“There’s a bottom plank ’most ripped out of her!” shouted Moses, coming on deck and looking wildly about for Marion. “She’s goin’ down!”
“I don’t reckon she’ll sink,” said Kenton; “but she’ll be durn wet to sleep in.”
“What did it?” cried Lewis.
“Sawyer, I guess, while she was comin’ through the gap. It was an awful pull. Ain’t nothin’ left to show what done it, now,” said MacAfee.
“There’s a bayou a little way below here that we can pole her into and lay her up,” said Marion. “Let go the hawsers. Lewis, you and Lincoln watch the cargo and the horses. Get ashore. I don’t
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believe she can sink. Let go the lines—all together—Claiborne, you and Kenton and Mose man the sweeps. I’ll look out forward. Watch the water, you fellows. If she settles any further, call out. Give us time to get off in the skiffs. I don’t think she’ll settle much farther.”
The ark had sunk to her gunwales, and now floated like a raft. The whole crew were on deck, excepting the two who had been set ashore to watch the cargo and horses. With her dismantled cabin piled amidships, she looked a wreck indeed, and excited much sympathy from the craft that passed her. About a mile below, the arksmen worked her into a flooded bayou, up which they were obliged to pole for a considerable distance before reaching shoal water.
On this bayou the arksmen, directed by Marion, established a permanent camp. The cargo was brought over by small boatloads,
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and some was loaded and brought across by land on the horses, and stored in a shelter which was built for it. There were no means of re-shipping it by other barges, for all the craft on the river were loaded with their own freight; and, besides, the port was still closed to the Americans.
At this camp Marion overhauled the great flatboat as well as he could, without getting it out of the water, and so heavy had been the damage done by the snag and the strain of bringing the ark through the gap that, as Moses said, the cross-bottoming and closing of the seams was about as much work as building two new flatboats.
Weeks passed, and the stifling malarial summer wore through. One after another the men sickened with a local fever, against which their familiar remedies seemed powerless. They recovered, but the great heat which made work during the middle of the day impossible, kept them prostrated.
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The dews fell like rain every night, and made sleeping on the ground, as they were accustomed to doing in the northern woods, more dangerous than they knew. The air they breathed was full of heavy scents from blossoming bays and magnolias.
Marion realized, too late, that he had been led by a forlorn hope into entering a cul de sac. He kept up the spirits of the men, however, and after nightfall led many an excursion up and down the bayou, spearing alligators by torchlight, from the skiffs. The men enjoyed this, for there are few more exciting sports, and it helped to keep the alligators at a distance from the camp, where they were too fond of coming at night to look for garbage around the cooking quarters, and terrify the horses and Tige. His life, poor fellow, was not a happy one. Jimmy had captured a baby alligator, about two feet long, and was trying to tame him in a little corral near the
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camp. Natural sin was deeply rooted in his nature, however, and he and Tige, who could not leave such small fry to scoff at him unpunished, kept up a constant and deadly warfare; and yet it ended in the little reptile’s drooping away from too much civilizing, until, like a flower out of water, he withered up, his skin grew cracked and dingy, and he died and was buried with melancholy rites.
Marion also sent the men fishing a good deal, and they trolled all the way to the head of the bayou after green trout, or black bass, as they are called in the north.
It was on one of these trips that the boys made a curious discovery which greatly excited the imagination of Moses, and led Jimmy to think of something which indirectly saved the fortunes of the crew, and, in all probability, Marion Royce’s life as well.
The two were paddling up a branch of
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the bayou, which they had never explored before. It was just sunrise, for they usually made these expeditions about daybreak, and brought back the camp’s breakfast. The creek was very narrow—not more than ten feet across from one high bank to the other, but fully fifteen feet deep in most places, and fed by many little springs, which they could see purling at the bottom. The still water at the surface was so clear that they could see the clean sand and the tufts of grass in which the fish hid, motionless. After the months on the dirty Mississippi, and the black waters of the lower bayou, this little creek was a marvel of delight to the boys, and they paddled along, their blades brushing the banks as they went.
“It’s the first perfectly clear water we’ve seen since we left home, isn’t it?” said Mose. “My, don’t it make you homesick?”
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Jimmy shook his head. He had not been homesick. The ark had been his first real home. “Look!” he cried.
Moses looked, and saw, blocking the little creek ahead of them, the ribs of an ancient, many-oared galley. It rose, skeleton-like, to the surface of the water, hung with tatters that looked like sea-weed and turned out to be rust-eaten chains. The boys paddled up to it and felt them over, dipping their arms in to the shoulder. They could see it as clearly as if it had been out of water.
“Curious, ain’t it?” said Jimmy. “Escaped, most likely, from Corsairs, or Spaniards, or something. Wonder what became of the crew?”
“Let’s go ashore and look,” suggested Mose.
There was a tiny strip of shelving beach, up which they drew the skiff, and then they wandered about the landing-place.
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“Here are some marks on these magnolias,” said Moses, after prowling about for awhile. “Right opposite each other. A ship on this, and a square on the other. Do you suppose there’s a treasure hid between them?”
Jimmy studied the deep scars in the smooth trunks attentively. “Uncle Amasa always said that pirates didn’t bury treasure,” he said. “They spent it all. No; I reckon that’s just a mark to show where the next fellows were to land, and what they’d find when they got here.”
“I bet there’s treasure,” said Moses, excitedly. “Let’s come up here every morning, and dig until we’ve dug all round the landing, and see if we don’t find it!”
Jimmy looked at him with paternal indulgence. “Don’t you get work enough on the ark to suit you?” he asked. “Come on into the woods a bit and see what they meant by these marks.”
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They went up a pine-needle-covered slope and gained a tiny little cleared plateau, and saw an orderly line of live fig trees. If the boys had been southern born, this might have told them that they were looking at the place where people had lived, but they knew nothing about the habits of fig trees, and they did not even guess that the late crop of brown fruit which hung to the branches was good to eat. Experience with sundry prickly pears had made them cautious where they had at first been venturesome, and they left the figs alone. A few silvery boards strewed the cleared ground, and at a little distance a row of strange little wooden edifices, like the dog tents of soldiers, were falling into decay. Moses bent down and peered into one of them.
“Why, they’re graves!” he exclaimed, in an awed voice. “I wonder why they were covered like this.”
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“To keep animals from rooting up the dead, I reckon,” answered Jimmy, who was practical. “The people from the boat must have come and lived here and waited for their friends a long time, and died of some fever, one by one, so that each fellow was decently buried. That’s all I can make of it, and I reckon that satisfies me. Don’t it you?”
“No, it don’t,” said Moses, decidedly. “I want to hunt for the treasure.”
Jimmy looked at the younger boy thoughtfully, without answering. He saw that the vision of treasure had filled Moses’ imagination so that the terrible parallel that these lost graves and relics of a boat foreshadowed, for their own desolate plight farther down the bayou did not even occur to him. Nothing could be gained by pointing it out, moreover, so he kept his peace. He examined the ground carefully, and searched the bottom of the creek,
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when they finally returned to their skiff; but the sands of many years had sifted back and forth, and he saw nothing.
“Mebby he got away,” he muttered, “when there wasn’t any one left to look after. Lord A’mighty, I hope so.”
“Who got away? What ye talking about?” asked Moses.
“The last one, of course,” said Jimmy. “We counted nine of those hen coops. Some fellow must have buried the last one, mustn’t he? We didn’t find any traces of him anywhere, so I reckon when there wa’n’t anybody left to look after, he got away, and mebby lived to get somewhere. I hope so.”
“Then he probably took the treasure with him, if there was any?” asked Mose, who was still cherishing visions.
Jimmy stared at him. “Oh, dod rot you and your treasure,” he said, roughly. “I mean—of course, he took it. Wouldn’t you?”
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“Sure—of course,” said Mose. But this view of the case was a great blow to his fancies, and they rowed down to camp almost in silence.
When they got back to the ark, Moses was full of their discovery, and told the men about the galley and the marks on the trees, and discussed the possibility of treasure. But Jimmy drew Marion aside to propose a very different idea.
“Mack,” he said, abruptly, “I want to take one of the skiffs and go to Natchez.”
Marion lifted his head sharply. “What for?” he asked. He was the color of clay, and staggered as he stood. “What for?” he repeated, sharply.
“I’m afraid I’ll lose my head if I don’t go,” answered Jimmy.
“Your head, man? What’s the matter with you? Are you sick, too?”
“It’s the same as mine,” persisted Jimmy. “The others can’t tell who shot
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him, but they’re all willing I should negotiate for the crowd, because he gave me the most trouble. I mean Big Harp—his head. I want to take it to Natchez, and give it over to the commandant at the fort and have it stuck up on the palisades, so that there won’t be so much outlawry along the river for a while. I got to studyin’ about it up the bayou, and I think it’s my duty. I oughtn’t to wait.”
Was this Jimmy Claiborne? The boy who talked about his duty to other rivermen? Marion looked at him with a dawning understanding of what the month among the outlaws, and the months on the ark, had been to the boy who had been condemned at home. He knew nothing of the way the incident up the bayou—which had fired the younger boy with enthusiasm for treasure hunting—had brought home to this one what he owed to his fellows. And the young captain stood silent, staring out
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of feverish eyes at the big fellow who faced him.
“Jimmy,” said Marion, leaning back against a magnolia, “do you know that you’re the only man I can count on?”
“Me?” said Jimmy.
“Yes, you. Kenton is around, and that’s about all. He’s discouraged. MacAfee’s discouraged. Merrick’s a pretty sick man. I’m discouraged. Oh, boy,” he broke off, “if you knew what a load this expedition is to carry about on——”
“On a chill?” suggested Jimmy.
“Yes, that’s it. On a chill. A band of those ruffians who are loafing around Natchez could come up here and wipe us out—the way we stand. There’s Charlie and Lewis Hoyt, and there’s Shadwell and Moses and you, and that’s about all.”
He leaned against the magnolia and thrust his hands deep in his pockets and regarded Jimmy with a countenance so dismal
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that Jimmy felt himself stricken with an icy foretaste of fear; not fear for his life or limb, but that fear known as responsibility for others, which he now realized was the thing that most brave men carried about with them, even when they slept. Marion had carried it all through the voyage. Was he laying it down?
“You’ll be all right by mid-day,” said Jimmy, with outward cheerfulness. “You’ll be all right, Mack. Don’t you go and worry. Everything’s doin’ all right. The men are gettin’ on pretty well. Corson has his chill, and then about noon he gets up and waters the horses. Every fellow is able to do something. They ain’t knocked out. Why, if any danger was to come along it would brace ’em right up.”
Marion frowned. “I want you to know how things are,” he said, a little impatiently. “I don’t want you to think things are all right, and then some morning
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have the whole load fall on you without any warning, that’s all.”
He pulled himself up with an effort. “If you go to Natchez, you’d better find out from somebody who’s had experience in this climate how they treat these fevers. You’d better take Lincoln with you, for you’ll probably have a fight on your hands. There’s a rough crowd there, and if you’re alone you’ll probably lose your ‘Big Harp.’ Find out everything you can about the chances of deposit at New Orleans. The commandant probably won’t tell you much, but what he does say will have truth in it; and all these rumors that we’ve been getting have nothing definite, except that we can’t deposit and ought to fight. The men along the river don’t know any more about the plans of the French than we do. I hope there’s no fight coming; but if there is, God willing, we’ll take a hand in it.”
“You bet,” said Jimmy. He cleared
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his throat, because what he had to say embarrassed him. “Mack,” he began, “I reckon you know I’ll stand by you? If you’re going to be sick, don’t you go and worry. I’ll stand by the ark. I can put the thing through. You can trust me.”
Marion smiled wearily. “You will be c............