"Yes," said Norris, "and I'm afraid we'll have a taste of some more voodoo doings before we get through."
Neither of us cared to ask Norris what he meant. We continued to give ear to that weird music for long; and to each of us it seemed full of a portent; and each dreaded to hear another put it in words.
I do not know how many hours we three continued to squat there, at the edge of the wood; seldom talking, and then avoiding the thought uppermost in our minds. But at last it came, and we heard voices over by the cliff wall. They were coming down the rope ladder.
We rose to our feet, and scurried off in the edge of the wood, till we crossed the ridge and came to the beginning of the path. And there we crouched in the brush and waited.
At last came the stealthy, black figures, moving in silence, and in single file. We counted twenty as they went by us, and each carried some kind of gun. My heart pounded with the emotion; I have never before nor since experienced such fear as gripped me at sight of the martial array.
When they had passed, we got over across the stream to our friends, and gave them our ill news. The coming of those twenty dusky voodoos could have but the one explanation: Duran had brought them to hunt down, and destroy, the six of us. He would madden them with rum, mixed with the blood of fowls, and sick them on to us. And he made sure of us, since there was but the one exit from this vale; and there he doubtless had stationed some trusty black at the cliff-top, to keep the ladder and the halliard, till he should have need of it—when the work shall have been completed.
We trapped ones, got our heads together for some talk of our situation. How we lamented our lack of foresight, in leaving behind our arms and ammunition! Norris's lone rifle, with but a handful of cartridges, would but delay for a little the inevitable end. But for a time I had had my mind full of a wild thought. And I pulled Norris to one side, and opened the thing to him. My plan was so desperate that I hadn't the courage to tell it to anyone less bold spirited than he. It was no less than to employ that under-water way that Duran had used to transport the gold—to sink into the stream and be carried through that hole, and fetch up within that cavern; and so out to our camp in the forest, and return with the three rifles and the ammunition by way of the ladder—that was the plan.
Norris seized me by the arms. "The very thing!" he said, "——if it can be done. We'll find out!"
When we told the others of the plan, they took it without enthusiasm; declared it impossible—suicidal.
"You've no idea how far it is in to the cave," said Ray.