The Pirate Story Megapack. R.M. Ballantyne

his own.

      “No kanaka walk along this island,” one of them pronounced. “Too much already they raise plenty hell an’ bobbery suppose they here this time.”

      They landed, and the covering boat came up.

      “Everything to ourselves,” said Newton. “Now then, Lyman, where’s the Golden Dolphin?”

      Jim took his bearings and led the way into the bush. It was much thicker than when he had last penetrated it. The almost level sunrays stabbed its green mantle with long lances. They climbed through, over and about dense masses of creepers and palmetto, saw-leaved pandanus, with tree trunks grown close together as the stakes of a palisade. Here the Fijians first proved themselves, hacking a way through the tangle. Soon there were no longer any shafts of sunlight, they walked in a green twilight, as they might at the bottom of a sea with weird water-growths twining all about them. The sight of the ship vaguely showing amid a mass of verdure heightened the resemblance. It was hard to see at first even when the grinning kanakas pointed it out, but then their eyes traced it and they hurried forward as fast as they could, with their hearts pounding with excitement. To Kitty Whiting it was the visible confirmation of her hopes, the sight of it reinforced her belief that, having found her father’s ship, she would find her father. Lynda Warner naturally shared her cousin’s feelings. To Newton the ship represented a fortune of which he had been somewhat skeptical, though not so much so as he was at heart concerning the fate of Captain Avery Whiting. Jim was not unthrilled by the thought of the pearls hidden in the hulk. He found some triumph in showing what he had promised, in proving up. He wished Stephen Foster were there beside his son. Kitty Whiting’s joy was his.

      There was an open space above the ship where its weight had crushed the growth and prohibited any revival. So thick was the jungle that the Golden Dolphin seemed to lie at the bottom of a green shaft. Away up the topmost branches of the trees had caught the rising sun but it was not high enough yet to send full light to the bottom of the well. It would not be long before it did so, Jim noticed. Looking at his watch he saw that they had been four hours struggling through the bush from the beach, four hours to make half a mile of progress. It had originally taken him a quarter of the time. Another year and this ship would be utterly lost, swallowed by the jungle.

      The native boys attacked the barricade with fresh vigor, their bodies, naked save for loincloths, glistening with sweat that ran off them in streams. Now they could make out the mast that lay over the side, festooned with green vines. Vines had climbed the mast-stumps and the tangle of ropes, smothering the vessel with a cloak that seemed to hide it from the shame of its disaster.

      Suddenly the sun peeped over the edge of the rift in the trees. A ray came down and touched the half-hidden figurehead. Kitty gasped. Jim saw her eyes fill with tears that she winked away.

      “The Golden Dolphin.” She flashed one look at Jim, a reward that amply satisfied him. Then her eyes closed for a moment and her lips moved. She was praying.

      They clambered aboard breathlessly, leaving the native boys below. They peered down through the broken skylight through the tarnished bars into the dim interior where more green things writhed. The sun, as if directed for their search, sent one beam, almost vertical, probing through the gloom, disclosing a mast, outlines of a table, chairs, a cushioned transom, a stateroom door.

      “I got down through there,” said Jim. “The companion doors were jammed. Maybe we can move them.”

      They were closed, but united effort shifted them more easily than they expected. The companion ladder was in place and unbroken.

      “I’ll test it,” said Jim. It was sound and he called up the news. The sun, almost directly overhead now, beginning to flood the shaft with golden light, illuminated the main cabin with beams in which golden motes danced, and rendered the darkness still blacker by contrast. They had brought along electric torches and Jim turned his on the stairs as Kitty descended. She held out her hand to him naturally for assistance though she did not need any, he knew. Lynda followed, then Newton. Baker tactfully kept the rest back, telling them this was “the lady’s party.”

      The quartet did not notice that they were not followed. Kitty stood in a ray of sunlight, her hand over her heart, leaning forward, looking, listening; listening, it seemed to Jim, as if her love was conjuring from this stranded ocean habitation of her father’s some clew to his whereabouts. She spoke in a whisper that fitted the occasion. There seemed something uncanny about the place. Jim fancied he heard movements back of the passage that led from the cabin forward. He sent an exploring pencil of light down its dark tunnel, showing stateroom doors on either side, half open, a door closed at the far end.

      “There may be some message,” said Kitty. “We must look.” They moved forward through the vines that caught at them like seaweed or like detaining hands.

      Jim thought of the skeleton alongside, well covered now with verdure. Their searchlights flicked through the dense patches of shadow.

      “Spooky,” muttered Newton, close behind him. “She’ll find no message, Lyman. Wonder where the pearls are?”

      Jim, sympathetically possessed by the girl’s real quest, had temporarily forgotten the pearls. He half turned on Newton to bid him hush.

      Suddenly there was a rush and a scuffle on the deck, a stifled cry, a shout half strangled, in Moore’s voice:

      “Look out, belo-o-w!”

      A shot sounded, distant, as if from the lagoon. Another and another. As they grasped their weapons, turning for the companionway, at the top of which they saw to their amazement, Walker, fighting viciously with Vogt and Neilson, a deep voice came from the passage leading forward.

      “Up with your hands, all of you! Chuck your guns over to the port transom. Hurry, or I’ll bore the lot of you. Up!”

      The ray from Newton’s torch as he jerked his arms aloft lit up the great figure of a man that almost filled the entrance, fell on his sardonic face, squash nose, piggy eyes and bald head with a tonsure of red hair. Over Hellfire Swenson’s shoulder leered the features of a man with a close-clipped beard and moustache, mouth open, the tip of a tongue showing between white teeth, for all the world like a wolf gloating at the survey of a victim. This in a flash; they vanished as the torch dropped from Newton’s nerveless hand.

      Some one called through the skylight bars. It was Sanders.

      “They’ve got us, Skipper. They’ve got you covered.” Then there was a thud on the deck. Other faces looked down. The sun caught the glint of rifle barrels trained on them. Swenson spoke out of the dark.

      “No nonsense, now. I’ve come too far to monkey. Short work from now on. Lyman, throw that gun away or I’ll start with you. I don’t need you any longer.” The bleak purpose of his voice was appalling in its menace. Sullenly Jim tossed his automatic to the port transom. A man swung down through the skylight and secured the weapons.

      “You poor fool,” said Swenson. “There are other harbors in the Fijis besides Suva. I got there first and put in at Levuka on Ovalau. My good friend, Cheng, whom you were good enough to hire at Honolulu, sent me the position from Suva by wireless. I’ve been here forty hours waiting for you to show up. The Shark’s on the other side of the island, snug. Your schooner is in my hands. Cheng is a good persuader; I’ve got five of your men in with me. The rest are damaged and your kanakas have chucked the job. Now then, young woman, where are those pearls?”

      He switched on a torch that sought out Kitty’s face and held it, pale in the circle of light but with chin up, lips compressed and eyes that shone defiantly. Jim, his useless fists clenched, furious at the trickery he had not detected, the mutiny of the five, which were, he supposed, the three Norsemen, Wiltz and Cheng, saw the girl’s finely cut nostrils dilate.

      “I’ll not tell you,” she answered and there was a ring to her voice that told of true metal. “Not if you kill me.”

      “Mebbe you wouldn’t,” said Swenson, and there was a grudging acknowledgment in his voice, “but I don’t aim to kill you. You’re the goose that lays the golden eggs, you see.