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He beckoned to Jack, who crept near him. "Somebody's nigh us afore an' behind," he whispered. "We better hide till dark comes. You crawl into that ol' holler log. I'll nose myself under a brush pile." They were in a burnt slash where the soft timber had been cut some time before. The land was covered with a thick, spotty growth of poplar and wild cherry and brush heaps and logs half-rotted.
The fast-driven launch had run, bow-on, into a tooth of coral barely ten inches under the surface of the smooth water. And, what with her impetus and the half-rotted condition of her hull, she struck with such force as to rip a hole in her forward quarter, wide enough to stick a derby hat through. In rushed the water, filling her in an incredibly short time.
There was a chest of drawers against the wall, in which we found, half-rotted away, old-fashioned articles of a man's dress, such as might have been worn eighty or a hundred years ago by a gentleman of some rank; costly steel buckles and buttons, like those yet worn in court-dresses, a handsome court sword; in a waistcoat which had once been rich with gold-lace, but which was now blackened and foul with damp, we found five guineas, a few silver coins, and an ivory ticket, probably for some place of entertainment long since passed away.
As silently as a cat after a mouse, Dick entered the gloomy building and felt his way over the half-rotted floor to where the stairs were located. Ascending these, he found himself in something of a hallway, the upper floor of the building being divided into several apartments by wooden partitions nine or ten feet in height. From one of the apartments shone a faint light.
There was a chest of drawers against the wall, in which we found, half-rotted away, old-fashioned articles of a man's dress, such as might have been worn eighty or a hundred years ago by a gentleman of some rank costly steel buckles and buttons, like those yet worn in court-dresses, a handsome court sword in a waistcoat which had once been rich with gold-lace, but which was now blackened and foul with damp, we found five guineas, a few silver coins, and an ivory ticket, probably for some place of entertainment long since passed away.
The stranger was outlandishly arrayed in the sorry remains of a half-Indian, half-Canadian sort of a dress, consisting of a fawn-skin jacket the fur outside and hanging in ragged tufts a half-rotten, bark-like belt of wampum; aged breeches of sagathy; bedarned worsted stockings to the knee; old moccasins riddled with holes, their metal tags yellow with salt-water rust; a faded red woollen bonnet, not unlike a Russian night-cap, or a portentous, ensanguined full-moon, all soiled, and stuck about with bits of half-rotted straw.
There was the fallen, half-rotted log under which the swift current had dug a deep hole in the sandbed for the big fellows to haunt and pounce out upon bits of food which floated by. How his heart had gone pitapat when he had discovered it and had quietly, oh, so quietly, dropped his baited hook into the clear, spring water.
But days of drudgery at the paddles transformed the makeshift hope into something almost like a certainty. There was no lumber at Rocky Point. We rummaged through a pile of driftwood and found some half-rotted two-by-sixes. These we hacked into paddles. They weighed, when thoroughly soaked, at least fifteen pounds apiece.
He was tall and slenderly built, with a pale face shadowed by dark hair; he was clad in black, and carried in one hand a half-open book, which, however, he seemed to have forgotten. A short distance ahead was a path, scarcely marked except where the half-rotted trees were trodden through.
And they surveyed the box that had once held some soldier. "She did like fixin's," said Limber Jim. "Fixin's!" said Toothpick Kid. "That's easy." While some six of them, with Chalkeye, bore the light, half-rotted coffin into the room, many followed Toothpick Kid to the post-trader's store. Breaking in here, they found men sleeping on the counters.
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