CHAPTER XVIII
A FACE AMONG THE FERNS
In my ear rang angry shouting, the sound of heavy blows rained upon that inner door, as I dashed out of the hut. Marjorie flashed by the front of the sheds and took a rocky path which led off steeply to the left. As I tore after her, a man stepped out quickly from the angle of the hut to bar my passage. But without faltering I drove my elbow into his face and he slipped backwards, striking his head against the split log facing of the shed with a horrid crack. I did not stop to see what became of him, but ran on, congratulating myself that I had laid him out without using the pistol which my right hand clutched in my pocket. For I knew that the sound of a shot would bring the whole horde buzzing about our ears.
Daylight was coming now with great strides. The morning mists clung sluggishly about the lower part of the steep incline leading up from the hollow where the camp was situated. As we topped the path, we came into view of the shores of a little cove and glimpsed a long, grey motor-launch that lay at anchor. This, as Marjorie told me afterwards, was Sturt Bay, which, I remembered, the “Sailing Directions” had mentioned as the only practicable landing-place other than Horseshoe Bay on the island. In that deep hollow the sheds must have been invisible both from the land and the sea side. When, later on, Marjorie told me that Clubfoot's men, in their talk among themselves, always referred to the huts as the “Petrol Store,” I thought I understood why such care had been taken to conceal the camp from prying eyes.
Now we were in the forest following a winding track. Though, on looking back, it seemed to have been the height of foolhardiness, I do not think we could have acted otherwise. For it was essential that we should reach the high ground undiscovered before it was fully light, and we might have wasted hours trying to find the way through these dense woods where, though day was at hand, the shadows of the night yet lingered.
The noises I had heard on the outskirts of the camp had ceased. The silence made me uneasy. We relaxed our pace to a walk and went along swiftly and softly, our feet making no sound on the spongy ground. Suddenly, from a clump of rich green ferns, not a pace away from me, a man's head arose. I did not require to see the heavily bruised features to recognize Custrin. If ever the intent to kill peered out of a man's face, it did from the quick, black eyes of the doctor of the Naomi.
It happened far quicker than it takes to write it down. I could not see his hands: but there was a warning rustle of the ferns, a sudden change in the face, which told me he was going to shoot. The index finger of my right hand was crooked round the trigger of my pistol as it lay in the side pocket of my jacket...
We fired together. Something “whooshed” by my ear. In accents of shrill surprise Custrin cried out, “Oh!” stared at me stupidly for the fraction of a second through the blue haze that drifted on the air between us, then pitched forward on his face into the clump of ferns. There was a horrid gush—a convulsive movement of the hands—and the body lay still. The woods seemed to ring with the report and there was a smell of singed cloth in the air. The pocket of my jacket was smouldering....
Now silence descended once more upon the forest, broken only by a faintly audible drip! drip! from that drooping head at my feet. Then suddenly a distant hallo went echoing through the woods; another shout, much nearer at hand, answered it, and was answered by another and another until the whole forest rang again.
I turned to Marjorie. White to the lips, she stood with face averted from that limp form sprawling in the ferns.
“We must make a dash for it, partner!” said I.
Docilely, like a little child, she thrust her hand in mine.
“Don't go too fast!” she pleaded, “I'm ... I'm ... afraid of being left behind...”
Hand in hand, like the Babes in the Wood, we set off again through the forest, pelting headlong down the track. Unmolested we reached the lip of the clearing and dropped down into the hollow where the grave lay bathed in the lemon-coloured light of the new day. In front of us towered the rugged mass of rock for which we were making, and my eye sought on the topmost terrace that pillar of dressed stone which held, as I firmly hoped, the secret of the treasure.
Panting, we scrambled up the shelving slabs of stone which led to the foot of the crag. In order to reach the first shelf I had given Garth a back; but I guessed that the track I had seen winding aloft from the first terrace must, somehow, find its way to the ground.
We followed the base of the rock round till, presently, we came upon a tiny, zigzag footpath, crumbling and precipitate, leading upwards.
By this we were out of sight of the clearing, but the sounds of pursuit drifted across to us more plainly every minute—the noisy passage of men through the undergrowth, raucous shouts... They seemed to be beating the jungle, keeping in touch with each other by calling.
The attack, when it came, would come from the rear. Therefore, I made Marjorie go first up the path. I looked at her anxiously. She was game all through, this girl; but her eyes were wistful and her mouth drooped pathetically.
The path, winding its way across the face of the rock, brought us on to the first shelf and thence, from the far end, pursued its course aloft. As we stepped out on the terrace, a shout rang out from below and at the same moment a bullet hit the rock with a resounding thwack right next to my ear while another whined shrilly over our heads.
“Go on, go on!” I cried to Marjorie. Together we dashed across the terrace and then the winding of the path brought us under cover again. We toiled on, the path growing steeper and steeper. I kept looking round to see if we were followed; but the grey path below us remained deserted.
As we mounted higher, I noticed that the shelves cut out of the rock face grew narrower. The second terrace was scarcely more than twelve feet wide. Since we had left the first terrace, we had looked out over a stem landscape of barren rock and lonely crag without a vestige of green. But, when we were within measurable distance of the third and topmost terrace, the path suddenly bent to the left and a magnificent panorama of land and sea burst upon our gaze.
Far below us the belt of green jungle was spread out at our feet; the waving green trees sloped down to the cliff-sheltered anchorage where the white wings of sea-birds flashed in the sun; a broad belt of deep blue sea ran out to the horizon all round. In the foreground our narrow path zigzagged to and fro, like a fluffy grey ribbon gummed to the rock. Just beyond we looked into the cup-shaped hollow with the grave. Tiny figures, every detail clear-cut and distinct in that limpid air, were dotted about the clearing. One leant heavily upon a stick, which, as we stood and gazed upon the view, he raised and pointed aloft.
“Hurry, hurry!” I cried to Marjorie, but almost before I spoke a shot again rang out in the hollow below and the dust spurted at my feet. It was some thirty yards to where the path, turning once more, would bring us out of sight, and we scrambled forward with the bullets “zipping” angrily in the dust or noisily flattening themselves out on the rock. Several of the men in the clearing seemed to be firing, for the bullets came pretty fast.
It was a harrowing experience to be shot at at that height, perched on a precipitate path like flies on a ceiling. I plunged forward, my heart in my mouth. Now Marjorie had reached the bend and, having rounded it into cover, had halted, waiting for me to draw level. A bullet struck the ground between us splashing the grey volcanic dust knee-high and the next moment I had scrambled into safety. Then I saw that the topmost terrace was only a few yards from us.
I turned to the girl. She had gone very white, and she seemed to be leaning for support on the rocky wall at her side. Before I could speak she heaved a little sigh and pitched forward. I caught her in my arms.