CHAPTER X
A MIDNIGHT ALARM
I think that Professor Herndon was the only person in the company who was quite contented with the day's doings on that evening when we camped near the table of stone. The polished slide and the ledge along which we had passed to the cavern stirred his imagination concerning the wonders that were before him, and he convinced himself that he had the god of his ambition by the heel. The fat notebook was made the repository of countless surmises regarding the period at which the ledge was in active use as a test for courage, and the stone structure that loomed up immediately beside the camp was tagged with countless suppositions regarding its uses and its probable date of construction. Soma gathered in some easily earned shillings by raking his mind in search of traditions and retailing them to the scientist by the light of the fire. He made magazine prices for tales that he spun from his fertile brain, and the Professor could hardly write fast enough in the excitement brought about by the discovery of so much historical knowledge.
"It is wonderful!" he cried, pausing for a moment to polish the thick lenses of his glasses upon the end of his silk coat. "The chance of enlightening the world upon this subject is one that I would not have missed for a million dollars."
"The dollars for me," murmured Holman. "I don't think the old world cares three cents about anything that happened a thousand years ago in this patch."
The Professor adjusted his glasses and turned them upon the doubter for the space of three minutes, but Holman was blissfully ignorant of the look which the angry archæologist favoured him with. The youngster was watching the firelight upon the face of Miss Barbara Herndon, and his thoughts were probably in a dream-fed future instead of a dismal past.
Leith sat silent and gloomy, his head pillowed against the trunk of a maupei tree, his face in the shadow of his hat, which he had pulled down over his forehead. The supper had been eaten with little conversation, the Professor being the only one who showed conversational powers of any note. With the notebook already partly filled he felt certain of a niche in the Pantheon of Fame, and he could not resist a desire to prattle childishly about the sensation which his discoveries would cause. It's a terrible thing for a man to get the applause craving in its worst form. It is liable to make him do things which no craving for treasure would allow him to do, no matter how badly he desired the tempting gold.
The girls retired early, and soon afterward Leith wrapped himself up in a blanket and lay down at the foot of the tree. The Professor at last became tired of firing questions at the wonderfully well-informed Soma, and the Kanaka, finding that the market for legends was not as good as it was in the early part of the night, retreated to the other fire, where Kaipi and the fire carriers were slumbering.
The heavy silence that comes in the night to the outposts of the world fell upon the place like a cold hand at that moment. A moon that appeared to have a pellicle across it, like the film upon a dead man's eye, peeped over the barrier of black rocks—peeped over as if it wondered what we were doing in that God-forgotten quarter. Sudden puffs of wind rustled the leaves of the maupei and fled hurriedly, and from somewhere in the coral rocks one of those red-striped lizards that are sometimes found in the rocky parts of the Carolines sent his unearthly shik-shuck into the stillness, where one fancied it a little projectile of sound crushed in its efforts to pierce the tremendous silence of the night. One's imagination pictured the places where there were lights and music, the tinkle of glasses, and the laughter of men and women, and the wilderness suffered in the comparison. Coral atolls with waving palm trees are delightful spots when one reads of them when seated in a comfortable armchair in a snug library, but the real island comes down heavily upon the nerve-centres when night falls upon the spot. Then the fringe dweller feels that he is an outcast from the warm places of the world where men and women meet in social intercourse.
Holman, who had been staring in silence at the fire for some twenty minutes, turned toward me after the Professor had retired.
"Sleepy?" asked the youngster.
"Worse than that," I muttered.
"Let's turn in."
The "turning in" was an easy performance. We lay down on the pile of leaves which the carriers had scraped together, pulled a rug over us, and in spite of the surroundings I was soon fast asleep.
It was Holman's fist that disturbed my slumber. It came with some force against my short rib, and I sat upright. The moonlight made it possible to see across the valley, while every object around the camp was clearly outlined.
Holman was sitting up on his leafy bed, and I put a question breathlessly as I jerked myself upright.
"What's up?"
"Didn't he say that this place was uninhabited?" asked the youngster.
"Yes," I answered. "Why?"
"Well, some one has just pushed his head and shoulders up above that stone table," whispered Holman. "He put his head up, looked across at us for about five minutes, then dodged quickly back."
"You weren't dreaming?"
"Dreaming? Rot! I haven't closed my eyes since we retired!"
I threw off the rug and looked around. Leith lay under the maupei tree in the same position as we had seen him in at the moment I lay down. Near him the Professor snored dismally, probably dreaming dreams of the greatness that would be thrust upon him in the near future. No sounds came from the tent that sheltered the two girls, but a combination of curious nasal sounds rose from the spot where the natives were sleeping around their fire.
"It might be one of the niggers," whispered Holman. "Let us see."
We stole silently across the intervening space, and, crouching in the shadows, counted the sleepers. There were seven. The prowler that Holman had seen upon the top of the stone structure was evidently an outsider, and the knowledge brought no pleasant feelings. Leith had assured the Professor on several occasions that the island was uninhabited, yet it was quite possible that natives from the adjoining groups had visited it during the period that elapsed since his last visit. Yet we felt that it was no stray visitor from another island that had peeped over the top of the massive table, and it was with a suspicious eye upon the sleeping Leith that we crept quietly over the coral rocks toward the tremendous stone piers of the structure that rose like a monster gateway against the gray sky. The atmosphere of that place was indescribable. We seemed to be in the midst of relics that were older than the pyramids. The temple of Luxor may seem impressive by moonlight, but the knowledge we possess of Thebes in its glory somewhat modifies the awe which we would feel if we knew nothing of the people who had raised the great monuments in the city of Amen-Ra. And Holman and I knew nothing of the dead race that erected the mighty stone table on the cleared slope, which by its construction gave evidence of a knowledge of mechanics of which the present-day Polynesian is entirely ignorant. I recalled the Nan-Tauch ruins and the tombs of the mysterious Chan-te-leur kings Ola-Sipa and Ola-Sopa in the Carolines, the tolmas and the langis of the Marshall and Gilbert groups, and I wished the Professor anything but pleasant dreams. The place seemed waiting for the return of its dead. The scenery possessed that singular expectancy that compels one to turn around every few moments to convince one's self that an unfriendly watcher is not immediately in the rear.
Still keeping in the shadows, we circled the camp till we were in front of the stone table, but just when I took a step into the moonlight space before it, Holman grasped my arm and drew me back.
"Look!" he gurgled. "Look! there he is again!"
All doubts concerning the youngster's previous observations were swept away at that moment. A head and shoulders rose suddenly above the black line of the immense flat stone, remained there for the space of three minutes, then dropped back so that we could not see it from the position in which we stood.
"Take the two front pillars!" whispered Holman. "I'll watch the two back ones. Come on!"
We dashed across the open space, the youngster rushing to the rear, while I ran to the front columns. It was impossible for any one to descend unless we saw him, and with nerves on a tension we walked around the huge supports and watched anxiously for the midnight watcher to descend.
We must have remained on guard for twenty minutes or more, but there was no sign of the spy. Around us the massive structure cast a patch of velvety shadow, but not the slightest sound came from above.
Holman tired of the inactivity, and stepped across to where I was standing. "I'm going to climb that chestnut tree and see if the beggar is still there," he murmured. "You stop here till I take an observation."
He darted across to the big Pacific chestnut and climbed hurriedly, while I walked round and round the square pillars and strained my ears for the slightest sound that would give a hint that the person on the roof of the mysterious table was preparing to descend.
A low whistle from Holman pierced the silence, and I answered.
"Come up here," he cried softly. "He's given us the slip."
I climbed the tree to the branch where the young fellow sat awaiting me. From his position he had a clear view of the top of the big table, and as I reached him I looked through an opening in the thick leaves. The top of the stone was empty!
"Do you think he slipped down while I was climbing the tree?" asked Holman.
"I'm certain he didn't," I answered. "It would have been impossible."
We stared at the stone in silence. The top was covered with short moss that had gathered there through the centuries, and instead of being flat as we had surmised there was a noticeable slope, so that the part that was directly behind the camp was fully two feet higher than the rear. This was the only peculiarity in its construction, and although we sat in silence, staring at its moss-covered surface, we were utterly unable to put forward the slightest supposition that would account for the disappearance of the watcher. The incident was an extraordinary one. The man could not have dropped from the table before we reached the supporting piers, and we were equally certain that he had not slipped down the pillars while we stood guard beneath.
"I'm going up there," muttered Holman. "We can get the rope from the camp. Come along! I'd like a look at that place at closer quarters."
We climbed hastily down the tree, crept cautiously back to the camp and took the stout rope which we had used in reaching the Ledge of Death. The camp was quiet. The curious nasal sounds produced by the natives, together with the rather high-toned snore of Professor Herndon, were the only sounds that came through the still night.
Holman flung one end of the rope over a projecting corner of the flat slab, twisted one half of it round and round the pillar to make occasional grips which we could use in the ascent, then clutching the hanging end he worked himself slowly up. I followed him, only to find the upper surface of the table as bare of any signs of life as we had previously noted from our perch in the chestnut tree. The tough moss upon the stone was fully four inches long, and covered the slab completely. In vain we stamped around looking for a possible hiding place. The massive block didn't offer a cranny that a lizard could hide in, and with an unsolved mystery upon our hands we descended to the ground.
"What do you make of it?" asked Holman.
I shook my head. The enigma baffled me. Our suspicions regarding the honesty of Leith made the strange appearance of the figure on the table of stone more perplexing than it would have been under ordinary circumstances. Leith had asserted that the island was uninhabited, yet we were not inclined to rush to him with the news of the discovery. We felt that it was another of the small discoveries that made us pile up suspicions against the big bully at the head of the party. We had no proof of the midnight visitor, and the story of his sudden disappearance while we watched below would only provoke an unbelieving grin from Leith, and an idiotic laugh from the foolish old Professor.
"Better keep it to ourselves," growled Holman.
"For the present at any rate," I remarked. "If Leith knows that there are others upon the island, and if those others are friendly to him, it will only make him more careful of his actions if we tell what we have seen to-night."
Arriving at this decision we came back to the camp and crawled quietly under the rug, where we watched the mystical monument till the flaming tropical dawn lit up the valley.
