CHAPTER XXVI--A NIGHT OF TERROR
I was about to follow in pursuit of Trust, and had even taken a fewsteps towards the undergrowth upon the right bank of the brook, whenBannister called me back.
"What's the use?" said he. "Let dogs delight. We have our own friendsto think of."
"Our own friends?" said I.
"Have you forgotten Rushby? We have left him alone too long as it is.His life is more to us than the fate of either Trust or Baverstock; andhe is in danger just as great."
At those words, I felt something of shame that I had indeed forgottenone who had proved himself so loyal and true a comrade.
"Then, what's to be done?" I asked.
"That's not so easy to decide," said Bannister. "I take it," he added,turning again to Forsyth, "that you are now willing to cast in your lotwith us, to give up all thought of plunder?"
Forsyth actually yawned.
"Have it your own way," said he. "I have made a promise which I willfaithfully keep. I have always believed that there was honour amongthieves; but, even here, I find I was mistaken. To speak the truth, Iam heartily sick of the whole business, which has cost me a pretty pennywith nothing to show for it, save a scratched skin and a score ofbruises, and the loss of an ear. You may count me as one of yourselves.I have little enough, perhaps, upon which to flatter myself, but ifthere is skill in gaining, there is at least an art in losing. It canbe done gracefully. Do you not agree?"
"Moralise as much as you like," laughed Bannister. "It amounts to nomore than this: you have failed dismally, and are glad enough to findyourself alive. You are wise to accept the situation as it is. That'sall the same to me. Henceforward, you are under my orders, and I expectprompt obedience."
"I shall be charmed," said Forsyth, with a mock bow. "And what ofRushby?"
"He lies some way to the north," said Bannister. "I am alarmed at hiscondition. The wound in his leg is septic, and it is very doubtfulwhether he will recover."
"I am distressed to hear it," answered the other, to whose effronterythere seemed no end; for he added, "If the truth be told, it was Imyself who shot him--with the best intentions in the world."
"No doubt," said Bannister grimly. "There has been give and take onboth sides; and I am the more glad to have saved your life, since I knowfor a fact that you stood between Dick, here, and certain death, whenAmos would have killed him. But we waste time in useless talk. Beforewe leave this place, I propose to cover the slab with earth, to hide alltraces of an intrusion so utterly worthless, doomed to failure from thestart."
And thereupon the four of us set to work, scraping the soft earth backupon the stone slab; for Bannister, who had enough of Spanish to expresshis meaning, soon found another ally in Vasco, who, after all, was aweak, shiftless kind of fellow, with few opinions of his own. Though theman had been bewildered by the sight of so much gold, the Treasure hadhad much the same effect on him as on myself when I first went down intothat vast, amazing chamber. He was frightened of it all; and as well asthat, he now realised for the first time that he had served for allthese months one who was both treacherous and mad; and had it not beenfor Bannister and me, he would not have escaped with life.
We were all hard at work upon our hands and knees, when we weresurprised by the sound of a rifle-shot, fired at no great distance inthe Wood, in a northerly direction.
Bannister got slowly to his feet, and stood listening; and then,although he turned in my direction, it was as if he spoke quietly tohimself.
"One shot," said he. "And one shot only."
That was all he said.
"Trust was never armed," said I.
"That signifies nothing," answered Bannister. "Amos is loaded down bygold. If he carried a rifle, Trust may have wrenched it from hishands."
We waited for some minutes, expecting to hear another shot, or perhapssome other sound. But the whole Wood was silent--the silence of midday,when the sun is at its height and all the wilderness is resting, thewild things seeking refuge from the fierce rays of the tropic sun.
"Come," said Bannister, "we had best see to this."
He led the way into the undergrowth, and we followed him in single file.The trail of Amos was broad as a road, for, in his madness, he hadrushed forward, breaking down all obstacles that stood in his path bythe sheer weight of the gold he carried and the impetuous, headlongnature of his flight.
There could be little doubt that Joshua Trust had followed him with aslittle difficulty as we. Certain it was that they could not be farahead, since Trust himself had not yet been absent half an hour. In allprobability, the night before, Amos himself, overtaken by the darkness,had fallen sound asleep, and, being exhausted by his frenzied efforts,had slumbered on until long after daybreak.
In any case, we had not journeyed far before we came upon the still,huddled form of him who had once been known as Joshua Trust, who now laya corpse, in a pool of his own blood, upon the trail that he hadfollowed.
John Bannister kneeled down upon the ground beside the body, butpresently got sharply to his feet.
"Stone-dead," said he, and nodded sagely, as if to signify that hitherin the end go all things weak and mortal.
"Shot?" I asked.
"By Amos. Through the heart."
We stood in silence around the body, and I know that I was thinking thatit would be no more than common decency to bury this poor, misguided manwhere he had fallen, when there came to my ears a sound that made myvery blood run cold.
It was a sound of laughter, faint and far away. Never in my wildestnightmares had I heard laughter to compare to that. It was the laughterof a fiend, terrible to listen to, for there was something in it of thechuckling of an old, demented man, the cry of a new-born child, and thesenseless mirth of one who is delirious.
In that half-light we looked at one another. There was cold fear in theeyes of us all, even in the eyes of John Bannister, who I did not knowhad fear of anything that lived upon the earth.
"Amos!" he exclaimed. But his voice was no more than a whisper.
I saw that Forsyth shuddered. And then that man, as a rule so calm andnonchalant, who had always seemed to me to dread nothing so much as thathe might show his feelings, burst forth in the hottest indignation. Ishall never forget that moment, for it was the only occasion upon whichI saw John Bannister afraid, and Mr. Forsyth alive--a living, sentientbeing--in every fibre of his body.
"This madman must not live!" he shouted.
Bannister answered slowly, in the same quiet voice in which he hadspoken before.
"I am inclined to think you right," said he. "His very existence uponthe face of the earth is a blot upon Creation. The sound of thathideous laughter robs the wilderness of all its beauty."
"Then, after him!" cried Forsyth.
"Leave that to me," said Bannister.
He opened his rifle, and slipped a cartridge into the breech. I heardthe click of the lock, and I saw how tightly his right hand gripped thesmall of the butt. And I knew that death was still in the pot, that wewere not yet at the end of all this strife and horrid bloodshed.
We went forward in pursuit, Bannister leading, hot upon the trail, theother three of us following at his heels.
All that afternoon we journeyed in a direction north-eastward, so far aswe could judge. And from time to time we heard the shrill, savagelaughter of that maniac, but a little way before us. And each time weheard it, we were filled with dread--the dread that comes naturally toone who finds himself confronted by the supernatural--the same dreadthat is believed to make the human hair to stand on end in the presenceof a ghost.
For Amos Baverstock, body, mind, and soul, was still in the possessionof his seven raging devils; and it was as if these evil spirits infestedthe humid, stifling atmosphere of the very jungle through which wepassed in hot pursuit. Hitherto, we had been adventurers in a savageland; we had walked in the midst of dangers that were material and real.But now, with that unearthly laughter for ever in ou
r ears, we felt thatwe were wayfarers in the dark nether regions, that not only our lives,but our very souls as well, were in peril of perdition, of everlastingdeath. The fleeting shadows of the Wood were to us the twilight of theUnderworld. We were opposed by forces stronger and more evil than wildbeasts and wicked men.
Darkness caught us before we had overtaken the madman whom we chased.How he had managed to elude us for so long is little short of a miracle;for he was weighed down by the gold he carried on his back. There weretimes when he was quite near to us, when we could distinctly hear himbreaking his way through the thickets, rushing blindly onward. And atsuch times he was silent--ominously silent. But he would always, quitesuddenly, shoot ahead again--how, we could not tell--and presently, wewould hear his wild laughter as before, far away from us--laughter inwhich there was something of triumphant glee, as well as lunacy andsenseless mirth, incomprehensible and terrible to hear.
All that night, during which we rested twice--on each occasion for anhour or more--we heard his laughter in the Wood, throughout the lengthand breadth of which it was as if fear of the man had spread. I verilybelieve the monkeys sat shivering above us in the tree-tops, and thegreat beasts of prey, who were wont to hunt by night, crouched withflattened ears like frightened cats in the dark places of the jungle.
Speaking for myself, I know that I experienced a most novel and insecuresensation. I felt that the constant sound of this demoniacal laughterwould in the end drive me also mad; and Vasco, I am certain, felt thesame, though I cannot speak for the others.
For all that, I had never seen an expression of such invincibledetermination as the daylight disclosed upon the face of Bannister. Hisjaw was set: his lips tight pressed, and there was a look in his eyes ashard as steel.
He said not a word to any one of us; and we had no thought of food,though we all four drank deeply of water at the first stream to which wecame.
Then we went on, following the trail, with the sound of that maniac'slaughter to guide us like the siren of a ship in a fog at sea.
Never was a journey more strange, more ghostly. We were haunted men,though we found upon the road evidence of the material. For, here andthere, lay golden ingots that had fallen from his arms, and there wasblood, too, upon the dead leaves upon the ground, where he had torn hisflesh upon the thorns.
And then, at last, we sighted him, in a place where the undergrowth wassparse and the trees a little way apart. For no longer than an instantdid we see him, else John Bannister had shot him dead; for it was a maddog we hunted, and it was not right that he should live. Strange as itmay seem--since they had sojourned for so many months in one another'scompany--it was Mr. Gilbert Forsyth who was most keen upon the chase. Hewas like a bloodhound on the trail. It was as much as Bannister coulddo to keep him back.
"Have at him!" he cried. "There he is! Shoot, man! Shoot him down!"
But--as I have said--we caught no more than a glimpse of him. Thatglimpse, however, was enough. If it had been terrible to hear hislaughter, it was even more terrible to behold him with our eyes. Everyshred of clothing had been torn from his back. He was plastered withblack mud from the swamp in which he had waded; and this mud--though wecould not see that--was still alive with little leeches that weredraining the life's blood in his veins. His hair was all ragged anddirty; and without clothes he was more hideous than ever. We could seethe ingots, tied in a great bundle upon his back; and we marvelled thatany human being could carry so great a load. He shot a look at usbefore he dived again into the undergrowth; and in that look there wasthat for which we could not fail to pity him, vile and evil though theman had been all the days of his life.
His eyes were bright as ever, yet seemed to have grown larger, and, atthe same time, to have sunk deep into his head. His mouth, which wasnever straight, was twisted to a degree that was alarming. He hadalways the thinnest of lips, which he kept as a rule pressed tighttogether; but now his mouth was opened wide, and he was slobbering. Asfor his eyebrows, they reminded me of Satan himself as I have seen himpictured, for they met upon the bridge of his nose, to slant upward,arrow-shaped.
John Bannister dashed forward. I saw that he meant to make a supremeeffort to overtake the man. We all wanted it to end, for the wholeaffair was ghastly; and yet we dreaded the end, just as a hangman musthave no liking for his duty. And ours--we thought--was the veryhangman's work.
It so happened that in this place the Wood was dense. Amos did notlaugh again, but we could hear him just in front of us; though, striveas we might, we could not overtake him, until the pursuit had lasted,perhaps, another twenty minutes--for, in such a case as this, it isimpossible to keep account of time.
Bannister, who was still leading, of a sudden caught his foot in theroot of a tree, and pitched forward on his face. Without pausing aninstant, Forsyth rushed past him; and I, knowing that Forsyth wasunarmed, and fearing that he might come to the same violent end asJoshua Trust, hastened after him, without looking to see if Bannisterwere hurt.
Almost at once I caught sight of Amos, but dared not fire at him,because Forsyth was in front of me. And then, suddenly andunaccountably, to my amazement Amos stopped, and looked back at us witha face hideously contorted.
I carried my rifle to my shoulder, and I believe I would have pressedthe trigger, had I not then seen what it was that had brought thefugitive to a standstill. He had broken his way headlong through thethickets, and now found himself upon the bank of a wide, dark pool, andwe were so close upon his heels that he had no time to turn either tothe right or to the left.
It is my great regret that I did not fire; but I may be excused,inasmuch as I did not at once recognise the place, and had then not theleast suspicion of what was about to happen. No sooner was my rifle tomy shoulder than Amos turned away from me, and, without a sound, withhis great load of gold upon his back, plunged straight into the pool.
He sank so low at first that we thought he must be well beyond hisdepth; but, almost at once, his feet found something firm--I think thefallen trunk of a tree buried beneath the water. He rose to his fullheight with the water no higher than his knees, and began to stumbleonward, when the whole of this uncanny business reached its tragic andterrible conclusion.
I saw something move upon the surface of the water--something that shotacross the pool in utter silence and with the rapidity of an arrow.Right round Amos it swerved, and passed so close to us--who stood gapingon the bank--that we could not fail to recognise what this horror was.It was the flat and evil head of a gigantic, loathsome serpent.
Then the truth burst upon me like a sudden rush of ice, and I realisedthat Amos Baverstock was come to that place which I myself had named theGlade of Silent Death.