The Great Quest Part 36

Without a word, followed closely by O'Hara, who laid his gun on the threshold, I leaped out past Arnold and ran down to Matterson and helped him to his feet and led him groaning up to the hut.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

VI

FOR OUR VERY LIVES

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER XXIV

SPEARS IN THE DARK

"O-o-oh!" he moaned. "They got me. It's a wonder they didn't kill me. But here I am along with old Neil Gleazen."

"Where's your bundle?" Gleazen demanded.

"Down in the gra.s.s by the spring."

"Let me tell you, Matterson, it's good I carried my own."

Matterson repressed another groan and made no answer.

Blood was running from a great gash above his ear and across his cheek, which we hastened to bind to the best of our ability, and he lay down on the floor with his head on his hand.

"I'm on the sick list," he said at last, "but I've had water, and if those black sons of h.e.l.l have not poisoned the spring, I'll call it quits."

Matterson's face was a ghastly sight, and already blood had reddened the strip of sacking round his head; but I believe there was not a man of us who would not have taken his wound to have got his chance at water.

"If only we could catch a king," Gleazen remarked thoughtfully.

"That's the way to end a war in Africa. Catch us a king and make peace on him."

"That's one way surely to end a war," said O'Hara, darkly, "but not this war."

"And why not this war?"

"Because," said O'Hara, "Bull built the house on a king's grave.

It's the _spirits_ that are offended."

Gleazen laughed unkindly.

"Aye, laugh," cried O'Hara, "that's all you know about spirits. Now I'll tell ye, believe me or not as it pleases ye, that the spirit of a n.i.g.g.e.r is a bad thing to cross. And care as little as ye please for jujus and fetishes and n.i.g.g.e.r G.o.ds, the times are coming when they'd serve you well if you'd not turned them off by laughing at them."

"Spirits--" said my uncle in an undertone. "Hm! Hollands, Scotch, and Rye. We must lay in more Hollands, Sim; the stock's getting low.

And while you are about it, we'd best take an inventory of our cordials."

Gleazen fluently swore, and watched Seth Upham with a keen, appraising look. There was no doubt that in his own wandering mind my uncle was back again in his store in Topham.

"I'm thirsty," he said suddenly. "I must get a drink of water. Now where's the bucket? Sim, where's the bucket?"

As he fumbled along the wall, we stared at one another with eyes in which there was fear as well as horror. I swallowed hard. Poor, poor Uncle Seth, I thought. What was to become of him? And indeed, for the matter of that, of us all?

By this time I had come to see clearly that poor Seth Upham was in no condition to stand up for his own rights, and that, whether or not he could stand up for his rights, he had no chance of getting them from that precious trio, his a.s.sociates, without a stronger advocate than mere justice.

They had promised unconditionally that half the profits of their mad voyage should be his, and by that promise alone they had so cruelly persuaded him to sell home and business and embark in their enterprise. Now, deceived, bullied, flouted, he bade fair to lose not only those gains which were rightfully his, but also his vessel, his stores, and every cent that he had ventured. If there was to be a copper penny saved for him, Arnold, Abe, and I must save it.

Through the rough, less pleasant memories of his abrupt, sharp ways--and so often, even when he was in the abruptest and sharpest of moods he had betrayed unconsciously, even unwillingly, his thought of my future, for which he was building, as well as for his own--there came memories of old days, when he and my mother and I had lived so quietly and happily together in Topham.

I started up, all at once awakened from my reveries, with Abe's dazed voice ringing in my ears. "Look! Look!" he cried. "Look there!"

For the moment, in our horror at my uncle's condition, we had almost forgotten our danger from without.

"Look!" Abe cried again. "In heaven's name look there!"

We crowded shoulder to shoulder by the window where Abe had stationed himself and saw in the moonlit clearing a strange creature, which came dancing and rolling along from the edge of the forest. It was dressed in skins and rags. It was painted with big white rings and bars. Now it began to utter strange whines and squeals and whimpers, in an unearthly tone that it might have produced by blowing on a split quill.

From the corner of my eye I saw that Matterson was biting his lip.

At my side I felt O'Hara violently trembling.

Out in the moonlight, where the swaying creepers cast dim, spectral shadows, the gibbering, murmuring creature was coming nearer. Its boldness was appalling. I had been brought up in a Christian country and given a Christian education, but even to me that clumsy, dancing wizard, with his unearthly squeals and cries, brought a superst.i.tious fear so keen that I could scarcely control my wits.

Small wonder that such tricks impose on credulous savages!

"Watch, now!" Gleazen said quietly. He leveled a musket across the window-sill. "Spirits is it? I'll show them."

"Don't shoot," O'Hara cried. "Don't shoot, Neil, don't shoot!"

He reached past me toward Gleazen; but before he could lay hands on the gun, Gleazen fired. A spurt of flame shot from the muzzle, and as the report went thundering off into the forest the medicine man--wizard--devil--call him what you will--seemed curiously to wilt like a drought-killed plant, but more suddenly than ever plant wilted, and fell in a crumpled heap in the moonlight.

"You fool!" O'Hara cried, "you cursed fool! First it was Bull that built the house on a king's grave and now it is you that's killed a devil!"

"He's dead enough," Gleazen calmly replied.

"Look!"

Here and there, along the edge of the forest, men darted into the moonlight. They carried spears, which flashed now and then when the moon fell just so on the points. First they gathered by the body of the wizard and carried it back into the woods. We saw them, a little knot of men with the heavy weight of the fallen mummer in their midst, moving slowly to the wall of vines and through it into the mysterious depths beyond. Then, coming slowly out again, they moved back and forth before the hut as if to appraise our chances of defending it. Then they once more disappeared.

All this time they had walked as if in a world of death. Although we had seen their every gesture, we had not heard a sound loud enough to rival the almost imperceptible drone of insects in the gra.s.s. But now we heard again that grimly familiar, haunting, wild cry. Three times we heard it, terribly mournful and prolonged; then we heard a voice wailing, "White man, I come 'peak: white man all go Dead Land."

The voice died away, a few formless shrieks and yells followed it, and a silence, long and deep, settled upon the clearing.

Once more Arnold, Abe, and I stood on one side of the hut, and Gleazen, Matterson, and O'Hara on the other, with poor Seth Upham wandering aimlessly between us.