May 4, 1916 
LAND- & WATER 
CHJ TA 
e// "T^mance of the South Seas 
"By H. T>E FERE STAC POOLE 
19 
Synopsis : Macquart, an adventurer who has spent most 
of his life at sea, finds hiniself in Sydney on his beam ends. 
He has a wonderjid story of gold hidden up a river in New 
Guinea, and makes the acquaintance of Tillman, a sporting 
man about town, fond of yachting and racing, and of Houghton, 
a ivell-educated Englishman out of a job. Through Tillman's 
influence he is introduced to a wealthy woolbroker, Screed, who, 
having heard Macquart' s story, agrees to finance the enterprise. 
Screed purchases a yawl, the " Barracuda." Just before they 
leave Macquart encounters an old shipmate, Captain Hull, 
ivho is fully acquainted with his villainies. Hull gets in touch 
with Screed, who engages him and brings him aboard the yacht 
just as they are about to sail. They arrive at New Guinea and 
anchor in a lagoon. They go by boat up a river where they 
make the acquaintance of a drunken Dutchman, Wiart, who 
is in charge of a rubber and camphor station. Here they 
meet a beautiful Dyak girl, Chaya. According to Macquart's 
story a man named Lant, who had seized this treasure, sunk his 
ship and murdered his crew with the exception of one man, 
" Smith." Lant then settled here, buried the treasure, and married 
a Dyak woman, chief of her tribe. Lant was murdered by 
" Smith," whom Captain Hull and the rest make little doubt 
was no other than Macquart. Chaya, with whom Houghton 
has fallen in love, is Lant's half-caste daughter. Macquart 
guides them to a spot on the river-bank where he declares the 
cache to be. They dig but find nothing. Then he starts the 
surmise that the Dyaks have moved the treasure to a sacred 
grove in the jungle. Wiart is his authority. He persuades 
his shipmates to go in search of it. The journey leads them 
through the Great Thorn Bush, which is a vast maze from which 
escape is impossible without a clue. Macquart and Wiart 
desert their companions. As night falls a woman's voice is 
heard calling, and Chaya, answering their cries, discovers 
them ; through her help they at last escape from the maze, to find 
Ihat Macquart and Wiart have returned to the Barracuda 
CHAPTER XXVI [continued) 
The Treasure 
WHEN Macquart awakened Wiart, he roused 
himself up, yawned and looked about him. He 
did not recognise he was in the Bairacuda for a 
moment. Then when he came fully to his 
senses, he put his leg over the bunk edge. 
" I was dreaming that I was tangled up in that thorn 
scrub," said he ; " couldn't get my bearings no ways." He 
rubbed his eyes, got on to the floor and came to the table. 
" Where's the black fellow ? " he asked. 
" Jacky ? Up on deck. He'll be cooking himself some 
breakfast in the galley. I made this coffee over the methy- 
lated stove so as not to be bothered with him." 
Wiart drank his coffee. 
" And now," said he, "I suppose there's nothing to do but 
go for that location of yours and get the stuff on board." 
" Nothing. But we must take the yawl across the lagoon 
first." 
" How's that ? " 
" Because the stuff is buried on the other side." 
" Oh, Lord ! " said Wiart. " We'll have to tow her." 
" That's about it." 
" And why in the nation didn't you anchor on the other 
side to begin with ? " 
" For the very good reason that the ship was sunk on 
the other side and I didn't want those chaps to see her bones. 
But they did, all the same. Two of them went cruising about 
the lagoon in the boat and spotted the burnt timbers sunk by 
the bank over there. I thought for a moment it was all up, 
but the fools never suspected. They came back with the yarn 
that they had found a wreck under the water, and they never 
suspected." 
'■ D asses," said Wiart. " She was burnt, you 
said ? " 
" ^^^■" 
" That chap Lant must have been a peach." 
" He was." 
" And to think that girl Chaya was his daughter — well, 
she's a chip of the old block, and I reckon if she had any 
idea this stuff we're after belonged to the father, and if she 
knew we were on to it, she'd be after us." 
Macquart moved uneasily. 
Chaya was the only hint of that Past which he still 
vaguely dreaded. He had seen nothing of her mother, scarcely 
anything of tha Dyaks. Brave enough to go back to the 
scene of John Lant's undoing, he had not been brave enough 
to make enquiries or go near the Dyak village. 
" Anyhow," said he. " She doesn't know. No one has 
any idea of the whereabouts of that stuff but myself. Well, 
if you have finished, let's set to work." 
They came on deck, where they found Jacky, v^ho, as 
Macquart had surmised, was engaged on some food he had 
cooked for himself in the galley. They waited until he had 
finished, and then they landed and cast off the hawsers. 
Then they fixed the warp for towing. This done, they rowed 
across the lagoon to the opposite bank to find a suitable berth. 
The day was strong now in the sky, and when they 
reached the opposite bank, they could see vaguely outlined 
in the water beneath the boat, the bones of the Terschelling 
like the ghost of a black skeleton. 
" She was a big ship," said Wiart, who seemed fascinated 
by the sight below. 
" Fairly big," said Macquart. " There's her stem. Well, 
we'll bring the yawl over and moor her abaft the stern ; that 
camphor tree marks the position." 
They rowed back, took up the warp and began towing. 
The Barracuda came along easily enough. The difficulty 
was to bring her to her ight position beside the bank. In 
doing this, they nearly got the boat stranded on the stern 
part of the wreck of the Terschelling, but they managed the 
job at last, and as the rays of the sun began to strike strongly 
through the upper branches of the trees, they had her in 
position, moored stem and stern. 
" Now," said Macquart, " for the digging." 
His cheeks showed a flush above the beard, and his eyes 
were brilliant with excitement. There was a spare mattock 
on board and this was brought on shore, also a compass and 
three mat baskets. 
Jacky and Wiart shouldered the pick and the two mat- 
tocks, Macquart carried the compass. He took a line leading 
due south from the stern of the wreck and led the way straight 
into the forest. He led them for a hundred yards or so, and 
then stopped for a moment, glancing about him and seeming 
to listen. It was as though he were fearful of their being 
foUowed or surprised. But there was no sound other than the 
crying of the parrots, the wind in the trees, and now and then 
cutting through the air the rasping call of a cockatoo. 
Macquart led on. 
And now the trees begun to thin out and then, suddenly, 
the ground rose before them, forming a httle hill on which 
nothing grew except a few trees like the pandanus, but bearing 
no fruit. 
The hill was evidently formed by an uprising of the same 
strata to which the Pulpit Rock at the entrance of the river, 
in some mysterious way, belonged ; for, from the hilltop broke 
two rocks, in structure exactly like the Pulpit, though each 
of them was not more than six or seven feet in height. 
They were situated thirty feet, or more, apart. When 
Macquart reached the space between these rocks, he sat doWn 
on the ground as if exhausted. Wiart, standing beside him 
and glancing round, noticed that the elevation of the hill gave 
him a view far over the trees to southward, whilst the trees to 
northward barred all view of the river. 
The ground to the south was, in fact, covered mostly 
by low-growing mangroves feeding their roots in marshy land 
and reaching to the coast ridge where the foliage of other trees 
barred the view to the sea. 
" Well," said Wiart, " how much further have we to go ? " 
" We are on tlie spot," said Macquart. He struck his 
hand palm downward on the ground as he spoke. 
" Good," said Wiart. 
He put his mattock down and took his seat beside Mac- 
qu'rt, whilst Jacky stood by holding the spare mattock and 
pick and gazing round him, with eyes wrinkled against the sun- 
shine, at the far stretches of mangrove forest over which was 
hanging a vague blue haze. 
Jacky belonged to the primitive order of things. Amongst 
