The Rope of Gold, Page 5

  CHAPTER V THE GIANT ON THE WALL

  All that long, tropical day, with the sun burning hot and dry upon him,Curlie Carson had sought for some trace of Johnny Thompson. At the timePompee discovered the break in the top of the fortress he was somedistance away from the Citadel.

  Toward evening he had disappeared into the brush. There, crouching low,like some great, slim cat he prowled along bush grown, vine hung trailslooking for a familiar footprint.

  Long after darkness had fallen, with the golden spot of an electric torchever moving before him, he prowled on.

  Here a surprised covey of wild parrots flew screaming away, and theresome strange creature went scampering down his path. Here he narrowlyavoided stepping on a great lizard asleep in the trail, and there ayellow snake with green eyes that gleamed horribly in the night causedhim to start and shudder.

  At last, at a place some five miles from the Citadel, where two trailscrossed at a sharp angle, he came to an abrupt halt to bend down andexamine the loose, dry soil. Dropping on hands and knees he followed theother trail for a distance of fifty yards or more. Coming upon the drybed of a stream, he halted. There, to all appearance, he found what hesought.

  The bed of the stream was completely dry, but up the bank a little waywas a small damp spot, where in the rainy season a spring flowed. In thisdamp spot were three well marked footsteps.

  "Huh!" he grunted. "Didn't think he'd desert us."

  For a full moment he stood there pondering. Then at last he turned andwalked back toward camp.

  "He wouldn't desert us. Stands to reason he wouldn't," he muttered. "Hemight have discovered a clue. Some native might be leading him on. Butleading him on to what?"

  Curlie didn't trust natives. He had a notion that all people save thoseof his own race were treacherous.

  Arrived at camp, he cast down a bombshell by saying in his quietestdrawl:

  "Johnny's gone into the mountains with a bunch of natives. We'll followin the morning, and we'll take Mike with us."

  Dorn, the French boy, wanted to ask who Mike was, but being timid, andhaving always been somewhat ill at ease in the presence of this peculiarboy, he asked nothing.

  Curlie ate hastily and in silence. Then with a mumbled excuse, he losthimself once more in the night.

  "Strange fellow," said Dorn.

  "Some day mebby _Papa Lou_," said old Pompee, with a shake of his wiseold head. "Plenty understand that one boy."

  A _Papa Lou_ is a native witch doctor of Haiti, a priest of the Voodoocult. Dorn thought it very improbable that Curlie, or, for that matter,any white boy, would turn into a _Papa Lou_. However, realizing thefutility of arguing with an old man, he kept silent.

  With his back against a tree, with the moon gilding the topmost ridge ofthe ancient fortress, the French boy sat wondering in a troubled sort ofway what had become of his good friend Johnny Thompson. Beyond thediscovery of the khaki handkerchief at the bottom of the pitfall, theyhad found no trace of him.

  "He can't have gone away of his own accord," he assured himself. "He istoo honorable for that. He--"

  His reflections were broken short off by the cry of old Pompee:

  "See, _Monsieur_. Only look! Look!"

  Dorn did look and what he saw made his blood run cold.

  * * * * * * * *

  What Dorn saw had nothing to do with Johnny Thompson. For all that Johnnywas having his share of adventure. We left him, as you will know, hidingaway with his captors in a secluded tropical glade. The day was hot. Hehad traveled far. His day dreams may have blended with real dreams. Bethat as it may, he was suddenly startled into complete consciousness by aseries of shrill cries and, as he sprang to his feet, found himself incomplete possession of the field. Every black had fled.

  Hearing a sound in a tree at his left, he turned to see a nativefrantically struggling up the trunk in an endeavor to reach the lowestbranch.

  "The whole bunch has gone mad," he told himself.

  Then, of a sudden his eyes fell upon his quiver of arrows lying on theground. With an instinct of preservation harking back perhaps to thoseremote days when his ancestors dressed in skins and lived by hunting withthe longbow, he reached first for his quiver, then his bow.

  As he reached for the bow, he caught sight of a pair of brown heelsspeeding down the trail.

  Instinctively he turned to look in the opposite direction. That instanthis blood froze.

  Charging straight at him was a creature terrible to look upon. Curlingyellow tusks six inches long, jaws that chopped at every bouncing step, awild boar of the wilderness, savage, mad with rage, red-eyed andterrible, had come tearing out of the jungle.

  One instant Johnny stood there paralyzed, the next, with such automaticprecision as only comes from endless hours of training, his splendidhands did his bidding.

  An arrow flashed into place, the bow string sang taut, the arrow sped tostrike with a dull spat. The mad beast turning half about uttered a lowgrunting roar. The second arrow sped. The wild boar, rearing high andlunging far, fell at the boy's feet, dead.

  For a moment Johnny stood there motionless. The whole affair had beenthrust upon him so suddenly that he had been able to form no plan ofaction, nor indeed to comprehend the meaning of it all.

  "No rifles," he told himself at last, thinking of the natives.

  Of a sudden it came to him that he was master of the situation. More thanone pair of eyes had witnessed the deadly execution of his powerful yewbow. Eight arrows remained in his quiver.

  "Not one of those natives, nor all of them together would dare oppose meso long as I have my bow and arrows," he told himself.

  As proof of this he saw a man in the tree nearest him, a look of abjectterror on his face, staring down at him.

  Seeing the wild creature lying before him and knowing the high placewhich wild pork held in the esteem of the natives, he drew his claspknife to cut the jugular vein and allow the blood to run free.

  Then with a laugh, he tossed his quiver of arrows over his shoulder,gripped his bow and turning walked slowly back down the trail that hadled him to that place.

  * * * * * * * *

  When Dorn was brought to full consciousness by Pompee's grip on his armand his insistent, "Look, _Monsieur_. Only look!" he stared wildly abouthim for a moment. Then, following the direction of the aged native'suplifted and pointing hand, he strained his eyes in an attempt todiscover some unusual sight at the crest of the ancient Citadel.

  For some little time he saw nothing. The distant tum-tum-tum of a nativedrum smote his ears. That was all.

  "The natives," he said in a surprised whisper. "Why are they here?"

  "It is not the natives of to-day." Pompee's voice seemed to come from thedepths of some echoing chamber. "It is a spirit of the past. It is he,the Emperor, Christophe. I have heard. I did not believe. Now I see. Ibelieve. It is he who beats the drum. It is he who walks upon the wall.He has come back to call his scattered people together. For what? Who cansay?"

  The old man was trembling from head to foot, whether from excitement orfear the boy could not tell.

  Just as he finished Dorn's eyes caught the gleam of two red balls oflight. These appeared to be some eight or ten feet above the top of theCitadel.

  "And they move!" he said in a tense whisper. "They move!"

  "_Oui Monsieur_, they move," said Pompee. "It is he. It is Christophe,the great man of Haiti. He has come back to walk the walls of his greatwork, his Citadel, just as he worked there a hundred years ago withtrowel and mortar."

  Dorn was silent. This thing was weird in the extreme. He did not wish tobelieve in spirits. Yet the night, the silent jungle, the deep shadows ofthe fortress so grim and old, the memory of the bloody deeds thatfortress had witnessed worked powerfully upon him.

  Then as he sat there, hands gripped tight, tense, silent, expectant, hesaw the thing clearly. A figure, a very giant of a man,
(or was it aman?) moved forward at the top of the Citadel. The moon had climbed to apoint where it appeared as a yellow ball lying on the very crest of thefortress. And now the giant figure, moving forward, stood out in boldrelief against the ball of gold.

  "It is Christophe," the aged native murmured. Dorn could hear his teethchatter. He was swaying back and forth with a rhythmic motion thatappeared to accompany the distant beating of the drum.

  "And there, there," again Pompee gripped his arm, as the giant figurepassed on, and a shorter one moved into the spotlight that was the fullmoon.

  "There is the bearer of the magic telescope. He was ever with him."

  It was true. A short figure followed the giant as he walked on the wall.

  A moment longer they watched the strange, shadowy pair. Then a cloud,drifting in from the sea, hid the face of the moon and all was shroudedin darkness.

  At that precise moment the drum beats ceased. Silence and darkness hungabout them like a shroud.

  "He is gone," said Pompee. His tone was deep. "He will return. It is asign."

  "A sign of what?" Dorn asked.

  "How should I know? I am but a poor old man. I am not a _Papa Lou_."

  For some time they sat there in silence. Then Dorn said in a quiet tone:

  "Pompee, tell me of the Magic Telescope."

  "There is much to tell, my son." Pompee's tone too was quiet now. "But Iwill tell you a little. When the great Christophe came to be our ruler,men were in the habit of sleeping much in the sun. The fields wereneglected. Weeds and jungle were everywhere and people were very poor.

  "Christophe was a great worker. He was not always a tyrant. In thebeginning he loved his people and dreamed great dreams for them. It wasonly when the love of power and gold had driven out his love of God andthe toiling people that he became a tyrant.

  "At once, when he became emperor, he decreed that all men should workcertain hours every day, except on holidays and Sundays. That this decreemight surely be put into execution he bought himself a great, brasstelescope. This, a brown boy from the hills always carried after theemperor. Many days the emperor wandered far over the hills and themountains. Always the boy and the telescope went with him.

  "On some tall pile of rocks the emperor would stand for hours, looking,looking everywhere. It has always been said that the telescope had magicwithin it; that with it the great man could see hundreds of miles. I donot know. Certain it was that many times a man sleeping in the shadeduring working hours one day found himself in a dungeon or on a chaingang the next. Christophe had seen him from afar."

  "And the telescope?" said Dorn eagerly. "Where is it now?"

  "Who knows, _Monsieur_? Who can say? That was all very long ago. Wheretoo is the 'Rope of Gold'?"

  "Yes, where?" Dorn echoed.

  "But see, _Monsieur_. It is time we sleep."

  Dorn rolled up in his blankets. But sleep did not come at once. Half anhour later Curlie Carson came creeping back to camp and found him stillwide awake.

  "Dorn," Curlie said in a low whisper, "did you see anything to-night?"

  "I saw something that was very strange." Dorn replied.

  "Dorn," said Curlie, "some wise man has written, 'Believe nothing youhear and only half that you see.' That which you have seen to-nightbelongs to the half which is not to be believed."

  Dorn had only the remotest notion of the meaning of these strange words.Yet they brought him a curious sort of comfort.