“I say to you,” he cried with a menacing gesture toward Ramirez who looked at him stolidly, “that we will not wait longer. Always you say ‘wait, wait.’ The treasure, the gold, is there, you tell us that. We go get it to-night, now. Is it not so?” He turned to the men about the fire, who, muttering ominously, had half risen to their feet.
Phil, forgetting his own danger, watched fascinated. Mutiny! If the men got their way, then indeed were he and his friends and the treasure doomed. He would not even have a chance to warn them.
Ramirez, who had been standing motionless, his black eyes fixed on the mutinous crew, reached suddenly for his revolver. Almost with the same motion came the report.
The man who had defied him, stood where he was for a moment, a foolish expression spreading over his villainous features, then, without a sound sank to the ground.
“Take him away,” commanded Ramirez, seating himself, with the utmost indifference to the fate of his victim, near the fire. “That, my comrades, will be the fate of each one of you who defy me, Ramirez. I say wait. Therefore we wait. And I tell you why.”
Then while two of the men removed the ghastly huddled heap from the grass, Ramirez proceeded to give his reason for delaying the attack. Phil listened eagerly. Half-sickened as he was by what he had seen, he knew he must keep his senses intensely alert.
“They have not recovered all of the treasure,” said Ramirez. “I hear them talk. They have three chests. There are more. When they have them all, then we shall take them from them. We shall be rich and they—they shall be dead.” His mouth stretched in an evil grin.
Phil waited for no more. Silently, as he had come, he slipped away into the darkness.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE HORRORS OF THE LAGOON
Not until he had reached the rise of ground from which he had first looked down into the ravine did Phil pause. Then he turned and cast one backward glance at the sinister group gathered about the fire.