Part 10 (1/2)

It had once worn a crown, but the crown was broken away all but a little bit on the left side of the head and it had an appearance of life that almost daunted the girl as she stood looking, watching it, and listening to the singing sound of the beach echoes and the mewing and crying of the gulls.

Then as she moved closer her foot struck on something half buried in the sand, it was a balk of timber, s.h.i.+ps timber was all about, sanded over, and in places half uncovered. Here was firewood enough for twenty years.

In the figure-head alone there was enough to supply their wants for a long time to come.

She sat down to rest on a projecting piece of this timber near the figure. Close up to it like this it lost its touch of life and became simply a block of wood, and from this point she could see the beach over which she had travelled stretching away and away to the Lizard Point with the foam breaking around it and flown about by the never-resting gulls.

She had come nearly three miles and she had found something worth finding by just keeping on.

She remembered the spectre crab. It had nearly turned her back empty-handed, but she had kept on and she registered that fact deeply in her mind, dwelling on it with a pleasure she had never felt before.

Then she fell to thinking of the s.h.i.+p that all this belonged to and the storm that must have driven it here. The weeds of the high tide mark did not come within ten feet of the wreckage, so the waves must have come a hundred feet or more beyond where she was sitting. Perhaps it was at night with all this coast roaring in the darkness and the wind yelling above the shouting of the waves. And all that must have happened years ago, to judge by the work of the weather on the once gaily painted woman and the depth the timbers had sunk in the sand.

She rose up, and before starting back she glanced inland towards the mountains across the broken country.

Then she shaded her eyes.

Beyond the fringe of the beach and amongst the high broken rocks stood a cross.

CHAPTER X

THE CROSS

The thing itself startled her less than the fact that she had not seen it before. It was as though it had been put up whilst she sat to rest.

It was so striking, so palpably evident that anyone coming along towards the figure-head as she had done must have been attracted by it. To verify this she walked a few yards away and even as she did so the cross vanished, shut out from sight by the rock to the left of it. Only from the point of view of the figure-head could it be seen.

It was as though the beach had tried to frighten her again.

She came towards it, noticing as she came the shortness of the arms. It was less a cross than a sign-post, a sign-post raised on a mound of small rocks; it was tarred to preserve it from the weather. From the left limb close to the post a metal box was hanging by a wire, and on the post itself, a few feet from the base, there was a plate of galvanised iron nailed to the wood. On the plate were stamped some words.

She stepped upon the mound and read: ”Kestrel Expedition. Cache I. Don't disturb 19--”

The date was three years back.

The cache, whatever it might be, was under the mound. Also, this thing had evidently nothing to do with the wreck, for the embossed metal plate must have been prepared in some civilized country for the purpose to which it had been put.

She reached up and tried to detach the box and pulling on it brought down the slat of wood that formed the arms of the cross, the nails that had held it having rusted away.

Then, having detached the box, she examined it. It was an ordinary sailor's tobacco box, she pressed the spring, opened it, and found a piece of paper folded in four and inscribed as follows, the writing done with a purple indelible pencil:

Opened the cach.

Took nuthing out.

Stuck in som extry goods Put the s.h.i.+p about.

To any one that finds it in this blasted hole Sam Slac.u.m, Master Mariner. Thresler 19--

Then as an after thought:

”Keep up your spirits.”