Satan. H. De Vere Stacpoole
was a game—hauling on the halyards, fishing, cooking, hanging on to the beard of a storm by the sea anchor, wreck picking and so on—and she had infected him. Already they were good companions and, when together, of the same age, about nine—though she was fifteen and he over twenty.
“Stick them on that shelf,” said Jude. “Oh, Lord!—butter-fingers!—lemme! That’s the gadget to keep them from shiftin’ if the ship rolls. Now stick the knives in that locker. You don’t mind my tellin’ you, do you?”
“Not a bit.”
“Well, that’s all.”
They found Satan under the awning, attending to the gooseneck of the spare gaff.
Jude sat down on the deck clasping her knees, criticized Satan’s handiwork, received instructions to hold her tongue, and then collapsed, lying on her back with knees up and the back of her hand across her eyes. She could sleep at any odd moment.
The horizon had vanished in haze, the crying of the gulls had died down, and the washing of the lazy swell on the island beach sounded like a lullaby.
A trace of smoke was rising from the yellow funnel of the Dryad as she lay like a white painted ship on a blue painted ocean. They were firing up.
“How about getting ashore?” asked Ratcliffe. “I want to see that cache of yours. Care to come?”
“I’d just as soon leave it till they’re away,” said Satan, jerking his hand toward the Dryad. “There’s no tellin’, they might be spottin’ us on the location with a glass, and they’ll be off tonight—so the chap told me. You leave it to me and I’ll show you a cache better nor that in a day or two.”
“Shut up, Satan!” came a drowsy voice from the deck.
“Shut up yourself!” said Satan. “I’m not talkin’ of what you mean: I’m talkin’ of the abalone reef—lyin’ there like a lazy dog and lippin’ your betters!”
“Where’s me betters?” cried Jude, sitting bang-up suddenly, like the corpse in “Thou art the man.”
“I’m your betters.”
“You!”
“Me!”
Jude broke into a cracked laugh.
“Listen to him talkin’!” cried she to the universe in general. “Ain’t fit to bile potatoes!” She was on her feet, and he was after her with a rope’s end, dodging her round the mast. “Touch me and I’ll tell him!” A flick of the rope’s end caught her, and next moment she was clinging to Ratcliffe and using him as her shield. “It’s an old ship sunk south o’ Rum Key!” cried Jude. “South o’ Rum Key! I told you I’d tell him if you touched me.”
Satan dropped the rope and resumed the gooseneck business.
“Now you’ve done it!” said he.
“Told you I would,” said Jude. She sat down on the deck again as though nothing had happened and nursed her knees.
“You needn’t mind me,” said Ratcliffe. “I won’t tell.”
“Oh, it’s not that,” said Satan, “but Pap was mighty particular about keepin’ close. He located that hooker only three months before the fever took him—and he didn’t come on it by chance nuther. And now Jude’s given the show away!”
“I told you I’d tell him,” said Jude broodily.
“Told me you’d tell him! Why, ever since last fall you’ve been at me to keep my tongue in my head about it, and then you bring it out bing, first thing, yourself! That’s a woman all over.”
“Who are you callin’ a woman?”
“Me aunt. Shut your head and give over handlin’ that ball of yarn, clutch hold of the gaff and keep it steady while I fix this ring on her!”
He worked away in silence while Ratcliffe sat watching, vaguely intrigued by what had just passed. It was less the words than the place and circumstance—the little deck of the Sarah Tyler, the blue lazy sea, the voice of the surf on Palm Island, the figure of Jude and Satan. He had seen Rum Cay: They had passed it in a pink and pearly dawn. The steward had called him up to look at it. South of that lonely and fascinating place old man Tyler had located a sunk ship. What sort of ship he knew instinctively and that the Tylers were not the people to halloo over nothing. The gulls did not know these seas better than they. He said nothing, however. It was Satan who spoke next.
“Pap had reckoned to lay for it this spring,” said Satan, “but the fever took him. Then we were underhanded. Jude and me can make out to work the boat and get a livin’, but we’re too underhanded for a big job. Why, takin’ that truck off the brig I told you about near laid us out, and we had the nigger to help and she was hove up so that it was like takin’ cargo off a wharfside.”
“Look here,” said Ratcliffe, “I’ll help if you care to go for it. I don’t want any share: just the fun. What’s in her?”
“Well,” said Satan in a half-hearted way, “maybe we’ll have a look at her; but it’s a job that wants more than three by rights. Pap was three men in himself; he’d a done it. It’s a dynamite job. She’s got to be blasted open.”
“I’ve heard stories about buried treasure in these seas—” began Ratcliffe. Jude turned her head.
“That’s bilge,” said she.
“Yarns,” said Satan. “Pap used to turn any man down that talked of stuff bein’ buried. First he said that chaps didn’t bury stuff, second if they did you couldn’t find it, what with earthquakes and sand siftin’ and such, and third that never an ounce of silver, or gold for the matter of that, has ever been dug up by the tomfools huntin’ for it. Havana is full of tall stories of buried treasure—chaps make a livin’ sellin’ locations and faked charts and the like of that. It’s a Spanish game, and it takes good American money every year. You see, Pap was a book-readin’ man—taught himself to read, too, and didn’t start the job till he was near forty—so he had a head on him, but somehow or ’nother he never made the money he ought. If he’d stuck in towns and places, he’d have been a Rock’feller; but he liked beatin’ about free, said God’s good air was better than dollars. But it stuck in him that he hadn’t made out, somehow. Then he turned into unbelievin’ ways, Said he was a soci—what was it, Jude?”
“Somethin’ or ’nother,” said Jude.
“Socialist?” suggested Ratcliffe.
“That’s it! Said the time was coming when all the guys that were down under would be on top of the chaps that were on top, and that there’d be such a hell of a rough house money’d be no use anyway; said the time was comin’ when eggs would be a dollar apiece and no dollars to buy them with, and me and Jude would be safest without money gettin’ our livin’ out of the sea. He was a proper dirge when he got on that tack. But all the same it stuck in him that he wasn’t on top, and one night when he was in Diegos’ saloon he heard three Spanish chaps layin’ their heads together. He knew the lingo well enough to make out their meanin’. They were in the bar. Pap wasn’t on the water wagon, but he was no boozer. He was sittin’ there that night just dead beat, as any man might be after the day’s work he’d done, runnin’ the customs—”
“Luff!” said Jude in a warning voice.
“Oh, close your head! Think I am talkin’ to a customs officer? He don’t care.”
“Not a bit,” said Ratcliffe. “Heave ahead.”
“Well, he was sittin’ with his eyes shut, and he heard these guys colludin’ together. He didn’t get more than half they said, but he got enough to make him want to hear more. Then they quit the bar and went into a back room with their lemon juice and cigarettes. Ten minutes after hell broke loose in that back room, and when Pap and the bartender got the door open there was the chaps,