A Bitter Heritage: A Modern Story of Love and Adventure

by John Bloundelle-Burton

Yet, ere he did so, she saw, too, that behind him were those misty forms of the natives which she had observed to vanish at their approach below; she heard him speak to them; heard, too, the words he said.

"When I whistle, come up and bear him away. You know the rest. To my yawl, then a mile out to sea and--then--sink him. Now go, but be ready."

Whereon he turned to proceed along the passage, and, even in her terror, Beatrix could see that he bore in his hand a little lantern from which the smallest of rays was emitted. A lantern with which, perhaps, he wished to observe if his victim still lived, since surely he, who had dwelt in this house all his life, needed no light to assist him in finding his way about it.

"He will see us. He will see us," murmured Beatrix.

"He will never see us again," answered Zara, and as she spoke, she drew the other into the deep doorway of one of the bedrooms. "Never again," while looking down at her from her greater height, Beatrix saw that her right hand was at her breast, and that in it something glistened.

And, now, Sebastian was close to them, going on to the room at the end of the passage. He was in front of them. He was passing them.

"It is your last farewell," said Zara. And ere. Beatrix could shriek, "No. No!" divining the girl's mistake; ere, too, she could make any attempt to restrain her, Zara had sprung forth from the embrasure of the doorway, the long dagger gleaming in her hand, as the sickly rays of Sebastian's lamp shone on it, and had buried it in his back, he springing around suddenly with a hoarse cry as she did so--his hands clenched and thrust out before him--in his eyes an awful glare. Then with a gasp he sank to the floor, the lamp becoming extinguished as he did so. Whereby, Zara did not understand that, lying close by the man whom she had slain, or attempted to slay, was Beatrix, who had swooned from horror, and then fallen prostrate.

Sebastian had carried his white drill jacket over his arm as he advanced along the passage, he having taken it off as he mounted the steps, perhaps with the view of being better able to assist the Indians in the task of removing Julian when he should summon them. And Zara, full of hate as she was; full, too, of rage and jealousy as she had been at the moment before she stabbed him, as well as at the moment when she did so, had observed such to be the case, when, instantly, there came into her astute brain an idea that, through this circumstance, might be wreaked a still more deadly vengeance on Sebastian for his infidelity to her.

"He would have sent that other to his death in the sea," she thought; "now--false-hearted jaguar--that death shall be yours. If the knife has not slain you, the water shall." Whereupon, quick as lightning, she seized the jacket and disappeared with it down the corridor, entering at the end of the latter a room in which Julian lay wounded and bound upon a bed. A room in which there burnt a candle, by the light of which she saw that he who was a prisoner there was asleep.

Without pausing to awaken him, she took from off a nail in the room the navy white jacket that Julian had worn--which like Sebastian's own was stained somewhat with blood--and, seizing it in one hand and the candle in the other, went back to where Sebastian lay.