"Nay! He has found naught. Let him enjoy his disappointment for a while."
Muttering curses at his want of success, Joyce dragged himself out of the pit and walked towards the castle, leaving the lantern on the ground. Then he began to pace afresh, but in a different direction, till his form was lost in the darkness.
For a while no sound save the occasional hoot of an owl and the rapidly dying breeze broke the stillness as we waited for some signs of the renewed efforts of the treasure seeker.
Suddenly a hideous cry, so terrifying that it caused the blood to freeze in our veins, echoed through the silence of the night. Accustomed though we were to scenes of bloodshed and violence, this weird outburst, the concentrated expression of mortal agony, held us spellbound.
Drake was the first to recover himself, and, springing to his feet with a shout, he drew his sword and dashed across the open space of grass, while we followed close at his heels.
Stopping but for a moment to possess himself of the lantern, he made his way in the direction from which the sound had come.
Something compelled him to halt, and we stopped too. At our feet flowed the stream, its weed-encumbered waters looking black and forbidding in the dim light of the lantern, as with silent eddies it swirled between the steep rush-lined banks.
"Aubrey, that man is beyond your vengeance; a Higher Power has claimed him," exclaimed Greville, pointing with his weapon at a dark object that, arrested by a dense growth of weeds, floated in the centre of the stream. It was the hat of the doomed man, but not a bubble marked the spot where he had sunk.
In the presence of Death, that great leveller of rank and persons, we removed our hats and stood in silence, our eyes riveted on the spot under which the remains of my mortal enemy lay hidden from our view.
Then, extinguishing the lantern, we made our way through the wood, regained the road, and returned to the inn.