Meanwhile one of the men had refilled the water jug and tipped a basket full of fresh fruit on to the remains of the old supply. Cyrano made a gesture towards his injured knee, bared his teeth at Roger, and said: "I shall take a special pleasure in watching you dance for M. le Vicomte's crocodiles later in the day." Then he limped up the steps, the door was locked, behind him and the three remaining prisoners were left to their terrifying reflections.
During the rest of the morning, except for short intervals of violent coughing caused by his tubercular lung, Wells lay semi-comatose, but the other two could not free their minds from a series of mental pictures in which the unfortunate Jennings was the central figure. They saw him stripped to the waist, and round his body the knotted bight of a long rope, one end of which had already been passed beneath the Circe amidships. They saw him, fighting and yelling, thrown over the side to splash with whirling arms and legs into the water. They saw the rope now taut and being hauled upon by a mob of running men, so that
Jennings should be dragged under the hull and up the far side of the ship before he could drown. They saw him again on deck, dripping, gasping and bleeding from a score of lacerations to his flesh, while with brutal jests his tormentors revived him with neat rum to undergo the second scraping—and the third, the fourth, the fifth, until they could revive him no more.
Roger knew that there must be sharks in the bay and that they would be attracted by Jennings' blood. He prayed that one of them might get him during the first plunge, and so put an end to his agony swiftly. Yet the thought conjured up sickening visions of the ordeal to which the vengeance-crazed Vicomte intended to inflict upon him later that very day. There seemed little to choose between having one's feet gnawed off by sharks or crocodiles; and for him that would not be followed by a swift if painful end. Tomorrow that fiend in human form meant to burn his arms away, and the next to have the skin stripped from his back. Lastly there would come the excruciating agony of lying pegged out on an ant heap while the fire-ants ate away his vitals.
If his torn legs were given prompt attention it seemed certain that he would survive the first day's unholy sport, but there was a chance that the shock of the burns on the second day would kill him. After the third, at least, he might die from the loss of blood and nervous exhaustion, or have become a raving lunatic no longer capable of registering physical suffering with full consciousness. He could only pray that it would be so.
During the heat of the day the atmosphere became stifling and the stench almost unbearable. Mosquitoes plagued them and the itch of the bites drove them to a frenzy. But gradually the afternoon dragged through its awful length. At last the door was thrown open again.
Cyrano limped down the steps with his gang of butchers. They were carrying cords with which to tie the prisoners' hands behind their backs. The Supercargo, now nearly off his head with fear, screamed and fought but was seized with a desperate fit of coughing and soon overcome. Fergusson was white to the lips but had the fortitude to allow his wrists to be tied without a struggle. So did Roger. He knew that to resist or attempt to get away in this confined space was utterly hopeless. It could lead only to exhausting himself quite fruitlessly. He must husband every ounce of strength he had, just m case a chance offered for him to break away when he was in the open.
But his hands were bound and he would be one against fifty, or more probably a hundred, as the Vicomte meant the slaves also to witness his ruthless revenge. Even if he could drag the end of the cord that now bit into his wrists from the man who held it, what chance would he have? Before he had covered ten yards recapture was certain.
This was his third round with de Caylus. When he had set out upon the first he had expected to meet his death by a sword thrust. Bitterly, he wished now that he had. After all these years de Caylus had caught up with him. As he walked up the stone steps he faced the fact that this must be the end; but a lingering end, from which he could escape only after countless hours of torture.
chapter XI
THE CROCODILE POOL
As Roger was led across the main hall of the house the bright sunshine was still streaming through its rear windows, and he judged that there must be a good hour to go before brief twilight heralded the tropic night. Out on the veranda Amanda sat hunched in a chair, her head bowed in her hands. The other women were grouped round her and behind them stood four pirates who had evidently been set to keep watch on them. The sound of feet caused Amanda to lift her head. Immediately she saw Roger she jumped up to run to him but one of the men roughly pulled her back. The three prisoners were pushed past the women and down the steps; then each of the pirates took one of the women by the arm, and fell in with them behind Cyrano.
The foreshore presented an animated scene. Boatloads of men from the two ships were landing on the beach; others, and with them a score of slatternly looking women of mixed nationality, were emerging from the long low building which formed the south wing of the house, and little groups of slaves, ranging in colour from coal black to tanned whites, were leaving the lean-to's roofed with banana palm. The pirates and their molls were gaily dressed in looted silks and cottons; whereas the slaves had on only scanty, ragged garments; but nearly all had coloured handkerchiefs knotted about their heads, and a festive atmosphere prevailed. All were making their way across the front of the house towards the northern arm of the bay and laughing and joking as though they were setting out on a bean-feast.
Cyrano now had water on the knee, but was evidently determined not to miss the fun. Muttering curses with every step he took, he led his seven captives and their escort along the strand to a path that - -wound up into the forest.
As they entered it they passed into a new, fantastic, twilight world. Trees of enormous girth reared up two hundred feet in height, but their upper boughs could not be seen because they became lost in a smother of other vegetation. Out of their hollows and every cranny in them sprang ferns, many themselves as large as medium-sized trees. From their branches tangles of lianas and creepers cascaded down like green waterfalls. Some of their stems were as thick as a man's arm, and snaked upwards like green pythons, while countless others looped in all directions or hung down as straight as a weighted string. Between the giant acomas, candle-woods and palms, a vast variety of other trees struggled for room, their branches interlacing. Many were loaded with fruit: golden mangoes, green avocadoes, clusters of yellow paw-paws, prickly soursops looking like huge pears, custard apples, wild apricots, limes and citrons. Below them rioted bushes: and big tufts of coarse grasses half submerged under more tangles, of creeper with here and there the fallen limb of a great tree that,.
even as it rotted, was giving birth to ferns, mosses, and other forms of the teeming life that sprouted everywhere with almost incredible abundance.
The path wound upwards, and after ten minutes' hard trudging they emerged into an open space floored with an outcrop of rock, in the crevices of which only mosses and small plants could find enough soil to maintain a foothold. On the inland side of this clearing a tangle of great boulders sloped up to a twelve-feet-high cliff, overlapped with verdure where the forest began again; at its far end the cliff continued, curving and rising to a sheer wall over fifty feet in height. Below this high cliff lay the pool, on the edge of which had been erected a long-armed gibbet. To the seaward side of the open ground trees again towered skyward and between them the dense jungle cut off any view of the bay below.
Several score of people had already congregated to see the sport, and the prisoners were led through them to the pool's edge. It was roughly oval and lay in a deep hollow so that the water was some eight feet below the rocky floor of the clearing. Near the place where the boulders stopped a small waterfall tumbled down from the cliff to feed it, and the overflow was carried off, after passing through an iron grille by another that fell into a gully leading down to the sea. From the clearing the only exit, other than that by which they had entered it, was across the gully by a plank bridge, beyond which another track opened leading farther up into the forest.