At last he gave a start, and sat bolt upright, rubbing both his eyes.

"A strange thing!" said he, and continued to look at me, but this time with a frown.

"A strange thing, indeed!" he repeated.

There was another pause, during which I had not the courage to look him in the face. I had some presentiment of what was now to come; in spite of which the suddenness with which he had made it manifest that my secret was out, quite took away my breath.

"Allow me," said he, "to offer you my most hearty congratulations. We have every reason to presume that Master Richard Treadgold is unloved by the G.o.ds."

And at that, he held out a hand, and I was obliged to shake with him, though I felt at once frightened and a fool.

CHAPTER XXII--MR. FORSYTH AND I BECOME BETTER ACQUAINTED

Forsyth got to his feet, and to my horror, immediately awakened Amos.

Then was I certain that my last hour was at hand. I never thought for a moment that protection would come to me from a quarter whence I had no reason to expect it.

I had always suspected Amos to be a kind of madman; and that grey morning in the woods I was, for the first time, convinced of it. He behaved like no sane man, but cursed and raved and stamped upon the ground, upon which at last he flung himself writhing as if in pain.

He had been both foiled and fooled, and recognised it, too. Months before, he had left me in the woods to die, and now beheld me as alive as ever, and still standing betwixt him and the goal that he would gain.

Twice, it appeared, had he lost possession of the map--or that part of it which was of the greatest value to him--and on both occasions it was through me that he had failed. Besides that, he had taken me for a ghost, an apparition; he had fallen down upon his knees before me; and had I had the heart in cold blood to plunge my sword into the half naked and defenceless body of a living man, Amos Baverstock would now have been as dead as the Spanish warrior himself.

Make no mistake in thinking that he felt a shade of grat.i.tude for that.

It was bitter disappointment and blind, livid fury that mastered what sanity was his. He rolled in his wrath here and there about the ground, biting the withered leaves and the dead sticks, like the mad dog he was.

Then he got to his feet and swore that he would kill me, and this time there would be no muddling in connection with a matter so inordinately simple. For this dreadful purpose he took into his hands a long hunting-knife, and with this he came toward me. And as he did so, I looked over his shoulder, and saw in the midst of the thickets the gleaming barrel of a rifle.

I knew then for certain that I was not to die, and smiled into the evil face of Amos. John Bannister himself was near at hand, my guardian and my friend. Had Amos taken another step, or raised his hand to strike, I know he would have dropped stone-dead upon the spot; for Bannister, at such a moment, would have counted his own life as nothing. But now I come to the strangest part of all my story: it was Mr. Gilbert Forsyth who intervened.

"You cannot do this," he drawled.

He had stepped between us. Without violence, almost politely, with an arm extended, he pushed Amos aside.

"Why not?" gasped Baverstock, gaping at the other.

"Mainly, my good friend," answered Forsyth, "because it will profit you nothing. But there are other reasons. In the first place, last night he might have killed you, and did no such thing. Secondly, I am already disposed to admire this youth, and to think that it would have been the better for us had he been upon our side from the beginning. Thirdly, to kill him as you propose would be a foul and dirty business, such as I refuse to countenance."

Amos turned upon him like a wild beast.

"You!" he cried. "Who are you to dictate terms to me? Who brought you here?"

"I brought myself," said Forsyth, very calmly, "and I brought you and Trust as well; for money makes the world go round, and without my worthy banker you were still kicking your heels in England. So the less you speak of that the better."

I never saw a man more self-possessed; and, on the other hand, I never saw one more livid with rage than Amos. On the instant, forgetting me, he turned the full current of his wrath upon Mr. Forsyth.

It would be irksome to repeat, word for word, the altercation that took place between them; for they fought with words and argued for many hours that morning. And whilst this was happening, now and again I shot a glance toward the thickets, where I had seen the barrel of the rifle I was sure belonged to Bannister. But I saw no further sign of him, and heard no sound. I did not know, therefore, whether he was still at hand; for as yet I had no experience of his great skill as a woodsman.

I did not know that, in spite of his bulk, he could move in the undergrowth as silently as a snake, and when he struck, he did so with the suddenness with which the jaguar springs upon his prey.

For nearly all that morning Forsyth and Amos wrangled, the one to save me, and the other to do murder--the one, quiet and calm; the other, raving mad.

It was a question, I suppose, of will-power only; and Forsyth conquered in the end. Amos, I could see, was utterly exhausted. The fire within him had consumed the better part of his vitality and the violence of his nature. He was at last reduced to utter speechlessness. He stood before us, panting, his shallow chest heaving greatly like a man who has run a race. He could not stand steadily upon his feet, but swayed about, from one side to the other. I observed, also, a strange difference in his eyes. They were no longer glistening and pig-like; they were just the wild, staring eyes of a lunatic. And, sure enough, a lunatic he was.

He seated himself upon the trunk of a fallen tree, and there he sat for many minutes, shivering as if from cold. At last he turned and spoke in a weak voice--quite unlike his own--to Joshua Trust.

"Get me water, you dog," he ordered, "and be quick about it."

Trust went to a stream that was not far away; and even as the man entered the thickets, I thought that I heard something move beneath the trees, a little to his right.

He came back with the water, and Amos drained it at a gulp.

"I would know this," said Trust, standing before them both with folded arms. "Who's master now? Who takes the bridge? Whose orders am I expected to obey?"

"That's a matter for yourself to settle," answered Mr. Forsyth. "Here we are, in the midst of this almighty wilderness; and if we don't hold together, as like as not we die. For myself, I am not one who, once he has decided on a certain course of action, is easily turned aside. I have come this distance to behold the Greater Treasure, and I do not go back again until my quest is ended."

At that, Amos brightened up in a manner truly wonderful. The very thought of gold was to him a kind of tonic. He got again upon his feet.

"Why, there you speak some sense!" he cried. "I am the last man in the world to go back upon my friends. But we can do nothing without the map."

"Leave that to me," said Forsyth; "and, sooner or later, I will find it.

A little subtlety and sense may very well succeed where cold-blooded murder must have failed."

And thereupon Forsyth turned to me and, taking me by both shoulders, held me at arm's length.

"d.i.c.k Hannibal," said he--for he had a singular sense of humour, quite his own--"I would have you, as you love me, and are greatly in my debt, tell us the whole truth; for I am convinced in my mind that you know all there is to know."

I shook my head. I was resolved to be as stubborn as before. And besides, I had every reason now to think that John Bannister was hovering on the outskirts of the camp, and might at any moment hasten to my aid.

Forsyth waited for some minutes. Then he shrugged his shoulders.

"I see," said he, "that neither threats nor violence will be of much avail. You may think differently, however, when I prove to you that I am neither such a fool, nor yet so soft of heart, as you appear to think me.

"We find you in the Tomb," he went on, in his slow, deliberate voice, "where we believe the map to have been hidden. You knew, therefore, that it was there; and, therefore, also, you have fallen in with Rushby.

Very well, then, we all go back to Rushby; and what is more, we start without delay. We know where we left him, and we know that he cannot escape. The question, so far as I can see, presents no difficulty at all."

He appeared so confident that I was considerably alarmed, and not without some reason, for I knew that I had left William Rushby in possession of the map. Yet, Forsyth himself could never have known this. He had, however, some definite plan at the back of his mind, and appeared so c.o.c.k-sure of himself that I wished more than ever that I had some one with whom I might take counsel.

I had no chance that day to attempt to satisfy my curiosity; for, so soon as we had eaten a meal, we packed up what little equipment Amos had brought with him from the ravine, and set forward on our march towards the west. I calculated that it would not take us more than two days to reach the other side of the Wood; for we followed the trail by which Amos and the others had come, and it was seldom necessary for him, who led the little column, to make use of either axe or bill-hook.

On the first night, I had the privilege of being enlightened by Mr.

Forsyth, who now appeared to have taken me to some extent into his heart--though upon that long march across the Great Forest, when we had travelled in one another's company for many months, he had never deigned to speak to me on more than one or two occasions.

Amos, on the other hand, gave me as wide a berth as possible, and sat regarding me with scowls which--to tell the truth--I could not fail to see I shared with Mr. Forsyth. Indeed, I trusted Baverstock so little that, when sheer fatigue compelled me to fall asleep, I did so in the firm conviction that the man might plunge a knife into my heart at any moment. He was sullen and morose, addressing himself only to Trust and the Spaniard, Vasco, and then never without an oath, and in the voice of one who gives orders to a dog.

But the case was very different with Mr. Forsyth, whose demeanour was scrupulously polite.