Page:The Popular Magazine v72 n1 (1924-04-20).djvu/140

 of a rope or a turn of the wheel but had been part of the business of which it was prime mover, but it had not troubled them directly.

Now it was different. It was going to leave them. It was going to take itself ashore and hide itself in the sand and they were going to sail away without it. Not till now did they know that it had become part of them.

This great treasure had become part of their spirit, almost of their flesh and blood. They would have fought for it as men fight for their homes and their ideals, intrigued for it, lied for it—as indeed they were intriguing and lying with the wretched Longley, and they would have done all these things not for the sake of gain, but of possession; not because they were sordid or little, but because the gold was great in spiritual as well as material power, a potential treasure of the mind as well as the pocket.

They had bully beef for supper because it was too much bother to cook things, but they did not notice what they ate—it was all the same. The crying of the birds from the cay came through the open skylight and they could hear the last waves of the flood beating on the sands, a low, whispering, sighing sound that loudened occasionally only to die away again.

Worries bring up worries and to James, as he ate, the worry of having to leave the gold brought up other worries to help. The British government, that apparition whose judges can't be bribed, whose laws are so inelastic, whose arm is so long! Bompard—a vague dread of “consequences” arising from the death of Bompard had lately begun to disturb him! The crooks headed by MacAdam! Worry about all these things crept up from the subconscious mind of James to help the worry about leaving the gold.

Then as they were lighting their cigarettes after supper, sounds and voices came from outside—the voice of Larry admonishing Longley, the sound of some heavy object being carted on deck and dumped on the planking.

It was the gold coming up; moving like a cripple, hauled by common sailormen, dumped on the deck like old junk; the thing that could recreate or blast lives, feed multitudes, make the desert a flower garden, dumps like old iron to the tune of Larry's volce.

“Aisy, you fool, if you drop it on me toes I'll splinter you!”

They came out to help, and half an hour later the business was done and there it lay in the starlight on the narrow deck, block on block, a dusky heap with rope handles sticking out here and there.

When Dicky turned in a little later he could not sleep. The night was warm, but not stifling, for the Bahama temperature even in summer is rarely excessive; all the same, tossing under a single blanket, he could not sleep. The air felt oppressive and when he dozed off at last he was brought awake again with a start. It was as though the treasure on deck had suddenly spoken to him.

The gold was up there lying out on the deck unguarded; the fact that no one could possibly steal it was nothing, the feeling that it was there lying loose for any one to steal was everything.

He reasoned with himself, yet the uneasiness persisted, and the desire to go up and see if it was all right grew till, throwing the blanket off, he stood on the cabin floor in his pajamas.

James was snoring.

Dicky reached the cabin door and went up the companionway on deck.

The gold was all right. Larry, as an afterthought, had flung a tarpaulin on the heap. No one but Larry would have done a thing like that, and Dicky, having lifted the corner of the covering to glance beneath, smiled as he turned to the starboard rail and leaned on it face to the tepid breeze.

What a night! The blaze of a million stars lit the sea ruffled by a breeze from the Straits of Florida; the sky was a festival; streets of light, the blaze of palaces, a city of splendor swept through by the river of the milky way.

Dicky was no poet, but the beauty and the splendor of the sky held his mind for a moment, making him forget even the gold. He watched the stars for a moment, then the sea and the streaks to southward that showed the run of the current deflected by the southern spur of the sand spit.

Then the cay drew his attention. The surface of the cay by the water's edge seemed moving and changing in tint, the white of the sand passing as though a wave of dusk were invading it. Then he knew. It was crabs.

Crabs rising like a tide.