Their captors were determined they should have no chance: for although neither Herbert nor Cubina could see into the obscure interior of the cabin, and were as yet ignorant of the fearful spectacle that there awaited them, they had reason to suspect that the Spaniards had either intended some dark deed, or had already committed it. They had learnt something along the road of the progress of the caçadores, and their mode of journeying, which, to more than one whom they met, had appeared mysterious.
The horse standing tied to the tree—caparisoned as he was for travel—that was the most suspicious circumstance of all. Though none of the three pursuers recognised the animal as belonging to Custos Vaughan, as soon as they set eyes upon it they had felt a presentiment that they had arrived too late.
The wild haste with which the Spaniards were rushing from the cabin when intercepted at the door, almost confirmed their unpleasant foreboding; and before any of the three had entered the hut, they were half prepared to find that it contained a corpse—perhaps more than one, for the disappearance of Pluto was not yet explained.
Quaco, habile in handling cordage of all kinds, more especially the many sorts of supple withes with which the trees of a Jamaica forest are laced together, soon tied the two Spaniards wrist to wrist, and ankle to ankle, as tightly as could have been done by the most accomplished gaoler. A long practice in binding runaway blacks had made Quaco an expert in that department, which, indeed, constitutes part of the professional training of a Maroon.
The captors had already entered within the cabin, now dark as death itself. For some moments they stood upon the floor, their eyes endeavouring to read the gloom around them. Silent they stood—so still, that they could hear their own breathing, with that of the two prisoners upon the floor. At length, in the corner, they could dimly make out something like the form of a man lying stretched upon a low bedstead.
Quaco, though not without some trepidation, approached it. Stooping down, he applied his hand to it with cautious touch.
“A man!” muttered he: “eyther asleep or dead.
“Dead!” he ejaculated the instant after, as, in groping about, his fingers chanced to fall upon the chill forehead—“dead and cold!”
Cubina and Herbert stepping forward, and stooping over the corpse, verified the assertion of Quaco.
Whose body was it? It might not be that of Loftus Vaughan! It might be the black attendant, Pluto!