CHAPTER XXI
A GRIM SURPRISE
To sleep at that moment would have required more than human self-control. Forgetting every personal grudge, every cause of enmity, we huddled together, seven men alone in an alien wilderness, and waited,—listened,—waited. I, for one, more than half expected, and very deeply feared, to hear coming from the darkness that ghostly voice which had cried to us twice already, "White man, I come 'peak." But, except for the whisper of the wind and the ripple of the creek, there was no sound to be heard.
The wind gently stirred the leaves, and the creek sang as it flowed down over the gravel and away through the reeds. The moon cast its pale light upon us, and the remote stars twinkled in the heavens. The cries, after that second repetition, died away, and at that moment did not come back. But our night of adventure was not yet at an end.
O'Hara deliberately leveled his index finger at the bed of the stream above us. "Sure, now, and there do be someone there," he whispered. "Watch now! Watch me!"
Stepping forward, with a slow, tigerish motion, he slightly raised his voice. "Come you out!" he said distinctly. Then he spoke in a gibberish of which I could make no more sense than if it had been so much Spanish.
Before our very eyes, silently, there rose from the undergrowth a great negro with a spear.
Arnold Lamont gave a quick gasp and I saw steel flash in the moonlight as his hand moved. Gleazen swore; Matterson started to his feet; Abe Guptil came suddenly to a crouching position. But O'Hara, after one sharply in-drawn breath, uttered a name and whispered something in that same language, which I knew well I had never heard before, and the negro answered him in kind.
For a moment they talked rapidly; then O'Hara turned to his comrades and in a frightened undertone said, "The black devils know the worst."
"Well?" retorted Gleazen, angrily. "What of it?"
"This"—O'Hara's leveled finger indicated the negro—"is Kaw-tah-bah."