“Okay, Gaston,” said the Saint philosophically.
The tunnel was barely large enough for him to wriggle through on all fours, but he was glad to find it only about four yards long. He squirmed out into a low vaulted cave where the lantern revealed the men who had gone ahead perched on any seats they could find on the unevenly bouldered floor. The roof was too low for him to stand up without stooping, and after Johnny and the Commander had followed him in it seemed as if the number in the party had been calculated by an instinctive sardine-packer, for it would have been almost impossible to squeeze one more adult in.
“Dis de Peace Cave,” said the Commander, standing in the center with his shoulders seeming to hold up the rock over them. “Here de Maroon dem shoot de soldiers dat come after dem. Look.”
He pointed back through the tunnel, and Simon saw the trail that had brought them down into the valley framed like a brilliantly lighted picture at the end of it.
“Now look down here,” said the Commander.
He turned the Saint around with strong bony fingers, guiding him between two men who made way and pushing him down into a crevice at the back of the cave. There was just enough room there for a man to lie down, and at the end was a natural embrasure that looked straight up another fifty yards of the trail where it went on to climb the slope behind.
And as if he had lain there himself all those generations ago, Simon could see the soldiers in their red coats and bright equipment, probably with flags flying and bugles playing, marching in brave formation down the open path according to the manuals of gentlemanly manoeuvre of their day, sitting ducks for desperate guerrillas with an instinct for taking cover and no absurd inhibitions about chivalrous warfare.
“From dere dem shoot de soldiers dat come dat way,” said the Commander, as Simon clambered back out of the shallow hole. “Bang, bang!”
He made shooting pantomime, holding his machete like an imaginary musket, and roared with laughter.
“I can see why your people were never beaten,” Simon said to Johnny, who had been down into the hole for a look himself.
The Commander squinted at him with shrewd bright eyes.
“You proud to be a Maroon?”
“I certainly would be. Your fathers won their freedom the hard way.”
The Commander pressed him down on to a rock with a hand on his shoulder.
“Sit down,” he said, and sat beside him. “Where de rum?”
The bottle was produced and opened.
“Hold out yo’ hands,” said the Commander.
Simon did so, awkwardly, not knowing what they should be positioned for. The Commander turned them palm upwards for him and poured rum into the palms.
“Wash yo’ face.”
The Commander set the example, pouring rum into his own hands and rubbing it over his face and around his neck and up into his hair.
“Very good,” said the Commander, beaming. “Nice, cold.”
Following suit, the Saint found that it was indeed a cooling and refreshing, if somewhat odorous, substitute for cologne. The bottle passed around the circle for everyone to enjoy a similar external application. Then the Commander grabbed it and handed it to the Saint.
“Now drink.”
“Skoal,” said the Saint.
He took a modest sip from the bottle and passed it on. Everyone else now took an internal medication. The bottle came last to the Commander, who took a commander’s swallow and firmly corked it again.
“All right,” he said. “Out de light.”
The cavern was suddenly plunged into blackness.
“Gimme yo’ han’,” said the Commander.
Simon felt fingers groping down his arm in the inky dark until they closed tightly on his wrist.
The Commander said, “Who got de knife?”
Now at last the Saint understood, and for an instant felt only the reflex drumming of his heart. It was fantastic and unreal, but he was awake and this was happening to him. He wondered fleetingly if it was only a test, a primitive elementary ordeal in darkness, and if perhaps in other days a man who flinched might have found the knife turned summarily into his heart. Intuition held him motionless, his arm relaxed. The Commander’s ghoulish laugh vibrated in the cramped space.
“You have de nerve? You don’ frighten?”
“Go ahead,” said the Saint steadily.
“You all right,” said the Commander, with respect. “Good man.”
There was a tiny flick of pain at the base of the Saint’s little finger, and then his hand was grasped and held as in a firm handshake and his wrist was released.
“Light de lamp,” ordered the Commander.
A match flared and dimmed, and then the brighter flame of the lantern took over. The Commander still held Simon’s hand, and in the renewed light the Saint saw a little trickle of blood run from between their clasped palms and drip down on the floor of the cave.
Five other entranced black faces leaned forward to observe the same phenomenon, and from four of them came a murmurous exhalation of approval. Johnny said, “Well, for gosh sakes.”
“My blood mix wid yours,” said the Commander gravely. “So A mek you mi brother. Now you is a Maroon too!” Delighted laughter shook him again as he released his grip. “Whe’ de rum?”
He opened the bottle again and poured a few drops on his own wound, then on the Saint’s. Then they drank again. Each of the other men solemnly shook the Saint’s bloody hand, and drank from the bottle. After that the bottle was empty.
The Commander pulled out a clean handkerchief and tore it in half. He gave one half to Simon and bound the other half around his own hand.
“All right,” he said. “We go back outside.”
He motioned Simon to go first.
The return to sunlight was briefly blinding. While the others were climbing down from the tunnel and replacing the stone across the entrance, Simon wiped his hand and inspected the cut in it. It was reassuringly small and had already almost stopped bleeding. He fastened the cloth around it again and forgot it. Considering various aspects of the rite he had been through, a hypochondriac would undoubtedly have been screaming for mouth-wash, penicillin, and tetanus antitoxin, but the Saint had a sublime contempt for germs which may have given nervous breakdowns to innumerable hapless microbes.
He looked up and saw the Commander standing before him, with Johnny a little behind.
“Now you is a Maroon, and you is mi brother. What you goin’ do ’bout Cuffee?”
“Well,” said the Saint thoughtfully, “first of all, is there any chance of finding the other Colonel? If we produced him, at least Cuffee’s election might be washed out, and we could have another.”
The Commander gazed at him, with bright searching eyes, and put an arm around his shoulders.
“Come.”
He led the Saint only a little way off the trail, where the fast-growing jungle had already almost obliterated the traces of something heavy being dragged through it. The Saint guessed even then what he was going to see, before the sickly-sweet stench and the buzzing of disturbed flies made it a certainty, before the final pathetic travesty of swollen glistening flesh confirmed it without need of the words which were still inevitably spoken.
“Das de Colonel,” the Commander said.
6
It was the Commander who had found the body, Simon learned — driven by rebellious unsatisfied curiosity, guided by atavistic senses that no civilized white man could hope to understand even if the Commander had been able to discourse professorially about them. The other elders represented there had been informed, but had been helpless to decide what should be done with the information, and afraid even to reveal their knowledge outside their own circle. The recent Colonel had been murdered, but they had no evidence to point from his body to the killer. The Commander might just as easily have been accused himself. And if the real killer had felt himself in serious jeopardy, anyone who appeared to threaten him might well be found in the same condition as the luckless ex-Colonel.