Part 15 (1/2)

”It's just where the house is,” I says, ”or it was. There wasn't any house then.”

Monson shook with laughter though he kept it quiet, and I don't know what pleased him. It would have pleased me then to see him dead, I was that savage for the people in the house. One spot on a mean little island, and they'd squatted on it! Yet it was plain enough, for the inlet led up to the three trees, which seemed to invite a man to do there whatever he had planned to do.

”Stuff 'em up their chimney,” says Monson. ”Tip the hut into the creek.

That joke's on them, ain't it?”

I didn't see how the joke was on them.

”Why, I never knew an Injy islander to dig a cellar,” he says: ”They lie on the ground and get ague. Course, they might dig a hole.”

The door of the little house was closed, when we came soft along the muddy sh.o.r.e and crept up to the window. There were five men inside, around a table, leaning forward, whispering together and drinking aguardiente. That's what Kid Sadler on the _Hebe Maitland_ used to call ”affectionate water.” They were small men, but fierce-looking and black-eyed, and they appeared as if they were talking state secrets, or each explaining his special brand of crime. Monson roared out and struck the door with his fist, and they disappeared. Three of them went under the table.

Monson had to bend his head to enter, and his s.h.a.ggy hair pressed along the ceiling. He pulled some by their legs from under the table, and one from a bench in a dark corner by the hair, whom he left suddenly, for it was a woman, and the two others he hauled from a closet.

”Bring us some more!” he shouted in Spanish, laughing uproariously.

”Aguardiente! Hoorah!”

I don't know, or forget, how he quieted them, but pretty soon we were seven men about the table, and the woman was serving us with ”affectionate water.” One of them, with the woman, was owner of the house, and the others, it seemed, lived across the island. They had heard Monson's laugh, and afterward, hearing and seeing nothing more, they'd taken it to be ghosts and were afraid. They were fierce-looking little men, but pleasant enough and simple-minded. ”Doubtless,” they said, ”the senores were distinguished persons, who had come on a s.h.i.+p and would buy tobacco.” We arranged that the four, who lived across the island, should come back in the morning with their tobacco. So the four went away affectionate with aguardiente, and we were left alone with the fifth. His name was Pedronez and his wife's Lucina. Then I asked how long they'd lived there.

”One year, six months,” he says, counting on his fingers.

”Build the house?”

”Si, senor. A n.o.ble house! A miracle!”

”Ever dig a hole here?”

”A hole! But why a hole? In the ground of the n.o.ble house! Ah, no! By no means!”

Monson roared again, to the fright of Pedronez and Lucina, who flattened herself against the wall. He went out and brought in the spade, and the bags. I guarded the door, and Monson dug where I pointed in the hard trodden earth of the floor. Pedronez and Lucina backed into corners and chattered crazy. They seemed to think the hole was for them, and Monson meant to bury them in it, which had as reasonable a look as anything.

Clyde's money was there still, lying no more than two feet from where Pedronez and Lucina had walked over it eighteen months, grubbing out a poor living. The brown bags were all rotted away and the coin was sticky with clay. I laid a handful on the table, and told Pedronez to buy the tobacco of the others in the morning, but I didn't suppose he would.

It seemed a hard sort of joke played by luck on the little Windward Islander, Clyde's money lying there so long, twenty-four inches from the soles of his feet. I remember how Pedronez clutched his throat and shrieked after us into the night. He had s.h.i.+ny black eyes and skin wrinkled about the mouth, and Lucina was draggled-looking. When we were out of the inlet we could hear him yelling, and I had an idea he and Lucina took to fighting to ease up their minds.

We came under the dark of the s.h.i.+p's side. One of the negroes leaned over above us, and Monson told him to turn in, so short that he scuttled away with a grunt. We heaved the stuff aboard, and took it below, and stowed the whole four meal bags under my bunk. We got up sail before daybreak and slipped away while the stars were still s.h.i.+ning.

Now, I took Monson to be a simple man, though sudden in action, and a man with an open mind, and sure to blow up with anything it was charged with, and in that way safe, as not having the gifts to deceive. I don't say the estimate was all gone wrong, but I'd say a man may act so simple as to take in a cleverer man than me. He came to me the next day and took me down below, acting mysterious, and he put on an expression that was like a full moon trying to look like a horse trader, which wasn't a success. Then he jerked his beard, and looked embarra.s.sed.

”Why,” he says, ”it's this way. I think I'll have half that pile, don't you see?”

I says: ”What?”

I felt like an empty meal bag with surprise. Then I says, ”Of course I was meaning to make you a present, Captain.”

”No,” he says. ”That's not it. It's this way. The n.i.g.g.e.rs is so tricky, they'd drop you overboard, tied to a chunk of iron, if I told 'em they might, don't you see? And if I don't tell them they might, seems as if I ought to have half. Because,” he says, ”they'd love to do it, because they're that way, those n.i.g.g.e.rs, and it seems that way, as if I'd ought to have half, don't it?”

”Why don't you take it all?” I says, sarcastic and mad.