CHAPTER XXXIV.

THE MYSTERY INCREASES.

An immediate search was resolved upon. Lots were cast for the one who was to remain behind to guard our property, and the duty fell upon me.

Armed with the boat stretchers, or with clubs which they had carefully selected and cut from the trees, Hislop departed with all my companions; and after proceeding over the grassy plain, they soon disappeared in the woods that covered all the lower slope of the great mountain.

I cannot describe the sensations of loneliness that came over me on finding myself for the first time single, alone, and left entirely to my own reflections and resources.

The carpenter's hatchet was my only weapon; and armed with it I sat on a grassy slope mid-way between the hut and sea, gazing anxiously inland, listening for any passing sound; but all remained still save the chafing of the waves on one hand, and the loud buzz of tropical insect life in the thickets or among the long grass on the other.

What, I asked myself, if savages were actually lurking in the woods, and on seeing that all my companions were gone, they should come tumultuously down upon the hut and boat? I would at once become their victim.

Or what would be my fate if my friends fell into an ambush, or perished in detail?

Could any human beings be lurking in the two adjacent isles? was my next surmise.

We had never seen any thing alive on them--not even wild goats or boars; and if there were other inhabitants, the steepness of the rocks, which rose sheer from the water, and the fury of the surf that rolled between, forbade any attempt to cross.

So in such painful surmises, and in keen watching, I passed the most of the day alone.

In the afternoon, one by one, all my shipmates returned to our little headquarters on the shore, weary and jaded--torn by briars and brambles in the thickets--and all had the same tale to tell. They had seen and heard of nothing save wild boars, wild goats, and sea-birds.

Hislop now directed that one of our number should guard the hut by night, and a second the boat, with orders to hail each other in this fashion:

"Boat, ahoy!"

"Hut, ahoy!"

This was to insure a watchful look-out; but with all these precautions, wise and necessary though they were, our feeling of security, and even of reliance on each other, was gone for the time.

As these occurrences excited the imagination of our companions, some of those who watched the hut and boat by night, asserted that when all our party, save themselves, were safely lodged and asleep, something like the figure of a very tall man had appeared for an instant on the bluffs that overhung the sea, between them and the moonlight.

But of this mysterious personage, if such existed anywhere, except in the overstrained imagination of a lonely midnight watcher, we could discover no trace during day.

One night, when Francis Probart and Ned Carlton were on watch, a sound like the distant report of a pistol was heard by them, and at the same instant, both saw a flock of petrels and storm-finches rise up in the moonlight from the face of a bluff, where they revolved above the breakers, like a swarm of gnats in a sunbeam.

So if Ned and the carpenter were mistaken in the sound, the birds were also roused and alarmed.

Marc Hislop ridiculed their story, but he was considerably bewildered, and so were we all when two days after, a seaman named Hugh Chute, when rambling in the woods, found one of our goats, which we knew by the fragment of rope still tied round its neck, lying dead, with a _bullet_ in its throat!

He brought it to the hut, where the wound was cut open, and the bullet extracted. It was small, and had evidently been fired from a pistol; this event caused the most exciting speculations, amid which the carcass was hastily buried, as not one of us would eat of it.

What or who could this person be? were the prevailing questions; and what was his reason for concealing himself from us in the thick woods of the island?

In the thorough exploration of the latter, caused by these episodes, our people fortunately discovered a fine grove of banana trees, and returned laden with their yellow and luscious fruit.

At the same time Tattooed Tom found some letters "in a foreign lingo," as he said, cut on the face of a steep rock, overhanging the river, which formed the cascade at the beach. To this rock he conducted Hislop and me next day, and after tearing aside some masses of creepers and scraping off a rich coating of moss, we found this old legend on the smoothed face of the basalt:

EL NOBLE CABALLERO, D. ALPHONSO DE ALBUQUERQUE; A. D. 1506. RVGVEN A DIOS FOR EL.

"The year of the discovery of the island!" said Hislop.

"Have other eyes ever seen this inscription since?" added I.

"It is very doubtful. This Alphonso also discovered the Albuquerque Kays, as he named the three islets which lie off the Mosquito shore in the Caribbean Sea."

Hislop copied the inscription into his notebook, and just as we turned to leave the spot, a large stone about sixty pounds in weight, came crashing down the cliff, hurled apparently from its summit, and if so, by no inexpert hand, for it struck the rock of the legend within a foot of where Hislop stood, and was shivered into a hundred pieces, covering him over with dust.

Had it struck him instead, he had been slain and mangled on the spot. Had a fragment broken any of his limbs, in how miserable a plight would he have been on that desolate island, without proper shelter or surgical aid!

Looking up to the summit of the cliff, which was about a hundred and fifty feet in height, I perceived among the dense fringe of wild gourds, shrubs, leaves, and plantain trees, then waving in the wind, something like a human face, that, after peering over at us, was suddenly withdrawn.

"That stone was never dislodged either by goats or by accident," said Hislop; "there is not a vestige of clay upon the fragments--besides, all the face of the cliff is smooth and solid rock!"

"And it is the only place we did not overhaul yesterday, master Hislop," said Tom Lambourne.

"Then _there_ must be the thief of our biscuits--of our goats----"

"Of our stun'sail boom and my old guernsey. Let us have all hands turned up for a hunt again," exclaimed Tom.

I now mentioned what I had seen.

"A man!--do you think it was a man's head?"

"I cannot be certain, Hislop," said I; "it seemed a face of some kind, and a very hairy one too."

"It might be an old pumpkin," suggested Tom, in his matter-of-fact way.

"Or a goat--at all events, it could not have been a baboon?" said I.

"No, no; there is no such animal hereabout, master Rodney," replied Tom.

"Man or monkey, goat or devil, we'll overhaul the place this very afternoon." exclaimed Hislop, with increasing energy and anger; "but first we shall return with all expedition to the hut."