When the Birds Begin to Sing Part 34

Elizabeth smiles vaguely. Her smile is her only beauty. It lights up her stern face, and makes Eleanor forget that she has sandy eyelashes.

They talk together in the low verandah till long after Quinton should have been home.

"He promised not to stay more than an hour with his friends, and it is a two hours' ride," says Eleanor. "He left soon after one o'clock. It is nearly dark."

Elizabeth detects the anxiety in her tone.

"Oh! you know what men are, they are worse than women! The Major has probably a host of good stories, and the Captain is plying him with wine and some extra special cigars. Don't worry, my dear Mrs. Quinton, he is sure to be late."

She presses Eleanor's hand, and wishes her good-bye.

Then Mrs. Katchin hurries up the hill to her hut, where big Tombo is growling at her absence, and little Tombo getting into endless mischief, which only his mother's watchful eye can prevent.

Night has fallen, but still Eleanor waits on the verandah, with widely-opened eyes, staring along the zigzag path by which Carol rode away. She remembers he turned back to look at her three times, kissing his hand twice. What can have detained him? Surely he knows how nervous she is!

Eleanor rises and walks up and down distractedly, her face ashen pale, her figure trembling.

He has had an accident--she is certain of it. The road, he said was lonely and rough; it winds near a precipice, the loose stones and boulders roll down the slope of the hill and fall into the abyss.

Perhaps his horse has fallen a victim to disease upon the way, or he has been attacked by a savage troop and speared to death.

These thoughts are too horrible to be borne with equanimity; the stillness of night appals her, she can stand it no longer.

Summoning Quamina, she orders her horse to be saddled immediately, with the idea of flying to his aid. She loves him too well to fear the night, the dangers of that lone road, or her indifferent horsemanship!

She would die sooner than sit at home when he might need a.s.sistance.

Her horse is the handsomest animal that Carol could buy. She has named him "Braye du Valle."

The black men stare wondrously as she mounts and rides out bravely into the night.

"Braye du Valle," she whispers, "we must find him if it costs our lives!"

In the meanwhile Quinton has bidden his friends good-bye, having stayed far later than he intended, talking over old times, and airing his favourite adventures.

It is dark, and he feels a pang of self-reproach at the thought of Eleanor.

Yet his heart is light, and he whistles as he turns his horse's head homewards.

He loses himself in thought, for Carol Quinton is an imaginative man.

As far as his fancy is concerned, he is artist, author, poet, and actor. He creates pictures in his brain, dreams of immortal verse, invents a thousand thrilling anecdotes, and quaint love histories. His train of ideas is more that of a woman than a man.

The moon rises, and he watches it floating above him

Like one that had been led astray, Through the heaven's wide pathless way.

But the soul of the poet, soaring in the high region of his fancies, is suddenly rudely shaken. His horse starts, throws up its head and snorts, then shies across the road, as a dark shadow blackens the white stretch of moonlit ground.

"Steady," murmurs Quinton, patting the animal's neck, which is damp with sudden terror.

A black figure comes out from the gloom as he speaks--a tall, masked man on horseback--and before Quinton realises his presence he is seized violently by the throat and dragged from his saddle. A hissing sound as of suppressed rage issues from the a.s.sa.s.sin's lips--he towers above Quinton, and is muscular and active. Carol is taken unawares, and therefore at a disadvantage. He is like a rat in the paws of a tiger, he can neither cry out nor speak, for the cruel fingers press with deadly force upon his windpipe, and he is flung backwards and forwards, shaken till his teeth rattle in his head and his eyes all but drop from their sockets.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The cruel fingers press with deadly force.]

The moon swims round in a sea of blood--he gasps, gargles, struggles.

The savage man in whose clutches he suddenly finds himself seems glorying in his power.

Quinton feels himself face to face with death: he is a child in the hands of this dark highwayman.

The thought rises suddenly to his fading senses:

"By night an Atheist half believes in G.o.d."

The terror of judgment is upon him--h.e.l.l threatens. Through the black slits of the mask he faintly discerns the eyes of his tormentor, whose face is in such close proximity to his own that the hot breath of pa.s.sion brushes his brow. They are the eyes of a devil, burning as coals of fire--glowing, scintillating. The broad white teeth of the man glisten as they press his lower lip; then he loosens his hold on Quinton's throat and gropes for his hand.

The two are fighting now like twin devils under the dark trees, through which the moonlight flits. They roll over in the dust, while Quinton breathes out curses, struggling for mastery. More than once he feels one finger of his left hand caught in the stranger's grasp, then, as with a cry of triumph which rends the air with hideous mirth, super-human strength seems to possess the masked man. He picks up Quinton in his sinewy arms, whirls him once wildly above his head, and drops him over a rock, down a bank--a fall of only a few feet, on to thick undergrowth below. Then leaping back into his saddle, he gallops at full speed towards the jungle, while Quinton lies gasping and shaking, cut and bleeding.

He rises dizzily--strange!--there are no bones broken, only the uncomfortable feeling of those hot fingers at his throat, and the giddy sensation from the violent shaking. He feels for his watch; it is still there. Some money fallen from his pocket lies loose on the wayside. Nothing apparently is stolen.

Then he looks down suddenly at his finger, the one twice captured in their struggle.

His cat's-eye ring has gone!

CHAPTER XVII.

"WHERE THERE AIN'T NO TEN COMMANDMENTS."

"_The Road to Mandalay._"--_Rudyard Kipling_.

As Carol goes on through the night, fear is in his heart.

How easily the dark, vindictive, savage creature could have cast him wantonly into eternity, yet he stayed his hand. Evidently he had not desired Quinton's life, since he took nothing but a little band of gold, with a cat's-eye. Such a worthless prize--a woman's ring.

The scene is a puzzle to Carol Quinton, the mystery of it haunts him.

In every shadow he sees a black mask, at the slightest sound his blood runs cold, the creaking of the boughs above are to him the echo of pursuing hoofs, and the cry of the parrot, that sinister yell which accompanied his fall. Even the stars are flashing eyes, the moon an enemy, and the stones devils.

Quinton is not a brave man; truth to tell, he is a coward. His whole system is suffering from the shock, while the long tramp he has taken in search of his horse, which strayed from the road, increased his nervous agitation.

His hands tremble as they hold the reins, his knees knock against his frightened horse, who in sympathy with his master, starts at every step, appearing to find his route peopled with spirits.

"What did it all mean--what could it mean?" he asks himself again and again.

The beating of his heart seems to Quinton as thunder on the air, which is heavy and oppressive, a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours!

Surely this can be no fancy--the slow tread of a sure-footed beast on the path before him. Carol quails and whitens to the lips. The moon pa.s.ses behind the cloud--a second figure is at his side. He spurs his horse, and the frantic swish of his crop lays a deep weal on the animal's withers. It breaks into a gallop, throwing up the dust around and flying down a steep descent. He hears the hoofs following closely in the rear, someone is nearly upon him gaining inch by inch. His courage sinks--dies--he is white, perspiring, terrified, limp! His senses reel, he drops the reins, falling forward on his horse's neck.

His fingers clutch the mane, while a woman's voice cries behind: