"Give me another week," returned Chéri-Bibi, as he disappeared from view.
The four convicts fished out their dice and began to play in the dismal light of the lanterns hanging from the prison roof. Darkness had fallen, for night comes quickly in tropical countries. In every part of the dormitory men began to play games. Some of them were at cards. Bottles were opened and the pungent odor of rum permeated the air.
The Nut was seemingly asleep in his hammock.
"Chéri-Bibi is lying to you," whispered the Burglar to his three confederates. "Chéri-Bibi is tricking us. He's going to do the job to-night. He'll get out through his underground passage, and put off in the motor launch. He has found some dodge of making the engine go. The Nut is to follow him in half an hour when he's ready to start the engine. But our pals will prevent the Nut from getting away, and it's we who'll do a guy. When Chéri-Bibi finds that the Nut doesn't turn up he'll come back to fetch him, and we'll take the opportunity of jumping into the launch, and off we'll go!"
The plot was cleverly contrived. The other "jail-birds" were furious when they learned that Chéri-Bibi was putting them off, and held themselves in readiness to act on a signal from the Burglar.
The Nut pretended to be asleep. Nevertheless he was consumed by a feeling of intense excitement. At that terrible and decisive moment his thoughts turned to his mother, who had died of grief, and he prayed to her—his mother! He thought of the golden days of his youth. He lived the past over again. He beheld the radiant picture of himself when life smiled at him and he had but to stoop to pluck its most fragrant flowers.
[CHAPTER III]
THE SHADOW OF THE PAST
Raoul had not known in that enchanted garden how to cull the flowers. It needs very little to transform paradise into a garden of suffering. At the dawn of life, as at the dawn of the world, it is enough for the gesture of a woman to bring about the catastrophe.
What acts of folly he had committed for Nina Noha, the capricious dancing-girl who scoffed at him and ruined him, tormented and drove him mad with jealousy, and forced him into the worst excesses of gambling!