Page:The Popular Magazine v72 n1 (1924-04-20).djvu/143

 ballast is only dead weight, a substitute for old metal, shingle, lumps of rock.

The gold, having condemned them to this coolie work, kept them at it. They had to get done by dark. If they did not get the whole job done that night, it would mean waiting all the next day idling and sweltering in the sun.

They couldn't talk, either, and tell each other this, nor could they complain too much else Longley would surely say to himself, “Why are they in such a hurry?” They began to hate Longley; before they had finished that evening, with their backs to a flaming sunset, they were hating the world.

Sheila, who had been taking turns with the spade, helped Larry to tie the mouth of the last sack, then, leaving the spades by the trees, they got the bags on board and stowed them, making three journeys in all.

Then they had supper.

If that had been the whole job they would have been tired out and ready for bed. As it was the prospect before them drove tiredness away. Nature has provided for nearly all.contingencies and every man has in him a reserve of strength of which he knows nothing till the moment comes and the call. All the same, though they were not tired, they were strained in temper. Sitting there at the cabin table a very little would have started a quarrel.

It was not so much the work they had been doing as the work in prospect that produced this condition of nerves. The gold seemed to hold out before them an endless prospect of labor and difficulties. When they buried it they would have to get back and join the Dulcinea, sail for Havana, tell lies freely as to “information they had received from an old sailor as to treasure buried on Crab Cay”—Knight's “Cruise of the Alerte” had suggested this dodge—get permission to dig, return, dig up the stuff, bring it back to Havana. It seemed endless, all the things they had to do and the fact had never expressed itself so clearly as it did to-night. Especially in the case of James.

Money was a necessity to Dicky and Sheila—it wasn't to James. He had let himself in for all this hard labor and tribulation and bother urged by the craving for adventure, that lies in every healthy soul, and the fascination of the gold; it would have been much better for him to have stayed out. He had no need for more riches and as for adventure he was surfeited. So he told himself to-night. But he said nothing.

After supper when Larry had cleared the things away they sat about in the cabin, Sheila knitting, the two others smoking, Crab Cay singing to them through the open skylight. They had no newspapers or books, only “Treasure Island” and the other treasure-hunting books which James had bought at Denny's in the Strand, and the very names of which were noxious to them; they had nothing to talk about, the gold barred every avenue of conversation; the gold, squatting like a demon on the beach a few hundred yards away—waiting to be buried.

And they could not bury it till Longley was asleep.

It was ten o'clock when Larry appeared at the door of the cabin.

“Snorin'!” said Larry in a half whisper.

Sheila put her knitting down and James put away his pipe. They followed Larry on deck, and into a night where a new moon was setting, a night of stars and warm wind and vague voices from the wave-beaten cay.

Yes. Longley was snoring. They could hear the sound as they dropped over into the boat which the push of the tide carried toward the beach almost without stroke of Oar.

Then having landed and hauled the boat up they set to work.

The rope handles helped, but it was a hard business, as any one who has carried weight over beach sand will know.

When the blocks were all up by the sand hole between the trees, Larry took one of the spades and Dicky the other. The hole had to be deepened and broadened, and, working in double shifts, Sheila helping, this business took them nearly an hour. They had finished it and the first pig of gold had been flung in when Sheila, turning, gave a little cry and clutched Dicky by the arm.

The beach edge and all round by the boat was moving.

“Crabs,” said Dicky.

He had been half expecting them.

Larry, wiping his forehead with his arm, turned to look. He seemed quite unconcerned. He knew quite well that so long as a man wears boots and is able to stand on his feet crabs can't hurt him, even in thousands. They raised no disgust in his soul, and his only fear was that they would swarm up and fill the hole.