All was still; but it seemed lighter away to his left than he could quite account for, and he was starting again when a distant shout as of many voices came through the silence of the night and died away.
“Carousing,” he muttered, and he hesitated again.
If the men were carousing the watch kept would be less strict, and there might be some chance of obtaining a boat.
“To start alone on a cruise,” he said, half aloud. “What madness!” Then passionately: “It all seems madness, and I can do nothing but drift with fate.”
Fighting down the strange hesitancy which kept assailing in various forms, especially now in that of conjuring up difficulties in the way of escape, he plunged sturdily into the forest path, and, as fast as the darkness allowed, went on straight for the old temple, a grim place of refuge, with its ghastly relics; of Abel Dell lying, as it were, in state; and the horrible, haunting recollections of the huge cavernous cenote where the would-be assassin had met his fate, and the other had been consigned as to his tomb.
It was painful work. Every now and then some thorny creeper of rapid growth hung across and tore his skin; at some sudden turn he came in contact with tree-trunk or mouldering stone; but the greater the difficulties in the darkness, the greater the rest seemed to Humphrey Armstrong’s brain, and he kept on till a sudden turn brought him close to the fork, where one path went winding to the left toward the men’s and the captain’s quarters, the other to the temple.
As he approached he became conscious of a rustling sound, as of a wild creature passing through the forest, and he snatched his knife from his waist, ready to strike for life if attacked; but, firmly convinced that there were no denizens of the wild there but such as were more likely to avoid him, he kept on again, to reach the dividing path just as he became aware that it was no creature passing through the wilderness of trees, but someone, like himself, hurrying along the track from the men’s quarters so rapidly, that they came in contact, and a hand seized him by the throat, and the point of some weapon seemed to be pressed against his breast, as a voice exclaimed in a hoarse whisper—
“Make the slightest sound and it is your last.”
And as these words seemed to be hissed into his face, a shout arose from some distance along the path, and the tramping of feet and rustling of branches intimated that people were rapidly coming in pursuit.
“You!” exclaimed Humphrey, hoarsely, as he stood with hand uplifted to strike, but suspended in the act as if every muscle had suddenly become stone.