Margaret peeped in at the door. “Aren’t the children in their bunks?” she asked.
“No, but they’ve been in their bunks. These blankets are warm still, and the bichos are on the hop, too, still, good Lord!”
“Well, where are they?”
“It’s very odd; but it can’t be foul play; it is on too big a scale for that: three adults and two children. Come to the door and let us both shout together.”
They shouted and yodelled and clapper-shouted for the missing five.
“Now,” Hilary said, “anyone within three hundred yards must have heard; even a deaf person must have heard. If they’ve been within hearing, they’ve heard us. Keep quite still now. We may hear an answer.”
They kept as still as mice on the grass near the gate, but heard no noise at all except the dropping and rustling never absent from the forest at night.
“It’s the spring equinox, or near it,” Margaret said. “Just listen a moment longer, Hilary; I seem to catch a noise like drums and a guitar, very far away.”
“Yes, there is some sort of tom-tom going; it’s in the forest, to the west, in that clearing called Los Jardinillos.”
“Well, Hilary, don’t you think it likely that the negroes have been called to some fiesta of the equinox?”