"Well, my lads, there are neither wild men nor wild beasts here," said Lambourne; "so we shall return back to Master Hislop, who is hanging in the wind halfway down, and then be off to the hut. We've earned a stiff glass of grog by this bout, anyhow."
My emotions became almost suffocating, when I heard them turn away to descend and rejoin Hislop without me.
I saw and heard them pass and repass over us, the creepers of the jungle yielding with their weight.
The leg and foot of one, named Henry Warren, came down through the green network of leaves, and actually touched me.
I drew a long gasping breath, and the atrocious Cubano, believing I was about to cry aloud, compressed my throat so tightly with his muscular hands, that a thousand lights seemed to flash before my eyes, and I must have become senseless for some minutes, as the next incident that dwells in my memory, is seeing him sitting in a crouching attitude, with his elbows on his knees; his black-bearded chin resting in the hollow of his right hand, and with his knife—his murderous Albacete cuchillo—clenched in his white teeth, while he surveyed me with a strange and sardonic smile in his deeply-set black eyes, which glittered like those of a snake in the rays of sunlight that struggled through the woven roof of leaves above us.
I heard no more the voices of my shipmates. They were gone, and I was left alone and unarmed with this man or devil,—as yet I knew not which he was; but I knew that if he had the will, he had assuredly the power, to kill and leave me in his lair, or to cast me, a mangled heap, to the bottom of the cliff whereon he lurked.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
A TERRIBLE INTERVIEW.
He perceived the fear or horror he excited, and it seemed to amuse or flatter him.
I remembered his dreams, his outcries, and midnight terrors, when in the forecastle bunks; I thought of poor Captain Weston, of old Roberts the man-o'-war's man, who disappeared so mysteriously in the night, and of others whose blood was upon this man's hands and on his soul, and my flesh crept with loathing at our proximity.