“Going down the mountain,” he said shortly. “Be late getting back, past midnight probably.”
“Look out for the natives,” warned Johnny.
“Natives?” said Curlie. “Natives of Haiti? They wouldn’t hurt you.”
“You never can tell.” Johnny rubbed his bandaged head.
Curlie disappeared. The fire burned lower and lower till only a spark remained. Then, because their musty bedchamber within the grim walls seemed unusually damp and chill on this night, Johnny and Dorn dragged their blankets to a flat open space. There rolling themselves up side by side, with the massive Pompee near by, they prepared for sleep.
Dorn, the dark-eyed French boy, was soon breathing in the steady way of a deep sleeper. But Johnny could not sleep. Life that day had been strange. He had thought little of this journey in the beginning. True, he had hoped, boy fashion, that something might come of it; that they might find something of real value that would aid the aged Professor in his work. It was to be, at worst, a well deserved vacation, a week’s experience worth telling of when he returned to his home in the States.
But the presence of natives where there had been no natives before, especially of a long-haired bronze type such as he had not seen before, was vaguely disturbing.
“It’s like coming quite suddenly upon a bumblebee’s nest,” he told himself, “only a great deal worse. What can they want? Is there really something hidden here that they know of and do not wish disturbed? What will come of it all?”
Finding that sleep would not come, he rose at last to begin the ascent of a flight of stairs leading to the top of the Citadel.
“Go a little way up,” he told himself. “Cool my blood. Dorn’s safe enough. There’s Pompee to protect him.”