“The sight of them was enough to madden a man,” Vulmea continued, watching the captain narrowly. “We camped there for the night, and, one way or another, we fell out over the division of the spoil, though there was enough to make every man of us rich for life. We came to blows, though, and whilst we fought among ourselves, there came a scout running with word that a Spanish fleet had come into the bay, driven our ships away, and sent five hundred men ashore to pursue us. By Satan, they were on us before the scout ceased the telling! One of my men snatched the plunder away and hid it in the old temple, and we scattered, each band for itself. There was no time to take the plunder. We barely got away with our naked lives. Eventually I, with most of my crew, made my way back to the coast and was picked up by my ship which came slinking back after escaping from the Spaniards.
“Harston gained his ship with a handful of men, after skirmishing all the way with the Spaniards who chased him instead of us, and later was slain by savages on the coast of California.
“The Dons harried me all the way around the Horn, and I never had an opportunity to go back after the loot-until this voyage. It was there I was going when you overhauled me. The treasure’s still there. Promise me my life and I’ll take you to it.”
“That is impossible,” snapped Wentyard. “The best I can promise you is trial before the governor of Jamaica.”
“Well,” said Vulmea, “Maybe the governor might be more lenient than you. And much may happen between here and Jamaica.”
Wentyard did not reply, but spread a map on the broad table.
“Where is this bay?”
Vulmea indicated a certain spot on the coast. The sailors released their grip on his arms while he marked it, and Wentyard’s head was within reach, but the Irishman’s plans were changed, and they included a chance for life-desperate, but nevertheless a chance.
“Very well. Take him below.”
Vulmea went out with his guards, and Wentyard sneered coldly.
“A gentleman of his Majesty’s navy is not bound by a promise to such a rogue as he. Once the treasure is aboard the Redoubtable, gentlemen, I promise you he shall swing from a yard-arm.”
Ten days later the anchors rattled down in the nameless bay Vulmea had described.
CHAPTER 2
It seemed desolate enough to have been the coast of an uninhabited continent. The bay was merely a shallow indentation of the shore-line. Dense jungle crowded the narrow strip of white sand that was the beach. Gay-plumed birds flitted among the broad fronds, and the silence of primordial savagery brooded over all. But a dim trail led back into the twilight vistas of green-walled mystery.
Dawn was a white mist on the water when seventeen men marched down the dim path. One was John Wentyard. On an expedition designed to find treasure, he would trust the command to none but himself. Fifteen were soldiers, armed with hangers and muskets. The seventeenth was Black Vulmea. The Irishman’s legs, perforce, were free, and the irons had been removed from his arms. But his wrists were bound before him with cords, and one end of the cord was in the grip of a brawny marine whose other hand held a cutlass ready to chop down the pirate if he made any move to escape.
“Fifteen men are enough,” Vulmea had told Wentyard. “Too many! Men go mad easily in the tropics, and the sight of the Fangs of Satan is enough to madden any man, king’s man or not. The more that see the jewels, the greater chance of mutiny before you raise the Horn again. You don’t need more than three or four. Who are you afraid of’? You said England was at peace with Spain, and there are no Spaniards anywhere near this spot, in any event.”
“I wasn’t thinking of Spaniards,” answered Wentyard coldly. “I am providing against any attempt you might make to escape.”
“Well,” laughed Vulmea, “do you think you need fifteen men for that?”
“I’m taking no chances,” was the grim retort. “You are stronger than two or three ordinary men, Vulmea, and full of wiles. My men will march with pieces ready, and if you try to bolt, they will shoot you down like the dog you are-should you, by any chance, avoid being cut down by your guard. Besides, there is always the chance of savages.”
The pirate jeered.
“Go beyond the Cordilleras if you seek real savages. There are Indians there who cut off your head and shrink it no bigger than your fist. But they never come on this side of the mountains. As for the race that built the temple, they’ve all been dead for centuries. Bring your armed escort if you want to. It will be of no use. One strong man can carry away the whole hoard.”
“One strong man!” murmured Wentyard, licking his lips as his mind reeled at the thought of the wealth represented by a load of jewels that required the full strength of a strong man to carry. Confused visions of knighthood and admiralty whirled through his head. “What about the path?” he asked suspiciously. “If this coast is uninhabited, how comes it there?”
“It was an old road, centuries ago, probably used by the race that built the city. In some places you can see where it was paved. But Harston and I were the first to use it for centuries. And you can tell it hasn’t been used since. You can see where the young growth has sprung up above the scars of the axes we used to clear a way.”
Wentyard was forced to agree. So now, before sunrise, the landing party was swinging inland at a steady gait that ate up the miles. The bay and the ship were quickly lost to sight. All morning they tramped along through steaming heat, between green, tangled jungle walls where gay-hued birds flitted silently and monkeys chattered. Thick vines hung low across the trail, impeding their progress, and they were sorely annoyed by gnats and other insects. At noon they paused only long enough to drink some water and eat the ready-cooked food they had brought along. The men were stolid veterans, inured to long marches, and Wentyard would allow them no more rest than was necessary for their brief meal. He was afire with savage eagerness to view the hoard Vulmea had described.
The trail did not twist as much as most jungle paths. It was overgrown with vegetation, but it gave evidence that it had once been a road, well-built and broad. Pieces of paving were still visible here and there. By mid-afternoon the land began to rise slightly to be broken by low, jungle-choked hills. They were aware of this only by the rising and dipping of the trail. The dense walls on either hand shut off their view.
Neither Wentyard nor any of his men glimpsed the furtive, shadowy shapes which now glided along through the jungle on either hand. Vulmea was aware of their presence, but he only smiled grimly and said nothing. Carefully and so subtly that his guard did not suspect it, the pirate worked at the cords on his wrists, weakening and straining the strands by continual tugging and twisting. He had been doing this all day, and he could feel them slowly giving way.
The sun hung low in the jungle branches when the pirate halted and pointed to where the old road bent almost at right angles and disappeared into the mouth of a ravine.
“Down that ravine lies the old temple where the jewels are hidden.”
“On, then!” snapped Wentyard, fanning himself with his plumed hat. Sweat trickled down his face, wilting the collar of his crimson, gilt-embroidered coat. A frenzy of impatience was on him, his eyes dazzled by the imagined glitter of the gems Vulmea had so vividly described. Avarice makes for credulity, and it never occurred to Wentyard to doubt Vulmea’s tale. He saw in the Irishman only a hulking brute eager to buy a few months more of life. Gentlemen of his Majesty’s navy were not accustomed to analyzing the character of pirates. Wentyard’s code was painfully simple: a heavy hand and a roughshod directness. He had never bothered to study or try to understand outlaw types.
They entered the mouth of the ravine and marched on between cliffs fringed with overhanging fronds. Wentyard fanned himself with his hat and gnawed his lip with impatience as he stared eagerly about for some sign of the ruins described by his captive. His face was paler than ever, despite the heat which reddened the bluff faces of his men, tramping ponderously after him. Vulmea’s brown face showed no undue moist
ure. He did not tramp: he moved with the sure, supple tread of a panther, and without a suggestion of a seaman’s lurching roll. His eyes ranged the walls above them and when a frond swayed without a breath of wind to move it, he did not miss it.
The ravine was some fifty feet wide, the floor carpeted by a low, thick growth of vegetation. The jungle ran densely along the rims of the walls, which were some forty feet high. They were sheer for the most part, but here and there natural ramps ran down into the gulch, half-covered with tangled vines. A few hundred yards ahead of them they saw that the ravine bent out of sight around a rocky shoulder. From the opposite wall there jutted a corresponding crag. The outlines of these boulders were blurred by moss and creepers, but they seemed too symmetrical to be the work of nature alone.
Vulmea stopped, near one of the natural ramps that sloped down from the rim. His captors looked at him questioningly.
“Why are you stopping?” demanded Wentyard fretfully. His foot struck something in the rank grass and he kicked it aside. It rolled free and grinned up at him-a rotting human skull. He saw glints of white in the green all about him-skulls and bones almost covered by the dense vegetation.
“Is this where you piratical dogs slew each other?” he demanded crossly. “What are you waiting on? What are you listening for?”
Vulmea relaxed his tense attitude and smiled indulgently.
“That used to be a gateway there ahead of us,” he said. “Those rocks on each side are really gate-pillars. This ravine was a roadway, leading to the city when people lived there. It’s the only approach to it, for it’s surrounded by sheer cliffs on all sides.” He laughed harshly. “This is like the road to Hell, John Wentyard: easy to go down-not so easy to go up again.”
“What are you maundering about?” snarled Wentyard, clapping his hat viciously on his head. “You Irish are all babblers and mooncalves! Get on with-”
From the jungle beyond the mouth of the ravine came a sharp twang. Something whined venomously down the gulch, ending its flight with a vicious thud. One of the soldiers gulped and started convulsively. His musket clattered to the earth and he reeled, clawing at his throat from which protruded a long shaft, vibrating like a serpent’s head. Suddenly he pitched to the ground and lay twitching.
“Indians!” yelped Wentyard, and turned furiously on his prisoner. “Dog! Look at that! You said there were no savages hereabouts!”
Vulmea laughed scornfully.
“Do you call them savages? Bah! Poor-spirited dogs that skulk in the jungle, too fearful to show themselves on the coast. Don’t you see them slinking among the trees? Best give them a volley before they grow too bold.”
Wentyard snarled at him, but the Englishman knew the value of a display of firearms when dealing with natives, and he had a glimpse of brown figures moving among the green foliage. He barked an order and fourteen muskets crashed, and the bullets rattled among the leaves. A few severed fronds drifted down; that was all. But even as the smoke puffed out in a cloud, Vulmea snapped the frayed cords on his wrists, knocked his guard staggering with a buffet under the ear, snatched his cutlass and was gone, running like a cat up the steep wall of the ravine. The soldiers with their empty muskets gaped helplessly after him, and Wentyard’s pistol banged futilely, an instant too late. From the green fringe above them came a mocking laugh.
‘Fools! You stand in the door of Hell!”
“Dog!” yelled Wentyard, beside himself, but with his greed still uppermost in his befuddled mind. “We’ll find the treasure without your help!”
“You can’t find something that doesn’t exist,” retorted the unseen pirate. “There never were any jewels. It was a lie to draw you into a trap. Dick Harston never came here. I came here, and the Indians butchered all my crew in that ravine, as those skulls in the grass there testify.”
“Liar!” was all Wentyard could find tongue for. “Lying dog! You told me there were no Indians hereabouts!”
“I told you the head-hunters never came over the mountains,” retorted Vulmea. “They don’t either. I told you the people who built the city were all dead. That’s so, too. I didn’t tell you that a tribe of brown devils live in the jungle near here. They never go down to the coast, and they don’t like to have white men come into the jungle. I think they were the people who wiped out the race that built the city, long ago. Anyway, they wiped out my men, and the only reason I got away was because I’d lived with the red men of North America and learned their woodscraft. You’re in a trap you won’t get out of, Wentyard!”
“Climb that wall and take him!” ordered Wentyard, and half a dozen men slung their muskets on their backs and began clumsily to essay the rugged ramp up which the pirate had run with such catlike ease.
“Better trim sail and stand by to repel boarders,” Vulmea advised him from above. “There are hundreds of red devils out there-and no tame dogs to run at the crack of a caliver, either.”
“And you’d betray white men to savages!” raged Wentyard.
“It goes against my principles,” the Irishman admitted, “but it was my only chance for life. I’m sorry for your men. That’s why I advised you to bring only a handful. I wanted to spare as many as possible. There are enough Indians out there in the jungle to eat your whole ship’s company. As for you, you filthy dog, what you did in Ireland forfeited any consideration you might expect as a white man. I gambled on my neck and took my chances with all of you. It might have been me that arrow hit.”
The voice ceased abruptly, and just as Wentyard was wondering if there were no Indians on the wall above them, the foliage was violently agitated, there sounded a wild yell, and down came a naked brown body, all asprawl, limbs revolving in the air. It crashed on the floor of the ravine and lay motionless-the figure of a brawny warrior, naked but for a loin-cloth of bark. The dead man was deep-chested, broad-shouldered and muscular, with features not unintelligent, but hard and brutal. He had been slashed across the neck.
The bushes waved briefly, and then again, further along the rim, which Wentyard believed marked the flight of the Irishman along the ravine wall, pursued by the companions of the dead warrior, who must have stolen up on Vulmea while the pirate was shouting his taunts.
The chase was made in deadly silence, but down in the ravine conditions were anything but silent. At the sight of the falling body a blood-curdling ululation burst forth from the jungle outside the mouth of the ravine, and a storm of arrows came whistling down it. Another man fell, and three more were wounded, and Wentyard called down the men who were laboriously struggling up the vine-matted ramp. He fell back down the ravine, almost to the bend where the ancient gate-posts jutted, and beyond that point he feared to go. He felt sure that the ravine beyond the Gateway was filled with lurking savages. They would not have hemmed him in on all sides and then left open an avenue of escape.
At the spot where he halted there was a cluster of broken rocks that looked as though as they might once have formed the walls of a building of some sort. Among them Wentyard made his stand. He ordered his men to lie prone, their musket barrels resting on the rocks. One man he detailed to watch for savages creeping up the ravine from behind them, the others watched the green wall visible beyond the path that ran into the mouth of the ravine. Fear chilled Wentyard’s heart. The sun was already lost behind the trees and the shadows were lengthening. In the brief dusk of the tropic twilight, how could a white man’s eye pick out a swift, flitting brown body, or a musket ball find its mark? And when darkness fell—Wentyard shivered despite the heat.
Arrows kept singing down the ravine, but they fell short or splintered on the rocks. But now bowmen hidden on the walls drove down their shafts, and from their vantage point the stones afforded little protection. The screams of men skewered to the ground rose harrowingly. Wentyard saw his command melting away under his eyes. The only thing that kept them from being instantly exterminated was the steady fire he had them keep up at the foliage on the cliffs. They seldom saw their foes; they only saw the f
ronds shake, had an occasional glimpse of a brown arm. But the heavy balls, ripping through the broad leaves, made the hidden archers wary, and the shafts came at intervals instead of in volleys. Once a piercing death yell announced that a blind ball had gone home, and the English raised a croaking cheer.
Perhaps it was this which brought the infuriated warriors out of the jungle. Perhaps, like the white men, they disliked fighting in the dark, and wanted to conclude the slaughter before night fell. Perhaps they were ashamed longer to lurk hidden from a handful of men.
At any rate, they came out of the jungle beyond the trail suddenly, and by the scores, not scrawny primitives, but brawny, hard-muscled warriors, confident of their strength and physically a match for even the sinewy Englishmen. They came in a wave of brown bodies that suddenly flooded the ravine, and others leaped down the walls, swinging from the lianas. They were hundreds against the handful of Englishmen left. These rose from the rocks without orders, meeting death with the bulldog stubbornness of their breed. They fired a volley full into the tide of snarling faces that surged upon them, and then drew hangers and clubbed empty muskets. There was no time to reload. Their blast tore lanes in the onsweeping human torrent, but it did not falter; it came on and engulfed the white men in a snarling, slashing, smiting whirlpool.
Hangers whirred and bit through flesh and bone, clubbed muskets rose and fell, spattering brains. But copper-headed axes flashed dully in the twilight, warclubs made a red ruin of the skulls they kissed, and there were a score of red arms to drag down each struggling white man. The ravine was choked with a milling, eddying mass, revolving about a fast-dwindling cluster of desperate, white-skinned figures.
Not until his last man fell did Wentyard break away, blood smeared on his arms, dripping from his sword. He was hemmed in by a surging ring of ferocious figures, but he had one loaded pistol left. He fired it full in a painted face surmounted by a feathered chest and saw it vanish in bloody ruin. He clubbed a shaven head with the empty barrel, and rushed through the gap made by the falling bodies. A wild figure leaped at him, swinging a war-club, but the sword was quicker. Wentyard tore the blade free as the savage fell. Dusk was ebbing swiftly into darkness, and the figures swirling about him were becoming indistinct, vague of outline. Twilight waned quickly in the ravine and darkness had settled there before it veiled the jungle outside. It was the darkness that saved Wentyard, confusing his attackers. As the sworded Indian fell he found himself free, though men were rushing on him from behind, with clubs lifted.
The Pirate Story Megapack: 25 Classic and Modern Tales Page 327