"Seven of them," said Van Dyck, with his lips at my ear. "At least one of them will stay by the yawl when they land. That will cut the odds down a bit, though I shouldn't mind if they'd divide up a little evener."
I did not reply. My eyes were smarting painfully from the sweat which was running down into them, and I was trying to get clear vision enough to enable me to distinguish between the figures in the slowly drifting boat. Though I couldn't make sure, I thought that the man at the yawl's tiller was the ex-steward, Lequat.
A landing was made a little way down the beach from us, in a small indentation too shallow to be called a bay. Noiselessly the yawl's oars were unshipped, and then we heard the gentle grating of the boat's keel upon the sand. In the debarking it became apparent that Bonteck had considerably underrated the caution of the invaders. Three of the men stayed by the yawl, leaving only four for whatever landward expedition was toward. Oddly enough, as we thought, the four did not make directly for the glade where the gold had been hidden. Instead, they moved off down the beach, marching silently in single file and keeping well within the shadow of the wood.
It was Van Dyck who flung a guess at their intention.
"They are going to take a look-in at our camp, first—to get the lay of the land and to make sure that they won't be interrupted," he hazarded, adding: "Which simplifies matters somewhat. The farther they get away from their boat and the yacht, the easier it will be for us to clap an extinguisher upon them without giving the alarm. Let's run for it and head them off!"
It seemed easy enough to make a quick detour through the forest to a point at which we could lie in wait for the marching four, and it was not until after we had begun it that we realized how dark it was under the trees, and how much the darkness was going to cut our speed. A few minutes of this woodland race proved enough for both of us. "Head for the beach and we'll run them down in the open," was Van Dyck's modifying order, after we had stumbled and fallen half a dozen times and got ourselves well torn and stabbed by the little bayonet palms that grew thickly among the larger trees; and this we did, issuing from the wood a hundred yards or so beyond the beached yawl, and possibly a like distance behind the men we were trying to overtake.
To chase the four men openly from that point was to give the alarm in both directions at once; in other words, to invite a front and rear attack that we couldn't hope to repel with our primitive weapons. So we fell back into the wood, changing our plan again and deciding to wait until the four were out of sight, when we could turn and fall upon the three at the boat and stand some chance of overcoming them and possessing ourselves of whatever arms they might have.
But even this alternative was to be denied us. While we halted, breathing hard from the hot struggle with the impeding jungle, Van Dyck said, "Listen!" again. Afar to the eastward there was a sound like the flapping of a thousand wings; a low drumming that seemed to fill the dead air with jarring vibrations and to play upon the senses with the maddening insistence of a single musical note too long sustained.
Before we had time to realize what the ominous warning portended, a pistol shot cracked from the Andromeda's bridge, and for a brief instant the blinding glare of the searchlight swept the island beach.
"Calling them in," I said. "Whatever they're minded to do, the storm is going to beat them to it." And that the shot and flash were signals summoning the boat's crew to come aboard was quickly made apparent. The expeditionary four wheeled and came running back along the beach, while the three boat guards were tumbling hastily into the yawl and shipping the oars.