear, but what there is of it is plain enough : " Ici son oooo . . . environ en or pieces et . . ." " That doesn't look over - promising, does it ?" said Thatcher. " But it is plain that son was originally sont? "Plain as day. Icisont here are ; or,in the words of the head-stones, ' here lie.' " " Four zeros." " That must have been at the very least i oooo," I said. " Fully that. I don't see how it could have been less. You are conservative." " My real opinion, however, is that the total figure represented a larger sum." " There is certainly room enough for more figures on that line," said Thatcher, laughing. " Oh yes ; but you've got to put a word 34 WE WALKED SLOWLY HOMEWARD INVESTIGATION AND SPECULATION in between sont and the zeros enterres, or caches, or deposes, or something equiva- lent." " But even the longest one of those words would leave plenty of space for more figures." And we went at our prob- lem with a millimetre measure, gauging the spread of the chart-maker's chirogra- phy. But of course it all came to naught, and we presently abandoned that investi- gation and took up the second line, "en- viron en or pieces et . . ." " It looks as if there might have been another word after those zeros," said Thatcher. " There's certainly something lacking in the sentence as it stands. Suppose the first missing word were ' hidden.' Then it would read, ' Id sont caches . . . 0000 . . . environ en or pieces et . . .' 1 think there ought to be some punctua- tion after or, say a comma or a dash; 'pieces ^/'and whatever followed were ex- 35 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE planatory of the gold; don't you think so ? Pieces means coin pieces of money. Evidently the treasure is in coin and bullion, or ingots, eh ? Ingots is a good old pirate word ; pieces et lingots. How's that?" " Make it pieces et lingots for the pres- ent. But how about the word following the zeros?" After a good deal of debate and thought, it struck us that this word must have been some expression of monetary value such as francs, pounds, ducats, doubloons, or Louis d'or; and this seemed reasonable, since it would have been only natural for the writer of the map to designate in some way the value of his buried hoard. So we gave up speculating upon that sen- tence and turned to the consideration of the eight capital letters that stood below, near the outline of the islands, and, after a brief examination, we concluded that these fragments INVESTIGATION AND SPECULATION ILE SAI MI must represent the name of the group. We determined, at any rate, to proceed on this basis, and should our premises prove false, we could but begin over again. "ILE is certainly the French for isl- and," said Thatcher, writing the letters out on a pad. " It was probably written ILES" said I, " in the plural, for you see there are more islands than one shown on the map, and the last letter has no doubt been burned off. Let us take that for grant- ed we have got to take a lot for granted in this search, so it matters little where we begin. Now here we have ILES SAI . . . MI . . ." " Exactly," returned Thatcher. " Now, the main question is, Where are the lies Sai . . . Mi . . .?" " By Jericho !" I exclaimed, jumping to 37 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE my feet, " I have it ! It's as plain as day ! The S-A-I stands for Saint. They are the Isles of Saint something." " Certainly !" shouted Thatcher, now very much excited ; " that's it precisely. Saint Michael, eh ? or, rather, Saint Michel? "Are there any lies Saint Michel?" I asked, trembling with excitement. " Oh, there must be !" gasped Thatcher " there must be ! The French have islands and towns for every saint on the calendar." " They probably have," I continued, more calmly; "but Michael surely has not a monopoly on the initial letters M I. There may be any number of saints whose names begin with those letters." " How shall we find out ?" " One way is to get a gazetteer or a geo- graphical dictionary, and write out a list of all the islands whose names begin with Saint Mi . . ." 38 INVESTIGATION AND SPECULATION " That's it," interrupted Thatcher, glee- fully ; " and then we'll get a map and look up each one until we find the group that corresponds in outline and general con- figuration with the one sketched on the O chart. My boy, my boy, have a million with me !" It took us much longer, of course, to arrive at these conclusions than I have here set down, but having reached them in approximately that line of reasoning, we felt satisfied with our achievement, and brought down the stocky bottle of King William from the top shelf and built castles so high and so late that the dawn crept in through the windows and gilded their mythical battlements before we parted, promising to meet a few hours later in the Astor Library. Here we encountered our first disap- pointment, as I had had a vague fear we should, as the gazetteer was replete with names of saintly islands that began with 39 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE the letters M I. There were Saint Mi- chaels, Saint Michels, Saint Mihiels, Saint Miguels, and Saint Miniatos with- out number. " Well," observed Thatcher, sadly, " it's a case of take-your-choice, I suppose." " It's a case of work," I answered. " The process of elimination will be a long one, but it must be thoroughly done. Get an atlas." While Thatcher was making life a burden to the librarian in his attempt to get maps of the world on the largest pos- sible scale, I wrote down one beneath the other, in a long list, the names of the islands that might hold our secret. When completed, there were over thirty on the list, the most promising being the islands of Saint Michael in the Azores, Saint Michael in Cornwall, and Saint Michael off the coast of Labrador. We patiently searched out each individual isle and each group separately, and compared them with 40 INVESTIGATION AND SPECULATION our tracing of Carquemort's chart, but not one corresponded in any way. Then we made a second and a third comparison, and at the end we had not even a hope left that the chart-maker had been a poor draftsman, and had only roughly outlined the spot where his treasure lay. There was no group of four islands with a name beginning " Saint Mi." " Well," sighed Thatcher and his face wore a look of disappointment that was pathetic " there is one thing left. We can go through these atlases and com- pare our chart with every group of islands in the world." " That would be nonsense," I replied, "and no one but a crazy man would think of such a thing." " I don't pretend to be anything else but a crazy man now," he said. " In the first place, that atlas or any other does not show all the islands of the world. It could not. There are millions 41 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE of islands. Every river, every bay, every shore is dotted with islands. Many are not shown on any map. It is more than likely that this treasure is laid away in some obscure group that used to be fre- quented by pirates and sea-robbers. I don't know what we can do." " I know what we won't do," retorted Thatcher; "we won't give up not just yet, at least. If you think the stuff is hidden on an island that used to be fre- quented by pirates, I am willing to inves- tigate all the West Indian groups and all the Louisiana and Florida islands." " Investigate?" I exclaimed. " Not personally," said Thatcher. " I am not as mad as that. But I'll stay here all day and go over every map I can lay hold of. I shall then at least have the satisfaction of knowing where the islands are not, even if I don't locate them." I could not stay with him, because I had an appointment down town. I would not 42 INVESTIGATION AND SPECULATION have stayed with him if I could. I con- sidered his scheme rank lunacy, and told him so ; but Thatcher was not to be dis- suaded. He was an individual of unlim- ited determination and spasmodic per- severance. If this latter quality had been fixed in him, Thatcher would have been a genius. So I left him with his atlases, agreeing to meet him in the evening at Chiffard's, and promising to fill out in the meanwhile, if I could, the half-burned in- scription on the lower part of the chart, which neither of us had attempted to de- cipher as yet. CHAPTER IV DEDUCTIONS AND CONCLUSIONS THE labor I had so cheerfully assumed proved no easy task, as I very soon dis- covered, and I spent three hours of the afternoon in partially piecing out the lines where the words had been burned away. I did not expect to make any important discovery by doing this, but I wanted to have some results to show Carquemort at dinner-time. The broken sentence, as it appeared on my copy of the chart, ran thus: Pour trouver la each on se met le dos centre le mat Ton marche directe ver croix sur 44 DEDUCTIONS AND CONCLUSIONS chiens u de 25 pa la pierr creuse The result of my labors was not re- markably satisfactory, but when the time came to start for Chiffard's, I had arranged the sentence in this fashion : Pour trouver la cachetfe on se met le dos contre le mat et (?) Ton marche en ligne (?) directe ven- la croix sur chiens u de 25 pas la pierir creuse To be sure, I had added but a few let- ters, yet I felt that, little as this was, I had accomplished something. There could be no doubt that cachelte was the word indi- cated by each, or that ver had been vers, 45 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE pa had been/^^, and/zV^-r must have been pierre. I did not feel so sure about the insertion of the words en ligne at the end of the fourth line, or the article la at the end of the fifth ; but they made sense, and that was something, for further along I could not make any sense at all. Trans- lated, my revised version read : " To find the hiding-place, put your back against the mast and walk in a straight line di- rectly towards the cross on ... dogs . . . 25 steps . . . the stone . . . dig." The first part of this, of course, was plain that is, it was plain in so far as, by locating the hiding-place, it confirm- ed in a measure the statement, made in the words at the top of the chart, that there was treasure concealed somewhere on the island. But then, again, it was not plain at all, for the directions were exceedingly vague, and I could not help recalling the old fable of the three wise men who rowed to the middle of the lake 4 6 DEDUCTIONS AND CONCLUSIONS and there threw a bag of gold overboard, marking the spot for future identification by cutting a notch in the side of their boat. My map-maker had apparently lo- cated the cachette on the island by stand- ing with his back to the mast of his ship, and Heaven only knows where the ship was anchored or how the tide ran at the time he took his bearings. This was grievously discouraging. And as to what "the cross," "dogs," "25 steps," and "stone" might mean I could not dream. As I walked through Washington Square and let the cool evening breeze blow across my feverish forehead, I wondered, in a confused, irrational sort of way, if the witless chart-makerhad taken his line from the "mast" of a ship at sea to a "cross" on shore, where there was a pack of "dogs" standing "25 steps" from some " stone." If such were the case, even with the island found, we should have a merry time searching for the spot to "dig" for 47 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE the cachette. What bitter, bitter irony to invite us to dig on such slim, idiotic, worse than useless directions ! On arriving at the little restaurant in South Fifth Avenue, I found Thatcher and Carquemort already at table. So solemn looked Thatcher that there was no necessity for him to tell me his search among the West Indian islands had been fruitless ; but it was nevertheless pleasing to hear him report his failure for the mere sake of enjoying the picturesqueness of his profanity. Carquemort had been sip- ping absinthe all the afternoon so Chif- fard told us later and was in sullen mood. He was inclined to be querulous, where- fore Thatcher, whose temper had not been improved by his afternoon's experience, ordered him to be quiet and bade him dine, that he might be the better possessed of his senses when Chiffard should join us later. Madame was as cordial as ever, and her 4 s DEDUCTIONS AND CONCLUSIONS cheery announcement to her spouse of "ces messieurs sont la" rang out clearly through the room, bringing to me an assurance of gastronomic consolation at least. But the accursed chart had played sad havoc with Chiffard's nerves, which, in turn, had affected his culinary prowess, for I think he never cooked a worse dinner in his life. The editing of the burned portion of the chart, insignificant as it was, seemed to give the greatest gratification to Carque- mort. He lost every vestige of sullenness in his examination of my writing, which he could not any more read than if it had been Syriac, and he displayed in the sub- sequent discussion an amount of intelli- gence and reasoning power of which his previous manner had not led us to believe him capable. His chief contribution tow- ards the unravelling of the fragmentary directions was of greater importance than it appears as here set down. I was revil- D 49 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE ing the maker of the chart, to a soft ob- bligato of blasphemy and profanity by Thatcher, dwelling particularly upon the fact that the main point of direction, be- ing taken from a movable object, was absolutely useless, when Carquemort re- marked : " You may not be right. It is possible that the mast was not on a ship." " Oh, of course," I exclaimed, petulant- ly, " they may have unstepped their mast and stuck it in the sand, and they may have chained their dogs to the stone ; but, confound it, all that is not probable." " You do not comprehend," objected Carquemort. " The word mat in French means just as much a pole on land as a mast on a vessel. A flag-pole is a mat. Did you never see a mat de cocagne ?" Of course I had seen a mat de cocagne, and many a time. I had climbed one at the Fete de Neuilly in the good old days of my Franco -American infancy, and I 50 DEDUCTIONS AND CONCLUSIONS wondered I had not recognized all along the amphibiousness of the term. Yet there was consolation in the fact that in days of old wiser heads than mine had failed at the egg trick until Mr. C. Colum- bus came along. And so Carquemort was our Columbus, and the foggy atmosphere of mystery over those directions became partially cleared away. How simple the sentence now appeared : " To find the hiding-place, put your back against the pole and walk in a straight line directly towards the cross on ... dogs ... 25 steps . . . the stone . . . dig." " But confound the cross on the dogs !" exclaimed Thatcher. " What on earth can be the connection between the dogs and the cross?" " There must be some connection," I said. "And yet there is not room for more than one or two words at the end of that line. We shall have to find out what they are before we can go much further." 51 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE And so we puzzled and puzzled, but our labors bore no fruit; and we parted again, weary and mentally chafing, hoping against hope, but ever strong in our belief that in the end we must succeed. As the cynical Thatcher put it, this was a miss- ing-word contest, limited to four compet- itors, with a prize of untold sums in gold. And so we kept on guessing. CHAPTER V THE FINGER OF FATE FOR many days we made no progress whatever, and almost every evening we dined at Chiffard's. Madame made little pretence of concealing the fact that she looked upon us as weak-minded vision- aries, and she often rated her husband severely. But the petard took this cen- sure meekly, as usual, and reserved his explosions for Carquemort, whose funds were rapidly ebbing low, and who now threatened to become a charge upon his old shipmate of the Cuverville. This serious feature of the situation first ap- pealed to Thatcher. He had overheard a conversation between the two, and, be- ing a man of action and expedient, he 53 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE forthwith asked Carquemort why he did not find work. " I am only fit for the sea," he replied, somewhat sullenly. " It is better to work on land than to starve," said Thatcher, sharply; and he followed up the rebuke by offering to get him a place down town somewhere. "What is the good?" retorted Car- quemort. " I speak but few words of English 'Thank you,' 'How much?' ' Goddam !' and I should be of no use to journalists, except perhaps to furnish them with lies." Chiffard, for some reason, had concluded that Thatcher and I earned our living by the pen. He always spoke of us as " ces messieurs les journalistes" It was of no importance to him, of course, whether we journalized daily or merely incidentally. In his eyes we were members of that vast craft which he believed could make or unmake any condition of affairs, and con- 54 THE FINGER OF FATE sequently we commanded his admiration. It was for this reason, we afterwards learned, that he urged Carquemort to take us into his confidence. Chiffard felt sure we could help the man, or that if we could not, we had the means of reaching others who might be able to. As a matter of fact, neither of us was in any way connected with journalism. Thatcher earned his daily bread in the manufacture and sale of leather. His father had grown rich in the Swamp, and had insisted that his son, upon graduation from college, should spend a certain num- ber of hours daily in the shadows of the great arches of the Bridge. Thatcher was a good business man, as business men go, but he did not relish the odor of leather. He unfortunately got printers' ink on his fingers at New Haven, and printers' ink is a bacillus which, when once inoculated into the blood, can never be purged from the system. 55 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE Thatcher, however, did not neglect his duties for all that, and while he wrote occasionally, and spent much more of his time with men of Bohemian instinct than he did at the Hide and Leather Club, where the members' shoes fairly creaked with quotations, he never considered him- self in any sense of the word a man of letters. He used to refer to himself as a " rank outsider, worshipping at the shrine of the Muses, with his feet mired from traffic in the Swamp." As for myself, I had not been connected with a newspaper for eight years when we fell foul of Carquemort, although I had never let my pen grow rusty. Thus it was that although Carquemort could truly be of no service in literature, he might prove useful in leather, and Thatcher persuaded him to take a place, temporarily at least, as porter in the house of Thatcher & Co., Cliff Street. This was cheering news to Chiffard ; it was profit- 56 THE FINGER OF FATE able for Carquemort, and in the end the seaman proved serviceable in his adopt- ed sphere in spite of occasional surliness brought on by bad whiskey, which the truckmen of the Swamp soon taught him to like. Carquemort's humiliating career as a landsman, however, did not last long. I believe he served the house of Thatcher & Co. just three weeks in all, and then that moment came which formed an epoch in the lives of all four of us, and which I look upon as the second nail in the coffin that this entire treasure-hunting incident ought to be buried in. The moment was that in which we substantiated the mys- tery of Carquemort's chart. It came about more or less accidentally, as all discoveries do, no matter how great and painstaking the preliminary labors of the finite mind may have been. It is with no desire for taking any credit upon myself, but for the sake of making 57 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE my story complete, that I give the incident of discovery in detail. It happened on a Sunday afternoon in June. We had been puzzling over the half-burned sentence for an hour or more, just as we had puzzled over it for days and days previously, and with no better success ; and Thatcher had embroidered his conversation with more than his usual allowance of anathemas for the chart and the man who burned it. The knotty problem we had never been able to solve was the connection between croix and chiens, but on this day these words became the key to the whole situ- ation. " We have gone over this so many times," I was saying to him, "that I am sick of it. I am beginning to feel that even millions would scarcely be sufficient wage for the gray matter I am daily wast- ing in this investigation ; but I am willing to keep at it a little longer, only I am going at the thing now in a different way." 58 THE FINGER OF FATE " I am glad you have found a new way," commented Thatcher, somewhat hope- lessly. " What is it ?" " It is this," I went on. " We have made sense out of the words up to a point where the cross gets mixed up with the dogs. Now let us get every bit of sense and make every kind of deduction we can from what is left. It really does not make much difference what we de* duce or how extravagant we are ; it is better than merely staring at the chart." " Go ahead," grunted Thatcher. " We know, in the first place, that there is an island in fact, several islands, but we are onlv interested in one of them. j We know that somewhere on this particu- lar island there is (or was) a pole or mast, possibly a flag-staff. We know further that there is also on the island a hiding- place, possibly a cave, more likely a hole, because the word creuse implies that, the hiding-place once found, we must dig. 59 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE We know, too, that there is a cross on the island, and possibly there are dogs. The cross is the point at which we first stick." " And where we have stuck for a month," said Thatcher. " Well, then, let us see what we can do with that cross. It was evidently a land- mark, or the writer of the chart could not, and probably would not, have used it as a basic point. It may be a cross on a church, or it may be stuck up in the ground. It must certainly have been in plain sight when these words were writ- ten. So it seems to me we want to look for an island where there is a church or a cross." " There is probably a cross on every inhabited civilized island," said Thatcher. " That is possible ; but don't look at it from such a discouraging stand-point. Let us rather see if we cannot deduce something further from the cross." 60 THE FINGER OF FATE " You have deduced a church," ob- served Thatcher. " Yes, I have deduced a church. A church with a cross on it would presum- ably be a Catholic church. Therefore the church is in a Catholic community, and if we accept that deduction we bar out all desert islands and all islands in strictly Protestant countries." " For the sake of argument, let it go at that," said Thatcher. " But suppose the cross is not on a church. You started by saying it might be on a steeple, or it might be sticking up out of the ground." " If it were an isolated cross stuck into the ground, it must surely be in a Cath- olic country," I argued. " I remember distinctly a great crucifix on top of the cliffs at T report, where I. spent one sum- mer as a boy. It stands high above the village, facing seaward, and the fishermen look to it as a sort of mute guardian of their interests. Now that I think of it, 61 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE it seems to me I never was in a French seaport town that did not have such a crucifix standing on some conspicuous height overlooking the harbor and the sea." " Then you deduce from that," said Thatcher, somewhat ironically, " that on one of the islands is located a French seaport town, with a tall crucifix over- looking the sea?" " That is not so very illogical," I an- swered, calmly ; and I felt a peculiar thrill rising within me. " It is not impossible, of course," re- sumed Thatcher, more seriously. " It is a new line for us to work on, at any rate. And, after all, why should not this be a French island ? The chart is French ; the writing on it is French. I wonder we did not think of this before !" He seemed to become suddenly affect- ed by the excitement that was brewing in me. He rose hurriedly from his chair 62 THE FINGER OF FATE and leaned over the tracing of the map that lay on the table. "By gad!" he cried, "we may have struck it at last ! Let's go somewhere !" " Go somewhere ?" I repeated. " Where ? Where can we go to-day? It is Sunday. Libraries, like saloons, are closed on Sun- day in New York. We'll have to wait until to-morrow. How foolish, after all, to get so excited over this now !" " Excited ? I have not been myself since I first saw that chart!" cried Thatcher. " Come ! it's French. Let's go to some French place. We might find somebody who knows. Let's go to the Martin." And before I could realize it, Thatcher had his hat and coat on and had started down the stairs. I followed him, and in a few moments we were at the Hotel Martin. It is a quiet place of a Sunday, with the shades pulled well down, and peculiar- looking, bearded Frenchmen, endimanch'es, sitting 63 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE about at the marble-topped tables of the cafe absorbing rainbow drinks. We sat with the rest, and Thatcher asked the waiter if he did not have some sort of a directory of French towns and cities that we could look at. The waiter said there was indeed such a book, but it was chained to the desk in the office. So we perforce sought the book, inasmuch as it could not be brought to us, and we found it to be exactly what we could have wished for. It was a directory of France and of all her colonies, with maps of the Repub- lic's foreign possessions and diagrams of many of the principal cities. I shall not dwell upon the excitement of the moments we spent in looking through that thick, canvas-bound volume. We were as famished ones who sought for stray crumbs that might have rested between the leaves ; and when we had come to the end of our search, having found nothing along the line of our in- 6 4 "WE HAVE STRUCK IT AT LAST!" HE CRIED THE FINGER OF FATE vestigation, we closed the big book re- signedly, and the chain rattled disconso- lately against the wall. Thatcher went across the room and gazed out of the window into the silent street, and I stood leaning on the desk in despair. After a few moments, in a purely mechanical way, I began fingering the leaves again, and looking at the maps and reading the cu- rious French names ; and soon I came to a picture of a group of islands in almost every respect like any other picture in the book, and I paid no attention to the name printed in big letters at the top of the page; but my eye caught, and held, as an anchor fastens to the rocky sea-bed, upon the words "// aux Chiens" Then I looked again, and I saw that the group was an enlarged counterpart of Carque- mort's chart, and the name of the place as printed in the book was "lies Saint Pierre Miquelon" At the top of my voice I shouted, and E 65 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE Thatcher rushed to my side and savagely seized the book, so that the chain snapped from its fastening ; and in our bewilder- ment we dropped the volume, and it was seconds before we could find the place again. Well, briefly, we had discovered the group we were looking for. The islands of St. Pierre Miquelon, off the south coast of Newfoundland, in longitude 56 20 west and latitude 47 4' north, were the ones traced on the chart, and across each islet of the four was written its name St. Pierre, Grande Miquelon, Petite Mique- lon, He aux Chiens and the word Chiens was no longer a mystery and a stumbling- block. It did not now take us long to fill in the words that had been destroyed in the burning of Carquemort's paper, and here is what we made out, the italics be- ing our additions : Pour trouver la on se met le dos 66 THE FINGER OF FATE centre le mat et Ton marche en ligne directe verr la croix sur file aux chiens \\ne distance de 25 pas la piern? creuse The name of the group we set down on our paper thus : 1LES SAINT PIERRE T&IQUELON, and gurgled hysterically at the reminis- cence of our past futile efforts. There was high revelry at Chiffard's that Sunday evening, and I have never seen man so drunk as Carquemort. Ma- dame left us early, and Chiffard put up the shutters and turned the kev on the / public, revelling himself with his allies in the little dining-room. There was a vast 67 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE amount of words wasted that night to small profit in the morning, and much good liquor sunk beneath palates that were numb to discrimination. CHAPTER VI A PECULIAR PARTNERSHIP IT was now July, a favorable season for a voyage to the North, and we solaced ourselves with the reflection that even if the chart and the gold and all the rest of it were a hoax, the trip to the isl- ands might alone be worth the candle. The colony of St. Pierre Miquelon has a name for loneliness and barrenness, and Thatcher felt that if the quest proved futile, and if all else went awry, he could at least find some secluded spot up there where he might soundly thrash Carque- mort; and, next to finding the gold, to thrash Carquemort seemed to be Thatch- er's chief desire. Our preparations were rapidly and ea- 6 9 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE sily made. There was nothing to keep me in town, and Thatcher found little trouble in arranging for a more or less indefinite absence from the leather business during the dull summer months. Carquemort, of course, had no other object in life ; but with poor Chiffard it was another matter. He had to go through a stormy session with Madame before he felt certain of his plans, and even so he secured her final indorsement only by deeding to her what small property he had, and by withdraw- ing all his savings from the bank and turn- ing them over to his wife. This money she took and at once deposited in another savings-bank, in her own name, and there- upon called her husband again a fool, and vowed that if he still wished to go upon the career of a wild ass and have himself shipwrecked, or, at best, waste his time instead of attending to his legitimate and proper business, which was to make the cooking in their little basement, he was 70 A PECULIAR PARTNERSHIP free to do so, for all of her, and the sooner he rid the place of the canaille that had caused all the trouble the better would she be pleased. As for ourselves, we were glad that Chiffard was so anxious to go along, for we felt sure of his devotion, and welcomed it as a counterpoise to an un- stable confidence in Carquemort ; and, be- sides, as Thatcher aptly put it, it is never inconvenient to have a good cook at hand. It had been agreed among us before we separated on that riotous Sunday night or Monday morning, more likely that Thatcher and I should make such ar- rangements as we thought best for our o o voyage. We had anticipated no diffi- culty here, but we soon discovered that there was not a steamship man or a ticket- agent in all New York who could tell us exactly, or even approximately, how to reach St. Pierre. Even at Cook's they had never heard of the place, and the clerk we questioned stared at us as if he 71 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE believed we were daft when we told him we wanted to make a pleasure trip in that direction. He almost insisted upon sell- ing us tickets to St. Pierre Martinique ! Finally it occurred to Thatcher, the planner of the quartet, that inasmuch as we had gotten our initial information at the Martin, we might secure even more from the same quarter, should we go about it in a calmer and more leisurely manner than we had on our last visit to the little hotel in University Place. And again Thatcher was right. We found a man in the cafe who had once heard of St. Pierre Miquelon, and he saperlotte-z.& vol- ubly at the reminiscence. From him we learned that the first step in our journey was to Halifax, whence frequent steamers sail for Newfoundland, and some of these, our friend thought, stopped occasionally at the French islands. That was the best we could do, and accordingly, the four of us Thatcher, 72 A PECULIAR PARTNERSHIP Carquemort, Chiffard, and I set off from New York for Nova Scotia on Monday morning, July 22, 1894. The last few days preceding our de- parture had been spent in drawing up certain legal documents, and these were signed on Saturday afternoon, the 2Oth Carquemort making an anchor as his mark. There were four papers, and each of us adventurers and treasure - hunters retained a copy. The gist of the for- mality was to the effect that one Car- quemort, seaman, of St. Malo, France, being the rightful owner and possessor of a certain chart, which apparently des- ignated the location of hidden treasure, agreed to take the three other parties to the indenture into partnership for the purpose of obtaining and securing the said treasure. Thatcher and I bound our- selves to advance money, up to a cer- tain amount, with which to pay the ex- penses of the expedition this advance 73 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE to be repaid from whatever treasure might be found. After the settling of this obligation, and the payment of all further and necessary expenses, it was stipulated that the remainder of the treas- ure should be divided equally among the four. It is plain that Thatcher and I were taking the major risk in this venture ; but we had talked the matter over pretty carefully before we made the proposition, and the amount we agreed to advance was but little more than the sum of what the two of us had spent during a six weeks' vacation, hunting in Colorado, the previous year. In this manner we soothed our consciences and drugged our doubts, and we juggled figures to de- ceive our saner instincts. Chiffard's con- tribution to the partnership may, at first thought, seem inconsequential and not sufficient to entitle him to a quarter- share in the proceeds. But it should be 74 A PECULIAR PARTNERSHIP remembered that he was staking more than any other one of us not even ex- cepting Carquemort; and, further, we proposed to arrange things later so that he should fairly earn his salt. My desire, from the start, had been to charter a schooner in New York, or Boston, or, better still, Gloucester, the home of the bank fishermen, and sail forth upon the seas towards the rocky shores of the treasure-holding islets, like genuine buccaneers, with Carquemort as one of the crew and Chiffard as steward. Both were seamen born and bred, and I'll wager no better cook ever stood in a galley. But Thatcher objected. He was seething with impatience, and the bare thought of calms and head winds thrust his influence in favor of the railroad as far as Halifax, at least. There, perhaps, he would be willing to think of taking a schooner and of giving Chiffard a chance to make himself useful. 75 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE And as I was somewhat impatient my- self and not over anxious to dwell too many days on what, at best, must be a small boat, I did not stand out any too strongly for my original buccaneering proposition. It is possibly just as well, too, that I did not. CHAPTER VII A MOVE IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION WE arrived at Halifax on the 24th of July, and my first impressions of the city are still somewhat confused. They con- sist mainly of a swarm of howling hack- men, and of a long, narrow street that runs apparently straight up into the air, the houses on either side clinging to the sidewalks by some incomprehensible eva- sion of the laws of gravity, doubtless peculiar to the locality. We struggled up this painfully steep street, Chiffard bending under the weight of our valises (which were certainly not included in the dispensation that seemed to favor the houses), and found our way to a comfort- able hostelry, where we rested and were 77 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE refreshed. Our Frenchmen we sent to an humble lodging. Rid of their encum- brance, we breathed more easily, and set out to walk about the town in quest of such knowledge as the Nova Scotians might have to offer. It was early afternoon and the streets were thronged so many soldiers I had not seen in one day for years and in our delight over the novelty of the sights of a foreign city, we set our hopes and anxie- ties momentarily behind us and enjoyed life to its fullest extent. Thatcher, espe- cially, seemed to delight in the red coats and the pacing sentries, and he kept im- pressing upon me that these were genuine soldiers his antipathy being the militia. We met Mr. Tommy Atkins on every block, and a fine-looking young fellow he was with his clear complexion, his broad shoulders well displayed in his scarlet tunic, his lozenge - shaped Scotch cap cocked jauntily over his right ear, and 78 A MOVE IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION his short bamboo swagger-stick swinging loosely in his gloved hand ! He looked neat and clean, too, and bore himself as if he were not ashamed of his calling and were proud of the Queen's uniform. And, walking arm in arm with him, or with a blue -jacket from the harbor, went the heavy -artillery man, clanking along the narrow pavement with sabre and spurs, gaudy in red and yellow trappings, and comical with his pill-box cap set at a thrilling angle. The first hour of this o o sort of thing affected us much as if we had strayed into an opera-bouffe rehearsal (and the Halifax houses helped out the illusion, for they look like old scenery) ; but after a while we grew accustomed to all this scarlet and gold, and soon did not even turn our heads when we passed a pompous sergeant with his brilliant chevrons and purple sash. " Do you know," said Thatcher, as the conversation fell back to the topic upper- 79 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE most, after all, in our minds, " I think it is time we began taking some precautions. Here we are off for an out-of-the-way and almost unheard-of place after treasure, ac- companied by a French cook and by as tough a customer as you could find any- where on Montmartre. Doesn't such a combination appeal to you as unu- sual?" " That last feature you mention of the situation is certainly sufficient to arouse suspicion in the mind of almost any one," I admitted. " Exactly. That's why I think we ought, so far as possible, to keep dark our rela- tions with Chiffard and the villain. That was my principal reason for wanting to put them off under a different roof." " Yes ; but, after all, I don't know that it makes much difference so long as we are going to sail directly from here in our own chartered schooner." " Perhaps we shall not do that. I am 80 A MOVE IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION not by any means convinced of that's be- ing the best plan. Are you ?" " I don't know that I am, but we haven't anything better in view just now. Let's go down to the docks and see what we can find in the way of a schooner." " We can spend our time to better ad- vantage, I think," said Thatcher. " While you were pigeon-holing the crew and the cook, I was talking to a number of Nova Scotian idiots around the hotel. I never struck a town where the average of infor- mation was so low ; nevertheless, I man- aged to worm out something. I posed as a ' journalist ' bad cess to the word ! on my way up to St. Pierre to 'write up' the place for a syndicate, and would you believe it ? the first three men I braced did not know there were any such islands on the face of the sea. Finally, however, I found a fellow in the bar who told me that Madden & Maddigan are the agents for a steamship which boasts the name La F 8l FOUR FOR A FORTUNE Patrie, that runs up to the Miquelon Isl- ands every two weeks. Well, sir, I was so tickled at getting on some kind of a trail that I blew that fellow off to three Scotch whiskeys in about as many min- utes, and you never saw so astonished a Nova Scotian in your life. So I want to look up Madden & Maddigan, and if the cretin who directed me knew what he was talking about, we ought to be somewhere near their shop now." But the said cretin, like the majority of his race whom it was our fortune to meet in Halifax, had put us on the wrong scent, and, after walking around in a circle for some time, we ended up by chartering a conveyance, in which we rode for half an hour before the driver found any one who knew enough to tell him where Madden & Maddigan's was. At the end of that time we wandered into a narrow, roughly paved street, and drew up before a clean- looking stone building of very modest 82 A MOVE IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION appearance, and over the low doorway hung the anchored sign of Madden & Maddigan. " Now, mind you," said Thatcher, as he jumped out of the rickety caleche, "we are tourists you and I, two of us only; you artist, I writer and we want to go to St. Pierre. Let me do the talking, and be sure you back me up in all I say." Before I could expostulate, he had pushed open the glass door of the low- ceilinged shipping-office and was leaning expectantly upon the polished counter. A clerk crawled out from behind a desk as we entered and stared at us with the imbecilic expression we were rapidly be- coming accustomed to an expression which Thatcher characterized as " the codfish face." When we told him we wanted to find out about transportation to St. Pierre, a momentary gleam of in- telligence seemed to appear in his eyes, as if at some remote period he had heard 33 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE the name of the place; and then he re- lapsed codfishy and said La Patrie sailed in a few days, but would not go to St. Pierre this trip. We attacked him from all points of the compass, and tried to confound his crass ignorance of his own business, hoping the man might unwit- tingly deliver himself of some useful fact ; but all in vain. Then we asked if, per- haps, a member of the firm were in. Yes, Colonel Madden was in. " Thank Heaven for that !" muttered Thatcher. We were invited into a rear office, where we met a tall, loosely-built, military-look- ing man with a fine face, sunburned all over, except for a scallop over his right eye, where his little pill-box artilleryman's cap had protected a circle some three inches in diameter from the effects of sun exposure during a week in camp. To our unspeakable delight, Colonel Mad- den could tell us just what we wanted to A MOVE IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION know and he did, too. We found we could go by steamship more or less di- rectly to our destination, or we could go by rail as far as Sydney, at the extremity of Cape Breton, and thence take the same steamer to St. Pierre. He informed us thoroughly concerning prices and time, and even of the manners and customs of the folk we were going to. The one point he could not make clear and that to himself was why we should ever want to go to Miquelon. Thatcher attempted to satisfy his curiosity on that point, but even his glowing fiction and wild rhetoric failed to convince or enlighten the good Colonel, and he doubtless looks upon us to this day as harmless lunatics. Never- theless, he offered to do everything he could for us if we should choose to go on his ship, and he convinced us of his good- will by taking us into his club. Over our pipes, after supper, we dis- cussed our plans more comprehensively 85 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE in the light of the important informa- tion obtained from Colonel Madden. We came to the conclusion, after very short consideration, that such a quartet as we were would possibly cause some com- ment if we were known to be travelling together, and we soon agreed that it would be far better if Chiffard and Car- quemort could make their way indepen- dently to St. Pierre, and meet us on the islands. The trouble would be in per- suading the Frenchmen of this. We both felt that Carquemort was already becoming restless at the way in which we were conducting the expedition, dis- regarding him entirely and proceeding along the line of our best judgment. He had not complained, to be sure; but for the past few days in fact, from the hour we left New York the man had been si- lent and morose. Chiffard, who was most with him, had commented to us upon it ; and we had also overheard him say to 86 A MOVE IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION Carquemort one night that he would rather travel around the world with a mangy dog than go a day's journey with such a sullen beast as he. And Carque- mort had made no reply ; so we held the opinion that he was in drink but whence he got the money to pay for his sullenness we could not guess. After a protracted session, we con- cluded that our best plan, and the swift- est, would be for the four of us to go by rail to North Sydney, in Cape Breton. Between St. Pierre and this place there is a lively trade in coal and kindling- wood, and a powerful traffic in smuggling. We believed we could hire a schooner for a song at Sydney, a schooner that had run in the smuggling line, if possible, for her skipper would be just the kind of a man we needed for the business in hand. And so it was that our stay in Hal- ifax was cut shorter than we had antic- ipated; and we left on the railroad early 87 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE in the morning of the second day after we had fastened upon our determination. The time intervening we spent in the purchase of spades and picks, hammers and chisels, a quantity of heavy canvas sacks, and several pounds of blasting powder and dynamite. This we had some trouble in securing ; in fact, we feared we must do without. But Carque- mort, when we had failed, took our money and promised to secure the explosives. A villain himself, he must have dealt with his kind ; for, an hour later, he re- turned with the goods, and the price we paid was double the market rate. Wheth- er it was Carquemort who profited by this transaction, it is difficult to say ; but from what Chiffard reported the next morn- ing, Carquemort was far from sober that night, and I much fear he led the cook beyond temptation, for both men were sorry passengers on the shuffling, colonial train that beautiful July day. 88 CHAPTER VIII A PLAN OF OPERATIONS THE little town of North Sydney nes- tles in the knee of a deep bay on the northeastern coast of Cape Breton, and straggles along the shore in a single, nar- row, ill-kept street that lifts itself up out of the coal-mines near the hollow of the harbor and stretches off aimlessly to the northward until it loses itself in a waste of rocks and dwarf pine. Everything about the place is grimy with coal, the air is heavy and soggy with fog, and all nature seems dull and gray. The chill sea -water laps mournfully against the sides of the coaling craft that lie along the shaky, moss-grown docks, and the rat- tling of pulleys, the creaking of derrick- 8 9 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE booms, the groaning of steam winches, with every now and then the hoarse roar of a load of coal dumped from a trestle, make the only sounds that cut into the bleak and melancholy stillness of the place. It was night when we came to Sydney black, misty night, and the trees drip- ped in the darkness. By the grace of a small native with a lantern, we felt our way slowly and with an ungovernable sense of apprehension through the stubble fields that separate the terminus of the railroad from the inhabited quarter of the town. Thatcher carried the explosives, which he was reluctant to intrust even to my care, and Carquemort, cursing, stumbled along in the murk behind, while Chiffard clung to the circle of the lan- tern's rays, ever and again looking back over his shoulder towards Thatcher and his death-dealing burden. The dim glare of the swinging lantern sent our shadows 90 A SMALL BOY GUIDED US THROUGH THE DARKNESS A PLAN OF OPERATIONS stalking like bodiless giants through the last patch of woods, and finally we turned into the silent street. Here there was scarce more light than in the by-ways, a faint beam falling across the ruts here and there from under the drawn curtain of some sailors' shore-side tavern. The boy led us to a dingy, unventilated inn, that backs up on a dock and boasts the proud name "Hotel des Ambassa- deurs." The proprietor welcomed us in a sleepy, unintelligent, Nova Scotian fash- ion, but he earned our good-will at once by defying the Scott Act without further ceremony. Our walk through the fog- laden atmosphere had chilled us to the marrow and, in addition, his whiskey was excellent. We marvelled at its qual- ity and commented upon it ; but our host was not vainglorious. Later we under- stood why, and wondered we had not sus- pected the reason from the first. The proprietor's name was Holtz, or at 91 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE least so he was generally called by his neighbors, but he assured us over the second bottle that his full name was Sammelholtz. He seemed to us a surly fellow at the start, but developed qualities as the bowl's tide ebbed. In spite of his increased geniality and openness, how- ever, we never quite made him out. He looked like a Scotchman, he had the Gaelic, he spoke English with a non- Scotch accent, he had a German name, and he claimed to be French backing this .by bawling a patois at Carquemort and Chiffard. But, poor devil ! no wonder he had lost his identity, living, as he had for years, in that bleak northern hole where winter is long and summer but a mockery, and life altogether a dull, beast-like exist- ence at best. Beyond ourselves there seemed to be no guests at the Hotel des Ambassadeurs. Consequently we had the full choice of apartments, and, the rates being cheap, 92 A PLAN OF OPERATIONS Thatcher and I each took a room, and we packed off our Frenchmen to a cham- ber within call, at the end of the narrow passageway. So constantly were we now subject to the spell of the feverish ex- citement of our enterprise that sleep sat lightly upon our eyes, and it had almost become a necessity for us to puff at our pipes for an hour or more each night, and talk, talk, talk rehearsing the same hopes and reviewing the same fears, the whole to a pepper-and-salt flavoring of international profanity by Thatcher be- fore we could compose ourselves for a much-needed repose. " There is one good thing about that blackguard Carquemort," said Thatcher, as we conversed; " he does not talk about our private affairs, no matter how drunk he may be." " He's got sense enough for that," I said. " He would never have spoken to us in Chiffard's if he had not been driven 93 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE to it by the need of financial aid. Do you think we made a mistake in letting Holtz or Sammelholtz, or whatever his name is know we were all four together?" " I hardly think so," answered Thatcher. " I rather suspect Holtz is a bit deep him- self. He never paid duty on that whis- key, or he could not sell it at the price he does, or even keep it in such a hole as this. I have an idea we've stumbled over the right man in him. He may prove of considerable service to us." " I hope he may. We might enlist his services by giving him the impression that we are up to some sort of a smug- gling scheme which in reality we are. He is a close - mouthed customer appar- ently. There is no harm in sounding him." " None whatever. He may be just the man to fit out our expedition, schooner and all. The fellows who sailed that 94 A PLAN OF OPERATIONS whiskey into this port ought to be availa- ble to navigate a little bullion and coin down to Boston or New York." "So you still consider it advisable to get our schooner here and invade St. Pierre," I said, " rather than to learn first if we have any cargo, and hire the trans- port in the islands afterwards?" " By all means. The chances are we should have trouble getting a boat up there. It's a very small place, you know, and there's a governor, with a garrison, and paternal government, and all that sort of thing ; and French law claims half of treasure- trove and if we 'trove' any, you can bet your boots we are not dividing with any government ! We are putting the stuff aboard ship and skip- ping for home as tight as the merry winds will blow us !" and Thatcher slap- ped his knee loudly by way of emphasis. " I don't relish the idea, however, of sail- ing up to those islands in a foul-smelling 95 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE tub, and I never have taken much to that part of the programme since it was first suggested." 11 1 don't relish it myself," I admitted. " But I think we ought to do what is for the best." " So do I, of course, but I doubt if it is necessary for us to coop ourselves up in any schooner just yet. We can just as well send Chiffard and Carquemort off on the boat and ourselves seek St. Pierre by steamer." Thatcher was warming to his argu- ment. " Any schooner we get must have some sort of excuse for putting into the port of St. Pierre. Coal is the best sub- terfuge we can adopt in these parts. The schooner makes St. Pierre with her coal and kindling and the skipper gives out that he wants to pick up a cheap cargo of cod. In the mean time you and I, artist and writer again, take the good La Patrie, which touches here next 9 6 A PLAN OF OPERATIONS Wednesday you heard Holtz say so to- night and land comfortably in St. Pierre. We are going to make an indefinite stay in the colony; we take up our lodgings in some quiet neighborhood where we can go in and out at all hours ; we hang around the docks and scrape acquaintance with the fishermen looking for ' local color,' you know. In this way we make the acquaintance of Chiffard and Carque- mort and of the other thugs we shall by that time have in our employ, and we at once set about surveying that direct line from the cross on the He aux Chiens to the mast. See ?" " All that sounds very well," I said, " but how about putting it through ?" " We've put everything through, so far, have not we ?" I was forced to admit that we had. " Very well," he continued, " if you ap- prove of this now I'll see that it's put through if I have to knock the logic of it G 97 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE into Carquemort with my two fists. What do you say ?" " Amen !" I shouted. " That settles it, then," said Thatcher, jumping to his feet. " Take one more nip of Holtz's best, and get to your dreams. It is three o'clock." CHAPTER IX EXPLANATIONS AND NEGOTIATIONS THE following day broke clear and fresh, and a brisk wind from the east carried the odor of the deep sea in at our windows. We looked forth into the glad morning and saw the sunlight dancing on the quivering waters of the bay like the visions of gold that ceaselessly twinkled in our own minds. Even the scraggy shores back of South Sydney, opposite, looked a little less bleak and arid, and here and there a tuft of verdure forced itself up above the gray monotone of the sky-line. Distance lent beauty to the mov- ing fishing craft in the harbor, and the sight of sails inspired us to renewed activity. We found our Frenchmen below and 99 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE satiate, and when ourselves had break- fasted the four of us gathered in one of the upper rooms and opened a conference behind bolted doors. Thatcher unfolded in detail the plan he had roughly outlined to me the night before, and Chiffard, as the more intelligent of our two associ- ates, pronounced at once in favor of it. So emphatic was his approval that his fist fairly cracked the table-top, and the old petard spirit rolled out in cataractic French. But Carquemort was silent and shifted about uneasily in his chair. " I don't like this separating business," he said, finally. " We are all four to share equally in the benefits of the treas- ure, and it seems to me all four ought to share in the work." " We are, none of us, trying to shirk any work, Carquemort," I returned, sharp- ly. " We are trying to arrange matters so that the French authorities will not interfere with us." 100 EXPLANATIONS AND NEGOTIATIONS " They won't interfere with us," he re- torted, sullenly. " Do you mean to tell me that if we four, with perhaps a couple of men addi- tional in the crew, arrive in the harbor of St. Pierre on a coaling schooner with- out any apparent object in view, with no cargo and in search of none, the author- ities would not at once be suspicious of such actions and put a watch on us ?" " By gad !" cried Thatcher, " they never would pick us for a combination to travel for pleasure, especially in the tub we'll be able to get here. They'd take us for smugglers you can bet your share on that ! and the first thing you'd know they'd have us all in the jug !" Carquemort shrugged his shoulders. " If your head is too thick to under- stand this," I continued, "you'll have to take our word for it that's all. We've got to arrange things so that we can make our surveys and searches without arous- FOUR FOR A FORTUNE ing any one's suspicions, and the only way to do that is to adopt Thatcher's plan, or something like it. Can you sug- gest anything better?" " Yes !" snorted Chiff ard, " sacrebleu, can you suggest anything better ? -fichu cha- meau, vas /" Carquemort scowled, but gave no direct reply. Instead, he put another question : " If we find the gold, then what ?" " If we find the gold, we pack it aboard the schooner." "All of it?" " All of it, of course. Do you suppose we're going to leave part of it behind?" " What I want to know is whether all the gold comes back on the schooner, or if part of it goes back on the steamship. If it does not all go on the schooner, I " You confounded blockhead !" inter- rupted Thatcher, with an enforcement of brutal oaths (for he had found that such methods worked best with the man), " how 102 EXPLANATIONS AND NEGOTIATIONS the deuce could we ship gold through the regular channels without the fact becom- ing known? What do you imagine we should want to take a schooner over there for if we could conceive of any other way of getting the treasure away from the isl- ands secretly ?" This argument, and the tone of its de- livery, appeared to have some influence with Carquemort, for he looked up and asked : " And you two Americans ?" " What about us ?" " How do you come back ?" " You can bet your sweet life we come back with the gold !" I shouted. And so great was my vehemence that the other three laughed outright, which was a fort- unate thing, for this unexpected hilarity helped considerably to clear the conver- sational atmosphere. It was curious to consider how we had come to look upon the existence of the 103 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE treasure as a certainty. The serious doubts of reasonable and right-minded men which we had formerly held con- cerning the genuineness of the chart had now vanished altogether, and we no longer even harbored any fears lest other hunters or chance diggers might have taken the gold from its hiding-place years ago. The single remaining obstacle which we rec- ognized in our speculations and discus- sions were the difficulties we must en- counter in locating the cachette. That done, we looked upon the rest as merely a matter of patience and muscle or dynamite and the conjectures as to our separate dividends fluctuated between the thousands and the millions; for, as Chif- fard said, it was just as easy to add an extra zero or two before the treasure was unearthed, since this could not in any way affect the eventual result, and it certain- ly did give flavor to our constant diet of boiled and fried cod. Chiffard, in his 104 EXPLANATIONS AND NEGOTIATIONS own culinary way, was more or less of a philosopher. So it was that we eventually brought Carquemort to look upon the proposed separation as a part of the comedy we must act, and he agreed to take his role with the rest of us, the only stipulations being that he have a voice in the selec- tion of the schooner and the crew, and that if gold were found we all sail away from the islands together. We could not quite understand his persistent desire to have us on board the treasure - laden schooner, but we did not bother much about it, because we had never even re- motely contemplated the idea of intrust- ing the fruits of our quest, might they be ever so small, to such a rascal as Carque- mort. " If we find but a thousand dollars," observed Thatcher, " I shall not only convoy it to New York myself, but I mean to sit upon it by day and sleep upon 105 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE it by night, until I get a deposit-slip for it from the receiving-teller of my bank." Having converted the men to our own views, we went down -stairs and sought out Holtz, whom we found in the little back room where he had entertained us on our arrival the nis^ht before. Thatcher O pulled his hat over his eyes and looked as mysterious as he could, and glanced about the room as if he feared there might be agents of the secret police concealed some- where, and then addressed our host in what I should have appreciated as a very melodramatic manner if I had not been in such a peculiar mental condition con- sequent upon this whole treasure-hunting business. But I saw nothing comical in the situation then. Now, as I look back upon it, I can enjoy it all to its full extent, and the subsequent tragedies do not in the least, so far as I am concerned, cast gloom over the farce-comedies that went before. 106 EXPLANATIONS AND NEGOTIATIONS " You have some acquaintance among the watermen of this port ?" Thatcher be- gan. Holtz nodded his head non- commit- tally. " Well, we are looking for a schooner that we can get to take us over to St. Pierre, and wait for us until we get ready to come away, and either sail us back to Halifax or to some port in the States." " Why don't you go to St. Pierre on La Patrie ?" asked Holtz. " Well," drawled Thatcher, as he blew a great cloud of smoke towards the ceil- ing and then looked steadily at the hotel proprietor, " I am told that St. Pierre is a most interesting place, and we may find some things up there that we should like to bring back; and possibly it might not be just convenient for us to ship them on La Patrie do you see? We don't want to go through a lot of formalities, you know." 107 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE " O-o-o-h !" exclaimed Holtz, in a very low, long sort of whistle ; " I understand." And he looked long and search ingly at both of us. " I wondered why you gen- tlemen came with those two" and he jerked his head to one side, as indicating Chiffard and Carquemort. " They are seamen ?" " Both," replied Thatcher. " We want two more, I guess a master and an A. B. The skipper must be a man with a level head, and no mouth, no eyes, no ears, no memory !" " Perhaps we can do something," said Holtz, musingly. " I know a man who forgets very quick," and he chuckled at his own sally. Then he rose from his seat and stepped to a window facing the bay and called to a boy, who sat swinging his legs on the end of the dock, to run down and fetch Captain McLeod, if he was at home. " McLeod is about the man you want, 108 EXPLANATIONS AND NEGOTIATIONS I guess," he said, as he sat down again. " He knows those Newfoundland waters as he knows his pocket. And," he added, impressively, " there's nobody knows any- thing about Captain John McLeod's busi- ness, because Captain John McLeod don't advertise in the newspapers." And here Holtz chuckled again and -looked from one to the other of us to note the effect of his wit. I never should have picked out Holtz for a man imbued with delicacy and tact, and the spirit which prompted him to act as he presently did may have been far from either of these qualities. But what- ever it was, when, fifteen or twenty min- utes later, a short, stocky, bearded seaman came stumping into the hotel, Holtz arose, and, having shaken hands with his friend, introduced him to us, and then walked forthwith out of the room, closing the door behind him, without saying a word or offering any explanation whatever to the 109 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE sea-captain. Possibly that is the way business of this nature is transacted in Sydney and similar places, for the new- comer seemed to take it all as a matter of course. As for ourselves, we were just as well pleased to have as few cooks to our broth as were absolutely necessary. So we shook hands all around, and poured a full glass for the captain, who drew a chair up to the table and crossed his short legs and folded his hard, knotted hands, and sat calmly waiting for one of us to speak, showing no more embarrass- ment than if he had known us all his life. And this is odd for a seafaring man. CHAPTER X THE CAPTAIN OF THE MERRY MADGE CAPTAIN McLEOD was a Cape Bret- onese Scot, and I judge his years were fifty. He came originally from a village of the Bras d'Or, but for the past twenty- five years or more he had lived in and out of Sydney, mostly on sea. I was not greatly taken with his countenance, but I presume it is scarcely fair to look for soft- voiced, mild-mannered men in the trade he followed. His hair was close cropped on a bullet head, and his pale, sea-colored eyes moved slowly but ceaselessly from one side of the room to the other, or from the ceiling to the floor. He had a scar down his right cheek which fell across the corner of his mouth and gave a pecul- FOUR FOR A FORTUNE iar and ghastly expression to his face when he smiled which was not often, thank Heaven. He was shaven along the upper lip and to a point just below the ears, but his chin and throat bristled with a short, stubby beard that resembled horse-hair. Thatcher opened the proceedings with- out any diplomatic parleying and went directly to the point, stating our case almost in the first sentence an auda- cious proceeding which undoubtedly bore weight with the sailorman. " Captain," he said, " we want to go up to St. Pierre Miquelon, on a little matter of business and pleasure combined. We are looking for a schooner, snug and sea- worthy, and a skipper who knows those waters. We may wish to remain up there two weeks we may find ourselves compelled to stay two months." McLeod grunted and glanced up quick- ly, first at one of us and then at the other. 112 THE CAPTAIN OF THE MERRY MADGE "I have a little eighty -ton schooner anchored off the point down here," he said, " and as soon as I can put in enough kind- ling-wood and coal, I'm going up to the French islands myself. I usually take the Merry Madge over there two or three times a year; but I never carried any passengers," and McLeod again looked up quizzically. Thatcher seemed to un- derstand. " There are four of us," he said. " Two are to go on the schooner, two will go on La Patrie" And then he added, slowly and impressively, plac- ing the tip of his extended forefinger upon the captain's knee : " But from the time the schooner we hire leaves her mooring here until she lands us again at any port we may designate between St. John's and Philadelphia, we control her absolutely do you understand? absohitely. We take all risks, too and we're willing to pay what's right." H 113 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE " Ah !" exclaimed McLeod, thought- fully. " Of course, it's none of my busi- ness what you gentlemen are going up there for; and I'd just as lief not know anything about it. I ain't going to ask any questions. I'll just sail the Merry Madge as you say ; and while I'm under contract to you, I'll do as you wish, bar running her on the rocks." " That's understood, then. We're boss, and what we say goes." " What you say goes," assented Mc- Leod. " Where are the others ?" " I'll call them," said I, rising. " No ; hold up a bit," interposed Thatcher, and, turning to the captain, " What's your price ?" McLeod did not hesitate a second : " Three hundred dollars, cash down in the Dominion Bank here, before we start." " And for how long does that give us control of the schooner ?" 114 THE CAPTAIN OF THE MERRY MADGE "You said you wanted her about two months. If you require her a month longer we can come to an understanding later, easy enough. This figure includes my services, but you pay the crew." " How many men do you want in the forecastle ?" " Two can work her ; three would do better." " We'll give you a seaman and a cook the two men with us; you get the others." " My son, for one," said the captain ; " and there's always plenty of hands hang- ing around the coal docks." " Very well ; that '11 make four besides yourself, and the cook can stand his watch with the rest. Our fellows are both French." " That's all right," grinned McLeod ; " I can talk to the beasts ; I've had Ca- nucks on the Merry Madge before this," and he ripped out a French oath as a "5 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE sort of confirmation of his linguistic ca- pabilities. " You'll do," laughed Thatcher ; " now let's look at the boat." We picked up Chiffard and Carque- mort at the door; the latter looking some- what sour, for I guess he had expected to be called in with McLeod. But he said nothing, and we set off down the street, Thatcher and the captain walking on ahead, with Carquemort dogging their heels, while Chiffard and I followed lei- surely behind. The Merry Madge was swinging to a barrel buoy about ten cable-lengths from shore, just beyond a rocky little point where the town begins to lose itself in the scrub pine wilderness half a mile or so beyond the Hotel des Ambassadeurs. She was not, by any means, a beautiful craft to look upon, being rather more square - prowed than what you see in Gloucester, but McLeod explained as we 116 THE CAPTAIN OF THE MERRY MADGE neared her that she was built to crunch through the ice eight months of the year. She sat low in the water, and her dirty, coal-soiled sails swung half-hoist, bleach- ing in the sunlight. "Lend a hand there, Crackmug!" shout- ed the captain to our friend, Carquemort, as we reached the pebbly shore. " Chuck those oars into that dory, and slide her down lively, now ! And see here, you jab sea cook" to Chiffard "limber up now, limber up ! Don't you see the painter's going foul of that stake there ? 'Cre mille millions de pipes /" Carquemort was somewhat surprised at these unexpected commands, but (from habit, doubtless) he did not hesitate to obey; he grabbed one side of the heavy dory that lay high and dry on the beach, while the captain laid hold of the other gunwale, and between the two of them they launched her easily ; while Chiffard, who had been playing the grand seigneur "7 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE for over a week, stood like a stone image and glared at McLeod as if he had been insulted ; and I sprang to catch the trail- ing painter just in time to keep the dory from sliding adrift. Thatcher smiled. " You're a sailor now, Chiffard," he said; "steward and cook of the Merry Madge, or will be if we find her ship-shape and suitable. You've got to remember you're not in New York now, and that McLeod 's captain of his boat and your superior. You know what that means ; you've got sense. You have not dug up any gold yet, you know." Chiffard laughed and nodded, and cursed in an undertone ; but he knew what was expected of him and what he might ex- pect, and his early experience at sea stood him in good stead. " I'll do what's right," he said, " but I wish to Heaven it was all over. To think of fere Chiffard ' aye, aye '-ing to a crab like that !" 118 THE CAPTAIN OF THE MERRY MADGE In the mean time Carquemort and the captain had brought the dory alongside of a dilapidated float near by, and we quickly clambered in. " Tumble into the bow there, chef T shouted McLeod, "and play ballast for the gentlemen in the stern-sheets. Fall away !" He and Carquemort were at the oars, and it did me good to see the latter, for the first time since I had known him, doing some work. We found the captain's son, Glen, swab- bing down decks, and he was powerfully surprised to see the company his father brought over the rail with him. He was a likely looking lad for a Cape Bretonese, some two-and-twenty years of age, I guess, built square from top to toe, but appar- ently not the mental equal of his ancestor. As soon as Chiffard set foot on the schooner's deck he recovered his usual good - humor, and drew in great lungfuls of the salt air that rushed over the bow 119 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE and fell out of the drying sails. "Ah,sa- cristi, que (a sent don /" he exclaimed ; and he went stomping up forward to scrape acquaintance with young McLeod. " We shall not want you," said Thatch- er, turning to Carquemort, who hung near by. " We're going below to talk business with the captain, and until we return you can look over the schooner and see if she fills the bill." Then, as we crawled down the companion-way into the cabin, Thatch- er said to the captain : " You want to treat our two men white, if you can. They're in a sort of partnership with us on this deal;" and he added: " I don't mean by that you're to take any nonsense." " You bet I won't," returned McLeod. " The men on this schooner do what I tell 'em, and they do it well and P. D. Q. ! But I guess I know what you mean, and I'll hold it in mind. But, mind you, this trip ain't a picnic for the hands. Those fellows ain't passengers." 120 THE CAPTAIN OF THE MERRY MADGE "Not a bit of it," said I. "They're here to work, but don't drive 'em." " If they do their work properly they'll find Captain John McLeod is their man." And the old sea-dog slowly closed one eye in a self-appreciative and confident wink. CHAPTER XI A CONTRACT THE cabin of the Merry Madge was not roomy, nor particularly clean ; neither was its atmosphere so pure and bracing as that which had delighted Chiffard on deck, but no doubt the arrangements were as good as could be expected aboard an eighty-ton coaling schooner, and, on the whole, things might have been a great deal worse. There were two so-called state-rooms, one on either side of the companion-way, the star- board compartment being the captain's room. " Sometimes I let Glen sleep in the other," explained McLeod, "but most- ly he bunks for'ard. It's good for him." A narrow table ran down the centre of the cabin under the skylight, and along 122 A CONTRACT the sides were set a couple of broad lock- ers, cushioned on top so that they might, if necessary, be used for bunks. " One of you passengers '11 have to take up there, I guess," laughed the captain. " You can toss for the other room." Then he stepped over to a cupboard and brought down a brown bottle and some glasses. " I guess you can't beat this Madeira, even in New York," he said. " Captain McDavitt brought it over to me from Cadiz ; that's his barkentine tied up to the wharf back of the hotel," he added; "she trades in salt." " This is pretty good salt," I said, as I drank half a glassful of the wine. I had never tasted better. " Yes," answered McLeod. " There's money in salt, if you know what kind to buy," and he chuckled softly as he held his glass up to the light. Thereupon we turned to a discussion of the business in hand. McLeod said 123 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE there were some twenty tons of coal in the hold already, and that he had intend- ed putting in more during the week ; but he was willing, if we could advance a part of the contract price, to put down to the coal-trestles on Monday and take on an- other twenty tons. Then he thought he could get kindling-wood from a village a couple of miles inland the next day, and be ready to put to sea Wednesday on the early tide. The captain was more anxious about the kindling than the coal. " There isn't a tree on those islands," he explain- ed, "and Johnny Crapaud has to buy all his firewood from us or the Newfound- landers. Those Burin fellows run over in dories from the French shore, but they can't carry any such load as I'll put in if I have luck." He then wanted to know how much cargo space we wanted for the return trip, but, to his credit, he beat the devil around the stump a long while be- fore he put the question. 124 IN THE CABIN OK THE MERRY MADGE A CONTRACT " That's what we can't tell," I answered. " We really don't know ourselves, captain; but I reckon the cabin will hold all we'll bring off!" " The cabin ?" exclaimed McLeod, in surprise. "The cabin," I repeated; "but we'll see." "Oh," said McLeod, good-naturedly, "any one might think you were going after diamonds ! But I was not asking out of curiosity," he continued. "I want to know if I'll have room to take on a load of cod." "You are going to St. Pierre," said Thatcher, " to sell coal and buy cod, Mr. McLeod. Do you understand that ? That's what you are going there for." " I guess I see that," said the captain. "And you're in no hurry for your cod do you see ? You are willing to wait for the price to go down." " Surely," nodded McLeod. " I'll find 125 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE out who's in port, and I'll be waiting to buy my fish from the fellow that's on the banks." "That's the idea," said Thatcher; and then he roughly outlined a contract in pencil, covering all these points, and we agreed to sign Monday after the money had been deposited in the Dominion Bank. Take it all in all, we felt satisfied with our man and the one thing above all others that compelled our admiration was his capacity for minding his own business. When we got back to our quarters at the Hotel des Ambassadeurs, Carque- mort, very much to our surprise, express- ed himself as perfectly satisfied with the schooner Merry Madge ; and when, after supper, we read off Thatcher's outline of the contract, both men approved, and said they would do their share towards working the schooner up to the islands. The only objection Carquemort made was to the 126 A CONTRACT charter price ; but that objection was not very vigorous since the money did not come out of his pocket. So delighted was I at the progress we had made and at Carquemort's decency and demeanor, that I was fool enough to give him a two- dollar bill, bidding him drink to our good luck and to his new berth, which he did faithfully, and the next day he was of no use a condition which we ultimately en- vied him, for a Sunday in Sydney, Cape Breton, is a dreadful and interminable experience. But, like all things, it came to an end, and the next two days saw us most diversely occupied. Everything progressed satisfactorily, and by Tuesday evening McLeod had his coal and kindling-wood snugly stowed away in the hold of the Merry Madge, and everything was in readiness for the schooner to put to sea early the follow- ing morning. The fourth hand for the crew had been 127 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE shipped and, strange to say, upon Car- quemort's recommendation. Carquemort had discovered him Saturday night in some den of the town, and the two had drunk together, and he would have us believe he had known the fellow before ; but we all doubted this part of the story. The man was a Finn, by name Semsen tall, lean, sunken-eyed, but a deep-sea sail- or through and through, and he satisfied McLeod the moment he clapped eyes upon him. This being the case, we were willing to ship him ; and we \vere further urged to this course that it might seem to Carquemort as if he were a factor in our counsels. For this bit of sentiment we paid dearly in the end, as all must who allow sentiment to interfere with business. We were up with the larks on Wednes- day and walked down to the point. Mc- Leod rowed in from the Merry Madge for a few last words and then pulled back; 128 A CONTRACT and Thatcher and I stood upon the shore and listened to the creaking of the blocks and the bawling of orders until the cable was slipped from the mooring, and the breeze bent the little collier to a grace- ful angle, and the water bubbled in her wake as she moved slowly out of the bay. We realized now, more fully than we had at any time before, that we were fair- ly launched upon our enterprise, and we were scarcely able to control the powerful emotions that rose within us. We stood in silence, and never turned our eyes from the boat until at last she fell off behind the low headland and disappeared. Then we turned slowly away. CHAPTER XII A VOYAGE OVER-SEAS LONG, narrow, high-prowed La Patrie, with the tricolor of France floating laz- ily from the taffrail, put into Sydney a couple of hours later, having come up through the Golden Lakes from Bad- deck. She groaned and snorted and whistled, and made much ado, after the Gallic fashion ; and her deck-racing, wild- ly gesticulating officers almost had nervous prostration over getting her into dock ; all of which afforded much amusement to the Sydney wharf-loungers, who laughed uproariously and cast back ribald taunts in answer to the polysyllabic oaths belched into the air by the motley French crew. " The blooming maniacs !" muttered 130 A VOYAGE OVER SEAS Holtz ; " they give us this bloody show every two weeks," and he turned away in disgust. There was, in truth, a good deal of the spectacular about the management of this good ship, as Holtz had justly said that is, it was spectacular from an Anglo-Saxon point of view, but doubtless, to the French- men, very serious business. The afternoon was spent in coaling, and at nine o'clock in the evening, after the mail - train from civilization had ar- rived, there was bustle and commotion, and a prodigious sound of voices on the deck. Then, after some delay, a vocifer- ous exhortation from the bridge was sent rattling down the speaking - tube to the engineer asking why in the name of all the thousand thunders, and such other of the elements as are invoked by the French, he did not start his machines. To which the engineer replied in muffled tones, from the bowels of the ship, that he was FOUR FOR A FORTUNE no mind- reader, and that no signal had yet been given, and would any one be- lieve, par example, that a ship - captain could be such an infernal idiot as not to know enough to pull the signal-bell when he was ready to start? Whereupon en- sued a long-distance quarrel full of pictur- esque verbiage and marine simile, which ended by the captain calling upon the man at the wheel as witness that he had pulled the cord. The quartermaster was com- pelled to side with the engineer, and as- sured the captain that he must have over- looked the little formality; thereupon a stream of apology was sent gurgling down- ward through the speaking-trumpet, and the engineer's acceptance soon came bub- bling upward, and, after a pleasant ex- change of courtesies and jests, the ma- chinery-man asked if the captain was ready to start now, and the captain replied that he was if the engineer was ; and so, pres- ently, the engines began to wheeze and 132 A VOYAGE OVER-SEAS strain and the episode was closed, and the departure had, after all, been delayed not more than fifteen minutes, which is insig- nificantwhen you consider howmuch more important it is that the officers of a ship should thoroughly understand one another. Thus it is plain that life upon the good ship La Patrie was void of that excessive formality which breeds stiffness and, per- haps, discomfort two conditions which, at sea, of all places, are repugnant to the Latin temperament. We found a strange and mixed com- pany on board : three priests from Antig- onish bound for St. Johns ; an Ameri- can merchant of St. Pierre, genial and florid, and full of quaint oaths and strange hyperbole, and half a score of good, plain St. Pierrese, returning from their vaca- tions. Among the latter was a pleasant and garrulous old gentleman, a great- grandfather, who, we were told, was the "oldest inhabitant." 133 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE "Just our man," said Thatcher; and the next morning, as the ship rolled easily over the glassy sea, we made M. de Man- clay's acquaintance. He was a friend- ly soul, superlatively communicative and overflowing with anecdote. When we told him we were going to the islands for the pure pleasure of sojourning a few weeks among its people, the good old gentleman expanded as a morning-glory opens to the rising sun, and the thrilling history of France's only remaining possession in North America fell from his lips in an ab- sorbing and enthusiastic narrative. He told us of himself and of what he had seen and done in the long years that had stretched away to the birth of the century through the perspective of his life, and he revelled in the romance of warfare and the sea. " Croiriez-vous bien, messieurs" he con- tinued, dramatically, " that I likewise saw some of the terrors of your own civil war ? 134 A VOYAGE OVER-SEAS I went down to Baltimore to buy a schoon- er for my fishing enterprises. I took my men with me, and I sailed her back to St. Pierre myself. Off Cape Ann we saw a couple of Confederate privateers (des corsaires du Sud, he called them) overhaul and capture a dozen fishing-smacks from Gloucester, and they lashed them together and set them on fire. It was evening, and we saw the glare and smoke even after the conflagration had sunk below the horizon to the south of us. Ah, la guerre, mes jeunes amis, cest terrible /" And so the morning hours wore away, and incidentally we picked up a vast amount of information which must be useful to us in our impending endeavors. Along towards noon the fog fell and shut us in upon the heaving bosom of an unrippled sea. The ship bowed rhyth- mically to the ground-swell, and only the measured thump, thump, thump of the propeller, deep astern, broke the absolute 135 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE silence of our surroundings. Occasion- ally the man at the wheel bethought him- self of the requirements of navigation, and pulled a hoarse blast from the fog- horn ; but so long as he could even see a ship's length ahead of him he refrain- ed from this exertion. Along about two o'clock there came evidences that we were nearing land. We began to catch sight of dories off in the mist, two fisher- men in each, tending their cod lines. Oc- casionally the captain stopped the steamer and conversed with the dorymen over the rail, and the dorymen talked in an unin- telligible patois and pointed hither and yon, and gave us our bearings. And thus La Patrie felt her way cautiously in tow- ards the islands. Then, all of a sudden, out of the ab- solute stillness of the cloud-banks there came a deep, long-drawn moan the warn- ing of a fog-horn, the big steam-whistle on Galantry Head, at the entrance of St. 136 A VOYAGE OVER-SEAS Pierre harbor. It made a weird and ghast- ly noise, the note being so arranged that it trembled and vibrated like the hoarse bleating of some mammoth sheep. The sensation upon first hearing this fearsome sound, that seemed to come out of no- where from the mist and darkness, was pe- culiar, and suggestive of uncanny things. This ghastly howl of distress bore over the silent water like the wail of some giant -child some Frankenstein of the North that had become lost in the fog, and was crying out for help as it wan- dered alone over the ocean wilderness. We could tell from the curving wake that the vessel was pointing in towards the sound. Soon there was a rift in the mist, and the thickest of the fog seemed to lift ; and there, on the port bow, barely three ship's lengths from us, rose the bleak, rocky Galantry Head, with the slender light-house towering on its brow and the dreadful fog - horn bellowing amid the 137 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE breakers at its base. The helm went hard down, and we swung into the chan- nel for the harbor. This lies straight and narrow between the Head and a small isl- and where a little white fishing village clusters about a church and a light-house, and so narrow is its course that our faces, as we leaned eagerly over the rail, were splashed by the spray that flew from the surf on the rocks. " That," said M. de Manclay, pointing to the island, " is 1'Ile aux Chiens." What a magic name for us ! How we leaned and craned our necks and stared at the little settlement, and tried to pierce the very fog-banks with our vision, search- ing for the " cross " that had so long de- layed and puzzled us in the early stages of our adventure. But we could see no cross, and we thought best, for the present, to ask no questions. We mistrusted our own eagerness. A little breeze had sprung up mean- 138 A VOYAGE OVER-SEAS while from over Newfoundland way, and the heavy rolls of mist rose slowly and went scurrying off to leeward, leaving the fair little French town of St. Pierre all uncurtained before us. We exclaimed at the rude beauty of this sudden vision, and I felt, for one, that if even now our quest proved vain, the voyage to such a delightful spot was well worth the time and trouble we had expended upon it. Picture to yourself a village of about three thousand souls nestled near the top of some noble Alpine mountain, far up above the timber line, where there are no trees, no bushes, no verdure of any kind only bleak, bare, dun-colored rocks that tower a thousand feet or more above the slated roofs and the church steeples. Then let your imagination raise the sea up to the very edge of this Alpine village; dot the tortuous outer harbor with surf- smitten bowlders; place here and there a little white light-house clinging to one of 139 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE these slippery pedestals, crowd the inner basin with hundreds of luggers, barks, and brown-sailed fishing schooners. Such is St. Pierre ! It is a mountain town in mid-Atlantic. CHAPTER XIII A BAD START WE took up our lodgings in a quaint little house in a narrow lane of a street that sloped down towards the quays, and we slept peacefully that night in high mahogany bedsteads, under spreading, old-fashioned canopies. No sound dis- turbed our slumbers after the bold drum- mer had gone his rounds, rolling out cur- few and beating the St. Pierrese to rest; and we were called again to the business of another day by the martial notes of the town -crier's bugle. St. Pierre rises to the clarion and retires to the scolding rumble of a sheepskin. Our first . move upon sallying forth was the purchase of a map of the islands; 141 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE our second, an excursion across the har- bor to the He aux Chiens. As many dogs, upon so restricted an acreage, I never saw before ; and their friendliness was surpassed only by the good-natured curiosity of the islanders. Rightly was the rock named Dog Island; but, as Thatcher noted, while we searched in vain for the cross mentioned on Carque- mort's chart, " The cross seems rather to be in the breed of dogs than con- cretely erect upon the face of the cliff." And, indeed, the comment was zoologi- cally just. For, at a more or less remote period in the history of this colony some one must have imported a dachshund. That dachshund launched into a career of impetuous and reckless paternity, with the result that the influence of his breed is now plainly demonstrate in the fore- legs of every cur in town. It must surely shock any dog-fancier to visit Miquelon's 142 A BAD START He aux Chiens, for there he will en- counter red Irish setters, and pointers, and fox-terriers, with limbs only half as long as they should be the preambu- lators knock-kneed and squatty. The noble, pure-blooded Newfoundland that we had counted upon seeing in these regions was not. There are no more than twoscore dwellings upon Dog Island, and a church which is little more than a chapel. A small iron cross tops its low steeple ; but this, we knew, was not our quarry. None of the inhabitants could afford us any in- formation ; most of those we questioned merely stared and shook their heads in silence. Therefore we strolled down to the shore and sat disconsolately upon the rocks by the water-side and gazed across the bay towards the neat little town, bank- ed solidly upon the slope of the purpling hill and looking for all the world as bright as if it had been new scrubbed that morn- 143 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE ing. Thatcher idly tossed a few pebbles into the curling sea. " It strikes me," I said, presently, being the first to break the silence, " that we have begun poorly. Perhaps that is to be accounted for from the fact that we have tackled our problem from the wrong end." " The wrong end ?" repeated Thatcher. " Yes ; I believe we would do better to first locate the spot where stood the mat, and trust to fate to point out to us the next step in the puzzle." " I suppose you are right," returned Thatcher, rising ; " but with the He aux Chiens lying in plain sight, under our very noses, it was only natural that we should make for it first. I am at least satisfied that there is no landmark-cross on this island to-day. Let us call it a false start and begin over again." Upon our return frorh this useless ex- cursion, which had taken up the greater 144 A BAD START part of the morning, we sat ourselves quietly down, with the official map we had purchased and the tracing of the burned chart laid out side by side upon a table before us. Thereupon we set about our labors methodically, as we ought to have done in the beginning. A glance at the reproduction of the chart will show that the cross, indica- ting the location of the cachetic, lies well away towards the western end of the island. After some consideration it be- came clear to us that if the whole sur- face of the island of St. Pierre were di- vided into three approximately equal parts the cross could lie in the third, and that consequently we need waste no time in searching the central and eastern sections. This simplified matters somewhat. We therefore laid off these proportions with as great an accuracy as possible upon the official map, and we thus found that the district in which we hoped to unearth a K 145 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE fortune was the hilliest and most inacces- sible part of the island. This we consid- ered a favorable indication ; for it must be clear to all that whosoever concealed the gold would naturally have chosen a spot as remote as possible from the town and from observation. Having come to these conclusions, there was now, so far as we could de- termine, nothing left for us to do but set out in search of the emplacement of the mat. Thatcher favored spending the after- noon in making inquiries among the older fishermen, and he suggested calling upon M. de Manclay, who, he thought, might remember the mat as a landmark of St. Pierre; but my instinct unaccountably opposed me to this plan and inclined me rather towards action, and I argued that the less we talked of our affairs no matter how few our questions nor how veiled our queries might be the better for us in the long-run ; and I finally per- 146 A BAD START suaded Thatcher to undertake a general skirmish or reconnaissance over the coun- try, convincing him that this might prob- ably be more profitable to us in the end than much questioning of ignorant fisher- folk. And the event proved the wisdom of this course. We set out upon our exploration im- mediately after the noonday meal. We toiled up the steep and narrow unpaved streets that lead away from the water front, disputing the road half the time with ox- carts, driven by burly red-sashed Basques, and dog teams that trotted merrily by to the encouragement of bare-footed, brown- faced children. There are few horses in barren St. Pierre ; imported fodder comes high. The day was fine. The sun shone brightly from the pale northern sky a rare luxury in this region of fogs and storms and the air was cool and brac- ing. We felt the blood course vigorously 147 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE through our bodies, that had lacked the benefit of true exercise for some weeks past. As we picked our way through the town we encountered one of our fellow- passengers of the day before a fat and jovial advocate who politely inquired whither we were bound at so swinging a pace. We told him we were making a promenade only, and asked him for an orientation. This he gave us glibly, and closed by urging us to climb la Grande Vigie, the highest peak of the island, whence he asserted we should obtain a beautiful view of the sea, and of New- foundland, to the northward; he became eloquent and advised us to lose no time in making the ascent, for a clear day, such as this was, might not be known on the island again for a year. Thereupon, to detain us no longer, he bowed extrava- gantly we returning as good as we got and set off townwards, shaking his adi- pose body as he went. 148 A BAD START " Do you know," began Thatcher, thoughtfully, as we resumed our march, " this looks to me like the hand of Provi- dence." " What looks to you like the hand of Providence ?" I exclaimed, in surprise. " Meeting Pepinpierre. I am not su- perstitious, nor am I inclined to believe much in omens ; but when a man pops up out of the ground, so to say, and tells you to go to a certain place which is in the general region of the very spot we are so anxiously searching for I think there's more in it than a mere coincidence." " Bosh !" I said. " I would not climb that hill for a farm to-day, view or no view. The lower peak is good enough for a first attempt. Wait until we get in training before we try the other." We could plainly see, as we trudged along, these two rocky peaks which form the highest points on the island the nearer, Le Pin de Sucre, some five hun- 149 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE dred feet high, and across a little depres- sion behind it La Grande Vigie, some two or three hundred feet higher, which Pepinpierre had so warmly recommended as a belvedere. I thought one peak a day would be sufficient, even for treasure- hunters, and I wanted to take the nearer and lesser eminence first But Thatcher had apparently not even listened to my objections, as he strode onward straining his eyes hillward as if he would look into the very bowels of the mountain, for he leaped from his thoughts into conversa- tion, and said, excitedly : " And did you hear what he called it? La Grande Vigie 'watch hill,' the ' great watch hill ' the place where they used to watch for ships, I suppose just the place for a flag-staff or a signal-mast of some kind. More than likely it's the very place we're looking for ! And, if you want to know it, that's why I say it looks like the hand of Providence !" 150 A BAD START " Rot !" I replied, somewhat impatient- ly. "The signal -station is on Galantry Head, don't you see?" And I pointed towards the bold headland far across the harbor, which we could now plainly see over the house-tops below us. " It is now" said Thatcher, " but it might not have been a hundred years ago. It seems to me as clear as day that, back in those times, when this island was seesawing between French and Brit- ish rule, there should have been a watch- ing-place and perhaps a signal-pole on the highest available peak. Those fellows would not watch from Galantry when they could broaden their sphere of observa- tion by fifty square miles by climbing La Grande Vigie. And that's just what Grande Vigie means ! Come on !" Thus Thatcher persisted m his deter- mination to ascend the taller peak, and, for the sake of peace, I surrendered to his whim. 151 CHAPTER XIV THE SUMMIT OF AN ISLAND PEAK LEAVING the town well arear, we struck out across Calvary Hill, where stands the conventional gaunt crucifix, facing sea- ward (the kind of cross we had hoped to find on I'lle aux Chiens, and doubtless a counterpart of one that stood there in the early days of the island's settlement), and turned into the Route Iphigenie, a broad, well -laid highway that runs across the island to 1'Anse de Savoyard. We fol- lowed the road as far as the sailors' monu- ment, then struck off to the right and slashed our way through the underbrush towards the foot-hills. This underbrush was about the only vegetable growth we saw on St. Pierre. It is neither tree nor 152 THE SUMMIT OF AN ISLAND PEAK bush, but a sort of gnarled root, of the pine family, I judge, that clings to the interstices of the rocks, and in some places rises to a height of about two feet from the surface. It must be a hardy plant to thrive on such a stony bed, and it is tough, as we learned to our cost. There was no path, of course ; we had to pick our way laboriously over the bowlders, slipping here and there up to our ankles into some little rill or spring that lurked beneath a web of twisted roots and withered foliage. Thatcher's rich and expressive vocabulary of expletives afforded us both consider- able relief from time to time, and at in- tervals we sat ourselves down and rested. For over an hour we struggled along in this way, now pulling ourselves up the face of the mountain and now leaping from cliff to cliff across the tiny valleys that seamed the hill-side ; and at each pause for breath we gazed back upon the beautiful panorama behind us the little 153 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE town lying far below; the silent harbor, where vessels seemed to glide noiselessly about like toy craft; and, beyond, the great broad ocean, all peaceful and blue, stretch- ing away on every side until it fell into the curtain of the sky. To the north rose the dull cliffage of Newfoundland, bleak and gray-green yet a streak of compan- ionship in this vast loneliness. As we neared the summit of La Grande Vigie we obtained a good view of the other islands of the group Grande Mi- quelon and Langlade, which rises sheer from the water. But the afternoon was wearing on and no time afforded for view- gazing. We hastened upon our journey in such degree as we could. We had half-circled the peak in easing our ascent, and thus we crawled upon its very summit from the rear. A great gale was blowing there, and \ve were forced to thrust our heads snugly into our hats and lean for- ward against the support of the blast. 154 THE SUMMIT OF AN ISLAND PEAK But the sensation was invigorating and exulting, and the view well worthy the efforts we had made to obtain it. We felt under obligations to our friend Pepin- pierre. The summit of this peak looks exceed- ingly pointed and sharp when seen from the sea or from the town below. This is due to the fact that the topmost part of the eminence is formed of one huge rock that juts upward some fifteen or twenty feet, naked, out of a scramble of lesser bowlders and moss and gnarled roots. The platform of its summit extends no more than half a dozen square yards, sloping off steeply on the Langlade side, but dropping abruptly and perpendicu- larly where it faces the town and the harbor. Upon the edge of this declivity we sat and swung our legs to the winds over the face of the cliff, and after much strife with the gale we succeeded in light- ing our pipes. 155 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE " There's one thing sure," said I, when I had regained my breath ; " the fellow who lugged his treasure up here to hide it was a duffer." " Either he was a duffer," admitted Thatcher, " or he needed exercise, and had lots of time " " Or mighty little gold !" " Yes, or mighty little gold," he re- peated, pensively ; and then we sat there for some minutes and gazed out silently over the sea. When we had well rested of our ascent, we began to look about us and to exam- ine the surface of the elevation upon which we sat. It was rough and ribbed with clefts and crevices, and spotted here and there with little patches of green and yellow moss. " There is no indication, so far as I can see, of there ever having been a mast or signal -pole up here," observed Thatch- er. " To withstand the gales that must 156 THE SUMMIT OF AN ISLAND PEAK whistle over this peak, a flag-pole would have to be a pretty stout one, and it would need some mighty solid supports." " Indeed it would," said I ; " but let us climb down to the foot of this pedestal and see what there is, and then let's put for home ; it's getting late." We slid cautiously down the incline and scrambled carefully around the base of the huge rock, stumbling over roots and sharp branches to the peril of our clothing. Thatcher was in the van, and he first turned the corner that brought him upon the little plateau which formed a sort of shelf in front of the perpendicular face of the cliff. The gale was crying aloud at this point and conversation was almost impossible, and although from where I stood panting I could plainly see him, I could hear no word he spoke. Accordingly, I thought he had fallen suddenly demented when I saw him throw his arms violently into the air and 157 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE leap about like a wild man, his face dis- torted and strange sounds issuing from his throat. His hat fell to the ground and rolled away a toy to the winds, curl- ing in the air and bobbing from bowlder to bowlder down the hill-side, and his hair, freed of restraint, waved in disorder, giv- ing his countenance a fierce and uncouth appearance. I was spellbound for a brief space and then hastened to his side. He was still shouting incoherently, and when I drew near he seized me by the arm and pointed excitedly to a large iron band welded into the face of the rock. I, too, then felt the thrill that had shot through Thatcher, but with me the outward ex- pression of feeling took another and en- tirely opposite form, for all I could do was to gasp and lean heavily against the rocky wall in silence. My sensations were simi- lar to those that had welled up in me the day we located the island in the directory at the Hotel Martin in New York, only 158 I THOUGHT THATCHER HAD GONE MAD THE SUMMIT OF AN ISLAND PEAK fiercer, a hundredfold. The gale buzzed in my ears and I heard nothing for some seconds, but soon I was brought to a realization of my surroundings again by a flood of hilarious profanity from Thatcher. When we had somewhat recovered from this first explosion of our astonishment and joy, we examined the iron fastening more closely. It was very rusty, and in some parts the metal had caked deeply and had fallen away ; nevertheless, the heavy band some half an inch thick and almost two inches wide was firm and solid in its hold upon the cliff, and bowed outward in the form of a rude semicircle, standing some eighteen inches from the stone at the most distant point. It was fixed in the rock at the height of our shoulders, and there could be no possible doubt from its formation, and from the markings on the face of the cliff, that here had stood, at some time, a pole, held firmly in place by this band. 159 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE A further and more careful examina- tion brought new cries of joy to our lips, for we found, about four feet lower down, the remains of a similar brace or band that had apparently long ago been bent back and broken. " Is there any doubt in your mind about what this is?" asked Thatcher, wildly, as he rose to his feet again from examining the remnants of the lower brace. " It certainly looks very much as if we had struck something !" I shouted back. " My boy," he cried, " we are standing within twenty -five yards of a fortune!" and he waved his hand across the horizon. " That gold is almost in our clutches !" " If it is not already in somebody's else," I said. "Oh, shut up!" he retorted, roughly, turning upon me. " Don't spoil the de- light of these moments. We may have started badly this morning, but we've brought the afternoon to a glorious close." 160 THE SUMMIT OF AN ISLAND PEAK " I do feel hopeful," I said. " Of course you do. Then don't croak ! What did I tell you about the hand of Providence ? Do you believe now I had reason to feel that way ?" " I wish I were a more pious man," I said. But Thatcher only laughed hysterically and pounded me on the back. The sun was now hanging low over a cloud-bank in the west, and we knew we must hasten from the mountain before darkness fell or we might become lost. A few last glances at the iron bands unimportant bits of rust to all the world but us and we turned away from the summit of La Grande Vigie, picking our way down the steep, stony hill -side tow- ards the hazy town below us. As we sat in the Cafe du Midi an hour later, Thatcher, with a tall glass full of a pale- green fluid before him, leaned across the marble - topped table, and, placing his FOUR FOR A FORTUNE hand on mine, said, with a chuckle of content: " All the same, old man, this is pretty good work for our first day in St. Pierre." And, all things considered, it was. CHAPTER XV A PROBLEM IN GEOMETRY WE had confidently counted upon find- ing the Merry Madge anchored in the barachois, or inner harbor, when we strolled down to the port the next morn- ing, but our expectations were not ful- filled. The broad ocean heaved lazily in the offing under a windless pall of mist, and a fleet of clumsy luggers hung flap- ping helplessly in the channel. Doubt- less McLeod lay below the horizon some- where, whistling for a breeze, and until his arrival with our reinforcements there was little for us to do. But the atmosphere of St. Pierre made us almost content to rest upon our oars. Idleness in a French town is never irksome, and so we whiled 163 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE away that Saturday pleasantly enough, albeit our minds were in no sense upon the dalliance of the hour. On Sunday morning, when again we looked for the Merry Madge, she had not arrived, nor did she appear in the after- noon. We began to grow somewhat im- patient, not to say apprehensive. But on Monday morning, when we walked down to the quay, one of the first men we met was Captain John McLeod. " We had regular fisherman's weather all the way," he explained, as we shook hands all around. " But I don't suppose the delay makes any difference to you ?" " It's just as well you got here," an- swered Thatcher. " We may not want to stay longer than a week now. Where are you tied up ?" " I'm anchored," said the captain, and as this point in the conversation had brought us opposite to a little building, over the door of which appeared the le- 164 A PROBLEM IN GEOMETRY gend, ''Assurance Contre la Soif" we stepped inside and sat down and effected insurance. McLeod told us of his trip across from Cape Breton. It seems that all went well enough until the schooner got becalmed the second day out, and that afternoon Carquemort turned up drunk for his watch. He was not wholly incapacitated for work, but he was sullen and stubborn, and came very nearly being insubordinate when McLeod went into the fo'c'sle and found Semsen with the bot- tle that Carquemort had nearly emptied. " I took it away from him and chucked it overboard," continued McLeod ; " but I tell you, now : I don't hook to that Crack- mug fellow, and there never was any good in a Finn. Howsomever, we got along all right when the wind came up and I guess we'd 'a' got along all right anyhow." The conversation turned to the unload- ing of the schooner, and it was decided that this should be done within the next 165 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE two days, in order that the Merry Madge might be at our disposal by that time if we should be ready. Our Frenchmen and the rest of the crew having remained aboard the schooner, which lay in the outer harbor, Thatcher and I took a boat and rowed out to the anchorage, while McLeod made arrangements for docking. Chiffard was truly delighted to see us, but Carquemort's welcome was somewhat tempered with a suspicion that we had perhaps secured all the gold since our ar- rival, and had stowed it away to his spoli- ation. We led the way into the little cabin, and all four sat down to the narrow table under the skylight, the Frenchmen eager and aglow with curiosity, while Thatcher affected an air of mystery which seemed only to increase Carquemort's ill- concealed anxiety. In as few words as possible we told them of our ascent of La Grande Vigie, and of the discovery of the iron rings welded into the rock. 1 66 A PROBLEM IN GEOMETRY " C'est bien fa le mat T cried Chiffard, almost beside himself. "El la cachette, * vous I'avez trouvee?" We were forced to admit that we had not, and Thatcher sternly bade both men remain quiet until he could explain the situation to them and show just what re- mained to be done. In order to make this plainer, he produced a rough sketch which he had made the night before, and laid it out upon the table before us. " Here you have the island of St. Pierre," he said, " and the small island to the right of it, marked B, is 1'Ile aux Chiens. We are taking it for granted now that the rock we came upon yesterday is the place where the mat, mentioned on Carquemort's chart, originally stood. We will call this spot A. Now then, the chart- maker laid out a straight line from A to some point on B that we are unable to locate ; but we know for certain that the landmark he took was on the island B. 167 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE It was neither to the north of it nor to the south of it, to the east of it nor to the west of it. Therefore if we lay out a line A C as one limit of the space within which the cross he mentions could have been, and D another line A D as the other limit, we enclose on St. Pierre a narrow area with- in which the cachette must lie." Carquemort could not understand this at first, but Thatcher drew other diagrams, with pictures of poles and crosses and 168 A PROBLEM IN GEOMETRY other scenery, so that the man finally got it through his stupid head. " Now," continued Thatcher, "we know that the treasure was concealed at a point twenty -five paces from A. Therefore, if we measure off twenty-five paces, A E, on A D, and twenty-five paces, A F, on A C, and describe the arc E F, that arc passes over the cachette /" This last mathematics, however, were too much for our sailorman and cook, as I had warned Thatcher that they would be ; but finally, after much talking, we made it clear to them that 1'Ile aux Chiens, as seen from La Grand Vigie, looks very small, and that imaginary lines drawn from the rock to the extremities of the island would still be very close together even at twenty-five paces from the apex of the triangle ; and that consequently the arc, when described, must fortunately be a small one. As soon as we had made them understand this, they wanted to land at 169 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE once and climb the hill, and lay out the survey and fall to with shovel and pick. We were no less anxious to get to work than they, but we had made the ascent of the hill, and we knew what lay before us ; consequently we persuaded the men to dine first and to meet us at one o'clock on the quay, bringing with them a pick each. This much accomplished, we rowed back to the town, crossing McLeod on the way, and delaying long enough to in- form him of the orders we had left with the men. These suited him well enough, for he had found he could not dock until the morrow. Chiffard and Carquemort were awaiting us when we came down to the water-front from our lodgings. They had the picks in a huge sack which, during the ascent of La Grande Vigie, they took turns in carrying. The only impediments we brought were a small telescope that Thatcher had borrowed from a junkman 170 A PROBLEM IN GEOMETRY of the village, a ball of thick twine, along a section of which we had measured twenty-five paces, and half a dozen sharp pine stakes for markers. The day was not so clear as Saturday had been, and by the time we were half- way to the top of the hill the village was al- most hidden in a light haze that came float- ing in from the sea ; the sun was clouded, but there was little wind, and, the wise- acres had told us, no prospect of a heavy fog coming on before night to bewilder us in the mountain. Poor Chiffard snorted and perspired as he clambered up the steeps, and cast imprecations upon the head of the muffle who had chosen such an unheard-of place to hide his treasure. Carquemort was perfectly taciturn ; I be- lieve he expected to find at the summit evidence that Thatcher and I had already done away with the gold ; and I have no doubt that if he had he would unhesitat- ingly have done away with us. 171 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE The sight of the rusty iron bands when we reached the summit threw the two men into renewed excitement, and they were unwilling to sit down even for a brief space to rest from the exertions of the ascent. But this they were compelled to do, for their picks were of little avail un- less they knew in what spot to dig, and of this Thatcher refused to give any in- formation until he had smoked a pipe within the shelter of the cliff. During this respite he demonstrated practically to our followers the geometry he had been trying to make them understand in the cabin of the Merry Madge earlier in the day, and we were even surprised our- selves to note how very small an arc it would be necessary to describe, 1'Ile aux Chiens appearing almost insignificant in the glimpses we managed to catch of it through the rifts in the haze. O The measurements were rapidly made as soon as we set about our work. 172 A PROBLEM IN GEOMETRY Thatcher lay at full length on the top of the rock and took the upper end of 1'Ile aux Chiens through his telescope, while I, holding one end of the measured twine, the other being fastened to the lower iron band, stood off twenty-five paces and drove a pine stake into the hill-side at the spot indicated by the surveyor. The same method was pursued to lay out the line to the lower extremity of the distant isle, and after that it was a simple matter to describe the necessary arc, driving stakes every few feet. Carquemort and Chiffard thought we must be off in our mathemat- ics ; however, this did not deter them from wanting to begin digging at once. CHAPTER XVI A DAY OF TOIL IT will be remembered that the instruc- tions on Carquemort's chart were to the effect that, after pacing off twenty -five steps from the mat, something was to be done with a stone, prior to digging ; or per- haps it was intended that some digging was to be done with relation to the posi- tion of a certain rock. This part of the sentence we had been unable to restore, and had counted upon deriving inspiration for our actions from the lay of the land at twenty-five paces from the flag-pole, when we should have found the mat. There was little inspiration to be derived from that hill-top, however, for it consisted al- most entirely of huge bowlders scattered 174 A DAY OF TOIL pell-mell one upon another, most of the rocks weighing many tons. Therefore we determined, after a careful survey of the premises, to clear a space for a width of a few feet, along the arc we had laid out, of all stones that could be moved by means of such tools as we had at our dis- posal, and to frame our future course in regard to the larger rocks as conditions might suggest. The four of us set to work forthwith, but the labor was by no means a light task, and dusk was upon us before we had half completed it. We were consequently forced to leave it unfinished and return to the village, after concealing our picks under a tuft of dwarf pine. We felt no anxiety of their being stolen during our absence, and we doubted even if any St. Pierrese would climb to the top of La Grande Vigie at any time during the next month or during the year, for that mat- ter ; but we wished to take every precau- 175 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE tion that the suspicions of the natives might not be aroused. What we feared most in the future was that the daily ascent of the mountain by us, strangers, would soon be noticed and commented upon, and perhaps eventually investigated. But we subsequently got around this ob- stacle by giving out that Thatcher was painting a picture a view of St. Pierre from the mountain -side. The only un- pleasant feature of this fabrication was that we had to carry a box of alleged ar- tist's materials up the mountain at our every excursion ; but the box usually con- tained more palatable delicacies than oil- paints, and as no one ever asked to see the fabled picture, we felt that our ruse had been successful with the simple-minded fisherfolk. The next morning, Tuesday, we were on La Grande Vigie by ten o'clock, Carquemort and Chiffard joining us about half an hour later, as we had made them 176 A DAY OF TOIL take a roundabout road of approach our constant effort being to avoid attracting attention to our movements, or our rela- tions with these men. Our tools were augmented by a crow-bar, a small sledge- hammer, and two spades, but even with these additional aids it took us the entire day to clear away the shrubs and rocks that lay in the small territory under in- vestigation. By the time we knocked off, however, there were only five bowlders of too great a size to be moved, even by our combined efforts, and we left it until the morrow to determine against which we should aim our first serious attack. At the council we held that evening in the cafe, Chiffard urged the use of dyn- amite at once upon all the rocks, this plan being warmly seconded by Carquemort. The latter even volunteered to place the explosives and to ignite the fuses. But we demurred strongly to this, more on ac- count of the danger of discovery than for M 177 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE any other reason, for we feared that even if we waited until a stormy night the ex- plosion of five dynamite cartridges, or of a single one, distant as the mountain-top was, would startle the French govern- ment for a certainty, and probably result in a search into the cause of such an un- usual detonation that must redound to our discomfiture. I finally suggested that we select the rock most likely to be the one we wished to dislodge, for we had con- cluded that the treasure was probably under or near one of the five great rocks, and dig around its base to a depth of several feet. My contention was that if a bowlder had been placed over the cachette, we should thus make sure of that fact by digging to its base, whereas if the bowlder were not the one mentioned in the chart it would probably extend to a considerable depth below the surface, having been a feature of the landscape at the time the treasure was buried. The event proved 178 A DAY OF TOIL that this plan was a wise plan, for it did away with the use of explosives and led us to make the discovery we had travelled so far to attempt. We started in at the same hour the fol- lowing morning, Wednesday, upon the labor of displacing the rock nearest the centre of the space we had cleared. The work was of the hardest kind we had yet been forced to undertake, for the bowlder was wedged in by a quantity of smaller rocks small by comparison only weigh- ing on an average from 400 to 500 pounds each. These we had first to loosen in their beds and then, by the severest kind of exertion, lift out of their emplacements and roll away. It was only possible for three of us to work at a time, it having been considered wisest for one man to remain constantly on watch against the approach of strangers. This method, how- ever, had the advantage of affording to each one of us a chance for rest at fre- 179 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE quent intervals. By dusk we had cleared a ditch some two feet deep half - way around the great stone. We must have handled several tons of porphyry that day. And the exertion proved too much for us, for on the following morning both Thatcher and I were entirely played out lame, stiff, and sore and we determined that this day should be taken for rest. I think Chiffard and Carquemort were not displeased at the announcement. In this manner we also secured an op- portunity to have some intercourse with Captain McLeod, whom we had scarcely seen since the day of his arrival ; and when we learned that the Merry Madge was now unloaded and prepared to take on cod as soon as we gave the word, we bade our skipper wait until Monday, when we hoped to be able to give him some definite information concerning our fut- ure plans. It so happened, however, that we went 180 A DAY OF TOIL aboard of the Merry Madge hastily the following evening and, by force of cir- cumstances, confided to McLeod the complete facts concerning our enterprise. As a result, the little schooner found her- self, early Saturday morning, anchored in 1'Anse de Savoyard a little bay on the southern coast of the island and we then entered upon one of the most thrill- ing labors that I ever was, or expect to be, called upon to perform during my life. But I am anticipating. CHAPTER XVII THE SECRET OF THE CHART WE rested all day Thursday, as I have said, and on Friday morning, at the usual hour, we were again at our rock-digging with renewed strength and energy. The day was quite foggy and the town below was completely hidden from our view and we from the people's! but we had now become so familiar with the path of ascent and descent that we no longer feared becoming lost in the mist. Conse- quently, we were pleased with the weather conditions, and all worked steadily and persistently at lifting bowlders and rolling them from their beds down into the bush- grown clefts of the hill-side below us. It must have been shortly after mid- 182 THE SECRET OF THE CHART day, and just about time for us to knock off work to sample the contents of Thatch- er's "paint-box," that the famous dis- covery was made which resulted in leav- ing the " paint-box " unopened until five o'clock that afternoon. Chiffard was knee-deep in the ditch that we had dug around the big bowlder, puffing and groaning with a crow-bar, when the thing slipped and was swallowed almost to its entire length into the hill-side. The cook fell flat, of course, and bruised himself, and what he said would not look well in print. I believe, however, that the man was more frightened than hurt, for he scrambled out of the ditch and called loudly upon Thatcher and me, who were laboring like a pair of Sisyphi at rolling a huge rock. When we came to him and he explained what had happened, pointing out to us only a few inches of the handle of the crow-bar above ground, we realized that he had struck some kind of a hole, 183 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE and the hope that it might be the cachette threw us again into one of those frenzies of excitement that had overwhelmed us on one or two previous occasions in con- nection with our hunt for buried treasure. Thatcher leaped into the ditch and withdrew the crow-bar. Then he fell upon his knees, and with some difficulty forced his hand and forearm into the crevice through which the tool had fallen. " This must be the place !" he shouted, presently. " I can't feel anything below, but there is certainly a large chamber of some kind here ! I can feel the top it seems to be a flat stone !" Then he made way for me, and I thrust my arm in and felt about in the dark hol- low, and afterwards both Chiffard and Carquemort did likewise. The two latter were almost beyond control, and Carque- mort, in his eagerness to tear away the rocks near the aperture, labored fiercely with his fingers until they bled. When, 184 THE SECRET OF THE CHART after a few moments, we had all become almost rational again, and had made a closer and more careful examination of the crevice, we concluded from such gen- eral indications as were evident that Chif- fard, by a fortunate hazard, had sent his crow-bar into a hole some two or three feet deep, over the top of which rested a flat stone. The bar had entered just under the edge of this stone, and by re- moving: some smaller bowlders in a new O direction from that in which we had been working, we found that the flat rock was about three feet long in one of its dimen- sions. Piled above it were stones and earth and roots some two feet deep an accumulation of years, doubtless, and probably an artifice of concealment as well. " If this is the cachetic" said Thatcher, as he wiped great beads of perspiration from his brow, " we have come upon it from the side, and this flat rock closes the 185 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE upper orifice. There is no necessity for removing all that stuff on top. Let us now widen the little opening we have al- ready made until we can see or reach inside of the vault." But this was not so easy of accomplish- ment as our enthusiasm could have de- sired ; nevertheless excitement lent us the power of Titans, and at the end of an hour we had torn away a couple of stones that formed a part of the side wall of the hiding-place. Then, by the aid of light- ed matches, we saw that we had come upon some sort of an artificial chamber about two cubic yards in capacity. What the chamber contained, however, we could not then ascertain ; but that this was the cachette we no longer entertained the slightest doubt. An hour more of per- sistent work and we had broken an open- ing about two feet square, through which it was decided that one of us must thrust his head and shoulders, while the others 1 86 THE SECRET OF THE CHART held him by the heels, to investigate the interior of the dark chamber. The part of imitating Israel Putnam fell to me, be- ing the smallest man of the four, and I must confess that it was with considerable reluctance, barely tempered by the hope of bringing gold to light, that I finally consented to push my head into that black hole where there might be lurking some strange kind of danger, the nature of which, of course, I was unable to imag- ine, for I knew there were no snakes on the island of St. Pierre. First, I placed my right arm through the orifice and felt about in the darkness, and then I lay down upon my stomach and worked my head slowly under the stones, while a shower of pebbles and dirt rattled over my face and down my neck, and the jagged side of the rocks tore my hair. Carquemort and Thatcher held me firmly by the feet, and Chiffard jabbered volubly in helpless idleness. When I had 187 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE worked my head and shoulders well with- in the chamber my hand touched bottom, and I could feel stones of all sizes, or what I at first thought to be stones ; but the large ones seemed all to be of about the same size and smooth, and after a few seconds of careful feeling I was aware that they were square and seemingly arranged in some order. I felt confident then that what I touched was not stone, but gold or silver surely metal of some kind in bull- ion and although I burned to give an expression to the feelings that arose in me, I soon found that a man almost throt- tled in a black, airless pit is physically unequal to rise to such an occasion. But I signalled wildly with my heels to be pulled out, and when finally my compan- ions got me to the surface again my clothes were torn, my face and head were bleedinsr, and I felt as if I were almost O' suffocated. All I could say was : " Gold ! De I 'or, mes amis ! Gold bars !" 1 88 THE SECRET OF THE CHART In spite of the fact that we had labored for so many weeks to find this cachetic, and would have experienced the bitterest disappointment if we had never discov- ered it or, if found, it had been empty none of the three Thatcher, Carquemort, or Chiffard would believe that what I said was true ; and even I myself, after a few seconds of daylight, doubted my own senses. So it came that I was almost forced into the jagged hole again, with injunctions to bring out the gold if it was really there ! But after almost bursting every blood-vessel in my head, I kicked for rescue once more, and when dragged back to the fresh air had only succeeded in partially dislodging one of the heavy square pieces of metal that lay embedded in the bottom of the chamber. In spite of the protestations and en- treaties of the others, I swore that I would not go into that place again that day, and I lay down upon the hill-side to recover 189 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE from my efforts. Carquemort fell at once to an attack upon the rocks with the sledge, but Chiffard and Thatcher plied me with questions and brandy and were soon themselves executing a war- dance that appeared to me, played out as I was, wholly undignified and superfluous. I shouted to them that they would do better to thrust their heads into the pit and derive experience, but they laughed at me, and Chiffard bawled the most absurd statements concerning what he intended to do with his money when he got back to New York. No further progress did we make that day, for night was approaching. We rolled a bowlder over the opening we had made, and concealed our tools and groped our path down the mountain-side almost in darkness, guided by the twin- kling lights of the town and by the great revolving flash on Galantry Head. We dined that night on the best there 190 THE SECRET OF THE CHART was to be had in St. Pierre including the driest of champagne, that had never paid duty ! and Chiffard left the straight and narrow path and caroused so with that beast of a Carquemort that the quiet streets rang with their vociferations, until a patrolling gendarme seized them and threw them bodily on board of the Merry Madge, that lay moored at the quay. Thither, too, in our exuberance, did. we find our way ; and we saw our allies sprawling upon the forward hatch. We awakened McLeod and bound him by great oaths to secrecy, and told him of our adventure, for we knew he must event- ually be intrusted with our confidence; and although he thought we were foolish with wine and were telling him a prodig- ious yarn to shield some baser undertak- ing, he listened discreetly and fell in with our desires like the true man that he was. From La Grande Vigie we had noticed 191 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE a little bay which juts into the base of the hill on the far side from the town, and at a lesser distance. McLeod told us this was 1'Anse de Savoyard, a convenient anchor- age, especially for the loading of the qual- ity of cod he expected to buy. Here, for the first time, our Scot intimated that the cargo he intended to carry away would be in bottles and casks rather than of quintals of salted fish ; and as the pur- poses of all concerned would therefore be the better served by a greater privacy, it was agreed that the Merry Madge should put into 1'Anse de Savoyard early the following morning. Thus it was that, shortly after daylight, when Chiffard and Carquemort were brought to consciousness by the heaving of the schooner as she bobbed over the waves before a spanking breeze, tacking out to sea, with Galantry fading on the starboard quarter, the two men thought we had bribed McLeod to kidnap them ; 192 THE SECRET OF THE CHART and, in their momentary fury, it is probable that slaughter was only averted by bring- ing the Merry Madge about and pointing her for the headland, behind which she cast anchor an hour later in the snug little bay of Savoyard. CHAPTER XVIII FORTUNES FOR FOUR ALTHOUGH McLeod put no faith in the tale of buried treasure we had spun for him in the middle of the night, he felt confident we had succeeded in whatever enterprise had led us to the lonely shores of St. Pierre, and expressed himself as willing to assist us in any way possible in what remained to be done. The fisher- men who lived in the huts along the edge of the cove, he said, had been of service to him before, and understood perfectly the nature of the business that brought the Merry Madge to so secluded an anchorage. This was good news for us, for we had feared we might have some difficulty in smuggling our booty on 194 FORTUNES FOR FOUR board. We therefore bade our skipper load his " cod " with expedition, and our- selves, with Carquemort and Chiffard, again sought the mountain-top. The morning was spent in the Hercu- lean task of enlarging the aperture we had already made under the flat stone, and by noon we had succeeded in making it broad enough for any one of us to enter the chamber with head and shoulders so as to be able to work within with both hands. Carquemort was assigned to the task of extracting the first sample of our findings, and the eager expression of his face as he kneeled to carry out this task was almost beastlike in its fierce greed. He heaved and wrestled for some brief moments with the thing I had partial- ly dislodged the previous afternoon, and then slowly squirmed backward and out- ward, assisted by us all. His hands came forth last from the darkness, and clutched between them was an oblong, 195 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE yellowish-brown colored object which we all recognized at once as an ingot of solid gold! As he dropped the heavy burden upon the ground he rolled over and exclaimed, breathlessly : "Bon Dieu ! Le trou en est plein!" The realization that we now stood face to face with a large fortune a fortune, even when quartered, sufficient to make each one of us independently rich for the rest of his life did not affect any of us in the manner that I should have thought it would. We all took the climax more or less calmly ; and I suppose this was so because our nerves had been worked up by continuous exciting incidents to a pitch where failure only would have snapped their tension. The ingot that Carquemort brought to light was oblong in shape, and measured some six inches in length by four in width by two in depth. These figures 196 FORTUNES FOR FOUR are only approximate, for we never act- ually measured any of the gold bricks. We weighed two or three that night and they averaged twenty-eight pounds. But of this more later on. As soon as we had satisfied our curios- ity and had each examined and fondled the brick over and over again, Carque- mort was sent into the cachette to extract another. He had less difficulty in loosen- ing the second and those he subsequently secured, for the earth and pebbles that had cemented the upper layer of ingots had not filtered through to encumber the others. By noon, therefore, we had a dozen of the bricks piled before us. But such a profusion of treasure made us cal- lous to its fascination, and we actually sat upon the gold as we ate our luncheon at noon, talking wild and hilarious nonsense the while. Then, taking turns at the la- bor, we worked until the sun had fallen low and over fifty tawny bars had been 197 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE recovered, with no indication of there be- ing an end to the supply ! The question of transporting and guarding so much wealth now arose as a mighty problem, and we were occupied for a considerable period in its settle- ment. It was at length decided that two of us should remain upon the mountain all night, and the fortune of lot relegat- ed this unpleasant duty to Carquemort and Chiffard. Thatcher and I, however, agreed to bring up to them warm cloth- ing, sou'westers, food, and drink, but they were bound not, under any circum- stances, to make a light not even to smoke so great had become our fear of detection. So, upon this promise, we left them, carrying in the "paint-box" two of the bricks. (I commend to any one who de- sires exercise the carrying down a rough mountain -side of fifty- six pounds dead weight.) We reached the shore of the 198 FORTUNES FOR FOUR inlet towards six in the evening, just at dusk, and Glen McLeod came out for us in a dory. The skipper was anxiously watching for our approach over the rail, and we at once invited him into the cabin. His amazement at sight of our prize was such as I have rarely seen at any time, and when we told him of the pile of similar bars that lay on the top of the mountain he sank back speechless upon the cabin bench. We got the scales from the galley and weighed the two bricks. As I have written, they averaged twenty- eight pounds each, as did several others which we subsequently tested. Thatcher took pencil and paper from his pocket and figured. " Gold," he said, " is worth about twenty dollars a Troy ounce, if I remember cor- rectly. I doubt, however, if this stuff is pure. American gold coin is over .990 fine. This can't be more than .800 fine, 199 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE and, at a rough guess, is worth, say, $16.00 to the Troy ounce, or" and he figured away rapidly "about $232 to the pound avoirdupois. At any rate, let us figure on that basis. Now, one of these bricks weighs twenty-eight pounds: that would be twenty- eight times two hundred and thirty-two dollars, say $6496. This brick, gentlemen, is worth $6496 !" A dead silence followed that statement, and we each in turn examined Thatcher's figures, that we might be convinced. " Holy Moses !" said McLeod, as he gazed from one to the other of us, and his was the only open comment. We supped hastily, and as we ate we decided not to leave the schooner with $ 1 3,000 of our gold unguarded. McLeod, knowing we were to return to our fellow- O millionaires, had asked to be taken up to La Grande Vigie that he might see the treasure of his own eyes, and so Thatcher and he set off to carry comfort to our FORTUNES FOR FOUR Frenchmen, while I remained in the cabin with the treasure. The next morning, early, I climbed the hill alone, leaving Thatcher to watch aboard the Merry Madge, and the day was spent in carrying down the gold bars, four at a time, in sacks. The process was necessarily slow and fatiguing, but we all got long rests between journeys by taking turns in guarding the schooner and the cachette. This method kept two of us continually idle, which, in a sense, was a disadvantage. The most unpleasant duty of the whole process of transferrence was the night-watch on the hill, where the temperature towards dawn frequently fell to freezing, and we could not even allow ourselves the solace of a pipe. Rain, too, for three days made the night misery al- most unbearable ; but nearly any kind of suffering becomes supportable when one is pulling wealth out of a hole at the rate of about $25,000 to the minute ; and so it 201 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE was that we plugged away steadily and cheerfully for ten days until there was not a bar left in the famous cachette. When we were convinced of this we took account upon our check-list and found that we had stowed away in the cabin of the Merry Madge no less than five hun- dred and seventy-seven bars of gold ! If this should eventually prove to be worth sixteen dollars an ounce, as Thatcher had calculated, we were now the possessors of $3,747,092 ! Three million seven hun- dred and forty-seven thousand and ninety- two dollars ! Think of it ! $936,773 for each one of us nineteenth-century ad- venturers ! But here is no place to drag into ecsta- sies over our riches; and my tale is al- ready stretching far beyond the limit I had set at the beginning. Brevity seems to be a virtue that this story has lacked thus far, but I trust the truth of the state- ments will atone for the verbiage. I find 202 FORTUNES FOR FOUR that when writing of things one has done and seen, it is a task to thresh detail. In all this time of gold-digging Carque- mort had been the one to seem not wholly satisfied with our fortune. His constant talk was of more, more, more ! He would exclaim, as he mouthed the figures of our calculations, how fortunate the man would be who could own all we had found ; and at times he broke into curses upon Chif- fard, grudging the cook his share poor Chiffard, who had worked hard from the start, and who, after all, had been the means of bringing Carquemort to us and of thus making it possible for him to se- cure the solution of the mystery of his half-burned chart. Thus it was that when the rest of us were satisfied and convinced that no more treasure lay within the cachette, Carquemort still brooded over the possibil- ity of finding more if we should dig deep- er, and, to be just towards him, his conten- 203 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE tion was certainly more or less warranted by the wording of the chart which said "pieces et lingots" we having supplied the last word, and correctly as the event had proved. For we had dug out of the cachette over three million dollars in in- gots, but no coin. Neither Thatcher nor I believed there could be any coin there, as a very thorough search of the pit had been made by each one of us after the withdrawal of the last ingot, and we felt disinclined to waste time in digging about any more, being anxious to escape from the little cove of Savoyard with the booty we had before an evil chance should be- tray our enterprise to the government of the island, and so compel us to surrender a large portion, if not all, of our treas- ure. McLeod, too, was apprehensive about further delay, for gossip flies swiftly in small places, and there were many tongues that could wag to ill purpose concerning the " cod " in the hold of the 204 FORTUNES FOR FOUR Merry Madge. Furthermore, we had promised the good skipper one bar out of our great plenty as his share in the success of the venture, and so the canny Scot, with his mental eye fixed upon $6496, was doubly eager to see Galantry drop below the horizon in the wake of the Merry Madge. Carquemort was so persistent, however, that we agreed to devote one full day ad- ditional to La Grande Vigie to satisfy him that there was no more gold to be had ; and upon this concession he agreed to offer no further objection to an early departure thereafter. This understand- ing was reached on the evening of Tues- day, August loth, that being the date upon which we brought down the last bars from the summit. Our plan as pro- jected then was to slip quietly out of the cove at dark the following evening, August 1 1 th, with, doubtless, the richest cargo that ever left St. Pierre. 205 CHAPTER XIX THE LAST LOAD THUS, in spite of the fact that I had thought we had all seen the last of La Grande Vigie, three of us found ourselves upon the summit again, hidden in fog, the next morninar Thatcher remaining on o o guard aboard ship. The tools lay in the bottom of the cachette undisturbed, as we had left them the day before, and after they had been removed Carquemort an- nounced that he intended to enter the chamber bodily. This we had none of us undertaken previously, having recovered the treasure by merely diving into the hole, while those without clung to the worker's feet. Yet, now that all the gold had been taken out, it was barely possible 206 THE LAST LOAD that the cachette would accommodate a man, but I could not see that space enough would be left to enable him, once inside, to use his arms for \vork of any kind, especially Carquemort, awkward, hulking seaman that he was. But he slid in nevertheless, feet first, and Chiffard muttered to me under his breath that he would like nothing better than to roll a bowlder up against the opening of the cackette and leave the ruffian to his fate. That we did not do this is only one more proof to my mind that morality, after all, is but a mere engine of Providence, which makes me reflect further that a century and a half ago, when there was precious little morality, the plans of Providence must have been fearfully interfered with ; all of which rather obtuse and complicated philosophy will be the better understood at the close of this tale. There was better accommodation in- side of that cachette than I had supposed, 207 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE for Carquemort could be heard grunting and scuffling about within to a staccato accompaniment of falling pebbles, while Chiffard and I sat outside in the fog and smoked. He was digging with his knife at the bottom of the pit, and he kept at this persistently for almost two hours, in spite of our offers to take his place for a time and our taunts that he was wasting his energy in an empty black hole. At the end of that period, however, the tables were entirely turned, and the laugh rested wholly with Carquemort; and, to say truth, I believe he was the most sur- prised of the three. To put it briefly, when he had dug some six or ei^ht o o inches down into the hard clay which had compacted at the bottom of the cachette, his knife-point struck sparks, and a little more scraping proved that in the bottom of the pit lay a large iron-clamped chest. Of course we each took turns of inspec- tion at once, and the blackguarding we 208 THE LAST LOAD got from Carquemort meanwhile was such as would have ranked the foulest-worded of Captain Kidd's crew as a drawing-room conversationalist. I, being the smallest of stature, was next allowed to slide into the pit, and to my surprise I found that I could lean over and cut away the clay in reasonable comfort. The refuse was passed up to the surface in our caps and thrown out ; and when it came Chiffard's turn to labor, fully one-third of the lid of the strong-box had been cleared to view. An hour or so after that the top of the chest was free, yet the chest itself was still so firmly em- bedded as to be immovable. The work progressed slowly, both because of the difficulty of attack and because we could use jack-knives only ; but towards mid- afternoon we had hacked away enough sediment from one side of the chest to clear the lock. This Carquemort smash- ed with the crow-bar after a good fifteen o 209 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE minutes of volcanic profanity, and the snapping of the bolts was soon followed by an eruption of gold and silver coins that he tossed to us from within, clamber- ing out immediately himself with his two fists full of doubloons. I say doubloons, and I have no doubt that such they were, for they were gold pieces, big and heavy ; and although many were badly rubbed, there were enough stamped with the pro- files of kings and bearing pious legends to identify the famous gold piece of pirate story-books. There were silver coins, too, and larger and smaller gold pieces, and a few coppers the latter all French, as was also much of the gold and silver. I regretted that as a boy I had never col- lected coins, that I might have known these pieces by name and nation ; but one thing I was sure of, and that was their genuineness and their great value and unquestioned age, for no date did we find greater than 1740, and only a few of THE LAST LOAD these, all fresh coins. We were more af- fected by this find than we had been by the bullion, for the money appealed more directly to our sense of sight and appre- ciation than did the tawny bricks. Chif- fard and Carquemort again and again held the coins high in air and let them sift through their fingers and fall into a jingling pile upon the ground below, and I found myself compelled to use hard words and some physical force to keep Carque- mort from stuffing his pockets. Finally I ordered him away, on the pretext that he go to the schooner and fetch rope and a pair of oars, or boat-hooks, and some flour-bags in which to carry off our treasure. While he was gone I entered the ca- chette and passed out capful after capful of gold and silver pieces to Chiffard until my back and arms fairly ached, and the cook piled all these in a great stack on his coat that had been spread out near by. FOUR FOR A FORTUNE The box I was delving from was about half the size of an ordinary modern steamer trunk. This may give some idea of what its capacity was, and this capacity was taxed to the utmost, for when I first lifted the lid the coins were brim even. The pile outside, as I saw it when I emerged, was fully two feet high and almost three feet in diameter at the base. What the actual value of all this was in money of to-day I cannot state, for it was never satisfactorily computed ; but Thatcher, who proved himself the mathe- matician and financier of the expedition, divided the silver coins from the gold the night we sailed from St. Pierre and made a rou:h estimate of the contents of the O chest, which he reckoned at nearly $200,- ooo. This brought our grand total up to nearly four millions of dollars. To return to our day's work, however. Carquemort got back from the schooner at just about sunset. The coins had all 212 WE CARRIED OUR COINS DOWN IN BASKETS THE LAST LOAD been recovered and Chiffard was in the cachette trying to dislodge the chest, for we thought we might find about it some clew to the source of all this wealth, and, incidentally, to the designer of our luckful chart. Carquemort brought with him a pair of oars and some rope but no bags, for of these he had been able to get none. Thus it became imperative that we dig out the chest, for we had nothing else in which to carry away the money. We did finally dislodge it, and after much trouble we pulled it through the aperture to the surface. It was too dark by that time to make any examination, and beyond noting that it was an unusually strong oaken box, bound and clamped with iron, I paid little attention to it. The coins were poured back into it and shaken down so that we could close the lid, and the coffer was then stoutly bound with rope, with nooses arranged so that it could be slung on the oars and carried by two of us. But when 213 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE we came to attempt this we found that by our united efforts we were only just capable of raising the great weight a few inches from the ground. The result was another night's watch on La Grande Vigie, the lot falling this time to Carquemort and me, and the next day, in four tiresome trips, we carried our coins down to the cove in cod-baskets. Each load was dumped into the chest, that had gone aboard carrying the first instalment, and was stowed for greater safety in the bunk of the little cabin where one of us had expected to sleep during the return trip. Thus, finally, our entire hoard was put into the Merry Madge, and nothing further held us to St. Pierre. The capstan began clinking at eight o'clock that night, and the wind holding fair and southeasterly, the little schooner slipped quietly out of the bay in the darkness just half an hour later. CHAPTER XX HOMEWARD BOUND UP to the present I have said little about Semsen, the fourth hand aboard the Merry Madge, whom we shipped at the last hour out of a North Sydney grog- shop. It has seemed best to reserve his indictment until he moved more promi- nently into our story, and that period we have now reached. He was a Finn, as I think I have told a lank, greasy beast, fit to sustain the evil repute that hangs at the heels of all those of his race who follow the sea. He worked well enough, it seems, on the trip over from Cape Breton, being in good pay and not yet spoiled by association with Carquemort, although Heaven knows he 215 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE must have been bad enough from the start. Rum and our black-hearted part- ner did the rest. On two or three occasions during the time the schooner lay at anchor in the cove, McLeod had let drop some remark which plainly showed us the fellow was losing favor with the skipper. But even this caused us no particular uneasiness. Semsen had had ten days of almost per- fect idleness while we were transferring the treasure, for we never called upon him to assist us, and so far as McLeod's enterprise was concerned, all Semsen had to do was to row the dory back and forth a couple of times in the evening when the kegs and cases came out from the town to Savoyard in little wagons drawn by dogs. It was impossible to keep the man in ignorance of the nature of the schooner's main cargo, and I doubt if concealment was ever attempted in that direction, but he was given pretty plainly 216 HOMEWARD BOUND to understand that he must keep his mouth shut, and he was not allowed any shore leave. As to the treasure, we tried' at first to keep the true nature of the affair from him, but when we continued coming down the hill day after day with our loads of gold bars and clambering clumsily over the rail with them, it seems almost impossible that an inkling of the truth should have failed to sift through his idle brain. As a mutter of fact, Carque- mort probably told him all about the whole business soon after the cachette was discovered, for we have agreed since, in discussing our adventures, that Semsen, for a man ignorant, showed a remarkable lack of interest in the peculiar proceed- ings he was living in the very midst of. He and Carquemort had been on friendly terms jirom the start, and every evening the latter \vas not on duty at the summit of La Grande Vigie the two used to sit in the bow smoking their pipes and talking 217 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE in undertones, and their conversation al- ways ceased when Glen McLeod, or Chiffard, or any other of us approached. This did not arouse our suspicions at the time, although, when you consider the temptation to crime latent in the millions we had housed in the cabin, I suppose it should have. Doubtless, during those long conversations, Semsen and Carque- mort concocted the plan which they tried to put into effect some days later, and which might very well have succeeded in spite of their being only two against five if fortune had not favored us as it did. What the plan actually was I am also unable to say with any degree of exacti- tude, for its development came so sud- denly, when it did come, that we were all taken by surprise. I feel sure, however, that some part of their scheme went wrong, or possibly some misunderstand- ing between the two caused a premature execution, for it would hardly seem pos- HOMEWARD BOUND sible that they should attempt to attack five men in the manner they did. And now, having made this brief exposition of the temper of our treacherous fellows, let us return to the little schooner on the night we put out of 1'Anse de Savoyard. The cove fell quickly out of sight in the darkness, and as we rounded the point we picked up the lights of St. Pierre off the port bow, the night being clear. The wind favored us, and before long the revolving light on Galantry Head had dropped well astern. We went down into the dingy cabin McLeod, Thatcher, and I. No definite plans had been made as to our port of destination otherwise than that we should head in the general direction of North Sydney and decide as soon as possible exactly where and how we should try to land our gold. We had been too busy up to the present to think about anything further than getting safely away from the French. 219 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE On this first night out, however, we postponed any discussion of our plans in order to count the coins that lay in the bunk of the extra cabin. It was a glo- rious entertainment, in which McLeod took part, and the result of Thatcher's rough calculations was, as I have said, that the value of the coins approximated $200,000. The most important discovery came later in the evening, after the mathemat- ics had been laid aside, when we set to making the first close examination of the chest. It was an unusually well-made box. The wood was doubtless oak or ash, but we could not be certain on ac- count of its age. The iron clasps and hinges were wrought in curious designs, and the padlock, on the reverse, was dec- orated with a crown in cameo with these letters engraved in script beneath it, "N. D. de la DT We thought that this would remain our only clew to the iden- HOMEWARD BOUND tity of the original owner of the strong- box, but McLeod, who possessed sharp eyes, claimed that he could discover the trace of a name on the lid, and we, too, finally managed to recognize signs of let- tering. I took a clothes-brush and pol- ished the top of the chest off to the best of my strength, scattering the floor with dirt and rust and bits of wood that fell before the vigor of my assault. Then we wiped the surface with an oiled rag, and thus brought out more clearly the words that had almost faded away. McLeod's eyesight was again brought into requisi- tion and he spelled out " a Deliv anc" Beyond that we could rescue nothing from the darkness. To us who had labored so long and as- siduously over the burned chart the pres- ent puzzle proved a simple one, and we made the faded letters at once into " la Delivrance" and coupling this with the letters on the padlock we concluded that FOUR FOR A FORTUNE the name of the ship to which this chest had originally belonged was " N. D. de la Delivrance ;" but what " N. D." might stand for we did not then determine, and, to be frank, just at that time we did not much care. Our minds were on other matters, and our hearts set rather into the future than upon the past. So we stowed the coins back again carefully into the box, stacking them according to size, and filling the chinks with cotton-waste ; and then we nailed down the lid of the cof- fer, and after much effort moved it back again into the port cabin, where it formed a sort of step to the bunk. Just as we were about to turn in for the night Thatcher startled us by leaping to his feet, tearing open the cabin-door and striding up the companion-way three steps at a time. We heard him walk rapidly around the deck and speak a few words to Glen, whose turn it was at the wheel, and then he returned. 222 HOMEWARD BOUND " I guess I've got 'em again," was all he said. " Why ? What ailed you ?" asked Mo Leod. " Why, I looked up there and I could swear I saw a face peering down through the skylight. That man Semsen, I thought. I rushed up to see who it was, but there was no one on deck but Glen at the wheel." " You need rest," I said ; and for the time we thought no more of the incident. CHAPTER XXI AN UNEXPECTED OUTBREAK THE next morning we slept late that is, late for seafarers for when I awoke it was half-past seven. McLeod had gone on deck long before. I aroused Thatcher, and as we dressed we could tell from the lazy motion of the schooner and by the groaning and creaking of the booms that the Merry Madge was becalmed. Above we found the captain smoking his pipe and saying things that would not look well in print, and he pointed northward to a heavy bank of dull gray clouds flush with the ocean. " Fog ?" said I, for the atmosphere even then was thick and chilly. "Yes," growled McLeod, "and in an 224 AN UNEXPECTED OUTBREAK hour we'll be packed in it like in cot- ton." We took our breakfast in the galley with Chiffard, who was whistling jovially over his pots and kettles and forever jok- ing about the condescension it was on his part a millionaire to play sea-cook. But he played his part well, and McLeod used to mourn the coming loss of so good a hand at making coffee. By the time we had finished our scant meal the fog was upon us, and in less than an hour every rope of the rigging was dripping dismally. Thatcher and I had smoked our pipes and were back again in the cabin lounging on the spare bunks, with our feet cocked up on the piles of bullion, discussing the port we had better make for as soon as the wind favored, when we heard heavy foot-falls on the steps, and Carquemort stalked into the cabin. " Hallo !" exclaimed Thatcher. " How p 225 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE did you get down here ? Where's the captain ?" " The devil take the captain !" retorted Carquemort, sullenly. " I guess I'm as good as he. Do you know I'm getting tired of this dog business? I've got just as much right in this cabin as you have ! That money 's as much mine as yours. Where's the chest ?" u See here, Carquemort," said Thatcher, quite calmly, rising, " sit down there." " I did not come here to sit down," continued Carquemort. " I want some of that money." " Well, you can't have any of that mon- ey," returned Thatcher, sharply. " And if you don't want to listen to reason, you can get right out of here !" Carquemort was looking about the cabin in search of the chest ; but that was safely locked in the port state-room, and I carried the key to the door in my pocket. 226 AN UNEXPECTED OUTBREAK " What do you want with money to- day ?" I asked, pacifically. " I want to have it in my pocket. It's mine, and I've a right to it. I want to divide the coin in the chest now. We may hang here in this fog for a week." " It was understood in the be^innin^ o o that this treasure was not to be divided until we reached land," I said. " And, what's more, it won't be, either ; you may depend upon that ! If you have any- thing reasonable to say, very well ; but " Here McLeod came down from the deck, and he appeared somewhat sur- prised at finding the Frenchman in the cabin. " That will do, Carquemort," said Thatcher, as if dismissing the man, and he sat down again and went at filling his pipe. Carquemort scowled and climbed slowly up the companion-way. " That fellow's getting ugly," I said. " Ugly?" repeated McLeod. 227 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE " Yes. I guess he has not got enough work to do, captain," put in Thatcher. " Can't you set him at something that will keep him busy until we get under way again ?" " I guess I can find something to oc- cupy the beast," he said ; and after put- ting on his sou'wester, which he had come down for, he left us again. We heard him bawling some orders above, and there was an interchange of oaths that fairly shook the panes of the skylight. And now I shall have to tell this part of the story as the events happened, and as they were told to me afterwards, not as I saw them ; for, being below, Thatch- er and I were not witnesses to what oc- curred in the beginning of the exciting period that followed Carquemort's visit to the cabin. It seems that McLeod set the Frenchman and Semsen at some sort of dirty labor aloft on the foremast scraping the top -mast, I believe, though 228 AN UNEXPECTED OUTBREAK I'm pretty weak on nauticalities and Glen was ordered to take the wheel and watch the sails in case a breeze sprang up. Occasionally, too, he blew a mournful blast upon a fog-horn a per- fectly useless proceeding, for we were apparently alone upon the surface of that foggy sea. McLeod sat by, smoking in silence, and Chiffard was busy in the galley. And so things went for half an hour or more, with the drip, drip, drip of the fog upon the deck and the hoarse tooting of Glen's horn as the only dis- turbance of that ominous peace. Presently the captain arose and leaned far over the rail, and peered intently into the mist for some moments. "See here, Glen," he said, "d'ye catch sight of anything beyond?" Glen strained his eyes for some mo- ments, and replied that he thought he could make out some sort of a dark ob- ject floating off the port quarter. 229 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE " Yes," said the skipper, " there's some- thin' there, sure, and it's floatin' this way. Mayhap it might be a dory or the like ;" and, sure enough, that is what it proved to be. It came slowly along on the tide, its outlines growing more and more dis- tinct, and in a few moments it was bob- bing, bottom up, almost within reach of the stern of the Merry Madge, but still well beyond the grasp of a boat-hook. " There goes twenty- five dollars, my boy," remarked McLeod. "What do you let it go for?" asked Glen. " Is she sound ?" " Seems to be," and then, struck with a sudden idea : " Lend a hand there, lad, and we'll have that. Launch a dory, now, lively;" and almost in less time than it takes to tell, the father and son had got- ten our smaller dory over the rail we only carried two, nested over the main hatch and had shoved off in pursuit of the derelict. Glen sculled with a single 230 AN UNEXPECTED OUTBREAK oar, while the older McLeod kneeled in the bow, leaning on the boat-hook as though it were a huge harpoon. Fog is a traitor to judgment, or else the tide took a sudden flow, for the two men found they had quite a distance to go before they overhauled the upturned dory. And now comes the devil-work of that incarnate fiend, Carquemort. Scarcely had McLeod and Glen put off from the schooner when the men dropped their work aloft and tumbled down to deck. Whether they had their plan all prepared and were only waiting for some such un- expected occurrence as this to aid them, I cannot say; but they jumped at the op- portunity which had so suddenly arisen to rid them for a space of two of the five men against whom they had evidently laid some plot, and set about to over- power the rest of us. Of Chiffard they took little heed, apparently, although they lifted the remaining dory from the hatch 231 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE and laid it quietly across the galley door, so that the cook would have a hard time of it getting out when he once became alarmed. Then they hurried to the com- panion-way, and our first intimation of trouble brewing was shouted down to us by Carquemort, who called upon Thatch- er to come up on deck. "What's the row?" returned Thatcher, somewhat surprised at the summons. "No row," answered Carquemort; "the captain's just put off in a dory. Hurry up!" We both rose to our feet to go on deck ; but, as good fortune would have it, I, hav- ing slipped off my shoes when we came below, was delayed half a minute in put- ting them on again. That necessity, an in- significant thing in itself, probably saved the lives of four of us. Thatcher went on ahead, and in my inclined position I could follow him with my eyes until he stepped on the deck. No sooner had he 232 AN UNEXPECTED OUTBREAK done so than an arm shot out from be- hind him, and he was struck in the back of the head with a belaying-pin. Not a sound did he make, but pitched forward heavily and fell violently against the wheel, where he lay motionless. For a second I could not believe the testimony of my own eyes ; I thought he must have slipped on the wet deck ; but yet I had seen the blow struck, and the sound of the heavy fall of Thatcher's body was fol- lowed by absolute silence. If he had tum- bled accidentally, Carquemort would be assisting him to his feet. But there was no evidence of that. All this flashed through my mind in much less time than it takes to write it, or even to read it, and fearing treachery, I went at once to my satchel that hung over my bunk and took my revolver. I had only just had time to make sure it was loaded when I heard foot-falls on the companion-way. I retired quickly to 233 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE the end of the cabin farthest from the steps and cocked my pistol. I thought I should have to deal with Carquemort, but to my surprise it was Semsen who faced me, the belaying-pin still in his hand. " Don't you move another step !" I shouted to him, as his head appeared be- low the door-piece. I was leaning with my left hand upon the table and I had the drop on him with my right. The man seemed staggered at finding himself facing a revolver, for he hesitated a mo- ment and raised his right hand as if to hurl the heavy pin at my head. Just then Carquemort shouted : " Hurry up, you fool! They're putting about" (meaning the McLeods in the dory, I suppose). " If you move, I'll shoot," said I ; but Semsen must have had a small opinion of my marksmanship, for he made a leap from the steps towards me, and as he did so I fired. 234 AN UNEXPECTED OUTBREAK He fell headlong upon the cabin floor. I knew he could not be fatally hurt, for I had aimed low, intending (like a fool) to hit him in the leg, so I leaped upon his prostrate form and pounded him upon the head as fiercely as I could with the butt of my pistol. This had the desired effect, for he lay like a log. The while I had kept a sharp eye on the door, but the sound of my shot must have knocked some of the temerity out of Carquemort, who, I am sure, had not the remotest sus- picion that we carried fire-arms. I did not know, of course, at this time that McLeod and Glen were away from the schooner ; so I wondered what could possibly have happened to them, and very naturally conjectured that as they made no move to my assistance they must, for some reason, be powerless. All this made me hesitate to climb the companion-way, and I delayed some mo- ments in coming to my determination, 235 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE which finally was to take the offensive at once. I fortified myself with a second pistol out of Thatcher's bag, and with both weapons cocked I made my way cautious- ly to the cabin door and peered carefully upward. There was no one to be seen, and not a sound to be heard above the dripping from the sails and shrouds. I crept slowly up the slippery steps, fear- ing at every moment to be attacked with a belaying-pin, but nothing of the kind befell ; and when at last I stuck my head above the level of the companion-rail I saw Carquemort leaning over the bul- warks amidships, and consequently with his back to me. McLeod and Glen had just come along-side with the rescued dory, but, from where I watched, they were invisible to me, and I could form no idea of why Carquemort stood in that position. After my shot in the cabin he had, no doubt, expected to hear sounds of a strug- 236 AN UNEXPECTED OUTBREAK gle, or, if Semsen were hurt, calls' for assistance. But as neither followed he must have concluded that both of us were injured as a result of our collision, and that I, at least, was temporarily out of the fight. It was the better part of valor, too, for him to make no personal investigation into the conditions that held in the cabin ; for (as he had signalled to Semsen) the two McLeods had put about and were rapidly nearing the schooner. As matters stood, therefore, he was left sin- gle-handed to meet these two ; and, con- sidering their approach a graver danger than my possible advance from out of the cabin, he had abandoned his post at the top of the companion - way and lay in wait for the unsuspecting Scotsmen. Of course, all this, let me repeat, was wholly without my knowledge and beyond my comprehension, and consequently I did not act with such alacrity as I might had I held any conception of the lay of af- 237 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE fairs. My courage, too, was effectually sapped by the sight of Thatcher lying face downward upon the deck, not six feet distant, apparently dead, with an ugly gash above the ear, from which a little stream of blood spread into an ugly pool upon the planking. I consider that the protrusion of my head above the companion-way rail and the arrival of McLeod and Glen along- side the Merry Madge were simultaneous. The skipper, being in the bow of the dory, and holding the painter in one hand, stood up and started to clamber over the rail amidships. As he did so, Carquemort leaped from the lounging position he held and caught McLeod full in the face with a belaying-pin. At the same instant I sprang to the deck, just in time to see the captain throw up his hands and fall backward. He struck the side of the dory with the small of his back and plunged head first into the sea, 238 AN UNEXPECTED OUTBREAK upsetting Glen into the water at the same time. But even before the splash of the falling men and Glen's sharp cry had reached my ears, I had fired twice at Car- quemort missing with both cartridges. He turned quickly upon me, and seizing another pin from the main rigging near which he stood, he made a step in my direction. I fired again, and this time the bullet struck him under the right arm, making only a slight flesh-wound a few inches below the shoulder-blade. Chiffard had not heard the report of my first shot at Semsen in the cabin, but the shouts and the firing which followed my arrival on deck roused him in his galley, and even in the excitement of my encoun- ter with Carquemort I could hear the cook cursing and struggling with the heavy dory that had been placed to bar his pas- sage. " Arm yourself, Chiffard !" I shouted. "Arm yourself !" and hardly had I cried 239 FOUR FOR A FORTUNE these words when Carquemort, with a sav- age oath, flew at me, dropping the heavy pin he held and drawing from his belt an ugly knife that I had frequently seen him use to cut tobacco. I did not wait for the onslaught, but turned and fled forward along the opposite side of the deck, thus placing the cabin skylight and the main-mast momentarily between me and my pursuer. I reached the galley just as Chiffard burst himself free and stepped on deck, holding in his hand a long meat-knife. I turned then, restored to some confidence by his presence, and faced Carquemort, who was now within less than five yards of us. I raised both my pistols and fired with the two at one time, and, thank God, hit the mark, for Carquemort fell prone forward with one bullet in the abdomen and another in his left wrist. These details of injury we did not make sure of until later, but we knew at once from the way he lay 240 I FIRED BOTH PISTOLS AT ONE TIME AN UNEXPECTED OUTBREAK writhing and cursing that he would give us no more trouble for the moment. I had had no time to think of McLeod and Glen meanwhile, but as soon as we had made sure that Carquemort was safe- ly hurt, I thrust the bewildered Chiffard towards the starboard rail, saying I know not what as I did so, and gazed keenly over the board. The two dories had floated some distance away, and close in to the schooner drifted an oil-skin cap but no si