Part 10 (1/2)

And now which way to turn? How I wished for my flashlight! I tried it to the left, moving cautiously. I had taken about twenty short paces, when I noted little beams of light coming through the wall. I got my eye to a c.h.i.n.k, and made it out that here was another shrine, set in the wall of some room of the palace.

I got a view, too, of some part of that room. A cl.u.s.ter of burning candles stood on a table, which piece of furniture, I could see, was of richly-carved mahogany. And there lay my flashlight in plain view.

A figure moved into the field of my eye. It was the _papaloi_; his wounded hand was still in a bandage. He bustled about, though I could make nothing of his occupation; till finally he set a pomade jar on the table, turned in his clothing at the neck, and began to smear his face.

Here was a fastidious black. The process was long and leisurely, and there came a period of wait--to let the oil that shone on his dark skin soak in. And then he took up a cloth and began to wipe.

It was then I got a start, for his face came out from under the rag--white! And it was then I recognized Duran, alias Mordaunt! This voodoo _papaloi_, who put the knife to little innocents, was no other than Duran himself. I was now prepared to believe the stories of the horrifying cruelty, and strange fanaticism--or whatever it may be called--of some of those of mixed blood.

A black attendant came into the room with a vessel of water. Duran washed, while the black busied himself with laying out clothing, as I could see when he moved into my view. These Duran began to don, making himself into more the appearance of a gentleman, a role he had learned to a.s.sume. Only now he allowed his features to relax into an expression that was more that of a hardened criminal than of a gentleman. There was little talk, and that was in French; no word of it that I could understand.

I lingered in the hope that the room should be vacated, and I might try if his Calvary--through whose filigree c.h.i.n.ks I peeked--should not prove to be another door, and so be the means of my recovering my electric flashlight. It was a thing I wanted, to help me find my way out of that black hole.

The black man went out, finally, soon followed by Duran. I heard the door close. Now was my time! I got my hand through a crevice. I tried one kneeling figure, and then another. It came out, and I swung the gate in. In another moment I was on the floor, though I turned over a chair in the jump. I closed the portal and looked about.

The furnis.h.i.+ngs were rich, the floors marble. A single window there was, tightly shuttered; a bed, with an end to the wall.

I thrust my flashlight into a pocket of my trousers; I still held the stone peg in my hand.

The candles had been left burning; likely Duran would be back; so it was time I was scrambling out. But my presence was already known, for the door opened, and in sprang a black.

There was no time for anything but defense. The black reached for me. I dodged, and made toward the bed. As I landed on the covers, he had me by the ankle. And then I came down on his woolly pate with my stone peg, using all my force.

The black doubled up on the floor without a sound. I rushed a chair under the secret portal, and in two moments was back in the dark pa.s.sage, the door with its peg back in place.

I put my eyes to the c.h.i.n.k. In a minute Duran appeared. That he was all in a knot--dumfounded at the thing he saw, was plain.

I was curious to know whether I had committed manslaughter, but when Duran opened the door and began to call out to others, I thought it wise to move. I used my light, and went back the way I had come. There showed

nothing but bare stone walls; the pa.s.sage, between four and five feet wide, and not twice so high.

Presently it descended, in steps; at the bottom my light showed a door.

I lifted a long, rusty latch, and with repeated strong pulls, swung it open. There was a hole through, ostensibly to permit of reaching the latch with a stick from the outside.

The welcome outdoor air came through a heavy growth of vines. It was perhaps fifteen feet to the ground. I swung the door to after me, and scrambled down by the vines.

Ah, how good that bit of turf felt under my feet! Trees were all about, though just here they were new growth--small. A stream trickled over stones close by. I went down to its edge and drank my fill, and I took the brook for my guide, upward, toward the hills.

I came to a place where I must walk in the water to go round a low cliff. And then I came upon a path, new used, and seeming to come from that great building whose upper walls I could still see peeping through the tree-tops.

I heard voices, and jumped behind a bushy screen. There appeared on the path a half dozen black men, and an old black crone. Two pairs of the men were burdened with litters, and two went before as an advance guard--they were armed with guns. On the litter were bundles, some in gunny sacks, and some tied in blankets. I was sure I saw some movement in the bundle on one litter, as of some living thing there. My heart thumped with the thought that here were some little ones being transported for voodoo slaughter. And my reason told me that little Marie Cambon was of the number.

I followed for some miles, for the most part out of view--but now and then getting glimpses of the blacks ahead. The trail--much used I could see it was--held pretty much to the sh.o.r.es of the stream; at times the way was through the brush, avoiding a bend or some bad going; at times the path lay in the water itself. Grand tree ferns and a great variety of tropic growth made it a wonderfully romantic and beautiful woods path. And yet here it was given over to h.e.l.l's own purposes.

I went far enough to convince my mind that the blacks were making direct to that castle fortress on the mountain, whose high walls now and anon came into view. I turned short about then, and hurried back. I would go to the Brill cottage for news of Robert and Carlos, and send for my friends on the _Pearl_.

I was still a mile or more from the old ruin where I'd been a prisoner, when I heard shots. I soon cut away from the path, and stumbled through the jungle, in the direction of the sounds of battle. My mind was full with conjecture.

”It must be Jean Marat, and Norris, and the others from the _Pearl_,” I said to myself at last. Robert must have signalled them last night, and now they were attacking.

When the sounds of firing told me I was near, I whistled a call. And then I came up with them. And there were Robert, and Ray with my rifle; and Ray had a story of his performance with the gun. ”I peppered him at the south end, going northwards,” he said, ”and it's a hot tack he'll be sitting on every time he 'plunks' down on a stool.”