"Call out, then."
"I am afraid."
A savage poke with the cane, a war whoop from Abdul Hakkim ben Salazar. No answer.
"We'll get him," Colonel Glinka would say. "Oh, my, yes."
But an hour had passed and still they had encountered no living thing upon the path.
At last Abdul stopped abruptly. They were in a little, narrow ravine, high above the sea, with looming red cliffs all about them, and the booming of the surf upon the distant, windward shore of the island plainly audible.
"Why have we stopped here?" Colonel Glinka said, bumping into him.
"Look there, Effendi!" Abdul whispered, gesturing toward a ledge not ten yards above their heads, where a burnoosed figure stood looking down upon them.
"And there—and there—and there!" Abdul pointed at other little ledges where similar ghostly sentries stood, barely visible in the gloom.
Colonel Glinka looked behind him and saw that there were others that they had passed within a very few feet of, standing upon every shelf and ledge that afforded a foot-hold above the trail. Dozens and dozens of them.