CHAPTER XV
THE ISLAND

To the dark land on the sky-line, we swiftly drew nearer, and presently saw a low shore where a thread of gleaming white, which came and went, told us unmistakably that great seas were breaking. Of the exact point that we had reached on the coast we still were in doubt, for our charts were poor and Captain North suspected the quadrant of having developed some fault of a nature so technical that I neither understood it at the time nor now remember its name; so we hove to, while Gleazen and Matterson and Gideon North, and eventually Mr. Severance, of whom I saw less and thought more seldom than of any other man in the cabin, put their heads together and argued the matter.

Mr. Severance was a good enough man in his place, I suppose, but he was too indolent and self-centred, and too sleepily fond of his pipe, to command attention.

For all the headway that the four seemed to be making, they might have argued until the crack of doom, as far as I could see, when from the masthead came the cry, "Sail ho!"

Matterson and Gleazen faced about, as quickly as weasels on a stone wall, and Gideon North was not much behind them.

"Where away?"

"Off the larboard bow!"

"What do you make her out?" Captain North demanded.

"As yet, sir, she's too far off to be seen clearly."

I had known that we were sailing dangerous seas, but nothing else had so vividly brought our dangers home to me as did the scene of desperate activity that now ensued. Hoarse orders went booming up and down the decks. Men sprang to braces and halyards. For a moment the foresail, newly let fall, roared in the wind, then, clapping like thunder, it filled, as the men tailed on tack and sheet, and catching the wind, stiffened like iron. Wearing ship, we set every stitch of our canvas, and with a breeze that drove us like a greyhound through the long, swiftly running seas, went lasking up the coast of Africa, as, intently training glasses across the taffrail, we waited to see more of the strange vessel.

Notwithstanding our feverish efforts to elude her, she had drawn slowly nearer, and we made out that she was a schooner and as fleet as a bird. For a time there was talk of the armed schooner Shark, which our own government was reported to have sent out to cruise for slavers.

It was with grim interest that we watched her every manoeoeuvre. Our men forward would constantly turn their heads to study her more closely, and those of us aft kept our eyes fixed upon her. Swift as was the Adventure, it was plain from the first that the schooner was outsailing her in a way that seemed almost to savor of wizardry.

"I swear I can see the hangman's knot in her halyard," Gleazen cried, and roundly braced his oath. "Never before did I feel such an itching on my neck."

At that Gideon North sternly said, "If she's a government vessel, gentlemen, I can assure you that we will not run from her. We have committed no crime; we carry no contraband. It is not government vessels I fear."

"There's reason in that, too!" Gleazen muttered. "Yes, I'd as soon swing, as go over the side with my throat slit." Then, caustically, he added, "No! Oh, no! We've no contraband, you say. So we haven't. But we have enough water-casks for three hundred men, and lumber for extra decks, and shackles and nigger food."

Gideon North flamed red and started to respond angrily; but Matterson, with a sly smile, turned the argument off by saying lightly, "If she's the Shark she's sailing under false colors. See! She's broken out the flag of Spain."

"Humph," Captain North grunted, "she's a trader at best—"

"In either case, Captain North, she is outsailing us, for all our Baltimore bow and grand spread of canvas," Matterson interposed. "But never fear, Captain North, Gleazen and I have a way with us. We have no wish to meet with any ships of war, but from mere pirates and slavers we are not, I beg to assure you, in any great danger."

"Humph! The devil looks well after his own."

"The devil," Matterson retorted with an ironical smile, "is not so bad a master as some men would make him out to be."

Leaning on the rail, we silently watched the swift, strange schooner. Above the horizon, so perfectly did the bright canvas with the sun upon it blend into the background of sky, we could see only the black shadows that appeared on the sails just abaft the masts and stays; but her hull made a clean, bright line against the vivid blue of the sea, and against that same blue the foot of her mainsail stood out as sharp and white as if cut from bone. She continued to gain on us surely all that afternoon, but our apprehensions, which grew keener as she drew nearer, were allayed when she stood out to sea and gave us as wide a berth as we desired. She was a rarely beautiful sight, when, in the early evening, still far out at sea, she passed us; and remembering the Merry Jack and Eleanor in Havana harbor, I could not bear to think that so graceful a craft might carry sordid sights and smells.

After a time, as the light changed, her sails turned to a slate-gray touched with dull blue, and with a great blotch of purple shadow down the middle, where mainsail merged into staysail and foresail, and foresail into jib. So grim, now, did she appear in the gathering darkness, that I could have believed almost anything of her. And now she was gone! Lost to sight! Vanished into the distant, almost uncharted waters of the great gulf! Only the memory of her marvelous swiftness and of the changing light on her sails was left to us—that and the memory of one more angry encounter with Gleazen and Matterson.

That night, while we lay in those long slow seas which roll in upon the African coast, the two spent hours by the taffrail in low-voiced conversation, and Gideon North sat below over his charts and papers, and Arnold and I strolled about the deck, arm in arm, talking of one project and another. But my uncle, Seth Upham, the man who owned the Adventure, paced the deck alone in the moonlight, now with his head bent as if under the weight of a heavy burden, now with his head erect and with an air of what seemed at some moments wild defiance. An odor of tobacco drifted back to us on the wind from where the carpenter and the sailmaker were smoking together, and we heard the voices of men in the forecastle.

When, at daybreak, we resumed our course up the coast, we knew that we were near the end of our journey, for Gleazen and Matterson were constantly conferring together and with Gideon North; and a dozen times in two hours, one or the other of them charged the masthead man to keep a smart lookout.

Now Gleazen would lean his elbows on the rail and search the horizon; now he would hand the glass to Matterson and stride the deck in a fury of impatience. Below, the log-book lay open on the cabin table at a blank page, on which there was a rough pencil-sketch of coast and a river and an island. On a chart, which lay half open across a chair, someone had drawn a circle with a pair of compasses, half on land and half on sea; and when Arnold silently drew my attention to it, I saw that in the circle someone had penciled the same sketch that I had seen on the blank page of the log-book.

Coast, river, and island! We studied the sketch in silence and talked of it afterward.

That evening, for the first time in many hours, we came on Captain North alone by the rail.

"Someone has drawn an island on the chart," said Arnold, slowly.

Gideon North growled assent.

"Well?" said Arnold.

"It would seem that the blithering idiots don't know its bearings within a hundred miles, and yet they expect me to bring it straight aboard. One says thus and so; t'other says so and thus. Gleazen talked loudest and I took his word first—like a fool, for he's no navigator. I'd not put such foolishness beyond Seth Upham, but the others ought to know better. Aye! And they do know better."

"What island?" I demanded.

He shot a keen glance at me.

"Hm! Have they said naught to you?"

"Not a word."

Arnold was smiling.

"Nor to you?" Gideon North demanded, seeing him smile.

"Nor to me."

"Then," said he, "you two know less than I, and I know little enough."

"If you know more than we, pray tell us what you can?"

"After all," said he, "I only know that we are looking for an island, and that when we find it the deviltry is yet to begin—" He smiled grimly. "We'll yet have a chance to see sparks fly from those weapons Gleazen hung in the cabin. I hear he's a clever man at the smallsword."

When he said that, Captain North looked at Arnold and me as if to question us.

"Clever?" I replied. "Yes, he's clever, though—"

I then saw that Arnold was smiling. I remembered seeing him smile when Gleazen and I were fencing on the green. I remembered his saying that he had not been laughing at me. And now he was smiling again!

I stammered with embarrassment and clumsily concluded, "But—but not so very—perhaps not very clever."

In the waist I heard Gleazen call in a low voice, "Masthead! You there, wake up!"

"Ay-ay, sir," came the man's reply.

"Not so loud," said Gleazen. "Have you seen no lights—no land?"

"No lights, sir, and no land but the coast yonder, which we've seen these two days."

I could just make out that Gleazen was leaning on the bulwark and staring into the northeast.

"Did you hear that?" Captain North asked in a whisper.

We both had heard it.

"I'm thinking," Captain North presently muttered, "that we're like to see more land than will be good for us. Mark the sky to westward."

It was banked with clouds.

The island, when we found it, which we did early next day, proved to be low and flat and marshy. Behind it, exactly according to the sketch in the log-book and on the chart, lay the mouth of a river. On the mainland in each direction, as far as we could see, and on the bar at the mouth of the river, and on the outer shore of the island, which seemed to be in the nature of a delta, although with deep water behind it where the flow of the river appeared to have kept a Y-shaped channel open, a great surf broke with muffled roar; and in the channel a ruffle of choppy waves indicated that stream and tide combined to make a formidable current.

As we bore down on it, Gleazen and Matterson and Seth Upham drew apart and stood smiling as they talked together in undertones. But Captain North and Mr. Severance and some of the older sailors were studying sky and wind and currents, and their frowns indicated that much was amiss.

To me, watching Gleazen and Matterson, it seemed strange that men who but a little while ago had been so fiercely eager should all at once become as subdued as deacons before the communion table; and it was only when I edged around until I could see Gleazen's face that I suspected the wild glee that the man was restraining. The light in his eyes and the change in his expression so fascinated me that for the moment I almost forgot Arnold Lamont and Gideon North and the alliance that bound us together, almost forgot my poor uncle and his wild hopes, almost forgot the very island whose low and sedgy shores we were approaching.

"Gentlemen," cried Captain North,—his voice startled me as much as those whom he addressed,—"would you wreck this vessel by keeping me here on a lee shore with heaven only knows what weather brewing? Look for yourselves at those clouds in the southwest. If this harbor, of which you were talking yesterday, is within fifty miles of us, we must run for it. If not, we must stand off shore and prepare to ride out the storm."

"The harbor, Captain North," Matterson returned, his light voice hard with antagonism, "is much less than fifty miles from here. You will lay by for one hour while we go ashore on that island yonder; then I will pilot you to harbor."

"Mister Matterson!" said Captain North calmly, turning on the giant of a man beside him, "are you mate or master?"

"Captain North," Matterson very quietly replied, "I am mate of this vessel, and as mate I do not dictate. Have I not worked faithfully and well on this voyage? Have I not carried out every order of yours?"

It was true, for to the surprise of Gideon North and Arnold and myself, he had made a first-class mate.

"But I also am a friend of the owner and as friend of the owner, I spoke just now, forgetting my place as mate, I ask you to pardon me."

In his words and his manner there was something so oily and insincere that from the bottom of my heart I distrusted him, and so, obviously enough, did Gideon North. But the man's sudden change of front took the weapons, so to speak, out of the captain's hands; and before he could reply Matterson said, "Mr. Upham, what are your wishes in the matter?"

I looked first at my uncle, then I looked back at Matterson, and as I looked at Matterson, I caught a glimpse over his shoulder of Neil Gleazen, who was staring at Uncle Seth with a scowl on his brow and with his lips moving. Turning again to my uncle, I once more saw on his face, now so weak, the pathetically timid expression that I had come to know so well.

"If there's no immediate danger—" he began.

"There's none at all!" Matterson and Gleazen cried with one voice.

"Then let us go ashore, say for merely half an hour."

Captain North, with a shrug as of resignation, put the trumpet to his lips and gave orders that brought the brig into the wind with sails ashiver.

"Come, lads," Gleazen cried to Arnold and me, "the more the merrier."

So into the boat we climbed, and I for one was pleased to find that Abe Guptil had an oar.

It was about half a mile from the brig to the island, and when we reached it and hauled out the boat, I pushed ahead of the others. Climbing from the edge of the water up the little incline at the head of the beach, I saw first of all, on the farther shore a quarter of a mile away, the ribs and broken planking of a wrecked ship. Then, before I had taken another step, I saw some little creature running through the grass and looked after it eagerly, to discover what strange kind of animal would inhabit so barren and remote an isle.

At first I saw only that the animal was long and gray. Then it came out into plain sight, and I saw that it was a rat—an ordinary rat such as I had seen by the hundreds in old barns and in old ships. And how, I wondered, had an ordinary rat, such as might slink along the wharves at Boston, come to live on that lonely island? Before an answer occurred to me, I saw another running away in a different direction, and another and another. I stopped short and looked about me. Here, there, everywhere were rats. The island was peopled with them. With big gray rats! Then I looked at the bones of that wrecked ship, which stuck up out of the water, and knew that I had found the answer to my question. They were rats from that ship; they had come ashore when she was wrecked.

What they lived on, I never knew; but there they had flourished and multiplied and formed in the midst of those blue seas a great rat empire.

"Rats!" I heard Gleazen exclaim. "Pfaw! How I hate them!"

Throwing sticks ahead of him to drive away the lean, gray vermin, he started across the marshy land toward the old wreck, and the rest of us fell in behind him.

Of us all, Matterson showed the least repugnance for the multitude of snaky little beasts that swarmed around us at a distance and watched us with angry eyes as black as shoe buttons.

And now we came to the wreck and saw a sight that filled me with horror. In the hold, into which we could look through holes between the ribs and between the beams where the waves had torn away the spar deck, there were five human skeletons chained by their ankle-bones to the timbers. Yet, so far as there was any outward sign, I was the only one to see the skeletons.

Matterson and Gleazen looked long and sadly at the old hulk, and Gleazen finally said, "She's done for and gone, Molly. There's not a thing left about her that's worth salving."

Matterson gloomily nodded. "Mr. Upham," said he, "we lost two hundred prime niggers that night."

I turned away from them, as they stood there talking, and went back to the boat. It would be good, I thought while I waited, to leave the island forever.

Whatever the outcome of their talk may have been, the rising wind presently brought them back to the boat in a hurry. We launched her, and tumbled aboard, drenched from head to foot, and after a lively struggle came up alee of the brig. It was plain that we must soon seek shelter, for already the storm was blowing up and the waves came charging down upon us in fierce, racing lines.

"Yonder island," Matterson was saying, at the same time marking a diagram on the palm of one hand with the forefinger of the other, "yonder island is part of the delta of the Rio Polo. It runs so—and so—and all but the island is washed away. You see, do you not, gentlemen? If Captain North will run straight so,—northeast by east, say,—holding his bearings by the angle of ripples where you see the current veer, and when we are four cables' lengths from the breakers give me the wheel, I will take her over the bar."

"Mr. Matterson—"

"The responsibility is mine, Captain North, by the owner's orders."

"Ah, Mr. Upham," said the captain, with a wry smile, "and is this the kind of support you give me?"

Not one word did my uncle say.

I had seen Pedro's monkey for a while playfully swinging from rope to rope and later scratching its ear as it sat on the companion hatch; but I had not seen it go below, nor had any of the others. To this day no one knows just how it evaded us, for it was forbidden the cabin, and every man on board had orders to head it off if it showed any inclination to go there. Yet the mischievous beast did slip below, and for once succeeded in catching Willie MacDougald off his guard.

Willie, it seems, had been engaged in the praiseworthy occupation of spying on Neil Gleazen, and had one eye firmly fixed to the keyhole of the cabin door when the monkey calmly jabbed teeth and claws into the luckless boy's leg.

His yell startled every man on deck; but far more than it startled us did it startle the man in the cabin, who had thought himself safe from peeping eyes.

First we heard Willie yelling with all the power of his brazen little throat; then the cabin door was flung open with a bang; then suddenly Willie and the monkey literally flew out of the companionway and alighted on deck.

The fall was short and neither was much hurt. But when each tried to escape from the other, both started to run in the same direction and Willie, tripping, fell on the monkey. At that, the monkey grabbed Willie's head with its front claws, raked its hind claws across his face, then snatching out two good handfuls of hair, fled triumphantly aloft.

Gleazen burst out on deck at that very instant, and seeing nothing of Willie who—luckily for him!—had fallen out of sight round the corner of the cabin, started into the rigging, swearing to skin the monkey alive.

Meanwhile Matterson was like to have died laughing at Willie MacDougald,—and, indeed, so were the rest of us!—for between anger and fear, and with half a dozen long scratches across his cheeks, he was in a sad state of mind. I tell you, any ideas of his innocent childhood that we may have entertained completely vanished before the flood of oaths that the little wretch was pouring out, when Gideon North collared him and sent him below with stinging ears.

And now, since all that takes so long to tell happened quickly, the breakers were close aboard, when Gleazen, who had followed the scapegrace monkey to the mizzen royal yard, roared in that great voice of his:—

"Sail ho! By heaven, there's a cruiser in the offing."

He came down the rigging like a cat, bawling orders as he came, and at the same time Gideon North was giving counter-orders. It seemed for a moment that in that scene of confusion, which suddenly from comedy had changed to the grimmest of grim earnest, we should go on beam-ends into the surf.

Seas such as I had never dreamed of were breaking on the bar before us. Overhead a storm was gathering. In the offing, it was reported, there sailed a strange and hostile ship. And in the brig Adventure there were contradictory orders and tangled ropes and men working at cross purposes.

Say what you will against Matterson in most respects, in that emergency he was the man who saved us. Throwing the helmsman from the wheel so violently that he fell clean over the companion ladder and down to the spar-deck, he seized the wheel and cried in a voice as hard as steel, "Gleazen, be still! Be still, I say! Now, Captain North, with head yards aback and after yards braced for the starboard tack, we'll make it."

Captain North, with an able man at the wheel,—to pay the devil his due,—gave orders in swift succession and the brig came back on her course and rose to meet the breakers. How Matterson so surely and confidently found the exact channel, I do not know. But this I do know: he took the brig in through the breakers without the error of as much as a hair's breadth, straight in along the channel, with never a mark to guide him that I could see, except the belt of tidal chop and the eddies of the intermingling currents, to the comparative quiet of the mouth of a river that led away before us into the mazes of vast swamps and tangled waterways, where mangroves and huge interweaving, overhanging vines and sickly sweet flowers grew in all the riotous luxury of tropical vegetation.

To me the calm river seemed an amazing haven from every danger that we had encountered outside. But not so to Matterson.

Looking back at the thundering breakers, he thoughtfully shook his head.

"Well," said Gleazen significantly, "if worst comes to worst, we can fight."

"If worst comes to worst."

"Well?"

Matterson shook himself like a dog. "It's the niggers," he said in a low voice. "If them infernal witch doctors get wind of us!"

Gleazen stared a long time into the mangroves.

"It ain't as if we could take an army," Matterson continued. "We've got to take only them we know—know, mind you. What'd our lives be worth if all these here—" he waved his hand at the crew forward—"if all these here knew. It would pay 'em well to knock us on the head."

Still Gleazen stared silently into the tangled swamp.

"It would pay 'em well," Matterson repeated.

CHAPTER XVI
STRANGEST OF ALL

Even had I not suspected already that Matterson had brought vessels into the mouth of that river many times before, I could not have doubted it after seeing him bring the Adventure through the narrow channel across the bar, and up to the mouth of the river itself. I marveled that, having been more than a year away from it,—how much more than a year I did not know,—he dared even attempt the passage. But whatever his faults, indecision and fear were not among them, and he had justified his bold course by bringing us safely within the sheltering bar, where the lookouts reported minute by minute every movement of the suspicious distant sail, which approached until from the deck we could see her courses, and then wore ship to haul off shore before the storm caught her.

"Bah! The cruising curs!" Matterson scornfully exclaimed. "Captain North, shall I continue to serve as pilot and take the brig up the river?"

"Since up the river it seems we are to go," Captain North returned stiffly, "I place the helm and all responsibility in your hands, Mr. Matterson." With that he folded his arms and, with a nod to Seth Upham, withdrew to the weather-rail.

My poor uncle!

Never was there merer figurehead than he as owner of the brig Adventure. It was pathetic to see him try to maintain his dignity and speak and answer smartly, even sharply as of old, when every man on board knew that if that reckless, high-handed pair, Gleazen and Matterson were at any time to cease tolerating him, his life would be worth no more than the flame of a snuffed candle. He must have been perfectly well aware of the weak part he had played, yet he held up his head and boldly returned Gideon North's glance and nod.

Meanwhile Matterson had climbed to the masthead and with glass at eye was studying the stranger. Now he came slowly down again, and said to Gleazen, "She's bearing off in good faith to ride out the storm, Neil. What say? Shall we anchor here behind the bar?"

Gleazen shook his head.

"There's fair shelter," Matterson persisted.

Gleazen waved his hand at the black sky. "But not shelter enough," he said.

"If we go up the river," said Matterson in a low voice, "the news will spread from here to the hills."

Gleazen smiled unpleasantly. "Look off the larboard bow," he said.

We all turned, as did Matterson, and I for one, at first, saw nothing except the vines and great trees on which fell the shadows of the premature twilight that foreran the storm. But Matterson cried out, and Arnold Lamont, seeing my blank expression, touched my arm and pointed at a dark lane of water and said, "See—there—there!"

Then I saw something moving, and made out a canoe. In the canoe was a big black negro, with round eyes and flat nose and huge, puffed-out lips. The negro was paddling. Then I saw something else. I could not believe my eyes. I turned to the others, and knew by their faces that they and Arnold had seen it, too, and that Seth Upham had not.

Then Gleazen, who was looking hard at Matterson, said with an oath, "The beer is spilt. It's up the river for us."

And Matterson nodded.

In that canoe, which had already swiftly and silently disappeared among the mangroves, I had seen a white girl.

I cannot describe her to you now as she then appeared in the canoe, sitting in front of the great, black canoeman. It was long ago, and even at the time I was so startled, so amazed, that I saw only her white face and great dark eyes looking out at me from the shadowy recesses of the swamp.

I felt as if I had been set down suddenly in the midst of a fairy story. I strove against a sense of mystery and danger, a thousand vague terrors.

I cannot tell you what the girl looked like; yet, though I seem to deal in contradictions, I have never forgotten that white frightened face and those dark eyes, which had disappeared as mysteriously as they had come.

Then, as the sails filled and the Adventure fell off and got steerage-way and slipped up the great, swift river, Matterson spun the wheel with his own hands this way and that.

At first the shores were low and sedgy and covered deeply with mangroves; but soon the river widened into a vast mirror, in which we saw reflected towering trees of numberless varieties, with a trailing network of vines and flowers, and from among the leaves, which were unbelievably large, spears of bamboo and cane protruded. As the wind at our backs drove us slowly up stream, notwithstanding the swifter current where we passed through the narrows, we saw plantains, bananas, oranges, lemons, and tall palms. Then between the trunks we saw fields of rice; and then, as we turned a bend where the river once more widened, we saw a settlement before us.

In the centre of a clearing stood low houses built of cane and thatched with grass, mud huts grouped here and there, and a large enclosure for some purpose of which I was ignorant. Could the girl I had seen in the swamp have come thither? On all sides people were running this way and that, some of them white, but most of them as black as midnight. So small did the settlement appear, and so sharply was each figure outlined, that it looked for all the world like a toy village in a shop window, or like such a tiny model of a foreign town as sailors sometimes bring home from distant ports.

As the anchor gripped the bed of the river, and the men, spraddling out on the footropes and leaning over the yards, clewed up the sails and hauled in the great folds of canvas, the Adventure brought up on her cable and lay with her head into the current.

Matterson and Gleazen who had ordered a boat launched and were standing in the gangway, now turned and called to Uncle Seth, who responded by walking toward them with as haughty a manner as if he were heart and soul in their councils and their plans. All three of them got into the boat and there talked for a while in undertones. Then they called Willie MacDougald to come tumbling after them, and all together they hastily went ashore, where I saw that a crowd had gathered to meet them; then the storm, which had so long been threatening, broke with a roar of wind and rain, and Arnold and I, going below, had the cabin for a time to ourselves.

Arnold sat down by the cabin table and looked around at ports and doors, and at the dueling swords on the bulkhead, and up at the skylight on which the storm was fiercely beating.

"You, too," he said, with a quiet smile, "you, too, Joe, look around at the cabin of this good brig. It has not been a pleasant place to live, but I do believe there are times coming when we shall wish ourselves back again in this very spot."

"And what have you learned now of our friends' plans?" I asked.

"One does not have to learn so much, Joe."

"But what?"

Arnold, I knew, was smiling at my impatience, although the light was so nearly gone that I saw him, when he bent forward, only as a deeper shadow in the darkness. Yet the ports and the skylight still were clear enough to be reflected in his eyes when he leaned very close to me, and whatever his doubts, I saw that he showed no sign of fear.

"They talked yesterday and to-day—in Spanish—of the men they call Bud and Bull, who share the secret that has brought us all the way from Top—Hark!"

Arnold half rose. I myself heard a soft step. When Arnold lifted his hand I saw his knife, now drawn, so far as I knew, for the first time in apprehension of treachery. Then the step—so soft and low—sounded again. I reached for my own pistol. The sound was repeated yet again. It was just outside the door. Then into the cabin crept a low ambling creature, which we both knew at once must be Pedro's monkey.

Arnold laughed quietly and sat down again and breathed deeply.

"They have discovered—something," he whispered, as if we had suffered no interruption.

"That I know well," I said. "But what?" I believed that I, too, had ferreted out the secret, but I was not yet willing to hazard my surmises.

"Sh!" He raised his hand to warn me. "Do you not guess?" he whispered. "Try! Until they have got what they have found to the sea, you and I are safe. They must have men to help them who will not turn and rob them. They do not believe in the saying about honor among thieves."

"Come," I cried, "stop speaking in riddles. Tell me!" Then, thinking of Cornelius Gleazen as I first had seen him, with the rings flashing on his fingers, I popped out a word that began with D.

Arnold smiled and nodded.

"Well," I returned, "speak up and tell me if such a voyage as we have come upon is not a far-fetched manner of approaching such an errand as you have described."

"In a sense, yes. In a sense, no. They are after other things, too. This good vessel, as we have remarked before, is well found for the trade."

Suddenly, he gave me a start by beginning to whistle a lively tune and to drum on the table. His quick ear had detected another step in the companionway. As the step drew near, the monkey, which in our absorption we had quite forgotten, pattered toward the door and slipped out.

"What's that? Who's here? Who passed me then?" It was Captain North.

Arnold struck a spark into tinder and lighted a candle.

"And what, pray, are you two doing here in the dark?" the captain demanded.

"We are passing time with talk of our good friends, Gleazen and Matterson," said Arnold.

With an angry exclamation, Captain North took the chair opposite us.

"Well," said he, "matters have turned out as any sane man might have known they would. That precious little scamp of a cabin boy will tell you no more tales, Lamont."

"You mean—"

"I'll wager half my wages for the voyage that you and I have seen the last of him. The monkey betrayed the little scamp after all."

Although I knew that Willie MacDougald's innocent and childlike face masked a scheming, rascally mind, I could not so calmly see the little fellow go, soul and body, into the power of such men as Gleazen and Matterson, or perhaps worse; and although neither Arnold nor Gideon North, appraising Willie at his true worth, cared a straw what became of him, I was so troubled by his probable fate that I did not listen to the others, who were talking coolly enough about our own predicament, but, instead, got up and walked around the cabin.

It seemed very strange to listen to the roaring wind and driving rain and yet feel the brig lying quiet underfoot in the strong, deep current of the river. Now I sat down and listened to a few sentences of their talk; now I got up and once more paced the cabin. For a while I thought about Willie MacDougald; then I thought of the dangers that surrounded us all, and of poor Uncle Seth, once so bold and arrogant, now become little better than a cowardly, pitiful wretch; then I thought of the girl I had seen in the jungle, and strangely enough the memory of her face seemed at once to quiet my wilder fancies and to enable me to think more clearly than before.

Becoming aware at last that the storm was passing, I went on deck and saw lights in the clearing where the houses stood. The wind, which had come upon us so suddenly and so fiercely, was subsiding as suddenly as it had arisen, and a deep calm pervaded river, clearing, and jungle. I had not waited ten minutes before I heard the boat on the water.

"I swear," I heard Gleazen say in an angry, excited voice, "I swear they're lying to us. Bud'll tell us. News travels fast hereabouts. Bud'll be here soon."

They came on board, one at a time, all but Willie MacDougald. Of him there was neither sign nor word. I started forward to question them, then stopped short. Something in their attitude froze and repelled me. Of what use were questions—then, at any rate? For a moment they waited in the gangway, then, all together, they went aft.

Leaving them and moving to the farther side of the brig, I looked a long time into the dark, tangled jungle. The clouds had gone and the stars had come out and the dying wind spoke only in slow, distant soughs among the leaves. So blackly repellent was the matted and decaying vegetation, through which dark veins of stagnant water ran, and so grimly silent, that I could not keep from shuddering with a sort of childish horror. Surely, I thought, human beings could not penetrate such depths. Then, almost with my thought, there came across the dark and fever-laden waters of the great swamp, out of the black jungle night, a thread of golden melody. Someone in that very jungle was whistling sweetly an old and plaintive tune.

I heard the three, Gleazen, Matterson, and my uncle, turn to listen. By lantern light I saw their faces as they looked intently toward the jungle. So still had the brig now become, that I actually heard them breath more quickly.

Then Neil Gleazen cried, "By the Holy, that's either Bud O'Hara or his ghost."

With both hands cupped round his mouth, he was about to send a hoarse reply roaring back across the river, when Matterson clutched his hand.

"Be still," he whispered. "Here's the answer."

And he, in turn, sent back the answering phrase of that singularly mournful and haunting ballad: "I Lost my Love in the Nightingale."

CHAPTER XVII
THE MAN FROM THE JUNGLE

Very slowly Matterson whistled that old tune, "The Nightingale," and very slowly an answer came back to us; then a long silence ensued. The black water of the marsh rose and fell. We could hear it whispering softly as it washed against the tangled roots of the mangroves, and once in a while I could distinguish the long, faint rasp of some branch or vine that dragged across another. But except for those small noises, the place was as still as a house of death; and as we watched and waited, the feeling grew upon me that we must be in the midst of a dream.

Then something moved and caught my eye, and a canoe silently shot out upon the river. With a swish and swirl of paddles, she came alongside us and stayed for a moment, like a dragon-fly pausing in its flight, then shot silently back the way she had come. I had seen against the water that there were three men in the canoe when she came; but when she slipped back into the mangroves, I saw that there were only two.

Before I had time to question the reason of all this, I saw a man's head rise above the bulwark and knew that he had sprung from the canoe to the chains while the little craft so briefly paused.

Climbing over the bulwark and dropping to the deck, the man said in low, cautious voice, "Is it Neil I've been hearing? And Molly?"

"Here we be, Bud, us two and Seth Upham."

"And sure, do this fine vessel be ours, Neil?"

"Ours she is, along with Seth Upham. Come, Bud, here is Mr. Upham, who has joined in with us and gets a half-and-half lay, and here—"

"O Neil," the mysterious newcomer drawled, "would he be comin' for naught short of half shares? And where's Molly? Ah, Molly, you've been long away."

They all were shaking hands together.

"And now," said Matterson, "what news of Bull?"

"Of Bull, is it?" the man replied. "Sure, he's sitting on the chest o' treasure. Warnings they give us, that the hill is haunted and all such. Spirits, you know, Neil; spirits, Molly. Sure the niggers know more about them things than we do—indeed they do. It's not I would go agin them rashly. But I fixed 'em, lads."

"How?" asked Matterson softly.

"Bull laughed at them fit to kill,—which is his way, as you'll remember,—but not I. Says I, 'Laugh if you will; 't is well to be fearless since you're the one to stay.' But I did for him better than the stiff-necked rascal would do for himself. That night I hunted me out an old master wizard and paid him in gold, and didn't he give me a charm that will keep spirits away?"

To hear a sober white man talk of charms with all the faith of a credulous child amazed me. I had never dreamed there could be such a man. Pressing closer, I took a good look at this queer stranger, and saw him to be a short, broad fellow, with a square jaw and a face so intelligent that my amazement became even greater.

He, in turn, saw me looking at him, and half in a drawl, half in a brogue, asked, "Now who'll this one be?"

"He's the young man that came with Mr. Upham," Gleazen replied.

"Is he fearless?" asked the strange Bud. "And is he honest?—Aye," he rather testily added, "and is he, too, to share half-and-half?"

To that Gleazen returned no answer, but the man's tone made me think of Gleazen himself roaring drunk and staggering away from Higgleby's barn, of Matterson with his voice hardened to a cutting edge, of the master of the Merry Jack and Eleanor, and of the adventurous night when we parted from poor Sim Muzzy. I tell you honestly, I would have given every cent I had in the world and every chance I had of fortune to have been fifteen hundred leagues away.

Turning to Matterson, the man went on: "'T is not discreet for the like o' you two to come sailing in by broad daylight with all sail set. Now why couldn't ye ha' come in a boat, say, and let the brig lie off the coast. Then we could 'a' met secret-like and 'a' got away and up the river with no one the wiser. Sure, and there's not a soul in a thousand miles, now, that ain't heard a tale o' Neil and Molly."

"The storm was hard upon us," said Matterson.

"And a cruiser lay in the offing," said Gleazen.

"It would be possible, then," the man returned, "that ye're not as big—not quite as big fools as I took ye to be."

Then, as if all had been arranged beforehand, while Matterson and the strange man and Uncle Seth went below to the cabin, Gleazen took me by the arm and led me away from the others.

"Joe," he murmured,—and I saw a new, eager glint in his eyes,—"Joe, there's great times coming. I've made up my mind I can trust you, Joe, and I'm going to make you my lieutenant. Yes, sir, I'm going to make you an officer."

I wondered what kind of story he would tell next, for by this time I knew him far too intimately to be deceived by his brazen flattery. It was singularly trying for me, man grown that I was, to be treated with an air of patronage that a stripling would have resented, and there were moments when I was like to have turned on Gleazen with a vengeance. But I waited my time. It was not hard to see that my patience need not endure interminably.

"You, Joe, are one of us," he continued, "and we're glad to take you into our confidence. But these others—" he waved his hand generally—"we can't have 'em know too much. Now we're going to-night to get things sized up and ready, and what I want to know, Joe, is this: will you—as my lieutenant, you understand—take Arnold and Mr. Severance and Captain North ashore to call on Mr. Parmenter?"

"But who," I asked, "is Mr. Parmenter?"

"He's an Englishman, Joe, and if you can sort of convey to him—you know what I mean—that we're after hides and ivory, purely a matter of trade, it'll be a good thing, Joe. Mind you, as my lieutenant, Joe."

Never had I been so Joe'd in all my life before. When Gleazen had gone, I fairly snorted at my sudden and easy honors. Evidently he told much the same story to the others, except Captain North, with whom Gleazen himself very well knew that such a flimsy yarn was not likely to prevail, and to whom Uncle Seth, accordingly, entrusted some genuine business; and half an hour later we gathered at the rail to go ashore.

"Now, then," Captain North said peremptorily, in such a way that I knew he was entirely unaware of my recent appointment as Gleazen's lieutenant, "now then, lads, into the boat all hands together."

"One moment!" I cried. "I forgot something." And with that I ran back.

In changing my jacket in honor of the call we were to make, I had left my pistol behind me. Of no mind to put off without it, I hurried down to my stateroom.

Passing through the cabin, I saw that the four men, Gleazen, Matterson, the strange Bud, and my uncle, were drawing up around the great table, on which they had carelessly thrown a pack of cards. They gave me frowns and hard looks as I passed, and I heard them muttering among themselves at the interruption; but with scarcely a thought of what they said, I left them to their game.

No sooner had our boat crunched on the shore than on all sides black figures appeared from the darkness, and landing, we found ourselves surrounded by negroes, who pressed upon us until we fairly had to thrust them back with oars. It was the first time I had set foot on the continent of Africa, and the place and the people and the circumstances were all, to my New England apprehension, so extraordinary and so alarming that I cast a reluctant glance back at the dim lights of the Adventure. But now a door opened, and I saw in the bright rectangle a white man in European clothes; and we went up and shook his hand,—which seemed for some reason to displease him, although he did not actually refuse it,—and were ushered into a large room with a board floor and chairs and tables and pictures, for all the world as if it were a regular house.

"Under some circumstances I should no doubt be glad to meet you, gentlemen," he said, with cold reserve, "for no ship has visited us for more than three months. But we hereabouts are not friendly to slavers."

"Nor are we," Gideon North retorted.

"I think, sir," said Arnold Lamont, soberly and precisely, "that you mistake our errand."

He looked at us a long time without saying more, then he quietly remarked, "I hope so."

His cold, measured words repelled us and set us at an infinite distance from him.

We looked at one another and then at him, and he in turn studied us.

We four—for Mr. Severance had accompanied us, although as usual he scarcely opened his mouth—saw a man whose iron-gray hair indicated that he was a little beyond middle age. The lamp that burned beside him revealed a strong, rather sad face; the book at his elbow was a Bible. It came to me suddenly that he was a missionary.

"You give us chill welcome, sir," said Gideon North. "What, then, will you have us do to prove that we are not what you believe us?"

"Your leaders who were here a little while ago," our host replied, "tried their best to prove it—and failed. Indeed, had I not seen them, I should more readily believe you. It is not the first time that I have seen some of them, you must remember,"

Gideon North bit his lip. "Have you considered," he asked, "that we may not be in accord with them?"

"A man must be known by the company he keeps."

"We are in neither sympathy nor accord with them."

"It is a virtue, sir, no matter what your circumstances, to be at least loyal to your associates. If you so glibly repudiate your friends, on what grounds should a stranger trust you?"

At that Gideon North got up all hot with temper. "Sir," he cried, "I will not stay to be insulted."

"Sir," the man returned, "I have insulted, and would insult, no one."

"Of that, sir," Gideon North responded, "I will be my own judge."

"Captain North," said Arnold, "have patience. One moment and we—"

Turning in the door, which he had reached in two strides, our captain cried hotly, "Come, men, come! I tell you, come!"

Mr. Severance followed him in silence; Arnold stepped forward as if to restrain him, and I, left for a moment with the missionary, turned and faced him with all the dignity of which I was master.

"I am sorry that you think so ill of us," I said.

"I am sorry," he replied, "to see a youth with an honest face in such a band as that."

I could think of no response and was about to turn and go, when I suddenly remembered our lost cabin boy.

"Can you, in any case," I asked, "tell me what has become of our cabin boy, Willie MacDougald?"

"Of whom?"

"Of Willie MacDougald—the little fellow that came ashore to-day?"

"Did he not return to the brig?"

"No."

The man stepped forward.

"No," I repeated, "I have not seen him since."

"Then," he returned, "you are not likely ever to see him again."

"What do you mean?" I demanded. "What has happened? Where is he?"

Getting no answer, I looked around the room at the chairs and tables and pictures,—they had an air of comfort that made me miserably homesick,—and at the well-trimmed lamp from which the light fell on the Bible. Then I turned and went out into the darkness.

What had befallen that hardened little wretch? Where under the canopy of heaven could he be? I cared little enough for the mere fate of Willie MacDougald; but as a new indication of the extremes to which Matterson and Gleazen would go, his disappearance came at a time that made it singularly ominous.

As I stood, thus pondering, on the rough porch from which I was about to step down and stride into the darkness, where I could make out the figures of negroes of all ages moving restlessly just beyond the light that shone from the windows, I received such a start as seldom has come to me. A hand touched my arm so quietly that for a moment I nearly had an illusion that that miserable little sinner, Willie MacDougald, had returned from the next world to haunt me in this one; a low voice said in my ear, "Stay here with us."

I turned. Just beside me stood the girl whom I had seen in the canoe.

"Stay here," she repeated. "They have gone."

I stammered and tried to speak, and for the first time in my life I found that my tongue was tied.

A step rustled in the grass just under the porch; something touched the floor beside my foot; then a huge black hand brushed gently over my shoe and up my leg, and a black, grotesque face, with rolling eyes and round, slightly parted lips, looked up at me, so close to my hand that unconsciously I snatched it away lest it be bitten.

Startled nearly out of my wits by this amazing apparition, I gave a leap backward and crashed against the wall, at which the absurd negro uttered a shrill whistle of surprise.

The girl tossed her head and stamped her foot, and spoke to the negro in a low voice, which yet was clear enough and sharp enough to send him without a sound into the darkness.

For a moment the lights from the window shone full upon her, and I saw that she was proud as well as comely, and spirited as well as generous. The toss and the stamp showed it; the quick, precise voice confirmed it; and withal there was a twinkle of kindliness in her eyes that would have stormed the heart of a far more sophisticated youth than I. Such spirit is little, if at all, less fascinating to a young man than beauty; and when spirit and beauty go hand in hand, he must be a crabbed old bachelor indeed who can withstand the pair.

Whatever my theories of life, as I had long since revealed them to Arnold Lamont, I was no Stoic; and though at the time I was too excited to be fully aware of it, I thereupon fell, to the crown of my head, in love.

As the negro vanished, she turned on me with that same, queenly lift of her head.

"Well, sir, will you stay?"

"Why should I stay?" I managed at last to ask.

She looked me straight in the eye, "You're not of their kind," she replied. "Father himself thinks that."

For the moment I was confused, and thought only of Arnold and Gideon North.

"You and he are wrong," I stiffly responded. "I am their kind, and I am proud to be their kind."

"Oh," she said, "oh! I beg your pardon."

A hurt look appeared in her eyes and she stepped back and turned away.

All at once I remembered that she had never seen Arnold and Gideon North; that she had not meant them at all; that she had meant Gleazen and Matterson. It was at the tip of my tongue to cry out to her, to call her back, to tell her the whole truth about our party on board the brig Adventure. I had drawn the very breath to speak, when Gideon North's voice summoned me from the darkness:

"Joe, Joe Woods! Where are you?"

"Here I am," I cried. "I am coming." Then, when I turned to speak to the girl, I saw that she had gone.

I stepped off the porch, tripped, stumbled to my knees, got up again, and strode so recklessly down through the dark to the river that, before I knew I had reached it, I was ankle-deep in water.

"Well, my man," cried Gideon North, "you seem to be in a hurry now, though you were long enough starting."

Without a word, I got into the boat and took off my shoes and poured out the water. It irritated me to see Arnold looking at me keenly and yet with gentle amusement. I had come to have no small respect for Arnold's unusual insight.

All the way back to the brig my head was in such a whirl that, for the first time in my waking moments since we left Cuba, I completely forgot the one fundamental object for which we three were working, to save as far as possible poor Seth Upham and his property from the hands of Cornelius Gleazen and his fellows. Instead I kept hearing the voice that had said, "You're not of their kind," kept seeing the face that I had seen there in the dim light—not at all clearly, yet clearly enough to see that it had a sweet dignity and that it was good to look upon.

The boat bumping against the brig woke me from my dreams. Scrambling aboard, I left my shoes in the galley to dry by the stove and ran aft in my stocking feet, and down below. In my eagerness to get dry shoes and stockings I quite outstripped the others, who were loitering in the gangway.

It was with no thought or intention of surprising the four men in the cabin that I burst in upon them on my way to my own stateroom. They had pushed cards and chips to one side of the table and had gathered closely round it. In the centre, where their four heads almost met, was a handful of rough stones, which for all I knew might have been quartz.

That I had done anything to anger them, when I came down so unceremoniously, I was entirely unaware; but O'Hara, the newcomer, sweeping the stones together with a curse, covered them with his hands; Gleazen faced about and angrily stared at my stockinged feet; and Matterson, rising in fury, snarled through his teeth, "You sniveling, sneaking, prying son of a skulking sea-cook, I swear I'll have your heart's blood!"

Before I could turn, the man dived at me straight across the table. I raised my hands to fend him off, with the intention of shoving his head into the floor and planting my feet on the back of his neck; stepped back, tripped and fell. I saw Gleazen lift a chair to bring it down on my head—even then I thought of the irony of my being his "lieutenant"! I saw that wild Irishman, Bud O'Hara, laughing like a fiend at my plight. Then I flung up my feet to receive the blow, and seizing the legs of the chair, twisted it over between Matterson and myself, and got up on my knees. Then in came the others.

Spinning on his heel, Matterson, his jaw out-thrust, stood squarely in the path of Gideon North.

"You are hasty," I said. "I came in to get my shoes."

"Ah," said Bud O'Hara, in biting sarcasm, "and then 't was in the eyes of us that you was looking for trouble."

"It was, indeed," I retorted.

"And perhaps you didn't see what was going on," he persisted.

"I did not," I replied, not knowing what he meant.

They looked doubtfully at one another, and then at me, and presently Gleazen said, "Then we're sorry we used you rough, Joe."

Meanwhile, I now perceived, the handful of stones had disappeared.

All this time my uncle had sat in his chair, looking like a man in a nightmare, and had raised neither hand nor voice to help me. In a way, so amazing was his silence, it seemed almost as if he himself had struck me. I could scarcely believe it of him. When I looked at him in mingled wonder and grief, his eyes fell and he slightly moistened his lips.

CHAPTER XVIII
A WARNING DEFIED

The brig Adventure, two thousand miles from home, lay now in the strong, silent current of a great tropical river, which seemed to me to have an almost human quality. In its depth and strength and silence, it was like a determined, taciturn man. I felt keenly its subtle fascination; I delighted to picture in my mind its course all the way from the mysterious hills far inland, of which Pedro and Gleazen and Matterson told stories filled with trade and slaves and stirring incidents, down to the low, marshy shore, which had already cast a spell upon me.

For months since that fearful night when we five fled from Topham, Arnold and Gideon North and I had been holding ourselves ready at every moment to stand up against Gleazen and Matterson and meet them man to man in behalf of my poor, deluded uncle, who now would go slinking about the deck, now would make a pitiful show of his old pompous, dictatorial manner. But when I burst in upon them in the cabin, there had been that in their manner, even after their anger spent itself, which told me more plainly than harshest words that the time for action had come very near.

To Arnold, when we were alone in our stateroom, I said, "What would you think, were I to load my pistols afresh?"

He looked curiously at me.

"You think," said he, slowly, "that there is already need?"

"I do," I replied.

I felt a new confidence in myself and in my own judgment. I regarded our situation calmly and with growing assurance. Although I did not then realize it, I know now that I was crossing the threshold between youth and manhood.

He gravely nodded.

"It is a wise precaution," he said at last, "although I prophesy that they will use us further before the time comes when we must fight for our lives."

So we both slept that night with new charges in the pistols by our heads, and Arnold, very likely, as well as I, dreamed of the utterly reckless, lawless men with whom we were associated. I question, though, if Arnold thought as much as I of the stern man in the cane house on the riverbank, or if he thought at all of the girl whose white face and dark eyes I could not forget.

For another day we continued to lie in the river; but the brig, alow and aloft, bustled with various activities. We sorted out firearms on the cabin floor, and charts and maps on the cabin table, and on the spar-deck we piled a large store of provisions. And in the afternoon Matterson took Captain North in the quarter boat down to the mouth of the river, and there taught him the bearings of the channel.

Side by side Arnold and I watched all that went forward, here lending a hand at whatever task came our way, there noting keenly how the stores were arranged.

"Well, sir," said Arnold, quietly, when Captain North for a moment stood beside us in preoccupied silence, "are we about to load a cargo of Africans?"

"I assure you I'd like to know that," the captain replied, with one of his quick glances.

Uncle Seth gave me an occasional curt word or sentence—he was in one of his arrogant moods; Matterson talked to me vaguely and at length of great times ahead; O'Hara watched me with hostile and suspicious glances. And still Arnold and I, whenever occasion offered, put our heads together and made what we could of the various preparations. Our surmises, time showed, were not far wrong.

And all this while I had watched the clearing ashore and had seen neither the missionary nor any other white man.

When, in the evening, all hands were ordered aft, we on the quarter deck looked down and saw the men standing expectantly to hear whatever was to be said. A thousand rumors had spread throughout the vessel, and of what was really afoot they knew less, even, than Arnold and I. There was Abe Guptil with his kindly face upturned, Pedro with his monkey on his shoulder and what seemed to me a devilish gleam in his eye, and all the rest. As they gathered close under us, the light from the lanterns slung in the rigging revealed every one of them to my curious gaze.

"Men," said Captain North, quietly, "Mr. Gleazen has asked me to call you together. There are certain things that he wishes to tell you."

As the grizzled old mariner stepped back, Cornelius Gleazen advanced.

His beaver, donned for the occasion, was tilted over his eye as of old; his diamonds flashed from finger and throat; he puffed great clouds of smoke from his ever-present cigar.

"Lads," he cried in that voice which seemed always so fine and hearty and honest, "lads, that there's no ordinary purpose in this voyage, all of you, I make no doubt, have heard. Well, lads, you're right about that. It is no ordinary purpose that has brought us all the way from Boston. You've done good work for us so far, and if you keep up the good work until the end of the voyage has brought us home again to New England, we ain't going to forget you, lads. No, sir! Not me and Mr. Matterson and Mr. O'Hara—oh, yes, and Mr. Upham! We ain't going to forget you."

Reflectively he knocked the ash from his cigar. Leaning over the rail, he said, as if taking all the men into his confidence, "All you've got to do now, lads, is stand by. Captain North will take the brig to sea for one week. There's a reason for that, lads, a good reason. At the end of the week he will bring the brig up off the mouth of the river, and some fine morning you'll wake up and find us back again.

"Meanwhile, lads, we're going to make up a little party to go exploring. Me and Mr. Matterson, Mr. O'Hara, Mr. Upham, and Pedro and Sanchez are going. And we are going to take John Laughlin with us, too. It's going to be a hard trip, lads, and you'll none of you be sorry to miss it. Now, then, lay to and load this gear into the boat. Be faithful to your work, and you'll be glad when you see what we're going to do for you."

As he turned away, proud of his eloquence, there was a low rumble of voices.

I looked first at Gleazen and Matterson and O'Hara; then I looked at poor Seth Upham, once as proud and arrogant as any of them. Remembering how in little ways he had been kind to me,—how, since my mother died, his dry, hard affection had gone out to me, as if in spite of him,—I pitied the man from the bottom of my heart. Surely, I thought, he must not go alone into the wilds of Africa with such men as were to make up Gleazen's party.

No one had spoken, except in undertones, since Gleazen; some one, I thought, must speak promptly and firmly.

For a moment, as I looked at the hard faces of the men whom I must oppose, my courage forsook me utterly; then the new confidence that had been growing within me once more gave me command of myself. Whatever should come of my effort, I was determined that my mother's brother should have at least one honest man beside him. To reason out all this had taken me the merest fraction of the time that it takes to read it.

Stepping suddenly forward, I said in a voice so decided that it surprised me as much as anyone, if not more:—

"Mr. Gleazen, I desire to go with you."

"And I," said Arnold Lamont.

"You young pup," Gleazen bellowed, "who are you to desire this or desire that?"

"Then," said I, "I will go with you."

"You will not," he retorted.

I saw out of the corner of my eye that Matterson and O'Hara were looking at me keenly, but I never let my gaze veer from Gleazen's.

"Mr. Gleazen," I said boldly, "Arnold Lamont, Abe Guptil, and I are going to take the places of Pedro, Sanchez, and John Laughlin."

He swore a round oath and stepped toward me with his fists clenched, while the men below us fairly held their breath. In a fist fight the man could have pounded me to a pulp, for he was half as heavy again as I; but at the thought of poor Uncle Seth with all his property tied up in that mad venture, with his happiness and his very life in the absolute power of that band of godless reprobates, something stronger than myself rose up within me. At that moment I verily believe I could have faced the fires of hell without flinching. Thinking of the old days when Uncle Seth and my mother and I had been so happy together and of how kind he had been to me in his own testy, abrupt, reserved way, I stepped out and shook my fist in Gleazen's face.

Before he could say another word, I cried, "So help me, unless we three go with you and those three stay, we'll keep Seth Upham back and sail away in the Adventure and leave you here forever."

Never before could I have spoken thus lightly of what my uncle should, or should not, do. The thought made me feel even more keenly how helpless the poor man had become, and confirmed me in my purpose.

It was on the tip of my tongue to add that Gideon North was to come, too, but I thought of how essential it was that someone whom we—Arnold and I—could trust should stand guard upon the brig, and said nothing more, which probably was better, for my words seemed to have struck home.

When I threatened to sail away with the Adventure, Gleazen glared at me hard and murmured, with a respect and admiration in his voice that surprised me, "You young cock, I didn't think you had it in you."

Throwing overboard the butt of his cigar, which made a bright arc in its flight through the darkness and fell into the water with a smart hiss, he smiled to himself.

Matterson whispered to O'Hara, who touched Gleazen's arm. I thought I heard him say, "Too honest to make trouble," as they drew apart and conferred together, glancing now and then at my uncle; then Gleazen nodded and said, "Very well, Joe"; and I knew that for once I had come off victorious.

At least, I thought, we are strong enough to stand up for our rights and Uncle Seth's.

The men quietly turned away and went forward, a little disappointed that the trouble had blown past and the episode had come to naught. But it had added one more issue to be fought out between Cornelius Gleazen and myself; and though it was over, it was neither forgotten nor forgiven.

I had gone into the waist, where I was watching the arms and provisions that the men were loading into the boat we were to take, when I heard a voice at my ear, "I guess—ha-ha!—you come back with plenty nigger, hey?"

It was Pedro with his monkey riding on his shoulder. The beast leered at me and clicked its teeth.

"No," I replied, "of that I am sure. We are not going after any such cargo as that."

"I wonder," he responded. "I t'ink, hey, queer way to get nigger—no barracoon—go in a boat. But dah plenty nigger food below. Plenty lumber. Plenty chain'. What you get if not nigger?"

I said nothing.

"Maybe so—maybe not," Pedro muttered. His earrings tinkled as he shook his head and moved away.

I was surprised to observe that for the moment all work had stopped.

Seeing that O'Hara was pointing into the swamp, I stepped over beside him to ascertain what had caught his attention, but found the darkness impenetrable.

"I'm telling ye, some one's there," O'Hara muttered with an oath.

I saw that Gleazen and Matterson were on the other side of him.

Now the men were whispering.

"Sh!"

"See there—there—there it goes!"

"What—Oh! There it is!"

I myself saw that something vague and shadowy was moving indistinctly toward us down one of the long lanes of water.

Suddenly out of the swamp came a piercing wail. It was so utterly unhuman that to every one of us it brought, I believe, a nameless terror. Certainly I can answer for myself. It was as if some creature from another world had suddenly found a voice and were crying out to us. Then the wail was repeated, and then, as if revealed by some preparation of phosphorus, I indistinctly saw, in the dark of the swamp, an uncouth face, black as midnight, on which were painted white rings and patches.

For the third time the cry came out to us; then a voice shrieked in a queer, wailing minor:—

"White man, I come 'peak. Long time past white man go up water. Him t'ief from king spirit. Him go Dead Land.

"White man, I come 'peak. We no sell slave. White man go him country so him not go Dead Land. White man, I go."

The dim, mysterious face drew away little by little and disappeared. A single soft splash came from the great marsh, then a yell so wild and weird that to this very day the memory of it sometimes sets me to shivering, as if I myself were only a heathen savage and not a white man and a Christian.

Three times we heard the wild yell; then far off in the fastnesses of the swamp, we heard an unholy chanting. It was high and shrill and piercing, and it brought to us across the dark water suggestions of a thousand terrors.

I felt Bud O'Hara's hand on mine, and it was as cold as death.

CHAPTER XIX
BURNED BRIDGES

"By Heaven!" O'Hara gasped, "the voice has spoke."

"Aye, so it has," said Gleazen slowly.

"Neil, Molly, sure and we'd best put out to sea. This is no time for us, surely. A month from now, say, we could slip in by night with a boat—"

"O'Hara," said Matterson's light, almost silvery voice, "have you turned coward?"

"No, not that, Molly! 'T is not I am scairt of any man that walks the green earth, Molly, but spirits is different."

"Spirits!" Matterson was softly laughing. "I didn't think, O'Hara, you'd be one to turn black."

"Laugh, curse you!" O'Hara cried hotly. "If 'twas you had seen a glimmer of the things I've seen with my own two eyes; if 't was you had seen a man die because he went against taboo; if 't was you had seen a witch doctor bring the yammering spirit back unwilling to a cold body; if 't was you had seen a man three weeks dead get up and dance; if 't was you had seen a strong man fall down without the breath of life in him at all, and all for nothing else but a spell was on him, maybe then you'd believe me. I swear by the blessed saints in heaven, it's throwing our lives away to go up river now; and all I've got to say for Bull is, God help him!"

The others were looking at O'Hara curiously. The lantern light on their faces brought out every scar and wrinkle and showed that strong passions were contending within each of them.

"It ain't spirits that worries me," said Gleazen, at last, "and it ain't niggers. It's men." He now seemed quite to shake off the spell of the strange voice. "What say, Seth?" He turned to my uncle.

To my surprise, Seth Upham rose manfully to the occasion. "Spirits?" he cried. "Nonsense!"

O'Hara uneasily shifted his feet. "Ah, say what you like, men," he very earnestly replied, "say what you like against spirits and greegrees and jujus and all the rest. I'll never be one to say there's nothing in them, nor would you, if you'd seen all that I have seen. And I'll be telling you this, men: that voice we heard then was speaking the thoughts of ten thousand fighting niggers up and down this river."

"Pfaw!" said Gleazen, stretching his arms. "Niggers won't fight."

"That from you, Neil!"

I never learned just what lay behind O'Hara's simple thrust, but there was no doubt that it struck a weak link in Gleazen's armor, for he flushed so deeply that we could see it by lantern light. "Well, now," said he, with a conciliatory inflection, "of course I meant it in moderation."

All this time Arnold and Gideon North and I stood by and looked and listened.

Now, with a glance at us, Matterson said shortly, "Come, come! Enough of that. All hands lay to and load the boat."

"I've warned ye," said O'Hara.

"At midnight," said Matterson, "we'll go up the river, and Gideon North'll take the brig down the river. Come morning there'll be no stick nor timber of us here. They'll bother no more about us then."

"Ye'll never fool 'em," said O'Hara.

Matterson turned his back on him, and the work went forward, and for an hour there was only the low murmur of voices. The boat, now ready for the journey, rode at the end of her painter, where the current made long ripples, which converged at her bow. Here and there, lights shone in the clearing and set my imagination and my memory hard at work, but elsewhere the impenetrable blackness of a cloudy night blanketed the whole world. And meanwhile the others were holding council in the cabin.

"I think," Arnold Lamont said, "that Matterson and Gleazen underestimate the ingenuity and resources of that black yelling devil."

"So they do," said Abe Guptil. "So they do, and I'd be glad enough to be back home, I tell you."

What would I not have given to be sleeping once more in Abe's low-studded house beside our wholesome northern sea!

Now the others came from the cabin. They walked eagerly. Their very whispers were full of excitement. Even Uncle Seth seemed to have got from somewhere a new confidence and a new hope, so smartly did he step about and so sharply did he speak; and the faint odor of brandy that came with them explained much.

We climbed down into the loaded boat and settled ourselves on the thwarts, where Abe Guptil and I took oars.

"It's turn and turn about at the rowing," Matterson announced. "We've a long way to go and a current dead against us."

I saw Gideon North looking down at us anxiously, and waved my hand. Then someone cast off, and we pulled out into midstream and up above the brig, where we held our place and watched and waited.

Soon we heard orders on board the brig. Sails fell from the gaskets and shook free. The men began to heave at the windlass. The brig first came up to the anchors, then, with anchors aweigh, she half turned in the current.

Now orders followed in quick succession. We could hear them rigging the fish tackle and catching the hooks on the flukes of the anchors. Blocks rattled, braces creaked, the yards swung from side to side according to the word of command. The sails filled with the light breeze, and coming slowly about, the Adventure gathered steerage-way and went down the river as if she were some gigantic water bird lazily swimming between the mangroves. We watched her go and knew that we seven were now irrevocably left to fend for ourselves.

When Gleazen whispered to us to give way, we bent to the oars with a will. For better or for worse, we had embarked on the final stage of our great quest.

The lights in the clearing fell astern. The tall trees seemed to close in above us. Alone in the wilderness, we turned the bow of our boat toward the heart of Africa.

That we had set forth in complete secrecy on our voyage up river we were absolutely confident. What eyes were keen enough to tell at a distance that the brig had left a boat behind her when she sailed?

Gleazen now laughed derisively at O'Hara. "You'd have had us sail away, would you? And wait a month? Or a year, maybe, or maybe two. Ha, ha!"

"Don't you laugh at me, Neil," O'Hara replied. "We're not yet out o' the woods."

At the man's solemn manner Gleazen laughed again, louder than before.

As if to reprove his rashness, as if to bear out every word O'Hara had said, at that very moment the uncanny yell we had heard before rose the second time, far off in the swamp. Three times we heard the yell, then we heard the voice, faint and far away, "White man, I come 'peak. White man boat him sink. White man him go Dead Land."

Three times more the wordless wailing yell drifted to us out of the darkness; then we heard a great multitude of men wildly and savagely laughing.

Never again did Cornelius Gleazen scoff at O'Hara. His face now, I verily believe, was grayer than O'Hara's. He turned about and stared downstream as if he could see beyond the black wall of mangroves.

"Now what'll we do?" he gasped, with a choking, profane ejaculation. "Did you hear that?"

Had we heard it! There was not one of us whom it had not chilled to the heart. Our own smallness under those vast trees, our few resources,—we had only the goods that were piled in the boat,—our unfathomable loneliness, combined to make us feel utterly without help or strength. But it was now too late to return. So we bent to our oars and rowed on, and on, and on, against the current of the great river.

The only help that remained to us lay in our own right hands and in the mercy of divine Providence. Would Providence, I wondered, help such men as Gleazen and Matterson and O'Hara?

Nor was that the only doubt that beset us. Although the three accepted us, and in actual fact trusted us, they made no attempt to conceal their enmity; and I very well knew that, besides danger from without our little band, Arnold, Abe, and I must guard against treachery from within it.