The lid was off. I looked; I rubbed my eyes and looked again—could I be dreaming?
Save for a large roll of sheet-lead, the coffin was empty. No man had ever been buried in it!
The whole funeral must have been a farce, intended to deceive some one. Could that some one, I asked myself, have been Juanita?
My exclamations must have puzzled her, for she cried out—
"Oh, what have you found?"
I was so overcome with surprise that I had some difficulty in finding voice enough to reply to her. Then I said—
"Juanita, you've been hoaxed! No man was ever buried here. There's only a sheet of lead in the coffin!"
With that she faced round on me, and never, before or since, have I seen such an expression of fear in the human face. She stood there, wildly staring, first at the open coffin, then at the grave, unable to speak. Her face seemed to grow every moment paler. Then, turning to me, she said very softly, so softly that I asked myself whether the shock could have been too much for her brain—
"I have been the victim of a conspiracy; take me back to the schooner."
I signed to the men to collect the tools, and we were in the act of starting on our return to the beach, when I heard unmistakable sounds of some one moving through the undergrowth on the bank above us. Juanita heard them too, and by some means, for which I cannot account, must have divined their cause, for she faced round like a tigress at bay. Then the bushes parted, and the Albino stood before us!