The Rope of Gold, Page 2

  CHAPTER II THE NATIVE DRUM

  Johnny Thompson was no weakling. He was a football player and alightweight boxer of no mean ability. He had lived clean and taken goodcare of the physical side of his being as every boy should. When theunseen person seized him so suddenly from behind he was down but not outby any manner of means. With a deft twist he freed himself from the graspof his unknown adversary, and, leaping to his feet, struck out with hisright and left with the best of results. His clenched fists landed withdull thwacks. There followed the sound of a heavy body staggeringbackward into the brush.

  Having no desire to do bodily injury to anyone, the boy turned and wouldhave dashed swiftly away had not a dark arm reached out to entwine itselfabout his neck. This startling embrace was followed by a blow on thehead, which left him all but senseless and without further power ofresistance.

  Sinking to the ground he awaited the end. To his great surprise, hediscovered that the end of this particular adventure had already come. Hewas left there alone in the dark.

  Night, jungle night, dark, damp and silent lay all about him. Still buthalf conscious of what went on about him, not daring to move, he laythere quite motionless.

  A moment passed, another and yet another.

  "There is no--no one about," he told himself at last.

  At that, there sounded off in the distance the boom of a native drum; onestroke, that was all, then again jungle silence hung over all.

  "They are a long way off. I must get--get back to camp," he told himselfas in a dream. "Dorn and old Pompee will go out hunting for me."

  He tried to rise. In this he failed. His head whirled. He sank back andmust have lost consciousness for when next his benumbed brain registereda thought, the light of a torch was shining in his eyes and a face wasbefore him. A strange and very curious pair of eyes were looking into hisown.

  The man was incredibly short and broad. He seemed to have scarcely anylegs at all. His face was thin, his nose sharp and very crooked. But hiseyes! Johnny thought he had never looked into a keener pair of eyes. ToJohnny's great surprise, he found that his bruised head had been quitedeftly bandaged. There was a pungent odor of drugs about him.

  "They hit you," the short, broad, little man said in quite amatter-of-fact tone. "Hit you on the head. Good thing I happened along.Gone bad with you. But you're safe enough now."

  Johnny looked into the man's eyes again and wondered who he might be.

  "It was the drum," the strange man went on. "You thumped it, didn't you?"

  "Yes I--"

  "Never thump a native drum here in Haiti. Gets you in trouble, rightaway. If the Marines or native police don't get you, someone else will.Where'd you get the drum, anyway?"

  "It was hanging on a tree."

  "Uh huh! They left it there. Notice how it was made?"

  "No."

  "Cut right out of a log, pretty hard log. Plenty of work to make a nativedrum. Besides, the natives love their drums. I can't say the drums are agood thing. Lot of superstition and wild practices hanging about them.But you can't change people all at once. New ideas will come, the rightsort I mean, even here in Haiti. But it takes time. Haiti's beenpractically ignored by our country for a hundred years. Now we're takinghold.

  "Know what would have happened to the drum if the native police had gotit?" he asked, suddenly fixing his sharp eyes on the boy. "Burst in itshead," he continued, answering his own question. "Split it up forkindling wood. That's what they'd have done. The Marines would have donethe same. You're white like the Marines. Probably these natives thoughtyou meant to burst their drum. That's why they treated you rough. Butyou'll be right enough now."

  "Th--thanks. I--" Johnny did not finish. The strange short, broad man hadvanished into the night.

  "This," Johnny told himself, rising stiffly, "is the strangest island Ihave ever known. You strike a drum on the head and get struck on the headin return. A short, broad, white man, with the skill of a surgeon, comesalong and fixes you up. Who hit me? Who is this curious doctor-like man?Where'd he come from? What's he doing down here? Guess I'd better hurryon back to camp."

  His steps were a trifle unsteady at first. His head hurt. As his bloodwarmed, he got the better of this and in due time walked into anilluminated circle which was the light of his own camp fire, to exclaimas he dropped down beside three shadowy figures:

  "Well, here I am and I've had an adventure."

  "Adventure!" The voice of the speaker was shrill and high-pitched, thevoice of a boy in his early teens. "Tell us about it." This boy was DornMontcalm.

  Dorn Montcalm was the son of a merchant who made his home in one of thehill villages of Haiti. His father, who had the good of the Islandnatives at heart, had taken a great liking to Johnny's aged Professor.They had exchanged many visits. In this way Dorn had become acquaintedwith Johnny. When he learned of the proposed search for the "Rope ofGold" he had begged to be allowed to go along. Permission was granted byhis father only on condition that Pompee, a native servant and a verygiant of a man, be taken along as his bodyguard. Pompee was more thanwelcome for, besides being a man of great physical prowess, he was afamous cook. He knew the value of every native herb, root and fruit. Whenoccasion demanded, he could gather and prepare a delicious repast in theheart of the jungle.

  So they sat there by the camp fire waiting for Johnny's story, CurlieCarson, Dorn and Pompee. The shadow and the spell of the Citadel was uponthem. For some time Johnny did not speak. Their temporary abode, a darkman-made chasm, part of the Citadel, yawned at their back; on either siderose the massive walls.

  "What's happened to your head?" demanded Curlie, suddenly catching sightof Johnny's white bandages.

  "Come to that presently," replied Johnny. "Had a visitor to-night, didn'tyou?"

  "No! Why of course not!" Curlie seemed quite startled.

  "He looked in at your window." Johnny chuckled.

  "He couldn't," Curlie laughed out loud. "It's twenty feet from theground."

  "Then you didn't see him?"

  "Of course not. There was no one."

  "There was," Johnny's tone was serious.

  Curlie Carson leaped to his feet. "What! How--"

  "Hung a rope ladder to the great brass cannon above," Johnny saidquietly. "He climbed down after a while. And after that, quite soon, hesaw something that caused him to do a back somersault off the end of hisladder. Wonder he didn't break his neck."

  "But he didn't?" said Curlie, pacing nervously back and forth.

  "No," said Johnny. "Apparently these natives are like cats--always landon their feet."

  He was surprised at the evident agitation caused in Curlie's mind by thisdisclosure. "What's he cooking up in that dark little laboratory of his?"Johnny asked himself. He recalled the mysterious packages Curlie's burroshad packed up the mountain.

  "Radio is all I can think of," he told himself. "Lots of sense to that.We had a portable outfit complete in a box and decided not to bring it."

  He was to know the answer to all this in due time. For the present it wasto remain the freshest mystery of the grim old Citadel.

  Presently Curlie dropped back to his place beside the fire, which by thistime had burned itself down to a dark red bed of blackening coals.

  "It's all done by the aid of batteries," he mumbled as if speaking tohimself. "Did that visitor of mine come round and try to break yourhead?" he asked, once more staring at Johnny's bandages.

  "No, well,--perhaps, who can tell? It was some native or other."

  Settling back in his place Johnny told of the night's encounter. "Thatproves," he ended, "that some places are not as safe as they seem."

  "And that you may expect a doctor to appear upon the scene at any time,"laughed Curlie.

  "Anyway," said Johnny quite soberly, "he was a handy person to meet. Onlyhope I get an opportunity to repay him."

  Once more silence, the great, ominous, silence of the Citadel hung overall. For a full ten
minutes no one spoke. It was old Pompee who at lastbroke the silence.

  "Once," his deep voice rumbled, "men lay upon the ground as we rest herenow, waiting for sleep to come. There were hundreds, perhaps thousands ofthem, prisoners condemned to toil upon the unfinished walls.

  "And on this night," his voice rolled deep, and solemn, "as they lookedup they saw a single man toiling there, as they had toiled during theday. This man was larger than any one of us, larger than any of them. Andhe was greater than all of them," Pompee continued. "The greatest, mostpowerful ruler Haiti has ever known. He was their emperor. And yet hetoiled there at common labor the long night through. Why?"

  As he paused for an answer he looked away at the distant wall to fancyagain that he saw a figure moving there, to imagine that he caught therhythmic motion of a mason working in brick, mortar and stone.

  "Of course," he went on as no one spoke, "he may have been angry andimpatient at the slow workmen. And yet--"

  "He hid something there," said Dorn.

  "And that?" asked Johnny.

  "Was the 'Rope of Gold'," said Dorn. "It required two men to carry it.But the emperor was a powerful man, the most powerful ever known inHaiti." The French boy's tone became eager, insistent. "He could havewrapped it about him, inside his great purple coat."

  "Yes," said Pompee, giving approval. "And that is what he did. But whereis the 'Rope of Gold' now?"

  To this question none could give answer, though each wished that he coulddo so.

  Once more the silence of shadows and night fell upon them.

  For some time Curlie spread his slim legs before the fire. Then,apparently remembering some forgotten mission, he sprang to his feet.

  "Going down the mountain," he said shortly. "Be late getting back, pastmidnight probably."

  "Look out for the natives," warned Johnny.

  "Natives?" said Curlie. "Natives of Haiti? They wouldn't hurt you."

  "You never can tell." Johnny rubbed his bandaged head.

  Curlie disappeared. The fire burned lower and lower till only a sparkremained. Then, because their musty bedchamber within the grim wallsseemed unusually damp and chill on this night, Johnny and Dorn draggedtheir blankets to a flat open space. There rolling themselves up side byside, with the massive Pompee near by, they prepared for sleep.

  Dorn, the dark-eyed French boy, was soon breathing in the steady way of adeep sleeper. But Johnny could not sleep. Life that day had been strange.He had thought little of this journey in the beginning. True, he hadhoped, boy fashion, that something might come of it; that they might findsomething of real value that would aid the aged Professor in his work. Itwas to be, at worst, a well deserved vacation, a week's experience worthtelling of when he returned to his home in the States.

  But the presence of natives where there had been no natives before,especially of a long-haired bronze type such as he had not seen before,was vaguely disturbing.

  "It's like coming quite suddenly upon a bumblebee's nest," he toldhimself, "only a great deal worse. What can they want? Is there reallysomething hidden here that they know of and do not wish disturbed? Whatwill come of it all?"

  Finding that sleep would not come, he rose at last to begin the ascent ofa flight of stairs leading to the top of the Citadel.

  "Go a little way up," he told himself. "Cool my blood. Dorn's safeenough. There's Pompee to protect him."

  As he began to climb, the bracing night air, acting as a stimulant, drovehim up and up until at last he stood at the very top of the Citadel, onehundred and thirty feet above the ground.

  "Here," he told himself with a quick intake of breath, "Christophe theEmperor stood on that memorable night spreading mortar and laying bricks.And it may be," he caught his breath, "that I am standing at this verymoment above the treasure he buried so long ago.

  "Oh, Christophe!" he exclaimed. "In your younger days, before the love ofgold and power drove you mad, you dreamed great dreams for the good ofyour people. Now, as never before, they need the wealth you hid away inyour time of great might."

  He would have added, "If it be within your power reveal the hiding placeto me now," but somehow a feeling came over him that this would be akinto the wild superstitions that pervaded the land, so he fell intosilence.

  The top of the Citadel is broad and very long; a perfect promenade for amoonlight night.

  Now fancying himself a guard pacing his beat in the silent night, and nowendeavoring to live again the days of long ago, Johnny paced the rampartsin silence.

  Never had there been such a night, and never a lovelier sight in all theworld. At the back of the Citadel distant mountains loomed, blue,indistinct, mysterious.

  Before him he caught the glint of the far away sea. At its shore, heknew, palms grew rank and tall, shading beautiful white stucco homes. Thewater of the sea was blue and clear as the most transparent glass. Greenparrots flitted from tree to tree. And in the evening the mocking birdssing.

  "It's the most beautiful island in all the world," he told himself, as hewalked slowly along with bowed head, "and yet its history is the saddestof all.

  "Columbus found it. He made an earnest attempt to colonize it. Yet itbrought him only sorrow, a dungeon and chains. The French conquered it.It brought them only death. Christophe dreamed dreams. He, too, ended indefeat. And why? Gold! Columbus might have succeeded but the greedySpaniards demanded gold and more gold. He was obliged to enslave thenatives to obtain gold. The French were no better. Slavery has alwaysbrought tragedy.

  "Gold. Christophe was thought of as a hero and a liberator until he fellin love with glittering gold.

  "Gold," he stopped short in his tracks. He was here at this very momentin a search for gold, the 'Rope of Gold.'

  "Ah, yes," he told himself after a moment's thought. "But we want it atleast in part for others, not entirely for ourselves."

  He strolled slowly on. As he did so, he saw in his mind's eye a broadaqueduct running down from the mountain and on out over a desolate,cactus grown plain. It was broken in places, but once it was repaired itwould bring water to thousands of thirsty acres. Not alone that, but itwould bring pure, cold water to those who now traveled far to carryluke-warm water on donkeys' backs.

  "Hundreds die needlessly every year because of the water," the Professorhad said. "If only we had the money for rebuilding the waste places."

  "He must have it," the boy told himself. "Somehow--"

  Of a sudden, he felt himself sinking. His first thought was that he hadwalked off the wall.

  But no, he was in the very center.

  Stones crumbled and glided beneath his feet. He threw his arms out madly.It was no use. Down, down he went.

  He knew on the instant that the unusual had happened.

  "It's a secret opening in the wall," he told himself. "I have found thehiding place of the 'Rope of Gold'."

  "Or you have found death," a voice seemed to whisper. "You are more thana hundred feet above the mountain top."