Bart grasped the urgency of the case, called two men, and set off at a run, while Dinny was next summoned.
“Hah!” ejaculated the captain, drawing his breath between his teeth; “a traitor in the camp!”
He called for lights, and went straight to the corridor, entered and walked down it to the chamber, tenanted now by the grim idol alone, and stood for a few moments looking round.
“Well,” he muttered, “he will learn the truth of what I said. The firing of the powder must have been planned.”
He went back to where his men were waiting outside and walked through to the terrace above the old amphitheatre, to find that the magazine was completely swept away; but the darkness hid the shattered stones lying in all directions and the trees blasted and whitened and stripped of leaf and bark.
“My prisoner has escaped,” he said aloud. “I think with the man who was his attendant, the Irishman, Dennis Kelly. Capture both; but no violence to either, on your lives.”
There was a low murmur either of assent or objection, and he was turning away when Dick, the sailor, came up.
“Gone!” he said, laconically.
“Mazzard? Gone!” cried the buccaneer, excitedly.
“Yes; and the man who was on guard lying dead, crushed with a stone.”