CHAPTER V--I SET FORTH UPON MY VOYAGE
Though all these events took place more than fifty years ago, I have avery perfect recollection of that drive. In those days there was notmuch traffic on the Sussex roads; and we passed nothing on the way toSlindon save a hay-cart and a brewer's wagon. On neither occasion did Idare cry out for help, for Joshua Trust sat by the side of me with hisloaded pistol, pressed close against my ribs, in the pocket of hissailor's pea-jacket. I never doubted for an instant that he wouldshoot. I had then, it is true, little experience of the world; but Icould scarce fail to recognise that I was fallen into the hands ofdesperate men who counted human life of little worth.
So I kept my silence upon the road, wondering all the time what was tobecome of me, and, above all else, what Amos Baverstock would say whenhe discovered that I had cast away my fragment of the map.
That he thought I had it still was plain enough, since he twice toldJoshua to keep an eye on me, lest I should throw it from the cart. Hewas in a great haste to reach the woods at Slindon, where in springtimethe wild flowers are like a garden; and he had a good reason for this.Indeed, in all my experience of Amos, I never knew him fail for want ofcaution; and when a man is circumspect as well as fearless, he is anenemy who cannot be trifled with.
It was the scoundrel's design, so I discovered, to reach the woods withas little delay as possible, and there to wait until the evening, whenhe could take the Portsmouth road under cover of darkness. There were,at that date, many coaches on the highways; and Amos evidently thoughtit wiser not to trust me.
So to Slindon Woods we went, and were there in no time, soon after noon.They unharnessed the horse, and turned him out to graze; and whilst Mr.Forsyth unpacked a hamper that was well stocked with provisions and wineto drink, Amos took me by the shoulders, and looked me straight in theface.
"And now, boy," he said, "I'll have no more nonsense from you--sounderstand me, once and for all. It's an unwise thing to pry into myaffairs--I can tell you that. You know more about me already than Icare to think; and I tell you fairly, you had best mend your ways, ifyou value life."
I was afraid of the look of him, of the hard glitter in his eyes and theway in which his thin lips were tightly pressed together. And I wasmore afraid still of what would happen when he discovered that I hadmade away with my fragment of the torn map. My heart was in my mouth.I felt as if I were suspended by a thread upon the brink of a precipice,and that at any moment that thread would break and I be hurled intoeternity.
Fortunately, perhaps, I was not left long in such uncertainty; for nosooner had Amos taken his hands from off my shoulders than he clappedthem together behind his back, and came out with the very question thatI feared.
"And where's the map, my boy?" said he.
I answered nothing.
"Give it up," he demanded, and held out a hand.
"I have not got it," said I.
At that his jaw dropped. He stared at me in amazement, not knowingwhether or not to believe me.
"Haven't got it!" he repeated. "What d'ye mean?"
And the way he rapped out those last few words made my blood run cold. Isaw, however, that I must make a clean breast of the matter, let it endwhich way it would.
"I have not got it," said I, "for a simple reason; because I had thrownit away before you caught me. And now, you know the truth, and can dowith me what you will."
The hunchback stood staring at me as if I were a ghost. His thin,wrinkled face had gone a yellow or a greenish colour, and his littleeyes looked blacker and more on fire than ever. He kept working hismouth about, as if he were chewing some of his vile tobacco; and, on thewhole, I cannot conceive an expression more menacing, a countenance lessprepossessing.
He came up to me, and searched my pockets; and whilst he was doing so, Inoticed that both his hands were trembling. He had then been joined byboth Trust and Forsyth, who stood on either side of him.
Amos, as he drew away from me, came out with an oath that I can neverwrite. Indeed, the swearing of this man was not the least of his manysins.
"He has not got it!" he cried. "We've been fooled, Mr. Forsyth; andthat by a slip of a boy!"
I thought that he would kill me, then and there, beneath the shadow ofthe trees in Slindon Woods. But, though Amos Baverstock often workedhimself into fits of ungovernable fury, he never was guilty of a foolishaction. For my life--though at the time I never guessed it--was of someuse to him. Not only did I know where I had hidden the torn map, but,as like as not, I had looked at it, and might be able to remember thenames of some of the places that were marked thereon--knowledge forwhich Amos would give much. Had it not been for this, I have littledoubt he would have put me out of the world.
They tied my feet together, in case I should endeavour to escape, whilstthe three seated themselves upon the gnarled surface roots of a greatoak tree, and examined their fragment of the map, discussing thequestion openly, so that I overheard them and learned of the trick thatProvidence had played us all.
For the map had been rent in twain, not by the hands of Amos Baverstockand me, but by the sure and supple fingers of Almighty Destiny. Amoshad in his possession at least three-quarters of the parchment--he hadit all, indeed, except one corner, that which I had seized in my attemptto wrench it from his grasp. And, as good luck had it, that one cornercontained the information of the greatest value: to wit, the exactlocality where the Greater Treasure was to be found.
As for the rest of the map, it carried you from the outskirts of whatmay pass as modern civilisation to within a certain unknown distance ofthe secret place. It put you on the right road, as it were, and thenleft you--lost in the midst of a wilderness of doubt.
When Amos grasped the full significance of this, he jumped to his feet,a perfect figure of fury, storming at me and swearing, using threats andshouting of torture, if I did not then and there confess. But speak Iwould not. Whatever happened, I was resolved to hold my ground, thoughI was filled with grave misgivings.
For all that afternoon they badgered me, trying intimidation, briberyand curses; and then, at last, they settled it amongst themselves thatthey would take me with them into Portsmouth, and thence across the seainto the very heart of a black barbarous country, where they hoped tofind the Treasure of the Incas.
It was then, whilst we waited in the woods for sunset, that I sawmyself, a lad of sixteen summers, launched upon a series of adventures,among strange peoples and in wild, romantic lands--adventures such asthose of which I had often read, of the bold Spaniards who had followedColumbus into a new and unknown world, and brave blades of the stamp ofDrake and Grenville, who--like John Bannister himself--were all men ofDevon. That I was to be one of a company so glorious seemed to me allmy heart could wish, though I went as a hostage with my life itself atransom.
In a strange fashion, in very truth, did I begin my travels; for Ijourneyed that night to Portsmouth, not only bound hand and foot andtied to the seat of the dog-cart, but gagged as well; so that, by thetime we reached our destination, I ached in every limb.
For three weeks we dwelt together in a lodging-house, patronised byseamen, in a poor quarter of the town. The landlord--a fat, slovenlyfellow whose hand was seldom far from a pint mug or near a razor--was,as I guessed, hand in glove with Amos; for he must have known thatthroughout those three dreary weeks I was kept locked in a stuffy room,where I had neither fresh air nor liberty, and no better fare than isaccorded to a convict.
I have said that we dwelt together, but this was not wholly so; for Mr.Gilbert Forsyth, though he was often of our party, had taken rooms inone of the best hotels. He was a gentleman somewhat fastidious in hishabits, with a nice taste in wine and clothes, though--as he was soon toprove--he could rough it with the best of us.
Joshua, too, was seldom in our lodgings. It appears that he spent mostof his time in the neighbourhood of the docks, on the lookout for an oldshipmate whom he knew he could trust, with whom Amos could strike abargain.
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br /> Such a man was eventually found. Joshua brought him in, one evening,and shortly afterwards Mr. Forsyth arrived, looking more than ever as ifhe had just come out of a bandbox.
This fellow proved to be the skipper of a barque, due to sail in a fewdays' time, bound for Caracas in Venezuela. She must call first atLiverpool, to take on a cargo of cotton goods, but would touch at noport upon the voyage but Fayal in the Western Islands, which are nowcalled the Azores.
All this fitted in exceedingly well with Amos's plans. As I was in thenext room when they talked the matter out, and they never troubled toclose the door, I know for a fact that Baverstock bribed the skipper,and that Forsyth--who I suspected all along had undertaken to producethe funds--paid him as much as fifty pounds down, quite apart from thequestion of passage money, and there was more to come at the end of thevoyage.
Gilbert Forsyth, indeed, was a member of the expedition for no otherreason than that he supplied the sinews of war, else Amos had nevertaken him into his confidence and agreed to forego a third part of theloot. For all that, Forsyth proved himself a man of action andresource, though he never looked it; and things would have gone worsewith Amos than they did, had he not had at his right hand one so capableand cool throughout those wild, adventurous days.
For Joshua Trust was well enough in his way to strike a blow or carry acamp-kettle across a mountain range that topped the clouds--otherwise hewas a bull-in-a-china-shop kind of a fellow, whose worth was in hisforearms and not his head.
But Forsyth was cast in a finer mould: a man of education, with tags ofLatin in the corners of memory, a sense of humour--subtle enough to belost upon both his strange companions--and a wonderful brain forfigures.
The man's laziness was all pretence and affectation. He always talkedas if he were half asleep, and yawned at intervals, screening his mouthwith a hand upon one of the fingers of which he wore a golden signetring; and yet, his brain was ever active, and he had the happy knack ofdoing the right thing at the right time--as he had already proved to mycost.
Even whilst I lay imprisoned in that dingy room in Portsmouth, Forsythreturned along the coast to within a stone's throw of John Bannister'scabin by the sea, and searched vainly for the fragment of the map whichI had thrown away. And that in itself was a bold thing to do; for thepolice--to whom Bannister had described the appearance of bothBaverstock and Trust--had been told of my disappearance, and thecountryside, from Arundel to Chichester, was populous with printedoffers of reward.
For, all this time, my mother was well near distracted by anxiety anddistress. John Bannister called upon her, and tried in his ownstraightforward way to set her fears at rest, and swore to her that hewould find me, though he had to search the world.
Of how well he kept his oath it is my task to write, and of much elsebesides. For the barque, which was called the _Mary Greenfield_,dropped her pilot off the Needles of the Isle of Wight, and with a fairwind and under full canvas struck the open sea. And I, Dick Treadgold,was on board, sea-sick that night as any full-grown man could be, andsick at heart as well. For, when the white cliffs of dearest Englandfaded in the evening light, I realised for the first time that I wasalone, and there was no telling what the Fates held in store for me.