Part 18 (2/2)

I felt much as a mouse must feel, when the trapdoor closes after him. I was spurred into sudden action. And yet there was nothing I could do.

If I rushed into the thickets, my enemies must hear me. And what chance had my blow-pipe against a leaden bullet? I looked up at the trees around me, and saw at once that there was not one that I could climb without a deal of trouble. And yet, Amos himself was coming nearer and nearer, as I could tell by the breaking of the underwoods and the dead sticks upon the ground. On a sudden, without a thought, I jumped down into the Tomb, and pulled the stone slab into its place above me.

It is easy to say that this was the action of a fool. I attempt no more than to relate what happened. That no man in a calm moment would have done anything so rash and stupid, I would never for a moment deny. I was, however, very far from calm. If the truth be told, I was afraid.

I hid my face like an ostrich--for that is all it comes to.

And as soon as I found myself lying at full length upon those white and aged bones in the darkness of the grave, I realised that I was lost--that it had been far better for me had I fled into the jungle.

Amos himself must s.h.i.+ft the slab to search the Tomb for the map that he believed he would find within.

And presently, through the opening in the slab, I heard, with a distinctness that was indeed alarming, the voice of the man himself.

”It is here!” he cried. ”We've found it, as I said we would!”

From the certain fact that no one answered him, I judged that Baverstock was alone; and I was the more sure of this, since I could hear the footsteps of but a single man upon the thin stone above me. And I began to reckon what my chances would amount to, if it came to a square fight between the two of us, with no one to intervene.

Then I remembered that I was unarmed; for I had left my blow-pipe above ground, though the chances were that it was now so dark that he might not notice it. By the noise he made, his grunting and his muttered oaths, I judged that he was searching for the means to lift the slab.

I touched the stone above me with my fingers; and when I felt it moving, I knew that the hour of my ordeal was come. I must fight and defend myself, or die--and very likely both. I rose as the stone was lifted, and, as I did so, placed the Spaniard's helmet on my head and took up the rusted sword.

Amos threw aside the slab, and then jumped backward, as I stood up in the grave, waist-deep in mother earth.

It was that half-light which is neither night nor day--a weird and ghostly light, pervading like a mist the shadows of the Wood. Small wonder that that evil man thought that he beheld the resurrection of a corpse!

He let out a shriek--such a shriek as I never heard before or since--that seemed as if it must have been audible for miles throughout the evening silence of the jungle. It was the shriek of one whose hair stands upright on his head. He stood before me quaking at the knees; and then he found his voice again.

”Mercy!” he cried.

And at that I rushed upon him with my sword.

CHAPTER XXI--I AM MADE A GHOST, AND THEN A FOOL

I sprang at him with my sword, the rusty blade that I had filched from those grim and whitened bones.

The man was at my mercy. He was unarmed, having laid aside his rifle before he approached the Tomb. He trembled in every limb as he fled before my onslaught, and cried out aloud for pity, as I jabbed at him in a kind of vicious frenzy.

In the twilight his face looked pale-green in colouring, and his little pig-like eyes seemed in danger of springing from his head. It would be difficult to conceive an expression upon which abject terror was more strongly marked.

Amos Baverstock was an evil man in many ways, and a brave man in others; else he had never risked his life so often amid the dangers of the tropic wilderness. Courage of a sort he had in plenty, but, because he was evil in his nature, he feared death and all connected with the grave, though I had never thought to find him as superst.i.tious as he was. He had always struck me as a hard, calculating man, who looked upon the practical side of all things. And yet, without a doubt, he now took me for a ghost.

And after all--when the full facts are considered--his mistake was excusable; even to-day, when I call to mind that scene which was enacted in the half-light of the woods, I am inclined to laugh at it all, for there was something ludicrous about it.

I wore the helmet of the dead man, and had sprung at Amos out of the Tomb, without giving him time to think. a.s.suredly, in his eyes, what else could I have been but an infuriated ghost, dangerous and active because my peace and solitude had been disturbed.

I thrust at him savagely in the darkness, whilst he hurried here and there, in and out among the trees, yelling like a fiend. How hideous he was! I can see him now, with his hunchback, his green face, his staring eyes, his mouth contorted in terror. For all that he was quick and agile, and once or twice eluded a sword-thrust that would have pierced him to the heart.

And then, at last, I had him. I carried my sword in my right hand, and, as I lunged, he jumped aside, towards the left. As quick as thought I caught him by the throat. Whereat he fell down before me on his quaking knees, and clasped his hands in the att.i.tude of one who pleads for mercy.

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