CHAPTER XXII--MR. FORSYTH AND I BECOME BETTER ACQUAINTED
Forsyth got to his feet, and to my horror, immediately awakened Amos.Then was I certain that my last hour was at hand. I never thought for amoment that protection would come to me from a quarter whence I had noreason to expect it.
I had always suspected Amos to be a kind of madman; and that greymorning in the woods I was, for the first time, convinced of it. Hebehaved like no sane man, but cursed and raved and stamped upon theground, upon which at last he flung himself writhing as if in pain.
He had been both foiled and fooled, and recognised it, too. Monthsbefore, he had left me in the woods to die, and now beheld me as aliveas ever, and still standing betwixt him and the goal that he would gain.Twice, it appeared, had he lost possession of the map--or that part ofit which was of the greatest value to him--and on both occasions it wasthrough me that he had failed. Besides that, he had taken me for aghost, an apparition; he had fallen down upon his knees before me; andhad I had the heart in cold blood to plunge my sword into the half nakedand defenceless body of a living man, Amos Baverstock would now havebeen as dead as the Spanish warrior himself.
Make no mistake in thinking that he felt a shade of gratitude for that.It was bitter disappointment and blind, livid fury that mastered whatsanity was his. He rolled in his wrath here and there about the ground,biting the withered leaves and the dead sticks, like the mad dog he was.
Then he got to his feet and swore that he would kill me, and this timethere would be no muddling in connection with a matter so inordinatelysimple. For this dreadful purpose he took into his hands a longhunting-knife, and with this he came toward me. And as he did so, Ilooked over his shoulder, and saw in the midst of the thickets thegleaming barrel of a rifle.
I knew then for certain that I was not to die, and smiled into the evilface of Amos. John Bannister himself was near at hand, my guardian andmy friend. Had Amos taken another step, or raised his hand to strike, Iknow he would have dropped stone-dead upon the spot; for Bannister, atsuch a moment, would have counted his own life as nothing. But now Icome to the strangest part of all my story: it was Mr. Gilbert Forsythwho intervened.
"You cannot do this," he drawled.
He had stepped between us. Without violence, almost politely, with anarm extended, he pushed Amos aside.
"Why not?" gasped Baverstock, gaping at the other.
"Mainly, my good friend," answered Forsyth, "because it will profit younothing. But there are other reasons. In the first place, last nighthe might have killed you, and did no such thing. Secondly, I am alreadydisposed to admire this youth, and to think that it would have been thebetter for us had he been upon our side from the beginning. Thirdly, tokill him as you propose would be a foul and dirty business, such as Irefuse to countenance."
Amos turned upon him like a wild beast.
"You!" he cried. "Who are you to dictate terms to me? Who brought youhere?"
"I brought myself," said Forsyth, very calmly, "and I brought you andTrust as well; for money makes the world go round, and without my worthybanker you were still kicking your heels in England. So the less youspeak of that the better."
I never saw a man more self-possessed; and, on the other hand, I neversaw one more livid with rage than Amos. On the instant, forgetting me,he turned the full current of his wrath upon Mr. Forsyth.
It would be irksome to repeat, word for word, the altercation that tookplace between them; for they fought with words and argued for many hoursthat morning. And whilst this was happening, now and again I shot aglance toward the thickets, where I had seen the barrel of the rifle Iwas sure belonged to Bannister. But I saw no further sign of him, andheard no sound. I did not know, therefore, whether he was still athand; for as yet I had no experience of his great skill as a woodsman.I did not know that, in spite of his bulk, he could move in theundergrowth as silently as a snake, and when he struck, he did so withthe suddenness with which the jaguar springs upon his prey.
For nearly all that morning Forsyth and Amos wrangled, the one to saveme, and the other to do murder--the one, quiet and calm; the other,raving mad.
It was a question, I suppose, of will-power only; and Forsyth conqueredin the end. Amos, I could see, was utterly exhausted. The fire withinhim had consumed the better part of his vitality and the violence of hisnature. He was at last reduced to utter speechlessness. He stoodbefore us, panting, his shallow chest heaving greatly like a man who hasrun a race. He could not stand steadily upon his feet, but swayedabout, from one side to the other. I observed, also, a strangedifference in his eyes. They were no longer glistening and pig-like;they were just the wild, staring eyes of a lunatic. And, sure enough, alunatic he was.
He seated himself upon the trunk of a fallen tree, and there he sat formany minutes, shivering as if from cold. At last he turned and spoke ina weak voice--quite unlike his own--to Joshua Trust.
"Get me water, you dog," he ordered, "and be quick about it."
Trust went to a stream that was not far away; and even as the manentered the thickets, I thought that I heard something move beneath thetrees, a little to his right.
He came back with the water, and Amos drained it at a gulp.
"I would know this," said Trust, standing before them both with foldedarms. "Who's master now? Who takes the bridge? Whose orders am Iexpected to obey?"
"That's a matter for yourself to settle," answered Mr. Forsyth. "Herewe are, in the midst of this almighty wilderness; and if we don't holdtogether, as like as not we die. For myself, I am not one who, once hehas decided on a certain course of action, is easily turned aside. Ihave come this distance to behold the Greater Treasure, and I do not goback again until my quest is ended."
At that, Amos brightened up in a manner truly wonderful. The verythought of gold was to him a kind of tonic. He got again upon his feet.
"Why, there you speak some sense!" he cried. "I am the last man in theworld to go back upon my friends. But we can do nothing without themap."
"Leave that to me," said Forsyth; "and, sooner or later, I will find it.A little subtlety and sense may very well succeed where cold-bloodedmurder must have failed."
And thereupon Forsyth turned to me and, taking me by both shoulders,held me at arm's length.
"Dick Hannibal," said he--for he had a singular sense of humour, quitehis own--"I would have you, as you love me, and are greatly in my debt,tell us the whole truth; for I am convinced in my mind that you know allthere is to know."
I shook my head. I was resolved to be as stubborn as before. Andbesides, I had every reason now to think that John Bannister washovering on the outskirts of the camp, and might at any moment hasten tomy aid.
Forsyth waited for some minutes. Then he shrugged his shoulders.
"I see," said he, "that neither threats nor violence will be of muchavail. You may think differently, however, when I prove to you that Iam neither such a fool, nor yet so soft of heart, as you appear to thinkme.
"We find you in the Tomb," he went on, in his slow, deliberate voice,"where we believe the map to have been hidden. You knew, therefore,that it was there; and, therefore, also, you have fallen in with Rushby.Very well, then, we all go back to Rushby; and what is more, we startwithout delay. We know where we left him, and we know that he cannotescape. The question, so far as I can see, presents no difficulty atall."
He appeared so confident that I was considerably alarmed, and notwithout some reason, for I knew that I had left William Rushby inpossession of the map. Yet, Forsyth himself could never have knownthis. He had, however, some definite plan at the back of his mind, andappeared so cock-sure of himself that I wished more than ever that I hadsome one with whom I might take counsel.
I had no chance that day to attempt to satisfy my curiosity; for, sosoon as we had eaten a meal, we packed up what little equipment Amos hadbrought with him from the ravine, and set forward on our march towardsthe west. I calculated that it would not take u
s more than two days toreach the other side of the Wood; for we followed the trail by whichAmos and the others had come, and it was seldom necessary for him, wholed the little column, to make use of either axe or bill-hook.
On the first night, I had the privilege of being enlightened by Mr.Forsyth, who now appeared to have taken me to some extent into hisheart--though upon that long march across the Great Forest, when we hadtravelled in one another's company for many months, he had never deignedto speak to me on more than one or two occasions.
Amos, on the other hand, gave me as wide a berth as possible, and satregarding me with scowls which--to tell the truth--I could not fail tosee I shared with Mr. Forsyth. Indeed, I trusted Baverstock so littlethat, when sheer fatigue compelled me to fall asleep, I did so in thefirm conviction that the man might plunge a knife into my heart at anymoment. He was sullen and morose, addressing himself only to Trust andthe Spaniard, Vasco, and then never without an oath, and in the voice ofone who gives orders to a dog.
But the case was very different with Mr. Forsyth, whose demeanour wasscrupulously polite.
"I would delight to hear your story from the first," he said to me; "forI cannot believe that you have arrived so far as this without some veryexceptional adventures."
"I did not know," said I, "that my affairs meant anything to you."
"On the contrary, you interest me vastly," he replied. "Consider, hadit not been for my humble self, you had now been lying with your throatcut beside the open grave--or, perhaps, we might have buried you, withsome pretence of decent feelings."
And so I told him as much as I thought it would do him no harm tohear--of how I had been found by the wild men of the woods, and hadjourneyed by myself to Cahazaxa's Temple. Thence, I told him, I hadfound my way to the Wood of the Red Fish, where I had had the goodfortune to fall in with William Rushby. But I told him nothing ofAtupo, the Peruvian priest, or of the map which I myself had found by sosingular a chance, or of the Treasure that my living eyes had lookedupon.
"And this is all your story?" he asked.
I thought it best not to answer him; but I saw by the sly, half-amusedexpression upon his face that he knew well enough that I would keep himhalf in the dark.
He said nothing for a long time. And then quite suddenly, he slapped ahand upon a knee.
"Upon my life and soul," he cried, "you are a lad of spirit, such as Imyself once was, until I learned that in this world it is best to assumea pose! Let me explain to you. There are certain commodities upon theearth that all men are ever after, and money is the first of these. Weare, therefore, all enemies of one another; we scramble in the samegutter--to such heights has civilisation attained. Be set down for afool, a lazy rascal and a fop, and it is easy enough to take by surprisethose who think they have the whip-hand of you. You have had an exampleof this yourself in your own brief experience of Gilbert Forsyth. Whenyou made off from John Bannister's cabin, on the morning when you saw usfirst, you never suspected that I was the one who would catch you. Andso now. It is I who will outwit you, where friend Amos, with his knifeand oaths, has failed already."
I pricked my ears at that; for my curiosity was roused.
"And where are we going?" I asked.
"To William Rushby," he answered, "sometime boatswain of the _MaryGreenfield_."
"And why?" I asked.
He laughed outright.
"You must learn to see things," he observed, "from the point of view ofothers. Remember that I am well aware of this: Rushby and you, when youmet, compared notes and hatched a plot together. John Bannister himselfmay, or may not, have been a party to your mild conspiracy. That is apoint that does not affect the issue. I am not so sure Rushby spoke thetruth when he told us he had hidden the map in the Spaniard's Tomb;otherwise, I cannot see why we did not find it. I go back to Rushby,and I take you with me, to learn the real truth."
"How will you do that?" I asked.
I thought, at first, that he had ignored the question; for he answeredin a round-about way.
"There is a game of cards called Poker," he observed, "at which I myselfam tolerably proficient. In this game--with which you are too young tobe well acquainted--there is a method of gaining by what is known asBluff. Amos played the game of Bluff on Bannister, and failed. Hetried it again on Rushby, and was singularly successful. In other words,Baverstock pretended that he held you in his power, and he was neverasked to show his cards. To bluff, therefore is a risky business, whichshould be practised only in moments of emergency or urgent need. I gonow to William Rushby, to lay my hand upon the table, knowing for acertainty that I hold the best card in the pack."
"I quite fail to understand you," said I, shaking my head; for all thiswas so much double Dutch to me.
"You," said Forsyth, "are the best card in the pack. There is nooccasion for us to bluff. We have you in our power, as we have alsoRushby. Between you, you know the truth. If one will not speak, theother will. If neither speaks, Amos can have his way, and both of youcan leave your bones in this savage country, where you have ventured ofyour own free will."
I saw now there was nothing about the matter so subtle as I had thought.After all, it was no more than the old game they had played from thebeginning.
"I see," said I, quite slowly.
"I am glad of that," said Forsyth.
Whereupon he lay down upon his side, and almost immediately fell soundasleep.
And for a long time I watched him slumbering, and wondered greatly uponthe strange complexity of the man's character. He was polished andrefined, and something of a scholar, too, if there was real learningbehind his tags of Latin. He was also not without humanity and a senseof justice; else I had now been dead for a whole day and night--and thatI was still alive I was profoundly grateful. And still, he was avillain, as cold-blooded as Amos himself, and more dangerous in thesense that he was saner.
These were the thoughts that carried me far into the night. Trust wasagain on sentry; and as I watched the man, I observed that he wasnodding by the fire. Plainly, he was three parts asleep. Were my handsnot bound behind my back, it would be a simple matter to escape. And asthis thought came into my head--lo and behold!--_I was free_!
Someone had approached quite silently from behind me, from the directionof the thickets. In a trice, a sharp knife had cut my bonds. And--as Ihave stated--I was free.