Roy J. Snell

“ All this Doris knew, yet, strangely enough, she experienced no tremor of fear. Not so strange after all perhaps: for was not Johnny Thompson close at hand? It is strange this confidence of a girl in the strength of a boy; her utter confidence in his power to defend her from the beasts of the jungle, from a hidden enemy, yes, from the very lightning bolts that shoot from the sky. ”

“ Just how long they slept no one will ever know. It was Johnny who first awoke. He emerged from unreality to reality, from dream life to real life with something of a start.
In his dream he had once more followed the strange monkey with the band of gold and a diamond on his arm. The monkey climbed a great cocoanut palm. With quite as much ability, he followed after. Up—up—up, ten, twenty, thirty, forty feet he climbed until at last he was among the fronds, sitting on a clump of half-ripe cocoanuts. ”

“ The second arrow sped. The wild boar, rearing high and lunging far, fell at the boy’s feet, dead.
For a moment Johnny stood there motionless. The whole affair had been thrust upon him so suddenly that he had been able to form no plan of action, nor indeed to comprehend the meaning of it all.
“No rifles,” he told himself at last, thinking of the natives.
Of a sudden it came to him that he was master of the situation. More than one pair of eyes had witnessed the deadly execution of his powerful yew bow. Eight arrows remained in his quiver. ”

“ So she sat there listening to the voice of the jungle.
Night brings its changes to a tropical island. At night a thousand creatures, too torpid or too timid to face the light of day, fare forth in search of food. Strange mouselike rodents, and those resembling rabbits, sport in the spots where moonlight falls. The short-nosed wild pig comes forth from his dark retreat to root around among the ferns and shrubs. ”

“ At once Johnny’s brain was in a whirl. These men were superstitious, he knew that. All blacks are. Would this man dare attack this mysterious monster?
“If he dares,” he said aloud, “we are lost.”
Curlie nodded, but at once the sound of his whistles grew louder, more insistent, and the antics of the giant more frantic.
“He will not dare,” Johnny told himself. Yet even as he said it, he knew that he was wrong. What had come over the black man? ”

“ So Curlie had gone away down the trail toward the village of Terre Plaisance. And here he was sitting across from Dot drinking limeade, talking now and then of matters of no great consequence, and dreaming long dreams in between.
“A revolution,” he thought now. “How wildly thrilling that would be. And yet it would be tragic. These natives can’t fight against our airplanes, our gas, our machine guns. And yet—”
He thought of the long and bitter struggle that had been going on in Nicaragua and of the war between the invincible Napoleon and the Blacks of Haiti and how the Blacks of Haiti had won. ”

“ She thrilled as she recalled Johnny’s story of the copper-colored natives and his battle with the wild boar.
Most of all she wondered about the island which they had reached in such a strange manner. Was it a small island? Was it large? Were there many natives? Were they wild natives? Was it true that some of these natives were cannibals? It had been true long ago in the days of Columbus. Had they changed or had they clung to their primitive customs down the long centuries? She thought of Nieta and her snake-tooth charm. ”

“ As you know, when Curlie Carson, with his heavily laden donkeys, took the trail in search of Johnny Thompson, he left his laboratory stripped of all contents. It was well that he did, for only two hours after he left, a band of blacks, some fifty in number, came scrambling up the trail that leads to the Citadel. They were led by a black man with a face of such fierce ugliness as one seldom sees on land or sea. ”

“ What does one think of when he is at the bottom of a dungeon in a strange land? Johnny wondered a while about this. That he was not the first one who had spent hours of solitary darkness in this great fortress he knew well enough. He was not even the first white man. During the reign of Christophe more than one daring soldier of fortune sought adventure in Haiti to find a dungeon instead.
With much time on his hands, Johnny thought of many things. He thought first of the aged Professor and his labor of love for the kindly natives of the valley. ”

“ From up the trail came a sound as of a host rushing through the brush.
“Oh—Ah!” she whispered sibilantly, gripping Curlie’s arm and backing into the brush.
Curlie began to laugh. “Do you not recognize the sound?” he asked. “It’s only a ‘chattering woman’.”
“O, yes, so it is a ‘chattering woman’. How stupid of me to get all excited,” she exclaimed as she stared away in the direction of the curious tree.
Dot told herself that she must get better control of her nerves if she was to be of any service on this strange enterprise.
“Listen! The dance grows wilder,” she said. ”

“ At once Doris recalled what Dorn had told her of the strange voodoo charm.
“The snake, you know,” Nieta went on quite solemnly, “is able when alive to charm a monkey. When the snake is dead his spirit remains near his teeth. I am telling him to charm the monkey and bring him down to us.”
“Nieta,” said Doris, shocked beyond belief, “you must not think such things. They are not true. It is truly wicked to believe them. There is but one living spirit outside ourselves and that is the spirit of the great Father.”
“But do you not pray to that spirit?” The native girl’s brow wrinkled. ”

“ Time will come when we work on plantations, in sugar mills, in mines and have no pay. That he says. Better he says that we die fighting.”
“People have worked the roads always,” said Dot. “Now they work on the most needed roads. It’s part of America’s efficiency.”
“I know,” said Mona. “But how can these understand? After the speech—the sacrifice.”
Curlie repeated, “We must get the goat. But how?”
He thought of his bow and arrow. He was a fair shot. The arrow point was sharp as a razor blade. One twang of the bow, one wild bleat, perhaps, and the goat would be no more. ”

“ Curlie said to the girl. To the native woman he said, “Lead on. We will follow.”
[200]
After that, for a half hour they followed the black woman through such an intricate maze of rocks, cliffs, vines and bushes as neither of them had ever known before. Through it all the old black woman never faltered. In the end, after a final breathless climb of a hundred feet, they found themselves looking down upon a scene of matchless beauty. Riding high the moon painted on a glassy sea a path of gold. ”

“ Hearing a stir at the top he threw on his flashlight to find himself staring into a familiar face, the face of the native who, but a few hours before, had been swinging on the rope ladder before Curlie’s window.
If any doubt remained in his mind, it was dispelled at once, for without uttering a word, the native began letting down the rope ladder.
“For all the world as if it had been prepared for this very occasion.” Johnny’s heart raced. His brow grew hot, then turned icy cold.
“Well,” he concluded, “the die is cast. There’s nothing now but to climb the ladder.” ”

“ But she did not, for at that precise moment there came, faint, indistinct, like the low roll of thunder, yet unmistakable a call from the distance and the dark.
“The drums,” a shudder ran through the girl’s slender form. “Far away, the drums. And now perhaps there will be a revolution. How—how useless, how terrible! Someone must prevent it. It can only end with the death of many honest but deluded people; the poor, honest ones.”
“It is true,” said Mona the black servant who had come to serve cocoa. “It should not be.”
“The men all are gone; the native police too,” Dot said turning to Curlie. ”

“ From above him, on the sloping hillside which had once been a badly cleared cornfield, there came a sound much like a shrill scream.
Stringing his bow and nocking an arrow, he began scouting away up the hill. Now he peered out from behind a clump of young banana plants. And now a great boulder hid him. Now he crept rapidly over a patch of barren red soil. But ever he moved upward. ”

“ The massive fortress which the dwellers on the island of Haiti have always called the Citadel hung like a mountain cliff above a boy who, hot from climbing, had thrown himself on a bed of moss at the foot of a gnarled mahogany tree.
“Whew!” he exclaimed softly to himself. “Even three thousand feet above the sea here in Haiti it’s hot. Hot and dry. ”

“ The life of the hill people was simple and beautiful—children playing about their small, grass thatched, white plastered homes, men hoeing corn, women picking wild coffee, and always the simple songs of the hills were on their lips. ”

“ In a moment of stress and great danger, perfect strangers become comrades for the hour. Once the danger is passed they more often than not become strangers once more. It was so with Curlie and the girl, or so it seemed to Curlie. He had hoped she would tell him who she was and where she lived. She did not. She told him nothing.
One thing he did not need to be told. They had not been scouting down the trail for a half hour before he realized that she needed no directing from him. She was far better acquainted with the jungle than he. ”

“ They led him along the top of the Citadel for a time, then, after descending stone stairways into the heart of the fortress, lost him completely in a maze of rooms and passageways to at last emerge upon the top of a stairway that, hidden as it was by great over-hanging treetops, had escaped the eager eyes of the three boys.
“They know a great deal about this old fortress,” Johnny told himself. ”

“ STOWAWAYS
That the boat they had sighted was a large one, far too large to be tipped on its side they learned soon enough; not, however, until they had become utterly exhausted by their mad race with the storm.
And such a storm as it promised to be. The sky was inky black. The mountains, the nearby hills, even the cocoanut groves were blotted out. The sea, a sheet black as iron lay so still it appeared that one might walk upon it. ”

“ It was Doris who asked this without answering his question.
“Can’t you see?” His face expanded into a broad grin. “I am the Marine King of Manowa. And these,” he added with a low bow, “are my subjects—some of ’em. Three thousand, in all, and pretty loyal, too.”
[180]
“This,” Doris told herself, rubbing a hand across her eyes, as if to dispel a vision, “is not reality. It is a chapter from Alice in Wonderland.”
But it was not. The Marine King of Manowa proved to be very real indeed. The repast he spread before his three young guests a half hour later dispelled the last doubt. ”

“ And, Johnny, if we had money for cement, we’d rebuild that aqueduct and these half-starved and half-naked people would be happy and prosperous.
“And we, Johnny, you and I,” his eyes had shone with high hope. “We would become rich, for more than half of the land is uninhabited waste that can be bought for an incredibly small sum. And with water for irrigation it can be reclaimed and sold—for who knows how much? Get an American planter interested in it. Then see! We’d be rich, my boy! Think of an old professor and a boy getting rich!” ”

“ Johnny said to himself, as his astonishment grew by leaps and bounds. “There is not a wire strung within twenty miles.”
He thought of a radio sending set. But no. That was impossible. There had not been time for installing one. “Besides,” he assured himself, “one does not send a radio S. O. S. by means of tin whistles. It’s a mad place,” he told himself. “This cave is full of mad people and Curlie has gone mad with the rest of them.” ”

“ Parting the bushes, he peered into the open space beyond. Before him was a spot quite clear of trees and bushes. The grass had been cropped short by wild goats. And there in the center, squatting low, drum between knees, thumping the drum with naked hands, was not some swarthy native drummer but a slim white girl dressed in a bright blouse and plaid knickers.
“Of all places!” he thought. “Miles from human habitation. A girl and a drum at night.” ”

“ Doris thought of the ugly black foe that Dot and Curlie had seen at the top of the cliff after the explosion, and experienced a moment of uneasiness. But so eager was she to begin the search that she was able at once to cast fears aside.
“It will be a race,” she said with a little wild skipping, “a race between the boys and ourselves to see who first discovers treasure.”
[224]
“Yes,” laughed Dot, “a race that is likely to end with a draw. Everybody loses.” ”

“ Then, in dead silence, with not a drum beat, not a whisper, the natives filed away into the forest.
“We must follow,” said Dot. “For Haiti, and her kindly, innocent people, we must follow. The sacrifice has been made. But the torch of war must not be lit.”
“We must not follow.” The tone of Mona, the black woman, was firm. “If we follow we will be surprised and killed. There is another way. They go to Deception Bay where the ship is and where are many rifles and much ammunition. There is another trail. We will take it. It goes to the top of a very steep cliff. There we may look down upon them. ”