THE MYSTERY INCREASES.
An immediate search was resolved upon. Lots were cast for the one
who was to remain behind to guard our property, and the duty fell
upon me.
Armed with the boat stretchers, or with clubs which they had
carefully selected and cut from the trees, Hislop departed with all
my companions; and after proceeding over the grassy plain, they soon
disappeared in the woods that covered all the lower slope of the
great mountain.
I cannot describe the sensations of loneliness that came over me on
finding myself for the first time single, alone, and left entirely to
my own reflections and resources.
The carpenter's hatchet was my only weapon; and armed with it I sat
on a grassy slope mid-way between the hut and sea, gazing anxiously
inland, listening for any passing sound; but all remained still save
the chafing of the waves on one hand, and the loud buzz of tropical
insect life in the thickets or among the long grass on the other.
What, I asked myself, if savages were actually lurking in the woods,
and on seeing that all my companions were gone, they should come
tumultuously down upon the hut and boat? I would at once become
their victim.
Or what would be my fate if my friends fell into an ambush, or
perished in detail?
Could any human beings be lurking in the two adjacent isles? was my
next surmise.
We had never seen any thing alive on them--not even wild goats or
boars; and if there were other inhabitants, the steepness of the
rocks, which rose sheer from the water, and the fury of the surf that
rolled between, forbade any attempt to cross.
So in such painful surmises, and in keen watching, I passed the most
of the day alone.
In the afternoon, one by one, all my shipmates returned to our little
headquarters on the shore, weary and jaded--torn by briars and
brambles in the thickets--and all had the same tale to tell. They
had seen and heard of nothing save wild boars, wild goats, and
sea-birds.
Hislop now directed that one of our number should guard the hut by
night, and a second the boat, with orders to hail each other in this
fashion:
"Boat, ahoy!"
"Hut, ahoy!"
This was to insure a watchful look-out; but with all these
precautions, wise and necessary though they were, our feeling of
security, and even of reliance on each other, was gone for the time.
As these occurrences excited the imagination of our companions, some
of those who watched the hut and boat by night, asserted that when
all our party, save themselves, were safely lodged and asleep,
something like the figure of a very tall man had appeared for an
instant on the bluffs that overhung the sea, between them and the
moonlight.
But of this mysterious personage, if such existed anywhere, except in
the overstrained imagination of a lonely midnight watcher, we could
discover no trace during day.
One night, when Francis Probart and Ned Carlton were on watch, a
sound like the distant report of a pistol was heard by them, and at
the same instant, both saw a flock of petrels and storm-finches rise
up in the moonlight from the face of a bluff, where they revolved
above the breakers, like a swarm of gnats in a sunbeam.
So if Ned and the carpenter were mistaken in the sound, the birds
were also roused and alarmed.
Marc Hislop ridiculed their story, but he was considerably
bewildered, and so were we all when two days after, a seaman named
Hugh Chute, when rambling in the woods, found one of our goats, which
we knew by the fragment of rope still tied round its neck, lying
dead, with a _bullet_ in its throat!
He brought it to the hut, where the wound was cut open, and the
bullet extracted. It was small, and had evidently been fired from a
pistol; this event caused the most exciting speculations, amid which
the carcass was hastily buried, as not one of us would eat of it.
What or who could this person be? were the prevailing questions; and
what was his reason for concealing himself from us in the thick woods
of the island?
In the thorough exploration of the latter, caused by these episodes,
our people fortunately discovered a fine grove of banana trees, and
returned laden with their yellow and luscious fruit.
At the same time Tattooed Tom found some letters "in a foreign
lingo," as he said, cut on the face of a steep rock, overhanging the
river, which formed the cascade at the beach. To this rock he
conducted Hislop and me next day, and after tearing aside some masses
of creepers and scraping off a rich coating of moss, we found this
old legend on the smoothed face of the basalt:
EL NOBLE CABALLERO, D. ALPHONSO DE ALBUQUERQUE;
A. D. 1506.
RVGVEN A DIOS FOR EL.
"The year of the discovery of the island!" said Hislop.
"Have other eyes ever seen this inscription since?" added I.
"It is very doubtful. This Alphonso also discovered the Albuquerque
Kays, as he named the three islets which lie off the Mosquito shore
in the Caribbean Sea."
Hislop copied the inscription into his notebook, and just as we
turned to leave the spot, a large stone about sixty pounds in weight,
came crashing down the cliff, hurled apparently from its summit, and
if so, by no inexpert hand, for it struck the rock of the legend
within a foot of where Hislop stood, and was shivered into a hundred
pieces, covering him over with dust.
Had it struck him instead, he had been slain and mangled on the spot.
Had a fragment broken any of his limbs, in how miserable a plight
would he have been on that desolate island, without proper shelter or
surgical aid!
Looking up to the summit of the cliff, which was about a hundred and
fifty feet in height, I perceived among the dense fringe of wild
gourds, shrubs, leaves, and plantain trees, then waving in the wind,
something like a human face, that, after peering over at us, was
suddenly withdrawn.
"That stone was never dislodged either by goats or by accident," said
Hislop; "there is not a vestige of clay upon the fragments--besides,
all the face of the cliff is smooth and solid rock!"
"And it is the only place we did not overhaul yesterday, master
Hislop," said Tom Lambourne.
"Then _there_ must be the thief of our biscuits--of our goats----"
"Of our stun'sail boom and my old guernsey. Let us have all hands
turned up for a hunt again," exclaimed Tom.
I now mentioned what I had seen.
"A man!--do you think it was a man's head?"
"I cannot be certain, Hislop," said I; "it seemed a face of some
kind, and a very hairy one too."
"It might be an old pumpkin," suggested Tom, in his matter-of-fact
way.
"Or a goat--at all events, it could not have been a baboon?" said I.
"No, no; there is no such animal hereabout, master Rodney," replied
Tom.
"Man or monkey, goat or devil, we'll overhaul the place this very
afternoon." exclaimed Hislop, with increasing energy and anger; "but
first we shall return with all expedition to the hut."