The Great Quest Part 35

Gathering in the door of the hut, we looked out into the silent, moonlit glade that led down the hill and through the valley toward the distant river.

"Are we all ready, lads?" Matterson asked in his light voice.

"Push on, Molly, push on," Gleazen replied.

Shouldering his pack, Matterson stepped out into the moonlight.

"Now, then," he whispered,--for although we were confident that no enemy within earshot was then awake (it had not been hard for O'Hara to persuade us to his own way of thinking), a spell of silence and secrecy was upon us,--"it's straight for the river, lads, and the devil take the hindermost. If you're too lame to travel, Neil, so help me, I'll carry you."

"Push on!" Gleazen returned hoa.r.s.ely. "Push on to the spring. After that we'll talk if you wish."

"We're going home," I thought. Home, indeed! It seemed that at last we had turned the corner; that at last we had pa.s.sed the height of land and were on the point of racing down the long slope; that at last our troubles were over and done with. A score of figures to express it leaped into my mind. And first of all, best of all, at last we were to get water!

Arnold said sharply, "Come, Abe; come, Joe; step along."

Bending low, Matterson led the way, I followed close at his heels, and the others came in single file behind me. Seven dark figures, silently slipping from shadow to shadow, we left behind us the hut,--we believed forever!--and headed straight down the hill to the spring; for more than anything else we longed to plunge our faces into cold water and drink until we had quenched our burning thirst.

Down the hill to the spring we went, slipping along in single file.

All night and all day, without a word, we had endured agony; for it was by showing no sign of life whatever to those who were guarding the hut from the forest that we hoped so to lull their watchfulness that we could escape them just after midnight. And now we were eager almost beyond words for that water which we had so vividly imagined.

As we darted into the tall gra.s.s, it seemed so completely a.s.sured that I swung my pack from my shoulder and broke into a quick trot after Matterson, whose long, swift strides, as he straightened up, had carried him on ahead of me.

If a thousand people read this tale, not one of them, probably, will know the full meaning of the word thirst; not one will understand what water had come by then to mean to me.

I ran--I tried to run faster--faster! But as I dragged my pack along, b.u.mping at my knees, I was amazed to see Matterson stop. He threw his musket to his shoulder. The hollow boom of it went rolling off through the woodland and echoed slowly away into silence among the mighty trees. Then he threw his hands up, and with a cry fell into the gra.s.s, and lay so still that I could not tell where he had fallen.

By the flash of his musket I and those behind me had for an instant seen by the spring a grotesque figure dressed in skins and rags, and painted with white rings and bars. When the flash died away, we could see nothing, not even the waving gra.s.ses and the black trees against the sky, because momentarily the sudden glare had blinded us.

As if impelled by another will than mine, I drew back step by step until I was standing shoulder to shoulder with the others. Whatever quarrels we had had among ourselves were for the time forgotten.

"Now, by heaven," Gleazen gasped, "it's back to the hut for all of us!"

"But Neil--now, Neil, sure now we can't run away and leave old Molly," O'Hara cried.

"Leave him?" Gleazen roared. "We've got to leave him! Where is he?

Tell me if you can! Go find him if you like! Hark! See!"

With a thin, windy whistle a spear came flying out of the night and pa.s.sed just over Gleazen's shoulder and his pack. Another with a soft _chug_ struck into the ground at my feet; then, my eyes having once more become accustomed to the moonlight, I saw sneaking into the clearing a score of dark, slinking figures.

"They're coming!" I cried. "They're cutting us off! Quick! Quick!"

In panic I started back to the hut, with the others at my heels.

When they saw the figures that I had seen, Gleazen and O'Hara both fired their muskets, whereupon the figures disappeared and we, deafened by the tremendous reports and blinded again by the bright flashes, ran back as hard as we could go to the hut that so short a time since we had eagerly abandoned; and with Gleazen limping in the rear, fairly threw ourselves across the threshold.

Whether our gunfire had done any real damage, we gravely doubted; and now we were both a man and a weapon short. But bitterest of all, and by far the most discouraging, was our intense thirst.

"Ah, the black devils," O'Hara muttered between grinding teeth.

"Sure, and they planned all that--planned to let us get the water almost between our lips and then drive us back here. The black cowards, they dare not meet us man to man, though they are forty to our one."

It was significant that no one spoke of Matterson. The silence as regarded his name marked a certain fatalism, which now possessed us--something akin to despair, yet not so ign.o.ble as despair; something akin to resolution, yet not so praiseworthy as resolution.

There seemed, indeed, nothing to say about him. Bull was dead, I thought, and Matterson was dead; and even if the blacks dared not rush upon us and take the hut by storm, they would soon kill us by thirst. We had done our best; if worst came to worst, we would die with our boots on.

Meanwhile queer low cries out in the forest were rising little by little to shrill yells and hoots and cat-calls. If we could judge by the sounds, there were hundreds of blacks, if not thousands.

"O Bull! You poor, deluded fool!" O'Hara cried. "Now why--why--_why_ did he go and build the house on a king's grave?"

Why indeed?

It was a fearful thing to hear those cries and yells; yet, although we watched from door and windows a long while, we did not actually see any further sign of danger, until Arnold Lamont, who was guarding the door, said in a subdued voice, "Look--down the hill--half-way down. Something has moved twice."

As we gathered behind him, he turned and with a quick gesture said, "Do not leave the windows. Who knows what trick they may try upon us?"

My uncle, who seemed for the moment to comprehend all that was going forward, and Abe Guptil and Gleazen, went back to the windows, although it was evident enough that their minds were not so much on their own duty as on whatever it was that had caught Arnold's attention.

"See!" said Arnold.

There was nothing down there now that seemed not to belong by nature to the place, and I surmised that Arnold had seen only some small animal. But that a black object, appearing and disappearing, had revealed more to the others than to me, I immediately apprehended.

"It was fifty feet farther down the hill when I first distinguished it," said Arnold.

O'Hara went over to my uncle and I heard him say, "Let me take your gun, since it's loaded, Mr. Upham, and thank you kindly."

Returning, he sat down in the door beside Arnold, who had begun meanwhile to load the empty musket that O'Hara had carelessly laid aside. When the thing, whatever it was, moved again, O'Hara raised the gun to his shoulder.

"Don't shoot!" Arnold whispered.

"And why not?"

The thing moved once more.

"Will ye look, now! It's come ten feet in this direction," O'Hara whispered.

Now Arnold raised his own musket.

Again we saw the thing, but so briefly that neither Arnold nor O'Hara had time to fire.

Suddenly O'Hara laid his hand on Arnold's shoulder and repeated Arnold's own words:--

"Don't shoot."

"This time," Arnold whispered, "I shall shoot."

"Wait a bit, wait a bit!" O'Hara gently pressed down the muzzle of the gun.

Meanwhile, you must understand, the yelling and hooting had first grown loud and near, then had drawn slowly farther away. It was not easy to let that creature, be it animal or human, come crawling up the hill in the full light of the moon. As the cries died in the distance, the thing moved faster and with less concealment, and I fiercely whispered, "Shoot, Arnold, shoot!"

"Wait," he replied and lifted a restraining hand.

At the moment I could not understand why he did not do as I said; but as the thing came out into open ground, the same thought that had caused the two to hold their fire occurred likewise to me; and now we saw that we were right.

The thing crawling up the hill was a man, and when the man came into the open clearing directly in front of our camp, we saw that it was Matterson.