The Mystery by Samuel Hopkins Adams (books to get back into reading TXT) 📖

better view. I saw it was not a tin can. There was a dark body under it, which the waves were tossing about, and as the metal moved with the body, it glinted in the sun. Suddenly it was borne in upon me that an arm was doing the signalling, waving to me with a sprightly, even a jocular friendliness. Then I saw what it really was. It was Handy Solomon and his steel hook. He was riding quite high. Every now and again he would bow and wave. He grounded gently on the sand beach. I planted him promptly. First, however, I removed a bag of tobacco from his pocket. Poor stuff, and water soaked, but still tobacco. Spent a quiet afternoon carving a headstone for the dear departed. Pity it were that virtues so shining should be uncommemorated. Idle as the speculation is, I wonder who my next visitor will be. Thrackles, I hope. Evidently some of them have been playing the part of Pandora. Spent last night in the cave. Air quite fresh.

"June 6. Saw the glow again last night."

The surgeon paused in his reading. "That would be the night of the 5th: the night before we picked her up empty."

"Yes," agreed Captain Parkinson. "That was the night Billy Edwards--Go on."

"Saw the glow again last night. Don't understand it. Once should have been enough for them. This matter of hoarding tobacco may be a sad error. If Old Spitfire keeps on the way she has to-day I shan't need much more. It would be a raw jest to be burned or swallowed up with a month's supply of unsmoked cigarettes on one. Cave getting shaky. Still, I think I'll stick there. As between being burned alive and buried alive, I'm for the respectable and time honoured fashion of interment. Bombardment was mostly to the east to-day, but no telling when it may shift.

"June 7. This morning I found a body rolling in the surf. It was the body of a young man, large and strongly built, dressed in the uniform of an ensign of our navy. Surely a strange visitor to these shores! There was no mark of identification upon him except a cigarette case graven with an undecipherable monogram in Tiffany's most illegible style of arrow-headed inscription. This I buried with him, and staked the grave with a headboard. An officer and a gentleman, a youth of friendly ways and kindly living, if one may judge by the face of the dead; and he comes by the same end to the same goal as Handy Solomon. Why not? And why should one philosophise in a book that will never be read? Hold on! Perhaps--just perhaps--it may be read. The officer was not long dead. Ensigns of the U. S. navy do not wander about untraversed waters alone. There must be a warship somewhere in the vicinity. But why, then, an unburied officer floating on the ocean? I will smoke upon this, luxuriously and plentifully. (Later.) No use. I can't solve it. But one thing I do. I put up a signal pole on the headland and cache this record under it this afternoon. From day to day, with the kindly permission of the volcano, I will add to it.... Bad doings by Old Spitfire. The cloud is coming down on me. Also seems to be moving along the cliff. I will retire hastily to my private estate in the cave.

"That's all, except the scrawl on the last page," said Trendon. "Some action of the volcano scared him off. He just had time to scrawl that last message and drop the book into the cache. The question is, did he get back alive?"

"I doubt it," said the captain. "We will search the headland for his body."

"But the cave," insisted the surgeon. "We ought to have found some sign of him there."

"Slade is the solution," said the captain. "We must ask him."

They put back to the ship. Barnett was anxiously awaiting them.

"Your patient has been in a bad way, Dr. Trendon," he said.

"What's wrong?" asked Trendon, frowning.

"He came up on deck, wild-eyed and staggering. There was a sheet of paper in his hand which seemed to have some bearing on his trouble. When he found you had gone to the island without him he began to rage like a maniac. I had to have him carried down by force. In the rumpus the paper disappeared. I assumed the responsibility of giving him an opiate."

"Quite right," approved Trendon. "I'll go down. Will you come with me, sir?" he said to the captain.

They found Slade in profound slumber.

"Won't do to wake him now," growled Trendon. "Hello, what's here?"

Lying in the hollow of the sick man's right hand, where it had been crushed to a ball, was a crumpled mass of tracing paper. Trendon smoothed it out, peered at it and passed it to the captain.

"It's a sketch of an Indian arrow-head," he exclaimed in surprise, at the first glance. "What are all these marks?"

"Map of the island," barked Trendon. "Look here."

The drawing was a fairly careful one, showing such geographical points as had been of concern to the two-year inhabitants. There was the large cavern, indicated as they had found it, and at a point between it and the headland the legend, "Seal Cave."

"But it's wrong," cried Captain Parkinson, setting finger to the spot. "We passed there twice. There's no opening."

"No guarantee that there may not have been," returned the other. "This island has been considerably shaken up lately. Entrance may have been closed by a landslide down the cliff. Noticed signs myself, but didn't think of it in connection with the cave."

"That's work for Barnett, then," said the captain, brightening. "We'll blow up the whole face of the cliff, if necessary, but we'll get at that cave."

He hurried out. Order followed order, and soon the gig, with the captain, Trendon, and the torpedo expert, was driving for the point marked "Seal Cave" on the map over which they were bent.

VI MR. DARROW RECEIVES

"You say the last entry is June 7th?" asked Barnett, as the boat entered the light surf.

Trendon nodded.

"That was the night we saw the last glow, and the big burst from the volcano, wasn't it?"

"Right."

"The island would have been badly shaken up."

"Not so violently but that the flag-pole stood," said the captain.

"That's true, sir. But there's been a good deal of volcanic gas going. The man's been penned up for four days."

"Give the fellow a chance," growled Trendon. "Air may be all right in the cave. Good water there, too. Says so himself. By Slade's account he's a pretty capable citizen when it comes to looking after himself. Wouldn't wonder if we'd find him fit as a fiddle."

"There was no clue to Ives and McGuire?" asked Barnett presently.

"None." It was the captain who answered.

The gig grated, and the tide being high, they waded to the base of the cliff, Barnett carrying his precious explosives aloft in his arms.

"Here's the spot," said the captain. "See where the water goes in through those crevices."

"Opening at the top, too," said Trendon.

He let out his bellow, roaring Darrow's name.

"I doubt if you could project your voice far into a cave thus blocked," said Captain Parkinson. "We'll try this."

He drew his revolver and fired. The men listened at the crevices of the rock. No sound came from within.

"Your enterprise, Mr. Barnett," said the commander, with a gesture which turned over the conduct of the affair to the torpedo expert.

Barnett examined the rocks with enthusiasm.

"Looks like moderately easy stuff," he observed. "See how the veins run. You could almost blow a design to order in that."

"Yes; but how about bringing down the whole cave?"

"Oh, of course there's always an element of uncertainty when you're dealing with high explosives," admitted the expert. "But unless I'm mistaken, we can chop this out as neat as with an axe."

Dropping his load of cartridges carelessly upon a flat rock which projected from the water, he busied himself in a search along the face of the cliff. Presently, with an "Ah," of satisfaction, he climbed toward a hand's breadth of platform where grew a patch of purple flowers.

"Throw me up a knife, somebody," he called.

"Take notice," said Trendon, good-naturedly, "that I'm the botanist of this expedition."

"Oh, you can have the flowers. All I want is what they grow in."

Loosening a handful of the dry soil, he brought it down and laid it with the explosives. Next he called one of the sailors to "boost" him, and was soon perched on the flat slant of a huge rock which formed, as it were, the keystone to the blockade.

"Let's see," he ruminated. "We want a slow charge for this. One that will exert a widespread pressure without much shattering force. The No. 3, I think."

"How is that, Mr. Barnett?" asked the captain, with lively interest.

"You see, sir," returned the demonstrator, perched high, like a sculptor at work on some heroic masterpiece, "what we want is to split off this rock." He patted the flank of the huge slab. "There's a lovely vein running at an angle inward from where I sit. Split that through, and the rock should roll, of its own weight, away from the entrance. It's held only by the upper projection that runs under the arch here."

"Neat programme," commented Trendon, with a tinge of sardonic scepticism.

"Wait and see," retorted Barnett blithely, for he was in his element now. "I'll appoint you my assistant. Just toss me up that cartridge: the third one on the left."

The surgeon recoiled.

"Supposing you don't catch it?"

"Well, supposing I don't."

"It's dynamite, isn't it?"

"Something of the same nature. Joveite, it's called."

Still the surgeon stared at him. Barnett laughed.

"Oh, you've got the high explosives superstition," he said lightly. "Dynamite don't go off as easy as people think. You could drop that stuff from the cliffhead without danger. Have I got to come down for it?"

With a wry face Trendon tossed up the package. It was deftly caught.

"Now wet that dirt well. Put it in the canvas bag yonder, and send one of the men up with it. I'm going to make a mud pie."

Breaking the package open, he spread the yellow powder in a slightly curving line along the rock. With the mud he capped this over, forming a little arched roof.

"To keep it from blowing away," surmised Trendon.

"No; to make it blow down instead of blowing up."

"Oh, rot!" returned the downright surgeon. "That pound of dirt won't make the shadow of a feather's difference."

"Won't it!" retorted the other. "Curious thing about high explosives. A mud-cap will hold down the force as well as a ton of rock. Wait and see what happens to the rock beneath."

He slid off his perch into the ankle-deep water and waded out to the boat. Here he burrowed for a moment, presently emerging with a box. This he carried gingerly to a convenient rock and opened. First he lifted out some soft padding. A small tin box honey-combed inside came to light. With infinite precaution Barnett picked out an object that looked like a 22- calibre short cartridge, wadded some cotton batten in his hand, set the thing in the wadding, laid it on the rock, carefully returned the small box to the large box and the large box to the boat, took up the cartridge again and waded back to the cliff. They watched him in silence.

"This is the little devil," he said, indicating his delicate burden. "Fulminate of mercury. This is the stuff that'll remove your hand with neatness and despatch. It's the quickest tempered little article in the business. Just give it one hard look and it's off."

"Here," said Trendon, "I resign. From now on I'm a spectator."

Barnett swung the fulminate in his handkerchief and gave it to a sailor to hold. The man dandled it like a new-born infant. Back to his rock went Barnett. Producing some cord, he let down an end.

"Tie the handkerchief on, and get out