The Saint on the Spanish Main (16 page)

“Government should be able to take care
of it,” Si
mon remarked. “A few soldiers, or even police
men——
”

“You’re forgetting the Treaty.”

The Saint had finished his plate. He lighted
a cigarette
thoughtfully.

“Well, where do I stand?” he
inquired. “I don’t like
Mr. Cuffee on principle, and I didn’t sign any treaty.”

He was aware of a transient spark in
Robertson’s dull eyes, and that for a moment the Commander paused in his
energetic chomping, but most of all of the intent
eagerness of Johnny.

“No,” Farnham said firmly.
“You’re only a visitor.
I know your methods, and they just won’t go
here. This situation is ticklish enough already. Don’t make it any
more complicated.”

“You’re the boss,” said the Saint;
but he knew that
Johnny
was still looking at him.

David Farnham could not responsibly have
taken any
other attitude, but his enforced correctness cast an in
evitable
dampener over the discussion. They went to bed
not long afterwards,
after much repetition and no
progress, and Simon sympathetically refrained
from
further argument when they were alone. The iron
bedsteads were not
luxurious, but the rough-dried sheets
were fresh and clean, and the Saint
never allowed vain extrapolations to interfere with his rest. A few seconds
after his head settled on the pillow, he was in a dream
less
sleep.

He awoke to a light touch on his shoulder,
instantly,
without a movement or even a perceptible change in his
breathing.
Relaxing one eyelid just enough to give him a
minimum slit to peek
through he saw Johnny’s face
bending over him in the first grayness of
dawn, and opened both eyes.

Johnny put a finger to his lips and made a
beckoning
sign.

The Saint nodded, and slithered over the
edge of the
bed as silently as the uncooperative springs would let
him. The hearty rhythm of Farnham’s snoring did not
change, and Johnny
was already a shadow gliding through the door. A few moments later the Saint,
in
shirt and trousers and carrying his sandals, joined him
outside.

A little way up the path from the house, in shadows
made darker by the paling sky, a group of five men
stood waiting. As Johnny and Simon
joined them, Simon saw that Robertson and the Commander were two
of them. The other three were of similar age.
There were
no introductions. Johnny
seemed to have been ap
pointed
spokesman.

“We talked for a long time after you
went to bed,” he said. “I told them a lot about you. They think you
might
be able to help us. They want to show you the Peace
Cave.
That’s where the Treaty is supposed to have been
signed. I haven’t
even seen it myself. But they seem to
think it’s important, I don’t know
why. Will you go?”

“Of course,” said the Saint, with
a strange sensation
in his spine.

5

They set off at once.

Nobody talked, and before long the Saint
himself was
grateful to be spared the effort of conversation. Even
in
such good condition as he always was, he was glad to
save his
breath for locomotion. The trail wound up in
numerable steep hills
and down an identical number of
declivities, through arching forest and over
the slippery
rocks and muck of little streams. The sun came up,
scorching
in the open, brewing invisible steam in the de
ceptive shade. Simon
had to marvel at the driving pace
set by the Commander in the lead and
uncomplainingly
maintained
by the other old men.

In the full light, he saw that one of them
carried a
bottle of rum, one carried an old oil lantern, and one
had a
cardboard mailing tube which was the twin of the
tube that Cuffee’s
aide had carried. The significance of that last item puzzled him profoundly,
but he managed
to restrain himself from asking questions. The first
rule
of the whole mysterious expedition seemed to be that he
should
place himself blindly in their hands, and he had
decided to do nothing that might upset the
procedure.

They made one stop, in a grove of coconut
palms. The
Commander picked up a couple of fallen nuts from the
ground,
shook them, and threw them away. He looked
up at the clusters
of nuts overhead and pointed with the
machete which he had carried all the
way.

“Go get we some water coconut,
Johnny,” he said.
“See if you still a good Maroon.”

Johnny grinned, took off his shoes and socks,
and
scrambled up a tree with what Simon would have rated
as
remarkable agility, but which convulsed the rest of
the party with goodnatured
laughter. The Commander
deftly whacked off the tops of the nuts
which Johnny
threw
down and passed the first one to Simon.

They sat in the shade and sipped the cool
mild-tasting
water from the nuts, and bummed cigarettes from the
Saint, but the bottle of rum was not touched. Presently
the
Commander stood up, flourished his machete like a
cavalry officer, and
led them on.

It was nearing noon when the trail turned down
around a small valley and twisted past a shoulder of exposed rock and
more or less massive boulder. Later Simon was to learn that they were actually
only about two miles from the village, and that the long hike had only
been
contrived as a kind of preliminary ordeal to test
him. He could see the
path winding up again beyond,
and wondered if it was ever going to reach a
destination;
but
the Commander halted at the rocky point and the rest of the safari gathered
around him.

“Now we reach de Peace Cave,” said
the Com
mander,
and waved his machete. “Open de door!”

The first men to scramble up rolled aside
one of the
smaller stones, disclosing an opening little more than
two feet
square. The man with the lantern lighted it and
crawled in first, on
his hands and knees. Others followed. The Commander urged Simon upwards.

“Okay, Gaston,” said the Saint philosophically.

The tunnel was barely large enough for him
to wriggle
through on all fours, but he was glad to find it only
about four
yards long. He squirmed out into a low
vaulted cave where
the lantern revealed the men who
had gone ahead perched on any seats they
could find on the unevenly bouldered floor. The roof was too low for him to
stand up without stooping; and after Johnny and
the Commander had
followed him in it seemed as if the
number in the party had been calculated
by an in
stinctive sardine-packer, for it would have been almost
impossible
to squeeze one more adult in.

“Dis de Peace Cave,” said the
Commander, standing
in the center with his shoulders seeming to hold up the
rock over
them. “Here de Maroon dem shoot de soldiers
dat come after dem.
Look.”

He pointed back through the tunnel, and Simon
saw
the trail that had brought them down into the valley framed like a
brilliantly lighted picture at the end of it.

“Now look down here,” said the
Commander.

He turned the Saint around with strong bony
fingers,
guiding
him between two men who made way and
pushing
him down into a crevice at the back of the cave.
There was just enough room there for a man to lie down,
and at the end was a natural embrasure that
looked,
straight up another fifty
yards of the trail where it went
on to climb the slope behind.

And as if he had lain there himself all those
gener
ations ago,
Simon could see the soldiers in their red
coats
and bright equipment, probably with flags flying
and bugles playing, marching in brave formation down the open path
according to the manuals of gentlemanly
maneuver of their day, sitting ducks for desperate
guerillas with an instinct for taking cover and
no absurb
inhibitions about chivalrous warfare.

“From dere dem shoot de soldiers dat
come dat way,”
said the Commander, as Simon clambered back out of
the
shallow hole. “Bang, bang!”

He made shooting pantomime, holding his
machete
like an
imaginary musket, and roared with laughter.

“I can see why your people were never
beaten,” Si
mon said to Johnny, who had been down into the hole
for a
look himself.

The Commander squinted at him with shrewd
bright
eyes.

“You proud to be a Maroon?”

“I certainly would be. Your fathers won
their freedom
the hard way.”

The Commander pressed him down on to a rock
with
a hand on his shoulder.

“Sit down,” he said, and sat
beside him. “Where de
rum?”

The bottle was produced and opened.

“Hold out yo’ hands,” said the
Commander.

Simon did so, awkwardly, not knowing what
they
should be positioned for. The Commander turned them
palm
upwards for him and poured rum into the palms.

“Wash yo’ face.”

The Commander set the example, pouring rum
into
his own hands and rubbing it over his face and around
his neck
and up into his hair.

“Very good,” said the Commander,
beaming. “Nice,
cold.”

Following suit, the Saint found that it was
indeed a
cooling and refreshing, if somewhat odorous, substitute
for cologne. The bottle passed around the circle for ev
eryone to
enjoy a similar external application. Then the
Commander grabbed it
and handed it to the Saint.

“Now drink.”

“Skoal,” said the Saint.

He took a modest sip from the bottle and
passed it on.
Everyone else now took an internal medication. The
bottle
came last to the Commander, who took a
commander’s swallow
and firmly corked it again.

“AH right,” he said. “Out de
light.”

The cavern was suddenly plunged into
blackness.

“Gimme yo’ han’,” said the
Commander.

Simon felt fingers groping down his arm in
the inky
dark
until they closed tightly on his wrist.

The Commander said: “Who got de knife?”

Now at last the Saint understood, and for an
instant
felt only the reflex drumming of his heart. It was fan
tastic and
unreal, but he was awake and this was hap
pening to him. He
wondered fleetingly if it was only a test, a primitive elementary ordeal in
darkness, and if perhaps in other days a man who flinched might have
found the
knife turned summarily into his heart. Intui
tion held him
motionless, his arm relaxed. The
Commander’s ghoulish laugh vibrated in the
cramped
space.

“You have de nerve? You don’ frighten?”

“Go ahead,” said the Saint
steadily.

“You all right,” said the
Commander, with respect.
“Good man.”

There was a tiny flick of pain at the base of
the Saint’s
little finger, and then his hand was grasped and held as
in a firm handshake and his
wrist was released.

“Light de lamp,” ordered the
Commander.

A match flared and dimmed, and then the
brighter
flame of
the lantern took over. The Commander still
held
Simon’s hand, and in the renewed light the Saint
saw a little trickle of blood run from between their
clasped palms and drip down on the floor of the
cave.

Five other entranced black faces leaned
forward to observe the same phenomenon, and from four of them
came a
murmurous exhalation of approval. Johnny said:
“Well, for gosh sakes.”

“My blood mix wid yours,” said the
Commander
gravely. “So A mek you mi brother. Now you is a
Maroon
too!” Delighted laughter shook him again as he
released his grip. “Whe’ de
rum?”