Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs (best way to read an ebook TXT) 📕

of the harbor, so that he obtained an excellent view of the wonders of this strange, floating house.

There were some twenty men running hither and thither about the deck, pulling and hauling on ropes.

A light land breeze was blowing, and the ship had been worked through the harbor’s mouth under scant sail, but now that they had cleared the point every available shred of canvas was being spread that she might stand out to sea as handily as possible.

Tarzan watched the graceful movements of the ship in rapt admiration, and longed to be aboard her. Presently his keen eyes caught the faintest suspicion of smoke on the far northern horizon, and he wondered over the cause of such a thing out on the great water.

About the same time the lookout on the Arrow must have discerned it, for in a few minutes Tarzan saw the sails being shifted and shortened. The ship came about, and presently he knew that she was beating back toward land.

A man at the bows was constantly heaving into the sea a rope to the end of which a small object was fastened. Tarzan wondered what the purpose of this action might be.

At last the ship came up directly into the wind; the anchor was lowered; down came the sails. There was great scurrying about on deck.

A boat was lowered, and in it a great chest was placed. Then a dozen sailors bent to the oars and pulled rapidly toward the point where Tarzan crouched in the branches of a tree.

In the stern of the boat, as it drew nearer, Tarzan saw the rat-faced man.

It was but a few minutes later that the boat touched the beach. The men jumped out and lifted the great chest to the sand. They were on the north side of the point so that their presence was concealed from those at the cabin.

The men argued angrily for a moment. Then the rat-faced one, with several companions, ascended the low bluff on which stood the tree that concealed Tarzan. They looked about for several minutes.

“Here is a good place,” said the rat-faced sailor, indicating a spot beneath Tarzan’s tree.

“It is as good as any,” replied one of his companions. “If they catch us with the treasure aboard it will all be confiscated anyway. We might as well bury it here on the chance that some of us will escape the gallows to come back and enjoy it later.”

The rat-faced one now called to the men who had remained at the boat, and they came slowly up the bank carrying picks and shovels.

“Hurry, ⸻ you!” cried Snipes.

“Stow it!” retorted one of the men, in a surly tone. “You’re no admiral, you damned ⸻ ⸻ shrimp.”

“I’m Cap’n here, though, I’ll have you to understand, you swab,” shrieked Snipes, with a volley of frightful oaths.

“Steady, boys,” cautioned one of the men who had not spoken before. “It ain’t goin’ to get us nothing by fightin’ amongst ourselves.”

“Right enough,” replied the sailor who had resented Snipes’ autocratic tones; “but it ain’t a-goin’ to get nobody nothin’ to put on airs in this bloomin’ company neither.”

“You fellows dig here,” said Snipes, indicating a spot beneath the tree. “And while you’re diggin,’ Peter kin be a-makin’ of a map of the location so’s we kin find it again. You, Tom, and Bill, take a couple more down and fetch up the chest.”

“Wot are you a-goin’ to do?” asked he of the previous altercation. “Just boss?”

“Git busy there,” growled Snipes. “You didn’t think your Cap’n was a-goin’ to dig with a shovel, did you?”

The men all looked up angrily. None of them liked Snipes, and this disagreeable show of authority since he had murdered King, the real head and ringleader of the mutineers, had only added fuel to the flames of their hatred.

“Do you mean to say that you don’t intend to take a shovel, and lend a hand with this work? Your shoulder’s not hurt so all-fired bad as that,” said Tarrant, the sailor who had before spoken.

“Not by a ⸻ sight,” replied Snipes, fingering the butt of his revolver nervously.

“Then, by God,” replied Tarrant, “if you won’t take a shovel you’ll take a pickax.”

With the words he raised his pick above his head, and, with a mighty blow, he buried the point in Snipes’ brain.

For a moment the men stood silently looking at the result of their fellow’s grim humor. Then one of them spoke.

“Served the skunk jolly well right,” he said.

One of the others commenced to ply his pick to the ground. The soil was soft and he threw aside the pick and grasped a shovel; then the others joined him. There was no further comment on the killing, but the men worked in a better frame of mind than they had since Snipes had assumed command.

When they had a trench of ample size to bury the chest, Tarrant suggested that they enlarge it and inter Snipes’ body on top of the chest.

“It might ’elp fool any as ’appened to be diggin’ ’ereabouts,” he explained.

The others saw the cunning of the suggestion, and so the trench was lengthened to accommodate the corpse, and in the center a deeper hole was excavated for the box, which was first wrapped in sailcloth and then lowered to its place, which brought its top about a foot below the bottom of the grave. Earth was shovelled in and tramped down about the chest until the bottom of the grave showed level and uniform.

Two of the men rolled the rat-faced corpse unceremoniously into the grave, after first stripping it of its weapons and various other articles which the several members of the party coveted for their own.

They then filled the grave with earth and tramped upon it until it would hold no more.

The balance of the loose earth was thrown far and wide, and a mass of dead undergrowth spread in as natural a manner as possible over the new-made grave to obliterate all signs of the ground having