The Dark Canoe Read Free Page A

Jeremy. And that hatred had grown through the years, since, injured in the fall, he was forced to hobble about on a twisted leg, scarred of face, and an object of pity.
    â€œPerhaps it wasn’t Caleb after all,” Tom said, “but if a man ever had a good reason for murder, it was he.”
    The crew had left the supper table and I could hear some of them walking around on the deck above. I went out, cleaned up the dishes, washed them, and put them away for the morning. Then I hurried back to the forecastle.
    â€œThere’s some good news after all,” I said, sitting down beside Tom on the bunk. “It happened just before supper.”
    In the glow of the lantern that swung from the beam over our heads, I watched his eyes grow wide as I told him about the chest. “It could be filled with Spanish gold.”
    â€œNot filled,” Tom said, “or else it wouldn’t float. A cubic foot of gold weighs more than a ton, just one cubic foot.”
    â€œPerhaps a quarter full.”
    â€œNot even that much.”
    â€œHow much?” I asked, disappointed.
    â€œA bag about the size of your cap,” Tom answered. “But the chest could hold something more valuable than that.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œA map,” Tom said. “A map that shows where a million dollars in gold is hidden away.”
    Tom laughed, we both laughed because we had begun to sound like a couple of adventurous schoolboys.
    â€œWhat shall I do with the chest?” I said. “It will have to be moved before daylight.”
    â€œTow it ashore,” Tom said. “Find a good place in the cove and hide it.”
    We talked for a while about the map, counting the gold we would find after following all the instructions. When the men started to drift down from above we still went on counting the gold and how we would spend it. But we pretended that we were spending our share of the sperm oil and ambergris in the sunken hold of the Amy Foster .
    â€œYou’ll both have barnacles on your beards before she’s found,” said Jim Still.
    â€œShut up,” the cook said. “And you, Nathan, see to it that the dishes are cleaned up when they ought to be.” I waited until everyone was asleep, or seemed to be, before I went quietly up the ladder to carry out the plan Tom and I had decided upon.

4
    A half-moon had climbed the sky and everything around me shone clearly—the ship, the flat waters of the bay, and the beach on Isla Madera. A dark night would have been better for what I had to do, but I did not dare to wait for the moon to set.
    Blanton, who had the midnight watch, was out of sight at the stern of the ship. I found that the tide had caught up the chest and that it was pointed toward the open sea, straining hard at its tether. I untied the line from the ringbolt and dropped it overboard.
    Alert , our small barquentine, carried four launches. Three of them were in the water, tied to the anchor chain, all of them stacked with diving gear and heavy to handle. But there was no choice, for while the fourth launch swung empty in its davits, I could not lower it away without help.
    I ran to the bow and slid down the chain and scrambled into the nearest launch. Setting the oars in the locks, I headed out in the direction I thought the chest would drift, now that it had been set free, and by good fortune overtook it after a time of hard rowing. With the chest in tow, I turned and made a wide circle around the ship and set a course for Isla Madera, which was some mile or more to the north.
    Alert lay to starboard, its trim, black hull clearly outlined by the moon. Two men stood at the stern and I supposed that they were watching me. It did not matter, for from the distance that separated us, they could not tell that I had something in tow. Nor would my absence cause any alarm. The past week I had taken to rowing at night, just to be away from the ship.
    The tide was against me, running