“If he looks serious, there’s something to be serious about,” was Clensy’s uncomfortable reflection as he looked at his revolver and began to wonder if he would ever see the sunrise again.
“Keep to the sand; for heaven’s sake keep to the sand!” said Biglow in a premonitory voice, as they sank up to their ankles into the silvery dust as they got off the beaten track.
“There’s no telling who might come along that pathway,” said Biglow, as they found themselves once again in the shadows.
“Look out! a light on the starboard bow!” whispered Biglow, just as Clensy and Adams were hoping that they had been brought on a wild-goose chase. Sure enough, right below the cross-shaped peak, far away at the end of the valley, gleamed a tiny light.
Clensy and Adams stared in each other’s eyes. What was going to be Biglow’s next move, they both wondered? The big man’s ears had gone stiff, alert, like a mastiff’s, as he stood there, his hand arched over his brow, his eyes staring as though with delight at the tell-tale gleam that flickered somewhere between the palm trunks ahead of them.
“Blest if the moon isn’t over the peak, in the exact position that I want it!” said Biglow.
“Wa jer mean?” said Adams, as he lifted his solitary eye and gazed nervously towards the mountain peak.
“Why, the moon’s the clock of the papoloi cannibal priests, and when it hangs over that peak it is a sign that the priests must offer sacrifices on the fetish altars of the vaudoux. Old Crippy said so, and he evidently knows, or else why is that light down the valley and the moon hanging like a Chinese lantern exactly over that big cross up there with a cabbage on top of it?”
Adams and Clensy looked towards the mountain. “It do look loike a cabbage that ’ere nob on top of it,” growled Adams as his eye shifted about, so nervous did he feel.
“Come on,” said Biglow, “don’t stand there gaping.”