He heard the words plainly but could not believe his ears. The words had come from the girl’s lips. She had discovered him and had not cried out in fright. What a truly remarkable girl!
“If only we could get their goat,” she repeated, for all the world as if she had known him always, and as if he should understand what she meant.
Once more Curlie’s heart leaped. Who was this strange girl? What could she mean?
For the answer to this second question, he had not long to wait.
“They’ve got a goat, a very black goat.” The girl’s whisper was low but distinct. “They’re going to sacrifice it. It’s a voodoo custom, you know. There are always the witch doctors to lead them on. And besides, just now there is Pluto. Pluto is a big, bad man, a sort of leader, who wants money and power. He thinks he can drive the Marines away and overturn the government. He will make these people mad with wild dances. Then Papa Lou will sacrifice the black goat which they think will bring them success.”
“We can’t get their goat.” Curlie whispered.
“There may be a rebellion,” the girl urged. “Lives may be lost. If only we could somehow break up the meeting; the meeting I must have called without meaning to. If only we could!”
“There’s the dog,” suggested Curlie.
“Yes,” said the girl. “He is my protector. He’s very good. He won’t hurt you. But I wouldn’t think of sicking him on. He’d be killed.”
For a moment, save for the mad tum-tum of the drum, there was silence. Then Curlie, leaning close, asked in a low tone:
“Will he howl?”
“Who?”
“Your dog. Can you make him howl?”
“Why yes, I think so.”
“Make him howl then.”
“Why?”
“Make him howl. There’s no time for explaining.”
“Be ready to fly,” Curlie added. “Follow me. I know a secret way down the mountain.”
With trembling fingers the girl drew a small harmonica from her pocket. Then she touched the dog who had all this time stood tense at her side.
“Now, Leo, old boy,” she whispered hoarsely as the throb of the drum rose louder and a chanted song rose and fell like the wild waves of the sea. “Now Leo, do your bit.”
She put the tiny musical instrument to her lips and sent forth a piercing discordant screech.
The next instant Leo stood on his haunches and pointing his nose to the stars let out such a mournful wail as only a tropical dog knows.
The effect was electrical. With a loud bam, the drum beats ceased. The song broke off short. For ten seconds silence, deep and ominous, hung over the jungle. Then again came that unearthly screech and the dog’s answering wail.
This last was too much. Came the sound of rushing through the brush, the bleating of a black goat being dragged over the rough trail by his masters. All this grew indistinct in the night. Then again silence.
“There won’t be any rebellion now,” said Curlie. “At least not right away. They thought it was the Loupe Garoe. That is a bad sign.”
“The Loupe Garoe?” said the girl.
“Yes,” said Curlie. “But we’d better be getting down. Some of them might suspect. It wouldn’t be nice to be found here.”
“These natives,” Curlie said as they crept along down a steep trail, “as you know of course, are very superstitious. It’s a pity. One who is afraid of many things is never happy. Voodooism is really a sort of Devil worship.
“They are afraid to offend the Mama Lou and the Papa Lou, who are witch doctors. But most of all they are afraid of the Loupe Garoe, who doesn’t exist at all, except in their imaginations. When your dog howled they thought him the Loupe Garoe who, so they believe, is half wolf and half man. He carries off little children and when he is about it is a very bad sign.”
“I have heard all that,” said the girl, “but I didn’t think of it in the way you did. You are a wise one. I thank you.
“If only we could get their goat,” she said after a time. “Goats that are all black are hard to find and according to their superstitious notions, only an all black goat will suffice for a sacrifice before some desperate undertaking.”
In a moment of stress and great danger, perfect strangers become comrades for the hour. Once the danger is passed they more often than not become strangers once more. It was so with Curlie and the girl, or so it seemed to Curlie. He had hoped she would tell him who she was and where she lived. She did not. She told him nothing.
One thing he did not need to be told. They had not been scouting down the trail for a half hour before he realized that she needed no directing from him. She was far better acquainted with the jungle than he. Once when he hesitated at a forking of the way, she forged straight on. At another time she gripped his arm just in time to save him from a dangerous fall. At this time he learned one more fact; slender girl that she was, there was power in her good right arm. Hers was the grip of a man.
“I go this way,” she said quite suddenly when, after an hour of almost unbroken silence, they came to a fork in the trail.
Curlie found himself sorely tempted to say, “So do I.” But this he knew would be an untruth.
Since he valued truth and above all prized this girl’s opinion, he said, “I go up.”
“All right. Good night, and thank you.” He found his hand caught for a second in a firm clasp. The next instant she was gone; swallowed up by the night.
“That’s a queer girl; but a real one,” he told himself as he toiled up the trail. “Wonder why she beat out those signals on the drum if she didn’t want those natives to meet? Who is she? Where’s her home? Will we meet again?” He hoped so. Yet in this strange old world one never could tell.
The night was well spent. His eyes were heavy with sleep. At this elevation there were no flying pests. The trail was still long. It would be there in the morning.
Selecting a gently sloping bank beneath a tropical oak, he gathered moss from low hanging branches to form a pillow. He then threw himself upon the earth, closed his eyes and fell asleep.
Johnny Thompson did not in the least mind being lost. Truth was he got much joy from it. The sky was so blue, the morning air, as he left the abandoned native home, so crisp and balmy, he felt like singing a song.
True, he disliked worrying his friends, but the island of Haiti is not the world. He would find his way back in time. He had breakfasted well on cold guinea meat, parched corn and bananas. His bow and quiver of arrows were slung across his back. The trail was before him.
“With wild fruit and game I could live a half year through,” he told himself.
For some time he made his way through rough uplands, where trees and brush obstructed his travel and only wild trails helped him on his way.
At last, however, he came upon an ancient man-made trail that led over a ridge and down upon the other side.
“Now I shall find my way to somewhere,” he told himself. But this trail ran through rough uncultivated land. Mid-afternoon found him apparently some distance still from human habitation.
“Oh well,” he sighed dropping down beside a cool spring, “the afternoon is hot. Guess I’ll rest a while. The evening will be cool.”
Had he persevered for another quarter of a mile he most surely would have met with a surprise; for there browsing close to the trail was a donkey, and on his back were two empty hampers. A few yards up the bank in the deep shade, he might have discovered two unusual patches of color, one orange, the other red. The orange spot was a white girl’s jacket, the red a native girl’s dress. Had he explored still further he would have found that the two girls were resting from the heat of the day. And these girls, as you may have guessed, were Doris and Nieta. They had chosen to return home from the ancient fort by a new and little used trail. Midas had not liked the plan. He had shown his displeasure by using a snail-like pace and by offering to eat every tree and bush that grew beside the trail.
At last, quite worn out by her constant flogging of the obstinate donkey Doris had given in to his whims and had allowed him to wander as he willed while she and Nieta rested.
“You can’t lose a donkey,” she had said to Nieta. “Not completely. He’ll always find his way home. And he has nothing on his back but empty hampers.”
They had been sitting there for some time dreamily gazing at the wavering patterns of sunlight and shadows woven on the mossy earth or looking up into the treetops when Doris gave a sudden start. Her eye had caught a peculiar gleam of white light.
“What can it be?” she asked herself. “There is nothing about a palm tree to reflect light that way.”
She puzzled about this for some time. Then, since her keen eyes did not succeed in detecting the cause, she fell to wondering about Midas who had disappeared down the trail. “If he’s gone home by himself it will be a blessing,” she told herself.
“There are no lions and tigers to fear here. There are some very terrible snakes and lizards five feet long and wild hogs with tusks like razor blades, but they’re not likely to trouble us. We—” She broke short off to stare. Once more in the midst of dense foliage she had caught that white flash of light. So white! So intense! Like the flash that comes from a mirror, only sharper and brighter. She caught her breath. There it was again. Here it was, there. Now, like a glimmering ghost, it was gone.
“Quick as lightning.” She glanced through the leafy branches to the sky. Pale blue the sky was, not a cloud. She had suspected lightning. “But no,” she told herself, “it’s four hours before shower-time.” Showers come with a convenient regularity in Haiti.
She studied the scanty leaves and many dry pods that hung directly above her. They had seated themselves beneath a “chattering woman,” or so this odd tree is called. It was loaded with dry pods. These pods rattle and chatter in the wind. At this moment there was no wind.
Slowly her eyes roved over the dangling pods. Then, of a sudden, her gaze became fixed, her lips parted in a scream that died in forming.
Directly above her, peering down at her, was the smallest, strangest little face she had ever seen. The eyes were so wide in question, the brow so wrinkled, the whole expression so broadly intelligent that for the briefest part of a moment she was tempted to believe the creature human. He was, she realized at once, a marmoset, one of those smallest of monkeys who are so popular as pets among South American ladies of quality.
“Oh you monk! You cute little monkey! Where did you come from?” she cried.
The monkey blinked his eyes three times, then, as if to hide himself from her, put both hands over his eyes.
It was this movement that brought a low exclamation to the girl’s lips for, once again, at the very instant his slim arms moved, there came that brilliant flash of light.
“He did it!” she told herself. “A monkey! But how could he?”
The answer came at once and with such sudden surprise as fairly sent her senses reeling. On the monkey’s left forearm, like a lady’s bejeweled bracelet, there gleamed a ring, set with a white stone.
“It’s a diamond,” she told herself, “a very large diamond! No bit of glass could flash like that. But where did he get it?”
In her mind was formed what she believed to be the answer. This was a pet monkey. There could be no question about that, for there are no wild monkeys in Haiti. This monkey had stolen his mistress’ diamond ring and made away with it.
“It should be worth hundreds of dollars,” she told herself. “It’s probably a wedding ring, a priceless possession. Somehow we must catch the monkey and take the ring from him. He may tire of it and hide it or throw it away.”
“How old it seems,” she told herself after a moment’s study. “All corroded. Can’t have been worn for years. But how the diamond sparkles!”
Again the white stone flashed, as the monkey uncovered his eyes to resume his worried study of these strangers who had invaded his domain.
Doris touched the drowsy Nieta on the arm. Then, after placing a finger to lips for silence, pointed up at the tree.
“Sh’sh! Don’t speak,” she whispered. “Look up, up there among the pods on that thick branch.”
Nieta did look up. She started suddenly and found herself staring and fully awake.
“See!” Doris whispered. “See that on his arm? It’s a diamond ring; must be. And we must get it. Think of the reward! Think—if we never found the owner at all! Think—
“Oh—Oh!” she fairly cried. “He’s gone! Hurry! Hurry!” she whispered excitedly. “Look! Look everywhere! We mustn’t lose him! Think Nieta, think of the reward. Think if we find no owner at all!”
The native girl’s eyes were bulging.
At that precise moment, Johnny Thompson came swinging down the trail.
At sight of the two excited girls he stopped short to stare in astonishment.
“Babes in the woods,” he said at last. “Now where is the wicked old queen or the dragon, or—Oh, now I know,” he said changing his tone. “You are Doris, Dorn’s cousin. He’s told me all about you. He—”
“Forget about it and be quiet.” Doris took a step toward him. “There’s a monkey in this tree and he has a diamond ring on his arm.”
“A—a monkey!” The boy stared as if he thought her out of her senses. “A diamond ring on a monkey’s arm!”
“Be quiet, I tell you.” Doris put a finger over his lips. “It’s true. I—we—we saw him! There! There he goes now!” she exclaimed as a brown streak surging from a branch set the dry pods rattling, then vaulted into the top of a cocoanut palm.
“And there he leaps again,” said Johnny, losing himself in wild excitement. “Come on. We’ll get him.”
They all went tumbling down the hill.
They were quite out of sight of the “chattering woman” and still following the monkey when Doris stopped short. “I—I think I saw him.”
“Where? Where is he?” demanded Nieta. Her eyes were wide with excitement.
“There! There!” The white girl’s words came in a shrill whisper. “He’s up in that small mahogany tree looking down at us.”
“He’s come to rest,” said Johnny. “All we have to do now is to coax him down.”
“Ye-e-s,” said Doris, doubtfully. “That’s all.” They sat down side by side on a big flat stone to stare up at the grinning monkey and to catch now and then a fleeting glance of that gleaming stone.
“It’s a diamond all right,” said Johnny. “And my! what a whopper!”
“Wait,” he said a moment later. “Monkeys like bananas. I saw a clump of wild ones back there. Perhaps I can find some ripe ones.”
While he was gone Doris kept her eyes on the monkey, but once when she glanced down at Nieta she found to her surprise that she was paying no attention to the monkey. Instead, she had taken some curious white objects from a small leather sack carried by a string round her neck and was whispering to them.
“Nieta!” she whispered. “What in the world are you doing?”
“These,” said Nieta quite soberly, “are the teeth of a yellow snake killed in the back of a cave in the dark of the moon. They are a powerful voodoo charm. They were given me by a very wise Papa Lou. A Papa Lou is a voodoo priest.”
At once Doris recalled what Dorn had told her of the strange voodoo charm.
“The snake, you know,” Nieta went on quite solemnly, “is able when alive to charm a monkey. When the snake is dead his spirit remains near his teeth. I am telling him to charm the monkey and bring him down to us.”
“Nieta,” said Doris, shocked beyond belief, “you must not think such things. They are not true. It is truly wicked to believe them. There is but one living spirit outside ourselves and that is the spirit of the great Father.”
“But do you not pray to that spirit?” The native girl’s brow wrinkled. “Do you not—”
“Look!” Doris gripped her arm. “He leaped away over there. He—he’s gone!”
By the time Johnny caught up with them, the monkey, by a succession of tree races and wild flying leaps, had led the girls down a precipitous slope to a spot where a rocky ledge hanging over a drop of some fifty feet brought their race and the monkey’s to an end.
The monkey climbed out on a branch that appeared to hang over a precipice. He seemed at first to contemplate a flying leap to the top of a tall tree that grew on the lower slope. This would have proven a thrilling spectacle. Doris caught her breath as he hung there by one foot, looking down. The distance was thirty feet or more, a straight drop down. Would he do it? Dared he?
“Oh!” she said gripping at her breast. “If he dares we will never see him again.”
Apparently Mr. Monk did not dare, for in time he drew himself up to a position of safety, then began polishing the glistening stone mounting of the ring with the furry back of his right hand.
From time to time he would pause to give the girls a knowing look and wink as if to say:
“See! Doesn’t it shine? Don’t you wish you had it?”
In good time Johnny caught up with them. They were delighted to see that his arms were filled with small ripe bananas.
“They are really good,” he said, slipping the last bite of one in his mouth. “Ripened in the shade.”
There followed the age old drama of a boy with something in his possession and a monkey who wants it. The monkey had been someone’s pet. For this reason he did not have the fear of humans that possesses a wild monkey. Yet these children were strangers. More than that, two were white. His master had beyond doubt been a dusky native. He was in no hurry to come down. He came one branch at a time with many a backward look. More than once he paused to polish his diamond and wink.
“We’ll get him,” said Johnny half beside himself with suppressed excitement. “You’ll see! He’ll come.”
He was coming. Little by little, branch by branch, he came. Now he was half way down, now three quarters. Now he was five yards away, now four, three, two. He stared wistfully at the banana held high.
Then, of a sudden, with a speed that was astonishing, he leaped.
Not upon another branch did he land, nor upon the ground, but squarely on the top of Johnny’s head.
So surprised was Johnny that he jumped and yelled.
Came a snatching at his hand, then monkey and banana were gone—gone not up but down.
Leaping to the top of the ledge the monkey paused for a second to place the banana between his teeth, then without so much as a backward look, lowered himself over the precipice and was gone.
Throwing herself flat on the ground, then crawling slowly forward until the steep surface of the cliff was within her view, Doris watched him throw himself from fissure to fissure and from one narrow ledge to the next.
“He’ll be killed,” she said breathlessly.
But he was not. Almost before she could realize it, he had reached a spot near the bottom, where by a daring leap, he reached the top of a tree.
“We—we’ve lost him,” she half sobbed. “We’ll never see him again.”
“Listen,” said Nieta with a sudden start.
They did listen and to their waiting ears came the dull roll of distant thunder. In their wild chase they had completely forgotten that the time for the day’s thunderstorm was at hand.
“Where are we?” Johnny asked.
Where indeed? The trail was far above them. Should they attempt to find it they must surely be half drowned before they reached it. A Haitian thunderstorm in the jungle is a fearful thing to contemplate.
“We’d better skirt the top of this cliff and make our way down to the sea,” said Doris. “There must be some thatched huts down there that will furnish shelter.”
Acting upon this plan, they dashed away.
The race after the monkey was nothing to this mad race with the storm. Now creeping along a rocky ledge, now clinging to a stout vine and dropping down, down, down, now racing over a wild hog’s trail, now leaping a fallen tree to tear through a clump of brambles with the rumble and roar of the storm ever increasing they made their way forward, until, with a sudden breathless whoop, Johnny stopped at the edge of a wild cocoanut jungle to stare at the silent, blue-black sea.
“Not a hut,” Doris moaned as her eyes swept the narrow coral beach.
“What’s that yonder?” Johnny asked.
“A boat! A boat on the beach!” Doris exclaimed. “Hurray! We will tip it over and make a shelter of it.”
“I wonder if we will ever see him again,” she said to herself as, on reaching the beach, she paused for breath. She was thinking of the monkey with the jeweled arm.
The next instant a blinding flash of lightning and a crash of thunder sent her flying toward the boat, that seen from the level now seemed much larger and very far away.
“We’ll never make it,” she panted sobbingly. “We’ll be half drowned.”
That the boat they had sighted was a large one, far too large to be tipped on its side they learned soon enough; not, however, until they had become utterly exhausted by their mad race with the storm.
And such a storm as it promised to be. The sky was inky black. The mountains, the nearby hills, even the cocoanut groves were blotted out. The sea, a sheet black as iron lay so still it appeared that one might walk upon it.
“Cou—couldn’t turn it over. If it—it was only a bark canoe! And look!” Doris panted. “It’s a young ship.”
It was indeed. The craft they had taken for a row-boat was a square masted schooner, with mast thrown carelessly over the side.
“We might get under the sail,” suggested Doris.
“Too much wind,” said Johnny. “Blow away. Give me a hand. I’ll look inside of her.”
Doris gave him a lift and up he went.
“Yo—ho!” he cried ten seconds later. “What luck! A cabin, a regular canvas cabin in her prow. And not a soul on board. Give us your hand and up you come.”
“But dare we?” screamed Doris above the roar of the storm.
There was no time for answering this question. The storm was upon them. She could see it racing in white sheets down the beach.
Up they went, up and over, scramble, tumble, scramble, and they were there, all hidden in the prow with a roof of stout painted canvas over their heads and a brown curtain of the same material hanging before them.
“What could be sweeter?” said Johnny, dropping into a corner.
“How it rains!” Doris shuddered as torrents of water came pelting down.
Once more the native girl was whispering to her snake tooth charm.
Nieta was the only member of the little party who really feared lightning. Now they were sheltered from the rain and far from tall trees, where danger from lightning really lurks, Doris and Johnny settled back each in a dark corner for a good rest.
“Wonder whose boat it is?” said Doris.
“Native boat,” said Johnny. “Tell by the way the canvas is sewed and the boards are nailed.”
“Probably came from Cape Haitian,” said Doris. “Gone up in the hills to hunt wild guineas or cocoanuts. We’ll get them to take us to town with them.”
This was a consoling thought. To trek back up the mountain in the dark and wet after the storm would be difficult indeed.
“Wonder where Mr. Monk is?” said Doris.
“It’s curious about that ring,” said Johnny. “It looked old—old as the hills. The gold was all tarnished and the stone didn’t look a bit like the ones I’ve seen; wasn’t cut the same.”
Doris made no answer to this. She had suddenly recalled some strange stories told to her by a very old black woman of Cape Haitian. The stories had to do with days long gone by. They told of the rule of Christophe, the only powerful emperor Haiti has ever known.
“And Honey,” the toothless old crone had said to her, “I had it right from my own Mammy and I know it’s true; the ladies of that Emperor’s court wore diamonds and rubies and pearls, such jewels as you only hear of now, but don’t most never see.
“And when the uprisin’ came and the Emperor was expectin’ to be overthrowed, the wicked old Emperor took all the jewels an’ gold an’ buried it somewheres; nobody’s found out where. No Honey, not nobody has ever found it yet.”
“What if—” Doris thought to herself now. “But then of course that could never be.”
“And besides,” she added a moment later, “we’ll never see the monkey again, so how could we follow him?”
Then, because she was far from her home and her new found friend, Johnny Thompson, was near at hand, because the wild beat of the storm gave her a feeling of loneliness and a longing for someone to confide in, she told him of her day dreams, of her hope that she might find the monkey and follow him to the hiding place of the ancient treasure.
“There must be something to that story of the hidden treasure of the black Empress,” said Johnny quite soberly. “Of course there are many wild tales told of that romantic king of the blacks. This much is history. I read it in a book written six years after his death. When the emperor felt his throne crumbling beneath him he went one evening to the Citadel. There he worked until past midnight. At two o’clock in the morning he knocked at the door of one of his dukes, a trusted ally.
“The duchess opened the door and was frightened half out of her wits. The emperor said nothing was wrong. He required the service of the duke; that was all.
“The duke dressed, then accompanied him to the castle. At the back of the castle they entered a door to drag forth a strong box. It was all the two of them could do to lift it.
“Having carried it a little way they hid it, so the story goes. When the work was done the emperor explained to his ally that the box was filled with the queen’s treasures; that, if anything ever happened to him, there was enough there to support his family in comfort for many years.
“A few days more and the emperor was dead.” Johnny’s story was at an end.
“And the treasure?” Doris leaned eagerly forward trying to read his face in the half darkness.
“Who knows about that?” Johnny laughed a low laugh. “If we knew where it was hidden we would go for it. If that had been told in the book, the treasure would have been removed long ago.
“So far as anyone knows, the duke never betrayed the emperor’s secret. Perhaps he too died during the uprising. As for the queen, everyone knows that she sailed for Europe on the first available boat and never returned to Haiti.
“You see,” he explained, as he felt that Doris was about to ask one more question, “the Emperor had sent a great deal of gold to England by a sea captain he trusted. This was at the queen’s disposal. Since it was enough why risk her head by a return to Haiti in search of further wealth?
“So,” he added, with another low laugh, “the treasure is yours; provided you find it. I too have been on a search for some of the emperor’s treasure, the ‘Rope of Gold’.”
“I know,” she said quietly. “How have you succeeded? When I was at your camp you were mysteriously absent.”
Johnny told her of his search, of Curlie Carson’s strange doings, of his kidnapping by the natives, and his all but miraculous escape.
“And so here we are,” he added. “Two treasure hunters lost in the night and the storm.”
“Here—here’s wishing you luck,” said Doris, reaching out in the half darkness to grip his hand.
“But say,” Johnny asked, “what would you do with all those diamonds, rubies and all that if you found them?”
“I’d sell them. Don’t care much for jewels. They’re too hard to keep. People steal them.
“And then,” she half closed her eyes, to lean far back in her corner, “then I’d buy dresses and shoes and things like that. I like bright things. I want a blue dress with orange trimmings and an orange dress with blue trimmings, and a green dress with an old gold sash, and a white dress with a pink sash; all of them silk, real shimmering silk that shines in the moonlight.”
“That,” said Johnny quite suddenly, “will do. Here’s hoping you never find them. I like girls with arms strong as a man’s, who can hike ten miles and who mostly wear khaki knickers.”
“And yet,” he set the gleam of his flashlight measuring her up and down, “if that’s what spells happiness for you, you should have all your dresses and wear them too.”
“I suppose,” he added, “that you also want a fur coat.”
“No,” she said, in sudden anger. “I don’t. I want a midnight blue cape with an Alaskan white fox collar.”
“That,” said Johnny at once sorry for his caustic remarks, “shows your good taste. I’ve been in Alaska. Know real fur when I see it. And like it as well as you. Here,” he said, putting out a hand, “is wishing you best of luck and happiness! Everyone in the world has a right to happiness.”
“I say!” he exclaimed after a brief silence. “How’d you like some lunch?”
“Fine! Please serve it at once,” laughed Doris.
“No fooling. Pockets full of good, ripe bananas.”
He began digging into his pockets. In the end, he brought out three; quite a little feast.
After the first wild burst that came like a flood, the rain settled down to a steady, monotonous patter—patter—patter on the staunch canvas roof.
Night crept in upon the world like the falling of a great curtain. All three, Johnny, Doris and Nieta had traveled far that day. They had been hot. Now they were cool. They had been excited. Now they were calm. They had been weary. Now their bodies were in repose.
Slowly a drowsiness crept over them. The slow patter—patter of rain on their roof, the low rush of wind through the palms whispered of sleep.
And why not? Just three winks. Here they were cosy and safe. The storm would end. Then they would wake to think of other things.
Perhaps they did not think it through in just this manner. Probably they did not think it through at all, but yielded to the call of slumber. However that may be, time found them all breathing softly and steadily in sleep. And still the rain pattered on their canvas roof.
Just how long they slept no one will ever know. It was Johnny who first awoke. He emerged from unreality to reality, from dream life to real life with something of a start.
In his dream he had once more followed the strange monkey with the band of gold and a diamond on his arm. The monkey climbed a great cocoanut palm. With quite as much ability, he followed after. Up—up—up, ten, twenty, thirty, forty feet he climbed until at last he was among the fronds, sitting on a clump of half-ripe cocoanuts.
But where was the monkey? He looked wildly about him and even as he looked a sudden burst of wind seized the great palm and set it swaying like an inverted pendulum, back and forth.