“Those days are gone,” he told himself, shaking himself free from the illusion. But were they? Only the year before four black men, who had engaged to carry two rich traders across the bay, had murdered their passengers and sailed to some unknown haven with their spoils.
“Always a little danger down here,” he thought. “Revolutions and all that.”
He rose suddenly on an elbow, to listen intently. Sure as he was a rational human being, out of that darkness had come a sound.
With a hand that trembled slightly, he touched a dark form close beside him. Something there stirred; otherwise there was not a sound.
“Hist!” His whisper was low and tense. “Not a word! There is some one.”
“Who? Where?” came back still in a whisper.
“Who knows, Tuan? You listen. Your ears are better than mine.”
“Tish!” came the black-brown man’s low expression of appreciation, then all was silence once more.
Tuan was one of those Caribs who, somewhere back in the dim distance, had a black slave for an ancestor. A great gaunt man, he was endowed with the strength of the black race and the endurance of the red man. A lifetime in the bush had given him the ear of a jaguar.
“Tish!” he whispered a moment later. “Truly there came a sound. But who can it be? Our other schooner is near. They may have put off a dory.”