Part 25 (1/2)

We waited for some minutes, expecting to hear another shot, or perhaps some other sound. But the whole Wood was silent--the silence of midday, when the sun is at its height and all the wilderness is resting, the wild things seeking refuge from the fierce rays of the tropic sun.

”Come,” said Bannister, ”we had best see to this.”

He led the way into the undergrowth, and we followed him in single file.

The trail of Amos was broad as a road, for, in his madness, he had rushed forward, breaking down all obstacles that stood in his path by the sheer weight of the gold he carried and the impetuous, headlong nature of his flight.

There could be little doubt that Joshua Trust had followed him with as little difficulty as we. Certain it was that they could not be far ahead, since Trust himself had not yet been absent half an hour. In all probability, the night before, Amos himself, overtaken by the darkness, had fallen sound asleep, and, being exhausted by his frenzied efforts, had slumbered on until long after daybreak.

In any case, we had not journeyed far before we came upon the still, huddled form of him who had once been known as Joshua Trust, who now lay a corpse, in a pool of his own blood, upon the trail that he had followed.

John Bannister kneeled down upon the ground beside the body, but presently got sharply to his feet.

”Stone-dead,” said he, and nodded sagely, as if to signify that hither in the end go all things weak and mortal.

”Shot?” I asked.

”By Amos. Through the heart.”

We stood in silence around the body, and I know that I was thinking that it would be no more than common decency to bury this poor, misguided man where he had fallen, when there came to my ears a sound that made my very blood run cold.

It was a sound of laughter, faint and far away. Never in my wildest nightmares had I heard laughter to compare to that. It was the laughter of a fiend, terrible to listen to, for there was something in it of the chuckling of an old, demented man, the cry of a new-born child, and the senseless mirth of one who is delirious.

In that half-light we looked at one another. There was cold fear in the eyes of us all, even in the eyes of John Bannister, who I did not know had fear of anything that lived upon the earth.

”Amos!” he exclaimed. But his voice was no more than a whisper.

I saw that Forsyth shuddered. And then that man, as a rule so calm and nonchalant, who had always seemed to me to dread nothing so much as that he might show his feelings, burst forth in the hottest indignation. I shall never forget that moment, for it was the only occasion upon which I saw John Bannister afraid, and Mr. Forsyth alive--a living, sentient being--in every fibre of his body.

”This madman must not live!” he shouted.

Bannister answered slowly, in the same quiet voice in which he had spoken before.

”I am inclined to think you right,” said he. ”His very existence upon the face of the earth is a blot upon Creation. The sound of that hideous laughter robs the wilderness of all its beauty.”

”Then, after him!” cried Forsyth.

”Leave that to me,” said Bannister.

He opened his rifle, and slipped a cartridge into the breech. I heard the click of the lock, and I saw how tightly his right hand gripped the small of the b.u.t.t. And I knew that death was still in the pot, that we were not yet at the end of all this strife and horrid bloodshed.

We went forward in pursuit, Bannister leading, hot upon the trail, the other three of us following at his heels.

All that afternoon we journeyed in a direction north-eastward, so far as we could judge. And from time to time we heard the shrill, savage laughter of that maniac, but a little way before us. And each time we heard it, we were filled with dread--the dread that comes naturally to one who finds himself confronted by the supernatural--the same dread that is believed to make the human hair to stand on end in the presence of a ghost.

For Amos Baverstock, body, mind, and soul, was still in the possession of his seven raging devils; and it was as if these evil spirits infested the humid, stifling atmosphere of the very jungle through which we pa.s.sed in hot pursuit. Hitherto, we had been adventurers in a savage land; we had walked in the midst of dangers that were material and real.

But now, with that unearthly laughter for ever in our ears, we felt that we were wayfarers in the dark nether regions, that not only our lives, but our very souls as well, were in peril of perdition, of everlasting death. The fleeting shadows of the Wood were to us the twilight of the Underworld. We were opposed by forces stronger and more evil than wild beasts and wicked men.

Darkness caught us before we had overtaken the madman whom we chased.