“He didn’t do that just for fun. These natives are serious folks, despite all their drumming, dancing and singing. I’ve seen natives of other lands, Central America, Alaska, Siberia. I tell you they’re different.
“But they’re superstitious, too,” he went on. “Look at the way I frightened that fellow,” he laughed. “Never meant to at all. Didn’t even know he was there. But look! A little flash of red light, a little something for him to see and Bim! Down he goes, head over heels. Wonder he didn’t break his neck.
“Know what, Dorn?” he suddenly grew serious. “Know what I could do? I could walk from one end of this island to the other and take you with me, and you’d never see a native; at night I mean, always at night.”
“But there are thousands of homes right by the roadside.”
“Plenty of homes. Homes can’t run away. People can. You might see their bare heels. That would be all.”
It was Pompee who made the discovery of the day. There were many strange secrets hidden away behind Pompee’s wrinkled old brow. As a boy he had wandered many days among these ruins. Fear had been upon him then and a great dread, a dread of the spirits of those who had lived there in the past. Yet a boy’s consuming curiosity had led him on and on until he knew every dungeon, every secret passage as an American boy knows the secrets of the woods at the back of his pasture.
While Curlie and Dorn searched every dark corner, Pompee had eyes only for the new, the unfamiliar. In time he found it, a fresh break in the top of the Citadel.
There he dropped on hands and knees to shade his aged eyes and peer into the darkness below.
Long he remained there motionless. Then of a sudden, a low exclamation escaped his lips. Having moved a little to one side, he had allowed a glimmer of light to touch a spot on the floor of that dark hole where Johnny had come upon a misadventure.
Another moment of silence, then he spoke a name: