Part 7 (1/2)

We showed him the silencers set on the rifles and tried to explain them, but he shook his head; his physics wasn't up to such juggling with sound.

The shadows were over everything when we stopped beside a brook to rest and make a meal. Carlos found wood that burned with little smoke, and we soon had a bird apiece, broiling. Out of a bag Carlos poured farine.

With water he made a paste. Then came macadam--codfish stewed with rice.

We topped off with bananas, and water from the stream.

The scene was like to have been the last to my eyes on this earth. A high peak towered some seven miles to the east. We could see the blue sea below, many miles to the north, with the golden-yellow horizon.

Great tracts of forest were everywhere between, with bits of glades, and palm groves.

While we looked, the coast line darkened, the valleys blackened; the gloom crept up the slopes; swiftly it enveloped the three of us. Then for several minutes the mountain peaks glowed at the tops as if afire, and then they, too, went out, and it was night. The world was changed.

The trees seemed like personalities now, come awake like the owls, with the going out of the light. Tree-ferns below us seemed to whisper with their greater neighbors--mysterious gossip. Night birds piped their solemn dirge, insects tweeked; tree toads shrilled in compet.i.tion with the bellowing bull-frogs; owls hoa.r.s.ely laughed, and called their ”what-what-what.”

A strange oppression crept over me and I yearned for the deck of the _Pearl_.

Suddenly Carlos sat erect--listening. I c.o.c.ked my ear, but there was nothing but the usual night sounds. A minute pa.s.sed. Then, ever so faintly I discerned the peculiar low rumble. It was something I had heard before. It rose and fell in waves of sound; and wave upon wave it swelled in volume.

”It's the voodoo drum!” I whispered Robert.

”That's over a mile away,” he observed, listening.

”Seex mile!--maybe seven mile!” corrected Carlos.

We collected our belongings and were off in the direction of the sound.

When we entered the forest, we no longer heard the sound. But after stumbling among the slimy roots, and b.u.mping our noses on the swinging lianas, for half an hour, we came again out in the open, and again we heard the drumming. Carlos ofttimes avoided the jungles by detours. At the end of an hour the rolling of the drum seemed only a few hundred yards away.

”T'ree more mile, I guess,” said Carlos.

On and on we stumbled in the dark. The moon was not due till near morning, and so distinct was the drumming that we did not seem any longer to be approaching the place, but were already arrived.

Then at last the sound seemed more distant.

”Now we ver' close,” said Carlos.

Something or other was contradictory.

A quarter of a mile or so through the dense forest, and a bright light showed in front.

Now cautiously we moved forward till we came to the edge of an open s.p.a.ce. The place appeared to have been partly cleared by hand, for many tree-stumps presented.

We climbed into the low branches of a great tree. The great fire blazed but a hundred yards from our perch. The drummer sat astride his instrument (a cylinder of wood) the fingers of both hands playing on the skin stretched over the one end. The dancers were very many. Here was a repet.i.tion of the things I saw in the company of Jules Sevier.

To the right of the fire there was the raised platform, on which stood the snake-box. Back of all was some form of shelter, out from which in time came a figure cloaked in red, and wearing a red kerchief wound about the head. This was the _papaloi_ (voodoo king). This appearance was the signal for a hush, and a halting of the dance. All grouped round. There were the usual requests for favors and the listening at the box for the answers.

Then came the slaughter of the fowls; and the mixing of the rum.

I had begun to breath more freely on my perch. But then Robert touched me on the arm.

”What's that thing on the ground?” he whispered.