Baptiste, feeling the rapid change, rested on his oars, and looked round towards the pile of barren hills. "Ugh, what a horrid place!" he cried. "I have a sensation as if I were passing into the mouth of a tomb. I should not like to explore that island alone."
"Pull away!" said Carew impatiently. "Are you superstitious, like those two Spanish brutes?"
"Superstition is not one of my failings, captain," replied the Provençal, as he rowed on again; "but those dreadful cries we heard last night seem to be still ringing in my ears. I wonder what they could have been?"
"When you have put me on shore," said Carew, paying no heed to Baptiste's words, "you can go back to the barque. I shall probably remain on the island three or four hours. Then I will return to the landing-place, and stand on the end of it till you come off for me. So see that someone looks out for me with a telescope occasionally."
"We won't keep you waiting, for I know that you will soon have had enough of Trinidad. But perhaps monsieur has a scientific mind, and desires to study the botany, zoology, geology, and so forth, of the island?"
Carew made no reply to this. They came alongside the promontory of black coral, and found that the sea was not rolling in so heavily as on the previous day. The Englishman landed without any difficulty.
"Good-bye, sir," Baptiste called out. "You will find the prisoners behind the first big boulder up the ravine." Then he pulled lazily back to the vessel.
Carew was now alone on the desert island with his captives. He looked to his knife and pistol to see that they were ready to his hand, and proceeded to clamber cautiously along the narrow, slippery ledge.
At the farther end he found a loathsome monster standing in his way, seemingly quite indifferent to his approach; for it did not budge, but remained quite still, its ungainly form spread across the causeway, so that he had to step over it to pass by. Carew had never before seen one of the species; but he recognised this as a tropical land-crab—one of a hideous race of crustacea that swarm on this island, sharing the possession of Trinidad with the sea-birds and the snakes. In his present nervous state, Carew was startled by the sight of this repulsive-looking creature. It must have extended two feet across from claw to claw. Its colour was a bright saffron, and its grotesque features, which were turned towards the man, seemed to be fixed in a cynical grin. Its cruel-looking yellow pincers, hard as steel, could have bitten through an inch board, and between them was clutched—Carew sickened when he saw it—a fragment of the flesh of some animal.