Part 27 (1/2)

”A fit end for such a man,” said he. ”He himself was as evil as any snake, though he had courage of a sort; for I remember him well, when he faced the mutineers on board the _Mary Greenfield_. And what of the map?” he asked, turning suddenly to Bannister, who shrugged his shoulders.

”We do not know,” he answered; ”but in default of certain evidence we must presume that that little fragment which we brought with us all the way from Suss.e.x went down into the water when Amos was crushed to death.”

”So then,” said William Rushby, who was of a practical turn of mind, ”no one is any the wiser, so far as the Big Fish is concerned?”

”No one,” said Bannister, ”save we five, and I do not suppose that any one of us will ever care again to undertake such an expedition.”

I looked at Mr. Gilbert Forsyth; for I was inclined to think that he was the only member of our party who was likely to persevere upon the quest of the Greater Treasure in spite of any promise he had made.

I was surprised at the att.i.tude he had a.s.sumed; for there was something in it that jogged my memory, that took me back to the day when I had first seen him and Baverstock and Joshua Trust. For he lay upon his back, with his hands clasped behind his head, and one knee thrown carelessly across the other. But how different was he now! He no longer wore his highly polished boots, his double-breasted waistcoat, and his hat tilted at a jaunty angle on his head. He was in rags and tatters, burnt and blistered by the sun, deprived of an ear where the skin was all white and scarred owing to his having burnt it. And yet he yawned in the same lazy fas.h.i.+on.

”I've had enough of it,” said he. ”I want nothing better than a land of chimney-pots and gas-pipes. I shall rejoice at the sight of a policeman.”

And he yawned again.

Rushby, we found, was in no better plight than before. It was quite impossible for him to walk. We saw at once that we must carry him; and as delay would profit us nothing, we set forward that very afternoon, heading in the direction of the hills towards the east.

It was a silent, almost a saddened, party that crossed the plain to Cahazaxa's Temple. We took it in turns, two at a time, to carry Rushby; and on that account we could not make many miles a day. We crossed the suspension bridge, and at last came within sight of the great ruin, whence from the hill-top we looked down upon the forest, wherein we had all risked our lives so often, in the heart of which I had lived for weeks with the wild men of the woods.

I asked Bannister how it was that they had treated me so kindly, when it was these same people who had murdered Atupo's friends.

”Curiosity,” said he; for he could explain most things. ”The South American savage is not by any means as curious as the African; but you must remember that the men who found you had never before set eyes upon a white man. They probably looked upon you as a kind of G.o.d. With the Peruvians, it was different. Though the forest folk never ventured to the Temple, they had regarded the priests for years as their natural foes.”