SORTIE
Night and morning we got little rest. We ate another meal from our
slender store; but it was a fearful thing to see how few meals
remained; and though in part we satisfied our hunger, our thirst
seemed more unendurable than ever.
"Eat light and belt tight," O'Hara muttered. "Last night they was
watching like cats at a rat-hole. To-night surely they'll not be so
eager. It'll be to-night that we can make our dash to the river."
Once more the sun was shining on the green, open space around the
hut. A huge butterfly, blazing with gaudy tropical colors, fluttered
out from some nook among the creepers where it had been hidden, and
on slow wings sailed almost up to us, loitered a moment beside a
blue flower, and again took flight through the still air to the
opposite forest wall.
"If Neil Gleazen had as much brains under his hair as he has hair to
cover his head," Matterson softly remarked, "we'd have brought
enough food so that we'd not have to go hungry."
"Food!" Gleazen roared. "Food, is it? You eat like a hog, you
glutton. And who was to know that Bull would not have a house full
of food to feast us on? Who was to know that Bull would be dead?"
At that a silence fell upon us.
As usual, though we had agreed to a truce between our two parties,
Gleazen, Matterson, and O'Hara sat on one side of the room, the side
where the skeleton and the bag of pebbles lay, and Arnold, Abe and
I sat on the other, with poor Uncle Seth wandering about at will
between us.
There was that in my uncle's manner which I could not understand;
and as I watched him, Abe Guptil touched my elbow.
"Something queer ails Seth Upham," he whispered.
"I know it," I replied.
"I don't like to see him act that way."
"Nor I."
Abe regarded me thoughtfully. "Now ain't it queer how things turn
out?" he whispered. "I mind the day you come to my house and told me
I'd got to flit. It was a bitter day for me, Joe, and yet do you
know, I'd kind o' like to be back there, even if it was all to go
through again. I swear, though, I'd never sail again with Mr.
Gleazen."
There was something so ingenuous in Abe's way of saying that he
wished he had never come, that I smiled; but it touched me to
remember all that Abe and I had faced together; and Abe himself,
with keen Yankee shrewdness, added in an undertone, "It's all very
well for O'Hara to talk of making our break to-night. I'm thinking,
Joe, it is upon us a storm will break before we get free and clear
of this camp."
As the sun rose higher and higher, the sunlight steadily grew
warmer. The air shimmered with heat, and the house itself became as
hot, it seemed, as an oven over a charcoal fire. Sweat streamed from
our faces and, having had no water now for nearly twenty-four hours,
we suffered agonies of thirst.
Never were men in a more utterly tantalizing predicament. Whether or
not it was cooler outside the hut than within, it surely could have
been no hotter; and from the door straight down the hill to the
spring there led a broad, open path. The spring was only a short
distance away, and there was, so far as we could see, not a living
creature between us and cold water in abundance. Hour after hour the
green, deep grass around it mocked us. Yet in the wattled hut, under
the thatched roof, we were prisoners.
Three arrows, shot by we knew not whom, every one of them now in our
own hands, were the only warnings that we had received; but not a
man of us dared disobey the message that those three arrows had
brought.
The day wore on, through the long and dreary watches of the morning,
through the tortures of high noon, and through the less harsh
afternoon hours. We ate another of our few remaining meals and
watched the sun set and the darkness come swiftly. The shadows,
growing longer and longer, reached out across the clearing to the
trees on the opposite side; and suddenly, darkly, swept up the
eastern wall of the forest. As the light vanished, night enfolded
us. The stars that flashed into the sky only intensified the utter
blackness of the woods.
O'Hara uneasily stirred and stretched himself in the darkness like a
dog.
"Now, lads," he whispered, "now's the time to gather things
together. At two in the morning we'll run for it. Then's the hour
they'll be sleeping like so many black pigs."
Gleazen moved and groaned,--it was almost the first time that he had
yielded in the least to the pain of his wound.
"Can you travel by yourself, Neil?" Matterson asked. "Or shall I
carry you on my back?"
When it came to me that the question was no joke, that Matterson
actually meant it, I could not keep from staring at him in
amazement. He was a tremendous man, but there was something honestly
heroic in his offering to carry Cornelius Gleazen's weight back over
all those miles.
Gleazen smiled and shook his head. "Thanks, Mat," he replied, "but
I'll make out to scramble along."
The word "scramble," it seemed, caught Uncle Seth's attention, and
with a curt nod, he said, "Yes, scramble them; use them any way but
boiled. We can't sell cracked eggs in the store, but they're
perfectly good to use at home."
We all looked in amazement, and Gleazen, in spite of his pain,
hoarsely laughed.
"Why, Seth," he cried, "are you gone crazy?"
My uncle stared blankly at him and continued to pace the room.
In the silence that ensued, Gleazen's words seemed to echo and
reëcho; though they were spoken quietly, even in jest, their
significance was truly terrible.
"Gentlemen," said Arnold Lamont in a very low voice, "Seth Upham, I
fear, is not well. We must not let him stand guard. _We cannot trust
him!_"
"Name of heaven!" whispered Matterson, "the man's right. Upham is
turning queer."
As I watched my uncle, my mother's only brother, the last of all my
kin, a choking rose in my throat. He did not see me at all. He saw
none of us. In mind and spirit he was thousands of miles away from
us. I started toward him, but when his eyes met mine dully and with
no indication that he recognized me, I swallowed hard and turned
back.
Never was a night so long and ghastly! With all prepared for our
dash to the river, with Uncle Seth wandering back and forth, and
with the rest of us divided into three watches of two each, that
overlapped by an hour, so that four men were always on guard, we
watched and waited until midnight passed and the morning hours came.
When the moon was at the zenith, O'Hara woke Matterson, and we
gathered by the packs, which were made up and ready.
"Poor Bull!" said O'Hara, brushing his hand across his eyes. "Sure,
and I hate to leave him thus. If ever man deserved a decent burial,
it's him."
"If men got what they deserved," Gleazen briefly retorted, "Bull
would never have drove the ship on the island, and we'd never have
had to divide up this here find which Bull dug up for us, and Bull
would never have had to stand by the hill to get himself killed, in
the first place."
Each man had tied up his own belongings to suit himself, and had put
in his pocket his share of what little food was left. The different
packs stood in the middle of the hut, but it was noticeable that,
although each man was nearest his own, Matterson was eyeing
Gleazen's with a show of keener interest.
"Let me carry your bundle, Neil, you with a hole in your leg," he
said.
"No," Gleazen replied.
"I'll never notice the weight of it."
"Keep your hand off, Molly. I'll carry my own bundle."
"As you please."
Matterson turned away and stepped to one side.
All this I noticed, at first, mainly, if the truth be known, because
I saw how closely Arnold Lamont was noticing it, but later because
the manner of the two men convinced me that Gleazen's pack held the
bag that the others were so carefully guarding.
Now that our food was almost gone, there remained so very little
baggage of any kind for us to carry, that there was no good reason
that I could see for not putting our odds and ends of clothing and
ammunition into, say, two convenient bundles, at which we could take
turns during our forced march to the river, or, indeed, for not
abandoning the mere baggage altogether. But Gleazen, Matterson, and
O'Hara had planned otherwise. Having allotted to each of us his
share of the food that remained, and an equal seventh of our various
common possessions, they kept three of the muskets themselves, and
gave the fourth to poor Seth Upham, which seemed to me so mad an act
that I was on the point of questioning its wisdom, when Arnold
caught my eye and signaled me to be still.
Gathering in the door of the hut, we looked out into the silent,
moonlit glade that led down the hill and through the valley toward
the distant river.
"Are we all ready, lads?" Matterson asked in his light voice.
"Push on, Molly, push on," Gleazen replied.
Shouldering his pack, Matterson stepped out into the moonlight.
"Now, then," he whispered,--for although we were confident that no
enemy within earshot was then awake (it had not been hard for O'Hara
to persuade us to his own way of thinking), a spell of silence and
secrecy was upon us,--"it's straight for the river, lads, and the
devil take the hindermost. If you're too lame to travel, Neil, so
help me, I'll carry you."
"Push on!" Gleazen returned hoarsely. "Push on to the spring. After
that we'll talk if you wish."
"We're going home," I thought. Home, indeed! It seemed that at last
we had turned the corner; that at last we had passed the height of
land and were on the point of racing down the long slope; that at
last our troubles were over and done with. A score of figures to
express it leaped into my mind. And first of all, best of all, at
last we were to get water!
Arnold said sharply, "Come, Abe; come, Joe; step along."
Bending low, Matterson led the way, I followed close at his heels,
and the others came in single file behind me. Seven dark figures,
silently slipping from shadow to shadow, we left behind us the
hut,--we believed forever!--and headed straight down the hill to the
spring; for more than anything else we longed to plunge our faces
into cold water and drink until we had quenched our burning thirst.
Down the hill to the spring we went, slipping along in single file.
All night and all day, without a word, we had endured agony; for it
was by showing no sign of life whatever to those who were guarding
the hut from the forest that we hoped so to lull their watchfulness
that we could escape them just after midnight. And now we were eager
almost beyond words for that water which we had so vividly imagined.
As we darted into the tall grass, it seemed so completely assured
that I swung my pack from my shoulder and broke into a quick trot
after Matterson, whose long, swift strides, as he straightened up,
had carried him on ahead of me.
If a thousand people read this tale, not one of them, probably, will
know the full meaning of the word thirst; not one will understand
what water had come by then to mean to me.
I ran--I tried to run faster--faster! But as I dragged my pack
along, bumping at my knees, I was amazed to see Matterson stop. He
threw his musket to his shoulder. The hollow boom of it went rolling
off through the woodland and echoed slowly away into silence among
the mighty trees. Then he threw his hands up, and with a cry fell
into the grass, and lay so still that I could not tell where he had
fallen.
By the flash of his musket I and those behind me had for an instant
seen by the spring a grotesque figure dressed in skins and rags, and
painted with white rings and bars. When the flash died away, we
could see nothing, not even the waving grasses and the black trees
against the sky, because momentarily the sudden glare had blinded
us.
As if impelled by another will than mine, I drew back step by step
until I was standing shoulder to shoulder with the others. Whatever
quarrels we had had among ourselves were for the time forgotten.
"Now, by heaven," Gleazen gasped, "it's back to the hut for all of
us!"
"But Neil--now, Neil, sure now we can't run away and leave old
Molly," O'Hara cried.
"Leave him?" Gleazen roared. "We've got to leave him! Where is he?
Tell me if you can! Go find him if you like! Hark! See!"
With a thin, windy whistle a spear came flying out of the night and
passed just over Gleazen's shoulder and his pack. Another with a
soft _chug_ struck into the ground at my feet; then, my eyes having
once more become accustomed to the moonlight, I saw sneaking into
the clearing a score of dark, slinking figures.
"They're coming!" I cried. "They're cutting us off! Quick! Quick!"
In panic I started back to the hut, with the others at my heels.
When they saw the figures that I had seen, Gleazen and O'Hara both
fired their muskets, whereupon the figures disappeared and we,
deafened by the tremendous reports and blinded again by the bright
flashes, ran back as hard as we could go to the hut that so short a
time since we had eagerly abandoned; and with Gleazen limping in the
rear, fairly threw ourselves across the threshold.
Whether our gunfire had done any real damage, we gravely doubted;
and now we were both a man and a weapon short. But bitterest of all,
and by far the most discouraging, was our intense thirst.
"Ah, the black devils," O'Hara muttered between grinding teeth.
"Sure, and they planned all that--planned to let us get the water
almost between our lips and then drive us back here. The black
cowards, they dare not meet us man to man, though they are forty to
our one."
It was significant that no one spoke of Matterson. The silence as
regarded his name marked a certain fatalism, which now possessed
us--something akin to despair, yet not so ignoble as despair;
something akin to resolution, yet not so praiseworthy as resolution.
There seemed, indeed, nothing to say about him. Bull was dead, I
thought, and Matterson was dead; and even if the blacks dared not
rush upon us and take the hut by storm, they would soon kill us by
thirst. We had done our best; if worst came to worst, we would die
with our boots on.
Meanwhile queer low cries out in the forest were rising little by
little to shrill yells and hoots and cat-calls. If we could judge by
the sounds, there were hundreds of blacks, if not thousands.
"O Bull! You poor, deluded fool!" O'Hara cried. "Now why--why--_why_
did he go and build the house on a king's grave?"
Why indeed?
It was a fearful thing to hear those cries and yells; yet, although
we watched from door and windows a long while, we did not actually
see any further sign of danger, until Arnold Lamont, who was
guarding the door, said in a subdued voice, "Look--down the
hill--half-way down. Something has moved twice."
As we gathered behind him, he turned and with a quick gesture said,
"Do not leave the windows. Who knows what trick they may try upon
us?"
My uncle, who seemed for the moment to comprehend all that was going
forward, and Abe Guptil and Gleazen, went back to the windows,
although it was evident enough that their minds were not so much on
their own duty as on whatever it was that had caught Arnold's
attention.
"See!" said Arnold.
There was nothing down there now that seemed not to belong by nature
to the place, and I surmised that Arnold had seen only some small
animal. But that a black object, appearing and disappearing, had
revealed more to the others than to me, I immediately apprehended.
"It was fifty feet farther down the hill when I first distinguished
it," said Arnold.
O'Hara went over to my uncle and I heard him say, "Let me take your
gun, since it's loaded, Mr. Upham, and thank you kindly."
Returning, he sat down in the door beside Arnold, who had begun
meanwhile to load the empty musket that O'Hara had carelessly laid
aside. When the thing, whatever it was, moved again, O'Hara raised
the gun to his shoulder.
"Don't shoot!" Arnold whispered.
"And why not?"
The thing moved once more.
"Will ye look, now! It's come ten feet in this direction," O'Hara
whispered.
Now Arnold raised his own musket.
Again we saw the thing, but so briefly that neither Arnold nor
O'Hara had time to fire.
Suddenly O'Hara laid his hand on Arnold's shoulder and repeated
Arnold's own words:--
"Don't shoot."
"This time," Arnold whispered, "I shall shoot."
"Wait a bit, wait a bit!" O'Hara gently pressed down the muzzle of
the gun.
Meanwhile, you must understand, the yelling and hooting had first
grown loud and near, then had drawn slowly farther away. It was not
easy to let that creature, be it animal or human, come crawling up
the hill in the full light of the moon. As the cries died in the
distance, the thing moved faster and with less concealment, and I
fiercely whispered, "Shoot, Arnold, shoot!"
"Wait," he replied and lifted a restraining hand.
At the moment I could not understand why he did not do as I said;
but as the thing came out into open ground, the same thought that
had caused the two to hold their fire occurred likewise to me; and
now we saw that we were right.
The thing crawling up the hill was a man, and when the man came into
the open clearing directly in front of our camp, we saw that it was
Matterson.
Without a word, followed closely by O'Hara, who laid his gun on the
threshold, I leaped out past Arnold and ran down to Matterson and
helped him to his feet and led him groaning up to the hut.
[Illustration]
VI
FOR OUR VERY LIVES
[Illustration]