CHAPTER XXII

BURIED ALIVE

Ruth pointed out to Drew exactly where the figure that had so startled her had stood. It was down the slope of the hill to the westward, and directly between two lava boulders at the edge of the jungle.

The figure--man, apparition, what or whoever it was--had lingered in sight but a moment.

Before returning to work in his excavation, Drew went down to the spot Ruth had pointed out. There was not a sign of anybody having been there. The earth between the huge lumps of lava seemed not to have been disturbed. He could find no broken twigs or torn vines at the edge of the jungle.

"She dreamed it--that's all," muttered Drew. "Poor Parmalee!"

He thought of the man whose tragic end was so linked with his own existence--of the body buffeted by the waves somewhere in the blue expanse that stretched easterly from this little island.

Of what use would the pirate treasure, if they found it, be to Allen Drew? This bitter query obsessed him. He would gladly give every coin and jewel Ramon Alvarez had buried here, were it his to give, to see Parmalee, leaning on his cane, walk out of the jungle.

He was so lost in these gloomy musings that he started when he felt a light touch on his arm.

He looked up to find Ruth standing beside him.

"Did you find any trace of him, Allen?" she asked, in a voice from which the tremor had not entirely gone.

"Not the slightest sign," he answered. "The man or thing, whatever it was, seems to have vanished into thin air."

"It must have been mere fancy," she murmured, though without conviction.

"Our nerves play strange tricks sometimes," Drew rejoined lightly. "We are all of us in such an excited state just now that anything may happen."

"I've always felt that nerves had been left out of my composition,"

said Ruth, smiling faintly. "But when it comes to the pinch, I suppose I'm just as liable to them as any one else."

"No, you're not," denied Allen Drew warmly. "You're the most perfect thoroughbred of any woman I ever knew."

"Perhaps your experience has been limited," she suggested, with a flash of her old mischief.

"I'm perfectly willing it should be limited from this time on to just one woman," he was on the point of saying, but bit his lip just in time.

"It is strange that this apparition, for want of a better name, should have taken the form of Parmalee," he continued, his jealousy in spite of himself taking possession of him. "Perhaps you were thinking of him, just then," he hazarded.

"Not at all," returned Ruth frankly. "Just at that moment I'm afraid my mind was fixed on nothing else but the hunt for the pirate's treasure."

Drew felt somewhat rea.s.sured by this, and they had turned to retrace their steps when he suddenly stood stock still.

"What is it?" asked Ruth in some alarm.

"I thought I saw an opening in the side of the mountain over there," he replied. "Perhaps the ghost, or whatever it was, is hiding in that,"

he added jestingly. "At any rate I'm going to take a minute and see what it is."

He made a step in the direction he had indicated. Ruth sought to restrain him.

"Don't you think you had better call my father and Mr. Grimshaw before you venture in there?" she asked. "You don't know what may be lurking there."

"Nonsense," laughed the man lightly. "They'd only be vexed at being interrupted in their digging. At any rate they're within easy call--if there should be any need of them."

Ruth was silenced though only half convinced. Together they went over to a gaping rent in the side of the hill.

As a matter of precaution, Drew had taken his revolver from his belt and held it ready in his hand. He had really no expectation of meeting anything hostile in human shape and he did not believe that any animal that would be at all formidable ranged the island.

"If it's a ghost, I don't suppose this revolver would do any good," he joked, more to relieve Ruth's uneasiness than any that he felt himself.

"At the very least I'd have to have a silver bullet or one that had been dipped in the river Jordan."

The opening before which they stood was irregular in shape and seemed to have been made by one of the convulsions of nature that apparently were so common to the island. It was, roughly speaking, about four feet wide and nine high, and from the glimpse they got into its depths seemed to widen out in the interior. There was nothing about it to speak of human occupancy and the ground leading to it bore no marks of footprints. Nor were there any bones scattered about that might indicate that it was the lair of wild beasts.

Drew cupped his hands to his mouth and sent forth a ringing call.

"h.e.l.lo, in there!" he shouted.

There was no answer, but the reverberations of his own voice that came back to him seemed to show that the cave extended inward to a considerable depth.

"h.e.l.lo!" he shouted again. "If there's any one in there, come out!

We're friends and won't hurt you."

Again there was no answer.

"Doesn't seem to be sociably inclined," muttered Allen grimly.

"I guess there's n.o.body there," said Ruth. "Let's go back to the others, Allen. We've spent too much time already on this foolish notion of mine."

"It wasn't foolish at all," protested Drew. "As a matter of fact it may prove to be of the greatest importance. We ought to sift the matter to the bottom. If there's anybody on this island we don't know about, it ought to be our first business to find out. I think I'll take a peep into this mysterious cave."

He made a step forward, but Ruth's hand tightened on his arm and he stopped.

"Do you think you'd better risk it, Allen?" she asked. "How do you know what may be in there. Suppose--suppose----"

"Suppose what?" he asked with a whimsical smile.

"Suppose anything should happen to you?" she half whispered.

"Nothing will happen to me," he rejoined. "Not that it matters much anyway," he added bitterly, as the thought swept over him of the black cloud of suspicion that hung above him.

"Just give me a minute, Ruth," he pleaded, hating himself for his reckless words as he saw the pained look in her eyes. "I won't go in for more than twenty or thirty feet, just to see if there's anything about this place that we really ought to know. You stay here and I'll be back before you fairly know I've gone."

She reluctantly loosened her grasp of his arm and he plunged forward into the darkness.

For the first ten feet or so, the going was rendered rather difficult by projecting bits of rock that caught at his clothes and impeded his progress. But then the pa.s.sage widened out steadily until he could not feel the sides even when his arms were stretched to their utmost limit.

The light that had followed him from the small entrance finally vanished, and he went forward with the utmost caution, carefully planting each foot for the next step. At any moment, for all he knew, he might find himself on the brink of a precipice.

"Black as Egypt in here," he muttered to himself, as he felt for the matches he carried in an oilskin bag in the pocket of his coat. "I guess I'd better strike a----"