Crab Reef/Chapter 4

Sailor Penny and Henry were gone from the cave when Peter Griffon awoke from his first night of slumber in that queer sanctuary. Though he ached from scalp to heel, he felt a new kick of life in him.

Big Tom brought him breakfast and bathed and dressed his shoulder. When he went to the front of the cave he found the sun high and the grating removed from the long window. It was then that Big Tom told him that their host and Henry had gone away at the first clear break of daylight, and that all hands, with the exception of the Turtle, were to remain underground until their return, by Master Penny's orders.

Griffon was startled by an unpleasant suspicion.

"Would he play us false?" he whispered.

"No fear o' dat," replied Tom. "What for would he make known all de secret ways o' dis yere cave to us if he didn't mean to act honest by us?"

"And why not, if he shipped us far enough away? He said he had shipped dozens like us, white and black, out of the island. D'ye think he goes to all this bother and labor and danger for the love of poor devils like you and me?"

"But Henry say dey goes free. De old man don't sell 'em. Henry make one v'yage himself, two years ago. He go away free and he come back free six months later."

"And what manner of voyage was that?"

Big Tom did not know. Henry had not given a clear account of the trip, having no appetite for the sea and its roaring perils. He had been glad to get back to Master Penny with a whole skin and two handfuls of gold.

"There you have it!" exclaimed Griffon. "Freedom! Aye, freedom with a vengeance—until ye're sped in a bloody fight or taken alive and hanged by the neck. Two handfuls of gold! Don't you see it, Tom? It's the buccaneers who take Penny's runaways off his hands! The buccaneers—and they're naught but murdering pirates nowadays!"

Big Tom accepted this disclosure calmly. Griffon was dejected. He saw himself helpless between an ignominious death on one hand and an unthinkable life of brutality on the other. For the glory of the old buccaneers, of the Free Companions, was a thing of the past. That hardy and desperate fellowship had preyed upon Spain, upon the proud and ruthless enemy of England and humanity—but those days and conditions were gone, and the old name was now applied to crews of beasts as devoid of courage as of mercy.

Twice during the day the two fugitives attempted to leave the cave by the way they had entered, but each time they found the Turtle with his cross-bow on guard at the mouth of the tunnel; and each time the Carib had turned them back with a gesture of the hand and a shoot of the eye not to be denied. They considered the seaward vent as a way of escape. They could easily have reached the narrow ledge by way of the crack in the face of the cliff, and with the help of a rope they could have descended from the ledge to the lagoon—but, as they were without a boat of any sort, all that would have been worse than useless.

The day passed without the return of Sailor Penny and Henry. The Turtle came below at sunset and took command. The heavy grating was again placed in the aperture overlooking the sea and the black reef, and the evening meal was cooked and eaten.

Peter Griffon retired early, but he did not sleep. For a long time he lay still, hearing nothing but the snores and snorts of his slumbering companions. Then he left his couch and moved noiselessly about the caves. He became aware of a faint pulsing sound, light on the ear, but large on the mind like the running and pounding of surf greatly muffled; and for a time he believed it to be the voice of the sea's commotion out in front along the base of the cliff and the reef beyond. But he changed his mind. It did not come from the front—or not entirely so, at least—but from beneath. It pulsed under his feet, under the floor of rock on which he stood, telling of a second and lower cave into which the tide rolled.

"That's their water gate, their, and doubtless they have a safe way down to it and boats hidden somewhere," he told himself.

It did not interest him particularly, for he had no intention of attempting to escape just then in an open boat. He would wait to learn more of this Sailor Penny and his subterranean ways.

He moved toward the front of the cave and presently heard another sound ahead. He paused for a moment, then continued his advance with the utmost caution. The sound grew as he approached the grated seaward aperture. It was a composite sound, made up of crackings and rattlings and harsh scrapings; and he thought of the nightly attack from the sea of which Sailor Penny had spoken, and all the old tales he had ever heard of sea devils and the like flashed across his mind.

He paused again and struggled for the space of half a dozen quickened heart beats with a frantic impulse to retreat to the farthest corner of the cave and his snoring companions; but he mastered this cowardly impulse and went forward again.

He looked for a faint gleam of starshine at the grated vent, but he could not see it. He continued to advance toward the appalling and mysterious confusion of sounds until they seemed to arise from within a yard or two of him; and at the same moment an almost overpowering stench of deep sea things assailed his nostrils and breathed coldly and clammily on his face—the stench and breath of watery depths, of weed sodden with the undertows of a thousand tides, of barnacles and rotted wreckage and salty slime and death.

He stood his ground, though he wavered and swayed for a moment. He caught a gleam of starshine close in front of him, but it vanished in a fraction of a second. He caught another, which was gone as swiftly as the first. Then he realized that things—the devil only knew what manner of things!—filled the seaward vent of the cave, fighting and clawing at the grating of rusty iron.

Peter Griffon sank to his knees, unnerved by a sickening horror. Wild conjectures surged through his shuddering mind; but he did not retreat; and presently he mastered his horror sufficiently to raise and advance his hand and a short stick he held toward the point where he knew the grating stood securely wedged in its frame of rock. He felt the iron bars—and other things as hard—but alive!—things as hard as the iron which moved beneath the point of his stick.

He jabbed the stick frantically here and there through the grating, and at every jab something loosed and fell and he heard a thud on the rocky ledge below; and at every thrust a shining gap of starlight appeared for a moment against the grating—a gap almost as wide as a cavalier's hat. The gaps were obliterated, refilled, as fast as he made them; and soon, his arm work slackening in speed, the stick was gripped and all but snatched from his hand.

He yanked hard on it, yanked and pulled until it came away with a tearing sound. He felt the end of it with his fingers and found the tough wood shredded like hair for a distance of four or five inches from the tip.

Then he knew. These monsters against whom the seaward entrance to the cave was so strongly barred every night were giant crabs. He had heard gruesome tales of certain reefs and keys of the Tortugas to the north, to which just such beasts as these swarmed up every night from black depths, whereon bones of men who had been cast ashore alive and dead lay white as new coral. He remembered one tale of a big negro who had been dragged to earth and killed and stripped of his flesh in the sight and hearing of a canoe load of would-be rescuers. Now he understood the significance of Sailor Penny's remarks concerning the reef. It was a comfort to know that Penny was not crazy.

Peter returned to his mat and slept until aroused by the good scents of yams and fish roasting and broiling for breakfast.