Treasure of Kings Part 19

He was in my power. I said not a word, but clenched my teeth, and looked into those eyes that even then I feared. I drew back my sword, and then paused a moment; for I had no liking for the work, which was the hangman's job.

"Mercy!" he groaned.

I took in a deep breath, like a man about to dive. I felt that I must brace myself for this red task of common justice. I looked at his body, clothed in tatters, to select a spot most vulnerable where I might plunge my rusted sword.

"Mercy!" he cried again.

I clenched my teeth. I was on the point of speaking, but fortunately did not.

I could hear him breathing heavily.

And thereupon, on a sudden, I was felled by some one who had crept upon me from behind. I was felled like an ox. A single blow upon the back of the head sent me over like a ninepin, and I lay stretched at my full length upon the ground, but half-conscious, with a singing sensation in my head.

Presently I sat up and looked about me. There was Amos, still upon his knees, as green as ever. And immediately above me stood one whom I did well to recognise as Mr. Gilbert Forsyth.

That place was dimly illumined by the white light of the newly-risen moon, turning the leaves upon the trees above us to a glistening silver.

Forsyth was wearing the remnants of a pair of trousers, the legs of which ended in a tattered fringe a little below his knees. He was naked to the waist, around which was a belt, crammed with knives and pistols.

I remembered his curled whiskers and his pomaded moustache on the morning when I had first set eyes upon him, when I lay hidden in the gorse-bush. His fair hair now had grown so long that it reached to his shoulders; and his whiskers had spread into a short, s.h.a.ggy beard, which was divided somewhat in the middle like that of a Frenchman or a Sikh.

I had thought of him always as a very immaculate gentleman; but here was a desperate, piratical blade who, one might easily believe, chewed gla.s.s and compelled his unhappy victims to walk the plank.

He looked at me and folded his arms; and then spoke in a voice quite calm.

"And who the blazes are you?" he asked.

I was wise enough not to answer. Ghosts--so far as I knew--could never speak. And was I not a ghost?

If I had been a fool to go down into the Tomb, I showed at least a little wisdom in now holding my tongue. For this, however, I take no credit. I could not foresee the course that events would take. I had been surprised and mastered, and cursed myself because I had not killed Amos out of hand, when the man was in my power. Disappointed, disgusted with myself, I was stubborn as a mule. They might do what they would, they might torture me, but still I would not speak.

Forsyth repeated his question; and for answer, I rushed again at Amos, and even then would have killed him, had not the other caught me in his arms and held me fast.

The man was stronger than I thought; for, though I kicked and struggled, I could not free myself. Amos, as he watched us, regained a little of his commonsense, and got slowly upon his feet.

"No ghost," said he. "No ghost." And he went on repeating the words as if he were a parrot.

"Ghost!" laughed Forsyth. "If this is a ghost, he is a warm-blooded one, and as vicious as they make 'em."

"Then, who is he?" asked Baverstock. "I swear to you, he came out of the Tomb, as I'm a living man."

"And he's another," added Forsyth. "Who he is, or what business he has in such a place as this, I can no more say than you can. None the less, the circ.u.mstantial evidence is all against mortality. I am reminded, my friend, of the Carthaginian Queen: '_Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor_'--(May some avenger arise from my bones). I call this individual 'Hannibal,' on that account."

"Who wants your Latin gibberis.h.!.+" cried Amos. "Look plain facts in the face; call a spade a spade."

"Also," said Forsyth, in his usual sing-song voice, "call a man a man, and not a ghost."

"If he's alive," said Amos, coming even nearer, "then, who is he? I tell you, when I lifted the tombstone, he sprang forth like a Jack-in-a-box, and, had it not been for you, I would never have escaped with life."

"I have told you already," said the other, "I know no more of him than you do."

It was then that they were joined by the Spaniard, Vasco, and Joshua Trust, who came together from the darkness of the thickets into the full light of the moon. And when they saw me, they also were afraid; for I still wore the helmet on my head and stood at no great distance from the open grave.

Forsyth explained the situation in a few words, with many a wave of the hand, as if he introduced us. Baverstock, in the meantime, was rapidly becoming his normal self. He seemed to have forgotten, for the time being, the very object of his journey.

"There's some mischief here!" on a sudden he exclaimed. "Rushby told us we would find the map beneath the helmet of the Spaniard."

At this, Forsyth laughed, and pointed straight at me.

"And since our Hannibal," he observed, "wears such a headgear somewhat out of fas.h.i.+on, we may safely presume that he could tell us where the map is, if he had the power to make us understand--which, for myself, I doubt."

The truth then dawned upon me on the instant. Mr. Gilbert Forsyth, for all his cleverness and calmness, was as fully in the wrong as Amos Baverstock had been; for he believed me to be a savage, whereas the other had taken me for a ghost, the awful apparition of a bygone Spanish soldier. If I had refused to speak before from sheer pigheadedness, I was now resolved to play the part that I was cast for, putting my trust in Providence and fortified by resolution. Though they burnt my flesh with red-hot irons, I was determined I would never speak.

They questioned me in every barbarous language that they knew. Vasco and Amos himself were my inquisitors, for Trust was no scholar, and Forsyth's learning went no further than the dead cla.s.sic tongues, and, I believe, a little French. But I just gaped at them like a fool, and at last they gave it up as a bad business; and Amos, by now well convinced that I was human, struck me a cowardly blow across the mouth.

They looked in the Tomb; they searched everywhere for the map. They made a great fire of brushwood that they might see the better, and neglected no possible hiding-place where that little strip of parchment might be hidden. They looked inside my quiver, and even in the hollow of my blow-pipe. And then, at length, quite late at night, they gave it up. And in an ill mood they were, especially Trust and Amos.

They must have thought, however, that I was likely to be of some use to them, for they bound me hand and foot before I was permitted to lie down to rest. They were evidently not disposed to set me free, until they had solved the riddle I presented. They were altogether at a loss to explain who I was or why--apparently of my own free will--I had gone down into that grim and ancient vault. I think, even then, they connected me in some way or other with Bannister himself.

Left alone, I was given time to think, and I lay awake that night for many hours, wondering what would happen.

There were exactly three reasons why they should not have recognised me: firstly, I was so altered in appearance, so brown and wrinkled by the sun, with my hair all long and s.h.a.ggy, that I do not think my own mother herself would have known me; secondly, my face had been half-hidden by the helmet I had worn; and, thirdly--the most potent fact of all--they never dreamed for a moment that I was yet alive. Months before, they had tied me to a tree, and left me to starve to death in the great forest many miles away across the plain beyond Cahazaxa's Temple. And, as I remembered this, it occurred to me that, even if they were to recognise me, they might again believe me to be a ghost, since for so long they had been certain I was dead.

These were my thoughts as I lay awake, too near the fire for comfort; and as I was thinking, I observed a singular phenomenon, which at first gave me cause for new alarm.

Amos, Forsyth, and Vasco were sound asleep, and Joshua Trust was on watch, seated on the ground a little way from me. He was not particularly alert. Indeed, he was occupied in the kind of pastime that amused him. With a red-hot firebrand in his hand, he was killing, one by one, the little insects that crawled upon the ground.

I looked past him into the thickets, and at once I could have sworn that I observed a pair of eyes in which the firelight was reflected--eyes that steadily regarded me. Now, I might have believed these eyes to be those of a jaguar, were it not that they resembled the eyes of a man, and I knew for a fact that John Bannister was on the trail.

I made neither sound nor movement, but at once set out upon this new train of thought. Were a jaguar prowling around the camp, and I had seen in his eyes the reflection of the firelight, it had been of a certainty but a few inches from the ground; for I knew well the habits and the nature of this most beautiful of beasts. But these eyes were four feet at least above the ground, and, being too large for those of a monkey, must belong to a human being--who could be none other than John Bannister himself.

Sure of my facts, I was resolved to take no action, though my life itself were in the greatest danger. I knew that I might safely leave the matter in the hands of an older, wiser, and a stronger man than I.

I saw those eyes for no longer than a few seconds, and then they disappeared. I heard no sound, not so much as the stirring of a leaf, for the night was strangely still. There was not a breath of wind.

How can I describe the emotions that then swayed me! I knew that I must possess my soul in patience, leaving what was best to do to Bannister himself. And yet I longed with all my heart to grasp the hand of my friend. I knew now, for certain, that he was near to me, watching over me, ready to strike a strong blow in my defence when the opportunity should offer. And for that reason--so great was my faith in him--I was conscious of a sense of security that I had not known for months.

I remembered that I had not seen him since that day when I beheld him running across the Suss.e.x fields, with his brown paper parcel under his arm, when Forsyth had struck me down with his whip and carried me away, to begin my series of adventures. I remembered him, too, as I had seen him, standing in the white road looking after us. And he was now quite near to me, thousands of miles away from where I had caught my last glimpse of him; for it is a long march, in very truth, from the South Downs of England to the shadow of the Andes; and much lies between that is strange and wonderful and savage--the great ocean, the mystery of those broad and endless rivers, and the forest with its eternal twilight and dark, silent places where death lies in wait. John Bannister had gone forth to find me; and he had found me, at last, after all these dreadful days.

How was it possible for me to sleep? I lay awake for hours with quickly beating heart, and thought of all that had been and all that might be yet to come. I saw Vasco take the watch from Trust, and then Mr.

Forsyth post himself as sentry towards the early hours of morning. And when at length the daylight came, Forsyth looked at me and saw that I was awake. We sat for a while, looking straight into one another's eyes.

"Friend Hannibal," said he.

But I made no answer. At which he thought--for he was a strange man in many ways--to test me with the cla.s.sics.

"'_Tutum silentii praemium_,'" said he; "or, as we have it, 'Silence is ever golden.' However, I believe that you could tell us much, were you so disposed."

Still I never answered. He could think what he liked; I was determined to hold my peace. For all that, I was considerably disconcerted; for he continued to look at me for a long time in a very searching manner, the while the daylight grew and the woods became flooded with that faint, evanescent twilight that fades and seems to drift, even when the sun is at its height.