CAP

CHAPTER XI

THE "CHANTICLEER"

APTAIN FRANCIS REYNOLDS, bankrupt by shipwreck, was now a rich man; that is to say, he was rich beyond any dreams of avarice which had ever entered his head. For how long does a master in the Merchant Service take as a rule to save out of perhaps the poorest-paid calling in the world the handsome sum of eleven thousand pounds, with a few hundred pounds on top in notes and gold; just enough to open a pretty little banking account with?

But Reynolds did not happen to take an inspiriting view of the noble turn which fortune had done him. He was never once visited by a single heart-beat of exultation. The solemn and sturdy sense of satisfaction and repose of spirit which attend competence did not come to swell his heart. On the contrary, he regarded himself as a miserable hopeless castaway, as a wretch whose hideous doom prayer was not likely to avert; and the bonds in the cave, and the notes and property in the chest, were as worthless in his sight as the leaf on the tree, or the empty sea-shell on the sand.

At the same time, he was sensible that he had most honourably come by this little estate, and he would sit and lament that he could make no use of it. The

desire of his soul was that Lucretia should get it, and learn from whom it came, and in what state the husband she had forsaken had been when he contrived that she should receive it. Mrs. Lane was by no means well off. Dr. Lane in his day had been tempted to gamble on the Stock Exchange. "The old fool went into mines," his friends said. He could not ask for a simpler and surer grave for the everlasting entombment of his capital, which he had gotten by painful toil, by tedious, anxious vigils in sick-rooms, by exposure to weather, and to the many morbific diseases to which flesh is heir. Panic seized him. To rescue himself, his wife, and daughter from the workhouse he purchased an annuity on his own and Mrs. Lane's life, on which, and about one hundred a year, which Lucretia would come into on her mother's death, and which represented money that had not gone to the jobbers, Mrs. Lane and Lucretia lived.

All this was known to Reynolds, and whenever he thought of the bonds in the cave, he longed to give them to his wife, though convinced he would never meet her again. But how was this to be done? He pondered in vain. It was an end impossible to arrive at. Ideas occurred to him which he considered absurd. He had Goodhart's gold pencil, and there was a flat pencil in the chest; a roll of paper was there, and in that chest were blank leaves of letters-Mrs. Goodhart's, and a few of Lucretia's to him; his wife's letters had been in his pocket when he was washed ashore. The ink had run, the writing was indecipherable; but he had kept the letters, nevertheless, and they had dried long ago, and were fit where they were blank to receive pen or pencil. He said to himself: "If I write my wishes, how am I to despatch them? I have not even an empty bottle

to cork the missive up in, and send it afloat. But suppose this could be managed; the man who picked up the bottle (if it did not go washing about till the crack of doom) might value the secret too highly to betray it, come to the island, and carry off the bonds."

It will be seen that in these speculations he conceived himself dead. But one day, being vastly exercised by thoughts of his wife and the bonds, he formed a resolution. He said to himself: “I will write a sort of will, and take my chance of its being found by one who will prove honest enough to carry out the instructions it contains."

For he clearly understood that if he was to die on the island, the buried bonds must remain a secret for ever; and eleven thousand pounds would be left to rot in a cave, of no good to mortal man, when, by leaving a declaration of the existence of the treasure-which it truly was-it might, peradventure, come safely into his wife's hands, and benefit the honest fellow who delivered it to her.

He took the roll of old paper from the shelf in the chest, and using Goodhart's pencil-case, he sat down on the grass, employing the back of the shovel as a table. A useful shovel! It had served as a frying-pan, as a mattock for the burial of a man's bonds, and then the man himself, and now it was to supply the place of a desk. He wrote thus:—

"June 15, 1892. I who write this am Captain Francis Reynolds. I commanded the ship Flying Spur, which sailed from Falmouth, October 13, 1890, and was lost off this island through fire, and in half a gale of wind, February 2, 1891. I am the sole survivor of the

whole ship's company. This, at least, is my conviction. I remained alone till September 14, seven months of solitude, when a boat arrived with six seamen of the crew of the Esmond, that had gone down through a collision, and Mr. John Goodhart, of Sydney, New South Wales. The sailors stayed on the island until October 2, on which day they chased a ship, but the boat was without mast or sail, and I am certain that she never came up with that ship, and I am also persuaded that she will not again be heard of. Had her people been rescued, they would have reported Mr. Goodhart and me as being left, and we would have been fetched, not necessarily by the ship that received the men, but through the report of her master; plenty of time having elapsed to allow for that report to reach the ears of a British Consul, who would consider it his duty to communicate with the commander-in-chief on the Pacific station.

"When the boat had left the island, Mr. Goodhart showed me, in a couple of waterproof sacks, eleven Victoria 4 per cent. bonds, each of the value of one thousand pounds. He informed me that his wife had died in childbed at Sydney, and that he was absolutely without kith or kin. We conceived a great liking for each other. We were one in sympathy and tastes. But his was a very great and noble mind. Our comradeship in privation, and the sufferings which attend shipwreck, heightened our affection, and endeared us to each other. He told me that if he died on the island I was to consider myself as his heir, and take possession, not only of his bonds, but also of all the property which was upon his person. As I shall continue to carry that property about with me in his clothes, which I am wearing, it will be found upon my remains,

which cannot lie far away from this spot, if, indeed, I do not die in the cave; and the discoverer of this letter must seek my body, and take what is on it; and I implore him, in God's name, to bury me.

"To provide against the risk of a landing being effected unseen by us, in which case the cave might be entered, the chest explored, and the bonds removed, I buried them with the approval of Mr. Goodhart, and the place where they lie will be found marked by a short spade-shaped stake, which I drove into the ground, to help me should my memory come to be weakened. My wife, Lucretia, when I left England, was living with her mother, Mrs. Lane, in Chepstow Place, Bayswater, London, W., and it is my earnest wish that she should be the recipient of these bonds and the property that may be found upon me. To which end I, a brokenhearted, desolate, dying man, humbly and affectionately greet the reader of this letter, and do entreat him, as he loves God and the truth and honour, to convey these words and the property to my wife, Lucretia Reynolds, who, for the trouble he is at in finding her, if she has removed, and in acting as my emissary, will receive fifteen hundred pounds, which he will more greatly enjoy, as money honourably and virtuously gained, than if he kept the whole sum, thereby robbing the widow, and blasting the only hope which keeps warm and alive the heart that dictates these words. Again I greet and bless you, and thank you for the noble service you will be doing me.

"FRANCIS REYNOLDS."

The mere writing this letter was almost as good as a talk, almost as comforting to the poor fellow as the sound of a voice. He was even warmed, when