Part 5

No thieving jackal or designing lion could have stalked that party more patiently and noiselessly than we did; foot by foot, and yard by yard, we drew nearer to our prey, and at last we had reached the mimosa bush and were watching them as they lay, the rays of their fire all but shining upon us as we crouched, but falling just short. Jack placed his hand upon my arm, and whispered--

"James Strong watching, very sleepy," he breathed, scarcely audibly; "the others fast asleep. I take James, and you the other two. Are you ready? Follow me and stand at my side, but keep your rifle at your shoulder from now on, and never lower it for an instant. Are you ready?"

"Ready!" I managed to whisper, but my lips were so dry that hardly any sound came from them. Then Jack instantly rose and stepped out into the firelight--I following him.

*CHAPTER XII*

*SCOTCHING A SNAKE*

James Strong was lying half waking and half sleeping, his rifle at his side; he saw us instantly, however, as we stepped into the firelight, and was on his feet in a moment, dragging his rifle up with him.

"Drop the gun, James Strong," said Henderson, "and put up your hands. I am covering you, you see, and this is not the revolver you choked. Drop it at once, or I fire. I will count three. One--two"--Strong let the rifle fall. Neither the thud of this nor the sound of Jack's voice awoke the other two, who still slept, I covering them with my rifle.

"Pick that thing up, Peter," said Jack. "I'll see to the covering." I did as my captain bade me.

"Chuck it on the fire," he continued. "I shall pay you for it, Mr. Strong, but I am afraid you are scarcely to be trusted with a rifle just at present."

I heard Strong grind his teeth as I picked up his gun, took the cartridges out, and threw the weapon on the fire.

"Sit down, Mr. Strong, and empty your pockets," continued Jack, and his victim obeyed, because he could do nothing else.

"Take those other rifles, Peter, and do the same by them," pursued Jack; "then wake those fellows, and see if they sport revolvers. Have you none, Mr. Strong? Come, produce it if you have. Feel his pockets, Peter, and his saddle-bags. What, has he none? Well, you shall give him yours, Peter, one day; perhaps he will know how to get the lead out since he put it in!"

Strong's face through all this was not a pleasant study.

I obeyed Jack's decrees to the letter. I collected all the weapons--three rifles and one revolver--and threw them on the fire; I awoke the two sleepers, who swore frightful oaths when they realised the position of affairs, and cleared their pockets and wallets and saddle-bags of cartridges, all of which I confiscated.

"Good-night, gentlemen," said Jack, when my work was finished. "I shall repay you for all that has been taken from you to-night. Your zeal, you will understand, has been a little too great; you have given yourselves away. But for your premature attempt to rid yourselves of us on the island, and for one or two foolish matters since then, we might never have been aroused to our danger, and you would certainly have enjoyed many opportunities of shooting us at your leisure--in the back, of course. Now, you see, we have the whip hand of you."

"And you will use it, curse you," said James Strong, "to prevent us taking our legal share in the search for my uncle's property. I know you!"

"Nothing of the kind, my good man," said Jack cordially. "Dig away, by all means; you shall see that neither of us will interfere."

"Yes, and if we find the treasure, you will shoot us down; I know you, I say!" replied Strong. We made allowance for his temper, which was shocking to-day; but then his provocation had really been considerable.

"If you find the treasure you shall take it away with you in peace, so far as my friend and myself are concerned," said Jack. "We shall not shoot you, and you can't very well shoot _us_ without rifles, can you? Good-night all; come, Peter."

We could see our good friends frenziedly poking among the embers for their burning weapons the moment we had departed; but, as Jack remarked, they were welcome to the barrels, and since he had taken care to keep up the conversation long enough to allow the woodwork to burn away, that would be all they would get.

Returning to our camp, we made up a fire for ourselves and tossed up for first sleep, for we must keep a stricter watch than ever now, or these desperate fellows would steal our weapons and turn the tables upon us. So we slept and watched by turns until morning, and it was on this night that I heard for the first time in my life the roar of a lion. It was not very near at hand, but, far away as it was, it sounded terrible enough to the inexperienced ear, and I thought over all I had read of the ways of lions in the works of Mr. Selous and other African sportsmen, and recalled an awkward propensity some of them have of coolly coming into camp and foraging among the waggons even in the glare of the firelight. If this brute were to come now and help itself to Jack Henderson before I could interfere, what a truly terrible thing it would be! The idea impressed me so deeply that I awoke Henderson and told him there was a lion roaring somewhere within hearing.

Jack was very sleepy, and my watch was only half over, which made him ridiculously angry to have been awaked.

"Well, what then?" he said. "Let him roar and be hanged! if he didn't wake me, why should you?"

"Why, he might come and bag you while you slept," I said; "travellers say they do that kind of thing."

"Well, what are you there for, man?" said Jack angrily, settling himself to sleep again. "You are there to shoot James Strong, or lions, or she-bears, or anything else that comes and plays the fool around here. For goodness' sake don't wake a fellow to talk about the habits of lions--shoot him if he comes, that's all you have to do!"

I suppose the lion had other engagements for that night, for his roars receded farther away and were lost, presently, in the distance.

We were up in the morning at the first glint of light, for we were naturally anxious to see the ground upon which our labours were to be lavished until the envious soil should reveal to us or the others the secret of old Clutterbuck. There it was, the open space of sandy hummocky soil, and there were the posts, three of them at least; we could not see the fourth. And there, too, was the upturned earth over a considerable area, representing the day's work, or the day and a half's work, of the Strongs, who had evidently toiled for all they were worth in order to make the most of the start they had gained upon us. The result of this haste on their part was to be seen in the shallowness of their digging, which appeared to have nowhere extended to a greater depth than six to nine inches. As we stood and surveyed the ground, our three friends came with their spades and set to work at once. They scowled at us ferociously, but made no reply to Jack's polite "Good-morning."

"I daresay they _are_ rather annoyed with us," said Jack. "Now, Peter, don't be lazy, but begin to dig at once. I'm your bodyguard, remember, and shall do no work except thinking."

"Aren't you going to dig?" I said.

"Certainly not," said Jack; "I'm not one of the authorised. If I dug and found the treasure, there might be a legal point. Now dig up, man, and don't argue; you're wasting your time. Think of the nuggets and diamonds only awaiting the magic touch of your spade! George! if I had a legal position, wouldn't I dig!"

I did dig. I dug that morning until the sweat poured from my face and head like drops of rain. I dug till my arms and back ached so that I almost cried with the pain, while Jack sat or lay and watched, keeping an eye on the Strong party and entertaining me with light conversation. By the evening I was perfectly exhausted, and the greater part of the space of about two acres had been dug over, though not to any great depth, by one or other of the four workers, yet nothing had been discovered.

When Jack awoke me to take my watch at half-time that night, he said--

"Peter, I've been thinking."

"What about?" I asked sleepily.

"About that fourth post," he said.

*CHAPTER XIII*

*AN UNEXPECTED TRAGEDY*

"I was wondering what has become of that fourth post," continued Jack. "It can't have disappeared very well."

"It doesn't matter much," I rejoined, "for it can only have been in one spot--the fourth corner of a square; the other three are absolutely symmetrically placed. We can easily judge of the position of the missing one."

"I'm not so sure," said Jack. "I don't think it's a trick of the Strongs, for they seem to take it for granted, as we have done, that the area is a square. I shall look about for it to-morrow while you dig."

"I wish you'd dig while I look about!" said I; "it's the most fatiguing thing I ever tried in my life."

"That's because you never did a day's work till yesterday, my son; but cheer up, you'll find it less fatiguing every day, take my word for it." Jack yawned and lay down, and in a minute was fast asleep. As for me, I very nearly fell asleep also--in fact, I believe I was actually dozing--when my friend the lion suddenly roared from somewhere so close at hand that my heart went into my boots and I felt my knees tremble together as I lay. So loud was it that even Jack awoke and started to his feet.

"What on earth was that?" he said. "Did someone shoot?"

"It was a lion's roar, close behind us here in the bush," I said, my teeth chattering. I don't think I am a coward, but I do hate dangers that I cannot see.

"By George!--fancy those wretched chaps over by that fire," said Jack, "without rifles; what a state of terror they will be in!"

What a good fellow Jack was! I had never thought, in my selfishness, of the infinitely more dangerous position of the others.

At this moment the lion roared again.

"Listen to that!" continued Jack. "What a voice the brute has! It's enough to terrify anyone, especially unarmed people. Ought we to go and stand by those chaps, think you, Peter?"

I am glad to think that I replied in the affirmative.

"And yet," said Jack, "I'm not sure that one of us hadn't better stop here to take care of our horses. Shall we toss up who goes? You see, it was we who disarmed the poor beggars; we can't very well leave them unprotected when real danger comes."

I cordially endorsed the sentiment, and though I would far rather have let our horses go by the board than separate from Jack in this crisis, I tossed up with him as to who should go and who stay.

"Heads stay--tails go," said Jack. "You toss."

I tossed, and the coin showed tails.

"Tails; then you go--lucky rascal!" said Jack; "you get all the fun. Shout for me if anything happens. Caesar! there he is, roaring again, and nearer their camp. Be off, Peter, and mind your hide!"

I have said that I do not consider myself a coward, but assuredly the greatest coward in the world could not have been more frightened than was I during that most weird and uncanny walk through the darkness towards the twinkling glow of the Strongs' camp fire, but a very few hundreds of yards away. The word darkness hardly expresses the almost opaque blackness of the night as I stumbled over hummock and thorn bush in the direction of the fire.

Beasts were abroad, it appeared, in horrible profusion. Scuttling, growling, rushing, they seemed to jump up from before and around me at almost every step, as though an army of them were stalking me, and came repeatedly within springing distance, only to lose heart as I approached, and dash away into the darkness.

I have since come to the conclusion that these were hyenas, for no other beast would be likely to be about in close proximity to a roaring lion.

The lion advertised himself freely. Once, at least, he roared within twenty yards of me, and though I held my rifle to my shoulder ready for him, I quite gave myself up for lost. But his designs were not, it appeared, directed against myself, for a moment after he roared again much nearer to the Strongs' camp fire, and presently from beyond that point.

I could hear the Strongs talking excitedly and loudly, and could see that they were busily engaged in piling brushwood upon their fire, for at intervals it seemed to blaze up brightly and to smoke more vigorously. The lion, I could not help thinking, was prospecting both our party and theirs, and walking round and round both, working himself up to the necessary pitch of audacity for an attack.

So, stumbling, groping, creeping upon my uncanny way, I came at last within fifty yards of the Strongs' camp. The lion had been silent now for several minutes, a fact which rendered my horror all the more intense, because I could no longer tell where the brute was, and, for all I knew, he might be at my heels or a couple of yards away on either side of me, licking his lips, and, as it were, choosing his joint in preparation for a spring.

Of a sudden I was startled by the most piercing shrieks and yells that I had ever heard. The noise came from the Strongs' camp, and set the seal of horror upon my soul, so that I fell on my knees then and there and prayed aloud with the most intense earnestness I had ever put into prayer. Then I sprang to my feet in a flush of shame. The lion, I suddenly realised, had made his appearance among these wretched, unarmed folk, while I, their protector, knelt and prayed like a coward for the safety of my own skin!

Aroused and stimulated by this thought, I rushed madly for the camp, careless now of the darkness and danger and horror of the night, and in a moment or two had reached, breathless, the circle of light shed by the Strongs' fire. Here a weird sight presented itself to me.

Clutterbuck knelt and gabbled prayers aloud, his eyes, almost starting from his head, fixed upon a spot just on the verge of the firelight, where James Strong stood, armed with a burning log, cursing as loudly as the other prayed, and staring into the darkness beyond.

Both started as I appeared, but both immediately looked away from me again and resumed their occupations.

"What is it?" I gasped. "Has anything happened? Where is your brother, Strong?"

"It's the most infernal murder, that's what it is!" shouted the fellow, turning suddenly upon me and stamping his foot; "as clear a case of murder as ever a criminal committed!"

"What has happened, man? Was it the lion?" I cried. "Stop your blithering and tell me; we may save the fellow yet!"

James Strong growled out some curse.

"Yes; go out into the dark and save him. You are a likely man to do that, you coward!" he shrieked; "you who rob men of their defences and leave them at the mercy of brute beasts. This is as clear a case of murder as need be, and you shall hang for it yet!"

Sick at heart, but not any longer with fear, I seized a burning brand, and, shouting for Jack, rushed away into the bush in the direction which I supposed the brute had taken.

But though I wandered alone for a while, and with Jack, who soon joined me, for another longer while, we found no trace of either victim or lion, and we were obliged to give up the search in despair.

And here I may say that his shriek as the lion sprang upon him was the last that was ever heard of poor Charles Strong. We picked up a piece of cloth which had been a portion of his coat, but beyond this we never found sign of the unfortunate fellow, whose fate sat like a midnight horror upon our souls for many a day.

*CHAPTER XIV*

*A GLIMPSE OF THE WINNING-POST*

There was no digging done the next morning, for both we and the rival camp spent all our time wandering about in the forlorn hope of finding poor Strong--wounded, but perhaps still alive--left by the lion, who, we hoped but scarcely believed, might have been terrified by our shouts and by the shots we fired for the purpose of frightening the brute, and have dropped his victim and departed.

James Strong, though frequently within speaking distance of us, neither spoke to us nor looked at us, excepting now and again to scowl fiercely as his way, in the searching, crossed ours. But Clutterbuck spoke to me several times and to Jack also, entreating us, for the love of Heaven, either to provide him with firearms, or to take him at nighttime under our protection. If he had to pass another night unarmed, he said, after this, he should certainly go mad.

We promised, however, to protect the unfortunate fellow, and this soothed him wonderfully.

That night both James Strong and Clutterbuck were encamped close to our fire, between their own and ours, the two fires being built up within ten yards of one another. Strong was too proud to ask for protection as Clutterbuck had, but anyone could see that he was glad and greatly relieved when we came and made our camp near theirs. I was sorry for the fellow, rogue though he was, and thought that it was certainly the least we could do to take him under our wing, since we had deprived him of the means of protecting himself.

As for his brother's death, I do not take any share of responsibility for that misfortune. For, as we learned afterwards from Clutterbuck himself, in all probability no shot would have been fired even if the three men had still been in possession of their rifles.

According to Clutterbuck's narrative, the thing happened something like this: He, Clutterbuck, had been deputed to watch for the first three hours of the night, the two Strongs sleeping meanwhile. But Clutterbuck himself fell asleep, and allowed the fire to languish and almost die out, when of a sudden the roaring of the lion awoke not only him but the Strongs also. Then all three men rushed about, getting brushwood and sticks to make a blaze that would keep the lion at a distance; but while poor Charles Strong was ten yards away in the bush there was a sudden roar and a scuffle, and a shriek for help from him, and that was all that either Clutterbuck or James Strong knew of the matter. Neither of them had seen the lion.

All this Clutterbuck himself told me as we lay awake together on the first night after the mishap, during my watch. The poor fellow, naturally a timid creature, was far too frightened to sleep, and was, I think, grateful for being allowed to talk.

The lion did not come near us, neither did he treat us, even at a distance, to any of those terrible roars which I had found so unmanning. Clutterbuck was even more communicative to Jack when his watch came round; he told Jack many interesting things, and among others this--which I suspect the artful Henderson gradually wormed out of him--that he found himself a companion and partner of the Strongs, whom he disliked, by the stress of circumstances rather than of deliberate choice.

Our suspicions as to the affair near Las Palmas were well founded, said Clutterbuck; for it was the simple truth that the Strongs and he himself set out that day with the deliberate purpose of murdering us. It was James Strong's idea, he declared, and his brother had accepted it readily. He, Clutterbuck, had pretended to do so, but in reality had had no intention of hurting us.

"No, no, Clutterbuck, that won't do!" said Jack at this point of the narrative; "for we counted the shots fired, and there was at least one volley of six shots! You fired with the rest, man; I am not so easily taken in!"

"That's true enough," said Clutterbuck; "but did I hit you?"

"No, that you certainly did not," replied Jack; "but then you are a very poor shot, my friend!"

"I fired wide on purpose, I'll swear to it!" said Clutterbuck.

After this, Jack inquired about the crocodile, and found that here, too, the Strongs had cherished amiable intentions with regard to us. They saw the brute right enough, and that was why they left us to ford the river and themselves stayed behind.

"You ought to have warned us somehow," said Jack.

"I dared not," said the other. "James is an awful fellow, and his brother is nearly as bad--was, I mean--poor chap!"

As for the spiking of my revolver and the changing of the map, Clutterbuck knew nothing of either. It was done in the state-room, and he was not there to see.

"You would probably have been shot as you forded the river," he continued, "if you hadn't rather frightened the Strongs by what you said a moment before--that you were a crack shot, and would have no mercy if they missed you."

"So you see, Peter," concluded Jack, telling me all this afterwards, "it pays to blow your own trumpet sometimes. They wouldn't have hit us, probably, but then we should have been obliged to make three bull's-eyes of _them_, and that would have been unpleasant too!"

But all this while the treasure still lay hid in the bosom of the veldt. Charles Strong's death was very terrible, but I must dig, dig. Regrets and sentiment are mere waste of time with one hundred thousand pounds waiting to be dug out of the earth!

Whatever measure of grief James Strong may have felt for his unfortunate brother, his sorrow did not prevent him betaking himself very seriously to his digging work as soon as day dawned on the second morning after the mishap. He went about his business in grim silence, vouchsafing us, as before, neither word nor look.

Neither were we dilatory. I went back to my digging with back and shoulders still stiff from the labours of the first day, while Jack expressed his intention to search about for the fourth post.

"Either there's some trick about the position of that post," he said, "or it has got moved away by an accident; some elephant or other big brute has used it for a scratching-post, or knocked it down and perhaps rolled it away; in any case, we ought to know where it was."

I still thought that in all probability the fourth post had simply completed the square suggested by the other three, and that it had been in some way removed from its place--perhaps by an elephant, as Jack said, or more likely by a gust of wind. I did not consider the question at all important.

As it proved, Jack was right. He found the fourth post twenty yards at least out of the square, and planted right in the middle of a prickly-pear bush. But though I extended my operations to the new ground introduced by the change of area, and though the two other men and I together dug it superficially over, so that the entire space between the four posts had now been dug up--to a certain depth--the result of the day's work was "nothing to nobody," as Jack facetiously expressed it. Indeed, I, for one, began to wonder whether we had embarked upon a wild-goose chase, and whether the hundred thousand pounds ever existed save in the imagination of old Clutterbuck; and again, whether, supposing the money to have actually existed, the old miser had not purposely so hidden his treasure that no other human eye should ever behold it, since he himself could no longer gloat over it. But when I communicated these views to Jack Henderson, he said--

"Bosh! man; don't be a fool. Dig for all you're worth!"

If real hard work could have insured success, it would have been a difficult matter to judge between James Strong and myself as to who should bear away the prize. Clutterbuck laboured away too, after his kind; but he was of a different kidney from ours, and I think I turned up more soil in an hour than he did in half a day.

For the best part of a week we vied thus with one another, toiling day-long in the sweat of our brows and meeting with no success.

On the evening of the sixth day Jack said to me, as we walked together towards our camp fire--

"Do you believe in second sight and that kind of thing, Peter?"

"No," I said, "I don't. Why?"

"Because I have a kind of idea that I know where the treasure may be," said Jack unexpectedly.

I laughed.

"I too am beginning to have a pretty firm conviction as to where it is," I said.