Chapter II: The Native Drum

Johnny Thompson was no weakling. He was a football player and a lightweight boxer of no mean ability. He had lived clean and taken good care of the physical side of his being as every boy should. When the unseen person seized him so suddenly from behind he was down but not out by any manner of means. With a deft twist he freed himself from the grasp of his unknown adversary, and, leaping to his feet, struck out with his right and left with the best of results. His clenched fists landed with dull thwacks. There followed the sound of a heavy body staggering backward into the brush.

Having no desire to do bodily injury to anyone, the boy turned and would have dashed swiftly away had not a dark arm reached out to entwine itself about his neck. This startling embrace was followed by a blow on the head, which left him all but senseless and without further power of resistance.

Sinking to the ground he awaited the end. To his great surprise, he discovered that the end of this particular adventure had already come. He was left there alone in the dark.

Night, jungle night, dark, damp and silent lay all about him. Still but half conscious of what went on about him, not daring to move, he lay there quite motionless.

A moment passed, another and yet another.

"There is no--no one about," he told himself at last.

At that, there sounded off in the distance the boom of a native drum; one stroke, that was all, then again jungle silence hung over all.

"They are a long way off. I must get--get back to camp," he told himself as in a dream. "Dorn and old Pompee will go out hunting for me."

He tried to rise. In this he failed. His head whirled. He sank back and must have lost consciousness for when next his benumbed brain registered a thought, the light of a torch was shining in his eyes and a face was before him. A strange and very curious pair of eyes were looking into his own.

The man was incredibly short and broad. He seemed to have scarcely any legs at all. His face was thin, his nose sharp and very crooked. But his eyes! Johnny thought he had never looked into a keener pair of eyes. To Johnny's great surprise, he found that his bruised head had been quite deftly bandaged. There was a pungent odor of drugs about him.

"They hit you," the short, broad, little man said in quite a matter-of-fact tone. "Hit you on the head. Good thing I happened along. Gone bad with you. But you're safe enough now."

Johnny looked into the man's eyes again and wondered who he might be.

"It was the drum," the strange man went on. "You thumped it, didn't you?"

"Yes I--"

"Never thump a native drum here in Haiti. Gets you in trouble, right away. If the Marines or native police don't get you, someone else will. Where'd you get the drum, anyway?"

"It was hanging on a tree."

"Uh huh! They left it there. Notice how it was made?"

"No."

"Cut right out of a log, pretty hard log. Plenty of work to make a native drum. Besides, the natives love their drums. I can't say the drums are a good thing. Lot of superstition and wild practices hanging about them. But you can't change people all at once. New ideas will come, the right sort I mean, even here in Haiti. But it takes time. Haiti's been practically ignored by our country for a hundred years. Now we're taking hold.

"Know what would have happened to the drum if the native police had got it?" he asked, suddenly fixing his sharp eyes on the boy. "Burst in its head," he continued, answering his own question. "Split it up for kindling wood. That's what they'd have done. The Marines would have done the same. You're white like the Marines. Probably these natives thought you meant to burst their drum. That's why they treated you rough. But you'll be right enough now."

"Th--thanks. I--" Johnny did not finish. The strange short, broad man had vanished into the night.

"This," Johnny told himself, rising stiffly, "is the strangest island I have ever known. You strike a drum on the head and get struck on the head in return. A short, broad, white man, with the skill of a surgeon, comes along and fixes you up. Who hit me? Who is this curious doctor-like man? Where'd he come from? What's he doing down here? Guess I'd better hurry on back to camp."

His steps were a trifle unsteady at first. His head hurt. As his blood warmed, he got the better of this and in due time walked into an illuminated circle which was the light of his own camp fire, to exclaim as he dropped down beside three shadowy figures:

"Well, here I am and I've had an adventure."

"Adventure!" The voice of the speaker was shrill and high-pitched, the voice of a boy in his early teens. "Tell us about it." This boy was Dorn Montcalm.

Dorn Montcalm was the son of a merchant who made his home in one of the hill villages of Haiti. His father, who had the good of the Island natives at heart, had taken a great liking to Johnny's aged Professor. They had exchanged many visits. In this way Dorn had become acquainted with Johnny. When he learned of the proposed search for the "Rope of Gold" he had begged to be allowed to go along. Permission was granted by his father only on condition that Pompee, a native servant and a very giant of a man, be taken along as his bodyguard. Pompee was more than welcome for, besides being a man of great physical prowess, he was a famous cook. He knew the value of every native herb, root and fruit. When occasion demanded, he could gather and prepare a delicious repast in the heart of the jungle.

So they sat there by the camp fire waiting for Johnny's story, Curlie Carson, Dorn and Pompee. The shadow and the spell of the Citadel was upon them. For some time Johnny did not speak. Their temporary abode, a dark man-made chasm, part of the Citadel, yawned at their back; on either side rose the massive walls.

"What's happened to your head?" demanded Curlie, suddenly catching sight of Johnny's white bandages.

"Come to that presently," replied Johnny. "Had a visitor to-night, didn't you?"

"No! Why of course not!" Curlie seemed quite startled.

"He looked in at your window." Johnny chuckled.

"He couldn't," Curlie laughed out loud. "It's twenty feet from the ground."

"Then you didn't see him?"

"Of course not. There was no one."

"There was," Johnny's tone was serious.

Curlie Carson leaped to his feet. "What! How--"

"Hung a rope ladder to the great brass cannon above," Johnny said quietly. "He climbed down after a while. And after that, quite soon, he saw something that caused him to do a back somersault off the end of his ladder. Wonder he didn't break his neck."

"But he didn't?" said Curlie, pacing nervously back and forth.

"No," said Johnny. "Apparently these natives are like cats--always land on their feet."

He was surprised at the evident agitation caused in Curlie's mind by this disclosure. "What's he cooking up in that dark little laboratory of his?" Johnny asked himself. He recalled the mysterious packages Curlie's burros had packed up the mountain.

"Radio is all I can think of," he told himself. "Lots of sense to that. We had a portable outfit complete in a box and decided not to bring it."

He was to know the answer to all this in due time. For the present it was to remain the freshest mystery of the grim old Citadel.

Presently Curlie dropped back to his place beside the fire, which by this time had burned itself down to a dark red bed of blackening coals.

"It's all done by the aid of batteries," he mumbled as if speaking to himself. "Did that visitor of mine come round and try to break your head?" he asked, once more staring at Johnny's bandages.

"No, well,--perhaps, who can tell? It was some native or other."

Settling back in his place Johnny told of the night's encounter. "That proves," he ended, "that some places are not as safe as they seem."

"And that you may expect a doctor to appear upon the scene at any time," laughed Curlie.

"Anyway," said Johnny quite soberly, "he was a handy person to meet. Only hope I get an opportunity to repay him."

Once more silence, the great, ominous, silence of the Citadel hung over all. For a full ten minutes no one spoke. It was old Pompee who at last broke the silence.

"Once," his deep voice rumbled, "men lay upon the ground as we rest here now, waiting for sleep to come. There were hundreds, perhaps thousands of them, prisoners condemned to toil upon the unfinished walls.

"And on this night," his voice rolled deep, and solemn, "as they looked up they saw a single man toiling there, as they had toiled during the day. This man was larger than any one of us, larger than any of them. And he was greater than all of them," Pompee continued. "The greatest, most powerful ruler Haiti has ever known. He was their emperor. And yet he toiled there at common labor the long night through. Why?"

As he paused for an answer he looked away at the distant wall to fancy again that he saw a figure moving there, to imagine that he caught the rhythmic motion of a mason working in brick, mortar and stone.

"Of course," he went on as no one spoke, "he may have been angry and impatient at the slow workmen. And yet--"

"He hid something there," said Dorn.

"And that?" asked Johnny.

"Was the 'Rope of Gold'," said Dorn. "It required two men to carry it. But the emperor was a powerful man, the most powerful ever known in Haiti." The French boy's tone became eager, insistent. "He could have wrapped it about him, inside his great purple coat."

"Yes," said Pompee, giving approval. "And that is what he did. But where is the 'Rope of Gold' now?"

To this question none could give answer, though each wished that he could do so.

Once more the silence of shadows and night fell upon them.

For some time Curlie spread his slim legs before the fire. Then, apparently remembering some forgotten mission, he sprang to his feet.

"Going down the mountain," he said shortly. "Be late getting back, past midnight probably."

"Look out for the natives," warned Johnny.

"Natives?" said Curlie. "Natives of Haiti? They wouldn't hurt you."

"You never can tell." Johnny rubbed his bandaged head.

Curlie disappeared. The fire burned lower and lower till only a spark remained. Then, because their musty bedchamber within the grim walls seemed unusually damp and chill on this night, Johnny and Dorn dragged their blankets to a flat open space. There rolling themselves up side by side, with the massive Pompee near by, they prepared for sleep.

Dorn, the dark-eyed French boy, was soon breathing in the steady way of a deep sleeper. But Johnny could not sleep. Life that day had been strange. He had thought little of this journey in the beginning. True, he had hoped, boy fashion, that something might come of it; that they might find something of real value that would aid the aged Professor in his work. It was to be, at worst, a well deserved vacation, a week's experience worth telling of when he returned to his home in the States.

But the presence of natives where there had been no natives before, especially of a long-haired bronze type such as he had not seen before, was vaguely disturbing.

"It's like coming quite suddenly upon a bumblebee's nest," he told himself, "only a great deal worse. What can they want? Is there really something hidden here that they know of and do not wish disturbed? What will come of it all?"

Finding that sleep would not come, he rose at last to begin the ascent of a flight of stairs leading to the top of the Citadel.

"Go a little way up," he told himself. "Cool my blood. Dorn's safe enough. There's Pompee to protect him."

As he began to climb, the bracing night air, acting as a stimulant, drove him up and up until at last he stood at the very top of the Citadel, one hundred and thirty feet above the ground.

"Here," he told himself with a quick intake of breath, "Christophe the Emperor stood on that memorable night spreading mortar and laying bricks. And it may be," he caught his breath, "that I am standing at this very moment above the treasure he buried so long ago.

"Oh, Christophe!" he exclaimed. "In your younger days, before the love of gold and power drove you mad, you dreamed great dreams for the good of your people. Now, as never before, they need the wealth you hid away in your time of great might."

He would have added, "If it be within your power reveal the hiding place to me now," but somehow a feeling came over him that this would be akin to the wild superstitions that pervaded the land, so he fell into silence.

The top of the Citadel is broad and very long; a perfect promenade for a moonlight night.

Now fancying himself a guard pacing his beat in the silent night, and now endeavoring to live again the days of long ago, Johnny paced the ramparts in silence.

Never had there been such a night, and never a lovelier sight in all the world. At the back of the Citadel distant mountains loomed, blue, indistinct, mysterious.

Before him he caught the glint of the far away sea. At its shore, he knew, palms grew rank and tall, shading beautiful white stucco homes. The water of the sea was blue and clear as the most transparent glass. Green parrots flitted from tree to tree. And in the evening the mocking birds sing.

"It's the most beautiful island in all the world," he told himself, as he walked slowly along with bowed head, "and yet its history is the saddest of all.

"Columbus found it. He made an earnest attempt to colonize it. Yet it brought him only sorrow, a dungeon and chains. The French conquered it. It brought them only death. Christophe dreamed dreams. He, too, ended in defeat. And why? Gold! Columbus might have succeeded but the greedy Spaniards demanded gold and more gold. He was obliged to enslave the natives to obtain gold. The French were no better. Slavery has always brought tragedy.

"Gold. Christophe was thought of as a hero and a liberator until he fell in love with glittering gold.

"Gold," he stopped short in his tracks. He was here at this very moment in a search for gold, the 'Rope of Gold.'

"Ah, yes," he told himself after a moment's thought. "But we want it at least in part for others, not entirely for ourselves."

He strolled slowly on. As he did so, he saw in his mind's eye a broad aqueduct running down from the mountain and on out over a desolate, cactus grown plain. It was broken in places, but once it was repaired it would bring water to thousands of thirsty acres. Not alone that, but it would bring pure, cold water to those who now traveled far to carry luke-warm water on donkeys' backs.

"Hundreds die needlessly every year because of the water," the Professor had said. "If only we had the money for rebuilding the waste places."

"He must have it," the boy told himself. "Somehow--"

Of a sudden, he felt himself sinking. His first thought was that he had walked off the wall.

But no, he was in the very center.

Stones crumbled and glided beneath his feet. He threw his arms out madly. It was no use. Down, down he went.

He knew on the instant that the unusual had happened.

"It's a secret opening in the wall," he told himself. "I have found the hiding place of the 'Rope of Gold'."

"Or you have found death," a voice seemed to whisper. "You are more than a hundred feet above the mountain top."