For a moment the boy stood where he was. Then a hand pushed him very gently forward.
“What’s the use?” he thought. “They are three. I am one. It is night. I am unarmed. Whatever they will to do they can do.”
He thought of the young French boy. “Shouldn’t have brought him,” he told himself. “But old Pompee will care for him.”
He thought of the needy valley people, of the old Professor and his dreams, of the ‘Rope of Gold’.
“This is the end of that,” he told himself as he followed on in the darkness.
They led him along the top of the Citadel for a time, then, after descending stone stairways into the heart of the fortress, lost him completely in a maze of rooms and passageways to at last emerge upon the top of a stairway that, hidden as it was by great over-hanging treetops, had escaped the eager eyes of the three boys.
“They know a great deal about this old fortress,” Johnny told himself. “Shouldn’t wonder if they could lead me to the ‘Rope of Gold’.
“But where do we go from here?” he asked himself, as the leader moved on down the moss-grown stairs.
At the foot of the stairs were some twenty natives. Apparently Johnny and his guards had been expected. He noted with a little tremor that two of the men carried light strong ropes.
Without a word the men formed in line, some in front, some behind him. Then, slowly, the procession moved forward single file over a narrow trail Johnny had not known before.