автордың кітабын онлайн тегін оқу  Treasure of Kings

Captain Charles Gilson

Gilson Charles
Treasure of Kings Being the Story of the Discovery of the Big Fish, or the Quest of the Greater Treasure of the Incas of Peru

CHAPTER I-JOHN BANNISTER

I shall never forget the day on which I first set eyes upon John Bannister. I was then a boy-sixteen years of age, if I remember rightly-and I stood before him, tongue-tied by the questions that he asked me, wondering how he had come by the great ugly, horrid scar upon his face, awed-indeed, I think, a little frightened-by the great muscles in his forearms, naked to the elbows, his rough weather-beaten face with skin like leather, and above all else by the stature of the man.

For he was a giant-a giant such as I had dreamed of when a child. As some such figure had I pictured Giant Despair, when my mother had read to me from Pilgrim's Progress: "And Giant Despair was in one of his fits again." I had pictured Strength and Madness let loose amid a thunderstorm of wrath. And when I first looked upon him who was to be my champion and my comrade. I forgot his soft, kindly words and pleasing smile, and could only think how terrible he must be in anger.

There is a strip of beach upon the Sussex coast, so many miles from nowhere, where the sand-snipe gather and seldom a human being may be seen. There, as a lad, I would love to roam, with no certain object in view, but just to find what I could, to observe what chanced to come my way, and, when wearied of wandering, to sit upon the shingle over and above those plains of wet, grey sand and think of all manner of things as my boyish fancy pleased.

I was seated thus one April morning, far from home, and wondering how my tired legs would carry me back to dinner, when my attention was attracted to two strange birds, of a kind that I could not remember to have seen before. The sea was calm as glass, the sun hot as August. They were large birds, and were engaged-so far as I could see at a distance of more than a hundred yards-in dragging from the shallow water what might have been the carcass of a fish.

I watched them, greatly interested, forgetful even of my appetite, possibly for five minutes; and then there came a heavy step upon the shingle at my back.

I turned quickly, to behold the figure of John Bannister. Like some great beast of prey, he had broken his way quite noiselessly through a thick brake of that shrub which, I think, is called sea-buckthorn-though I never knew one tree from another. And he stood regarding me, with his hands upon his hips.

I got to my feet, thinking that such a man might be up to no good in so lonesome a place, and I might find it advisable to take to my heels. But, quite suddenly, he laughed; and at the sound of his laughter I knew at once that I, for sure, had nothing to fear. Since that memorable day I have learned in the world many true and singular things, but none truer than that you may know always an honest man by his laughter and the shake of his hand.

"I startled you," he said.

"I wondered who it was," I faltered sheepishly.

"And you are still none the wiser," he answered.

And at that, he seated himself by my side.

He told me that the strange birds were hooded crows. He told me also how they bullied the rooks, robbed the gulls; how they were cleverer and more evil than any other bird, foes of all and feared by all-thieves and murderers. He talked like a book; he had the science of the matter at his finger-tips, and he could, at the same time, paint pictures, as it were, with words. With him the hooded crow was in a single sentence corvus cornix, and the "highwayman of the air."

And as he talked to me, I wondered the more concerning him, and thought the less of the hooded crows. Who was he, whence had he come, and what was he doing there in such a lonely place, in his shirt sleeves, in the warm April sunshine? These were questions that he himself was to answer. I cannot say why he took me straightway into his confidence, and afterwards into the very chamber of his heart-but he did; else I would now have naught to write about.

Let me confess that I have taken the whole tenour of my life from this man's greatness. I have tried my best, all my long years, to bear in mind his strength, his wisdom, and his courage, that I might walk humbly in the shadow of a glorious example. But, more than all besides, I know that I owe to him the restless spirit of adventure, the love of action, the joy of wandering, that has led me so often to strange and distant places where I have found myself in even stranger company.

I cannot tell you of all he said to me upon the morning of our meeting. He spoke of many things, of the world he had seen, the dangers he had faced, the people he had known. As I had no longer feared him after his first word and his open, kindly smile, so after five minutes of his talking did I feel that I had known him all my life. For his words were magic. Wondrous pictures framed themselves before my eyes upon the calm surface of that English sea-pictures of wild men, of treeless deserts, of savage forests and inhospitable hills; and I longed then to follow in the footsteps of this heroic man, whose hairy arms were those of Vulcan and whose voice was soft as that of the mother whom I loved.

I forgot my dinner. I hungered only for adventure. I sat upon the shingle, wondering what lay beyond the vague horizon where grey sea and sky were blended, where I could just discern the smoke of a solitary and distant steamer, the only sign of life or movement upon that desert sea-for we in the West of Sussex lay well away from the track of the Channel shipping.

On a sudden, I asked him the time; and with a glance at the sun he told me it was two. At that, I jumped to my feet.

"But I am late!" I cried.

"Not for the first time," said he. "I can remember my own boyhood."

"My dinner was at one."

"Then you dine with me; for I eat when I have time and appetite, sleep when I will, and live as Nature meant me to."

He led me back from the beach across some sand-hills to a place where the gorse was like a wave of gold. And there was a wooden hut-or, rather, shed, for it was walled upon three sides only. And within were all sorts of things: a sleeping-bag made of the skins of some small animal with fur soft as a mole's, which he said had come from the south of Africa; an iron cooking-pot, an evil-looking affair which he had brought with him from the Amazon; skins painted by North American savages; mocassins; a Malay sarong, a kind of towel worn around the waist; and more curiosities and rude, primitive utensils than I could well describe within the space of a page of the smallest print.

And yet, I dined like a prince: a soup of fish, plover roasted upon a spit, and in place of bread, flour and water fried in a pan after the custom of the Afghans. It may have been the novelty of it all, or the fact that by then I was well-nigh famished, but I never ate more heartily, and I have never forgotten that meal, though I have had many such since then.

In answer to my questions, he told me more concerning himself. Though he had lived a life of adventure, exploring wild countries, sleeping beneath the stars, in constant peril of his life from savage beasts and scarce less savage men, I could not of myself comprehend why he should in peaceful England bury himself miles from the abodes of his fellow human beings. For I write-you must remember-of many years ago, of the mid-Victorian time, as it is called-and good days they were, as we know full well who have lived to see these unsettled, troublous days. To-day, from the spot where John Bannister and I first met, you may catch a glimpse to the west along the coast of the red roofs of bungalows, where week-end visitors may come from London to set up bathing-huts upon the beach, whilst from the east, perhaps, a pair of lovers may wander from across the golf course at Littlehampton in search of desirable seclusion. For that stretch of coast is desolate still; but in those days it was a kind of No Man's Land, with no sign of life but the gulls and the sand-snipe, the smoke from John Bannister's camp-fire, and the hooded crows.

Well, the truth was, he who feared neither beast of prey nor painted cannibal was afraid of civilised men. He went once a week to the little inland village a few miles distant to purchase groceries and stores. There-as I found out afterwards-they thought him a madman, though he was always courteous in his manner and paid without question for what he bought. He had few words for any man, and none ever for a woman. Later, when my mother came to learn of my new-found friend who lived alone among the sand-hills, she was anxious to see him, more for my own welfare than from curiosity; but he told me flatly that he had never known any civilised woman save his own mother, who had died when he was young, and he would rather face a wounded lion than pretend to talk to one.

"For it comes to this," said he; "I have gone back, as it were, upon the centuries; I have learned to live as men lived in ancient times. Though I have read much and thought more, and have some claim, I suppose, to be called a scholar, in many ways I am no better than a cave-man. I have forgotten all the niceties of culture. I have neither small-talk nor table manners. So I prefer to live as I do, in my own way; and I offer no welcome to visitors. The farmer who owns this land is glad enough of the little I pay him in the way of rent; but, beyond that and my weekly shopping, I seek no intercourse with strangers. I am content to be alone."

I asked if he were not often lonely, and he laughed.

"Even here," said he, "in Sussex, Nature is a living force. The sea changes almost hour by hour. Birds come and visit me. Even the rabbits in the brake have already learned to know me. They all seem to know-these little, wild things-that I am one of them, and soon cease to fear me. They are my companions and my friends, and I have also books and memory. And I have health and air, the smell of the salt sea and the seaweed, and the sunrise to awaken me before your street-bred friends are stirring. The wind, the rain, and the sun-I welcome each as it comes. Did I want other comrades, I should go and seek them; but I prefer to live like this."

"And yet you talked willingly to me?" I asked.

"Because," he answered slowly-and his words came to me as a surprise-"because you are a cave-man, too."

"I!" I exclaimed.

"Every boy," said he, "every healthy, happy boy. It was the savage in you-though you may not realise it-that brought you out here alone, that took you right away from red bricks and shops and dinner."

I cannot say whether I have conveyed to the reader in the space of this short chapter a true conception of the character of John Bannister, as he was when I knew him first. Of his personal appearance I have yet to write; and if it be a simple matter to describe that which is outwardly apparent, it is by no means easy either to fathom or to portray a man's soul and mind.

Do not imagine that I myself knew aught of him until after we had sojourned together for months, faced the same dangers, stood side by side throughout the great adventure of which I have to tell. I knew from the first that he was wise and generous and kind: I could see with my eyes that he was strong, and his talk charmed the imagination of a dreamy, active boy. In spite of all he knew, of the experiences he had had in all parts of the world, he was one of the simplest men that ever lived. And there was something in him of the poet. I do not mean that he ever tried to set down his thoughts in verse, but that he lived in love with all things beautiful. I have seen him stand stock-still like one transfigured, with eyes illumined, gazing in wonderment upon a purple sunset upon the snow-capped crestline of the distant Andes-and that at a moment when his own life, as well as mine, was not worth a full day's purchase.

Judge all men by their deeds and not their words. Hear this history to the end, and see what like of man was he whose charm and peril led me forth from green and sleepy Sussex to adventure in the darkness of those tropic forests that shut out the source of the great River of Mystery, where there are poison, black ignorance, and fell disease, and a man may no more count the dangers that encompass him than the myriads of stinging insects that drone about his ears.

And one thing more: my own life has not been lived without event. It has been my fate to tell a score of times of the enterprise of others; but of all men of action I have ever known, read or written of, I rank John Bannister as first. Perhaps that may be because I can now seat myself of a winter's evening before my study fire and see him in my fancy as he was in all his strength and manhood, pass through again the dangers and the hardships, and live once more the glorious days that it was my privilege to pass with him, and remember that, had it not been for him, I might have lived all my life in Sussex and seen nothing of the world. But how can I set down the debt I owe him? For I owe him life itself.

CHAPTER II-THE COMING OF AMOS

After that morning, throughout the summer months when I was at school, there was seldom a Saturday or a Wednesday afternoon when I was not to be seen hastening eastward along the beach to see John Bannister and to listen to his talk.

During those days I learned much of him, of his travels and adventures; but there were certain matters upon which he would never speak in any detail. He would never tell me, for instance, the full story of how he had come by the great scar upon his face-a disfigurement so pronounced as to be at once pathetic and repulsive, which had aroused my boyish curiosity from the first. Had it not been for that scar, Bannister would have been a handsome man, as indeed he was when the left side of his face was to be seen in profile. He had deep-set steel-grey eyes that looked clean through you, and the forehead of a thinker; his hair, in those bygone days, was black, no more than touched with white upon the temples and about the ears, and his moustache the longest I have ever seen. Though there was never a man, I should suppose, who had less of vanity in his composition, I think he grew it thus to hide in part the record of the terrible wound that had extended from his right ear to the corner of his mouth-a scar that was always rough and white, though his face was burnt by the sun to the colour of tan.

"I came by that," he once said to me in answer to my question, "in what might be called an honest cause. A thousand miles from nowhere, where there is neither Law nor Right nor Wrong nor Justice, one-who may or may not have learned the Lord's Prayer at his mother's knee-would have put to death some score of helpless human creatures, slaughtered them like sheep."

"Why?" I asked.

"Why," said he, "there are but few motives that sway the evil that lies in all men, and of these greed of gold is first. And this man of whom I speak was a great force of evil, and is so still, for I never doubt that he is yet alive. For gold he would have murdered those who had never wronged him, who had indeed shown him nothing but kindness and hospitality. Fate decreed that this man's path and mine should cross; and because I stood between him and an ill-gotten fortune, I was struck a coward's blow. You would never guess the weapon, Dick, that gave me my beauty mark for life?"

He paused as if waiting for an answer, though I had none to give.

"Well, then," he continued, "it was a sceptre-the golden sceptre of a bygone dynasty of monarchs, ended four hundred years ago-kings of no naked savages, but emperors, rulers over an ancient civilisation that has crumbled to the dust, of a people who were cultured in their own way, industrious and great. It is something, we may imagine, to carry through life the scar that was given by the symbol of such authority and power."

"And where was this?" I asked.

"Where the mountains overtop the clouds," he answered, "where one may see the last of the sunset beyond the valleys of Peru, and the dawn rises from the dark forests of the Upper Amazon, in which, Dick, there are secrets that no man yet has ever lived to learn."

"It was the sceptre of the Incas!" I exclaimed; for I had read as a holiday task The Conquest of Peru.

"The very same that was hidden from Pizarro," he made answer, "together with all the gold of Huaraz and Cuzco."

"And who was the man who struck you?" I demanded.

"When I tell you that his name is Amos Baverstock," said Bannister, "that he hails from the same west-country town as I do-and that is Tiverton in Devon-and that that man to this day counts himself as my greatest enemy, I tell you more than I should."

And though I tried my utmost, I could get from him nothing more. A reticent man by nature, he was yet from the beginning prodigal of speech with me. With the exception of this great Peruvian adventure-which, I could tell from his demeanour, he ranked as the one outstanding episode in all his life-he would answer all my questions. I thought this strange; and there was an even stranger thing about him-and I was soon to learn that the two were linked together. Though he had to some extent confided in myself, he forbade me to speak of him to my schoolfellows. He told me he was well content to have found a friend in a boy after his own heart, much the same sort of lad as the John Bannister who had bathed in the Exe, and, barefooted, raced other boys upon the river bank; but, were the knowledge of his presence upon that lonely shore to become the common property of a clamouring, crowded school, his seclusion would be lost, his peace of mind disturbed, his haven of rest and solitude converted into a kind of monkey-house-for that is what he called it.

I gave my word, and kept it; and yet, I could not but think of things. And it occurred to me that John Bannister lived as he did for other reasons than solely to enjoy the fruits of solitude. Not that he himself had ever told me anything that was not the truth: he had, indeed, sojourned for so many years in the wild places of the world that he had forgotten much concerning the ways of civilisation and could be shy-as he was before my mother-like an overgrown yokel who stands, cap in hand, first on one foot and then upon the other. He wanted more than solitude, he wanted secrecy. For more reasons than one I should have guessed it; but I was but a boy, and looked not for motives or for causes. I was content to take the man as he was: a hero in my eyes, who had risked his life a thousand times, who had done great deeds and seen strange sights and wondrous places that I had only dreamed of.

And now I come, at last, to the beginning of my story: a blazing morning in the August sun, when our friendship was four months old, when the wheels of chance began to move, and those forces were set in motion that whirled me away, when still a schoolboy, from sunny, sleepy Sussex, to be a wayfarer with grim Death himself in dark, tropic lowlands, or amid the very clouds.

It being holiday-time, and I having no thought in my head than what pertained to my hero, I set forth earlier than usual, and took the straight cut across the fields, instead of following the shore. This led me to a group of sand-hills, not half a mile from where Bannister had pitched his camp; and amid these I stumbled upon three men, seated, heads together, in the shadow of a gorse bush.

I cannot for the life of me explain why I did it-never before or since have I played the eavesdropper of my own free choice-but the moment I set eyes upon a hunchback, with a clean, wrinkled face and two small eyes as black as boot-buttons, down I dropped on all fours, like a man shot, and crept silently and swiftly to the cover of a clump of reed-like grass.

I think the sight of the man frightened me. He had the cruellest face I had ever seen; and there was cunning in it, too. Also, there was a suggestion of merriness, of latent mirth, about him-patent in the shining, bead-like eyes-that caused me instantly to shudder. Have you ever considered the eyes of a half-grown pig, as something apart from the glistening, inquisitive, joyful, and highly entertaining quadruped that a young pig happens invariably to be? They are wicked and gleeful, defiant and pitiless, those little, twinkling eyes. They are more fearful than those of a snake, because they are more alive and equally soulless. Well, then, such eyes had this man: eyes at once merciless and mischievous. And so it was, I must suppose, that I hid myself amid the grass.

And then one of those who were with him used these very words; and when I heard them, it was as if I was deprived of the power to breathe.

"I wish I were a hundred miles from here, I can tell you that. He's not likely to forget that it was you, Amos Baverstock, that trapped him and left him for dead, and that it was I who struck the blow."

I lay in the long grass, close as a hare, my heart pumping within me like an engine. I had heard and seen enough already to know that my friend was in danger. I had a sense of some calamity impending, but no time just then to guess at the meaning of it all; for I must listen to the quiet, cold voice of Amos Baverstock-the hunchback with the pig eyes and a long, thin nose like a weasel.

"You were right enough in London," said he, "when I told you I had tracked him down, as I swore to you both I should."

"Maybe," said the other, "I forgot, for the moment, what he was. I would sooner face a tiger."

He was a rough-looking man, with a red, untidy beard, and there was something about him of the sailor.

"Tut, man," said Amos; "you make a mountain of a molehill! I do not propose to set about this matter like a fool. He's lying yonder like an old dog-fox in his earth, and we'll send a terrier in to fetch him out."

"Me!" cried the red-bearded man, horror-stricken at the thought.

But, before Amos Baverstock could answer, the third man spoke for the first time; and my attention being thereby attracted towards him, I was at once astonished at everything about his individuality: his voice, his personal appearance, the words he used, his very attitude of carelessness and ease.

"Cave tibi cane muto."

That is what he drawled, and though I was then a schoolboy who had struggled through the dull prose of Cæsar to the loftier realms of Virgil, I must confess that fear had so deprived me of my wits that I understood no word, except the first.

The speaker lay flat upon his back, with his hands folded behind his head, and his face exposed to the sun-like a tripper who would go back to London nicely tanned. I observed that he had taken off his coat and rolled it into a pillow, and that the shirt he wore was of the softest, flimsiest silk.

He was dressed like a fop in the height of the fashion of that day, wearing a white tie, with a great gold pin in it, a well-curled moustache and those short side-whiskers which were then the vogue. He had light-blue eyes and fair, curly hair, and had it not been for the side-whiskers, would have looked much younger than he was. Everything about him suggested that he was-or should have been-a gentleman of means and leisure.

"Cave tibi cane muto," he repeated, more slowly than before. And this time I had the sense to understand it: "Beware of the silent dog."

"Just so," said Amos. "We will tempt the dog with a bone. Trust to me, you dolt," he cried, turning sharp upon the man with the red beard, who was sitting with a scowl upon his face and his legs crossed like a Hindoo. "Ask yourself, have I ever yet sent you on a wild-goose chase? Am I one to take unnecessary risks?"

"Then, shoot him, take what we want, and have done with it," growled the other.

"Friend Joshua," said Amos, "we are some eight thousand miles from Chimborazo, and probably not two miles from a police-station. We want no questions asked, no hue and cry. That would ruin everything."

"There's something in that," admitted the red-bearded man, whose name was evidently Joshua.

Amos chuckled.

"This is no baby's game," said he. "Bannister fears neither man, wild beast nor devil. No more am I afraid of him. I have tricked him once, and I can trick him again. Were I to get within arm's length of him, it is true, as like as not he would wring my precious neck; and the same applies to you, friend Joshua; for he will not have forgotten that it was you who struck him down at the end of the passage that leads from Cahazaxa's Tomb. But Mr. Forsyth here, he has never set eyes on in all his life."

"In other words," cut in the young man with the side-whiskers, still stretched at full length upon the ground-"in other words, I myself am the bone to be presented to the silent, dangerous dog. A pleasant prospect-but I acquiesce. Having gone into this business, I am prepared to take what comes."

Though he had spoken with a shade more animation than before, he had neither moved an inch nor troubled even to open his eyes. A calm customer, in very truth, was Mr. Gilbert Forsyth, as I was afterwards to learn, something to my cost-a man with more manners than morals, who was never afraid and never surprised, and who smelt of the vile pomade with which he plastered his moustache.

"Sir," said Baverstock, "you are the very man for me. I promise you that, if we pull this business through, we shall wade knee-deep in gold."

"I want gold to spend and not to paddle in," said Forsyth. "Give orders, Mr. Wisdom; I am here solely to obey."

Amos produced a long and very black cigar, bit the end off and began to chew, making his face all wrinkles. I thought that he would light it, but he did no such thing. He would look at it with one eye half closed, use it much as a musical director wields his baton to punctuate his words, and then chew again, until the brown juice was streaming from the corners of his mouth.

"Go to John Bannister this morning," said he. "Go to him now, if you like. He doesn't know you from Adam. Pretend you're just an idle, inquisitive holiday-maker who has dropped across him by chance; get into conversation with him, ask him foolish questions; and then, without advertisement, just-drop that across his head."

As he said this, he threw across to Mr. Forsyth some kind of weighted implement, such as a house-breaker might have in his possession. It was about the size and shape of a belaying-pin, and attached to the thin end was a leather strap to secure it to the wrist.

"Sounds simple enough," drawled Forsyth. "However, for the sake of argument, suppose I fail. I understand from what you both tell me, he has the strength of two ordinary men."

"Six," growled the red-bearded fellow, who seemed to me to be a discontented rascal.

"Strike hard and without warning," said Amos. "In case of mishap, Trust and I will be at hand to help you."

I thought, at the time, that Trust was another man-a fourth party in this vile conspiracy; for I did not then know that the name of the red-bearded man-as great a rogue as Amos himself, if not a tenth as clever-was Joshua Trust, who had served before the mast in the Royal Navy, to be tried by court-martial for a felony and afterwards discharged.

Mr. Forsyth, in the meantime, picked up the bludgeon and toyed with it in his hand.

"A useful tool," he observed. "Convenient to carry, and-I should say-effective to use. To be candid, I'm a little afraid of it. Though I have not the pleasure of knowing Mr. Bannister, I should be sorry-for my own sake as well as his-to deprive him of his life."

"You need not be afraid of that," laughed Amos. "Had his skull been thinner than a bullock's, it would have been broken years ago. We want him senseless, when we can bind him hand and foot, and help ourselves to the very thing we want. He has got it somewhere, sure enough; and had I to search the world for it, I would find it in the end."

And then he clapped his hands and rubbed them together; and I have never seen in all my life an expression of such malignant glee.

"Once it is ours," he cried, "across the Western Ocean! Nothing stands between us three and fortune. Gold!" he almost shrieked, "I tell you, it is there knee-deep in a cavern as large as a cathedral: golden ornaments and vessels, bars and rings and bracelets. You shall have your fair share, Mr. Forsyth; for all's square between us, and, I confess, we could not very well move in this business without you. Joshua here will tell you, though I may be an ill man to cross in more ways than one, I never yet went back upon my friends. You've come into this affair to help us, and I'll not forget it."

"Dear me, no!" drawled Forsyth. "I join you for my own ultimate gain. I recognise that I am blessed with as little conscience as yourselves, and see profit in the matter. I know nothing of this fellow Bannister, and care still less. Besides, I have, I suppose, a natural taste for such an adventure as you propose. I am heartily tired of this dreary country, with its railways, gas-pipes and antimacassars. I would, in a word, stake all I have upon an only venture, to die soon or rich-I care little which it be."

And thereupon he yawned, placing the tips of his fingers before his mouth in a manner exceedingly affected.

They talked then for a while of other things; and all the time I was seeking an opportunity to escape, to hasten to my friend to warn him of his danger; and yet, though I was well screened from view of Amos Baverstock and his companions, it was some time before I could find the courage to bestir myself. I feared that they might hear me; and the very sight of Amos had instilled within me a sense of dread which returns to me even to this day whenever I think of the man.

I lay in the long grass like a wounded bird: it was as if I had not the power to move. My thoughts were running riot-Bannister to be shamefully assaulted, something stolen, and I kept repeating to myself the magic phrase, "Gold knee-deep in a cavern large as a cathedral."

There was something about all this of the kind of adventures I had often imagined; I had thought that I would revel in the prospect of such dangerous escapades; and here was I, scared out of my wits, too terrified to move, my heart beating violently, as if I were out of breath from running.

Indeed, it was only the thought that Amos Baverstock or one of the others would get up to go, and then discover me, that made me shift from where I had been hiding; and no sooner was I out of earshot than I set off running as if pursued by fifty fiends. I never ran so fast before or since. Over the sand-hills, stumbling amidst the shingle, breaking my way through gorse and hedgerow, I came at last to John Bannister's cabin, lying in a hollow by the sea.

"Mr. Bannister!" I cried. "Mr. Bannister! Something dreadful is about to happen!"

I was, I suppose, half blinded by my running; or I had not the sense to look about me. I stood before the opening of the cabin, wringing my hands and crying out like a fool:

"Mr. Bannister! Mr. Bannister! Come quickly!"

I had for answer neither the sight of his great strength nor the familiar sound of his voice, but just the wash of the sea at high tide beyond the ridge where the buckthorn grew, a great rhythmical, breathing sound, as if a giant were slumbering.

I was more afraid than ever when I realised that he was not there, and it might take time to find him; for, befogged as my wits were, I knew well enough that the occasion was one that would admit of no delay.

I ran straight to the beach, and looked to the eastward and westward. For a moment I had hoped to find him, for he would sometimes bathe in the sea at that hour of the day; but a glance or so was enough to tell me I should not find him there.

I wandered for a while somewhat aimlessly amongst the shrubberies that crowned the margin of the sand-hills and the shingle, and then returned to the cabin. As things happened, I must have done so in the nick of time; for, when I had searched in odd corners, as if looking for a hidden thimble, instead of a man of six-foot-four, I went to the threshold, and looking out beyond the gorse, beheld the tall figure of Mr. Gilbert Forsyth, strolling towards me, swinging in his hand his silver-mounted Malacca cane.

I did not know whether or not he had seen me. It was sufficient for the moment that I had no way of escape. The cabin-as I have said-had been built in a hollow, and to cross the ridge that encompassed it would bring me into full view of Mr. Forsyth.

On the other hand, I could think of nowhere to hide. I stood for a moment irresolute, with clenched fists, cudgelling my brains and wishing that I was anywhere else upon the wide face of the earth. Then I heard a footstep on the shingle without, and as I drew back into the shade of the hut, I saw the man's shadow cast upon the threshold.

I looked about me in a wild and silly way, and then without a thought dived under the great fur sleeping-bag that lay ruffled against the wall.

Forsyth entered. I could not see him, but I could hear him moving to and fro, and once he even trod upon my foot. Then I heard his voice, raised in a kind of drawling sing-song, as if he called to someone at a distance.

"Come on," he sang. "The way's clear. The dog's out of his kennel."

A full minute may have elapsed. On such occasions, time counts for next to nothing. But, presently, I was aware that, besides myself, there were three persons in that small place, and one of them was Amos Baverstock.

"Here's our chance," said he. "Joshua, keep watch from without. He may not be far away, and it would be a rough-and-tumble business if he caught us in the act. And now, sir, help me to find the map. The thing must be somewhere in this hut, unless he carries it always on his person."

And at those words was I made to realise that, as sure as I had been christened Richard Treadgold in the little church at Middleton, I had done a foolish thing and was like to be made to pay for it.

For Amos Baverstock was come to search for a certain map, the significance of which I then, of course, knew nothing. Whether or not he would find this map was a question of itself; but there was no sort of a question within the bounds of probability that he could look for long and fail to discover me. And then, in truth, the fat would be in the fire.

CHAPTER III-THE MAP

I expected every moment to be caught, to be jerked forth from my hiding-place like a landed fish. In the course of their searching they must sooner or later move the sleeping-bag, and I would be exposed.

It occurs to me that fear must be one of the strangest of emotions; for I can honestly say that, now that I was in this hopeless and perilous predicament, I was no longer afraid. Certain that I must fall into the hands of Amos Baverstock, equally uncertain of what then would be my lot, I was resigned to my fate; I was long past apprehension. I still thought of Bannister, and wondered concerning the map for which Amos and Forsyth were looking, but for myself I now cared not a snap of the fingers what became of me; and this attitude of mind I preserved throughout the next eventful moments, else I had never acted as I did.

For Amos never found me on his own account. No doubt he would have done so in a very little time, had not Forsyth, almost at once, struck upon the very map for which the two were searching.

"What's this!" exclaimed Forsyth. "It seems the thing we want."

"Where?" cried Amos, who, I judged, snatched it from the other's hand.

"That's it!" he almost shouted. "The parchment map copied from that made ages ago by Villac Umu, the High Priest of the Incas of Peru. Bannister has translated it, and marked the route in red ink. It's all plain as daylight."

I could tell by the sound of his voice that he was wildly excited. He spread out the map upon the little table in the centre of the cabin, and, feeling secure since Joshua Trust was keeping watch, spoke breathlessly to Forsyth, relating the matter in such detail that then and there I was made a party to the whole vile conspiracy-or as much of it as there was any need for me to know.

"When the ancient Peruvians fled before the advance of the Pizarros," he explained, "they carried their treasures across the mountains. These they hid in two places: one, which is called the Little Fish, consists of all manner of earthenware utensils; the other-the Big Fish-is composed of golden ornaments and ingots. I have heard it said by some that the Little Fish is in Bolivia; by others, as far north as the Amazonas Territory-the truth being that no man living knows. It was John Bannister himself who discovered the secret of the Greater Treasure, or the Big Fish, as the natives call it. He lived for years among the wild savages who inhabit the forests about the eastern foothills of the Andes; and there, I believe, he came across some priestly descendants of those who had served the Incas. It was high up among the Conomamas, to the south of the great Region of the Woods, that I first fell in with Bannister. I was there prospecting for gold, but I had never dreamed of such a gold-mine as the Greater Treasure of the Incas. Bannister never told me that he had learned the secret from the priests, but I made so free as to inspect the map, when I believed him to be sleeping."

"But is this safe?" asked Forsyth. "Supposing Bannister returns?"

"There is nothing to fear," said Amos. "Time's our own. Joshua is on watch upon the sand-hills, and can see him coming half a mile away. We are as safe here as anywhere."

"Well, then, go on with your story," said the other. "You saw the map yourself?"

"No more than glanced at the thing before he had me by the throat and well-nigh strangled me," cried Amos. "After that we parted company, though I followed his track, and three times tried to kill him."

I heard Mr. Forsyth laugh in his silly, affected way.

"You do not mince your words," said he. "And I think I like you for it all the better. So you tried to murder him, and failed?"

"I did not say 'murder,'" grumbled Amos. "You can do no worse than kill in the great Region of the Woods; and whether you slay a jaguar, a monkey or man, it is much the same in the end. But to kill a man like John Bannister is no such easy matter. He has the ear of a panther and the eye of a bird, and he strikes like the coral snake-silent and deadly-and for those self-same reasons, the story I am telling you must now turn something against myself. For I began the business by hunting John Bannister in the Wilderness; but, before the game was a week old, it was he that was hunting me, and hunting me, too, day and night, from the Putumayo to Bolivia, from the Amazon to the sea.

"I sought safety, at last, in the port of Lima, where I was sheltered by some pretence of Law and Justice; and there I joined forces with friend Joshua and three other kindred spirits who now lie unburied, their bones picked by the vultures.

"Well, then," Amos went on, "we five put our heads together and talked the question out. It was plain to us that, since Bannister was such a tough nut to crack, it were safer and simpler to go straight to the fountain head, as the saying goes, and see what could be done with the priests. I guessed from what Bannister had told me, that the Peruvians were a weak-kneed, cowardly lot, and thought it would not be difficult to frighten them into telling us all they knew. But we had to search the woods for months before we found them, living in the midst of black ignorance and superstition; and by then-would you believe it! – Bannister had got wind of our intentions, and had come back upon his own trail, crossing the mountains and descending into the Region of the Woods.

"He turned up in time to ruin all our plans. His very presence gave the priests the courage they had lacked. There was a stiff fight, and we, having the worst of it, were obliged to beat a quick retreat to the foothills, though we carried with us a hostage. So far as this man was concerned, I took a leaf from the book of the Spaniards. I knew that Pizarro had not gained all his knowledge by fair words and promises. I tortured the wretch, until he shrieked for mercy and promised that he would guide us to Cahazaxa's Tomb, upon the very crestline of the Andes, where he swore to us the Greater Treasure was hid. Thither we went, to find that the rascal had lied to us. A few golden ornaments there were, in a vault cut in the living rock, at the end of a narrow passage, and amongst these was the ancient sceptre of the Incas, but the lot were not worth the price of our journey. Moreover, John Bannister himself had had the audacity to follow us. Night by night, he hovered about our bivouac, hoping to deprive us of our hostage. So I set my mind to work to finish him; and as fortune had it, the old Tomb was as good as a rat-trap. For there was a great boulder at the mouth of the passage, which might be rolled down-hill to block the entrance; and even then it was as much as Joshua and I could do. We fooled John Bannister to enter the Tomb by making a show of moving camp and leaving the Peruvian behind. However, when we thought we had caged him, we found to our great dismay that we had under-estimated the man's colossal strength; for he rolled back the boulder as though it were nothing, and came down upon us like a raging lion."

Amos paused a moment in his narrative. Listening eagerly for what was yet to come, I heard distinctly the disgusting noise of the chewing of one of his long, black cigars.

"We were unprepared for that," he continued. "Indeed, thinking we had got him safely caught, to starve to death or shoot himself, we were standing before the entrance to the passage without our arms; and before we could master him, our party of five had been reduced to two. It was Joshua who ended the affair. We had looted the Tomb of the little treasure that was there; and Joshua snatched up the golden sceptre of the Incas and struck down John Bannister, whom that night we left for dead."

"And what of the map?" asked Forsyth.

"We searched him, but never found it. He may have left it with the priests, or hidden it somewhere in the forest. Two years later, I again journeyed to the Region of the Woods, and found out from the priests that Bannister had taken it away with him, after he had returned to the Wilderness from Cahazaxa's Tomb."

Amos had calmed down by degrees whilst he related the whole story to Mr. Forsyth; but now, quite suddenly, he became as frantically excited as before.

"For two years I have hunted for the man," he cried; "and I found him here by chance. I want nothing but the map, to know where the Greater Treasure has lain hidden for more than four centuries, and to learn how to get there. See here!" he shouted; "the place is far to the north, near the valley of the Yapura River. The treasure of the Incas was carried four hundred miles from Cuzco!"

"What more could we want?" laughed Forsyth.

"Why, nothing else," said Amos. "This map's worth more to us than the keys to the vaults of the Bank of England."

I heard a sound like the rustle of paper or parchment, from which I judged that Amos flourished the map in his hand. And then it was that I did a thing so bold that I have never ceased to be amazed at my own audacity.

I had passed from sheer fright to cold deliberation. I cared not two pins for my own safety; and though I was still in dread of Amos, I thought not once of him, but of John Bannister, whose very shadow I almost worshipped. Besides, it must be understood, I was already caught like a fly in the web of these adventures. I had listened, as to a story, to all that Amos had said, and had tried to figure in my mind's eye the Greater Treasure, all glittering in the dust, Cahazaxa's Tomb and the dark Region of the Woods. I knew, from what I had heard, that if all this wealth belonged to any Christian man, that man was John Bannister himself and never Amos Baverstock. Why Bannister was content to live as he did, when he could be master of such riches, was a circumstance I could not then explain, but which I was wise enough to see was no concern of mine. Upon one thing was I well determined, with a kind of blind pig-headedness that might have led to my own undoing-and that was that Amos should never take away with him the map.

"Gold!" he cried. "Gold! We'll wade knee-deep in it!"

And at that, I sprang from under the sleeping-bag and hurled myself straight at him whom I so truly feared.

Both he and Mr. Forsyth were too surprised to do little else but gape, which gave me the chance I wanted, to snatch the parchment from his hand.

I do not think I could have been much quicker; but he was not to be taken unawares. The parchment was old, and must have been half torn already, for, when he pulled one way and I the other, the thing came in half. And then, even before Baverstock had time to drop an oath, I was past the opening of the cabin and racing like a madman through the gorse.

CHAPTER IV-KIDNAPPED

While I went over the sand-hills like a hare, I looked back once and saw Amos running, his face all screwed up in fury, and his black eyes as if they were on fire. At the door of the cabin stood Mr. Forsyth, shaking his Malacca cane at me, but never troubling himself to move so much as an inch.

I knew from the first that I had the legs of both of them, that Amos could never catch me though I carried a pound weight on either foot. And I believe, like a fool, I laughed, thinking myself secure; and when I pulled through a hedgerow that cut off the sand-drift from the open fields, I found myself face to face with Joshua.

For my own excuse, it may be urged that I had had much to think of in the last few minutes; and if I had remembered my friendship with Bannister, I had at least forgotten the very existence of Joshua Trust. But there he was, as plain as a pike-staff, about thirty yards to the front of me.

I pulled up and stared at him; and to my surprise he made no movement, until I heard the voice of Amos from behind me.

"Catch the young fiend! Shoot, Joshua, before he gets away!"

And at that I jumped to the right, straight into a rabbit-hole, and pitched on to my head.

I lay where I was for a few seconds without moving, for I was a trifle shaken by the fall. I could still hear Amos, cursing and swearing horribly, and Joshua, beating along the hedge with his stick. For all that, neither could I see them nor could they see me; for I was flat upon my face in a bunch of thistles, which was near as great a torment as a swarm of bees.

I knew from the first that sooner or later I would have to run for it; and the only thing that held me back from bolting then and there was the certain knowledge that Joshua Trust would shoot. I write with natural reluctance whatsoever stands something to the credit of myself; but, even at the moment, I thought more of the parchment than of my own skin. For I still held the crumpled fragment of the map in my right hand, gripping it tightly as if it were a running-cork.

I heard Joshua's voice quite near to me; and knowing that he must find me if I remained where I was, I resolved to take my chance. But first, in case of possible misfortune, I stuffed my portion of the parchment map to the full length of an arm down the very rabbit-hole that had tripped me up. And as I did so, a thought flashed through my mind: that it was, indeed, a strange circumstance that half the secret of the Greater Treasure of the Incas of old Peru, who four hundred years ago had foiled the greedy Spaniards, should lie hidden in a rabbit-scrape in Sussex.

And then I sprang to my feet and trusted to Providence to help me. Joshua was in front of me and threw out his arms to catch me. But I dived beneath them, swerved away from him, and ran for my very life.

I heard Amos shouting like a madman. Out of the corner of an eye, I saw Joshua Trust fumbling in the region of his belt for the pistol I knew he carried.

It was neck or nothing then. I had the sense not to run straight, but to dodge here and there like a snipe; and as like as not I owed my life to that. For I found out afterwards that Trust was a dead shot, who seldom missed his mark.

As I fled, the sharp crack of his pistol broke upon the silence, scaring the sea birds from the beach. The bullet sang past my head and clipped the lobe of an ear, so that the blood ran down my neck. And thus was I, Dick Treadgold, blooded, in both metaphor and fact, to a life of peril and adventure.

Whilst Joshua reloaded, I had a chance to double the distance between us. I headed inland, away from the shore, and made in the direction of the village which was more than a mile away. Straight in front of me was a clump of trees, and I hoped to gain this before Trust could fire again.

Though the country that lies south of the Downs, from the west of Worthing to the ancient city of Chichester, is, in the main, as flat as a table, this particular clump of trees was perched upon a rounded hillock-though you would call it that nowhere but in western Sussex; and therefore, when I gained the trees, I could survey the land on every side of me to the extent of a good square mile.

To the south were Joshua and Amos Baverstock, hastening after me, the latter some way behind his longer-legged companion. To the north, a little to the east, was the sharp belfry of the church in the village I would gain: and, to the west, was the lane that leads to Arundel.

I had paused for a moment, not so much for breath as to get my bearings, to select the shortest route; and in this brief moment, I became aware of a circumstance that caused my heart to leap for joy. For, coming toward me, by way of a footpath that led across the fields, carrying under an arm a brown paper parcel that I knew to contain his weekly stock of provisions, I recognised the great, tall figure of John Bannister himself.

All thoughts of my pursuers were instantly banished from my mind. What cared I now for Amos Baverstock and all his threats and oaths! I was conscious of nothing else but the bald fact that a friend in need was close at hand-and one, moreover, who would soon get the best of Master Baverstock-and so great was my elation that I took no heed of a dog-cart which, at that moment, came rattling round a bend in the road.

I called loudly upon Bannister by name, though he was then scarcely within hearing, and dashed down the hill before Joshua could have reached the trees from the other side.

The road in that place was bounded by a wooden fence, and balancing myself upon the top of this, I shouted frantically to Bannister.

"Come quick!" I cried. "Amos Baverstock is here!"

I was answered, before the last word had left my lips, by a shot fired at the back of me. The bullet splintered the woodwork of the very bar upon which I was standing; and, startled into action, I jumped into the road.

Immediately I had to turn back again no less quickly, to avoid being run down by the dog-cart, the driver of which reined up with a jerk.

I looked up at him at once, thinking to recognise some farmer that I knew; but, instead of that, I set eyes, to my amazement, upon Mr. Gilbert Forsyth, with his side-whiskers and his greased moustache.

I remembered then-too late as things turned out-that the road curved seaward near the place where I had first discovered Amos and his friends. Had I thought of it at all, I must have known that they had never walked to that lonely spot. They had driven there, to leave the horse and cart upon the road, whilst they settled themselves at a little distance to discuss how best they might attack John Bannister, in his cabin by the sea. Moreover, had I known then as much as I know now of Mr. Gilbert Forsyth, I should never have supposed for a single instant that he could be as idle as he seemed, that he would have remained doing nothing before the opening of the cabin, whilst his friends were pursuing me.

For Gilbert Forsyth, a fop to all appearances and a lazy dude, was in reality a man of action. He said not a word to me, but when he had reined in his horse, he lifted his whip, and cut me down as if I were a thistle.

It was a long tandem whip-and tandems were much in fashion in the days when all this happened. The lash wrapped itself about my legs like a living snake; so that when Forsyth jerked the whip backwards with all his force, I was thrown violently on my face upon the hard, dusty road.

I tried to get to my feet as quick as I could, but had done no more than struggle to my knees, when Forsyth struck me upon the crown of my head with the heavy handle of the whip.

It was a cruel blow and a stout one; and I know that if I did not actually lose consciousness I, at least, saw the trees swing upward into the sky, and the white road upon which I lay rush round and round, like the spokes of a revolving wheel.

And then the next thing I knew was that Forsyth had me by the throat. Though I was then young, I was not a weakling. I struggled desperately, and might, perhaps, have freed myself, had not Joshua Trust arrived upon the scene in time to settle the affair the wrong way for me.

For he gathered me up in his arms, and I was held as if I were encased in iron. I shouted frantically, but that was of no more help than the cackling of a hen. I was lifted bodily into the cart.

I heard Joshua shout to Amos: "Run like mad! Here's Bannister himself!"

Forsyth had climbed upon the box. Trust was on the back seat, with me held like a squalling babe in his arms. The cart tilted forward a bit, as Amos scrambled up and took his seat beside the driver.

I heard Forsyth crack his whip, and immediately the horse started off at a canter, the cart rocking like a boat in a heavy sea. I continued to shout, until Joshua swore at me and clapped one of his great hands across my mouth. And the last thing I saw, as the cart turned into the main road to Littlehampton, was John Bannister breaking through the boundary fence, and then standing quite still and upright in the middle of the road, staring after us, with his brown paper parcel still under his arm.

CHAPTER V-I SET FORTH UPON MY VOYAGE

Though all these events took place more than fifty years ago, I have a very perfect recollection of that drive. In those days there was not much traffic on the Sussex roads; and we passed nothing on the way to Slindon save a hay-cart and a brewer's wagon. On neither occasion did I dare cry out for help, for Joshua Trust sat by the side of me with his loaded pistol, pressed close against my ribs, in the pocket of his sailor's pea-jacket. I never doubted for an instant that he would shoot. I had then, it is true, little experience of the world; but I could scarce fail to recognise that I was fallen into the hands of desperate men who counted human life of little worth.

So I kept my silence upon the road, wondering all the time what was to become of me, and, above all else, what Amos Baverstock would say when he discovered that I had cast away my fragment of the map.

That he thought I had it still was plain enough, since he twice told Joshua to keep an eye on me, lest I should throw it from the cart. He was in a great haste to reach the woods at Slindon, where in springtime the wild flowers are like a garden; and he had a good reason for this. Indeed, in all my experience of Amos, I never knew him fail for want of caution; and when a man is circumspect as well as fearless, he is an enemy who cannot be trifled with.

It was the scoundrel's design, so I discovered, to reach the woods with as little delay as possible, and there to wait until the evening, when he could take the Portsmouth road under cover of darkness. There were, at that date, many coaches on the highways; and Amos evidently thought it wiser not to trust me.

So to Slindon Woods we went, and were there in no time, soon after noon. They unharnessed the horse, and turned him out to graze; and whilst Mr. Forsyth unpacked a hamper that was well stocked with provisions and wine to drink, Amos took me by the shoulders, and looked me straight in the face.

"And now, boy," he said, "I'll have no more nonsense from you-so understand me, once and for all. It's an unwise thing to pry into my affairs-I can tell you that. You know more about me already than I care to think; and I tell you fairly, you had best mend your ways, if you value life."

I was afraid of the look of him, of the hard glitter in his eyes and the way in which his thin lips were tightly pressed together. And I was more afraid still of what would happen when he discovered that I had made away with my fragment of the torn map. My heart was in my mouth. I felt as if I were suspended by a thread upon the brink of a precipice, and that at any moment that thread would break and I be hurled into eternity.

Fortunately, perhaps, I was not left long in such uncertainty; for no sooner had Amos taken his hands from off my shoulders than he clapped them together behind his back, and came out with the very question that I feared.

"And where's the map, my boy?" said he.

I answered nothing.

"Give it up," he demanded, and held out a hand.

"I have not got it," said I.

At that his jaw dropped. He stared at me in amazement, not knowing whether or not to believe me.

"Haven't got it!" he repeated. "What d'ye mean?"

And the way he rapped out those last few words made my blood run cold. I saw, however, that I must make a clean breast of the matter, let it end which way it would.

"I have not got it," said I, "for a simple reason; because I had thrown it away before you caught me. And now, you know the truth, and can do with me what you will."

The hunchback stood staring at me as if I were a ghost. His thin, wrinkled face had gone a yellow or a greenish colour, and his little eyes looked blacker and more on fire than ever. He kept working his mouth about, as if he were chewing some of his vile tobacco; and, on the whole, I cannot conceive an expression more menacing, a countenance less prepossessing.

He came up to me, and searched my pockets; and whilst he was doing so, I noticed that both his hands were trembling. He had then been joined by both Trust and Forsyth, who stood on either side of him.

Amos, as he drew away from me, came out with an oath that I can never write. Indeed, the swearing of this man was not the least of his many sins.

"He has not got it!" he cried. "We've been fooled, Mr. Forsyth; and that by a slip of a boy!"

I thought that he would kill me, then and there, beneath the shadow of the trees in Slindon Woods. But, though Amos Baverstock often worked himself into fits of ungovernable fury, he never was guilty of a foolish action. For my life-though at the time I never guessed it-was of some use to him. Not only did I know where I had hidden the torn map, but, as like as not, I had looked at it, and might be able to remember the names of some of the places that were marked thereon-knowledge for which Amos would give much. Had it not been for this, I have little doubt he would have put me out of the world.

They tied my feet together, in case I should endeavour to escape, whilst the three seated themselves upon the gnarled surface roots of a great oak tree, and examined their fragment of the map, discussing the question openly, so that I overheard them and learned of the trick that Providence had played us all.

For the map had been rent in twain, not by the hands of Amos Baverstock and me, but by the sure and supple fingers of Almighty Destiny. Amos had in his possession at least three-quarters of the parchment-he had it all, indeed, except one corner, that which I had seized in my attempt to wrench it from his grasp. And, as good luck had it, that one corner contained the information of the greatest value: to wit, the exact locality where the Greater Treasure was to be found.

As for the rest of the map, it carried you from the outskirts of what may pass as modern civilisation to within a certain unknown distance of the secret place. It put you on the right road, as it were, and then left you-lost in the midst of a wilderness of doubt.

When Amos grasped the full significance of this, he jumped to his feet, a perfect figure of fury, storming at me and swearing, using threats and shouting of torture, if I did not then and there confess. But speak I would not. Whatever happened, I was resolved to hold my ground, though I was filled with grave misgivings.

For all that afternoon they badgered me, trying intimidation, bribery and curses; and then, at last, they settled it amongst themselves that they would take me with them into Portsmouth, and thence across the sea into the very heart of a black barbarous country, where they hoped to find the Treasure of the Incas.

It was then, whilst we waited in the woods for sunset, that I saw myself, a lad of sixteen summers, launched upon a series of adventures, among strange peoples and in wild, romantic lands-adventures such as those of which I had often read, of the bold Spaniards who had followed Columbus into a new and unknown world, and brave blades of the stamp of Drake and Grenville, who-like John Bannister himself-were all men of Devon. That I was to be one of a company so glorious seemed to me all my heart could wish, though I went as a hostage with my life itself at ransom.

In a strange fashion, in very truth, did I begin my travels; for I journeyed that night to Portsmouth, not only bound hand and foot and tied to the seat of the dog-cart, but gagged as well; so that, by the time we reached our destination, I ached in every limb.

For three weeks we dwelt together in a lodging-house, patronised by seamen, in a poor quarter of the town. The landlord-a fat, slovenly fellow whose hand was seldom far from a pint mug or near a razor-was, as I guessed, hand in glove with Amos; for he must have known that throughout those three dreary weeks I was kept locked in a stuffy room, where I had neither fresh air nor liberty, and no better fare than is accorded to a convict.

I have said that we dwelt together, but this was not wholly so; for Mr. Gilbert Forsyth, though he was often of our party, had taken rooms in one of the best hotels. He was a gentleman somewhat fastidious in his habits, with a nice taste in wine and clothes, though-as he was soon to prove-he could rough it with the best of us.

Joshua, too, was seldom in our lodgings. It appears that he spent most of his time in the neighbourhood of the docks, on the lookout for an old shipmate whom he knew he could trust, with whom Amos could strike a bargain.

Such a man was eventually found. Joshua brought him in, one evening, and shortly afterwards Mr. Forsyth arrived, looking more than ever as if he had just come out of a bandbox.

This fellow proved to be the skipper of a barque, due to sail in a few days' time, bound for Caracas in Venezuela. She must call first at Liverpool, to take on a cargo of cotton goods, but would touch at no port upon the voyage but Fayal in the Western Islands, which are now called the Azores.

All this fitted in exceedingly well with Amos's plans. As I was in the next room when they talked the matter out, and they never troubled to close the door, I know for a fact that Baverstock bribed the skipper, and that Forsyth-who I suspected all along had undertaken to produce the funds-paid him as much as fifty pounds down, quite apart from the question of passage money, and there was more to come at the end of the voyage.

Gilbert Forsyth, indeed, was a member of the expedition for no other reason than that he supplied the sinews of war, else Amos had never taken him into his confidence and agreed to forego a third part of the loot. For all that, Forsyth proved himself a man of action and resource, though he never looked it; and things would have gone worse with Amos than they did, had he not had at his right hand one so capable and cool throughout those wild, adventurous days.

For Joshua Trust was well enough in his way to strike a blow or carry a camp-kettle across a mountain range that topped the clouds-otherwise he was a bull-in-a-china-shop kind of a fellow, whose worth was in his forearms and not his head.

But Forsyth was cast in a finer mould: a man of education, with tags of Latin in the corners of memory, a sense of humour-subtle enough to be lost upon both his strange companions-and a wonderful brain for figures.

The man's laziness was all pretence and affectation. He always talked as if he were half asleep, and yawned at intervals, screening his mouth with a hand upon one of the fingers of which he wore a golden signet ring; and yet, his brain was ever active, and he had the happy knack of doing the right thing at the right time-as he had already proved to my cost.

Even whilst I lay imprisoned in that dingy room in Portsmouth, Forsyth returned along the coast to within a stone's throw of John Bannister's cabin by the sea, and searched vainly for the fragment of the map which I had thrown away. And that in itself was a bold thing to do; for the police-to whom Bannister had described the appearance of both Baverstock and Trust-had been told of my disappearance, and the countryside, from Arundel to Chichester, was populous with printed offers of reward.

For, all this time, my mother was well near distracted by anxiety and distress. John Bannister called upon her, and tried in his own straightforward way to set her fears at rest, and swore to her that he would find me, though he had to search the world.

Of how well he kept his oath it is my task to write, and of much else besides. For the barque, which was called the Mary Greenfield, dropped her pilot off the Needles of the Isle of Wight, and with a fair wind and under full canvas struck the open sea. And I, Dick Treadgold, was on board, sea-sick that night as any full-grown man could be, and sick at heart as well. For, when the white cliffs of dearest England faded in the evening light, I realised for the first time that I was alone, and there was no telling what the Fates held in store for me.

CHAPTER VI-I AM CONCERNED IN A MUTINY

I have neither space nor patience to describe in any detail that long and tedious voyage. For we were months at sea. I saw whales spouting water into the air, and schools of porpoises; and at one time, for a whole month on end, we were becalmed, the ship lying idle in the midst of a vast floating mass of seaweed, where there were all kinds of jelly-fish and squids. The heat was excessive, and there was a rank, almost putrid, smell in the air, which came from the decaying seaweed. That in itself was enough to try the temper of every member of the crew; but, to make matters worse, much of the tinned meat on board exploded in the hold. I cannot explain this, but I know that it happened, and am content to leave the explanation to the scientific reader. These circumstances, together with the surly nature of James Dagg, the captain, led from dissatisfaction to open grumbling, and thence to the mutiny of which I have now to tell.

My own fortunes were, to some extent, involved in that affair; and in any case, I must describe the incident more or less as it occurred, since nothing could better serve to illustrate the true character of Amos Baverstock, who plays as important a part as myself in the narrative that follows.

I had not been a week at sea, and just recovered from my sickness, when I was given clearly to understand that I was to hold no intercourse with any of the crew. I cannot say that I wished to, for they were a ruffianly lot-half of them, I verily believe, prison-birds, like Joshua Trust, and the remainder West Indian negroes, Chinamen, and Lascars from the coast of Malabar.

I had to share a cabin with Amos himself, who seldom let me out of his sight. Thrown into such close intimacy with the man, I learned much concerning him, and he more of me. He seldom allowed a day to pass without questioning me in regard to what I knew of the map; and so terrible did his threats become that I was filled with fear for the future.

On that account, I yearned for a friend, someone in whom I could confide; and it was not long before I found such a man on board that pestilential ship. Now that I can look back upon my series of adventures, I can see both men and matters in their true perspective, and I realise that, had it not been for William Rushby, the boatswain of the Mary Greenfield, the most honest and the whitest man that ever piped all hands on deck, this tale had never been told.

When I saw him first, I sized him up as the true seaman that he was; but I dared not speak to him, because of the threats that had been heaped upon me. I knew also that I could go to none of the ship's officers with my story, for they were all tarred with the same brush as the skipper; but Providence before long gave me the chance I wanted.

When we were in mid-ocean Amos tired of the voyage, and required little persuasion from Mr. Forsyth to take to playing cards. Captain Dagg was a card-player, too, and Joshua made the fourth; and this was the party that sat down nightly after supper to gamble, drink and smoke, by the light of a reeking paraffin lamp in the little stuffy saloon.

I watched them play for many nights, and though I knew nothing of the game, it was quite clear to me that they were three babes at the business by the side of Mr. Forsyth. For it was he who always won, no matter with whom he played or what cards he held, and it was he who raked in their money.

This was all one to me. I soon tired of watching them; and when I had once slipped away from them, to breathe the fresh air on deck, and no questions had been asked, I made it my constant practice to sit of an evening upon the poop, whence I could look down into the water and see the phosphorus as if smouldering in the wake of the ship.

And here it was that I talked with William Rushby. At that hour it was his duty to see that the ship's lamps were lighted, and when he had hoisted the mast-head lights, and put the red light to port and the green to starboard, he would come aft, haul in the log, and speak to me in whispers.

That he took that precaution from the first makes it plain enough that he guessed some mischief was afoot. He questioned me concerning who I was and what business I had in such company on board that ship. It was some time before I dared tell him the truth, for fear of Amos Baverstock; but I did so in the end, making him swear to keep my secret; which he did.

"It is all like a fairy tale," said he, when he had heard my story; "and it's hard to tell the best way to help you. Of this much I am certain: if you set forth into the back country of Venezuela with a man like Baverstock, you'll not come back alive."

"But I cannot escape!" I protested. "Even on board this ship, I am watched at all hours of the night and day."

Rushby thought for a while, stroking his short black beard which was like that of a Russian Czar.

"Maybe," said he, "at Caracas, I could desert and take you with me. I have no liking for my shipmates here, as you may well imagine. In the meantime, many weeks must pass before we sight the mainland, and in that time much may happen."

As he said this with some significance, I asked him what he meant.

"Why, just this," he answered; "there's trouble brewing aboard, which will come to a head before we touch port. The crew are a low-down, blackguard lot, no better men than sailors; and though they may be held to blame for that, it's no fault of theirs if they are fed worse than swine and cursed from dawn to sunset. Dagg I had heard about, though I never signed on under him before, nor will again, and the mate's even worse. There's high talk in the fo'c'sle, as it is, where the ringleader is that nigger cook. Mark my words-and I've sailed the seas for more than twenty years-a prize-fighting negro in the galley can cause more mischief aboard a sailing-ship than a monkey and a woman, both in one."

I laughed, for I was not then accustomed to the talk of sailors.

"And they've run out of lime-juice," he went on; "and that's a serious thing."

"Lime-juice!" I repeated, thinking he was joking still.

"A man must eat vegetables," he explained to me, "to keep his blood cool and his liver nicely trimmed. You can't eat green cabbages and Brussels-sprouts in mid-Atlantic, so you must carry lime-juice aboard; and we've run out. The men have much to complain of. They are in ill health, and one or two should be lying up in a sick berth, instead of being sworn at left and right for not moving quicker. So I see trouble ahead. It may be a hurricane, or just a summer squall; and if the first, Heaven help James Dagg and his officers, for they're a tough lot for'ard, as I know who've listened to their talk."

And Rushby was proved to be in the right. We ran into a great calm as I have said. The sea was like glass; and though the sun was blotted out by a steam-like fog, the heat was so intense that we went about the deck in naught but vests and trousers, with the sweat dripping from our finger-tips.

Without a doubt, the crew suffered for lack of lime-juice; some broke out with a horrid skin disease. And then the news came that the tinned meat had all gone bad, and we were forced to live on salted ling-fish, so that we went thirsty all day long.

It was Ebenezer Hogg, the negro cook, who started all the trouble. He was a long, raw-boned Jamaica man, who had cut a figure in the prize-ring in his younger days. He had never forgiven the skipper for a blow across the mouth because the cabin potatoes had not been properly peeled, though this was the work of Ah Chin, the cook's mate, a half-daft Canton Chinaman, who would fire off crackers at all hours of the night, in honour (I suppose) of the heathen gods he worshipped.

Hogg told his shipmates he cared not a "dime with a hole in it" for James Dagg or any man. They had no food fit to eat, so they might as well help themselves to the ship's grog, to keep-as he described it-body and soul together.

Rushby-as his duty was-warned the captain of what was coming; but Dagg, who had been losing heavily at cards to Mr. Forsyth, only abused the boatswain for his pains, and said that he himself was the best judge of such matters and would know how to deal with insubordination.

And that night the crew, led by Hogg, the nigger, broke into the storeroom with a hatchet and broached the rum casks. Within half-an-hour, they were all roaring drunk; and that was a night that I shall never live to forget.

The moon came out from the white sea-mist, as if to look down in scandalised amazement upon a scene of debauchery and violence-a round, red ball of fire, casting its rays upon the stagnant, reeking seaweed, illuminating the deck of that floating madhouse with a dull crimson glare, whereby you might see the whites of men's eyes and the glitter of the sharp blades they handled.

Dagg appeared on deck, his face livid with passion; and I could see by his walk that he, too, had been drinking heavily at his card-playing.

"What's all this?" he shouted at the top of his voice. "Understand, I'll have no monkey-tricks aboard the ship that I command."

Hogg at once squared up to him, his two fists before his face, very drunk and brazen.

"Come on, James Dagg!" he cried, with his Christy-minstrel accent. "Time yer and me settled de account."

"This here's mutiny!" exclaimed the captain.

"Dat's de right word, boss," said Hogg. "Mutiny it is."

And at that, he struck the captain with his fist, so that Dagg rolled over and over upon the deck, groaning loudly.

The fat was now in the fire. If discipline could be restored, Hogg would be hanged at the yard-arm and his body cast into the sea; and drunk as he was, the nigger knew it.

"I'm de captain of dis ship," he bellowed, "an' James Dagg's de cook."

He showed his white teeth in a grin, and then gave orders as if he had been accustomed all his life to a position of authority; and the wonder was he was instantly obeyed. Five minutes later, both Dagg and his mate were bound hand and foot; and the second mate had been locked in his cabin, where he was fast asleep. The negro went staggering backwards and forwards, from the forecastle to the poop, crying out that he it was who was Captain and his name was Admiral Hogg.

There were two spectators of this comedy, who could not be considered as partisans; and the one was William Rushby and the other was myself. The boatswain's sense of duty would have held him to the captain, had it not been for me; for, though I had no liking for any of the crew, and a feeling of positive loathing for a great brute like Hogg, I saw in the discomfiture of James Dagg and his officers some chance of my own ultimate deliverance. So that when the cook turned upon me, and caught me by the scruff of the neck, I played the card that I thought safest at the time, but which certainly lost me the trick that meant the game.

"And now, boy," said Hogg, "which way de wind blow wid you? Will you sign on to serve as cabin-steward under Admiral Hogg?"

"Why, sure," said I, having picked up something of the man's own way of speaking. "I was never a friend of Captain Dagg's, as you may have seen for yourself."

And thereupon, I looked away from the negro's grinning countenance, and straight in the black, pig-like eyes of Amos Baverstock.

If I had feared him before, I was well-nigh terrified of him then; for there was black murder in the look he gave me, and his mouth was working horribly.

For all that, he straightened his face in half a second, and turned to Hogg as calm as the sea itself.

"I'll settle with you in a moment," said he. "I've not lived more than half my life without learning how to deal with a buck nigger who's three parts tipsy. Bo's'n," said he to Rushby, pointing straight at me, "put that boy in irons."

Rushby never moved.

"Did you hear my orders?" rapped out Amos.

"I heard right enough," said the boatswain. "But I'm not here to take orders from you."

At that, the crew, who had gathered round, thinking that Rushby was with them, became bolder than ever. Knives were drawn from belts, and one of these was flourished in the face of the captain who still lay upon the deck, bound hand and foot.

"Ho!" cried Amos. "So that's your tune, is it? I see you must all be taught a lesson."

He talked with all the confidence in the world, though-with the exception of Mr. Gilbert Forsyth, who had just strolled on deck with both hands in his trouser pockets-there was no one at his back, and he faced a crowd of angry, drunken seamen who would not then have stopped short of murder.

From Rushby he turned once more to Hogg. "And so," said he, "you claim to be the captain of this ship?"

The negro glanced in his direction, but would not meet those cruel, steadfast eyes.

"If I'm not," he blurted out, "then who is de captain? Tell me dat?"

"Why, I am," roared Amos. "And what have you to say to it?"

Hogg realised he was challenged. Perhaps, under the influence of rum, he had already gone further than he meant to; but, in any case, so far as he was concerned there was no question of retreat.

"Put up your fists!" he shouted. "We fight for it and let de best man win."

He grinned from ear to ear, as, standing in front of Amos-above whom he towered by a good clear head and shoulders-he lifted his great, black fists to the level of his face. I thought that he would kill Amos with a single blow; for the one was so big and bony, and the other so frail and shrivelled up. But I did not then know Amos Baverstock.

"Come on!" cried Hogg, still grinning.

I looked at Amos, thinking to find him alarmed; but never upon the face of any man have I beheld an expression of such complete contempt.

"You black dog!" said he, with an oath.

He drew back his right hand, as if about to strike, and immediately I caught the glint of a revolver barrel in the moonlight.

There was a flash, a single loud report, and then a dull, heavy thud as the negro's great ungainly body came down upon the deck. And there he lay, full in the red moonshine, upon that tropic night, huddled and stone-dead-the black, bragging fool who had claimed to be our captain.

"And now, then," said Amos, as cool as ever, turning to the crew, "is there any man else who would like to command this ship?"

CHAPTER VII-AND AM MADE TO PAY FOR IT

And that was the end of the mutiny on board the Mary Greenfield. The match was struck by a negro; the flames were fed with rum; and the fire flared up, just to be stamped out by the one strong man on board.

Amos at once released both the captain and his mate; whereupon Dagg treated the crew to a long-winded, high speech upon the subject of what he would do, if such insubordination occurred again; but as he had done naught during the crisis, but to get knocked down the moment he opened his mouth, there were few of his audience who were not laughing up their sleeves.

I have told the full story of the disturbance, to illustrate the character of Amos Baverstock. I have yet to write of the sequel to the trouble, which more nearly concerned myself.

For Amos was as good as his word, and made short work of William Rushby and of me. Though the crew had been bound over to keep the peace, as you might call it, admonished to behave themselves in future, the boatswain was not only degraded of his rank, but forthwith cast into irons.

As for myself, I was led before a kind of tribunal, assembled in the saloon. Captain Dagg, Amos Baverstock, and Joshua Trust were my judges; and a strange triumvirate they made, Amos chewing his black cigar, and all three seated before their glasses of grog, with their greasy playing-cards scattered before them on the table.

"Boy," said Dagg, "you joined in a mutiny. Do you know that, you whelp? Do you know what it means?"

"No, sir," said I.

"It means death," said Dagg. "The yard-arm-that's what it means."

I believed, for the moment, that they were really going to kill me; and so seriously had the great heat and the excitement affected me that I don't think I cared very much whether they did so or not. Anyway, I know I answered boldly, though I had never the courage to look straight at Amos, whose eyes I felt were upon me.

"Captain Dagg," said I, "if you want to murder me, get on with the matter. I ask you to do no more than to remember this: I did not come on board your ship of my own free will. I was kidnapped, and carried here by force, and I have no means of escape."

At that, Amos struck the table with his fist; and, bold though my words had been, I jumped as if a cannon had been fired.

"Silence!" he roared. "We are not here to argue with you. You were given your orders. You were told that on no account were you to communicate with anyone on board this ship, and you defied us. We have reason to suspect that you have taken into your confidence William Rushby, formerly boatswain. Do you deny it?"

He banged the table again. I looked right into his face, and it was just as if I was under fire. But I could never answer him. I had the pluck neither to lie nor to tell the truth.

"Good!" said he. "You admit as much. Well, then, we shall see that no such tricks are played us in the future. Rushby is in irons. As for you, for the rest of this voyage you remain a prisoner in your cabin; and if we have any more trouble with you-I warn you fairly-you meet the same fate as that hide-bound, cursed nigger."

And that was the lame and impotent conclusion of the mutiny on board the Mary Greenfield.

My lot was now even worse than before. For week after week I was locked in a stuffy cabin, and got neither fresh air, good food, nor exercise. The calm broke up quite suddenly with a squall, followed by a shower of rain. For about an hour the water came down like a cascade upon the sea, washing the ship from stem to stern, giving-as it appeared to me, looking out from my narrow port-hole-new life to the floating seaweed and the myriads of living things that were swarming in the midst of it.

The ship rocked, turning lazily from side to side, like a sleeper awakening, and then, lurching, took on a list to starboard, as the wind gripped her hoisted sails. And then, once again, we were under canvas, ploughing westward across that great, lonely ocean.

A few days later, we struck a trade wind, and made even better progress. Though I myself was never more miserable in all my life, I had reason to think that there was less discontent on board. I could hear the patter of the bare feet of the men on the deck above me, as they hastened about their work, as sailors should, and the shrill note of the boatswain's whistle-which caused me to wonder who the new boatswain was. It must be understood that during these days of my imprisonment I had nothing to read and nothing to do, but to meditate upon my own misfortunes.

Life was not made any the more pleasant for me inasmuch as I still shared a cabin with Amos, though I was devoutly thankful that I saw little of him. Night by night, he would sit late at cards, trying-I should imagine-to win back what he had lost to Mr. Forsyth; and I made a point of being asleep, or pretending to be so, before he came to bed.

And now I have to tell of something which has a direct bearing upon all that follows. I had become so despondent and forlorn, and I found myself in the company of such infamous and shameless rogues, that I had actually forgotten my friends. I had forgotten that there were yet in the world true, honest men who could be both brave and loyal.

One evening, I must confess, my heart was near to breaking. The world seemed all so hopeless and so wicked that I brought my face to my hands and cried just as I had been wont to cry, when I was a little chap of four years old, when things had not gone for me exactly as I wanted. And as I sobbed, I could hear the gamblers in the saloon beyond the cabin door; the "clink" of the bottles and the glasses, and the deeper note of the coins upon the table; now and again, a gruff oath from Amos or Joshua Trust, and Mr. Forsyth's affected drawl. And then, a voice, quite near to me, whispered in my ear:

"Me lad, be quick! I want a word with you."

I sprang to my feet-I had been lying on my berth-and looked about me. I could see no one in the cabin, and had begun to think of ghosts and spirit-voices, when I heard the whispering again.

"Here, me lad! The port-hole."

I looked at the port, and could see a face by the light of the oil lamp-a face in a frame studded with stars, the face of a man with a short stump of a grisly beard.

"Rushby!" I exclaimed.

"The same," said he. "But speak low, for Heaven's sake! Those rascals are at their cards in the saloon; the door's thin, and it's all up with us if we're discovered."

I went to the port-hole, so that my face was close to his.

"But how are you here?" I asked.

"I've not lived my life and done my duty," said he, "without making friends. One of the crew, of the name of Adams, to whom I have been of service in the past, has let me loose-just as you might unchain a yard-dog for a run. I have a few minutes at the best before I'm back in irons, but that's enough for what I have to say."

"But where are you now?" I asked, for he appeared to me to be walking upon the sea.

He explained that he was hanging on to a rope, made fast to a stanchion on the deck above, but that he had something of greater importance to tell me.

"Are we near our journey's end?" I asked.

"In three days," he answered, "we should sight the coast, unless the wind changes. What they intend to do with me at Caracas I neither know nor care. I will somehow find the means to escape, and make my way back to England; and then, Captain Dagg and Amos Baverstock shall pay for what they've done."

"I entreat you," I exclaimed, "do not meddle with Amos!"

Rushby laughed softly.

"And leave you at his mercy!" he cried. "That's not my way, nor-I should think, if all you have told me be the truth-the way of Mr. Bannister. This matter shall never rest where it now stands. I am here to learn two things, though I am no better than a simple sailor, and it will want a wiser head than mine before we're safe in port. Come, tell me, lad, where did you hide the map you snatched from Baverstock? John Bannister may want it."

"In a rabbit-hole," said I; and I went on to describe, as best I could, how that rabbit-hole might be found.

"There's a warren," said I, "about two hundred yards to the west of Bannister's cabin-"

"And how am I to find that?" Rushby took me up.

I thought for a moment; and then I got a bright idea when most I needed it, for I realised there was little time to spare and that Amos, at any moment, might enter and find Rushby at the port-hole.

I gave him my mother's address; for I had little doubt that Bannister had gone, long before this, to her. With my life in danger, he would-I knew-soon get the better of his natural dread of women.

"That's all I want," said he.

And a moment after he was gone. It so happened that many months were to elapse before I set eyes upon him again-a true man and an honest, big of heart and strong of hand, the type that has made the very name of British sailor to rank so highly all the world across, from the old three-decker to the battle-cruiser of to-day. And I speak of the men without whose cutlasses and courage Blake and Drake, or even Nelson himself, had never been the famous admirals that they were.

For, when we were come to Caracas, I was discharged from that poisonous vessel like a worthless bale of freight. Unshipped by night into a broken-down two-wheeled cart, and conveyed through the narrow streets of an evil-smelling city, where men talked loudly in a foreign tongue, with quarrelsome voices and much waving of the hands, and then I found myself in a dirty hovel upon the slopes of tree-clad hills, where I could see the round moon through a great hole in the roof, and lie listening to the singing of millions of crickets, wondering what would be the end of it all.

CHAPTER VIII-INTO THE WILDERNESS

For these few days, it happened that I was left in the charge of Joshua Trust. In other words, he was the watch-dog that guarded me, day and night; and a dull dog he was. He never opened his mouth, save to grumble at everything-the heat, the insects, the very food he cooked himself. Now and again, he would sigh; which puzzled me, until I solved the problem for myself: he was inclined to regret the idle days aboard the Mary Greenfield when he had naught to think about except his grog and cards.

So, in this man's company, I learned nothing concerning what was afoot. But I was free to use my eyes, and I could scarce fail to observe that they were turning by degrees that ruined habitation into a kind of depôt. For, day and night, came stores and arms and ammunition to the place-all manner of such things as might be required upon an expedition into the wild hinterland of that strange country, where there were few roads, but many bridle-paths and broad rivers to be crossed.

Amos came often to the hut, and Mr. Forsyth was always with him; and, as I knew, it was the last-named who had paid for all. That, however, was all one to me. I was safely caught, thousands of miles from dear, silly Sussex; and even if I was so fortunate as to escape from Joshua Trust, what was I to do in that foreign land, where I could not speak a word of the language and had no friend to whom to go?

On the fourth day of my captivity came six mules, and with them three men whom I took to be half-castes of a sort, for they were no more than two parts black and spoke Spanish, shouting at one another when they conversed. But I was more interested in the mules, which were of a kind that I had never seen before; for they were small animals, little larger than donkeys, with mouse-grey woolly coats like sheep. Each of these was provided with a pack-saddle; and when they were loaded for the inspection of Amos Baverstock and Forsyth, I was amazed at the great weight that such slender and seemingly fragile beasts could carry.

On the fifth day after we had left the ship, we set forth upon our great march towards the south. Our party numbered eight in all: Amos, Forsyth, and Trust (the first the acknowledged leader of the expedition); myself and the three mulemen, whilst the other was a guide-a lean, cadaverous Spaniard, black as a raven, whom I never heard called by any other name than that of Vasco. I do not think this fellow was an evil man by nature, except in so far as he was capable of doing almost anything for money. In that, at any rate, he was honest: he served his masters faithfully, no matter who they were.

And now we come to the march itself that, step by step, led me farther and farther from the confines of civilisation and into the heart of a cruel and magic wilderness where things happened that I should not believe, had I not seen them with my eyes.

The first stage of our journey was uneventful enough; and the scenery-especially on the mountains we were obliged to cross-surprisingly beautiful. We first climbed to a great height, following a zig-zag road, along which the little mules struggled gallantly with their heavy loads. I had thought that, on gaining the crestline, we must again descend to something approaching the level of the sea. But this was not so; for the mountains proved to consist of a series of parallel chains, and no sooner had we negotiated one valley than we found ourselves upon the watershed of another.

These valleys were thickly populated. We were seldom out of sight of villages and towns, many of which contained considerable buildings. The country had the aspect of being extremely fertile and prosperous. There were plantations of coffee and cocoa, tobacco and cotton, but a far greater area of the valley regions was given over to the cultivation of manioc and maize. For all I could ever learn, there was no flour in the land, for I never tasted bread, but subsisted upon hot maize cakes, made by Vasco, the guide, which I found as good as hot-cross buns.

When we were clear of the mountains, we began to descend into the valley of a great river which, had I learned more geography when I was at school, I would have known to be the Orinoco. The course of this great stream we followed for many days, marching in a south-westerly direction, against the current. The climate was now a great deal hotter than it had been near the coast, and towns and villages were few and far between. One thing that I observed was the courteous behaviour of the inhabitants, who seldom failed to wave their hands to us and pass the time of day.

We came to a vast sea of grass where, here and there, were scattered woods; and finally, after crossing a river of some importance, a tributary of the Orinoco, we sighted a great mountain that overtopped the surrounding hills like a giant in the midst of pygmies.

Amos, who had been unusually reticent upon the line-of-march, now became talkative, almost hilarious. He carried constantly a grin upon his fox-like countenance, and would often chuckle to himself.

For the great mountain in front of us might be described as the gateway of the road to the Treasure we were seeking, and was marked upon the left-hand top corner of the map. It was called Mount Tigro, but by that name I have never been able to trace it upon any modern map, though it was shown to be about twenty miles south of the Rio Guaviare.

We were now-though I did not know it at the time-close upon the frontier of Colombia, and, I think, for a time our route lay through that little-known country, until we turned eastward again into the territories of the Amazonas.

We were now in a mountainous and savage land, where we could make but the slowest progress. For not only were the hills steep and pathless, but in places clothed in such luxuriant vegetation that we had often to break a way with hatchets for the mules.

We were marching by the map, and Amos had become our guide. He and Forsyth-who never seemed to tire-would lead our little column, myself walking in company of Joshua, and the pack-mules bringing up the rear.

We were soon to bid good-bye to these faithful, dumb companions; for, after we had climbed the slopes of another range of mountains, we followed the course of a river valley that led us rapidly downward, to land us into the very heart of such a forest as I did not dream to be possible.

The mulemen were paid off-by no means too handsomely, I thought-to return upon that long and tedious journey to the coast. And we five went on alone-Amos and his two confederates, Vasco and myself-carrying our stores and provisions in knapsacks on our backs, and all armed as though we were like to meet with savage men.

In the first place, I must tell you that the heat was insufferable, for all this while we had been approaching the equator. The forest swarmed with myriads of stinging insects, and sometimes I saw great tree snakes of a magnitude that even now makes my blood run cold when I think of them. We came upon one, lying half coiled upon the bank of a woodland pool, and I am ready to swear that he was longer than a cricket-pitch, and of a thickness almost equal to my own waist.

But I marvelled most at the forest trees, the names of some of which I learned from Vasco, who had a little English, of which he was exceedingly vain. One of these was a palm-tree, the very leaves of which were forty feet in length, standing almost erect, all bunched together-a magnificent sight to behold. And these forest giants were intertwined and intermingled with thousands of creepers, parasites, and climbers, so that in places, even at mid-day, when the tropic sun was at its height, it was dark as night in the vast Region of the Woods.

For weeks we struggled onward, literally fighting our way through that all but impenetrable wilderness. I saw that Amos had more than he could do to trace our route upon the map; and there were times, I am convinced, when even Vasco and Baverstock himself truly believed that we were lost.

He told us he was looking for a certain landmark; and in that dark and endless forest he might as well have searched for a pin. At one time, there was not a living soul within hundreds of miles of us. There were great alligators in the rivers that we crossed by means of rough dug-out canoes, which we made upon one bank and left upon the other; the jungle teemed with snakes, many of the venomous kind besides the great loathsome pythons, in whose coils an ox might have been crushed to death; thousands of gaily-coloured birds were among the tree-tops high above us, and the dead leaves about our pathway swarmed with little things that crept and crawled and stung so vilely that we were covered from head to foot with painful swellings. But never a sign did we see of any human being. Nature reigned in that black wilderness, untrammelled and supreme.

And then, as one steps on a sudden from a darkened room, we came forth one morning from the forest into the blazing light of the sun. And there was such a wonder as I had never seen before.

Before us was a plain upon which was growing a tall, reed-like grass; and in the centre of this plain was a long, hog-backed hillock, bare of trees. Remember, we were in the very heart of the Unknown, for months we had seen no sign or trace of humanity, and I, at least, judged myself to be hundreds of miles from the very outposts of the civilised world; and yet, upon the summit of this hillock was a great ruined palace or a temple, encircled by a colonnade of vast stone pillars, no less in their proportions than those of Stonehenge, on Salisbury Plain in England, only they were there by the score, and stood perpendicular and massive, not one having fallen from its place.

I stood rooted in amazement, when my attention was attracted by Amos, whose behaviour was now that of a madman. He threw both his arms into the air, which action-in view of his hunched back and his pig-like, glittering eyes-made him look more evil and gleeful than ever, and shouted at the top of his voice:

"Found!" he cried. "The Temple of Cahazaxa, who fled from Cuzco with the Treasure! And now, boy, the matter rests with you!"

He changed as in a flash from unbounded joy to passion. He seized me by the shoulders, gripping me so tightly that it was as if his fingers burned into my flesh like red-hot irons.

"I'll have the truth from you!" he shrieked, dancing like a maniac on his feet. "The truth, and nothing but the truth! Or else, I swear as I'm a living man, you die here and now."

"What truth?" I asked.

My voice was trembling; for so terrible did the man seem that a cold sweat had broken out upon my forehead. He drew nearer to me still, peering into my face and whispering.

"Henceforward," said he, "you guide us. Either you have seen the map or Bannister has told you all he knows. In any case, you guide us from here to the place where the Greater Treasure is hid. Refuse, and you die, here and now, in the midst of this almighty desert."

One glance at the man was enough to tell me that he meant every word he said. And yet, I do not think I was any longer afraid.

CHAPTER IX-I AM LEFT TO MY DOOM

I was now, it was apparent, in such a situation that my life was of little worth. Without doubt, Amos did believe that I was capable of guiding our little column to the place where the Greater Treasure was hidden.

He thought, perhaps, that I had looked at the fragment of the map I had snatched from his hand, or else that John Bannister had told me the full story.

As a matter of fact, I knew nothing. When flying for my very life from Amos, I had had other things to think of than to gratify a very natural curiosity, and had never so much as cast a glance at the map. And as for Bannister, I have said already this was the one subject upon which he could never or seldom be induced to talk.

Amos, however, held a contrary opinion. Somehow, he must have learned that for several months John Bannister had been a good friend to me, and in his own mind had never questioned that I knew all there was to know.

In either case, it was all the same to him; for my life was worth nothing if I could not help him in the furtherance of his purpose, and I was but a fifth mouth to feed in a wild, tropic region where food was difficult to find.

That day I had a stormy scene with Amos, who was supported by Mr. Forsyth, whose questions I found even more difficult to answer; whilst Joshua Trust stood by, tugging at his red beard, which had now become more untidy and unkempt than ever. As for Vasco, he sat at a little distance, cross-legged, looking in a puzzled manner from Amos Baverstock to me.

I swore on my oath to them that Bannister had told me nothing; but they would not believe me. Then, for the first time, I was shown the map which Amos had brought with him all the way from Sussex; and at once I observed a singular coincidence.

For the parchment had been rent across the very place where was marked the great ruined building even then before us; and all Amos had of it was the following inscription: THE ANCIENT TEMPLE OF C- and then came the torn edge, where I had held the parchment tightly between my thumb and forefinger.

But this information, slight as it was, had been enough for Amos, who knew well the story of Cahazaxa, the Peruvian prince, of whom I will tell in the proper place. Both Bannister and Amos had heard often of Cahazaxa's Temple, which might be regarded as a kind of half-way house upon our treasure hunt. And upon the other portion of the map, which I had hidden in a rabbit-hole, were the letters "AHAZAXA," plain enough to any one who had ever heard of the temple, and thence the route marked plainly to the secret place where the Greater Treasure lay.

Had Bannister ever shown me the map, I should in all probability have remembered the names of some of the places marked thereon; but he had never done so-which, after all, saved me a world of trouble at one of the most critical moments in my life.

For, had I known, I trust I would never have confessed to these unholy scoundrels. I like to think that my courage would not have failed me at the eleventh hour. As it was, being wholly ignorant, I had nothing to tell, and boldly declared as much, though both the hunchback and Mr. Forsyth thought me to be lying.

The former worked himself into a kind of frenzied passion. Gripping me by a wrist, he jerked me first in one direction, then in another, sometimes so violently that my head flew backward and forward like a weather-cock in the wind.

"We'll have the truth from you!" he shouted. "I'll have it, though I must tear it from you with red-hot irons."

"I know nothing," I persisted.

"You'll speak or die," he answered. "And I'll see to it that death does not come easy!"

All that day, they badgered me and persecuted me with questions. And in the end, when the sun was setting, they gave it up, and decided to put me to death.

Mine was a strange fate, in very truth; and now, when I look back upon that hour, I marvel that I took it all so calmly. For it was my destiny to sit by the camp-fire, whilst our evening meal of maize and manioc was cooking, and hear them discuss among themselves how I should be done to death.

Trust was all for rough-and-ready methods, in keeping with the blunt character of the man; Amos, for cold, deliberate torture; whereas Forsyth would bind me to a tree and leave me in the midst of that great wilderness to starve.

It was Mr. Forsyth's vote that was carried; and now that I knew the manner of my death, I was filled with cold fear, though till then I had borne my ordeal with a fortitude that surprised even myself.

And bound I was, then and there, to a stout palm-tree that stood by itself a little distance from the margin of the forest. For rope they used a kind of creeper that was common in the woods, and not only was this as strong as a ship's hawser, but so hard and tied so tightly that it cut into my legs and arms like bands of steel.

In such a manner was I doomed. For an hour or so I watched those three dread men, all so different, alike in nothing but their devilry, sitting together around the fire, talking in low voices, even pleasantly, as if to do murder were an every-day affair.

Then they lay down to sleep, and both Trust and Amos were soon snoring; whereas I was left, already athirst and hungry, to await the approach of a terrible and lingering death.

That night and those which followed will live always in my memory. I watched the moon rise, wondrous round and white and large, behind the rounded hill upon which stood Cahazaxa's Temple. The stars, which had been shining in their millions, faded in the moonshine, all save one bright planet in the sky above me. And there arose a mist, in which I thought there was something ghostly, upon the plain where the long grass stood like corn ready for the cutting. And behind me, as if striving to enfold me in an overpowering, stifling embrace, was the dark, deadly forest that cut me off from all and everything I loved.

Long before dawn, Amos Baverstock was stirring. I watched him kindle the embers of the camp-fire into a blaze, and, sitting with his crooked back, he looked just like a monkey. I noticed that even at that hour he was chewing one of his foul, black cigars, his stock of which was running low. Presently, he awakened Trust and Forsyth. They ate their breakfast in silence; never a word was said. And then they packed their knapsacks and set forward upon the march, in the gloaming, with never a word or a glance at me.

They marched in a bee-line upon the ruins of the ancient temple, and were soon lost both to sound and sight, for the plain lay even yet in the shadow of the night.

The dawn-the great heat at midday-the majesty and grandeur of the wilderness in the heart of which I was doomed and lost for ever-and, above all else, the grave-like silence of that place-it were better I made no attempt to describe these things than fail in the endeavour. I know no more than that my loneliness was overpowering. It was as if I was the only living atom, save the insects and the butterflies that fluttered round about me, in all that world of gorgeous vegetation.

I could not move a fraction of an inch. I would gaze by the hour at the great stones of the ruins before me, small in the distance and yet plain to see in that clear atmosphere, and wonder what manner of men had lived there in bygone days-what had been their hopes, their interests, their mode of life. And then my thirst would consume me; my tongue would cleave to the roof of my mouth, and I would suck my lips to find them dry as bones.

One day of it had been more than I could bear; and that second night, I prayed that death might come speedily, for I saw that in death only would I find release from all my sufferings. But I lived on, like the Ancient Mariner himself; and on the third day, as on that tragic ship, there came a rain-a blessed rain from Heaven itself for me. Clouds appeared as if by magic, a dark canopy cast across the forest like a curtain; and the skies on a sudden opened and the rain came down in torrents.

I was wetted in an instant to the skin, but I cared nothing for that. I threw back my head with opened mouth, and the water streaming down my face was life and strength and hope to me.

And that night I no longer prayed for death; I prayed to the great God of Right and Justice for deliverance. And yet, how weak is human nature, how little is our faith! For before morning I was struggling like a madman to free myself from my bonds.

The more violently I fought for liberty, the greater pain I suffered; for the hard fibre cut into my flesh until I gave it up, and, overcome by sheer exhaustion, I fell asleep, held upright by my bonds.

I awoke to behold the half-light of approaching day. The plain of grass before me was lost in the mist which, in that weird place, came always at sunset and at dawn.

I looked about me as if I yet were dreaming. The giant forest trees had taken upon themselves the shape of ugly spectres. The tall grass swayed in the wind of the dawn with a soft, rustling sound that reminded me of my mother's silken dresses. I watched a lizard, the length of a foot-rule, run swiftly down the trunk of a tree and make off into the grass.

I endeavoured in vain to trace its passage, wondering whither the little creature was going so swiftly; and when I looked up I beheld to my astonishment-a man!

CHAPTER X-HOW THE WILD MEN CAME AND LOOKED AT ME

I have called him a man, and so he was, though, in very truth, at that time I had never seen his like. He was small in stature, little taller than myself; and there was something about him that was more animal than human. I cannot account for this, unless the explanation be found in the scared look upon his face, especially in the eyes-the eyes of a hunted beast.

He was not black, but light brown of skin, though there was so much dirt about him that I was not even sure of that. His hair was lank and long. All matted with mud, it fell about his ears. He wore no clothing, save the skin of some small, wild animal hung loosely round his waist; and he held in one hand a long bamboo rod, which I took to be a blow-pipe.

Now, I believed that this savage would kill me out of hand, defenceless as I was. But he stood staring at me for a long time, with his wild eyes and his mouth widely opened.

So, by degrees, my courage returned to me, and with it something of hope. I tried to think-and it is no simple matter to be reasonable when one is exhausted by starvation and tortured both in body and in mind.

It was manifest, in the first place, that I had no means of communicating with this man. I could neither speak to him nor sign, since I knew no word of any barbarous language, and my hands were bound fast to my sides. But I did the only thing I could do-I moved my mouth as if I were eating, hoping against hope that he would take my meaning: that I was starving and begged for food.

And the more I mouthed at him and made grimaces, the more he stared at me, and the more frightened did he seem. For the better part of five minutes I swear he never moved an inch, and then, quite suddenly, he took to his heels and dived into the woods.

For a little time I could scarce credit it that he had left me to my fate. But when a full hour had passed, and I realised that it was possible that the wild man might not return, my sense of loneliness became even more oppressive than before, and to tell the truth I cried.

I am, in the evening of a long, adventurous life, at times of a reflective disposition, and I have considered often the strange complexities of human nature, for I have seen many men and places in my time. When I first beheld the savage, I was alarmed beyond measure that he would put the life out of me by means of his murderous-looking blow-pipe. I would, at that moment, gladly have had him on the other side of the world. And when he left me so suddenly, without sign or signal of either hostility or friendship, I felt no less dismayed.

I was so utterly alone in that great silence, in the shadow of those mute, majestic trees. Not even the wild inhabitants of that inhospitable region would come and have done with it and kill me.

And thus, indeed, I burst into tears, and cried as children cry. I think sheer weakness and the pain that I had suffered had much to do with it; and in any case it all seemed to me so pitiful and hopeless, for I was over-young to undergo such cruel privations.

I slept again until the evening, when I was awakened of a sudden by a strange noise like the chuckling of a hen.

I opened my eyes and looked upon the same wild man who had regarded me before. But this time he had brought three others with him-all four as like to one another as so many beans. And there they stood, in a row, immediately before me, one of them-as I have just expressed it-chuckling like a hen.

I could not for the life of me make out whether or not he was laughing. He might have been amused, amazed, or angered. There was no expression upon his face. The noise seemed to come from somewhere out of his throat. When I opened my eyes and looked at him, he ceased at once; so I am inclined to think he had behaved thus in order to awaken me.

I judged that the man I had seen earlier in the day had stood at a distance of about twenty paces from me; but now, made bolder by companionship, he had approached to within about twelve yards from the palm-tree to which I was bound. They were all armed with blowpipes, but they made no hostile movement; they just stood staring at me with their mad eyes, speechless and looking more afraid than I was.

All on a sudden, I was impelled to cry out. I shouted as a dog yelps when trodden on, asleep upon a mat.

"Give me food!" I cried. "Have pity on me! I am starving!"

And at that they vanished, all the four of them. They scattered like birds, swiftly and in silence. At one moment, I beheld them; at the next, they were nowhere: they might have been spirited away.

They did not return that night, which was the most miserable of all. Hunger was now gnawing at my vitals. There was a foul taste in my mouth, and I felt so weak and lifeless that it was as if the slow beating of my heart shook my whole frame, making it hard for me to breathe. Also, I was again consumed by a raging thirst; but the worst of the whole matter was the seeming hopelessness of my situation; for now I verity believed that my end was drawing near.

Though often our endurance is strained to the utmost, and there are times when we are weighed down by grief and trouble, I know that the good God is merciful, that it is well to bear the ills we have so bravely as we may, in the firm conviction that faith and a stout heart to hope will conquer in the end.

The sun rose in that lone place upon my misery; and a little after, came the wild men again; and this time they were nine in number, for I counted them as they stepped in single file forth from the darkness of the woods.

They stood gazing at me as before; and now I was wise enough to hold my peace, though by then-if the truth be told-there was little strength within me; for, even as I looked at them, my eyelids dropped and my head nodded on my shoulders like that of a drunken man.

They came closer than ever, to within an arm's length of me, and one timidly extended an arm and touched me, and then drew back quickly as if he had burned his fingers.

I saw now that I had nothing to fear from them, that it was a keen struggle in their untutored minds as to whether fear or curiosity should win. I did my best to smile.

It was a senseless, mirthless smile, forced upon lips that were dry and burning and eyes grown dim throughout long hours of watching and despair; and yet-by the grace of Providence-it achieved its simple purpose.

For, forthwith, like a tribe of monkeys, they set to talking among themselves; and never had I heard such gibberish. They waved their hands, and made mouths and faces at one another that were astonishing to behold. They touched me repeatedly, fingering my tattered clothes; and one tugged so violently at the sleeve of my shirt, which had been torn to ribbons upon the thorn trees in the forest, that he pulled it off almost from the shoulder-and then began the monkey-house again.

The very sight of my white skin, where it had not been tanned by the sun, set them jabbering for the space of half-an-hour; and all that time I kept my silence, fearing that, if I should speak, they would disperse like Sussex rooks at the sound of a farmer's gun.

I had read and heard of fierce savage black men, cannibals and the like, who regarded as their natural foes all of alien race, whom they put horribly to death. But these wild people were shy as antelopes; and though they might have been dangerous if handled wrongly, there was nothing to fear from them in the case of one placed at so great a disadvantage as myself.

I did nothing, then, but let them talk it out; and in the end, one of them took a bone knife with an edge like a saw, and cut through the fibre that bound me to the tree.

The others stood a little apart with their long blow-pipes, ready to riddle me with darts that I learned afterwards were poisoned. But no sooner were my hands freed than I pointed a finger straight down my opened mouth-a gesture which no one could mistake.

That set them talking once again; and when they were through with it, they took me with them back into the woods. In single file we wormed our way through the thick undergrowth of the forest, until at length we hit upon a footpath where they travelled fast and silently, these strange men of the woods. By then my strength was well-nigh exhausted. Both in mind and in body I was come to the end of my powers of endurance; and I could go no farther.

And so, thereupon, they carried me, taking it in turns among themselves to bear my weight, for they were not strong men, but thin of limb and short in stature.

We journeyed until nightfall, and then camped in the forest. They gave me food-roasted manioc and crushed bananas; and then I fell asleep.

At daybreak-though in those dark places we saw little of the sun, and there was small difference betwixt night and morning-we were on the march again, and about midday struck the course of a considerable river which we followed up-stream for a distance of many miles. From this valley we turned into that of a tributary, and reached our destination in the evening.

This was a small village of rude huts, inhabited-as I afterwards discovered-by the various members of a single family. I had walked many miles upon the second day, and found myself on arrival at the village as greatly fatigued as ever, suffering also from a stiffness in the joints, due to the cramped position I had been forced to assume when bound by the liana to the tree. So that after my simple meal that night, I again fell asleep, and slept, I verily believe, as I never did before or since. For not only was I spent and weary, but I had now the comfortable assurance that these wild people would do me no bodily harm. For the time being, at least, I was safe.

CHAPTER XI-I BURN MY BOATS

You may scarce credit it when I say that I sojourned for many months with these savage, yet simple, people, and whilst with them received neither hurt nor insult, but passed my days in pleasant idleness in the heart of those awe-inspiring woods.

I have since described their ways and mode of living to a famous ethnologist, one whose business it was to study the sundry races of mankind; and he believed that I fell into the hands of a tribe of Caishana aborigines, one of the most primitive races in the world.

Of this, however, no one can be sure; for I learned little of their language, and of that remembered nothing. Besides, there are so many hordes of Indians and tribes in the valleys of the Upper Amazon, and of so few of these is anything definite known, even at the present day, that a question of such slight importance, for the time being, may remain unanswered.

It makes, in any case, no difference to my story. I do but state mere facts, leaving footnotes, queries and the like to scientists and students. For five months-as I can guess-I lived with this woodland people; and it pleases me to remember that, in return for their hospitality and kindness, I was able to render them some service. I taught them novel methods of catching the fish that abounded in the rivers, creeks and pools; and I gave them gladly the few belongings that I had upon me, even a large jack-knife, which the chief of the village received with unfeigned delight-for they were so uncivilised as to be altogether unacquainted with the use of iron.

On my side, I learned many things from them, becoming, for instance, skilled in the use of the blow-pipe-a very deadly weapon, since it made no more noise than a pop-gun, and the arrows were invariably dipped in the juice of a poisonous herb that grew plentifully in the forest.

I was much interested in the manufacture of these instruments. Many were of bamboo, but those of the better quality of a hard wood, from which the inside had been patiently scraped by means of a bone knife, until the surface was smooth as glass. Needless to say, to accomplish this, the shaft had to be split into two pieces, which were afterwards joined together. It took a skilled worker weeks to make a blow-pipe. A good specimen was always coveted, and he who possessed one was regarded as a person of importance. I was instructed also in the craft of making the darts or arrows; and this was an accomplishment that, more than once in the course of the next few months, stood me in good stead.

Of the people themselves, of their strange ways and customs, I might write a full chapter, were I so disposed. I have no reason to think that they varied greatly from the majority of the wilder tribes in the great forests of the Amazon. They were small in stature, short-lived, and very dirty. They went well-nigh naked, and many suffered from a particularly loathsome disease, the character of which I know not, save that it left their skin marked black in patches. I feared, at first, that this would prove contagious; but, either my nationality or else my cleanly habits-for I bathed daily in the river-preserved my health and personal appearance.

In regard to my bathing, I can relate a strange thing. It being the rainy season, the river was alive with alligators. I was at first considerably frightened of these horrid reptiles; but I soon discovered that all that was necessary was to beat the surface of the water violently with a stick in order to scare them away. Of course, it was needful to exercise a certain amount of discretion, to keep one's eyes open whilst in the water; and I do not say that there was no danger present. But the fact remains that the South American cayman, one of the most formidable-looking brutes in all the world, is a cowardly beast and by no means greatly to be feared.

If that be so, I have another story to tell concerning the snakes of that dark region; for these I never ceased to fear, and not without good cause. My boots had long since ceased to be of the least practical use, and I had presented them, not without ceremony, to the head man of the village where I stayed. I was obliged therefore to go bare of foot in the forest, like the natives themselves, and day and night I walked in constant peril of my life.

For the underwoods were populous with serpents of all kinds, many of which were venomous. They were usually to be found in the vicinity of water, and amongst them I cannot fail to mention the gigantic tree and water snakes, in whose deadly coils a full-grown man might well be crushed to death. More than once I set eyes upon these great, evil, stealthy monsters; and on each occasion my very blood ran cold. But I have yet to write of what I have called-for no better reason than that there is melodrama in the name-the Glade of Silent Death, where in part the tragedy of all my narrative attains some sort of a crisis-a crisis, at least, for one of whom I dare say more than I would of any other: that he well deserved his fate.

Now, had I been content to eke out the remainder of my years with these untutored people, I should never have beheld the wonders of which I have to tell. I think I realised that if I continued to live as a savage, I must eventually myself become a savage, forgetting all I had ever learned of Christian civilisation. So I made up my mind to take my life into my hands, and set forth alone into the Wild.

Beyond doubt, my ulterior motive was to regain the confines of the civilised world, to hear again the voices of men speaking my own language-even the lazy Sussex twang. But I was moved firstly not so much by a desire for liberty, as by the spirit of adventure. For I had caught something of the rover from John Bannister, as I sat listening to his stories to the soft accompaniment of the wash of the English sea; and I would find out all I could concerning the quest of Amos Baverstock and the secret of the Greater Treasure of the Incas, which the more civilised of the Indians called the "Big Fish."

And so I asked the savages to guide me back to the place where they had found me, within sight of Cahazaxa's ruined temple. Though I never knew but a score of words of their language, I was now proficient in the art of conversing by signs and the drawing of pictures in the mud, as I was also something of a woodsman and-though but a few months older than when I had been kidnapped-no longer a boy, but the beginnings of a man, who was like to have a hard part to play. Life in the wilderness had made me self-reliant. To the wanderer in savage places peril comes naturally enough, and death itself is all in the work of the day.

But it was one thing to ask, and another to receive. The chief man of the community-for it was hardly a village-was all against the project. In the first place, he and the rest of them had grown to be fond of me-I was regarded as both a curiosity and something of an acquisition. Secondly, I soon discovered that they stood in fear and trembling of the ruins, which they firmly believed to be haunted.

Though they might have restrained me by force, we argued the matter out, and it came to a question of will-power-or obstinacy, if the word suit you better-and I had my way.

Accordingly, one morning I set forth into the forest, accompanied by a guide. I was dressed in the remnants of my shirt, tied like a kilt about my waist, and carried a ten-foot blow-pipe and a score of darts; and beyond these I had neither arms nor clothing. I was just a white savage in a great dark wilderness, with my life in my own hands and all Nature at war against me. And I doubt if I can even say that I was white, for I was now tanned almost to the colour of the wild men amongst whom I had lived.

In three days, by easy journeys, my companion and I came to the margin of the woods, to the great plain of waving grass, in the midst of which the Temple of Cahazaxa stood upon a hill-top.

I begged of the man to come with me, to serve me as a servant, making vague promises of reward which I am sure he did not understand; and though, as I could see, the spirit was willing, the flesh was weak; for he fell down upon his knees before me, trembling in all his limbs, craving permission to return.

I could not be heartless. From the tribe I had never received anything but kindness. But permission to be gone was not all the simple fellow wanted; for, when he saw that I was determined to go alone upon my way to the ruins on the hill-top, he again fell down upon his knees, and implored me to return with him.

In so far as I could take his meaning, the old temple was infested by ghosts and evil spirits. Singular things for centuries had been known to happen among those grey, worn stones: weird singing had been heard and strange coloured lights had been seen of nights, and no man of the forest who had ever ventured to the hillock had as yet returned alive.

To speak true, these fables-though I believed no word of them-did but whet my appetite for action. I had a taste for danger. For the first time in my life, I was conscious of my own individuality. Man or boy, I was free. I had a part to play upon the stage of life, and the wide world was my scene. I, too, was upon the same quest as Amos: the hunt for the Greater Treasure. It was as if something within me urged me to go forward, like a knight-errant of old, placing my firm trust in Providence; and I now have little doubt that it was the voice of Destiny that spoke within me.

And so I bade farewell to the forest tribesman, whom I left upon the verge of tears, believing in his heart of hearts that I was as good as doomed; and with a light heart and my blow-pipe, I went my way across the plain, towards the hill upon which stood the ancient Temple of Cahazaxa, whilst the sun was sinking in the sky.

CHAPTER XII-THE PATH OF THE TIGER

It was near upon the time of sunset when I slowly climbed the hill. I could not take my eyes from the great stones before me, many of which must have been at least ten square yards in surface area, and cut so straight and square that, without cement or mortar, they fitted one against the other as nicely as a child's wooden bricks. I wondered how they had come there, by what means they had been transported and lifted into position; and I marvelled that an ancient people should have been masters of such science.

But it was not this alone that caused my footsteps to become slower and slower as I approached the ruin. Despite myself, I could not help remembering much that the wild man had said to me of ghosts and evil spirits.

In the dim evening light, wreathed in the mist that rose from the surrounding plain, those great pillars of cold, silent stone looked not to belong to this world of common things. Towering, as they did, above the tree-tops of the forest, they made me think of the enchanted palaces of which in childhood my mother had read to me from fairy tales. If there were ghosts anywhere in all the world, they were here-and I was sure of that.

This notion got the strongest hold of me; and presently, a cold sweat broke out upon my forehead, and I wished that I were back with the wild men in their woodland village. However, I had more pride than to retreat, and that at the eleventh hour; and I continued to go forward, though something after the manner of a condemned man towards the gallows.

As it grew darker I became more afraid. Night in those tropic latitudes comes suddenly; darkness falls like a curtain upon a stage; and when I had gained the outer pillars, which formed together an encircling colonnade, there was scarce light enough for me to see a distance of thirty yards.

Within the circumference of these outer pillars-which attained upon an average a height of about fifty feet-was a great roofless building with a floor of flagstones, where the silence quite unnerved me. It was more oppressive than the silence of the forest, where I had always been conscious that one was surrounded by Life in a million forms: plants, insects, and animals-all at war that they might live.

But this place seemed dead, save for vast colonies of small red ants whose bite was poisonous; for I had not been there a full minute before I was bitten from head to foot, and there were painful weals all over me.

It was plain I could not sleep amid the ruins as I had intended. Not only would the ants torture me almost to distraction, but the place was uncanny, and I could now well understand how those ignorant woodlanders believed it to be haunted.

I was about to go, and had actually turned towards the main entrance, which I could see quite clearly in the light of the newly-risen stars, when a sound came to my ears that was so like a groan that I felt my blood run cold.

I stood transfixed, more frightened than bewildered. Looking about me on every side, straining my eyes in the semi-darkness, I could see nothing. I was convinced that there was no one in that vast chamber save myself and the red ants. And yet the groan came again, louder than before.

I tip-toed across the room, my heart throbbing like an engine. And like a frightened child, I hid myself in a corner; for I had no convictions any longer, and I wished only to be somewhere where I could not be seen.

Then a spider descended upon me from somewhere high up the wall. And you may laugh at me when I say that I sprang to my feet and dropped my blow-pipe and let out a cry that was very near a shriek. But you would never have laughed had you been placed as I was, seen that spider, and felt upon your shoulders his restless, furry legs. For this was no common spider that eats flies and gnats, but a bird-devouring brute, the size of a saucer; and this is no exaggeration when one takes into account the full extension of his legs.

As I fled, I picked it from off me with my hand, and threw it away; whereupon I found that it had covered my fingers with a disgusting and sticky saliva. I am only thankful that it had no time to bite me, for I believe the bite of these terrible insects has been known to prove fatal. They build webs of such strength and solidity that birds as large as sparrows are caught in the toils and killed; and I have heard it said that these monsters also ascend trees, drive hens from their nests and then devour their eggs.

However, this is no treatise upon Natural History. He who wishes to know more of this horrid creature may read of it in recognised works of science. For myself, to have felt once its quick, hairy legs upon my bare neck and shoulders is enough for many a day, and the thing may belong to any species and genus that it likes, so long as I never set eyes upon one again.

For I was thoroughly scared; I had become as jumpy as a bean on a hot plate. I trust that I am not by nature a coward; but the atmosphere of that ghostly, misty place, the mysterious groans that I had heard, which had seemed to come from nowhere, and the long-legged, furry spider, had all so played upon my nerves that I knew neither what I was doing nor what would happen next.

I had made, in any case, as much noise as a harlequinade. I had cried out at the top of my voice and had sent my wooden blow-pipe rattling to the ground. And then I stood motionless, breathless, waiting-as it seemed-for some new calamity.

This time it was no groan I heard, but a human voice calling, at first loudly, and then more softly, in a strange foreign tongue.

I listened, and I dared not move. The silence that followed endured for minutes, during which the seconds were punctuated by the violent beating of my heart. And, presently, I began to think. As I mastered my fears, I became capable of reasoning.

It was folly to consider ghosts. Such superstitions were well enough for untutored savages, wild men of the forests, but they would never do for Richard Treadgold, who had lived his years in Sussex-though, of a certainty, I had heard of more than one so-called haunted house between Beachy Head and Selsey Bill.

I was convinced that I had heard a human voice. I had been able even to distinguish words, howbeit in a language that I did not comprehend. And if that were so, it must follow that I was not the only human soul within that gloomy ruin.

I looked about me, and saw in the starlight my blow-pipe, lying on the floor. I picked it up, and placing a dart within the mouthpiece, began to explore the place, starting at the wide entrance and making a tour of the walls.

It was not long before I came upon a square hole in the ground, edged with shallow coping stones to keep out the water when the place was flooded by the rains. It reminded me of a hatchway on board a ship.

Below it was quite dark. I lay down upon the floor at full length with the idea of listening: for I was now sure that I was on the track of the secret of the place. But presently my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, and I saw before me a flight of narrow steps, leading downward-as it seemed-into the very bowels of the earth.

I had now mastered my fears. I was determined to be a fool no longer, but to conduct myself like the man I wished I were. I would have descended without a second's thought had it not been for two grave considerations: firstly, I had no means of striking a light; and secondly, the stairway was so narrow that I must leave behind my long Indian blow-pipe, the only means of self-defence I had.

I have set down already much by no means favourable to myself; and therefore I have the less hesitation in recording an incident which goes far to prove that there were moments when I was a worthy pupil and admirer of John Bannister himself. For I went down that black and shallow staircase, half naked as I was and quite unarmed, not knowing what would befall me at the end of it.

Half-way down, the staircase turned, when to my surprise I saw below me the dim reflection of a light. And presently I found myself in a long shallow chamber, where I stood bewildered.

In the centre of the room was a rough stone altar upon which burned an oil lamp of a quaint design and wrought in bronze. Of other such lamps, similar in all respects, I counted five, lying upon the stone flooring, each surrounded by its own pool of oil.

The whole place indeed was in great disorder. Curtains of finely woven hair had been wrenched from the walls and cast upon the ground. Benches and short-legged tables had been overturned, and in some cases broken. Here lay a sword, and there a spear, and here again a pistol, broken at the small of the butt. Nor was all this the worst of it, by any means; for immediately before me, lying in stiff, huddled attitudes-a pathetic and a tragic thing to see-were three stone-dead men, as sure as I first saw the light of day in Sussex.

Dead they were, for they neither moved nor even breathed. And when I sighed aloud at the wonder of it all, a fourth man whom I had not noticed, lying upon the floor at the other end of the room, struggled upon an elbow and cried out to me, and afterwards pointed a finger down his throat.

I was no such fool as to mistake his meaning. He wanted water to drink, and I looked about me to find it. At the foot of the altar was a pool of clear, crystal water, a spring that bubbled from out of the crust of the earth, the overflow being conducted to the far end of the chamber by means of a shallow, wooden trough. I found a drinking vessel which, to my amazement, was of gold; and this I filled in haste, and brought to the wounded man.

For wounded he was, a leg being broken at the thighbone, so that he could not move an inch without suffering the greatest pain. It was this pain I daresay, as much as loss of blood, which had thrown him in a fever; for his skin was burning to the touch.

Three times I filled the cup, and each time he emptied it; and as he drank, he thanked me with his eyes.

Then he lay back and rested, whilst I gazed upon that shambles; for a shambles it was-blood was everywhere.

I went to the dead men, to each in turn, to make sure that there was no spark of life in any. And this was the second time that I looked upon the cold face of death; for, sure enough, each one was dead. And they were shot; they had been killed by leaden bullets: one in the head, another in the heart, whereas the third, poor wretch! had died in agony, with a great wound in his stomach.

But dead though they were, I could not regard them without noticing how different they were in features and in figure from the wild men of the woods.

The savages with whom I had sojourned for so long, for whose simple kindness I shall be ever grateful, were of a Mongolian cast of countenance: they had high cheek-bones, lips thinner than a negro's, and yet thick and loose, and their eyes were almond-shaped, inclining downwards to the nose. Also, their greatly receding foreheads and chins suggested that they belonged to one of the lower and least intelligent species of mankind.

But the three dead men, as well as he who was yet alive, had aquiline noses, thin lips, and rounded eyes. Also they were fully dressed in long tunics of some woven material, open at the throat, and girdled at the waist. They wore their hair long, but cut straight, level with the eyebrows; and above this fringe a broad metal band encircled the head above the ears.

I looked from them to the altar, and saw thereon a graven disc from which rays extended to the extremities of the stone. Beyond doubt this was meant to be the sun; and of a sudden I remembered that the inhabitants of Old Peru had been wont to worship the sun.

So these, perhaps, were those same Peruvian priests of whom Amos Baverstock had spoken, they who shared with John Bannister the secret of the Greater Treasure of the Incas.

And then the truth burst upon me as in a flash-I had struck the pathway traversed by the tiger. The death and destruction by which I was surrounded was the work of Amos Baverstock himself.

I picked up the broken pistol, looked at it in the lamplight, and knew straightway that I had guessed aright. For I recognised it at once. It had belonged to Joshua Trust. It was the same pistol I had seen often in his hands, the one with which he had fired at me upon the Littlehampton road. And if I had had any doubts upon the matter, they would have been dispelled at once; for there were the man's initials, "J.T.," carved with his sailor's jack-knife on the wood.

I just let the broken pistol fall to the ground at my feet; and at the noise, the wounded man, to whom I had given water, struggled again upon an elbow, and spoke to me-in English.