I smiled, but did not answer him. In truth, I had begun to find the minutes of waiting intolerable. What with the oppressive atmosphere of the tunnel, the heated, steam-laden air, and upon this the ghostly fascination of the spectre at the cavern’s mouth, it came to me that my own strength might not carry me safely through the ordeal. What kept Okyada? The sentry, on his part, did not appear to have moved since I had first seen him. There was no sound in the cave save that of the hissing steam behind us. I could not discover the little figure of my servant, though I was looking from the darkness toward the light. Had he come to the conclusion that it was dangerous to go on? This seemed possible, and I had already taken a few steps towards the tunnel’s mouth when his figure suddenly emerged into the light, and standing side by side with the sentry, he uttered that soft, purring whistle which called to us to come on.
“Yon’s one of our own, then,” the boatswain said, starting to his feet clumsily.
“Then someone has gone under, and he is keeping watch over him,” I replied. “God send that it is not one of our crew.”
“Amen to that, sir, though ’twere in a Christian man to say that we maun all die when the day comes.”
“But not in this cursed island or at the hands of a rascally Jew. The day will be an unlucky one if it comes here, my man. Put your best foot foremost, and say that it shall not.”
My words were Greek to him, of course; and he answered me with a strange oath and an expression of opinion upon Portuguese and others which was quite valueless. My own curiosity now turned, however, to consider the odd fact that the sentry remained motionless, and that Okyada did not appear to have exchanged a single word with him. Who, then, was the man, and what kept him in that grotesque attitude? At a distance of fifty yards from the light I could not have told you, but at twenty yards I understood. The wretched man was as stone dead as his comrade who lay upon the path. A bullet from an unknown rifle had shot him through the heart as he stood in ambush waiting for me. So much I hazarded on the instant. The truth must be made known to me upon the yacht’s deck.
I name the yacht, and this is to tell you in a word that, coming out of the pit, we espied her, lying off the headland—a picture of life and light upon the still water. There below, upon the shore, stood the friends who had known so many anxieties, suffered upon my account such weary days of waiting, such long hours of strenuous labour since I had left them. And now I had but to scramble down the rugged cliff side and clasp their hands, and to tell them that all was well with me. But nine days away from them, I seemed to have lived a year apart, to have changed my very self, to be a new man coming into a living world of action from a grave of dreams.
And what voice more earthly could I have heard than that of the unsurpassable Timothy McShanus crying, “Me bhoy!” in tones that might have been heard upon the mountain top?
No, indeed, and Timothy was the first to greet me, and I do believe there were tears of gladness in his eyes.