.. -*- encoding: utf-8 -*-

.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 46582
   :PG.Title: Clutterbuck's Treasure
   :PG.Released: 2014-08-13
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: Fred Whishaw
   :DC.Title: Clutterbuck's Treasure
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1910
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

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CLUTTERBUCK'S TREASURE
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      Cover art

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      :alt: "INSTANTLY A THIRD SHOT WHIZZED PAST OUR SANCTUARY."  (See page 42.)

      "INSTANTLY A THIRD SHOT WHIZZED PAST OUR SANCTUARY."  (See page `42`_.)

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      Title page

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      CLUTTERBUCK'S
      TREASURE

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      BY

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      FRED WHISHAW

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      LONDON
      HENRY FROWDE
      HODDER AND STOUGHTON
      1910 

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   CONTENTS

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Chap.

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I.  `A Cowardly Attack`_
II.  `The Old Miser`_
III.  `The Great Prize is offered`_
IV.  `I enter for the Race`_
V.  `Treachery!`_
VI.  `Rats in a Trap`_
VII.  `Ghosts`_
VIII.  `Neck and Neck for the First Lap`_
IX.  `More Treachery`_
X.  `A Serious Check`_
XI.  `Stalking a Man`_
XII.  `Scotching a Snake`_
XIII.  `An Unexpected Tragedy`_
XIV.  `A Glimpse of the Winning-Post`_
XV.  `Eureka!`_
XVI.  `"All that glitters is not Gold!"`_
XVII.  `Lost!`_
XVIII.  `How we buried ourselves alive for the Love of Science`_
XIX.  `A Night with a Lion`_
XX.  `Our Trusty Nigger to the Rescue`_
XXI.  `The Bad Elephant`_
XXII.  `I am mourned for Dead`_
XXIII.  `A Rude Awakening`_
XXIV.  `Strong sprints and gains a Lap`_
XXV.  `Lapped, but still in the Race`_
XXVI.  `How we prospected for Coal`_
XXVII.  `Eldorado or—Hogland`_
XXVIII.  `What the Elder did with Strong`_
XXIX.  `Much Digging`_
XXX.  `I take a Strong Lead in the Race`_
XXXI.  `The Elder makes a good Bargain, and Michail a poor one`_
XXXII.  `We receive a Terrible Shock`_
XXXIII.  `How Strong escaped from Prison`_
XXXIV.  `Exit Strong`_
XXXV.  `More Checks`_
XXXVI.  `We find an Old Friend`_
XXXVII.  `Mr. Strong makes an Effective Reappearance`_
XXXVIII.  `Arrested`_
XXXIX.  `Digging again`_
XL.  `Jack proves Himself a Genius`_
XLI.  `The Excitement becomes intense`_
XLII.  `All over but—`_
XLIII.  `—the Shouting`_





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.. _`A COWARDLY ATTACK`:

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   CLUTTERBUCK'S TREASURE

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   CHAPTER I

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   A COWARDLY ATTACK

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When my father died and left me unexpectedly
penniless, all those kind friends
whom I consulted upon my obvious failure to find
anything to do were quite agreed as to this fact:
that when a young man is desirous of finding
employment in this world, and of making his way
and keeping his head up among his fellows, his
failure to do so, if he does fail, must certainly be
his own fault.  He lacks, they said, either energy
or perseverance or pluck, or all three; in a word,
he wants "grit."

Therefore the reader will kindly understand
this about me as a standpoint: that since I failed
miserably to find employment befitting a young
person of my position, at a time when it was
necessary to find employment or go to the wall,
I must—by all the rules of the probabilities—not
only have gone to the wall, but also be deficient in
all those qualities which are most dear to the
British intelligence, namely—pluck, perseverance,
and so forth.

And yet I did not go to the wall.  On the
contrary, I am, though still a young man, in an
exceedingly comfortable position; while as for the
British virtues which I am supposed to lack, I do
not think—though I will not boast—that the
reader will hesitate to acquit me of the charge of
wanting every quality that goes to make an
average Englishman, when he shall have read the
curious tale I have to unfold.

My father's death, followed by the unexpected
revelation of his insolvency, was a terrible blow to
me.  I had been educated without regard to
expense.  At Winchester I had plenty of pocket-money,
and was, for this reason—and because I
was a good athlete and but a moderate scholar—a
popular character.  At New College, Oxford,
during the one year I spent there, I was in a set
whose ideas centred rather upon the pleasures of
life than upon its duties and responsibilities.

I still had plenty of money, and undoubtedly
the last thing in the world that would have been
likely to trouble my head at this time was any
reflection as to where the funds came from.  My
father, as I believed, was a rich man, a member of
the Stock Exchange, and having the disposal, as
I had always understood, of practically unlimited
supplies of money.

Then came the telegram from home announcing
disaster, and at a moment's notice I found myself
fatherless, penniless, and as good as hopeless
too; for at my age, and with my inexperience, I
was utterly at a loss to know what to do or how
to set about to find some means of supporting
myself.

My father's business, it appeared, had suddenly
and completely collapsed.  He had "got himself
cornered," as I was informed, though I did not
understand the term, and had lost every farthing
that he possessed and more.  The shock of it all
had proved fatal to my poor parent, and he had
succumbed suddenly—a broken heart, as I heard
someone say; but I fancy my father's heart had
always been a weak point in his economy, and the
collapse in his fortunes doubtless gave to it the
finishing touch.

So then, at the age of nineteen, I found myself
master of my own fortunes, which certainly looked
very like *mis*\fortunes; and in that stress of
circumstances it was that I applied to my friends for
advice, and received from each the assurance that
if I possessed those British qualities to which
reference has been made I should certainly find
something to do; and that if I failed to "get on"
I might rest assured that I had no one to thank
but myself.  Nevertheless, I found nothing to do.
There could be no talk of any of the learned
professions; I was too old for Sandhurst, even if I
could have passed the examination; the navy was,
of course, out of the question.

My ideas wildly wandered from professional
football or cricket to enlistment in the line, and
from that to life in the bush, or digging for hidden
wealth in the soil of Rhodesia or of Klondyke, but
the expense of the outfit and journey rendered this
latter project impossible.  There remained ultimately
two resources from which to choose: enlistment or
desk-work at a London office, which I believed I
could obtain without difficulty if I should be reduced
to so unpalatable an alternative.

But office life, I felt, would be worse than
purgatory to me.  The very idea of confinement
and the lack of plenty of fresh air and exercise was
intolerable, and I ultimately resolved that I would
take the Queen's shilling, and submit to barrack
discipline and all the indignities of existence
among my social inferiors rather than bind myself
for ever to the misery of the city.  Indeed, I had
quite made up my mind to journey to Trafalgar
Square, in order to interview one of the recruiting
sergeants generally to be found at the north-eastern
corner of that favourite rendezvous, when
something happened to set my ideas flowing in a new
channel.

My father's house, in our days of prosperity,
had been one of those fine mansions overlooking
Streatham Common; and though I had left the
dismally stripped and dismantled place as soon as
the miserable formalities of funeral and sale were
over, I had taken a cheap lodging in Lower
Streatham, because in the chaos of my ideas and
plans it appeared to me that I might as well stay
in the neighbourhood of my old home as anywhere
else, until the fifty pounds still remaining to my
credit at my Oxford bankers had gone the way of
all cash, or until I should have made up my
bewildered mind as to where, in all this wide and
pitiless world, I should go for a living.

I had practically determined, as I say, to enlist,
and was walking one warm summer evening along
the green lane which runs from Thornton Heath to
Lower Streatham, deep in somewhat melancholy
reflection upon the step I was about to take, when
a noise of scuffling and bad language distracted my
thoughts from the contemplation of to-morrow's
barrack-yard trials, and brought them up with a
run to the consideration of the present instant.  I
suppose the noise that they were themselves
making prevented the four persons taking part in
the scrimmage, which I now suddenly saw, from
observing my approach, for they continued to
tussle and to wrangle on their side of the hedge,
while I watched them for a moment from mine,
desiring, if possible, to discover what the quarrel
was about and on which side the right lay, if either.

Then I soon perceived that the fight was an
iniquitous and unequal one, for three younger men
had set upon one elderly person and were obviously
engaged in attempting to relieve him of his money
and valuables, an attempt which the old gentleman
made gallant but naturally futile efforts to frustrate,
hitting out right valiantly with his umbrella, but
doing far more violence to the Queen's English
than to the heads and persons of his assailants,
upon whom the blows of his feeble weapon produced
little effect.

I need scarcely say that, having ascertained
what was passing, I did not waste time in making
up my mind as to which side should receive the
favour of my support, and in far less time than it
takes to write the words, I had burst through the
hedge and rushed to the assistance of the swearing
and furious old gentleman.

At my appearance one of the fellows bolted
like a hare across the field towards Norbury, and I
saw no more of him.  Now, I had paid some little
attention to the study of self-defence while at
Oxford, and though the remaining two rascals
stood up to me for a moment, I soon placed my
right fist in so convincing a manner upon the tip
of the nose of one that he went down like a
nine-pin and lay where he fell, while the other, after
feinting and dodging and ducking for a few seconds
as I squared up to him with the intention, if
necessary, of treating him like his fellow, suddenly turned,
darted through the hedge, and was away down the
lane towards Thornton Heath in the twinkling of
an eye, I following.

Away we went at hundred-yards' speed, he
leading by about ten paces, and for about fifty yards
it was anybody's race.  Then I began to gain, and,
seeing this, the fellow threw something down and
ran on; he careered for another half hundred paces
and then ridded himself of something else; and I,
fearing, if I continued the pursuit, to lose my
chance of recovering the old man's property—which,
I rightly conjectured, was what the fellow
had relieved himself of—stopped to pick it up
while I could.  I thus allowed my friend to escape,
which was, of course, what he most desired at the
moment, even more than the possession of the
pocket-book and the gold watch which I soon
found in the road and recovered.

Then I returned to the spot where I had left
my fallen foe and the old gentleman whose property
had been the original cause of disagreement
between the contending parties.





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.. _`THE OLD MISER`:

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   CHAPTER II


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   THE OLD MISER

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I found my ally beating the prostrate enemy
with his umbrella, and still using language
which would have been unseemly in any person,
and sounded doubly shocking in the mouth of an
old man.

"Come," I said, "you needn't swear, sir; and I
wouldn't continue to whack a man who is down, if
I were you."

"Kill him! kill him—the cowardly rascal!  Kick
him on the head and kill him!" shrieked the
infuriated old gentleman; "they have robbed me
between them, and I'll have his life for it!  I'm a
poor man, and they've taken my all; kick him in
the head, if you're a man, and kill him!"

I could not help laughing.  "It's because I'm a
man that I shall do nothing of the kind," I said.
"Stop dabbing at him with your umbrella and
attend to business; here's your property—take it."  I
presented him with his pocket-book and watch as
I spoke, and never did I behold so complete a
metamorphosis in the expression of a man's face as
now passed over his.  He seized his property with
both hands and hugged it to his breast.  He
beamed and chuckled over it, mumbling inarticulate
words of delight as he fondly drew forth a bundle
of notes and counted them.

It struck me that here was a considerable sum
of money for a poor man to carry about with him;
for though he jealously hid from me the figures
that would have revealed the value of the notes, I
was able to observe that there were at least fifteen
or twenty of these, which, even supposing them to
have been mere "rivers," would represent a
decidedly respectable sum.  The old fellow observed
me watching him.

"Private papers, private papers!" he muttered;
"letters from my dead wife that I would not lose
for their weight in diamonds!"

"You old humbug!" I thought; "if ever you
had a wife you starved her, I'll bet."

But the condition of our prostrate enemy began
to give me some anxiety, and I was obliged to
transfer my attention from the old miser to him.
He lay groaning and snoring, his eyes shut, and
his nose still bleeding a little.  Suddenly he opened
his eyes slightly and looked at the old man and at
me.  He scowled as he saw me, but his lips
muttered "Water!"

"Go and fetch the man some water—you, sir,"
I said; "you can finish counting your notes
afterwards.  I would go, but I dare not leave him
with you."

"Water for the rogue that robbed me?  Not
I," said the old fellow; "let him lie and rot first!"

"Then I will go," I said, for positively the
rogue looked like expiring, and I was really anxious
for him.  If he were actually as bad as he looked
there was not much danger in leaving him.  I
knew of a duck-pond near a farmhouse close by,
and towards this I proceeded at my best speed, for
the fellow must not be allowed to die—rascal though
he undoubtedly was.

The rascal, it appeared, had no intention of
dying, however, just at present; for when I returned
with water from the duck-pond, he had departed,
and departed—as I gathered—in company with the
old gentleman's pocket-book, for its owner sat on
the grass evidently dazed, nursing a portion of the
*porte-monnaie*, for which, I suppose, he had made
a good fight, if the jagged and torn appearance of
the remnant was any indication of a struggle.

I could see our friend careering down the lane,
some distance away, towards Thornton Heath, well
out of reach of pursuit, and I was straining my
eyes after him in hopes of marking him down
somewhere, when the old miser behind me suddenly
interrupted my reflections by bursting anew into a
paroxysm of abuse and bad language, which threw
even his previous excursions into the shade.

Whether I or the thief, or both of us, were the
objects of his frenzy was not very apparent, for his
vituperations were incoherent and inarticulate; but
I gathered presently that I was at least in part
responsible for the disaster, for he inquired, with
many added flowers of speech, why I had been so
foolish as to go for water and leave him with a
cold-blooded ruffian who had robbed a poor old
man of his entire fortune.

I was sorry for the unfortunate victim to my
ill-judged humanity, and did my best to soothe him.

"You must stop the notes at once," I said;
"and as for the fellow himself, why, we'll describe
him to the police and identify him in no time; we
shall get your money back, never fear."

"It's a lie!" he shrieked; "I am ruined!  I shall
never see a penny of it; you and your accomplices
will fatten upon the old man's savings.  Curse you
all!  I wish you were dead!"

"Thank you," I said; "if that's the case I shall
wish you good afternoon and depart, or my
accomplices will levant with my share of the spoil."  I
started to go in the direction of Streatham.  The
old fellow came to his senses at once.

"Stop a minute!" he cried; "I don't mean
that.  Stop and help me to recover my money."

"What, from my own accomplices?" said I.
He took no notice.

"Help me to recover my money," he continued,
"and to bring that rogue to the gallows, and—and
you won't be sorry for it!"

"It isn't a hanging matter," I said; "but I am
ready to help you if you talk like a sensible man.
How much has the fellow taken?"

This was an unfortunate remark, for it instantly
plunged the old man into renewed paroxysms of
rage and woe.  I therefore did not pursue my
inquiries, but led my friend slowly towards Streatham,
he spluttering and muttering his maledictions,
I patiently awaiting the dawn of reason.  I
inquired, however, presently, whether he knew
the numbers of his stolen notes, and as my
companion inquired, in response, whether I took
him for a fool, I concluded that he did possess this
information.

The old man grew calmer after a while, and I
accompanied him first to the police station, and
afterwards to the telegraph office, where he wrote
and despatched a wire to the manager of the Bank
of England.  The clerk read out his message as
we stood at the counter, and I was astonished
and rather shocked to learn that my new friend's
loss, according to his list of notes, amounted to
something very near three hundred pounds.

During the next few days my acquaintance
with the strange old man ripened considerably;
for together we were called upon by the police
authorities to attend, at least once *per diem*, at
the Streatham police station, in order to identify
the culprit among a large assortment of suspicious
characters brought up daily for our inspection.
I think it was on the fifth or sixth day after
the robbery that our pilgrimages to the police
station were at last crowned with success, and we
had the pleasure of seeing once again the
unmistakable features of the rogue we were in search
of, and afterwards of getting him condemned by
a magistrate to a period of enforced virtue and
innocence.  We were, moreover, successful in
recovering a portion of the stolen property,
though not all of it—a circumstance which
greatly pleased me, for I honestly believed that
the lost three hundred pounds represented the
whole of my old friend's worldly possessions, as
he had led me to understand, and I had been
grieved to think of the poor old fellow's sudden
misfortune and ruin through the guile of a
fellow-creature.

Mr. Clutterbuck, which was the old miser's
name, lived in a small villa in Lower Streatham—a
dingy, dull-looking house situated in the midst of
a moderate garden surrounded by a high brick wall.
So far as could be seen, there was no way of
entering the abode excepting by a small door in
the wall leading up through the square garden to
the house; and though I several times, during that
week of attendance at the police station and the
police court, accompanied the old man home, he
never once invited me within doors; neither did he
ever express to me one word of thanks for the
services I had rendered him in connection with the
loss he had sustained and the recovery of a good
portion of his property.

Meanwhile, however, this affair had delayed my
enlistment for more than a week, and during that
period I received an invitation from a college friend
in the country to pay him a visit at his house in
Gloucestershire; an invitation which I gladly
accepted, thanking my lucky stars that some good,
at least, had thus come of my strange encounter
with the eccentric old miser, Clutterbuck.

Assuredly, when I parted from him for the last
time, after the completion of the business which
had brought us daily together for a week or near
it, I never supposed that any other good could
possibly proceed from the acquaintance, or from
the delay in my "career" which the affair had
occasioned.  After my visit to Gloucestershire I
should return to London and enlist without
further delay; and as for old Clutterbuck, I had
neither expectation nor desire ever to behold his
face or hear his name again.  For how could I
know that—

As a matter of fact I never did see the old man
again.  I went to Gloucestershire and forgot him,
or at all events forgot to think of him,
until—nearly a month after—I received a letter which
brought him suddenly and very forcibly to
remembrance—a letter which was destined to lead to
a complete "general post" of all my ideas and
plans in life, driving from my mind all thoughts
of enlistment and office drudgery and everything
else of the kind; a letter which told of the miser's
end and gave me hope of a new beginning,
and which proved, after I had learned its full
significance, that even misers may remember
benefits conferred, and show a sense of gratitude
for which they do not, as a rule, obtain much
credit.

I read the letter, first, with my heart all
a-flutter with excitement; but presently my agitation
cooled down, for, I reflected, even though I
should have been chosen as the old man's heir,
or part-heir, what could the old fellow have to
leave?

"Don't be a sanguine fool, man!" I said to
myself.  "There isn't much in the business."

Which showed that, though good at games, I
was no better prophet than I was scholar!





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.. _`THE GREAT PRIZE IS OFFERED`:

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   CHAPTER III


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   THE GREAT PRIZE IS OFFERED

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The letter, so far as I can remember the
wording of it, read something like this—

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"DEAR SIR,"—(it ran)—"By desire of the late
Mr. William Clutterbuck I have to invite you to be
present at his burial, on Friday next, in the
churchyard of St. Mary's, Norbury, and also at the
subsequent reading of my late client's will on the
same afternoon at Aston Villa, Lower Streatham."

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The signature was that of some lawyer.

"By George!  Peter, old chap," said my college
chum, to whom I handed the letter after reading it,
"you're in for a legacy, you lucky old rascal!  Who
is it?—an uncle?  You won't have to enlist after
all!"

"Uncle?" I repeated; "no!  I haven't such a
thing in the world; and as for legacy—there may
be a fiver or so in it, but nothing more.  It's an
old fellow who carried all his fortune in a
pocket-book and got it stolen;" and I told Henderson the
whole story of my futile attempt to defend old
Clutterbuck's property in Green Lane a month ago.

Henderson was immensely interested.

"Don't you make any mistake; that pocket-book
never contained his entire fortune," he said.
"The old boy was a miser on the face of him, any
fool could see that; he may have got a hundred
thousand hidden in a cellar, half eaten by the rats,
and all left to you.  Why, man, I have heard of
huge fortunes left to fellows for far less."

And Henderson proceeded to tell me of how a
man he had read or heard of was left fifty thousand
for letting an old lady look over his hymnbook in
church; and how another fellow got as much again
for paying an old gentleman's omnibus fare when
the conductor refused to give him change and
threatened to be disagreeable; and many other
choice examples of a similar character.

But I was firmly convinced that there was
nothing romantic forthcoming as the result of my
acquaintance with old Clutterbuck, at least nothing
more romantic than a five- or ten-pound note, and
I took the train to Paddington with the sense that
the journey was an unmitigated nuisance, since it
was unlikely to lead to anything seriously interesting,
while it cut short an extremely pleasant visit in a
circle of society from which I should perforce be
excluded before long in my capacity of plain
Tommy Atkins, the recipient of the Queen's
shilling and wearer of the uniform of the humblest
of her servants militant.

Steggins, the lawyer, was, however, decorously
polite when I made my appearance at Aston Villa.
There were three or four other persons present,
expectant legatees like myself, I concluded; so
that the contents of dead Mr. Clutterbuck's
pocket-book were to be divided among five, at least, of us.
There was nothing in the business—I was certain
of it; I had been a fool to leave my comfortable
quarters in the country upon such an errand; would
that I had stayed!

Mr. Clutterbuck had died, I was told, of heart
disease.  He had never quite recovered the shock
of the assault in Green Lane, and it was believed
that he had encountered one of his assailants on
the day of his death and recognised him, and that
the excitement of the *rencontre* had proved fatal.
My fellow-legatees were, it appeared, relatives of
the deceased, and one and all of these looked
askance at me as an interloper, several of them
inquiring of Steggins, in my hearing, what I had
had to do with the testator, and what claim I
possessed upon the property.

Mr. Steggins replied that he believed I had
performed some service to the deceased for which
the testator was grateful.

"What's the figure, Steggins, old man?" asked
one.  "How does the old boy cut up?"

"That's what we are about to learn," said the
man of law.

We did learn it a few minutes later; and a very
remarkable lesson it was!

I suppose that Mr. Clutterbuck's testamentary
dispositions were just about as surprising and
unexpected as such dispositions can well be, unless
indeed they had emanated from an absolute lunatic,
and this Mr. Clutterbuck certainly was not.  We
who were present as expectant legatees were taken
aback, one and all, and when I use this expression
about my own feelings I am choosing an exceedingly
mild one.

As a matter of fact, I was, to use a more
serviceable word, "flabbergasted."  For me alone
of those present the large amount of money which
the testator had to dispose of was an absolute
surprise.  I learned afterwards that all the rest
were well aware that their relative had been
possessed of considerable wealth, though perhaps none
of them may have realised the real extent of his
hoarded riches.  At all events no one could possibly
have guessed how the eccentric old man intended
to dispose of his money.  So that in this matter
the surprise of the rest was as great as my own.

"The will, gentlemen," said Mr. Steggins,
preparing to read that document, "is very short,
very clear as to its dispositions, though not worded
in the customary legal phraseology" (I could not
help laughing at the *non sequitur* involved in this
explanation), "and exceedingly eccentric.  It begins
with the words, 'The Prize to the Swift,' which
sentence heads the document as a kind of text, and
it continues as follows:—

"'I wish to preface my testamentary dispositions
with the remark that my personal estate amounts,
at the time of writing, to exactly ninety-seven
thousand eight hundred and ninety-two pounds
three shillings and sixpence, free of legacy duty.
The accumulation of this sum of money has
occasioned me much hard labour, much thought,
much disappointment, many dangers, much travel
by land and sea.  I have no intention that my heir
should acquire that which has been gained by the
sweat of my brow without corresponding labour
and suffering on his own part.'

"That is the opening paragraph of the will itself,"
said Mr. Steggins; "this is how it proceeds:—

"'I have therefore decided that, as I have
indicated in the initial sentence of this my will, the
prize shall go to the swift.  Let me explain my
meaning.  Those of my possible heirs who have
known me long are aware that I have devoted
considerable time during recent years to foreign
travel.  During one of my latest journeys I took
the opportunity to bury a box containing treasure
at a place indicated in the map of Bechuanaland
which I have sketched.

"'I now bequeath to him who first succeeds
in reaching that spot, and in finding the treasure,
the entire fortune which I possess, and which I
estimate to be the equivalent of the sum quoted
above.  Those whom I have authorised by name
to compete in this race for wealth are advised that
many qualities of mind and body will be called into
requisition by the winner: such as energy,
perseverance, pluck, judgment, acuteness.  Without
the determination to employ each and all of these
qualities, it would be useless to undertake the
search which must be the toilsome preliminary to
enjoyment of my wealth.

"'The competitors who shall alone be legally
competent to inherit from me are the following:—

"'William John Clutterbuck, nephew.

"'James Strong, nephew.

"'Charles Strong, nephew.

"'John Ellis, cousin.

"'Godfrey Bernard Hewetson, of 13 Enderby
Terrace, Streatham, to whom I am indebted for a
service rendered.'"

(This last name is my own.)

"'If none of these five persons shall have
succeeded within three years of my death in finding
the buried treasure, my lawyer, Mr. Steggins, shall
have power to seek new instructions within the
sealed letter which has been entrusted to him for
that purpose.

"'Each competitor, as above enumerated, shall
receive, immediately after the reading of this my
will, one-fifth share of any money found upon my
person or within my house at the time of my decease.
To save trouble, I may add that any such money
will be found within my pocket-book; there is none
anywhere besides the notes and change therein
contained.  The house and garden will, of course,
remain the property of the successful discoverer of
the rest of my estate.'

"The will ends there," said Steggins; "but
there is a postscript which I may read out, though
it has no actual bearing upon the matter in hand:—

"'I should like to add' (writes the testator)
'that, since none of my relatives have ever shown
me the slightest affection, or paid me any attention
which was not obviously interested, I should be
glad if the last-named among the competitors—Mr. Godfrey
Bernard Hewetson, who has, at least on
one occasion, done me a very signal service—should
prove himself, as I fancy he is as likely as any to
do, the successful competitor.  My relatives are,
so far as I know them, but poor specimens of
humanity, and little likely to carry away the prize
in a competition requiring such qualities as energy
and courage.  I have authorised them to compete,
however, as a matter of family duty.  Possibly the
desire for gain may transform one or all of them
into animated human beings.'"

The faces of those surrounding the table at
which Steggins had sat and read this remarkable
document were black enough when he had finished.
One or two men swore audibly.  Every one of
them scowled at me, as though I were in some way
to blame for the eccentric dispositions, which had
evidently disappointed them.

As for me, I was so dumbfounded by the
stupefying thoughts and considerations to which
the recital of Mr. Clutterbuck's dispositions had
given rise, that I think I must have made a poor
show as I sat and blushed and helplessly blinked
my eyes, while the others burst into a torrent of
angry conversation.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`I ENTER FOR THE RACE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IV


.. class:: center medium bold

   I ENTER FOR THE RACE

.. vspace:: 2

"Do you consider, Mr. Steggins," said one,
"that any British jury would regard the
precious document you have just read as the work
of a sane man?"

"Certainly," replied Steggins; "I don't see
how any British jury could help themselves.  It is
surely proper that you gentlemen, his only relatives,
should have been accorded equal chances of
becoming his heirs with this other gentleman, in
whose favour his sympathies had been gained."

"That is not the point," said another—one of
the Strongs, I think; "the question is, What right
has this Mr. Hewetson to benefit, and whether
undue influence can be proved?"

"Very doubtful indeed, I should say," said
Steggins.  "I happen to know that, beyond the
fact that Mr. Hewetson saved the life of
Mr. Clutterbuck, as the deceased firmly believed, and
afterwards assisted him in the recovery of certain
bank-notes of which he had been robbed, the
testator had no acquaintance whatever with this
gentleman; his act is one of disinterested gratitude."

"How do we know that this person is not in
possession of private information which will enable
him to discover the treasure while we are helplessly
searching for it all over Africa?" asked another
of the amiable nephews.  The question aroused
me from my stupor, and from this moment I was
myself again.

"To suggest such a thing is an insult to the
deceased," said Steggins gravely; "and as for
searching all Africa, the little map which you hold
in your hand, together with the footnotes explaining
it, affords a precise guide to the spot, within an acre
or so, in which the treasure is declared to lie
buried."

"As to that," I broke in hotly, "allow me to add
my assurance that I know no more about this
matter than has been read aloud by Mr. Steggins.
I have no information whatever beyond that which
the map and explanations convey.  If any
gentleman present still feels doubt as to my *bonâ fides*,
I shall be grateful if he will kindly mention it."  No
one spoke.  "As a matter of fact," I continued,
"I shall probably take no part in the search for
this problematical treasure.  I shall consider the
question, but I shall perhaps decide to remain at
home."

I did not say this because the idea of a journey
to South Africa was in any way distasteful to me.
On the contrary, nothing, I felt, could possibly be
more congenial than such a trip, especially when
combined with the delightful excitement of a search
for hidden treasure.

The fact was that I did not see my way to
undertaking the journey, for the best of reasons.
My last fifty pounds were all but spent already;
my one-fifth share of the old gentleman's petty
cash could not well amount to more than thirty
pounds (it was actually twenty-eight pounds four
shillings and twopence).  How should I equip
myself for the enterprise, or pay my passage to the
Cape and the expenses of the trip up-country
afterwards?

My fellow-heirs did not, however, set much
faith in my assertion, so I gathered from their looks,
though none of them replied in any way to my
remark.  This galled me again, and I added that I
intended to consider the question thoroughly before
finally deciding.  I should not, I said, surrender
my rights if I could help it!

Before leaving the room, I took the precaution
to interrogate Mr. Steggins as to certain matters:
whether, firstly, Mr. Clutterbuck had actually been
in possession of the large sums of money he claimed
to dispose of; and whether, secondly, my own legal
position, supposing that I should be fortunate enough
to find the treasure, would be unassailable; whether,
in two words, there was any treasure to find, and
whether the "finder" would be recognised by the
law as the "keeper."

Steggins assured me that he knew for a positive
fact that a very few years ago Mr. Clutterbuck had
undoubtedly possessed at least as large a fortune
as that named in the will, and that it was extremely
unlikely that he should have spent all or any large
portion of it in the interim.  My position would
certainly be unassailable.  It might be argued that
the journey to South Africa for the purpose of
burying his fortune in order that his heirs might
not succeed to it without personal trouble was the
act of an eccentric; but the desire to test the
perseverance and energy of his heirs was sane
enough, and the device—if clumsy—was not an
insane one.  Mr. Clutterbuck had disliked his
nephews, Steggins explained, and had often
declared that he would "make the lazy young rogues
sweat a bit before they touched his money."  The
will had been made out before the event which
introduced myself to his notice, and my name had
been added.

"Mr. Clutterbuck often expressed the wish,"
concluded Steggins, "during the last week or two
of his life, that you should be the successful one,
and disappoint these nephews of his, upon whom,
as I say, he did not waste much affection."

And no wonder, thought I, for a more disagreeable-looking
set of fellows than the three nephews
I do not think I ever saw.  The cousin was an
elderly man, and was a person of a different stamp
from the rest, two at least of whom obviously
belonged to that class of society of whom it is often
remarked that one would not care to meet them
alone in a dark lane.

Steggins's remarks were rather encouraging, and
I began seriously to regret that my funds—or,
rather, my lack of them—was likely to prove a
stumbling-block to success, or even to any attempt
on my part to take a hand in the extremely
"sporting" game which dead Mr. Clutterbuck
proposed to us.  The more I thought over it the
more I deplored the poverty which not only stood
in the way of my winning this tantalising race, but
which actually made it impossible for me to find
the preliminary entrance fee!  And such a prize at
stake—oh, why had I not a few hundred pounds!
Truly my luck was abominable!

.. vspace:: 2

I returned the same night to Henderson's place
in Gloucestershire, and talked the matter over with
my college chum.

To my surprise and great pleasure Henderson,
who was a year senior to me at Oxford and
had just taken his degree, received my news with
extraordinary excitement and delight.  Not only did
he instantly insist upon my "entering for the race,"
as he called it, but he insisted also upon constituting
himself my "backer" and trainer, and announced
his intention of coming with me to see fair play.

Henderson had no reason whatever to mind the
expense of journey and equipment.  I should pay
him back my share, he laughingly declared, out of
the treasure when we found it!  He had nothing
in the world to detain him in England at present.
On the contrary, he longed for a big travel before
settling down to country life as a Gloucestershire
squire.  This business was simply a godsend for
both of us!

Needless to say, I was easily persuaded that it
was even as Jack Henderson declared, and that he
really desired to accompany me and to take the
risk of my being able to repay him some day for
his outlay on my behalf.  As a matter of fact, I
am quite as certain that Jack really wished to go
(he was always a sporting character, was Jack
Henderson) as I am that he cared no more whether
I ever repaid him my expenses than he reflected
whether these should amount to one hundred
pounds or two thousand.

Actually they came to a good deal, because
Jack Henderson insisted upon doing everything in
the best style.  We should enjoy a bit of sporting,
he said, after I had found the cash; and therefore
we provided ourselves with heavy rifles for big
game, small ones for antelope, shot guns, revolvers,
knives, ammunition enough of every kind to stock
a fortress, and every luxury and convenience that
the up-country sportsman in Africa can possibly
expect to require.

What is more, in spite of all the purchases and
preparations we made, we were on board ship
within forty-eight hours of my return to Gloucestershire,
fortified with the knowledge that none of my
fellow-competitors could, at all events, have stolen
a march upon me in this, the first move of the
campaign; for the *Chepstow Castle*, the fine steamer
in which we had secured berths, was the first vessel
that had left any London dock for the Cape since
the day on which Steggins read out the will and
metaphorically fired the pistol which started us five
competitors upon our race.

I had secured a flying start at anyrate.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`TREACHERY!`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER V


.. class:: center medium bold

   TREACHERY!

.. vspace:: 2

For several days I was under the impression
that, for some reason or other, the rest of
Mr. Clutterbuck's potential heirs had left me to
"walk over."  Probably, I thought, they intended
to allow me to find the treasure unchallenged, and
would contest the will and my right to inherit after
I should have saved them the trouble of unearthing
the money.  This, I felt, was foolish of them,
because my position, according to Steggins, was
unassailable.  It could easily be proved that I had
not, and could not possibly have, exerted any
undue influence upon the old man.  They might
contest as much as they pleased, but no British
jury would listen to their nonsense, and I should
remain in blessed possession!  I should, moreover,
have all the fun of this "big travel," as Henderson
called it, and the excitement of the treasure hunt
thrown in!  Poor-spirited creatures these nephews
of old Clutterbuck; the old man had not been a
bit too hard upon them in the postscript to his will!

But about the fifth day out I was almost sure
that I caught sight of one of my rivals—the
man called James Strong, who had made certain
unpleasant innuendoes as to my good faith after
the reading of the will.  The fellow stood, half
hidden, behind a donkey-engine on the deck used
by second-class passengers, well wrapped to the
chin in a waterproof or some kind of long cloak.
I suppose I must have betrayed the fact that I had
recognised, or half recognised, him, though I did
my best to conceal it; for the next time that I
came in sight of the spot which he had occupied
he had disappeared, and I did not see him again.

Anxious to discover whether the fellow really
had been James Strong, or merely some
second-class passenger whose appearance bore an
accidental resemblance to that individual, I made
friends with the steward of the second-class mess,
and begged from him a sight of the list of passengers
under his charge; but in his list there was no person
bearing the name I sought, neither was there a
Clutterbuck nor an Ellis.

"They may be on board under assumed
names!" suggested Jack Henderson, but I scouted
the idea.

"Why should they?" I said.  "They would
gain nothing by that sort of game, for we should
be sure to see them at landing, if not before; and,
besides, what if we didn't see them?"

"Why, then we should conclude that we had
the hunt to ourselves, don't you understand,"
explained Jack, "and that would suit them very
well."

"Why so?" continued dense I.

"Because in that case we would not hurry
up-country, but allow them to get a start of us and
have first dig for the treasure."

"That's true, by George!" I assented reflectively;
"you are a sharper customer than I thought,
Jack!" and from this moment until we reached the
Canaries, where we were delayed a couple of days
on account of something going wrong with our
screw, I kept a very sharp lookout for my co-heirs
among both second-class and steerage passengers.

Once I was almost certain that I saw both
James Strong and his brother; and once, too, I
thought I recognised the other nephew, Clutterbuck;
but in each case I was unable to determine the
matter with certainty, because the suspected
individual disappeared as soon as observed.

Under the circumstances, both Henderson and
I thought that it would be wise to waste no time at
all at Cape Town.  We would buy horses and
spades, and be off without delay, taking the train
as far as it would carry us in the required direction,
and acting generally as though my suspicions as to
the identity of the second-class passengers were
actually verified.

But all our good intentions to frustrate the guile
of those who thought to get the better of us by
superior cunning were nipped in the bud by an
unforeseen and very unfortunate occurrence.

Our propeller went wrong, and it was found
necessary to put into port at the Canary Islands in
order to repair the damage, which the captain hoped
would be effected in a day, but which actually
occupied two days.  A strong south-east wind
happened to be blowing, and this rendered the
harbour at Las Palmas unsafe; we were therefore
obliged to lie in the protected waterway between
the islands Graciosa and Lanzarote, a very fine
anchorage of one mile in width, the former of these
islands being uninhabited (excepting by seagulls
and other fowl), while Lanzarote can boast of a
small population.

Jack Henderson and I, together with many of
the other passengers, landed on the second day to
stretch our legs, some visiting Lanzarote, while we
and a few others chose Graciosa.  Captain Eversley
impressed upon all who went ashore that it was
absolutely necessary to be on board by seven in
the evening, as at that hour the *Chepstow Castle*
must sail, whether all were aboard or not.  Since we
had not the slightest intention of remaining ashore
so long as this, however, we allowed the captain's
warning to be adopted and digested by those to
whose intended proceedings it might be applicable.
As for ourselves, we started with our shot guns for
a walk along the rocky beach.

It was a fine day, and the walk was pleasant
enough after the protracted confinement aboard
ship, and Jack and I felt buoyant and happy as we
trudged along the sand and shingle at the foot of
some fine cliffs that frowned down upon us from
the shore side, banging our guns off at every winged
creature that would give us a chance at anything
like shooting distance, and laughing and singing
after the fashion of schoolboys let loose.  The head
steward had provided us with sandwiches, and
these we consumed as we lay sprawling in the
sunshine on the sand, having walked and scrambled
a mile or two over very rough "going," and intending
after lunch and a rest to turn and go back to our
ship.

We had heard a few shots now and again from
the top of the cliff, and had agreed that the same
idea must have occurred to others of the passengers
besides ourselves—namely, to employ some of their
spare time and work off some of their energy in
banging at the sea-birds that circled and flitted
about the rocks in hundreds; but beyond congratulating
ourselves upon the fact that we were well
below the line of fire, and not likely to be hit by a
stray shot, we had not paid much attention to the
cannonading of our neighbours.  I believe I had
fallen asleep.  It was warm, sleepy weather, and
the sand couch we lay upon, with our backs to a
rock, was very comfortable.  Suddenly Jack seized
my arm and shook me.

"Good Heavens, Godfrey!" he said, "look out,
old man; did you hear that last shot?  It was ball,
I'm certain, and the bullet struck this rock—there's
the mark, see!  Somebody had a shot at us.  Slip
behind, quick!"

Wide awake now, I slipped behind the rock in a
moment, Jack doing the same; and we were only
just in time, it appeared, for at the same instant a
second shot was fired and a splinter flew from the
rock close to the spot which we had occupied.

"Shout out at them that there are people here!"
I said.  "They must be firing at a mark!"

"Firing at a grandmother!" laughed Jack; "*we*
were the mark, man.  Wait a bit, look here, I'll
show you!"

.. _`42`:

Jack adopted an old device: he took his cap, and
placing it at the end of the muzzle of his gun, held
it up over the top of the rock behind which we
cowered, as though someone had popped out his
head to look abroad.  Instantly a third shot whizzed
past our sanctuary.

"There," said Henderson; "that's James Strong,
or his brother, or the other rascal!"

"Oh, impossible!" I said.  "No fellow could be
so base as to attempt to murder us in cold blood.
Besides, we are not even certain whether they were
on board."

"Well, you may take it from this moment that
they *were*!" said Jack, laughing; "they have sent
in their cards.  Now let's think what's best to be
done.  We can't go back along the sands because
we shall be within shot pretty nearly all the way.
We must make a bolt for the cliff, get under its
shelter, and either storm their position or hide there
until they are gone."

"What! and miss the steamer?" I said, "we
can't afford to do that, Jack!"

"Can we better afford to get ourselves knocked
down like cocoanuts at a fair?" asked Henderson
pertinently.  "We shall have to make a bolt for
the cliffs; when there we'll try to climb the rocks
so stealthily that we surprise the enemy and fall
upon him unawares."

This seemed the only feasible course, under the
circumstances, and we decided to take it.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`RATS IN A TRAP`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VI


.. class:: center medium bold

   RATS IN A TRAP

.. vspace:: 2

It is not the pleasantest thing in the world to be
obliged to bolt like a rabbit across the open,
even for twenty yards or so, under a hot fire.

"We must hope they are poor shots!" said
Jack, smiling grimly.  "If they couldn't hit us
lying quietly on the sand they are not likely to
bowl us over running."

"Count the shots they fire," I said; "then we
shall know how many of them are in it."

"Now," whispered Jack, "we'll draw their fire
with the cap once more; and the instant you hear
the shot run for all you're worth to the base of the
cliff.  Do you understand?"

I nodded my head.  I was horribly frightened,
I confess.  I do not think I am a coward when I
can hit back if assailed, but I always lose heart
when helpless.  To cut and run for other fellows
to shoot at you is, to a reflective mind, one of the
most unpleasant things a man can be called upon
to do.

However, there was nothing else to be done.
Jack held up the cap; two shots were fired at it,
and away we ran.

Three more reports rang out as we raced across
the open, and, to my horror and despair, Jack fell.
All my terror vanished at the sight, and only rage
remained.  I seized Jack's feet with an exclamation—it
may have been an oath and it may have been
a prayer—and dragged him along on his back in a
manner which must have been dreadfully trying to
a wounded man.  One more shot was fired, but it
flew over our heads; I heard the whistle of it
distinctly.  I deposited my burden at the foot of
the cliffs,—the whole affair did not last four
seconds,—and to my astonishment and intense relief the
victim rose to his feet and laughed consumedly,
though not noisily.

"I'm awfully sorry I frightened you, old man,"
he said, "but it was part of the game; I only
invented it on the spot, or I would have warned you."

"Aren't you wounded?" I gasped.

"Not a bit of it!" said Jack.  "I shammed on
purpose.  I'm hoping they'll come down now they
imagine there's only one to deal with.  If they do,
there'll be 'ructions'!"

I cordially agreed with Jack on this point.  I
would not mind all three nephews, and would
gladly throw in the cousin as well, at close quarters
and in equal fight.  Any fool can frighten me if he
shoots at me from an ambush.

But though we waited in silence for some little
while the enemy made no sign, and we came to the
conclusion that the risk of being seen and
recognised weighed more with them than the desire to
wipe me off the face of the earth at any hazard.

"They've got to deny all knowledge of this
little affair when we meet on board ship, you see,"
explained Jack.

"But they are sure to have another shot at us
before they leave us," I rejoined.  "Even if we
creep along under the lee of the cliffs they'll find
some place where they can sight us, confound
them!"  I looked up and around uncomfortably.
I hated the position.

"We won't let them 'draw a bead' on us if we
can help it," said Jack.  "What say you to creeping
quietly along for half a mile, and then trying
to scale the cliffs?  I'd give something to surprise
the rogues, and have a shy at them at close quarters
as they come along!"

This very distinctly met my views, and we
started at once, creeping over rocks, springing
quickly over level stretches of sand, wading here
and there,—getting rapidly over the ground one
way or another,—and all so close to the steep cliffs
that unless a man lay on his waistcoat at the top
and looked over the edge he could not have seen us.
But we came to no place where the rocks looked
climbable or anything like it; and we reached,
instead, a spot where the sea had advanced to the
foot of the rocks, and was breaking against them
at a depth of a few inches.

"By George! how the tide has come up!" said
Jack, looking serious; "we must dash through
this, and hope that it will be all right beyond."

But though we plunged and waded for a couple
of hundred yards beyond the corner, we found that
the water became deeper rather than shallower, and
that unless we returned at once we should have to
swim back to the dry beach.  There was no
disguising the fact—we were cut off by the tide!

I am afraid we both used strong language when,
after wading back to the beach, we realised what
this misfortune meant for us.  It meant, of course,
that in all probability we should be left behind by
the *Chepstow Castle*, for it was now past five o'clock,
and likely enough the tide was still coming in.  It
was too excruciatingly cruel for anything excepting
naughty words, and we must be forgiven if one or
two of these slipped out in a moment of bitter
disappointment.

There was, however, no actual danger in our
position.  As we could see by the mark of high
water on the cliffs, we should not, in any case, get
much more than a foot-bath if we remained where
we now stood.  That was a comfort, so far as it
went, and something to be thankful for.  But to
think that those rascals—the Strongs, and the rest
of them—would gain a week's start in the race for
Bechuanaland!  It was too bitter to speak of, and
for the first hour or two we dared not trust
ourselves to mention the grievance, lest the fires that
smouldered within should burst forth and consume us.

We employed our time in making frantic efforts
to scale the cliffs, and we succeeded in getting
ourselves, each in turn, into positions of unique and
unparalleled peril, out of which each had to be
rescued by the other; but as for climbing the cliff,
we never reached anywhere within hail of the top,
and if we had persevered from that day to this we
should never have succeeded in attaining thereunto.

Sorrowfully we came to the conclusion, at last,
that there was nothing for it but to wait for the fall
of the tide with all the patience and philosophic
calm we could command; and these, I fear, were
qualities which no known instrument could measure,
for there was scarcely a microscopical trace of either
in the pair of us.

At seven o'clock by my watch, punctually, we
heard the booming signal of the *Chepstow Castle*,
and we knew what that meant only too well.  It
meant that the steamer was leaving the anchorage,
having on board my rival competitors, as well as
our rifles and ammunition and revolvers, and
everything we possessed, and that for a week or so after
reaching Cape Town these men would be adding
every hour and every minute to the odds against
me in the race for old Clutterbuck's treasure.

"We shall meet them coming home with the
money-box," said I presently, following the train of
my own thoughts, "about half-way to Vryburg;
and we can't well scrag them at sight, for we have
no absolute evidence that it was they who shot at us."

"If we had," Jack assented, "we could relieve
them of the money-box, and all would be well.
However, they may not have found it by the time
we reach the spot.  We don't stand to win, I
confess, but we won't quit the field till we are beaten
hopelessly out of it."

"We shall have to keep our eyes open in the
veldt as we go," I said, "for evidently the fellows
are not particular."

"They wouldn't dare murder us there," rejoined
Jack.  "There was not much risk here, you see.
Oh, what wouldn't I give to have the rascals just
exactly here now, where my fist reaches!"

I agreed that this would be sweetly consoling.
One might spend a quarter of an hour, I said, very
happily in pummelling Messrs. Strong and Clutterbuck;
but obviously there were few things less
likely than that we should see either or any of
them again this side of Vryburg, so that there was
not much use in hoping for it.

It was nine in the evening before we found
ourselves able to return to the spot at which we
had landed, and when we reached it we learned
from an Englishman who was about to return in
his boat to Las Palmas, whence he had come
during the day on sport intent, that we were too
late.

The *Chepstow Castle* had sailed, as Captain
Eversley had declared he would, at seven o'clock.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`GHOSTS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VII


.. class:: center medium bold

   GHOSTS

.. vspace:: 2

Our new friend professed the utmost sympathy
when we somewhat shamefacedly explained
that we had been caught by the tide, and
concealed a smile; but he proved a good fellow by
offering to put us up for a few nights until the
arrival of the next steamer going Capewards, an
offer which we gladly and gratefully accepted.
This good fellow informed us that he had seen
the last boatful of passengers taken on board at
about six o'clock or half-past, and in reply to my
inquiry added that the last to arrive had been a
party of three with guns; they had a few seagulls
with them, he said, and had declared that no one
else remained on shore so far as they were aware.

"And when are we likely to get on from here?"
asked Jack; to which our host replied that it might
be a fortnight and might be a week, and possibly a
steamer might arrive this very night.  There was
a cargo steamer overdue now that was to touch
here on her way south.

In the morning there was a joyful surprise
awaiting us; for when we awoke and looked out
upon the bright waters of the Las Palmas harbour,
there—black and ugly in the morning sunshine,
but of all sights the most beautiful in our eyes
to-day—floated a big English cargo-steamer,
already busily engaged in discharging that portion
of her cargo which had been consigned to Las
Palmas.  Needless to say, we lost no time in
going on board, and as little in settling with the
captain to take us on to Cape Town, for a
consideration.  We would have paid ten times the
price with pleasure if he had asked it.

The *Panther*, our new vessel, was to sail by
sunset that very evening, so that—by a happy
turn of Fortune's wheel—we should, after all,
have waited but twenty-four hours in this place.
The *Panther* would travel considerably slower than
the *Chepstow Castle*, however, so that we must
still lose another day or two in time before Cape
Town should be reached; but, under the
circumstances, things might have been so very much
worse that we were inclined to be perfectly
contented for the moment, though we suffered many
an hour of mental torture before arriving at the
great southern city.

For the trusty ship *Panther* bore us at a
uniform rate of about twelve knots per hour, and
we realised as we neared Cape Town that the
*Chepstow Castle* must be several days ahead of
us: we had hoped and expected to travel faster
than this.  Nevertheless the unforeseen occasionally
happens, and a pleasant surprise was in store for
us on our arrival; for when Jack and I sought
out the local offices of the company to which the
last-named steamer belonged, in order to claim
our goods and be off northwards as quickly as
possible, we were informed, to our huge delight,
that the *Chepstow Castle* had not yet arrived.
She had had trouble with her propeller, the clerk
informed us, and had been delayed, first at Las
Palmas and afterwards at Walfisch Bay.

Then that clerk nearly had a fit, because Jack
and I manifested the wildest delight and roared
with laughter; I am not sure that we did not
execute a step or two of an improvised skirt
dance.  The clerk smilingly observed presently
that if we were in hopes that somebody we expected
in the *Chepstow Castle* was going down to the
bottom, or anything of that sort, it was his duty
to disappoint us, because the steamer was all right
and perfectly safe, and would arrive this evening.

"Oh no," said Jack very heartlessly; "our
rich uncles and aunts are not on board!"

"I thought they must be," said the clerk, "as
you seemed so pleased to hear of the ship's
accident."  He eyed us as though doubts as to
our sanity had begun to dawn in his mind.

"Why, man," said Jack, "we are passengers
ourselves—that's the joke of it!"

"Passengers on board what ship?" asked the
clerk.

"The *Chepstow Castle*" exclaimed Jack.

Then the doubts as to our sanity which had
dawned in that clerk's mind ripened into certainty,
and he began to look about for a safe place; he
also grasped his ruler in case of emergency,
resolved, no doubt, to sell his life dearly.

"We got out at Las Palmas," I explained.  I
made the remark in sympathetic sorrow for that
clerk's agony of mind.  But my explanation did
not reassure him much.

"You can't be in two places at once," he said.
"If you got out at Las Palmas, you are there
still.  Besides, if you got out you surely knew
enough to get in again?"

"We'd have got in again if we could," I said,
"but we missed the boat and had to come on by
the *Panther*, which arrived this morning.  Here
are our tickets—they will prove that we started
by the *Chepstow Castle*."

The clerk examined our tickets and wiped his
forehead; then he looked us over, laughed almost
as loud as we did, and said it was rather funny
that we should have turned up first after all.  If
he had known what a poor joke it was for some
others on board the *Chepstow Castle*, I daresay he
would have laughed still more.  As it was, he
entered so heartily into the spirit of the thing that
he obtained permission for us to board the steamer
in the company's tug so soon as the ship should
arrive in sight, a permission which we were right
glad to have, because we were somewhat anxious
as to our property on board, in case certain persons
should have found means during our absence to
possess themselves of that which was not theirs.

There was also another reason for our desire
to go on board in the darkness and unexpected.
We desired to do a little spiritualism in real life,
and to appear before our friends the Strongs in
the morning as though we had never left the ship.

"Nothing like playing the ghost for getting at
the truth of things," said Jack, as we left the office.
"We shall see by the rascals' faces, when they
catch sight of us, whether it was really they who
fired the shots at us!"

That shipping clerk was of the greatest service
to us in another way, for he gave us much excellent
advice as to how best to proceed in our journey
up-country, what natives to engage, how many
oxen to purchase, and the best kind of waggon,
together with a quantity of other useful
information as to roads and the chances of sport to be
obtained.  It was dusk by the time the *Chepstow
Castle* arrived in the offing, and we boarded her
during the dinner-hour, when of passengers there
were none on deck.  Captain Eversley was on
duty, however, and our ghostly reappearance began
propitiously with that cordial officer, who first
stared at us in a bewildered manner and
afterwards burst into laughter.

"Well, you are nice sort of young fellows," he
said; "you ought to be still vegetating at the
Grand Canary if you had your deserts!  What
became of you?—lose yourselves?"

"Caught by tide," Jack explained, "and
brought on by a freighter."

"Come for your things, I suppose?" said the
captain.  "All right; I had them removed from
your cabin because two second-class passengers
asked to be allowed to pay the difference and
come in when there was room.  The steward has
your property.  They're all at dinner below; you'd
better join them—they'll take you for ghosts."

"Who are the fellows in our cabin?" I inquired.

"Brothers, I believe, called Smith," said
Eversley.  "They have a friend among the
second-classers; they have not been popular
among the state-room people.  We have wished
you back more than once."

We thanked the captain and retired, as he had
suggested, below.  Here our sudden appearance
caused first a dead silence of amazement, followed
by the uproar of a dozen or two tongues speaking
at once; and then, to add to the dramatic interest
of the situation, one of the passengers rose from
his seat at the lower end of the table as though
to leave the room, uttered a kind of groan, and
fainted.  I saw him and recognised him in a
moment—it was Charles Strong.  His brother,
seated beside him, quickly dragged his unconscious
relative away.

A word or two of explanation soon convinced
our late fellow-travellers that we were not ghosts,
and in order to reassure them more fully as to
our substantiality we both sat down and made a
remarkably good dinner.  I am sorry to say that
it was the unanimous opinion of all present that,
had we been still looking out for a sail at Las
Palmas instead of comfortably dining almost within
the harbour of Cape Town, we should have had
nothing but our own foolishness to thank for it.

As for the Strongs, or Smiths, no one had a
good word to say for them.  They never spoke,
we were told, at meals, and they spent all their
time conspiring and whispering together over maps
and papers on the second-class deck, where they
had a fellow-mystery.  They were set down by
universal consent as miners or gold-diggers who
had received a "tip" as to some rich spot, which
they intended to find and exploit.  Universal
consent had not made such a very bad guess, as
it turned out.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`NECK AND NECK FOR THE FIRST LAP`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   NECK AND NECK FOR THE FIRST LAP

.. vspace:: 2

When we went to claim our property
afterwards from the steward's pantry—which
we did in some anxiety, seeing who our successors
in the cabin had been (for we naturally concluded
that the Strongs would not have paid money for
the pleasure of occupying our berths unless they
had had designs upon something we might have
left there), we missed my small handbag.

"Were these new fellows in the cabin before
our things were removed?" we asked of the
steward.

"Oh no, sir," said that functionary; "one of
them looked in to see if it would suit, but he
wasn't there five minutes; you wouldn't surely
suspect the gentleman of"—

"Oh dear, no!" I said, "certainly not, steward;
probably my little bag escaped your notice and
his too.  Go and ask for it, like a good man; it
was under the sofa when we were in the cabin,
and it's probably there now."

The steward went off on his mission somewhat
flustered; for it was a reflection upon his
carefulness that the bag had been left behind.
When I said that it might have escaped Strong's
notice as well as his own, I really meant what I
said, though the sceptical Jack grinned at my
"innocence," as he called it.  The bag contained,
as Jack knew, a few exceedingly important
articles—namely, my slender stock of ready money (about
thirty-five pounds), a copy of the all-important
map and instructions for finding Clutterbuck's
treasure, my revolver, and a few other things of
less importance.

Nevertheless, when the steward brought the
bag to me a few minutes later with "Mr. Smith's"
apology, and declared that the latter gentleman
said that neither he nor his brother had seen or
touched it, I believed him.  I was the more
disposed to acquit the Strongs when I opened the
bag and found money, map, revolver, and everything
else still within it just as I had left them;
but subsequent events proved that Jack's scepticism
was in the right after all, though we did not
discover this until later.

We saw no more of the Strongs that evening,
and when—very early in the morning—we went
on deck to see the ship moored in dock, we found
that our friends had already departed.

"We can afford to make a good breakfast and
give them that much start," said Jack; "for they
will probably have a lot to buy and to arrange
before they can start, while most of our preliminary
arrangements were made yesterday."  Therefore
we made a good breakfast.

The train, we found, would take us as far as
Vryburg, after which we should have to purchase
horses and push along over the Chartered
Company's road towards Bulawayo.  Our destination
was several days' journey short of that town,
however, and lay some way to the east of the
pioneer waggon-road used by the company during
the first Matabele campaign.  At Vryburg we
encountered the Strongs and Clutterbuck at a
horse-dealer's yard.  They, like ourselves, had
come to buy horseflesh, and we surprised them in
the midst of their bargaining.

There was no particular reason for pretending
that I did not recognise them, for it was likely
enough that we should be near neighbours when
it came to digging, and we were all encamped
upon a couple of acres of land.  I therefore
addressed them, and bade them good-morning,
by name.

They growled an unwilling greeting in return.

"We're all here, I see, excepting Mr. Ellis,"
I continued.  "I suppose he is to follow later?"

"I know no more about him than you," said
James Strong surlily.  "Who's this, may I ask,
with you, and what right has he to come digging
for our treasure?"

"Is he digging for our treasure?" I asked.

"That's what he's here for, you bet," said
Strong; "if he finds it, let me tell you, your claim
won't stand, remember that."

"My good man," said Henderson exasperatingly,
"do wait until you have caught me at it!
As my friend suggests, I am not thinking of
digging; I am here to keep him company, and to
act as a kind of bodyguard."

"Can't the poor fellow take care of himself?"
said Strong, laughing rudely; "what's he afraid
of?  We are all respectable people here!"

"You see," said Jack, with exasperating
coolness, "in some countries the bullets fly very
promiscuously; people have been known to shoot
at seagulls and to hit men.  Now only the other
day, at an island called Graciosa"—at this point the
second Strong dragged his brother away to look at
a horse, and as the proprietor of the establishment
beckoned us mysteriously aside at the same moment,
we saw no more of our friends at this time; when we
returned to the yard they had taken their departure.
The horse-dealer's object in beckoning us aside
was, it appeared, to inform us that—if we liked to
pay for them—he had a horse or two which would
be likely to suit gentlemen like ourselves much
better than this rubbish.

We were quite ready to pay for a good
article—delighted; at least Jack was, and I was quite
glad that he should.  After all, if the fellow
mounted us better than the Strongs & Co., the
privilege would be well worth paying for.

We certainly paid for it, at anyrate; but
whether our horses were really much, or any, better
than the "rubbish" that fell to Strong's lot is a
question.  Possibly Strong squared the horse-dealer
before we came; if so, he was no fool, and
perfectly within his rights.

We had bought our waggon and oxen, seasoned
or "salted" animals chosen without regard to
expense, and had engaged a Kaffir driver and a
native of Bechuana or Somali land to act as
huntsman, in case we should find the treasure and have
time upon our hands for some big-game hunting
afterwards.

All these matters had been arranged before
we left Cape Town, and our party were even now
trekking slowly northwards towards the appointed
rendezvous on the Bulawayo road, at the point, in
fact, where—as per map—our side route branched
off from the main road.

We had left the heavy rifles and most of our
ammunition to be brought on after us by the
waggon, and we hoped that by the time the
question of the treasure had been decided we should
find our property waiting for us at the rendezvous.
Jack said we should "do a bit of sporting" whether
we dug up the treasure or no.

So that we had not much in the way of
impedimenta actually with us.  Each carried a light
spade, a blanket, a waterproof coat, a light rifle, a
revolver, cartridge-belt and case, saddle-bags with
tinned food and biscuits, a bottle of brandy as
medicine, and little else besides.  Thus equipped,
however, we both felt that we could easily and
comfortably spend a week or two without any
more of the comforts of civilisation than we
carried about us, and we set out upon our
hundred-mile ride in the highest possible spirits,
even though we were well aware that "the
enemy" were on the road before us.

"I don't want to kill anybody if I can help it,
you know, Peter," Jack had said (he always called
me Peter, though my name is Godfrey; I was
called Peter at school, for some inscrutable
schoolboy reason!), "but I'm hanged if I am going to
let these fellows have any more shots at me gratis.
If any fellow lets fly at me again and misses, he's
a dead man if I can make him one!"

I quite agreed with Jack that we would not again
play at being targets without taking our turns at the
shooting afterwards.  I do not relish the idea of
shedding human blood any more than Jack, but
one must draw the line somewhere, and we were
going to draw it at those who took shots at us
from an ambush; for such we would have no pity.

On the evening of the first day we came up
with our friends the Strongs.  They were encamping
on the banks of a river over which there was a ford.

Our horses were not tired, we had not ridden
very hard, and we agreed that this would be a
good opportunity to push on and obtain a good
start of the Strongs.  The complacency with which
these men had settled down in this place and were,
apparently, prepared to see us pass them in the
race, perplexed and puzzled us not a little.  We
were suspiciously inclined towards them, and it
appeared to us that they would not allow us to get
ahead so easily without a good reason.  However,
it was unlikely that we should learn their reason by
asking for it, and we did not desire more of their
society than was absolutely necessary; we
therefore agreed to push on—to play our game and
allow them to play theirs.  We could take care
of ourselves, though they were three to two.

So we proceeded to ford the river, the Strongs
watching us intently, though they pretended to be
taking little notice of us.  Jack's horse led the
way, and was wading in the water considerably
over his knees, when something floating in
mid-stream caught my eye, and I invited Jack to
stop a moment and look at the object.  Jack
pulled up at once and stared with me at the
dark-looking thing floating slowly with the
current.

"I should say it was a log of wood if I did not
happen to know that crocodiles abound here," he
said.

"If it's a log of wood it's a nimble one," I
rejoined; "for see, Jack, it is coming this way,
partly against current."

For reply, Jack wheeled his horse round and
plunged madly for the land.

"Back to the shore, Peter, quick!" he shouted,
"for your life!"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`MORE TREACHERY`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IX


.. class:: center medium bold

   MORE TREACHERY

.. vspace:: 2

When we reached the bank and looked
round, the dark object had disappeared,
but almost immediately it reappeared within five
yards of us.  We could see it plainly now—a huge,
scaly head, half out of the water, and a wicked
little eye looking straight at us as though gloating
over the feast it had just lost by a hair's-breadth.
It was horrible.

"Oh, the cruel-looking, bloodthirsty, gaol-bird
brute!" muttered Jack, raising his rifle.  "Thank
Heaven we were not a quarter of a minute later,
Peter!  Now watch—this is for his eye-socket."

As the little rifle sent out its message with a
light, ping-like report, there was a strange upward
lift of the great head, a vast commotion for a
moment of the water, then the tail went up and
the head went down; there was a little reddening
of the mudded stream, the crocodile disappeared,
and the tragedy was over.

To my surprise, Jack immediately turned and
made for the group of men—the two Strongs and
Clutterbuck—sitting by their camp fire and watching
us; he still held his rifle in his hand—his little
double-barrelled sporting weapon.  I took my
revolver and followed him, for I did not know
what he meant to do.  Henderson strode right up
to the group and addressed them without any kind
of preface.

"If I were certain you fellows were aware that
the crocodile held the ford," he said, "I'm hanged
if I wouldn't chuck you in after him, one by one."

"Words don't cost much," said James Strong;
"we are three to your two.  It is foolish to
boast of what you would do if you were strong
enough."

"You are right; words are cheap," said Jack;
"but for want of something trustier I must ask
you to give yours that you knew nothing of that
crocodile.  If you cannot give me an assurance
on this point I shall do as I threaten.  I know you
are three to two, but we need not fear a set of
cowards who shoot at helpless persons from an
ambush."

James Strong flushed and glanced at his
companions, who reddened also.  Nevertheless, he
maintained a bold front, and replied readily
enough—

"We have not come into the interior of Africa
to guess riddles.  I know nothing about any
crocodiles; but if one had eaten your friend there
as he crossed the ford we should not have gone
into mourning.  It might have had you too,
without many tears from us.  As to shooting from
an ambush, you may explain what you mean if you
please, or do the other thing if you prefer it.
There's no law against riddles and lunatics that I
know of, in these parts."

"Very well, then; so be it," said Jack.  "At
the same time let me tell you this: Prevaricate as
you will, we know well enough what we know;
you shot at us from the cliffs at Graciosa—good.
Luckily you are very bad shots, all of you.  Now
I am a dead shot.  I have twice been in the
Queen's Hundred at Wimbledon and Bisley, and
my friend here is not far behind me at a mark.
What you are to understand is this—that if any of
you fellows at any time fire at us, either of us, and
miss, we shall shoot back, and we shall not miss;
if we can't get a shot at you at once (for you are
likely to be behind an ambush), we shall let fly at
our next meeting.  Bear this in mind for your good."

"Come, chuck the sermon," said James Strong,
who was the spokesman of the party, and a very
rude one at that.

"Very well," said Jack, "words are thrown
away upon fools; next time I shall shoot."

And with this crude repartee we left these
worthies and crossed the ford, and gained a good
ten miles upon them by nightfall.

Now that my tale is taking us rapidly towards
the spot in which, according to our maps, old
Clutterbuck's treasure lay buried, it would be as
well to present for the reader's assistance a copy
of the map and instructions as we each received
them from Steggins the lawyer on the day of the
reading of the will.

Here is the copy, which I present to the reader
with apologies for its shortcomings as an artistic
production.  I could have made it more presentable
and accurate, but it is better to reproduce it as I
received it.

.. vspace:: 2

.. figure:: images/img-069.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: Explanation of Map.

   Explanation of Map.

"Take the road to Bulawayo from Vryburg.

"Ride about one hundred miles to a village called
Ngami; there turn aside eastward into the veldt.
Head straight for a conical hill fifteen miles distant
from the road and visible from Ngami.  At the foot
of the mountain is a sandy plain covered with rocks
and occasional thorn bushes.  Between the highest
thorn bush and the slope of the hill is an open
space of sandy soil about two acres in extent, and
covered with scrubby grass.  Within this area I
have planted four posts.  The treasure is buried at
a spot within the space defined by these four posts."

.. vspace:: 2

Jack Henderson and I rejoiced greatly when
we off-saddled that night ten miles ahead of the
others.  This would give us a good start of them,
and, unless we had our own lack of energy to
blame, we should never allow them to make up
the difference.  We were to have first dig, after all!
We drank a little hot brandy and water in memory
of our crocodile; for to him, we agreed, we owed
the advantage we had now gained.  But for his
good offices our friends would certainly have
pushed on farther.

"Perhaps," I suggested, "it was all a trick—their
camping there, I mean—and they are even
now at our heels and coming up hand over hand!"

"By Jove! you may be right, Peter," said
Jack.  "I had not thought of it.  I'll tell you
what, man; it won't do for both of us to sleep at
the same time.  We must take watches—at all
events just now, while we are in the neighbourhood
of these bad characters!"

We were to discover before very long that we
could not afford to camp out in these African
forests without setting a watch, even when far
away from bad characters of the biped persuasion!
There are some very shady characters in Bechuanaland
that walk on four feet, and perform all
manner of wickedness under the cover of night!
We had not realised this fact as yet, but we were
to realise it pretty soon.  Nevertheless, in
compliment to the poor opinion we held of the Strongs
and their ways, we agreed to divide our night
into two parts, and that one of us should sleep
while the other watched, and *vice versâ* at "half
time."

I was not sleepy, and undertook the first watch,
and a right creepy function I found it.  Those who
have never slept out of their own beds would
scarcely believe in how many unexpected and
unrecognisable voices old Mother Night can speak.
In the heart of an African forest she has
tongues innumerable, and, moreover, all of them
weird and startling, while some are absolutely
terrifying.

We had built up a good fire, and had taken
the precaution to pile up an ample supply of fuel
almost at hands' reach from the spot at which I lay
with my toes to the blaze.  But when it became
necessary to rise from my place and walk two yards
to the pile of firewood in order to add fuel, I must
confess with shame that I was so thoroughly cowed
and frightened by a feeling of supernatural awe,
brought on by the thousand weird and startling
noises to which I had lain and listened for two
hours or more, that I could scarcely summon
sufficient nerve to assume an erect attitude, but
lay trembling on the ground endeavouring to
gather the courage which had left me, a prey to
unworthy feelings of horror.

"However," I reflected, "if I do not keep the
fire up, all these awful beasts that are now prowling
about in the darkness and dare not come near will
become bolder, and"—  This thought settled it,
and I arose, sweating with foolish terror, and
piled a mass of dry material upon the languishing
flames at my feet.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`A SERIOUS CHECK`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER X


.. class:: center medium bold

   A SERIOUS CHECK

.. vspace:: 2

As I did so there was a scuffle and a yelp a few
yards away, by a bush, and in the light that
the fire shot suddenly around I distinctly caught
sight of a brute which I believe was a hyena.

After this I lay with my revolver in my hand,
determined that if any savage brute became bold
enough again to venture within sight of me I
would let fly at him, at the risk of frightening poor
slumbering Jack out of his wits.  Better that than
to have a loathsome hyena or jackal come nibbling
at one's leg while one lay asleep.  A single shot
would probably ensure quiet for the rest of the
night.

Before my watch was over I did catch sight of
another beast, or rather, I suppose, of the same one.
I raised my revolver and pulled the trigger.  The
weapon misfired.

The "click" of the hammer was sufficient to
scare my friend away for the time being; but it
was not pleasant to think that our ammunition was
not to be relied upon, and I determined to
overhaul the stock in the morning.  Meanwhile, I
changed the cartridges in my revolver, for the
little weapon had been loaded ever since leaving
England, and it was possible that these were damp.

What if some brute had really attacked us, or—which
was at least as likely—if the Strongs had crept
up and fallen upon us, and our safety had depended
upon this cartridge which had misfired?  Ugh!
I lay a while and reviled, in thought, revolver,
gunner who made it, cartridge filler, and everyone
remotely connected with the matter, including
myself for neglecting to change the charge.  Then I
had a better thought, and offered up thanks for
being saved twice this night from disaster: from
the crocodile first, and afterwards from all kinds of
unknown horrors lurking around us in the darkness.

After all, I reflected, whether we are at home
in bed or in the midst of an African forest, we are
in God's hands, to save or to kill.  How pitifully
helpless is every human being that lies and sleeps
unconscious, and how entirely at the mercy of a
Providence which one has probably angered times
unreckoned!  Misfortune might as easily assail us
at home in bed as here in the veldt, if it were so
willed!  Disaster, after all, can no more befall me
here than there unless the Almighty decrees it.

This reflection was of much comfort to me
subsequently, throughout many a weird and creepy
night—in hours of real danger, compared with
which the mostly imagined perils of that first night
out were as the merest child's play.

Jack was made of sterner stuff than I, and even
the unseen perils of the darkness and of the ambush
scarcely affected his nerves.

His watch passed off, it may be assumed, without
much trial of his courage, and when I awoke
at high daylight one of the first things my eyes
beheld was the carcass of our friend the hyena, which
Jack had shot with his revolver.  The report had
not disturbed me, which may be taken as evidence
that it must have been fairly "bedtime" when
the end of my watch opened for me the door of
slumberland.

We covered thirty good miles that day, and
though we continually looked out for them, we
saw nothing of "our friends the enemy."  The
night passed without adventure, and—though I
cannot honestly say that I was absolutely free from
those feelings of dread which had so unmanned me
on the previous night—I am justified in declaring
that I was not nearly so frightened at this second
experience.

On the third day, towards evening, we came to
a village, and here I was for turning aside into the
veldt eastwards.

"Westwards," corrected Jack.

"No," I said, "eastwards, surely!"

"I bet you sixpence your map says westwards!"
said Jack.  "I was looking at it yesterday, and
noticed it particularly!"

Now I could have taken the most solemn oath
that I had read "eastwards" in the instructions at
the foot of the map, and the route shown, as I
remember, was to the right of the road, which
would be eastwards.

Yet now, when I looked at our plan, the route
was undoubtedly shown as lying to the left of the
road—westwards—just as Jack said.

So to the left we went, and rode for an hour
towards a hill whose outline we could just make out
in the dim distance.  Then the darkness came on,
and we off-saddled for the night, full of spirits; for
to-morrow, we thought, we should be on the very
spot, and at work within a few yards of the treasure
itself, and with a good start of our rivals into the
bargain.

.. vspace:: 2

We were up and away with the first rays of
light in the morning, and rode fast and joyously
forward, merry as two schoolboys out for a
jollification.

"It's a longish fifteen miles to *that* hill, I
know," said Jack when we had ridden ten miles.
"The map says fifteen miles; but we rode an
hour last night and have ridden another to-day,
and I'm hanged if we are any nearer than we were
before."

This seemed true enough.

"It doesn't look what I should call 'conical,'
either," I added.  "I should call it a flat-topped
thing if I were asked."

"So should I," said Jack; and we rode on.

"I wonder if there can be any mistake," I said,
when we had ridden another ten miles and had
stopped for a long rest.

"What kind of a mistake?" asked Jack.

"Why, about the map.  That hill positively
looks as far off as ever."

"It really does," Jack assented.  "It must be
a good fifty from the road."

"Perhaps the old boy wrote fifty and not
fifteen, as we both seem to remember it," I said,
fishing in my saddle-bag for the case which
contained my map.

"I'm sure it's fifteen there," said Jack, "for I
took the precaution of making a copy of both plan
and instructions at Cape Town, in case those
rascally friends of yours should get hold of our
map and leave us to dig up all Africa for our
treasure.  I remember the wording quite well—it
was 'westwards,' and fifteen miles to a conical hill,
over a sandy plain."

These words of Jack's made me think—not
those which referred to his taking of a copy of the
map; I had done the same myself while on board
the *Chepstow Castle*, and had my copy in my
pocket at this moment.  The words which struck
me were those which referred to my "rascally
friends," and suggested the possibility of the
stealing of our map by them.  The idea reminded
me that my black bag with the map in it had been
at their mercy in the cabin of the *Chepstow Castle*
for a week or more; though, it must be
remembered, my money was apparently left untouched,
as well as my revolver and the other things.  Could
they have tricked us by altering the map?

Flushed and excited at the very idea of such
a thing, I communicated my idea to Jack.

"Good Heavens, man!" said he.  "I never
thought of it; yet it's the most likely thing in the
world.  Let's have a look at the map!"





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.. _`STALKING A MAN`:

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   CHAPTER XI


.. class:: center medium bold

   STALKING A MAN

.. vspace:: 2

We scanned that map over and over, but
could find no trace of alterations.  Jack
suggested that it might be altogether new—a bogus
copy, in fact; almost exactly like the real one, in
case we should remember the original, but incorrect
enough to lead us astray at the critical moment.

"What a pity my copy was done *after* these
rascals had had their chance of doctoring it," said
Jack; "otherwise we should soon see whether this
one has been got at."

"But I have a copy done *before* we were left at
Las Palmas!" I cried.  "We can compare it with
that, which *must* be right!"

"Peter, you are a trump!" said Jack, banging
me on the back.  "You're a glorious fellow!
Produce it at once!  Ha! ha!  When in doubt,
play Peter!"

I produced my copy, a rough thing, but
accurately copied in the most essential portion,
which was that which supplied instructions as to
this very place.  We compared my copy with the
original, as we had supposed it to be, and found
that it was as we suspected.  We had been duped.
The rascals had substituted for my original map a
production of their own, made so like the former
in the matter of handwriting and style, and even
paper, that it would easily pass, if unsuspected, as
the real article.

Furious with rage, we turned and retraced our
way towards the road.  We had come nearly thirty
miles westward instead of turning, as we ought to
have done, to the east, and had wasted a day and
a half—it was intolerable!  If we had met the
Strongs at this time there would have been a battle;
we were blood-hot, and should not have spared
them.  They had tricked us, and had, in all
probability, unearthed the treasure by this time, and
departed with it.  I could not trust myself to speak
as we rode swiftly back, in grim silence, upon our
own tracks.  Jack said nothing either.

That night, as we lay by our fire, it suddenly
occurred to me to look at my revolver.  It, after all,
had been in my small black bag as well as the map.
Probably they had tampered with it; for, otherwise,
why should my weapon have missed fire and Jack's
not?  They had soused my cartridges—that much
was pretty certain; but perhaps they had done the
revolver some injury besides.

I examined it carefully.  The lock worked all
right; the drum revolved perfectly.  I looked
down the barrel; looked straight down it at the
firelight, and saw nothing.

"Well?" said Jack.

I handed him the revolver.  Jack looked down
the barrel as I had; then he took a thin stick and
poked at it.

"The demons!" he said; "they've choked it
with lead or something.  Curse them! it would have
burst in your hand if you had fired it!  We'll pay
them out for this, Peter, if we have to chase them
half round the world for it!"

Thirty miles back to the waggon road, twenty
miles farther northwards, and then at last we were
at the spot where, according to the original map,
we should have turned off at the village called
Ngami.  Our bogus map gave no name to the
village, which showed, as Jack said, the fiendish
cunning of the Strongs; for if they had called it
Ngami, we should have gone on until we had
reached a village of that name, and from it we
should have plainly seen, as we now saw, the conical
hill on our right.  As it was, we had gone sixty
miles out of our way, and might have gone six
hundred, or, indeed, never have struck the right
road at all, but for my happy idea on board ship to
take a copy of the map in case of accidents.

It was dusk when we arrived, riding with
exceeding caution, within a mile or so of the conical
hill.  Here we dismounted by Jack's orders; for
he, by the most natural process in the
world—namely, the simple slipping into his proper place,
as nature intends that people like Jack should
do—had assumed the leadership of our party of two.
It was quite right and proper that he should lead,
for Jack had twice the resource and the readiness
that I had been furnished withal; his wits were
quicker workers than mine, and his judgment far
more acute and correct.  Jack decreed, then, that
we should dismount and wait, and listen.  If they
had not yet found the treasure, he said, they would,
of course, still be upon the ground; and if there,
they would certainly light a fire when darkness fell.

"Then will come our chance!" added Jack.

"Of doing what?" I asked.  "You don't think
of shooting them asleep, Jack, surely!"

Jack laughed gently.  "That's what they
deserve, the blackguards!" he said.  "Why do
you suppose they spiked your revolver?  I'll tell
you.  So that when they attacked you, as they
fully intended to do, and would do now if we gave
them the chance, you should be harmless and
unable to hit them back."

It certainly did seem pretty mean, viewed in
this light—a cold-blooded, premeditated, murderous
kind of thing to do.  The idea made me very
angry.  It gave me that almost intolerable longing
one sometimes feels—which, at anyrate, I feel—to
punch some offender's head; it is a feeling which
generally assails one at helpless moments, as, for
instance, when a schoolmaster (whose head cannot
be punched with propriety) takes advantage of his
position to bombard some wretched victim, who
can utter no protest, with scathing remarks.

"What are we going to do, then?" I continued.
"Of course we are not going to murder them in
cold blood; but can't we punch their heads?"

Jack laughed.  "Oh, it may come to that,
likely enough," he said; "but what we must go for
first is to disarm them.  It is perfectly impossible
to live near these men in any sort of comfort or
security unless we first deprive them of their rifles
and revolvers.  That's what I want to do to-night.
One or two of them will be asleep, the other
watching.  We must stalk them at about midnight, cover
them with our revolvers, and make them 'hands up!'"

"No good covering them with my revolver," I
said.  "I'd better cover a pair with my rifle, and
you the other fellow with your pistol.  They know
mine won't go off, well enough!"

"That's true," said Jack.  "All right, your rifle
then.  We must shiver here till about midnight;
you won't mind that for once."

And shiver we did for several hours, as much
with excitement as with the cold of the night; for
at about nine o'clock we saw the glow of a fire a
mile or so away, which gave us the welcome
assurance that our friends had not, at anyrate,
found the treasure and departed.

I entreated Jack several times to let us be up
and at them; but Jack was inexorable, and would
not budge until our watches told us that midnight
had come.  Then Jack arose and stretched himself.

"Are you ready?" he said.

"Rather!" said I; "come on!"

"No hurry," continued my friend exasperatingly.
"Change your cartridges first; so.  Now take a
drop of brandy neat, to correct the chill of the
night—not too much.  We may have to shoot a
man; are you up to doing it?"

"If necessary," I said; "but I'd rather not."

"Of course not, nor would I; but if there is
any hitch, or if either of the men show signs of
being about to put in a quick shot, yours or mine
must be in first; do you understand?  Am I to
command, or would you prefer to?  It is better
that one should take the lead."

"You, of course!" I said.

"Then do just as I tell you when we are among
them.  Now, are you ready?  Then come along!"

Cautiously and softly we crept towards the place
where the fire twinkled and glowed in the distance.
As we came nearer, we could see that it had been
built up close to a mimosa bush which lay between
us and the circle of light shed by the burning
brushwood.  This was favourable to our purpose, for
we were enabled to creep along without the danger
of being seen, as we might have been even in the
dark, had we been obliged to cross one of the wide
open spaces which checked the plain.

No thieving jackal or designing lion could have
stalked that party more patiently and noiselessly than
we did; foot by foot, and yard by yard, we drew
nearer to our prey, and at last we had reached the
mimosa bush and were watching them as they lay,
the rays of their fire all but shining upon us as we
crouched, but falling just short.  Jack placed his
hand upon my arm, and whispered—

"James Strong watching, very sleepy," he
breathed, scarcely audibly; "the others fast asleep.
I take James, and you the other two.  Are you
ready?  Follow me and stand at my side, but keep
your rifle at your shoulder from now on, and never
lower it for an instant.  Are you ready?"

"Ready!" I managed to whisper, but my lips
were so dry that hardly any sound came from them.
Then Jack instantly rose and stepped out into the
firelight—I following him.





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.. _`SCOTCHING A SNAKE`:

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   CHAPTER XII


.. class:: center medium bold

   SCOTCHING A SNAKE

.. vspace:: 2

James Strong was lying half waking and
half sleeping, his rifle at his side; he saw us
instantly, however, as we stepped into the
firelight, and was on his feet in a moment, dragging
his rifle up with him.

"Drop the gun, James Strong," said Henderson,
"and put up your hands.  I am covering you,
you see, and this is not the revolver you choked.
Drop it at once, or I fire.  I will count three.
One—two"—Strong let the rifle fall.  Neither
the thud of this nor the sound of Jack's voice awoke
the other two, who still slept, I covering them with
my rifle.

"Pick that thing up, Peter," said Jack.  "I'll
see to the covering."  I did as my captain bade me.

"Chuck it on the fire," he continued.  "I
shall pay you for it, Mr. Strong, but I am afraid
you are scarcely to be trusted with a rifle just at
present."

I heard Strong grind his teeth as I picked up
his gun, took the cartridges out, and threw the
weapon on the fire.

"Sit down, Mr. Strong, and empty your
pockets," continued Jack, and his victim obeyed,
because he could do nothing else.

"Take those other rifles, Peter, and do the
same by them," pursued Jack; "then wake those
fellows, and see if they sport revolvers.  Have you
none, Mr. Strong?  Come, produce it if you have.
Feel his pockets, Peter, and his saddle-bags.  What,
has he none?  Well, you shall give him yours,
Peter, one day; perhaps he will know how to get
the lead out since he put it in!"

Strong's face through all this was not a pleasant
study.

I obeyed Jack's decrees to the letter.  I collected
all the weapons—three rifles and one revolver—and
threw them on the fire; I awoke the two sleepers,
who swore frightful oaths when they realised the
position of affairs, and cleared their pockets and
wallets and saddle-bags of cartridges, all of which I
confiscated.

"Good-night, gentlemen," said Jack, when my
work was finished.  "I shall repay you for all that
has been taken from you to-night.  Your zeal, you
will understand, has been a little too great; you
have given yourselves away.  But for your premature
attempt to rid yourselves of us on the island,
and for one or two foolish matters since then, we
might never have been aroused to our danger, and
you would certainly have enjoyed many opportunities
of shooting us at your leisure—in the back,
of course.  Now, you see, we have the whip hand
of you."

"And you will use it, curse you," said James
Strong, "to prevent us taking our legal share in the
search for my uncle's property.  I know you!"

"Nothing of the kind, my good man," said
Jack cordially.  "Dig away, by all means; you
shall see that neither of us will interfere."

"Yes, and if we find the treasure, you will shoot
us down; I know you, I say!" replied Strong.
We made allowance for his temper, which was
shocking to-day; but then his provocation had
really been considerable.

"If you find the treasure you shall take it away
with you in peace, so far as my friend and myself
are concerned," said Jack.  "We shall not shoot
you, and you can't very well shoot *us* without rifles,
can you?  Good-night all; come, Peter."

We could see our good friends frenziedly poking
among the embers for their burning weapons the
moment we had departed; but, as Jack remarked,
they were welcome to the barrels, and since he had
taken care to keep up the conversation long enough
to allow the woodwork to burn away, that would be
all they would get.

Returning to our camp, we made up a fire for
ourselves and tossed up for first sleep, for we must
keep a stricter watch than ever now, or these
desperate fellows would steal our weapons and turn
the tables upon us.  So we slept and watched by
turns until morning, and it was on this night that I
heard for the first time in my life the roar of a lion.
It was not very near at hand, but, far away as it
was, it sounded terrible enough to the inexperienced
ear, and I thought over all I had read of the ways
of lions in the works of Mr. Selous and other
African sportsmen, and recalled an awkward
propensity some of them have of coolly coming into
camp and foraging among the waggons even in the
glare of the firelight.  If this brute were to come
now and help itself to Jack Henderson before I
could interfere, what a truly terrible thing it would
be!  The idea impressed me so deeply that I awoke
Henderson and told him there was a lion roaring
somewhere within hearing.

Jack was very sleepy, and my watch was only
half over, which made him ridiculously angry to
have been awaked.

"Well, what then?" he said.  "Let him roar
and be hanged! if he didn't wake me, why should
you?"

"Why, he might come and bag you while you
slept," I said; "travellers say they do that kind of
thing."

"Well, what are you there for, man?" said Jack
angrily, settling himself to sleep again.  "You are
there to shoot James Strong, or lions, or she-bears,
or anything else that comes and plays the fool
around here.  For goodness' sake don't wake a
fellow to talk about the habits of lions—shoot him
if he comes, that's all you have to do!"

I suppose the lion had other engagements for
that night, for his roars receded farther away and
were lost, presently, in the distance.

We were up in the morning at the first glint of
light, for we were naturally anxious to see the
ground upon which our labours were to be lavished
until the envious soil should reveal to us or the
others the secret of old Clutterbuck.  There it was,
the open space of sandy hummocky soil, and there
were the posts, three of them at least; we could not
see the fourth.  And there, too, was the upturned
earth over a considerable area, representing the
day's work, or the day and a half's work, of the
Strongs, who had evidently toiled for all they
were worth in order to make the most of the
start they had gained upon us.  The result of
this haste on their part was to be seen in the
shallowness of their digging, which appeared to
have nowhere extended to a greater depth than
six to nine inches.  As we stood and surveyed
the ground, our three friends came with their
spades and set to work at once.  They scowled
at us ferociously, but made no reply to Jack's
polite "Good-morning."

"I daresay they *are* rather annoyed with us,"
said Jack.  "Now, Peter, don't be lazy, but begin to
dig at once.  I'm your bodyguard, remember, and
shall do no work except thinking."

"Aren't you going to dig?" I said.

"Certainly not," said Jack; "I'm not one of the
authorised.  If I dug and found the treasure, there
might be a legal point.  Now dig up, man, and
don't argue; you're wasting your time.  Think of
the nuggets and diamonds only awaiting the magic
touch of your spade!  George! if I had a legal
position, wouldn't I dig!"

I did dig.  I dug that morning until the sweat
poured from my face and head like drops of rain.  I
dug till my arms and back ached so that I almost
cried with the pain, while Jack sat or lay and
watched, keeping an eye on the Strong party and
entertaining me with light conversation.  By the
evening I was perfectly exhausted, and the greater
part of the space of about two acres had been dug
over, though not to any great depth, by one or
other of the four workers, yet nothing had been
discovered.

When Jack awoke me to take my watch at
half-time that night, he said—

"Peter, I've been thinking."

"What about?" I asked sleepily.

"About that fourth post," he said.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`AN UNEXPECTED TRAGEDY`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   AN UNEXPECTED TRAGEDY

.. vspace:: 2

"I was wondering what has become of that
fourth post," continued Jack.  "It can't have
disappeared very well."

"It doesn't matter much," I rejoined, "for it can
only have been in one spot—the fourth corner of a
square; the other three are absolutely symmetrically
placed.  We can easily judge of the position of the
missing one."

"I'm not so sure," said Jack.  "I don't think it's
a trick of the Strongs, for they seem to take it for
granted, as we have done, that the area is a square.
I shall look about for it to-morrow while you dig."

"I wish you'd dig while I look about!" said I;
"it's the most fatiguing thing I ever tried in my
life."

"That's because you never did a day's work till
yesterday, my son; but cheer up, you'll find it less
fatiguing every day, take my word for it."  Jack
yawned and lay down, and in a minute was fast
asleep.  As for me, I very nearly fell asleep
also—in fact, I believe I was actually dozing—when my
friend the lion suddenly roared from somewhere so
close at hand that my heart went into my boots and
I felt my knees tremble together as I lay.  So loud
was it that even Jack awoke and started to his feet.

"What on earth was that?" he said.  "Did
someone shoot?"

"It was a lion's roar, close behind us here in the
bush," I said, my teeth chattering.  I don't think I
am a coward, but I do hate dangers that I cannot see.

"By George!—fancy those wretched chaps over
by that fire," said Jack, "without rifles; what a
state of terror they will be in!"

What a good fellow Jack was!  I had never
thought, in my selfishness, of the infinitely more
dangerous position of the others.

At this moment the lion roared again.

"Listen to that!" continued Jack.  "What a
voice the brute has!  It's enough to terrify anyone,
especially unarmed people.  Ought we to go and
stand by those chaps, think you, Peter?"

I am glad to think that I replied in the affirmative.

"And yet," said Jack, "I'm not sure that one
of us hadn't better stop here to take care of our
horses.  Shall we toss up who goes?  You see, it
was we who disarmed the poor beggars; we can't
very well leave them unprotected when real danger
comes."

I cordially endorsed the sentiment, and though
I would far rather have let our horses go by the
board than separate from Jack in this crisis, I tossed
up with him as to who should go and who stay.

"Heads stay—tails go," said Jack.  "You toss."

I tossed, and the coin showed tails.

"Tails; then you go—lucky rascal!" said Jack;
"you get all the fun.  Shout for me if anything
happens.  Cæsar! there he is, roaring again, and
nearer their camp.  Be off, Peter, and mind your
hide!"

I have said that I do not consider myself a
coward, but assuredly the greatest coward in the
world could not have been more frightened than
was I during that most weird and uncanny walk
through the darkness towards the twinkling glow of
the Strongs' camp fire, but a very few hundreds of
yards away.  The word darkness hardly expresses
the almost opaque blackness of the night as I
stumbled over hummock and thorn bush in the
direction of the fire.

Beasts were abroad, it appeared, in horrible
profusion.  Scuttling, growling, rushing, they seemed
to jump up from before and around me at almost
every step, as though an army of them were stalking
me, and came repeatedly within springing distance,
only to lose heart as I approached, and dash away
into the darkness.

I have since come to the conclusion that these
were hyenas, for no other beast would be likely to
be about in close proximity to a roaring lion.

The lion advertised himself freely.  Once, at
least, he roared within twenty yards of me, and
though I held my rifle to my shoulder ready for
him, I quite gave myself up for lost.  But his
designs were not, it appeared, directed against
myself, for a moment after he roared again much
nearer to the Strongs' camp fire, and presently from
beyond that point.

I could hear the Strongs talking excitedly and
loudly, and could see that they were busily engaged
in piling brushwood upon their fire, for at intervals
it seemed to blaze up brightly and to smoke more
vigorously.  The lion, I could not help thinking,
was prospecting both our party and theirs, and
walking round and round both, working himself up
to the necessary pitch of audacity for an attack.

So, stumbling, groping, creeping upon my
uncanny way, I came at last within fifty yards of
the Strongs' camp.  The lion had been silent now
for several minutes, a fact which rendered my
horror all the more intense, because I could no
longer tell where the brute was, and, for all I knew,
he might be at my heels or a couple of yards away
on either side of me, licking his lips, and, as it were,
choosing his joint in preparation for a spring.

Of a sudden I was startled by the most piercing
shrieks and yells that I had ever heard.  The noise
came from the Strongs' camp, and set the seal of
horror upon my soul, so that I fell on my knees
then and there and prayed aloud with the most
intense earnestness I had ever put into prayer.
Then I sprang to my feet in a flush of shame.
The lion, I suddenly realised, had made his
appearance among these wretched, unarmed folk,
while I, their protector, knelt and prayed like a
coward for the safety of my own skin!

Aroused and stimulated by this thought, I
rushed madly for the camp, careless now of the
darkness and danger and horror of the night, and
in a moment or two had reached, breathless, the
circle of light shed by the Strongs' fire.  Here a
weird sight presented itself to me.

Clutterbuck knelt and gabbled prayers aloud,
his eyes, almost starting from his head, fixed upon
a spot just on the verge of the firelight, where
James Strong stood, armed with a burning log,
cursing as loudly as the other prayed, and staring
into the darkness beyond.

Both started as I appeared, but both
immediately looked away from me again and resumed
their occupations.

"What is it?" I gasped.  "Has anything
happened?  Where is your brother, Strong?"

"It's the most infernal murder, that's what it
is!" shouted the fellow, turning suddenly upon me
and stamping his foot; "as clear a case of murder
as ever a criminal committed!"

"What has happened, man?  Was it the lion?"
I cried.  "Stop your blithering and tell me; we
may save the fellow yet!"

James Strong growled out some curse.

"Yes; go out into the dark and save him.
You are a likely man to do that, you coward!"
he shrieked; "you who rob men of their defences
and leave them at the mercy of brute beasts.
This is as clear a case of murder as need be, and
you shall hang for it yet!"

Sick at heart, but not any longer with fear, I
seized a burning brand, and, shouting for Jack,
rushed away into the bush in the direction which I
supposed the brute had taken.

But though I wandered alone for a while, and
with Jack, who soon joined me, for another longer
while, we found no trace of either victim or lion,
and we were obliged to give up the search in
despair.

And here I may say that his shriek as the lion
sprang upon him was the last that was ever heard
of poor Charles Strong.  We picked up a piece of
cloth which had been a portion of his coat, but
beyond this we never found sign of the unfortunate
fellow, whose fate sat like a midnight horror upon
our souls for many a day.





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.. _`A GLIMPSE OF THE WINNING-POST`:

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   CHAPTER XIV


.. class:: center medium bold

   A GLIMPSE OF THE WINNING-POST

.. vspace:: 2

There was no digging done the next morning,
for both we and the rival camp spent
all our time wandering about in the forlorn hope of
finding poor Strong—wounded, but perhaps still
alive—left by the lion, who, we hoped but scarcely
believed, might have been terrified by our shouts
and by the shots we fired for the purpose of frightening
the brute, and have dropped his victim and departed.

James Strong, though frequently within speaking
distance of us, neither spoke to us nor looked
at us, excepting now and again to scowl fiercely
as his way, in the searching, crossed ours.  But
Clutterbuck spoke to me several times and to Jack
also, entreating us, for the love of Heaven, either
to provide him with firearms, or to take him at
nighttime under our protection.  If he had to pass
another night unarmed, he said, after this, he should
certainly go mad.

We promised, however, to protect the unfortunate
fellow, and this soothed him wonderfully.

That night both James Strong and Clutterbuck
were encamped close to our fire, between their own
and ours, the two fires being built up within ten
yards of one another.  Strong was too proud to
ask for protection as Clutterbuck had, but anyone
could see that he was glad and greatly relieved
when we came and made our camp near theirs.  I
was sorry for the fellow, rogue though he was, and
thought that it was certainly the least we could do
to take him under our wing, since we had deprived
him of the means of protecting himself.

As for his brother's death, I do not take any
share of responsibility for that misfortune.  For,
as we learned afterwards from Clutterbuck himself,
in all probability no shot would have been fired
even if the three men had still been in possession
of their rifles.

According to Clutterbuck's narrative, the thing
happened something like this: He, Clutterbuck,
had been deputed to watch for the first three hours
of the night, the two Strongs sleeping meanwhile.
But Clutterbuck himself fell asleep, and allowed
the fire to languish and almost die out, when of a
sudden the roaring of the lion awoke not only him
but the Strongs also.  Then all three men rushed
about, getting brushwood and sticks to make a
blaze that would keep the lion at a distance; but
while poor Charles Strong was ten yards away in
the bush there was a sudden roar and a scuffle, and
a shriek for help from him, and that was all that
either Clutterbuck or James Strong knew of the
matter.  Neither of them had seen the lion.

All this Clutterbuck himself told me as we lay
awake together on the first night after the mishap,
during my watch.  The poor fellow, naturally a
timid creature, was far too frightened to sleep, and
was, I think, grateful for being allowed to talk.

The lion did not come near us, neither did he
treat us, even at a distance, to any of those terrible
roars which I had found so unmanning.  Clutterbuck
was even more communicative to Jack when
his watch came round; he told Jack many interesting
things, and among others this—which I suspect
the artful Henderson gradually wormed out of
him—that he found himself a companion and partner
of the Strongs, whom he disliked, by the stress of
circumstances rather than of deliberate choice.

Our suspicions as to the affair near Las Palmas
were well founded, said Clutterbuck; for it was the
simple truth that the Strongs and he himself set
out that day with the deliberate purpose of
murdering us.  It was James Strong's idea, he declared,
and his brother had accepted it readily.  He,
Clutterbuck, had pretended to do so, but in reality
had had no intention of hurting us.

"No, no, Clutterbuck, that won't do!" said
Jack at this point of the narrative; "for we counted
the shots fired, and there was at least one volley of
six shots!  You fired with the rest, man; I am
not so easily taken in!"

"That's true enough," said Clutterbuck; "but
did I hit you?"

"No, that you certainly did not," replied Jack;
"but then you are a very poor shot, my friend!"

"I fired wide on purpose, I'll swear to it!" said
Clutterbuck.

After this, Jack inquired about the crocodile,
and found that here, too, the Strongs had cherished
amiable intentions with regard to us.  They saw
the brute right enough, and that was why they
left us to ford the river and themselves stayed
behind.

"You ought to have warned us somehow," said Jack.

"I dared not," said the other.  "James is an
awful fellow, and his brother is nearly as bad—was,
I mean—poor chap!"

As for the spiking of my revolver and the
changing of the map, Clutterbuck knew nothing of
either.  It was done in the state-room, and he was
not there to see.

"You would probably have been shot as you
forded the river," he continued, "if you hadn't
rather frightened the Strongs by what you said a
moment before—that you were a crack shot, and
would have no mercy if they missed you."

"So you see, Peter," concluded Jack, telling
me all this afterwards, "it pays to blow your own
trumpet sometimes.  They wouldn't have hit us,
probably, but then we should have been obliged to
make three bull's-eyes of *them*, and that would
have been unpleasant too!"

But all this while the treasure still lay hid in
the bosom of the veldt.  Charles Strong's death
was very terrible, but I must dig, dig.  Regrets and
sentiment are mere waste of time with one hundred
thousand pounds waiting to be dug out of the earth!

Whatever measure of grief James Strong may
have felt for his unfortunate brother, his sorrow
did not prevent him betaking himself very seriously
to his digging work as soon as day dawned on the
second morning after the mishap.  He went about
his business in grim silence, vouchsafing us, as
before, neither word nor look.

Neither were we dilatory.  I went back to my
digging with back and shoulders still stiff from the
labours of the first day, while Jack expressed his
intention to search about for the fourth post.

"Either there's some trick about the position
of that post," he said, "or it has got moved away
by an accident; some elephant or other big brute
has used it for a scratching-post, or knocked it
down and perhaps rolled it away; in any case, we
ought to know where it was."

I still thought that in all probability the fourth
post had simply completed the square suggested by
the other three, and that it had been in some way
removed from its place—perhaps by an elephant,
as Jack said, or more likely by a gust of wind.  I
did not consider the question at all important.

As it proved, Jack was right.  He found the
fourth post twenty yards at least out of the square,
and planted right in the middle of a prickly-pear
bush.  But though I extended my operations to
the new ground introduced by the change of area,
and though the two other men and I together dug
it superficially over, so that the entire space between
the four posts had now been dug up—to a certain
depth—the result of the day's work was "nothing
to nobody," as Jack facetiously expressed it.
Indeed, I, for one, began to wonder whether we had
embarked upon a wild-goose chase, and whether
the hundred thousand pounds ever existed save
in the imagination of old Clutterbuck; and again,
whether, supposing the money to have actually
existed, the old miser had not purposely so
hidden his treasure that no other human eye
should ever behold it, since he himself could no
longer gloat over it.  But when I communicated
these views to Jack Henderson, he said—

"Bosh! man; don't be a fool.  Dig for all
you're worth!"

If real hard work could have insured success,
it would have been a difficult matter to judge
between James Strong and myself as to who should
bear away the prize.  Clutterbuck laboured away
too, after his kind; but he was of a different kidney
from ours, and I think I turned up more soil in an
hour than he did in half a day.

For the best part of a week we vied thus with
one another, toiling day-long in the sweat of our
brows and meeting with no success.

On the evening of the sixth day Jack said to
me, as we walked together towards our camp fire—

"Do you believe in second sight and that kind
of thing, Peter?"

"No," I said, "I don't.  Why?"

"Because I have a kind of idea that I know
where the treasure may be," said Jack unexpectedly.

I laughed.

"I too am beginning to have a pretty firm
conviction as to where it is," I said.

"Tell me where *you* think first," continued my
friend; "and then I'll tell you my idea."

"Nowhere," said I; "at least, nowhere that
you or I, or anyone else, will ever know of."

"Well, now listen to my idea; you can act upon
it or not, as you like.  Have you thought of
removing the posts and looking into the holes?"

"No, I haven't," I said; "but I'll do it."

"Do it when the others are asleep to-night,"
Jack rejoined.

"Why, what's the hurry?" I asked.  "Must I
grope about in the dark, and all among the hyenas
and lions?  Hang it all, let me wait till morning!"

"The thing is, it's a new idea; and if Strong
sees you removing one post, he'll remove another,
and Clutterbuck a third, and you split your chances.
*They* may look under the right post while you are
busy unearthing the wrong one!"

"You seem to be very cocksure of your posts,
old chap!" I said, laughing.

Jack's answer astonished me.

"Do as I tell you," he said; "and begin with
the erratic post in the thorn bush.  I have a very
strong idea about that post."

"Why—have you seen anything?" I gasped.
Jack's manner impressed and excited me.

"It's like this," he said; "and, of course, my
idea may be worth nothing.  The post is not very
tightly fixed in the ground, and to-day I shook it
about and up and down.  Well, it seems to rest
upon something hard and smooth, that's all.  I left
it for you to pull up."





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.. _`EUREKA!`:

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   CHAPTER XV


.. class:: center medium bold

   EUREKA!

.. vspace:: 2

Jack's communication rendered me frantic
with excitement, and I instantly determined
that I would do as he had suggested.  The
idea of wandering about the bush at night, alone,
was not pleasant; but if the treasure were really at
the foot of Jack's post, why, it would be worth
running the gauntlet of a score of lions to get it.
Besides, I could take a torch.  Of course, the hard
and smooth surface the post rested upon might
prove to be a stone and no more; still, I would go
and see for myself.

Jack and I divided the watching every night.
We could not, of course, trust either of the others
to undertake the duty.  Such a step would have
been suicidal indeed on our part; for James Strong,
at anyrate, and possibly Clutterbuck also, would
have taken so good an opportunity to rid himself
of a rival and of a rival's inconvenient friend at a
swoop.  Hence both men were allowed to sleep,
if they would, all and every night.

This evening we supped well upon an antelope
shot by Jack in the bush while we laboured in our
treasure-field, and by the time darkness was well
set in, James Strong and Clutterbuck were already
in full snore.  Then, moving cautiously, I took rifle,
spade, and torch, and sallied forth, not without some
trepidation, upon my enterprise.

Whether owing to the occasional shots fired by
us in this place in the pursuit of game, or whether
by reason of their natural dislike for abiding in the
continued proximity of mankind, we had not been
bothered during the last few days by the presence
of many hyenas or other creatures of the kind about
our camp.  A few days ago, if I had undertaken the
gruesome night enterprise upon which I had now
embarked, I should have been startled almost at
every step by some suddenly rushing or creeping
brute; but to-night I was left to pursue my journey
almost in peace.

I had no difficulty in groping my way to our
treasure-area, which resembled a ploughed field by
this time, with all the digging and re-digging it
had suffered.  Nor was I long in discovering the
post as to which Jack had formed so strong and
optimistic an opinion.

After all, it was not unlikely that our old miser
should have planted a post over the grave of his
treasures, and I was somewhat surprised that it had
not occurred either to me or to the Strong faction
to remove the posts and look underneath them,
since we had dug up the whole of the area enclosed
by them without result.  Doubtless it would have
occurred to us to do so after we had dug a little
deeper in the space enclosed.

At all events, here was Jack's post, and I laid
hold of it and shook it, and moved it up and down
just as he had described that he had done himself.
Sure enough, the post struck hard and dead on
some flat, unyielding substance beneath.  My heart
beat in a ridiculous fashion—was I really on the
brink of a discovery that would place me for ever
out of reach of poverty and of the necessity to
embark in some lifelong, uncongenial occupation?
I felt so faint in the agitation of the moment that I
was obliged to pause and gather strength before I
was sufficiently master of my energies to lay hold of
the post and pull it up.

"Now, Godfrey," I said to myself, "don't be a
fool.  In moments of difficulty preserve an equal
mind; if you can't do that, what was the use of
your learning Horace?  Pull yourself together and
play the man!"

I seized the post and tugged at it.  It was stiff
enough to resist displacement, though it had wobbled
about when shaken to and fro.  But having once
mastered my agitation, I was equal to any amount
of exertion; and by dint of working it backwards
and forwards and up and down for five minutes, and
twisting it round in my embracing arms, I succeeded
at last in raising and removing it.  My torch had
gone out meanwhile, and I could see nothing, of
course, in the dark hole which had formed the
socket of the post.

Kneeling over it, therefore, with palpitating
heart, I plunged my hand down.  My arm did not
reach the bottom in this way, however, and I lay
down on my side and plunged it in a second time to
the very armpit.  This time the ends of my fingers
just touched the bottom of the hole, and distinctly
felt what seemed a cold, flat substance lying there,
but could not grasp and raise it.

I tried to keep cool and think how best to act
under the agitating circumstances.

Then I lay down again, after scraping away
some of the sandy soil at the edge of the hole, in
order to gain a few inches in reach by getting my
shoulder lower; and this time I was able to
distinguish, by the touch, a small tin box, and to get
my fingers under it.  In the joy of that moment I
could scarcely forbear to shout aloud.  Eureka!
I had found the treasure!  I was a rich man; the
whole world was my own—to the full extent of
about ninety-eight thousand pounds odd.

Slowly and carefully I raised the little box to
the surface; my grip upon it was as tight as that of
a drowning man to the hand that will save him.
Up it came, a small tin thing like a cheap money-box
by the feel; now I had it safely, and was standing
shaking it, half dazed, trying to realise what its
discovery meant for me.  Oh for a light, that I
might open it and gloat without delay over its
thrice-blessed contents!

The next moment I was careering at full speed
towards the camp fire to tell Jack of the marvellous
success of my night enterprise, and to open with
him the treasure-box that burned my hands as I
carried it.  But stay! what if James Strong were
awake?  Could I postpone the joy of raising the
lid of that box until the morning, and the almost
equal delight of telling Jack all about it?  No, I
felt I could not.  If I might not open the box, and
talk about it too, I should certainly "go crazy."

As I approached the fire, however, I saw that
both James Strong and Clutterbuck were fast asleep,
Jack watching.  He heard me coming, though I
crept softly for fear of awakening the sleepers, and
long before he could possibly have seen me he had
his finger to his lip in token that caution was
required.  I concealed the box in the
"hare-pocket" of my Norfolk jacket, and stepped into the
firelight.  I suppose that Jack thought I was about
to speak, for he said very softly, "Ssh!" and made
a warning gesture.

It was tantalising indeed.  Nevertheless, I sat
down by the fire close to Henderson, and for a few
minutes neither of us spoke or whispered a word.
The only sign that passed between us was an
interrogatory uplifting of the eyebrows by Jack, which
I took to mean, "Any success?" and to which I
responded with the very slyest possible closing of
the left eyelid, which I intended to signify
"*Rather!*"

After about ten minutes of listening to James
Strong's measured snoring and Clutterbuck's
groans, grunts, and snortings, Jack leant over and
whispered—

"Strong sat up and looked around while you
were away.  He made as though he did not notice
your absence, but I have an idea that he knew all
about it.  We must be very careful indeed.  Have
you really had any luck?"

"The best possible," I whispered back.  "Can
I show you something?"

"Wait a bit, old man!" said Jack, pressing my
hand; "this is splendid!  I congratulate you; but
for Heaven's sake be careful!  I don't trust that
fellow Strong's sleeping; he may be wide awake,
watching.  He's as cunning as they're made."

"Let's try him," I suggested.  "I'll suddenly
cough loudly, and you keep a careful watch on his
eyes; probably he'll wince if he's awake."

"Go on, then," said Jack.  I didn't cough; I
said "Hello!" very shortly and sharply.  Strong
gave a slight start, but then so did Clutterbuck,
and both went on sleeping.

"We'll give them another ten minutes,"
whispered Jack, "and then risk it."

At the expiration of that period I looked
inquiringly at Jack, and he nodded affirmatively.

Slowly and cautiously, and with my eyes fixed
upon Strong's face, I drew the tin box from my
deep pocket; I heard Jack's breath come quick and
short as he caught sight of the prize.  It was, as I
thought, a plain tin money-box, painted black and
gold, such as anyone may buy at any ironmonger's
for a few shillings.  It was tied round with a wire,
but unlocked, and with trembling fingers I removed
the wire and opened the lid.

Within was a second tin box, a small thing like
a sandwich-box, and this too was unlocked.

I paused to take a look at the sleepers; both
were still, apparently, as fast asleep as ever.

"Go on!" whispered Jack; "it's all right."

I put my hand inside the case and produced a
leather pocket-book, and from this I drew an
envelope!

"Ah, a cheque!" whispered Jack; "and a fat
one if it's for the lot!"

There were several papers in the envelope.
First a letter, which I put aside to read later,
because the rest were bank-notes, and I was anxious
to learn the amount of my inheritance.

Then came two terrible shocks, one after the other.

Shock number one.  There were twenty five
pound notes.  No more, and no less!





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`"ALL THAT GLITTERS IS NOT GOLD!"`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XVI


.. class:: center medium bold

   "ALL THAT GLITTERS IS NOT GOLD!"

.. vspace:: 2

One hundred pounds!

A nice little sum in itself, but not one
that would tempt a man to imperil his life in as
many ways as it contained notes!  Surely the old
man had not brought me all this distance to give
me one hundred pounds at the end of it?  The
letter would prove to be an order upon his bankers
for the bulk of his fortune.  The hundred was
intended to cover my expenses home to England.

In so far as concerned the hundred pounds my
surmise was correct enough.  But the letter was
not a bank order.  It was a very original document,
and I purpose giving it *in extenso*.  Here it is:—

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: center

   "THE PRIZE TO THE SWIFT.

.. class:: center

   "To my Heir: a message from the tomb.

.. vspace:: 1

"MY DEAR HEIR,—If ever you read these words
it must happen after my death, because I shall take
care that no man handles my money until I am in
my grave.  That is why I call this a message from
the tomb.  The dead can gain nothing by lying;
therefore I give you no other assurance that what
I have to say is the absolute truth.

"You have done well to come so far, whichever
of my potential heirs you may be.  My treasure is
not here, neither are your journeys at an end.

"From South Africa to the Finnish Gulf is a
considerable stretch, but one hundred thousand
pounds is a large sum; it is a sum that has
occasioned its owner more trouble to acquire than
is involved in a pleasant journey from Africa to
Finland.  If it is worth your while to undertake
this journey, you will act as I shall presently direct
you; if not, you will leave my money to rest where
it is, and where, assuredly, neither you nor any
relative of mine shall ever find it.

"If my treasure fall into hands for which it was
not intended, may my curse rest upon it for ever;
and if none find it from this day until the day of
resurrection, I, William Clutterbuck, shall be just
as happy.  Let him who is wise read the following
instructions, and obey them to his profit:—

.. figure:: images/img-114.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: Old Clutterbuck's Second Map

   Old Clutterbuck's Second Map

"The island is about five miles in length.
Steamers from Hull or London to Cronstadt pass
within half a mile of lighthouse.

"Special arrangements must be made with
shipowners to land upon island.

"An open space will be found in the forest at
about the spot indicated by a cross.  Here are four
posts, defining the area within which it is necessary
to dig.

.. vspace:: 1

"The Prize to the Swift.

.. vspace:: 1

"W. CLUTTERBUCK."

.. vspace:: 2

By the time I had read to the end of this
precious document, my heart was in the usual
condition of hearts whose cherished "hope" has been
deferred.  The disappointment was almost more
than I could bear; the thing was so unexpected,
and the pill so bitter.

If I had followed the impulse of the moment I
should have torn that hateful letter into a thousand
pieces and danced upon it, then and there, to the
tune of all the worst names I could think of to
revile its author withal.  Yet, when I glanced at
Jack to see how he took this disappointment, I saw
that he was shaking with suppressed laughter.

"I would give worlds to have known that old
chap!" he whispered.  "It is the finest notion for
giving healthy occupation to a set of lazy nephews
that ever an uncle devised.  He was a grand old
fellow, this, Peter!"

"What nonsense you talk!" I whispered.  "I
believe the whole thing is a hoax, from beginning
to end.  The man was mad on all matters
concerning money.  He was determined no one should
ever touch his treasure, since he could not carry it
away himself, and this is his dodge; he will trot us
backwards and forwards after the infernal stuff until
we die or get our throats cut, and the money will
rest unfound in Timbuctoo, or Jerusalem, or the
Grand Canary!"

"I don't think so," said Jack.  "I believe the
old man was entirely sane and entirely serious.
Just think; if you had a lot of money to leave and
no one to leave it to (he didn't know *you*, remember,
when he wrote this!), except a set of
good-for-nothing scamps like these Strongs, and"—

As Jack referred to Strong by name, I glanced
up at the sleeping form of that individual, whose
very existence I had forgotten for the last few
minutes in the excitement of examining the money-box
and its contents, and to my horror I distinctly
saw that his eyes were wide open, and that he was
both looking and listening with every faculty at high
pressure.  He closed his eyes the instant he saw me
look up, and was, apparently, as fast asleep as ever.

I whispered my discovery to Jack, but that
practical person was not in the least discouraged.

"Much good may it do him!" he said.  "Take
a copy of the map of the island, though," he added,
"and of the instructions."

And this I did, then and there.

It was, of course, useless after this to attempt
to conceal our discovery from James Strong and
his companion.  We therefore determined to take
the bull by the horns—in other words, to inform
them we had found all there was to be found, and
that, consequently, we intended to depart, in order
to return presently to England.

It fell to me to undertake the duty of making
this communication to my fellow-competitors.  I
did not care for the job, but, desiring to get it over,
I plunged "into the middle of things" at breakfast,
in the morning.

"James Strong," I said, "I think I ought to
inform you that I have found what we all came to
seek, and that it is all up with your chance and
Clutterbuck's.  I should recommend you to return
quietly to England, and if you give me no further
trouble I shall take no further steps about the affair
at Las Palmas."

"You're a pretty cool hand, I will say," said
Strong, forcing a laugh.  "And you won't take
steps about Las Palmas, won't you?  You are too
generous to live, hang me if you aren't!  And do
you suppose I'm going to keep quiet about my
brother's murder?"

"Take proceedings against the lion by all means,"
said Jack with a laugh.  "What a fool you are,
James Strong!  Why can't you talk sense among
grown men?  We are not schoolboys, my friend;
you can't frighten us that way.  Now, what do you
want for your spoilt guns—the three of them?"

"Curse you and your money!" said Strong;
"we shall see what I want for my spoilt guns when
we get back to England."

"Very well," said Jack; "then I shall settle
with Mr. Clutterbuck."

We did settle with him, paying him one
hundred pounds for the three burned guns, to
which Jack generously added another hundred
pounds for expenses, advising Clutterbuck to return
to England at once, and to have, in future, as little
to do with Mr. James Strong as circumstances
permitted; and this advice Clutterbuck promised to
take to heart.  I certainly considered Henderson's
settlement in the matter of guns and expenses an
extremely generous one.

Then those two rode away from the field,
leaving me the conqueror.  My victory was a
barren one, as I feared; but still, I had found all
there was to find, and Jack had quite persuaded me
by this time to follow up my success, and to treat
old Clutterbuck and his "message from the tomb"
with perfect seriousness—nay, I was determined
that I would have that hundred thousand pounds if
I had to seek it in the ends of the earth, and to dig
up half a continent to find it!





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.. _`LOST!`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XVII


.. class:: center medium bold

   LOST!

.. vspace:: 2

As for Jack and me, since we had in our
pockets the map of the spot in which the
treasure lay awaiting our pleasure to come and
dig it up, and since James Strong could not
possibly know to what quarter of the world we
had been directed, or, indeed, any part of the
purport of the miser's eccentric letter, we
determined to enjoy a week or two of real sport
before returning to civilisation and the digging of
treasures in high latitudes.

We had given Strong no weapons, since we
could not trust him; but to Clutterbuck, who was
nervous of travelling unarmed, we presented my
old revolver, choked as it was with lead, together
with a handful of cartridges, Clutterbuck vowing
by all his gods never to give the weapon to Strong,
or even to let that untrustworthy person know
that he had it.

After he had made us this solemn promise, I
revealed to Clutterbuck a plan I had thought of
for clearing the barrel.  It was simple enough.
All he would have to do would be to heat the
jammed portion of the barrel in the fire, when the
lead would quickly melt and come out.

James Strong's face was a study as he rode
away with his companion, and Jack made the
remark that he would not for a good sum be in
Clutterbuck's shoes and have to ride back all the
way to Vryburg, if not to Cape Town, with such
a murderous-looking, scowling ruffian as James
Strong in his present temper.

"Oh, well," I said; "Clutterbuck's the grey
mare this time.  It's he that has the pistol, and
therefore the last word."

"Yes, if he can keep it," said Jack sagaciously.
"But I should be surprised to hear that the poor
chap reaches Cape Town in company with his
share of the two hundred pounds or the revolver
either.  However, that's not our affair.  I hope
we've seen the last of both of them for many a
long day, or for ever; and the latter for choice."

After this, for a space, we gave my co-heirs no
further attention, but devoted ourselves entirely to
the delights of sport.

We first rode back to the village of Ngami in
order to see whether our ox-waggon and hunters
had arrived, but did not find them waiting for us,
as we had hoped might be the case.  We therefore
decided to employ the hours or days of waiting in
a little impromptu sport in the neighbourhood.

We had no guide, and were without any very
large stock of ammunition for the light rifles which
we had brought with us; therefore, we agreed, it
would be foolish to venture too far into the bush.
It would be well too, if possible, to keep our
conical hill in sight as a landmark in our guideless
wanderings.

So away we rode into the jungle, with our
rifles slung over our shoulders, half a hundred
cartridges apiece disposed about our persons, a
blanket each, plenty of matches, very little food of
any kind,—for we would shoot our dinner day by
day,—and, lastly, with old Clutterbuck's absurd
but invaluable "message from the tomb" buttoned
up safely within the inner pocket of my Norfolk
jacket, and a copy thereof in Jack's secret
waistcoat lining in case of accidents.

It was a somewhat unfortunate circumstance
that we went astray at the very outset.  A herd
of beautiful elands crossed the open before our
very eyes, and we did the most natural thing for
Englishmen of our age: we tally-ho'd and galloped
away in pursuit; and a fine chase those elands
led us, heading straight for the jungle a couple of
miles farther away.

Up to this point our conduct had been that
of fairly sane men; but no sooner did the big
antelopes disappear, at a distance of some two
hundred yards in front of us, into the dense forest,
than without a thought we plunged in after them,
gaining rapidly upon the hindermost, at which we
had fired three shots as we rode, and which—with
rare bad luck for the eland, for we were
not accustomed to firing at full gallop—we had
wounded.

We rode madly into the thick cover, straining
every nerve to overtake our prey.  We could hear
them crashing their way through the trees, very
close at hand, and this excited us to even greater
exertion.

The result was a foregone conclusion.  When,
a quarter of an hour later, we succeeded in
overtaking the wounded beast and administering the
*coup de grâce*, and had admired to the full the
splendid proportions of the beautiful dead animal
at our feet, it struck us that we had perhaps done
a rash thing in venturing into this jungle.

"I wonder where we are?" one of us remarked
laughingly.

"Do you remember the way out of this
place?" asked Jack of me, looking around him.

The tangled growths on every side were of
such density that it was impossible to see fifty
yards in any direction.

"We must follow our tracks back, I suppose,"
I said.  "That won't be difficult, will it, as the
elands crashed through the same way?"

Jack did not think it would be very difficult,
neither did I.  Yet, after we had ridden back for
a few hundred yards we came to a place where
the right way might be any one of three ways; for
either our herd had dispersed at this spot, or
other companies of deer or other wild animals had
passed, making several trampled tracks which our
inexperienced eyes could not distinguish from our
own, and any one of which might, as I say, be
the right one.

"This is the way, I believe," said Jack,
showing one trampled path.

But I was almost sure that the right course
was not this, but another.  We argued; we
laughed; we grew serious; we argued again; but
all that we said and adduced in support of our
respective contentions only tended to puzzle us
both the more.  In the end we were no nearer a
solution of the difficulty, but rather, if possible,
further away; for I believe it is a fact that we
were both so muddled by the arguments, and by
the general sameness of the look of the place in
every direction, that we neither of us knew at last
which trampled path we had selected in the first
instance to swear by.  I daresay I changed over
to Jack's and he to mine.

At all events, we eventually agreed to one
thing, and that was that we were most distinctly
and decidedly lost.

We climbed a tall tree or two in the hope of
thus seeing, over the heads of the rest, our old
friend the conical hill; but not a thing could we
detect near or far but the waving tops of other
trees in apparently endless lines of hopelessly
innumerable and impenetrable leaf-screens.

We inspected every apology for a track until
it branched off into two or more other paths.  We
rode for several hours, absolutely ignorant whether
we went deeper into the forest or towards the open
out of which we had entered it, until at last Jack
pulled up, tied his horse to a tree, and threw
himself down on the ground, rolling from side to side
in a paroxysm of laughter, which I found very
contagious and in which I joined immediately.

Of course, there was nothing to laugh at that
I knew of; on the contrary, our position was
somewhat serious.  Nevertheless, I laughed simply
because Jack did, until he suddenly looked up
and pointed, and then at last I saw the reason of
his mirth.  Our dead eland lay about fifteen paces
from us.  We had ridden for four or five hours,
and had returned to the spot from which we had
started!—at which discovery I laughed again until
I nearly cried.





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.. _`HOW WE BURIED OURSELVES ALIVE FOR THE LOVE OF SCIENCE`:

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   CHAPTER XVIII


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   HOW WE BURIED OURSELVES ALIVE FOR THE LOVE OF SCIENCE

.. vspace:: 2

"Talk of returning to one's mutton!" said
Jack; "here's our venison!"

I confess I was uncommonly glad to see that
eland; for since breakfast I had scarcely tasted
food, and the prospect of camping out for the
night upon a little tinned meat and a couple of
biscuits had not presented itself to my imagination
in the brightest of colours.

Under the soothing influence of roast venison,
however, and a comfortable fire, our prospects for
the night brightened very considerably, our only
source of anxiety for the present being the want
of a "long drink."  We had our brandy-flasks
still nearly full, for we were resolved to keep the
spirits for medicinal purposes only; but as the
stuff was unmixed with water, we were unable to
satisfy our thirst by means of a pull from the
flask.  We were lucky enough, however, to come
across a kei-apple tree which provided us with a
kind of dessert; not particularly luxurious certainly,
but palatable enough to thirsty souls with nothing
to drink.

That night passed without adventure.  We
heard wild animals in the distance, but none came
very near us, and if they had we were growing
accustomed to them by this time, and my spell of
night-watching was passed without serious attacks
of "creeps" and "horrors," such as had rendered
my first night or two in the bush periods of
mental torture to me.

On the morrow we breakfasted upon more of
our eland, and cut and cooked sundry slices to
take away with us.  Our Kaffir apples again
served as substitutes for "drinkables," but I think
either Jack or I would have given pretty nearly
all we were worth for a cup of tea or a drink of
water.

"We must get out of this jungle to-day, Peter,"
said Jack, "and find some water; kei-apples are
not good enough."

I quite agreed.  We must get out of this
jungle, if only for the sake of having a long
drink.

Our horses, which had filled themselves with
the cactus-like growths abounding at our
feet—elephant's-foot, or Hottentot bread, and other
delicacies of a like nature—were presumably as
anxious to find water as we were.  They carried
us in whatsoever direction we urged them, but
went listlessly, as though by no means in love
with our enterprise.

When we had wandered thus for a few hours,
and were growing somewhat depressed by reason
of our continued failure to find a way out of the
jungle, I proposed to Jack to allow the horses to
go where they liked.

"They can't make a worse business of it than
we have done," I added; "and they may possibly
be guided by instincts which we don't possess."

"Good idea," said Jack; "we'll try it."

The result was rather astonishing.

Those two sagacious creatures, feeling their
bridles loose upon their necks, and recognising
that they were to be permitted to go where they
pleased, pricked up their ears and started off at
a quick walk.

"I wonder if they really know where they are
going, or whether this is only a kind of 'swagger'?"
said Jack.  It certainly seemed as though they
knew all about it.  Why should they not, after
all, as well as any other animal that is wild and
has a vested interest in the forest?  Horses came
originally from a wild stock, and doubtless possess
the inheritance of their species—namely, the
instinctive power to find their way unerringly
from point to point as well through pathless
jungle as over the easy open.

At any rate, our good steeds had scarcely
travelled an hour without our interference when
we saw to our delight that the forest grew thinner
and the light stronger, and a few minutes later we
were actually in the open, with the jungle behind
us.  We could see our conical hill in the distance,
but on the other side of the belt of forest through
which we had so laboriously passed.  It was also
clear to us that there existed a way to Ngami,
skirting the forest, which would obviate for us
the necessity to plunge again into those dangerous
fastnesses; and this discovery was a great relief
to our feelings, for it would have been a sore test,
to my nerves at least, to re-enter those dark
shades in order to get into the road for home.

Meanwhile our horses walked briskly onwards,
as though determined to see through the matter
which had been entrusted to their instinct; and
whether my readers believe it or not, it is
nevertheless the fact that they travelled as straight
as the bee flies, never diverging by a yard from
their line, until presently they brought us up on
the banks of a wide stream, into whose cool
current they promptly plunged their noses, and
we ours, in very abandonment to the luxurious
delight of thirst-quenching.

This little adventure, or misadventure, was a
lesson to us, and a most useful one, throughout
our wanderings in search of big game during
the next month or more; and as at this time we
passed through several "'scapes" and incidents
of an interesting if alarming kind I now purpose
to set down one or two of these for the benefit
of those of my readers who have a taste for
adventure and wild beasts.  I do not mean to
describe in detail the whole of our month of
jungle life, but merely to pick out an incident or
two as samples of the rest, for an average volume
would not contain the narrative of all we saw and
did during those momentous thirty days.

Jack and I slept that night by the river which
the instinct of our horses (as I suppose) had
discovered for us; and, it being a warm evening,
we determined to do without a camp fire for once,
and to conceal ourselves by means of deep holes
dug in the ground, in which we would crouch
with our heads and shoulders concealed in the
scrub, or by boughs lopped from tree and bush.
We had heard of hunters adopting this plan at
spots by a river's bank to which wild animals were
in the habit of coming down to drink at night,
in order to obtain easy shots from their ambush
at the unsuspecting lion, leopard, antelope,
elephant, or what not, that came to slake its thirst
at the stream.

So Jack and I dug holes, being provided with
spades brought for quite a different purpose, and
lopped heaps of branches and scrub with our
hunting-knives; and when darkness fell we got
into our graves, a yard or two apart, within
whispering distance, and piled branches and
greenery around the mouths of each pit so that
we might put our heads and shoulders out, if need
be, and still not be seen; and then we waited for
developments.

The night was full of a holy calm, warm and
still, and instinct with a kind of sense of waiting
for something to happen.  One felt that the silence
and peace were very delicious, but that this sort
of thing could not continue long, and must not,
for it would grow intolerable after a while.

Then, just as one began to weary of the strain
of the stillness and utter noiselessness, a leopard,
or some such creature, came to the rescue, far
away, and roared half a dozen times on end.

I thought, and whispered my conviction to
Jack in the next grave, that this habit of roaring
when about to go a-hunting was a very foolish
trait in leopards, tigers, and other beasts of prey.
It amounted to calling out, "Now, then, all you
fat deer and juicy antelopes, you'd better clear
out or I'll have you for supper!"

Jack said it reminded him of a master at
school, who used to call out "*Cave*, gentlemen,
*cave*!" before going the round of the studies,
and was, in consequence, the favourite master in
the school.

I was just beginning to propound my opinion
as to which was the greater and which the lesser
fool, the master or the leopard, when suddenly a
sound as of a gust of wind broke in upon us,
came nearer, disintegrated itself into the noise of
the scurrying of many feet, and in a moment we
were in the midst of a splendid squad of antelopes,
plunging, bucking, kicking, boring, leaping,
grunting, squeaking,—all intent upon the water, and
each creature apparently in mortal fear lest its
companions should drain the supply before it had
its share.

One or two of the beautiful little animals
actually leaped over my head as I ducked to
avoid being kicked, and I put out my hand and
patted another which stood close by, to its
unspeakable surprise and terror, causing it to dive
madly in among its fellows and raise a
pandemonium in the ranks, for which, I am sure, the
rest could have discerned no reason.  Probably
my friend obtained the character of being a mad
antelope among his companions from that night
forward.

All this—the confusion and the trampling of
the mud at the water's edge and the drinking—lasted
about five minutes; then, as though they
had suddenly realised that they were doing an
exceedingly rash and foolish thing, the whole
family, as with one accord, turned right about
and galloped away into the darkness.  A
moment—and they were here; another—and they were
gone thither whence they came, and where that
was, no man knows.

What had startled them?  The plunging of
our horses, perhaps; for those poor picketed
beasts were, for some reason or other, very
nervous, and we could hear them stamping their
hoofs and shaking their heads as though anxious
to break away.  A hyena or two were prowling
about in the neighbourhood, disagreeably noisy
as usual, but the horses could scarcely be nervous
on their account.

Suddenly all is explained: the hasty "skedaddle"
of the antelope herd; the agitation of our horses;
the sudden hush of all voices of the forest.
Somebody is arriving—a great and majestic and terrific
personage, at whose coming my coward heart
goes with a jump into my boots.  It is a
lion—and a hungry one!





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.. _`A NIGHT WITH A LION`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIX


.. class:: center medium bold

   A NIGHT WITH A LION

.. vspace:: 2

Without a sound, without a roar, without
warning of any kind whatever, the great
creature is suddenly standing before us.  He was
on his way to the river, doubtless, and became
aware, by means of his acute gift of scent, that
visitors were somewhere in the neighbourhood.

This is Leo Rex; and he is saying to himself,
"Well, I may be mistaken, but unless I were
assured to the contrary I should be inclined to
think that there was a man about!  Yes, I am sure
of it.  And—yes, upon my life, horse too; is it
horse, now, or bullock?  Certainly something
civilised—horse it is!  Well, now, this is really
very surprising and delightful!  You are in luck
to-night, your majesty!  Let me see, shall it be
man first or horse, or a long drink?"

Then the king decides that he will first roar.
That, he thinks, will start the game.  At present he
does not know *exactly* where the man is; after a
good roar from him there will probably be a rustle
and a bolt; as when a terrier gives tongue at a
thorn bush in order to set a-running the rabbit that
lurks therein.

So the great king set up a terrific roar, and
the immediate effect was—besides nearly deafening
Jack and me, and frightening me half out of my
wits—to terrify our poor horses to such an extent
that both broke away at the same moment and fled.
We heard the clatter of their hoofs as they galloped
away into the sanctuary of the darkness, and we
could make out also that the great beast standing
so close to us raised his head to listen.

I daresay he was blaming himself in the worst
feline language for being so foolish as to drive away
good food in this way.  I do not know for certain
what he thought, for at this moment Jack took his
turn at the game of startling poor me, and, before
I had any idea of his intention, crashed off first
one barrel and then the other, the two reports being
almost simultaneous.

I do not know how it was, but I had not thought
of shooting; I do not think my rifle was out of the
pit.  It had been understood between us that we
were to observe, this night, not kill; the fact being,
of course, that we had not expected a lion to come
down to the water, but at most a herd or two of
antelopes or zebras, or perhaps an eland.  I was
not prepared for action when Jack fired, and the
succeeding events somewhat took me aback.

It all happened in a single moment, however,
so that my confusion did not last more than a
second or two at most.  It was like this: at Jack's
shot the huge brute first gave forth the most awful
roar that ever assailed human ears, then in an
instant it launched itself into the air, alighting, as I
saw to my horror, exactly upon the spot from which
Jack had fired.  Probably the smoke hung over
the place and attracted it.

For an instant I gave up Jack for lost, and the
sudden horror of the catastrophe so paralysed me
that I had neither thought nor power of action.
The next moment the idea came to me that I
might at least discharge my rifle into the brute's
body, and perhaps prevent it from carrying poor
dead Jack into the jungle and eating him there.

The lion was standing over Jack, roaring loud
enough to be heard at the Cape, and doubtless
tearing the flesh from my friend's bones; but it was
too dark to see anything.  I could distinguish an
opaque mass standing close at my elbow, and I
knew this to be the lion; but it was impossible to
discern what he was doing.

I put my rifle to my shoulder, but could not see
the sights; then I stretched the weapon to arm's
length until I could feel the end of it against
the brute's ribs, and pulled the trigger—both
triggers.

I thought that the great roar to which he had
previously treated us had been a fairly effective
production, but a terrific noise, half roar, half
bellow, to which he now gave vent, put the first
completely into the shade.  At the same time the
brute, so far as I could distinguish, seemed to rise
up on his hind legs, paw the air, and fall over
backwards.

I thought of dead Jack, and fury lent me
courage; I reloaded both barrels of my rifle,
climbed out of my pit, and placing the muzzle once
more to the brute's side—though he lay quite still
and did not seem to require a second dose—I
fired both cartridges simultaneously.  At the same
moment a wonderful thing happened.

Out of the pit in which he had lain hid suddenly
popped Jack's head, and Jack's voice cheerily
hailed me.

"Peter, old man!" it said, "I'm really awfully
obliged to you!"  At the words so fierce a flood
of joy rushed up to my throat that all utterance
was choked and I could say nothing.  "You have
saved a very precious life," continued Jack.  "Do
you know the brute was simply feeling for me with
his claws when you fired and stopped his game?
Look here!"

It was not of much use to look, for the night
was pitch dark; but I may say that afterwards, by
the firelight, I was somewhat shocked to observe
that Jack's Norfolk jacket about the left shoulder
was torn to shreds, and that his arm was considerably
scratched beneath it.  If the pit had been an
inch or two shallower, Jack's arm would have been
lacerated in a fearful way; as it was, the brute only
just touched him.

We found the lion was as dead as a post when
we had fired some brushwood and were able to
examine him, which we did without loss of time, for
it was unpleasant to feel that the brute might
possibly be still alive, and gathering up his dying
energies for a little *vendetta*, to be enacted upon us
so soon as one of us should come within grabbing
distance of that tremendous mouth of his!

I confess that I was very proud and happy over
that dead lion.  It was "my bird" undoubtedly;
for though Jack was a crack shot and had fired both
barrels at it, at a distance of about ten paces, or
not much more, yet he had missed it clean.  He
could not see the end of his rifle, he explained, and
had simply pointed the weapon according to the
grace that was in him, hoping for the best results.
The results were a clean miss and a big lion sitting,
as he picturesquely put it, on the top of his head
and digging at his arm.  As a matter of fact, I
believe this is what happened: the lion, enraged
by the shot, instantly sprang towards the only
visible thing that it could see, which was the white
smoke of Jack's rifle.

It had alighted with its great carcass stretched
over the pit, the hind legs short of the aperture,
head and shoulders beyond it, but one of its front
legs happened to fall just inside the hole; and it
was in struggling to regain its footing and draw its
great arm out of the mysterious hole into which it
had fallen, that the brute spoiled Jack's coat and
very nearly spoiled his arm and shoulder as well.

My shots came at the right moment, and the
mystery which that lion must have already felt to
exist with regard to the banging and the hole in
the ground, and things in general, was, for that
lion, never solved.  He went away to the Happy
Hunting Grounds with his last moments in this
world made mysterious by unguessable and
incomprehensible riddles, leaving me a very proud and
elated young person.

Perhaps other lions who have been shot by a
visible creature, and with whom my first victim has
by this time scraped acquaintance in those shady
retreats, have now explained it all for him, and have
described what an artful, tricky, fire-spitting,
incomprehensible race are we humans, who have
about as much strength in our whole bodies as lions
have in one muscle of their forearms, but who can
nevertheless spit fire at a lion from the other end
of nowhere, and burn him up in an instant from
out of sight.





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.. _`OUR TRUSTY NIGGER TO THE RESCUE`:

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   CHAPTER XX


.. class:: center medium bold

   OUR TRUSTY NIGGER TO THE RESCUE

.. vspace:: 2

We did not attempt to skin that lion, for
the best of reasons—because we did
not know how.

Simple Jack was very much inclined to try,
because, said he, it could not be very difficult.  He
had heard that if one cut it straight down the
proper place one could pull the whole skin clean off
over the beast's head, like a fellow having his
football jersey pulled off after a match.  But I did
not encourage his enterprising spirit in this matter,
because I did not think Jack's theory would "come
off," or the lion's skin either.

We made up a splendid fire after this adventure,
and passed the rest of the night in comfort and
self-laudation.  We could not expect to see much
more animal life out of our pit ambushes after all
the banging and talking in which we had indulged.

But we heard several hyenas—probably the
pilots and squires of Lord Leo, departed—which
came around and said a great many things in
derisive tones, as it seemed to us; but whether they
intended thereby to rejoice over the downfall of a
tyrant, or to abuse us for depriving them of their
patron and food-provider; or whether, again, they
were addressing their remarks to the lion himself,
ignorant of his death, and assuring him, wherever
he might be, that he was wasting invaluable time,
inasmuch as two fat and juicy young men were
ready and waiting for his kind attention down by
the river, I really cannot say, not knowing hyenese.

But this I know, that once, when Jack and I
had both (oh, how imprudently!) just dozed off for
a few minutes of repose, I suddenly awoke to the
consciousness—like a person in a ghost story—that
we were "not alone."

Up I started, and up started Jack also, aroused
by the same sound that had awakened me.  What
was it?—another lion?

Not only was it not another lion, but lion
number one had disappeared.  We sat up and
rubbed our eyes.  We stood up and looked
carefully around, and asked one another what in the
name of all that was mysterious was the meaning
of it?

At the sound of our voices there was a scuffle
behind the scrub close in front of us, and a
pattering of feet; growlings, moanings, yelpings
followed the scuffle: and we ran, rifle in hand, to
solve the mystery.

There lay our lion, dragged from the spot in
which he had died, and there, under the lee of a
prickly-pear bush, his friends the hyenas would, in
another minute or two, have torn him to pieces.

I did not know then that the hyenas would
have eaten their lord and patron.  It struck me
that they had dragged away his carcass in order
to hide it, in honour, from his enemies, perhaps
to bury it.  I mentioned this to Jack, who laughed
rudely.

"Bury it?" he said.  "Yes; in their stomachs."

I had conceived quite a wrong idea of the
relations between the hyena and the lion, it
appeared.  The respect of the former for the
latter, I now know, though great during life,
vanishes with the breath of his nostrils.  The
hyena flatters and adores the lion while he can
roar and kill food for him; but when the lion dies
the hyena instantly eats him if he can get hold of
the royal carcass.

The morning after our exploit with the lion,
which had first so nearly eaten Jack and afterwards
been itself so nearly devoured by hyenas, we left
our quarry to take care of itself, for this was the
only course open to us, and went on foot towards
Ngami, leaving it on the ground at the mercy of
vultures or hyenas, or anything else that should
smell it out and descend upon it.  We went on
foot, because our horses had broken away and
departed, as we feared "for good," whither we
knew not.

But to our great joy and surprise, when we
reached a grassy glade near the village (having
walked about ten miles from the spot in which we
had passed the night), we suddenly came upon
them feeding quietly, with their torn halters
dangling on the ground, neither surprised nor
disconcerted to see us.

They allowed themselves, moreover, to be
caught by us, which was really exceedingly
obliging of them, for there they were with the
whole of Africa to run about in if they pleased, and
no one to prevent them; and yet they submitted
tamely to be placed once more under the yoke,
and to enter into bondage upon the old conditions!

At the village of Ngami we found our waggon,
with its, to us, invaluable accompaniment of native
hunter and Kaffir driver, and its welcome load of
little luxuries such as bottled beer, and big luxuries
such as express rifles, with other delights.

The native hunter was a Somali, and knew a
little English.  His name, for those who liked it,
was M'ngulu; but we felt that we could never do
justice to such a name as that without a special
education, and called him "M" for short.  He
had convoyed other bands of young English
sportsmen, and knew enough English words to
convey his meaning when he wanted anything,
such as tobacco, which he called "to-bac," or
whiskey, which he called "skey," but which, since
we soon found that he was better without it, we
never offered him.

I do not think our Kaffir driver had a name of
his own; we called him "Nig," or, sometimes
"Hi!" and he was equally pleased with either,
being an extremely good-natured person.

M'ngulu, or M, took to us at once.  I think it
was on account of the lion of the previous night, to
whose remains we very quickly introduced him.  I
had made sure that the hyenas would have picked
its bones by the time we reached the spot, but, to
my joy, there the brute lay, untouched.  As we
neared the place, however, three huge vultures
rose from a tree close by and flapped lazily away
to another a few yards farther down the bank,
which showed that we were only just in time to
save our property.

It was a treat to see M skin that lion, or any
other animal.  There was no mystery about the
proceeding when *he* had a hand in it.  Off came
the skin as easily as if the fellow were divesting
himself of his waistcoat, which, by the bye, is a
garment that he did not actually wear.  When I
come to think of it, I am afraid I should be puzzled
to tell you what M *did* wear.  I do not think it can
have been much, or I should have remembered
it.

When M saw that we had really killed a lion,
and without his assistance, he evidently felt that he
was in for a good thing.  He had cast in his lot
with a couple of great sportsmen, and that was
enough to make him very happy.

Those who had recommended M'ngulu to us
informed us that he knew Bechuanaland as well as
most men know their own back gardens.  You
might set him, they said, anywhere within a hundred
or two miles of Vryburg, blindfold; then remove
the handkerchief and ask him where he was, and
he would tell you.  I do not know that this was an
exaggeration.  I am certain that we, at all events,
never succeeded in finding a place which he did not
know, or pretend to.

M now desired to be informed where we wanted
to go to, and in pursuit of what game?

"Oh, elephant," said Jack.  "Let's have a turn
after the elephants first, Peter; don't you think so?"

I did, and remarked forthwith to M'ngulu,
interrogatively, "Elephants?"

"Oh, elfunts," said M.  "M'ngulu know—not
here—come."

And M'ngulu took a turn to the north-east and
went away with us after those elephants, up through
the continent of Africa, as though he knew every
clump of trees from sea to sea, and all that dwelt
therein.

Wherever the elephant country may have been,
we occupied a week in getting there; a week,
however, which was not wasted, but which was full of
adventure and delight; of days spent in stalking or
tracking, and of nights luxuriously passed within
the waggon under the comfortable knowledge that
M'ngulu lay asleep without by the fireside with one
eye open, and that if a lion or any other large beast
were to move a whisker within a mile or so, M
would know the reason why.

And at length one day, as we passed by a dense
copse of trees whose appearance was unfamiliar to
us, M remarked, "This right tree; elfunt like
him not far now!" from which we inferred that
we had passed into a district which produced
the food beloved by the big creatures we had come
to find.

Soon after this we made a camp, by M'ngulu's
directions, and left the waggon under the care of
the Nig, to whom we presented a rifle for use in
case of accidents, and departed, all three of us, on
horseback into the jungle.

Jack said that it was to be hoped no one would
alarm Nig and cause him to wish to fire that rifle;
for that would be a fatal moment for poor Nig, who
knew no more about firearms than he did about the
rule of three.  Nig spoke English fairly well, and
we asked him at parting what he would do if
attacked by a lion?  Whereupon the Kaffir seized
his rifle (which was loaded), and waved it wildly
about his head (with accompaniment of bad language
and war dance), in a fashion that caused us to ride
away in great haste over the veldt, and not to draw
rein until we were well out of range of his weapon.
It was on the second day after leaving camp
that we saw our first elephant, and made our
acquaintance for the first time with an animal
actually and undoubtedly "possessed," and a pretty
lively introduction it was for us!





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.. _`THE BAD ELEPHANT`:

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   CHAPTER XXI


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   THE BAD ELEPHANT

.. vspace:: 2

We were riding slowly, in Indian file, through
a rather dense belt of forest, M leading,
when that worthy suddenly drew up and slowly
turned his head round to shoot a warning glance at
us.  When he did this old M always looked so
exactly like a setter drawing up to a point, that it
was all Jack and I could do to avoid laughing aloud.

At this particular moment, laughter or anything
else of a noisy description would have been a grave
mistake, for M was very much in earnest.  He
beckoned us up to him, and pointed to a tree which
had been almost stripped of its leaves and smaller
twigs, and said, "Elfunt—bad elfunt!"

"Why *bad*?" whispered Jack to me; "and how
does he know whether it is bad or good?"

To this I could give no reply, for I could not
imagine wherein consisted the goodness or the
badness of an elephant.  There did not appear to
me to be anything peculiarly wicked in an animal
helping itself to its natural and favourite food
without M'ngulu's leave; and I confess that up to this
point my sympathies were in favour of the elephant
and against his traducer, M; but I was to learn
presently that this elephant was a very bad animal
indeed—a really wicked creature without one
redeeming feature about his character.

It seems that the acute M'ngulu formed his
opinion as to the elephant upon whose traces he
had suddenly chanced by the manner in which he
had eaten his breakfast.  He had not only stripped
the tree, but had savagely pulled it about and
broken its branches, scattering bits far and wide,
and from this fact M promptly concluded that he
was a bad or "rogue" elephant—namely, one who
by reason of his evil temper has found it impossible
to remain with the herd to which he belongs, and
has therefore separated himself or been forcibly
separated from his fellows, and has departed to
vent his fury, in future, upon trees, or strangers, or
anything that is encountered.

"You know," said Jack, when we discussed this
question together afterwards, "it's a capital idea!
Why don't we fellows of the human persuasion
adopt the plan?  Fancy, if one could always banish
sulky chaps, at school or anywhere, and send them
away to rage about the place until they recovered
their senses and returned mild and reasonable!"

I said that I scarcely thought the plan would
work in polite society, because, though the
community to which he belonged would no doubt be
excellently well rid of the rampageous one, the rest
of the world would probably object to his being at
large, and would likely enough return him to the
fold in several pieces.

M'ngulu followed up that elephant, by some
mysterious process of his own, for two hours, at the
end of which period we had drawn so close to the
quarry that we could distinctly hear him somewhere
in front of us, still breakfasting, apparently in his
own distinctively "roguish" way, for there was a
sound of continual rending and tearing of branches,
and the ground here and there was littered with
wasted food which, Jack whispered, might have
been given to the elephantine poor instead of being
chucked about in this ruthless way!

A minute or two more, and M'ngulu stopped,
sitting motionless upon his horse, finger to lip.
Wondering and excited, we followed his example,
sitting like two statues.

Presumably M'ngulu had caught sight of the
elephant, but I could see nothing of the brute;
neither could Jack, it appeared, for he craned his
neck to this side and that, and looked excited but
vacant.  The rending noise had ceased.  Doubtless
the "rogue" was becoming suspicious; perhaps he
had heard us, or seen us, or scented us.

"That's the worst of having a Somali hunter,"
whispered Jack; "one *can* smell them quite a long
way off!  Any fool of an elephant ought to"—

But Jack's frivolity was suddenly broken off at
this moment by a loud ejaculation from M'ngulu,
who turned swiftly about at the same instant and
whipped up his horse, shouting out something to us
in his native lingo, which we took for instructions
to follow his example.

Off we scudded, all three of us, separating as
we went; and as we turned and fled I heard a
sound which was somewhat terrifying to the
inexperienced—a shrieking, trumpeting noise,
accompanied by the crashing of trees and shuffling of
great limbs; and I knew, without being told, that
the "bad" elephant had taken this hunt into his
own hands.

In spite of all the noise and circumstance
affording unmistakable evidence that our friend the
"rogue" was really close at hand, I had not caught
sight of him up to this time, and it was only when
M'ngulu had galloped away in one direction and
Jack and I (rather close together) in another, and
when the elephant had very wisely selected M to
pursue, that we two got our first glimpse of him.

He was a huge fellow, and he looked very much
in earnest as, with his big, sail-like ears stretched
to their full width on either side of his head, his
trunk uplifted and his tail cocked, he went crashing
after our nimble nigger, trumpeting and squealing
like a steam-engine gone mad.  I felt some anxiety
on M'ngulu's account as pursuer and pursued
disappeared in the dense depths of the jungle
through which we had come.

M was by far the worst mounted of the three of
us, and was armed only with one of our small rifles,
a bullet from which might stop an elephant once in
a thousand shots, and, certainly, would do nothing
of the sort the other nine hundred and ninety-nine
times.  It would appear that the angry brute had
appreciated these facts in choosing M'ngulu to vent
his fury upon instead of one of us, for we were
armed with our express rifles, bought by Jack with
a view to this very work, and we were besides,
much better mounted than our good nigger.

But we need not have feared for M'ngulu.
That acute person knew very well indeed what he
was about; and as Jack and I still sat wondering
whether we ought to follow in his tracks, or whether
M would have the gumption to bring the elephant
round so as to pass within easy shot of us, we
became aware that M'ngulu had proved himself to
possess the required quality, and was, indeed, at
this moment approaching with the elephant at his
horse's heels.

The first indication of this was a violent
trembling and quaking on the part of my horse as the
crashing and trumpeting began to tend in our
direction instead of away.  Jack's horse, on the
contrary, showed signs of a desire to bolt; and it
was with difficulty that he restrained it until, just
as the hunt came in sight, the brute gave itself up
to complete terror, and, refusing all persuasion,
twisted round and galloped madly away in the
opposite direction.

Mine showed a less frantic disposition.  Though
it quaked and shook like a man in an ague fit, it
stood its ground and allowed me to bring my heavy
rifle to bear upon the furious brute as it came by.

Away darted M'ngulu's terrified horse, making
better pace than ever it had made before this day,
straining every nerve to keep ahead of the mad
brute behind it.  Even old M looked a little nervous,
I thought, glancing back over his shoulder at the
pursuing "rogue," and shouting something to me
as he flew by.  I did not catch what he said.  The
elephant was distinctly closer to his horse's heels
now, than when, a few minutes ago, they had
disappeared in the jungle, and it certainly seemed
to me that it gained at every stride; no wonder
poor M looked nervous.  A considerable responsibility
attached to my shot, I felt; for if I could not
stop the brute he would undoubtedly have M or
his horse in another minute unless they contrived
to dodge him.

I could still hear Jack's horse crashing away in
the distance, and Jack's voice remonstrating with it
very loudly and heartily; there was no help to be
expected from him in this crisis.

All this takes so long to describe, while the
thoughts themselves passed like lightning through
the brain.

I brought my rifle to bear upon the brute as
well as I could for the trembling of my horse, and
pulled the trigger just as it passed within thirty
yards of me, aiming for its heart, which I hoped
and believed was to be found just outside the top
of the shoulder.  I pulled both triggers at once,
feeling that this was a crisis, and that I should not
get another chance of putting two heavy balls in at
a favourable distance and in a vulnerable spot.

The immediate effect of my shot was twofold.
In the first place, the recoil of the rifle from the
double discharge was so great and unexpected as
to cause me to lose my balance and fall backwards
clean out of the saddle.  That was the effect as it
concerned myself.  As for the elephant, it stopped short
in its career, falling forward upon its knees, and
smashing both of its fine tusks with the concussion.

For a moment I fancied that I had killed it outright
at a shot; but the next I discovered that this
was far from being the case, for in an instant the
great beast struggled to its feet and looked about it
with the nastiest expression in its eyes that ever
disfigured the optics of man or brute.  Blood
streamed down its side, but not from the shoulder
or near it; I had missed my mark by a good foot,
and wounded it in the ribs—badly no doubt, but
not in such a manner as to render it immediately
harmless.

I had fallen off my horse, as I explained, and
was at this moment behind it, with one foot in the
stirrup, about to remount, watching the elephant
over the top of the saddle, uncertain whether it
would be wiser to trust to my horse's legs or my
own; and whether, indeed, there would be time
to mount and get under way before the brute
discovered us and charged.

The elephant did not allow much opportunity
for reflection.  He turned his head in our direction
as soon as he was upon his feet, and of course saw
my terrified horse.

Up went his trunk, out went his great ears,
forth bellowed his scream of rage.  Silenced as he
had been, for a moment or two, by the sudden
shock of his wound and his fall, he was doubly
furious and vindictive now by reason of the pain he
had been caused, and in less time than is occupied
by the pious British man who calls at need upon
his patron saint, Jack Robinson, the great animal
was in full descent upon my horse.





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.. _`I AM MOURNED FOR DEAD`:

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   CHAPTER XXII


.. class:: center medium bold

   I AM MOURNED FOR DEAD

.. vspace:: 2

My steed was doomed; that was clear enough,
for it still stood, helpless and terrified,
rooted to the spot and quaking with abject,
nerveless fear.  Apparently terror had completely bereft
it of the power to move, for from the moment (only
half a minute ago, in spite of all this talk and
telling!) when it caught sight of the "rogue" in
full pursuit of M'ngulu until now, it had stood with
forefeet apart, ears cocked forward, eyes and nostrils
dilated, trembling and snorting, and insensible to
direction from the saddle.

As for me, seeing that my horse was doomed,
and that if I had still been mounted I should
probably have shared its fate, I thanked Heaven
for my escape and sprang back into the bush
without further ado, leaving the poor brute to its evil
destiny.  Safe behind a dense, thorny bush I was
free to reload my rifle and watch, if I desired it, the
elephant's behaviour with regard to his victim.

This was not a very pleasant sight, and the idea
of what would have become of me had I remained
in the saddle, trying to get the horse to move, until
too late, made me quite faint.  It is enough to say
that when the "rogue" had done with the poor
beast there was not an unbroken bone in its body;
for he had knelt upon it, danced upon it with his
huge feet, gored it with the stumps of his tusks,
thrown it hither and thither, and torn it to bits with
his trunk, and, in a word, vented upon it an
abandonment of fury which was absolutely terrific to
behold.

So quickly did he perform his work, in the
madness of his rage, that I, who was obliged to set
to work cautiously and with little movement for
fear of attracting his attention, had not finished
loading my rifle when the second act of the tragedy
began.

It was M'ngulu who reappeared next upon the
boards.  He came galloping up, wailing and weeping
at full voice, under the impression, I suppose,
that I had fallen a victim as well as my horse; and
as he dashed past the elephant's nose, he first spat
at it and cursed it, and then fired off his rifle in a
very "promiscuous" manner, one handed.  This,
though it did not injure the elephant, served to
enrage him yet further; and involved M'ngulu in a
second race for life.

Of this race and of its upshot I was not a
witness, for our good nigger and the raging "rogue"
at his heels passed immediately out of my sight,
and it was only when I heard in the distance first
one shot and then two more that I knew where to
look for the hunt.  Having now reloaded my rifle,
I felt justified in rejoining the chase on foot; and
careered away at my best pace in the direction of
the shooting.  I presently encountered both Jack
and the nigger galloping back to meet me so rapidly
that I thought at first they were pursued, and hid
myself behind a tree in order to save my own skin
and perhaps get a telling shot as the brute passed
me.  But there was no elephant, and M'ngulu was
weeping and wailing, and Jack's face looked white
and scared and haggard.

"Jack!" I shouted as the pair rode by.  "Hold
on a bit!  Where's the?"—

Jack pulled up in a instant, so did M, who
ceased wailing on the spot, and, jumping off his
horse, commenced dancing around Jack and me in
a manner that made me suspect for a moment that
the madness of the elephant had infected him.

"Good Heavens, man!" cried Jack, "I thought
you were done for.  This fool of a nigger has been
telling me you were dead—'White man Peter dead—kill,'
he has been saying, and crying and wailing
fit to raise the dead."

"I wish he could raise my dead horse," I said;
and I described to Jack my own escape.

"Great scissors!" cried Jack.  And for some
little time such foolish and unmeaning expressions
as "Cæsar!" "Snakes alive!" "Scissors!" and so
on were the only remarks I could get my friend to
make.

"I don't know which was the bigger fool," he
said at last, "your horse that wouldn't go or mine
that wouldn't stay.  This fool of a beast of mine
took me half a mile away before he would consent
to return, and I only got a look in at the hunt *then*
thanks to old M here, who kindly brought the
elephant to me as I was not allowed to go to the
elephant."

"Still," I said, "I think your horse was less of
a fool than mine under the circumstances.  It's no
fault of my poor brute that I was not made jam of
by that raging beast.  By the bye, I suppose you
killed it between you, as you are here and the
elephant is not?"

"He's dead," said Jack.  "You made two good
holes in him, but in the wrong place.  M'ngulu
brought him by me, and I put in a lovely bull's-eye
in the forehead.  He went down like a sheep, but
struggled upon his knees again.  Then I put in a
second near the same spot, and M fired off his piece
and nearly knocked my cap off—he never went
near the elephant.  He is a free cannonader, is M;
I don't think we'll give him rifles to hold in future,
Peter—at least, not loaded ones."

We were now at the scene of the bad elephant's
demise, and Jack showed me where he had stood,
and where M'ngulu, and how it had all happened.
M's bullet had really passed very close to Jack's
head, it appeared, for the tree trunk was splintered
by it a foot or two above the spot where Jack had
been standing.

There lay the "bad 'un," terrible even in death;
a big, vicious, mangy, bony, ungainly elephant as
ever went mad and was expelled by a respectable
herd.  His tusks had been good, but they were
spoiled by his first fall, and though we collected the
pieces, and M deftly dug out the roots, they were
useless as specimens.  We made them over to M,
however, who sold them, I daresay, for a good
price.

After this we shot two or three other elephants
before returning southwards; but in each case it
being we who hunted them and not they us, as in
the instance of the "bad 'un," the record of our
achievements would be uninteresting in comparison,
and I shall leave the tale of them to the
imagination of my readers, who know well enough how the
thing is done, and resume the thread of our history
proper, which must be pursued without further
digressions; and those who have skipped the
hunting adventures may now read on in the
certainty that the Treasure business will in future
be strictly "attended to," and that they will not be
called upon to skip again, unless, indeed, it be from
pure excitement in the incidents of the legitimate
story of the hidden money.

Had we known it, we were on the brink, even
now, of a very terrible incident indeed.





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.. _`A RUDE AWAKENING`:

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   CHAPTER XXIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   A RUDE AWAKENING

.. vspace:: 2

Our hunting trip over, Jack and I left
M'ngulu, our Somali hunter, and the nigger
driver in charge of the ox-waggon, which was to
follow us at leisure to Vryburg.  On their arrival
we purposed to sell oxen and horses and waggon,
pay off our men, and depart by train for Cape
Town, thence to England, and thence again to our
new treasure island in the Gulf of Finland.

As on our ride from Vryburg, we now took
nothing with us excepting our light rifles and
ammunition, our one remaining revolver, brandy,
blankets, a small supply of tinned food, and two
small kegs of water (of which we had learned the
necessity by the bitter experience of our two days'
waterless wanderings in the jungle near Ngami).

It was but a hundred or so of miles to Vryburg,
but we were determined to enjoy the return ride
thoroughly, and to keep ourselves in food by the
way through the medium of our rifles, though we
did not look to have anything in the way of
adventures, since our friends James Strong and
Clutterbuck were no longer by to afford us the
excitement of a race to the treasure ground, with
its added interest of possible shots from behind or
from an ambush.

I cannot say that I was sorry to feel that
Strong was well out of the way, and probably
half-way to England by now.  I do not like the
feeling, when travelling, that every tree may have
an enemy behind it, only waiting for an opportunity
to put a bullet into you as you come along.  I am
a plain man, and like a quiet manner of travelling
best—the civilised kind, without the excitement of
ambushes and cock-shots, and so on.

We did not go far each day, for there was no
hurry.  M'ngulu and the nigger were going to
spend a few days at Ngami, to rest the oxen,
before starting after us; but we ourselves would
rather pass our time in the veldt than at Vryburg.
So we hunted antelopes, and shot all manner of
birds that looked queer but tasted excellent, and
we camped out at night, and enjoyed life amazingly,
as any two young Britons would under similar
circumstances; for we had had a successful and
delightful hunting expedition, and we were on our
way home to England with the secret of the
treasure safely buttoned up in our breast pockets;
the object of our journey had been attained; the
present moment was full of delight—what could
any man desire more than this?

We were no longer afraid of lions at night.
As a matter of fact, they were rare enough so far
south, and in all probability the one we had shot
at Ngami, before the waggon reached us, was the
same animal which had captured and devoured
poor Strong, junior, that terrible night at the
treasure field.  There were plenty farther north, as
we well knew.  But now we were thirty or forty
miles south of Ngami, and on the highroad to
Vryburg, and there was not much danger of a
night surprise from any of our old friends.

Hence we were somewhat careless when on the
watch over the camp fire.  Nominally we still took
our sleep in turn and watched during the interval;
but as a matter of fact, the function of watching
was honoured by us in the breach more than in
the observance, and it often happened that we both
slept soundly for hours together.  Thus when, on
the fourth night, a most unexpected and alarming
surprise broke over us, like a thunderclap from a
clear sky, we found that we had been living in a
fool's paradise.

For once, old Jack—generally so much more
to be depended upon than I, being a more gifted
person all round, and infinitely smarter and more
wide awake than your humble servant, the present
scribe—old Jack, the acute, was caught napping.
It was his watch, and he ought, undoubtedly, to
have been awake—wide awake.  Instead of that
he was asleep—fast asleep—when, as he described
the event afterwards, he was awakened by being
stirred in the ribs by someone's foot.

Assuming that it was I who took this liberty
with him, Jack lashed out with his own foot, and
hacked someone violently upon the shin, eliciting
an oath which, I am glad to say, Jack instantly
realised could not have proceeded from lips so
refined as mine.

"Come, sit up!" said a strange and yet familiar
voice, with added expletives which I omit.  It
may be taken as understood that in the subsequent
conversation there was an oath to every three
words of one of the speakers, for this was a person
who, I may tell you, was quite unable to speak
the Queen's English without a large admixture of
strong language: there are such people—more
than are needed.

Jack opened his eyes with a start, and recognised
James Strong.  Then he twisted round and
felt for his rifle, which lay at his side ready for
emergency; but he could not find it.

Strong, who held a revolver in his left hand,
laughed aloud.

"No, no," he said; "I've seen to it; you taught
me that trick, you know.  See there!"

Jack followed Strong's eyes to the fire, and
there he beheld the butts of our two rifles blazing
merrily among the twigs and logs.

"Burn nicely, don't they?" said Strong.  "Now
chuck that revolver of yours in.  No, no! none of
that, my lad; if you turn the muzzle anything like
in my direction I shoot.  I can get mine off long
before yours is pointed my way.  Drop it out of
the pouch, anyhow it comes.  You needn't touch
it.  Open the pouch and shake it out—so!"

Jack was obliged to obey, for Strong's revolver
covered him all the time, and Strong was a man
to shoot in a moment if it suited him.  Jack's
revolver fell at his feet.

"Kick it towards me!" said Strong, and Jack
was obliged to do so.  Strong kicked it into the
fire.

"Now then," he said, "that little matter being
settled, hand me up the letter you took from
Clutterbuck's tin box."

"I haven't it," said Jack; "Godfrey has it."

"Turn out your pockets," said Strong.  "You
took a copy; I saw you do it.  Now, please, no
shilly shally—out with everything."

Strong turned over with his foot the few articles
which Jack produced from the pocket of his Norfolk
jacket.  The copy of our precious document was
not there.

"Take off that waistcoat," said Strong; "Or,
stay, what do I care where you have hidden the
blessed thing?  Look here, I give you one minute
to produce it."

There was nothing to be done.  Poor Jack was
obliged to reveal the secret places of his waistcoat
lining, and to bring out the required document.
What else could he do?  The man with the
revolver is bound to have the last word.  If I had
been awake, instead of sleeping like a pig by the
fire, we might have had him; as it was, Jack was
at his mercy.

"Now," said Strong, "go away into the bush;
step out one hundred yards, and stay there while
I negotiate this snoring tomfool here!"

Jack, feeling, as he said afterwards, that a
worm would have appeared a dignified creature in
comparison with himself, stepped out his hundred
yards, or pretended to; as a matter of fact he
remained behind a thorn bush about seventy paces
away, determined to rush in at any risk if the
fellow threatened me any harm.

Then Strong woke me as he had awakened
Jack, by stirring me with his foot, and I am
thankful to think that I too "landed him one" for his
trouble; for I lashed out just as Jack did, and my
foot certainly encountered some portion of his
frame, and as certainly elicited flowers of speech
which I omit.

"Come, get up!" he said sulkily; "the game's
played out."

I started to my feet, feeling for my rifle; it was
gone, as the reader knows.  Only half awake, I
stared at Strong; then I looked round for Jack,
who had disappeared.

Strong's revolver covered me all the while, just
as he had held Jack in peril of instant death.

"Jack!" I screamed.  I do not know what I
thought.  I believe I had an awful fear that Strong
had murdered and buried him.  "Jack, where
are you?"  To my intense relief Jack shouted back—

"All right, Peter; do as he tells you, just now!"

Strong laughed loudly, and swore atrociously.

"D'you hear that?" he said.  "You are to do
just as I tell you; the captain says so.  If you
don't, your brains will fly in about two seconds.
Your rifles are burnt, so is your revolver; your
smart friend wasn't quite acute enough to-night,
and he's a prisoner.  Hand up the letter, or cheque,
or bank order, or whatever it may be that you
took out of Clutterbuck's tin box that night.  You
thought I was asleep, curse you, but that's where
you spoiled yourselves."

I handed Strong the document he asked for.
"There goes," I thought, "my chance of the
treasure!"

Strong glanced at it and pocketed the paper.

"Any bank-notes in that pocket-book?" he
said; "if so, hand them over."  I had thirty pounds
in cash, which he took.  I had subscribed the rest
to make up Clutterbuck's two hundred pounds.

"Now," resumed Strong, "if you move a finger
while I'm in sight I shoot.  Come, hands up!
Stand!"

He left me standing like a confounded statue,
with my hands over my head.  Then he laughed,
swore a disgusting oath at me, loosened the bridle
of his horse, which was tied to a tree quite close at
hand, and started to ride away.





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.. _`STRONG SPRINTS AND GAINS A LAP`:

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   CHAPTER XXIV


.. class:: center medium bold

   STRONG SPRINTS AND GAINS A LAP

.. vspace:: 2

Jack was at my side in a moment.

"Quick," he whispered "let's mount and
be after him; I shall never be happy again
until I have kicked that fellow within an inch of
his grave!"

We dashed into the wood for our horses—they
were not where we had left them.  Of course they
were not; the man would have been a fool to
leave us our horses—we might have raced into
Vryburg before him, and got him arrested!  Strong
was about as perfect an example of a scoundrel as
you would find in Africa or any other continent,
but no fool!

We stood and stamped and murdered our
native language, diving to the lowest depths of
our vocabularies for expressions of hatred and
rage and of abuse, and the promise of future dire
vengeance.  We still stood and raged, when
suddenly Strong came riding back.

"You have disobeyed orders," he said; "don't
blame me for enforcing discipline.  Go back to
your place, you—Henderson, or whatever your
name is!—hands up, you other!"

"I shall have it out of you, one day, for this,
you infernal scoundrel," said Jack, whose temper
was now beyond his control.  "Get down and
fight me on the ground—you may have your
revolver, I'll use my fists."

"You fool!" rejoined Strong with an oath;
"a man does not ask a leopard to spit out his
teeth before attacking him.  Go back to your
place, I tell you, or I fire!"

Jack did not move.

"You are a murderer already," he said, "and
you know it.  What have you done with Clutterbuck
and his money, you scoundrel?  That's his
pistol you hold; do you think I don't know it?
Never fear, you shall hang one day, my friend!"

For answer James Strong fired his revolver
straight at Jack's head.  I do not think he had
intended from the beginning to murder us.  Either
he had calculated that his plans would work out
without the need of killing us; or he had reflected
that his own skin would be the safer, when in
England, if he spared ours; for inquiries would
certainly be set on foot if Henderson disappeared
though few would know or care whether poor I
disappeared or not.

But when Jack accused him of murdering
Clutterbuck, his comrade—a crime which in all
probability he had actually committed, though Jack
only drew his bow at a venture—Strong changed
his mind and suddenly determined that it would be
the safer plan to shoot us both down.  Accordingly,
he first fired at Jack and missed him clean.  Then
he fired another shot and missed again, and swore,
and turned his pistol on me and fired three shots
at me; at the third I fell, feeling a sharp pain in
my shin-bone—my leg would not support me.

Jack had drawn a log from the fire and was
about to hurl it at Strong when he fired his last
shot, at Jack this time, and rode away into the
grey of the early morning, before the last named
could launch his clumsy missile at him.  The
shooting of the six shots did not occupy altogether
more than ten seconds.

Jack sprang to my side, white and terrified.

"For Heaven's sake, Peter, where are you
hurt?" he gasped.  "Can you speak?  Are you
dying?  Where is the pain?"

"My leg," I said, writhing, for the pain was
very severe.  "It's only a broken leg—but it'll
lose us the race!"

As a matter of fact, my leg was not broken, as
the term is generally understood—there was no
bone setting required; but the bullet had carried
away a splinter of my shin-bone, having all but
missed me, but taking, as it were, a little bite out
of me as it passed.

Nevertheless, trivial as the wound was, this
misfortune delayed us three weeks at Vryburg;
for though Jack doctored me with all the devotion
and skill that he could command, the weather was
hot, and I suppose there were some wretched little
bacilli about of the kind "to play old gooseberry
with open wounds," as Jack learnedly expressed it;
for my shin became very painful and inflamed
before we reached Vryburg, and I was obliged to
take to my bed at the hotel there and remain in it
for a tantalising spell of three weeks.

As for our journey to Vryburg, I performed it
in the waggon.  Jack carried me, or half carried
me, back to a village on the highroad which we
had passed through on the previous evening
without stopping, and there we awaited the arrival of
the waggon, sleeping in a native hut and collecting,
I suppose, the bacilli that were destined to play
the part with my wound which Jack described as
"old gooseberry."  Had we stayed in that village
on the previous evening we should have learned
that a white man had been living in the place for
a month, waiting for friends to come down from
Bulawayo, and that he was living there still.  This
was, of course, our friend Strong, who had
deliberately waited a month for us, in ambush, and had
sallied after us when we passed through, and
caught us napping, as described, over our camp fire.

But we learned another significant fact bearing
upon this matter.  When the white man originally
came to the village a month ago, he was, we were
told, accompanied by a friend who lived with him
in a hut which the white men made for themselves.
But after about a week the little white man
disappeared, and the big white man explained that
he had gone on to Cape Town, being tired of
waiting.

But after another week—that is, a fortnight
ago—Umgubi, who was a kind of village herdsman,
and looked after the cattle belonging to the chief
men of the place, came upon the body of the little
white man in a nullah with steep banks two miles
or so off the road.  Then the big white man said
that the little one must have gone astray and fallen
down into the nullah, or else an eland or some
other big animal had attacked him and pushed him
down; and all the natives of the village said that
he must have terribly offended his gods for so
great a misfortune to have happened to him, and
that doubtless an eland had pushed him over into
the nullah, or else he had fallen over by himself
without the eland.

Only, if that was the case, said our informant
innocently, why was there a bullet-hole in the back
of his head!

It was when M'ngulu and the nigger had
arrived with our waggon and translated the tale
for us that we heard the details of this story of
Strong's villainy; and I may honestly say that,
though shocked to hear of poor Clutterbuck's end,
I was not altogether surprised.  It was a comfort
to think that we had done our best for him by
furnishing him with a pistol, while Strong was left
quite unarmed.  If Clutterbuck, with so great an
advantage, was unable to retain the upper hand,
there could be, after all, no one to blame but himself.

How Strong dispossessed him of the revolver;
by what stratagem or plausible arguments or
threats he succeeded in persuading Clutterbuck to
part with all that stood between himself and his
murderous companion; and how, when he had
obtained the weapon, he used it for his fell purpose,
will, I suppose, never be known.  Perhaps the dark
tale of deceit and murder will be revealed at the
last tribunal of all; but it is certain that the tragedy
must remain one of the mysteries in this life.

Meanwhile, where was the murderer?  Half-way
towards Hogland and my hundred thousand pounds?

As for ourselves, we determined to collect what
evidence we could in order to bring the miscreant
before the judges at Cape Town, if we could catch
him there; but events proved that the fox was not
to be so easily run to earth as we had hoped.

To this end we telegraphed from Vryburg, just
a week after our own interview with James Strong,
explaining that we had evidence of his connection
with a murder, and giving his name and appearance.

But when, three weeks later, we reached Cape
Town, we found to our disappointment that the
police had utterly failed to find Strong.  No person
of that name, or answering to the description, had
either been seen or had taken passage by any of
the late steamers bound for home.  The nearest
approach to our description of the man "wanted"
was of one Julius Stavenhagen, who had sailed
in the *Conway Castle* before our telegram was
delivered.

Jack and I looked at one another on receiving
this information.  If this were Strong himself—and
we had a firm conviction that such was the
case—then he had not only escaped just chastisement
for his crime, but he had also obtained a three
weeks' start of us in the race for Clutterbuck's
Treasure.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`LAPPED, BUT STILL IN THE RACE`:

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   CHAPTER XXV


.. class:: center medium bold

   LAPPED, BUT STILL IN THE RACE

.. vspace:: 2

It may strike some of those who read this
narrative that, considering the fact that we
had (in a cowardly manner, as they may deem it,
and with far too much regard for the safety of our
skins) surrendered to James Strong not only our
invaluable map of the spot to which we were
directed by old Clutterbuck's "message from the
tomb," but also the copy of that document which
we had been prudent enough to make in case of
emergency—that, considering these facts, it did not
really matter very much whether Strong sailed for
England with one day's start of us or one year's;
for he now possessed every available clue to the
discovery of the treasure, while we had none
whatever.

Our game was played out and lost.  Strong had
won.  We might sail for England to-morrow or this
day five years, but James Strong would now both
possess himself of and retain the hundred thousand
pounds for which we had toiled and travelled
and suffered, simply because we were ignorant
where to look for either the treasure or for him.

Yet this was not the case, for we—Jack and I—had
been in this matter craftier than the fox and
wiser than the eagle; and each independently of
the other, too.

We discovered this on the morning after Strong's
checkmate of us, as I lay by our camp fire, when,
intending to spring a mine of surprise and delight
upon Jack, I started bewailing the shipwreck of
our hopes to find the treasure.  Strong had stolen
from us, with fiendish cunning, both the plan and
the copy.  I dwelt upon this disastrous fact because
I intended presently to send Jack into ecstasies of
admiration for my sagacity by informing him that it
did not really matter a bit, seeing that I had
committed the whole letter to memory, and knew by
heart every jot and tittle of plan and instructions.

But Jack spoiled my little game by saying—

"Oh, I don't think you need worry, old man,
about the loss of the 'message from the tomb.'"

"Why not?" I asked.

"I know it by heart," he said, "every word of
it; and the plan too—I could draw it exactly.
Look here!"

This was disappointing, for I really had
thought I was going to score for once over my
acute one!

However, we praised one another, and came
unanimously to the conclusion that any two foxes
would have to take a back seat for cunning if he
and I were to drop treasure hunting and take to
robbing farmyards!  And that is how it came
about that the loss of our papers was not so serious
a disaster for us as it might have been if we had
been "other than we were"—*i.e.* less clever.

So three weeks after Mr. Julius Stavenhagen's
departure, or, if you prefer it, Mr. James Strong's,
Jack Henderson and I sailed at last from Cape
Town; a bad second, of course, but still not
without hope that Strong might hitherto have failed to
find the treasure when we should have reached the
island of Hogland, or Hochland; indeed, it might
even prove that, fearing lest we should have
remembered the name of the island, he might have
hesitated to visit the place at all, in case we should
follow and denounce him for the murderer he was.

I did not greatly rely on this last faint hope,
however, for Strong was not the kind of man to
surrender an undoubted advantage for any
consideration of craven expediency.  He would rather
occupy the island of Hogland, and shoot us if we
appeared to disturb him; and that was what we
must look out for, supposing that we ever found
the island with Strong in possession.

"It would simply amount to a shooting match
in that case," said Jack; and I think he just about
expressed it.

My leg was quite cured by this time, and my
only trouble on the voyage to England was that
the *Bangor Castle*, which is one of the fastest
passenger steamers afloat, did not travel quickly
enough.  I was beginning to consume my soul in
anxiety to be even with James Strong for his
smart trick upon us, and to be "one point ahead"
in the matter of the treasure.

But we reached England in due time, and I
journeyed straight up north to Hull, in order to
lose not a moment in making arrangements for our
departure; while Jack took the train at Paddington
for Gloucestershire, binding himself first by a
solemn promise to come up north the instant I
telegraphed for him.

My faithful old friend had vowed to see me
through with this treasure hunt, and declared,
moreover, that he considered himself under a
solemn obligation to discover James Strong and
see him thoroughly well hanged for his misdeeds.

So away went Jack for Gloucestershire, and I
travelled northwards to Hull and interviewed
without delay the shipowners, Messrs. Wilcox, who, I
found, ran a line of regular steamers from this port
to St. Petersburg and Cronstadt.  And first I
inquired, with not a little anxiety as to the reply,
whether there really existed in the Gulf of Finland
any such island as Hogland.  The clerk's answer
was encouraging.

"Why, certainly!" he said.  "Here, Captain
Edwards, you can tell this gentleman all about
what he wants to know far better than I can.
Captain Edwards has just returned from a trip to
Cronstadt, and must have passed this very
Hogland a few days since."

"At five forty-five last Sunday afternoon," said
the captain, a quiet and most gentlemanly little man,
who, I was afterwards to learn, was a pronounced
favourite not only with his employers but also with
every passenger who had the good luck to take the
trip in his fine steamer, the *Thomas Wilcox*.

"Do passengers ever land there?" was my
next question.

"Well, they don't get a chance, as a matter of
fact," said Captain Edwards; "for we never stop.
There is nothing particularly attractive in the
island to cause passengers to wish to land and
explore it.  Stay, though; I have heard of one
visitor to the place—in fact, I took him off the
island eventually, though it was not I that landed
him."

"Not just now—this month?" I blurted.  The
communication gave me a shock, for it struck me
that the passenger referred to could be no other
than James Strong, who, if he had already visited
and left the island, must have taken the treasure
with him.

"Now?  Dear, no!" said Edwards.  "Four
years since, at least—if not five.  An old
fellow—cracky, I should say.  He gave out on board the
*Rinaldo*, tripping from Hull to Cronstadt, that he
was in search of an island to bury treasure in, and
asked to be landed in Hogland when he passed it.
You remember the story, Mr. Adams?"

Mr. Adams laughed, and said he had heard
about it.

I laughed too, to hide my deeper emotions.
This was delightful confirmation of my best
hopes!

"Was he landed there?" I asked.  The
captain's first words rather staggered me.

"No, he wasn't," he replied.  "He couldn't be
without permission from the Russian Government.
But he went on to St. Petersburg, got his
permission, and was landed by the *Rinaldo* on her
return journey.  I took him off and brought him
home.  Dotty, I should say, decidedly.  He was in
the rarest spirits, and declared that he had tricked
his blackguards of heirs, as he called them.  They
were not going to touch his money, he said, before
they had sweated a bit to earn it—just as he had.
Nobody believed he had a farthing to leave.  He
was dressed like a pauper, and disputed his
steward's bill."

Nothing could have portrayed my late revered
acquaintance more realistically than these words.

"It's sport, I suppose, isn't it?" continued
Captain Edwards.  "I am told that numbers of
wolves, foxes, and game birds of all kinds come
over the ice in winter, and some are caught there
when the thaw sets in.  You might have a
pleasant week—lonely, though; only a few
fisherfolk and the lighthouse people.  The island is five
or six miles in length."

I blushed, and declared that sport was—in part,
at least—the object of my visit; but that my main
idea was to make some investigations in the hope
of finding coal and iron, which were supposed to
exist in the islands of the Gulf of Finland as on
the mainland of Esthonia on the Russian side of
the water.

"Oh, I see!" said Captain Edwards.  "Well,
look out for my old friend's treasure if you get
digging.  Who knows you mayn't hit upon something
that will pay you even better than coal and iron!"

Captain Edwards laughed merrily at his little
joke; he did not dream how near he came to
touching the truth.

"Get yourself ready in a week," he added,
"and I'll take you out.  You'll have to get leave,
though, before you can land.  Try the Russian
Consul; he's a sensible chap, and isn't likely to
refuse anyone with commercial intentions that
might benefit his country."

I thanked Captain Edwards, and left the
ship-owners' office to digest what I had heard.

James Strong had apparently not sailed for
Hogland from Hull; or, if he had, he had not
revealed his intention to land before sailing.  If
that was the case, then he would not be landed at
all—unless, indeed, he relied upon getting
permission from the authorities in St. Petersburg to
visit the island, and then returning thence to the
spot.

After all, thought I, he would scarcely be so
rash as to give himself away by announcing who
he was, and why he desired to visit the island of
Hogland.  He would reflect that the first thing we
should do on reaching England would be to travel
up to Hull and inquire after his movements; and
whether our designs upon him should prove to
have reference to the treasure or to the welfare of
his neck, he would naturally prefer to keep his
whereabouts a secret.  He would guess that,
though we had lost our maps, we might at least
remember the name of Hogland, and that it lay
somewhere between St. Petersburg and Hull.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`HOW WE PROSPECTED FOR COAL`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXVI


.. class:: center medium bold

   HOW WE PROSPECTED FOR COAL

.. vspace:: 2

I happened to have some distant relatives
in Hull, and, partly because I could not as
yet make up my mind upon the particular
cock-and-bull story that would best serve me with the
Russian Consul, and partly because, I suppose, if
one possesses very few relatives of any kind the
heart warms towards even very distant ones when
there is a chance of making or renewing acquaintance
with them, I determined to pay them a call.

I was glad afterwards that I did so; for my
father's cousin and his people were pleasant folk,
and I have since learned to know and value
them well.  But over and above these good and
sufficient domestic reasons there was another.  My
relative was well acquainted with the Russian
Consul, I found, and not only did he offer to
introduce me to that official, but even volunteered
to go with me and use his good offices in
persuading Mr. Oboohofsky to grant my request.

My cousin, moreover, knew something of
mining matters, and was somewhat enthusiastic
about my idea of coal and iron to be found in
paying quantities in Hogland.  There were coalfields
in Esthonia, he said; why not in the islands off the
coast?  Why not, indeed?  I began to look upon
Hogland as a kind of "land of promise," and
grew quite in love with my own ridiculous fable of
exploiting the place for mineral wealth, though at
the same time I was somewhat ashamed of myself
for, as it were, taking in my relative in this matter.
There might be coal and iron, however, in the
place, and if I happened to find any, why, so much
the better; my cousin should have the entire profit
and exploitation of it for himself.

Still, I would not promise to dig very deep for
it; that would depend upon the depth at which old
Clutterbuck had buried his money-boxes; I should
go no deeper than that!

The Russian Consul was a practical person,
and did not feel so enthusiastic about my mining
schemes as I had hoped he would.  He wanted to
know why on earth I had thought of going to the
Gulf of Finland for coal; whereupon I trotted out
my Esthonian coalfields—knowledge culled from
some physical geography book, and, by some
inscrutably mysterious process of mind,
remembered where most other items of knowledge were
clean gone out.

Then he asked, why particularly Hogland?
And it was at this point of the conversation that I
showed a readiness of resource and a nice appreciation
of difficult situations, otherwise "corners," and
of how to get out of them, which, if I could only
act at all times up to the "form" of that morning
in September, would undoubtedly lead me into
very high places in the diplomatic and political
world.

I pointed out to the Russian Consul that for
purposes of coaling the Baltic fleet a fuel-producing
island like Hogland, in mid-channel on the direct
line from Cronstadt to everywhere else, would be
an unspeakable boon to the nation.  At present
most of the coal used by Russian warships came
from Hull and other English and Welsh ports
But what if the Baltic were blocked in time of
war?

The Russian Consul did not burst into tears,
and, while thanking Heaven for this revelation of
the terrible possibilities of the future, entreat me,
with streaming eyes, to go to Hogland and find a
little coal for his imperial master's warships; but he
laughed, and said that the English were wonderful
people, and seemed to be for ever prepared to take
a great deal of trouble all over the world on the
chance of very small results, and added that he
hoped, if I found my coal, that I would make him
a director of the company started to work it and
would present him with a few shares.

I promised that if I found coal I would let him
know, but we have never corresponded.

However, thanks to the good offices of my
cousin, who was quite intimate with the Consul,
and my own obvious enthusiasm, which he did not
for a moment suspect to be founded on any more
substantial basis than coal—and extremely
problematical coal at that—Mr. Consul Oboohofsky
granted my request for permission to land at
Hogland, and countersigned my passport to that
effect with the words—"Bon pour l'île de
Hochland;" and Jack Henderson's also.

This matter being satisfactorily arranged, and
there being still four days to pass before a start
could be made, I ran down to Gloucestershire and
spent that time with Jack and his sister, who is one
of the sweetest girls that ever—but no, I think I
will not enter into that matter in this place; if I
have anything more to say about the Hendersons
and their family circle I shall say it later on.

Enough that on the Saturday following Jack
and I returned to Hull and took ship on board the
*Thomas Wilcox*, whose captain had special
permission from his owners to land us on the island
of Hogland.  I confess that I left the shores of
England feeling depressed and miserable, and
disinclined to go and dig for treasure or anything else,
and that I looked long and sadly back at the dull
shores of the Humber and wondered whereabouts
exactly lay Gloucestershire, and what the good
folks at Henderson Court were doing just at this
moment, and especially Gladys—there I go again!

The North Sea is a cruel, ruthless body of
water, and a stumbling-block to passengers.  I had
travelled to the Cape and back, and scarcely felt
inconvenience; but here, one day out from England,
I was treated to such a pitching and a rolling and
a tumbling that my very soul refused comfort, and
I lay and wished I was dead like any novice upon
shipboard; and so did Jack, which was a great
consolation to me, and did me more good than all
the ministrations of the benevolent chief steward
and the encouragement of kind Captain Edwards.

But all was forgotten and forgiven when
Copenhagen was reached and the historical castle
of Elsinore, one of the ugliest fastnesses, I should
say, that ever mason put together for the joint
accommodation of long-dead, disreputable kings,
exemplary living monarchs, and respectable ghosts.

We passed Elsinore at midnight, and I did
think that—as we had paid a good sum of money
for our passages, and had stayed up and yawned
for an hour beyond our usual sea-time for
retiring—there might have been some little spiritual
manifestation for our benefit.  But Hamlet's father
is, I suppose, laid by this time; or the rebuilt
castle, upon whose battlements he used to walk,
is not to his taste (in which case he is the ghost of
a wise and discriminating spirit!), for he never
appeared to us; and we were obliged to retire to
bed baffled and disappointed, resolved to pen a
complaint to the Psychical Research authorities,
who ought to see that passengers *viâ* Elsinore
are not disappointed in this way.

And so on into the Baltic, and past many
islands belonging to Denmark and Sweden, and
with distant glimpses of a most uninteresting-looking
mainland; and presently the Gulf of
Finland was reached, and our pulses began to beat
once more with the old ardour of treasure hunting—a
sensation we had almost forgotten since the
agitating days of the Ngami search, and the many
exciting adventures and crises through which we
had passed in the last three months.

As we drew hourly nearer to our island, my
excitement grew positively painful.  I was
oppressed with a kind of horror that we should find
Strong waiting to be taken off, with a smile of
triumph upon his face and a cheque for one hundred
thousand pounds securely buttoned up in his breast
pocket!

Captain Edwards, who proved a good and kind
friend to us throughout, strongly recommended us
to take with us to Hogland a sailor—one whom he
could easily spare us, since he was now within a
twelve hours' run of his destination—of Russian
nationality, who could speak English.  He had
more than one such "hand" on board, and we
arranged with a certain Michail Andreyef to land
with us and act as our interpreter—a post which
that gentleman, having ascertained that no work
of any kind would be involved in the situation,
accepted with alacrity at a moderate wage; and
remarkably useful he proved to us in our sojourn
in that lonely island.

I do not think that Michail, good man, would
have landed with us if he had known that there was
no drinking shop on the island; but he found out
our flasks after a day or two, and these no doubt
afforded him some little consolation, though, of
course, the contents did not last him long, and he
was only drunk three days on the entire proceeds.
And now here, at last, was Hogland itself—our
Eldorado, as we hoped, if only James Strong
had not already landed and ruined our prospects!

How I stared at it, and wondered and wondered
whether the fateful tin box that contained
old Clutterbuck's cheque lay somewhere within its
soil, peacefully slumbering until the right man came
along to unearth the treasure!  And oh! how
I wished it might prove that Strong had neither
arrived nor forestalled me!





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.. _`ELDORADO OR—HOGLAND`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXVII


.. class:: center medium bold

   ELDORADO OR—HOGLAND

.. vspace:: 2

The island looked bare and desolate enough
from the point of view of the deck of our
steamer, long and rather narrow at each end, but
bulging in the middle to a width of several miles;
covered with pine forests and patches of moorland,
and with a high backbone of tree-clad hills running
down the middle from end to end.  It was
exceedingly like the old man's map as we remembered it,
and the first sight of it so whetted my enthusiasm
and treasure-ardour that I could scarcely contain
my joy when we steamed into view of it.

Jack and I, nevertheless, made the most of the
bird's-eye prospect of the island which we now
obtained; for we knew well that such a survey of
the place might be exceedingly useful to us in our
subsequent investigations.  We saw the spot which
appeared to us to answer to that described in our
lost maps as the grave of Clutterbuck's Treasure,
and we noted the best way to get to it, which was
by the seashore to the left from the lighthouse.

The keepers of that most useful building must
have been surprised indeed to see a large British
steamer stop within half a mile of the hungry-looking
rocks upon which their house and tower
were erected; for though such vessels passed daily,
none ever stayed.  Three men, two women, and
several children came out in a hurried way and
stood staring like startled rabbits at us and our
proceedings before bolting back to their holes as the
boat approached into which we had transferred
ourselves and our luggage, guns, spades, and provisions.

So far as these good folk were concerned, we
might as well have had no passport at all; and as
for the "bon pour Hochland" of the Consul, if we
had written across the document any such legend
as, for instance, "Herrings at tenpence a dozen,"
it would have served the purpose equally well.
For the lighthouse keeper, after having studied the
passports wrong way up, and scratched his head
for inspiration, and spat on the ground in true
Muscovite protest against the incomprehensible,
and having crossed himself in case there should be
anything appertaining to the evil eye or the police
(which he regarded as amounting to much the same
thing) about the proceedings, gave it up as a bad
job, and inquired of our interpreter, Michail, what
on earth we had come for.

I fancy Michail indulged in some pleasantry
at our expense, for the two women and three men
and seven children, standing gaping around us, all
burst out laughing at the same moment, and the
conversation among them "became general."

Presently, however, Michail informed us that it
was all right, and that we might remain if we
pleased.  He said a small offering to the lighthouse
keeper, for "tea," would be acceptable, and this we
cheerfully provided, with the result that that
gentleman and all his following were our sworn friends
for life, in the hope of more tea-money some other day.

We were offered quarters in the wooden houses
in which these good people lived; but when we
entered their abode and learned that we should be
expected to herd in one suffocatingly hot room,
together with every person whom we had yet seen,
and perhaps others to whom we had not yet been
introduced, and to sleep on straw upon the floor,
or on sheepskins upon the top of a huge brick stove
which occupied half the room, we explained to
Michail that we had other engagements.  There
were several reasons for this decision besides those
given—some crawly ones and some jumpy.  We
saw a number of the former on the walls, and had
already begun to suspect the presence of the latter
nearer still to our persons.

Michail might come back and sleep here, we
told him, after he had accompanied us to the small
fishing village where we desired to make a few
inquiries.

This seemed to please Michail, who, we
concluded, had some good reason for liking the poor
dumb animals on the wall better than we did.  I
suppose there is good in most things, if one can
only discern it through the evil.

Michail inquired, at our request, whether
anyone had landed here lately, within the last month
or so; upon which the lighthouse keeper informed
us that the last stranger who had visited the island,
so far as he knew, was a madman from England,
or Germany, or other foreign parts, where
everyone, he was told, was more or less mad.  This
English lunatic had landed here a few years ago;
he had gone and hidden himself in the woods for
a week, alone, sleeping, he believed, at the village
at the other end of the island, and passing his time
counting the trees in the forest, or doing something
equally insane.  After a week he had returned, and
had been taken on board by a steamboat.

"No one else, this month?" we insisted.

"Certainly not," said the man; why should
anyone come to the island if he could live on the
mainland, where there were drink-shops?

This was unanswerable, and quite delightful too,
though how it happened that we had contrived to
arrive before the wide-awake Mr. James Strong
was more than I, or Jack either, could imagine.

"Perhaps he was wrecked, and drowned on the
way here," I suggested.

Jack dissented.  That would not be "playing
the game," he said; Mr. Strong was born to be
hanged; of that there could be no possible doubt
whatever.  Perhaps he would arrive while we were
still on the island!  Michail must keep a lookout,
and come and warn us if anyone landed.  We had
no particular desire to be bombarded again by
Mr. James Strong.

As an additional precaution we promised the
lighthouse keeper the sum of ten roubles, which is
about equal to one pound, if he refused to allow any
other person to land, and were comforted by that
individual's assurance that he would refuse
admittance to the Tsar of England himself for such a
sum of money as that.

Then we went to the fishing village in order to
glean any information that the inhabitants might
have to dispense at their end of the island; but to
all our questions as to whether any person had
landed on the island within the last month, the
"elder," or head man of the village, to whom we
applied, declared that he knew nothing and cared
nothing about anybody or anything; and that,
when it was necessary, he also saw nothing and
heard nothing.

"Ask him, Michail, if a rouble would refresh his
memory as to anything he may have seen or heard,"
suggested Jack.

The head man said he did not know; it might.

Then he took the rouble, and declared that no
one had been near the island for years.

This was very satisfactory, and we added a
second rouble in the joy of our hearts; at which
evidence of our generosity Alexander, the elder,
crossed himself and prayed aloud for the welfare of
our souls.  Then he said he had some articles for
sale which might be useful to us if we intended to
try a little sport on the island, and produced—to
our surprise—an English-looking revolver.  I was
about to take it from his hand, when Jack snatched
the weapon from me.

"Why, great skittles!  Peter," he cried.  "Look
at it!  Look at it, man; look at it!  What do you
see?"  Jack burst out laughing, and then suddenly
grew grave.  I took the weapon from him to
examine it, surprised at his excitement.

"It's loaded," I said, "in four chambers."

"Yes; but look at it well!" he cried.  "Don't
you know it, man?"

I looked again, and the weapon almost dropped
from my hand.  It was my own revolver, not a
doubt of it—my own name was scratched along the
lower side of the barrel.  It was the same that
Strong had choked with lead, that I had afterwards
presented to Clutterbuck, that Strong had stolen
from that unfortunate fellow, and with which he
had murdered his companion; the same with which
he had attacked ourselves on the road to Vryburg,
at our last encounter with the rascal, and a bullet
from which had taken a bit out of my shin-bone.

For a moment or two I was too bewildered to
collect my thoughts.  Jack brought me to my senses.

"Well," he said, "what do you make of it?"

"I make of it that we are too late," I groaned.
"The rogue has been too quick for us, confound him!"

"Yes," said Jack, "that's what I'm thinking
too.  But how did this fellow get hold of the pistol?"

It was a question to which I could find no reply.

"Ask him where he got the pistol from," said
Jack to Michail; and our interpreter put the question
as desired.

The reply was that the pistol was for sale;
would we buy it?  The elder knew nothing about
the antecedents of the weapon, but it was his
property, and for sale.

"Ask him if he will remember anything about
its history if we buy it," said Jack.

The elder was of opinion that he might
remember a little for ten roubles.

This sum was instantly transferred, and our
friend presently informed us, through Michail, that
the weapon had belonged to a Swedish person who
had come over from the coast of Finland, from
Helsingfors, in a sailing boat about three weeks
ago, and who had made him a present of it.  That
was all he had to say.  The Swede had departed
a fortnight ago.

At this reply my heart sank lower than before,
for here was the confirmation of my worst fears.  All
was lost—that much was obvious.  James Strong
had been too smart for us.  He had travelled *viâ*
Sweden and crossed from Stockholm to Helsingfors,
sailing over to Hogland from that port—absolutely
the simplest, and at the same time the most artful,
course he could pursue, seeing that he was unwilling
to travel direct from Hull by reason of the obvious
publicity of such a proceeding.

All was lost—that was now certain.  I was a
pauper again.  The only consolation was that, so
far as I could see, I could not have done anything
to circumvent Strong.  He had had too long a start.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`WHAT THE ELDER DID WITH STRONG`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXVIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   WHAT THE ELDER DID WITH STRONG

.. vspace:: 2

Jack looked as dejected as I did.

"The only thing I don't understand is,"
he said presently, "why Strong should have
presented the fellow with his revolver.  Do you
suppose he intended us to find it here, as a sort
of mocking message to us that we had failed?"

"More likely he wished to be rid of an
awkward piece of evidence in case he was ever
collared by us," I said.  "If we ever caught him,
and he had this thing in his possession, we should
easily have proved our accusations against him."

"Of course he found the treasure," said Jack,
"or he wouldn't have gone away."

"Of course," I echoed dismally.

"Still," said Henderson, "it would be interesting
to hear all about *how* he found it and where;
I'd give another ten roubles to be told all this
grimy gentleman knows."

I was not at all certain that it would be an
unmixed joy to be taken and shown the pit out
of which another fellow had dug the treasure which
I had so ardently hoped to make my own.  But
Jack was evidently anxious on the subject, and
curiosity was burning a hole in my resolution as
well.  I reflected a minute or two.

"Well, ask him if you like," I assented presently;
"it will be a painful thing for me, though,
I can tell you."  More painful than Jack guessed,
perhaps; for I was tenfold more anxious to be rich
to-day than I had been a few months since in
Africa.  I had found a new reason, down in
Gloucestershire, for wishing to own the treasure,
and now all hope of possessing old Clutterbuck's
golden hoard had vanished.  Painful?  It would
be *torture* to be shown the hole in which the
treasure, and all my hopes of happiness with it, had
rested but a short three weeks since; to be ruthlessly
torn from their sanctuary by the bloodstained
hands of a double-dyed rascal like James Strong.

"Michail," said Jack, "tell the fellow there is
more tea-money to be had if his memory improves."

Michail conveyed this intelligence to his grimy
companion, who grinned and scratched his shaggy
yellow locks, and spat and made a gesture as
though he now abandoned in our favour all
previously observed considerations of discretion.  Then
he bade Michail tell us that for a second ten-rouble
note he would tell us the whole history of the pistol,
which he had just remembered.

Jack was artful this time, having gained
experience upon this artless island.  When he had heard
the story, he said, he would hand over the tempting-looking
red bank-note for ten roubles, which he
now carefully removed from his purse and displayed,
invitingly held between his fingers.

Then the elder, after looking wolfishly at the
note and indulging in a final scratching among his
tousled locks, began his tale, which proved to be
a sufficiently exciting one.

"It was a lunatic of a Swede," he said, "who
had sailed over in a small sailing-boat from
Helsingfors, and had moored his craft over there at
the Finnish side of the island and come ashore.
He couldn't talk a word of anything that anyone
could understand in the island, and would not come
to the village, but slept on the shore close to his
boat; and if anyone came near to have a look at
him he stamped and raved and scolded them away
again.

"On the morning after the first night I went
down to the shore to see what the Swede was
about," continued the elder, "that being my duty
as elder of the village, and I took with me Kuzmá,
my brother-in-law, and Gavril, my brother; for we
have no right to admit strangers upon the island
without passports.  But this fellow had no passport,
and threatened me with his fists for demanding one
of him.

"So Kuzmá and Gavril and I sat down on the
shore to watch what the Swedish lunatic would do.

"He waited, hoping that we would go away;
and we waited, to see what he wanted on our island.
He did nothing but read letters and look this way
and that through the trees, and then down again
at his letter, like any lunatic.

"Presently he grew tired of waiting, and stood
up and shouted at us to go away.  We did not
understand his lingo, but that was doubtless the
meaning of it, only the man was so angry that he
could hardly speak, but only screamed at us and
stamped his foot.  Kuzmá grew a little frightened
and said, 'Shall we go, brothers?  This man is
mad; it would be wise to preserve our bodies from
harm.'

"But I said, 'No.  We will pretend to depart,
and hide ourselves among the trees; then we shall
see but not be seen!'  So we departed and hid
ourselves where the mad Swede could not see us.

"After a while," continued the elder, "the
madman took his letters and a spade, and wandered
about among the trees until he came to a certain
place, and there he began to dig.

"We desired to know, naturally, why he dug in
the earth of our island, and while he was very busy
with his digging we came nearer to see what we
could see.

"And then, of a sudden, Kuzmá coughed, and
that mad Swede looked up and saw us.

"Holy Saint Vladimir, equal to the apostles,
preserve us from such demons as that Swedish
maniac when he caught sight of Kuzmá and me
and Gavril!  He rushed straight at us like a wild
bull, bellowing and shouting, and then—what think
you, Mercifulness?—he whipped this very pistol
from his pocket and banged one shot at Kuzmá
and one at me.  Me he missed, by the mercy of
the Highest, and thanks, doubtless, to the
interposition of my patron saint, Alexander of the Neva;
but Kuzmá was struck by a bullet in the arm, and
lay yelling on the ground."

The elder here paused in his narrative, which,
for me, was about as interesting a tale as ever
human lips unfolded, and spat five several times on
the earth, crossing himself after each performance
of the function.  I waited impatiently for him to
recommence.  Jack's face, which I glanced at, was
a study; he too was absorbed by the interest of
the tale.

When the elder had finished his semi-religious
duties, he continued—

"Gavril," he said, "my brother, to whom may
the saints ensure a heavenly kingdom for his
behaviour that day,—Gavril, with his staff, whacked
the Swede on the head before he had quite killed
Kuzmá and me, and knocked him senseless; in
which condition Gavril and I put him in his boat
and sailed across to Narva, where we gave in our
evidence against him in the police court.  We
showed the pistol, and promised to produce Kuzmá
when his arm was well enough to allow him to
travel.  This is his pistol that you have bought;
and that is my tale.  It's all I know, and may the
holy saints preserve those who are honest folk, and
punish the evil doers!  If I have pleased your
Mercifulness, I will place the ten-rouble note along
with the other."

Thus, or to this effect, did the elder wander
along, Michail laboriously translating, and then he
stopped, having said his say.

"Good Heavens!  Peter," said Jack after a pause,
"that's a tale well worth ten roubles, I fancy;
what say you?"

"Stop a bit," I gasped.  "Ask him, Michail,
what the Swede got out of the earth?  Does he
know what the fellow was digging for, and did he
find it?"

"He did not give himself time," said the elder.
"He flew at us before he had dug for half an hour.
As for that which he expected to find, how should
a plain fisherman know that?  He was mad; what
would a madman expect to find growing upon an
island, that he could dig up with a spade?  Gold
and jewels, perhaps!"  The elder laughed aloud
and spat freely.  Jack still withheld the note.

"At anyrate, he found nothing?" he asked.

"Nothing but sand, Mercifulness."

"And what has become of the Swede?" said I.
"Was he detained at Narva?"

"Detained at Narva to be tried, Mercifulness,"
said the elder.  "But there is hope that when the
police behold Kuzmá's arm, which will be next
week, the rascal may journey to Siberia without
further trouble."

Jack handed in the ten-rouble note; our friend
had certainly earned it; for though, of course, I
would not go so far as to say that this elder told
the truth (being a Russian that, of course, would
be impossible; the only Russian who ever told the
truth is dead), yet that his tale was not all lies was
proved by the pistol.

Jack thought of a way of obtaining a little
supplementary evidence in corroboration.

"Get him to show us where the Swede shot at
him," he said, addressing Michail.  "It would be
interesting to see the mark in the tree made by the
bullet fired at the elder."

Strong's latest victim had no objection to giving
us this pleasure, and we were conducted to a place
in the wood, and shown a tree which had an
undoubted bullet mark some seven feet up the trunk.

"Ah!  I see," said artful Jack.  "So that is
where you stood, and Kuzmá here, and the mad
Swede came rushing from over there."

"No, not there," said the elder; "your Mercifulness
may see, if you will, where the fellow was
digging in the ground when we saw him.  Heaven! to
come all this way to dig!"





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.. _`MUCH DIGGING`:

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   CHAPTER XXIX


.. class:: center medium bold

   MUCH DIGGING

.. vspace:: 2

The elder's invitation fell out very propitiously
with artful Jack's designs, and we were
shown the open space among the trees where
Strong had commenced his digging operations,
which had come to such an untimely end.  There
was the hole he had dug when interrupted and
made to lose at once his temper and his chance of
wealth.

There too were the four posts, arranged exactly
as in Bechuanaland, in an irregular square.  Strong,
remembering where the treasure had been found in
the first instance, had gone straight to the
corresponding corner here, had pulled up the outer post,
and begun to dig about its socket.  Jack laughed.

"The old fellow wouldn't have been likely to
hide it in the same spot twice," he said; "that
would be too easy for us!"

I suggested that, at anyrate, we must not lay
ourselves open to suspicion by digging about or
even remaining in the neighbourhood of this
particular spot, or we should have the whole village
coming and digging with us.  We must pretend
that our curiosity was satisfied by the sight of the
scene of the struggle, and that there our interest in
this spot ended.  We must do a little hunting or
fishing for a day or two, and then return unsuspected
to our real labours.

So we hired the elder and Gavril, the hero of
the broomstick which had overthrown James
Strong, and went a-fishing among the tiny islands
and rocks that fringed the shores of Hogland itself,
and here we spent a day very pleasantly in allaying
the suspicions of the elder and in catching some
good fish, in weight from one to fifteen pounds,
including a few which I believe to have been large
lake trout.  The water here was scarcely brackish
and the fish we caught were all denizens of the
fresh water.

But excitement and longing to be up and about
so as to discover the hidden treasure, burned like
a banked fire within my bosom, and I was feverishly
anxious to be ashore once more and at work.

We were out all night, and a cold function
indeed it was; and right glad were we that we had
brought our flasks to keep us alive and help our
circulation to maintain the struggle.  It was now
that Michail discovered the existence of those
flasks, for we had presented both the elder and our
interpreter each with a small portion of the
contents, and both men had found the English brandy
to their taste.  The consequence to us was, that
when we landed and retired to sleep those two
artless Russians stole our flasks and disappeared.

Now this, far from proving, as at first sight it
might seem, an unmixed disaster, was, as a matter
of fact, the greatest boon that could have happened
to us; for though there was not very much of the
spirit in our stolen flagons, yet it was strong, and
there was enough to keep both men handsomely
employed in recovering from its effects for three days.

Those three days of investigation, free from
inquisitive observation and possible interference,
were exactly what we most desired, and at the very
first opportunity we shook off both the elder and
Michail, who were already in secret possession of
the flasks and quite pleased to be shaken off, and
set to work in earnest at our digging.

The area to be investigated was of the same
shape as our African treasure-field, but smaller by
half, for which mercy I was grateful to destiny;
for even half the old area was quite sufficient for
the digging of two men, unless they happened to
desire to dig themselves into their own graves,
which Jack and I certainly did not.

Needless to say, Jack now felt no compunction
about taking his turn with the spade, for I might
fairly consider myself the only competitor now left
"in the running."  Poor Clutterbuck murdered;
young Strong eaten; James Strong in Siberia, or
on the way there—there were none left to contest
my claims.

So Jack dug with me, and very hard work he
found it, and very stiff he felt at the end of the
first profitless day; so that I was able to screw out
of him a kind of apology for his want of sympathy
with my stiffness at Ngami.  We had half intended
to set a decoy for wolves, of which there were said
to be a few on the island; but we were both too
tired for anything of the sort, and preferred to
sleep, wrapped in our blankets, over a fire in the
forest, as in the African days, only with dark pines
waving over our heads, and a sharper air biting at
the exposed parts of our persons, instead of strange
palmy and ferny trees, and prickly-pears and kei
apples, and a soft, hothouse kind of air around us.

On the second day we toiled from morn till
dewy eve, but found nothing to repay us, and by
that time the surface of our ground was upheaved
from end to end to the depth of a spade-head.
Then we determined to spend the third day in
trying various experiments.

We were full of excellent ideas, but the same
thoughts had unfortunately not occurred to old
Clutterbuck while hiding his treasure.

First of all, we procured from the village a ball
of string; they had plenty there, for the making
and mending of nets.

Then we fastened an end to one of the posts
and carried a line across diagonally to a second,
and from a third across to the fourth, as from A to
B and from C to D in the chart—

::

         A      C
              E
            D   B

.. vspace:: 1

Where the strings crossed at E, we dug a deep
hole and had great hopes for the result.  But it
seemed that this excellent plan had not occurred
to Mr. Clutterbuck; he had not concealed his
wealth in accordance with our ingenious geometrical
device.  Then we went and borrowed a horse and
a plough from the fisherfolk, who had a field or
two near the village for the growing of their rye
and potatoes.  And with that plough we turned
up every scrap of our acre of land, and began to
grow desperate because there was not a vestige of
treasure or anything else but sandy soil and a few
worms.

Then we sat down to reflect, and gnashed
our teeth, and took in vain the name of old
Clutterbuck who had beguiled us to this forsaken
island to dig for treasure which he had never
buried.

"I believe Strong found it, after all," said
Jack—"found it in five minutes in the very first
hole he made."

"If I thought that I would go to Siberia after
him," I said, "and screw his neck till he gave it up."

"My dear man, he couldn't take a load of
treasure with him to Siberia!" said Jack.  "The
authorities would have it in a minute."

"It might be all in one cheque," said I; "and
he's hidden it—swallowed it, or put it in his boot
or something."

"Well, you can't very well follow him to Siberia
with a stomach-pump in one hand and your revolver
in the other," laughed Jack; "but you may bet, if
he had found the stuff he would not have been so
quarrelsome; he would have been too pleased with
himself to rush straight at these poor peasants and
empty his revolver at their heads!"

This seemed true, and we turned our thoughts
once more to the invention of devices that might
have occurred to the old man for the more
ingenious concealment of his treasures.  It could
scarcely be supposed that the old miser really
desired to defeat altogether the ingenuity of his
heirs, should they prove to be in possession of a
quantum of that commodity; for if it had been his
intention to deprive us altogether of the money, he
need never have made us his potential heirs.  The
money must be here—that was as good as certain.

Then we tested other geometrical designs.
We counted as many feet towards the middle, from
each post in turn, as the old man had lived years,
seventy-one; and we dug deeply at each seventy-first
foot.  We turned up the soil at the spot where
fell the only shadow of the day—the shadow of a
tall pine whose topmost boughs afforded us a few
feet of shade towards evening; but nothing came
of it.  We tried many other devices, each more
deeply ingenious, not to say "far-fetched," than the
last; but the third day drooped and faded, and still
we were no wiser than before.

That night Michail returned to camp, looking
as though he had passed through great tribulation
and had been making good resolutions.  He slunk
in and lay down by the fire, and slept so soundly
that no ordinary artillery firing a royal salute at his
ear would have disturbed him.

We were sorry to see Michail, for we did
not desire his presence here.  We wished we had
another flask for him.

This wish was redoubled when in the morning,
as we dug and delved—toiling and perspiring and
almost despairing, though still manfully playing up
to the motto of my own family crest: "*Dum spiro
spero*" (which Jack translated "Stick to it, boys,
till you're pumped!")—while Michail still slept, the
elder appeared suddenly upon the scene.  He too
bore traces of bacchanalianism, though he did not
seem to have suffered so severely from the malady
as Michail.  The elder was surprised to see us
working, and asked us what we were about.

We gathered that this was the meaning of the
elder's remark, but until we had kicked Michail into
the realms of consciousness in order to translate
it for us we could not be certain.  Michail awoke
at the seventeenth kick, and said he had not been
asleep, but had been lying and thinking.  He told
us what the elder had said, the elder repeating it.

"Tell him that's our business," said Jack
surlily—he was disgusted, like myself, with the
failure of our labours; "and that he'd better go
home to the village and mind his own."

"Oh," said the elder, on hearing this, "certainly
I will obey; I had no wish to intrude upon their
Mercifulnesses; only I thought their Mercifulnesses
might be digging here in order to find a certain tin
box with a letter in it which I myself found near
this spot some years ago!"

The spade dropped from my hand; Jack's fell also.

"Michail," he said, or gasped; "what does the
fellow mean?  Where is the tin box and the letter
that he found here?  Ask him quickly, idiot, or
I'll brain you with my spade!"

The elder was not disturbed by our excitement;
he said he thought the tin box was somewhere up
at the village; he wasn't quite sure!





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`I TAKE A STRONG LEAD IN THE RACE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXX


.. class:: center medium bold

   I TAKE A STRONG LEAD IN THE RACE

.. vspace:: 2

Jack seized the elder by the shoulders and
shook him—shook him handsomely and
thoroughly till his splendid white moujik-teeth
rattled in his head.  The elder burst into tears and
fell on his knees as soon as Jack let go of him,
crossing himself repeatedly and jabbering
vociferously.  The fox had changed in an instant into a
rabbit, and a timid one at that.  It was impossible
to translate what he said, Michail protested.  On
being pressed to do so, Michail observed—

"He say his prayers," and I think that must
have been about the measure of it; at all events,
he was saying nothing about tin boxes.

"Tell him we don't wish to hurt him," said
Jack; "but we intend to have that tin box; and if
his memory does not improve in the next five
minutes, so that he leads us straight to where he
has hidden it, something dreadful will happen to him."

This truculent message was given to the elder,
who allowed himself but one more minute for the
consolation of prayer and then took to his heels for
the village, we taking care to keep up with him.
Jack's threat seemed to have wonderfully assisted
the process of recalling the past, for Alexander led
us straight to his own house, into the living room
(where his astonished wife and five amazed children
were feasting upon black bread and dried fish,
their mouths, opened to receive those dainties,
remaining open by reason of their surprise), and
without hesitation opened a kind of cupboard in
the corner in which he kept his three teacups and
his two tumblers (one cracked), together with his
store of vodka.

From this receptacle, which he opened but a
fraction, as though jealous lest we should steal a
peep at his teacups, he quickly produced a tin box,
the facsimile of that which I had unearthed in
far-away Bechuana.  The elder crossed himself,
spat on the ground, made a droll gesture of
surrender to superior force, and banged the box down
upon the table.

Then his face assumed a beseechful, maudlin
expression, and he said that he had done as the
gentleman desired, but if the gentleman considered
it worth a gratuity that he should have safely
preserved this box until the gentleman came for it, why—

"Tell him to go to the deuce," said Jack; "and
wait there till we see what's in it and what isn't.
Here, Peter; it's yours—examine."

I opened the box: there was another within it,
as before; neither was locked; and as before,
inside the inner receptacle was an envelope, and
within the envelope a letter; no cheque to bearer,
no bank-notes for one hundred thousand pounds....
My disgust and disappointment were too
great for words; I could not speak; I could not
even swear; I believe I burst into tears.

"Come, come!" said Jack bracingly, "don't
give way, old chap; it's just as well there are no
diamonds or gold—this elder fellow would have
had the lot!  Cheer up, man, and read the letter,
or I will!  I for one don't mind another
journey—I haven't travelled half enough yet!  Read the
letter!"

It was all very well for Jack.  The issue was
nothing to him (comparatively speaking); to me it
was everything—all the world, and the happiness
of life!

"I told you how it would be," I raved; "the
old rascal meant to swindle us from the beginning.
He will keep us travelling from pillar to post in
this way till the worms have eaten up his hoardings
and his miser's carcass as well.  The whole thing's
a fraud, Jack, and I am the victim."

"You're better off than the other victims, at all
events," said Jack.  "Read the letter, man.  Don't
abuse the old boy till you know he deserves it."

"Confound the letter," I said, "and him too!
Read it yourself—I'm sick of the business!"

I was, as my conduct indicates, very angry,
very disappointed, and very ridiculous.  I have
since exonerated Mr. Clutterbuck and apologised
to Jack, many a time.  I still think, however, that
the old man's methods were extremely exasperating;
and though ashamed of my loss of temper,
I am not in the least surprised that I should
have succumbed to my feelings of rage and
disappointment.

But there was one thing which I have never
regretted in the slightest degree, and that is, that
when Michail suddenly laughed out at this point,
finding, I suppose, something comical about my
words or actions, I laid hold of him by the
shoulders from behind, and walked him twice
round the room and out at the door, I kicking and
he yelling.  After this I felt consoled and returned
to hear Jack read out the letter.

It was very much like the other.

"The Prize to the Swift," the document began,
and continued as follows:—

.. vspace:: 2

"Do not despair, you whose energy has proved
equal to emergency.  Having succeeded up to this
point, you are sure to succeed to the end.  My
treasure is not here.  I would never leave it so far
from home and at the mercy of prying strangers
in a foreign land.  How do I know that I am not
watched at this moment by jealous eyes from the
fishing village a mile away?  This box will possibly
be dug up after my departure, but I do not dread
such an event, since it will add, perhaps, to your
trouble in finding it, my most indolent relatives
and heirs, and that is a contingency which I hail
with joy.  That any finder of the box will destroy
it, I am not afraid.  He will rather keep it by him
and sell it to those who come to seek it.

"As for you, my treasure is where it should be,
and must ever have been, for I would never trust
it elsewhere—in my own country and in my own
home.  Where else should it be?  Return, then,
successful pilgrim; seek nearer home.  Where
my treasure is, there is my heart, or near it.  I
lie buried in Streatham churchyard; my treasure is
not far away from my bones! ... Dig, dig, and
dig again.

"The only land upon which I or my heirs
possess the right of digging is my own garden in
Streatham.  Dig there, my friend, and success to
him who digs wisest and deepest.

"My portrait is part of the spoil for the winner;
it was done for me by a pavement artist for two
shillings and three pence, but do not throw it away
on that account.  It is the portrait of your benefactor,
and his blessing will go to him who preserves
it well."

.. vspace:: 2

The letter ended here, without signature or date.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE ELDER MAKES A GOOD BARGAIN, AND MICHAIL A POOR ONE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXXI


.. class:: center medium bold white-space-pre-line

   THE ELDER MAKES A GOOD BARGAIN, AND
   MICHAIL A POOR ONE

.. vspace:: 2

"What does he mean?" I growled.
"Where's the portrait?"

Jack looked in the boxes, and turned the
letter round; there was no sign of a drawing
or of anything connected with portraiture.

I walked up to the elder's cupboard and
looked in.  Besides the teacups and other
domestic treasures there was a tin case, in size
about one foot by nine inches.  I took this
without permission from the elder, who had
disappeared after Michail.  I opened it.

Sure enough, it was a portrait of old Clutterbuck—the
vilest that could be conceived, but still
recognisable.  The old man could never, I should
say, have laid claim to good looks; but the
"pavement artist" had scarcely done him justice; he
had, in fact, represented his client as so repulsively
hideous that the lowest criminal would probably
have reconsidered his position and turned over a
new leaf if informed that he possessed a face like
this of poor maligned Clutterbuck.

"By George!" said Jack, "the old chap
couldn't have been very vain to bequeath such
a thing as that to his heirs.  What a terrible
specimen he must have been!  Was he like this
thing?"

"He wasn't as bad as that," I replied.  I felt
that I had a grievance against the man, and I was
not inclined to give him more than the barest
justice; but I was bound to admit this much.

"I'm glad to hear it," said Jack; "for if he
had been, I think I should have lost my faith in
the *bonâ fides* of his letters and of the whole thing.
That pavement artist ought to have been hanged,
and his body danced on.  What, in Heavens
name, did the old man want to leave you a thing
like that for?  Why couldn't he get himself
photographed if he was sentimentally anxious that
his heirs should possess his portrait?"

Jack laughed; I could not help joining in.  It
was really rather funny; and the more one looked
at the picture the more one felt inclined to laugh.
The artist was evidently not ashamed of his work,
for he had painted his name in full at the foot
of it, "Thomas Abraham Tibbett," bless him!  I
know his name well—I read it every day of my
life, for his masterpiece hangs over my washstand,
and I look at it whenever I feel low in spirits and
think that a little T. A. Tibbett will do me good.

"What a merciful dispensation that one can't
see his eyes, or, rather, that they are looking
downwards and don't follow you about as they do in
some portraits that are not by pavement artists,"
said Jack.  "Look at them; there'd be a lifetime
of nightmares in a pair of eyes like those, if they
happened to be looking up."

I have often thought how true this was, and
have rejoiced that the artist of the pavement
mistrusted his skill and made the eyes as he did; but
for my joy there are more reasons than now appear.

Michail and the elder were outside when we
left the house.  I think they were conspiring
against us; no violence, or anything of that
sort—a mere conspiracy of roubles.  Michail desired a
solatium for the kicks he had received from me;
the elder grieved because he had delivered up
his tin box, under the influence of fear, without
pecuniary equivalent.

Both were sulky and uncommunicative, or
perhaps assumed sulkiness for their own ends.
The only information that we could obtain from
Michail, in reply to our requests that he would
inquire of the elder where and how he found the
tin boxes, was that Kuzmá was going to sail across
to Narva to give evidence against the Swede who
had shot him.

"What has that to do with it?" said Jack.

Michail grinned and scratched his head, and
said something in Russian to the elder, who did
likewise and cleaned up his mouth with the back
of his hand besides.

"Well?" said Jack; "go on!"

"The other great lord kicked me in a painful
manner!" continued Michail, placing his hand near
the afflicted part.

"He will kick you again in a still more painful
manner," said Jack, "if you don't explain yourself."

"There is plenty of good vodka at Narva," said
Michail, "forty, fifty, or sixty copeks the bottle, or
two-forty for a *vedro*."  (A *vedro* contains, approximately,
a gallon.)

"Oh, I see," said Jack.  "All right, sonny, you
shall be healed, don't fear; and the other fellow
too, but ask him about the boxes first!"

"Tea-money first!" said Michail.  "Alexander
says the little box is worth five roubles and the big
one ten.  At Narva, if I complained against the
merciful gentleman for kicking me, he would be
detained and fined.  A gallon of vodka and twenty
roubles is my price for being kicked by the
honourable lord."

"Kicked how many times?" said Jack.  "For
that sum we shall certainly kick you round the
island, my friend.  The police at Narva will fine
as much for one kick as for thirty.  We shall take
all our kicks, remember!"

Michail decided not to go to Narva, and to
charge me for the original kicking only—the price
of which was fixed at a vedro of vodka, to be
brought back from Narva by Kuzmá, and one rouble.

As for the elder, we paid him for the tin boxes,
for, after all, they were treasure-trove, and might
prove to be very much more valuable to us than
the price asked.

This little matter being satisfactorily settled,
Alexander the elder deigned to inform us how he
came by the property.

This, he said, was a very simple matter.  He
had had the things five years, keeping them
because he felt sure someone would arrive one
day to find them.  Five years ago an old
Englishman had come on the island, all alone,
to seek rare flowers and plants, as he informed
everyone through a pilot at the lighthouse, since
departed, who spoke English.

The elder had watched the old man's botanical
researches, and saw him collect a number of roots
of "*brusnika* and other rubbish," and saw him
also plant four posts in the wood, digging holes
for each and putting them in and piling earth to
keep them steady.  Then he had dug a fifth hole,
somewhere near, and buried these boxes in it,
laughing and jabbering to himself, said the elder,
like a madman.  The rest was very simple.  Old
Clutterbuck sailed away in the English steamer
that stopped to pick him up, and the elder quickly
went and dug up the boxes, hoping to find cash,
but discovering nothing more valuable than a
letter he could not read.  He had thought of
destroying both this and "the picture of the devil,"
as he called old Clutterbuck's portrait, but had
taken the wiser course of preserving both in case
someone to whom they were not valueless should
come to find them.

When Strong arrived and commenced his
digging operations, the elder hoped that his
opportunity had dawned; but Strong proved to be
a madman with whom it was impossible to enter
into negotiations.

The rest, of course, we knew.

Were we really on the road to success at last?
At all events, Jack and I had the grace to admit
that we had enjoyed fairly good luck after all,
supposing that the letter was actually the passport
to wealth which it purported to be.  If the elder
had destroyed it we should never have got any
farther than Hogland in our researches!  As for
the picture, he might have done what he liked with
that, we thought; though, since it seemed to be
the desire of the testator that we should keep it,
we piously determined to do so.

So that here we were with our object attained,
or attained so far as it was possible to attain it,
and with another week or so on our hands to
be spent on this island before the steamer could
be expected to return and fetch us away.  What
was to be done, and how should the time be spent?

There was fishing, and there was wandering
about with our shot guns, in hopes of picking up a
few grouse or other game which might be met with
in the moorland and woods which covered the
island.  But the elder made a tempting suggestion
which we caught at, though we did not anticipate
much result from his idea.

There were three wolves on the island, he said,
half-starved and rather savage.  They lived here
because they could not return to the mainland,
whence they had come in the days of ice, last
February or March.  If we liked to pay for a
sheep, he would kill one and lay it down as a decoy.
On the third night, if we passed the hours of
darkness in a tree over the spot, we should probably
have an opportunity of shooting the brutes, and a
good thing too; and it was in consideration of this
fact that the elder would let us have a sheep for a
merely nominal sum—fifteen roubles.

We agreed to pay this sum, so the sheep fell a
victim, and was laid to rest not in but upon the
earth beneath a tree.

Meanwhile the wounded Kuzmá was about to
sail for the mainland in order to bring up his
bandaged arm in testimony against James Strong,
and the question arose whether Jack and I were
not bound to accompany him in order to do what
we could to ensure a fair trial to a
fellow-countryman in distress.

He had done his best to murder us more than
once, true.  He had also foully done to death his
own cousin, the younger Clutterbuck; and he had
only failed to shoot down three innocent Russian
peasants because one of the three had had the
cleverness to knock him on the head before his
purpose was half accomplished.

Yet, for all his crimes, we felt compunction
about allowing him to pass, friendless and helpless,
into the hands of those who are ever ready, as
Englishmen (who know nothing about it) invariably
believe, to draft their victims away to Siberia
whether guilty or innocent.  He deserved "Siberia,"
whatever that name may imply, as thoroughly as
any rascal; but, somehow, though neither of us
would have moved a finger to save his neck had it
been in danger at the hands of an English hangman,
yet we felt inexplicably averse to permitting
Russians to have the twisting of it.

Why this was so I do not attempt to explain—it
is a psychological problem which I leave to
other heads to solve; all I know, is that it was
only the sturdy good sense of Jack Henderson
that prevented me from stepping on board his
fishing-lugger with Kuzmá, and another peasant,
and sailing away to Narva to make a quixotic fool
of myself in defence of the indefensible James
Strong.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`WE RECEIVE A TERRIBLE SHOCK`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXXII


.. class:: center medium bold

   WE RECEIVE A TERRIBLE SHOCK

.. vspace:: 2

As it was, we contented ourselves with sending
a letter to the British Consul there (supposing
that there existed such a functionary),
exhorting him to use his influence to obtain a fair
trial for the rogue called James Strong, and to see
that he was not sent to Siberia without good and
sufficient cause shown.

"Great Jupiter!" said Jack, when he had read
over my letter.  "Why, man, we have evidence
enough to send the fellow to Siberia, or to the next
world for that matter, half a dozen times over!"

So we had, of course.

"And I'll tell you what, Peter!" continued
Jack, "it will serve us well right, when we've
got the rascal out of his scrape by our confounded
meddling, if he turns up just in time to snatch
the treasure out of your fingers at the very last
minute.  What'll you do if he shows up at
Streatham and claims the right to dig with you,
neck and neck for the last lap?"

"Oh, come," I said, "that's quite a different
thing!  I should let him hang in England, fast
enough, but it's unpleasant to think of Russians
stringing the poor beggar up far away from friends
and country!"

Doubtless Jack agreed with me, for he took no
steps to prevent the despatch of my letter.  But
it has since struck me that it is, after all, very
doubtful whether the proximity of "friends and
country" would have comforted Strong much if
he had had the rope round his neck, even an
English rope.


What with fishing all day and sitting shivering
in pine trees all night (like a couple of frozen-out
sedge-warblers, as Jack picturesquely expressed it),
we contrived to pass away the time for the best
part of a week, and then Kuzmá arrived, having
prepared for us a surprise which for absolute
breathless unexpectedness undoubtedly broke the
record in so far as my own limited experience went,
or Henderson's either!

Michail came running up to the moor where
Jack and I were busily engaged in trying to induce
a covey of grouse to allow us within range of our
guns, and imparted the exciting information that
Kuzmá's boat was in sight.

At the news Jack and I gladly conceded the
honours of war to our covey of grouse and hastened
down to the shore to see Kuzmá's boat, for it had
come to this, that we were so very hard up for
excitement on this island that we would have gone
miles to see anything or nothing.

"There are three men on board," said Jack, as
the boat came nearer, running straight for the
shore before a fresh breeze.  "I suppose they've
brought a police officer along to make inquiries on
the spot."

"I hope he won't ask *us* to go to Narva as
witnesses!" I laughed.  "That would be a bad
look-out for poor Strong, Jack, eh?"

Jack was gazing at the boat as it neared the
land; I gazed too, watching the jolly little craft cut
the water into an endless V as it flew scudding
towards us, as though rejoiced at the prospect of
getting home.

"Peter," said Jack presently, "look at the fellow
in the bows; he's got his head round this way.
If I were not absolutely certain that such a thing
were impossible, I should say it was James Strong."

"*What?*" I shrieked, "which? where?"  I
stared at the man; it *was* Strong, there could not
be a doubt of it—there was no mistaking his face,
even at this distance.

"Good gracious!  Jack, what are we to do?" I
said, trembling at the knees like any coward.
"Heaven help us, what will happen now?" I
added.  My nerve seemed to have taken to itself
wings at the sight of James Strong!

"Why, what's the matter, man?" said Jack.
"It's a mystery to me how the fellow happens to
be in that boat, but you may take your oath that
he's pretty harmless as far as *we* are concerned;
he won't catch us napping again, if we have to
watch him all day and night till the steamer comes!"

I recovered presently, and called myself many
evil names for yielding to a craven instinct at
sight of this ill-omened person.  I was not really
afraid of the fellow; it was the unexpected that
upset me—it always does.

As a matter of fact, there was little to be afraid
of in the wretched man.  It was not the James
Strong whom we had known in Africa that landed
among us that afternoon in Hogland.  It was a
poor, broken-spirited, hopeless creature that raised
his arms with a cry of despair at seeing us, and hid
his face and trembled and refused to leave the boat
when Kuzmá and others beached it and ran it, with
him still seated in the bows, up the shore.  I felt
quite sorry for the terrified wretch.

"Well, James Strong," said Jack, "this is an
unexpected meeting, after all that has passed!  How
come *you* here, pray?"

"I didn't expect to find you on the island," said
Strong.  "Oh, curse my luck!" he added, in a
wailing tone which changed into one of sudden
ferocity as his eye fell upon Jack, who was
laughing at him.

"Yes, it *is* poor luck for you, I admit," said the
latter, "but, if it is any comfort for you to know it,
you would have been too late in any case, for we
have got all there was to find."

"I don't believe a word of it," said Strong.

"And what's more," continued Jack, ignoring
Strong's remark, "the elder had it all the while,
and would have given it to you if you hadn't shot
at him.  So you see what comes of evil temper,
James Strong.  Now, if you had not shot poor
Clutterbuck, and tried to murder my friend and
me, you might have followed us to England, and
perhaps, even yet, have robbed us of our possessions.
As it is, you see, if you come to England
you will certainly hang!"

James Strong swore one of his vile oaths and
spluttered there was no proof.  Who was going
to believe our lies?  It was much more probable
that we had shot Clutterbuck than he, and any
jury of Englishmen would see that the whole yarn
was a foul conspiracy.  Then he changed his tone
and whimpered, and said he had passed a miserable
fortnight in the Russian prison in Narva, and
beseeched us, if we were men and Englishmen,
to help him escape to England and thence
anywhere we pleased.  The Narva police would be
after him by to-morrow for a certainty, even if
these Russian fiends did not carry him back and
deliver him up.

"Tell us your story, with as few lies as you
can put into it," said Jack, "and we'll think what's
best to be done with you."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`HOW STRONG ESCAPED FROM PRISON`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXXIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   HOW STRONG ESCAPED FROM PRISON

.. vspace:: 2

"You're such an infernal blackguard, you
see, Strong," continued Jack, with engaging
candour, "that one must be very careful in
dealing with a man like yourself.  It seems to me
that it's Siberia or the gibbet, my friend; and upon
my word, I don't quite know which to advise in
your best interests.  Tell us what happened at
Narva."

James Strong was considerably cowed by his
experiences, and obeyed without further demur.
Undoubtedly, his tale was full of untruth, but as he
gave it to us I will pass it on to the reader.  We
were able to learn a truer version subsequently.

Strong declared that he had been taken to Narva
by the fishermen, having been bound by them while
still unconscious from the effects of a blow on the
head from Gavril's staff.  At Narva he was thrust
into a miserable prison or police cell, where he was
interrogated by persons who could not understand
him, nor he them.  A Swedish interpreter was
brought, and Strong was knocked about and bullied
because he protested that he could understand
Swedish no better than Russian.  He repeated the
word "English" in hopes that an English interpreter
would be produced, but none appeared.  He was
half starved and atrociously bullied by Russian
policemen, and so the time passed until the witness
Kuzmá came to give evidence against him.  At the
trial the English Consul came and spoke for him
(this was in consequence of our letter, no doubt),
but he was taken back to his cell, the Consul
informing him that he could do nothing to save him
from the consequences of his violence.  He would
probably be convicted of attempted murder and
deported to Siberia.

That night was celebrated, Strong explained,
some Russian church holiday, and everyone was
drunk or half drunk.  He succeeded in escaping
from the wooden building in which he was confined,
and in finding his way down by the river to the
port, securing a small boat, which proved to be
rotten and to leak vilely, in which he put out to
sea; he hoped to get away and finally return
somehow to Hogland, where he might even yet find the
treasure before we arrived, and escape with it on
the first steamer that passed.

"You can't blame me for that," interposed
Strong at this point.  "I had as much right to the
treasure as you, if I could find it first."

"Oh, quite so, Strong," said Jack.  "We don't
always approve of some of your methods—as, for
instance, of your attempts to remove us out of the
way, us and poor Clutterbuck—but we never denied
your right to compete.  Proceed.  Whom did you
murder, and how, in order to escape from your
cell?"

"You never give me a chance, curse you!" said
Strong, looking livid with rage.  "I have never
killed a human creature.  Clutterbuck fell down a
nullah and broke his neck.  I shot wide of you on
purpose—it was necessary to frighten you off—and
these fellows too.  Did I murder one of them or
one of you?"

"What about my leg, Strong? you infernal lying
blackguard!" I said.

"I was bound to keep you back how I could,"
he cried hotly; "I am sorry I hurt you, but that's
not murder, and you know it."

"I know it was meant to be," I said.

"It was not," he cried; "I fired wide on purpose.
One doesn't hit a man in the leg if one means
killing."

"Oh, come, Strong; you are a poor shot, you
know, at the best!" said Jack.  "We don't forget
Graciosa!  Go on with your story."

"Oh, curse Graciosa, and you too!" said Strong
surlily, and not another word could we get out of
him at this time.

But Kuzmá told us the rest of it—that is to say,
from the point at which Strong left off—though we
only heard the true version of his escape from
Narva at a later date, and from another source.

Kuzmá returning to Hogland in his fishing-boat,
had seen in the distance, when about an hour
out from Narva, a small craft occupied by one man,
who seemed to be in difficulties, since he shouted
and gesticulated.

As Kuzmá and his companion consulted whether
to head for the small boat in order to offer
assistance, they suddenly observed that the vessel
had disappeared.  Sailing up to the place where it
had sunk they had come upon a man swimming,
whom they did not recognise for Strong until they
had pulled him on board.

When they did recognise him, said Kuzmá,
they were for pitching him back into the sea; but
Strong had a knife, and looked so dangerous, that
they thought it wiser to bring him along, which
they did.  They knew nothing of his escape or
anything else, excepting that they fully intended to
make a little money out of the job, presently, by
restoring him to the authorities, and claiming a
gratuity.

Had they known more, they would probably
have smashed in his head with an oar, and pitched
him back into the gulf.  Cash rewards are very,
very pleasant things; but under some circumstances
Kuzmá would have felt even greater satisfaction
in smashing a head than in earning money by
preserving it whole for others to smash!

On the following day we might fairly begin to
look out for the return of our good steamship the
*Thomas Wilcox*, and it became necessary to settle
something as to James Strong and his fate.

The Russians, Kuzmá and his friends, being
aggrieved parties, and also interested in a pecuniary
way in returning the prisoner to his bonds, were
naturally all for conveying him back to Narva
under strong escort; but this James Strong
besought us with tears and piteous entreaties at all
hazards to disallow.  He would assuredly be sent
to Siberia or starved or flogged to death, he
protested; nothing could save him.  "For the love of
Heaven," he begged us, "let me sail with you from
this accursed place."

"But I can't, we can't do it, as honest men!"
said Jack, in some perplexity for the wretched
fellow.  "Don't you see, man, that if you set foot
in England we are bound to denounce you?"

"Then land me at Copenhagen," said Strong,
"or anywhere."

"But you'll take the first steamer on to Hull,
and the difficulties will all begin again," said I.

"I won't—I swear it!" he cried.  "I'll sign
anything you like."

Jack and I held a consultation over this knotty
question.  No doubt it will be said that our duty
was obviously either to abandon the miscreant to
these poor fellows, whom he had deeply aggrieved,
and who would restore him into the hands of
those who would try him; or else to take him to
England ourselves, and arraign him there.

And yet, stern and judicial reader of these lines,
we felt that either course would be equally repugnant
to us.  We could not allow these Russians to
have their will of the fellow; how did we know that
they would not knock him on the head, without
trial, so soon as we were afloat?  As for taking him
to England and accusing him of murder, fully as
we believed him guilty, we were without absolute
proof, and the work of establishing a case against
him was not an enterprise we cared to undertake.

In the end we decided to buy the man off from
these islanders for the sum of one hundred roubles,
which they gladly accepted, and to allow him to
accompany us as far as Copenhagen, where he
should land.  In consideration, therefore, of a signed
statement from him that he was guiltless of the
murder of Clutterbuck, who, he solemnly declared,
had fallen in fair fight during a struggle for the
revolver, which had exploded and killed Clutterbuck
on the spot; in consideration, I say, of a declaration
to this effect, Jack and I both undertook to
leave Strong unmolested so long as he did not
cross our path in England.  So sure as he ever
came near us again, for good or ill, he should
be denounced by us without further compunction.





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.. _`EXIT STRONG`:

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   CHAPTER XXXIV


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   EXIT STRONG

.. vspace:: 2

We did not altogether believe Strong's story
even then; I believe it now still less, in
the light of subsequent information bearing upon
his conduct at Narva.  Taking him all in all, I
daresay, and indeed I hope, that I shall never look
upon the like of James Strong again; for I do not
suppose the earth contains many such callous and
sanguinary rascals as he, and it would be more than
my share of ill luck to come across two such
scoundrels in the course of one lifetime.

I will not dwell upon his "gratitude" and joy
when our decision was communicated to him.  He
had knelt weeping before us, praying aloud and
blubbering while we had the matter in consideration,
and when the thing was decided he—well, it was a
sickly exhibition, and, of course, his gratitude was
only sham.  He would have stabbed either of us in
the back any minute, for a five-pound note.

Thus, when the good ship *Thomas Wilcox*
arrived off the island next morning early, we took
leave of our gentle but avaricious elder and his
friends, and left the island without much regret, and
James Strong went with us.

"Well," said kind and hearty Captain Edwards,
shaking each of us warmly by the hand, "found
your coal?"

As for me, I had completely forgotten our coal-mining
enterprise, and was foolishly taken aback by
the remark.  But Jack, as usual, was "all there."

"There is certainly coal in the island," he said;
"but I don't think it will prove to exist in paying
quantities."

I don't think it will either; for, so far as I
know, the only coals to be found in the place are
the few ashes shot out by steamers passing the
island near enough for their siftings to be washed
ashore.

"Ah, that's a pity!" said Edwards; "I was
looking forward to be a director, one day!  So
your trip's been a failure?"

"Well, not altogether," said Jack, grave as a
judge; "we've enjoyed some good fishing, and
haven't had a bad time altogether."

We paid Strong's passage to Copenhagen, and
landed him there.  Not wishing to enter into
particulars as to his story, we gave out that he had
come to the island a month ago, *viâ* Helsingfors,
upon much the same errand as ourselves; and if
Captain Edwards was surprised to hear that there
had been three fools instead of two in the matter,
he was too polite to say so.  But after Strong had,
to our relief, finally departed, and we were once
more in full sail for England, we received a piece
of news from Captain Edwards which gave us what
is commonly called "a turn," and we were glad at
first that we had not received it but a few hours
earlier.  We had just seen Strong off, and were
sitting and talking in the dining-saloon, discussing
various matters, when Edwards suddenly startled
us by saying—

"Nice pranks a countryman of ours has been
playing at Narva!"

"What—Strong?" I blurted in my foolishness.
Jack coughed as though choking over his glass of
sherry.

"How your mind is running upon Strong,
Peter!" he said.  "At Narva this was, Captain
Edwards said; didn't you, captain?"

"Yes, at Narva," said Edwards, suspecting
nothing; "it's a place not so very far from
Hogland, on the Esthonian shore.  The fellow was
a sailor apparently, and had behaved violently
towards other sailors, Russians—I don't know the
history of it; but he was placed in 'quod' for his
misdeeds.  Well, what does the fellow do one night,
finding that most people about the lock-up were
drunk by reason of a church holiday (it's a sin to
be sober on a church holiday, you must know, in
Russia); what does he do but set fire to the place,
stick a knife into one policeman, brain another with
a stool, and escape in the confusion down to the
water, where he gets to sea in a leaky boat, and goes
Heaven knows where?—probably to the bottom, for
the boat is described as a totally impossible craft."

"Do you mean to say, captain, that the two
men he attacked are actually dead—murdered?" I
asked, feeling that I was paler than I ought to be
to hear of these excesses in a stranger.

"Why, certainly," said the captain; "he appears
to have run amuck entirely; and I should say that
if he went to the bottom he did a deuced wise
thing, for if they catch him there'll be a bad quarter
of an hour for him; on that you may bet your pile."

"Anyone burnt?" said Jack.  He too looked
somewhat appalled by these revelations.

"Most probably—I only saw a telegram, mind
you, in the French paper, the *Journal de St. Petersbourg*.
There must have been a number of drunken
people about the place,—bah! it isn't a pretty story.
Upon my word, you have both gone quite pale over
it.  Pass the sherry, Mr. Henderson—help yourself
and your friend; you both look to require it."

Talking over this horrible story with Jack,
afterwards, we agreed that if we had known of this
before leaving Hogland, we could not possibly, in
conscience, have allowed the fellow to escape.  We
must have sent him back to Narva.  It was lucky
indeed that Kuzmá had known nothing of it,
having simply picked the man up in mid-sea!

"What should we have done if Captain Edwards
had told us this story while Strong was still on
board?" I asked.

"Nothing," said Jack.  "What would have
been the use?  It would have been very awkward
for Edwards; and besides, rogue as Strong is, I
don't think I should hand the poor wretch back to
Russian judges any the easier after this.  Heaven
only knows what would happen to him!"

At all events, it was a matter to be thankful for
that we were at length happily quit of this
nightmare, and, as we hoped, for ever.

As we hoped, yes.  But it's a delusive thing, this
bubble "Hope," and very given to bursting!

It was during lunch that Captain Edwards had
told Jack and me all about the Narva business, and
it was while sitting and smoking a pipe in my cabin
an hour later that it suddenly occurred to me—I
don't know why—to have a look at old Clutterbuck's
last letter and the daub which was supposed
to be a reproduction of his features upon canvas.

I did not suspect anything.  On the contrary,
it never for one moment occurred to me that
anything could have happened to the things.  They
were useless to anyone but myself, unless it were
Strong; but that thoroughly cowed individual
would never have dared possess himself of them—why
should he?  It was impossible for him to
show himself in England, for he would know that
we should have no mercy if he were deliberately
to disobey orders and risk his neck in this way.

I suppose I wanted to have a peep at the things—my
stock in trade, such as it was; just as one
enjoys taking out one's money, from time to time,
and counting it, in the mere pleasure of possession.
I can think of no other reason why I should
have gone to my portmanteau to have a look at
that foolish old letter and that unspeakable
caricature.  At anyrate I went.

The portmanteau was unlocked, and strapped
only on one side, because of the nuisance of hunting
up keys and unfastening buckles when at sea.
Dressing in a cabin with a rocking floor beneath
one's feet is an extremely disagreeable process, and
I am always unwilling to add to the necessary time
to be expended in the operation by fastening up
bags and portmanteaus.

Let them lie open, day and night—there are no
thieves to come picking and stealing at the
first-class passengers' end of the ship!  That is what
had been my idea in the matter, an idea supported
by the reflection that I had nothing worth stealing.
But when I went to the portmanteau and found
that both letter and picture had totally disappeared,
I realised, not for the first time, that Mr. James
Strong was an individual whose craftiness should
not be measured with the ordinary tape-yard
applicable to the shrewdness of others.  He
required a measure all to himself.  He had got
the better of us again!





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.. _`MORE CHECKS`:

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   CHAPTER XXXV


.. class:: center medium bold

   MORE CHECKS

.. vspace:: 2

I rushed upstairs to Jack, who had gone on deck.

"Jack," I cried, almost shouting in my excitement,—"he's
done us again!—he's got the things!
Heaven only knows what he means to do with
them, but he's got them and—and we haven't!" I
concluded lamely.

"What do you mean, man?" said Jack.
"Who's got what?"

"Why, Strong—Strong again!  Don't you
understand?—he's stolen the letter and the picture
too, and Heaven only knows where he's gone
with them."

It was now Jack's turn to be moved.

"Impossible!" he exclaimed; "he would never
dare; why—man alive!—he knows well enough he
must swing if he sets foot in England, and what
use are the things to him anywhere else?"  Jack
rose and strode about the deck.

"He might have done it out of spite, though,"
he added next minute; "very likely he was
determined that if *he* couldn't have the money, at all
events *we* shouldn't have it either.  Are you sure
they are gone?"

"Come and see for yourself," I said; and together
we hurried down again, through the saloon
and into my cabin.

Here we turned out every single article that my
portmanteau contained; we searched every corner
of the tiny room in case the things should have
been mislaid; but we found nothing, and finally,
in desperation, we called up the steward and
cross-questioned him as to whether anyone could possibly
have entered the cabin, either by day or night,
without being seen by him or by his sub.

But neither did the steward know anything of
the lost articles, nor would he admit that anyone
could or would have entered the saloon without his
being aware of the fact.

"Why, my pantry's at the foot of the stairs,"
he said, "and if I'm not in it Arthur is, and the
stewardess is generally knocking around about here
too; how's anyone going to pass the lot of us
without someone knowing of it?  Besides, we don't
keep no thieves aboard *this* ship," he concluded,
with displeasure.  "No one but me and Arthur's
been in this 'ere cabin since you came aboard at
Hogland, and that's a fact!"

"No, you're wrong there, steward!" I said,
"for that Russian sailor Michail came in to close the
portholes last night, and woke me; what's more,
he said you sent him."

The steward admitted that this suddenly recollected
circumstance was correct.  He had forgotten
it, he explained.  Michail had come to him at about
two in the morning, and had asked whether he should
close the passengers' windows, as the wind seemed
to be rising and the portholes might ship a sea or
two presently.  "If you suspect him, or me, or
any of us, all you have to do is to examine our
things," the steward ended.

But we disclaimed any such desire.  We would
like to see Michail, however, and as soon as
possible; for if the things were not forthcoming,
we must—as Jack expressed it—"get out at
Elsinore, and walk!"

So Michail came up for examination.

Did he often volunteer for the duty of closing
portholes at night? we asked.

Michail said he did it sometimes; he generally
offered to do it because he liked the job; the
passengers now and then gave him a small gratuity.
On this occasion, Michail added, the gentlemen
had given him nothing, but it was not too late
should they desire to repair the omission.

"Wait a minute, Michail," said Jack.  "The
time has not yet arrived to speak of gratuities.
What about this portmanteau, here?  Have you
seen it before?"

"Often," said Michail; "it is the very one I
carried ashore on Hogland, for the gentleman with
red hair."  (My hair is *not* red, it is a warm yellow;
Michail meant me, nevertheless, for Jack's locks
are raven black.)

"Yes; but have you been a-fishing in it lately—just
an innocent search, you know, for something
of interest; not a burglary of course."

Michael started back in horror and surprise.
"Do the *barins* take me for a thief?" he asked
with some indignation.

"That was the idea," said Jack, quite coolly.
"But you may have been acting for another—for
that other Englishman, for instance, Strong."

"Which Englishman is that?" asked Michail
innocently; "one of the sailors?"

"The Narva man; you know well enough!" said Jack.

Michail crossed himself very devoutly.
"*Barin!*" he said; "as if I would act with
that *skoteena*!" (rascal)

"Come, Michail," continued Jack, "will ten
roubles do it?"

"There is nothing to tell of myself," said
Michail reflectively; "but for the sum of money
mentioned, I might possibly be induced to tell you
something that I heard him say to one of our men
in the fo'c'sle."

"Well," I said, "go on Michail.  It sounds
promising.  When did he say it, and what did he say?"

"It was yesterday," replied Michail; "you two
were walking on deck, and I saw him point to you
and say those two passengers had the worst tempers
of any two men he'd ever seen; they go mad angry
every two or three days, he said, and tear around,
playing Old Harry with everything.  Very likely
they'll want to be landed in the middle of the North
Sea, and they'll paint everything red till they're
allowed, too; and I shan't be there to see the
fun, he said, for I shall have been put ashore at
Copenhagen."

"What did he mean by that?  You're romancing,
Michail!" said Jack severely.

Michail replied that he would scorn to tell us
anything but the plain truth, though he was always
glad to tell that—for a consideration.

"Well, you've earned nothing yet, my friend;
the ten roubles remain with me, so far.  You'd better
remember a little more if you want the money."

"That was all the *skoteena* himself said,"
Michael continued; "but if the *barins* desire it, I
will tell them what some of those in the fo'c'sle
thought about it."

"Go on," said Jack; "what did they say?"

"They said—when the *skoteena* had told us
about your tempers and what you would do in the
North Sea after he had gone—that he wouldn't say
a thing like that unless he had a reason for it; and
probably the reason was that he had got hold of
some of your property, and you'd find out about it
in a day or two and go mad with rage, and want to
be landed wherever was nearest so as to go after him."

"Oh, that was it, was it?" said Jack.

Michail received his ten roubles, and Jack drew
me aside.

"I'll tell you what it is, Peter, old chap;
Michail's right.  Whether he said it because he
has a guilty conscience, and wants us off the ship;
or whether Strong really used the expression he
attributes to him, one thing's certain—we must
land."

"Where can we?—anywhere here along the
Danish coast?  By George! if we catch him again,
Jack, he shan't escape us, eh?"

"He should swing if it depended upon me,
now, and I could prove anything," said Jack
grimly.  "But come and interview Captain
Edwards, and see if he'll stop the ship and land
us."  Captain Edwards was upon the bridge with
the pilot, whom we had shipped at Copenhagen.

"Of course," Jack added, as we caught sight of
the jolly-looking, weather-beaten Dane standing
beside our own skipper—"the pilot!  We'll ask
Edwards to let us go ashore in his boat, with
him; that'll probably be Elsinore.  Confound it
all, though, we shall be six hours behind him at
Copenhagen!"

"But why, what's up, what's happened?" asked
bewildered Captain Edwards, when we had made
known to him the nature of our request; "has the
other fellow bolted with the money-bags?"

We explained that this was just about the state
of the case; the man had robbed us, and we must
land and be after him.

"Are you quite sure it was he?" continued
Edwards; "it would be funny if you went after
this fellow and left the real culprit, *plus* your
property, on board!"

But we explained that there was no reasonable
doubt as to this.  The only person now on the ship
who might possibly have had a hand in it was
Michail, and we begged the captain to keep an open
eye on this rascal, and even have him watched on
landing in Hull.  It was possible that he might
have in his possession a picture belonging to us,
and of some value.

"What! a work of art?" laughed Edwards.
"May I ask how you came to be travelling about
and landing and prospecting on Hogland in
company with a valuable work of art?"

Well, we thought it best—and probably the
shorter way as well—to tell the skipper all about it,
and we did so.  Now that Strong was out of our
hands we need not scruple to conceal the fact that
he was perhaps the greatest rascal unhung, and
that he and the hero of the Narva exploit were
one and the same person.

Captain Edwards was naturally somewhat excited.

"The scoundrel ought to have been sent back
to Narva," he said, "not brought on here and set
free.  You deserve what's happened for setting
such a monster loose upon society.  It's not fair
dealing towards your kind, young men, upon my
soul it isn't; you may take that from an older man
than yourselves.  However, please God you'll catch
him yet.  You must land with the pilot, of course;
that'll be at Elsinore, in half an hour's time.  You'd
better get your traps ready."

We went down to prepare for our departure.
In the cabin a thought occurred to me.  What if
Michail and Strong were in direct collusion, and
had agreed upon a base of action such as this: that
Michail should convey to us, just as he had done,
by innuendo, that Strong had stolen our property, in
order that we might be induced to land at Elsinore
and hurry back after him by train to Copenhagen;
that meanwhile Strong should have caught the first
train to Elsinore, and—having "done" the distance
by land much faster than we should have
accomplished it by water—be waiting at Elsinore or
beyond it, knocking around in a small boat all
ready to be picked up at dusk by his friend Michail.
In that case he would have left the property on
board, and would simply continue his journey to
Hull, and land there in two days and a half, or three
days, while we were still hunting him, goodness
knows where, all over the Continent, perhaps!

"Well," said Jack, "if that *is* the plan, Master
Strong will find himself in the wrong box.  I don't
believe he could get taken on board out of a small
boat without stopping the ship, or the captain or
mate knowing something of it; but if he did,
Edwards knows all about him now, and he'd be as
safe here as in Newgate, *pro tem*.  Let him come,
by all means; the arrangement would be all right
for us even though we did lose a few days travelling
about the Continent."

Nevertheless we warned Captain Edwards that
it was just possible Strong might turn up again
beyond Elsinore and demand to be taken aboard,
or perhaps be assisted by Michail in making a
secret reappearance.

"Not he!" said Edwards; "he wouldn't risk
it—don't you make any mistake!  I only wish he
would.  It would be putting his head in a bag
with a vengeance!"

I think I ought to make an apology, at this
point, to the memory of the astute Mr. James
Strong.  I ought never to have imagined him
capable of so crude an enterprise as that which
my fancy accused him of undertaking.





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.. _`WE FIND AN OLD FRIEND`:

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   CHAPTER XXXVI


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   WE FIND AN OLD FRIEND

.. vspace:: 2

The ugly castle of Elsinore was in sight when
we came on deck, and a few minutes later
the pilot's own little craft, splendidly sailed by his
mate and a boy, came alongside, and without asking
us to stop for her, made fast to us and raced along
in our company.

After a hasty farewell with Captain Edwards,
and a whispered injunction under all circumstances
to keep a good look-out upon Michail, we threw
our portmanteaus into the arms of the astonished
Dane below, and followed the pilot down the steps
swung over the side of the ship for our accommodation.

Though the pilot lived at a village at some little
distance from Elsinore, he kindly agreed to convey
us to the railway station at the latter town, and
with a fair wind we soon made the jetty close to
the very spot from which the trains start.  Here,
having paid off our gallant boatmen, we jumped
ashore and hurried with all speed to the station, to
find that we had just missed one train and that we
could not now catch another for an hour and more.
This was tantalising and vexatious; but at least we
were ashore and in full chase after our quarry, and
that was a source of some comfort to us.

Together we paced up and down the platform
of Elsinore Station.  We tried to converse.  I
asked Jack what he thought would be Hamlet's
opinion of the state of affairs if he were to "come
down" and see a railway station within a stone's-throw
of his capital castle of Elsinore.

Jack replied that all depended upon whether
Strong should have been lucky in catching his
train; if one had started from Copenhagen soon
after he landed there, then his advantage over us
would be very great, and probably our best way
would be to let him go, and hurry back to England,
ourselves, by land.

Presently, standing at a spot whence he
commanded a good view of the castle, Jack observed
that if Hamlet's father's ghost ever walked upon
the parapet of the great ugly building nowadays,
he must be as active as a cat, for there would be a
lot of climbing to do, there being a kind of miniature
turret at every few yards which the ghost would
have to negotiate if he desired to get along.

To which I replied, in a contemplative fashion,
that in any case we knew well enough without the
paper where we had to dig for the money, and the
only thing that really mattered was the picture.
The question was, did we absolutely require the
daub to help us find the treasure, or not?  At
anyrate, Strong knew too much to come fooling around
in England.  He must know that we would nab
him at once.  There was no fear of Strong himself
turning up.  From all of which it will be gathered
that our conversation was a little mixed.  However,
the train started at last, and we left Elsinore
behind us.

At Copenhagen many inquiries had to be made,
and at first we were somewhat helpless; for though
the language sounded sufficiently like English to
make it additionally annoying that we could not
understand it, yet neither we nor those with whom
we attempted to converse could make head or tail of
that which we or they respectively tried to convey.
At the station we could do nothing towards making
our wishes known, and at length we determined to
visit the nearest hotel and engage an interpreter, if
such a person existed.

Here we were lucky, for we found the very
man, and to him we confided our need, namely, to
get upon the track of an individual who landed
from an English steamer, and had, presumably,
gone on by the first train elsewhere.

"But where?" asked our commissionaire; and
to this question we had, of course, no reply.

"We must begin at the beginning, and go
down first to the landing-stage," said our friend.

Now this was annoying, because the journey
would be a loss of time; but it was obviously the
correct course, and we took it.  We must begin
our inquiries from the spot at which he first touched
land.

Down at the wharf our Dane interviewed
several boatmen, all of whom had seen the *Thomas
Wilcox* arrive and depart, and all of whom agreed
that a passenger had landed and had engaged a
conveyance and driven away.

"To the station, of course," said I.  "Why do
we wait?  This is all a waste of precious time!"

"Which station?" asked our Dane grimly; and,
when I had no reply to make, he added, "That is
what we have come for to find out."

It seemed, however, that the point was a most
difficult one to establish, and that we should be
obliged to drive to each station in turn, thereby
wasting more time, until there wandered upon the
scene, presently, a Danish youth who said he had
taken the passenger's bag out of the boat and put
it into the carriage.  The passenger was a German,
he said.

"How do you know that?" asked Jack, through
the interpreter.

"Because he wanted to get to Kiel," said the
boy; "he knew no Danish, and could only hold up
his finger to the driver and say, 'Skielskor, for Kiel!'"

This was good enough for us.  We drove
rapidly towards the station, feeling that we were
about to make a real start at last.

The clerk at the booking-office remembered the
man we wanted.  He had hurried into the station
and said, in an interrogative manner, "Skielskor?"
and when the clerk had replied that it was all right,
if he meant that he required a ticket for that place,
he had repeated, "Kiel—Bremen?"  Whereupon
the clerk, seeing that conversation would be difficult,
had tentatively offered two tickets, one to Skielskor,
and the other through to Kiel; of which he had
selected and paid for the latter.  He had left just
an hour ago.

"Can't we get to Kiel direct by water, quicker
than by land to Skielskor, and thence across?"
asked Jack.  "If there should be a steamer going
just about now, we might possibly cut him off at Kiel."

Fortune favoured us quite handsomely this time.

Hastening back to the waterside we actually
found a Kiel steamer about to depart; that is, a
large steamer lay in mid-channel, having arrived
since we were down here half an hour before; she
had stopped to put down passengers, just as the
*Thomas Wilcox* did, and would proceed almost
immediately.

We signalled her to take us on board, and left
without a moment's delay.

"Great Scott, Jack!" I exclaimed; "Strong
will have the luck of the evil one himself if he
reaches Kiel before us now; this is splendid!"

We ascertained that, all being well, we should
reach our destination considerably before Strong
could do so, he travelling by land and then by small
steamer to Kiel, even though he should catch one
just about to start.  Under these circumstances the
jubilation which we felt was most justifiable, and
over a capital dinner we spoke with delight of the
joy in store for us, when we should stand on the
landing-stage waiting for the arrival of the little
Skielskor steamer, and see the countenance of
Mr. James Strong change when he caught sight of us there.

"Will he have a fit, think you, Jack?" I asked in glee.

Jack said he thought it quite likely; it would
appear so uncanny to the wretched chap, and so
utterly unexpected.  "I should certainly have a fit
under similar circumstances," he added.

We went to bed with the conviction that fortune
was treating us kindly this time, and that to-morrow
had consolations for us in expiation for the shocks
and disappointments of to-day.

But these rascally to-morrows never perform
exactly what is expected of them.  Our programme
was all of the colour of the rose, and justifiably
so; but certain circumstances marred the order of
events, and things fell out differently.

Now our steamer, the *Peter der Grosse*, had
come from Cronstadt, just as our own *Thomas
Wilcox* had, and in Russia at this time the cholera
was having one of those periodical innings which it
enjoys at regular or irregular intervals in that
country.  And when we arrived at Kiel and
requested to be landed as quickly as might be, we
were met by the stunning statement that this would
be impossible until the quarantine officer should
have come on board and passed us.

"How long will that be?" we asked, and were
informed that it might be a couple of hours and
might be twelve.

"They are very particular here," said the
captain, "and are as likely as not to leave us half a
day or so, just to give the germs a chance, in case
they should require this much extra time to develop."

As a matter of fact, the quarantine officer did
not visit us until nearly evening, we having arrived
before midday.  Just before his arrival I had
noticed a little Danish steamer creep into harbour,
and through the captain's glasses I distinguished,
or thought to distinguish, the words "*Helma*—Skielskor."

"Jack," I said, "look at the little craft just
running into harbour—here, take the glasses."

Jack took them and had a long steady gaze at
the small steamer.

"You're quite right," he said presently (I had
expressed no opinion whatever!); "he's just done
it; that must be his boat; there's no question of it!"

Then Jack muttered an expressive word
between his teeth, and I another.

Then I looked at Jack and he at me,
and—having nothing better or wiser to do, I
suppose—we both burst into a roar of laughter.

It was sickening to see the fellow just gliding
out of our very hands; but at the same time it was
really very funny.

"Never mind," said Jack.  "We'll be after
him directly, and we know he's going *viâ* Bremen.
Perhaps we may catch the same train yet."

But we were not destined to reap this crop of
good fortune.  The quarantine officers came on
board and examined carefully every creature in
the ship.  This occupied a couple of hours.
Fortunately for us, we were able to prove that we had
joined the steamer at Copenhagen; still more so,
we were not asked for passports, otherwise the fact
would have been revealed that we too had come
from Russia, and we, like the rest of the passengers,
would have been delayed in quarantine for twenty-four
or forty-eight hours, or whatever the term
may have been.

As it was, we were allowed to land, though the
rest were detained; and without a moment's delay
we made for the station, calling on the way at the
jetty, at which lay, sluggishly steaming, the little
Skielskor steamer which had arrived a short while
since.

We inquired of the captain, as best we could, as
to the passengers he had brought over.  Was
there an Englishman? we asked; and we
described our friend Strong.  The captain
who—excellent man!—spoke English, replied that most
certainly there had been an Englishman among his
passengers, a charming, cheery sort of person, who
had laughed and drunk Swedish punch all the way,
and told capital stories.  He was a generous kind
of a man too, and had stood drinks all round.  He
had also made him, the skipper, a little present
which he declared to be of some value, though it
could not be said to have the appearance of much
intrinsic worth, so far as he, the skipper, was able
to judge!

"Oh," said Jack, not greatly interested; "and
what was that?"

"The picture of an old man—Dutch School;
after Gerard Dow, so he said," laughed the skipper.
"You can see it, if you like; you may be a judge
of these things.  Lord knows why he gave it
me—drunk, I suppose!"





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.. _`MR. STRONG MAKES AN EFFECTIVE REAPPEARANCE`:

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   CHAPTER XXXVII


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   MR. STRONG MAKES AN EFFECTIVE REAPPEARANCE

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This communication was as exciting as it was
utterly unexpected.  We entreated the
skipper, as calmly as we could, to produce his
work of art.  He did so.  It was the portrait, of
course.

And we to talk of ill-luck!  Why, supposing
the thing to be really of any value to us, it was a
stroke of the most magnificent good fortune to
have found it in this way!  I realised this fact as
the skipper brought the ugly thing out, and—with
a laugh—placed it on the table before us.

"There," he said; "a beauty, isn't it?  If it's
by Gerard Dow, why, I don't think much of Gerard
Dow, and that's the truth.  Any offers?" he added,
with another laugh.

"Ten shillings!" said Jack, laughing also.
"It isn't Gerard Dow, nor yet *after* him; but I
collect these old Dutch daubs, and I'll take it off
your hands for a half sovereign."

"That and a drink round," said the skipper.

And ten minutes later we were driving in a
German droshky to the station, having our
newly-recovered treasure in tow.

It mattered little, now, whether we caught
Strong or not.  As a matter of fact he would be
more of an embarrassment than anything else.
What should we do with him if we caught him?

At anyrate, however, we would shadow him
and see what he intended to do.  If his destination
should prove to be England, then matters would
be different and it would be our duty to follow
and arrest him.

"We can't prove anything," I said.

"We shall have to try," replied Jack.  "A
rogue like him can't be allowed to prowl about
England free."  This was, of course, perfectly true.

"Why did the chap steal the portrait, only to
chuck it away again?" I said presently, as we drove
along.  "Simply to annoy us, or prevent us finding
the treasure, even though he daren't go and dig
for it at Streatham himself?"

"That's the idea, I should think," said Jack;
"that if *he* can't have it, *you* shan't!"

Upon reaching the station we found that
Mr. Strong was, at anyrate, not to be caught in Kiel.
The Bremen train had left just an hour ago, with
him in it.  There would be another in fifty minutes.

"Gad, Peter, we are in the race, at anyrate,
after all!" said Jack, with a guffaw; "if we have
any luck in the trains we may catch him yet."

"Let's find out how long he'll have to wait
at Hamburg for the Bremen train," I suggested.

We did so, and found to our annoyance that
our train reached Hamburg just ten minutes after
Strong's was timed to leave that station for Bremen.
There would be another one, however, in an hour
or less, and a quicker one than his; so that we
might get him at Bremen, It would depend upon
what should be his next destination.

"It doesn't much matter," I reflected.  "If we
don't catch him at Bremen we'd better just see
where he's gone to and then set off for Streatham,
*viâ* Hanover and Flushing, as quickly as possible.
Are you very keen to see him, Jack?"

"It depends," said Jack.  "I should dearly
like to see him, just once more, in a dark lane and
without witness or revolvers, but with a pair of
football boots upon my feet.  That would be very
sweet indeed.  At a crowded station, one might
get in a little comforting language; but kicking
would be out of the question, and therefore the case
would not really be met.  However, it would be
nice just to see his face, when *he* sees *ours*, and to
tell him one or two things about himself."

So we took train for Bremen *viâ* Hamburg, and
at this latter place we found, to our amusement,
that our train, though starting after Strong's, who
had already gone on, ran into Bremen a short
while before the other; ours being an express.

"Gad, Peter, this is splendid!" cried old Jack,
rubbing his hands with delight.

It really was; it was splendid!  Destiny was
playing a strong game in our favour; there was
no doubt about it.

We should thus have the ecstatic pleasure of
meeting Mr. Strong upon the platform, and of
observing his expression of delight upon seeing us
waiting for him.

It was at some little station outside Bremen,
and about five miles from that city, that we
overtook Strong's train, which, no doubt, was waiting
there in order to allow the express to go by.

We did not know it was Strong's train, of course.
We discovered the fact in this way—

I was reading, Jack was looking out of the
window.  Suddenly he startled me with an exclamation.
He was staring, all eyes, through the glass,
which was closed on account of the dustiness of the
German railways.

"What is it?" I inquired.  I looked out, but
saw nothing very startling or unusual; a train lay
alongside of ours, and Jack was staring, as it
appeared, into one of the carriages.

"What is it?" I repeated.

"Hush!" said Jack.  "Don't make a row, but
just look in there—the compartment exactly opposite
this one.  Don't speak too loud or you may awake
the dear kind soul."

I looked, and first my heart gave a great jump;
then, almost immediately, I was attacked by the
most violent desire to laugh aloud, and I sank back
in my place and heaved about, stuffing my handkerchief
into my mouth to prevent an outburst of noise
therefrom.

For it was Strong himself, alone in a carriage,
and fast asleep—the pretty innocent—not dreaming
of the possibility of enemies at hand!  Happy; at
peace with all the world; slumbering upon his
second-class cushions in all the guileless confidence
of a weary child.  It was too beautiful for words.

Almost immediately our train started with a
sudden jerk, and spoiled our contemplation of the
sweet picture before us.  But in marring one it
gave us another—a mere lightning flash of a picture,
this last, certainly; but one which I would not have
missed for untold sums, and the memory of which
is even now a constant delight to me whenever
conjured up by the wizard Imagination.

The movement of our train caused Strong to
open his eyes languidly and to raise them towards
the cause of his awakening.

At the same instant he caught sight of Jack's
face and then of mine, and a more sudden and
startled rushing of a sleepy intelligence into full
and disgusted wakefulness I have never beheld.
Strong's eyes went from languid and fishy
expressionlessness into swiftly alternating phases
representing surprise, disgust, rage and terror;
they seemed to start from his head and to grow,
visibly, to about twice their normal size.  It was a
noteworthy and unforgettable spectacle; it was
beautiful.  As we passed out of his scope of vision,
we saw the fellow start from his seat as though to
put his head out of the window and follow us away
with his eyes.

"Did you ever see the like of that?" exclaimed
Jack, subsiding into his seat and beginning to roar
with laughter.

"*I* never did!" I concurred.  "The only thing
is," I added, "the rascal will get out, now, and not
come on to Bremen."

"That doesn't matter a bit," said Jack; "let him;
it will save us trouble; we don't want him now, for
we have the picture, which is all he took from us
barring Clutterbuck's letter, of which we each have
a couple of copies, besides one apiece by heart."

"He may come on to England after us," I said.
Jack laughed.

"I don't believe it.  He wouldn't dare.  This
last fright would put him off even if he had
contemplated it.  As a matter of fact, I don't believe
he ever meant digging.  He wouldn't have given
away the picture if he had, for he could scarcely
have failed to suppose that it has something to do
with the treasure finding, though I'm bound to say
I, for one, can't imagine *what*!"

"Then why did he steal it from us?" I exclaimed.

"Malice, my dear chap; pure, unadulterated
malice and devilment; the rascal wouldn't be happy
unless he were playing Old Nick upon someone or
other."  I daresay Jack was perfectly right.

We waited at Bremen Station, however, for the
arrival of Strong's train, in case he should be in it,
and—as it happened—we should have saved ourselves
both time and vexation of spirit if we had
gone on and left him.

Strong was in the train.  He came out as bold
as brass, and showed no fear or surprise when he
met us upon the platform.  He even wished us
good-evening, and asked us how we came to be
here and not on board the *Thomas Wilcox*, in the
middle of the North Sea.

"Well, you're a darned cool hand, Strong, I
must say!" said Jack.  "What about the work of
art, and the other things?"

"What work of art?" he asked, positively
without a blush.

"Clutterbuck's picture—you know quite well
what we mean," I said.  "You stole it out of our
cabin."

"I never went near your blamed cabin," he
said; "you'd better prove what you say.  You're
too jolly fond of accusing innocent people, you two
bounders.  If I had you in a quiet place I'd make
you swallow all those infernal lies about me that
you invented on Hogland."

"Oh, that's your line is it, Strong?" said Jack
"You're going to figure as the injured innocent,
are you?  All right, my man; you're safe here in
Germany, but don't you show yourself in England."

"You cannot prove anything, curse you!" cried
Strong, "and you know it."

"Very well; quite likely; at the same time,
think twice before crossing the Channel; we may
have a little evidence up our sleeve that you don't
know of."

Strong uttered one of his oaths, which need
not be repeated.

"You deny stealing the picture, then?" continued Jack.

"I may have it and I may not," said Strong,
too angry now to care what he said.  "At anyrate,
it seems *you* haven't."

"Never judge by appearances, Strong," said
Jack; "we have it, all right, such as it is.  Pity to
allow a work of art by G. Dow to remain in the
hands of a man who can't even recognise the
beauty of it.  Your friend sold the keepsake you
gave him—unkind of him, wasn't it?"  Strong
winced.

"You have the luck of the devil," he snarled.
"What's your game?  You can't touch me, here;
you know that.  Michail took the picture; I didn't
want the infernal thing—he took it in revenge for
your kicking him on the island—there!  You're
welcome to it; it's as like my darned uncle as two
peas, I'm sick when I look at it.  It may help you
to find the treasure, though how in perdition it's
going to do it beats me.  If you want my opinion,
there isn't any treasure—at least, not for you or
me.  The blamed old miser played a trick on us
all; it's rotting somewhere, like him; and no one'll
ever dig up the money any more than his carcass.
The whole thing's blamed, bally rot, and we've
all been a parcel of silly idiots; that's my
opinion—take it or leave it."

"We'll leave it, thanks, Strong," said Jack;
"and we'll leave you too, if you'll excuse us.
Good-night, my man; you'd better keep this side
of the Channel, that's *our* opinion, take or leave *it*."

Strong darted a look of anger at Jack, and
turned on his heel with an oath.  He slunk out of
the station and disappeared in the dusk outside.

We were in two minds whether to follow and
keep him in sight, or let him be.  But we decided
to let him go, since he did not appear to have any
intention of molesting us further.

So we sought out a hotel near the station and
engaged a room together, for it would be just as
well to double our chance of hearing Strong should
he, by any chance, resolve to make another attempt
to deprive us of the picture, or otherwise rob us,
and somehow force an entry into the room.

As it happened, we were disturbed before we
were an hour older; but not by Strong.

A very unexpected and exasperating thing
happened—comical too, after a fashion, especially
after the event.

We were seated over our supper in the coffee-room
of our hotel, when a scared-looking waiter
informed us that both the English Herren were
wanted downstairs.

"By whom?" we asked in some surprise.

"By the police," said the man; "should he
invite them upstairs, or would we step below into
the entrance hall?"

Jack and I looked at one another.  What did
this mean?

"We will come down," said Jack; and to the
great hall below we descended.  Here an
astonishing spectacle greeted our eyes: a group of
policemen in uniform; a man in civilian garb,
presumably an interpreter; and—Mr. James Strong!





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.. _`ARRESTED`:

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   CHAPTER XXXVIII


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   ARRESTED

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"Yes," observed Mr. Strong, upon our
appearance, "these are the very men.  Tell the
police, Mr. Interpreter, that these persons have
robbed me; the robbery was effected while *en route*
from Russia; they are, I believe, in possession of a
work of art belonging to myself; their luggage had
better be searched."

I was absolutely speechless with surprise.
This was certainly the most audacious act I had
ever heard of.  I did not know whether to be
more furious or amused.

Jack apparently decided in favour of fury.
"You infernal rascal, Strong!"—he began, but
Strong said something to the interpreter, who
signed to the police, who promptly laid hold of
Jack and me.  It was too ridiculous.

"Strong, you"—Jack began again, and—"Gad,
Strong, if I don't"—began I; but our
policemen would not have us speak, and marched
us up to our room, Strong and the interpreter
following, bidding us in curt military fashion hold
our tongues.  It was a ridiculous position.  I have
laughed over the memory of it scores of times; I
even felt inclined to laugh then.  What could
Strong's motive be in acting in this way?  He could
not want the picture, or he would never have
given it to the skipper at Kiel.  Had he thought
better of it, and determined, if possible, to get us
locked up here for a few days while he hurried
away to Streatham to dig without us?

He couldn't, surely!  Why, we could prove our
right to the work of art by telegraphing to Kiel, and,
if necessary, producing the skipper to witness to
our purchase.  Besides, he would have to prove
*his* right to the thing before they could justly
deliver it over to him.

It must be an act of spite, then, conceived in
the simple desire to score one against us.

Of course the picture was found in my
portmanteau.  Equally, of course, we protested that it
was our own, while Strong declared that we had
stolen it from him during the voyage to
Copenhagen.  No less was it to be expected that upon
seeing the work of art, both policemen and
interpreters smiled grimly, and that one of them
observed—

"*Was ist aber Dass für ein Teufelskopf!*"

In the end, the police took possession of the
disputed picture, but allowed us to remain in peace
at the hotel.  This was, however, Saturday night,
so that the examination into the matter of ownership
which, we were informed, it would be necessary to
hold, could not be brought into court before Monday.

This was very unfortunate, for if Strong should
really have devised this little interlude with the
sole desire to gain time, in order to reach the
treasure-ground in Streatham a day or two before
us, he had certainly gained his end.

It was in vain that we assured our captors that
we could easily prove our title to the work of art
by simply telegraphing to Kiel, to the man from
whom we purchased it.

"That will be very good evidence on Monday,
supposing that the seller appears in person," said
the police.  "Meanwhile, we will take care of the
work of art, and on Monday you shall speak, and
your friend here shall speak, and the plaintiff shall
speak, and then we shall see to whom the beautiful
picture belongs."

"This gentleman will not wait to hear the case
argued," said Jack, indicating Strong; "he will
be in England by Monday!"

"Then he will lose the picture," said the man,
shrugging his shoulders.  "Whoever remains alone
to claim it, to him we shall consider that it rightfully
belongs."

"You're a nice, audacious blackguard, Strong,
I will say!" muttered Jack to our friend, as—accompanied
by his little band of interpreter and police,
with the picture—Strong left the room; "I warn
you, you'd better be out of Streatham by Tuesday,
for by all that's certain, we shall have no mercy if
we catch you on our side of the water!"

"Don't fret," said Strong; "I shall have the
cash by that time, and you may catch me when you
can find me."

"Do you really mean to dig, Strong?" I
said.  "I wish you'd take advice and keep away;
we don't want to be the cause of your hanging, but
we shall be forced to give you up if we catch you
in England; you must know that."

"Well, catch me there, curse you!" said
Strong rudely.  "You'll have to be a darned
sight sharper than you've been yet, either of you,
before you touch either me or the money!  That's
my last word."

"Well, *we* are off by the next train," said Jack
(to my surprise); "so you'll not get the start you
expect.  You don't suppose we're going to wait for
that ridiculous picture, do you?"

Strong looked foxily at Jack for a second or
two; but he said nothing, and followed the others
from the room.

"Lord!" said Jack, when they had gone,
"I don't know whether to laugh or cry; what a
mysterious, incomprehensible, snake of a beast it
is!  What's his game?  One thing is clear, either
it hasn't struck him (which is improbable), or he
has decided against believing, that the picture has
anything to do with finding the money."

"So have you, apparently," I said; "for you
told him that we were not going to wait for it."

"That was bluff, man; don't you understand?
It was said to frighten him from going on by the
first train to Streatham; because, don't you see, if
he thinks that we are going at once, why, *he* can't."

"Do you think he's still after the treasure?"
I asked.

"That's what I can't make out," replied Jack;
"it would be a fearful risk for him to be about the
place when we are there too, he knows that well
enough; yet I can't help thinking that he has not
abandoned all hope of the money.  He's such a
snake, that's the mischief of it; who's to know
what his game is?  At anyrate, we must wait and
get the picture.  It may and may not have a
bearing on the search, but we won't risk anything."

"What if he waits too, and claims it?"

"That is not at all likely; he doesn't want the
picture.  I should say he'll be up at the station for
the next Flushing train, and if he doesn't see us
there, he'll go on.  Perhaps we'd better show up
at the station in order to prevent his departure."

We agreed to do this, and having found out
that a Flushing train started early on Sunday
morning, we both drove to the station, great-coated
as though for travelling, and stood about near the
train as though intending to board it at any moment.

Carefully we scrutinised the faces of all who
passed and repassed us, about to travel by the
express, but we did not see Strong.  He had not
thought good to journey to England, then; probably
Jack's hint that we were intending to travel by
the first opportunity had deterred him.  Presently,
after much bell-ringing and whistling, and
loud-voiced invitations, from stentorian German throats,
to take our seats, the train slowly began to move
forward.

"Well, *that's* all right," said Jack; "he isn't
in *there*, anyhow."

"Good-morning, gentlemen both," said someone
leaning out of a carriage window—the last
carriage—just as we were about to turn and
depart.  "Wish me luck with my digging, won't
you?  Forty-eight hours' start ought to do me, eh?
Well, ta-ta; take care of the picture—it's a beauty,
it is!"

Strong bawled out the last sentence or two at
the top of his voice from far away down the
platform, to the surprise of a few porters and
loiterers who gazed at us suspiciously.  Jack shook
his fist in Strong's direction, a civility which was
replied to by that individual by a grimace, and a
gesture of the hands—as the train passed round
a curve and out of sight—which might have been
intended to signify digging, and might not.

Jack burst out laughing; I did not feel mirthful.

"It's all very well," I said, "but I don't like
it.  He has forty-eight hours' start of us.  He may
find the treasure in that time, by some fluke."

"He's been too clever for us, Peter, and that's
the plain truth," laughed Jack.  "Mind you, I
don't think he'll find the money, and maybe he
doesn't intend to try; but we have been badly
scored off, and there's no denying the fact.  We
must hope it is only spite.  I daresay it's that."

But on Monday morning when we turned up at
the police court to claim our work of art, the police,
finding that Strong had departed without waiting
for the case to be heard, exclaimed—"*Lieber Gott
im Himmel!* you were then right!" upon which the
interpreter added that he supposed the other
Englishman had not waited for the original because
the copy which he possessed of it, and which he
had shown him, the interpreter, was probably
sufficient for him.

"Had he a copy?" asked Jack quickly.

"Certainly," said the man; "a very exact one.
Done, he told me, by a clever sailor on the ship
which brought him from Russia.  He had it painted
as a precaution, he said, lest certain persons should
steal the original for their own purposes."

The police allowed us to take away our work
of art, however, without further difficulties.

"Gad," said Jack, as we left the court, "my
opinion of that chap's cuteness strengthens every
day! he *has* intended, all along, to have another
dig for the treasure.  He expected to gain a day
by being set down at Copenhagen; he gave away
this picture simply because he didn't require it,
having got safely away with the other; this may
be only the copy."

"It looks like our old friend," I said moodily;
"but one can't tell.  Anyhow, we've lost, Jack;
it's very sickening after all we've been through"—

"Nonsense, man! the battle isn't lost until it's
won.  Do you suppose Strong is going to win
right off, in a day and a half?  Why, there's a
fortnight's hard digging in a garden of that size!
Don't lose heart so easily, Peter, it doesn't become you."

It was all very well, I thought, for Jack to be
sanguine and spirited.  He had nothing hanging
upon the issue of this matter, excepting the sporting
desire to win, and the friendly wish that I—as
his chum—should succeed.  To me success was
absolutely everything!

We caught a train on the Monday evening,
and reached Flushing in due course; but the
weather was so terribly stormy that the steamers
were not running.

This circumstance put the coping-stone to my
disgust and depression.  It was too bad—too
utterly unfortunate.  The delay would cost us
another twenty-four hours, every second of which
time was a clear profit to Strong.

When the weather moderated, and the steamer
was advertised to start in the evening, we found
that an immense number of passengers had
assembled to make the crossing.  We obtained
berths with difficulty, and at some additional
expense.  At supper I asked the steward whether
his steamer was always crowded in this way.

"Oh dear, no, sir," said my friend; "most of
these passengers have been waiting two days and
more.  We haven't run since the gale began—Sunday
night."  A moment later, the significance
of this statement suddenly occurred to me.

"Why, Jack!" I exclaimed, "then"—

"Yes," said Jack.  "Either he's on board now,
or else he has seen us, and remained behind on
shore; at anyrate there's been no digging done at
Streatham."

"Thank God!" I exclaimed.  "I was a brute
to rave about bad luck, Jack, before I knew."

"Yes," said Jack, smiling; "the winds and
waves and all the elements seem to have fought
on our side this time, old man!  It strikes me
we are going to win yet."

At Queenborough Station, in the morning, we
scrutinised every passenger that landed from the
*Princess Clementine*.  There were many pale,
sea-sick, travel-worn people that came ashore to take
train to London; but we were both certain that
Strong was not among them.  Neither did he
alight at Victoria.  There was no doubt about it;
for once Strong's cleverness had been over-trumped
by the forces of nature!





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.. _`DIGGING AGAIN`:

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   CHAPTER XXXIX


.. class:: center medium bold

   DIGGING AGAIN

.. vspace:: 2

Jack was determined to see me through with
my treasure hunting, now—as we hoped—at
its last stage, and came with me to Streatham
without even a flying visit to his Gloucestershire
home; which was good of old Jack.

Arrived at Streatham, we put up at the best
hotel we could find, and lost no time in walking
down to old Clutterbuck's house in the lower town.
The place looked gloomy and forbidding, and we
rang at the garden gate—the only entrance—with
a feeling that our trouble was not quite over yet,
and that in all probability the old man would have
exerted his eccentric ingenuity to the uttermost in
order to make the last stage of our search at least
as difficult and toilsome as any, in spite of the
seemingly simple instructions of the letter, which
were merely to go and dig in his own garden at
Streatham, and find what we should find.

As a matter of fact, we encountered one difficulty
before getting farther than the garden gate—the
*outside* of it, I mean; for an old caretaker answered
the ring, and, opening the door an inch or two,
but without removing the chain which secured it,
peeped out and asked us what we wanted.

I said that we had authority from its late master
to take possession of the house and garden.

The old fellow produced from his pocket an
envelope, from which he drew a scrap of paper.

"Is your name William Clutterbuck?" he asked.

"He's dead," I replied.

"James Strong?" he continued.

"Oh, hang it, no! not that blackguard," said
Jack.  "It's all right, old gentleman; this is
Mr. Clutterbuck's heir."

The old caretaker took no notice of this remark.

"Charles Strong?" he continued, unmoved.

"He's dead too," I said.

"Ellis?" said the old fellow, doubling up his
paper and preparing to return the envelope into
his pocket.

"No," said I, "but"—

"Then you don't come in here," concluded the
man, banging the door in our faces and
double-locking it.

The old caretaker's arbitrary action nonplussed
me for the moment.

"But my name is down in the will together
with those you have read out," I cried through
the panels.  Jack stood and laughed.  I heard the
old man stumping towards the house.  I shrieked
out a repetition of my last appeal.  He paused and
spoke.  An errand boy stopped to look on, and
whistled "D'isy, D'isy, give me your answer do,"
so loudly that I could scarcely hear the reply.

"No, it ain't," shouted the old fellow back
again.  "For I copied these down from it myself,
and there wasn't another.  And what's more, this
'ere door don't git opened to no one else but these
four, and if yer wants to git into the garden,
yer'll 'ave to climb the wall and see what yer'll git
from the dawg.  He's loose in here—speak, Ginger!"

Ginger spoke, and the utterance was certainly
alarming.  Ginger's voice was a deep bass, and
it seemed to say—unless my imagination gave it
a meaning which it did not really possess—that it
was as well for those outside that there was a wall
between them and Ginger.  It was ridiculous; but
it was extremely aggravating also.

"But my name was added afterwards," I
pleaded, while Ginger barked and Jack laughed,
and the errand boy, interested, stopped whistling
to hear the reply.  This was not encouraging.

"Garn!" said the rude old man; "I know
what I knows; you go and git yer 'air cut, and
come back and show me the will."

"I can do that easily enough," I shouted, "and
the lawyer who drew it up too, so you'd better save
trouble and let me in at once."

"You find me a lawyer and a will as gives more
than four names, and in you may walk," said the
heroic caretaker; "and till then you can take
yourself off or do the other thing—but out you stay!"

This was evidently the ultimatum, for the old
fellow could be heard stumping up towards the
house.  The dog Ginger remained and continued
his observations in the same tone until we retired.
The errand boy remembered an engagement and
departed, disappointed with us, no doubt.  We
ought, of course, to have scaled that wall and been
eaten by Ginger in order adequately to perform
our duty to that errand boy; but we had other
views, and went and called on the lawyer, Steggins.

That good fellow was sincerely glad to see me,
I believe, and to hear that I was the successful
competitor up to this point.  We told him—in
skeleton form—of our adventures, promising him
a detailed account if he would dine with us at the
hotel, which he gladly undertook to do.  Then we
told him of our difficulties with the old caretaker,
who had received his instructions, evidently, before
my name had been added to the will.  Steggins
laughed.

"What, old Baines?" he said.  "I'll soon put
that right; we are old friends, he and I.  But I'm
afraid this other gentleman, Mr.——er"—

"Henderson," interposed that worthy.

"Mr. Henderson cannot take any part with
yourself in the digging operations; the instructions
are so clear that *only* the successful competitor is
to be allowed in the house or garden until the
treasure has been found.  Otherwise, you see, all
the rest might have remained at home, and still
have been in at the death, so to speak.  They
might simply wait till the report went about that
you were busy digging in the garden, and would
then come and take a hand on equal terms with
you, who had had all the trouble."

This seemed true.  It was annoying, however,
that I was not to have the benefit of Jack's help
in my last dig.  As I told Jack, I had particularly
wished him to have half the work of digging.

"And half the fun of being worried by Ginger!"
added Jack; "thanks awfully, Peter.  It will be
rather fun to stand outside and hear you 'Good-dogging'
Ginger, and presently your squalls when
he lays hold of you!"

"Ginger's all right," laughed Steggins.  "He's
almost as old as his master, and hasn't a tooth in
his head; besides, he's the friendliest of animals,
and wouldn't injure a baby."

"His voice doesn't sound like it," I said.
"Jack grew quite pale when he heard it."  Jack
shinned me under the table for this, I am sorry to
say.  He is a vindictive and un-Christian-like
person, is Jack, when his pride is touched.

"Ginger's voice is his fortune," said Steggins;
"it always has been; he's the finest dog for the
other side of a wall that ever I saw."

I may say that presently, when Steggins had
taken me down and introduced me to Baines and
Ginger as the *bonâ fide* heir-at-law, I found that
Ginger was quite as benevolent a being as Steggins
had described him.  He was a St. Bernard, of
enormous size and the very mildest of manners,
and his voice was a complete fraud, for whereas
it threatened gore and thunder, its real purport
and intent were nothing more shocking than small
beer or milk and water.  For all he knew, I might
have been a murderous desperado, but he took to
me at sight, like David to Jonathan.

Old Baines, too, was polite enough on his own
side of the wall, and showed me over the house
and garden.  He was surprised when I asked for
spades, but produced one nevertheless; however,
when he had watched me turn over the first few
sods of turf, he retired muttering into the house,
and I could see plainly enough that the new
proprietor was, in his opinion, about to prove a
disappointing master, inasmuch as he was
harmlessly but hopelessly mad.

The garden measured sixty-three yards by
forty-eight, and on that first morning of my solitary
digging I ardently wished, with all my heart, that
it had been one-quarter the size.  For to dig up a
garden of this area, and dig it deeply too, as the
latest instructions suggested, and all by oneself,
was a task involving more trouble than is agreeable,
or ever has been, to the present scribe, who is no
lover of monotonous drudgery.

There were a few trees here and there, but not
a flower-bed in the place; the whole area was
roughly covered with turf upon which coarse grass
had been allowed to grow throughout the summer,
which grass I was obliged to mow down with a
scythe before I could proceed in any comfort with
my digging.

Jack did not desert me, though he might not
assist me on my own side of the wall.  He
remained at the hotel, where I lunched and dined
with him daily; and during these meals we
consulted upon my labours and the direction these
should take; and sometimes Jack would come and
carry on a conversation from the top of the wall,
upon which he climbed when none were by to
see.  Ginger used to look up and wag his tail
affectionately upon the stranger appearing in that
unorthodox fashion within the domains he was
kept to watch over.  If Jack had been a burglar,
Ginger could not have looked up more lovingly at
him as he sat on the wall and gave the dog bits of
biscuit.

Several days passed, and the late Mr. Clutterbuck's
garden now resembled a ploughed field; but
never a glint of gold had I struck yet, nor a
glimmer of diamonds, nor the pale crisp delight of
a bank-note or cheque.

Mr. Baines knew nothing, he protested, about
anything whatsoever; he merely thought me a
madman, and considered it the safer way to leave
me entirely alone.  I questioned him, now and
again, as to whether he had ever observed the late
lamented, whom he had served as *factotum* in life,
employed in digging or in taking measurements in
the garden; but to all these inquiries Mr. Baines
gave answers courteously but plainly pointing to
one and the same conclusion—namely, that though
old Clutterbuck had been undoubtedly a "skinflint"
(as he picturesquely described the parsimonious
character of the deceased), yet he had always
shown himself a *sane* skinflint, and therefore unlike
the gentleman who now took his place as master of
the establishment.  By which Mr. Baines meant to
infer that old Clutterbuck neither took measurements
nor dug in the garden, and that I—who did
both—must therefore be mad.  He did not say so
in as many words, but he made it pretty clear that
this was his meaning.

There was no assistance to be got out of old Baines.





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   CHAPTER XL


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   JACK PROVES HIMSELF A GENIUS

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After all, it was only natural that "the
testator," desiring to give his heirs as much
trouble as possible, should scarcely confide his
secret to one who would probably reveal it, afterwards,
to the first that offered him half a crown for
the information.

At the end of the fourth day I was very tired
and rather depressed.  I had measured the garden
from end to end and across, and dug down at every
spot where, according to carefully thought out
calculations, stretched strings would cross one
another; I tried every dodge I could think of or
that Jack could suggest.  I gazed a dozen times at
the old portrait, and could suck no inspiration from
it; indeed, as regards that work of art, I had quite
decided ere this that the thing was no more than
a sickly joke on the part of its grim old original.
I took Clutterbuck's age and measured it out in
feet, and dug at the end of the seventy-first, and in
inches, and diagonally in yards, starting each from
the house, and the two first from the centre.  I
pulled up the old stump of a cut-down tree and
looked inside the hole it left behind.  I think I
really tried nearly every device that the mind of
man could conceive, but nothing had as yet come
of my labours excepting fatigue and depression and
stiffness.

Then, one day, on returning to the hotel, weary
and cross by reason of repeated failure, I found
Jack studying the portrait of old Clutterbuck,
which annoyed me still more; for I was angry with
the miser and his detestable expedients for keeping
his money out of the hands of honest persons who
had worked for it and fairly earned it.

"Look here, Peter," said Jack, smiling, "here's
fun for you; see what I have found on the back of
this work of art—read it for yourself!"  He passed
the portrait over to me.

I took it with, I am afraid, a growl of ill-temper,
and read the words he had pointed out to me.
They were written very faintly and in pencil on the
back of the portrait, at a spot where the paper had
become loose under the beading, and ran as follows—it
was a doggerel rhyme, and this fact annoyed
me still more in my ridiculously furious state of
mind at the moment:—

   |  "If you'd save yourself some trouble,
   |  Dig at three foot six, and double!"
   |

"What does it mean?" said Jack.

"Oh, take the confounded thing and chuck it
into the fire!" I said sulkily.

"Well, but what *does* it mean, if it means
anything?" Jack insisted.  "You've got to take tips
if you can get them, you know; so make the most
of this, though it does seem to convey a rather
unpleasant meaning.  As I understand it, you
have to dig to a depth of seven feet—that is,
*double* three foot six, and"—

"What!" said I hotly, "dig over the whole
garden to a depth of seven feet?  I'll see the old
skinflint"—

"Don't swear," said Jack, though I had not
sworn; "but keep cool and help me to think this
matter out.  Now look here: he said, 'Dig at
seven feet in order to save yourself trouble,' or
words to that effect.  Now, I can't help thinking
he meant this for a tip; for if it meant that you
were to dig over the whole garden to a depth of
seven feet, what trouble would you save yourself
by doing that?  What the old boy meant was, find
the right spot, and *then* dig down seven feet."

"Yes," I said, laughing mockingly and throwing
the portrait on the table, "find the right spot;
that's just the *crux*!  If you'll kindly find the spot
for me, I'll dig to any depth you like—sink an
artesian well, if you please; but where the dickens
*is* the spot?"

"You are angry and disinclined to speak like a
sensible creature," said Jack.  "Have your dinner,
and then perhaps you'll be in a fit mood to listen
to an idea which has struck me."

This rather sobered me.

"Have you really an idea?" I asked, flushing.

"Yes," said Jack, "I have; but I'm not going
to tell you till you've dined.  A full man is a less
dangerous being than an empty one; you might
fall upon me and rend me now, if you thought my
idea absurd, as you very likely may."

Entreaties broke like little waves upon the
shingle of Jack's obstinacy.  I said I was sorry for
being rude and angry; I begged to hear his last
new idea.  Jack's only reply was—

"Dinner's at eight; you'd better change those
digging clothes and make yourself look like a
decent Christian, if you can."

Jack was perfectly right.  Dinner made a
wonderful difference in the view I took of things in
general; it always does.  After dinner, armed with
his pipe, sitting over an early fire in our private
sitting-room, Jack dismounted from his high horse
and admitted me into his confidence.

"I daresay you won't think anything of it," he
said; "but it was the portrait of old Clutterbuck
that set me dreaming."

"*What!*" I said, jumping to my feet and
seizing a dessert knife, "you don't mean to say,
after all my digging, that the money's hidden in it?"

"Why, man, no!  I never thought of that,"
said Jack.  "However, open the back carefully
and see, if you like."

I did so; I ripped the back off and looked in
the space between it and the canvas upon which
the odious caricature was painted.  An earwig ran
out, but there was no treasure.  I threw the thing
back upon the table, and the knife with it.

"Don't fret," said Jack; "that's not what I
meant at all.  What I did mean is this: do you
suppose that any sane man—and you cannot say
that old Clutterbuck was anything else—would any
man who was not insane take the trouble to carry
a picture to the Gulf of Finland and bury it there for
his heirs to find—an odious misrepresentation of
his features too—unless there were some object to
gain by so doing?  In a word, what I can't understand
is how both you and I should hitherto have
accepted the ridiculous fact without suspicion."

"But we *did* suspect," I cried.  "We said at
the time that the thing was about as idiotic as it
could be; but when one's right to benefit by a will
depends on the sanity of the testator, one doesn't
like to air one's opinion that he was mad, even
though one may think so."

"Depend upon it, the old boy was no madder
than you or I," said Jack gravely.  "I am
beginning to think that he was very sane indeed,
and that he has managed the whole of this business
with consummate skill—always bearing in mind his
expressed desire to make his heirs sweat for their
money.  Now listen here.  I have been thinking
while you did your hard labour in the garden, and
I am now perfectly convinced that the old fox did
not bury his precious piece of rubbish because he
valued it or thought his heir would.  Quite the
contrary.  He knew that it was extremely likely
that his heir—probably James Strong, as he
supposed at the time—would chuck the portrait in
the fire with a curse at the memory of the original.
And why, think you, did he take the trouble to
have this picture painted and to bury it and
solemnly bequeath it to his heir if he suspected
that the finder would burn it?"

"It beats me," said I.  "Go on."

"Because he knew that the portrait was
indispensable, or nearly so, to the finding of the
treasure," said Jack mysteriously.  "See here.
He hates Strong and the rest, and knows they hate
him.  Therefore he makes his portrait indispensable
in the hope that they will destroy it, and with
it their chance of finding his money."

"Very well," said I, "let us admit all that; but
how *can* the portrait be indispensable to, or have
any connection with, the finding of the hidden
treasure?"

"That's what we have to learn," said Jack;
"but I have evolved a theory on that point also."

I laughed.

"Upon my life, Jack, it's too funny," I said.
"You are as ingenious as Machiavelli himself; but
how are you going to connect that awful daub
with the buried treasure?  You can't do it; I defy
you!"

"Well, I'll tell you, anyhow; it may be as
ridiculous as you suppose, and it may not," said
Jack.  "You see the eyes of the awful personage
in the picture: look here, I hold the portrait thus.
Now get in front of the thing and try if you can
find a place where the eyes focus you; you'll have
to lie down on the carpet."

Still amused, but interested nevertheless, I lay
down along the carpet, as desired, and presently
found a spot where the eyes certainly seemed to
gaze at me.

"Well," I said, "what then?  They are to
gaze at the spot where the money lies hidden?  Is
that it?"

"That's just exactly it," said Jack, flushing a
little.





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   CHAPTER XLI


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   THE EXCITEMENT BECOMES INTENSE

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"But, man alive," said I, "where's the picture
going to hang, or be held, in order to
point out the spot?"

"That's what we've to find out," said Jack.
"If my theory is right, the old boy will have
prepared a place for it to hang.  Are there trees,
or nails in the wall?"

"There are trees, certainly," said I; "I don't
know about the nails.  And am I to dig a
seven-foot hole wherever the confounded picture will
hang?"

"Yes, you are," said Jack imperturbably, "and
you know it.  And now you had better go to bed;
partly because you'll require some rest for these
seven-foot holes, but chiefly because you are in
such an evil humour to-night that I'm blessed if I
will endure your society any longer!"

And so to bed I went.

That night I dreamed a great many wonderful
dreams, and in each and all of them I was digging
and for ever digging, and the treasure was still
unfound or, when found, snatched from me!  In one
of my dreams, I remember, I fancied that I had
hit upon the right tack, when of a sudden three
huge Mahatmas bore silently down upon me from
the world of spirits and demanded of me what I
sought.

They looked out upon me with piercing black
eyes let into cavernous sockets framed in dead-white
faces, and they flapped their sable mantles
over me and frightened me.

"Oh, sirs," I said, "I am seeking for buried
treasure; I am within an ace of finding it and yet
have not found it.  Help me, I beseech you, to
light upon it, and you shall do with me as you
will!"

"Treasure is vanity, vanity, vanity!" cried one
of the Mahatmas.

"Gold is dross, dross, dross!" wailed a second.

"Nevertheless, I will show you where to find
it!" sang the third, in a mournful monotone.  "Come!"

I dreamed that I followed the Mahatma back,
earthwards, and we alighted in Clutterbuck's
garden.  He did but turn over one spadeful of
earth, and there lay revealed a sack of glittering
gold pieces.  Instantly the two other Mahatmas
flew shrieking to the treasure and fought for it,
tearing the black mantles from one another's
shoulders.  But the third slew them both from
behind, and, seizing the sack of gold, fled over
land and sea, I, shrieking, after him.

But just as I was overtaking him he turned,
and I saw his face—it was James Strong.  At the
same moment he cried aloud, and said: "For
treasure I have sinned and murdered, and lo!  I
have bartered my soul in vain—for see what this
gold of yours is!"

With the words he poured the gold out of the
sack's mouth, and behold! it was ashes, and they
fell hissing into the sea.

In another of my dreams I was busily digging,
while the dog Ginger watched my efforts.
Suddenly I turned up a sod in which lay a piece of
bread, and in the bread was folded a cheque for
one hundred thousand pounds; but even as I read
the figures, and was about to cry aloud for joy, the
dog snatched both bread and paper from my hand,
and swallowed them.

All this dreaming went to prove that I was far
more interested and influenced by Jack's rather
brilliant idea than I had chosen to show; his
suggestion was on my mind and had "murdered
sleep," quiet, solid sleep, such as I usually indulged
in.  Consequently, I was up very early on the
following morning in order to set about putting the
new idea to a trial.  I hurried through breakfast,
and was out of the hotel and busy at work in the
garden before Jack was dressed.

First I tried the trees.

There was a willow, a fine tree with two big
branches, almost as large as the parent stem,
about ten feet from the ground.  There was no
excrescence from this tree small enough to hang
the picture upon, and I passed on to the next, a
poplar.  Here, at about five feet from the earth,
there was a twig from which the picture might
be got to hang in a lopsided kind of way; but
the twig was evidently a young shoot, and had
probably sprung into existence since the picture
had been taken to Hogland and buried, so that
I spared myself a seven-foot dig beneath that poplar.

Then there was a lime, a small one, near the
end of the garden; and into the trunk of this tree,
on the wall side, I discovered that a nail had been
knocked.  I grew hot and cold at the sight, for
I thought I had "struck oil" at last.

But, alas! when I had hung the picture by
its little ring to this nail, and tried to get my face
where the eyes would be fixed upon it, I found
that the portrait glared at a spot about half-way
down the brick wall, and not at any place on the
ground whereinto a man might sink a spade.

There were no more trees, and I now turned
my attention to the wall itself, and looked for nails
up and down, and from end to end.  I found one,
to my delight, and having hung up the portrait,
was engaged in the occupation of lying on my
stomach and wooing the stony glare of old
Clutterbuck's lack-lustre eyes, when Jack mounted the
wall just above it, and nearly fell off again for
laughing at the ridiculous spectacle which he said
I presented.  However, I focussed the eyes, and
planted a stick in the exact spot.

"It's the only nail in the garden, Jack," I cried
excitedly.  "I do believe we've hit off the place
at last!"

"Good!" said Jack grimly; "now dig for all
you're worth!"

I did dig.  I dug that seven-foot hole as
though at the bottom of it some terrible earthworm
had seized by the throat all that I held most dear
in the world.  Never were seven feet of earth
displaced in quicker time by human energy.

But there was nothing there.

"Dig another three-foot-six!" said Jack from
the wall.  "The rhyme may mean 'Three foot six,
and double *that* besides'—that is, ten feet six in
all."

Breathless, despondent, stiff, half dead with
fatigue, I dug on till the water was up to the top
of my boots; it was of no use.

"I won't dig another inch!" I groaned; "not
to-day, at all events."

"Come out then, and consult," said Jack.
Even he seemed dejected with the last failure.

I came out, dead beat.

"Are there no more nails in the wall,
*anywhere*?" he asked.

"Not one," said I.  "I couldn't dig again
to-day if there were!"

"Have you tried the trees?"

"Yes; there's nothing to hang the confounded
thing from on any of them."

"I see the cut-up trunk of a felled tree against
the shed, over there.  When was that one cut down?"

I didn't know.

"Ask old Baines," said Jack.

Baines was within doors, though Ginger was
with me; the dog had been a terrible nuisance all
day, licking my face when I had to lie on my
waistcoat in order to focus those eyes, and while
I was digging the huge hole standing at the brink
and whining and howling as though he expected
me to unearth a huge cat for his delectation.  As
a matter of fact, he would have run away if a
mouse had jumped out.  Ginger was not a brave
dog; he was too benevolent to be really brave.

I went and fetched Baines, and asked him
who had cut down the tree, and when and why?

Baines said that he had felled it a year ago
at his master's orders.

"What for?" I asked.  But Baines did not
know that.  Only, he said, he had strict orders
not to burn the wood, or even touch it, for some
reason or other.

This seemed rather curious, and I reported to
Jack on the wall.

"Great scissors!" said that most ingenious
individual; "go and see if there's a nail in the
trunk!"

To my astonishment and delight, there was a
nail; I shouted this news to Jack.

"Oh, hang it all, I'm coming over!" cried Jack;
"this is too exciting for sitting on walls," he added,
as he joined me and looked at and felt the nail for
himself.  "Where was this tree?"  I took Jack
and showed him the big hole in the centre of the
garden out of which I had dug the root.

"Come on," said he; "we must have that root
in again!  Shove!"

Together we shoved the stump back into its
own place, taking care to fit it into the hole exactly
as it had rested there in life, and to keep its
sawn surface level with the earth in order that
the sundered portions of the trunk might be made
to stand one upon another and all upon the parent
stump, straight and without tipping forward or
backward.





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   CHAPTER XLII


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   ALL OVER BUT——

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Then we brought the round thick logs which
had formed the trunk, and which had been
sawn into lengths of about four feet, and piled
them one on top of another in their own order,
which was obvious and unmistakable on account
of the lessening girth of the trunk as it went higher.
We piled three of these, fitting them one upon the
other as they had stood in life, and the nail was
in the fourth, with which we crowned the edifice,
Jack standing upon a step-ladder and I handing
up the logs.

"There!" he said, when he had built up the
edifice to the height of some fifteen feet; "there's
our tree as it stood in life, wobbly, no doubt, and
insecure; but it will bear the picture though it
wouldn't stand much of north-easter.  Hand up
the work of art."

We hung up the portrait, and again I lay on
the ground here and there and ogled the hideous
thing until I had wooed its eyes to meet my own.

Then we dug together.  Jack had thrown all
ridiculous fastidiousness to the winds of heaven,
and helped me like a man and a sensible being.

Together we dug, and the hole rapidly grew,
and with it grew also our own excitement and
Ginger's, who looked on whining, as before, for
the game that we were to start from our burrow
for him to run away from.  We had had no lunch,
and the afternoon was fleeting fast; but we dug on.

.. vspace:: 2

Now the grave was two feet deep, and now
four, now five.  I had never felt so excited as
this, even at that supreme moment when my fingers
touched the tin box in the African veldt.

Now the hole was six feet in depth, and Jack's
head, when he stood up, was just below the
earth-level.  Ginger, in his excitement, pulled Jack's
cap off and laid it on the ground beside him,
probably determined that if we were to disappear
altogether, he would preserve at least a memento
of us to swear by.

Six feet and a half, and now my spade (it *was*
mine; I am glad it was mine), *my* spade struck
against something hard and metallic.

"Hullo!" cried Jack, who heard the sound.

"Only a stone, I'm afraid!" said I, trembling
so that I could hardly raise my spade.  Jack
stopped work to watch.

"Your first blood!" he said.  "Dig again and
see; if there are honours, they shall be yours!"

There *were* honours.  Half impotent with excitement,
I dug again.

It was no stone.  Trembling, I cleared the
clayey soil from the object, whatever it might be,
and revealed a vessel of hardware.

"Pull it out, pull it out, man!" said Jack; "don't
stand quaking there!"

I made an effort, and removed the thing and
handed it to Jack; I felt cold and faint with the
excitement.  I could only just see out of my eyes
sufficiently to recognise that the object I had
found was a large earthen jar, corked and sealed
round.

Jack scrambled out of the hole and gave me
a hand; I climbed out in a dream.

"Open it," he said.

"No—you," I gasped.  I sat down and watched,
only half alive.

Jack put the vessel on the ground and broke
it neatly in two pieces.  Inside was a small tin
box, hardly larger than the envelope which Jack
drew forth from it after prising it open.

"Another sickening disappointment?" I gasped.

"I don't know," said Jack; "read it, and see."

"I can't," I said; "open it and read it to me;
if it's another sell, I shall curse Clutterbuck and die."

Jack—looking pale and thin—broke the seal of
the envelope.  I saw the colour rush back to his face.

"What is it, in Heaven's name?" I said;
"don't madden me!"

"All right this time, old boy," cried Jack,
handing me the paper with flashing eyes—"a
cheque to bearer."

It was so.  A cheque for ninety-seven thousand
odd pounds!

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I do not know what I did.  Jack, who sometimes
tells the truth, says that I deliberately stood
on my head on the very top of the pile of earth we
had dug out of the hole, and that Ginger licked my
face just as I had reached the third bar of the
National Anthem (performed then positively for
the first time in that position!) and brought me
down with a run.  Personally I do not recollect the
episode.

.. vspace:: 2

The cheque was duly paid, the bank manager
gravely smiling as I handed it to him in his private
room.  He was, I found, partially in the secret.
He asked for, and I gave him, a short account of
my adventures, when he was kind enough to
express the opinion that I deserved the money.





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.. _`—THE SHOUTING`:

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   CHAPTER XLIII


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   —THE SHOUTING

.. vspace:: 2

That evening Jack and I gave a party.  That
is, we sent down to old Baines a box of
cigars, a bottle of champagne, and a hamper of
delicacies which—I have since reflected—must
have made him very unwell, if he ate them.  We
did not forget Ginger; Ginger enjoyed, that night,
a meal which he must, I am sure, have believed to
have been cooked in the Happy Hunting Grounds,
and to have been sent specially from that abode
of canine bliss for the comfort of his declining
years.  To this day I sometimes see him, when
asleep, licking his lips and going through the
action of masticating imaginary food.  Well, I
believe he is, at such moments, enjoying once
again—in the sweet glades of remembrance—the
ecstasies of that *gala* banquet.

As for ourselves, Jack invited me and I him
to a Gaudeamus, and together we celebrated the
occasion in a manner befitting so glorious a finish
to our wanderings and toil (not that Jack ever did
much of the digging!) and sufferings and disappointments,
and so on.  Together we fought o'er again
every encounter, whether with Strong, with
elephants, with lions, or with the devils of despair
and disappointment, and it was on this festive
occasion that Jack made me promise to write down
for your benefit, my dear reader, the record of
our experiences and adventures.  I may say that
we drank your health, dear owner of this volume,
whoever you may be, and voted you an excellent
fellow for buying, or having presented to you, the
book; and wished you were twins and each had a
copy,—all for your own benefit, you know, because
the tale is a jolly good—but perhaps I had better
leave all this for others to say; only I should just
like you to know that we thought of you, as of a wise
person to have possessed yourself of the book, that's
all.  Well, among other things that night, absurd
things that—in our joy and triumph—we said and
did, we drank Strong's health and wished that he
might escape the hangman's rope; we also breathed
a fervent wish that we might never see the rascal
again, and then, in more serious mood, discussed
the question as to whether it was at all likely that
we ever should.

We both decided that it was extremely unlikely.
He certainly had audacity enough and—to do him
justice—pluck enough for five men; but when
a man knows that he is a murderer, and a double
or treble murderer, and that if his crimes could be
brought home to him he must "swing" for them,
he is not likely to haunt those parts of the world
where he would be most in danger.  The world is
big enough.  He would keep away from us, at
anyrate!

"I wonder what he is doing now?" said Jack
with a laugh; "and where he is, and what he would
say or do if he knew of to-day's little success, eh?"

"Well, I'm glad on the whole that he doesn't,"
I said; and in this conclusion Jack concurred; for,
without being exactly afraid of the fellow, we had
had enough of him, and that's the truth.

Now, the longer I live in this world the more
I realise that we human beings are but a poor,
blind, helpless lot of creatures; we are best pleased
with ourselves when we have, in reality, little
cause for satisfaction; we imagine ourselves safely
out of what is familiarly termed "the wood," when,
as a matter of fact, a very jungle of trouble lies
immediately before us, could we but see it!  Here
is a case in point.  We were very, very happy that
night, and apparently with every legitimate reason;
moreover, when I laid my head upon the pillow at
about twelve o'clock, I imagined that I should
awake at eight or so, ready to step into a new
bright world which the sunshine of yesterday's
success should have transformed for me into a
very paradise of bliss.  I had every reason to
suppose that this would be so.  I never for one
moment imagined, for instance, that this might be
the last time that I should lay my head to rest in
this world, and that the sleep I now courted should
be an endless one in so far as concerned the usual
awaking to a terrestrial morrow!

And yet this came very near to being the actual
and exact state of the case.

It was, I think, about two or three o'clock in
the morning, when some pleasant dream I was
enjoying began to be marred—I remember the
feeling quite well—by a kind of choky sensation,
a difficulty in breathing.  I can even recall the
fact that some friend—a dream-friend, I mean—made
the heartless remark that prosperity was
making me so fat that the function of getting
breath had become a labour to me.

But the sensation became rapidly unpleasant
and intolerable, and I awoke suddenly, sweating
and in terror.  What had happened to me?

Then I heard Strong's voice, very subdued
and soft, but certainly Strong's voice.  Could this
be still a part of the dream?

No, it was reality; Strong's voice was a reality;
so was a handkerchief which he had tied over my
mouth, gag-wise; so was a candle which he had
lighted in the room, and the light of which revealed
the detested face and ferocious expression of the
scoundrel as he bent over me, and hissed his oaths
and threats into my ear.

"Ah, you're awake, are you?" he murmured
(I omit the oaths with which he befouled his
language)—"I have you at last, you see, you
infernal"—(I really cannot repeat the names he
called me, they were too vile even to mention),
"say your prayers, for you're off this time, to glory!"

I could not speak for the gag upon my mouth.
I tried to raise my hands, but I found the rascal
had tied them together at the wrists.  I could
hardly breathe, for the bandage was so tightly
drawn that I was half suffocated already.

Strong saw that this was so.  He put his
hand behind my head and slightly loosened the
handkerchief.

"Now, you whelp of Satan," he said, "get
out of bed and show me where you've hidden
the treasure, curse you!  I've wasted time enough
over it already.  Don't pretend this hundred
pounds odd, in your letter-case, is the lot.  Lies
won't do, you're off to Kingdom Come in two
minutes; you'd better not go with a lie on your
lips!  Come,—I saw you find it,—you'd better be
quick!"

I glared at the scoundrel, but did not move.
I was thinking hard!  Oh that I could get my
hands free and be at him! or my mouth, that I
might shout for Jack—who was in the adjoining
bedroom.  My heart was almost bursting with
rage and hatred for this man; yet I was absolutely
helpless; I could do nothing.

"What, you won't budge, won't you?" said
the scoundrel.  His face, at this crisis, looked
exactly what I should imagine the devil to be
like: the very incarnation of hatred and malice
and all evil—but I daresay my own was not, at
the moment, a type of innocent beauty and
passionless charm, any more than his!

Strong placed his hand behind my neck a
second time, and tightened the gag.  I was
suffocating—I kicked and struggled—my heart
was bursting, my brain reeled and swam, my veins
swelled—I sweated from head to foot in my agony
and terror, and then—at the critical moment—by
God's mercy an idea occurred to me.

I sprang out of bed and rushed to the wash-hand
stand, and, whether by kicking, or falling
over upon them, or pushing with bound hands or
with elbow, I contrived, somehow, before Strong
realised my intention, to send the jug and basin
crashing upon the floor with a noise, I suppose,
that would have awakened an army of men a
mile away.  At the same moment I lost
consciousness, and therefore for the events of the
next few minutes I am indebted to second-hand
information.

This is, I understand, what happened.

Jack is a lightish sleeper.  He was dreaming,
he says, of a cricket match in which he once took
part at "Lords," playing for his school against
the M.C.C. in the great annual function held, as a
rule, on the first two days of the holidays.  Jack
was batting, it appears, to Strong's bowling.
Dream-bowling is sometimes very difficult to play
by dream-batsmen.  It depends very much upon
whether the batsman has dined judiciously or the
reverse.  Jack had assisted at a banquet, as has
been shown; and Strong's bowling was giving
him a lot of trouble.  Strong had sent down four
balls, of which the slowest, Jack declared, could
have given points to a flash of buttered lightning.
One of them killed the wicket-keeper; and another,
being a wide, lamed short-slip for life; no one
knew what became of the other two balls, they
were never caught sight of at all.  Then Strong
sent down the fifth, and Jack—though he saw
nothing of it—slogged at it for all he was worth.
The wicket-keeper, it seems, just before he died,
had assured Jack that Clutterbuck's treasure would
be lost to us for ever, and that Strong was to be
declared the legitimate proprietor of the same,
by special rule just passed by the committee of
the M.C.C., unless he contrived to make four
runs in this over.  So that it was absolutely
necessary, Jack explained, to hit this fifth ball to
the boundary.

By some fluke Jack caught the ball full; he
did not see it; he admits having shut his eyes;
Strong's face was more than he could stand up to.
He lashed out at it blindly, and sent it flying, at
the rate of a million miles an hour, over Strong's
head, straight for the pavilion seats.

That marvellous fellow, Strong—the
dream-Strong—rushed after it, and careered so fast (at
the rate, in fact, of a million and one miles per hour)
that he was just able to leap into the air at the
very pavilion rail and touch the ball.

He could not hold it, however, and, losing
his balance—owing to the great pace at which he
had travelled—he flew head over heels clean
through the glass windows of the pavilion, and
alighted upon the luncheon-table, which fell with
a frightful crash.

This crash was my little contribution to Jack's
dream; it was the overthrow of my jug and basin,
and the tumult of it roused Jack in an instant.
He sprang from his bed, wide awake, and seeing
that a light burned in my room, and hearing—as
he thought—some sound there, pushed the door
open and entered, full of wonder and some alarm.

He was just in time to see a figure disappearing
out of the door, and without stopping to help
me—indeed, he declares that he didn't notice me lying
there in the corner!—sprang away after the man
at the door, believing that it was I, and that I had
gone suddenly and mysteriously mad.

Things went propitiously.  Several people
rushed into my room, wakened and startled by
the crash of china and the sound of feet scudding
down the passage; and one of them speedily
removed the bandage from my mouth and the
cord from my wrists.  I think this saved my life.
Indeed, I was already half dead, and even when
released I did not for some minutes recover
consciousness.

Meanwhile, Jack had scudded after Strong
without knowing whom he pursued.

Strong made for the outer hall, intending to
escape from the hotel; but delay at the front
door, which he found locked, enabled Jack to run
him to earth.

Strong fished out a revolver and pointed it at
Jack's head, but Jack luckily dashed it aside, and
it fell upon the marble floor of the entrance hall,
exploding as it did so, with a startlingly loud report,
which effectually roused those few people sleeping
in the hotel whose slumbers had survived the
upsetting of my jug and basin.

Then Jack, recognising Strong at last, fell
upon the scoundrel and administered the grandest
possible thrashing and kicking that you can
imagine.  That thrashing of Strong, Jack always
says, did him a heap of good, and made a new
and self-respecting man of him again; for he had
lost of late some of his self-respect by reason of
Strong's indisputable cleverness in Copenhagen and
Bremen, where he had scored heavily against us.

When, however, he had "scarcely begun," as
he says, the process of kicking and punching the
wretched man, the performance was interrupted
by an inrush of frightened people, who had heard
a pistol-shot and were rushing downstairs to see
what was the matter.

So that there was no difficulty about securing
Strong; and that arch scoundrel was presently
led upstairs to my room, bound tightly at the
wrists, in order that I might testify to his identity
as set forth by Jack.

Well, there was little doubt about that, and as
little trouble in getting the midnight burglar
transferred from the hotel to the police cell.  He had
been caught red-handed.  My money and my letter-case,
with my own cards in one of the pockets, were
found in his possession, two hundred pounds in
notes, the bulk of Clutterbuck's cheque had of course
been deposited by me in the bank.  It was as clear
a case of burglary as ever delighted policeman's
ears, and the constable, summoned to remove
Strong, looked as pleased as one who has come,
unexpectedly, into a good thing.

We found that Strong had—under an assumed
name, of course—actually slept for three nights
within a room or two of us!  He had taken care
to remain invisible at all such times as we spent
within the hotel, however; but had kept a watch
upon our actions, and had even—as he declared—watched
me find the treasure,—peeping over the
wall at a spot where his face was well hidden by
the branch of a spreading tree.  He probably
concluded that I should have the entire proceeds of
the cheque with me in the hotel.  It was just as
well that I took the precaution to bank the money,
however; for had he found it, he would have got
clear away without awaking me.  As it was, he
deliberately awoke me in order to compel me, by
the torture of suffocation, to point out where I had
hidden my property.

There is not much more to tell.  The magistrate
committed our rascal for trial at the Croydon
sessions, and in due time he was sentenced by the
court to a term of hard labour.  Jack and I
consulted earnestly as to whether we ought to reveal
the miscreant's criminal acts in Bechuana and in
Narva; but we decided that it would be useless to
attempt to prove the major offence of murder; we
were without evidence of any kind; and, after all,
so long as the fellow was safe within stone walls and
under many locks and keys at Millbank or Portland
or at Dartmoor, or wherever it might be, it would
be out of his power to commit further mischief.

Did he intend to murder me in the hotel, I
wonder?  Jack says he thinks not; but then Jack
did not feel the torture of that gag, and the horror
of imminent suffocation as I did; and I am certain
that, whether Strong intended it or not, I should
have died then and there, if my good friend had
not rushed in and released me in the nick of time.

I suppose there are not many, even among the
convicts in Dartmoor, so utterly evil and cruel in
disposition as this man James Strong, and I am
glad that I may here take leave of him—in these
pages at least—for good and all.  I daresay the
reader is as glad to be rid of him as I am.  I
humbly hope and pray that I may never meet him
again in this world.

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And now at length I was able to enter into
peaceful possession of my hard-earned inheritance
of Clutterbuck's treasure.  I had worked and
suffered much for it, and I think on the whole that
I deserved it.  Of course, money earned by regular
daily toil is, in a way, more worthily obtained; but
since destiny placed in my way the opportunity to
make my fortune, as it were, by a single sustained
effort, the only condition being that I should possess
the necessary pluck and perseverance to continue
that effort right up to the goal, Success, why, I am
not troubled with any compunctions as to the
comparative shortness of the road which, in my case,
led to wealth and prosperity.  Nevertheless, feeling
that I should better enjoy my prosperity if I were
assured of the well-being of those (always excepting
James Strong) whom my own success had, in a
manner, disappointed of expected benefit, I sought
out, through Steggins, the relatives of the murdered
Clutterbuck, who—I found—had been a widower.
He had left two children in poor circumstances, and
the future of these youngsters I shall make it my
business to secure.  They are living in comfort with
a sister of their dead father, and will never know,
I hope, but that their parent perished through an
accidental fall into an African nullah.

Ellis, the cousin, a meek person, who refused
from the first to take part in the treasure hunt,
though one of the five potential heirs of the old
man, was, I found, fairly well-to-do, and declined
with thanks my offer to make him a small allowance.

As for myself—well, you have probably had
enough of me by this time.  But I will just mention
this much: that the little affair down in Gloucestershire
to which I have once or twice made slight
allusion ended in accordance with my dearest hopes;
and that Jack and I are now even more than school
and college chums, being united by a tie whose
name is Gladys, and who is certainly one of the
sweetest—  But no!  I will not go into that.  She
suits me excellently, and that, after all, is the main
thing!

We live in Gloucestershire, near Henderson
Court, in a house that was once a farmhouse but
which has been glorified for our benefit by Jack,
who is its owner.

Jack and I have not many elephants and lions,
or even ibex and elands, about the premises; in
fact, I do not remember to have shot a single one.
But we have plenty of rabbits and not a few
partridges, and occasionally a pheasant or two.  As for
our ".500 Expresses," they are hanging ready on
the wall in case any of the above-mentioned types of
the larger animals should come down into
Gloucestershire; so that we are all right.

Ginger came to the wedding.  He *would* come
into church with the rest of us, and he sat between
two school children and behaved shockingly; for he
nosed all the hymn-books off the pew in about
half a minute, and howled aloud when I told Gladys
that with all my worldly goods I her endowed.

Jack said afterwards that there spoke the spirit
of old Clutterbuck, who was doubtless present in
the form of Ginger, and who hated to hear me
make over his property in this way without forcing
Gladys to do a single day's work for it.

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   *Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London and Bungay.*

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