Part 41 (1/2)

Carlos was at the foot of the incline when Duran reached the limit of the ledge. On up that way sped Carlos, after him. My heart, my breath, my feet, all alike stopped, as I awaited the clash. And then it came.

The struggle was short. The two tripped over the edge together. I saw Carlos grasp at some growth; it tore loose. And then he seized on a vine, finally sliding to the bottom. I rushed to him. He had escaped with a badly wrenched shoulder.

Duran lay at the rocky foot of the cliff in a heap, the death-rattle already in his throat. He had broken his skull.

CHAPTER XXIX

HOW THE ENEMY PERISH AND THE MONKEY DISCOVERS THE TREASURE

It was some minutes before Carlos could hold up his head, so badly shaken was he. I went all over him, and had soon satisfied myself there were no broken bones. He had been saved by the very ma.s.s of vines that had before preserved me from death. His fall had been but forty feet, and mine had been many times that; a fall, after a manner of saying, for, as will be remembered, I slid down the rope halliard the greater part of the descent.

I ran through the wood to the creek, and brought Carlos a drink; and it was then he got to his feet. We stood looking on the now quite inanimate form of Duran, for a little, neither of us speaking his thoughts. I could not tell by Carlos' stoic features what there was in his mind; but in mine there was admixture, of some sorrow, that the presence of death always puts into one when excitement is gone, but more of a sense of elation that Duran had come by his death in the manner he had. For whatever intent Carlos had entertained in his mind, he had not actually slain the man with his own hand. And there on the ground, too, lay a knife that Duran had tried to use on Carlos, who was without a weapon of any sort, his own knife being in the camp.

It was time we were on the way to join our friends. I had been hearing occasional shots, but when we turned away from Duran's body, all sounds had ceased. We crossed the ridge, and in a little had come to the clearing. There was no one in sight; so we went round within the edge of the wood back of the huts; and as we neared the cliffs my nostrils were filled with the odor of sulphur. And we had no sooner got to the edge of the little open s.p.a.ce in front of the cave, than Robert was upon us and pulled us to the ground. He had us to crawl after him to where Norris and Marat lay, gun in hand, behind a fallen tree-trunk.

They had their eyes on the mouth of the cave, and looking over there, I saw a curious thing. A fire burned at the very entrance of the cave; and on the one side, Andy Hawkins lingered beside a pile of dried brush-wood and dead palm leaves. This fuel he cast on the flames, from time to time. Ray and the black boy soon came to view, back of Hawkins, with arms filled with more fuel which they added to the pile.

I now saw how it was; the enemy had taken refuge in the cave, and now our party were smoking them out. The smoke, I saw, was drawn into the cavern as into a chimney; and I remembered how, when I was in the cave, I had felt the draft of air going through. I looked up the cliff-side; and there, far to the left, I saw a wee column of smoke going up from a cleft. And then--there was that odor of sulphur again. Smoking them out!

Ay, but how smoking them out? My flesh crept with the horror of the thing. This was the miserable Hawkins' doing. I remembered now that word he had let drop about his taking care of them if we should but drive them into the cave--and his whispering in Norris' ear. I felt sick.

”Are we doing right?” I said to Norris, beside whom I crouched.

”Right!” he said, turning an angry look at me. ”Didn't they plan to eat our hearts this night? And didn't they attack us, twenty guns against four--the murderous, child-eating cannibals? And isn't smoking as easy a death as hanging? What do you want?”

I was effectively silenced. And then I thought, too, on the alternative.

Suppose we retire and let the blacks out. Would they go their ways and let us alone? I knew better. They would simply set a strong guard on the only exit; and then collect many more of their voodoo comrades; and they would have our hearts for a voodoo feast in the end. So I gave in to this thing that was going on, distasteful as I found it.

I watched Andy Hawkins over there. That thin body of his squirmed with his infirmity, and made him seem to be in the throes of a heathen dance, as he plied the fire with the fuel. The volumes of yellow-white smoke continued to pour into the cave's mouth. It was burning sulphur, as I learned.

It may have been two hours that we lay behind that fallen tree, and the sun was mounted well on toward the zenith. Then Norris and Marat conferred, and decided that the enemy must be in a state beyond all power of striking back. So we approached the fire and pulled it away from the cave's mouth. But nearly another hour pa.s.sed before we ventured in. Norris took the lead with a battery lamp, the rest of us following.

A little way within, we came upon a body that lay in a pool of blood. He was one that sought to rush out, and got a ball in his body. Then at various portions of the pa.s.sage we saw three more blacks, all inanimate.

And at the uttermost confines of the cave, just below that narrow opening out--the chimney, as it were--all the rest lay in various postures, where they fell, choked by the fumes.

”Well, they all got just what they earned,” observed Norris. ”The world would be better, if all of their kind were here with them.”

”Yes,” agreed Jean Marat, ”but Duran, he ees not here. I am ver' sorry he ees not here weeth hees voodoo frien's.”

I had not told of Duran's accident at the foot of the ladder. Now I told it.

”Ah! You don't say!” said Norris. ”Are you sure he's dead?”

”Yes,” I a.s.sured him. ”His skull was fractured.”

”We're in great luck,” said Norris. ”Now we've got the whole secret of this place among us. And Carlos, you had a narrow escape.”

”Yes,” said Carlos. ”And my father, hees murderer, he dead.”