Treasure of Kings

As it was then almost dark, I hastened immediately to the Tomb, and threw back the stone slab. There was light enough for me to see at a glance that nothing had been touched. There were the white bones, the breast-plate, sword and helmet-exactly as I had left them. I stood irresolute a moment, looking down into the grave; and all at once, a great fear possessed me that some calamity had overtaken Bannister.

I was here in advance of both him and Amos-which was more than I had ever hoped for. The next thing to decide was what to do, and-as will be seen, in a moment-I was given no choice in the matter.

Fear spreads, I think, like fire. I was solicitous, at first, for Bannister; and then I feared for myself. Or there may be something in the notion that the evil that is in a man taints the very atmosphere in which he moves. At any rate, even as I thought of Amos Baverstock, I became filled, on a sudden, with my old dread of him. I stood shivering, as if from cold, beneath the trees, by the side of that ancient grave, whilst the darkness spread around me.

And then it was that the voice of Amos Baverstock himself came to my ears with such startling suddenness that I was taken unawares. It was just as if I had received some kind of electric shock. I straightened with a jerk, and I verily believe that my heart itself stood still.

I had not been able to hear the exact words he used; but I knew only too well the hard, strident tones of his voice. I think he called upon Joshua Trust to make haste and not to lag behind, and the language that he used was vile as always.

I stood where I was, stock-still, like one transfixed. And then I heard the breaking of the undergrowth, as someone rapidly approached.

I felt much as a mouse must feel, when the trapdoor closes after him. I was spurred into sudden action. And yet there was nothing I could do.

If I rushed into the thickets, my enemies must hear me. And what chance had my blow-pipe against a leaden bullet? I looked up at the trees around me, and saw at once that there was not one that I could climb without a deal of trouble. And yet, Amos himself was coming nearer and nearer, as I could tell by the breaking of the underwoods and the dead sticks upon the ground. On a sudden, without a thought, I jumped down into the Tomb, and pulled the stone slab into its place above me.

It is easy to say that this was the action of a fool. I attempt no more than to relate what happened. That no man in a calm moment would have done anything so rash and stupid, I would never for a moment deny. I was, however, very far from calm. If the truth be told, I was afraid. I hid my face like an ostrich-for that is all it comes to.

And as soon as I found myself lying at full length upon those white and aged bones in the darkness of the grave, I realised that I was lost-that it had been far better for me had I fled into the jungle. Amos himself must shift the slab to search the Tomb for the map that he believed he would find within.

And presently, through the opening in the slab, I heard, with a distinctness that was indeed alarming, the voice of the man himself.

"It is here!" he cried. "We've found it, as I said we would!"

From the certain fact that no one answered him, I judged that Baverstock was alone; and I was the more sure of this, since I could hear the footsteps of but a single man upon the thin stone above me. And I began to reckon what my chances would amount to, if it came to a square fight between the two of us, with no one to intervene.

Then I remembered that I was unarmed; for I had left my blow-pipe above ground, though the chances were that it was now so dark that he might not notice it. By the noise he made, his grunting and his muttered oaths, I judged that he was searching for the means to lift the slab.

I touched the stone above me with my fingers; and when I felt it moving, I knew that the hour of my ordeal was come. I must fight and defend myself, or die-and very likely both. I rose as the stone was lifted, and, as I did so, placed the Spaniard's helmet on my head and took up the rusted sword.

Amos threw aside the slab, and then jumped backward, as I stood up in the grave, waist-deep in mother earth.

It was that half-light which is neither night nor day-a weird and ghostly light, pervading like a mist the shadows of the Wood. Small wonder that that evil man thought that he beheld the resurrection of a corpse!

He let out a shriek-such a shriek as I never heard before or since-that seemed as if it must have been audible for miles throughout the evening silence of the jungle. It was the shriek of one whose hair stands upright on his head. He stood before me quaking at the knees; and then he found his voice again.

"Mercy!" he cried.

And at that I rushed upon him with my sword.

CHAPTER XXI-I AM MADE A GHOST, AND THEN A FOOL

I sprang at him with my sword, the rusty blade that I had filched from those grim and whitened bones.

The man was at my mercy. He was unarmed, having laid aside his rifle before he approached the Tomb. He trembled in every limb as he fled before my onslaught, and cried out aloud for pity, as I jabbed at him in a kind of vicious frenzy.

In the twilight his face looked pale-green in colouring, and his little pig-like eyes seemed in danger of springing from his head. It would be difficult to conceive an expression upon which abject terror was more strongly marked.

Amos Baverstock was an evil man in many ways, and a brave man in others; else he had never risked his life so often amid the dangers of the tropic wilderness. Courage of a sort he had in plenty, but, because he was evil in his nature, he feared death and all connected with the grave, though I had never thought to find him as superstitious as he was. He had always struck me as a hard, calculating man, who looked upon the practical side of all things. And yet, without a doubt, he now took me for a ghost.

And after all-when the full facts are considered-his mistake was excusable; even to-day, when I call to mind that scene which was enacted in the half-light of the woods, I am inclined to laugh at it all, for there was something ludicrous about it.

I wore the helmet of the dead man, and had sprung at Amos out of the Tomb, without giving him time to think. Assuredly, in his eyes, what else could I have been but an infuriated ghost, dangerous and active because my peace and solitude had been disturbed.

I thrust at him savagely in the darkness, whilst he hurried here and there, in and out among the trees, yelling like a fiend. How hideous he was! I can see him now, with his hunchback, his green face, his staring eyes, his mouth contorted in terror. For all that he was quick and agile, and once or twice eluded a sword-thrust that would have pierced him to the heart.

And then, at last, I had him. I carried my sword in my right hand, and, as I lunged, he jumped aside, towards the left. As quick as thought I caught him by the throat. Whereat he fell down before me on his quaking knees, and clasped his hands in the attitude of one who pleads for mercy.

He was in my power. I said not a word, but clenched my teeth, and looked into those eyes that even then I feared. I drew back my sword, and then paused a moment; for I had no liking for the work, which was the hangman's job.

"Mercy!" he groaned.

I took in a deep breath, like a man about to dive. I felt that I must brace myself for this red task of common justice. I looked at his body, clothed in tatters, to select a spot most vulnerable where I might plunge my rusted sword.

"Mercy!" he cried again.

I clenched my teeth. I was on the point of speaking, but fortunately did not.

I could hear him breathing heavily.

And thereupon, on a sudden, I was felled by some one who had crept upon me from behind. I was felled like an ox. A single blow upon the back of the head sent me over like a ninepin, and I lay stretched at my full length upon the ground, but half-conscious, with a singing sensation in my head.

Presently I sat up and looked about me. There was Amos, still upon his knees, as green as ever. And immediately above me stood one whom I did well to recognise as Mr. Gilbert Forsyth.

That place was dimly illumined by the white light of the newly-risen moon, turning the leaves upon the trees above us to a glistening silver.

Forsyth was wearing the remnants of a pair of trousers, the legs of which ended in a tattered fringe a little below his knees. He was naked to the waist, around which was a belt, crammed with knives and pistols.

I remembered his curled whiskers and his pomaded moustache on the morning when I had first set eyes upon him, when I lay hidden in the gorse-bush. His fair hair now had grown so long that it reached to his shoulders; and his whiskers had spread into a short, shaggy beard, which was divided somewhat in the middle like that of a Frenchman or a Sikh. I had thought of him always as a very immaculate gentleman; but here was a desperate, piratical blade who, one might easily believe, chewed glass and compelled his unhappy victims to walk the plank.

He looked at me and folded his arms; and then spoke in a voice quite calm.

"And who the blazes are you?" he asked.

I was wise enough not to answer. Ghosts-so far as I knew-could never speak. And was I not a ghost?

If I had been a fool to go down into the Tomb, I showed at least a little wisdom in now holding my tongue. For this, however, I take no credit. I could not foresee the course that events would take. I had been surprised and mastered, and cursed myself because I had not killed Amos out of hand, when the man was in my power. Disappointed, disgusted with myself, I was stubborn as a mule. They might do what they would, they might torture me, but still I would not speak.

Forsyth repeated his question; and for answer, I rushed again at Amos, and even then would have killed him, had not the other caught me in his arms and held me fast.

The man was stronger than I thought; for, though I kicked and struggled, I could not free myself. Amos, as he watched us, regained a little of his commonsense, and got slowly upon his feet.

"No ghost," said he. "No ghost." And he went on repeating the words as if he were a parrot.

"Ghost!" laughed Forsyth. "If this is a ghost, he is a warm-blooded one, and as vicious as they make 'em."

"Then, who is he?" asked Baverstock. "I swear to you, he came out of the Tomb, as I'm a living man."

"And he's another," added Forsyth. "Who he is, or what business he has in such a place as this, I can no more say than you can. None the less, the circumstantial evidence is all against mortality. I am reminded, my friend, of the Carthaginian Queen: 'Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor'-(May some avenger arise from my bones). I call this individual 'Hannibal,' on that account."

"Who wants your Latin gibberish!" cried Amos. "Look plain facts in the face; call a spade a spade."

"Also," said Forsyth, in his usual sing-song voice, "call a man a man, and not a ghost."

"If he's alive," said Amos, coming even nearer, "then, who is he? I tell you, when I lifted the tombstone, he sprang forth like a Jack-in-a-box, and, had it not been for you, I would never have escaped with life."

"I have told you already," said the other, "I know no more of him than you do."

It was then that they were joined by the Spaniard, Vasco, and Joshua Trust, who came together from the darkness of the thickets into the full light of the moon. And when they saw me, they also were afraid; for I still wore the helmet on my head and stood at no great distance from the open grave.

Forsyth explained the situation in a few words, with many a wave of the hand, as if he introduced us. Baverstock, in the meantime, was rapidly becoming his normal self. He seemed to have forgotten, for the time being, the very object of his journey.

"There's some mischief here!" on a sudden he exclaimed. "Rushby told us we would find the map beneath the helmet of the Spaniard."

At this, Forsyth laughed, and pointed straight at me.

"And since our Hannibal," he observed, "wears such a headgear somewhat out of fashion, we may safely presume that he could tell us where the map is, if he had the power to make us understand-which, for myself, I doubt."

The truth then dawned upon me on the instant. Mr. Gilbert Forsyth, for all his cleverness and calmness, was as fully in the wrong as Amos Baverstock had been; for he believed me to be a savage, whereas the other had taken me for a ghost, the awful apparition of a bygone Spanish soldier. If I had refused to speak before from sheer pigheadedness, I was now resolved to play the part that I was cast for, putting my trust in Providence and fortified by resolution. Though they burnt my flesh with red-hot irons, I was determined I would never speak.

They questioned me in every barbarous language that they knew. Vasco and Amos himself were my inquisitors, for Trust was no scholar, and Forsyth's learning went no further than the dead classic tongues, and, I believe, a little French. But I just gaped at them like a fool, and at last they gave it up as a bad business; and Amos, by now well convinced that I was human, struck me a cowardly blow across the mouth.

They looked in the Tomb; they searched everywhere for the map. They made a great fire of brushwood that they might see the better, and neglected no possible hiding-place where that little strip of parchment might be hidden. They looked inside my quiver, and even in the hollow of my blow-pipe. And then, at length, quite late at night, they gave it up. And in an ill mood they were, especially Trust and Amos.

They must have thought, however, that I was likely to be of some use to them, for they bound me hand and foot before I was permitted to lie down to rest. They were evidently not disposed to set me free, until they had solved the riddle I presented. They were altogether at a loss to explain who I was or why-apparently of my own free will-I had gone down into that grim and ancient vault. I think, even then, they connected me in some way or other with Bannister himself.

Left alone, I was given time to think, and I lay awake that night for many hours, wondering what would happen.

There were exactly three reasons why they should not have recognised me: firstly, I was so altered in appearance, so brown and wrinkled by the sun, with my hair all long and shaggy, that I do not think my own mother herself would have known me; secondly, my face had been half-hidden by the helmet I had worn; and, thirdly-the most potent fact of all-they never dreamed for a moment that I was yet alive. Months before, they had tied me to a tree, and left me to starve to death in the great forest many miles away across the plain beyond Cahazaxa's Temple. And, as I remembered this, it occurred to me that, even if they were to recognise me, they might again believe me to be a ghost, since for so long they had been certain I was dead.

These were my thoughts as I lay awake, too near the fire for comfort; and as I was thinking, I observed a singular phenomenon, which at first gave me cause for new alarm.

Amos, Forsyth, and Vasco were sound asleep, and Joshua Trust was on watch, seated on the ground a little way from me. He was not particularly alert. Indeed, he was occupied in the kind of pastime that amused him. With a red-hot firebrand in his hand, he was killing, one by one, the little insects that crawled upon the ground.

I looked past him into the thickets, and at once I could have sworn that I observed a pair of eyes in which the firelight was reflected-eyes that steadily regarded me. Now, I might have believed these eyes to be those of a jaguar, were it not that they resembled the eyes of a man, and I knew for a fact that John Bannister was on the trail.

I made neither sound nor movement, but at once set out upon this new train of thought. Were a jaguar prowling around the camp, and I had seen in his eyes the reflection of the firelight, it had been of a certainty but a few inches from the ground; for I knew well the habits and the nature of this most beautiful of beasts. But these eyes were four feet at least above the ground, and, being too large for those of a monkey, must belong to a human being-who could be none other than John Bannister himself.

Sure of my facts, I was resolved to take no action, though my life itself were in the greatest danger. I knew that I might safely leave the matter in the hands of an older, wiser, and a stronger man than I.

I saw those eyes for no longer than a few seconds, and then they disappeared. I heard no sound, not so much as the stirring of a leaf, for the night was strangely still. There was not a breath of wind.

How can I describe the emotions that then swayed me! I knew that I must possess my soul in patience, leaving what was best to do to Bannister himself. And yet I longed with all my heart to grasp the hand of my friend. I knew now, for certain, that he was near to me, watching over me, ready to strike a strong blow in my defence when the opportunity should offer. And for that reason-so great was my faith in him-I was conscious of a sense of security that I had not known for months.

I remembered that I had not seen him since that day when I beheld him running across the Sussex fields, with his brown paper parcel under his arm, when Forsyth had struck me down with his whip and carried me away, to begin my series of adventures. I remembered him, too, as I had seen him, standing in the white road looking after us. And he was now quite near to me, thousands of miles away from where I had caught my last glimpse of him; for it is a long march, in very truth, from the South Downs of England to the shadow of the Andes; and much lies between that is strange and wonderful and savage-the great ocean, the mystery of those broad and endless rivers, and the forest with its eternal twilight and dark, silent places where death lies in wait. John Bannister had gone forth to find me; and he had found me, at last, after all these dreadful days.

How was it possible for me to sleep? I lay awake for hours with quickly beating heart, and thought of all that had been and all that might be yet to come. I saw Vasco take the watch from Trust, and then Mr. Forsyth post himself as sentry towards the early hours of morning. And when at length the daylight came, Forsyth looked at me and saw that I was awake. We sat for a while, looking straight into one another's eyes.

"Friend Hannibal," said he.

But I made no answer. At which he thought-for he was a strange man in many ways-to test me with the classics.

"'Tutum silentii praemium,'" said he; "or, as we have it, 'Silence is ever golden.' However, I believe that you could tell us much, were you so disposed."

Still I never answered. He could think what he liked; I was determined to hold my peace. For all that, I was considerably disconcerted; for he continued to look at me for a long time in a very searching manner, the while the daylight grew and the woods became flooded with that faint, evanescent twilight that fades and seems to drift, even when the sun is at its height.

At last he gave a start, and sat bolt upright, rubbing both his eyes.

"A strange thing!" said he, and continued to look at me, but this time with a frown.

"A strange thing, indeed!" he repeated.

There was another pause, during which I had not the courage to look him in the face. I had some presentiment of what was now to come; in spite of which the suddenness with which he had made it manifest that my secret was out, quite took away my breath.

"Allow me," said he, "to offer you my most hearty congratulations. We have every reason to presume that Master Richard Treadgold is unloved by the gods."

And at that, he held out a hand, and I was obliged to shake with him, though I felt at once frightened and a fool.

CHAPTER XXII-MR. FORSYTH AND I BECOME BETTER ACQUAINTED

Forsyth got to his feet, and to my horror, immediately awakened Amos. Then was I certain that my last hour was at hand. I never thought for a moment that protection would come to me from a quarter whence I had no reason to expect it.

I had always suspected Amos to be a kind of madman; and that grey morning in the woods I was, for the first time, convinced of it. He behaved like no sane man, but cursed and raved and stamped upon the ground, upon which at last he flung himself writhing as if in pain.

He had been both foiled and fooled, and recognised it, too. Months before, he had left me in the woods to die, and now beheld me as alive as ever, and still standing betwixt him and the goal that he would gain. Twice, it appeared, had he lost possession of the map-or that part of it which was of the greatest value to him-and on both occasions it was through me that he had failed. Besides that, he had taken me for a ghost, an apparition; he had fallen down upon his knees before me; and had I had the heart in cold blood to plunge my sword into the half naked and defenceless body of a living man, Amos Baverstock would now have been as dead as the Spanish warrior himself.

Make no mistake in thinking that he felt a shade of gratitude for that. It was bitter disappointment and blind, livid fury that mastered what sanity was his. He rolled in his wrath here and there about the ground, biting the withered leaves and the dead sticks, like the mad dog he was.

Then he got to his feet and swore that he would kill me, and this time there would be no muddling in connection with a matter so inordinately simple. For this dreadful purpose he took into his hands a long hunting-knife, and with this he came toward me. And as he did so, I looked over his shoulder, and saw in the midst of the thickets the gleaming barrel of a rifle.

I knew then for certain that I was not to die, and smiled into the evil face of Amos. John Bannister himself was near at hand, my guardian and my friend. Had Amos taken another step, or raised his hand to strike, I know he would have dropped stone-dead upon the spot; for Bannister, at such a moment, would have counted his own life as nothing. But now I come to the strangest part of all my story: it was Mr. Gilbert Forsyth who intervened.

"You cannot do this," he drawled.

He had stepped between us. Without violence, almost politely, with an arm extended, he pushed Amos aside.

"Why not?" gasped Baverstock, gaping at the other.

"Mainly, my good friend," answered Forsyth, "because it will profit you nothing. But there are other reasons. In the first place, last night he might have killed you, and did no such thing. Secondly, I am already disposed to admire this youth, and to think that it would have been the better for us had he been upon our side from the beginning. Thirdly, to kill him as you propose would be a foul and dirty business, such as I refuse to countenance."

Amos turned upon him like a wild beast.

"You!" he cried. "Who are you to dictate terms to me? Who brought you here?"

"I brought myself," said Forsyth, very calmly, "and I brought you and Trust as well; for money makes the world go round, and without my worthy banker you were still kicking your heels in England. So the less you speak of that the better."

I never saw a man more self-possessed; and, on the other hand, I never saw one more livid with rage than Amos. On the instant, forgetting me, he turned the full current of his wrath upon Mr. Forsyth.

It would be irksome to repeat, word for word, the altercation that took place between them; for they fought with words and argued for many hours that morning. And whilst this was happening, now and again I shot a glance toward the thickets, where I had seen the barrel of the rifle I was sure belonged to Bannister. But I saw no further sign of him, and heard no sound. I did not know, therefore, whether he was still at hand; for as yet I had no experience of his great skill as a woodsman. I did not know that, in spite of his bulk, he could move in the undergrowth as silently as a snake, and when he struck, he did so with the suddenness with which the jaguar springs upon his prey.

For nearly all that morning Forsyth and Amos wrangled, the one to save me, and the other to do murder-the one, quiet and calm; the other, raving mad.

It was a question, I suppose, of will-power only; and Forsyth conquered in the end. Amos, I could see, was utterly exhausted. The fire within him had consumed the better part of his vitality and the violence of his nature. He was at last reduced to utter speechlessness. He stood before us, panting, his shallow chest heaving greatly like a man who has run a race. He could not stand steadily upon his feet, but swayed about, from one side to the other. I observed, also, a strange difference in his eyes. They were no longer glistening and pig-like; they were just the wild, staring eyes of a lunatic. And, sure enough, a lunatic he was.