“There are seven hundred Marines on the island,” she told herself. “But what are they against so many? This—this terrible schooner will be everywhere, in all the little bays, lurking about with rifles and ammunition to sell for gain and at the cost of many human lives.”
Suddenly a desperate measure suggested itself to her. She recalled the incident of a few nights before when, by shooting an arrow made into a pitch-pine torch, Curlie had burned a cord and loosed the black goat.
Curlie’s bow and arrows were at this moment close by his side. Near at hand was a dwarf pine. It would furnish the pitch. In the center of that boat lying down there in the bay stacked round the mast was a pile of sleeping mats. Inch thick affairs of palm fiber they were and dry as tinder.
The schooner lay almost directly beneath them, an easy shot.
“One flaming arrow in that pile of sleeping mats and the boat will be in flames.” She said these words aloud without really willing it.
“And the ship carries much powder,” said Mona gripping Dot’s arm until it hurt. “It is the way. He, the young man, must shoot the arrow. He must shoot at once. See! I will gather the rosin.”
She endeavored to spring to her feet but Dot pulled her back.
“I—I—Wait. Wait one moment,” Dot implored. “Those are bad men. Perhaps they do not deserve to live, but—”
“They do not deserve it.” The native woman’s tone was bitter. “That white man who owns that ship sold the rifle that killed my father in a needless revolution before the Americans came. He does not deserve to live.”
“Wait,” said Curlie touching the girl’s arm lightly. “There is no need for haste. They are unloading rifles. Those long boxes could contain nothing else. The ammunition remains on board. Without it they can do nothing. I will be back,” he took a long breath, “very soon.”
The next instant he was lost in the shadows. He did not for a moment doubt the wisdom and justice of the aged black woman’s plan. His only thought was for the safety of the daring girl who was willing to risk so much for a country that was not her own.
“If the plan fails, if they see the descending arrow and trace its course,” he told himself, “if they come storming up the cliff and block our one way of escape, we are lost. I must find a second way down.”
He was gone but ten minutes. To the waiting girl it seemed an hour.
“There is another way; very steep and dangerous,” he said, “but a way of escape I believe. Shall I shoot the arrow?”
“Shoot the arrow.” Her eyes gleamed in the moonlight.
“They may discover us, may surround the rock. I am not afraid for myself, but for you—”
“Shoot the arrow.” He felt the warm pressure of her hand on his arm.
“Shoot the arrow,” she repeated.
“They may guess the source of the arrow. Your home may be destroyed.”
“Shoot the arrow.” Her lips were close to his ear, her tone low and tense.
“Here is the rosin.” The black woman’s hand trembled as she pressed a sticky ball into his own.
Seizing an arrow he rolled it over and over in the sticky mass. Then, with a sudden intake of breath he lighted a match. A moment later he nocked his arrow to send it circling straight and true, down, down, down to at last bury itself in the pile of dry mats.
All unseen by the workers on the schooner, a wisp of white smoke began mounting to the sky. Then, with a suddenness that was startling, the whole mass of mats burst out in red flame. Even then they did not see. For a space of thirty seconds they worked on. When at last the smell of smoke reached their nostrils and they turned to find themselves staring into the flames, they acted according to their own natures.
A native seized a bucket of drinking water to dash it into the flames. It might have been oil for all the good it did. The mats, baked as they had been in the dry Haitian sunlight, were tinder. So too was the deck, the mast and the rails of the schooner.
The schooner carried two dories. The one at her side was more than half filled with heavy boxes of rifles. Two natives, in an attempt to lighten this dory, over-balanced it. It filled and sank. All thought now was of escape. Men poured from the cabin where they had been sleeping. Brown men, red men, black men, men of every hue, they stormed madly about the deck.
Two men, cooler than the rest, began launching the remaining dory.
One man, wilder than the rest and possessing no patience at all, leaped into the sea.
“The White Shadow!” Mona screamed. “That man will perish!”
As if hearing her call, the man turned his face upward as he swam.
“It is the villain, the bad white man.” Mona put her hands to her eyes. “It is he, yet I cannot see him perish.”
Without knowing why she did it, Dot followed her example. For a full moment she remained with covered eyes. Then, suddenly realizing the peril of their position, she uncovered her eyes and scrambled to her feet to exclaim:
“Curlie! Mona! The ship will explode. We are in great danger! Back! Back! We must get far back into the forest!”
Even with this warning Mona paused for a last look. The ship was all in flames. The dory, with its human freight, was moving rapidly away. But the swimming white man, where was he? Gone. Only where he had last been seen, far below the surface, was a movement as of a white sheet.
“The White Shadow of the sea,” said Mona as she turned to go racing away after her friends.
They had beaten their way back into the brush for a distance of a hundred rods when of a sudden, the very earth beneath them seemed torn in pieces. So great was the explosion that they were thrown to the earth and fine particles of debris were sprinkled over them.
“That,” said Mona, “is the end of the revolution. And perhaps of all revolutions. That heartless seller of arms will visit us no more.”
Ten minutes later they were lying once more upon the rock, looking down. All the overhanging bushes and palms had been blown away. The bay, a silent, beautiful blue, lay beneath them. Only drifting fragments remained to tell the story. A dory swamped near the farther shore told that the crew had escaped.
“But what is that white thing over there?” Dot asked, pointing away to the left.
“That,” said Curlie after one good look, “is the White Shadow of the sea.”
“A shark!” Dot said in great surprise. “He must have been killed by the explosion. But see! Was there ever one as large as he?”
The shark was indeed a monster; fully sixteen feet long, with all his cruel teeth grinning he lay there a terrible thing.
“So you see, Mona,” Dot said quietly, “it is as I have told you. Your White Shadow was but one of God’s living creatures, created beyond doubt to do His will.”
“What was that?” said Curlie suddenly springing to his feet. A twig had snapped in the brush behind them. In an instant Curlie’s flashlight revealed an ugly, distorted black face. Quite as suddenly the face vanished into the night.
“That,” said Mona, “was Pluto, the bad black man, the bad white man’s friend.”
“This affair,” said Curlie, as they made their way down the rugged cliff in the dark, “is not at an end. We have been seen. Who can tell what will follow?”
“Very bad,” said Mona.
That night, at a late hour, Curlie sat once more by the window that looked out upon the garden at the chateau. He was alone. Dot, he hoped, was fast asleep. Johnny was far away. For all that he was dreaming once more of a life of peace in a garden of roses.
“Peace,” he said at last, flinging his arms wide. “What chance is there for peace with such a girl about? ‘Shoot the arrow’ she said, ‘Shoot the arrow!’ and once more ‘Shoot the arrow!’”
All the same in the end he found himself admiring the brown-eyed girl for her rare courage.
There was in Curlie Carson something of the primitive man. Like the American Indian or the Eskimo, if he hunted or prowled half the night, he slept half the next day. The tropical sun was high when he awoke. The particular sound that disturbed his slumbers was the barking of a dog—Dorn’s dog. The dog barked for joy. His young master had returned. With Dorn was Pompee.
They had returned, Curlie heard them tell Dot, because there was no use keeping camp at the Citadel. Nothing ever happened there. Nothing of importance was discovered and the two young adventurers who had induced them to take up camp there were forever getting themselves lost. Just at the present moment they were both lost.
“Curlie Carson is here,” said Dot. “He came upon us in the dark last night. And how glad I am that he did! We—we destroyed the supply ship of the revolutionists. The revolution is over. The bad white man is dead.
“But Dorn,” Curlie heard her catch a long hard breath, “Pluto, the bad black man, is still alive. He saw us last night after it was all over and he understood. I know he did. And now what will happen? Who can tell?”
Curlie had heard enough. His good friend Johnny was lost once more. In the light of the previous night’s events that seemed serious.
“They may have known of our camp,” he told himself. “Going there to waylay me they may have come upon Johnny and taken him instead. That settles it.” There was an air of finality in his tone. “The whistles must do. The drums would have been more dramatic, but there is no time to lose.”
After a hasty toilet and a more hasty meal, he bade good-bye to Dot and Doris, Dorn and Pompee, then went hurrying away over the trail to the Citadel.
Arriving at the grim old fortress just at nightfall, he went at once to his laboratory. From this place, after a half hour of banging and bumping, he emerged laden with packages. Having caught up with his burros he began loading them. After six trips to the laboratory he at last left it with the door ajar which told plainer than words that whatever of value had been there was now safely packed in hampers on the burros’ backs.
Being a good trail hunter he was not long in picking up a fresh scent that, to his great surprise, he found led in the same direction as that taken by the natives who had before spirited Johnny away.
Had he known the full truth, he must have been much more surprised for it was not alone the same trail that Johnny had been taken over but the same group of natives had taken him, and, at the very moment when Curlie found the trail, the same natives were breaking camp on the identical spot at which Johnny, with the aid of a ferocious wild boar, had made good his escape only a few days previous.
It is said that lightning never strikes twice in the same place. Something very like lightning had struck Johnny twice. A second time as he walked on the Citadel wall a group of bronze natives had silently formed about him and had spirited him away.
“This time,” he had told himself, as he recalled the strange words of the short, broad man, “I will see the thing through.”
And well he might say this for now he was caught quite helpless and unarmed. And no wild boar had as yet come to his aid.
As before, the group of bronze natives taking Johnny with them from the Citadel had traveled all night without the aid of a light. As morning dawned, they had sought out a secluded spot and had breakfasted, without building a fire, on fruits, nuts and cold cooked meats. With one member of the band detailed to watch, they had sprawled out among the ferns and had fallen asleep. Not one of them slept better than Johnny, for having once committed himself to a course of action, he never allowed the strangeness of the course nor the wildness of the land about him to rob him of his rest.
As night fell they resumed their journey. The general direction of their course was not changed. Once more they plodded steadily onward over the narrow trail that now rose at an abrupt angle, now ran on the level and now dipped a trifle downward, as a mountain trail will, but in the main bore steadily upward.
“It’s the strangest thing I ever heard of,” Johnny told himself. “I am not treated as a prisoner. Yet they take me with them, nor do they as much as say, ‘By your leave.’”
Once more the old resolve surged through his being; he would see the thing through, come what might.
What he saw and heard after three hours of steady plodding caused him to start and wonder. Having rounded a dark clump of southern pines, they came quite suddenly upon a low burning camp fire. And seated crosslegged before the fire, smiling like some elfin king, was the short, broad man who had already played so considerable a part in the boy’s life.
“So you came?” he exclaimed in quite a genial tone.
“Yes,” said Johnny rather slowly, “I—I came.”
“I hoped you would. Knew you too were trying to help the natives of Haiti. Thought I might help you. Sit down by the fire.”
As Johnny’s eyes became accustomed to the dim firelight, he noted that a large brass tube lay across the mysterious man’s knee.
“That,” said the stranger as he saw Johnny’s eyes resting upon it, “is the Magic Telescope of the old Emperor Christophe.”
“That! It—it can’t be!”
“There’s not the least doubt about it.”
“But it must be more than a hundred years old.”
“Quite a little more. Look closely and you will see the date’s still there.”
He held up a blazing ember. Johnny, looking close, read there: “Paris, France, 1797.”
“It is.” His tone was filled with awe.
At once, as he settled back in his place his mind was filled with strange stories that had been told of Christophe and this telescope and its magic properties.
“But, of course,” he said to the little man, “the magic part was all myth?”
“Nevertheless,” said the other without answering his question, “it’s a strangely powerful instrument. I’ll demonstrate. Come with me.”
He led the way to a cleared spot above a rocky ledge that was like an observation post.
“If you will follow the direction the telescope points,” said the stranger, “you will be able to locate the Citadel. The rising moon brings it out in rather strong relief.”
“Ah,” Johnny was astonished at its apparent nearness.
“You followed an irregular trail in coming here,” the other offered. “For all that it’s some distance away. Now try this.” He placed the priceless relic of other days in Johnny’s hands.
For a time as he lifted the telescope to his eyes, his trembling hands defeated his purpose, but at last the parapets of the ancient fortress stood out in startling clearness.
“It—why, it’s marvelous!” he said in a low whisper as if afraid the ghosts of other days might overhear. “It is as if—”
“As if one were right there,” put in the short broad man. “Exactly so. And it might interest you to know,” he said as he dropped to a seat on a fallen tree trunk well back from the edge of the precipice, “that the Citadel has been watched from this point, through this very glass, every day for more than a hundred years—since the death of Christophe, in fact. You have heard the story of the telescope?” He asked quite suddenly.
“Yes,” said Johnny. “But after the Emperor’s death, how did it come here?”
“The brown boy, carrier of the telescope during Christophe’s reign, was a native of this very mountain,” said the little man. “He and his tribe were loyal to the Emperor. After his death they remained loyal still. They took an oath to watch the Citadel and to defend it from vandals. That is why the watch has been kept.”
“And that explains—”
“It explains many things. There is a rumor that the bearer of the telescope knew the secret of the Emperor’s treasure and that is why they guard the Citadel so very carefully.”
“If they know that,” said Johnny, suddenly springing to his feet, “then they know the hiding place of the ‘Rope of Gold’.”
“The rumor has never been confirmed,” said the little man, rising and turning away from the ledge. “It is probably one of those myths that spring up from time to time.
“But as to the ‘Rope of Gold’,” he added as an apparent after-thought, “whether the rumor were true or not will not make the least difference. The ‘Rope of Gold’ is not in the Citadel and never was. Come, let’s go.” He struck back over the trail at a stride quite astonishing for one so short of stature.
“He knows where the ‘Rope of Gold’ has been.” The boy’s heart throbbed. “Perhaps he knows where it is to-day.”
For some time they tramped along in silence. They were, Johnny discovered, not going to the camp spot they had left.
“These people,” said the short, broad man after a time, “are not black men. They are Indians, almost pure stock, the kind of men Columbus found when first he landed here. They do not build houses as the blacks do. They live in groves and caves. We will soon come to one of their caves. Whatever you see or hear, have no fear. They have known me for more than twenty years. So long as I am with you, you are safe.”
Johnny spent the remainder of that night in the most curious place he had yet seen in Haiti—at the mouth of a cave. How far back the cave extended into the mountain he had no notion. He did know that the night air at this high altitude was crisp and cool, that his thick bed of mats was comfortable and the home-woven blankets ample for warmth. This, however, did not at once induce sleep. The day had been too full of adventure and fresh revelation for that.
When he realized that their every act at the Citadel had been watched through the “magic telescope” it gave him a peculiar feeling.
“And yet,” he told himself, “we have done nothing but look about. We have not removed a stone from its place in the ancient walls.
“Well enough that we didn’t,” he mused. “That little man told me that the ‘Rope of Gold’ has never been at the Citadel. Wonder how he knows.”
The natural answer to this question came to him as something of a shock. “If a man knows for sure that a thing is not in a certain place and never has been there, he needs must know where it has been and where it is now,” he told himself. “And if only he would tell me,” he added. “But that, of course, is not to be expected.”
There were other problems to be studied out. He had been brought to this spot for a purpose. What could that purpose be? Were these bronze men afraid that he and Curlie would chance upon some of the ancient treasure? Did they propose to break up their search by holding him prisoner? If so, where did this strange white man come in? To this question he could form no answer, so still puzzling over it he fell asleep.
* * * * * * * *
As you know, when Curlie Carson, with his heavily laden donkeys, took the trail in search of Johnny Thompson, he left his laboratory stripped of all contents. It was well that he did, for only two hours after he left, a band of blacks, some fifty in number, came scrambling up the trail that leads to the Citadel. They were led by a black man with a face of such fierce ugliness as one seldom sees on land or sea.
Arrived at the Citadel, they scattered as if in search of someone. When two of them came upon Curlie’s abandoned laboratory they let out a cry and at once the entire band swarmed around them.
Finding the place deserted, they wrecked it, tearing up tables and shelves, even wrenching the door from its hinges.
When one member, keener eyed than the others, discovered Curlie’s trail leading away into the hills, the whole band, like a pack of hounds in full cry, went yelling and roaring away after the boy and his donkeys.
What a strange and terrible horde they were. Leaning far forward as they ran they seemed more like a pack of gigantic baboons than men. But woe unto any human being who might fall into their clutches.
As for Curlie Carson, he plodded doggedly on before his burros, picking out the trail leading the way, steadily and surely, toward Johnny’s cave.
* * * * * * * *
On the day that Curlie left the chateau to go in search of Johnny, Doris and Dot started on an expedition all their own. With imagination fired by dreams of the ancient black queen’s treasure, still dreaming of seeing again that monkey with the diamond ring on his wrist, they proposed to visit the ruins of the black emperor’s palace.
“We’ll take Mona,” Dot said. “Now that the revolution has been brought to an end there is no danger.”
Doris thought of the ugly black foe that Dot and Curlie had seen at the top of the cliff after the explosion, and experienced a moment of uneasiness. But so eager was she to begin the search that she was able at once to cast fears aside.
“It will be a race,” she said with a little wild skipping, “a race between the boys and ourselves to see who first discovers treasure.”
“Yes,” laughed Dot, “a race that is likely to end with a draw. Everybody loses.” Despite this dire prophecy, they departed in high spirits and ere twilight came found themselves camping within the shadows of the impressive stone steps that had once led to a palace of such magnificence and grandeur as no other black ruler has known.
“To think,” Doris told herself as two hours later she lay beneath the blankets awaiting sleep, “that up those steps in days long gone by one passed gorgeously attired dukes and earls with their women all aglitter with jewels. And now here we are, just two girls and one old black woman, all alone with all the ruined magnificence. Here we are and to-morrow—Oh, you glorious to-morrow!”
To-morrow they would explore the mysterious pile of brick and stone that had once been a king’s palace.
“Treasure,” she whispered. “That magic word treasure. There was treasure aplenty here in those all but forgotten days. Who knows but it lies hidden away here still? Who knows—”
Her thoughts broke short off. There had come a faint scratching sound from the palm fronds above her.
“Blackbird. Some old blackbird,” she told herself. She was not quite satisfied with this. A tropical blackbird, she remembered, was always talking to himself and fluttering in and out among the branches. The thing troubled her. It was night and the jungle was new to her. She thought of snakes. Snakes, she remembered, glided about in trees. She had seen a picture of a huge one hanging over a limb.
“But everyone says there are no dangerous creatures in the Haitian jungle, not even snakes,” she reassured herself. She settled back in her place. The rustling for the time had ceased. “Just some bird,” she told herself once more.
Her right hand went to her left wrist. There something gave forth a jingling sound. Doris was not given to wearing jewelry. Notwithstanding this, before starting on this trip she had surprised her companions by putting on her three bracelets and even borrowing two others from Dot. Dot hadn’t asked why she wanted to wear them, but she had wondered about it. They were on her wrist still.
“Seems sort of foolish,” she told herself. “I’m glad I brought them though, for you really never can tell. They say that monkeys travel far. And if we found him it really might work. And if—Why! What was that?” Something had hit her hand.
“It was thrown or dropped,” she told herself, now quite genuinely alarmed. “Who could have done that?”
“Perhaps,” she thought as her heart gave a leap, “there are natives about these ruins.” She thought of the black face the others had seen at the top of the cliff by Deception Bay. With an unsteady hand she drew a flashlight from her pocket. Having snapped it on, she set its circle of light searching for the thing that had struck her hand. A half minute of this, then she gave forth a low chuckle.
“Only some creature shucking a cocoanut up there,” she told herself.
The next instant her face was quite serious. “If it were the monkey; if it only could be the jeweled monkey.” Her heart raced.
Directing the ray of light upward she was just in time to catch sight of a pair of small eyes peering down at her. The next instant they were gone.
“Itwasa monkey!” she told herself with a quick intake of breath. “It was! It was!”
“But then,” she told herself more soberly, “there may be many tame monkeys in the hills who have turned wild. I have heard of three.”
For a long time she kept the light playing upon the fronds of the palm, but all to no purpose. She saw nothing more of the creature who had showered her with cocoanut shucks. At last, as her rebellious eyelids grew heavy, she crept up to a place beside her pal and fell asleep. But even in her sleep she dreamed of palatial halls, soft carpets, gleaming chandeliers and of diamonds worn by black ladies dressed for state.
All that night, Curlie Carson plodded doggedly on before his three burros. Had he known of his pal’s safety, he must surely have camped beside the trail and slept. As it was he did not pause for rest.
As the black horde on Curlie’s trail traveled light, with no donkeys to be urged forward, they made hourly gains on the lone plodder. In the beginning Curlie had a start of ten miles. Two hours had not passed before this lead was cut to eight miles. Midnight found them but four miles behind. As dawn broke, had the trail been straight and broad instead of crooked and narrow, they must surely have caught sight of Curlie’s lagging donkeys. And then—
But fate was with the lone traveler. They did not see; they could not know how near they were to the one on whom they hoped to wreak vengeance. And as the sun came out hot on the jungle trail, they began, animal-like, to drop beside the trail to rest.
At last with half his force missing, the revengeful leader angrily called a halt and made rude camp for the day. In this he missed his opportunity, for Curlie, after a brief pause to allow his donkeys to browse on the tree leaves and wiry grass, pressed tirelessly on through the long hot day. Only as evening fell did he tether his beasts and lie him down to close his weary eyes in sleep.
* * * * * * * *
Meanwhile Doris and Dot were not without their exciting hours.
“Look! There! There he is!” It was Doris who spoke. She danced up and down in wild excitement.
“Where? Where?” Dot asked in great bewilderment. Night had passed. Morning had dawned with vivid clearness over the ruins of the ancient castle. Breakfast was over and the girls for three hours past had been exploring the ruins. On tiptoes they had ascended the massive moss-grown stairs that in the distant past had led to stately halls. They had come upon great heaps of stone and brick mantled by clinging bush and creeping vine.
“It is as if nature would hide it all.” Doris had said, a touch of sadness in her tone.
“Yes,” said Dot. “And why not? The man who built the castle turned tyrant. He sold his splendid birthright for power and gold. Had he proven a kind and just ruler his castle might have been standing to this day.”
They were wandering still among the ruins when the great moment had arrived. Doris did not answer her companion’s excited questions. She only pointed at the top of a jagged pile of rock and Dot saw for herself.
“The monkey!” exclaimed Dot.
“The jeweled monkey,” Doris answered.
“And see!” she said, gripping at her heart to still its wild beating. “There are now three rings on his arm!”
It was true. From the small creature’s arm there gleamed three jewels, two white stones and a red one.
“Two diamonds and a ruby,” whispered Dot. “If only we can get them.”
“If only we can find the hiding place from which they come,” said Doris.
Dot was thinking hard. Of all the exciting moments in her young life, this was the wildest, yet she knew that few things were accomplished in moments of wild excitement.
“We must be calm,” she said.
She closed her eyes for a moment that her wild spirits might be stilled.
Doris too was thinking and as she thought she put her hand to her bracelets. She wondered, as she did so, whether her finely laid plan would work.
Moving one step nearer to the motionless monkey she squatted down in the identical posture he had assumed, then having removed one bracelet from her wrist she placed it on the rock before her. This done she removed another and yet another until the five bracelets lay on the rocks before her.
She then replaced all the bracelets upon her wrist; waited a moment only to repeat the operation. When she had removed the bracelets six times, she left them lying on the rock to turn her back and walk away motioning her companion to follow her.
“Why! What in the world?” Dot whispered as they hid behind a clump of bushes.
Doris held up a hand for silence. It was indeed a bold game she was playing. She prized her bracelets because they came from very dear friends. And if she lost Dot’s? She dared not think of it.
That the monkey would do one of two things she felt quite certain. “If he should take a fancy to the bracelets,” she drew in a quick breath at the thought.
But no! As they peered through the bushes they saw that the monkey was acting true to form. He was imitating the girl’s action. Having removed the three rings from his arm he placed them on a flat rock. This done he placed them again on his arm.
“But will he go away and leave them?” Doris asked herself.
Three tense moments followed, moments in which the monkey followed out the girl’s pantomime to the last detail.
Then to Doris’ intense delight, he went scampering away.
Twenty seconds later Doris’ hand was closing over the three precious stones.
“It is a shame to do it,” she said. “But these stones will do us much more good than they could possibly do any monkey.”
“Let me see them,” said Dot eagerly stretching out a hand.
She took one of the white stone rings from her open palm. Then having taken a small mirror from her pocket, she drew the corner of the stone across it.
“Hurrah!” she shouted. “It’s real. It cuts glass. It’s a diamond.”
“Be still!” said Doris gripping her arm. “You’ll frighten the monkey away. I’m afraid that we have killed the goose that lays the golden egg.”
“Killed what?” Dot stared at her in surprise.
“Don’t you see,” said Doris, “what we might have done? If our monkey friend has found two rings in the last few days, who can say how many more treasures there are hidden where these rings were found?”
“Who indeed?”
“If only we could have followed him to the source of his treasure.”
“We can! We can!” exclaimed Dot, springing up. “There he goes now!”
The next instant they were following on the trail of the fleet-footed monkey. In no time at all Dot, surer of foot and more accustomed to rough travel in the tropics, was far in the lead of her cousin.
“We—we’ll lose him!” she panted.
“But look,” said Doris, trying her best to keep up. “He is leaving the ruins and taking to the forest.” Her tone showed her disappointment. “He’s not going to his treasure-house. He’s trying to escape us.”
“You never can tell,” said Dot. “Anyway we must follow him.”
So once more in the stifling heat of a Haitian day they took up the wild race that led on to victory or defeat, to treasure or disappointment.
A half hour of exciting struggle through brush, bush and tangled vines and then, just as hope was waning, they came to an open space to discover there a heap of broken masonry. And atop the pile, Oh, joy of joys! was the jeweled monkey.
One moment he blinked at them, the next he disappeared into the ruins.
“Oh, Dot!” said Doris. “What if this should prove to be the place of the queen’s treasure!”
“That,” said Dot, after a moment of rest and thought, “is what we are about to find out.”
Together, hand in hand, feeling like Twin Alices in Wonderland, they marched to the ruins.
“This,” said Dot, “is the ruins of the black emperor’s hunting lodge. I have heard of it, but no one I know has ever seen it. Look,” she said as she mounted the pile. “The monkey went down through that small hole to the cavity beneath that large rock.”
“We must roll the stone away,” said Doris excitedly. “There must be a chest down there, a huge copper chest filled with jewels and gold.”
Instantly all save the treasure was forgotten. The heat, approaching night, the trouble and labor that had been theirs, all was forgotten in their one desire to roll away the stone.
For a time all went well. A dozen smaller stones were sent tumbling down the sloping pile. The monkey, who had left his retreat, chattered encouragement from a nearby treetop. When at last they came to the key stone they found, to their consternation, that their combined strength could not move it. Three times they attempted it. Then panting and perspiring, with sore hands and heavy hearts, they sat down to think.
“If only we had brought old Pompee with us,” said Dot.
“I am so hungry I could eat anything,” said Doris.
“Tell you what,” said Dot, who was a hard loser. “We’ll have one more try at that big stone. There’s a stout lignumvitae pole over there. It’s dreadfully heavy, heaviest wood in the world, but we can handle it. We’ll get one end under the stone, then use it as a pry.”
Wearily the girls climbed down to tug away at the pole. Up it went and into place. Then presto! Down it came and up came the stone.
“Grand!” said Dot. “Now you sit on the end of the pole and I’ll have a look.”
“Hurrah!” she shouted a moment later. “Here is a hole, a regular grotto, and I see something shining down there. We’ve found the chest of gold. You just sit tight where you are on the pole and I’ll go down. Don’t move though or you might drop the stone on me.”
Down she went. The place she entered was not over three feet across. It had jagged edges and led down to what had once been a solid floor, some eight feet below.
“Fine! I’m down!” Doris heard her say. “And here’s a chest of secrets!”
The chest she spoke of was a rather small affair; little more than a lady’s jewel box.
The earthquake which had wrecked the walls of the ancient lodge had crushed the chest as well. One hinge was gone, the lock was broken, and it lay half on its side with its contents spilled over the rocks.
That the objects the box had contained were of considerable value Dot knew. She set herself to the task of gathering them together. Darting her flashlight about she discovered here a diamond brooch, there a ruby set shoe buckle and here its mate, here a curious ring set with a more curious stone and there a belt buckle set with a spray of small diamonds.
She had righted the box, had replaced the contents and was darting her light about for a last look when, of a sudden, a terrible thing happened.
No one knew just how it came about. To sit on a smooth pole for a considerable length of time is a trying and difficult task. When one is weary it is worse. Perhaps Doris moved a trifle to ease a benumbed muscle. Perhaps she fell half asleep and moved unconsciously. Whatever it might be, the pole suddenly swung to the right, there came a sickening grind and the great rock fell into place, sealing Dot up beneath the rock as effectively as if it had been a tomb.
Could anything be worse? Their treasure hunt had ended in disaster. Doris sat down upon the ruins to cover her aching eyes with her hands and to try to think calmly.
Night was coming on. Already the shadows were falling. There was an ominous muttering from off in the east.
“It may rain. She may be drowned in that horrible well of a place.” For the first time she found herself hating the jeweled monkey. To make matters worse the graceful creature sat on a low hanging limb and chuckled as in high glee.
“It’s all right,” Doris called to Dot at last in the most cheerful tone she could command. “I will go to our camp for Mona. The two of us can roll the stone away.”
“The camp,” Dot answered, “is miles away. Besides, Mona is old. She has no strength. You two could not roll the stone away.”
“Then,” said Doris, “I must go for someone else. You can’t remain there forever.”
“No, I can’t. You’d better go.”
“All right. I’m going.” Something akin to a sob followed Doris’ words “Good bye.”
“Good bye.”
She was gone. Night settled down swiftly as nights will in the tropics. Dot was left to herself and the ancient treasure that had in its day witnessed so much of glory and honor, so much of baseness and defeat. As she sat there in the little dark hole it seemed to her that the long-lost jewels spoke to her telling her how all that is bright, rich and glorious must fade and pass away.
“If ever I get out of this alive,” she told herself, “my share of jewels shall be used in a way that will make a few people in this old world happier and better.”
Strangely enough, this resolve brought to her a peace she had not known before. It was as if some great spirit, kinder and more noble than she could ever hope to be, had whispered a solemn “Amen.”
In his cave near the top of the mountain, Johnny slept soundly. But the first faint streak of dawn found him wide awake and staring up at the stone that formed the roof of the cave. He had been engaged in this rather fruitless occupation for a full ten minutes, when, with a suddenness that might have been startling to an observer, he sat bolt upright to stare with all his eyes at some object far back in the cave.
Well he might stare, for there, but half revealed by the dim light, apparently suspended from the roof of the cave, was what appeared to be a mammoth dull yellow and green snake.
“It can’t be,” he told himself. “And yet, if not, what can it be? I—”
His thoughts were broken in upon by a cheerful voice:
“Sleep well?” It was the short, broad man.