They were drawing near the coast now as the sun sank slowly away over the crest of the Cockscomb mountains towards Guatemala; and already there were signs that the night--the swift night that comes to all spots which lie betwixt Capricorn and Cancer--was drawing near.
The sun, although now hidden behind the topmost ridge of the Cockscombs, was still an hour above the blue horizon, yet nevertheless the signs were apparent that he would soon be gone altogether. The parrots and the monkeys were becoming still and quiet in the branches--that is to say, as still and quiet as these screeching and chattering creatures ever do become in their native state--in dark and shade places where now the evening glow scarce penetrated, the fireflies gleamed little sparks and specks of molten gold; while, above all, there rose now from the earth that true tropical sign of coming night, the incense exuded by countless flowers and shrubs, as well as the cool damp of the earth when refreshed by the absence of the burning sun. Sometimes, too, across their path, an unmade one, or only made by the tracks of wild deer or the mountain cow, two or three of the former would glide swiftly and gracefully, seeking their lair, or the iguana would scuttle before their animals into the nearest copse, while the quash and gibonet were often visible.
They rode slowly, not only because of the heat, but also because none could progress at a swift rate through those tangled copses, the trees of which were often hung with masses of wild vines whose tendrils met and interlaced with each other, so that sometimes almost a wall of network was encountered. Also they rode slowly, because Desolada was but a mile or so off now, and they would be within its precincts ere the sun was quite gone for the day. And as they did so in silence, Julian was acknowledging to himself that, with every fresh person he encountered and every fresh question he asked, his bewilderment was increased.
For now, by his side, rode this man, half Spaniard, half Indian, named Ignacio Paz, who not only had been present at the birth of Mr. Ritherdon's son, but also had known that son's mother before she was married. And, Julian asked himself, how did the knowledge now proclaimed by this man--this man who, if he possessed any feelings towards Sebastian possessed only those of hatred--this man who had prophesied for him a violent death as the reward of his brutality and cruelty--how did that knowledge make for or against the story told by George Ritherdon? Let him see.
It served above all to corroborate, to establish, Sebastian's position as the true son and inheritor of Charles Ritherdon. So truly an acknowledged son and inheritor that, undoubtedly no contrary proof could ever be brought of sufficiently powerful nature to overwhelm all that the evidence of the last twenty-five or twenty-six years affirmed. Had not this man, Paz, been one of those who had received money from Mr. Ritherdon to drink Sebastian's health? Surely--surely, therefore, the old man was satisfied that this was his son. And if he, Sebastian, was his son, who then was he, Julian?
On the other hand, the half-breed proved by old Mr. Leigh's conversation that there was some inaccuracy--perhaps an intentional inaccuracy--in Sebastian's statement that Miriam Carmaux, or Gardelle, was a relative of Isobel Leigh. That was undoubted! There was an inaccuracy. Old Leigh had definitely said that he was the first of his family who had ever been forced to earn a living in exile--yet she, this woman, with a French maiden, as well as married, name, was a native of New Orleans, was a Frenchwoman. Was it not enormous odds, therefore, against her being any connection of the English girl with the fair, wheat-coloured hair, the peachlike complexion, and the blue eyes who had been brought as an infant from Essex to Honduras?
Also, was it not immeasurably unlikely that, even if then the women were connected by blood, such coincidences should have occurred that both should have come to the colony at almost an identical time; that Mr. Ritherdon's wandering heart should have chanced to be captivated by each of those women; that he should have jilted the one for the other, and that eventually one, the jilted woman, should have dropped into the place of mistress of the household which death had caused the other to resign? What would the doctrine of chances say in connection with these facts, he would like to know?
"One other thing perplexes me, too," he thought to himself, as now they reached an open glade across which the swift departing sun streamed horizontally, "perplexes me marvellously. Does Sebastian know, does he dream, that against his position and standing such a story has been told as that narrated to me in England by my uncle--as still I believe him to be. And if--if there is some chicanery, some dark secret in connection with his and my birth, does he know of it--or is he inno----"
He paused, startled now at an incident that had happened, an incident that drove all reflection from his mind.
Across that glade there had come trotting easily, and evidently without any fear on its part, one of the red deer common enough in British Honduras. Only this deer was not as those are which sportsmen and hunters penetrate into the forests and the mountains to shoot and destroy; instead, it was one which Julian had himself seen roaming about the parklike grounds and surroundings of Desolada, the territory of which began on the other side of the open glade.
Yet this was not the incident, nor the portion of the incident which startled both him and Paz. Not that, but something else more serious than a tame deer crossing an open grassland a few hundred yards in diameter each way. There was nothing to startle in that--though much to do so in what followed.
What followed being that as the deer, still slowly trotting over the broad-leaved grass, which here forms so luxurious a pasture for all kinds of cattle, came into line with Julian and Paz riding almost side by side, though with the latter somewhat ahead of the former--there came from out of the mangrove trees on the other side of the little opening, a spit of flame, a puff of smoke, and the sharp crack of a rifle, while, a second later, from off the side of a logwood tree close by them there fell a strip of bark to the ground.
"By Jove!" exclaimed Julian, his accustomed coolness not deserting him even at this agitating moment, "the gallant sportsman is a reckless kind of gentleman. One would think we were the game he is after and not the deer which, by-the-bye, has departed like a streak of greased lightning. I say, Paz, that bullet passed about three inches behind your head and not many more in front of my nose. People don't go out shooting human beings here as they do partridges at home, do they?" and he turned his eyes on his companion.
If, as an extra excitement to add to the incident, he had desired to observe now a specimen of native-born ferocity, he would have been gratified as he thus regarded Paz. For the man in whose veins ran the hot blood of a Spaniard, mixed with the still more hot and tempestuous blood of the Indian, seemed almost beside himself now with rage and fury. His dark coffee-hued skin had turned livid, his eyes glared like those of a maddened wolf, and his hands, which were now unstrapping the rifle that he too carried slung to his saddle, resembled masses of vibrating cords. Yet they became calm enough as, the antique long-barrelled weapon being released, he raised that rifle quickly, brought it to the shoulder and fired towards the exact spot whence they had observed the flame and smoke of the previous rifle to come.
"Are you mad?" exclaimed Julian, horrified at the act. "Great Heavens! Do you want to commit a murder? If the person who let drive at that deer has not moved away yet, you have very likely taken a human life."
But Paz, who seemed now to have recovered his equanimity and to have relieved his feelings entirely by that savage idea of retaliation, which had been not only sprung into his mind, but had also been instantly put into practice, only shrugged his shoulders indifferently while he restrapped his rifle. Then he pointed a long lean finger at the spot across the glade where the first discharge had taken place, directing the digit next to the spot where the deer had been, after which he pointed next to their heads and then to the tree, in which they could see the hole where the bullet was buried two or three inches. Having done all which, he muttered:
"Fired at the deer. At the deer! The deer was there--there--there," and he directed his eyes to a spot five yards off the line which would be drawn between the other side of the glade whence the fire had come and the deer, "and we are here. Tree here, too."
"What do you suspect?" Julian asked, white to the lips now himself--appalled at some hitherto unsuspected horror. "What? Whom?" And as he spoke his lips seemed to take the form of a name which, still, he hesitated to give utterance to.
"No," the half-caste said in reply, his quick intelligence grasping without the aid of any speech the identity of the man to whom Julian's expression pointed. "No. He is in Belize by now. He must be there. He has money--much money--to pay to lawyer this morning. Not him. Not him." After which the mysterious creature laughed in a manner that set Julian's mind reflecting on how he had heard the Indians of old laughed at the tortures endured by their victims.
"Come," he said now, feeling suddenly cold and chilled, as he had felt once or twice before in Desolada and its surroundings. "Come, let us go ho----back to the house," and he started the mustang forward on the route they had been following.
"No," Paz exclaimed, "however, not that way now. Other way. Quite as near. Also," and his dark eyes glistened strangely as he fastened them on Julian, "lead to hacienda. To Desolada. Come. We go through wood--over glade. Very nice wood."
"What do you expect to do there?" Julian asked, divining all the same.
"Oh! oh!" Paz said, his face alight with a demoniacal gleam. "Oh! oh! Perhaps find a body. Who knows? Gunny he shoot very straight. Perhaps a wounded man. Who knows?"
So they crossed the glade, making straight for the spot whence the murderous belch of flame had sprung forth, and, pushing aside flowering cacti and oleanders as well as other lightly knitted together shrubs and bushes, looked all around them. But, except that there were signs of footmarks on the bruised leaves of some of the greater shrubs and also that the undergrowth was a little trodden down, they saw nothing. Certainly nobody lay there, struck to death by Paz's bullet.
The keen eyes of the half-caste--glinting here and there and everywhere--and looking like dark topazes as the rays of the evening sun danced in them--seemed, however, to penetrate each inch of the surrounding shrubbery. And, at last, Julian heard him give a little gasp--it was almost a bleat--and saw him point with his finger at something about three feet from the ground.
At a leaf--a leaf of the wild oleander--on which was a speck that looked like a ladybird. Only--it was not that! But, instead, a drop of blood. A drop that glistened, as his eyes had glistened in the sun; a drop that a step or two further onward had a fellow. Then--nothing further.
"I hit him," Paz said, "somewhere. Only--did not kill." While, instantly he wheeled round and gazed full into Julian's eyes--his face expressing a very storm of demoniacal hate against the late owner of that drop.
"That," he almost hissed, "will keep. For a later day. When I know him."
They went now toward the house, each intent on his own meditations and with hardly a word spoken between them; or, at least, but a few words: Julian requesting Paz to say nothing of the incident, and the latter replying that by listening and not talking was the way to discover a secret.
"Ha! the gentle lady," said the half-breed now, as they observed Madame Carmaux seated on the veranda arranging some huge lilies in a glass bowl, while the form of Zara was observed disappearing into the house. "Ha! the gracious ruler and mistress." Then, as they drew near and stepped on to the veranda, Paz began bowing and scraping before the former with extraordinary deference. Yet, all the same, Julian observed that his eyes were roving everywhere around, and all over the boards near where Madame Carmaux sat, so that he wondered what it was for which the half-breed sought!
"It would be folly," said Julian to himself that night, "not to recognise at once that each moment I spend in this house, or, indeed in this locality, is full of danger to me. Therefore, from this moment I commence to take every precaution that is possible. Now let us think out how to do it."
On this occasion he was the sole occupant of the lower veranda, in spite of its being quite early in the evening, and owing to the fact that Sebastian was passing the night in Belize, while Madame Carmaux, having announced that she had a severe headache, had taken herself off to her own room before supper, he had partaken of that meal alone. So that he sat there quite by himself now, smoking; and, as a matter of fact, he was not at all sorry to do so.
He recognised that any attempt at conversation with the "gentle lady" as Paz had termed her--in an undoubtedly ironical and subacid manner--was the veriest make-believe; while, as to Sebastian, when he was at home--well, his conversation was absolutely uninteresting. He never talked of anything but gambling and the shortness of ready money, diversified occasionally by a torrent of questions as to what George Ritherdon had done and what he had said during the whole time of his life in England. While, as Julian reflected, or, indeed, now felt perfectly sure, that even this wearisome talk was but assumed as a mask or cloak to the other's real thoughts, it was not likely that Sebastian's absence to-night could be a cause of much regret.
"Let me think out how to do it," he said again, continuing his meditations; "let me regard the whole thing from its proper aspect. I am in danger. But of what at the worst? Well, at the worst--death. There is, it is very evident, a strong determination on the part of some people in this place to relieve the colony of my interesting presence. First, Sebastian tries to break my neck with an untrained horse; next, some one probably places a coral snake in my bed; while, thirdly, some creature of his endeavours to shoot me. Paz--who seems to have imbibed many ancient ideas from his Spanish and savage ancestors--appears, however, if I understand him, to imagine he was the person shot at, his wild and barbaric notions about the sacredness of the guest making him suppose, apparently that my life could not be the one aimed at. Well, let him think so. At any rate, his feelings of revenge and hatred are kept at boiling-pitch against some unknown enemy.
"Now," he went on, with still that light and airy manner of looking at difficulties (even difficulties that at this time seemed to be assuming a horrible, not to say, hideous, aspect) which had long since endeared him to countless comrades in the wardroom and elsewhere. "Now, I will take a little walk in the cool of the evening. Dear Madame Carmaux's headache has deprived her of the pearls of my conversation, wherefore I will, as her countrymen say, 'go and take the air.'"
Upon which he rose from his seat, and, pushing aside the wicker table on which stood a bottle of Bourbon whisky, a syphon, and also a pen and ink with some writing-paper, he took from off it a letter directed and stamped, and dropped it into the pocket of his white jacket.
"The creole negro--as they call those chaps here--passes the foot of the garden in five minutes' time," he said to himself, looking at a fine gold watch which he had gained as a prize at Greenwich, "and he will convey this to Spranger's hands. Afterwards, from to-night, I will make it my business to send one off from All Pines every day. I should like Spranger and Beat--I mean Miss Spranger--to receive a daily bulletin of my health henceforth.
"Sebastian," he continued to reflect, as now he made his way beneath the palms towards where the road ran, far down at the foot of the garden, "has meditations about being my heir--well, so have I about being his. Yet I think, I do really think, I would rather be Sebastian's if it's all the same to him. Nevertheless, in case anything uncomfortable should happen to me, I should like Spranger and Beat--Miss Spranger, to be acquainted with the fact. It might make the succession easier to--Sebastian."
He heard the "creole negro's" cart coming along, even as he reached the road; he heard also the chuckles and whoops with which the conveyer of her Majesty's mails urged on the flea-bitten, raw-boned creature that carried them; and then, the cart drew into sight and was pulled up suddenly as Julian emerged into the road.
"Hoop! Massa Sebastian, you give me drefful fright," the sable driver began, "thought it was your ghost, as I see you in Belize this berry morning----"
"So it would have been his ghost," remarked Julian, as he came close to the cart with the letter in his hand, "if you had happened to see him now. Meanwhile, kindly take this letter and put it in your mail-bag."
"Huah! huah!" grunted the negro, while he held out his great black hand for the missive and, opening the mouth of the bag which was in the cart behind him, thrust it in on the top of all the others he had collected on his route along the coast; "he get there all right about two o'clock this morning. But, massa, you berry like Massa Sebastian. In um white jacket you passy well for um ghost or brudder."
"So they tell me," Julian answered lightly. "But, you see, we happen to be cousins, and, sometimes, cousins are as much alike as brothers. My friend," he said, changing the subject, "are you a teetotaller?"
"Hoop! Huah! Teetotallum. Huah! Teetotallum! Yes, massa, when I've no money. Then berry good teetotallum. Berry good."
"Well, now see, here is some money," and he gave the man a small piece of silver. "Take a drink at All Pines as you go by; it will keep this limekiln sort of air out of your throat--or wash it down. Off with you, only take two drinks. Have the second when you get to Belize."
Profuse in thanks, the darkey drove off, wishing Julian good-night, while the latter's cheery, "Good-night, fair nymph," seemed to him so exquisite a piece of humour that, for some paces along the road, the former could hear him chuckling and murmuring in his musical bass: "Fair nymph. Hoah! Fair nymph. Hoah! Fair nymph. That's me."
"Now," Julian said to himself as he strolled along the road, "we shall see if Spranger comes to meet me as he said he would if I wanted his assistance. If he doesn't, then bang goes this one into the All Pines post-box to-morrow;" the "this one" being an exact duplicate of the letter which the negro postman had at that moment in his mail-bag.
"I'm getting incredibly cunning," Julian murmured to himself, "shockingly so. Yet, what is one to do? One must meet ruse with ruse and cunning with cunning, and I do believe Sebastian is as artful as a waggon-load of monkeys. However, if things go wrong with me, if I should get ill--Sebastian says the climate is bad and lays a good deal of stress on the fact, although other people say it's first-rate---or disappear, or furnish a subject for a first-class funeral, there is one consolation. Spranger, on not hearing from me, will soon begin to make inquiries and, as the novelists say, 'I shall not die unavenged.' That's something."
It is permissible for those who record veracious chronicles such as this present one, to do many things that in ordinary polite society would not be tolerated. Thus, we have accompanied Julian to his bedchamber on more than one occasion, and now we will look over his shoulder as, an hour before this period, he indited the letter to Mr. Spranger (which at the present moment is in the Belize post-cart), and afterwards made a copy of it for posting the next day at All Pines.
It was not a lengthy document--since the naval officer generally writes briefly, succinctly and to the purpose--and simply served to relate the various startling "incidents" which had occurred after he had returned to Desolada. And he told Mr. Spranger that, henceforth, a letter would be posted for him at All Pines every day, which, so long as it conveyed no tidings of ill news, required no answer; but that, if such letter should fail to come, then Spranger might imagine that he stood in need of succour. It concluded by saying that if this gentleman had a few hours to spare next day and could meet him half-way betwixt Belize and Desolada--say, opposite a spot called Commerce Bight--he would take it as a favour--would meet him, say, in the early morning, about ten o'clock, before the heat was too great.
"Sebastian," the letter ended, "seems to harp more, now, on the fact that he's my heir than on anything else. He evidently imagines that I have more to leave than I have. But, however that may be, I don't want him to inherit yet."
He was thinking about this letter, and its duplicate which was to follow to-morrow, if the first one did not bring his friend from Belize, when he heard voices near him--voices that were pitched low and coming closer with every step he took, and then, suddenly, he came upon the girl, Zara, and the man, Ignacio Paz, walking along the road side by side.
"Well, my Queen of Night," he said to the former, "and how are you? You heard that I found the snake after all, I suppose?"
"Yes, I heard," the girl said, her dark slumbrous eyes gleaming at him in the light of the stars. "I heard. Better always look. This is a dangerous land. Very dangerous to white men."
"So Sebastian tells me. Thank you, Zara. Henceforth I will be sure to look. I am going to take a great deal of care of my precious health while I am in this neighbourhood."
"That is well," the girl said; then, having noticed his bantering manner, she added, "you may laugh--make joke, but it is no joke. Take care," and a moment later she was gone swiftly up to the house, leaving him and his companion of the morning standing together in the dusty road.
"I wonder why Zara is such a good friend of mine?" Julian asked meditatively now, looking into the eyes of Paz, which themselves gleamed brightly.
"You wonder?" the half-caste said, with that bleating little laugh which always sounded so strangely in Julian's ears. "Do you wonder? Can't you guess? Do you wonder, too, why I'm a friend of yours?"
"You, Paz! Why we've only known each other about fifteen hours. Though I'm glad to hear it, all the same."
"Friends long enough to nearly get killed together to-day," the man replied. "That's one reason."
"And the other--Zara's reasons? What are they?"
Again the man's eyes glistened in the starlight; then he put out his long lithe finger, which, Indianlike, he used to emphasize most of his remarks.
"She hates him. So do I."
"You I can understand. He beat you this morning. But--Zara! I thought she was his faithful adherent."
"She hates him because," the man replied laconically, "she loves him."
"Loves him. And he? Well--what?"
"Not love her. He love 'nother. English missy. You know her."
"I do," Julian answered emphatically. "I do. Now, I'll add my share to this little love story. She, the English missy, does not love him."
"Zara think she do. Thinks he with her now. Go Belize, see her."
"Bah! Bosh! The English missy wouldn't--why, Paz," he broke off suddenly, "what's this in your hand? Haven't you had enough sport to-day--or are you going out shooting the owls to-night for a change?" while as he spoke he pointed to a small rifle the half-caste held in his hand. "Though," he added, "one doesn't shoot birds with rifles."
"No," the other replied, with again the bleat, and with, now, his eyes blazing--"no. Shoot men with him. Nearly shoot one to-day. I find him near where I find drop of blood this afternoon. Hid away under ferns. I take a little walk this evening in the cool. Then I find him."
"This knoll is becoming historic," Julian said to himself the next morning, as he halted the mustang where twice he had halted it before, when he had been journeying the other way from that which he had now come. "When, some day, the life and adventures of Admiral Ritherdon, K.C.B., and so forth, are given to an admiring world, it must figure in them. Make a pretty frontispiece, too, with its big shady palms and the blue sea beyond the mangroves down below."
In spite, however, of his bright and buoyant nature, which refused to be depressed or subdued by the atmosphere of doubt or suspicion--to give that atmosphere no more important name--he recognised very clearly that matters were serious with him. He knew, too, that the calamities which had approached, without absolutely overwhelming him--so far--were something more than coincidences; natural enough as each by itself might have been in a country which, even now, can scarcely be called anything else than a wild and unsettled one.
"I was once flung off a horse, a buckjumper," he reflected, "in Western Australia when I was a 'sub'; I found a snake in my bed in Burmah; and a chap shot at me once in Vera Cruz--but--but," and he nodded his head meditatively over his recollections, "the whole lot did not happen together in Australia or Burmah or Vera Cruz. If they had done so, it would have appeared rather pointed. And--well--they have all happened together here. That looks rather pointed, too."
"All the same," Julian went on reflectively, as now he tethered the mustang to a bush where it could stand in the shade, and also drew himself well under the spreading branches of the palms--"all the same, I can't and won't believe that Sebastian sees danger to his very firmly-established rights by my presence here. He said on that first night to Madame Carmaux, 'Knowledge is not proof,' and what proof have I against him? This copy of my baptism at New Orleans which I possess can't outweigh that entry of his birth which Spranger has seen in Belize. And there is nothing else. Nothing! Except George Ritherdon's statement to me, which nobody would believe. My own opinion is," he concluded, "that Sebastian, who at the best is a rough, untutored specimen of the remote colonist, with very little knowledge of the world beyond, thinks that if anything happened to me he would only have to put in a claim to whatever I have in England, prove his cousinship, and be put in possession of my few thousands. What a sublime confidence he must have in the simplicity of the English laws!"
Even, however, as he thought all this, there came to him a recollection, a revived memory, of something that had struck him after George Ritherdon's death--something that, in the passage of so many other stirring events, had of late vanished from his mind.
"He said," Julian murmured to himself--"my uncle said in the letter I received when we got back to Portsmouth, that he had commenced to write down the error, the crime of his life, in case he did not live to see me. And--and--later--after he had told me all, on the next day, he remarked that the whole account was written down; that when--poor old fellow! he was gone I should find it in his desk; that it would serve to refresh my memory. But--I never did find it, and, I suppose, he thought it was best destroyed. I wish, however, he hadn't done it; even his handwriting would have been some corroboration of the statement. At least it would have shown, if I ever do make the statement public, that I had not invented it."
While he had been indulging in these meditations he had kept his eyes fixed on the long, white, dusty road that stretched from where the knoll was on which he sat toward Belize; a road which, through this flat country, could be traced for two or three miles, it looking like a white thread lying on a dark green carpet the colour of which had been withered by the sun.
And now, as he looked, he saw upon the farthest end of that thread a speck, even whiter than itself--a speck, that is to say, white above and black beneath--which was gradually travelling along the road, coming nearer and growing bigger each moment.
"It may be Mr. Spranger," he thought to himself, still watching the oncoming party-coloured patch as it continued to loom larger; "probably is. Yet for a man of his time of life, and in such a baker's oven as that road is, he is a bold rider. I hope he won't get a sunstroke or a touch of heat apoplexy in his efforts to come and meet me."
At last, however, the person, whoever it was, drew so near that the rider's white tropical jacket stood out quite distinct from the black coat of the animal he bestrode; while, also, the great white sombrero on the man's head was distinctly visible.
"That's not Spranger," Julian said to himself, "but a much younger man. By Jove!" he exclaimed, "it's Sebastian. And I might have expected it to be him. Of course. It is about the time he would be returning to Desolada."
His recognition of his cousin was scarcely accomplished beyond all doubt, when Sebastian's horse began to slow down in its stride, owing to having commenced the ascent of the incline that led up to the knoll where Julian sat, and in a very few more moments the animal, emitting great gusts from its nostrils, had brought its rider close to where he was. While, true to his determination to exhibit no outward sign of anything he might suspect concerning Sebastian's designs toward him, as well as to resolve to assume a light and cheerful manner, and also a friendly one, Julian called out pleasantly:
"Halloa, Sebastian! How are you this fine morning? Rather a hot ride from Belize, isn't it?"
If, however, he had expected an equally cordial greeting in return, or, to put it in other and more appropriate words, a similar piece of acting on Sebastian's part, he was very considerably mistaken. For, instead of his cousin returning his cheerful salutation in a corresponding manner, his reception of it betokened something that might very well have been considered to be dismay. Indeed, he reined his horse up so suddenly as almost to throw the panting creature on its haunches, in spite of the ascent it was making; while his face, sunbrowned and burned as it was, seemed to grow nearly livid behind the bronze. His eyes also had in them the startled expression which might possibly be observed in those of a man who had suddenly been confronted by a spectre.
"Why!" he said, a moment later, after peering about and around and into all the rich luxuriant vegetation which grew on the knoll, as though he might have expected to see some other person sitting among the wild allamandas or ixoras--"why, what on earth are you doing here, Julian? I--I thought you were at Desolada, or--or perhaps out shooting again. By the way, I had left Desolada before you were up yesterday morning; what sort of a day did you have of it?"
"Most exciting," Julian replied, himself as cool as ice. "Quite a field-day." And then he went on to give his cousin, who had by now dismounted and was sitting near him, a résumé of the whole day's adventures--not forgetting to tell him also of the interesting discovery of the coral snake in his bed.
"If," he thought to himself, "he wants to see how little he can frighten one of her Majesty's sailors, he shall see it now."
He had, however, some slight hesitation in narrating the retaliation of Paz upon the unknown, would-be assassin--for such the person must have been who had fired at where the deer was not--he being in some doubt as to how this fact would be received.
At first it was listened to in silence, Sebastian only testifying how much he was impressed at the recountal by the manner in which he kept his eyes fixed on Julian--and also by the whiteness of his lips, to which the circulation seemed unable to find its way. Also, it seemed as though, when he heard of the drop of blood upon the leaf, once more the blood in his own veins was impeded--and as if his heart was standing still. Then, when the recital was concluded, he said:
"Paz did right. It was a cowardly affair. I wish he had killed the villain. I suppose it was some enemies of his. Some fellow half-caste. Paz has enemies," he added.
"Probably," said Julian quietly.
"And," went on Sebastian now in a voice of considerable equanimity, though still his bronze and sunburn were not what they usually were; "and how did you leave Madame Carmaux? Was she not horrified at such a dastardly outrage?"
"I did not have much time with her. Not time enough indeed to tell her. She went to bed directly I got back----"
"Went to bed! Why?"
"She was not well. Said she had a headache, or rather sent word to that effect. Nor did she come down to breakfast. Rather slow, you know, all alone by myself, so I thought I'd come on here for a ride. Must do something with one's time."
"Of course! Of course! I told you Desolada was Liberty Hall. Went to bed, eh? I hope she is not really ill. I don't know what I should do without her," and as he spoke Julian observed that, if anything, he was whiter than before. Evidently he was very much distressed at Madame Carmaux's suffering from even so trifling an ailment as a headache.
"I think I'll get on now," Sebastian said, rising from where he was sitting. "If she is laid up I shall have a good deal of extra work to do, I suppose it really is a headache."
"I suppose it is," Julian said, "it is not likely to be much else. She was arranging flowers in a vase when Paz and I returned."
"Was she!" Sebastian exclaimed, almost gleefully; "was she! Oh, well! then there can't be much the matter with her, can there? I am glad to hear that. But, anyhow, I'll go on now. You'll be back by sundown, I suppose. You know it's bad to be out just at sunset. The climate is a tricky one."
"So I have heard you say. Never mind, I'll be back in the evening, or before. Meanwhile I may wander into the woods and shoot a monkey or so."
"Shoot! Why! you haven't got a gun with you," Sebastian exclaimed, looking on the ground and at the mustang's back where, probably, such a thing would have been strapped.
"No, I haven't. But I've always got this," and he showed the handle of his revolver in an inside pocket.
"You're a wise man. Though, if you knew the colony better, you'd understand there isn't much danger to human life here."
"There was yesterday. And Paz has taught me a trick or two. If any one fired at me now I should do just what he did, and, perhaps, I too might find a leaf with a drop of blood on it afterwards."
"You're a cool fish!" exclaimed Sebastian after bursting out into a loud laugh which, somehow, didn't seem to have much of the ring of mirth in it. "Upon my word you are. Well, so long! Don't go committing murder, that's all."
"No, I won't. Bye-bye. I'll be back to-night."
After which exchange of greetings, Sebastian got on his horse and prepared to continue his journey to Desolada.
"By the way," he said, however, before doing so, "about that snake! How could it have got into your bed?"
"I don't know," Julian replied with a half laugh. "How should I? The coral snake is a new acquaintance, though I've known other specimens in my time. It got there somehow, didn't it?"
"Of course! They love warmth, you know. Perhaps it climbed up the legs of the bed and crept in where it would be covered up."
"It was rather rude to do such a thing in a visitor's bed though, wasn't it? It isn't as though I was one of the residents. And it must have been a clever chap, too, because it got in without disarranging the mosquito curtains the least little bit. That was clever, when you come to think of it!"
At which Sebastian gave a rather raucous kind of laugh, and then set his horse in motion.
"Au revoir!" said Julian. "I hope you'll find Madame Carmaux much better when you get back."
The morning was drawing on and it was getting late--that is, for the tropics--namely, it was near nine o'clock, and soon the sun would be high in the heavens, so that it was not likely along the dusty white road from Belize any sign of human life would make it appearance until sunset was close at hand.
"If Mr. Spranger doesn't come pretty soon," Julian said consequently to himself, "he won't come at all, and has, probably, important business to attend to in the city. Wherefore I shall have to pass to-day alone here, or have a sunstroke before I can get as far back as All Pines for a meal. I ought to have brought some lunch with me."
"Halloa, my friend," he remarked a moment later to the mustang, which had commenced to utter little whinnies, and seemed to be regarding him with rather a piteous sort of look, "what's the matter with you? You don't want to start back and get a sunstroke, do you? Oh! I know. Of course!" and he rose from his seat and, going further into the bushes behind the knoll, began to use both his eyes and his ears. For it had not taken him a moment to divine--he who had been round the world three times! that the creature required that which in all tropical lands is wanted by man and animal more than anything else--namely, the wherewithal to quench their thirst.
Presently, he heard the grateful sound of trickling water, which in British Honduras is bountifully supplied by Providence, and discovered a swift-flowing rivulet on its way to the sea below--it being, in fact, a little tributary of Mullin's River--when, going back for the creature, he led it to where the water was, while, tying its bridle to some reeds, he left it there to quench its thirst. After which he returned to the summit of the knoll to continue his lookout along the road from Belize.
But now he saw that, during his slight absence, some signs of other riders had appeared, there being at this present moment two black-and-white blurs upon the white dusty thread. Two that progressed side by side, and presented a duplicate, party-coloured imitation of that which, earlier, Sebastian Ritherdon and his steed had offered to his view.
"If that's Mr. Spranger," Julian thought to himself, "he has brought a companion with him, or has picked up a fellow traveller. By Jove though! one's a darkey and, well! I declare, the other's a woman. Oh!" he exclaimed suddenly, joyfully too; "it's Miss Spranger. Here's luck!" and with that, regardless of the sun's rays and all the calamities that those rays can bring in such a land, he jumped into the road and began waving his handkerchief violently.
The signal, he saw, was returned at once; from beneath the huge green umbrella held over the young lady's head--and his own--by the negro accompanying her, he observed an answering handkerchief waved, and then the mass of white material which formed a veil thrown back, as though she was desirous that he who was regarding her should not be in any doubt as to who was approaching. Yet, she need not have been thus desirous. There is generally one form (as the writer has been told by those who know) which, when we are young, or sometimes even, no longer boys and girls, we recognise easily enough, no matter how much it may be disguised by veils or dust-coats or other similar impediments to our sight.
Naturally, Beatrix and her sable companion rode slowly--to ride fast here on such a morning means death, or something like it--but they reached the knoll at last, and then, after mutual greetings had been exchanged and Julian had lifted Miss Spranger off her horse--one may suppose how tenderly!--she said:
"Father was sorry, but he could not come. So I came instead. I hope you don't mind."
"Mind!" he said, while all the time he was thinking how pretty she looked in her white dress, and how fascinating the line which marked the distinction between the sunburn of her face and the whiteness of her throat made her appear--"mind!" Then, words seeming somehow to fail him (who rarely was at a loss for such things, either for the purpose of jest or earnest) at this moment, he contented himself with a glance only, and in preparing for her a suitable seat in the shade. Yet, all the same, he was impelled directly afterwards to tell her again and again how much he felt her goodness in coming at all.
"Jupiter," she said to the negro now, "bring the horses in under the shade and unsaddle and unbridle them. And, find some 'water for them. I am going to stay quite a time, you know," she went on, addressing Julian. "I can't go back till sunset, or near sunset, so you will have to put up with my company for a whole day. I suppose you didn't happen to think of bringing any lunch or other provisions?"
"The mere man is forgetful," he replied contritely, finding his tongue once more, "so----"
"So I am aware. Therefore, I have brought some myself. Oh! yes, quite enough for two, Mr. Ritherdon; therefore you need not begin to say you are not hungry or anything of that sort. Later, Jupiter shall unpack it. Meanwhile, we have other things to think and talk about. Now, please, go on with that," and she pointed to the pipe in his hand which he had let go out in her presence, "and tell me everything. Everything from the time you left us."
Obedient to her orders and subject to no evesdropping by the discreet Jupiter--who, having been told by Julian where the rivulet was, had conducted the two fresh horses there and was now seated on the bank crooning a mournful ditty which, the former thought, might have been sung by some African sorcerer to his barbaric ancestors--he did tell her everything. He omitted nothing, from the finding of the coral-snake in his bed to his last meeting with Sebastian half an hour ago.
While the girl sitting there by his side, her pure clear eyes sometimes fixed on the narrator's face and sometimes gazing meditatively on the sapphire Caribbean sparkling a mile off in front of them, listened to and drank in and weighed every word.
"Lieutenant Ritherdon," she said, when he had concluded, and placing her hand boldly, and without any absurd false shame, upon his sleeve, "you must give me a promise--a solemn promise--that you will never go back to that place again."
"But!" he exclaimed startled, "I must go back. I cannot leave and give up my quest like that. And," he added, a little gravely, "remember I am a sailor, an officer. I cannot allow myself to be frightened away from my search in such a manner."
"Not for----" she began interrupting.
"Not for what?" he asked eagerly, feeling that if she said, "not for my sake?" he must comply.
"Not for your life? Its safety? Not for that?" she concluded, almost to his disappointment. "May you not retreat to preserve your life?"
"No," he answered a moment later. "No, not even for that. For my own self-respect, my own self-esteem I must not do so. Miss Spranger," he continued, speaking almost rapidly now, "I know well enough that I shall do no good there; I have come to understand at last that I shall never discover the truth of the matter. Yet I do believe all the same that George Ritherdon was my uncle, that Charles Ritherdon was my father, that Sebastian Ritherdon is a--well, that there is some tricking, some knavery in it all. But," he continued bitterly, "the trickery has been well played, marvellously well managed, and I shall never unearth the method by which it has been done."
"Yet, thinking this, you will not retreat! You will jeopardize your life?"
"I have begun," he said, "and I cannot retreat, short of absolute, decisive failure. Of certain failure! And, oh! you must see why, you must understand why, I can not--it is because my life is in jeopardy that I cannot do so. I embarked on this quest expecting to find no difficulties, no obstacles in my way; I came to this country and, at once, I learned that my appearance here, at Desolada, meant deadly peril to me. And, because of that deadly peril, I must, I will, go on. I will not draw back; nor be frightened by any danger. If I did I should hate myself forever afterwards; I should know myself unworthy to ever wear her Majesty's uniform again. I will never draw back," he repeated emphatically, "while the danger continues to exist."
As he had spoken, Julian Ritherdon--the bright, cheery Englishman, full of joke and quip, had disappeared: in his place had come another Julian--the Englishman of stern determination, of iron nerve; the man who, because peril stared him in the face and environed his every footstep, was resolute to never retreat before that danger.
While she, the girl sitting by his side, her eyes beaming with admiration (although he did not see them), knew that, as he had said, so he would do. This man--fair, young, good-looking, and insouciant--was, beneath all that his intercourse with the world and society had shaped him into being, as firm as steel, as solid as a rock.
What could she answer in return?
"If you are so determined," she said now, controlling her voice for fear that, through it, she should betray her admiration for his strength and courage, "you will, at least take every measure for your self-preservation. Write every day, as you have said you will in your letter to my father, be ever on your guard--by night and day. Oh!" she went on, thrusting her hands through the beautiful hair from which she had removed her large Panama hat for coolness while in the shade, "I sicken with apprehension when I think of you alone in that mournful, mysterious house."
"You need not," he said, and now he too ventured to touch her sleeve as she had previously touched his--"you need not do so. Remember, it is man to man at the worst; Sebastian Ritherdon--if he is Sebastian Ritherdon--against Julian. And I, at least, am used to facing risks and dangers. It is my trade."
"No," she answered, almost with a shudder, while her lustrous eyes expressed something that was very nearly, if not quite, horror--"no! it is not. It is a man and a woman--and that a crafty, scheming woman--against a man. Against you. Lieutenant Ritherdon," she cried, "can you doubt who--who----"
"Hush," he said, "hush. Not yet. Let us judge no one yet. Though I--believe me--I doubt nothing. I, too, can understand. But," he went on a little more lightly now, "remember, Sebastian is not the only one possessed of a female auxiliary, of female support. Remember, I have Zara."
"Zara," she repeated meditatively, "Zara. The girl with whom he amused himself by making believe that he loved her; made her believe that, when this precious Madame Carmaux should be removed, she might reign over his house as his wife."
"Did he do that?"
"He did. If all accounts are true he led her to believe he loved her until he thought another woman--a woman who would not have let him serve her as a groom--might look favourably on his pretensions."
"Therefore," said Julian, ignoring the latter part of her remark, though understanding not only it, but the deep contempt of her tone, "therefore, now she hates him. May she not be a powerful ally of mine, in consequence. That is, if she does hate him, as my other ally--Paz--says."
"Yes, yes," Beatrix said, still musing, still reflectively. "Yet, if so, why those mysterious visits to your bedroom window, why that haunting the neighbourhood of your room at midnight?"
"I understand those visits now, I think I understand them, since the episode of the coral snake. I believe she was constituting herself a watch, a guard over me. That she knows much--that--that she suspects more. That she will at the worst, if it comes, help me to--to thwart him."
"Ah! if it were so. If I could believe it."
"And Paz, too. Sebastian told me to-day that Paz has enemies. Well! doubtless he has--only, I would rather be Paz than one of those enemies. You would think so yourself if you had seen the blaze of the man's eyes, the look upon his face, when that shot was fired, and, later, when he showed me the rifle which he had found close by the spot. No; I should not like to be one of Paz's enemies nor--a false lover of Zara's."
"If I could feel as confident as you!" Beatrix exclaimed. "Oh! if I could. Then--then--" but she could find no ending for her sentence.