We found a way round the boulder, plunged into the wood, and struggled onward, striking against tree-trunks, lashed with branches, sinking knee-deep in moss or rotting wood. The air was heavy and fragrant, and whenever we halted, a thousand little wood-noises assailed our ears. And presently we caught the cry of a man’s voice, calling for help. Now here, in the pitch-dark wood, I was taken with a sudden revelation. This Morgan Leroux, this strange volume written in an unknown tongue, hardly deciphered here and there, whose hidden meaning both allured and warned, was turned unaccountably to a human creature, quick and fierce with some nameless emotion.
“That’s Brandon Pomfrett,” says Morgan, and answered him, high and shrill. He replied, and we replied; and so back and forth, as we floundered in the wood, this way and that. It is no easy matter to track a voice in the dark. And they must have heard us on the ship, for answering hails came, far and long-drawn, so that we confused their cries with Brandon’s, and the fear of pursuit was added to our confusion. But Morgan Leroux was brave as a man in the stress of that passage, and we kept on, boring our way like rats in a faggot-stack, until Brandon’s voice rang nearer and nearer, and we stumbled upon him where he lay at the foot of a rock, bound hand and foot.
“God! I thought I was dead,” says he, rolling over, as we freed him. “Have you any drink? I’ve touched nothing for two days.”
We had neither food nor drink with us; and if we were hungry, what was the supercargo? Morgan explained the posture of affairs, but I doubt if Pomfrett understood what she said. He hugged himself with his arms, and seemed to sleep. Never was so unheroic a rescue. Since, in all likelihood, Murch would delay sending to find us until the dawn, we composed ourselves to watch for the light. There we sat, in that discomfortable wilderness, while Pomfrett groaned and muttered in his sleep, and the leaden minutes laboured by with incredible sluggishness, until our faces showed dimly visible, each to the other, strange as ghosts, as a flaky greyness began to mingle with the dark. Then we took Pomfrett by the shoulders, dragged him protesting to his feet, and made him stand between us.
“Now,” says Morgan, “can you walk? So! Then we’ll strike for Porto-Bello. I can pass for a Spaniard anywhere.”
Pomfrett, coming to his senses, flatly refused to budge. “What are you doing here?” says he. “You must go directly back to Murch. As for us, we can shift for ourselves. Murch is quit of us—that’s all he wants. He told me so when he tied me up, and I was too tired to prevent him. Come, we’ll take you back to the beach.”
Thus was the first blow struck in the duel between these two. Pomfrett might have remembered that Morgan had risked her life to find him; but starving men cannot pick their words.
“Oh, is that the way of it?” said Morgan. “Is that how you talk to me?”
“Look you,” returned Brandon, laboriously, stopping at every other word to find the next, “I’ve lost my ship and I’ve lost the silver—Dawkins has it—he came with fifty men and beat us off. Well, then, we’ve lost all, we’re marooned—cannot you see? We’re like to die. You go back to your ship, and you’re safe.”
“All very noble and generous, Brandon Pomfrett. But let me tell you, my friend, that you waste time. If Murch catches you, I’ll not answer for what he’ll do this time. I can’t keep my petticoat over you for ever. Murch has done with you, has he? Well, now, I’ve done with Murch, do you see?”