With the map in his possession, Amos set forth without delay to feast his eyes upon the Treasure. Though his three companions were overcome by fatigue, and there was but half an hour that evening before sunset, the hunchback would not halt until darkness compelled him to do so; and that night the excited and disordered condition of his mind would not allow him to sleep.
He had them up in the small hours that they might be ready to start at daybreak; and they struck the Brook of Scarlet Pebbles early that morning, but a few miles to the north of the Big Fish.
Forsyth afterwards told us that all that day Amos never spoke, but forged ahead with the map in his hand, the others following as best they could. The man was now blinded by his own greed and avarice. He seemed alike incapable of fatigue and insensible to physical pain; for he rushed forward with such mad impetuosity that he was cut to pieces on the thorns, and was soon bleeding profusely from a score of places.
He came, on a sudden, upon the swamp, into which he plunged so recklessly that he was waist-deep before he knew it. Then, to his great alarm, he found that he was unable to move. He was held tight in the mud, and was at once attacked by scores of little leeches.
He threw up his arms into the air like a drowning man, crying out piteously for help. Forsyth, as cool as ever--as I can well imagine--at once cut down a long bamboo, and held this out to Amos, who was eventually hauled back to safety, though covered from head to foot in mud.
The leeches they were obliged to cut away from him with knives; and all the time the man reviled them for not making greater haste, telling them repeatedly that they were but a short distance from the Treasure, upon which he was determined to set eyes that very day.
It was then that his companions, for the first time, suspected that the man's mind was disordered; for Amos talked like a lunatic, and there was a strange look in his eyes. For instance, he whipped round upon Forsyth and told him that he had ever been a stumbling-block, with his refined manners and his London airs, since the expedition started from Caracas. At which Forsyth laughed aloud.
"Your memory is something short," said he. "Less than five minutes ago I saved your life. You were sinking even as I pulled you out. Had it not been for me, you would have been drowned in black, stinking mud, and your corpse devoured by leeches."
At that, Amos burst into the wild and hideous laughter of a madman.
"Liar!" he shrieked. "You saved the map! It was not me you saved; it was the map--and without risk to yourself. Much good may it do you! I shall see to it that you profit nothing. Trust Amos Baverstock for that!"