The trail became more open shortly, and progress was swift. Natalie kept her place with increasing difficulty, but never a murmur escaped her. Her shoes had long since become shapeless envelopes of soggy leather; her skirt was tattered like a Foreign Legion battle flag. Her hands and face were scratched and swollen with insect bites, but her eyes were dry and her lips firm, for some inward voice told her that she was about to learn some part of the truth that had been hidden from her. For all her earlier assertion that Vandersee was Barry's friend and a man to be trusted, a stubborn question had taken root in her breast since that message was delivered. If Vandersee was the man who had taken Barry's party, what became of all the previous suppositions and arguments regarding their relative relations with Leyden?
If the question were not to be answered quickly, at least it was to be forced aside by more vital affairs; all doubts were to be settled by one swift decision. The guides suddenly ran back, chattered volubly and murmuringly together, then stepped aside, waved Rolfe forward with a warning of caution, and joined their fellows who had been carrying their guns for them.
Rolfe parted the thicket, peered through, swore fiercely under his breath and didn't apologize for it. He beckoned Blunt, and that dour old salt squinted at the sight that had staggered the mate. Natalie stepped softly beside them and gazed over their stooping backs, to swiftly step back with a choking sob of horror.
"Navy party all right!" gritted Rolfe, squirming in every inch of his skin with the tremendous responsibility confronting him. None knew better than he what the consequences must be of attacking a party of Government sailors. But the sight he saw—the sounds he heard!
He looked out across a wide circle of sward, dotted with hummocks of brown earth. The trees surrounding it held fruit of Nero's kind. To each trunk a writhing, moaning Barang seaman was lashed, his face and body smeared with sticky stuff that was alive with crawling ants. A man squirmed and whimpered within five feet of Jerry Rolfe's eyes; the havoc of those busy insects was only too horribly apparent.
And on two of the brown hummocks, spread-eagled with vine ropes that cut deep into wrists and ankles, lay Barry and Little, grimly silent as to complaint, but with the haze of gnawing terror in their eyes. Their bodies swarmed with scurrying life; the heat had melted the native sugar on their naked skin until it had run in sticky rivulets to every part of their tortured bodies. Under the heaving multitude at Barry's throat, blood was trickling; an awful hint of a frightful end not far away.
Lounging at their ease, smoking or eating, lay a party of men in naval uniforms, three of them white men, the rest native Celebes. They chatted and laughed together with callous indifference for their captives' agonies; and at these white men—officers, by their dress—Rolfe found Bill Blunt glaring with eyes that were puzzled at first, then blazing with fury.
"Mr. Rolfe, pile into 'em!" the old salt growled hoarsely. "Give 'em hell an' blazes. Them ain't no more Dutch Navy men than you be! Gawd! Ain't I manned gangway fer th' Hollanders offen enough to know 'em? Them swine is fakers!"
Old Bill moistened his palm again, charged his rifle under his coat, and got on his toes waiting for the mate's word. Rolfe needed no other excuse to attack. Even though Blunt's announcement proved simply a ruse to force his hand, he cared nothing now. He led Miss Sheldon back to a clump of great trees, put a native by her, and handed her his own pistol.
"Stay here, Miss," he commanded sharply. "I'll come for you when it's safe. Don't move!"