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 he said so, laughing and without giving the least offense. Tyler explained that the cache was not their only larder: there were fish and turtle and turtle eggs, birds sometimes, fruit to be had for next to nothing, often for nothing. The only expense was for tobacco, and he had not paid ten cents for tobacco since last fall and wouldn’t want to for a year to come; clothes, and they didn’t want much clothes, Jude did the mending and patching; paint, and the Sarah Tyler had ways and means of getting paint and all such, spars and so on. He gave a wonderful instance:
Before Christmas last they had chummed up with a big yacht on the Florida coast near Cedar Cays. Thelusson was the owner, a man from New York. He took a fancy to the Sarah and her way of life, and he and his crew helped to careen her in a lagoon back of the reefs, cleaned her copper (she was dead foul with barnacles and weeds), gave her a new main boom and foresail and some spare canvas, and all for nix. He had no paint, or he would have painted her. He drank champagne by the bucket, and he wanted to quit the yacht and go for a cruise with them, only his missus who was on board wouldn’t let him.
Ratcliffe thought he could visualize Thelusson.
“She was a mutt,” put in Jude, “with a voice like a muskeeter.”
“She wanted to ’dopt Jude and stick a skirt on her,” said Tyler.
“Handed me out a lot of sick stuff about sayin’ prayers and such,” hurriedly cut in Jude.
“And put the nightcap on it by kissin’ her,” finished Tyler.
Jude’s face blazed red like a peony.
“If you chaps have had enough, I’m goin’ to clear,” said Jude.
“Right!” said Satan, rising, and she cleared, vanishing with the swiftness of a rabbit up the companionway.
Tyler fetched out a box of cigars. They were Ramon Alones.
“She won’t speak to me now for half a day,” said Tyler. “If you want to guy Jude, tell her she’s a girl. I wouldn’t a told you, only you’re not in our way of life and so can’t make trouble. No one knows. There’s not a man in any of the ports knows: she goes as me brother. But the Thelusson woman spotted her on sight—Come on deck.”
Jude was emptying a bucket of refuse overboard, then she vanished into the galley, and Ratcliffe, well fed, lazy, and smoking his cigar, leaned for a moment over the rail before taking his departure, talking to Tyler.
To starboard lay Palm Island, with the sea quietly creaming on the coral beach and the palms stirring to the morning wind, to port the white Dryad riding to her anchor on the near-shore blue, and beyond the Dryad the violet of the great depths spreading to the far horizon, beyond which lay Andros, and the islands, reefs, and banks from Great Abeco to Rum Cay. Not a sail on all that sea, nor a stain on all that splendor: nothing but the gulls wheeling and crying over the reefs to southward.
But Satan’s mind as he leaned beside Ratcliffe was not engaged by the beauty of the morning or the charm of the view. Satan was a dealer with the sea and the things that came out of the sea or were even to be met with floating on the waves. Ratcliffe was one of these things.
“You’ve never had no call to work?” said Satan tentatively. “You’ve lots of money, I s’pect, and can take things easy.”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“Like fishin’?”
“You bet!”
“Well, if you ever wants to see good fishin’ and more than ordinary folk see of the islands here, drop me a word to Havana. Kellerman, marine store dealer, Havana, will get me. He’s a pal of mine. I fetch up in Havana every six months or so—and there’s more than fishin’—”
Tyler stopped short, then he spat overboard and began to fill his pipe. He had no use for cigars—much.
