night and morning we got little rest. we ate another meal from our slender store; but it was a fearful thing to see how few meals remained; and though in part we satisfied our hunger, our thirst seemed more unendurable than ever.
"eat light and belt tight," o'hara muttered. "last night they was watching like cats at a rat-hole. to-night surely they'll not be so eager. it'll be to-night that we can make our dash to the river."
once more the sun was shining on the green, open space around the hut. a huge butterfly, blazing with gaudy tropical colors, fluttered out from some nook among the creepers where it had been hidden, and on slow wings sailed almost up to us, loitered a moment beside a blue flower, and again took flight through the still air to the opposite forest wall.
"if neil gleazen had as much brains under his hair as he has hair to cover his head," matterson softly remarked, "we'd have brought enough food so that we'd not have to go hungry."
"food!" gleazen roared. "food, is it? you eat like a hog, you glutton. and who was to know that bull would not have a house full of food to feast us on? who was to know that bull would be dead?"
at that a silence fell upon us.
as usual, though we had agreed to a truce between our two parties, gleazen, matterson, and o'hara sat on one side of the room, the side where the skeleton and the bag[pg 235] of pebbles lay, and arnold, abe and i sat on the other, with poor uncle seth wandering about at will between us.
there was that in my uncle's manner which i could not understand; and as i watched him, abe guptil touched my elbow.
"something queer ails seth upham," he whispered.
"i know it," i replied.
"i don't like to see him act that way."
"nor i."
abe regarded me thoughtfully. "now ain't it queer how things turn out?" he whispered. "i mind the day you come to my house and told me i'd got to flit. it was a bitter day for me, joe, and yet do you know, i'd kind o' like to be back there, even if it was all to go through again. i swear, though, i'd never sail again with mr. gleazen."
there was something so ingenuous in abe's way of saying that he wished he had never come, that i smiled; but it touched me to remember all that abe and i had faced together; and abe himself, with keen yankee shrewdness, added in an undertone, "it's all very well for o'hara to talk of making our break to-night. i'm thinking, joe, it is upon us a storm will break before we get free and clear of this camp."
as the sun rose higher and higher, the sunlight steadily grew warmer. the air shimmered with heat, and the house itself became as hot, it seemed, as an oven over a charcoal fire. sweat streamed from our faces and, having had no water now for nearly twenty-four hours, we suffered agonies of thirst.
never were men in a more utterly tantalizing predicament. whether or not it was cooler outside the hut than within, it surely could have been no hotter; and from the door straight down the hill to the spring there led a broad, open path. the spring was only a short distance away, and[pg 236] there was, so far as we could see, not a living creature between us and cold water in abundance. hour after hour the green, deep grass around it mocked us. yet in the wattled hut, under the thatched roof, we were prisoners.
three arrows, shot by we knew not whom, every one of them now in our own hands, were the only warnings that we had received; but not a man of us dared disobey the message that those three arrows had brought.
the day wore on, through the long and dreary watches of the morning, through the tortures of high noon, and through the less harsh afternoon hours. we ate another of our few remaining meals and watched the sun set and the darkness come swiftly. the shadows, growing longer and longer, reached out across the clearing to the trees on the opposite side; and suddenly, darkly, swept up the eastern wall of the forest. as the light vanished, night enfolded us. the stars that flashed into the sky only intensified the utter blackness of the woods.
o'hara uneasily stirred and stretched himself in the darkness like a dog.
"now, lads," he whispered, "now's the time to gather things together. at two in the morning we'll run for it. then's the hour they'll be sleeping like so many black pigs."
gleazen moved and groaned,—it was almost the first time that he had yielded in the least to the pain of his wound.
"can you travel by yourself, neil?" matterson asked. "or shall i carry you on my back?"
when it came to me that the question was no joke, that matterson actually meant it, i could not keep from staring at him in amazement. he was a tremendous man, but there was something honestly heroic in his offering to carry cornelius gleazen's weight back over all those miles.
[pg 237]
gleazen smiled and shook his head. "thanks, mat," he replied, "but i'll make out to scramble along."
the word "scramble," it seemed, caught uncle seth's attention, and with a curt nod, he said, "yes, scramble them; use them any way but boiled. we can't sell cracked eggs in the store, but they're perfectly good to use at home."
we all looked in amazement, and gleazen, in spite of his pain, hoarsely laughed.
"why, seth," he cried, "are you gone crazy?"
my uncle stared blankly at him and continued to pace the room.
in the silence that ensued, gleazen's words seemed to echo and reëcho; though they were spoken quietly, even in jest, their significance was truly terrible.
"gentlemen," said arnold lamont in a very low voice, "seth upham, i fear, is not well. we must not let him stand guard. we cannot trust him!"
"name of heaven!" whispered matterson, "the man's right. upham is turning queer."
as i watched my uncle, my mother's only brother, the last of all my kin, a choking rose in my throat. he did not see me at all. he saw none of us. in mind and spirit he was thousands of miles away from us. i started toward him, but when his eyes met mine dully and with no indication that he recognized me, i swallowed hard and turned back.
never was a night so long and ghastly! with all prepared for our dash to the river, with uncle seth wandering back and forth, and with the rest of us divided into three watches of two each, that overlapped by an hour, so that four men were always on guard, we watched and waited until midnight passed and the morning hours came.
when the moon was at the zenith, o'hara woke matterson,[pg 238] and we gathered by the packs, which were made up and ready.
"poor bull!" said o'hara, brushing his hand across his eyes. "sure, and i hate to leave him thus. if ever man deserved a decent burial, it's him."
"if men got what they deserved," gleazen briefly retorted, "bull would never have drove the ship on the island, and we'd never have had to divide up this here find which bull dug up for us, and bull would never have had to stand by the hill to get himself killed, in the first place."
each man had tied up his own belongings to suit himself, and had put in his pocket his share of what little food was left. the different packs stood in the middle of the hut, but it was noticeable that, although each man was nearest his own, matterson was eyeing gleazen's with a show of keener interest.
"let me carry your bundle, neil, you with a hole in your leg," he said.
"no," gleazen replied.
"i'll never notice the weight of it."
"keep your hand off, molly. i'll carry my own bundle."
"as you please."
matterson turned away and stepped to one side.
all this i noticed, at first, mainly, if the truth be known, because i saw how closely arnold lamont was noticing it, but later because the manner of the two men convinced me that gleazen's pack held the bag that the others were so carefully guarding.
now that our food was almost gone, there remained so very little baggage of any kind for us to carry, that there was no good reason that i could see for not putting our odds and ends of clothing and ammunition into, say, two convenient bundles, at which we could take turns during[pg 239] our forced march to the river, or, indeed, for not abandoning the mere baggage altogether. but gleazen, matterson, and o'hara had planned otherwise. having allotted to each of us his share of the food that remained, and an equal seventh of our various common possessions, they kept three of the muskets themselves, and gave the fourth to poor seth upham, which seemed to me so mad an act that i was on the point of questioning its wisdom, when arnold caught my eye and signaled me to be still.
gathering in the door of the hut, we looked out into the silent, moonlit glade that led down the hill and through the valley toward the distant river.
"are we all ready, lads?" matterson asked in his light voice.
"push on, molly, push on," gleazen replied.
shouldering his pack, matterson stepped out into the moonlight. "now, then," he whispered,—for although we were confident that no enemy within earshot was then awake (it had not been hard for o'hara to persuade us to his own way of thinking), a spell of silence and secrecy was upon us,—"it's straight for the river, lads, and the devil take the hindermost. if you're too lame to travel, neil, so help me, i'll carry you."
"push on!" gleazen returned hoarsely. "push on to the spring. after that we'll talk if you wish."
"we're going home," i thought. home, indeed! it seemed that at last we had turned the corner; that at last we had passed the height of land and were on the point of racing down the long slope; that at last our troubles were over and done with. a score of figures to express it leaped into my mind. and first of all, best of all, at last we were to get water!
arnold said sharply, "come, abe; come, joe; step along."
[pg 240]
bending low, matterson led the way, i followed close at his heels, and the others came in single file behind me. seven dark figures, silently slipping from shadow to shadow, we left behind us the hut,—we believed forever!—and headed straight down the hill to the spring; for more than anything else we longed to plunge our faces into cold water and drink until we had quenched our burning thirst.
down the hill to the spring we went, slipping along in single file. all night and all day, without a word, we had endured agony; for it was by showing no sign of life whatever to those who were guarding the hut from the forest that we hoped so to lull their watchfulness that we could escape them just after midnight. and now we were eager almost beyond words for that water which we had so vividly imagined. as we darted into the tall grass, it seemed so completely assured that i swung my pack from my shoulder and broke into a quick trot after matterson, whose long, swift strides, as he straightened up, had carried him on ahead of me.
if a thousand people read this tale, not one of them, probably, will know the full meaning of the word thirst; not one will understand what water had come by then to mean to me.
i ran—i tried to run faster—faster! but as i dragged my pack along, bumping at my knees, i was amazed to see matterson stop. he threw his musket to his shoulder. the hollow boom of it went rolling off through the woodland and echoed slowly away into silence among the mighty trees. then he threw his hands up, and with a cry fell into the grass, and lay so still that i could not tell where he had fallen.
by the flash of his musket i and those behind me had for an instant seen by the spring a grotesque figure dressed in skins and rags, and painted with white rings and bars.[pg 241] when the flash died away, we could see nothing, not even the waving grasses and the black trees against the sky, because momentarily the sudden glare had blinded us.
as if impelled by another will than mine, i drew back step by step until i was standing shoulder to shoulder with the others. whatever quarrels we had had among ourselves were for the time forgotten.
"now, by heaven," gleazen gasped, "it's back to the hut for all of us!"
"but neil—now, neil, sure now we can't run away and leave old molly," o'hara cried.
"leave him?" gleazen roared. "we've got to leave him! where is he? tell me if you can! go find him if you like! hark! see!"
with a thin, windy whistle a spear came flying out of the night and passed just over gleazen's shoulder and his pack. another with a soft chug struck into the ground at my feet; then, my eyes having once more become accustomed to the moonlight, i saw sneaking into the clearing a score of dark, slinking figures.
"they're coming!" i cried. "they're cutting us off! quick! quick!" in panic i started back to the hut, with the others at my heels.
when they saw the figures that i had seen, gleazen and o'hara both fired their muskets, whereupon the figures disappeared and we, deafened by the tremendous reports and blinded again by the bright flashes, ran back as hard as we could go to the hut that so short a time since we had eagerly abandoned; and with gleazen limping in the rear, fairly threw ourselves across the threshold.
whether our gunfire had done any real damage, we gravely doubted; and now we were both a man and a weapon short. but bitterest of all, and by far the most discouraging, was our intense thirst.
[pg 242]
"ah, the black devils," o'hara muttered between grinding teeth. "sure, and they planned all that—planned to let us get the water almost between our lips and then drive us back here. the black cowards, they dare not meet us man to man, though they are forty to our one."
it was significant that no one spoke of matterson. the silence as regarded his name marked a certain fatalism, which now possessed us—something akin to despair, yet not so ignoble as despair; something akin to resolution, yet not so praiseworthy as resolution. there seemed, indeed, nothing to say about him. bull was dead, i thought, and matterson was dead; and even if the blacks dared not rush upon us and take the hut by storm, they would soon kill us by thirst. we had done our best; if worst came to worst, we would die with our boots on.
meanwhile queer low cries out in the forest were rising little by little to shrill yells and hoots and cat-calls. if we could judge by the sounds, there were hundreds of blacks, if not thousands.
"o bull! you poor, deluded fool!" o'hara cried. "now why—why—why did he go and build the house on a king's grave?"
why indeed?
it was a fearful thing to hear those cries and yells; yet, although we watched from door and windows a long while, we did not actually see any further sign of danger, until arnold lamont, who was guarding the door, said in a subdued voice, "look—down the hill—half-way down. something has moved twice."
as we gathered behind him, he turned and with a quick gesture said, "do not leave the windows. who knows what trick they may try upon us?"
my uncle, who seemed for the moment to comprehend all that was going forward, and abe guptil and gleazen,[pg 243] went back to the windows, although it was evident enough that their minds were not so much on their own duty as on whatever it was that had caught arnold's attention.
"see!" said arnold.
there was nothing down there now that seemed not to belong by nature to the place, and i surmised that arnold had seen only some small animal. but that a black object, appearing and disappearing, had revealed more to the others than to me, i immediately apprehended.
"it was fifty feet farther down the hill when i first distinguished it," said arnold.
o'hara went over to my uncle and i heard him say, "let me take your gun, since it's loaded, mr. upham, and thank you kindly."
returning, he sat down in the door beside arnold, who had begun meanwhile to load the empty musket that o'hara had carelessly laid aside. when the thing, whatever it was, moved again, o'hara raised the gun to his shoulder.
"don't shoot!" arnold whispered.
"and why not?"
the thing moved once more.
"will ye look, now! it's come ten feet in this direction," o'hara whispered.
now arnold raised his own musket.
again we saw the thing, but so briefly that neither arnold nor o'hara had time to fire.
suddenly o'hara laid his hand on arnold's shoulder and repeated arnold's own words:—
"don't shoot."
"this time," arnold whispered, "i shall shoot."
"wait a bit, wait a bit!" o'hara gently pressed down the muzzle of the gun.
meanwhile, you must understand, the yelling and hooting[pg 244] had first grown loud and near, then had drawn slowly farther away. it was not easy to let that creature, be it animal or human, come crawling up the hill in the full light of the moon. as the cries died in the distance, the thing moved faster and with less concealment, and i fiercely whispered, "shoot, arnold, shoot!"
"wait," he replied and lifted a restraining hand.
at the moment i could not understand why he did not do as i said; but as the thing came out into open ground, the same thought that had caused the two to hold their fire occurred likewise to me; and now we saw that we were right.
the thing crawling up the hill was a man, and when the man came into the open clearing directly in front of our camp, we saw that it was matterson.
without a word, followed closely by o'hara, who laid his gun on the threshold, i leaped out past arnold and ran down to matterson and helped him to his feet and led him groaning up to the hut.
