Spanish Gold/Chapter 4

HE Spindrift, close hauled, thrashed her way out; towards Inishgowlan against a south-westerly breeze. The coast to the east, a low dark line, lay almost hidden in the haze. The entrance to Moy Bay was scarcely distinguishable. Major Kent, in an oilskin coat, sat at the tiller. The Rev. J. J. Meldon, most unclerically clad in a blue fisherman's jersey, old grey tweed trousers, and a pair of sea-boots, sprawled on the deck near the mast. He was apparently indifferent to the sheets of spray which broke over the bow of the boat now and then, when she struck one of the short seas which happened to be a little larger than its fellows. His red hair was a tangle of thick wet curls. His face and the backs of his hands were speckled with white where the Salt had dried on them. The skin of his nose, under the influence of bright sunshine and sea-water, already showed signs of beginning to peel off. He had a pair of field-glasses in his hand, which he polished occasionally with a red cotton pocket-handkerchief, and through which he gazed at the island in front of him. To the south lay Innishmore, the larger of the two islands. Dead ahead was Inishgowlan, a long green bank as it seemed, sloping down eastward, dotted over with small white cabins, and divided into tiny fields of the most irregular shapes imaginable.

"In another half-hour," said the Major, "we'll be well under the lee of the island and the water will be a bit calmer. Then we'll have something to eat."

"I suppose we anchor in that bay," said Meldon, pointing forward.

He was more interested in the island and in the adventure before him than in the prospect of luncheon.

"Yes. It's a fine, safe bay, good bottom, perfect shelter from the west, south, and north, and deep water up to the very shore. You could anchor a man-of-war in that bay and lie snug the whole winter through."

"I thought you told me," said Meldon, a few minutes later, "that there was nobody upon the island except natives."

"No more there is. At least, there wasn't last time I was there five years ago."

"And that they live in thatched cabins."

"Yes."

"Well, they don't. There's a galvanised iron hut on the grass just above the shore of the bay."

"Nonsense! There can't be such a thing on Inishgowlan. Why would the people fetch a galvanised iron house out from the mainland when they can build anything they like out of stones ready to their hands?"

"I don't know. But the thing's there."

"Do you take the tiller for a minute," said the Major, "and give me the glasses."

He gazed at the island.

"You're right enough," he said. "The thing's there. It's exactly like the one the engineers lived in when they were making the railway down to Achill. Now I wonder who the deuce put a thing like that on Inishgowlan?"

"They couldn't be building a railway on the island, could they?"

"No, they couldn't. Who'd build a railway on an island a mile long?"

"The Government would," said Meldon, "if the fancy struck them. But it's more likely to be a pier, and the Board of Works engineer will be living in that hut."

"It can't be a pier. They built a pier there only three years ago. You can see it, if you look, on the; south side of the bay."

"That wouldn't stop them building another," said Meldon. "I dare say you've observed, Major, how singularly little originality there is about Chief Secretaries. One of them, whose name is lost in the mists of antiquity, thought of piers and seed potatoes, and since then all his successors have gone on building piers and giving out seed potatoes. They never hit on anything original. Now if I was a Chief Secretary I'd strike out a line of my own. When I found I had to build something I'd run up a few round towers."

"I dare say you would."

"Of course there would be difficulties in the way. A pier is a comparatively simple thing to build, because part of it must be in the sea and the rest on some beach which nobody in particular owns. Whereas I should have to get a site in somebody's field for my round tower, and I should probably have the League denouncing me for land grabbing."

The Major took the tiller again, and Meldon resumed his inspection of the island through the glasses.

"Do you know," he said after a while, "if there is a Government official of any kind in that iron hut it may turn out awkward for us."

"How?"

"I'm not quite sure of the law on the subject, but I've always understood that the Government sets up to have a claim to all treasure that's found buried or hidden anywhere. It won't do to let this fellow, whoever he is, find out what we're after."

Major Kent, who had never taken the treasure-seeking very seriously, made no reply to this remark.

"We'll have to adopt a disguise," said Meldon. "I told you all along that we probably would."

I won't"

"Now don't make that remark about the false beard again. What we have to do is to invent some plausible excuse for spending a week on the island."

"Tell him we're out trawling."

"That won't do. In the first place we shan't trawl; in the second place he'd ask where our nets were. Those fellows who spend their lives watching other people doing things develop an unholy curiosity about everybody else's business. We must hit on something more likely than that. Suppose we told him we were out to learn Irish?"

"Stuff!" said the Major; "you wouldn't take in a newspaper correspondent with that tale. Just look at me. I've turned fifty, and I'm developing an elderly spread. Do I look like the kind of man who would go off to a desert island to learn Irish?"

"Oh, well, there may not be an engineer there after all. It'll be time enough to think of what we'll say when we see him."

"Besides," continued the Major, in whose mind the idea of learning Irish seemed to rankle, "the fool will very likely be learning Irish himself. Lots of those fellows do, I'm told. Then he'd want us to join him, and it might end in our having to learn Irish, whether we liked it or not. Here, take the tiller, and I'll go below and get some grub up on deck."

Still grumbling at the idea of learning Irish, the Major fetched some cold meat, bread, and a bottle of whisky from the cabin. The Spindrift was in calmer water, and Meldon was able to give both hands to the task of feeding himself, steadying the tiller by hooking a leg over it. The boat raced into the shelter of the bay, and the Major, having stowed away the remainder of the food in the cabin, busied himself in getting ready the anchor.

"The inhabitants," said Meldon, "are turning out en masse to welcome us. They are all down on the end of the pier—

And there is an engineer there. At least, if he isn't an engineer, he's mighty like one. He's dressed in grey tweed knickers and brown boots, and I think he has spectacles. There isn't a doctor on the island by any chance?"

"There is not, nor ever was. Cock the likes of those fellows up with a doctor!"

"Well, then he's an engineer. He couldn't be anything else. Pass the glasses aft till I get a good look at him."

"He is wearing spectacles," said Meldon, staring through the glasses. "And I fancy I know him. He's a fellow called Higginbotham; he was in my class in college. We went in for our Little-Go together. I heard he had got a job under the Congested Districts Board. Now could the Congested Districts Board have a man out here?"

"They might; there's no saying where you'd run across one of their officials. The less likely the place is the more certain you are to meet one of them. Round her up into the wind, J. J.; we're near enough to the shore."

The boat edged up into the wind; the jib and the mainsail flapped furiously. The anchor splashed into the water and the chain rattled out. Meldon ran forward and slacked the jib halyards. The Major gathered in the sail.

"If that's Higginbotham," said Meldon a few minutes later, when he and the Major were making up the mainsail, "it's all right. There'll be no difficulty whatever in dealing with Higginbotham. In the first place he's a thoroughly decent sort, and I don't believe he'd want to meddle with the treasure; in the second place he's quite an easy man to deceive. He always took what's called an intelligent interest in his work when he was in college, and never paid the least attention to anything else. If they've sent him to cover the whole island over with galvanised iron sheds, he'll do it quietly. He'll talk and think of nothing else till it's done. Any lie will do for Higginbotham; he'll believe whatever I tell him."

"If you are going to stuff him up with any cock-and-bull story," said the Major, "you may go and do it by yourself. I'll stay here and tidy up. You take the punt and go ashore to your long-lost friend. But, mind now, if you say a word about learning Irish, I'll go back on you straight away."

A collapsible canvas punt lay folded amidships. Meldon stretched her out, fixed the seat, and lowered her carefully into the water. He seated himself in her with the utmost caution, complaining that he was quite unused to a boat of the kind, and paddled towards the pier. In a few minutes he was shaking hands with Higginbotham in the middle of a group of admiring islanders.

"Well, now," he said, "isn't the world small? Last time I saw you was at the winter commencements in old Trinity, when we took our degrees together? Fancy meeting you here of all places!"

"I'm very glad to see you," said Higginbotham, blinking benignantly through his large round-glassed spectacles. "I find it lonely here, with nobody to speak to. But I thought you were a parson, J. J.?"

He eyed Meldon's collarless neck, the blue jersey, the shabby trousers and sea-boots, dubiously. Higginbotham himself was a young man who took care to be faultlessly attired on all occasions. Even on Inishgowlan he wore a clean collar, a light blue tie, and a well-cut Norfolk jacket. He carried his affection for civilised usage so far as to change his shirt and wear a smoking jacket every evening in his iron hut.

"So I am," said Meldon;" but you can't expect me to wear a dog-collar and a black coat on a ten tonner. Tell me, now—what brings you to this island?"

"The Board has bought the island, and I'm here striping it. You know what I mean, don't you? I'm dividing it up into proper-sized, compact farms, building fences and walls, so that the people won't be holding it, as they do at present, in little bits and scraps, and not knowing properly what belongs to each of them."

"Will you soon be done?"

"I would be done very soon," said Higginbotham, "only for one old fellow who's blocking the whole business. He refuses to stir from a wretched little field, right in the middle of the island, and the most miserable, tumble-down shed of a house you ever saw—a place you'd be sorry to put a pig into."

"I wouldn't; I hate pigs. Pigs and cats—I'd put them anywhere."

"There's a hole in the middle of his field, too," said Higginbotham, in an aggrieved voice, "a hole that a heifer once fell into and got killed, and he won't so much as let me near it to put up a fence."

"Why don't you reason with him, and show him that you're acting for his own good? You a$e acting for his good, aren't you? You haven't any little game on of your own, I suppose?"

"I try to reason with him, but he doesn't understand English. He speaks nothing but Irish himself."

"Well, why don't you tackle him in Irish? Do you mean to tell me, Higginbotham, that you can't talk Irish? You ought to be ashamed of yourself."

"I'm trying to learn," said Higginbotham. "In fact, I'm determined to master the language. I've got a grammar and a dictionary up in my house now. I'll talk to that old man in a way that he'll understand before I've done with him."

"Quite right. I'd offer to help you myself, only that I'm afraid I shan't have time."

"Are you going off to-morrow? I'm sorry. I hoped you might have been here for a few days."

"We shall be here for a week at* least," said Meldon, "but I shan't have time to teach you Irish. We shall be frightfully busy."

"Busy! What are you going to do?"

"I'm here with my friend, Major Kent. He's been sent to make a geological survey of the island."

"Really! I never heard anything about that. The Board ought to have let me know."

"He isn't acting for the Board. It was the Lord-Lieutenant and the Chief Secretary who sent him here. The fact is, Higginbotham, that the Major's business is of rather a private nature. I don't mind telling you, but it mustn't go any further, that an important syndicate has made the Government an offer for the mining rights of this island?"

"Over the head of the Board?"

"Oh, I know nothing about that. In fact, neither the Major nor I knew anything about the Board having bought the island when we came here. You know the way these Government departments overlap each other, and none of them know what the others are doing. I shouldn't wonder a bit if the Estates Commissioners turned up before long and said the island was theirs. However, you can understand that the Chief Secretary wasn't going to sell the mining rights of the place without finding out what they were worth. He sent out Major Kent to make a report."

"But—but—there must be some mistake. Can you have come to the wrong island?"

"Certainly not," said Meldon. "You ought to know me better than that, Higginbotham. Am I the sort of man who comes to a wrong island?"

"Of course not. But there must be some mistake. There are no minerals on the island at all. The whole place is nothing but pliocene clay."

"You may be right or you may be wrong. My friend Major Kent will find that out for himself. I'm not a mining expert, so I don't offer an opinion; but I'll just say this, speaking as a man with no special knowledge of geology, but still with a good general education—it doesn't look to me like pliocene clay, not in the least."

"I assure you, J. J., the geological map"

"I'm not an expert, Higginbotharn, and I don't propose to start an argument with you on the subject. What's more, I don't advise you to try to argue with the Major. He's a good-natured man and easy to get on with so long as you don't touch his own particular subject. But he's as snappy as a fox in a trap if any one starts talking geology to him. You know what these experts are. It's the artistic temperament. You wouldn't like it yourself if some outsider began laying down the law to you about galvanised iron sheds."

"Still, I'd like to tell him"

"Take my advice and don't. If you so much as mention pliocene clay, or tertiary deposits, or auriferous reefs, or anything of that kind to the Major, you'll be sorry afterwards. The best thing for you is not to let on that you know what he's here for at all."

"I won't, of course, if you say I'm not to, but"

"That's right. It's better not, for your own sake. And besides, you'd only get me into a mess. I'd no business to tell you about the matter. The Major is frightfully particular about official reticence and all that kind of thing. He's a man of violent temper if he's roused. He'd do anything when his blood's up. In fact, they say that his career in the army was cut short on account of his smashing up a man who insisted on asking him questions he didn't want to answer. The! man recovered more or less in the end and the thing was hushed up, but the Major had to resign. Of course I can't be sure of the truth of that story. I only heard it at third hand. It may be nothing but gossip. But any way, don't you worry the Major. Let him potter about the island tapping rocks if he likes. He won't do you any harm."

"All right, old man. And look here, you and the Major had better come and feed with me to-night. I can't call it dinner, but I'll do the best I can. I've got a tinned tongue and a lobster."

"Delighted. I'll answer for the Major. And we'll subscribe to the feast. On a desert island every ship-wrecked mariner brings what he can to the common store. We'll contribute some corned beef and a tin of sardines. What time?"

"I've a little writing to do," said Higginbotham. "Shall we say 7.30? Of course you needn't dress."

"Thanks," said Meldon, with a grin; "we won't, if you're sure you don't mind. I'll take a stroll round the island and then go and fetch the Major."