Call of the Caribbean/Chapter 4

ITH a favoring breeze, we ran down to Santo in one day. At Big Bay McShea landed his returns. And then Jack Stuart told the skipper that he planned to leave the Madeleine. Not only that, he intended to take enough tucker and stuff to get along for two weeks.

McShea sought for—and found—words to fit the occasion.

“Man,” he cried, “have ye lost the wits the Lord has given ye? What will ye do for two weeks on yon benighted stretch o’ weeds an’ hills an’ foul rivers? The Madeleine will not lay off Santo for two weeks to dry-nurse ye!”

Stuart explained then, for the first time, that he was going to explore the interior of the island, hoping to find traces of the Quiros expedition. I, who had known what lay on his mind, was not surprised—although I liked it little—but good McShea gaped.

“Daft ye are, Jack Stuart,” he growled, “daft as a haverin’ old wife. What will I be saying to your father, now?”

More he said, and finally pleaded. The lad, however, had made up his mind. He listened quietly to McShea; then asked if he could borrow certain supplies from our stores. The skipper shook his head grimly.

“Not a pound o’ flour, nor a potato nor cartridge do ye get from me, Jack Stuart,” he said, believing that he could turn the other from his purpose.

“Either I buy the stuff from you, McShea, or I go without it.”

The skipper growled at this and turned to me. I added my word to his. I pointed out that Stuart had no means of knowing where to look for the Quiros city. That the expedition had been lost to view for eight generations. That the coast natives might kill him before he could reach the interior.

“Mr. Haskins,” he said quietly, “I don’t want you to think I am jumping at this thing. I made up my mind to it before we left Maryborough. Naturally I said nothing about it to my father.” A faint smile twitched his lips, and I thought what his hard-headed father would have said to him if he had done so.

“Now if there was gold to be had,” observed McShea with a gleam of interest. “There would be sense in ye, Jack. Is there no gold?”

“Nor silver,” laughed the boy. “Except maybe a crucifix. I believe that there is some trace of the new Jerusalem remaining, at least of the church Don Quiros must have built.”

“Daft,” muttered McShea, shaking his head, “clean daft. To look for a Spaniard, an’ a dead Papist, at that.”

The boy made no response, other than to give the skipper a list of things that he wanted to take with him. I looked him squarely in the face.

“You insist on going?” I asked, but I read the answer in his eyes.

“Yes, Mr. Haskins.”

“Then,” said I with a sigh, “I will go with you. Old John Stuart put you under my care. I can’t let you go into Santo alone.”

“That’s jolly!” cried the boy. “I had rather hoped you might come. But then I had no right to ask you. Because—as you say—it might be dangerous.”

“Two men can go where one could not,” I answered briefly.

At the time I was ill disposed to go on with the wild undertaking. But Jack Stuart’s frank delight at having me for companion and the cheery way in which he spoke of the coming lark—as he put it—made me shrug my shoulders and stifle my conscience as best I could.

“There are two o’ ye,” said McShea, not without some secret satisfaction, for if I went with Jack, McShea would stand cleared of the business to old Stuart. He could say, and I believe he did, that it was a scheme of the two of us, carried out in spite of his, McShea’s, objections.

“I will be coming by Santo in two or three weeks, Mr. Haskins,” he added, “and if ye are still among the living, I will take ye on the Madeleine. How will I report ye to the commissioner?”

I explained to the skipper that we had landed the last of the returns at Big Bay, and my duties on the Madeleine were over. He would report truthfully what I had done, I told him, and ask that I be listed for duty on the Madeleine when the schooner returned to the islands and picked me up.

“Aye, Mr. Haskins, that may be,” said McShea grimly, “but I’ll be bringing another government agent with me, for ’tis not likely ye will join me.”

Once the die was cast, I saw to it that we got the best outfit possible from the stores of the Madeleine. McShea had the best of everything on the schooner and he did not stint us—even adding some quinine and sherry of his own to our slender stock.

“Ye will have the fever, ’tis likely,” he remarked cheeringly, “an’ this will help save ye for the clubs o’ the coast niggers.”

“Maybe,” grinned Quin, “they will build ye a stone cairn at the Papist shrine.”

But McShea turned on the mate with an oath, although Stuart smiled. He asked us if we would take one of the schooner’s boats. Stuart and I decided that a whaleboat would be too weighty for us to row up the Jordan, and the dinghy would not hold two men with our outfit. So the worthy skipper said good-by more feelingly than I had thought of him, and pulled off to the schooner, leaving us standing on the shore of the cove where the River Jordan emptied into the sea.

When I met McShea again, some three years later, I thanked him for his kindness. He said then that he had hoped to dissuade the lad up to the last and had pulled off to the ship with a heavy heart. There was much good feeling under the gruffness of the skipper. Quin, as I have said, was killed shortly after. An Irishman does not belong in the labor trade. Most of the skippers are Scotch.

I still have the inventory we took of ourselves and belongings on the beach that day. It runs something as follows:

Two able-bodied men, one being English, the other Australian; two rifles with a hundred and fifty rounds of ammunition for the Winchester and Spencer; one makeshift tent, fashioned out of a spare jib of the schooner; one set of blankets; ten pounds of potatoes, with a small stock of bacon; ship’s biscuits ad lib. and tea likewise; a handy kettle, matches and an indifferently good compass; also, McShea’s donation.

A small outfit, if measured by tourist standards to-day. Yet we hoped to make it serve for a month if necessary.