The next moment Adams and Clensy obeyed Biglow’s orders. Without hesitating both went down on their bellies and crawled along the silver sand, Biglow leading the way. Adams began to make a bit of a fuss as he went wriggling along on all fours, dragging his stout corporation as high as possible over the stones and scrub. Presently the three of them had crossed through the thick scrub and bamboo growth that divided them from the treeless slope that led nearly to the end of the valley. Peeping through the edge of the jungle growth, they peered across the sands that ran towards the place where the tell-tale light gleamed, and stared like men in a dream. There before them, not more than five hundred yards away, stood about a dozen dark men robed in white surplices, the goats’ horns, the vaudoux symbol, stuck on their heads. The horns gave a weird, devilish appearance to the huddled, slowly moving figures.
“Keep yer peckers up, don’t get nervous,” said Biglow, as Adams and Clensy suddenly bobbed their heads back into the jungle leaves, dreading that they might be observed. Adams looked like having a fit when Biglow nudged him violently in the ribs, and said in a stage whisper; “Five hundred pounds, old boy! Five hundred!”
“You’ve gone mad ter talk loud like that in a hawful time like this ’ere,” Adams almost hissed. Biglow seemed delighted to see Adams’s extreme funk, and the vicious light of his solitary eye.
“We’re not at a picnic, Biglow,” said Clensy as he too stared at his giant comrade, feeling a trifle irritated.
“We’re at something a damned sight better!” replied Biglow as he pointed in the direction of the white-robed priests moving about in the gloom.
Most certainly, the scene before their eyes was more like the description of some brigand’s cave in a dime novel, than anything that Clensy could liken it to. Even Biglow rubbed his eyes as he stared again, and the light from the head priest’s torch fell in such a way that they distinctly saw two coffins lying at the feet of those swarthy, surpliced, fetish worshippers. And as the three men watched, they saw those dark forms stoop and slowly lift the two coffins, and then begin to move towards the wide, but low entrance of a cavern that ran deep into the mountain’s side. So brilliant was the moonlight that they distinctly saw the figures bend their horned heads as they carried their gruesome load through the low-roofed cavern doorway.
“You’ll see the sight of your lives when you get in there,” said Biglow.
For a while Adams refused to budge, and said he wasn’t going to be murdered by cannibals for twenty thousand pounds. But Biglow’s fearless eyes and sanguine manner revived the ex-sailorman’s courage. “Awl roight, Gawd forgive yer if I’m mydered!” said Adams, and then the three men started to crawl slowly along the edge of the jungle, making their way towards the cavern’s entrance.
“Don’t get flustered,” said Biglow as he turned his head while still on his stomach, then added: “All you’ve got to do, is to hold your revolvers ready, and shout your loudest if I give the signal, and all will be well. I’ve fought three hundred niggers down at Sumatra, and routed an army of nine hundred niggers armed with drums and spears on the West Coast of Africa.”
“‘Ope it ain’t all talk,” wailed Adams as they crept under the fern trees that grew thickly within a few feet of the cavern’s entrance. They suddenly stopped. They could hear sounds of music.