CHAPTER VII
MELDON, encouraging the reluctant Major by example and exhortation, continued to scramble southwards along the base of the cliffs. It grew very hot. Now and then Major Kent sat down, mopped his face, and declared that he would go no further. On such occasions Meldon lit his pipe and argued with his friend. It always ended in the Major going on, slipping, staggering, clutching. At last he sat down with an air of great determination.
"J. J.," he said, "the tide has turned. I'm going back. We've passed some nasty corners, places we couldn't get round at half-tide. I've no fancy for being drowned. You know I can't swim."
"All right," said Meldon, "trust me. I'll pull you through."
"If you mean that you propose to save my life in a heroic manner and get credit and perhaps medals for it afterwards, I tell you plainly that I don't mean to give you the chance. I'm going home the way I came, partly on my two feet, partly on my hands and knees. I'm not going to be towed about the sea to gratify your vanity."
"The place I'm going to is just ahead of us. It's the very next promontory. We've time enough to get round it. You'll be sorry, Major, if you go back now."
The Major rose with a sigh, and followed Meldon to a headland which jutted further out into the sea than any they had passed. It was very difficult to get round it. The sea washed almost against the base of the precipitous rocks. There was no more than a narrow ledge, three or four feet above the level of the water, along which it was possible to walk; and even there it was necessary to press close to the side of the cliff. Once round the point, a long, narrow inlet opened before them. It was, even at the entrance, not more than thirty feet across, and it narrowed as it reached inland. On the south side of the channel the rocks rose sheer out of the water to a height of thirty or forty feet. Above them was a steep slope of short, wiry grass. On the north side, where Meldon and the Major stood, the cliff rose less precipitously, and it was possible to scramble along for a short distance. The tide was almost at dead ebb, and at the end of the channel the water lapped on a tiny beach, surrounded closely on three sides by cliffs. At the shoreward end of the beach, a few feet from the water, was a small hole, hardly to be dignified by the name of cave. It was evident that when the tide rose a little the water would reach the hole, and that at half-tide the entrance to it would be entirely covered.
Meldon gazed down the channel and saw the hole in the cliff. His face wore a look of intense satisfaction. Major Kent also seemed pleased. He gave a sigh expressive of relief.
"Now," he said, "we're stuck and we can't go any further. We've reached the last rock on which it is possible to climb, and I can neither swim nor fly. Sup- pose we start to go back?"
Meldon sat down and began to take off his boots.
"This," he said, "is the scene of the shipwreck, and in that hole the Spanish captain concealed his treasure. Reconstruct the scene for yourself, Major. The galleon, partially disabled by the loss of one or more of her masts, comes driving down on the island before a nor'-westerly gale. I gave you my reasons for saying the wind was nor'-west, so we needn't go into that again. Where does she strike? On the point we've just passed. It's the furthest sticking-out point there is, so of course she struck on it. You follow me so far? What happens next?"
Meldon, having got rid of his boots and socks, stood up while he took off his coat and waistcoat.
"What are you going to do?" said the Major.
"Swim to the end of the channel, of course, and see what's inside that hole. You can stay here and mind my clothes. But to go on where you interrupted me. Where was I? Oh yes. The galleon had just struck on the point. What happens next? A great sea lifts her stern and slews it round. Her bow slips off the ledge of rock over which we walked—it would be about half-tide when the thing happened—and the galleon drifts stern foremost into this channel and sticks fast just where we're standing now. You follow me all right, don't you?"
"It's very interesting," said the Major, "but I don't suppose for a moment it's true."
"Of course it's true. It's what must have happened. Don't you see that under the circumstances nothing else could happen? Tell me this, now—if a wave, with a nor'-west wind, lifted the stern of the galleon round in the way I have described, what could the old hooker do but go stern first along this channel until she stuck?"
"Oh, I dare say that's right enough, but there's such a lot went before that."
"Have you any other hypothesis which meets the facts of the case better? No. Very well, then, accept mine. That's the way all scientific advance is made. Some Johnny with brains produces a hypothesis. Everybody calls him a rotter at first. But he remains calm in the face of opprobrium."
"I'm the opprobrium, I suppose," said the Major.
"Well, in this case you represent the opprobrient. But to go on. What does the scientific Johnny do next?"
"You needn't go on."
"Oh, but I will. I read the whole thing up at college in Mill's Logic when I was thinking of going in for honours. I was young then. The scientific Johnny says, 'Take my hypothesis. If it doesn't account for the facts give it the chuck out; but if does, then stop scoffing and get ready a statue to erect in my honour,' Now, what I say is this, Does my hypothesis cover the facts? There now, you've kicked one of my socks into a pool. I do wish you wouldn't fidget in a place like this. There isn't room for a display of temper."
Meldon got his shirt off and stood poised on the edge of the rock for his plunge. "I'll finish explaining what happened when I get back," he said. "I won't be long. Hallo! Who's that? Oh, Great Scott!"
He pointed with his finger to the top of the grassy slope which crowned the cliff opposite him. The Major looked upwards and saw, seated above the hole, Thomas O'Flaherty Pat. The old man, his hair and beard blown in picturesque wisps, by the sea-breeze, was watching Meldon with a calm, disinterested gaze.
"What are you going to do now?" asked the Major.
"I'm going home again for to-day," said Meldon, clutching at his shirt. "I'm not going on with that old boy watching me. I tell you he knows what we are after. He can't have believed that story about the Athalonia miserabilis. What horrid sceptics these unsophisticated-looking people are in their hearts!"
"He'd have been a precious ass if he had believed it. You give nobody credit for any intelligence, J. J. You invent stories which wouldn't deceive a babe in arms, and then expect people to be taken in by them."
"Well," said Meldon, "Higginbotham believed much taller stories than that one."
"I knew you were going too far with that sea-insect of yours. Why couldn't you have invented something more likely if you had to invent?"
"Oh, well, if we're going to enter upon a course of mutual recrimination, why couldn't you have refrained from kicking my sock into a pool?"
Meldon was pulling his boot over the damp garment, and spoke feelingly.
"But never mind, Major, I'm not by any means at the end of my tether yet. To-morrow we'll come back here at low tide and I'll swim to the hole then."
"What about Thomas O'Flaherty Pat? He'll follow us again."
"Oh no, he won't. I'll manage him."
"How?"
"That'll be all right, Major. You leave it to me. If I say I'll manage him, you may take it as a fixed thing that he'll be managed. I can't tell you just this moment how I'm going to do it. I shall have to think the matter out by myself. But you may feel perfectly certain that it'll be all right. I've not done badly so far, have I?"
"In the matter of lies," said the Major, "you've shown an inventive power which has surprised me."
"Don't call them lies; call them disguises. Nine fellows out of every ten who go out treasure-seeking have to adopt some sort of disguise, and it's always considered quite right. Now, what's the difference, the moral difference, between a detective"
"We're not detectives."
"The principle is exactly the same—between the detective getting himself up as a dock labourer in order to deceive the wily criminal, and our saying that we're bug hunters in order to put old T. O. P. off the scent? There's no earthly difference that I can see; so there's no use being offensive and talking about lies. Come on, now. I'm dressed, and we ought to be getting back before the tide rises."
"I said so an hour ago."
"Apart altogether from the disguises that we've been compelled to adopt," said Meldon, when they had scrambled round the point and conversation became possible again, "I maintain that I've done pretty well so far."
"I don't see that you've done anything except cut a hole in the knee of your best trousers."
"They're not my best; they're the oldest pair I have. I bought them two years before I was ordained. That's how they come to be the colour they are."
Mr. Meldon meant that the date of their purchase explained their having once been light grey. It also explained the fact that they were now considerably faded and mottled with a fine variety of stains.
"But leaving my trousers out of the question," he went on, "I think I've done a good deal. I've located to a certainty the exact scene of the wreck; I've reconstructed the catastrophe precisely as it happened, and I'm practically sure I know where the treasure was hidden."
"Oh, you're sure of that, are you?"
"Practically sure, is what I said. I don't set up to be infallible. The best men may make mistakes. Listen to me, now, till I explain. The galleon is lying jammed in that channel. The water is, of course, comparatively calm there on account of the shelter of the headland. The Spanish captain, not being a fool—we agreed from the first, you remember, that the Spanish captain wasn't an absolute fool—sees that there is no immediate danger of the galleon breaking up. These Spanish galleons were all pretty tough. You remember the one that came ashore on Robinson Crusoe's island. It was pretty tough, and so was our one. Well, what does the Spanish captain do? He lowers his one remaining boat over the stern of the galleon and ferries his treasure into the mouth of the hole in the cliff. Then he drags it inland as far as the hole goes, maybe twenty yards or so. Afterwards he and the survivors of the crew landed just where we were standing, scrambled round the rocks—by that time it would be dead low water—very likely go up the same path that Thomas O'Flaherty Pat came down to meet us. Now what do you say to that?"
"I don't say anything," said the Major.
"No, you don't. You save yourself up so as to say, 'I told you so,' in case there happens to be any trifling miscalculation. Or if, as is far more likely, I turn out to be perfectly right, then you're in a position to pretend you agreed with me all along. But it's waste of breath talking to you."
"It is," said the Major.
"I'm glad you agree with me there, anyhow. Here's Thomas O'Flaherty Pat's path. Let's go up it and get back to the Spindrift. I'm as hungry as a wolf. That's the worst of breakfasting so early. By the way, where's the crab?"
"What crab?"
"The large red crab that old Tommy Pat caught and gave to me. Major, have you left it behind?"
"I never had it. If anybody's left it behind it was you. You were carrying it."
"But I told you to mind it while I swam up the channel."
"You did not."
"Well, I meant to, and anyway you ought to have known. How was I to go swimming with a large crab in my hand? Of course you ought to have minded it."
"I'm sorry," said the Major.
"Oh, well, it doesn't much matter. I don't so much care about the crab itself. I dare say we shouldn't have been able to cook it properly even if we had it. What I'm thinking of is poor old T. O. P.'s feelings. I'm afraid he'll be hurt if he sees us coming back without his crab."
"I shouldn't fret about that if I were you."
"Oh, but I do. It's not altogether Patsy Tom O'Flaherty's feelings that I mind. But on these occasions you ought always to try to win the goodwill and confidence of the natives."
"You go a queer way about it, then, if that's what you want."
"Any book of travel," said Meldon, ignoring the Major's last remark, "will tell you that the really important thing is to get the natives to trust you thoroughly from the start."
"That's why you told that yarn about the sea insect, I suppose?"
"Look here, Major, what's the good of rubbing it in about the Athalonia miserabilis? I've owned up that that was a slip. I can't do more, can I? I don't keep harping on to you about the way you put my sock into the pool and forgot the crab, and those are a jolly sight worse things than any I've done."
"I wouldn't care much," said the Major, as they neared the top of the steep and slippery pathway, "to be climbing up this five or six times a day with a creel of seaweed on my back."
"No more would I," said the curate. "Seaweed's poor stuff, but I wouldn't mind doing it that number of times and more with a parcel of doubloons slung over my shoulder; gold, Major, good solid gold. It's this way that we'll have to bring it up from that hole. I've been reckoning out how many journeys we'll have to make with it. Supposing, now, that there's"
"Do shut up, J. J.! What on earth's the use of talking like that? You know as well as I do that there's not the smallest likelihood of our getting any gold out of your hole."
"Oh, I'll shut up if you like. But I'll just say this: it's a good job for you, Major, that you have a man with you who has a little foresight, who figures things out beforehand and lays his plans in advance. You'd be particularly helpless if you were left to yourself."
They reached the top of the cliff. In front of them lay the long, green slope of the island, a patchwork of ridiculous little fields seamed with an intolerable complexity of grey stone walls. Below, near the further sea, were the cabins of the people, little white-washed buildings, thatched with half-rotten straw. On the roofs of many of them long grass grew. From a chimney here and there a thin column of smoke was blown eastwards and vanished in the clear air a few yards from the hole from which it emerged. Gaunt cattle, dejected creatures, stood here and there idle, as if the task of seeking for grass long enough to lick up had grown too hard for them. In the muddy bohireens long, lean sows, creatures more like hounds of some grotesque, antique breed than modern domestic swine, roamed and rooted. Now and then a woman emerged from a door with a pot or dish in her hands, and fowls, fearfully excited, gathered from the dung-heaps to her petticoats. Men, leaning heavily on their loys, or digging sullenly and slowly, were casting earth upon the wide potato ridges. Apart from the other habitations stood Higginbotham's egregious iron hut; the very type of a hideous, utilitarian, utterly self-sufficient civilisation thrust in upon a picturesque dilapidation. It gave to the island an air of half-comic vulgarity, much such an air as Thomas O'Flaherty Pat might have worn if some one had added to his customary garments a new silk hat. Beyond all lay the bay, round which the island folded its arms, a sheet of glancing, glittering water with darker sea behind it, and far away the dim outline of the mainland coast.
The Spindrift lay at her moorings, and beyond her another boat, cutter rigged also, which had just dropped anchor. Her jib was stowed; her mainsail shook in the breeze. Two men were to be seen casting loose the halyards. Soon the sail was down, and the men were gathering the folds of it in their hands and lashing the gaff to the boom. Major Kent and Meldon stared at the boat in surprise. For a time neither of them spoke. Then, taking his companion by the arm, the Major said
"What boat's that?"
"She looks to me," said Meldon, "uncommonly like my old Aureole."
"I just thought she did. Now what brings her here?"
"I don't know."
"Look here, J. J., you go in for being clever; you've been swaggering all day about the way you understand everything and get the hang of whatever happens, even if it's two hundred years ago; just set your great mind to work on that boat and tell me what she's doing out there."
Stirred by the taunt, Meldon spoke with some appearance of recovering self-confidence.
"It's the Aureole right enough. I hired her to a man in a mangy fur coat, who said he didn't know anything about boats but had a friend who did. Now I'll tell you this, Major, to start with. Either that friend knows nothing about boats either, or else he has some pretty strong reason for wishing to get to this island. Nobody but a fool, or a man who was prepared to take big risks, would have ventured out here in her. Why, every rope in her rigging is as rotten as a bad banana. If there'd come on the least bit of a blow that fellow in the fur coat and the other play boy, whoever he is, would have been at the bottom of the briny sea."
"Well, they're not," said the Major, "so their deaths are not on your conscience."
"They wouldn't have been in any case," said Meldon. "I never thought they'd go outside Moy Bay, or I wouldn't have hired the boat to them. Who'd expect a seedy individual in a fur coat, a fellow that looked sodden with drink, to take a boat out on to the broad Atlantic? At the same time the other fellow can't be altogether a fool. He must know something about sailing, otherwise he wouldn't have fetched up here at all. Now, what on earth brings him out here?"
"Maybe he's a tourist looking out for scenery."
"He is not, then. There isn't any scenery here, not what tourists call scenery. And there's not a guide-book in the world that so much as mentions Inishgowlan. The place isn't even marked on most maps. Whatever else he is, he's not a tourist."
"He might be a journalist."
"He might," said Meldon. " And yet I don't think he is. It's quite true that a journalist might come to see Higginbotham. Higginbotham is the sort of man a journalist would fasten on at once. A really smart man at his trade would scent Higginbotham from miles and miles away, and would track him over land and sea. Higginbotham would talk all day long if he got any encouragement. He'd pour out just the sort of sentimental rot about improving the conditions of the people's life that the plump, kind-hearted Englishman loves to read. There's a good deal to be said for that journalist hypothesis of yours, Major, but there are serious objections to it too."
Major Kent did not answer; he was not really much interested in the strangers. Meldon went on—
"In the first place, if he was a journalist, or if he was any kind of inspector, the Congested Districts Board would bring him round in their own steamer. They always take care to do a journalist middling well when they catch him, and they keep their eye on him. They don't let him off by himself in a boat to pry into all sorts of things which he has no business to see. That's one objection. The second is this: if he is a journalist, who is the other chappie, the one in the fur coat? Journalists never go about in couples. It would ruin their business if they did. No, on the whole I think we may decide that he's not a journalist. There's only one other thing he can be—a Member of Parliament, one of the conscientious, inquiring kind, who wants to look into the condition of Ireland for him- self before he commits himself to an opinion on Home Rule."
"I hope," said the Major anxiously, "that his coming won't make it necessary for you to tell any more—I mean to say to adopt any more disguises."
"I expect I shall have to."
"Well now, J. J., like a good fellow, draw it mild this time. Remember, if he's a Member of Parliament he'll see through the ordinary disguise at once."
"That's just it," said Meldon gloomily. "If he's an M.P. he's sure to have made inquiries about our educational system and he'll never believe that story about the National Board wanting to build a school."
"He certainly won't believe about my geological survey."
"You mean on account of the pliocene clay? I don't expect he knows much about clay—not enough to make him sceptical, anyhow."
"I wasn't thinking of the pliocene clay. What I had in my mind was the inherent absurdity of the whole story."
"I don't see that at all," said Meldon. "On the contrary, I'm inclined to think that he will believe that story. Anyhow, he'll ask a question in the House of Commons about it."
"I hope to God he won't! I should look a nice fool if that story ever got into the papers."
"You'd do worse than look a fool. You'd probably be called to the bar of the House, or be sent to jail for contempt of the Chief Secretary. I'll tell you what it is, Major, if that M.P. gets hold of the story you'd better sail straight to America."
"But it's not my story, it's yours."
"It's you they'd prosecute, though. That's the beauty of Ireland. The clergy are perfectly safe. Even the Chief Secretary daren't proceed against me; but he would against you, like a shot. He might set a Royal Commission on you."
"Don't be an ass, J. J."
"I'm not being an ass. I'm looking facts straight in the face and drawing conclusions. It's my opinion that if that man in my boat turns out to be a Member of Parliament—I say if—we shall have to adopt some fresh disguise."
"I can't stand another, J. J. I can't be four things at once. My brain won't stand it."
"It'll have to."
"What do you mean to tell him?"
"I don't know yet. I must be guided by circumstances. But you leave it to me, Major, and you'll find it'll pan out all right. I'm not by any means such a fool as people are inclined to take me for. After all, what's a Member of Parliament?"
The Major's spirits sank as Meldon's revived. He was a plain man with an immense dislike of complications, and he foresaw bewildering confusion before him.
"J. J.," he said solemnly, "I'm Major Kent, I'm also a mining expert in the pay of the Lord-Lieutenant and the Chief Secretary. I'm also a professor of sea-serpents and things of that sort. I can't and won't set up to be anything else on this trip."
"Oh, we're done with the sea-serpent. You can get that off your mind as soon as you like. That was only temporary. Remember, Major, what Shakespeare said, or if it wasn't Shakespeare it was some one else—'One man in his time plays many parts.' You're a man, aren't you? Well, there you are. You can't go behind Shakespeare in a matter of this kind. As soon as we've had a bite to eat I'll paddle across to the Aureole and call on the Member of Parliament."
"You will not," said the Major. "What's the use of running unnecessary risks? You leave him alone unless he goes for you in any way."
"That's the very worst possible policy to pursue," said Meldon. "He'll be off to collogue with Higginbotham straight away if I don't stop him; and it's ten to one he'll hear about the school or the geological survey. No, no. I'll take him in hand. If necessary I'll trot him round myself. How would it be, now, if I dropped a hint that we were members of the Irish Lights Commission going about inspecting lighthouses? He might believe that, and it wouldn't interest him enough to set him asking more questions."
"But there's no lighthouse here."
"That's true, of course. Still, we might be thinking of building one. But anyhow it's time enough to think about that. I can't possibly tell what the best thing to say is till I see the man. In the meanwhile let's go and get out dinner. I was hungry before; I'm simply ravenous now."
"My appetite is pretty well gone," said the Major.
"Rot! What is there to affect your appetite? Why, man, we're getting on swimmingly, far better than I expected. You can't go out treasure-seeking without meeting an occasional difficulty. That's where the sport comes in. And listen to me, Major, it doesn't in the least matter what I tell the Member of Parliament or what he hears from Higginbotham. The old Aureole is absolutely certain to drown him on his way home, and anything he happens to have learned will go to the bottom of the sea with him. It's nothing short of a miracle that he got here safe."