Yet, when he thought of her inexperience--had she not believed that Trinidad was the world!--and of how she was all alone now without kith or kin, he could not but wonder what would become of her.
"At least," he pondered, "I pray she may fall into the hands of no such an adventurer as this," and he glanced at Alderly's mangled body. "That would be too awful. Better anything than that, even to finding her fortune gone when we dig up the Key. Though that would be a strange climax, too, to all that has taken place. Gone! great heavens, what an idea! To think of it! To think that when we go to unearth it we may discover there is nothing to be got. The very thought makes my blood run cold. But--bah! it is nonsense. It must be there!"
His blood was running cold, though not from this idea which had come into his mind, but from the wetting he had received.
Therefore, as soon as the sun burst upon the island once more, he stripped himself of his clothes, and, laying them out to dry, proceeded to dry himself also by the old-fashioned method of running up and down the beach. Then, when but a short exposure of his garments to the sun had sufficed to render them once more wearable, he put them on again and set out for Barbara's home.
"Though," he said to himself, "it is no easy task to break such news to her. Alderly was not kind to her, and she knew his failings and despised him--yet he was her brother, and his death was awful. But it must be told."
He made his way with the usual difficulty through all the entanglement of the luxuriant vegetation that grew down to the beach, and at last reached the path leading to the hut. Indeed, he was eager to get there in spite of the fact that he had such dismal news to break to Barbara, since he was somewhat surprised that he had neither seen nor heard anything of her now. He had almost feared to denude himself of his clothes at daybreak, thinking that at any moment the girl might come down to him--it being her custom to rise at that time--and when an hour had passed, as it had now done, he was still more astonished at not seeing her. She must know by now that her brother was not in his house; she must, have known long ago that he had not sat up carousing far into the night as was his habit. Where was she? What could have happened?
His fears became intensified as her house came into sight. For he soon perceived that the jalousies were not opened, and that the door on the verandah was closed--a thing he had never known before to be the case, from daybreak until late night--nay, worse, more appalling than all to him, was to see that behind the slats of the jalousie of the front room there was a light burning--the light of the lamp that stood always on the table in the middle of the living-room.
Springing up the wooden steps leading to the verandah, he rattled the slats in great agitation, and called loudly, "Barbara! Barbara, are you there?" a summons which, he thanked Heaven, instantly produced a reply. He heard the bark of her dog, who knew him well now; but no answer came from her.
Unable to bear any further suspense, fearing the worst, namely, that her brother had murdered her before he set forth on his attempt to do as much for him, and remembering--fool that he was, as he called himself!--the shriek he had heard in the night and attributed to some of the disturbed denizens of the island, he tore the jalousie aside and entered the general room.
And then he knew why Barbara had not come to seek him at daybreak as was her wont.