"Tails; then you go--lucky rascal!" said Jack; "you get all the fun.
Shout for me if anything happens. Caesar! there he is, roaring again,
and nearer their camp. Be off, Peter, and mind your hide!"
I have said that I do not consider myself a coward, but assuredly the
greatest coward in the world could not have been more frightened than
was I during that most weird and uncanny walk through the darkness
towards the twinkling glow of the Strongs' camp fire, but a very few
hundreds of yards away. The word darkness hardly expresses the almost
opaque blackness of the night as I stumbled over hummock and thorn bush
in the direction of the fire.
Beasts were abroad, it appeared, in horrible profusion. Scuttling,
growling, rushing, they seemed to jump up from before and around me at
almost every step, as though an army of them were stalking me, and came
repeatedly within springing distance, only to lose heart as I
approached, and dash away into the darkness.
I have since come to the conclusion that these were hyenas, for no other
beast would be likely to be about in close proximity to a roaring lion.
The lion advertised himself freely. Once, at least, he roared within
twenty yards of me, and though I held my rifle to my shoulder ready for
him, I quite gave myself up for lost. But his designs were not, it
appeared, directed against myself, for a moment after he roared again
much nearer to the Strongs' camp fire, and presently from beyond that
point.
I could hear the Strongs talking excitedly and loudly, and could see
that they were busily engaged in piling brushwood upon their fire, for
at intervals it seemed to blaze up brightly and to smoke more
vigorously. The lion, I could not help thinking, was prospecting both
our party and theirs, and walking round and round both, working himself
up to the necessary pitch of audacity for an attack.
So, stumbling, groping, creeping upon my uncanny way, I came at last
within fifty yards of the Strongs' camp. The lion had been silent now
for several minutes, a fact which rendered my horror all the more
intense, because I could no longer tell where the brute was, and, for
all I knew, he might be at my heels or a couple of yards away on either
side of me, licking his lips, and, as it were, choosing his joint in
preparation for a spring.
Of a sudden I was startled by the most piercing shrieks and yells that I
had ever heard. The noise came from the Strongs' camp, and set the seal
of horror upon my soul, so that I fell on my knees then and there and
prayed aloud with the most intense earnestness I had ever put into
prayer. Then I sprang to my feet in a flush of shame. The lion, I
suddenly realised, had made his appearance among these wretched, unarmed
folk, while I, their protector, knelt and prayed like a coward for the
safety of my own skin!
Aroused and stimulated by this thought, I rushed madly for the camp,
careless now of the darkness and danger and horror of the night, and in
a moment or two had reached, breathless, the circle of light shed by the
Strongs' fire. Here a weird sight presented itself to me.
Clutterbuck knelt and gabbled prayers aloud, his eyes, almost starting
from his head, fixed upon a spot just on the verge of the firelight,
where James Strong stood, armed with a burning log, cursing as loudly as
the other prayed, and staring into the darkness beyond.
Both started as I appeared, but both immediately looked away from me
again and resumed their occupations.
"What is it?" I gasped. "Has anything happened? Where is your brother,
Strong?"
"It's the most infernal murder, that's what it is!" shouted the fellow,
turning suddenly upon me and stamping his foot; "as clear a case of
murder as ever a criminal committed!"
"What has happened, man? Was it the lion?" I cried. "Stop your
blithering and tell me; we may save the fellow yet!"
James Strong growled out some curse.
"Yes; go out into the dark and save him. You are a likely man to do
that, you coward!" he shrieked; "you who rob men of their defences and
leave them at the mercy of brute beasts. This is as clear a case of
murder as need be, and you shall hang for it yet!"
Sick at heart, but not any longer with fear, I seized a burning brand,
and, shouting for Jack, rushed away into the bush in the direction which
I supposed the brute had taken.
But though I wandered alone for a while, and with Jack, who soon joined
me, for another longer while, we found no trace of either victim or
lion, and we were obliged to give up the search in despair.
And here I may say that his shriek as the lion sprang upon him was the
last that was ever heard of poor Charles Strong. We picked up a piece
of cloth which had been a portion of his coat, but beyond this we never
found sign of the unfortunate fellow, whose fate sat like a midnight
horror upon our souls for many a day.
*CHAPTER XIV*
*A GLIMPSE OF THE WINNING-POST*
There was no digging done the next morning, for both we and the rival
camp spent all our time wandering about in the forlorn hope of finding
poor Strong--wounded, but perhaps still alive--left by the lion, who, we
hoped but scarcely believed, might have been terrified by our shouts and
by the shots we fired for the purpose of frightening the brute, and have
dropped his victim and departed.
James Strong, though frequently within speaking distance of us, neither
spoke to us nor looked at us, excepting now and again to scowl fiercely
as his way, in the searching, crossed ours. But Clutterbuck spoke to me
several times and to Jack also, entreating us, for the love of Heaven,
either to provide him with firearms, or to take him at nighttime under
our protection. If he had to pass another night unarmed, he said, after
this, he should certainly go mad.
We promised, however, to protect the unfortunate fellow, and this
soothed him wonderfully.
That night both James Strong and Clutterbuck were encamped close to our
fire, between their own and ours, the two fires being built up within
ten yards of one another. Strong was too proud to ask for protection as
Clutterbuck had, but anyone could see that he was glad and greatly
relieved when we came and made our camp near theirs. I was sorry for
the fellow, rogue though he was, and thought that it was certainly the
least we could do to take him under our wing, since we had deprived him
of the means of protecting himself.
As for his brother's death, I do not take any share of responsibility
for that misfortune. For, as we learned afterwards from Clutterbuck
himself, in all probability no shot would have been fired even if the
three men had still been in possession of their rifles.
According to Clutterbuck's narrative, the thing happened something like
this: He, Clutterbuck, had been deputed to watch for the first three
hours of the night, the two Strongs sleeping meanwhile. But Clutterbuck
himself fell asleep, and allowed the fire to languish and almost die
out, when of a sudden the roaring of the lion awoke not only him but the
Strongs also. Then all three men rushed about, getting brushwood and
sticks to make a blaze that would keep the lion at a distance; but while
poor Charles Strong was ten yards away in the bush there was a sudden
roar and a scuffle, and a shriek for help from him, and that was all
that either Clutterbuck or James Strong knew of the matter. Neither of
them had seen the lion.
All this Clutterbuck himself told me as we lay awake together on the
first night after the mishap, during my watch. The poor fellow,
naturally a timid creature, was far too frightened to sleep, and was, I
think, grateful for being allowed to talk.
The lion did not come near us, neither did he treat us, even at a
distance, to any of those terrible roars which I had found so unmanning.
Clutterbuck was even more communicative to Jack when his watch came
round; he told Jack many interesting things, and among others
this--which I suspect the artful Henderson gradually wormed out of
him--that he found himself a companion and partner of the Strongs, whom
he disliked, by the stress of circumstances rather than of deliberate
choice.
Our suspicions as to the affair near Las Palmas were well founded, said
Clutterbuck; for it was the simple truth that the Strongs and he himself
set out that day with the deliberate purpose of murdering us. It was
James Strong's idea, he declared, and his brother had accepted it
readily. He, Clutterbuck, had pretended to do so, but in reality had
had no intention of hurting us.
"No, no, Clutterbuck, that won't do!" said Jack at this point of the
narrative; "for we counted the shots fired, and there was at least one
volley of six shots! You fired with the rest, man; I am not so easily
taken in!"
"That's true enough," said Clutterbuck; "but did I hit you?"
"No, that you certainly did not," replied Jack; "but then you are a very
poor shot, my friend!"
"I fired wide on purpose, I'll swear to it!" said Clutterbuck.
After this, Jack inquired about the crocodile, and found that here, too,
the Strongs had cherished amiable intentions with regard to us. They
saw the brute right enough, and that was why they left us to ford the
river and themselves stayed behind.
"You ought to have warned us somehow," said Jack.
"I dared not," said the other. "James is an awful fellow, and his
brother is nearly as bad--was, I mean--poor chap!"
As for the spiking of my revolver and the changing of the map,
Clutterbuck knew nothing of either. It was done in the state-room, and
he was not there to see.
"You would probably have been shot as you forded the river," he
continued, "if you hadn't rather frightened the Strongs by what you said
a moment before--that you were a crack shot, and would have no mercy if
they missed you."
"So you see, Peter," concluded Jack, telling me all this afterwards, "it
pays to blow your own trumpet sometimes. They wouldn't have hit us,
probably, but then we should have been obliged to make three bull's-eyes
of _them_, and that would have been unpleasant too!"
But all this while the treasure still lay hid in the bosom of the veldt.
Charles Strong's death was very terrible, but I must dig, dig. Regrets
and sentiment are mere waste of time with one hundred thousand pounds
waiting to be dug out of the earth!
Whatever measure of grief James Strong may have felt for his unfortunate
brother, his sorrow did not prevent him betaking himself very seriously
to his digging work as soon as day dawned on the second morning after
the mishap. He went about his business in grim silence, vouchsafing us,
as before, neither word nor look.
Neither were we dilatory. I went back to my digging with back and
shoulders still stiff from the labours of the first day, while Jack
expressed his intention to search about for the fourth post.
"Either there's some trick about the position of that post," he said,
"or it has got moved away by an accident; some elephant or other big
brute has used it for a scratching-post, or knocked it down and perhaps
rolled it away; in any case, we ought to know where it was."
I still thought that in all probability the fourth post had simply
completed the square suggested by the other three, and that it had been
in some way removed from its place--perhaps by an elephant, as Jack
said, or more likely by a gust of wind. I did not consider the question
at all important.
As it proved, Jack was right. He found the fourth post twenty yards at
least out of the square, and planted right in the middle of a
prickly-pear bush. But though I extended my operations to the new
ground introduced by the change of area, and though the two other men
and I together dug it superficially over, so that the entire space
between the four posts had now been dug up--to a certain depth--the
result of the day's work was "nothing to nobody," as Jack facetiously
expressed it. Indeed, I, for one, began to wonder whether we had
embarked upon a wild-goose chase, and whether the hundred thousand
pounds ever existed save in the imagination of old Clutterbuck; and
again, whether, supposing the money to have actually existed, the old
miser had not purposely so hidden his treasure that no other human eye
should ever behold it, since he himself could no longer gloat over it.
But when I communicated these views to Jack Henderson, he said--
"Bosh! man; don't be a fool. Dig for all you're worth!"
If real hard work could have insured success, it would have been a
difficult matter to judge between James Strong and myself as to who
should bear away the prize. Clutterbuck laboured away too, after his
kind; but he was of a different kidney from ours, and I think I turned
up more soil in an hour than he did in half a day.
For the best part of a week we vied thus with one another, toiling
day-long in the sweat of our brows and meeting with no success.
On the evening of the sixth day Jack said to me, as we walked together
towards our camp fire--
"Do you believe in second sight and that kind of thing, Peter?"
"No," I said, "I don't. Why?"
"Because I have a kind of idea that I know where the treasure may be,"
said Jack unexpectedly.