The Voodoo Gold Trail

The figure (black of face) stood on the shore, looking out across the bay to the west. Was it Duran? I asked myself. Surely the form was not unlike his, but there were many real blacks in his employ who, at that distance would have looked much the same.

And then occurred a thing that settled the matter, and I thrilled all over. The man's hand went up to the side of his head, and the fingers toyed with the ear in that characteristic manner of Duran's, when he was in deep thought. There could be no doubt, I saw the hand moving up and down with the stroking. It was Duran!

I turned to my friends and gave them my news.

"Well, anyway," pouted Ray, "his man Friday was there; he went off in a boat."

"And now, what do you suppose he's doing on that island then?" asked Norris.

"He's burying his gold, of course," said Ray.

"Or maybe he's just after provisions," I suggested.

"And he sent that old fellow in the boat on his errands," offered Robert.

Carlos, appealed to, avowed that this explanation was not unlikely, since there was a bit of a hamlet far down the bay.

When the hot tropic sun had mounted to the zenith, Norris' restlessness seemed to be approaching a climax. It was with some difficulty we dissuaded him from a notion that had taken him, to make a trip back into the hills in search of that golden creek of his. And it was then there came a wet squall out of the west that drove us under the shelter of our over-turned boat till it went by. The monotony of that wait, too, was a bit relieved by the return to the island of that boat that had gone down the bay in the morning.

Before dark came I got Jean Marat aside and communicated to him an idea that had grown in my head that afternoon.

"Captain Marat," I began, "it is going to be very dark nearly all of tonight, and it will be hard to see, at that distance, when Duran leaves the island – if he does."

"Yes," returned Marat, "I have think of that."

"Well," I continued, "even in the dark it won't be safe to row over to the island. Duran might happen to be on the shore and so see us."

"Yes, jus' so," agreed Marat.

"I want to swim over," I said. "It's only half a mile."

"Ah!" said Jean Marat. "Thad might be. Yes – yes." (He pondered the thing.) "Yes, I swim too, with you."

It was the very thing I had in mind, this idea of his accompanying me, though I hesitated to include him in my suggestion.

"And then," Marat continued, "maybe we hear some theengs thad will help us."

Here, too, was some of my thought, remembering that night when he and I had rowed over to the Orion, in the harbor, and heard Duran say things that had enlightened us very much. Though some of the things he had said had not been at all clear, else Ray and I had been spared that period of captivity.

We were not long in giving our plan to the others. Norris, eager for activity, would like to be one of the party, but he himself found objections the moment his wish was expressed.

"It won't do to have too many," he said; "and then I can't understand the parley voo like Captain Marat."

"Besides," put in Ray, "there'd be an awful hulaboloo among the fish. They'd think it was a – " Norris had him in his grasp. " – A mermaid," finished Ray.

We did not wait long after night had settled over the bay. Jean Marat and I kicked off our clothes and, entering the water, headed for the island. It was chalked out that the others should hold everything in readiness, and if they should hear a signal, they would immediately row out and pick us up, to take up the trail of Duran again.

It was no great feat to swim that half mile of smooth water. And then it was with great caution that we crawled across that island beach. I must have been a curious spectacle for Jean Marat – black of face and arms and feet, the rest of me all white. The curly wig, of course, I had left with my clothing.

We passed in among the cocoanut palms, traversed a belt of hammock, and came to a piece of clearing. A light shone from a window of the hut. There were some bushes near the wall; these we got amongst.

Keeping our faces in the shadow, we contrived to look in. And it was somewhat a startling spectacle presented to us there. Duran's features – though stained like myself and Robert – were not so hard to distinguish in the light of the lamp. There was but one other occupant, a negro, old and portly of body. Duran's head bore a red kerchief, wound turban-wise, and his body was clad in a red robe – much like I had seen him wearing that night in the forest. He stood by the table, and in his hands he clutched a fowl, just beheaded, for the blood was running from the raw stump of the neck into a bowl.

When the dripping had almost ceased, Duran gave the chicken into the hands of the negro, who laid it aside. And then Duran poured rum from a jug into cups, and mixed in blood from the bowl; and now the two drank. And there showed that horrid, excited hankering of an old toper, in Duran's face when he brought the cup to his lips. Whether it was the rum he craved, or the blood, or the combination, or if he was really taken with a religious fanaticism, I have never been able to fathom. But that his emotion was real I could have no doubt.

A number of drinks round, and the black set himself to plucking the feathers from the fowl; and then it was not long till he had the bird in a kettle on the stove. Duran, after a time, inclined his head to a little box on the table, and presently it occurred to me that they must have the voodoo snake there as well. It was evidently a voodoo ceremony they were enacting, and I knew it could not be complete – if bonafide – without the snake.

Through it all, there was more or less talk between those two, and to that Marat was giving his ear. At times he moved over and put his head to the boards, the better to hear.

When at last the fowl was cooked, those two feasted on it, and ate little else. And then, in time, they dropped off to sleep; the portly negro seeking the floor, Duran slumbering in his chair, head and arms on the table.

Captain Marat and I now seated ourselves on the ground, a little away from that window to wait while those two within should sleep off their debauch. Marat told me something of the talk of Duran and the other. But there was nothing of new interest in it, since it referred almost solely to matters on which they were then engaged. Duran, however, had found occasion to descant on a purpose he professed he had, to bestow great riches on the black, how he would be required to remain faithful to Duran's service but a few days more, and he should be literally over-burdened with the gold that should be his.

Maybe two hours of waiting had passed, with occasional peeps in at that window, when Duran raised himself from his slumbers. He forthwith aroused the black, and divesting himself of the red gown, he addressed himself to the negro, who began putting together certain parcels of supplies in a pack. Duran took up a paddle, and the two moved out of the door, talking as they went.

Captain Marat and I crouched in the shadows, till they had gone toward the beach. Then we followed, moving from bush to bush. And we saw Duran embark in his canoe, going back the way he had come the night before.

So soon as the black had moved toward the hut, Marat and I entered the water and started for the shore of the mainland, where our friends awaited us. When we deemed it safe, I gave the whistle signal, and our friends came off in the boat and took us in.

"Thee Orion weel be here in thees bay before a week is gone," said Captain Marat. "Duran expect then to sail away, pay off hees crew, an' come back with new crew who know nothing about thee gold. And then he will take on gold cargo. And then for Europe. He tell that black man he take him with, and he will make him ver' rich."

"But he didn't tell that black where he was going to get his gold cargo?" ventured Ray.

Marat said no to that. But Duran had promised the negro that he should go with him, in two boats, and they two should transport all the gold aboard the vessel; and the new crew were to be told that it was all specimens of coral and other stones, for a museum in Europe. "And so," Marat continued, "Duran tell him if any strangers come round, he must not know anyone by name Duran, or Mordaunt, or anyone like that. And Duran tell him, too, thad when the Orion come, if anyone on the schooner come to the little island, he tell them Duran gives order thad no one of them is allowed on thee island; they must stay on the schooner."

"And why," began Norris, "do you suppose he don't want his own sailors on that little island?"

"Ask Wayne," said Ray.

"Now, Mr. Norris," I said, "you're just wanting to hear somebody echo the thought that's in your mind. Suppose you tell us what it is."

"Well," said Norris, "Ray said it last night. He's been burying some of the gold on the isle. And now he's afraid that if his men set their feet on the place, they'll get to looking for it."

"That's the way with people," said Ray. "If they hide something, they suspect that everybody that comes around can smell it."

"Ease on your oars," Marat admonished.

Norris and Robert were rowing. Intent on our discussion, they had forgotten caution, and were sending the boat forward at a rate. The night was quite dark in spite of the stars, and we might easily drive ourselves within hearing of Duran without realizing it. The night breeze rippled the bay, so that the canoe on the surface would not be visible till one should be almost on it.

"It's a mighty good thing," observed Robert, "that he doesn't make his trips in daylight. He couldn't help seeing that a good many besides himself have been tramping on that trail."

"He'd think a whole army was after him," said Ray.

When at last we came to the inlet, it was with some difficulty we found our way, so dark was it. It was Carlos who at last made out Duran's canoe, amongst the reeds.

"Well, he's got a good deal the start of us," said Norris, when at last we had got our boat in hiding and were ready for the trail.

"Perhaps it's just as well we're not too close," I offered, falling in behind Carlos, to whom we gave the lead.

"You don't believe he'd give us another chase in the schooner?" queried Robert.

"No," I admitted, "but he might pick a new trail, and throw us clear off again."

Single file, we moved forward. We were soon in the wood, where night birds and insects gave us their music. Out again in the glade; again into the forest. And at last, we came to where the trail dipped into the stream.

There was nothing to do but remake our camp in the old place, a little way to the west of the creek. There came renewed conjectures seeking solution of this mystery.

"Well, you'll find out my balloon is the only explanation," bantered Ray. "He carries one in his vest pocket, all neatly folded; he takes it out, blows it full of voodoo rum stuff, and – whiff – up he goes."

"Maybe there's some one of those lianas hanging from the trees that he swings out of the water on," offered Robert.

"That's so!" cried Norris. "A fellow might swing a big long jump that way without touching his foot to the ground. I'm going to have another good look there first thing in the morning."

Captain Marat had been taking stock of our supply of food.

"Someone have to go for more provision, if we stay much longer," he said. "We have hardly enough for one day."

So that after some hours of sleep Robert and Marat set off to return to the Pearl for fresh supplies. They planned to row across the end of Crow Bay before day should come, for there was no certainty that Duran's black on the isle might not have an eye out. It would not do to risk another daylight crossing.

Day had no sooner shot its earliest rays into the recesses of our forest, than Norris was over to the creek investigating the big vines that hung like so many ropes from the branches above. He finally came back to his breakfast, his face giving no signs of success.

"Never mind, Norris," said Ray. "If you're going to make that Duran out a monkey, you can hardly expect to find tracks – monkeys don't leave any."

"Well, anyway," insisted Norris, "that's the way he went, and we'll find that gold mine up on my creek – see if we don't."

For some unaccountable reason, I was not any more impressed by Norris' conclusions than by Ray's playful explications, and I was taken with a desire to be alone with the problem. So I urged the others to go and explore Norris' creek, and I would remain on watch at this place of Duran's strange disappearance.

When the three had gone, moving eastward along the foot of that towering stone wall, I began where the water came tumbling out of that hole in the cliff, and carefully examined the banks of the creek again, up and down, for half a mile or so. I reasoned that if he waded into the stream he must certainly have waded out of it again. Unless, as Norris had conjectured, he had swung himself over the bank by the means of some liana. I therefore imitated Norris and searched both sides for evidence of any such means; and with a negative result. Nowhere, so far as the forest followed the stream, was there a loose liana near the bank on either side.

And then it came to me that perhaps Duran had gone into the water at the end of the path, only to retrace his steps and leave the path some way on the back trail, thus to deceive any who should chance to come so far on his track. And so I scrutinized every foot of the path back to the edge of the forest, and some way across the glade. I even went off the trail, and fought my way through the growth as I went back, paralleling the path, and looking for signs.

But I got back to the creek bank and the music of the little cascade, no nearer the solution than when I had started. Hours had been consumed in my search. It must have been past ten when I squatted on the stream's bank, looking into the clear water, puzzling over this thing.

A beam of sun shone down through the water and illumined the creek's bottom. A round bit of rock or coral lay there, almost white in that liquid light. For a long time I stared on that spot, as if the solution were to be found there. I never before had felt so baffled.

And then I was startled! I could no longer see that stone – nor any part of the creek's bed. The water had in that moment become turbid. Something had muddied it. I leaped to my feet and hurried up to the fountain in the cliff. The water was coming out of the rock in that muddied condition. Now what could it all mean? I asked myself. And I set my wits to the thing as I continued to stare at the phenomenon. Presently the water cleared a bit. And then in a little it came as muddy as ever again.

CHAPTER XXIII

WHAT THE WATER HID

My thoughts flew. In a moment more I thrilled with an idea. Then I dashed into the water and got myself up to the little waterfall, made, as I have said, by a portion of the water coming round a rock and flowing over the edge of a flat shelf of rock.

I tried to look through that thin veil of liquid, failing which, I braved a shower and put my head through. In another moment I had my whole body behind that little cascade. I crouched, sputtering, under the rocky shelf. Then for eight or ten feet I crawled forward in the darkness. Directly, the passage made a little turn to the right, and the ground under my hands sloped upward. It may have been fifty feet, it may have been a hundred and fifty feet, that I had penetrated that cliff – my excitement had taken no measure of the distance – when I found that I could no longer feel the wall on either side. I was in a cavern of unknown dimensions.

I could hear the rushing of water, below and to my left. A feeling of exultation filled me almost to bursting; I had at last discovered Duran's secret. I came to a stop, fearing to lose my exit. How I wished for my flashlight! I had come away leaving it aboard the Pearl.

I do not know how long I had tarried in that spot, when a beam of light struck down from above on my right. And then came sounds of some being up there, and the light approached.

I retreated into the narrow passage by which I had come, ready to scramble out if there should be need. But soon the slant of the light beams showed me that the lamp had passed to the left, and I ventured forward again, and peeked around a projection of rock.

There was Duran's blackened face in the light of a lantern, which he was in the act of hanging on some form of hook in the cavern wall. The vault, I saw, was high, and at least fifty feet wide. It was down near the water that Duran was; and I saw him stoop and put his hand into the stream; and he fished out some sort of packet which he laid on the cavern floor. Time after time he reached down into the rushing water, and took out a packet each dive, till he had a pile on the floor that would measure a peck.

At last Duran sat himself on the cavern's floor, and he busied himself with untying knots and separating the objects he dealt with in two piles. And next he rose to his feet and set to transporting one of his piles to some niche that was out of the field of my eye.

Duran's next procedure was to gather the other pile into a sack. And this he took in hand and forthwith began to move back toward my part of the cavern.

I wormed my way down in my passage again, and when I had got a little way from the cascade, I waited and listened. But he must have gone back the way he had come. I ventured in again.

When I poked my head out of the passage into the cavern, there was no sign of Duran. But the lantern still hung where he had fixed it, throwing its light about that space.

I now ventured down to the scene of Duran's labors. There, completely spanning the stream, and reaching down to its bed, was a network of some sort of tough fibre, reinforced with slender bamboo. Near at hand, in a niche, lay, in a pile near a foot high, short sections of bamboo as thick as my arm. I took up one in my hand. Even prepared as I was for the discovery, its weight nevertheless startled me; it might have been solid brass.

"At last this smells of the gold mine!" I thought to myself. He would hardly miss one of these. And after hefting in my hand a half-dozen more, to satisfy myself that all were loaded, I retained that first bamboo cylinder and hurried to my exit.

As I passed out on all fours through that little waterfall, I got a fresh drenching. I waded on down the stream, and presently I heard a voice. It was Ray's; and he was over in our little camp.

It came into my mind to even up for some of the tricks Ray had played me. So I trilled out a low whistle, and when I heard them coming, I ducked myself in the creek. I held my breath for as long a space as I could manage, and then rose out of the water and made for the path, pretending not to see those petrified forms pedestaled on the creek bank. I went up the path and moved toward the camp, and when they hurried forward – "Hello!" I said. "Are you folks back already?"

"Say, now!" began Ray. "What in Sam Hill! Are you playing alligator, or mermaid, or – "

"Playing!" I said. "I've had no time for play." With one hand I was nursing the heavy cylinder that I now carried under my shirt.

"And what have you been doing?" demanded Norris, eyes big with perplexity.

And Carlos appeared no less mystified.

"I've been visiting the gold mine," I said simply.

Even Ray could not resist a look over to that spot in the stream where I had appeared to them out of the water.

"I thought I heard you whistle," he said.

"Dreaming some more," I suggested.

Norris got a long stick and began poking in the bottom of of the creek.

"Oh, not that way," I told him. "You have to say 'Open Sesame.'"

"Now look here, open up!" pressed Norris, dropping his pole.

"All right," I returned. And I produced the cylinder of bamboo.

"Well I'll – !" began Norris, hefting the thing. "Say, there's sure something heavy in that thing. Where'd you – ?" And again his eyes turned quizzically toward the water.

"You know what I told you this morning," broke in Ray, taking the section of bamboo in his turn of scrutiny.

"Yes," assented Norris, "you said Wayne would have it all figured out – what became of Duran – by the time we came back. And that's one reason why I was ready to come back as soon as I found those two little colors."

And Norris showed me two little flakes of gold he'd washed out of the black sand in the creek-bed.

"But open up now, Wayne," he continued. "Tell us."

"Well you see," I began, "you, Norris, would have it that Duran had gone through the woods by the lianas; and you, Ray, insisted on it that he went through the air. Now none of us had thought of his going through the water – "

Instinctively we all looked into the creek, and there I discovered that the water had gone muddy again.

"Look there, see that!" I pointed. "You know how clear that water has always been. And now see how riled it is."

They looked intently as if expecting to see Duran appear out of the stream as I had seemed to do.

"Aw, say now, what are you giving us?" said Ray.

Norris and Carlos were already moving up toward the spot where the water poured out of the cliff. But before they were half the way, the stream cleared again.

And then I went on to tell them how I had discovered the hole behind the little cascade. And they were open-mouthed till I had completed my narration of Duran's activities in that cavern in the cliff.

"Well now, and to think – " began Norris. "Anyway that proves that the gold mine is on a continuation of the creek where I found the colors. That creek goes into the rocks up there and comes out into some kind of a basin, and then goes into the cliffs again and comes out here, like a train going through two tunnels."

"Brava!" cried Ray. "Now you ought to have told us that yesterday, and saved all that trouble."

Norris had to penetrate the little cascade and see the beginning of the passage into the cliff. When he came out, it was decided to wait for night and the coming of Captain Marat and Robert, with the lantern, before going into the cavern. For, since Duran was working by day he would doubtless sleep at night.

"Well," said Ray, when we got to the camp. "I want to see what makes that thing so heavy."

The cylinder of bamboo was plugged at the one end with a section of wood, the edges being sealed with raw pitch. We heated the thing at the fire, and then pried out the plug of wood.

"Hooray!" cried Norris and Ray together, as I poured the contents into a tin.

There was fine dust of gold mixed with many small nuggets.

"How many of those things did you say you saw in there?" asked Ray.

"I didn't count them," I returned. But I showed with my hands the dimensions of that space that was filled with them.

"And that's only the beginning," said Norris. "Say, Carlos, we've found your gold mine," he continued, seizing that black by the shoulder.

"Yes, we find him now," grinned Carlos. "Maybe I find where my father buried." And his face went serious again with the sadness I saw there, something that was doubtless hatred of Duran, his father's murderer, showed too. And I wondered – and conjectured – what was in Carlos' mind, and shuddered.

Marat and Robert came at last, in the dark, and they marvelled at the tale of success we had to tell them.

"But, Bob," said Ray, in the midst of the tale, "to think that Wayne would play a trick like that on me! – who nursed him through measles, mumps, chicken pox, cholera morbus, and a stubbed toe, and even fed him up, dozens of times, on all-day suckers! – to pop out of the water like that, and bow, and tell me he had been playing Jonah, and that the whale had just stopped behind to wipe his feet on the mat and would be in directly."

Everything, Captain Marat told us, was going well on the Pearl; and Julian, good lad, was content to wait indefinitely, while we searched for the mine.

Fortunately, Robert and Marat had brought the lantern, and Robert had thought to bring along the electric flashlights; and most of us were supplied with matches, protected from the damp in tightly corked vials. We were soon at the little cascade, and crawling, one after the other, pushed through the curtain of water.