WE STEAL A MARCH ON THE ENEMY
"What I'd like to know," said Robert, "are we going to let that--that--"
"Kidnapper-voodoo priest--cannibal--son-of-a-polecat," prompted Ray.
"What I'd like to know," continued Robert, "are we going to let him beat
us after all?"
"Not if I have to go after him single-handed," declared Grant Norris.
"But he's making direct for that gold mine," said Robert.
"There's only one thing to do," Julian offered. "Some of us will have to
go overland."
"Yes, that ees it," said Carlos. "We beat him there!"
"What!" said Ray. "Jump over those mountains!" He looked up to those
peaks towering many thousands of feet; the morning sun had just set his
glow on them.
"Yes," I said. "There are roads over the passes, and the distance can't
be over two hundred miles."
"Id is thee only chance," said Captain Marat, "I get thee chart."
The chart was spread on the table.
"Id take anyway five day for the _Orion_ to sail round to thee places,"
said Captain Marat, making measurements, "if she have most favorable
wind."
"It won't take over four days to make it overland," I offered, "if we
make only thirty miles a day with horses."
"Just so," agreed Captain Marat, verifying my measurements.
"What is more," Robert added, "we know pretty accurately where Duran
will land to go to the gold mine."
We all of us caught afire with the prospect, Carlos not the least, for
the sailing away of Duran had set a melancholy on his face.
"Hurray!" cried Norris, "we'll beat that skunk yet."
Preparations went immediately forward. Norris, Julian, and Carlos
hurried over to the town, to secure horses and a guide. Robert and I set
to work on our packs, for it was we two that were to make the overland
journey, accompanied by Carlos.
It wanted an hour of noon when the three came back, having been
eminently successful. They had found horses in plenty, and no lack of
guides.
"Now looky heah," began Rufe, when Robert, Carlos, and I had taken our
seats in the small boat. "Don' you-all let dat white voodoo debbil git
his han's on you no moh. Keep yo' eyes peeled foh him; he's jes' dat
sneaking."
The tide was ebbing when we left the _Pearl_, though it would be some
time before the leak in her hull would be uncovered. The horses and
guide were waiting at the edge of town. The saddles were on, and the
black fellow--our guide--was looking to the cinches. To make fast our
packs to the saddles was the work of but a few minutes. The guide had
already distributed the needed provisions to the various ponies. Captain
Marat, Norris, Ray, and Julian stood in a row when we had mounted.
"Now remember," we told them. "We'll leave a note in the cleft end of a
stake--on the top of the first hill, or at the bottom. And we'll blaze
trees or bushes, or whatever there is to show the way to it."
"Trust us," said Norris. "We'll find it."
"And say!" broke in Ray. "If there should be any battles on the docket,
just hold up operations till Norris gets there with his brass barker and
Rufe's red hot poker."
The trees of the forest, into which our road plunged, soon cut off our
view of our friends. I felt a little sinking of the heart at this new
separation, for there was still much room for mishap before our coming
together again. Our guide (Jan was his name) and Carlos rode before;
Robert and I carried our little rifles slung at our backs. The ponies
were evidently trained to the saddle, and moved at a gait that was
something between a walk and a trot, so that our progress was agreeably
rapid.
We traversed first the bamboo; then palms, oaks, and mahogany sheltered
our way for long stretches. When we came to the foothills, occasionally
an open vista gave us view of waving golden-yellow cane fields. The
streams were overhung with the wonderful feathery tree-ferns. Oranges,
bananas, limes, mangoes, grew in abundance, though only berries were
ripe at this season. Our road took us at times into the twilight of the
heavier forests, among lofty trunks, from which hung, in festoons and
tangles, the rope-like lianas. It was as if innumerable ships had been
crammed together in some great storm, their rigging intertwined, and in
time all overgrown with green parasites and slimy mosses.
All this display of nature that showed to us on our way, and much more
than I have mentioned, I noted; and had my mind been untroubled by
serious business, I would have found much delight in this journey into a
tropic interior. But we were under the necessity of pressing forward,
always with the fear that Duran might come before us to that certain
spot of the northern coast, and so elude us and arrive at the hidden
mine secure from discovery.
By night we had mounted high among the hills. It was when we saw the
azure of the sea and the coast lines begin to darken, and the hills
below us fall into shadow, that we dismounted and removed the saddles
from our ponies. A quick meal, and soon we were under our mosquito-bars,
sleeping.
We were again on the move before the sun had thrown his rays on the
highest peaks. And this day it was up and down, and a winding about
among the mountains. The day following was but a repetition, except that
before night our guide told us that we had passed the greatest of the
mountains and were on the downward slope toward the northern coast of
the island. But we got no view of the sea till the third day, and then
the road rounded a spur of mountain, and there opened to our vision that
great blue expanse of sea and the irregular coast line below us.
"We're sure to make it in time now," observed Robert.
"Yes," I said. "The _Orion_ cannot get there before us now."
And then, as our ponies continued to plod onward behind those of our
guide and Carlos, we made some discussion of our plan of action. It was
decided to discharge our guide some way short of our destination, and
start him back before he should find opportunity to tell anyone there of
having led a pair of white boys across the island and into the region of
the voodoos. News of our exploits in those hills had doubtless been
spread among all of the voodoo faith; and so if the fact of our return
were noised about, we would doubtless have the pack at our heels, and
all our plans gone topsy-turvy again.
By noon we were come to a place in the hills fifteen miles from Carlos'
old home. It was a region well known to Carlos, as he professed.
"Here very good place to stop," said Carlos. "I go for the provision
while you rest here."
We pulled the saddles from the ponies, and Carlos set off alone through
the forest. And when he came back, after less than half an hour, he had
food to replenish the stock of the guide, who after an hour's rest
expressed himself as happy to be on the way back to his home on the
south coast of the island. When the guide was gone, Robert and I set to
work to stain our faces and hands, and don again those curly wigs. White
faces were too rare and unpopular in this region to escape comment and
more or less unpleasant attention.
So when we again took up the march we all went afoot; and in three hours
we had arrived at the little cove where we had seen Duran's schooner,
_Orion_, just before her sailing away with the _Pearl_ in chase. We were
now ten miles from the city, toward which we turned our steps, keeping
under shelter of the palms that skirted the beach.
When we were come within four miles of the city we halted. It was near
to the huts where we had made that landing--to go to the interior,
trailing Duran to the old palace ruin. It was our plan to send Carlos
into the city for articles of food and a rowboat of some kind. When we
had come so far, the sun was less than two hours high; so Carlos had but
an hour's rest before setting off on his mission.
When at last Carlos had gone, Robert and I settled down amongst the
cocoanut palms just above the beach. We watched land crabs and turtles
crawling up on the sand; anon we would look into one another's black
faces.
"When do you think the _Orion_ will get here?" said Robert.
"Tomorrow, if the winds are favorable," I answered; "or a day or two
after, if they're not. Duran will come as fast as he can, of course."
"Of course," agreed Robert. "But I can't make my mind give in to the
idea that he will land at that place on the beach that you and Captain
Marat marked. There can't be any gold mine about that place. Except
those two hills, the map shows nothing but sand and palms, and marshes,
and bushes."
I brought out of my pocket a folded paper on which I had copied from
Marat's chart this portion of the coast. I put my fingers on the Twin
Hills, near the foot of which we expected Duran would land; for it will
be remembered Marat had heard him say as much, that night when Marat and
I, in our own boat, had crept up to the _Orion_ in the dark. To the west
of the hills was a shallow bay of which the little cove mentioned was a
part. To the east and south of the hills lay a greater bay, (not to
mention its proper name, we will call it Crow Bay, for it is much the
shape of a crow's foot). The neck of land between the two bays was all
low, marshy and impenetrable thickets.
"Now," I said, "I agree with you that this seems not a proper place--at
these hills--to make a start for anything like a gold mine. But is not
that the very reason that Duran makes his landing here? Isn't it, for
some reason or other, the most favorable for covering up his trail? And
then, too, landing out there on the open beach, he can easily see
whether anyone is following him."
"Yes," said Robert, "that must be it. He's just that shrewd. And then,
when he sees his crew row back to the _Orion_ and sail away, he knows
none of his blacks are following him."
Darkness had soon spread over everything. And it must have been ten
o'clock, when we heard Carlos' whistle. And then at our answer a boat's
prow touched the sand of the beach. We had our packs and guns aboard in
a minute, and Robert and I, each pulling an oar, we moved, paralleling
the beach, to the east. The boat was as light as a canoe, almost, and
our progress was rapid.
"I find my friend," said Carlos, telling of his visit to the city. "An'
he wonder where I been so long. He say Duran have not come back. But he
hear much talk among voodoo about devil-guns--shoot, make no noise. My
friend help me find this boat. He buy it for me--eight dollar. The man
glad to sell for much money."
In an hour the moon--now in the last quarter--came out of the sea in
front of us. We rowed round the point, into the bay. We passed the
narrow entrance to the little cove, and made for the east side of the
bay, where a bight of the bay pushed in to within a mile and a half of
the back of the Twin Hills, as our bit of chart showed us.
We carried our boat above the beach into the bushes, and so made our
camp, at midnight.
When the sun rose we were abroad, and soon we had picked our way over to
the Twin Hills. They lay some way apart, towered perhaps a hundred feet,
and were grown over with brush. We climbed to the top of that nearest
the beach. That vantage point gave us a splendid view of the beach and
sea.
All that day some of us remained there on the lookout. The _Orion_ did
not come. We all three made our beds there that night. Before morning a
squall sent us scampering back to our boat, and we escaped a drenching
by turning the little vessel bottom up and creeping under.
Another day passed on the hill-top, and no _Orion_ came.
"I wonder if he's fooled us again," said Robert.
"I don't think it," I answered.
"I think he come," encouraged Carlos.
I was sleeping soundly when an insistent hand on my shoulder brought me
suddenly awake. It was Robert, whose watch was eleven to one.
"They're here," he said. "I heard a block rattle."
Carlos was now up. We could barely make out a dark mass well out from
the beach; the night was very dark in spite of the brilliancy of the
stars. We scrambled down the hill, and in a few minutes were in the
bushes that fringed the beach.
Not many minutes more passed till we heard oars knocking in the tholes.
And then a small boat touched the sand, and a figure stepped out.