and a year after, when we fetched up there again, she came aboard and died. Pap went for the Baptis’ man.”
“He wasn’t any more use for a Baptis’ minister when Pap had done with him,” said Jude. “That’s his books—Pap’s. There’s dead loads more in the spare bunk in there.”
Ratcliffe looked at the books. Old man Tyler’s mentality interested him almost as much as the history of the Tyler family—“Ben Hur,” Paine’s “Age of Reason” and “Rights of Man,” Browne’s “Popular Mechanics,” “The Mechanism of the Watch,” “Martin Chuzzlewit,” and some moderns, including an American edition of “Jude the Obscure.”
“Some of those came off a wreck he had the pickin’s of,” said Tyler, “a thousand-tonner that went ashore off Cat Island.”
“That was before Jude was born,” said Ratcliffe.
“Lord! how do you know that?” said Jude.
Ratcliffe laughed and pointed to the book. “It’s the name on that book,” said he. “I didn’t know: I just guessed.”
“I reckon you’re right,” said Tyler, opening a locker and fetching out cups and saucers and plates and dumping them on the table. “Not that it matters much where it come from, but you’ve got eyes in your head, that’s sure. Say, you’ll stay to breakfast, now you’re aboard?”
“I’d like to,” said Ratcliffe, “but I ought to be getting back: they won’t know what’s become of me. And besides I’m in these.”
“That’s easy fixed,” said Tyler. “Jude, tumble up and take the boat over to the hooker and say the gentleman is stayin’ to breakfast an’ll be back directly after. I’ll fix him for clothes.”
Jude vanished, and Tyler, going into the after-cabin, rousted out an old white drill suit of “Pap’s” and a pair of No. 9 canvas shoes.
“They’re new washed since he wore them,” said Tyler. “Slip ’em on over your what’s his names and come along and lend me a hand in the galley—can you cook?”
“You bet!” said Ratcliffe.
Eased in his mind as to the Dryad, the boy in him rose to this little adventure, delightful after weeks of routine and twenty years of ordered life and high respectability. He had caravaned, yachted in a small way, fancied that he had at all events touched the fringe of the Free Life—he had never been near it. These sea gipsies in their grubby old boat were It! A grim suspicion that these remains of the Tyler family sailed sometimes pretty close to the law and that their sea pickings were, to put it mildly, various did not detract in the least from their charm. He guessed instinctively they were not rogues of a bad sort. The lantern-jawed Satan had not the face of a saint. There were indications in it indeed of the possibility of a devilish temper no less than a desperate daring, but not a trace of meanness. Jude was astonishingly and patently honest, while old man Tyler, whose presence seemed still to linger on in this floating caravan, had evident titles, of a sort, to respect.
He was helping to fry fish over the oil-stove in the little galley when Jude returned with the information, delivered through the shouting of the frying pan, that everything was all right, and the message had been delivered to a “guy” in a white coat who was hanging his fat head over the starboard rail of the Dryad; that he had told her to mind his paint; that she had told him not to drop his teeth overboard, and he had “sassed” her back; that the Dryad was a dandy ship, but would be a lot dandier if she were hove up on some beach convenient for pickin’ her.
Then she started to make the coffee over an auxiliary stove, mixing her industry with criticisms of the cookery and instructions as to how fish should be fried.
“Jude does the cookin’ mostly,” said Tyler, “and we’d have hot rolls only we were under sail last night and she hadn’t time to set the dough. We’ll have to make out with ship’s bread.”
Considering the condition of Jude’s grubby hands, Ratcliffe wasn’t sorry.
CHAPTER III
BREAKFAST
The amount of food those two put away was a revelation to Ratcliffe, and from start to finish of the meal they never stopped talking. One being silent, the other took up the ball. They had cottoned to Ratcliffe, evidently from the very first moment, for, at the very first moment, Tyler had been communicative about himself and his ship and his way of life. An ordinary ship’s officer coming alongside would have got fish at a price if he had been civil or a fish flung at his head if he had given “sass”: Ratcliffe got friendship.
It was maybe his youth and the fact that all young people are Freemasons that did the business; the humor of the gorgeous pajamas may have helped. Anyhow, the fact remained. He had secured something that knowledge or position or fortune could not have bought—the good will and conversation of this pair, the history of the Tylers, and more than a hint of their life on these seas. They had four thousand dollars in the bank at Havana left by Pap, not to be touched unless the Sarah Tyler came to smash. They had no house rent or rates; no expenses but harbor dues, food, oil, and tobacco, and not much expense for food—at least just at present.
Tyler winked across the table at Jude and Jude grinned.
“Shut your head,” said Jude, “and don’t be givin’ shows away!” then suddenly to Ratcliffe, “We’ve got a cache.”
“Who’s giving shows away now?” asked Tyler.
“Oh, he won’t split,” said Jude.
“It’s on the island here,” said Tyler, “near a ton of stuff, canned. A brig went ashore south of Mariguana. We picked up the crew and heard their yarn and got the location. Then a big freighter came along and took the men off us. The wreck was only a hundred and fifty miles from our position, and we reckoned the salvage men wouldn’t be on the spot for a fortnight or more and something was due to us for savin’ that crew; so we lit out for the wreck. We had four days’ work on her. She was straddled on a reef with twenty fathoms under her counter and a flat calm, all but a breathin’ of wind. We made fast to her, same as if she’d been a wharf. We had the nigger then to help, and we took enough grub to last us two years an’ fourteen boxes of Havana cigars and a live cat that was most a skeleton.”
“She croaked,” put in Jude. “Satan fed her half a can of beef cut small, and then she scoffed half a bucket of water—that bust her.”
“We wouldn’t have been so free in taking the things but for the lie of the hooker on the reef and the weather that was sure coming,” said Tyler. “We knew all about the weather and the chances. And we didn’t cast off from that hooker an hour too soon! We were ridin’ out that gale three days, and when we passed the reef again making west the brig was gone.”
“And you cached the stuff here?”
“Yep.”
“But we hadn’t to make no cache hole,” put in Jude. “Pap had one here. It’s among the bushes—and he didn’t make it, neither.”
“It’s all coral rock a foot under the bushes,” said Tyler, “and there’s a hole you drop down six foot, that leads to a cave as cool as a refrigerator; so the goods would keep to the last trumpet. The old Spaniards must have cut it to hide their stuff in. Pap dropped on it by chance. Said they’d used it for hidin’ gold and such. Not that he believed in the buried treasure business—sunk ships is different.”
Jude, who was hacking open a can of peaches, suddenly made an awful face at Satan. It had the effect of cutting him short. Ratcliffe refused the peaches. He sat watching this pair of cormorants and thinking that the cache must be pretty big if it held two years’ provisions for them.
Then suddenly