"Well thought, Guillaume!" came down Vulmea's mocking voice. "Just what I had in mind. But how will you find your way back to the path? It'll be dark before you reach the beach, if you have to feel your way through the woods, and I'll follow you and kill you one by one m the dark."
"It's no empty boast," muttered Harston. "He is like an Indian for stealth. If he hunts us back through the forest, few of us will live to see the beach."
"Then we'll kill him here," gritted Villiers. "Some of us will shoot at him while the rest climb the crag. Listen! Why does he laugh?"
"To hear dead men making plots!" came Vulmea's grimly amused voice.
"Heed him not," scowled Villiers, and lifting his voice, he shouted for the men below to join him and Harston on the ledge.
As the sailors started up the slanting trail, there sounded a hum like that of an angry bee, ending in a sharp thud. A buccaneer gasped and sank to his knees, clutching the shaft that quivered in his breast. A yell of alarm went up from his companions.
"What's the matter?" yelled Harston.
"Indians!" bawled a pirate, and went down with an arrow in his neck.
"Take cover, you fools!" shrieked Villiers. From his vantage point he glimpsed painted figures moving in the bushes. One of the men on the winding path fell back dying. The rest scrambled hastily down among the rocks about the foot of the crag. Arrows flickered from the bushes, splintering on the boulders. The men on the ledge lay prone.
"We're trapped!" Harston's face was pale. Bold enough with a deck under his feet, this silent, savage warfare shook his nerves.
"Vulmea said they feared this crag," said Villiers. "When night falls the men must climb up here. The Indians won't rush us on the ledge."
"That's true!" mocked Vulmea. "They won't climb the crag. They'll merely surround it and keep you here until you starve."
"Make a truce with him," muttered Harston. "If any man can get us out of this, he can. Time enough to cut his throat later." Lifting his voice he called: "Vulmea, let's forget our feud. You're in this as much as we are."
"How do you figure that?" retorted the Irishman. "When it's dark I can climb down the other side of this crag and crawl through the line the Indians have thrown around this hill. They'll never see me. I can return to the fort and report you all slain by the savages—which will shortly be the truth!"
Harston and Villiers stared at each other in pallid silence.
"But I'm not going to do that!" Vulmea roared. "Not because I have any love for you dogs, but because a white man doesn't leave white men, even his enemies, to be butchered by red savages."
The Irishman's tousled black head appeared over the crest of the crag.
"Listen! There's only a small band down there. I saw them sneaking through the brush when I laughed, awhile ago. I believe a big war-party is heading in our direction, and those are a group of fleet-footed young braves sent ahead of it to cut us off from the beach.
"They're all on the west side of the crag. I'm going down on the east side and work around behind them. Meanwhile, you crawl down the path and join your men among the rocks. When you hear me yell, rush the trees."
"What of the treasure?"
"To hell with it! We'll be lucky if we get out of here with our scalps."
The black-maned head vanished. They listened for sounds to indicate that Vulmea had crawled to the almost sheer eastern wall and was working his way down, but they heard nothing. Nor did any sound come from the forest. No more arrows broke against the rocks where the sailors were hidden, but all knew that fierce black eyes were watching with murderous patience. Gingerly Harston, Villiers and the boatswain started down the winding path. They were halfway down when the shafts began to whisper around them. The boatswain groaned and toppled down the slope, shot through the heart. Arrows splintered on the wall about the captains as they tumbled in frantic haste down the steep trail. They reached the foot in a scrambling rush and lay panting among the rocks.
"Is this more of Vulmea's trickery?" wondered Villiers profanely.
"We can trust him in this matter," asserted Harston. "There's a racial principle involved here. He'll help us against the Indians, even though he plans to murder us himself. Hark!"
A blood-freezing yell knifed the silence. It came from the woods to the west, and simultaneously an object arched out of the trees, struck the ground and rolled bouncingly toward the rocks—a severed human head, the hideously painted face frozen in a death-snarl.
"Vulmea's signal!" roared Harston, and the desperate pirates rose like a wave from the rocks and rushed headlong toward the woods.
Arrows whirred out of the bushes, but their flight was hurried and erratic. Only three men fell. Then the wild men of the sea plunged through the fringe of foliage and fell on the naked painted figures that rose out of the gloom before them. There was a murderous instant of panting, hand to hand ferocity, cutlasses beating down war-axes, booted feet trampling naked bodies, and then bare feet were rattling through the bushes in headlong flight as the survivors of that brief carnage quit the field, leaving seven still, painted figures stretched on the bloodstained leaves that littered the earth. Further back in the thickets sounded a thrashing and heaving, and then it ceased and Vulmea strode into view, his hat gone, his coat torn, his cutlass dripping in his hand.
"What now?" panted Villiers. He knew the charge had succeeded only because Vulmea's unexpected attack on the rear of the Indians had demoralized the painted men, and prevented them from melting back before the rush.
"Come on!"
They let their dead lie where they had fallen, and crowded close at his heels as he trotted through the trees. Alone they would have sweated and blundered among the thickets for hours before they found the trail that led to the beach— if they had ever found it. Vulmea led them as unerringly as if he had been following an open road, and the rovers shouted with hysterical relief as they burst suddenly upon the trail that ran westward.
"Fool!" Vulmea clapped a hand on the shoulder of a pirate who started to break into a run, and hurled him back among his companions. "You'd burst your heart within a thousand yards. We're miles from the beach. Take an easy gait. We may have to sprint the last mile. Save some of your wind for it. Come on, now."
He set off down the trail at a steady jog-trot, and the seamen followed him, suiting their pace to his.
The sun was touching the waves of the western ocean. Tina stood at the window from which Françoise had watched the storm.
"The sunset turns the ocean to blood," she said. "The ship's sail is a white fleck on the crimson waters. The woods are already darkening."
"What of the seamen on the beach?" asked Françoise languidly. She reclined on a couch, her eyes closed, her hands clasped behind her head.
"Both camps are preparing their supper," answered Tina. "They are gathering driftwood and building fires. I can hear them shouting to one another—what's that?"
The sudden tenseness in the girl's tone brought Françoise upright on her couch. Tina gripped the window sill and her face was white.
"Listen! A howling, far off, like many wolves!"
"Wolves?" Françoise sprang up, fear clutching her heart. "Wolves do not hunt in packs at this time of the year!"
"Look!" shrilled the girl. "Men are running out of the forest!"
In an instant Françoise was beside her, staring wide-eyed at the figures, small in the distance, streaming out of the woods.
"The sailors!" she gasped. "Empty handed! I see Villiers-Harston
"Where is Vulmea?" whispered the girl.
Françoise shook her head.