sunset, Sailor Penny took Peter Griffon to the edge of the cliff before the shelter and pointed downward. Griffon saw a strip of still water about one hundred yards in width and three times as long at the foot of the cliff. This was sheltered from the outer commotion by a crescent of black reef against which the seas rocked up and rode straight and burst to froth as white as snow. Midway the reef, where it was highest and widest, squatted a fragment of an old hulk—twenty feet or so of stove keel, unplanked ribs crusted with shells and weeds, a ragged butt of bowsprit and a stump of foremast.
"It be a proper island at , an' no more nor a strip at full an' all a-wash at flood," said Penny. "I've set here many's the time for hours o' moonlit nights picturin' Caleb Stave on that there reef without boat nor raft to bring 'im off."
"You have?" queried Griffon, surprised. "So you know him, too?"
"I've heard tell of 'im from more nor yerself, mate, up an' down the islands these many years, ashore an' afloat. He'd look uncommon well on that there reef without raft nor boat, blast his fishy deadlights!"
"He'd swim ashore. You don't know the inhuman beastliness of that old man, or ye'd wish him worse than that, as I do. I wish him in hell! He's had me in hell, down in the red hot slime of it, these three years, torturing me soul and body. That's where I wish Caleb Stave—for a thousand years!"
"He wouldn't swim ashore, no fear! Sharks, me lad! They be down there a-plenty. I encourages 'em. He'd find Crab Reef hell enough."
"You would starve him? Good!"
"Nay, he wouldn't starve."
"Not starve? What then?"
"That be an uncommon bit o' reef, lad. I've seen the same north about the Tortugas. But come along now an' I'll show 'e somethink else afore dark."
He led the way back to the shelter, went to the rear of it and thrust a hand up into the thatch. A flake of dull metallic surface was exposed to view.
"What is it?" asked Griffon, who was beginning to entertain suspicions of Sailor Penny's mental condition.
"A pewter dish," answered Penny. "A lookout forrard. A sentinel. Safety."
Griffon smiled indulgently and shook his head.
"It shows from the outside, broad an' bright," continued the other. "But only from one angle. Over yonder scouts the Turtle, along me brook an' strip o' clearance, from sunup to sundown—an' he knows the angle. If he sights a stranger, up he climbs into the highest o' the right trees, up to the angle for a glimpse o' this here pewter dish, an' takes a shoot at it. Maybe two o' us be settin' here in the cool—or three, maybe—when ping goes the pewter dish, an' down we goes underground, leavin' nothink for a stranger to see save this here old shelter what a shipwrecked sailor might rig an' sleep under a night or two."
Griffon was impressed and puzzled.
"But the turtle? What d'ye mean by a turtle climbing trees?"
"Injun. Carib. Good lad, the Turtle—an' smart as paint."
"Ah! An aborigine. What does he shoot with?"
"Me own cross-bow, the best that ever sped iron tipped quarrel. I took it off a Flemming shipmaster years ago. It shoots farther an' truer nor dag or pistolet, an' without the bang. An' now I'll show 'e somethink else."
They left the shelter and entered the edge of the jungle at a point about twenty yards away. Sailor Penny lay flat and wriggled forward beneath the tangle a distance of six or eight yards. Griffon followed him close. Penny got to his feet and climbed into the branches of a tree of dense growth and low branches, disappearing in a few seconds in the upper tangle of green and brown. Griffon followed slowly, with considerable difficulty.
He reached a narrow platform of sticks lashed securely together to form an aerial den in the upper depths of green obscurity and jungle mystery. There Penny was waiting for him and led him halfway around the tree trunk on foot ropes of living vines re-enforced with cordage, and along a horizontal limb on hands and knees, where they were enveloped in screens of hanging tangle. Penny swung beneath the limb on the twisted jungle net, went down hand under hand and in a second was swallowed from Griffon's sight. Griffon followed, awkwardly because of his disabled left arm. But the descent was not difficult, for good hemp cordage was rove among the vines and ratlines were set as in a ship's shrouds.