The Great Quest Part 34

CHAPTER XXIII

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 s.h.i.+ning on the green, open s.p.a.ce around the hut. A huge b.u.t.terfly, 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 s.h.i.+mmered 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 gra.s.s 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, hoa.r.s.ely 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 reecho; 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 pa.s.sed 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, brus.h.i.+ng 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 s.h.i.+p 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.