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CHAPTER XXVI-A NIGHT OF TERROR

I was about to follow in pursuit of Trust, and had even taken a few steps towards the undergrowth upon the right bank of the brook, when Bannister called me back.

"What's the use?" said he. "Let dogs delight. We have our own friends to think of."

"Our own friends?" said I.

"Have you forgotten Rushby? We have left him alone too long as it is. His life is more to us than the fate of either Trust or Baverstock; and he is in danger just as great."

At those words, I felt something of shame that I had indeed forgotten one who had proved himself so loyal and true a comrade.

"Then, what's to be done?" I asked.

"That's not so easy to decide," said Bannister. "I take it," he added, turning again to Forsyth, "that you are now willing to cast in your lot with us, to give up all thought of plunder?"

Forsyth actually yawned.

"Have it your own way," said he. "I have made a promise which I will faithfully keep. I have always believed that there was honour among thieves; but, even here, I find I was mistaken. To speak the truth, I am heartily sick of the whole business, which has cost me a pretty penny with nothing to show for it, save a scratched skin and a score of bruises, and the loss of an ear. You may count me as one of yourselves. I have little enough, perhaps, upon which to flatter myself, but if there is skill in gaining, there is at least an art in losing. It can be done gracefully. Do you not agree?"

"Moralise as much as you like," laughed Bannister. "It amounts to no more than this: you have failed dismally, and are glad enough to find yourself alive. You are wise to accept the situation as it is. That's all the same to me. Henceforward, you are under my orders, and I expect prompt obedience."

"I shall be charmed," said Forsyth, with a mock bow. "And what of Rushby?"

"He lies some way to the north," said Bannister. "I am alarmed at his condition. The wound in his leg is septic, and it is very doubtful whether he will recover."

"I am distressed to hear it," answered the other, to whose effrontery there seemed no end; for he added, "If the truth be told, it was I myself who shot him-with the best intentions in the world."

"No doubt," said Bannister grimly. "There has been give and take on both sides; and I am the more glad to have saved your life, since I know for a fact that you stood between Dick, here, and certain death, when Amos would have killed him. But we waste time in useless talk. Before we leave this place, I propose to cover the slab with earth, to hide all traces of an intrusion so utterly worthless, doomed to failure from the start."

And thereupon the four of us set to work, scraping the soft earth back upon the stone slab; for Bannister, who had enough of Spanish to express his meaning, soon found another ally in Vasco, who, after all, was a weak, shiftless kind of fellow, with few opinions of his own. Though the man had been bewildered by the sight of so much gold, the Treasure had had much the same effect on him as on myself when I first went down into that vast, amazing chamber. He was frightened of it all; and as well as that, he now realised for the first time that he had served for all these months one who was both treacherous and mad; and had it not been for Bannister and me, he would not have escaped with life.

We were all hard at work upon our hands and knees, when we were surprised by the sound of a rifle-shot, fired at no great distance in the Wood, in a northerly direction.

Bannister got slowly to his feet, and stood listening; and then, although he turned in my direction, it was as if he spoke quietly to himself.

"One shot," said he. "And one shot only."

That was all he said.

"Trust was never armed," said I.

"That signifies nothing," answered Bannister. "Amos is loaded down by gold. If he carried a rifle, Trust may have wrenched it from his hands."

We waited for some minutes, expecting to hear another shot, or perhaps some other sound. But the whole Wood was silent-the silence of midday, when the sun is at its height and all the wilderness is resting, the wild things seeking refuge from the fierce rays of the tropic sun.

"Come," said Bannister, "we had best see to this."

He led the way into the undergrowth, and we followed him in single file. The trail of Amos was broad as a road, for, in his madness, he had rushed forward, breaking down all obstacles that stood in his path by the sheer weight of the gold he carried and the impetuous, headlong nature of his flight.

There could be little doubt that Joshua Trust had followed him with as little difficulty as we. Certain it was that they could not be far ahead, since Trust himself had not yet been absent half an hour. In all probability, the night before, Amos himself, overtaken by the darkness, had fallen sound asleep, and, being exhausted by his frenzied efforts, had slumbered on until long after daybreak.

In any case, we had not journeyed far before we came upon the still, huddled form of him who had once been known as Joshua Trust, who now lay a corpse, in a pool of his own blood, upon the trail that he had followed.

John Bannister kneeled down upon the ground beside the body, but presently got sharply to his feet.

"Stone-dead," said he, and nodded sagely, as if to signify that hither in the end go all things weak and mortal.

"Shot?" I asked.

"By Amos. Through the heart."

We stood in silence around the body, and I know that I was thinking that it would be no more than common decency to bury this poor, misguided man where he had fallen, when there came to my ears a sound that made my very blood run cold.

It was a sound of laughter, faint and far away. Never in my wildest nightmares had I heard laughter to compare to that. It was the laughter of a fiend, terrible to listen to, for there was something in it of the chuckling of an old, demented man, the cry of a new-born child, and the senseless mirth of one who is delirious.

In that half-light we looked at one another. There was cold fear in the eyes of us all, even in the eyes of John Bannister, who I did not know had fear of anything that lived upon the earth.

"Amos!" he exclaimed. But his voice was no more than a whisper.

I saw that Forsyth shuddered. And then that man, as a rule so calm and nonchalant, who had always seemed to me to dread nothing so much as that he might show his feelings, burst forth in the hottest indignation. I shall never forget that moment, for it was the only occasion upon which I saw John Bannister afraid, and Mr. Forsyth alive-a living, sentient being-in every fibre of his body.

"This madman must not live!" he shouted.

Bannister answered slowly, in the same quiet voice in which he had spoken before.

"I am inclined to think you right," said he. "His very existence upon the face of the earth is a blot upon Creation. The sound of that hideous laughter robs the wilderness of all its beauty."

"Then, after him!" cried Forsyth.

"Leave that to me," said Bannister.

He opened his rifle, and slipped a cartridge into the breech. I heard the click of the lock, and I saw how tightly his right hand gripped the small of the butt. And I knew that death was still in the pot, that we were not yet at the end of all this strife and horrid bloodshed.

We went forward in pursuit, Bannister leading, hot upon the trail, the other three of us following at his heels.

All that afternoon we journeyed in a direction north-eastward, so far as we could judge. And from time to time we heard the shrill, savage laughter of that maniac, but a little way before us. And each time we heard it, we were filled with dread-the dread that comes naturally to one who finds himself confronted by the supernatural-the same dread that is believed to make the human hair to stand on end in the presence of a ghost.

For Amos Baverstock, body, mind, and soul, was still in the possession of his seven raging devils; and it was as if these evil spirits infested the humid, stifling atmosphere of the very jungle through which we passed in hot pursuit. Hitherto, we had been adventurers in a savage land; we had walked in the midst of dangers that were material and real. But now, with that unearthly laughter for ever in our ears, we felt that we were wayfarers in the dark nether regions, that not only our lives, but our very souls as well, were in peril of perdition, of everlasting death. The fleeting shadows of the Wood were to us the twilight of the Underworld. We were opposed by forces stronger and more evil than wild beasts and wicked men.

Darkness caught us before we had overtaken the madman whom we chased. How he had managed to elude us for so long is little short of a miracle; for he was weighed down by the gold he carried on his back. There were times when he was quite near to us, when we could distinctly hear him breaking his way through the thickets, rushing blindly onward. And at such times he was silent-ominously silent. But he would always, quite suddenly, shoot ahead again-how, we could not tell-and presently, we would hear his wild laughter as before, far away from us-laughter in which there was something of triumphant glee, as well as lunacy and senseless mirth, incomprehensible and terrible to hear.

All that night, during which we rested twice-on each occasion for an hour or more-we heard his laughter in the Wood, throughout the length and breadth of which it was as if fear of the man had spread. I verily believe the monkeys sat shivering above us in the tree-tops, and the great beasts of prey, who were wont to hunt by night, crouched with flattened ears like frightened cats in the dark places of the jungle.

Speaking for myself, I know that I experienced a most novel and insecure sensation. I felt that the constant sound of this demoniacal laughter would in the end drive me also mad; and Vasco, I am certain, felt the same, though I cannot speak for the others.

For all that, I had never seen an expression of such invincible determination as the daylight disclosed upon the face of Bannister. His jaw was set: his lips tight pressed, and there was a look in his eyes as hard as steel.

He said not a word to any one of us; and we had no thought of food, though we all four drank deeply of water at the first stream to which we came.

Then we went on, following the trail, with the sound of that maniac's laughter to guide us like the siren of a ship in a fog at sea.

Never was a journey more strange, more ghostly. We were haunted men, though we found upon the road evidence of the material. For, here and there, lay golden ingots that had fallen from his arms, and there was blood, too, upon the dead leaves upon the ground, where he had torn his flesh upon the thorns.

And then, at last, we sighted him, in a place where the undergrowth was sparse and the trees a little way apart. For no longer than an instant did we see him, else John Bannister had shot him dead; for it was a mad dog we hunted, and it was not right that he should live. Strange as it may seem-since they had sojourned for so many months in one another's company-it was Mr. Gilbert Forsyth who was most keen upon the chase. He was like a bloodhound on the trail. It was as much as Bannister could do to keep him back.

"Have at him!" he cried. "There he is! Shoot, man! Shoot him down!"

But-as I have said-we caught no more than a glimpse of him. That glimpse, however, was enough. If it had been terrible to hear his laughter, it was even more terrible to behold him with our eyes. Every shred of clothing had been torn from his back. He was plastered with black mud from the swamp in which he had waded; and this mud-though we could not see that-was still alive with little leeches that were draining the life's blood in his veins. His hair was all ragged and dirty; and without clothes he was more hideous than ever. We could see the ingots, tied in a great bundle upon his back; and we marvelled that any human being could carry so great a load. He shot a look at us before he dived again into the undergrowth; and in that look there was that for which we could not fail to pity him, vile and evil though the man had been all the days of his life.

His eyes were bright as ever, yet seemed to have grown larger, and, at the same time, to have sunk deep into his head. His mouth, which was never straight, was twisted to a degree that was alarming. He had always the thinnest of lips, which he kept as a rule pressed tight together; but now his mouth was opened wide, and he was slobbering. As for his eyebrows, they reminded me of Satan himself as I have seen him pictured, for they met upon the bridge of his nose, to slant upward, arrow-shaped.

John Bannister dashed forward. I saw that he meant to make a supreme effort to overtake the man. We all wanted it to end, for the whole affair was ghastly; and yet we dreaded the end, just as a hangman must have no liking for his duty. And ours-we thought-was the very hangman's work.

It so happened that in this place the Wood was dense. Amos did not laugh again, but we could hear him just in front of us; though, strive as we might, we could not overtake him, until the pursuit had lasted, perhaps, another twenty minutes-for, in such a case as this, it is impossible to keep account of time.

Bannister, who was still leading, of a sudden caught his foot in the root of a tree, and pitched forward on his face. Without pausing an instant, Forsyth rushed past him; and I, knowing that Forsyth was unarmed, and fearing that he might come to the same violent end as Joshua Trust, hastened after him, without looking to see if Bannister were hurt.

Almost at once I caught sight of Amos, but dared not fire at him, because Forsyth was in front of me. And then, suddenly and unaccountably, to my amazement Amos stopped, and looked back at us with a face hideously contorted.

I carried my rifle to my shoulder, and I believe I would have pressed the trigger, had I not then seen what it was that had brought the fugitive to a standstill. He had broken his way headlong through the thickets, and now found himself upon the bank of a wide, dark pool, and we were so close upon his heels that he had no time to turn either to the right or to the left.

It is my great regret that I did not fire; but I may be excused, inasmuch as I did not at once recognise the place, and had then not the least suspicion of what was about to happen. No sooner was my rifle to my shoulder than Amos turned away from me, and, without a sound, with his great load of gold upon his back, plunged straight into the pool.

He sank so low at first that we thought he must be well beyond his depth; but, almost at once, his feet found something firm-I think the fallen trunk of a tree buried beneath the water. He rose to his full height with the water no higher than his knees, and began to stumble onward, when the whole of this uncanny business reached its tragic and terrible conclusion.

I saw something move upon the surface of the water-something that shot across the pool in utter silence and with the rapidity of an arrow. Right round Amos it swerved, and passed so close to us-who stood gaping on the bank-that we could not fail to recognise what this horror was. It was the flat and evil head of a gigantic, loathsome serpent.

Then the truth burst upon me like a sudden rush of ice, and I realised that Amos Baverstock was come to that place which I myself had named the Glade of Silent Death.

CHAPTER XXVII-HOW AMOS MET HIS END

We stood horror-stricken upon the bank of that dark pool-mute, impotent spectators of a tragedy we were powerless to prevent.

Vasco, the Spaniard, stood beside me; and I heard his teeth chattering in his head like castanets. As for Forsyth, before that gruesome spectacle was ended he turned away with a kind of sickening sob, at the same time passing a hand across his eyes, by which I knew that the man was human after all. Bannister-who had soon caught us up-said nothing, but stood rigid at the back of us, his rifle in his hands, ready to fire so soon as an opportunity should offer. As for myself, it was as if I was transfixed in petrified amazement. I was hypnotised by the terror of the thing I saw, and could not look away, but must watch the tragic business to the last.

With a great splash of water, the immense body of the snake arose from out the middle of the pool, the surface of which forthwith became agitated by scores of little waves, forming a series of concentric circles, spreading outward to the bank.

We saw the glistening coils of the terrific reptile wind themselves, swiftly and yet stealthily, around the frail body of the doomed, unhappy Amos. He let out a piercing shriek, far more terrifying to hear than the uncanny laughter with which he had disturbed the silence of the woods-it was freezing in its shrillness. And at the same time he threw both his arms above his head, so that his heavy bundle of golden ingots fell into the water and at once disappeared from view.

He made-so far as we could see-no effort of resistance. Terror, it seemed, had mastered every muscle, nerve, and sinew in his body. He was paralysed by fear. We could see, in that dim, religious light, the huge head of the snake swaying backward and forward in front of him, whilst its long forked tongue darted swiftly in and out. We saw the man's face, too, livid with fright, and his wide, staring eyes. For a moment all his features worked spasmodically. I think he tried to cry out once more; but the breath had already been driven from his slender frame by the colossal strength of the relentless serpent that, even as we looked, broke down the slender bulwark of his ribs.

It was then that John Bannister fired. He told me afterwards that he meant to put Baverstock out of the torture he was suffering both of body and of mind. If that were so, it was a lucky shot; for it killed at once the reptile and the man.

The bullet drilled the anaconda, breaking its spine, and thence pierced the heart of Amos Baverstock. The unhappy wretch vanished from sight upon the instant beneath the water of the pool; but the dying struggles of that gigantic snake were amazing to behold.

It lashed right and left, twisting all ways, writhing like a worm; so that we, who looked on, were drenched in flying water. It made the most frantic efforts to drag itself from the pool. The lower part of its body seemed to be paralysed and quite useless; but at last it succeeded in half twining itself around the trunk of a tree, where its head swayed from side to side quite aimlessly. What surprised-and I think horrified-us most of all was the silence of the brute.

I fired, and missed; for my hand trembled violently. And, thereby, it was left to Bannister to end the work he had begun. With his second shot he smashed in the reptile's head; and the great snake at last lay motionless, as loathsome in death as it had been terrible in life. I am ready to believe that five minutes elapsed before any one of us spake or even moved.

"I shall never cease to dream of this," said Forsyth, in a weak voice, at last. "No such nightmare ever was!"

I saw that he wiped a hand across his forehead; and I did the same. Though I was splashed all over with the water from the pool, a great sweat had broken out upon me, and I experienced, in quick succession, alternate sensations of extreme heat and cold.

Vasco seized Bannister by an arm.

"We go away!" he cried, in broken English. "We go now! It is no good stay here."

The man turned back into the Wood as if he would retreat by the way we had come; but Bannister called him back.

"Not that way," said he, in Spanish. "It is but a little way from here to the end of the Wood, and we can pass round to the north across open country. I know a way to the south of the morass."

We were under Bannister's orders. And thankful we were that we had such a man to follow. We knew there was an urgent need to go back to Rushby as quickly as we might.

We were obliged to pass round the pool, and this brought us to within a few yards of the great body of the snake.

"I never knew," said Bannister, "that such a monster could exist. He must be over thirty feet in length. But, come; we can do nothing here."

In single file, as before, we followed him, and presently came forth into the open air upon the skirting of the Wood.

There we regarded one another in shocked surprise; for the faces of us all were white, and Vasco was still trembling. We said nothing; not a word passed between us; but we all breathed deeply, like men who had been for a long time under water.

I looked up at the blue sky and the hills in the distance, to the east, whence I had first looked down upon the Wood of the Red Fish, after my journey across the plain. And I remembered what I had then thought; how I was filled with the restless spirit of adventure; how the joy of life was strong within me, whilst I ran the danger of my life, all naked as I was, with my Indian blow-pipe in my hand and my quiver full of arrows. But now I had seen the very face of death. I had beheld a living terror. The mask of Romance had been removed from the forbidding face of Tragedy. And that Wood was now to me a dread, unholy place, wherein, I knew, I would never dare to venture again, in spite of the great Treasure that lay hidden in its midst.

"I would not go back," I cried to Bannister, "for all the Treasure of the Incas, for all the treasure in the world!"

My old friend looked at me, and smiled.

"You are right," he answered. "And there never will be a need to, Dick. As soon as we are rested, we must find our honest Rushby, and do what we can for him."

We camped that night in the open air, a mile or so to the south of the morass; and the following morning continued our journey, keeping the Wood to our left.

We had not gone far before we discovered the figure of a man, who came running towards us from the direction of the hills. I noticed that he advanced with a peculiar limp, and on this account, for the moment, I believed it to be Rushby, most marvellously recovered of his wound.

But when the runner had drawn quite near to us, I was surprised beyond measure to recognise my old friend, Atupo, the Peruvian priest, whom I had befriended in the vault beneath the Temple of Cahazaxa.

Though I called him by his name, he cast never so much as a glance at me or any of the others, save Bannister, at whose feet he threw himself, as pagans prostrate themselves before the idols that they worship.

"My master!" he exclaimed, and went on, in his quaint, broken English, in some such strain as this: "I never thought to live to set eyes on you again."

Bannister lifted him to his feet and, laying a hand affectionately upon his shoulder, asked him what news he had of his friends and brethren, who had fled from their dwellings before the wrath of Amos.

Atupo told him that the majority had sought refuge in the woods, where many of their number had been treacherously murdered by the wild men. He himself, however, had founded a small colony of some score of persons who were living by the side of the ravine that crossed the plain, not so far beyond the hills that we could see. All these, he said, were anxious to return to Cahazaxa's Temple, but dared not do so, believing Amos to be still abroad.

Bannister at once set the man's mind at rest, assuring him that it was not only safe for them to return, but that Amos himself was dead and the Greater Treasure undisturbed.

At that, Atupo threw up his hands by way of a gesture of delight; and then, looking about him, for the first time recognised both Mr. Forsyth and myself. And it is doubtful which of the two of us he was most surprised to see.

Myself he regarded as a trusted friend; but he knew that Forsyth had been one of Baverstock's party, and he was astounded to behold that gentleman alive. Being told by Bannister that he had naught to fear, he pointed straight at Forsyth.

"But that man should be dead!" he cried. "With my own eyes I saw him shot with an arrow, the point of which was steeped in deadly poison."

And then it was that Mr. Gilbert Forsyth told us the truth, which I have set down already: how, with a fortitude that one cannot but admire, he had burned the poison from his flesh, and thus saved his life, though he had fallen into a fever.

Atupo, soon afterwards, expressed himself anxious to return to his own friends; but Bannister was one whose custom it was to look well ahead, and he knew that the ancient Peruvians had been well skilled in medicine.

"Friend Atupo," said he, "we have need of your assistance; for there is one of our number who is sorely wounded. You and your comrades owe not a little to us; and I will, therefore, ask you to go back to the Temple, and there await our coming. Prepare such drugs as you may have for a man who has a wound in the leg that will not heal."

"Does the sun ask the moon to shine?" inquired the Peruvian. "What of the white man's medicines?"

Bannister threw out his hands.

"Alas!" he exclaimed. "We have none; we have used all we had."

And so the matter was settled; Atupo, the priest, returning to the Temple, and ourselves veering round to the west, between the Wood and the morass, towards the place where we had left William Rushby.