Clutterbuck's Treasure

The next moment I was careering at full speed towards the camp fire to tell Jack of the marvellous success of my night enterprise, and to open with him the treasure-box that burned my hands as I carried it. But stay! what if James Strong were awake? Could I postpone the joy of raising the lid of that box until the morning, and the almost equal delight of telling Jack all about it? No, I felt I could not. If I might not open the box, and talk about it too, I should certainly "go crazy."

As I approached the fire, however, I saw that both James Strong and Clutterbuck were fast asleep, Jack watching. He heard me coming, though I crept softly for fear of awakening the sleepers, and long before he could possibly have seen me he had his finger to his lip in token that caution was required. I concealed the box in the "hare-pocket" of my Norfolk jacket, and stepped into the firelight. I suppose that Jack thought I was about to speak, for he said very softly, "Ssh!" and made a warning gesture.

It was tantalising indeed. Nevertheless, I sat down by the fire close to Henderson, and for a few minutes neither of us spoke or whispered a word. The only sign that passed between us was an interrogatory uplifting of the eyebrows by Jack, which I took to mean, "Any success?" and to which I responded with the very slyest possible closing of the left eyelid, which I intended to signify "Rather!"

After about ten minutes of listening to James Strong's measured snoring and Clutterbuck's groans, grunts, and snortings, Jack leant over and whispered—

"Strong sat up and looked around while you were away. He made as though he did not notice your absence, but I have an idea that he knew all about it. We must be very careful indeed. Have you really had any luck?"

"The best possible," I whispered back. "Can I show you something?"

"Wait a bit, old man!" said Jack, pressing my hand; "this is splendid! I congratulate you; but for Heaven's sake be careful! I don't trust that fellow Strong's sleeping; he may be wide awake, watching. He's as cunning as they're made."

"Let's try him," I suggested. "I'll suddenly cough loudly, and you keep a careful watch on his eyes; probably he'll wince if he's awake."

"Go on, then," said Jack. I didn't cough; I said "Hello!" very shortly and sharply. Strong gave a slight start, but then so did Clutterbuck, and both went on sleeping.

"We'll give them another ten minutes," whispered Jack, "and then risk it."

At the expiration of that period I looked inquiringly at Jack, and he nodded affirmatively.

Slowly and cautiously, and with my eyes fixed upon Strong's face, I drew the tin box from my deep pocket; I heard Jack's breath come quick and short as he caught sight of the prize. It was, as I thought, a plain tin money-box, painted black and gold, such as anyone may buy at any ironmonger's for a few shillings. It was tied round with a wire, but unlocked, and with trembling fingers I removed the wire and opened the lid.

Within was a second tin box, a small thing like a sandwich-box, and this too was unlocked.

I paused to take a look at the sleepers; both were still, apparently, as fast asleep as ever.

"Go on!" whispered Jack; "it's all right."

I put my hand inside the case and produced a leather pocket-book, and from this I drew an envelope!

"Ah, a cheque!" whispered Jack; "and a fat one if it's for the lot!"

There were several papers in the envelope. First a letter, which I put aside to read later, because the rest were bank-notes, and I was anxious to learn the amount of my inheritance.

Then came two terrible shocks, one after the other.

Shock number one. There were twenty five pound notes. No more, and no less!

CHAPTER XVI

"ALL THAT GLITTERS IS NOT GOLD!"

One hundred pounds!

A nice little sum in itself, but not one that would tempt a man to imperil his life in as many ways as it contained notes! Surely the old man had not brought me all this distance to give me one hundred pounds at the end of it? The letter would prove to be an order upon his bankers for the bulk of his fortune. The hundred was intended to cover my expenses home to England.

In so far as concerned the hundred pounds my surmise was correct enough. But the letter was not a bank order. It was a very original document, and I purpose giving it in extenso. Here it is:—

"THE PRIZE TO THE SWIFT"To my Heir: a message from the tomb

"MY DEAR HEIR,—If ever you read these words it must happen after my death, because I shall take care that no man handles my money until I am in my grave. That is why I call this a message from the tomb. The dead can gain nothing by lying; therefore I give you no other assurance that what I have to say is the absolute truth.

"You have done well to come so far, whichever of my potential heirs you may be. My treasure is not here, neither are your journeys at an end.

"From South Africa to the Finnish Gulf is a considerable stretch, but one hundred thousand pounds is a large sum; it is a sum that has occasioned its owner more trouble to acquire than is involved in a pleasant journey from Africa to Finland. If it is worth your while to undertake this journey, you will act as I shall presently direct you; if not, you will leave my money to rest where it is, and where, assuredly, neither you nor any relative of mine shall ever find it.

"If my treasure fall into hands for which it was not intended, may my curse rest upon it for ever; and if none find it from this day until the day of resurrection, I, William Clutterbuck, shall be just as happy. Let him who is wise read the following instructions, and obey them to his profit:—

"The island is about five miles in length. Steamers from Hull or London to Cronstadt pass within half a mile of lighthouse.

"Special arrangements must be made with shipowners to land upon island.

"An open space will be found in the forest at about the spot indicated by a cross. Here are four posts, defining the area within which it is necessary to dig.

"The Prize to the Swift."W. CLUTTERBUCK."

By the time I had read to the end of this precious document, my heart was in the usual condition of hearts whose cherished "hope" has been deferred. The disappointment was almost more than I could bear; the thing was so unexpected, and the pill so bitter.

If I had followed the impulse of the moment I should have torn that hateful letter into a thousand pieces and danced upon it, then and there, to the tune of all the worst names I could think of to revile its author withal. Yet, when I glanced at Jack to see how he took this disappointment, I saw that he was shaking with suppressed laughter.

"I would give worlds to have known that old chap!" he whispered. "It is the finest notion for giving healthy occupation to a set of lazy nephews that ever an uncle devised. He was a grand old fellow, this, Peter!"

"What nonsense you talk!" I whispered. "I believe the whole thing is a hoax, from beginning to end. The man was mad on all matters concerning money. He was determined no one should ever touch his treasure, since he could not carry it away himself, and this is his dodge; he will trot us backwards and forwards after the infernal stuff until we die or get our throats cut, and the money will rest unfound in Timbuctoo, or Jerusalem, or the Grand Canary!"

"I don't think so," said Jack. "I believe the old man was entirely sane and entirely serious. Just think; if you had a lot of money to leave and no one to leave it to (he didn't know you, remember, when he wrote this!), except a set of good-for-nothing scamps like these Strongs, and"—

As Jack referred to Strong by name, I glanced up at the sleeping form of that individual, whose very existence I had forgotten for the last few minutes in the excitement of examining the money-box and its contents, and to my horror I distinctly saw that his eyes were wide open, and that he was both looking and listening with every faculty at high pressure. He closed his eyes the instant he saw me look up, and was, apparently, as fast asleep as ever.

I whispered my discovery to Jack, but that practical person was not in the least discouraged.

"Much good may it do him!" he said. "Take a copy of the map of the island, though," he added, "and of the instructions."

And this I did, then and there.

It was, of course, useless after this to attempt to conceal our discovery from James Strong and his companion. We therefore determined to take the bull by the horns—in other words, to inform them we had found all there was to be found, and that, consequently, we intended to depart, in order to return presently to England.

It fell to me to undertake the duty of making this communication to my fellow-competitors. I did not care for the job, but, desiring to get it over, I plunged "into the middle of things" at breakfast, in the morning.

"James Strong," I said, "I think I ought to inform you that I have found what we all came to seek, and that it is all up with your chance and Clutterbuck's. I should recommend you to return quietly to England, and if you give me no further trouble I shall take no further steps about the affair at Las Palmas."

"You're a pretty cool hand, I will say," said Strong, forcing a laugh. "And you won't take steps about Las Palmas, won't you? You are too generous to live, hang me if you aren't! And do you suppose I'm going to keep quiet about my brother's murder?"

"Take proceedings against the lion by all means," said Jack with a laugh. "What a fool you are, James Strong! Why can't you talk sense among grown men? We are not schoolboys, my friend; you can't frighten us that way. Now, what do you want for your spoilt guns—the three of them?"

"Curse you and your money!" said Strong; "we shall see what I want for my spoilt guns when we get back to England."

"Very well," said Jack; "then I shall settle with Mr. Clutterbuck."

We did settle with him, paying him one hundred pounds for the three burned guns, to which Jack generously added another hundred pounds for expenses, advising Clutterbuck to return to England at once, and to have, in future, as little to do with Mr. James Strong as circumstances permitted; and this advice Clutterbuck promised to take to heart. I certainly considered Henderson's settlement in the matter of guns and expenses an extremely generous one.

Then those two rode away from the field, leaving me the conqueror. My victory was a barren one, as I feared; but still, I had found all there was to find, and Jack had quite persuaded me by this time to follow up my success, and to treat old Clutterbuck and his "message from the tomb" with perfect seriousness—nay, I was determined that I would have that hundred thousand pounds if I had to seek it in the ends of the earth, and to dig up half a continent to find it!

CHAPTER XVII

LOST!

As for Jack and me, since we had in our pockets the map of the spot in which the treasure lay awaiting our pleasure to come and dig it up, and since James Strong could not possibly know to what quarter of the world we had been directed, or, indeed, any part of the purport of the miser's eccentric letter, we determined to enjoy a week or two of real sport before returning to civilisation and the digging of treasures in high latitudes.

We had given Strong no weapons, since we could not trust him; but to Clutterbuck, who was nervous of travelling unarmed, we presented my old revolver, choked as it was with lead, together with a handful of cartridges, Clutterbuck vowing by all his gods never to give the weapon to Strong, or even to let that untrustworthy person know that he had it.

After he had made us this solemn promise, I revealed to Clutterbuck a plan I had thought of for clearing the barrel. It was simple enough. All he would have to do would be to heat the jammed portion of the barrel in the fire, when the lead would quickly melt and come out.

James Strong's face was a study as he rode away with his companion, and Jack made the remark that he would not for a good sum be in Clutterbuck's shoes and have to ride back all the way to Vryburg, if not to Cape Town, with such a murderous-looking, scowling ruffian as James Strong in his present temper.

"Oh, well," I said; "Clutterbuck's the grey mare this time. It's he that has the pistol, and therefore the last word."

"Yes, if he can keep it," said Jack sagaciously. "But I should be surprised to hear that the poor chap reaches Cape Town in company with his share of the two hundred pounds or the revolver either. However, that's not our affair. I hope we've seen the last of both of them for many a long day, or for ever; and the latter for choice."

After this, for a space, we gave my co-heirs no further attention, but devoted ourselves entirely to the delights of sport.

We first rode back to the village of Ngami in order to see whether our ox-waggon and hunters had arrived, but did not find them waiting for us, as we had hoped might be the case. We therefore decided to employ the hours or days of waiting in a little impromptu sport in the neighbourhood.

We had no guide, and were without any very large stock of ammunition for the light rifles which we had brought with us; therefore, we agreed, it would be foolish to venture too far into the bush. It would be well too, if possible, to keep our conical hill in sight as a landmark in our guideless wanderings.

So away we rode into the jungle, with our rifles slung over our shoulders, half a hundred cartridges apiece disposed about our persons, a blanket each, plenty of matches, very little food of any kind,—for we would shoot our dinner day by day,—and, lastly, with old Clutterbuck's absurd but invaluable "message from the tomb" buttoned up safely within the inner pocket of my Norfolk jacket, and a copy thereof in Jack's secret waistcoat lining in case of accidents.

It was a somewhat unfortunate circumstance that we went astray at the very outset. A herd of beautiful elands crossed the open before our very eyes, and we did the most natural thing for Englishmen of our age: we tally-ho'd and galloped away in pursuit; and a fine chase those elands led us, heading straight for the jungle a couple of miles farther away.

Up to this point our conduct had been that of fairly sane men; but no sooner did the big antelopes disappear, at a distance of some two hundred yards in front of us, into the dense forest, than without a thought we plunged in after them, gaining rapidly upon the hindermost, at which we had fired three shots as we rode, and which—with rare bad luck for the eland, for we were not accustomed to firing at full gallop—we had wounded.

We rode madly into the thick cover, straining every nerve to overtake our prey. We could hear them crashing their way through the trees, very close at hand, and this excited us to even greater exertion.

The result was a foregone conclusion. When, a quarter of an hour later, we succeeded in overtaking the wounded beast and administering the coup de grâce, and had admired to the full the splendid proportions of the beautiful dead animal at our feet, it struck us that we had perhaps done a rash thing in venturing into this jungle.

"I wonder where we are?" one of us remarked laughingly.

"Do you remember the way out of this place?" asked Jack of me, looking around him.

The tangled growths on every side were of such density that it was impossible to see fifty yards in any direction.

"We must follow our tracks back, I suppose," I said. "That won't be difficult, will it, as the elands crashed through the same way?"

Jack did not think it would be very difficult, neither did I. Yet, after we had ridden back for a few hundred yards we came to a place where the right way might be any one of three ways; for either our herd had dispersed at this spot, or other companies of deer or other wild animals had passed, making several trampled tracks which our inexperienced eyes could not distinguish from our own, and any one of which might, as I say, be the right one.

"This is the way, I believe," said Jack, showing one trampled path.

But I was almost sure that the right course was not this, but another. We argued; we laughed; we grew serious; we argued again; but all that we said and adduced in support of our respective contentions only tended to puzzle us both the more. In the end we were no nearer a solution of the difficulty, but rather, if possible, further away; for I believe it is a fact that we were both so muddled by the arguments, and by the general sameness of the look of the place in every direction, that we neither of us knew at last which trampled path we had selected in the first instance to swear by. I daresay I changed over to Jack's and he to mine.

At all events, we eventually agreed to one thing, and that was that we were most distinctly and decidedly lost.

We climbed a tall tree or two in the hope of thus seeing, over the heads of the rest, our old friend the conical hill; but not a thing could we detect near or far but the waving tops of other trees in apparently endless lines of hopelessly innumerable and impenetrable leaf-screens.

We inspected every apology for a track until it branched off into two or more other paths. We rode for several hours, absolutely ignorant whether we went deeper into the forest or towards the open out of which we had entered it, until at last Jack pulled up, tied his horse to a tree, and threw himself down on the ground, rolling from side to side in a paroxysm of laughter, which I found very contagious and in which I joined immediately.

Of course, there was nothing to laugh at that I knew of; on the contrary, our position was somewhat serious. Nevertheless, I laughed simply because Jack did, until he suddenly looked up and pointed, and then at last I saw the reason of his mirth. Our dead eland lay about fifteen paces from us. We had ridden for four or five hours, and had returned to the spot from which we had started!—at which discovery I laughed again until I nearly cried.

CHAPTER XVIII

HOW WE BURIED OURSELVES ALIVE FOR THE LOVE OF SCIENCE

"Talk of returning to one's mutton!" said Jack; "here's our venison!"

I confess I was uncommonly glad to see that eland; for since breakfast I had scarcely tasted food, and the prospect of camping out for the night upon a little tinned meat and a couple of biscuits had not presented itself to my imagination in the brightest of colours.

Under the soothing influence of roast venison, however, and a comfortable fire, our prospects for the night brightened very considerably, our only source of anxiety for the present being the want of a "long drink." We had our brandy-flasks still nearly full, for we were resolved to keep the spirits for medicinal purposes only; but as the stuff was unmixed with water, we were unable to satisfy our thirst by means of a pull from the flask. We were lucky enough, however, to come across a kei-apple tree which provided us with a kind of dessert; not particularly luxurious certainly, but palatable enough to thirsty souls with nothing to drink.

That night passed without adventure. We heard wild animals in the distance, but none came very near us, and if they had we were growing accustomed to them by this time, and my spell of night-watching was passed without serious attacks of "creeps" and "horrors," such as had rendered my first night or two in the bush periods of mental torture to me.

On the morrow we breakfasted upon more of our eland, and cut and cooked sundry slices to take away with us. Our Kaffir apples again served as substitutes for "drinkables," but I think either Jack or I would have given pretty nearly all we were worth for a cup of tea or a drink of water.

"We must get out of this jungle to-day, Peter," said Jack, "and find some water; kei-apples are not good enough."

I quite agreed. We must get out of this jungle, if only for the sake of having a long drink.

Our horses, which had filled themselves with the cactus-like growths abounding at our feet—elephant's-foot, or Hottentot bread, and other delicacies of a like nature—were presumably as anxious to find water as we were. They carried us in whatsoever direction we urged them, but went listlessly, as though by no means in love with our enterprise.

When we had wandered thus for a few hours, and were growing somewhat depressed by reason of our continued failure to find a way out of the jungle, I proposed to Jack to allow the horses to go where they liked.

"They can't make a worse business of it than we have done," I added; "and they may possibly be guided by instincts which we don't possess."

"Good idea," said Jack; "we'll try it."

The result was rather astonishing.

Those two sagacious creatures, feeling their bridles loose upon their necks, and recognising that they were to be permitted to go where they pleased, pricked up their ears and started off at a quick walk.

"I wonder if they really know where they are going, or whether this is only a kind of 'swagger'?" said Jack. It certainly seemed as though they knew all about it. Why should they not, after all, as well as any other animal that is wild and has a vested interest in the forest? Horses came originally from a wild stock, and doubtless possess the inheritance of their species—namely, the instinctive power to find their way unerringly from point to point as well through pathless jungle as over the easy open.

At any rate, our good steeds had scarcely travelled an hour without our interference when we saw to our delight that the forest grew thinner and the light stronger, and a few minutes later we were actually in the open, with the jungle behind us. We could see our conical hill in the distance, but on the other side of the belt of forest through which we had so laboriously passed. It was also clear to us that there existed a way to Ngami, skirting the forest, which would obviate for us the necessity to plunge again into those dangerous fastnesses; and this discovery was a great relief to our feelings, for it would have been a sore test, to my nerves at least, to re-enter those dark shades in order to get into the road for home.

Meanwhile our horses walked briskly onwards, as though determined to see through the matter which had been entrusted to their instinct; and whether my readers believe it or not, it is nevertheless the fact that they travelled as straight as the bee flies, never diverging by a yard from their line, until presently they brought us up on the banks of a wide stream, into whose cool current they promptly plunged their noses, and we ours, in very abandonment to the luxurious delight of thirst-quenching.

This little adventure, or misadventure, was a lesson to us, and a most useful one, throughout our wanderings in search of big game during the next month or more; and as at this time we passed through several "'scapes" and incidents of an interesting if alarming kind I now purpose to set down one or two of these for the benefit of those of my readers who have a taste for adventure and wild beasts. I do not mean to describe in detail the whole of our month of jungle life, but merely to pick out an incident or two as samples of the rest, for an average volume would not contain the narrative of all we saw and did during those momentous thirty days.

Jack and I slept that night by the river which the instinct of our horses (as I suppose) had discovered for us; and, it being a warm evening, we determined to do without a camp fire for once, and to conceal ourselves by means of deep holes dug in the ground, in which we would crouch with our heads and shoulders concealed in the scrub, or by boughs lopped from tree and bush. We had heard of hunters adopting this plan at spots by a river's bank to which wild animals were in the habit of coming down to drink at night, in order to obtain easy shots from their ambush at the unsuspecting lion, leopard, antelope, elephant, or what not, that came to slake its thirst at the stream.

So Jack and I dug holes, being provided with spades brought for quite a different purpose, and lopped heaps of branches and scrub with our hunting-knives; and when darkness fell we got into our graves, a yard or two apart, within whispering distance, and piled branches and greenery around the mouths of each pit so that we might put our heads and shoulders out, if need be, and still not be seen; and then we waited for developments.

The night was full of a holy calm, warm and still, and instinct with a kind of sense of waiting for something to happen. One felt that the silence and peace were very delicious, but that this sort of thing could not continue long, and must not, for it would grow intolerable after a while.