“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.
“Yes, I—”
“Come out with me into the light. Bit dismal in the cave.” The little man seized him by the arm to fairly shove him toward the door. As Johnny turned about for one more look at that fantastic thing clinging to the cave’s roof, the little man appeared to redouble his efforts. Yet in that last look Johnny obtained a further impression that was startling in the extreme.
“I wanted to have a talk with you before the natives were about,” said the little man, as they seated themselves on mossy rocks beneath a low, spreading tree. “They would not understand us for they speak only the lowest Creole. However, they would disturb us.”
“When I sent for you,” he began after a moment’s silence.
“Sent—”
“Did you not guess? Did they not tell you?”
“The natives speak only Creole,” said Johnny. “I do not understand that language.”
Then in a few words he told of his strange experience with the bronze natives.
“I am sorry to have caused you unnecessary trouble,” said the little man. “However, it was necessary for you to come. In the end you will not regret it I am sure. I am in a position, I think, to do you a lasting favor. That, however, must wait. It might help you to understand and lead you the more readily to consent to any proposition I may care to make, should I tell you a little more of myself.
“I was born,” he said, half closing his eyes as if to recall the past, “to a life of pain. Infantile paralysis struck me when I was less than a year old. Many doctors were called in consultation, for my father was a banker of some means. All told the same story. I would never walk, never feed myself, probably never talk. But after these, when I was five years old, came one greater than them all. He freed me from my terrible bondage. True, I have never been just as other men are. But that, my boy,” he laid a hand impressively on Johnny’s arm, “that does not matter. The only thing that really matters in this world is that a man have a mission and that he be equipped to fulfil that mission. Many a man who has been looked down upon, pitied, or scorned, because of physical infirmity has made a great and lasting contribution to the world’s true wealth and happiness. I studied medicine. When I had finished my course I said, ‘I will find the neediest people in the world and serve them.’ I found, I believe, the neediest people right here in Haiti. And here I am serving them, and shall be until I die. Money,” he said thoughtfully, “I do not ask from them. I have a small income from my father’s estate. It is ample. Loyalty, love, a certain amount of gratitude, these are my reward. And right royally I am paid. You too,” he said once more touching Johnny on the arm, “have a desire to serve.”
“Yes I—”
“I think it will be possible for me to aid you,” the little doctor broke in eagerly. “But first, before you know more, I have a mission, a hard one for you to perform.”
“Name it,” said Johnny, springing to his feet.
“Sit down,” said the doctor.
Johnny sat down.
“While you slept,” the little doctor’s tone became deeply impressive, “a man lay at the back of the cave, fighting a battle, perhaps his last battle with disease. He is very old; is not longer able to resist, and I, as a doctor, am able to do little for him. This man,” he went on, as his tone grew mellow, “is a native, a member of the tribe. Yet for more than twenty years, I have counted him my dearest friend. His family seem to have absorbed some of the greatness, generosity and nobleness of the black emperor at his best; for it was his father who always bore the Magic Telescope.”
“Oh!” said Johnny.
“Yes, he is the son of the bearer of the telescope. Father and son, they have more than spanned the century. But now his light burns dim.”
The doctor’s next remark was surprising. “You, I think,” he said, “have something to gain by his death. And yet,” he added at once, “I am going to ask you to go on a mission which may add some months, perhaps years to his life. Knowing you, having studied you, I know that you will do your best though failure might bring you a million.”
“A human life,” said Johnny quietly. “What is a million dollars to that?”
“Nothing. You are quite right,” said the doctor.
He rose to stand before the boy and point away toward a distant valley. “At the point of that valley is a humble village. There, for many years, I have had my home. In my home is a small laboratory. In it is the greater part of my medicine. One of those medicines may save this man’s life.
“If it were merely a matter of bringing it, I should send a native. Unfortunately it must first be distilled. It is, at the present moment, in a small distillery in one corner of the room. You have only to light the alcohol lamp and wait until the distilling process has been accomplished.”
“But the place?” said Johnny, eagerly.
“I will send a guide with you. He knows every foot of the way. And remember,” he added, “I am not sending you because I am unwilling myself to endure the hardship of the journey. For reasons I cannot at this time explain, I wish to remain beside the man who is fighting for his life.”
“I am ready to go,” said Johnny.
“Your breakfast is here,” said the doctor. “When it is finished your guide will be ready.”
Ten minutes later Johnny followed a lean, muscular bronze man down the trail that led away and away over hillside and mountain, down valley, through forest and jungle to the village.
“That native looks like one who cannot grow weary,” the boy told himself. He was to learn in time that this was true and was to feel thankful for his own physical training.
In the meantime, he had abundant food for thought. His mind was full of many wonders. He had left camp at the Citadel without taking leave. What of Dorn and Pompee? What of Curlie? He wondered most about the curious things the little doctor had said. How was the doctor to be of service to him and to the cause he had espoused? How, of all things, could he profit by the death of an old man, the son of the bearer of the Magic Telescope?
After a time he thought again of the golden green serpent hanging from the roof of the cave—or was it a serpent?
Mid-afternoon found him at the distant native village. Having dined while the distilling went forward, he bottled the fluid, and turning his face upward, was prepared to follow his tireless guide back to the cave.
Darkness had fallen as Curlie Carson, still following the trail of his good pal Johnny, and still urging his donkeys forward, approached the mouth of the cave occupied by the bronze natives and the little doctor. Johnny, as you will know, had been gone from that place several hours. He was now well on his way back.
The black horde, had Curlie but known it, was but two hours behind him on the trail. He did not know. All he knew was that his good pal was missing and that he had passed this way.
By great good fortune, the first person he met was the short broad man, the white doctor.
“Johnny?” the little doctor smiled in answer to Curlie’s question. “Sure we had him. We let him go. But he’ll be back; may be here at any time. Sit down and rest.”
“Here, Beppo,” he spoke to a bronze native, “bring us some of that roasted guinea hen and boiled plantain.”
When Curlie had eaten and had fed his donkeys from a bundle of wild grass, the little doctor told him as much as he deemed best of Johnny’s latest adventure. He showed him the Magic Telescope and bade him make himself at home.
Hardly had he finished speaking when a bronze native, panting and quite done in by running, dropped at his feet. When this man found his breath he told a startling tale of a black, ape-like horde of men, armed with clubs, machetes and rifles who were marching upon the cave.
“Now what?” said the doctor, turning to Curlie for an answer. “We are a peaceful people. Have you brought this mob to attack us?”
Curlie’s eyes went wide with wonder. The whole affair was news to him. A few well directed questions and he knew the worst. The leader of this band was none other than Pluto, the bad black man whose shipload of arms he had sunk. The others were his followers. That they were bent on vengeance he did not doubt.
“There’s no time for explaining now,” he said springing to his feet and seizing a heavy hamper. “Those men are not my friends but my enemies. I think you may leave them to me. But if your men will carry all these heavy hampers into the cave, it will help.”
“‘There is a destiny’,” he quoted to himself, “‘that shapes our ends’. A moment ago I was thinking what a lot of wasted toil it had been, urging those stubborn donkeys up this trail. But now—”
Ten minutes later he found himself busy erecting in the mouth of the cave a figure that was as fear-inspiring to the timid bronze men as he hoped it might be to the black horde.
This figure it was that had absorbed so much of his thought and occupied his hours in his laboratory at the Citadel.
* * * * * * * *
At ten that night Johnny was still toiling up the trail. As he paused to drink deep of the cool night air, he caught the gleam of lightning and felt some seconds later the shudder of the mountain as the thunder came rolling in.
“Going to storm,” he told himself. “Wonder if we’ll make it?”
Dot too heard the thunder. She too wondered. Her wonder was of a different sort. She was still imprisoned. Doris had gone for aid. She had not returned—might not return until morning.
“And if it storms.” She shuddered anew at the thought. A severe tropical storm is not soon forgotten. Dot had passed through one. It had uprooted century old trees, brought great ships ashore to break them on the rocks and had changed the very aspect of the country.
That she might not lose her grip on her nerves, she began prowling around her prison. Nor did her search go unrewarded. Of a sudden, as she shot her light in a dark hole behind a rock, she gave forth a low cry of surprise and fear. It seemed to her that a single fiery red eye was gleaming up at her.
A second, a calmer look and she knew that she was gazing upon the largest, most beautiful stone she had yet discovered, a huge ruby set in a circle of gold.
“It’s the Queen’s Ruby,” she told herself, holding it up to the light. There is a legend that the black queen always wore at her throat a gleaming solitary ruby.
“If only some one would come,” she said to herself. “If they only would.”
The answer was a second roll of thunder.
* * * * * * * *
In the meantime Johnny was making the best of his way up the mountain. Now he was two miles away, now only one. And now, as he paused once more at the top of a steep climb he caught an odd confusion of noises. His guide too heard and at once became violently excited. He began dancing about and howling in a strange manner.
“What’s happened?” the boy asked, after he had seized him and forced him into silence.
To this question the native made no reply.
“No use asking more,” the boy told himself. “He doesn’t understand a word of English.”
Immediately, upon being released, the fellow renewed his howling and dancing. In this manner he danced himself quite out of sight. That was the last seen of him.
But Johnny no longer needed a guide. The way was plain, straight ahead and up—up—up. He needed someone to explain the loud tum—tum—tum of drums, the wild screeching and screaming that came to him.
“The son of the bearer of the Magic Telescope is dead,” he told himself. “And this is the funeral chant. Or perhaps a witch doctor has arrived, some Papa Lou who is trying out his incantations.”
Coming at last upon a clump of tropical pines that shut the traveler off from a view of the cave’s mouth, he drew a long breath, stepped boldly forward, then stopped still to stare.
Before the cave, grotesquely lighted up by wavering torches, was the wildest, most terrible assembly of faces he had ever looked upon.
“It—it’s like a moving picture scene taken from the Hunchback of Notre Dame,” he told himself. “How terrible they are! And how they howl. What can it all mean?”
As he moved a few paces forward and to his right for a better view his astonishment knew no bounds. For there in the mouth of the cave, facing the angry mob of blacks, stood a gigantic solitary figure. Not a human figure was he, but like one. He had arms that now waved madly from side to side and now shot outward and upward as if to rain blows upon an approaching enemy. He had legs that now were motionless and now set him bobbing wildly up and down like an angry child. He had eyes that gleamed now green, now red, now blue, and jaws that from time to time snapped and cracked like the clamps of a steel trap.
“Of such things,” said Johnny, “madness is made.” He stepped back into the shadows.
Unable to understand the least bit of this wild scene, he found one thought uppermost in his mind; he bore in a sack at his side the precious medicine that might mean life to a dying man. Somehow he must enter the cave. To pass through that angry mob was unthinkable—and impossible.
“There’s a secret entrance over here to the right,” he told himself. “I will go that way.”
Turning, he wearily retraced his steps to approach the cave from a different angle. And still the flashes of light, green, red and blue, continued; so too did the screams and drum beats.
“What’s to come of it all?” he asked himself, and found no answer.
Once more came the roar and shudder of thunder, this time louder and more terrifying.
* * * * * * * *
Dot, still trapped among the rocky ruins, heard that thunder. She heard something more. That something set her heart beating wildly. It was the voice of her cousin, calling: “Dot! Dot! Are you still there? Just think! I have found the King.”
“The King. There is no King.” Dot thought her cousin out of her senses.
“The Marine King of Manowa. He was coming to see about the revolution. And I found him.”
“We’ll have you out of there in two shakes,” said the King. “Just sit tight.
“Now where’s that pole? Oh yes, here it is. Guess you’re lucky. Going to be a peach of a storm. Less than an hour. Now young lady, out on the end and down we go. Up goes the stone. No. She slipped. Let’s heave her up again. Now! Down we go. There you are. Crawl out. Double quick time. Trench duty with no frills. Hurray! Here she is laden with treasure and safe as a buck private in the guard house.”
It was with the greatest difficulty that Dot restrained herself from hugging the King as she tumbled off the pile of rocks. She did grip his arm hard and tell him how very, very thankful she was that there was at least one king left in the world.
“And now,” said the King in very blunt language, “we’ve got to beat it and that all-fired fast!”
Having completed his detour, Johnny at last entered the cave by the secret door. He found the confusion within the cave almost as great as that without. Bronze natives were darting here and there. Some were shouting, some chanting weird witch songs and some dancing about as if mere action suited the occasion.
The little doctor was nowhere to be seen. Among them all there was one calm figure—Curlie Carson. And he of all things! Johnny stood and stared in blank astonishment. Curlie sat cross-legged on the floor blowing on a tin whistle, or rather several tin whistles, one at a time. On his knees rested a telephone instrument. Each time he blew a whistle he inclined his head toward the receiver of this instrument. His eyes, for the most part, were fixed on the broad back of the grotesque, gigantic mechanical figure who, for the moment at least, blocked the threatening horde of blacks.
“A telephone instrument!” Johnny said to himself, as his astonishment grew by leaps and bounds. “There is not a wire strung within twenty miles.”
He thought of a radio sending set. But no. That was impossible. There had not been time for installing one. “Besides,” he assured himself, “one does not send a radio S. O. S. by means of tin whistles. It’s a mad place,” he told himself. “This cave is full of mad people and Curlie has gone mad with the rest of them.”
Even as he arrived at this conclusion, it struck him that there was some connection between the peep-peeping of those whistles and the actions of the mechanical giant. Curlie blew the shortest whistle several times and the giant began a wild, frenzied dance; a longer whistle and he swung his arms and cracked his iron knuckles together; still another and he began snapping his clanking jaws.
Slowly it dawned upon Johnny that here was something quite marvelous; well worth watching to its very end; a battle between the brains of a boy and the brawn of a black rabble.
At that moment someone touched his arm. He turned about quite suddenly. It was the little doctor.
“Get it?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” Johnny answered.
“Good! You made a marvelous trip. We shan’t need it though. I’m sorry. He’s gone. It’s all for the best.”
“Dead?”
“Dead.”
There was a moment of silence during which the giant once more blinked his eyes and cracked his knuckles together. Also from afar, but much nearer than before, came the rumble and growl of thunder.
“You win,” said the little doctor. “I am glad for that.”
“I—I win?” Johnny did not understand.
“You get the ‘Rope of Gold’. Explain later. That is, unless those rascals win. They are after Curlie. They were staging a revolution. Curlie blew up their ship. Good thing. Nothing better ever happened. We’ll stand by him. But what’s there to do? We haven’t weapons—just a few machetes, that’s all. Besides, these bronze people are no fighters; never were.”
He turned and was gone.
Mechanically Johnny moved to a place where he was quite hidden by darkness but where he could witness the action of the mob without and the giant within.
The natives were afraid, that was certain; afraid of this giant.
“Probably think he is the ghost of Christophe. Singing, dancing and drumming to drive him away. Well, if I’m any judge, he won’t drive. But will they grow bolder? That’s the question.”
All the while the giant continued to dance and grimace, swing his arms and crack his knuckles while the angry mob, thirsting for revenge, pressed closer, ever closer to their goal.
At last, as Johnny stood there in the shadows breathless, watching, he saw a short, broad black man with a full neck and an exceedingly evil face dart suddenly forward.
At once Johnny’s brain was in a whirl. These men were superstitious, he knew that. All blacks are. Would this man dare attack this mysterious monster?
“If he dares,” he said aloud, “we are lost.”
Curlie nodded, but at once the sound of his whistles grew louder, more insistent, and the antics of the giant more frantic.
“He will not dare,” Johnny told himself. Yet even as he said it, he knew that he was wrong. What had come over the black man? Had despair lent him courage? Had he by some chance come to realize that the thing before him was made of copper, steel and wood and was no spirit at all? Be that as it may, as he paused before the threatening giant, he suddenly drew a revolver from his belt and emptied its contents into the giant’s broad breast.
The giant’s only answer was a redoubling of his fury. He danced. He cracked his teeth. He grimaced terribly.
For a few seconds the black leader wavered. He took one backward step. At his back sounded the shouts of his men and from far back of that came a wild crash of thunder. The storm was all but upon them.
“The battle is won,” thought Johnny.
But no, with one wild cry the black man leaped at the giant. With a cutting, rending crash his machete drove into the very heart of the giant. At the same instant an iron hand came down upon his head.
The black man sank to the stone floor, to lie there motionless. The giant ceased his swinging and dancing. Only his eyes still burned a steady green. Bending slowly over he came to rest in a position that made it appear that his green eyes were fixed upon the vanquished leader.
With one wild wail the black horde turned to race madly away into the night and the storm.
“The fight,” said Curlie, coming forward, “was a draw.” His voice was husky. “They did one another in. It’s too bad,” he said bending over the still form of the black leader. “I didn’t mean to do that. He threw himself into it. He was a brave, though mistaken man. Had he lived at another time or espoused another cause, he might have died a hero.”
“But you, my friend,” he touched the mechanical giant affectionately, “you will live to fight again. In the world there are ever wrongs to right.
“That,” he said turning to Johnny, “is the advantage of not being human.”
“How does he work?” Johnny asked, looking with great admiration on the stooping giant.
“That,” said Curlie, “is a long story.”
“And I trust will keep,” said a voice behind him. He turned to find himself looking into the eyes of the little doctor.
“Johnny here has been traveling on foot for many hours,” the doctor said. “He will wish to eat and sleep. I too would like to know a little concerning this mechanical marvel. But more important still—I think you will agree when it is told—is something I have to say to you. Your giant,” he turned a twinkling eye on Curlie, “will be safe enough here. The blacks are gone. My men, I assure you, would not touch him for anything in the world. They will carry this unfortunate black man away. Later you may return to remove the victor in that unusual combat.
“In the meantime,” he turned to lead the way, “I suggest a cup of Haitian coffee, over which I have a tale to relate, the story of the ‘Rope of Gold’.”
“The Rope—”
The little man held up a hand for silence. Then he lead the way back into the cave.
A half hour later the boys found themselves seated upon cocoanut fiber mats drinking Haitian coffee, black and bitter, and listening to one of the strangest stories ever told.
“‘The Rope of Gold’,” the little doctor was saying, “was never in the Citadel. When the black Emperor Christophe found himself paralyzed beyond hope of recovery, and all but deserted by his people, he committed suicide. There were certain members of his household who remained loyal to him. Among these was the bearer of the telescope.
“Knowing the hiding place of the ‘Rope of Gold’ within the palace and fearing the destruction of the palace, he called to his aid a handful of his own hill people and carried it, not to the Citadel, but to—” he paused to look up at the ceiling, “to this place.”
Instantly there came to Johnny’s mind a picture of the golden green snake that hung from the cave’s ceiling. This was not the room but for all that he seemed to see it dangling there. “That,” he told himself, “is the ‘Rope of Gold’.”
As if to verify this conclusion, the doctor went on:
“For more than a century that ‘Rope of Gold’, with all its matchless workmanship in green, white and yellow gold, has hung within the shadows of this dingy cave.
“To-morrow, Providence permitting, it will again see the light of day.”
His young companions leaned forward, eager for the rest of the story.
“When I heard of your search and its purpose,” his voice went on quietly, “to benefit thousands of the simple and kindly peasants of Haiti, I thought once more of my duty regarding the ‘Rope of Gold’. I had known of its whereabouts for many years, knew, too, that its secret was loyally kept.