WE ARE TRAPPED--THE BATTLE
We turned back, when Duran had passed out of our view on the cliff-top.
Lest he should be watching, we still kept ourselves within the edge of
the wood, till we had recrossed the ridge where the trees covered all of
the ground. And there on the path we met the others and Norris, looking
a little embarrassed, I thought. Doubtless, he was conscious that he had
in his impetuosity discovered himself to Duran, and so spilled the soup,
as it were. He did not mention it, and no one taxed him with it; but I
know the thought punished him, and made him for a time a bit humble.
"He pulled the ladder and all up with him," I reported.
"And where is the polecat running to, do you suppose?" queried Ray.
And no one had an answer to that which he thought fit to give voice to.
I doubt not, each one of us had pretty much the same thought, one that
he dreaded to hear echoed by some other.
We were properly immured in this sink, of that we were all well assured.
For we had Andy Hawkins' story of the times--in the two years--that he
had made the round of those craggy walls in search of a possible escape.
It was a silent cavalcade that marched back to the clearing, and up to
where Hawkins and the black boy were busy in the diggings. We gave them
the news of Duran's precipitate flight, and Hawkins gave it little more
thought than to "'ope 'ee didn't carry hoff the brown stuff," (meaning
the opium) and "Hi'd give my 'and to know where 'ee keeps it."
Carlos, I noticed, had some private word with the black boy, and the two
soon were gone into the brush together. The lad soon came back, and I
egged on Jean Marat to question him as to what Carlos might be up to.
For answer he led the two of us to where we found Carlos kneeling beside
the skeleton of a human--it was in a patch of vines.
When finally Carlos discovered us, looking on wonderingly, he beckoned
us. "My father," he said, in explanation. And he held up a gold cross
that was on a chain that still hung on the ghastly figure.
And then Carlos got to his feet. "Duran--" he began, but the rest of the
speech stuck in his throat. And I saw a look in his face that I had seen
there before, and which boded ill for Duran.
With the black boy's help he had at last found the grave of his father.
And such a grave! It went indeed hard with the elder Brill. The spoiler
of his mine, and his murderer, had not even given him decent burial. We
sent for the others; and then and there we dug a grave, and Norris was
able to summon out of his memory a few words of the burial service. We
left Carlos kneeling beside the mound. And when he rejoined us, much
comfort showed in his face.
That bit of experience somehow drove, in large part, the gloom from our
spirits, and we went about our further doings with more semblance of
cheer.
Norris volunteered to go down and watch for Duran's possible return. I
guessed his thought; that he felt that his bungling, in allowing himself
to be discovered, had made him deserve this less agreeable task. The
rest of us set ourselves to the business of searching out Duran's hidden
storehouse. In spite of our zeal and numbers, the afternoon was nearly
gone, and we no nearer the solution. We explored that cavern that Andy
Hawkins had told us of; and moved forward in a passage that went upward
in its windings. I marvelled at the singular freshness of the air,
till--having traversed some couple of hundred yards--I discovered the
reason. The cave had but the one gallery, and that ended in a chimney,
just over our heads where we now stood, and through which showed the
light of day. That little opening, in which a hat would have stuck, was
high in the cliff-side, as we were to learn.
Ray and I hurried down the path in the dark, to Norris, to report our
failure and to relieve him on watch. But he refused to budge from the
place.
"I gave us all away," he said, "and now I'm going to make it up somehow.
I'm going to make that skunk show us where he's got the stuff. And he'll
do it, too, when I tell him a few of the things I've seen done to
carcasses like him."
When he would not leave the watch to us, we decided to remain with him.
He was not cheerful.
"You see," began Ray, then, "you'll have us to prove things by, when
you're trying to convince that polecat. You'll say 'Isn't that so, Ray?'
And I'll answer, 'Yes, that's so, Norris.' And then Wayne, here, he'll
say, 'Yes, Norris, that's right, I know, because you never tell--'"
"Hist!" I interrupted him. "Listen."
Some little time back I thought I heard a thing like thunder, far back
in the mountains. But it had been momentary, and I set it down as an
illusion. While Ray prattled his nonsense, I seemed to hear it again. We
cocked our ears, but heard not even so much as the trill of a tree-toad.
"Ah, say," began Ray, "What--" And this time he interrupted himself, to
listen.
There was that quavering, rolling, rumble that we had heard weeks
before. Each succeeding wave of sound seemed to join with, and
accentuate, the preceding. And then came a decadency, like a wagon
rolling out of ear-shot. And again--we could not tell just the moment we
began to hear the sound--there came from afar that eerie rumble,
swelling, slowly to die away once more.
"The voodoo drum," said Ray. "Some more voodoo doings--that's what he
went for."
"Yes," said Norris, "and I'm afraid we'll have a _taste_ of some more
voodoo doings before we get through."
Neither of us cared to ask Norris what he meant. We continued to give
ear to that weird music for long; and to each of us it seemed full of a
portent; and each dreaded to hear another put it in words.
I do not know how many hours we three continued to squat there, at the
edge of the wood; seldom talking, and then avoiding the thought
uppermost in our minds. But at last it came, and we heard voices over by
the cliff wall. They were coming down the rope ladder.
We rose to our feet, and scurried off in the edge of the wood, till we
crossed the ridge and came to the beginning of the path. And there we
crouched in the brush and waited.
At last came the stealthy, black figures, moving in silence, and in
single file. We counted twenty as they went by us, and each carried some
kind of gun. My heart pounded with the emotion; I have never before nor
since experienced such fear as gripped me at sight of the martial array.
When they had passed, we got over across the stream to our friends, and
gave them our ill news. The coming of those twenty dusky voodoos could
have but the one explanation: Duran had brought them to hunt down, and
destroy, the six of us. He would madden them with rum, mixed with the
blood of fowls, and sick them on to us. And he made sure of us, since
there was but the one exit from this vale; and there he doubtless had
stationed some trusty black at the cliff-top, to keep the ladder and the
halliard, till he should have need of it--when the work shall have been
completed.
We trapped ones, got our heads together for some talk of our situation.
How we lamented our lack of foresight, in leaving behind our arms and
ammunition! Norris's lone rifle, with but a handful of cartridges, would
but delay for a little the inevitable end. But for a time I had had my
mind full of a wild thought. And I pulled Norris to one side, and opened
the thing to him. My plan was so desperate that I hadn't the courage to
tell it to anyone less bold spirited than he. It was no less than to
employ that under-water way that Duran had used to transport the
gold--to sink into the stream and be carried through that hole, and
fetch up within that cavern; and so out to our camp in the forest, and
return with the three rifles and the ammunition by way of the
ladder--that was the plan.
Norris seized me by the arms. "The very thing!" he said, "----if it can
be done. We'll find out!"
When we told the others of the plan, they took it without enthusiasm;
declared it impossible--suicidal.
"You've no idea how far it is in to the cave," said Ray.
"We'll measure and find out," I answered. "Besides, it's our only
chance."
There was no time to lose, for what we had to do must be done before
daybreak; when we would have the whole cannibal crew stalking us.
We had a coil of half inch rope, which, with other things, we had taken
from the shacks. This I took up, and Norris, Robert, and Carlos, made up
the rest of the party. We moved down the stream in the dark, picking our
way amongst the underbrush. At length we got out in the open, beyond the
place of the ladder; and Carlos guided us to the spot on the bank of the
creek, where he had seen Duran setting afloat the gold-laden bamboo. It
was a wide pool about that hole, into which the waters disappeared in
the cliff-side.
We found a piece of wood the size of a man's thigh. In this, all around,
we drove a half dozen sharpened twigs; and we weighted the little log
with stones, tied on; and at last bent on an end of our half inch rope.
We then set it afloat, paying out the rope. And the log, neither
scraping the bottom, nor yet floating on the surface, was carried on
with the current into that hole.
I had my hand on the rope, and presently felt the impulse, as the log
found an obstruction. It rested against that net of Duran's in the
cavern; of that there was little doubt. We pulled back the log again,
and so got the measure of the distance.
"Not over twenty feet!" declared Norris.
"And none of the pegs are knocked off," announced Robert, who explored
the log.
"Now," I said, "I'm going. If after I get to the net, you feel two sharp
jerks, in a little while repeated, you're to give me the rope. If I give
five or six jerks, you're to pull me back; and if, after I touch the net
you get no sort of signal, pull me out; and you, Bob, you know what to
do."
None had better than Robert, the technic of artificial respiration.
"Now look here, Wayne," began Robert, "I'm going, too; and it's my turn
to make it first."
And so here began a discussion, and if each, including Carlos, had had
his way, all four would have gone that route. But at last we came to a
decision, and Robert and I won, I to go first.
I selected a stone of sufficient weight to hold me down, so that I
should not scrape on the roof of that passage; and I let them set the
loop of rope about me, under the arms. I waded into the pool. I felt the
suck of the water on my legs when I neared that hole.
"Keep your nerve and trust us," said Norris.
"Let her go!" I cried, and took a breath and held it, and ducked my
head.
The current caught me. I experienced but a momentary pang of fear; and
then succeeded a pleasurable sense of excitement. The next moment my
feet touched something more yielding than rock, and that was the signal
to lift my head to the surface. I was in the cavern. I slipped out of
the noose, and gave the signal to haul away, and the rope went out of my
hand. I crawled out of the stream.
It seemed little more than a minute, and Robert was beside me. I heard
him gasping for his first breath.
"Who'd have thought it would be so easy," he said.
We took in the rope and hurried out to our old camp in the brush. We
knew well where to lay our hands on the rifles--Marat's and Robert's and
mine. There were some hundreds of rounds of cartridges for the larger
guns--Marat's and Norris's--and many more of the twenty-two calibre for
our little rifles.
We tarried not at all, but got back through the cascade into the cavern
again, and so up and out, on the way to that cliff-top.
We moved cautiously, as we neared those cedars, where hung the rope
ladder, for it was probable there should be a peril there, in the shape
of a black, guarding the ladder, and it was in reason that he should
have some kind of weapon. Our plan of action had been determined before
we left Norris. We would surprise the fellow, pounce on him and secure
him with the rope.
Then we would let down the ladder to Norris and Carlos, who would come
up and help us lower the captive into the vale.
Our bare feet crept forward at a snail's pace, nearer and nearer to the
cedars. A pebble rolled, and suddenly a figure rose up before us with a
startled grunt. And that instant it toppled over the cliff-edge with a
guttural cry; and we heard nothing more.
In a minute we had the rope ladder unrolling, down the cliff-side. We
threw down the loose end of halliard, and began the descent.
"I didn't expect we'd get him down so easy," observed Robert, seeking
comfort in a grim joke.
"I wish it could have been as we planned," I said. I sickened at the
thought of that mangled body somewhere down below.
We soon had our feet on the sloping ledge. Norris and Carlos stood there
waiting.
"Did you have to throw him down?" queried Norris. And then, when I had
related the circumstance:--"He must have been asleep," he said.
Having pulled the ladder up to the cedars, I took up the loose end of
the halliard, and climbing as high as I dared venture among the vines, I
made fast the rope so that Duran would not easily discover it.
Norris and Carlos had made some disposition of the black's body, for
which I was thankful; for I had no wish to set my eye on the thing, even
in the dark.
Norris and Carlos took over the heavy ammunition, and we set off up the
vale. It was a silent file that stole cautiously through the woods, till
we had joined Marat and Ray, who were greatly relieved to learn that our
adventure had been carried through without unhappy accident. That it had
cost the life of one of the enemy was accounted a gain. There had fallen
an accession to our party, too, while we were gone; and Hawkins and the
black boy had stolen away from Duran's party soon after the arrival at
the huts.
"The boss," said Hawkins, "'ee butchered some chickens, and 'ee began to
dose them niggers up on the rum."
The black boy had told Jean Marat a startling piece of news: no less
than that Duran had promised his voodoo crew a feasting, on the morrow,
on the hearts of his white enemies.
"They've a surprise in store for them, I guess," said Norris, when Marat
had repeated the intelligence.
"Yes, I think," agreed Captain Marat. "We maybe feed them on thing' what
give indigestion." And he continued to distribute about his person his
share of the ammunition.
Day was not many hours off, and Norris and Marat put their heads
together to discuss the plan of battle. At the first, we were to be on
the defensive, and when the enemy had been given a proper reception, a
vigorous offensive action was to follow with the purpose to quickly
demoralize the blacks. Robert and I came forward with the suggestion
that while Marat and Norris should crouch behind some breastworks of
logs, that should be thrown up at the edge of the clearing, Robert and I
would seek sheltered places well forward on either side of the clearing,
and with our little silent guns we would throw lead into the feet and
legs of any blacks who should spread out to either flank. And thus we
would help to keep the enemy in a single mass during their attack, which
would give Norris and Marat their chance.
Some parts of fallen trees were dragged near the edge of the clearing.
And then a fire was made back among the trees, with the intent to give
direction to the enemy when they should come. When we had all taken our
places: I was at the edge of the clearing, close to the beginning of the
path; Carlos crouched with me behind a tree, to lend me his eyes; Ray
was doing the same for Robert on the opposite side of the clearing;
Marat and Norris lay behind their breastworks; Hawkins and the black boy
were at the back, ready to call, in any case of need.
You will never think that our situation was an agreeable one. I know I
speak for all of our party--except perhaps, Norris and Carlos--when I
say that we would gladly have escaped from that vale, and boarded the
_Pearl_, to sail away without thought of return. And you will say, there
was the rope ladder ready to our hand, and none to block the way. But
not one among us had the hardihood to suggest retreat. It was Norris
held us, of that I am sure; throughout, the thought of retreat never
entered his mind; that must have been plain to us all. We had some
things in our favor. Marat and Norris, each with his own heavy-powered
rifle, had long ago forgotten what it was to miss; Robert and I, with
our little guns, rarely ever lost our target.
After our fire had been set alight, not a sound had come from the huts.
Night birds and tree-toads intoned peaceful notes. The night breeze
rustled the tops of the taller palms. I crouched at the foot of my tree,
getting much comfort of the sound of Carlos' breathing close by.
Fortunately I had not to bear that suspense for long.
The first hint of dawn had hardly showed above the trees, when that
score of blacks poured into view by the huts, each holding a gun. They
moved forward, four or five spreading out on either flank. There was one
who was about to enter the wood to my right. I drew bead on his foot and
pulled the trigger. The black stooped, uttering a painful grunt. I did
the same for the next near black fellow. He cried out with the pain. And
the two forthwith limped back the way they had come. The others of the
stragglers on my side showed themselves startled at this inexplicable
conduct of their two fellows, and fell in to the main body.
A glance told me that Robert was having similar luck on his side. And
there was evident consternation among those of the enemy who saw some of
their comrades limping painfully away; for up to now there had been no
sound to account for such conduct.
But now the quiet of that dawn was broken. Two loud reports rang out and
set echoes going in the vale. Two more shots followed, and there lay
four writhing black voodoos on the ground. The rest of the blacks let go
one volley, and then broke and ran. One more among them fell before they
gained shelter behind the huts.
Then Norris joined me where I crouched. "No one hurt amongst us, I
guess," he observed, as he kept his eyes on the structures. When a head
or shoulder showed there, he let fly at it with a ball. We heard an
occasional shot from Marat's rifle on the east side of the clearing,
where he had gone to join Robert.
"If you can drive 'em back into the cave we've got 'em," spoke the voice
of Hawkins. "Hi'll take care of 'em then, Hi will." And he crept up and
whispered something into Norris' ear.
"Good!" said Norris. "We'll get them there. Run round and tell that to
Marat."
And the fellow set off through the woods to get round to Captain Marat.
For a time, the enemy let off an occasional shot on general principles,
and without effect, but soon lost all ambition, apparently, and silence
reigned. It was then I heard an exclamation from Carlos. "Ah! Duran!" he
cried, and he set off through the brush.
Instinctively I followed him. Directly, we were on the path. When we had
crossed the ridge, I saw Duran out in the open, legging it toward the
cliff under the cedars, and calling out as he ran. Doubtless he called
to the black he had left in charge of the rope ladder--he who now lay, a
mangled corpse at the foot. He continued to call as he hurried up that
inclined ledge. But no ladder came down to him.
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.