VI
Tom Chist was gone for almost an hour, though he ran nearly all the way
and back, upborne as on the wings of the wind. When he returned,
panting, Parson Jones was nowhere to be seen, but Tom saw his footsteps
leading away inland, and he followed the scuffling marks in the smooth
surface across the sand-humps and down into the hollows, and by-and-by
found the good gentleman in a spot he at once knew as soon as he laid
his eyes upon it.
It was the open space where the pirates had driven their first peg, and
where Tom Chist had afterwards seen them kill the poor black man. Tom
Chist gazed around as though expecting to see some sign of the tragedy,
but the space was as smooth and as undisturbed as a floor, excepting
where, midway across it, Parson Jones who was now stooping over
something on the ground, had trampled it all around about.
When Tom Chist saw him, he was still bending over, scraping the sand
away from something he had found.
It was the first peg!
Inside of half an hour they had found the second and third pegs, and
Tom Chist stripped off his coat, and began digging like mad down into
the sand, Parson Jones standing over him watching him. The sun was
sloping well towards the west when the blade of Tom Chist's spade
struck upon something hard.
If it had been his own heart that he had hit in the sand his breast
could hardly have thrilled more sharply.
It was the treasure-box!
Parson Jones himself leaped down into the hole, and began scraping away
the sand with his hands as though he had gone crazy. At last, with some
difficulty, they tugged and hauled the chest up out of the sand to the
surface, where it lay covered all over with the grit that clung to it.
It was securely locked and fastened with a padlock, and it took a good
many blows with the blade of the spade to burst the bolt. Parson Jones
himself lifted the lid.
Tom Chist leaned forward and gazed down into the open box. He would not
have been surprised to have seen it filled full of yellow gold and
bright jewels. It was filled half full of books and papers, and half
full of canvas bags tied safely and securely around and around with
cords of string.
Parson Jones lifted out one of the bags, and it jingled as he did so.
It was full of money.
He cut the string, and with trembling, shaking hands handed the bag to
Tom, who, in an ecstasy of wonder and dizzy with delight, poured out
with swimming sight upon the coat spread on the ground a cataract of
shining silver money that rang and twinkled and jingled as it fell in a
shining heap upon the coarse cloth.
Parson Jones held up both hands into the air, and Tom stared at what he
saw, wondering whether it was all so, and whether he was really awake.
It seemed to him as though he was in a dream.
There were two-and-twenty bags in all in the chest: ten of them full of
silver money, eight of them full of gold money, three of them full of
gold-dust, and one small bag with jewels wrapped up in wad cotton and
paper.
[Illustration: "'TIS ENOUGH,' CRIED OUT PARSON JONES, 'TO MAKE US BOTH
RICH MEN'"]
"'Tis enough," cried out Parson Jones, "to make us both rich men as
long as we live."
The burning summer sun, though sloping in the sky, beat down upon them
as hot as fire; but neither of them noticed it. Neither did they notice
hunger nor thirst nor fatigue, but sat there as though in a trance,
with the bags of money scattered on the sand around them, a great pile
of money heaped upon the coat, and the open chest beside them. It was
an hour of sundown before Parson Jones had begun fairly to examine the
books and papers in the chest.
Of the three books, two were evidently log-books of the pirates who had
been lying off the mouth of the Delaware Bay all this time. The other
book was written in Spanish, and was evidently the log-book of some
captured prize.
It was then, sitting there upon the sand, the good old gentleman
reading in his high, cracking voice, that they first learned from the
bloody records in those two books who it was who had been lying inside
the Cape all this time, and that it was the famous Captain Kidd. Every
now and then the reverend gentleman would stop to exclaim, "Oh, the
bloody wretch!" or, "Oh, the desperate, cruel villains!" and then would
go on reading again a scrap here and a scrap there.
And all the while Tom Chist sat and listened, every now and then
reaching out furtively and touching the heap of money still lying upon
the coat.
One might be inclined to wonder why Captain Kidd had kept those bloody
records. He had probably laid them away because they so incriminated
many of the great people of the colony of New York that, with the books
in evidence, it would have been impossible to bring the pirate to
justice without dragging a dozen or more fine gentlemen into the dock
along with him. If he could have kept them in his own possession, they
would doubtless have been a great weapon of defence to protect him from
the gallows. Indeed, when Captain Kidd was finally brought to
conviction and hung, he was not accused of his piracies, but of
striking a mutinous seaman upon the head with a bucket and accidentally
killing him. The authorities did not dare try him for piracy. He was
really hung because he was a pirate, and we know that it was the
log-books that Tom Chist brought to New York that did the business for him;
he was accused and convicted of manslaughter for killing of his own
ship-carpenter with a bucket.
So Parson Jones, sitting there in the slanting light, read through
these terrible records of piracy, and Tom, with the pile of gold and
silver money beside him, sat and listened to him.
What a spectacle, if any one had come upon them! But they were alone,
with the vast arch of sky empty above them and the wide white stretch
of sand a desert around them. The sun sank lower and lower, until there
was only time to glance through the other papers in the chest.
They were nearly all goldsmiths' bills of exchange drawn in favor of
certain of the most prominent merchants of New York. Parson Jones, as
he read over the names, knew of nearly all the gentlemen by hearsay.
Aye, here was this gentleman; he thought that name would be among 'em.
What? Here is Mr. So-and-so. Well, if all they say is true, the villain
has robbed one of his own best friends. "I wonder," he said, "why the
wretch should have hidden these papers so carefully away with the other
treasures, for they could do him no good?" Then, answering his own
question: "Like enough because these will give him a hold over the
gentlemen to whom they are drawn so that he can make a good bargain for
his own neck before he gives the bills back to their owners. I tell you
what it is, Tom," he continued, "it is you yourself shall go to New
York and bargain for the return of these papers. 'Twill be as good as
another fortune to you."
The majority of the bills were drawn in favor of one Richard
Chillingsworth, Esquire. "And he is," said Parson Jones; "one of the
richest men in the province of New York. You shall go to him with the
news of what we have found."
"When shall I go?" said Tom Chist.
"You shall go upon the very first boat we can catch," said the Parson.
He had turned, still holding the bills in his hand, and was now
fingering over the pile of money that yet lay tumbled out upon the
coat. "I wonder, Tom," said he, "if you could spare me a score or so of
these doubloons?"
"You shall have fifty score, if you choose," said Tom, bursting with
gratitude and with generosity in his newly found treasure.
"You are as fine a lad as ever I saw, Tom," said the Parson, "and I'll
thank you to the last day of my life."
Tom scooped up a double handful of silver money. "Take it, sir," he
said, "and you may have as much more as you want of it."
He poured it into the dish that the good man made of his hands, and the
Parson made a motion as though to empty it into his pocket. Then he
stopped, as though a sudden doubt had occurred to him. "I don't know
that 'tis fit for me to take this pirate money, after all," he said.
"But you are welcome to it," said Tom.
Still the Parson hesitated. "Nay," he burst out, "I'll not take it;
'tis blood-money." And as he spoke he chucked the whole double handful
into the now empty chest, then arose and dusted the sand from his
breeches. Then, with a great deal of bustling energy, he helped to tie
the bags again and put them all back into the chest.
They reburied the chest in the place whence they had taken it, and then
the Parson folded the precious paper of directions, placed it carefully
in his wallet, and his wallet in his pocket.
"Tom," he said, for the twentieth time, "your fortune has been made
this day."
And Tom Chist, as he rattled in his breeches pocket the half-dozen
doubloons he had kept out of his treasure, felt that what his friend
had said was true.
* * * * *
As the two went back homeward across the level space of sand, Tom Chist
suddenly stopped stock still and stood looking about him. "'Twas just
here," he said, digging his heel down into the sand, "that they killed
the poor black man."
"And here he lies buried for all time," said Parson Jones; and as he
spoke he dug his cane down into the sand. Tom Chist shuddered. He would
not have been surprised if the ferrule of the cane had struck something
soft beneath that level surface. But it did not, nor was any sign of
that tragedy ever seen again. For, whether the pirates had carried away
what they had done and buried it elsewhere, or whether the storm in
blowing the sand had completely levelled off and hidden all sign of
that tragedy where it was enacted, certain it is that it never came to
sight again--at least so far as Tom Chist and the Reverend Hillary
Jones ever knew.
