He had not ridden for two minutes before he felt a change in his horse;

all the gallantry was gone from his going, there was no spark nor stir

passing from horse to rider. “Poor old boy,” he thought, “he has been

awake all night, from that thing in the clearing, he is feeling a bit

tucked up.” He went gently through the forest for rather more than an

hour. It was good going, more open than it had been the day before, with

patches of savannah where the trend of the shadows gave him his

directions. He was thankful for these savannahs, because of their warmth

and colour, which restored him like draughts of wine. But his horse went

on like a log beneath him, with no life nor spirit, and his own heart

was troubled enough at all the delays. “At least, I am started now,” he

thought.

He came to a green expanse, broken up with pools of water, where reeds

of delicate stems, topped by pale blue tufts of flowers, attracted

multitudes of golden-throats, which poised at each tuft and glittered as

they fluttered. The patch was perhaps three hundred yards across and of

an intense glittering greenness. “Soft going,” Hi muttered; “this is

bog.”

The horse knew something about earth of that greenness. He would have

none of it. Hi dismounted to look at it; it looked like bottomless bog

leading to deep water, with bog on the further side. In the midst of the

green expanse there was a sort of bubbling wriggle of small snakes.

Sometimes a red turtle crawled out of a pool, wallowed along the mud and

sank into another. “Here’s a lively place,” Hi thought. “I’ll have to

get round it. I’ll work round here to the right and go round the end of

it.”

He set off in good spirits, but after two miles or more of exploration

he found no end of it. Instead of an end, the bog seemed to have a

growth in that direction into a lake or pool edged with bottomless mud.

Something in the water, whether tincture or germ, had killed the trees

which it had touched. Three or four hundred dead trees stood in a pool

the colour of stagnant blood, each tree was leafless and barkless: they

stood as bones, silent save for the beetles clicking on them. “Here’s a

nice place,” Hi thought. “It would be first rate as a shrubbery to a

morgue.”

There was no sign of any way across or round that bog. The blood-pool

stretched on to what looked like an oil-pool, black and rancid, with

prismatic gleams oozing outwards from it. Beyond this, there was swamp,

with enormous plants with branches like water-lily roots, or like knots

of snakes intertwisted, rising from the pools. The bark of these

twigless branches had been gashed, perhaps in some act of growth, so

that it hung in weepers, showing the red or yellow flesh beneath;

“beggars with sores,” Hi called them.

“Since I can’t get round here,” he said, “I must go back and try the

other end.” The mosquitoes were eating him alive here, so that when he

clapped his neck suddenly his hand was covered with blood. As he had

heard that oil will drive away mosquitoes, he smeared his hands, face

and neck with the skimmings of one of the pools; this relieved him for a

time.

At the other end, he found a tongue of dry land which seemed to thrust

right across the bog. “Here is a way,” he thought, “this will take me

over.” He set out upon it with good hope.

After a mile of open going, the reeds closed in on both sides of him, so

that he rode in a narrow space between ranks of stems, grey-green and

golden, topped by plumes of blue. The horse needed continual urging

forward, until he came to a patch of a plant like rest-harrow, which

attracted him; he seemed eager to crop it.

“Well, if it’s going to do you good, old boy,” Hi said, “you’d better

eat some.” He slipped the bit from his mouth to let him eat, but it

proved to be a sick beast’s fancy; he would not eat. He plucked two or

three croppings, but dropped them from his mouth. Hi didn’t like the

look of his eyes nor the feel of his skin. “What is it, old son?” he

asked. “What is turning you up? Was it the rain yesterday, or what?”

The horse drooped his head and trembled a little. “This is bad,” Hi

thought, “but I must get on, cruelty or no. He may be better presently.”

He led the horse forward till he reached a place where the reeds grew

across the causeway. He thrust into the reeds for a minute, when he

found that he was treading in water over his shoes. Four or five inches

down, the roots of the reeds, the surface of the earth, or both things

together, made a hard bed on which he could walk. “I think it will be

all right,” he said; “it seems fairly safe: anyway, this is my

direction; this bog can’t last much longer: I must be almost across, and

I simply won’t waste time by trying for another way.”

He slopped on slowly for another hundred yards, leading the horse. The

reeds grew thicker as he proceeded. They were hard in the leaf like

cactus and tough in the stem like bamboo. He had to back into them,

dragging the horse, who came unwillingly; sometimes he could not break

through, but had to edge round a clump. It was hot work paddling

backward thus. After the first hundred yards the water began to deepen.

Birds which had never before seen a man moved away at his coming; a

deep, intense droning of insects sounded about him: insects got into his

eyes and seemed to like being there. Many midges, with tiny black spots

upon their wings, thrust under the wrist-bands of his shirt and below

his collar, where they bit like sparks of fire. Suddenly the reeds let

in a great deal more light: he had backed through into the open. He

found himself standing almost knee deep in a lake of water two or three

miles long by a mile broad. There was no way across from there: he had

come the wrong way.

Perhaps, in his disappointment, had his horse been fit, he might have

tried to swim across, holding to his horse’s tail. The temptation to try

was strong in him; the water, though deep, looked so beautiful, and the

distance, in that light, so small. What made him hesitate was a patch of

weed near the further shore. “I might get snarled up in that,” he

thought, “or come to a mud patch and not be able to land.”

At the instant, something gave a sharp and savage pluck at his leg; he

kicked the thing from him and at once splashed back among the reeds.

“One of those snappers that father was always gassing about,” he

thought, as he recovered from his start; “he always said that the

fresh-water fish would eat a man. I must give up swimming it, that’s

all.”

He turned back in depression through the reeds. “Just as I thought I’d

crossed it,” he muttered. His horse seemed to share his depression. He

came back through the reeds in a way which seemed to say, “I could have

told you that you couldn’t cross here. Now you’ll have to fag all the

way back again, and you know that I have not any strength to waste.”

Going back made him realise how much further he had come than he had

supposed. It seemed to be miles to the starting place, but he reached it

at last.

“Dash it all,” he said, while he halted to consider, “I believe that

this is the place which Anton mentioned: the place he meant when he said

I couldn’t go so, because there was no ground. Well, if I’d only thought

of that sooner, I might have spared myself some pain. Now he said that

there was some sort of a track hereabouts, which would take me clean out

of the forest. Puzzle, find the track. I see no trace of any track. I’ll

take a cast, to see if I can hit it off.”

He took two casts, one in each direction, but could see nothing like a

track. “If there was one,” he thought, “it was very likely washed out by

the rain yesterday. Anyhow, I have tried the east and the middle: they

are both wrong. If there’s any way at all to the north from here, it

must be to the west. Here it is mid-day pretty nearly, and I have not

started yet.”

He set out to the west, through a forest of vast trees, which stood over

him like gods watching a beetle. When he had ridden for an hour, he

turned into a valley, down which suddenly a mist of rain came sweeping.

It came less violently than the rain of the day before, but settled in

as though it would last for ever. In a few minutes the forest had

changed to a dimness full of footsteps and sighings, across which shapes

of cloud faded and formed and faded.

“I must keep on, and then bear to the right,” Hi said. “This won’t last

as long as it did yesterday.”

He kept on for some hours at a walk, till he was stopped by a bog. A

river or large stream which perhaps ran into the lake at its western end

here had silted up its mouth over some acres of forest. A rotting mush

barred the way; there was no passing. As moving to the right brought him

to reeds growing in water, he moved to the left, uphill, until his horse

stopped.

He had saved a feed of corn against an emergency: the horse nosed at it,

but would not eat. “Poor beast,” Hi thought, “he’s in a pretty bad way.

I’ll rub him down and give him a rest. If we both rest for a little it

will do no harm.” After grooming the horse, he contrived what shelter he

could, and fell asleep. He woke once, to find the rain streaming on his

face, woke a second time, to find that the rain had stopped; then sleep

took hold of him body and soul and held him as one dead.

He slept all through the afternoon and would have slept longer far into

the night, but that he was suddenly startled by the shattering of a

volley of shots from some place far away. “There it is,” he cried,

starting up, “that is Don Manuel coming to the rescue.” Other shots

followed, some, at first, close together in volleys, the later ones

singly. After the shots, listening intently as he was, he thought that

he heard the sound of many horses going together at a fast trot. Some

such noise there was, it rang out, died down, clopped and clinked and

then clattered. “Of course, it can’t be Don Manuel,” he said, coming to

himself. “But it may be the Whites driving away the Reds. Anyhow, people

are there: the forest ends. It may even be Anselmo. Come on, horse,

here’s the world again. ‘They must be men, because they’re fighting, and

they must be civilised because they’re doing it with guns.’”

The horse seemed the better either for the rest or the sound of his

fellows; when Hi mounted, he set off with some kind of spirit. In a

quarter of an hour he came to something which made the horse whinny; it

was a trail.

“Here it is,” Hi cried, “the very little trail which Anton spoke of. Now

I shall be out of it in no time. Just as well, too, because I’ve slept a

lot longer than I thought: it is almost night.”

The sun was indeed behind Melchior; the birds had homed and were now

screaming before falling silent. The patches of sky over the forest

turned slowly scarlet, paled yellow, then changed to a green in which

stars were bright. The sparks of the fireflies began to pass upon the

air: cold silence and darkness came with them into the forest, so that

Hi shivered. His heart, none the less, was beating with hope, because

the horse was going with confidence. Then from somewhere ahead came the

distant lowing of cattle, which brought tears to Hi’s eyes. It was the

noise made by the cows of home coming into the barton at Tencombe: now

here, in this strange place, it told of the homes of men, where life was

lived wisely, away from towns, and far from the madness of rulers like

Don Lopez.

Suddenly, from somewhere ahead, a single shot rang out: it may have been

far away, but in that still air it sounded near by. It was followed

almost at once by the sound of the gallop of a horse, which was either

running away or being ridden by a man in fear for his life. It stretched

at a full gallop across his front and so away into the west: one horse

only, mad with fear, or with his rider’s fear, going at his utmost: from

what?

“I wish I knew from what,” Hi thought. “Listen.”

He listened: many men were talking and shouting. Then there came the

noise of many horses together: seventy or a hundred; “as many as in a

hunt at home,” moving along a paven place at a walk, then rising to a

fast trot together. “And they are within two miles of me,” Hi thought,

“going from me.” He shouted, but had no answer save the sound of the

horses dying away into the west. The cattle lowed again. “There must be

a ranch there,” Hi said. “I’ll go to where those cows are.” He hailed

again and was answered by little white owls which followed him on both

sides, perhaps for grubs or beetles kicked up by the horse in his going.

Presently he came out of the forest into a little plantation of trees

made as a wind-screen, possibly for cocoa. Beyond this, he saw a cleared

space in which, less than half a mile away, were the long, low white

buildings of a ranch lit up as for a festival. To his right, there

seemed to be ordered plantations of fruit trees in blossom: he saw long

streaks of paleness which he judged to be peach trees. To the left,

rather further from him, were high corrales, where pale cattle moved and

lowed; he heard them stamp and push: often they rattled their horns upon

the bars.

He rode nearer to the buildings, then paused to hail, crying out that he

was English, and that they were not to shoot. He had no answer to any of

his hails. The place was still, save for the cattle: there was not even

a dog. “The men must be all at supper,” he thought, “or milking, if they

milk in these parts. But it is odd that they have no dog.”

The moon, now some three or four nights old, was low down over the

house, near the tops of Sierras, which glittered. “I don’t know what

sort of a course I’ve been riding,” he thought, “I seem to have been

going due west: or is the moon different down here? It seems to slop

about all over the place.”

Leaving the moon for the moment, he rode on towards the house, calling

out that he was a friend. Some shrubs, newly planted, on both sides of

his track, gave out a strong sweet scent: beetles and fireflies were

swarming over them with a droning of wings which made the silence the

more apparent.

“Is anybody there?” he cried. “Hullo there. Don’t shoot: I am a friend.

House ahoy, I’m a friend.”

By this time he was at a long white gate which had been thrust and

propped open far back to its supporting posts and rails. He entered the

gate, riding cautiously, still calling that he was a friend, but having

no answer, and hearing no sound, save the moving of the cattle in the

corrales and the buzz of insects in the shrubs.

“Not even a dog,” he repeated, “and there must be fifty men in a ranch

like this. What if they are all in ambush, waiting for me to come on?”

“It’s not likely,” he thought, after a moment, “but it is possible. They

may be waiting at those windows to plug me like a nutmeg grater. But if

they are, they’ll wait to see who is coming with me. It feels to me as

if the house were deserted.”

Beyond the gate, the way had been paven, the horse’s hoofs struck on a

road; the house cast back the echoes, clink, clink, at each step. As he

advanced, the young moon bobbed lower down towards the house-roof: no

sound came from the house.

“Hey,” Hi called, “I am a friend, an amigo; un ami. Je suis Anglais.

Ingles.”

Something in the ominousness of the silence brought his calling to an

end. There was something dreadful at work here. Something had stricken

the heart of that house so that its life had ceased. Yet not quite

ceased, for as Hi dismounted he saw a breath of smoke blow from one of

the chimneys across the curve of the moon. “What in the wide earth is

happening here?” he asked himself.

At a little distance from the house, to the left of the entrance, were

tethering posts from which iron rings hung. He had thought at first that

they were the posts at which the slaves were flogged; but he now knew

better. He hitched his horse to one of the rings, and then went slowly

towards the door. The house seemed to grow bigger as he approached it:

he felt himself shrink. He wished that his footsteps did not make such a

noise upon the road. “It is deserted,” he told himself, “it is all

deserted. But it is all lit up, so that it can only have been deserted

within the hour, after that shot was fired here.”

Six steps from the door a thought came to him which made his heart leap

for joy. “Of course, this is Anselmo,” he said. “I’ve come to Anselmo.

This is the Elena’s ranch, and the Elenas and all their men have either

gone to Don Manuel or joined the other Whites. That is it of course.

Well, here I am. And they’ve moved all their horses with them; those

were the horses which I heard. I’m late enough, but word has reached

them. ’Zeke must have got through.”

Thinking thus he crossed the two broad stone steps of the perron to the

estancia door.

An electric light burned over the door: some moths were butting at it.

The door itself was of black maruca, bound with steel. A big bronze

pipkin, such as the country people all over Meruel use for milking, hung

beside the door. “I suppose this is the bell,” he thought. “It’s just

like a castle in the Morte d’Arthur. Here goes for a bang.”

He struck the bronze, which clanged aloud, spinning round upon its cord

and thrilling: then he struck again more loudly, twice. The clang died

down into a trembling of the air, but all within the house was silent,

there was neither voice nor footstep. There came a rustling of wind from

the madre de cacao trees; nobody came, nobody spoke. “Is anyone inside

there?” Hi cried. There was no answer.

“I don’t believe that there is anybody here,” he said. Then the thought

came: “Suppose the people have all been rounded up or killed by the

Reds?”

“But, no,” he thought, “the Reds would have sacked and burned the place.

It is not that. I don’t know what it is: it must be something queer.” He

struck the bronze for a last time.

XIII

“Well, if they won’t answer, I’ll see if I can go in,” he said. He

lifted the latch by plucking the plaited leather bobbin: the door was

not locked, it opened before him into a long lit corridor or hall where

an English clock was ticking. As he opened the door, the wind blowing in

shook the pictures on the wall: they swayed and clacked for an instant,

then steadied. There were lighted rooms opening from each side of the

corridor, but no sound of any living being.

“Hullo, you inside here,” Hi called. “I am a friend. Is anyone there?

Señor Elena. Señor George, Señor William. Hey, hey, heya. Is anyone here

at all?”

His voice rang along the corridor and died away: no one was there. “Very

well, I’ll go in,” Hi said. He stepped in, and closed the door against

the wind. As he did so a letter and envelope, which had been lying on

the edge of a table near him, fell to the stone flags with a clatter. He

replaced them on the table; then paused to look about him.

He had heard that men of the great ranches lived like princes. The hall

in which he stood was bare, big and white, lit by electric lights. There

were two stiff black chairs, two black pictures of yellow nymphs, a

table heaped with silver horse-trappings, and the English grandfather’s

clock, gravely telling the time. He walked up to the clock and read the

words on the dial:

Edward Hendred.

1807

Abingdon.

These two little things of old Berkshire met thus in this strange house

so many miles from Thames and Down. “Hendred of Abingdon,” he repeated.

“There may be a Berkshire man here who may know father.” He glanced at

the pictures of the yellow nymphs in their clothes blown out in the

grand manner. “Religious pictures,” he thought and glanced away. The

house was so still that he hardly dared to go further.

“What can have happened?” he asked. “Some fight or some show or what?”

He walked to the nearest door, on his left. The door was ajar, shewing a

lit room: he knocked at the door, had no answer, and therefore looked

in. It was a big, long room, in use as the messroom of the household,

for whom thirty places had been laid on the table. Food in abundance had

been set there for a meal, which had been begun. Baskets of small Meruel

loaves were on a sideboard near the door: he felt these by accident as

he put out his hand: the under loaves were still warm from the oven.

There was warmth in the vast silver cazuela tureen, which stood, more

than half empty at the head of the table. The table was littered with

the mess of the meal: broken loaves, bowls which had been used for

cazuela, halves of oranges, skins of bananas, and the bones of big birds

like turkeys. Yet from the look of the plates Hi felt that the meal had

never been finished: something had interrupted it before they had

reached the coffee and cigarettes. Somebody with some news had come

there soon after they were half way through, then chairs had been thrust

back and food left, half eaten and the eaters and talkers had gone. Why

had they gone, and where? Hi did not like the feeling of this house.

He went again to the hall and cried: “Is there anybody here?” But there

was no answer. “There must be someone somewhere in all this barrack,” he

said. “Surely in the kitchen or outhouses there will be a woman or a

negro or a peon. There must be at least a caretaker or night-watchman.

The kitchens will be along the corridor somewhere at the back.”

He went down the corridor, where he found the kitchen. It was a vast

room, bare, clean, and empty of people. The fire, which had done the

work of cooking, had been allowed to die down; but the castle-kettle,

once full of water for coffee and the washing-up of the dishes, was

still boiling and half full. A black cat with its paw round its face was

curled up asleep on a mat on a chair. “I’m glad that there is something

alive here,” he said.

Doors opened from the kitchen into outhouses, sculleries and larders: Hi

felt a dread of looking into these rooms, but he overcame it: no one was

there.

“Well,” he said, “if there’s no one to ask, I will make a mash for my

poor horse. No one could object to that.”

He took one of the big round-up stew cauldrons which lay against a wall.

In this he made a hot mash of bread for his horse, adding some salt. He

carried it out to the horse, who seemed glad of the warm food for a few

instants; but it was not all that he had hoped; in a few instants his

muzzle dropped from it. “Poor old boy,” Hi said, “I wish I knew what I

could give you, that you would like.”

He lingered by the horse for a few minutes, to pull his ears, and rub

him down. The breeze which had set in struck cold, so Hi moved the horse

to a more sheltered place behind the immense rain vats a few yards from

the tethering posts. He had hoped that somebody would come there while

he was outside with the horse, but there came neither sight nor sound of

anybody.

“I’ll go in to explore,” Hi said. “There must be someone, and if there’s

someone there may be something I can do.”

It was harder to enter the house for this second time than it had been

before. The uncanniness was greater now. The clock still ticked, the

light still burned, the table still stood uncleared. “I don’t want to be

caught bagging things in a strange house,” Hi thought, “but I’m jolly

well going to bag some food and leave some money for it.”

He ate and drank of what was on the table, to the amount (as he judged)

of a peseta, reckoning in the bread for the horse. He left one of his

five pesetas on the table for this. “What am I to do, and where am I to

go?” he wondered. “If I leave this? This may be Anselmo; almost must be:

yet where are all the Elenas gone? Perhaps I’ll find something in the

other rooms.”

There were three more rooms in the corridor of the hall: two on the

opposite side, one on his side, nearer the kitchens. The rooms further

down the corridor had the look of being offices or studies. “I’ll go

into those, first,” he said. “Very likely I’ll come upon somebody dead

in one, or on the old mad doctor who runs this private madhouse.” He

knocked at the door beside him, which was shut: for one instant he was

shocked by thinking that at the sound of his knocking someone within the

room had turned the pages of a book. He opened the door upon a dark

room, into which the breeze blew from an open ventilator high up in the

wall. He saw the light switches and switched the lights fully on. The

room was the estancia office, as he had supposed. There was a safe,

built into the wall. There were two long tables heaped with papers; but

another thing impressed Hi: chairs had been lifted from the floor on to

these tables, so that the floor might be swept. Two brooms had begun to

sweep the floor: there was the tide mark of dust, earth, torn paper,

cigarette ends and cigar butts half way across the room. There were the

two brooms resting against the table, just as the unknown sweepers had

left them when their task had been interrupted by what? On a third table

was a row of flat, square, white china dishes, each containing about a

pint of brown or reddish liquid. Hi judged that the liquid was a

chemical of some sort, perhaps a parasite mixture.

He crossed the corridor to the room opposite. This was plainly a room

for the women. It contained a long settle which faced a row of spinning

wheels. On a table there were heaps of palm-blades partly unravelled

into the white bast from which the Meruel women plaited their hats. At

the further end of the room were two hand-looms on which some weavers

had already woven parts of saints for the back cloth of an altar.

Someone had spilled a little bottle of scent upon the palm-blades. It

was oozing from its cork into a rivulet which had dripped into a pool

upon the floor. “There has been a hurry, even here,” Hi said. “Oh, I

wish to goodness I had come here an hour ago. If only I had not taken

that wrong turn, or slept quite so long, I might have found the people

here: and they are good people, doing good things.”

He went again into the corridor to listen: no one had entered the house.

“There are all the outhouses to search through presently,” he said. “I

must find someone before I can leave here. I’ll try this other room,

opposite the dining-room.”

This proved to be the main living-room of a company of men. One side of

it was slung with Indian hammocks, loosely woven of dyed fibres: the

rest was in the confusion in which undisciplined men will live. It was

littered with clothes, shot-guns, cartridges, belts, knives, books,

papers, watches, money, cigars, broken cigarettes, pipes, spurs, quirts,

matches, plugs of tobacco, photographs of girls, prints of horses,

shoes, laces, straps and twitches. Tobacco had been smoked there not

more than an hour before, but another smell also struck Hi’s nostrils.

It was a familiar smell, yet for an instant in that smell of tobacco he

could not say what it was. Then the sight of an empty brass revolver

shell upon the floor reminded him that what he smelt was the smell of

gunpowder. Somebody had burned a cartridge in that room not more than an

hour before: there was the shell of the cartridge.

He picked it up, with the thought that it was the heaviest revolver

cartridge he had ever seen. “Why,” he thought, “a thing like this would

stop a bison. This is a Jack the Giant Killer. Whoever has fired a thing

like this in here?” He put the brass shell to his nose and instantly the

pungent smell brought scenes into his mind of two months before. The

first scene was of the wood on the down above Tencombe, on a sunny

January afternoon, when he had shot a pheasant, and had stood to jerk

out the shell. A red squirrel had appeared on one of the leafless oaks

there: it had run along the branch to jabber at him, to within six feet

of him. This scene floated by into another of the Blowbury Woods at

sunset, when he had waited in the cold for wood-pigeons. The orange sky

to the west had been netted black by the elm twigs, and the woods had

stood still in the cold. He had had a shot at last, but had missed with

both barrels, had jerked out the cartridges, and had smelt just this

smell, from fumes curling up at him out of the breech.

He dropped the shell: it fell with a tinkle and rolled from him. He was

standing, at that moment, some four feet from the door, within the room;

he had not much more than entered to take his survey. Fear, anxiety,

homesickness, and the torment of failing his friends were all preying

upon him. Then he looked up, suddenly, towards one of the windows, where

something made his heart stand still. A man with a white face and

blazing eyes was watching him through the window with a look of rage

which made his blood run cold. The man’s brow was pressed on the pane,

while his right hand reached back for a gun. That man was no dweller in

the house, but a spy and an enemy.

He did not stay for the hand to come round with the gun, but slipped

sideways into the hall, closed the door behind him and drew the bolt

with which each of those doors was fitted. He slipped sideways along the

hall to the front door, which he bolted likewise. Then he stood for a

minute with his heart thumping, listening to hear whether the man were

breaking through the window or coming to the door for him.

After a minute, during which nothing happened, his eye caught the letter

that had been blown to the floor when he entered the house. The letter

was on the table within a few feet of him. “It must have been the last

thing read in this house,” he thought. “What if it were the cause of all

the people leaving here? It may have brought the deciding news, probably

did. At least, it may be addressed to one of the Elenas, or will tell me

if this be Anselmo.”

He looked at the envelope, which was addressed in a bold hand

—— J. G.

He had a horror of looking at a private letter, even when made public in

a book or newspaper. “It’s a skunk’s trick,” he said, “but I do want to

know where I am. I’ll apologise if I ever have the chance.” He pulled

the enclosure from the envelope to read it. It proved not to be the

letter (that had gone), but a piece of paper which had been sent with

the letter. The paper was a half-sheet of coarse bluish notepaper on

which the same hand had pencilled the words, “Si, Anselmo.”

“Now what on earth does that mean?” Hi asked himself. “Yes, Anselmo? I

would give something to know what is happening in this place.” All was

silent about him, save for that ticking of the clock.

With a little chirrupping cry, the black cat, which had been sleeping in

the chair in the kitchen, came running along the passage. It was a slim,

small-headed, short-coated cat, not yet of full growth; it rubbed

against Hi’s legs and purred; Hi leaned down to stroke it, but watched

the passage to the kitchen.

“That man has come in by way of the kitchen,” Hi thought. “He has scared

the cat, or let in a draught upon him. I’ll be out of this.”

The office window seemed to be the exit most likely to bring him out

beside his horse: he slipped into the office and closed the door behind

him. Then he listened, with a beating heart, for some swift, stealthy

footstep in the corridor or outside the window. “Perhaps,” he thought,

“I shan’t hear any footsteps, only the brute’s hand on the latch. He’s a

spy and a Red, that devil. Listen.”

In that silence, the beating of the clock clanged like the tolling of a

bell. The cat, left to preen his fur in the hall, padded back towards

the kitchen. Hi was on the point of turning to open the inner shutter of

the window, when a little shrill whirring bell began to scream like an

alarm-clock upon some metal hooks on a stand at the table end. The shock

of the sound made his hair stand stiff upon his head. He saw the

instrument shaking on its hooks with the vehemence of the bell. He had

read and heard of these things, but had never before seen one. It rang

for ten seconds, then paused, then rang for five seconds and paused

again. Then it rang again with determination for half a minute on end,

as though bent on having an answer. Someone was telephoning to that

house of the dead.

His courage came back in a few seconds. Someone was telephoning: why

should he not answer? Possibly an English voice would speak to him or

someone who knew English. Even if there were a Red outside the door, he

owed it to Carlotta to run the risk, if by running it he could learn

where he was and where he should go next. He did not know how to take

the call. He lifted the instrument from its hooks and listened, now at

one end, now at the other, to silence. “The thing is stopped,” he said.

“I don’t know how to work the beastly thing. Yes?” he called. “Yes? Who

is there? What is it?”

No answer come to him, not even the murmur of other voices which

sometimes comes over the telephone. Then suddenly the thought came to

him that perhaps the wire had been cut, or the unseen speaker shot down

somewhere far away. He put down the instrument, moved to the window and

opened the shutter. As he pulled it aside, the bell tinkled a little,

whimpered again, as though about to ring again, and then stopped. “The

wires are cut,” he muttered, “that devil the spy has done it.”

Peering out of the window, he could see nothing but a darkness which

gradually took shapes to itself of trees swaying in the wind, palms

clicking and clacking, and stars which became brighter as he gazed.

“Here goes,” Hi thought, “I cannot see that devil; I’ll risk it.” So he

scrambled out, landed on his feet, and then stood for an instant lest

someone should spring upon him. No one sprang; there was neither sight

nor sound of anyone, only his horse nosing at the earth, and the wind

shuffling and clicking. He unhitched his rein, mounted and cautiously

rode forward.

At the space near the door he halted to listen and to try to see. No one

was there.

“They’ll be where the spy was,” he thought, “crouched out of this cold

wind. I’ll see and make sure.” He edged his horse a little and a little

to the corner of the house, where he held him ready for a dash. Very

cautiously he craned forward along his horse’s neck, till he could see

round the corner. Then he stared with all his might at the space lit by

the windows of the living-room. No horsemen were gathered there out of

the wind, but at the lit window the figure of the spy still stood with

his hand reached back for his gun and his brow pressed upon the pane. He

was staring into the window: Hi could not see his face.

“Golly,” Hi thought, “he’s still there. He’s come here again.” He did

not move a muscle for fully fifteen seconds; the spy did not move. Hi

waited for that right hand to flash up suddenly with the gun, but it did

not come.

Then Hi thought, “But what’s he up to? He saw me in the room five

minutes ago; then probably he went after me in the kitchen. What brings

him here again? What is he staring at there? Can there be another man in

the room? He must know that I cleared out: he saw me do it. Is he

waiting to plug me when I come back, or what?”

He waited for another fifteen seconds, but the man never stirred a

muscle. He stood at the window, pressed to it, intently staring. Hi had

seen cats and foxes waiting intently thus before springing; but the cats

and foxes had at least trembled with the intensity of their control,

this man was motionless.

“But who in the wide earth is he staring at?” Hi asked himself. “There

must be someone in that room whom I never saw, but who was there when I

was there.” Then he thought, “Whatever is in the room, there is

something wrong with that man. He is not quite of this world.”

That was an opinion which the horse seemed to share, and the presence of

it in the horse made Hi’s terror stronger. Yet the intentness of that

watching figure “not quite of this world,” was fascinating. All purpose

will arrest the purposeless, but this deadly purpose was absorbing. It

made Hi forget that looking at a person will draw that person’s eyes

towards the looker. For the moment, he did not care; he longed to see

what the man saw. He stared: his horse also stared.

Suddenly a gust of the wind, now blowing at its height, caught the

window by which Hi had escaped. Hi heard it crash to, with a tinkle of

glass. The draught inside the house flung some door open, and blew ajar

the unhasped casement by which the watcher stood. The result was

something which Hi had not expected. The man slithered sideways,

scraping along the wall, and collapsed, with his head towards Hi, and

his gun arm twisted askew as no living arm could ever twist. The light,

shining now from the unobstructed window pane, showed Hi the bullet-hole

through which the body’s death had come.

The horse had swerved aside when the body fell. The knowledge that the

man was dead, and had been dead from the first, came to Hi in a flash,

at his first movement. The smell of powder in the room suddenly became

significant. “That explains the big revolver shell,” he thought. “Oh,

golly, let’s get out of this.”

The horse was out of sorts, but the cold had touched him up, and

something of his rider’s terror was afflicting him. He swerved away from

the house and galloped ahead across a peach plantation. Hi heard horses

whinny and a man’s voice hailing him from behind him as he entered the

plantation. The dreadful fear that it was the dead man mounted on the

nightmare made him crouch on his horse’s neck and urge him forward. He

heard shouts, calling to him to stop, or so it seemed.

At any other time, he might have stopped; but he could not now, after

the corpse flopping down towards him. In a few moments, he was certain

that men were shouting at him, several men, in earnest, shouting no

Christian tongue. By this time he had crossed the plantation fence at a

place where the bars were down, he was heading across a patch of

savannah towards the forest. He heard horses coming after him. He called

out that he was English and a friend. The man who was nearest to him,

perhaps mistaking this for an insult, fired a shot in the direction of

the voice, but missed. Hi crackled through some hard-leaved scrub into

the darkness of the covert, leaving the direction to the horse. Many

horses crackled into the scrub behind him. He called out again that he

was English and a friend, but his bailers cursed him, called to him to

stop and opened fire at him. As he rode, he heard the piping drone of

birds; then, suddenly, some of the birds spat and hissed close to his

ears, twigs fell from the trees about him; he knew suddenly that the

birds were bullets.

The pursuers, with one exception, soon pulled up, the firing ceased,

only one man still followed, calling to him to stop. Suddenly this one

pursuer pulled up, and Hi at the same instant felt a coldness of fear

all over him. There came a shot and shock, his horse swerved violently,

staggered, recovered, and bolted into the forest. “He hit the horse,” Hi

said, “but not badly, or he wouldn’t go like this.” For the rest of the

ride his task was to keep on.

How long he rode the forest he never knew: the horse went on in his

terror till he could go no more, then he halted, full of the ends of

terror, nervy, starting at a shadow and trembling.

The moon was long since down. Hi could make out that he was in a kind of

pan or crater in the forest, with wavy indistinctness everywhere,

smelling of balm. He dismounted, tried to examine his horse, who would

not let himself be examined, but had certainly been cut on the crupper.

He tried to comfort the poor beast. Coming to a patch of grass near a

brook, he offered him grazing and a drink, both of which he refused.

“Poor old Bingo,” Hi said, “you’re dead beat, you shall rest.”

He tethered, unsaddled and spread his coat upon him. The beast stood

where he was left without attempting to roll; he drooped his head as

though he had come to the end.

“Now I am pretty nearly done,” Hi thought. “I don’t know where I am.

I’ve been gone four days. I’ve killed one horse and cooked a second. Now

I’m lost in the forest again.”

He listened for some noise of men or the creatures of men, but heard

nothing save the noises of the forest. Terrors began to take hold of

him, the dread of such a terror as had come the night before, the terror

of the man at the window. Yet at last sleep took him from the terror of

being awake: he fell into a pit of sleep and slept for hours.

During this, the fourth day of Hi’s journey, young Chacon the notary,

reached Don Manuel with all the terrible news still to be told. By this

time, men and horses had begun to arrive at the rendezvous. Some copies

of the blasphemous proclamation, which had arrived in the west from Port

Matoche, had roused intense feeling throughout the west: men answered

Don Manuel’s call from all over San Jacinto. While Hi was lying down to

sleep, Don Manuel, with an advanced guard of about a hundred men, pushed

eastward from the river to begin his march.

XIV

Hi woke up suddenly into terror, for the forest was filled with a crying

as of creatures gone mad. A pack of things was giving tongue with voices

madder than a fox’s bark.

“Wild dogs gone mad,” he thought. The noise of the yap seemed to strike

between the skull and the coats of the brain, as the idea of the weasel

strikes into the brain of the rabbit. Hi jumped to the horse, who was

already trembling. He cast loose the tethering rope and swung himself on

to the beast’s bare back, gripping the headstall, and in an instant the

horse was away with him, in a panic which Rosas himself could not have

controlled. Horse and man fled like the bird knocked from roost in the

night. What did the bags and the saddle matter while that crying filled

the darkness?

“Oh, golly, what are those things?” he thought. “Oh, golly, if they are

after us.” All the night seemed full of flaming eyes, but these were

only fireflies, not a pack: the crying seemed to die away. The horse

floundered through mud in a cane-brake, which crashed under his

trampling. Hi dug his head into the horse’s neck and shut his eyes: it

was like running the gauntlet for what seemed a long time. After it, he

went through tall grass, which drenched him with dew. Hi felt him

weakening beneath him as he came out of the grass: then suddenly water

appeared before him as a lake or broad river, where the wind roused

reflections of stars. Hi saw a fish leap and splash, shaking up a

glittering; in an instant the horse was swimming, with the gleams all

round him.

Hi knew that a very little thing would drown the horse in his present

condition; he slipped off his back, slid sideways, caught his tail and

swam with him. After about fifty yards, the horse put his feet down,

stumbled on to his knees, but recovered and came to the bank. Hi with

some trouble scrambled up in front of him, got a purchase on the reins,

and helped him on to dry land. They stood there gasping together for a

while, being both out of breath as well as very cold.

“O Lord,” Hi thought, “what on earth were those things? I’ve never heard

anything so awful. Thank God, we got away when we did. A very little

more, and they would have been on us. I think I should go mad if they

were coming after me. Listen.”

There was no sound of any pack in cry coming after them. They had come

to a part of the wilderness which was silent, save for the rustle of the

reeds and the splash of the leaping fish. “I suppose it’s going to rain

again,” Hi muttered with chattering teeth; “that is why the fish are

leaping. I wish I’d brought my coat and the saddle.”

But they were left behind with the bags in a place which Hi was little

likely to find again. “Lord, I do feel wretched,” he said, shivering.

“I’ll get away from this water. There may be alligators in it. I never

thought of them before. Come up, old Bingo; we’ll find a place for you.”

They moved away through a thicket into a space which had been burnt the

year before. From the cold and from the colour of the sky, Hi judged

that it was about an hour from the dawn. The horse stopped from

exhaustion. “You’re sicker than I am,” Hi said. “I’ll do my best to warm

you.”

He pulled grass: the horse would not touch it, but it served to rub him:

he was trembling, his coat was staring, and his head was down. “I’d give

something for a bucket of warm beer for him,” Hi said. “It’s hateful

having nothing: even the bread is gone. Well, I must hope for the sun to

come soon to warm him.”

The cold was so painful that he had to move away, to dance and flog his

arms. The dawn seemed to take hours to bring any colour to the sky, yet

it came at last.

“Thank God, here it comes at last,” he said. “If only I could hear a

bell with it: even a cow-bell.”

It came with no sound of bells, but with a clapping of wings from all

the near-by trees, as the multitudes of the birds awoke. Their cries

were not sweet like the cries of so many English birds: only one seemed

to have a sweetness in his voice. This was a biggish bird with black

wings and orange breast. He had a sweet droning note which said, “Woe,”

then, after an interval, “Woe” again. All the other birds seemed to be

saying, “Damn it”: or so Hi thought.

As the light grew, the clamour of the birds rose to a roaring, for many

of them, after trying their wings, took flight, wheeled, and sped away

in their companies, to seek for food. Some of those who cried “Woe”

settled on a tree which was covered with great white waxy flowers,

intolerably sweet. Wafts of the sweetness came to Hi on the gusts of the

wind. He saw them tear at the flowers and eat the petals. Hi, going to

the tree, tasted a petal, thinking that what fed the birds could not

harm himself. It was like sweetened church candle or much what he had

imagined manna to have been. He ate of this manna with the knowledge

that he, too, had been fed in the wilderness. When he returned to his

horse, he found him stretched out dead.

It was the first time that he had lost a friend by death: he sat down

beside him and wept. He was not a lad given to weeping: he had not wept

for years, but he was shaken by the last four days, and in an extreme of

loneliness, which made him know what a friend the horse had been in

hours of danger and beastliness. Now that he was gone, Hi was alone

indeed. The horse lay dead on his off side: his near crupper was scored

with a bullet-mark. “So he was hit after all,” Hi said, “I thought he

was. And the poor old Bingo saved me twice last night, and now he is

dead.”

He remembered the last lines of a well-known song:

Could I think we’d meet again,

It would lighten half my pain,

At the place where the old horse died.

“Golly,” he thought, “I’ll never be unkind to a horse as long as I live,

after this.”

After the stunned half hour, he picked himself up, to look round at

where he was. He stood in a space of grass, ringed by trees, up which

the creepers climbed in a fire of flowers. To his right were the reeds

and the water, with the sun climbing above them; to his left was the

dimness of the forest.

“I’m facing north,” he said. “Almost due north. I’m facing the plain as

I stand. I’ve got about a day’s go in me. I must get to the plain this

day, or I shall never get to it at all.”

The thought of Carlotta depending on him and Rosa thinking that he was

on his way to fetch help came back in force. Again and again he went

over in his mind the events which had delayed him. “It is just as if I

were walking on a road which moves away from where I want to get to,” he

said. “If I were to try to avoid Anselmo, I might get there. I’ve been

four days and a bit. Or is it five days and a bit? If I get there now, I

may be too late.”

As he went on into the north, he began to hear voices which spoke in his

ears, bidding him to do this or that. So many voices spoke, that he

began to feel that he was attended by a flock of things like birds,

which had human voices and flew invisibly beside him. The going lay over

miles of dead reed and broken brush which had been laid in a tornado of

the August before. The dead reed having been laid in its prime, had not

decayed, but had hardened to something like bamboo: the young reed

growing through the old had then matted it into a cloth too high to

trample down and too tough to thrust through. Much of this reed grew (at

that season) in some inches of water. At the end of two hours of it Hi

came to a growth of trees which had been uprooted in a line. For three

hundred yards the line stretched like a wall in a succession of the

shields of black, intertangled roots standing upright over the hollows

whence they had been plucked. It looked like a wall of black snakes

barring his way. When he had scrambled up the wall, he saw beyond it the

lake amid her reeds, cruised over by white hawks. The beauty of the

water in that light, reflecting so much other beauty of forest, flower

and bird, each like an angel, could not be told. To Hi, it did not come

like beauty; but as a shock. It stretched away, seemingly for miles,

right across his path, to left and to right. He could see the sun in

heaven, in this clear space; this gave him his compass points. He had

come fairly truly to the north: now the lake stretched half a mile

breadth of water in front of him. There was neither ford nor boat.

“I must just edge along to the west,” he thought. “This must be the

water that stopped me yesterday when I was further to the east.”

After letting his clothes dry in the sun, he turned westwards along the

lake, not far from its shore, in a mood of anxiety tempered by hunger.

After a couple of hours of going, a black bog, with seepings of oil in

it which killed plants, turned him away from the lake: he had to turn to

the south to get round it. When he had turned, he began to think that he

never would get round it. It turned him more and more to the south, for

more than an hour. When he sat down to rest, more than half way through

the morning, he felt that he was perhaps further from Anselmo than he

had ever been.

As usually happens in the first days of starvation, with young people,

his hunger was checked by weariness and weakness from becoming

tyrannous. While he rested, he saw a scuffling among birds in a sunlit

path about a hundred yards away. Going thither, he found some thorny

shrubs, which even at that early season were covered with yellow plums

the size of sloes. Birds, butterflies and many other insects were

gorging themselves with these plums; he, too gorged, thinking that no

better plums had ever grown. Being schooled now to think of the next

meal whenever he had food, he contrived a sort of basket or frail of the

leaves of the spade-palm into which he packed a couple of pounds of

plums, which he took with him.

He judged that the sun had southed when at last he was able to cross the

bog and turn again to the north. The going proved to be much better

beyond the swamp. He set out in good spirits, walked hard for half an

hour to the west, but then was stopped by another southward trending of

the lake: he had to trudge southward again.

It was after a couple of hours of this trudging, when he was most tired

and dispirited at having met no living soul nor any sign of man, that he

heard far off, somewhere to the south, a single rifle shot. He shouted,

hoping that the shooter might reply: he had no reply to his hail, but

the thought, that someone was there, who might help him in his need, and

in no case could make him much worse than he was, made him turn in that

direction, shouting at intervals as he went. Perhaps two minutes after

he had set out towards the place of the shot, he judged that he smelt

smoke. He had but one whiff of it and could not catch it again: he was,

however, sure that it was woodsmoke. “There is some sort of a fire

there,” he thought. “I shall find somebody.”

Half an hour later, while he was hallooing, in the certainty that he

must be near where the shooter had been, he saw a footmark in some soft

earth close to a red-heart. The red-heart had been split by age, wind or

lightning: it was exuding a bright blue fungus from the split. This

brought him to a halt with a start, for the footmark was his own. He had

halted just beside that tree when the smell of the smoke had come to

him. There could be no doubt of it; he had noticed tree and fungus too

nicely to be mistaken. There was besides, the footmark, unmistakably

his. He was too wise to have false hope about it: he had been walking in

a circle: he was bushed.

“There it is,” he said, “I am bushed.”

As the words were spoken, there came into his mind the memory of

Tencombe at teatime during the last summer holidays. There was his

mother with the sun upon her hair and her alert, decisive way: there was

old Bill standing near the mantelpiece, holding his tea-cup, while with

one foot he rolled over the retriever pup. There at the table beside the

rest of them was a little frail, pale-faced, red-bearded man, with a

whispering voice, who had been bushed in East Africa.

His words came back into Hi’s mind. “If you lose your head when you’re

bushed, you’re done.”

“I’ll bet that that is true,” Hi said. “If I lose my head, I shall be

done.”

He sat still for some minutes, trying to keep control of himself by

repeating the things in his favour. “I have had food to-day: and still

have some plums: it isn’t raining: I can’t be far from a camp or at

least a place where hunters come, because of that shot: whatever wrong

tracks I’ve taken, I can’t be far from the edge of this forest: whatever

happens I must not give up hope, because ‘hope brings healing.’ I shall

get out of this mess if I believe I shall. I do believe I shall. I

believe that if I climb one of these trees, I may be able to see out of

this forest.”

The thought fell like light into his mind, that he might see out of the

forest; but it was not easy to find a tree which would both yield a view

and be possible to climb. After some search he came to one that seemed

perfect. It had the look of a red-heart, but was so swathed with tough

creeper, which gave good hand-and-foot hold, that the bark was almost

hidden. Hi set himself to climb. He discovered, before he had gone far,

that the creeper stalks were bristly, like ivy or nettle stalks at home,

and that the climb was hard work. “I’m weaker than I was,” he thought.

The dust, dead twigs and fragments of bark fell over his face and down

his neck, but he persevered, even when he roused up a gang of black tree

ants. He came out through the dimness of the roof into a sea of flowers

of every colour in a blaze of light, beset by birds and butterflies. All

that he could see was a sea of flowers, running up into crests of

greenness, topped here and there by spikes, pinnacles and fountains of

strange leaves. There seemed no end to it in any direction, nor any

break, for even the water was hidden by the trees. It glittered and

glowed: it hummed with life: it exulted with an ecstasy of life: it

lived thus in the sun all day, and at night the moon and the stars gave

it the shadow of a life and the peace which man never has. It was all

marvellous, but it had nothing to do with man: men did not come there.

After he had clambered down, he turned away towards the west, taking

sighting marks, from tree to tree, to stop any more going in a circle.

His hands were tingling from the creeper bristles, as though he had been

pulling nettles with them. His face was tingling in a somewhat different

way. It smarted as it had smarted years before at school when somebody

had kicked a wet Rugby football hard against his cheek. The smarting

spread down his neck to his chest and along his backbone. He rubbed the

smarting skin, but the rubbing did it no good: it made it slightly

different and worse. In about an hour, he felt a puffiness about his

eyes: his lips and fingers had a tight feeling. “I’m swelling,” he said.

“I must have been on one of those poison trees. If this gets much worse,

I shan’t be able to see: I shall be all puffed up.”

In another hour, his eyes had become so swollen that he could not see

clearly; all his face had swollen till it no longer felt like flesh: it

drummed within with a drumming which seemed to beat upon his brain. His

hands were so puffed that he could not bend his fingers. When he came to

a puddle in the wood, he peered down to look at himself in the water. He

could not see all, but he made out a bladdery appearance which

frightened him. “I’ve gone just like the bladders we used to suck to

make elastic,” he thought. “If one of these blisters bursts, I shall be

done.” He sat down, trying not to be frightened. “I’m going to be

blind,” he thought. “It will probably pass off in a few hours, but I

shall be blind while it lasts. I shall be blind to-night: all to-night

and perhaps to-morrow: and I don’t know where I am, nor how I am to get

out of here. I’ve been a pretty rotten messenger, so far. Oh, I wish

that this beating in my brain would stop.”

It did not stop: it grew louder, with a rhythm which did not vary for an

hour together: it beat like a heart-beat: after a while there was

something almost pleasant in its recurrence. Then, suddenly, it changed

to another rhythm, which was not like a heart-beat, but much more

exciting. Hi was afraid to hope: he stood still, listening. “I know what

it is,” he said at last, “it is a kind of a mine-stamp, or engine of

some sort: not far away. There is probably a mine here. I’ve wandered

into Meruel, where the mines are: this is one of them. And I am going

towards it.”

Hope came back into him as soon as he was certain that the noise came

from men. Even Reds would be better than the forest. He went on towards

the beating noise, which presently died away so that he scarcely heard

it. He went forward, praying that it might not cease. The light was fast

going from the forest (from sunset, not from his blindness); he longed

to be with his fellow men before the night set in. He shouted from time

to time. Presently the multitudes of the homing birds drowned the

beating with the noise of their wings.

When the wings were at last quiet, the noise of the beating reappeared

above the lesser noises of night. It was beating now in a different

rhythm, with a louder volume. “It is not an engine,” Hi said. “I know

what it is now. It is one of these tom-toms or native drums, like the

one at home, which father used to let us play. I was an ass not to

recognise it before. It must be near at hand, too. I’ll shout again.”

No answer came to his shouting: the drummer, if it were a drummer, was

intent upon his rhythm, which was taking his soul up great spirals of

recurrence into the ellipses of escape: what were night, nature and a

lost human being to him?

At last, amid much that was indistinct, Hi saw a light among the trees.

A little fire was burning there, though often obscured by things moving

in front of it. “It is a camp fire,” Hi thought. “And it must be an

Indian camp, because white men would never permit this drumming.”

Some little fear was in his mind lest the Indians should be hostile. He

had heard that the forest-Indians were sometimes made dangerous by white

criminals who found refuge among them. Still, even cannibals would

hesitate, he thought, before killing meat suffering from poisonweed. “I

believe that they will give me a square deal,” he said. In bursts, amid

the constant noise of the drumming, he heard the voices and the

movements of the people of the poblacion.

He called several times more. Now he was heard, for the dogs of the camp

began to bark.

In a few minutes he came into a compound, or cleared space surrounded on

three sides by Indian huts of the kind familiar to him from his father’s

tales. Fires were burning upon stones in all the huts: by their light he

could make out men in white and things like white cloths inside the

huts. Some little dogs were at the doors barking. There was a splashing

noise not far away. Men were talking, women were crooning to their

babies, the drummer went on drumming. Somebody was thudding at

something: it sounded like the beating of a wad of wet linen with a

mallet. Strange things like minute devils came out of the huts, mocked

at him and sidled softly away: he could not imagine what they were. The

linen-thudder began to intone a thudding song of a melancholy kind, such

as a dog in despair or affected by the moon will sing. The air was full

of the smell of food, burning gums and sweet oils.

“I am English. I am a friend,” Hi called. “Don’t shoot. I am English.”

He called this several times before anyone paid any attention to him.

Then an Indian man, dressed in white, came from one of the huts towards

him. He was a chubby little smiling man, grey-haired, cheerful and kind.

He spoke to Hi, in words of one syllable in a tongue which Hi had not

heard. He stared at Hi’s face, raised his hands and said, “Mar, Mar,”

which Hi took to be Indian for “You have a swollen face.” “Yes,” Hi

answered, in English, “I have indeed: trés Mar.” The Indian surveyed Hi

from head to foot, which seemed to convince him that Hi was pretty Mar

over all.

A coarse voice, from one of the huts facing Hi, called out an order to

the Indian, who ceased in his pantomime of sympathy as though he had

been stung. He seemed to invite Hi forward to enter the hut from which

the voice had called. Hi went forward, with the Indian at his side,

towards the hut.

The hut, like the other huts of the poblacion, was, at a guess, thirty

feet long by fifteen broad. The end, which faced Hi, was open to the

night: at the sides the roofs came down almost to the ground, with a

tiling of palm leaves stitched with bast. The end of the hut was lit by

a fire arranged among stones, which Hi could not help noticing were hewn

stones. Someone was moving about beyond the fire: he called to the

Indian some order, that Hi was not to come any nearer till the Indian

had reported. When this had been done, the guide led Hi into the hut.

Hi could see across the fire a biggish white man, dressed in a shirt and

riding breeches, with a bandolier cartridge belt. This man at the moment

was bent at the fire lighting a twig, with which he soon lit a clay

lamp.

“There, that’s lit,” he said. “Now, let’s have a look at you?”

He held up the lamp and surveyed Hi with a strange expression, which Hi

could not read. He was a strongly-made, rather tall, robust man, with

yellowish dead coloured hair, like brass-work smeared with oil. He was

clean-shaven, even in that wild place. His eyes were grey-blue in

colour. His nose was small and straight save for a defiant tip. His

mouth had about it a look of defiance, scorn, contempt and utter

fearlessness. He was without doubt an Englishman of about twenty-five

years of age who had at one time lived among people of refinement.

“So,” the man said. “And where the hell do you come from?” Hi told him

his tale, that he was lost while making for Anselmo.

“Anselmo?” the man said. “Anselmo? I never heard of Anselmo. Where is

that?”

“I don’t know,” Hi said. “In the plain: not twenty miles from Santa

Barbara. Isn’t this near the plain?”

“This is the Melchior forest, chum,” the man said. “What the hell have

you done to your face?”

“I got it poisoned by poison ivy.”

“That’s a proper new chum’s trick. You’ll be blind to-morrow. What do

you propose to do?”

“Perhaps you could let me stay here till my eyes are better and then

give me a guide to the plain.”

“I’ve got no guide.”

“Or put me on my way then. I can’t be far.”

“Did anyone tell you of me, or put you up to coming here?”

“No.”

“Did you come out alone into this forest?”

“Yes.”

“God.”

There was a pause at this point, while the man put down his lamp. Hi had

become used to scurvy welcomes from the natives of Santa Barbara, but

this man was a fellow-countryman with some traces of breeding in him.

The man sat on the edge of his hammock, with his feet upon a low wooden

stool. He swung himself to and fro while he seemed to consider.

“Got any oof?” he asked at last.

“None here. I have some in Santa Barbara.”

“And I suppose you’ve got some in the savings bank at home?”

“Yes.”

“God,” the man said. “My God, my Father, while I stray.”

“Very well,” Hi said. “If this is all the welcome you can give me, I can

go on. I am sorry if I have intruded.”

“Have you got a pack of cards?” the man asked.

“No. I’ll wish you good-night,” Hi said.

“As you please about that.”

Hi turned away, flaming with rage and self-pity at being treated thus,

in his misery, there in the wilderness, by this fellow-countryman. He

did not know where he was to go, nor how, in that darkness and pain, but

he was not going to stop with this fellow. He moved back into the space

in front of the houses, with a sense of the comfort of them. Each house

seemed full of sheltered and fed men and women, who had fire, rest for

the night, and certainty for the morrow, as well as companionship. He

had none of all these things: he was miles from any of them: he was

beside full of sickness.

“Here, chum,” the man called, “where are you going?”

“Out of this.”

“I don’t want your carcase poisoning the bush, and putting the game off,

which is what will happen if you try it,” the man said. He raised his

voice suddenly with a call for his Indian, who appeared on the instant,

without noise of any kind. He spoke rapidly to the Indian for a moment,

giving him orders. “See,” the man said at last to Hi, “you can’t go with

your eyes in that state. I’ve told Chug-chug here to put you into a hut

by yourself. He’ll give you stuff for your blisters as well as some

chow. Go along with him: he’ll look after you.”

“Thank you,” Hi said.

“You’d better go with him, hadn’t you?” the man asked.

“Right,” Hi said. The Indian motioned to him to follow him to one of the

huts on the right of the enclosed space. When Hi had entered the hut,

which was dark, the Indian disappeared, leaving him alone there. It was

like the other huts, closed at the sides by the roofs coming down to the

ground, and open to the air at the ends. Hi felt utterly alone there.

The tom-tom was still beating and beating: all his blood seemed to have

gone thin and bitter from the poison in his skin. In the next hut many

people were talking together: some were singing. Then at the door of the

hut the little tiny devils appeared again: they mocked at him and sidled

softly away.

Presently the Indian reappeared with wood for a fire and some burning

embers. With these, he made a fire upon a hearth of hewn stones: the

fire burned up so as to light the place a little. Hi noticed a couple of

tin travelling trunks, much battered with service, against one of the

walls. The Indian motioned to Hi to sit in a white cotton hammock, with

fringes of coloured bast, which had been slung from the posts. He sat as

he was bid, with his feet upon a long footstool of some hard wood. The

Indians brought him a mush or stew in a calabash, which he ate with

thankfulness. It was hot and seasoned with peppers: it brought the

essence of life right into his being. While he ate of this dish, an

Indian examined his feet for jiggers. When he had finished his meal, the

Indians smeared his face and hands with a soft wet mess, which (unknown

to Hi) they had been chewing while he ate. It had a rancid smell to it,

but it soothed the pain at once. An Indian brought him a cotton quilt

for his hammock. Wrapping himself in this, he turned in for the night:

full of anxiety for his friends, wild with disappointment at having

failed them, sick in body, and “perplexed in the extreme.”

He could not sleep, all weary as he was, because of the discomforts of

his body. He lay twisting in his hammock, while the tom-tom beat in the

hut beside him, changing its rhythm once in the hour. No one seemed to

want to sleep in that village. Men and women were moving about, talking,

telling endless stories, or singing like melancholy dogs, for hours

together. Sometimes he dozed away for a few minutes till the touch of

the hammock upon his face or hands roused him again. Always, when he

woke, the tom-tom was beating and someone was telling a story. Little

dogs, with sharp noses, enormous pointed ears and mangy skins, came

snapping into the hut from time to time, after beetles, it seemed. The

sidelong devils did not come again: he thought of them often enough.

On this, the fifth day of his journey to fetch Don Manuel, the Whites of

the Western Provinces mustered 437 men at San Jacinto. They moved out to

Don Manuel’s advanced post beyond the river, having left word that the

final rendezvous would be at San Pablo, only thirty miles from Santa

Barbara city. They brought with them many spare horses: this was the

only excellence in their force, their weapons being mainly machetes,

revolvers, rook rifles and shot-guns of all sorts and bores with

whatever cartridges they had. There was no hesitation in any of them at

the thought of marching upon Santa Barbara. They were all religious men,

who felt that their faith was threatened. The parish priest at San Luis,

where Don Manuel was camped, blessed them at their setting out:

certainly no man among them doubted that his going was in the service of

God.

XV

Towards three in the morning Hi fell into a deeper sleep, from which he

was roused by the cold: his fire was out and his quilt had slipped from

him. In groping for it, he found that his head had so swollen that he

could hardly see. The pain was gone, but he was puffed like a prize pig.

“O Lord,” he moaned, “I shan’t be able to see. I can’t see across this

hut. I shan’t be able to reach Anselmo even to-day. Now I am bound to be

too late, and Carlotta may be killed because of me.” He turned out of

his hammock to prove himself: it was only too true, he was nearly blind:

he could not hope to go on without a guide. “Horses,” he thought. “These

people have no horses. My only hope is a river. I may be near some

tributary of the San Jacinto. If I could take a canoe down that, or if

some Indian would take me, I might even find Don Manuel during to-day.

There must be rivers which run into the San Jacinto. If that fellow told

the truth, if this is the Melchior forest, I must be near the San

Jacinto, or its eastern tributaries. I must speak to that fellow and beg

him to help me. After all, he is an Englishman, though he is as ross as

a mule.”

As it was dark and cold, he turned back to his hammock to try for warmth

and sleep. He slept a little, by starts, always broken by nightmares.

The cold struck him from underneath: it got into all his bones. “Aha,

you English boy,” voices said to him in his dreams. “Now you’ve come

into our power you shall be searched. You’ve got the cramps, you’ve got

the aches, you’ve got the forest fever, you are going to go blind;

you’ve got the poison in your entrails and we’re going to wring you with

it.”

When he next awoke it was daylight, though still early. The village had

come again to the life it had hardly laid down during the darkness. The

thudding noise, of wet linen being banged on stones with a mallet, had

begun again: women were singing and little brown children were playing

in the _patio_. The sharp-eared dogs had tucked their noses into their

flanks for sleep in sunny places. The tiny devils were sidling about,

mocking at people. He recognised them now as dove-grey parrots with rosy

breasts. Their bright eyes and compact bent beaks gave them the knowing

look of men about town: they looked like devilled-bone-and-biscuit men.

They looked at him, with their heads cocked aside, considering his

offers of friendship, and then sheered off from him as something not to

be trusted.

He turned out of his hammock to peer from his puffy eyes at the new

world about him. His body felt as though it did not belong to him: pains

and aches had taken it over. His face and hands felt dead: his mouth was

full of fur. He wandered out into the morning.

He could see well enough to take a track which led past the side of his

hut to a river some twenty feet broad where naked men and women were

sitting in the water immersed to their chins. Some women were pounding

bunches of wet cotton on the stones near the river; their tiny children,

tying minute fragments of stone to strips of bast, were making bolases

with which they entangled the dragon-flies.

After washing in the river, and bathing his puffy eyes, Hi returned to

the huts, hoping to see the white man, who was not in his hut. Early as

it was, most of the men of the community had gone to whatever work they

had to do. Women were pounding and straining cassava, or baking it into

loaves. They laughed at Hi in a friendly way: one of them gave him bread

and a gourd full of broth. While he ate this, sitting in a hammock, an

Indian, dressed in three tobacco-tin lids, took station before him,

grinned, pointed to his chest and said: “Me Johnny God-dam.”

Unfortunately, this was all the English known to him. Hi tried by signs

to find out where the white man was, where one would come out if one

were to follow the river, and where the white settlements were. His

performance roused great interest, but nobody understood it: he had the

general impression that they thought that he was praying for dry

weather.

He went back to the hut where he had passed the night; he was full of

anxiety and helplessness. Chug-chug, if that were his name, appeared

with some aromatic leaves, which he rubbed gently on Hi’s blistered

skin, with a soothing effect. He was a cheerful man, who talked all the

time. Hi questioned him in English and by signs: this increased

Chug-chug’s flow of talk, without bringing any enlightenment.

“Oh, I ought to go on,” Hi said. “I ought to go on. Yet what is the

sense of going on, blind as I am, when I don’t know where to make for?

See here, Chug-chug,” he said, with signs to represent the white man,

“when will the Señor, the chief, come back into the camp?” Chug-chug

knew that an important question was asked, but he could not understand

it; he made a speech about the new cassava patch, which Hi could not

understand. Having thus made the honours even he disappeared.

“I’ll wait till mid-day,” Hi thought. “The white man will be back at

mid-day. Father always said that the forest practice is to eat at

mid-day and then take siesta. After siesta, I shall be able to go on.

The man’s a regular rossy tick: yet even a rossy tick will tell a fellow

the way. And the more I think of it, the more sure I am that I shall be

able to reach the San Jacinto River from here. I may even reach Don

Manuel to-night.”

He stood at the hut door for a few minutes gazing at the scene of

primitive life before him. The sun, blazing down into the compound, put

new life into him: he felt both warmed and comforted. He was beginning

to see a little better out of both eyes, and found that he could now

bend his fingers. One of the best of his symptoms was the feeling that

if he were to lie down he would sleep.

He went into the hut, with a sudden curious sensation that somebody had

been in the hut, behind him, until the instant of his turning to come

in. “Strange,” he thought. “It is this puffiness of my eyes. Or I know

what it was, coming into the gloom out of the glare, made me think that

the posts were a man.” He turned back to make sure of this. “I suppose

that that is what it must have been,” he thought. “It did look rather

like a man.”

He sat in his hammock, trying to think how much he was to blame for

going astray. Then his thoughts turned to the Englishman. “What is he

and what is he doing here, and why is he so sour? He must be a

prospector of sorts: he is not an engineer, for he hasn’t any engine. He

won’t be only a hunter or explorer: he’s too much of a swine for that. I

wouldn’t mind betting that he is a gold or mineral prospector, who has

come on a good thing out here and is afraid of some other person cutting

in on him. That is it, I’ll bet any money. That would explain his being

so crusty and giving me so poor a welcome. I wonder what the man is. I

suppose that those are his trunks, over there against the wall.”

The trunks were the usual, small, flat, tin, traveller’s trunks, made

low, so as to fit under bunks at sea, or lie snugly along the side of a

mule. They had once been japanned black. Hard service had worn away much

of the japan: some of the tin shewed bright, the rest was battered and

discoloured. On the top of the lid of one of them was the letter D in

what had once been white paint: on the top of the lid of the other was

most of the letter W. Both trunks had been neglected for some time.

Sprays of creepers, which had thrust under the roof there, had grown

right over them. “D and W,” Hi repeated. “A letter has been blotted out

on both boxes. I suppose the man’s name is D . . . W . . . Dirty White,

or Dingy Welcome, or Doubtful Wanderer: the initials might stand for any

of them. They look like the sort of box a prospector would take.

Meanwhile, I should be the better for some sleep.”

He turned into his hammock, hoping that a rest would help to heal his

eyes; he saw the dog at the hut door nuzzle further into his flank; then

his overwhelming weariness pressed down upon him so that he slept

unheeding.

He woke some hours later with the feeling that someone was in the hut

wanting to speak to him. It was not easy to thrust aside such folds of

sleep; while he struggled with them, the someone, whoever he was, had

gone; there was no one there when he awoke. “Strange,” he said. “It

seemed as though someone were there. I thought that I saw someone, a

tallish chap, who had something to say. I suppose I dreamed it. I wish

that sleeping in this land didn’t give one this thick sort of brown

taste in the mouth whenever one wakes.”

He turned out to stretch, feeling stunned and stupid, but the better for

his rest. “I’ll see if the D. W. fellow has come back,” he thought.

He found that the village was taking the siesta; he had slept into the

afternoon; the village was more silent than it had been at any hour of

the night. He called at the door of the white man’s hut. “Are you there,

sir? May I speak with you?” As he had no answer, he peeped in; the white

man had not returned. “Still away,” Hi thought. “What a nuisance.”

He had the feeling that he must not enter the hut while the owner was

away. None the less, he looked curiously at the contents of the hut.

Some clothes of a yellowish drill were hanging from one of the posts,

with a leather belt on which the initial D was marked in black. At the

back of the hut, beyond the hammock, was a table, made of two planks

supported upon the taller sort of Indian stools, of the kind cut by them

for their god-houses. This table was heaped with objects, which seemed

to be mostly stones or lumps of ore; he could not make out what they

were. Under the table was another tin box marked D W upon the side; this

box was open and contained boots. The hammock had a good brown

camel-hair blanket rolled up across its foot. Hi had just such another

in his kit at Santa Barbara: his mother had chosen it for him, “For your

father says the nights can be very cold, even a month after the rains.”

There seemed to be nothing else worth notice in the hut, except the

usual canvas water bottle, holding a gallon, a canvas bucket with a

laniard spliced into its rim, and a canvas basin in which D. W. had

soaped himself that morning. Hi had experience of the things bought for

outfits; he noticed that all these things were very good of their kind

but the worse for wear. “No tools,” Hi thought. “He has a working or a

claim somewhere near; the tools will be there.”

“Well,” Hi said to himself, “I must not spy upon this man. I wish that

he would come back, so that I could have it out with him.”

He walked into the compound, where he passed an hour trying to make

friends with the parrots and the little dogs. Both were gentle yet

suspicious; he had no success with them. The day dragged heavily over

him, while he waited for D. W. to return. The village was interesting

and the forest beautiful. He longed to be out of both, going fast upon

his mission, while there was still hope.

After a while, he felt within himself the suggestion that there might be

something of interest in the hut where he had slept. He had not examined

it thoroughly; now that his eyes were so much less swollen, he felt that

that would be something to do; there might even be some book tossed

aside somewhere. He had seen no trace of a book in D. W.’s hut.

In the furthest corner of his hut was a small rubbish heap. He pulled a

half-burnt piece of wood from his fireplace. With this, he began to poke

aside the rubbish, to see what he could find. The rubbish was of all

sorts, much the worse for having been in a corner of the hut into which

the rain had blown. He found these things:

Part of a canvas sack, into which the ants had worked.

A briar pipe, much used, which had a bleached look from exposure.

Part of a leather strop that had been cut through.

Three small twists of tough galvanised wire.

Four bits of old bootlace.

A broken strap.

A screw eye.

A paper, containing a mouldy empty cardboard box for Marcham’s Patent

Trouser Buttons, with the legend, “No more sewing.”

Most of a pair of drill riding breeks made in Taunton. The ants had been

in these. Two envelopes, or parts of envelopes.

A sodden little fat book, rather like a newly-drowned puppy.

He brought this book into the light, so that he might examine it. It

proved to be a dumpy volume of Milton’s poems, complete in itself,

“printed 1828 for J. Smith, Bookseller, 193, High Holborn,” and bound in

green cloth boards. It opened at the frontispiece, of Milton “from an

Impression of a Seal,” opposite a vignette of Eve among some dahlias

beside a very wriggly snake. On the flyleaf of the book was an

inscription in faint ink in the handwriting of a woman:

To Dudley Wigmore,

from his Mother. August 12th, 1881.

“Dudley Wigmore,” Hi said. “D. W. . . . So that is the fellow’s name, is

it? It is an odd book for him to have. And he might have been a little

more careful of a gift from his mother, one would think.”

The book was swollen and stuck together from being soaked; Hi opened it

in the sun, with great care. He knew little, certainly, about Milton,

except that he had written a poem called L’Allegro, which Hi had had to

learn by heart some years before at his prep. school. “I daresay I’ll

like it better now,” he said. “Anyhow this is a book, and a very famous

book: there must be something in it. And it will be something to do to

try to dry it without pulling out the leaves.”

After he had opened the book to dry, he went back to look at the rubbish

heap for more treasures. He found nothing more in that heap, except some

rags which the ants and grubs had riddled to pieces. He looked at the

two bits of envelope, both of which bore English stamps. On one of the

stamps part of the postmark could be made out when the paper was held to

the light. Hi read the name “allet.” He tried to think of some English

place with a name which ended in “allet”: he could think of none. “It

sounds liker a French name,” he thought. One of the pieces had been

addressed to

D. Wigm——

C/o Messrs. W——

Sant——

The rest was torn off. The other, which was smaller, had only a bit of

the flap, the stamp, and the ends of an address, in a different hand,

thus:

—— Esq.,

—— et Cie.

Hi dropped the bits of paper on to the heap. Some of the leaves of the

Milton were now dry: he turned them, so that others might dry. Having

nothing else to do, he brought out the stools from his hut, rested the

book on one, sat on the other, and passed some hours, reading bits of

the poem as the leaves dried. The Indians looked at him with curiosity

and fear, thinking that he was practising magic. His mood and that place

gave the poetry a value which it had not held (for Hi) in the prep.

school. “When my eyes are better,” he thought, “I will read this all

through. It is a wonderful thing.”

The day passed thus hour by hour with no sign of the white man. Some

Indians who had come to the poblacion with cassava, brought out some

stew for Hi with a piece of hot bread, which he ate. Having eaten, he

brought the stools and the book into the hut where he had slept.

“It is strange,” Hi said. “Whenever I come into this hut I have the

feeling that there is somebody here. It is the way that this

hammock-post catches the light.”

The sun was now fast dropping behind Melchior, so that it lit up the end

of the hut where the rubbish had been thrown. Something sparkled on the

floor beyond the rubbish. Hi picked it up. It was a little gold locket

clipped to a rusty steel watch-chain. After wiping the locket, he opened

it, with some trouble. It contained a tiny photograph, not so big as his

thumbnail, of a young woman’s face. She was a handsome young woman, of

the hawk brunette type.

“I suppose that this is his girl,” Hi thought, closing the locket. “He

must have dropped this somehow in the dark; he’ll be glad to have it

again.”

He dropped the locket on to one of the wooden stools, so that he might

have it at hand when D. W. returned; then he sat in his hammock,

thinking of Carlotta. “Early to-morrow,” he thought. “Early to-morrow,

whatever happens, I shall get away from here. Even now, with luck, I

might not be too late. But I simply must not be too late. I must be in

time.”

As the light suddenly passed from the world at the dropping of the sun

behind Melchior, he wondered whether after all he would be in time. It

was hard to say what might have happened under a madman like Don Lopez.

Supposing that the worst had happened? Supposing that he were not in

time?

He was weary from the hardships of the journey, all his body was crying

out for rest. He edged himself into his hammock, for the comfort of

lying prone, and there fell asleep. He slept heavily, having still some

arrears to make up, and yet, for all its soundness, his sleep was

troubled with the sense that all was not well. Gradually, as his sleep

weakened, he began to feel that there was an unhappiness, or something

worse, close to him: someone in distress was there. “Ah,” he answered in

his sleep, “it is you, Carlotta. All right, I’ll do my best to warn him

and bring him. I’ll do my best, though I do seem to have muddled

things.” Then, as his sleep weakened still more, he knew that it was not

Carlotta who was there, but a man who had been there before.

“Yes,” he said, in his sleep, “there was a man in the hut this

afternoon: so he is here again; well, what can I do for him? Where are

you? Let’s have a look at you.”

He struggled out of his sleep to a knowledge of the waking world, which

came upon him slowly, as another world, that had taken its place, moved

away in fiery mist. He saw, or thought that he saw, the man standing

near the hut entrance, looking at him, with sad eyes. “All right,” Hi

cried.

“Is it supper-time? I’ve been asleep, but I’m awake. I’ll be up in one

moment.” As he blinked and sat up, the figure faded away into the

darkness behind it, which was now a blackness of leaves moving against

stars. “It was only a dream, after all,” Hi said. “But it is odd how

there always seems to be a man here. I suppose one gets to imagine these

things.”

He came back fully to the world of the village, where now lamps and

fires were burning, women singing and the tom-tom drumming. “I’ll see if

D. W. has come back,” he said.

He was prevented by the entrance of Chug-chug, who came to ask him by

signs to come to the other hut. “D. W. is back, then,” he thought. “Now

for it.”

He followed Chug-chug to the other hut, which was lit by three lamps. A

trestle-table had been rigged up, food was set upon it. The man sat on

his camp-chair at the table-head, facing Hi. He had a much worn

cartridge belt slung over his shoulder: one of the pouches of it was

stamped D. W. He had been cleaning a light sporting rifle with a

pull-through and an oily feather: he now held the rifle across his

knees, and kept opening the breech and snapping it to. Hi could see him

more clearly than had been possible to him the night before. In the

main, he felt his impression confirmed, that he did not like the man:

there was more force in him than wisdom or goodness.

“You’d better have some chow, chum,” the man said.

The chow was the oily, peppery meat stew, served with cassava bread, of

which Hi had already eaten twice that day.

“Find yourself a pew there,” the man said. He was not a gracious host:

he seemed to resent Hi’s presence there, yet this was a kind of

invitation from him to sit down and dine. Hi pulled a stool to the table

and sat down.

“I suppose I’d better introduce myself,” the man said, “like the ladies

do at these receptions. Did you ever hear of Brocket Letcombe-Bassett,

the hundred yards Blue?”

“No,” Hi said.

“Well, he is my father’s second cousin. My father’s a clergyman, or was.

I don’t know whether he’s still alive; I don’t much care.”

“Then are you Mr. Letcombe-Bassett?”

“Yes.”

“Then is there another Englishman here; a Mr. Wigmore?”

“Wigmore? Did you know him?” the man asked.

“No,” Hi said. “But I found a book of his and this little gold locket.

Did you know him?”

“Yes, he was a prospector here,” the man said. “He died of forest fever

here a couple of years ago.”

“Poor chap,” Hi said. It seemed a lonely death for a man with a mother

and a lover.

“Yes,” the man said. “He died of forest fever a couple of years ago.

There’s a lot of forest fever here as soon as the rains call off.”

“Were you with him when he died?” Hi asked.

“Not actually with him, no; but in at the death, yes. I was as near as I

wanted to be. Forest fever’s an easily caught complaint.”

“Is he buried here?”

“Yes; or not far from here. I had the Indians to bury him. Indian

fashion, in a hole in the hut.”

“In the hut where I am?”

“The hut where you are? No. In the hut in the bush where he kicked the

bucket.”

“Were you able to let his people know that he was dead?” Hi asked.

“No; I didn’t know that he had any people.”

“Hadn’t he letters?” Hi asked. “There are scraps of letters in the hut;

torn up. Perhaps we could piece them together.”

“There weren’t any letters,” the man said. “Wigmore had no letters. I

expect you saw bits of some of mine, from my loving father: blast him.”

“No, these were to Wigmore.”

“Oh,” the man said. “Well, I saw none. I looked through his things. Of

course, out here, an Englishman with another Englishman, that was the

least one could do.”

“He had a girl and a mother.”

“How the hell do you know? I knew Wigmore well, my damned young cub. As

well, that is, as anyone could know a fellow of that stamp.”

“I don’t know about damned and cub,” Hi said. “I’m not your father.”

The man stared at him for an instant with a look of fury, which died on

the instant into contempt.

“I was talking about Wigmore,” he said. “If you think that this is a

Sunday school, you’ll learn it isn’t.”

“I think no such thing,” Hi said. “But I won’t take ‘damned young cub’

from a hundred yards Blue, let alone his second cousin.”

“The hell you won’t,” the man said. “Well, I always liked guts, so we’ll

reckon it not said.”

“All right,” Hi said. “As we were. I really thought that you were

Wigmore. The book was from his mother, and the locket has a picture of

his girl inside it. That was what made me think that he must have people

alive.”

“He was a very odd fish, Wigmore,” the man said. “He was a man under a

cloud. When you come to one of these solitary men, prospecting in a

place like this, you may always be sure that there’s something wrong. He

never talked about his past; but he let you see he had one. He drank

like a fish, too.”

“Did he ever find any gold?” Hi asked.

“He was one of these pleasure-miners. They always get enough to pay

their Indios and keep themselves in cartridges. They go brown after a

bit; that is, they turn Indian.”

By this time, he had slung his rifle by its bandolier to the crutch in

the post. Hi could see the initials D. W. burned upon the stock: it had

been Wigmore’s rifle in the past. Hi was uneasy at the way the man spoke

about Wigmore: he wished to know more.

“It’s a pretty awful end,” Hi said, “to die out here in the wilderness,

all those thousands of miles from home.”

“Damned sight better end than being poisoned by doctors in a frowsy

hospital.”

“I wish we could make out enough bits of letters to find out where his

people are,” Hi said.

“There aren’t any letters, I told you.”

“There are bits of letters, because I saw them. Do you know, there is

one way we could find out about him?”

“How?” the man asked, with a sudden close attention.

“From people in Santa Barbara. He had a letter addressed to him in the

care of a French firm in Santa Barbara. I expect that they were his

agents. There can’t be more than two or three French houses in Santa

Barbara. I could enquire at them all, and through them we could easily

find out where he came from.”

“Agents? A French firm?” the man said. “You mean Chardenal? It is a

general stores in Santa Barb’. He used to get his stores there. They

weren’t his agents: he was a customer there. As a matter of fact, I sent

an Indio in with a chit to them when Wigmore died to cancel his last

order. They know that he is dead.”

“Wouldn’t they know where he came from?”

“He was a very dark horse, Wigmore. He never told that to me, in all the

months we were together. I don’t see why he should have told his

grocers.”

“I suppose you don’t know any English town with a name ending in

‘allet,’ do you?” Hi asked.

“Allet?” the man said, suspiciously. “No, I don’t know any bally

‘allet.’ If you’d ask my opinion, I should say you were getting Wigmore

on the brain. Are you sure you’ve not got a touch of forest fever? It

often begins like that: getting excited about somebody’s bally corpse

and that.”

“I’m not excited about him,” Hi said. “Only it is rather rough on his

mother and girl, if they are wondering about him, and hoping to hear

from him all this time.”

“As I said before,” the man said, “I don’t believe for one moment that

he had a mother and girl. In all the months I knew him I never knew him

mention them nor have any letter from them. Put him out of your mind. He

was a dark horse and a tank. It’s my believe that he was wanted for

something: anyway he was under a cloud. Now about yourself: you say you

want to get to Anselmo? Is that near Santa Barbara? Well, if it is, it’s

seventy miles from here; and here is twenty miles from any road there.”

“Could you let one of your Indios guide me to the road there, early

to-morrow?” Hi asked. “My eyes are well enough. The swelling will

probably be quite gone by to-morrow.”

“I couldn’t, to-morrow,” the man said.

“Why not? I’d be ever so much obliged if you would.”

“I couldn’t send an Indio to-morrow: he wouldn’t go if I did: it will be

one of their moon-feasts.”

“Well, then; why not to-night?”

“You’re not fit to go to-night: besides, these Aracuis won’t move a step

at night. I don’t blame them. The snakes are abroad. Then there are

tigers. Besides, there are too many ghosts for them.”

“I would chance the ghosts,” Hi said, “if you would direct me on my

way.”

“You would never find your way,” the man said. “I couldn’t hope to show

it to you in a first quarter moon.”

“Will you show it to me to-morrow?”

“Yes, I’ll show it to you to-morrow.”

“Early; first thing? Would you mind starting early, so that I may reach

the road before dark?”

“I’ll start fairly early.”

“Will you tell me what you are?” Hi said. “I mean, what you do out here

in the wilderness?”

“I?” the man said. “I’m one of the damned lost souls, who like my own

way and mind my own business.”

“Certainly,” Hi said. “I didn’t mean to be inquisitive.”

“You say you haven’t any money?”

“No.”

“Do you play cribbage?”

“Yes.”

“It’s not much fun playing anything without having something on the

game. Haven’t you got a ticker?”

“Yes, but the water’s got into it. It’s stopped.”

“Then you haven’t got a tosser?”

“No.”

“Damn well on your uppers?”

“Yes.”

“My God, My Father, while I stray. You’d better go and turn in, then, if

you want this early start. I can’t play beggar-my-neighbour with you,

like a damned kid. Next time you look in, you’d better bring some

ooftish to cover your cards with: your mess-bills, too, if you don’t

mind.”

“I’m sorry that I’ve no money,” Hi said. “But as for mess-bills, if

you’ll tell me your name and agents, I’ll pay what you think fair for

what I have had here. Or you can take my watch. It is a good one and

nearly new: it will go well when cleaned.”

“We’ll talk about bills to-morrow,” the man said. “You’d better go and

turn in.”

“Very well. Good-night.”

The man did not answer. He stood staring at Hi out of his cold, hard

blue eyes: his lip was lifted in a sneer. Hi felt that he had never yet

met a man so hateful. “He is a loathsome swine,” he thought. “A vile,

taunting, silver-ring tick.”

He came to his hut and again had the sensation that someone was there:

this time so strongly that he called out. “Yes, who is it, there?”

before he saw that there was no one. “It is odd,” he said, “I keep

thinking that there’s a man here. I’ve got to be all jumpy from being in

the forest; and then, this hammock-post is like a man, and gives me the

illusion every time. I wish there were a man here, Dudley Wigmore or

another; then I might not be so dependent on this sneering devil.”

Still raging against the man, he turned into his hammock to think of

things which did not bear thought; Carlotta and Rosa depending on him;

Carlotta’s marvellous grace, beauty and goodness; now in gaol among

blackguards at the whim of a madman; then, himself, who was to have

saved her, all astray in a forest, all those miles from even beginning

to send word about her. There was no sleep for one with thoughts like

that.

Sleep would not have been easy in any case, for the village was

celebrating something, a hunt or a moon-feast: he could not tell what.

Half a dozen drums were beating. Presently the boys of the tribe lit a

bonfire in the midst of the _patio_ or space in the midst of the

village. They piled it high with wood which the women had collected

during the day. As soon as it burned well, they began to march round it,

blowing into horns of one note and flutes of two notes: some of them

clacked discs of hard wood or rattled beans in goobies: those who could

not make music, sang. The little, sharp-eared dogs sitting on their

haunches at the hut doors put back their heads, till they seemed all

throat, and sang likewise. The babies wakened from their sleep wailed

upon high notes. The men of the tribe sang or told stories: the women

and little girls dragged wood for the fire.

“I might be a thousand miles from anywhere,” Hi thought. “It may take me

days to get to Anselmo or anywhere else.”

The bonfire lit up the inside of his hut so as to shew the tin boxes

marked D and W. Since he could not sleep, his mind turned to these

boxes. “There is something queer about this man,” Hi said to himself.

“There is something odd about his relations with Wigmore. He said

something about these solitary prospectors being always bad eggs; well,

he doesn’t strike one as being a very lofty egg. He says he went through

Wigmore’s things and found no letters. I know that there were letters,

which he pitched on to the rubbish pile only a little while ago. He made

no effort to find Wigmore’s friends. It’s true that he says he sent in

an account of his death; yet he wears Wigmore’s belt and uses his rifle.

And then, to keep away from the poor chap while he was ill: good Lord.”

There rose in his mind suddenly the image of the forest fever, as a grey

thing without a head, a thing like a worm, which said: “It is just after

the rains now: very likely I have put a touch upon you, so that people

will leave you in a hut till you are dead. It is a very catching

complaint, the forest fever.”

“Very likely,” he said, “very likely I have caught the fever: in which

case they’ll never know at home what became of me: no one will ever

know, except the Indians who will bury me here.”

“I’m going to look in those boxes,” he said, turning out of his hammock.

“Perhaps there is some map or chart, if Wigmore was a prospector. With a

map I might be able to find out where I am and how to get away from

here.”

He pulled out the nearer of the two tin boxes from its covering of

creeper. It felt and proved to be empty save for two small studs and a

trouser button. He tipped the box on its side, to make sure that there

was no label or address. “No further help there,” he said. “Now for the

other.”

The second box had been used to block a hole which the dogs had routed

in the hut wall. It had been weighted inside with a biggish hewn stone,

so that the dogs should not thrust it aside. Beside the stone were some

scraps of rubbish which Hi brought out to the light to examine. The

things were:

A buckle of a strap.

Two halves of a lead pencil which had fallen apart.

The lead of the pencil.

A mouldy piece of knotted ribbon, which looked as if it had once gone

round a packet of letters.

Two sodden letters in envelopes, both post-marked Shepton Mallet, the

one on February 1st, the other February 8th, 1886, and addressed,

“Dudley Wigmore, Esq., c/o The United Sugar Company, Santa Barbara.” One

of these letters was signed “from mother”: the other was from “your

loving May.”

Last of all was a much-weathered, ant-eaten pocket-book, sodden with

damp and so clutched together by a rubber band as to be liker a piece of

mouldy wood than a book.

“This is queer,” Hi said. “These letters have been opened and carried

about in a man’s pocket. They are dated only about thirteen months ago.

Yet that fellow said that Wigmore died a couple of years ago.” Either

Wigmore was alive a year ago, or that tick opened his letters a year

after he was dead. It isn’t likely that that fellow could have made a

mistake about Wigmore’s death. He said ‘a couple of years.’ One could

hardly go wrong on a point of that sort. One would remember when the

only white man within twenty miles died.

“Then that fellow said, that Wigmore was a prospector, a pleasure-miner,

and drank like a fish. Now it’s odd that there are none of the

prospector’s things here: no pans and sieves for washing, no scales nor

any stuff for making assays. Then if he drank like a fish, it is odd

that there are no bottles left. It wouldn’t have been easy to drink like

a fish out here; but if he drank at all he drank from bottles, and there

are no bottles nor parts of bottles. Now father said that any forest

Indian would work for a week for a bottle, which is a very valuable

possession here. They make bottles into lamps, canteens, jewels, knives,

scrapers and arrow-heads. There isn’t a trace of a bottle in this

settlement, that I can see. So probably Wigmore didn’t drink like a

fish. Probably also he wasn’t a prospector. Probably also he didn’t die

a couple of years ago, but a year at most. This man has been lying about

him. If he lied about his life, probably he has lied about his death.

There has been a Wigmore here; that Wigmore is probably dead. The man

who knows about his death has his gun and cartridges, and perhaps also

his gold-claim and his mining things. The man who lies about him has

profited by his disappearance. Supposing this man, whoever he is, this

hundred yards Blue man, should have murdered Wigmore, in order to take

his things?

“Who is this hundred yards Blue man? I’ll bet that name isn’t his real

name, but a false name given to make me think that he is related to

decent people. He is not a gentleman nor a man of ordinary decent

feeling: he is a tick or criminal. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if he

has murdered Wigmore. If he thinks that I think that, he’ll probably

murder me. I don’t think he’d think twice about murdering a chap. I’ll

have to be jolly careful to-morrow. But, first, I’ll look at this book,

to see if it will help at all.”

The book proved to be little better than pulp. It had been at one time a

neat oblong pocket-book with a cover of black leather: now the dye in

the cover and the endpapers had soaked through into the leaves, which

were stuck together and stained like crushed blackberries. In the centre

were two leaves which contained some legible jottings in pencil in a

neat handwriting. They were seemingly columns of names. Closer

examination shewed Hi that they were lists of words in different

tongues. The left hand columns contained English words, the other

columns were the Indian words in different dialects.

“It’s a vocabulary or dictionary. A polyglot Indian dictionary,” Hi

said. “That explains what the man was. He was one of these men who write

books about the Indians, and Indian grammars. This isn’t the hand of a

man who goes pleasure-mining. This chap was a scholar. The only

prospecting this fellow did was finding a new tribe with a different

dialect.”

He had been standing bent over the book close to the door of the hut,

where the glow of the bonfire lit his examination. Something told him

suddenly that he was being observed. Looking up, to his left, to the

point prompted to him, he saw Letcombe-Bassett standing at the mouth of

another hut, three parts hidden, watching him. “The beast has been

spying on me,” Hi thought, turning away. “He knows that I think things

are a little fishy: he has been watching to see what I have been doing.”

The thought of being spied upon made him at first uneasy, then gay. “If

it comes to spying,” he thought, “I’ll see if I cannot lead you a

dance.”

He put the book on the shelf of the post for the night: then he turned

into his hammock, thinking uneasy thoughts till he was almost asleep.

He was lying high up in his hammock, with his head propped by what

sailors would have called the nettles. A faint noise at the mouth of his

hut made him instantly alert: someone had crept stealthily thither,

breathing anxiously.

“Yes? Who is there?” Hi called.

“Oh, are you awake?” Letcombe-Bassett answered. “I was going quietly so

as not to wake you. I was afraid you might be asleep. I only wanted to

say that we’ll start in good time to-morrow, if you feel up to moving.”

“To Anselmo? I’m up to moving.”

“I know nothing about Anselmo. I can start to set you on a road which

will take you to Santa Barbara.”

“That will do. Thank you.”

“Right. We’ll start then after an early chow. Sleep easy.”

He moved across the hut entrance towards his own hut; Hi wished him

good-night. “He’s a pretty bad egg,” Hi thought. “He is here for no good

and he means me no good.”

These thoughts in his brain slowly merged into the noises of the

village, which in turn grew into a night that covered him: he fell

asleep in his hammock half covered by a quilt of cotton.

On this the sixth day of Hi’s journey, the five hundred odd men of Don

Manuel’s army made their first march of fifty miles to the eastward, so

as to camp at the water-holes at Amarga. At the water-holes, they were

joined by some seventy more men, who had either followed them, or ridden

in from the north or south. When they left Amarga they were more than

six hundred strong.

XVI

It may have been the cold working upon a body worn by anxieties and

hardships: it may have been confusion in a brain nine-tenths asleep; or

it may have been another thing. As he slept, Hi became aware that Dudley

Wigmore was in the hut, sitting on a box, waiting for him to wake. He

could see him distinctly; a sad-looking man, of the middle build,

fair-haired, blue-eyed, gentle and thoughtful, yet with a clench of

resolution, in mouth and chin, which made the face memorable.

“I’m an ethnologist,” Wigmore was saying. “You want to escape from here

without fail. This is Murder Poblacion.”

“Is it?” Hi answered. “By George, did that tick murder you? Wait a

minute: I’ll be awake in a minute: then, I’ll ask you something.” He

struggled with his sleep as he spoke, beating aside the quilt. He sat up

to see Wigmore beside him, sad-eyed, resolute, yet in some way remote

from this world. Wigmore was looking at him with a look so sad that he

could hardly bear it; he was plainly there, in a suit of old drill, real

and touchable. Yet in an instant Hi saw the thatch of the hut wall

through the man’s body: the body was and then was not, like mist in a

change of wind: Dudley Wigmore was gone.

“By George,” Hi said. “This is Murder Poblacion. I want to escape from

here. That was pretty real. By George, if that wasn’t a dream, I’ve seen

a ghost. I believe that that was Wigmore’s ghost.”

He was not scared by the ghost, if it were a ghost; it had come with too

serious a warning for that. He was thrilled through with excitement; he

was pitted against a murderer in a place twenty miles from friend or

weapon.

“Golly,” he said. “That proves it to my mind. I’ve no further doubt that

that man murdered Wigmore: he did.”

As he turned out of his hammock, he saw that it was almost dawn: the

young men were mustering to a hunt. One of them began to make a

melancholy noise upon a flute, to which the others answered by tapping

upon their blow-pipes. Women were already at work at the cassava presses

or at splitting away the twigs from the branches brought for firing. The

young men moved off into the forest: the young women in a group moved

off to bathe: the babies, dogs, pigeons and parrots came all to life at

once: none but the grown men remained in their hammocks, even they were

smoking.

“I’ll go through that pocket-book by daylight,” Hi said. “Perhaps I

shall be able to make out rather more of it, when I have the light.” He

put his hand to the shelf for the book, and found it gone: it had not

fallen to the floor nor into his hammock: it was gone.

“I say,” Hi thought. “That fellow must have been watching me last night,

to some purpose. That was why he crept to the door, that first time.

When I was asleep, he must have crept in again and bagged it from where

I put it. All right. It’s just as well to know that he is roused. I am

roused, too. But, by Jove, he’ll never let me get to Anselmo, now that

it has come to this.”

He was standing, thinking these thoughts, with a daunted heart, near the

door of his hut, when a sentence floated into his mind as clearly as

though a voice had spoken in his ear. “He will never let you get to

Anselmo,” the sentence came. “Look out for him.”

It came with the distinctness of personality from the depths of his

being to voice the thought matured there. “It is true,” he repeated, “he

will never let me go. I must look out for him. But what am I to do?”

He had no time to think of what he was to do, because at that moment

Letcombe-Bassett appeared: he seemed to be in a much better temper than

hitherto.

“So you’re up,” he said. “Good. There’s nothing like the bally dawn in

these bally tropics: one soon gets into forest habits here: they are the

only ways that keep one alive here. As soon as Chug-chug brings our

chow, we’ll pasea.”

“It’s jolly good of you,” Hi said, “to see me off upon my road.”

“Not a bit,” the man answered. “Out here, an Englishman with another

Englishman, that is the least one could do.”

Hi thought that to see a man off the premises is perhaps the least that

one can do: he also thought that the man’s mood had strangely changed

for the better since the night before. Then he had been savage at the

thought of showing the way: now he was eager to show it. It occurred to

him that there might be a reason for this change, and that this reason,

coming from an unpleasant nature, might be an unpleasant one.

“I suppose I might reach the road before to-night?” Hi said.

“Reach what road?”

“The road to Santa Barbara?”

“Oh, that road,” the man said. “I’m not so sure.”

“But you said it was only twenty miles.”

“Did I? Hell. Well, it’s more than that. But I suppose you might reach

it. Yes, if you’re not lamed or crocked or ill you ought to reach it.”

“And can you let me take some food and water?”

“You’d better not take those here: you’ll only have to lug them along.

No. We’ll stop at another settlement, some miles from here, and get a

swag and a gooby for you there. Then you won’t have so much to carry.

But here is Chug-chug with the chow. I always have chocolate,

Spanish-fashion here, for breakfast. A man has to be pretty hard up to

drink maté in cold blood. I’d as soon drink swipes at a wedding.”

After breakfast, the man suggested that they should start. He had his

sporting rifle under his arm and his bandolier buckled to him. Hi kept

his eyes from resting on the letters D. W. so plainly stamped upon them.

He had taken pains to avoid any reference to D. W. He wondered, as they

set out, whether he would not come to know the contents of that rifle

during the course of the morning. He wondered whether that was why the

man had dissuaded him from taking food and drink. “Naturally, if I’m

going to be shot,” he thought, “he won’t want to waste food and drink as

well as a cartridge. But am I going to be shot? Does he intend to kill

me? How am I to dodge it, if he does? I can’t refuse to go with him.

That would bring things to a crisis at once. I must go with him, and

look alive and trust to my luck. The worse I expect, the better I shall

find.”

The man led the way out of the village, across the river, where the

Indians were bathing, to a narrow path through a cane-brake. The set of

the path was to the south and west, which Hi knew could not be the

course for Santa Barbara.

“This can’t be the way,” Hi said. “Santa Barbara must be north and east

of this.”

“Of course it is,” the man said. “But this is the way. It swings north

after a bit, but anyway you have to go west first of all, to clear the

marshes. All the mountain water which isn’t soaked up by the trees seeps

out at the foothills and makes marsh. You’d better let me lead you.”

“Lead the way, then,” said Hi. “It’s jolly good of you to trouble.” He

thought that at any rate it was jolly good to have the man with the gun

in front of him. The path was a well-trodden, very narrow Indian track,

running irregularly between walls of high growing canes, which glittered

and rattled. They had hard golden shafts from which pale sheaths, like

corn-husks, peeled. High up, seven feet above his head, their shoots

were bluish or seemed bluish from the sky above; while the sky in the

narrow gash above was greenish from their yellowness. The path curved in

and out, exactly as the leader of the tribe had swerved from snag or

snake long years before, when the Indians had first gone that way. It

was impossible to keep direction after the first few minutes. The most

that Hi could say was that he never headed to the east, because he never

had the sun in his eyes.

“We’ll keep forest habits, going,” the man said. “We’ll not speak on the

trail.”

Hi was much relieved at not having to talk. He watched the man’s back in

front of him, going on and on with the head down. “What is the brute

thinking?” Hi wondered. “How soon he shall turn round and bowl me over?

Or what a neat job he made of Wigmore and how it can be bettered? Or is

he debating whether I’m too much of a kid to bother about? As to that, I

wouldn’t mind betting that he’s made up his mind to do for me. The

question is, when?”

That was the main question; but the other questions were not answered,

they recurred continually, the question, “Will he?” and the other

question, “What can I do to stop him?”

There seemed to be no likely way of stopping him. Hi’s mind was working

very clearly and weighing all likely chances. The man was armed; he was

carrying his rifle at the ready. He was a quick man, probably trained by

years in the forest to wheel and make snapshots suddenly. He was a

strong man, much stronger certainly than Hi. If Hi were to dart in upon

him, to seize the gun, he would certainly settle Hi without trouble;

being stronger, quite as active, much more dangerous, and in better

condition. If Hi were to lag behind a little and then turn and run back,

he would only run to this man’s village, where no one could direct him

to safety, and all would tell which way he had taken. If he were to leap

to the side into the cane-brake, he might be lucky; he might by some

miracle leap into cover which would hide him: far more probably he would

at the first spring land in some thicket which would hold him, like

another Absalom, till his enemy could deal with him. Even if he were not

shot in the first minutes he would still be alone in the bush, lost, not

knowing his whereabouts nor his course. He might wander for days there

without finding a way out.

“What I must do,” he thought, “is to wait, if he’ll let me, till I can

see some real chance of escaping, and then take my chance: the first

that comes: any way of getting away: there’s none at present.

“But why does he lead me all this way? We must be three miles from the

village. If he had only wanted to get rid of me, he could have potted me

long ago and put me on an ant’s nest. Perhaps, after all, he is setting

me on my way to Anselmo or to the road. By Jove, if he is running

straight, I’ll apologise to him. But I’ll bet he isn’t. He’s got

something in his mind and the time for our settlement hasn’t come yet.”

They went on in Indian file through the cane-brake, neither speaking,

with strange thoughts and threats passing from one to the other, till

the cane-brake gave way to a jungle, which arched over the path,

shutting out the sky. They walked in a tunnel of greenness, pierced with

slats of glare, down which flakes of living glitter and colour floated

and soared, or sometimes paused as butterflies. Hi looked for some place

to his right side into which he could dart for safety: no place shewed

there. The man led on without uttering a word.

After half a mile of the tunnel of the jungle, Hi saw in front of him

the glare of a clearing, and at the same moment felt or heard a call

within his mind, to look to his right side. Afterwards he decided that

he heard the call as sound and at the same time felt it within him as

warning. He looked, as the call bade, to his right side, with the sense

that that part of the wood was evil. It looked more than usually black

and joyless, being a thick cover of trees made like stage Druids with

lichens. Yet at the point where he looked there was a space of

mournfulness, in the midst of which, upon a mound from which a foot

protruded, he saw the figure of Dudley Wigmore, as he had appeared at

the hut the night before. The face was sad as it had been the night

before: it had a look of hopeless brooding.

Hi was quite certain that he had seen it: he looked for one second: it

was certainly there: he looked again: it certainly was not there; though

the foot was there, a white man’s foot, in a boot. He looked to his

front instantly, just in time to catch the look of Letcombe-Bassett, who

glanced back at that moment to see what he was looking at.

“We’re nearly there now,” he said.

Hi felt that they were, but answered: “Surely not at the road?”

“No,” the man said, “not at the road, but what we’re coming to.”

“How far have we come?” Hi asked. “Four miles?”

“Call it two and a bit.”

“It seems more, in this forest,” Hi said.

“I’m used to this forest,” the man said. “Do you find it gloomy at all?”

“No,” Hi said. “Not when I can see the sunlight.”

“The last bit is a bit gloomy,” the man said. “It would be a good place

for putting anyone away, if anyone were inclined that way.”

“I suppose it would,” Hi said, becoming very watchful. “I didn’t

consider it in that light. I suppose you always run some risk from

Indians in a forest like this? Or are you too much feared by the

Indians?”

“You never know where you stand with Indians,” the man answered. “But

this is the sort of place they would choose, if they wanted me to pass

over Jordan. And no one would be any the wiser. One would be bones in a

week and green plantation in two: undiscoverable; just like part of the

world.”

He led the way into a space which had been cleared not very long before

by many men working together. Hi knew that Dudley Wigmore had been

murdered by this man at the spot over which they had just passed. That

was Wigmore’s foot sticking from the grave; that was Wigmore’s wraith

dreeing his weird there. How soon was he to be added to Wigmore’s grave

by those hands now playing upon the rifle?

“There now, what do you think of that?” the man asked, nodding ahead.

That was a stone temple carven with gods by some race long since

forgotten. It had been covered by jungle until a few months before: now

by many burnings, hackings and tearings its face had been cleared and

its doorway laid open.

“What do you think of that?” the man repeated.

“I suppose it is one of these Indian temples,” Hi said.

“Yes,” the man said, “one that hasn’t been touched. Do you know anything

about these places?”

“No,” Hi said, “I’m afraid I don’t.”

“What do you think of it?”

“It’s very grand.” Indeed it was very grand, being in two orders of

colossal architecture, carven to the cornice with grotesques of gods. It

seemed to Hi to be five cricket pitches long. It was built with a tough

stone facing over brick. Wherever trees had broken the facing, the brick

core was laid bare: they were small bricks laid in a mortar like melted

flint spread very thin. The bricks were rose-red and seemingly as tough

as stone. All the roof of this temple was covered with trees, shrubs,

plants and flowers, beautiful exceedingly. It occurred to Hi that this

was the sort of place for which Dudley Wigmore may have come

prospecting.

“I’ve had the men at work at this one for some time now,” the man said.

“I’m getting it a bit clear now. Where do you suppose the treasure would

be?”

“I suppose the Spaniards got all the treasure at the conquest.”

“Not from this one: they never came near this one.”

“I’ll bet they did,” Hi said.

“Well, I know they didn’t,” the man said. “This place was lost in the

jungle centuries before the Spaniards came. I can prove it: look here.”

He led Hi to the temple door, in front of which a great heart tree had

once grown. This tree had been sawn through and removed: the near-by

ground was all burnt and scattered with its wreck.

“There’s the proof,” the man said, “that tree was blocking the main door

long before the Spaniards landed. Count the rings in the stump.”

“That’s true,” Hi said, glancing at the countless rings. “But don’t

these tropical trees put on more than one ring in a year?”

“No, they don’t,” the man said. “Whereabouts inside do you suppose the

treasure is?”

“I suppose under the altar, wherever that would be. But the people would

have taken it with them when they went from here.”

“They didn’t go from here.”

Hi waited: he knew that the man wanted his help in some way in this

treasure-hunt. He would not ask any question which might bring in or

suggest Wigmore. He was certain that Wigmore had discovered this place

and had been murdered because of it. Any knowledge which the man had was

Wigmore’s.

“It will be hard work,” Hi said, “to get inside this place.”

“Nothing like the work of getting to it. The roof hasn’t fallen.”

“I’ll be surprised if it hasn’t,” Hi said, “with the weight of the trees

growing on it.”

“The roof can’t fall,” the man said. “These builders couldn’t vault a

roof. That is why this place is so narrow. The roof is of slabs of stone

laid upon balks of stone. It’s as strong as a hill. It is all enormous

walls, with narrow rooms inside them. There’s a certain amount of mess

inside, of course: these tropics sprout like sewage, but it can be

easily cleared: that is, fairly easily.”

“It would be interesting work,” Hi said, “to get inside and see what

it’s like.”

“Interesting? I believe you,” the man said. “This place was built by the

Quetzals, whoever they may have been. They had a picture writing of

sorts and kept a history in it. They’ve got rolls of their history in

Santa Barb’; people have been deciphering it. Nothing much is known of

them yet, for they were gone before the Spaniards came. Now I’ve reason

to believe that this place is the great temple of the Quetzals; the

Temple of the sun, or the Temple of Gold. It was a legend when the

Spaniards came, as I expect you know: they heard of it: they often

looked for it, but they never found it; the forest fever saw to that.

Except by a sort of miracle no one could have found it. The Quetzals

were a great race: you’ll see their cities up in Melchior; but the fever

came in and wiped them out. I believe that this old god-shop is bung

full of gold.”

“What gold?” Hi asked.

“Gold of offerings.”

“That would be exciting.”

“The Sacramento would be a fool to it.”

“Do you know that they offered gold?”

“They offered all the gold they found, so the histories say: thousands

of pounds for hundreds of years: believe some of what you see and a

tenth of what you hear: it is still likely that they brought a lot of

gold here, and here it is still.”

“That will be a find.”

“Well, what do you say to giving me a hand to get it? I’ve cleared this

space by the help of the Indians, but I’m not going to have these

Indians looking for the gold: not likely. That is the white man’s perk:

none of my brown brothers in this for me: no fear: the hunting parties

would go wearing gold till the Barboes learned of it: news soon spreads

in this forest. Then we should have the Government in. As you can see,

it’s more than a one man’s job in there, but I reckon that two could

shift the stuff and find the altar. And we’d need two to get the gold

melted down and into Santa Barb’. They buy it there, pesos for weight,

at the Assay Office. I tell you, the Ballarat field is just footle to

it. This is Tom Tiddler’s ground, that the kids play.”

“It sounds pretty thrilling,” Hi said.

“Thrilling? I guess it is thrilling: p.d. thrilling.”

“I’m awfully keen on getting to Anselmo first,” Hi said.

“I know you are,” the man said, “I know you are. But what is Anselmo

beside what I offer you here? We should shift our traps to here for a

couple of weeks, and after that what would Anselmo be? Why, you would be

able to buy Anselmo: buy it ten times over and all that’s in it: miss

and mister. And I’d be a lord at home and have a bloody deer-park.”

“Yes, I know,” Hi said. “I say, it sounds exciting. But have you any

picks and crow-bars?”

“Yes, in a stone trough there: out of the way of the ants.”

“I suppose we could get done in a couple of weeks?”

“We’ll have to, for the sooner we lift it the better. Not that anyone

will come.”

“You mean that the fever will come down?”

“No, but these Aracuis go talking: and news spreads. Shall we start,

then? What do you say? Off saddle and at it?”

“I’d like to, frightfully,” Hi said.

“Well, here you are then,” the man said. “I’ll give you a third share in

anything we find: very likely a million pounds.”

“I say, that’s generous. But before we start work,” Hi said, “I’d like

frightfully just to walk along the building and look at it, from close

to. I’ve never seen one of these places before.”

“Look your bellyful,” the man said. “I hoped you’d see sense when it

came to the point. I’ll get the picks along.”

The man kept his eyes upon Hi, who took a pace back to consider the

front of the building. He did not see the temple: it was all a blur of

angry gods topped by a foam of flowers and the spears of palms in a

glare of light as red as blood. He knew that the man was watching him:

he knew that the man had killed Wigmore so that he might be alone in

possession. The facts of the murder were all bright in his brain.

Wigmore, the scholar, had found the place and cleared it. Then this man,

the wanderer and waster, had come thither, by some Fate or chance, and

had murdered Wigmore. Now that he himself had come thither, the man

wished him to help in the finding and the raising of the treasure. If he

refused, he would have a bullet in his brain within ten seconds. If he

accepted, he would have a week’s or a fortnight’s toil: then the bullet.

If he tried to escape, what hope had he, save to wander in the fever

forest in the fever season till he died miserably or was lost in the

marsh?

“We’ll start in that door where the tree was,” the man said. “It may not

have been the main entrance, but the stone is all worn away there by

people’s feet: it is a used entrance.”