Hearing a sound in a tree at his left, he turned to see a native frantically struggling up the trunk in an endeavor to reach the lowest branch.
“The whole bunch has gone mad,” he told himself.
Then, of a sudden his eyes fell upon his quiver of arrows lying on the ground. With an instinct of preservation harking back perhaps to those remote days when his ancestors dressed in skins and lived by hunting with the longbow, he reached first for his quiver, then his bow.
As he reached for the bow, he caught sight of a pair of brown heels speeding down the trail.
Instinctively he turned to look in the opposite direction. That instant his blood froze.
Charging straight at him was a creature terrible to look upon. Curling yellow tusks six inches long, jaws that chopped at every bouncing step, a wild boar of the wilderness, savage, mad with rage, red-eyed and terrible, had come tearing out of the jungle.
One instant Johnny stood there paralyzed, the next, with such automatic precision as only comes from endless hours of training, his splendid hands did his bidding.
An arrow flashed into place, the bow string sang taut, the arrow sped to strike with a dull spat. The mad beast turning half about uttered a low grunting roar. The second arrow sped. The wild boar, rearing high and lunging far, fell at the boy’s feet, dead.
For a moment Johnny stood there motionless. The whole affair had been thrust upon him so suddenly that he had been able to form no plan of action, nor indeed to comprehend the meaning of it all.
“No rifles,” he told himself at last, thinking of the natives.
Of a sudden it came to him that he was master of the situation. More than one pair of eyes had witnessed the deadly execution of his powerful yew bow. Eight arrows remained in his quiver.
“Not one of those natives, nor all of them together would dare oppose me so long as I have my bow and arrows,” he told himself.
As proof of this he saw a man in the tree nearest him, a look of abject terror on his face, staring down at him.
Seeing the wild creature lying before him and knowing the high place which wild pork held in the esteem of the natives, he drew his clasp knife to cut the jugular vein and allow the blood to run free.
Then with a laugh, he tossed his quiver of arrows over his shoulder, gripped his bow and turning walked slowly back down the trail that had led him to that place.
* * * * * * * *
When Dorn was brought to full consciousness by Pompee’s grip on his arm and his insistent, “Look, Monsieur. Only look!” he stared wildly about him for a moment. Then, following the direction of the aged native’s uplifted and pointing hand, he strained his eyes in an attempt to discover some unusual sight at the crest of the ancient Citadel.
For some little time he saw nothing. The distant tum-tum-tum of a native drum smote his ears. That was all.
“The natives,” he said in a surprised whisper. “Why are they here?”
“It is not the natives of to-day.” Pompee’s voice seemed to come from the depths of some echoing chamber. “It is a spirit of the past. It is he, the Emperor, Christophe. I have heard. I did not believe. Now I see. I believe. It is he who beats the drum. It is he who walks upon the wall. He has come back to call his scattered people together. For what? Who can say?”
The old man was trembling from head to foot, whether from excitement or fear the boy could not tell.
Just as he finished Dorn’s eyes caught the gleam of two red balls of light. These appeared to be some eight or ten feet above the top of the Citadel.
“And they move!” he said in a tense whisper. “They move!”
“Oui Monsieur, they move,” said Pompee. “It is he. It is Christophe, the great man of Haiti. He has come back to walk the walls of his great work, his Citadel, just as he worked there a hundred years ago with trowel and mortar.”
Dorn was silent. This thing was weird in the extreme. He did not wish to believe in spirits. Yet the night, the silent jungle, the deep shadows of the fortress so grim and old, the memory of the bloody deeds that fortress had witnessed worked powerfully upon him.
Then as he sat there, hands gripped tight, tense, silent, expectant, he saw the thing clearly. A figure, a very giant of a man, (or was it a man?) moved forward at the top of the Citadel. The moon had climbed to a point where it appeared as a yellow ball lying on the very crest of the fortress. And now the giant figure, moving forward, stood out in bold relief against the ball of gold.
“It is Christophe,” the aged native murmured. Dorn could hear his teeth chatter. He was swaying back and forth with a rhythmic motion that appeared to accompany the distant beating of the drum.
“And there, there,” again Pompee gripped his arm, as the giant figure passed on, and a shorter one moved into the spotlight that was the full moon.
“There is the bearer of the magic telescope. He was ever with him.”
It was true. A short figure followed the giant as he walked on the wall.
A moment longer they watched the strange, shadowy pair. Then a cloud, drifting in from the sea, hid the face of the moon and all was shrouded in darkness.
At that precise moment the drum beats ceased. Silence and darkness hung about them like a shroud.
“He is gone,” said Pompee. His tone was deep. “He will return. It is a sign.”
“A sign of what?” Dorn asked.
“How should I know? I am but a poor old man. I am not a Papa Lou.”
For some time they sat there in silence. Then Dorn said in a quiet tone:
“Pompee, tell me of the Magic Telescope.”
“There is much to tell, my son.” Pompee’s tone too was quiet now. “But I will tell you a little. When the great Christophe came to be our ruler, men were in the habit of sleeping much in the sun. The fields were neglected. Weeds and jungle were everywhere and people were very poor.
“Christophe was a great worker. He was not always a tyrant. In the beginning he loved his people and dreamed great dreams for them. It was only when the love of power and gold had driven out his love of God and the toiling people that he became a tyrant.
“At once, when he became emperor, he decreed that all men should work certain hours every day, except on holidays and Sundays. That this decree might surely be put into execution he bought himself a great, brass telescope. This, a brown boy from the hills always carried after the emperor. Many days the emperor wandered far over the hills and the mountains. Always the boy and the telescope went with him.
“On some tall pile of rocks the emperor would stand for hours, looking, looking everywhere. It has always been said that the telescope had magic within it; that with it the great man could see hundreds of miles. I do not know. Certain it was that many times a man sleeping in the shade during working hours one day found himself in a dungeon or on a chain gang the next. Christophe had seen him from afar.”
“And the telescope?” said Dorn eagerly. “Where is it now?”
“Who knows, Monsieur? Who can say? That was all very long ago. Where too is the ‘Rope of Gold‘?”
“Yes, where?” Dorn echoed.
“But see, Monsieur. It is time we sleep.”
Dorn rolled up in his blankets. But sleep did not come at once. Half an hour later Curlie Carson came creeping back to camp and found him still wide awake.
“Dorn,” Curlie said in a low whisper, “did you see anything to-night?”
“I saw something that was very strange.” Dorn replied.
“Dorn,” said Curlie, “some wise man has written, ‘Believe nothing you hear and only half that you see.’ That which you have seen to-night belongs to the half which is not to be believed.”
Dorn had only the remotest notion of the meaning of these strange words. Yet they brought him a curious sort of comfort.
Night was fast approaching when Curlie Carson, weary from a long day’s tramping, threw himself down at the foot of a tamarind tree that shadowed a narrow dried-up stream. He needed rest and time to think. That day he had spent in following the trail of Johnny and the band of natives. Two hours before he had lost the trail. Now he was far, far away from the camp at the Citadel and from his improvised laboratory in the heart of the crumbling old fortress.
Thoughts of his laboratory there all unguarded disturbed him. “He’s almost finished,” he grumbled to himself. “Be a pity if some natives would get in and wreck him.
“Poor old Mike,” he sighed. “All alone in that gloomy old dungeon. But I guess it’s safe enough for all that.” He chuckled. He was thinking of the fright he had given that native on the rope ladder.
“Same natives that spirited Johnny away.” A frown formed on his brow. “Wonder what they’ve done to him by now? Why couldn’t I have followed that trail? Why—”
He broke short off to stare down at the sandy bed of the dried up stream. Did he see the print of a bare foot there! He bent over to look more closely.
“Yes,” he told himself, at once alive with fresh hope. “It is a footprint. And there’s another, and yet another. They came this way. Hurray! I am on the trail again!”
His joy was short lived. He had not followed the bed of the stream that had been used as a trail a dozen yards before he made a startling discovery. Johnny was no longer with the group of natives. That this was the same group of natives, he did not doubt. Two of these men had peculiar feet, one was nearly clubfooted, the other had lost a big toe. Their footprints in a damp spot registered these peculiarities quite perfectly.
“Can’t be mistaken,” he told himself. “Question is, what have they done with Johnny?”
To this question he could form no satisfactory answer. One fact stood out plainly: since he had come in search of his friend Johnny Thompson, and since he no longer traveled with this band, there was no longer any reason for following this trail.
“Back track is better,” he told himself. “May find some trace of Johnny. At any rate it will lead me back to the Citadel, to camp and my laboratory.”
He wondered in a vague sort of way what Dorn and old Pompee would think of his prolonged absence. Would they start out in search of him? He hoped not. Yet one never could tell. He had been gone since early morning. It had been agreed that he should take up the search for Johnny while Dorn and Pompee guarded camp and waited for much needed supplies that Dorn’s father had promised to send.
Rising and turning his back on the native trail, he began making his way back down the stream.
He had not gone a quarter of a mile before the trail left the bed of the stream to go branching away up the slope of a wooded hill.
Shadows were falling fast. It would soon be quite dark. As the boy hastened on, a breeze sweeping in from the sea fanned his cheek. It fanned something else; an all but burned out camp fire gleamed out anew.
This sudden flash of red caught the boy’s eye. Turning sharply to the right, he took a dozen steps, then paused in sudden astonishment.
As he stood there before the mildly glowing camp fire he fancied himself Robinson Crusoe. On the sands of the beach had he come upon an abandoned cannibal camp?
“And they do say that these Haitian natives, some of them, descended from cannibals and are not too sure to be free from cannibalism,” he told himself.
A cold chill ran up his spine. All about him were the evidences of a recently completed feast. Bones and scraps of half roasted flesh were everywhere. He thought of his missing friend and shuddered afresh.
A cloud obscured the setting sun. The world went dark. The boy found himself paralyzed with overpowering fear.
“Nonsense,” he managed to stammer. “It—it’s no use being foolish. Got—got to get a grip on myself.”
With that he gave the camp fire such a kick as sent sparks flying and momentarily lighted up the scene.
Enheartened by this he seized a handful of dry palm leaves to hurl them on the glowing coals. In a moment’s time he had a bright fire blazing cheerily.
* * * * * * * *
In the meantime there was consternation at the camp by the Citadel. It was bad enough, Dorn thought, with Johnny Thompson missing. Curlie’s continued absence doubled his anxiety. He was for plunging at once into the jungle in search of his lost companions. To this plan Pompee would not agree. “We are but an old man and a boy,” he argued. “I am strong, but being old I have not the endurance of youth. The jungle would claim me as its own. And you are too young to care for yourself in so vast a wilderness.”
Truth was that Pompee, being black, was very superstitious. The vision he had seen on the Citadel had seemed to him a warning. He would much rather have left the place and gone back to his cabin. But loyalty to his young master forbade this. One thing he could do—he could refuse to lead Dorn into further peril and this he did with all his heart.
To Dorn, held as he was to enforced idleness under the most trying circumstances, the tinkling of a bell that sounded far down the trail was a godsend. He sprang down that trail expecting anything and everything. What he found was a very droll looking donkey, named Midas. Midas was laden with all manner of good things to eat, brought straight from Dorn’s own kitchen.
With Midas came Dorn’s flaxen-haired cousin Doris. Doris was from the States. She was of French descent but her people had lived so long in America that they had become truly American. Dorn liked Doris; in fact everyone liked her. She had a round, smiling face and laughing blue eyes. A friend never came within hailing distance of her but they heard her cheery “Whoo hoo!” and saw her arm swung high in greeting.
Doris was now in Haiti for a rather long visit, while her father was away in Europe on business, but she had entered so thoroughly into the life of the island that to her friends and relatives she already seemed a part of it.
Both Doris and her dark-eyed cousin Dot, Dorn’s sister, had wished to accompany Dorn and his friends on their exploring trip to the Citadel. This, Dot’s father would not permit. The best he would allow was an over-night visit when they brought the supplies. It happened that when the day came for leading the drowsy Midas up the mountain with his loaded hampers Dot was much needed in her father’s office. So Doris and a native girl, Nieta, had come in her stead. This had brought bitter disappointment to Dot. She had, however, found some comfort in the thought that on the night of Doris’ absence she could carry out a secret experiment which she had for a long time contemplated making.
So here was Doris and the dark Nieta. And here too was Midas with his full hampers. And here as well was the marvelous, mysterious Citadel which must be shown to the girls. Dorn had a full day of it with little enough time to think of his missing friends.
But we must not forget Curlie Carson. Lost from his friends, far away among the hills, confronted by what seemed the scene of a grim tragedy, he found himself at first all but overcome by fear and dread. The brilliant illumination caused by burning palm leaves, however, quickly drove from his mind the suggestion that something sinister and quite horrible had happened round the half burned out camp fire. A little back from the fire, beneath a mango tree, he discovered a broad, sharp-toed hoof.
“Hog,” he mumbled to himself.
The next moment he picked up a broad circle of yellow ivory with edge as keen as a knife blade.
“Hog,” he repeated. A suggestion of awe had crept into his tone. “Tusk of a wild hog. And what a monster! Wonder who had the hardihood to face that fellow and kill him. Whoever it was, he found friends enough to help him pick the bones. Wish—”
He turned to search about among the palm leaves and the bushes. To his great joy, he found, high and dry and quite clean upon a broad leaf where it had apparently been forgotten, a liberal slice taken from the great beast’s ham.
“Thanks, kind Providence. Don’t mind if I do.” He watched the palm leaf fire burn low. Then raking out a good bed of live coals, placed his gift from the gods upon it.
At once the evening air was fragrant with broiling pork steak. A half hour later when Curlie rose to go it was with a feeling that nature was good to all mankind.
“But where am I and where is Johnny Thompson?”
These questions he could not answer. He did believe that with good fortune he could find his own way back to camp. This plan, since there seemed to be no likelihood of his coming upon his missing friend, he proceeded to put into execution.
His small flashlight was still with him. By its light he was able to follow winding trails, avoid brambles and save himself from many a fall over hidden rocks and narrow stream beds.
He had been traveling so for some two hours, when of a sudden, appearing to come from nowhere, a sound smote his ear. A single boom of a native drum. It shattered the silence of the night and set small wild creatures scurrying.
“Now what?” He came to a sudden halt.
A moment of silence and there it was again. This time three strokes: Tum! Tum! Tum!
“Over to the right,” he told himself. “Natives. They may have Johnny. At worst it’s to be one of those forbidden native dances, and that’s something. Something that few enough white folks see these days.”
He waited until the drum sounded again. Tum—Tum—Tum—Tum. Then he struck straight away in the direction from which the sound appeared to come. Nor did he pause until the drummer was so near at hand that the drum seemed to be his own ears pulsating in wild rhythm.
Parting the bushes, he peered into the open space beyond. Before him was a spot quite clear of trees and bushes. The grass had been cropped short by wild goats. And there in the center, squatting low, drum between knees, thumping the drum with naked hands, was not some swarthy native drummer but a slim white girl dressed in a bright blouse and plaid knickers.
“Of all places!” he thought. “Miles from human habitation. A girl and a drum at night.”
Still the girl drummed on. Like one in a trance she sat with eyes raised to the stars and sent out such rolls and thunder with such vibrations as the boy had not heard before.
But even as he listened in awed surprise there sounded a stealthy movement off to his right, another to his left. A twig snapped. A branch made a swishing sound.
He was becoming frightened. Was this some plot? Was the girl a plant, a lure to lead him on? He could not believe this. There was about her face, not a perfectly molded face, but well cut and strong, something of a look he had seen on the face of angels in an ancient painting.
No, the girl is not a part of a plot, for now in a second of silence, she too has caught a sound. Instantly her drum beats cease. She grips the drum by a strap and drags it noiselessly into the brush. Here she backs far into the shadows, straight toward the spot where Curlie stands. A step forward, a hand outstretched and he might touch her.
“Think she’d hear my heart beating,” he said to himself, but in the shadows he could not see her.
“Well,” he thought again, “the show is over. But I wonder?”
* * * * * * * *
During all this time, where was Johnny Thompson? Curlie had followed his trail over many a weary mile in vain. He had come upon a burned out camp fire and the remains of a feast of wild pig. This pig, as you have guessed, was that killed by Johnny. It was this very beast which had worked his liberation from the mysterious natives. He had not returned to camp, for Doris had journeyed to the Citadel, filled with high hopes of finding him there, only to have her hopes dashed to the ground. He was not there.
After retrieving his quiver of arrows and slaying the wild boar, Johnny had found himself free to go where he chose. Not one of the natives who had witnessed his marvelous archery and the deadly power of his bow dared resist him.
But where did he wish to go? For a moment he found himself engaged in a mental struggle. Strange as it may seem, he felt an almost overwhelming desire to stay and see this unusual affair through. There was something to be said for this course of action. The natives had, more than likely, saved his life by dragging him from the pit in the ancient fort. Not one of them all had laid violent hands upon him. They had shown him every respect. They had forced him to come with them; that was all.
What was there back of their actions? Had they been sent? If so who had sent them and why? All down the centuries since Columbus set the ensign of Spain upon these newly discovered shores, such procedures as this had come about. A queen of some distant tribe takes a fancy to some gallant young Spaniard. She sends a band of men for him. He is brought, whether he wills it or not, to the court. There, in time he is showered with riches and made a king.
A native chief learns that gold and odd bits of jewelry can be traded for steel knives, hawk’s bells and bright silk scarfs. His kingdom is far away. He sends a band to waylay a trader and bring him from afar, only to at last return him unharmed and laden with rich treasure.
“But that,” the boy told himself, “was very long ago. There’s no use romancing. Dorn and Pompee will be worried about me. Curlie will risk his neck to find me. I must return to camp.”
Some persons are natural scouts. To them an overturned pebble, a bent twig, moss on trees, a thousand simple things, are a sign. Johnny was not of this brotherhood.
Just as night began to fall he found himself descending a gently sloping hillside where the ground was red as a native clay pipe when, upon rounding a curve, he came within sight of a small, square house that gleamed white in the light of the setting sun.
“Good!” he exclaimed. “Now I shall not spend the night alone.”
In this he was mistaken. As he neared the place, no dog came out to bark a warning, no naked native children scurried through the doorway to their mother. The place was silent, deserted, lonely. Yet in the fact that this had once been a home; that children had once played with young goats before the door; that a mother had beaten corn for bread and a father had returned from a day of toil, Johnny found comfort. For this boy Johnny was an exceptional character. Himself a wanderer, he was ever dreaming of home, ever thinking of that time when, with loved ones about him, he would sit before his own hearth fire in a home he called his own.
Having explored the half ruined house and found its roof sound, he brought in dry banana leaves to make a bed on the shelf beneath the rafters.
He found ripe bananas in a little run below the house. Half content with this sparse supply of food, he sat down to listen. Nor did he listen long. From above him, on the sloping hillside which had once been a badly cleared cornfield, there came a sound much like a shrill scream.
Stringing his bow and nocking an arrow, he began scouting away up the hill. Now he peered out from behind a clump of young banana plants. And now a great boulder hid him. Now he crept rapidly over a patch of barren red soil. But ever he moved upward. Now and then to his listening ears came welcome sounds, cries, calls, duckings that told him that the quarry was not far away.
And now, as he lifted his head above a low-growing bush, he caught his breath as he murmured:
“Now! Now’s the time.”
Bending his bow for a quick aim, he let fly. Then such a screaming and whirring of wings! A whole covey of wild guinea fowl went wheeling and screaming away into the sunset. A whole covey? Not quite. A fat young cock lay still upon a flat rock. He had been shot through and through by one of Johnny’s arrows.
“Supper!” the boy exulted as he lifted the bird from the rock and retrieved his arrow.
There were dry branches to be had from the trees in the nearest run. These were rapidly converted into a heap of glowing coals. Lacking a kettle for boiling his fowl, Johnny first plucked off the feathers then rolled it in a two inch coat of red clay. After that he buried it, clay and all, beneath a great mound of glowing coals and sat down to await results.
“Life,” he told himself as he sat there with the abandoned home at his back, “is strange. Here was this chap who made this place a home. To him five dollars a year was a fortune. Wild guineas shot or snared, bananas and mangoes growing in the runs, corn from the hills, goat’s meat and goat’s milk, all to be had for the asking. These were his. And clothes,” he chuckled, “down here a long shirt and a broad smile makes a wonderful suit, better than the best dress suit a tailor ever made.
“But back where I came from,” he mused on, “a dress suit, a business suit, golf suit, top coat, winter coat, rain coat, high shoes, oxfords, golf shoes, tennis shoes, scarfs, shirts, collars, socks by the dozen. Men work days, nights and sometimes Sundays for a living wage. And how much is a living wage? Two thousand, three thousand, five thousand dollars. Poor souls! They grow gray and go to hospitals, sanitariums, and early graves. And here a man lives well enough on five dollars a year.”
Seizing a stout stick he scattered the coals to right and left. An oval mound of hard, baked clay lay before him. This he cracked with a rock and behold! Before him lay a feast fit for a king, a guinea fowl baked in clay among the coals.
As he lay down to sleep on that narrow shelf beneath the rafters, he tried to imagine the natures of those who had slept there before him. Their images did not linger long for he was soon lost in slumber.
Dorn looked at the Citadel and all connected with it through the big, round eyes of a young boy. Nothing would do but his fair-haired American cousin, Doris, must climb all those stone steps leading up to the top of the Citadel, there to peer down into the dark hole that had been Johnny’s prison and from which he had mysteriously vanished.
Doris exclaimed and shrank back from the darkness of the place. Then seized with a true girl’s impulse, she took a fishing line and hook from her knicker pocket and angled until she drew Johnny’s handkerchief up from those forbidding depths.
“What’s to be learned from that?” Dorn asked.
“Probably nothing,” replied Doris. “Anyway I have his handkerchief to remember him by if he is never seen again, haven’t I?”
“Remember him? You’ve never seen him.”
“But I can remember him all the same.”
This point Dorn did not care to discuss. So they moved onward over the moss grown roof of the ancient fortress until they stood upon the exact spot at which the shadowy giant of the night before had appeared.
“He stood right here,” said Dorn in an awed tone. “He moved right along there. And the little fellow, the bearer of the brass telescope, followed after.”
Doris had heard the story of the mysterious walking giant twice before, but to be standing at the very spot where the vision had appeared gave her an added thrill.
The sun was setting. Already half the world was in shadows. As she stood there she found her knees trembling.
“Let’s get away from here.” She moved forward unsteadily.
Behind her sounded the chattering of teeth mingled with mumbled whisperings.
“Nieta,” she said, “what in the world are you doing?”
“She is talking to her teeth,” whispered Dorn.
“Her teeth!” The girl’s tone showed unfeigned amazement.
“Sure. Her snake’s teeth.”
“Snake—”
“You don’t understand,” said her cousin. “Nieta believes in the power of voodoo charms. Her uncle, who is now dead, left her a very ancient charm. She wears it round her neck in a leather sack. It is the teeth of a yellow snake killed at the back of a cave at high tide when the moon was dark. It has great power, so they say. She is afraid now, so she is asking the spirit of the yellow snake for protection.”
“Oh!” Doris shuddered. “I’d rather trust the ghost of that old emperor—if there truly is a ghost.”
“We saw him—Pompee and I.” Dorn’s voice carried conviction.
“But look!” said Doris, pointing to a spot where a patch of green moss had been torn up. “There’s a donkey’s track.”
“Can’t be,” said Dorn. “No donkey has been here. Think of his coming up those steps!”
“But he has,” said Doris. “Look! There’s another footprint. And over there’s another.”
“A fresh mystery,” said Dorn, acknowledging the proof.
“But we must be getting down. Don’t want to be caught up here in the dark.”
“No—o,” said Doris. “We do not.”
But we must not forget Curlie Carson and the strange girl who drummed so mysteriously in the night upon a native drum.
The show which Curlie had thought ended when the strange dark-haired girl stepped from the greensward stage to his corner of hiding was continued and that almost at once. Curlie found time to note only one further fact. Crouching close beside the girl was an unusually large dog.
“Hate to mix with him,” he thought.
The next instant his attention was drawn back to the narrow stretch of green. Figures were darting back and forth across the narrow clearing.
“Those can’t be wild creatures,” Curlie told himself. “There are none in the island like that. They’re natives. And the girl has called them with the drum. What can they be doing at such an hour in such a place?”
He dared not move. He studied the girl. She seemed frightened, about to flee; yet she remained there motionless. As they crouched there a fourth, a fifth, sixth, eighth, tenth, twelfth figure passed across the star-lit clearing.
In time he lost much of his fear. The natives were some distance away. There was the girl and her dog. The girl might need protection. He doubted this, and curiosity came to take the place of fear. So he lingered.
The thing he was about to witness might seem to belong to those long lost days on the Hudson that Washington Irving is so fond of writing about. Be that as it may the strange panorama of that hour will never pass from his memory.
Somewhere in the dark, a drum was struck. At the same instant a dusky figure darted to the center of the spot of ground before him and as if by magic flames leaped up. After that came the steady red glow of a slow fire.
Again the drum, again and yet again. Figures appeared. They began leaping about the fire. Like black ghosts they were now within the circle of light and now lost within the shadows.
“Why did they come to this spot?” he asked himself. “There are a thousand grass grown clearings in the hills.”
There could be but one answer to this. The girl had drummed. Had she meant them to come? If so, then why had she hidden? Why did she seem so much afraid?
At once his mind was filled with pictures of the past. All the sad and tragic history of the island of Haiti, all the bright days, too, passed before his mind’s eye.
The brief, bright, glorious days of the French Colony, bright for a few, dark for many slaves, came and went.
The drum was beating now. Rolling, throbbing, singing, if a drum may be said to sing, it was telling out the story of the uprising of the natives and the slaves; telling how just such a goat’s head drum had sent out the signals, how another, another and yet a hundred others had taken up the notes until all the island heard. Down through all the bright and bitter years, of rebellion, war, slavery and freedom, the drums had played their part.
“But now?” he thought as the drumming rose louder and the dancers leaped in wilder circles, “now what can they want? It is their land. This is a republic. They are free. True, there are the Marines. But they are the servants of this nation as well as our own. They are here to help the people find their way out.” There came a pause in his thoughts. There had been rumors of intrigue against the present government. In every land there are the dissatisfied ones, especially in a small republic.
“And this girl, this American girl,” he thought, “has called them together for this.” The thing seemed unbelievable, yet had he not seen her drumming the signal call?
His thoughts broke short off. From before him there had sounded a shrill whisper.
“If only we could get their goat.”