“And he was reserving me to be put to death by torture as a sort of entertainment for his new adherents, I suppose,” Hugh muttered grimly. “That is not the part in the performance I should choose to play. Perhaps I can find some other part more to my liking.” A daring suggestion had come into his mind as Blaise told of the council on the “Island of Torture.” “Did you learn when the meeting was to be?” Hugh asked abruptly.
“It is to be soon, I think. They wait only for safe weather to make the crossing.”
Hugh was silent in frowning thought. When he spoke, it was not of the council. “It is plain to see what happened,” he said musingly. “The storm bore father and his comrade here to this island. Their boat was driven into that crack in the rocks and wrecked. Ohrante came upon them, took them captive and carried them to the mainland. Father must have had some warning, though, for he hid the pelts and the packet. I wonder, Blaise, if, when he was first wrecked, he put the furs up on that rock shelf to keep them dry and safe. Then, afterwards, when he learned Ohrante was near, he moved the bales to a more secret spot farther from the wreck.”
Blaise nodded. “It may be,” was all he said.
“We were right all the time,” Hugh added, “in believing that Ohrante had something to do with father’s death.”
“I felt in my heart that Ohrante was the guilty one,” the younger lad replied simply.
“Yet of course it may not have been Ohrante himself who gave father his death blow,” Hugh mused.
Blaise waved away his brother’s reasoning with a gesture. “It matters not whether Ohrante himself or one of his men struck the blow. It is not the knife that we punish when a murder is committed, but the man who wields the knife. Ohrante is that man. It was he who captured our father, who would have put him to the torture, who caused his death.”
“And Ohrante shall pay for it,” Hugh broke in passionately. “He shall pay soon if we can but reach the mainland in time. The sky is lighter, Blaise,” he added, looking up above the surrounding tree tops. “We must be moving.”