His Unknown Wife, Louis Tracy [best black authors .TXT] 📗

Both Maseden and Nina looked and felt like tongued-tied children, and Sturgess was not slow to note their confusion.

“Gee, if there was an orchard anywhere around, I’d think you two had been stealing apples,” he cried. “Sorry, Nina, if I’ve butted in on a heart-to-heart talk, but it’s not often I can josh our wise Alec, so I’m bound to take the few chances that come along.”

He little knew evidently how closely their talk had concerned him, and the fact that he had not overheard anything which would supply a clue to the topic under discussion was, in itself, a great relief.

“Nina appeared when I was about to call you,” said Maseden quietly. “She demanded her share of the watch, and as I was not inclined for sleep I remained on duty. Of course that is no excuse for an inattentive sentry. I propose that you shoot me straight off and imprison Nina for the remainder of her natural life.”

“I sentence the pair of you to rest until breakfast is ready. There’s no appeal from the court. About, turn! Quick, march!”

Nina hurried away. Maseden, thinking he would not be able to close an eye, followed her slowly, lay down, and was soon asleep.

The boat’s stores had revealed neither soap nor towels, so the early morning wash remained a primitive affair. A pool in the stream was set apart for the girls, while the men scrubbed among the rocks. Sturgess aroused Maseden a few minutes before breakfast was ready.

“Come this way,” he said, nodding in the direction of the boat. “I want to show you something.”

Maseden noticed that the other man’s hands and moccasins were soiled with the witish brown deposit through which a channel for the boat had been delved. Then he saw that no small part of the said channel was blocked by the debris of a fresh excavation.

Now, among the treasures on the boat were a couple of axes. Given an ax, some spice of ingenuity and a fair stock of patience, and any man can fashion an astonishing variety of useful articles. Singularly enough, Sturgess, who was gifted with the artist’s sense of proportion, could hew a spade out of a plank more skillfully than Maseden, and he was inordinately proud of the achievement.

“What the deuce have you been up to?” demanded Maseden at sight of so much misdirected industry.

“You wouldn’t guess in a week,” was the complacent answer. “This morning I was standing around doing nothing, when, as the tide fell, I spotted a bulge in the right bank of our canal. I wondered what had caused it, after our trouble in lining the walls with stakes, so I nosed around with a shovel. Then I got all fussed up, and didn’t care where I threw the dirt…. See what I’ve found, old scout!”

By this time they were in the trench, from which the tide had only recently receded. Sturgess’s zeal had cleared away some two cubic yards of silt, and Maseden saw at once that a part of the hull of a small vessel of some sort had been laid bare. Moreover, a few blows with an ax had removed sufficient of the rotting timbers to give access to the hulk’s interior.

It was a most interesting find. An old-time craft had been brought to her last resting-place within a few feet of the spot where the Southern Cross’s lifeboat was embedded. Evidently in the course of years she had sunk in the soft deposit, and probably formed a nucleus for a new sand-bank. At any rate, she was completely covered, and lay there keel uppermost.

“Have you been inside?” said Maseden, eyeing the doorway broken by the ax.

“You bet your life,” said Sturgess.

“Was the air foul?”

“Fine. I guess the lime hereabouts attended to that. Anyhow, I carried in a blazing stick, and it burned all right.”

“Skeletons on board?”

“Not a bone that I could see.”

“What are you keeping back, then? You can’t humbug me, C. K. There’s something on your chest. Get it off!”

Sturgess craned his neck over the edge of the channel to make sure that neither of the girls was near.

“From hints I’ve picked up now and then, when Madge felt she must either talk or bust, I’ve come to the conclusion that old man Gray’s death means poverty to that small bunch,” he said. “Now, I’m pretty well fixed, and I guess you’ll never be hard pushed to buy a food ticket, so I want your brainy assistance to arrange things for the girls’ benefit. See? It should kind of—make matters easy—when it comes to a showdown.”

“What have you come across? Spanish treasure?”

Maseden peered into the dimly lighted interior of the wreck. Apparently the inverted deck was about four feet below the level of the opening, and Sturgess had broken into the after part of the hull.

“Let me go ahead and pass out the boodle,“said Sturgess. “I found it in a wooden box, which is clamped with iron, but it has nearly fallen to pieces.”

He lowered himself to what had been the ceiling of a cabin, and moved cautiously among a litter of rotting wood, evidently the furniture which had once rendered the tiny apartment habitable. He came back with laden hands, and passed out a curiously shaped jug, or flagon.

Maseden examined it critically.

“By Jove!” he cried; “this is Aztec work, and hammered out of solid gold!”

“There’s five more of the same sort,” said Sturgess, in a voice cracked with excitement. “And this strikes me as something worth while.”

He produced a crudely modeled figure of a puma, the body in silver and the head, feet, and tail in gold. The eyes and claws were of polished quartz, and were bright as when the ornament left the hands of the Mexican lapidary who fashioned it. The metals, of course, were tarnished, the silver being black with age, but both men realized that they were gazing at a splendid specimen of a long-forgotten art.

“How much of this sort of stuff is there?” said Maseden, his imagination running riot as to the possible history of this unrecorded argosy.

“Twelve pieces altogether,” chuckled Sturgess. “Six gold pitchers, four animals and two carved dishes, each of gold. I’ve rummaged around carefully, and that’s the lot. For’ard of this section is a hold, and, from what I can make out, it was loaded with furs and cloth, but the cargo is all mussed up with salt and lime.”

“Sow me one of the dishes.”

Sturgess brought forth an oval-shaped dish, made, like the vessels, of solid gold. On its broad rim were chased twelve weird-looking creatures which reminded Maseden of the signs of the Zodiac; in the sunken center appeared a very elaborate design consisting of four trees, a bird perched on the topmost branches of each. Long afterwards he learned that this cartoon represented, in Aztec picture-writing, the four famous chiefs who founded the Aztec dynasty.

At any rate, he knew at the time that the hoard which Sturgess had discovered was of great archaeological interest, apart from the intrinsic value of the precious metals, itself no small sum.

“We ought to devote the necessary time to a thorough survey of the wreck,” he said thoughtfully. “Meanwhile what have you at the back of your head about Nina and Madge? What did you mean by saying it would make matters easier?”

“Well, suppose you and I agree to give ‘em the proceeds