Forsyth got to his feet, and to my horror, immediately awakened Amos.
Then was I certain that my last hour was at hand. I never thought for a
moment that protection would come to me from a quarter whence I had no
reason to expect it.
I had always suspected Amos to be a kind of madman; and that grey
morning in the woods I was, for the first time, convinced of it. He
behaved like no sane man, but cursed and raved and stamped upon the
ground, upon which at last he flung himself writhing as if in pain.
He had been both foiled and fooled, and recognised it, too. Months
before, he had left me in the woods to die, and now beheld me as alive
as ever, and still standing betwixt him and the goal that he would gain.
Twice, it appeared, had he lost possession of the map--or that part of
it which was of the greatest value to him--and on both occasions it was
through me that he had failed. Besides that, he had taken me for a
ghost, an apparition; he had fallen down upon his knees before me; and
had I had the heart in cold blood to plunge my sword into the half naked
and defenceless body of a living man, Amos Baverstock would now have
been as dead as the Spanish warrior himself.
Make no mistake in thinking that he felt a shade of gratitude for that.
It was bitter disappointment and blind, livid fury that mastered what
sanity was his. He rolled in his wrath here and there about the ground,
biting the withered leaves and the dead sticks, like the mad dog he was.
Then he got to his feet and swore that he would kill me, and this time
there would be no muddling in connection with a matter so inordinately
simple. For this dreadful purpose he took into his hands a long
hunting-knife, and with this he came toward me. And as he did so, I
looked over his shoulder, and saw in the midst of the thickets the
gleaming barrel of a rifle.
I knew then for certain that I was not to die, and smiled into the evil
face of Amos. John Bannister himself was near at hand, my guardian and
my friend. Had Amos taken another step, or raised his hand to strike, I
know he would have dropped stone-dead upon the spot; for Bannister, at
such a moment, would have counted his own life as nothing. But now I
come to the strangest part of all my story: it was Mr. Gilbert Forsyth
who intervened.
"You cannot do this," he drawled.
He had stepped between us. Without violence, almost politely, with an
arm extended, he pushed Amos aside.
"Why not?" gasped Baverstock, gaping at the other.
"Mainly, my good friend," answered Forsyth, "because it will profit you
nothing. But there are other reasons. In the first place, last night
he might have killed you, and did no such thing. Secondly, I am already
disposed to admire this youth, and to think that it would have been the
better for us had he been upon our side from the beginning. Thirdly, to
kill him as you propose would be a foul and dirty business, such as I
refuse to countenance."
Amos turned upon him like a wild beast.
"You!" he cried. "Who are you to dictate terms to me? Who brought you
here?"
"I brought myself," said Forsyth, very calmly, "and I brought you and
Trust as well; for money makes the world go round, and without my worthy
banker you were still kicking your heels in England. So the less you
speak of that the better."
I never saw a man more self-possessed; and, on the other hand, I never
saw one more livid with rage than Amos. On the instant, forgetting me,
he turned the full current of his wrath upon Mr. Forsyth.
It would be irksome to repeat, word for word, the altercation that took
place between them; for they fought with words and argued for many hours
that morning. And whilst this was happening, now and again I shot a
glance toward the thickets, where I had seen the barrel of the rifle I
was sure belonged to Bannister. But I saw no further sign of him, and
heard no sound. I did not know, therefore, whether he was still at
hand; for as yet I had no experience of his great skill as a woodsman.
I did not know that, in spite of his bulk, he could move in the
undergrowth as silently as a snake, and when he struck, he did so with
the suddenness with which the jaguar springs upon his prey.
For nearly all that morning Forsyth and Amos wrangled, the one to save
me, and the other to do murder--the one, quiet and calm; the other,
raving mad.
It was a question, I suppose, of will-power only; and Forsyth conquered
in the end. Amos, I could see, was utterly exhausted. The fire within
him had consumed the better part of his vitality and the violence of his
nature. He was at last reduced to utter speechlessness. He stood
before us, panting, his shallow chest heaving greatly like a man who has
run a race. He could not stand steadily upon his feet, but swayed
about, from one side to the other. I observed, also, a strange
difference in his eyes. They were no longer glistening and pig-like;
they were just the wild, staring eyes of a lunatic. And, sure enough, a
lunatic he was.
He seated himself upon the trunk of a fallen tree, and there he sat for
many minutes, shivering as if from cold. At last he turned and spoke in
a weak voice--quite unlike his own--to Joshua Trust.
"Get me water, you dog," he ordered, "and be quick about it."
Trust went to a stream that was not far away; and even as the man
entered the thickets, I thought that I heard something move beneath the
trees, a little to his right.
He came back with the water, and Amos drained it at a gulp.
"I would know this," said Trust, standing before them both with folded
arms. "Who's master now? Who takes the bridge? Whose orders am I
expected to obey?"
"That's a matter for yourself to settle," answered Mr. Forsyth. "Here
we are, in the midst of this almighty wilderness; and if we don't hold
together, as like as not we die. For myself, I am not one who, once he
has decided on a certain course of action, is easily turned aside. I
have come this distance to behold the Greater Treasure, and I do not go
back again until my quest is ended."
At that, Amos brightened up in a manner truly wonderful. The very
thought of gold was to him a kind of tonic. He got again upon his feet.
"Why, there you speak some sense!" he cried. "I am the last man in the
world to go back upon my friends. But we can do nothing without the
map."
"Leave that to me," said Forsyth; "and, sooner or later, I will find it.
A little subtlety and sense may very well succeed where cold-blooded
murder must have failed."
And thereupon Forsyth turned to me and, taking me by both shoulders,
held me at arm's length.
"Dick Hannibal," said he--for he had a singular sense of humour, quite
his own--"I would have you, as you love me, and are greatly in my debt,
tell us the whole truth; for I am convinced in my mind that you know all
there is to know."
I shook my head. I was resolved to be as stubborn as before. And
besides, I had every reason now to think that John Bannister was
hovering on the outskirts of the camp, and might at any moment hasten to
my aid.
Forsyth waited for some minutes. Then he shrugged his shoulders.
"I see," said he, "that neither threats nor violence will be of much
avail. You may think differently, however, when I prove to you that I
am neither such a fool, nor yet so soft of heart, as you appear to think
me.
"We find you in the Tomb," he went on, in his slow, deliberate voice,
"where we believe the map to have been hidden. You knew, therefore,
that it was there; and, therefore, also, you have fallen in with Rushby.
Very well, then, we all go back to Rushby; and what is more, we start
without delay. We know where we left him, and we know that he cannot
escape. The question, so far as I can see, presents no difficulty at
all."
He appeared so confident that I was considerably alarmed, and not
without some reason, for I knew that I had left William Rushby in
possession of the map. Yet, Forsyth himself could never have known
this. He had, however, some definite plan at the back of his mind, and
appeared so cock-sure of himself that I wished more than ever that I had
some one with whom I might take counsel.
I had no chance that day to attempt to satisfy my curiosity; for, so
soon as we had eaten a meal, we packed up what little equipment Amos had
brought with him from the ravine, and set forward on our march towards
the west. I calculated that it would not take us more than two days to
reach the other side of the Wood; for we followed the trail by which
Amos and the others had come, and it was seldom necessary for him, who
led the little column, to make use of either axe or bill-hook.
On the first night, I had the privilege of being enlightened by Mr.
Forsyth, who now appeared to have taken me to some extent into his
heart--though upon that long march across the Great Forest, when we had
travelled in one another's company for many months, he had never deigned
to speak to me on more than one or two occasions.
Amos, on the other hand, gave me as wide a berth as possible, and sat
regarding me with scowls which--to tell the truth--I could not fail to
see I shared with Mr. Forsyth. Indeed, I trusted Baverstock so little
that, when sheer fatigue compelled me to fall asleep, I did so in the
firm conviction that the man might plunge a knife into my heart at any
moment. He was sullen and morose, addressing himself only to Trust and
the Spaniard, Vasco, and then never without an oath, and in the voice of
one who gives orders to a dog.
But the case was very different with Mr. Forsyth, whose demeanour was
scrupulously polite.
"I would delight to hear your story from the first," he said to me; "for
I cannot believe that you have arrived so far as this without some very
exceptional adventures."
"I did not know," said I, "that my affairs meant anything to you."
"On the contrary, you interest me vastly," he replied. "Consider, had
it not been for my humble self, you had now been lying with your throat
cut beside the open grave--or, perhaps, we might have buried you, with
some pretence of decent feelings."
And so I told him as much as I thought it would do him no harm to
hear--of how I had been found by the wild men of the woods, and had
journeyed by myself to Cahazaxa's Temple. Thence, I told him, I had
found my way to the Wood of the Red Fish, where I had had the good
fortune to fall in with William Rushby. But I told him nothing of
Atupo, the Peruvian priest, or of the map which I myself had found by so
singular a chance, or of the Treasure that my living eyes had looked
upon.
"And this is all your story?" he asked.
I thought it best not to answer him; but I saw by the sly, half-amused
expression upon his face that he knew well enough that I would keep him
half in the dark.
He said nothing for a long time. And then quite suddenly, he slapped a
hand upon a knee.
"Upon my life and soul," he cried, "you are a lad of spirit, such as I
myself once was, until I learned that in this world it is best to assume
a pose! Let me explain to you. There are certain commodities upon the
earth that all men are ever after, and money is the first of these. We
are, therefore, all enemies of one another; we scramble in the same
gutter--to such heights has civilisation attained. Be set down for a
fool, a lazy rascal and a fop, and it is easy enough to take by surprise
those who think they have the whip-hand of you. You have had an example
of this yourself in your own brief experience of Gilbert Forsyth. When
you made off from John Bannister's cabin, on the morning when you saw us
first, you never suspected that I was the one who would catch you. And
so now. It is I who will outwit you, where friend Amos, with his knife
and oaths, has failed already."
I pricked my ears at that; for my curiosity was roused.
"And where are we going?" I asked.
"To William Rushby," he answered, "sometime boatswain of the _Mary
Greenfield_."
"And why?" I asked.
He laughed outright.
"You must learn to see things," he observed, "from the point of view of
others. Remember that I am well aware of this: Rushby and you, when you
met, compared notes and hatched a plot together. John Bannister himself
may, or may not, have been a party to your mild conspiracy. That is a
point that does not affect the issue. I am not so sure Rushby spoke the
truth when he told us he had hidden the map in the Spaniard's Tomb;
otherwise, I cannot see why we did not find it. I go back to Rushby,
and I take you with me, to learn the real truth."
"How will you do that?" I asked.
I thought, at first, that he had ignored the question; for he answered
in a round-about way.
"There is a game of cards called Poker," he observed, "at which I myself
am tolerably proficient. In this game--with which you are too young to
be well acquainted--there is a method of gaining by what is known as
Bluff. Amos played the game of Bluff on Bannister, and failed. He
tried it again on Rushby, and was singularly successful. In other words,
Baverstock pretended that he held you in his power, and he was never
asked to show his cards. To bluff, therefore is a risky business, which
should be practised only in moments of emergency or urgent need. I go
now to William Rushby, to lay my hand upon the table, knowing for a
certainty that I hold the best card in the pack."
"I quite fail to understand you," said I, shaking my head; for all this
was so much double Dutch to me.
"You," said Forsyth, "are the best card in the pack. There is no
occasion for us to bluff. We have you in our power, as we have also
Rushby. Between you, you know the truth. If one will not speak, the
other will. If neither speaks, Amos can have his way, and both of you
can leave your bones in this savage country, where you have ventured of
your own free will."
I saw now there was nothing about the matter so subtle as I had thought.
After all, it was no more than the old game they had played from the
beginning.
"I see," said I, quite slowly.
"I am glad of that," said Forsyth.
Whereupon he lay down upon his side, and almost immediately fell sound
asleep.
And for a long time I watched him slumbering, and wondered greatly upon
the strange complexity of the man's character. He was polished and
refined, and something of a scholar, too, if there was real learning
behind his tags of Latin. He was also not without humanity and a sense
of justice; else I had now been dead for a whole day and night--and that
I was still alive I was profoundly grateful. And still, he was a
villain, as cold-blooded as Amos himself, and more dangerous in the
sense that he was saner.
These were the thoughts that carried me far into the night. Trust was
again on sentry; and as I watched the man, I observed that he was
nodding by the fire. Plainly, he was three parts asleep. Were my hands
not bound behind my back, it would be a simple matter to escape. And as
this thought came into my head--lo and behold!--_I was free_!
Someone had approached quite silently from behind me, from the direction
of the thickets. In a trice, a sharp knife had cut my bonds. And--as I
have stated--I was free.