“And, Rene, I hope it’s just an hallucination, but your father ... he’s been gone ten years....”
“Great Heavens, Hal! Why ... it couldn’t be ... yet ... it’s just ten years!”
CHAPTER XXXV
A PHANTOM OF HOPE
The massacre of the Pallidas will come down in history, for a massacre it was. Renan and Hal leading the rebel volunteers were met that morning with a rain of poisoned arrows issuing from every conceivable bit of foliage on the banks of the settlement. War cries trembled in the air, shrieks of women and children.
Hal was stunned by it for a moment, but an arrow skimming off his tanned arm brought him to action. He leaped out of the canoe with Renan, pulling back the trigger of his gun with every step they took up the bank. Behind them came the rebels, shouting as they ran forward.
It was the work of minutes, but Hal lived a lifetime and he could see by Renan’s haggard face that he did also. And when the smoke cleared away they ran for the deserted maloka, deserted, save for Felice and her grandfather, who had been tied to the pillars, preparatory to making the supreme sacrifice for their companionship with the evil spirits.
The white men had come none too soon, she told them when she had regained her composure. And in a few words she explained how the Pallidas had descended upon her and her grandfather and carried them off to their settlement. Goncalves had been with them, but what became of him she did not know.
Hal led the men on the next inspection, an inspection which he instinctively feared the results of. But Renan urged him on, asking him to go first and see if their worst fears were well-founded.
Unfortunately, they were.
No sound greeted Hal as he walked ahead of the men. Not even a whisper greeted him as he stepped into the gloom of the hut. All was still as the tomb and a tomb it was indeed! For the withered remnants of a white man lay silent in death.