Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 157, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 July 1919 — PIECES OF EIGHT [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

PIECES OF EIGHT

BEING THE AUTHENTIC NARRATIVE OF A TREASURE DISCOVERED IN THE BAHAMA ISLANDS IN THE . YEAR T 903. NOW FIRST GIVEN TO THE PUBLIC

By RICHARD LE GALLIENNE

CHAPTER Vlll—Continued. “Mind yourself, sar," he railed cheerily, and Indeed it was a problem to get down to him without precipitating the loose earth and rock that were ready to make a landslide down the hole, and perhaps bury him forever. But, looking about, I found another natural tunnel in the side of the hill. Into this I was able to worm myself, and in the dim light found the old man and put my flask to his lips. “Anything broken, do you think?” Tom didn’t think so. He had evidently been stunned by his fall, and I another pull at my flask set him on “ hla feet. But as I helped him up, and, striking a light, we began to look around the hole he had tumbled into, he gave a piercing shriek and fell on his knees, jabbering with fear. “The ghosts! the he screamed. And the sight that met our eyes was certainly one to try the nerves. Two figures sat at a table—one with his hat tilted slightly and one leaning sideways In his chair in a careless sort of attitude. They seeemed to be playing cards, and they were strangely white — for they were skeletons. I stood hushed, while Tom’s teeth rattled at my side. The fantastic awe of the thing was beyond telling. And then, not without a qualm or two, which I would be a liar to deny, I went and stood nearer.to them. Nearly all

their clothes had fallgjf away, hanging but in shreds here and there. Th * the hat had so jauntily kept its was one of those grjin touches Di a th. that terrible humorist, loves to aid to his Jests. The cards which hap apparently just been dealt, had syzfered scarcely from decay—only a little dirt .had sifted down upon them, rX it had 'into the rum glasses that stood, too, at each man’s hide. And as’l looked a't the skeleton jauntily facing me. I noticed that a bullet hole had been made as clean as if by a drill in his forehead of bone—while, turning to examine more closely his silerit partner, I noticed a rusty sailor’sKknife hanging from the ribis where the »ngs bad been. Then I looked on the and found the key to the whole story.

For there, within a few yards, stood a heavy sailor’s chest.strongly bound around with iron. Its lid was thrown back and a few coins lay scattered at the bottom, while a few lay about on the floor. I picked them up. They were pieces of eight! Meanwhile Tom had stopped jabbering and had come nearer,-looking on in awed silence. 1 showed him the pieces of eight. “I guess these are all we’ll see of one John P. Tobias’ treasure, Tom,” I said. And it looks as if these poor fellows saw as little of it as ourselves. Can’t you imagine them with it at their feet —perhaps playing td- divide it on a gamble, and meanwhile the other fellows stealing in through some of these rabbit runs—one with a knife, the other with a gun—and then: off with the loot and up with the sails. Poor devils! It strikes me as a very pretty tragedy—doesn’t it you?” Suddenly—perhaps with the vibration of our voices—the hat toppled off the head of the fellow facing us.in the most weird and comical fashion —and thst n ' oQ ? toft_ niiirK' fftr _Toni, find screamed and made for the exit hole. But I waited a minute to replace the hat on the radish one's head. As I was likely often to think of him in the future I preferred to remember him at the moment of our first strange* acquaintance.

Book 11. CHAPTER I, Once More in John Saunders’ Snuggery. Need I say that it was a great occasion when I was once more back safe in John Saunders’ snuggery, telling my story to my two friends, John and Charlie Webster, all just as if I had ,never .stirred from my easy chair, instead of having spent- an exciting month or so among sharks, dead men, blood-lapping ghosts, card-playing skeletons and such like? My friends listened to my yarn in characteristic fashion, John Saunders’ eyes like mice peeping out of a cupboard, and Charlie Webster’s huge bulk poised almost threatening, as It were, with the keetfness of his attention. His deep-set kind brown eyes glowed like a boy's as I went on. but by thfcir dangerous kindling at certain points of the story, those dealing with our pockmarked friend, Henry P. Tobias, Jr., I soon realized where, for him, the chief interest of the story lay. “The rebel 1” he roared out once or twice, using an adjective peculiarly English. For him my story had but one moral —the treason of Henry P. Tobias, Jr. The treasure might as well have had no existence, so far as he was concerned,, and the grim climax in the cave drew nothing from him but a preoccupied nod. And John Saunders was little more satisfactory. Both of them allowed me to end in silence. They both seemed to be thinking deeply. “I must say you two are a great audience.” Isaid presently, perhaps rather childishly nettled. "It's-a very serious matter,’’ said John Saunders, and I realized that it was not ray crony but the secretary to the treasury of his Britannic majesty’s government at Nassau that was talking. As he spoke he looked across at Charlie Webster, almost as if forgetting me. “Something should he done about it, eh. Charlie?” he con-

tinned. “ traitor!" roared Charlie, once more employing that British adjective. And then he turned to me: “Look here, old pal. I’ll make a bargain with you, if you like. I suppose you're keen for that other treasure now, eh?” “I am,” said I. rather stiffly. “Well. then. I'll go after it with you—on one condition.' You can keep the treasure, if you’ll give me Tobias. It would do my heart good to get him. as you had the chance of doing that afternoon. Whatever were you doing to miss him?” "I proposed to myself the satisfaction of making good that mistake," I said, “on our next meeting. I feel I owe it to the poor old captain.” “Never mind; hand the captain’s rights over to me—and I’ll help you nd I know with your treasure. Beedes. Tobias is a job for an Englishman—eh. John? It’s a matter of iking and with me. With you it would be mere private vengeance. With me it will be an execution; with you it would be a murder. Isn’t that so, John ?” . “Exactly.” John nodded. “Since you were away,” Charlie began again, “I’ve bought the prettiest yawl you ever set eyes on—the Fla-mingo—-forty-five over all, and this time the very fastest boat in the harkbor. Yes’ she’? faster even than the Susan B. Now I’ve a holiday due me in about a fortnight. Say she word, and the Flamingo's yours for a. couple of months, .and her captain too. I make only that ope condition.” “All right, Charlie,” I agreed; “he’s

Whereat Charlie shot out a huge paw like a —shoulder of mutton —and grabbed my hand with as much fervor as though I had saved his life or done him some other unimaginable kindness. And as he did so his. broad, sweet smile came back again. He was thinking of Tobias. While Charlie Webster was arranging his affairs so that he might be able to take his holiday with a free mind I busied myself with provisioning the Flamingo, and in casually chatting with one and another along the water front, in the hope of gathering some hint that might guide us on our coming expedition. I thought it possible, too, that chaiice might thus bring me some information as to the recent movements of Tobias?

In this way I made the acquaintance of several old salts, both white and black, one or tw’o of whom time and their neighbors had invested with a legendary savor of the old “wrecking days,” which, if rumor speaks true, are not entirely vanished from the remoter corners of the islaads. But either I heir romantic hffloK~-were entirely due to imaginative gossip, or they themselves were too shrewd to be drawn, for I. got nothing out of them to my purpose. One afternoon in the course of these rather fruitless if interesting investigations among the picturesque shipyards of Bay street I had wandered farther along that historic water front than is customary with sightseeing pedestrians, and had come to where the road begins to be left alone with the sea, except for a few country houses here and there among the surrounding scrub —when my eye was caught by a little store that seemed to have strayed away from the others —a small timber erection painted in blue and white with a sort of sea-wildness and loneliness about it, and with large, naive lettering across its lintel announcing itself as an “Emporium” (I think that was the word) “of Marine Curiosities.” I pushed open the door. There was no one there. The little store was evidently left to take care of itself. Inside It was like an old curiosity shop of the sea, every available inch of space, rough tables and walls littered and hung with the queer and lovely bric-a-brac of the sea. Presently a tiny girl came in, as it seemed, from nowhere and said she w’ould fetch her father. In a moment or two he came, a tall, weathered Englishman of the sailor type, brown and lean, with lonely blue eyes. “You don’t seem afraid of thieves,” I remarked. « “It ain’t a jewelry store,” he said, with the curious soft sing-song intonation of the Nassau “conch.” “That’s just what I was thinking it was,” I said. “I know what you mean,” he replied, his lonely face lighting up as faces do at unexpected understanding -in a stranger. “Of course there are some that feel that way, but they’re few and far between.” ’ “Not enough to make a fortune out of?” - “Oh! I do pretty well,” he said; “I mustn’t complain. Money’s not everything, you see, in a. business like, this. There’s going after the things, you know. One’s got to count that in too.” I looked at him in some surprise. I had met something even rarer than the things he traded in. I had met a merchant of fireams, to whom the mere handling of his merchandise seemed sufficient profit : “There’s going after the things, you know. One’s got to count that in too.”

Naturally we were neck-deep in talk in a momelit. I wanted to hear all he cared to tell md about “going after the things”—such “things —and he was nothing loth, as he took up one strange or ...beautiful object after another, his face aglow, and he quire evidently without a thought of doing business, and told me all about them — how .and where he got them, and so forth. “But,” he said presently, encouraged by my unfeigned interest. “I should like to show you a few rarer things I have in the house, and which I wouldn’t sell, or even show to everyone. If you’d honor me by taking a cup of tea we might look them Over.” So we left the little store, with its door unlocked as I had found-it, and a few steps brought us to a little house I had not before noticed, with a neat garden in front of it, all the garden beds symmetrically bordered with conch shells. Shells ‘ were evidently the* simple-hearted fellow’s mania, his revelation of the beauty of the world. Here in a neat parlor, also mud|h decorated with shells, tea was served to us by the little girl I had first .seen and an elder sister, who. I gathered, made all the lonely dreamer’s family. Then, shyly pressing on me a cigar, he turned to show me the promised treasures. He also told me more of his manner of finding them, and of the long trips which he had to’ take - in seeking them, to out-of-the-way cays and in dangerous waters; He was showing me the last and rarest of his specimens. He had kept.

he said, the best to the last To me, as a layman, it was not nearly so attractive as other things he had shown me-MIHle more to my eye than a rather commonplace though pretty shell;, but he explained that It was found, or had so far been found, only in one spot in the islands, a lovely, vlgited cay several miles to the northeast of Andros Island. “What is it called?” I asked, for it was part of our plan for Charlie to do a little duck shooting on Andros, before we tackled the business of Tobias and the treasure. “It’s called Cay nowadays,” he answered, “but it used to be called Short Shrift island.” “Short Shrift island!” T crled ln spite of myself, immediately annoyed at my lack of presence of mind, “Certainly,” he rejoined, looking a little surprised but evidently without suspicion. He was too simple and too taken up with his shell. “ty Is such an odd name," I said, trying to recover myself. ' “Yes! those old pirate chaps certainly did think up some of the rummlest names.” . “One of the pirate haunts, was It?” I queried with assumed indifference. “Supposed to be. But one hears that of every other cay in the Bahamas. I take no stock in such yarns. My shells are all the treasure I expect to find.” “What did you call that shell?” I asked. He told me the* name, «but I forgot It immediately. Of course I had asked it only for the sake of learning more precisely about Short Shrift Island. He told me innocently enough just where it lay. “Are you going after it?” he laughed. “Oh! well,” I replied, “I am going on a duck-shooting trip to Andros be-

fore long, and I thought I might drop around to your cay and pick a few oi them up for you.” “It would be mighty kind of you, but they’re not easy to find. I’ll tell you exactly—” He went off, dear fellow, into the minutest description of the habits of , while all the time J was eager to rush off to Charlie Web ster and John Saunders and shout into their ears —as later I did at the first possible moment that evening: “I’ve found our missing cay I Short Shrift island is -.” (I mentioned the name o£ a cay, which, as in the case of “Dekd Man’s Shoes,” I am unable to divulge.) “Maybe!” said Charlie, “maybe! We can try it. But,” he added, “did you find out anything about Tobias?’ 1 CHAPTER 11. In Which I Am Afforded Glimpses Intc Futurity—Possibly Useful. Two or three evenings before we were due to sail, at one of our snuggery conclaves, I put the question whether anyone had ever tried the divining rod for treasure in the islands. Old John nodded anc- said he knew the man 1 wanted, a ha 4 f-crazy old negro back there in Graafs Town —the negro quarter spreading out into the brush behind the ridge .in which the town of Nassau proper U built. “He calls himself a ‘king,’ ’ ’ he added, “and the natives do, I believe, regard him as the head of a certain .tribe. The lads call him ?Old King Coffee’ —a memory I suppose of the Ashantee war. Anyone will tell you where he lives. He has a name as a preacher—among the Holy Jumpers ! but he’s getting too old to do much preaching nowadays. Go and see him for fun anyway.” So next 1 morning I went. I had hardly been prepared for the .plunge into -“Darkest Africa” which I found myself taking, as, leaving Government house behind, perched on the crest of its white ridge, I walked a few yards inland and entered a region which, fpr all its green palms, made a similar sudden impression of pervading blackness on the mind which one gets on suddenly entering a coal-min-ing district after traveling through fields and meadows.

“Old King Coffee” predicts an interesting future for the hero. x

(TO BE CONTINUED.)

I Waited a Minute to Replace the Hat on the Rakish One’s Head.

“You Don’t Seem Afraid of Thieves.”