"I know," replied Stuart, "he blew out his brains."
"Right over there, he did it!" the soldier agreed, pointing into the night. "But listen to the story of the treasure:
"When I was but a little older than a boy like you, into the Vache d'Or (a former gambling-house of some fame) there strolled this Dimanche Esnan. He swaggered in, as one with plenty of money in his pocket.
"Upon the table he threw some coins.
"The croupier stared down at those coins, with eyes as cold and fixed as those of a fer-de-lance ready to strike. The play at the table stopped.
"It was a moment!
"The coins were Spanish doubloons!"
"A pirate hoard?" suggested Stuart.
"It was thought. But this Dimanche had not been off the island for years! And the buccaneers' treasure is at Tortugas, as is well known.
"This Dimanche was at once asked if he had found Christophe's treasure, for where else would a man find Spanish doubloons of a century ago? It was plain, Yes!
"Well, what would you? President Hippolyte sent for him. He offered to make him a general, a full general, if he would but tell where he had found the treasure. He showed him the uniform. It was gold laced, yes, gold lace all over! Dimanche was nearly tempted, but not quite.
"Then they let him come back here, to Cap Haitien, Yes. All the day and all the night he was kept under watch. Ah, that was a strict watch! Every one of the guards thought that he might be the one to get clue to the place of the buried treasure, look you!
"But the general here, at that time, was not a patient man, No! Besides, he wanted the treasure. He wanted it without having the President of the Republic know. With sixty-five million gourdes he might push away the President and be president himself, who knows?
"What would you? The general put Dimanche in prison and put him to the question (torture) but Dimanche said nothing. Ah, he was stubborn, thatDimanche. He said nothing, nothing! The general did not dare to kill him, for he knew that the President had given orders to have the man watched.
"So the prison doors were set open. Pouf! Away disappears Dimanche and has not been seen since. He still carries the secret of the treasure of Christophe—that is, if he is not dead."
"But didn't the President try to find the hoard on his own account?" asked Stuart.
"But, most surely! My father was one of the soldiers in the party which searched in all the wonderful palaces that Christophe had built for himself in 'Without Worry,' in 'Queen's Delight,' in 'The Glory,' in 'Beautiful View,' yes, even in the haunted Citadel of La Ferrière. No, I should not have liked to do that, it is surely haunted. But they found nothing.
"Me, I think that the money is in the citadel. Has not the ghost of Christophe been seen to walk there? And why should the ghost walk if it had not a reason to walk? Eh?"
"That does seem reasonable," answered Stuart, in response to the soldier's triumphant tone.
"But, most sure! So, Boy," the guard concluded, "it is easy to see why the General does not like any 'white' to go to the Citadel. Perhaps the 'white,' whose horses you look after, has seen Dimanche. Who knows? So he will not be let get up there. You may be sure of that."
"One can't ever say," answered the boy. "Imust be ready for the morning," and, with a word of farewell, he sauntered into the village of Millot, to find some kind of stabling and food for the horses, and, if possible, some shelter for himself.
Morning found Stuart outside the door of the general's "mansion," a straw-thatched building, comprising three rooms and a narrow brick-paved verandah. From what the soldiers had said the night before, the boy had not the slightest expectation of the Cuban's success.
He had not waited long, however, before Manuel came out through the door, obsequiously followed by a coal-black general daubed with gold lace—most of which was unsewn and hanging in tatters, and all of which was tarnished. He was strongly, even violently, urging upon Manuel the need of an escort. The Cuban not only disdained the question, but, most evidently, disdained and disregarded the man.
This extraordinary scene was closed by the General, the commandant of the entire commune, holding out his hand for a tip. Manuel put a five-gourdes bill (two dollars and a half) into the outstretched palm, and mounted his horse to an accompaniment of a profusion of thanks.
A short distance out of Millot, the two riders came to the ruins of Christophe's palace of "Without Worry" (Sans Souci). It was once a veritable palace, situated on the top of a small hill overlooking a deep ravine. Great flights of stone steps led up to it, while terrace upon terrace of whatonce were exquisitely kept gardens, filled with the finest statuary, stepped to the depths below.
Now, the gardens are waste, the statuary broken and the terraces are washed into gullies by the rains. The palace itself is not less lamentable. The walls are crumbling. Everything movable from the interior has been looted. Trees grow outward from the upper windows, and, in the cracks of masonry and marble floors, a tropic vegetation has sprung up. Moss covers the mosaics, and the carved woodwork has become the prey of the worm.
A little further on, at a hut which the General had described, Manuel and Stuart left their horses, and then began the steep climb up La Ferrière. From the steaming heat of the plain below, the climbers passed into the region of cold. The remains of a road were there, but the track was so indistinct as to render it difficult to follow.
"Where the dense forest begins," Manuel explained, "we shall find a warder. I would rather be without him, but the General does not dare to send a message that a 'white' may visit the Citadel unaccompanied. Besides, I doubt if we could find the way, though once this was a wide road, fit for carriage travel, on which the Black Emperor drove in pomp and state to his citadel. It is incredible!"
"What is incredible?" asked Stuart.
"That Christophe should have been able to make these negroes work for him as no peoplein the world have worked since the days when the Pharaohs of Egypt built the Pyramids. You will see the vast size of the Citadel. You see the steepness of the mountain. Consider it!
"The materials for the whole huge pile of building and the three hundred cannon with which it was fortified, were dragged up these steep mountain scarps and cliffsides by human hands. Christophe employed the troops mercilessly in this labor and subdued mutiny by the simple policy of not only shooting the mutineers, but also a corresponding number of innocent men, as well, just to teach a lesson. Whole villages were commandeered. Sex made no difference. Women worked side by side with men, were whipped side by side with men, and, if they weakened, were knifed or shot and thrown into a ditch. One of Christophe's overseers is said to have boasted that he could have made a roadway of human bones from Sans Souci to the summit."
The words "bloody ruffian" were on Stuart's lips, but, just in time, he remembered his character, and replied instead,
"But Christophe was a great man!"
The boy knew well that though Toussaint L'Ouverture, the "Black Napoleon," had truly been a great man in every sense of the word, a liberator, general and administrator, the Haitians think little of him, because he believed that blacks, mulattoes and whites should have an equal chance. Dessalines and Christophe, monsters of brutality,are the heroes of Haiti, because they massacred everyone who was not coal-black.
Manuel cast a sidelong glance at Stuart, smiling inwardly at the boy's attempt to maintain his disguise, that disguise which the Cuban had so quickly pierced, and shrugged his shoulders.
"What would you!" he rejoined. "You see yourself, it is the only government that Haitians understand. To this day, a century later, this part of the island is better than the south, because of the impress of the reign of Christophe. Nothing changes Haiti!"
"The Americans?" queried Stuart, trying to put a note of dislike into his voice, but intensely interested in his own question.
"They have changed nothing!" declared the Cuban, emphatically. "They have painted the faces of the coast towns, and that is all. You heard that drum, the night before last? Not until the tom-tom has ceased to beat in Haiti, can anything be changed."
He rose, threw away the stump of his cigar, and motioned to the boy to take up the trail.
A few hundred yards higher, a raucous shout halted them.
There was a rustle of branches, and a negro colossus, of the low-browed, heavy-jawed type, plunged through the thicket and barred the path.
Bareheaded, barefooted, his shirt consisting of a piece of cloth with holes for head and arms, his trousers torn to tatters by thorns, the warder ofthe Citadel looked what he was, a Caco machete man, little removed from the ferocity of African savagery.
To his shout, the Cuban deigned no answer.
He broke a switch from a bush, walked toward the negro guard with a contemptuous look and lashed him across the face with the switch, ordering him to lead the way.
Stuart expected to see the Cuban cut down with one stroke of the machete.
Far from it. Cowed at once, the negro cringed, as to a master, and, without a word as to Manuel's authority, led the way up the trail.
A hundred yards higher, all sign of a path was lost. The negro warder was compelled to use his machete to cut a way through thorny underbrush and creepers in order to make a path for the "white's" feet.
The afternoon was well advanced when openings amid the trees showed, beetling overhead, the gray walls of the Citadel. An hour's further climbing brought them to the guard-house, where eight men watch continually, each relief for a period of a month, against the intrusion of strangers into Christophe's Citadel.
An irregularly disposed clump of posts, stuck into the ground, supported a rusted and broken tin roof, without walls, but boasting a brushwood pile on one side—such was the entire barracks of the La Ferrière garrison. The furniture consisted only of a log on which to sit, a few cookingutensils, and a pile of rags in the driest corner.
True, there was plenty of room in the Citadel. Many a chamber in the ruined place was dry and sheltered from the weather, many a corner was there where the watchers could have made themselves warm and comfortable. They were not forbidden to sleep there. On the contrary, they were encouraged. But never a one would do so. They declared the place haunted and were in a state of terror even to be near it.
Manuel, after pausing for a moment to take his breath, strode up to the group.
"Get in there, some of you!" he ordered, "And show me the way. I want to see over the place."
A chorus of wails arose. The guards shrank and cowered at the suggestion. Their terror was more than panicky, it was even hysterical. They shook with convulsive jerks of fear, as though they had a spasm disease.
"Christophe!" cried one of them, in a sort of howl. "Christophe! For three days he is here, Yes! We see him walk, Yes! If we go in, he will make us jump off the cliff!"
And another added, with an undertone of superstitious horror,
"And his ghost will be waiting at the bottom to carry our ghosts away!"
"Fools!" declared Manuel, "open the door!"
He pointed to where the huge, rusty iron-bound door frowned in the blank wall of gray stone.
The negro guards hung back and gabbled together, but Manuel turned upon them fiercely with uplifted switch. At that, the giant warder, who had already acknowledged the mastership, slouched forward and pulled open the creaking door, leaving a dark opening from which came the smell of foul air and poisonous vegetation.
Manuel motioned with his head for Stuart to precede him.
The boy hesitated. He was brave enough, but the terror of the negroes was catching. He would not have admitted to being afraid, but there was a lump in his throat and his legs felt unsteady.
The Cuban, who felt sure that Stuart was not the negro horse-boy that he seemed, judged this appearance of fear as evidence that the boy was still playing a part, and turned on him with a snarl.
"Get in there, you!"
Screwing up his courage, Stuart stepped forward, though hesitatingly and unwillingly. Just as he crossed the threshold, the giant warder reached out a gaunt hand and pulled him back.
"Not that way!" he said. "Two steps more, Boy, and you are dead!"
Manuel started. From his pocket he took a portable electric light and flashed it upon the ground just within the entrance.
The negro guard was right. Immediately before him lay a deep pit, how deep there was no means of saying. Once it had been covered with a trap-door, which could be worked from the InnerCitadel. Thus Christophe, if he pleased, could send a message of welcome to his visitors, and drop them to a living death with the words of hospitality on his lips.
"If I had gone first," said Manuel quietly, turning to the guards, "not one of you would have said a word!"
The negroes slunk away under his gaze. The accusation was true. They had no love for the "whites." Only the fact that they believed Stuart to be a negro boy had saved him.
The boy looked down at that profound dungeon, from which rose a faint stench, and shuddered.
There was a heavy pause. Manuel was debating whether he dare try and force the guards to show the way. If he ordered it, he would have to force it through, or the prestige he had won would be lost. He dared not. As between the terror of a white man's gun, and the terror of a "ha'nt," the latter was the more powerful.
Motioning Stuart to enter and showing the narrow ledge around the pit with the spotlight, he followed. Then he turned to the guards clustered outside.
"Close the door!" he ordered, curtly.
This command was obeyed with alacrity. The negro guards were only too anxious to see that hole in the wall shut. Suppose the ghost of Christophe should come gliding out among them!
So far, the Cuban was safe. He had reached the Citadel and entered it. He had no fear thatthe warders would open it again to spy on him. Their terror was too real.
Raising the spot-light so that it flashed full upon Stuart's face, the Cuban spoke.
"Understand me, now," he said curtly, and with a hard ring in his voice. "How much of your story may be true and how much false I have not yet found out. But, if what you say about hating Leborge is true, I will put you in a place where you will be able to see him. You have a pistol, I know. If you see Leborge raise pistol or knife against me, shoot, and shoot quickly! I will make you rich!"
Stuart thought to himself that if the conspirators were to come to quarreling, that was the very time he would keep still. He, certainly, had no desire for bloodshed, nor any intention to fire at anybody, if he could help it. But he only answered,
"I understand."
Manuel's intention was no less concealed. He planned either to reveal the boy to his fellow-conspirators, or else, to reveal him to the negro warders as a white intruder. Either way, he figured, there would be an end to the boy.
By the light of his lamp, consulting a small manuscript chart of the ruin, Manuel passed through many tortuous passages and dark chambers until he came to a ruined wall. Climbing a few feet up the crumbling stones, he set his eye to a crevice, nodded as though satisfied, wrenchedaway several more stones, laying these down silently and beckoned Stuart to come beside him.
The boy looked down on a circular hall, the outer arc of which was pierced with ruined windows opening to the sky.
"Leborge will sit there!" whispered Manuel, pointing. "Kill him, and you will be rich!"
Stuart nodded. He did not trust himself to speak.
Walking as silently as he could, Manuel left the place, pondering in his own mind what he was going to do with the boy. Should he reveal the secret and have his fellow-conspirators kill him? Should he turn him over to the machetes of the negroes? Or should he kill the boy, himself? One thing he had determined—that Stuart should not reach the plains below, alive.
And Stuart, in that hole of the ruined wall, crouched and watched. Of what was to happen in that room below, what dark plot he was to hear, he had no knowledge. Yet, over his eager desire to find out this conspiracy against the United States, above his anxiety with regard to the fate of his father, one question loomed in ever larger and blacker proportions—
He had got into the Citadel. How was he to get out?
Manuel was no coward. Somewhere, back in his Spanish ancestry, had been a single drop of an Irish strain, adding a certain combativeness to the gallantry of his race. That drop, too, mixed badly with Spanish treachery, and made him doubly dangerous.
Certainly the Cuban was no coward. But, as he came out from the murk of those chambers with their rotting floors, many of them undermined by oubliettes and dungeons, he felt a chill of fear. Even the occasional bursts of sunshine through the cloud-fog which perpetually sweeps over La Ferrière did not hearten him. He passed into the open space back of the outer walls and set himself to climb the long flight of stone steps that led to the battlements, where, he thought, his fellow conspirators might be. But, on the summit, he found himself alone.
The battlements cowed his spirits. With walls fifteen feet thick, wide enough to allow a carriage to be driven upon them, they looked over a sheer drop of two thousand feet. Sinister and forbidding, even the sunlight could not lessen their grimness.
As if in memory of the hundreds of victims who had been bidden jump off those ramparts, merely for Christophe's amusement, or who had been hurled, screaming, as penalty for his displeasure, a ruddy moss feeding upon decay, has spread over the stones, and this moss, ever kept damp by the cloud-banks which wreathe the Citadel continually is moistly red, like newly shed blood. In cracks and corners, fungi of poisonous hues adds another touch of wickedness. Manuel shivered with repulsion. Probably not in all the world, certainly not in the Western Hemisphere, is there a ruin of such historic terror as the Citadel of the Black Emperor on the summit of La Ferrière.1
1This ruin, now, is nominally in territory under the jurisdiction of an American provost-marshal. It is therefore less difficult of access than formerly, but it is still considered unsafe for travelers.
1This ruin, now, is nominally in territory under the jurisdiction of an American provost-marshal. It is therefore less difficult of access than formerly, but it is still considered unsafe for travelers.
A gleam of sun revealed the extraordinary impregnability of the place. The double-walled entrance from the hillside, pierced by but a single gate, could only be battered down by heavy artillery, and no guns powerful enough for such a feat could be brought up the hill. The Inner Citadel, access to which was only by a long flight of steps, is unapproachable from any other point, and a handful of defenders could keep an army at bay.
The cliff-side is as sheer as Gibraltar, affording not even a foothold for the most venturesome climber. The walls are built upon its very verge and are as solid as the rock itself. Its gray massconveys a sense of enormous power. "It towers upon the last and highest precipice," says Hesketh Prichard, "like some sinister monster of the elder world, ready to launch itself forth upon the spreading lands below."
The Citadel commands the whole of the Plain of the North clear to the distant sea. At its south-eastern end it faces toward the frontier of St. Domingo, the sister republic, fifty miles away. Christophe built it as a central base, controlling the only roads and passes which command the range from Dondon to Vallière, and rendering attack impossible, from the southern side, through Marmalade. (Many names in Haiti give an irresistible appearance of being comic, such as the Duke of Lemonade, Duke of Marmalade, Baron the Prophet Daniel, and Colonel the Baron Roast Beef, but they are intended seriously.)
Manuel had gazed over the landscape but a few moments when the sun was veiled in one of the cold, raw cloud-fogs which continually sweep the summit. Billowing, dank masses hurtled about him, blotting out even the outlines of the ruin. For several minutes the grey mists enwreathed him, then, as they lightened, the Cuban saw before him, shadow-like and strange, the figure of the Black Emperor himself.
The warders' terror of the ghost of Christophe cramped Manuel's heart for a moment and he fell back. His hand flashed to his pocket, none the less.
The figure laughed, a harsh coarse laugh which Manuel knew and recognized at once.
"General Leborge," he exclaimed, surprise and self-annoyance struggling in his voice. "It is you!"
"But Yes, my friend, it is I. You see, I am not so daring as you. I came secretly. I have been here three days, waiting for you."
"But the meeting was set for today!"
"It is true. But it was more difficult for me to get here than for you. See you, as a stranger you had not the suspicion of intrusion to combat. No, if it were known that I were here, there would be political difficulties—ah, many! Yes!"
The Cuban nodded. He was not especially interested in the political embroilments of his co-conspirator. As a matter of fact, the plot accomplished, it was Manuel's purpose to let enough of the truth leak out to make it seem that Leborge had been a traitor to the Haitian Republic.
"Have you seen Cecil?" he asked.
"Not yet, No!" answered the negro general. "Me, I had thought he would come with you."
"He didn't. And he wasn't on the road from Cap Haitien, either. Queer, too. First time I ever knew him to fail."
"So! But I have a feeling he will not fail. He will be here today. Come down to the place of meeting. I have some food and we can have a mouthful while waiting for him."
The big negro cast a look at himself.
"I do not think we shall be interrupted, No!" he commented.
The Cuban showed his teeth in the gleam of a quick smile.
"The guards are too much afraid of the ghost of Christophe to dare enter the place," he said. "That was a good idea of yours."
The two men turned away from the battlements to the steps which led down toward the dwelling rooms, and Manuel laid finger on lip.
"It is well to be a ghost," he said, "but if the guards should chance to hear me talking to the ghost, they might begin to think. And thinking, my dear Leborge, is sometimes dangerous."
The huge negro nodded assent and hung back while Manuel descended the stair.
At the entrance into the high room, ringed with windows, in a small ruined opening of which Stuart crouched watching, Manuel waited for Leborge. Together they entered.
At the door of the room the negro started back with an exclamation of astonishment, and even Manuel paused.
On a square block of stone in the center of the room, which Manuel could have sworn was not there when he looked into the chamber a short half-hour before, sat Guy Cecil, complacently puffing at a briar pipe. His tweeds were as immaculate as though he had just stepped from the hands of his valet, and his tan shoes showed mark neither of mud nor rough trails. Manuel's quickglance caught these details and they set him wondering.
"By the Ten Finger-Bones!" ejaculated Leborge. "How did you get in here?"
"Why?" asked Cecil, in mild surprise.
"Polliovo didn't see you come. I didn't see you come."
"No?"
The negation was insolent in its carelessness.
"But how did you get in?"
The Englishman took his pipe from his mouth, and, with the stem, pointed negligently to a window.
"That way," he said.
The negro blustered out an oath, but was evidently impressed, and looked at his fellow-conspirator with superstitious fear.
The Cuban, more curious and more skeptical, went straight to the window and looked out. The crumbling mortar-dust on the sill had evidently been disturbed, seeming to make good the Englishman's story, but, from the window, was a clear drop of four hundred feet of naked rock, without even a crack to afford a finger-hold, while the precipitous descent fell another fifteen hundred feet. To climb was a feat manifestly impossible.
"Permit me to congratulate you on your discovery of wings, Senor Cecil," remarked Manuel, with irony.
The Englishman bowed, as at a matter-of-coursecompliment, and, by tacit agreement, the subject dropped.
Yet Manuel's irritation was hard to hide. Not the least of the reasons for his animosity to Cecil was the Englishman's undoubted ability to cover his movements. In the famous case when the two conspirators had negotiated an indigo concession in San Domingo and the profits had suddenly slipped through Manuel's fingers, the Cuban was sure that the Englishman had made a winning, but he had no proof. Likewise, with this plot in hand, Manuel feared lest he should be outmanœuvred at the last.
Following Cecil's example, Leborge and Manuel rolled out to the center of the room some blocks that had fallen from the walls, and sat down. Stuart noticed that the Cuban so placed himself that he was well out of a possible line of fire between the negro general and the embrasure where the boy was hidden. This carefulness, despite its air of negligence, reminded Stuart of the rôle he was expected to play, and he concentrated his attention on the three conspirators.
Although the Cuban was apparently the only one who had reason to suspect being overheard, the three men talked in low tones. The language used was French, as Stuart gleaned from a word or two which reached his ears, but the subject of the conversation escaped him. One phrase, however, attracted his attention because it was so often repeated, and Stuart surmised that thisphrase must bear an important relation to the main subject of the meeting. The boy did not fail to realize that a conference so important that it could only be held in so secret a place must be of extraordinary gravity. This phrase was——
FOR A HUNDRED FEET THEY FELL AND STUART CLOSED HIS EYES IN SICKENING DIZZINESSFOR A HUNDRED FEET THEY FELL AND STUART CLOSED HIS EYES IN SICKENING DIZZINESS
"Mole St. Nicholas."
The words held no meaning for Stuart, though he had seen reference to them in his father's papers. He suspected that the phrase might be some catch-word referring to a subject too dangerous for mention, possibly the Presidency of Haiti. Following out this theme, the boy guessed that he was a witness to the hatching of one of the political revolutions, which, from time to time, have convulsed the Republic of Haiti. If so, the matter was serious, for, as the boy knew, ever since the treaty of 1915, the United States was actively interested in forcing the self-determination of Haiti, meanwhile holding the country under a virtual protectorate. Such a revolution, therefore, would be a deliberate attack upon the United States.
This impression was heightened by his catching the words "naval base," which could only deal with possible developments in a state of war. Stuart strained his ears to the utmost, but isolated words were all that he could glean.
Later, Stuart was to learn that his guess was at fault in general, but that the conclusion he had reached—namely, that injury to the United States was intended—was not far wide of the mark.
As the conference proceeded, it became evident to the hidden observer that the relations between the conspirators were growing strained. The Cuban seemed to be in taunting mood. The veins on the negro general's bull neck began to swell, and he turned and called Manuel,
"Pale Toad!"
A moment after, his raucous voice insulted the Englishman with the description,
"Snake that does not even hiss!"
Stuart expected to see violence follow these words, but the Cuban only moved restlessly under the insult; the Englishman smiled. It was a pleasant smile, but Stuart was keen enough to grasp that a man who smiles when he is insulted must either be a craven or a dangerous man with an inordinate gift of self-control. Cecil could not be a coward, or such men as Manuel and Leborge would not so evidently fear him, therefore the other character must befit him.
Another word which repeated itself frequently was——
"Panama."
This confirmed Stuart in his suspicions that the conspiracy, whatever it might portend, was directed against the authority of the United States, since the Panama Canal Zone is under American jurisdiction.
The conference was evidently coming to a crisis. The negro was becoming excited, the Cuban nervous, the Englishman more immovable than ever.
Came a sudden movement, following upon some phrase uttered by Manuel, but unheard by the boy, and the Cuban and Leborge leaped to their feet, a revolver in each man's right hand.
Spoke the Englishman, in a quiet voice, but sufficiently deepened by excitement to reach the boy's ears:
"Is there any reason, Gentlemen, why I should not shoot both of you and finish this little affair myself?"
A revolver glittered in his hand, though no one had seen the action of drawing.
In the flash of a second, Stuart understood Manuel's plot. It was the Cuban who had provoked the negro to draw his weapon, counting on the boy's shooting his supposed enemy, as had been agreed upon. Then Manuel would drag him out of his hiding-place and kill him for an eavesdropper. He crouched, motionless, and watched.
"Sit down, and put up your weapons," continued Cecil, his voice still tense enough to be heard clearly. "This is childishness. Our plans need all three of us. It will be time enough to quarrel when we come to divide the spoils. First, the spoils must be won."
Negro and Cuban, without taking their eyes from other, each fearing that the other might take an advantage, realized from Cecil's manner, that he must have the drop on them. With a simultaneous movement, they put away their guns. The negro sat down, beaten. Manuel, with a swift andhardly noticeable side-step, moved a little nearer to Cecil, putting himself almost within knife-thrust distance.
A slight, a very slight elevation of the barrel of the tiny revolver glittering in the Englishman's hand warned the Cuban that the weapon was covering his heart. An even slighter narrowing of the eyelids warned him that Cecil was fully ready to shoot.
With a low curse, the Cuban retreated to his stone and sat down. He did not sprawl loosely in dejection, as had the negro, but he sat with one foot beside the stone and his body leaning half-forward, his muscles tense, like a forest cat awaiting its spring.
The conference came to a head quickly, as Stuart saw. The outbreak of mistrust and hostility, followed by discussion, proved how closely linked were the plotters. Yet each man wanted the business done as quickly as possible, and wanted to be free from the danger of assassination by his comrades.
Leborge drew from his pocket a paper which he showed to the other two, and, in turn, Manuel and Cecil produced documents, the Englishman using his left hand only and never dropping the barrel of his revolver. Few words were exchanged, and these in the low tones in which the conference had been carried on before. Of the contents of the papers, Stuart could not even guess. Whatever they were, they seemed to besatisfactory, for, so far as the boy could judge, harmony returned among the conspirators. But the Englishman kept wary watch with his gun.
"All goes well, then," concluded Leborge, rising and shivering in the damp air, for the clouds were eddying through the ruined windows in raw and gusty blasts.
"It can be done next spring!" declared the Cuban.
"It will be done, as agreed," was the Englishman's more cautious statement.
"Then," said Manuel, raising his voice a trifle in a way which Stuart knew he was meant to hear, "the sooner I get down to Cap Haitien the better. I had trouble enough to get up."
"It might be well," suggested the Englishman, "if Leborge should repeat his trick of appearing as the ghost of Christophe. The guards will be so frightened that they will think of nothing else, and you will be able to get away without any unpleasantness."
"And you?" queried the Cuban. "How will you go?"
Again the Englishman nodded toward the window.
"I will use the wings you were kind enough to say I must possess," he answered, enigmatically.
Peering out cautiously from his post of observation in the embrasure, Stuart saw that both Manuel and Leborge hesitated at the entrance tothe dark passage which led from the Dining Hall and Queen's Chamber to the inner court, from whence went the paths leading respectively to the outer gate, whither Manuel must go, and to the battlements, where Leborge was to reappear as the ghost of Christophe.
"You are afraid of each other?" queried Cecil, with his faint smile. "Well, perhaps you have reason! I will go through the passage with both of you. As I said before, each of us needs the other."
Relief and hate passed like shadows across the faces of Leborge and Manuel. Each had intended to kill the other in the dark of those passages, each had feared that he might be slain himself. As Cecil knew, once out in the open, mutual distrust and watchfulness would ensure the keeping of the peace.
Stuart, listening intently for the sound of shots, heard in the distance the Englishman's voice:
"I forgot my pipe. I'll just go back for it."
And then he heard steps coming at a light, but fast run. Evidently Cecil wanted to gain time.
The Englishman came in swiftly, picked up his pipe—which he had left on the stone—slipped across toward the window, moved a loosened stone and drew out from a cavity in the wall a green bundle from which some straps were hanging. These he buckled on as a body-harness. Stuart had never seen fingers that moved so quickly, or which had less appearance of hurry.
A thought struck him. Impulsively, he leaped from the embrasure.
A glitter told him that the gun was covering him.
He spoke breathlessly.
"Manuel expected me to kill Leborge. He'll kill me for not doing it."
In answer to a commanding look of interrogation, Stuart went on:
"I'm an American, and straight. I'll tell you all about it, later. Guess there isn't much time, now. Take me with you."
Cecil knew men. He looked at the boy, piercingly, and answered:
"Very well. If you've got the nerve."
"I have!"
Eye flashed to eye.
Came the decision:
"Your belt's too small. Take mine!"
The Englishman unfastened his own belt, grasped the boy by the shoulders, spun him round, ran the belt under his arms and through the two sides of the harness he had strapped on himself. He took a step and a heave and both were on the window-sill.
At the sight of the abyss below, a sudden panic caught Stuart's breath and heart, and he seemed to choke.
"What do we do?" he gasped.
"We jump!" said Cecil.
They leaped clear.
For a hundred feet they fell, and Stuart closed his eyes in that sickening dizziness which comes from a high fall.
Then he felt Cecil's arm grip him in a bear hug, and, a second after, his breast bone seemed to cave in, as a sudden jerk and strain came on the strap by which he was bound to the Englishman.
Instinctively he tried to squirm free, but the grip and the strap held firm.
Then the falling motion changed into a slow rocking see-saw, coupled with a sense of extraordinary lightness, and Stuart, looking overhead, saw the outstretched circle of a modern parachute.
Swaying in sea-sick fashion, Stuart saw the forests, far below, seem to rise up to meet him. Under the influence of the double motion of drop and roll, the whole earth seemed to be rocking, and the sense of the void beneath him made Stuart feel giddy and faint. The fall was slower than he had expected.
Soon, a damp heat, rising from below, warned the boy that they were approaching the ground, and, a second or two later, the Englishman said quietly:
"We are going to hit the trees. Cover your face and head with your arms. You won't be hurt, but there is no sense in having one's eyes scratched out."
In fact, the trees were very near. Stuart cast one look down, and then, following the advice given, covered his face. A quarter of a minute later, his legs and the lower half of his body plunged into twigs and foliage. The parachute, released from a part of the weight which had held it steady, careened, was caught by a sidewise gust of wind, and, bellying out like a sail, it dragged the two aerial travelers through the topmost branches in short, vicious jerks which made Stuart feel as though he were being pulled apart. This lasted but a minute or two, however, when the parachute itself, torn, and caught in the branches, came to anchor.
"I fancy we had better climb down," remarked Cecil, cheerfully, and, at the same time, Stuart realized that the belt, which had grappled him tight to the Englishman's harness, had been loosened.
The boy drew a long breath, for his lungs had been tightly compressed during the downward journey, and, instinctively, reached out for a branch sufficiently strong to support him.
The Englishman, a man of quicker action, had already swung clear and was descending the tree with a lithe agility that seemed quite out of keeping with his quiet and self-possessed manner. The boy, despite his youth, came down more clumsily. On reaching ground, he found his companion sedately polishing his tan boots with a tiny bit of rag he had taken from a box not much bigger than a twenty-five cent piece. Stuart's clothes were torn in half-a-dozen places, Cecil's tweeds were absolutely unharmed.
The Englishman caught the boy's thought and answered it.
"Explorers' Cloth," he said. "I have it made specially for me; you can hardly cut it with a knife."
Inwardly the boy felt that he ought to be ableto carry on the conversation in the same light vein, but his nerves were badly shaken. His companion glanced at him.
"A bit done up, eh?" He took a metal container from his pocket, in shape like a short lead pencil, and poured out two tiny pellets into his palm.
"If you are not afraid of poison," he remarked amicably, "swallow these. They will pick you up at once."
The thought of poison had flashed into Stuart's mind. After all, the Englishman was just as much one of the conspirators as Manuel or Leborge, and might be just as anxious for the death of an eavesdropper. At the same time, the boy realized that he was absolutely in the Englishman's power, and that if Cecil wanted to get rid of him, there, in that thick forest, he had ample opportunity. To refuse the pellets might be even more dangerous than to accept them. Besides, there was a certain atmosphere of directness in Cecil, conspirator though the boy knew him to be, which forbade belief in so low-grade a manner of action as the use of poison.
He held out his hand for the pellets and swallowed them without a word.
A slight inclination of the head showed the donor's acceptance of the fact that he was trusted.
"Now, my lad," he said. "I think you ought to tell me something about yourself, and what you were doing in the Citadel. You asked me to saveyou from Manuel, and I have done so. Perhaps I have been hasty. But, in honor bound, you must tell me what you know and what you heard."
Through Stuart's veins, the blood was beginning to course full and free. The pellets which Cecil had given him—whatever they were—removed his fatigue as though it had been a cloak. They loosened the boy's tongue, also, and freely he told the Englishman all his affairs save for his cause in pursuing Manuel, which he regarded as a personal matter. He mentioned the only words he had overheard, while watching in the ruined Citadel and explained that the taunting of Leborge by Manuel, during the conference, had been only a ruse to provoke trouble, the Cuban hoping that the boy would shoot.
"And what general impression did you get from the meeting?" Cecil queried.
The boy hesitated, fearing to enrage his questioner.
"Well," he blurted out, "if I must say it, I think that you're plotting a revolution in this country, putting Leborge up as president, letting Manuel run the country, driving the United States clean out of it, and giving you the chance to take all sorts of commercial concessions for yourself."
The Englishman nodded his head.
"For a guess," he declared, "your idea is not half bad. Evidently, you have plenty of imagination. The only trouble with your summing up of the situation, my boy, is that it is wrong in everyparticular. If you did not learn any more than that from the conference, your information is quite harmless. I suppose I can count on your never mentioning this meeting?"
Stuart thought for a moment.
"No," he said, "I can't promise that."
The Englishman lifted his eyebrows slightly.
"And why?"
Stuart found it difficult to say why. He had a feeling that to swear silence would, in a sense, make him a party to the conspiracy, whatever it might be.
"I—I've got it in for Manuel," he said lamely, though conscious, as he said it, that the reply would not satisfy.
Cecil looked at him through narrowed eyelids.
"I suppose you know that I would have no scruples in shooting you if you betrayed us," he remarked.
Stuart looked up.
"I don't know it," he answered. "Manuel or Leborge might do it, but I think you'd have a lot of scruples in shooting an unarmed boy."
"Surely you can't expect me to save your life merely to run my own neck in a noose?"
"That's as good as admitting that what you're doing might run your neck into a noose," commented Stuart shrewdly, if a little imprudently.
"All right. But you must play fair. I have helped you. In honor, you can't turn that help against me."
It was a definite deadlock. The boy realized that, while the Englishman was not likely to put a bullet through his head, as either Manuel or Leborge would have done, he was none the less likely to arrange affairs so that there would be no chance for talk. Haitian prisons were deathtraps. Also Cecil's declaration that an abuse of kindness would be dishonorable had a great deal of weight with the boy. His father had taught him the fine quality of straight dealing.
"Look here, sir," he said, after a pause. "You said that I hadn't got the right idea as to what you three were doing."
"You haven't."
"Then I can't betray it, that's sure! I'll promise, if you like, that, if I do ever find out the whole truth about this plot, and if it's something which, as an American, I oughtn't to let go by, I won't make any move in it until I know you've been warned in plenty of time. If it isn't, I'll say nothing. There's no reason why I should get Leborge or you in trouble. It's Manuel I'm after."
"If you'll promise that," said Cecil, "I fancy I can afford to let you go. I don't want you with me, anyway, for that Cuban dog would be sure that you had betrayed him to me, and he would suppose that I was going to betray him in turn. I'll land you in Cuba, and if you take my advice, you'll keep away from Haiti. It isn't healthy—for you."
Having thus settled Stuart's fate to his ownsatisfaction, Cecil climbed a little distance up the tree, caught the ropes of the parachute, and with much hauling, assisted by Stuart, he pulled the wreckage down and thrust it under a bush.
"The weather and the ants will make short work of that," he commented. "There won't be much of it left but the ribs in a week. And now, lad, we'll strike for the coast."
Though there seemed to Stuart no way of telling where they were, Cecil took a definite course through the jungle. They scrambled over and through the twisted tangle of undergrowth, creepers and lianas, and, in less than an hour, reached a small foot-path, bearing northwestward.
"I don't know this path," the Englishman remarked frankly, "but it's going in the direction I want, any way." A little later, he commented, "I fancy this leads to a village," and struck out into the jungle for a detour. On the further side of the village, he remarked, "I know where I am, now," and, thereafter, made no further comment upon the route. He talked very interestingly, however, about the insects, flowers and trees by the way, and, when dark came on, taught Stuart more about the stars than he had learned in all his years of schooling.
They walked steadily without a halt for food, even, from the late afternoon when the parachute had hit the trees, until about an hour after sunrise the next morning, when the faint trail that they had lately been following, suddenly came toan end on the bank of a narrow river, hardly more than a creek.
Putting a tiny flat instrument between his teeth, Cecil blew a shriek so shrill that it hurt Stuart's ears. It was repeated from a distance, almost immediately. Five minutes later the boy heard the "chug-chug" of a motor boat, and a small craft of racing pattern glided up to the bank.
"Got a passenger, Andy," he said to the sole occupant of the boat.
"Food for fishes?" came the grim query, in reply.
"Not yet; not this time, anyway. No, we'll just put him ashore at Cuba and see if he knows how to mind his own business."
The motor boat engineer grumbled under his breath. He was evidently not a man for half-measures. The blood of the old buccaneers ran in his veins. It was evident, though, that Cecil was master.
The two men aboard, Andy turned the head of the motor boat down the river and out to sea, shooting past the short water-front of the little village of Plaine du Nord at a bewildering speed. The Creoles had barely time to realize that there was something on the water before it was gone out of sight.
Despite its speed—which was in the neighborhood of thirty-two knots—the motor boat was built for sea use, and it ran along the coast of the Haitian north peninsula, past Le Borgne and St.Louis de Nord, like a scared dolphin. Arriving near Port-de-Paix, it hugged the shore of the famous lair of the buccaneers, Isle de Tortugas, and thence struck for the open sea.
"Tortugas!" commented Cecil, pointing to the rocky shores of the islet.
"That's where all the pirates came from, wasn't it?" queried Stuart, eager to break the silence of the journey.
"Pirates? No. The pirate haunts were more to the north. It was the stronghold of the buccaneers."
"I always thought pirates and buccaneers were the same thing," put in the boy.
"Far from it. Originally the buccaneers were hunters, and their name comes fromboucan, a word meaning dried flesh. They hunted wild cattle and wild pigs on that island over there."
"Haiti?"
"It was called Hispaniola, then. The Spanish owned it, but had only a few settlements on the coast. The population was largely Carib, a savage race given to cannibalism. There seems little reason to doubt that even if the buccaneers did not actually smoke and cure human flesh, as the Caribs did, they traded in it and ate it themselves."
"Were the buccaneers Spaniards?" queried Stuart.
"No. French to begin with, and afterwards, many English joined them. That was just wherethe whole bloody business began. France protected the buccaneers, sent them aid and ammunition; even their famous guns—known as 'buccaneering pieces' and four and a half feet long—were all made in France. There was a steady demand for smoked meat and hides, and France was only too ready to get these from a Spanish colony without payment of any dues thereon.
"At the beginning of the seventeenth century the buccaneers—at that time only hunters—settled in small groups on the island of Hispaniola. Such a policy was dangerous. Time after time parties of Spanish soldiery raided the settlements, killing most of the hunters and putting the prisoners to the torture. In desperation, the buccaneers decided to abandon Hispaniola. They united their forces and sailed to the island of St. Kitts, nominally in the hands of Spain, but then inhabited only by Caribs.
"The French government at once extended its protection to St. Kitts, thus practically seizing it from Spain and claimed it as a possession. Great Britain agreed to support France in this illegal seizure and thus the little colony of St. Kitts was held safe under both French and English governments, which actually supported the hunting ventures of the buccaneers, and winked at the piratic raids which generally formed a part of the buccaneering expeditions.
"But it was not to be expected that the Spanish would keep still under the continual pillage ofthese plundering hunters. The Dons undertook to destroy the small vessels in which the buccaneers sailed and, before three years had passed, fully one-half of the buccaneers sailing from St. Kitts had been savagely slaughtered. These outrages prompted reprisals from the English and the French and thus the privateers came into the field."
"What's a privateer?" queried Stuart.
"I was just about to tell you," answered Cecil. "A privateer on the Caribbean and the Spanish Main, in those days, was a man who had sufficient money or sufficient reputation to secure a ship and a crew with which to wage war against the enemies of his country. As his own government had given nothing but permission to his venture, it gained nothing but glory from it. The privateer had the right to all the booty and plunder he could secure by capturing an enemy's ship, or raiding an enemy's settlement. The plunder was divided among the crew. Thus, a lucky voyage, in which, for example, a Spanish treasure-ship was captured, would make every member of the crew rich. Some of these privateers, after one or so prosperous voyages, settled down and became wealthy planters. The great Sir Francis Drake, on several of his voyages, went as a privateer."
"And I suppose the governments gained, by having a fleet of vessels doing their fighting, for which they needn't pay," commented the boy.
"Exactly. In a way, this was fair enough. Theprivateer took his chance, and, whether he won or lost, he was, at least, fighting for his country. But there were other men, unable to secure ships, and who could not obtain letters-of-marque from their governments, to whom loot and plunder seemed an easy way of gaining riches. Some of these were men from the crews of privateers that had disbanded, some were buccaneers. They claimed the same rights as privateers but differed in this—that they would attack any ship or settlement and plunder it at will. At first they confined themselves to small Spanish settlements only, but, later, their desires increased, and neutral ships and inoffensive villages were attacked.
"In order to put a stop to the raids of the buccaneering hunters, the Spaniards planned an organized destruction of all the wild cattle on Hispaniola, hoping thus to drive the ravagers away. It was a false move. The result of it was to turn the buccaneers into sea-rovers on an independent basis, ready for plunder and murder anywhere and everywhere. At this period they were called Filibusters, but, a little later, the word 'buccaneer' came to be used for the whole group of privateers, filibusters and hunters.
"The fury of both sides increased. So numerous and powerful did these sea-rovers become that all trade was cut off. Neutral vessels, even if in fleets, were endangered. With the cutting off of trade by sea, there was no longer any plunder for the rovers and from this cause came about thefamous land expeditions, such as the sack of Maracaibo by Lolonnois the Cruel, and the historic capture of Panama by Morgan. Large cities were taken and held to ransom. Organized raids were made, accompanied by murder and rapine. The gallantry of privateering was degenerating into the bloody brutality of piracy.
"In 1632, a small group of French buccaneer hunters had left St. Kitts and, seeking a base nearer to Hispaniola, had attacked the little island of Tortugas, on which the Spanish had left a garrison of only twenty-five men. Every one of the Spaniards were killed. The buccaneers took possession, found the harbor to be excellent, and the soil of the island exceedingly fertile. As a buccaneer base, it was ideal. Filibusters saw the value of a base so close to Spanish holdings, realized the impregnability of the harbor and flocked thither. Privateers put in and brought their prizes. Tortugas began to prosper. In 1638 the Spaniards, taking advantage of a time when several large expeditions of buccaneers were absent, raided the place in force and shot, hanged, or tortured to death, every man, woman and child they captured. Only a few of the inhabitants escaped by hiding among the rocks. But the Spanish did not dare to leave a garrison.
"The buccaneers got together and under Willis, an Englishman, reoccupied the island. Although Willis was English, the greater part of the buccaneers with him were French and they gladly accepted a suggestion from the governor-general at St. Kitts to send a governor to Tortugas. In 1641 Governor Poincy succeeded in securing possession of the Isle of Tortugas for the Crown of France. Thus, having a shadow of protection thrown around it, and being afforded the widest latitude of conduct by its governor—who fully realized that it was nothing but a nest of pirates—Tortugas flamed into a mad prosperity.
"That little desert island yonder became the wildest and most abandoned place that the world probably has ever seen. Sea-rovers, slave-runners, filibusters, pirates, red-handed ruffians of every variety on land or sea made it their port of call. Everything could be bought there; everything sold. There was a market for all booty and every article—even captured white people for slaves—was exposed for sale. An adventurer could engage a crew of cut-throats at half-an-hour's notice. A plot to murder a thousand people in cold blood would be but street talk. Every crime which could be imagined by a depraved and gore-heated brain was of daily occurrence. It was a sink of iniquity.
"After France had taken possession of Tortugas, it came about quite naturally that the French buccaneers found themselves better treated in that port than the English filibusters or the Dutch Sea-Rovers. Almost immediately, therefore, the English drew away, and established their buccaneer base in other islands, notably Jamaica, of whichisland the notorious adventurer and pirate, Sir Henry Morgan, became governor.
"The steady rise of Dutch power, bringing about the Dutch War of 1665, brought about a serious menace against the English power, increased when, in 1666, France joined hands with Holland. Peace was signed in 1667. In the next thirty years, four local West Indian wars broke out, the grouping of the powers differing. All parties also sought to control the trade across the Isthmus of Panama, and there was great rivalry in the slave trade. During this period, privateers and buccaneers ceased to attack Spanish settlements only, and raided settlements belonging to any other country than their own. During the various short intervals of peace between these wars, the several treaties had become more and more stringent against the buccaneers. When, therefore, in 1697, the Treaty of Ryswick brought peace between England, France, Holland and Spain, it ended the period of the buccaneer."
"I don't quite see why," put in Stuart, a little puzzled.
"For this reason. The buccaneers had not only existed in spite of international law, they had even possessed a peculiar status as a favored and protected group. The treaty put an end to that protection. Sea-fighting thereafter was to be confined to the navies of the powers, and the true privateers and sea-rovers roved the seas no more."
"But how about the pirates—'Blackbeard' Teach, Capt. Kidd, 'Bloody' Roberts and all the rest?" queried Stuart.
"They were utterly different in type and habits from the buccaneers," explained Cecil. "After the Treaty of Ryswick, piracy became an international crime. A harbor belonging to one of the powers could no longer give anchorage to a pirate craft. Markets could no longer openly deal in loot and plunder.
"Those freebooters who had learned to live by pillage, and who thus had become outlaws of the sea, were compelled to find some uninhabited island for a refuge. They made their new headquarters at the Island of New Providence, one of the Bahamas. With buccaneering ended, and piracy in process of suppression by all the naval powers, the reason for Tortugas' importance was gone. It dwindled and sank until now it is a mere rocky islet with a few acres under cultivation, and that is all. I know it well. Much treasure is said to be buried there, but no one has ever found it. Don't waste your time looking for it, boy. You will keep away from this part of the world if you know what is good for you!"
With which menace, the Englishman fell silent, and Stuart felt it wiser to refrain from disturbing him. Even over a copiously filled lunch basket, the three in the boat munched, without a word exchanged.
At dusk they ran into a small cove at the easternmost end of the northern coast of Cuba, not far from Baracoa, the oldest city in Cuba and its first capital, where Columbus, Narvaez, Cortes and others of the great characters of history, played their first parts in the New World.
Under the shadow of Anvil Mountain, the motor boat ran up to a little wharf, almost completely hidden in greenery, and there Cecil and the boy landed. Stuart did not fail to observe that the motor boat engineer needed no directions as to the place of landing. Evidently this cove was familiar.
On going ashore, without a word of explanation to the boy, Cecil led the way to a small hut, not far from the beach. When, in response to a knock, the door opened, he said, in Spanish:
"Ignacio, this American boy is going to Havana. You will see that he does not get lost on the way!"
"Si, Senor," was the only reply, the fisherman—for so he appeared—evincing no surprise at the sudden appearance of Cecil at his door, nor at his abrupt command. This absence of surprise or question was the strongest possible proof of the extent of the Englishman's power, and Stuart found himself wondering to what extent this conspirator's web extended over the West Indies.
A phrase or two, when they were walking together through the jungle, after the parachute descent, had shown Stuart that the Englishman was especially well acquainted with the flora andfauna of Jamaica. He must possess powerful friends in Haiti, or he could never have reached the Citadel, to arrive at which point both Manuel and Leborge had been compelled to employ tortuous methods, even to disguise. The motor boat awaiting him in the Haitian jungle showed an uncanny knowledge of that locality. He had mentioned that he knew the Isle of Tortugas. He was evidently known on the Cuban coast. This plot, whatever it might be, was assuredly of far-reaching importance, if one of the plotters found it necessary to weave a web that embraced all the nearby islands.
"I'm glad I didn't promise not to tell about it," muttered the boy, as he watched Cecil stride away without even a word of farewell, "for I miss my guess if there isn't something brewing to make trouble for the United States."