Treasure of Kings Part 25

We waited for some minutes, expecting to hear another shot, or perhaps some 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, the wild 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 had rushed forward, breaking down all obstacles that stood in his path by the sheer weight of the gold he carried and the impetuous, headlong nature of his flight.

There could be little doubt that Joshua Trust had followed him with as little difficulty as we. Certain it was that they could not be far ahead, since Trust himself had not yet been absent half an hour. In all probability, 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 lay a corpse, in a pool of his own blood, upon the trail that he had followed.

John Bannister kneeled down upon the ground beside the body, but presently got sharply to his feet.

"Stone-dead," said he, and nodded sagely, as if to signify that hither in 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 that it would be no more than common decency to bury this poor, misguided man where he had fallen, when there came to my ears a sound that made my very blood run cold.

It was a sound of laughter, faint and far away. Never in my wildest nightmares had I heard laughter to compare to that. It was the laughter of a fiend, terrible to listen to, for there was something in it of the chuckling of an old, demented man, the cry of a new-born child, and the senseless mirth of one who is delirious.

In that half-light we looked at one another. There was cold fear in the eyes of us all, even in the eyes of John Bannister, who I did not know had 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 and nonchalant, who had always seemed to me to dread nothing so much as that he might show his feelings, burst forth in the hottest indignation. I shall never forget that moment, for it was the only occasion upon which I saw John Bannister afraid, and Mr. Forsyth alive--a living, sentient being--in every fibre of his body.

"This madman must not live!" he shouted.

Bannister answered slowly, in the same quiet voice in which he had spoken before.

"I am inclined to think you right," said he. "His very existence upon the face of the earth is a blot upon Creation. The sound of that hideous 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 heard the click of the lock, and I saw how tightly his right hand gripped the small of the b.u.t.t. And I knew that death was still in the pot, that we were not yet at the end of all this strife and horrid bloodshed.

We went forward in pursuit, Bannister leading, hot upon the trail, the other three of us following at his heels.

All that afternoon we journeyed in a direction north-eastward, so far as we could judge. And from time to time we heard the shrill, savage laughter of that maniac, but a little way before us. And each time we heard it, we were filled with dread--the dread that comes naturally to one who finds himself confronted by the supernatural--the same dread that is believed to make the human hair to stand on end in the presence of a ghost.

For Amos Baverstock, body, mind, and soul, was still in the possession of his seven raging devils; and it was as if these evil spirits infested the humid, stifling atmosphere of the very jungle through which we pa.s.sed in hot pursuit. Hitherto, we had been adventurers in a savage land; we had walked in the midst of dangers that were material and real.

But now, with that unearthly laughter for ever in our ears, we felt that we were wayfarers in the dark nether regions, that not only our lives, but our very souls as well, were in peril of perdition, of everlasting death. The fleeting shadows of the Wood were to us the twilight of the Underworld. We were opposed by forces stronger and more evil than wild beasts 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 were times when he was quite near to us, when we could distinctly hear him breaking his way through the thickets, rus.h.i.+ng blindly onward. And at such times he was silent--ominously silent. But he would always, quite suddenly, shoot ahead again--how, we could not tell--and presently, we would hear his wild laughter as before, far away from us--laughter in which there was something of triumphant glee, as well as lunacy and senseless mirth, incomprehensible and terrible to hear.

All that night, during which we rested twice--on each occasion for an hour or more--we heard his laughter in the Wood, throughout the length and breadth of which it was as if fear of the man had spread. I verily believe the monkeys sat s.h.i.+vering above us in the tree-tops, and the great beasts of prey, who were wont to hunt by night, crouched with flattened ears like frightened cats in the dark places of the jungle.

Speaking for myself, I know that I experienced a most novel and insecure sensation. I felt that the constant sound of this demoniacal laughter would in the end drive me also mad; and Vasco, I am certain, felt the same, though I cannot speak for the others.

For all that, I had never seen an expression of such invincible determination as the daylight disclosed upon the face of Bannister. His jaw was set: his lips tight pressed, and there was a look in his eyes as hard 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 we came.

Then we went on, following the trail, with the sound of that maniac's laughter to guide us like the siren of a s.h.i.+p 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 and there, lay golden ingots that had fallen from his arms, and there was blood, too, upon the dead leaves upon the ground, where he had torn his flesh upon the thorns.

And then, at last, we sighted him, in a place where the undergrowth was spa.r.s.e and the trees a little way apart. For no longer than an instant did we see him, else John Bannister had shot him dead; for it was a mad dog we hunted, and it was not right that he should live. Strange as it may seem--since they had sojourned for so many months in one another's company--it was Mr. Gilbert Forsyth who was most keen upon the chase. He was like a bloodhound on the trail. It was as much as Bannister could do 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. That glimpse, however, was enough. If it had been terrible to hear his laughter, it was even more terrible to behold him with our eyes. Every shred of clothing had been torn from his back. He was plastered with black mud from the swamp in which he had waded; and this mud--though we could not see that--was still alive with little leeches that were draining the life's blood in his veins. His hair was all ragged and dirty; and without clothes he was more hideous than ever. We could see the ingots, tied in a great bundle upon his back; and we marvelled that any human being could carry so great a load. He shot a look at us before he dived again into the undergrowth; and in that look there was that for which we could not fail to pity him, vile and evil though the man had been all the days of his life.

His eyes were bright as ever, yet seemed to have grown larger, and, at the same time, to have sunk deep into his head. His mouth, which was never straight, was twisted to a degree that was alarming. He had always the thinnest of lips, which he kept as a rule pressed tight together; but now his mouth was opened wide, and he was s...o...b..ring. As for his eyebrows, they reminded me of Satan himself as I have seen him pictured, 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 supreme effort to overtake the man. We all wanted it to end, for the whole affair was ghastly; and yet we dreaded the end, just as a hangman must have no liking for his duty. And ours--we thought--was the very hangman's work.

It so happened that in this place the Wood was dense. Amos did not laugh again, but we could hear him just in front of us; though, strive as we might, we could not overtake him, until the pursuit had lasted, perhaps, another twenty minutes--for, in such a case as this, it is impossible to keep account of time.

Bannister, who was still leading, of a sudden caught his foot in the root of a tree, and pitched forward on his face. Without pausing an instant, Forsyth rushed past him; and I, knowing that Forsyth was unarmed, and fearing that he might come to the same violent end as Joshua Trust, hastened after him, without looking to see if Bannister were 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 and unaccountably, to my amazement Amos stopped, and looked back at us with a face hideously contorted.

I carried my rifle to my shoulder, and I believe I would have pressed the trigger, had I not then seen what it was that had brought the fugitive to a standstill. He had broken his way headlong through the thickets, and now found himself upon the bank of a wide, dark pool, and we were so close upon his heels that he had no time to turn either to the 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 the least suspicion of what was about to happen. No sooner was my rifle to my shoulder than Amos turned away from me, and, without a sound, with his 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 his depth; but, almost at once, his feet found something firm--I think the fallen trunk of a tree buried beneath the water. He rose to his full height with the water no higher than his knees, and began to stumble onward, when the whole of this uncanny business reached its tragic and terrible conclusion.

I saw something move upon the surface of the water--something that shot across the pool in utter silence and with the rapidity of an arrow.

Right round Amos it swerved, and pa.s.sed so close to us--who stood gaping on 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 realised that Amos Baverstock was come to that place which I myself had named the Glade of Silent Death.

CHAPTER XXVII--HOW AMOS MET HIS END

We stood horror-stricken upon the bank of that dark pool--mute, impotent spectators of a tragedy we were powerless to prevent.