‘Hell’s bells!’ exclaimed Richard. ‘And I never gave the fact that you’d lost all your protective stuff a thought!’
‘I did,’ said Marie Lou. ‘I’ve been worrying about it, on and off, the whole afternoon.’
Rex pulled a face. ‘Seems, then, that we’re in one helluva jam.’
De Richleau spoke again with incredible bitterness. ‘Without the things to make a proper pentacle we shall be as defenceless as a group of naked people facing a battery of machine-guns.’
‘I was hoping you’d be able to get fresh supplies of most of the things in Port-au-Prince,’ murmured Marie Lou.
The Duke shook his head. ‘Some of them, perhaps, but when we drove through it quarter of an hour ago you saw what a god-forsaken place it is. Only a herbalist or a first-class chemist could supply many of the items I require, and I doubt if there is either nearer than Kingston.’
‘Jamaica’s all of two hundred miles,’ muttered Rex.
‘You’re thinking in terms of air travel. By water it must be nearer three hundred.’
Richard was calculating quickly. ‘If, down at the port, we could get a motor-schooner or a sea-going launch that does fifteen knots, we could make it in twenty hours.’
‘Sure,’ agreed Rex. ‘And we’ll get a boat all right. Thank God my wallet was on me when we crashed! Good American dollars will buy anything in this place.’
‘They would also buy a plane in Jamaica,’ added the Duke.
‘A plane?’ repeated Marie Lou. ‘What for?’
‘The return journey,’ he replied quietly. ‘I mean to stay here and face the music while you others go to Kingston to get the things we need; but you must get back at the earliest possible moment, as I dare not sleep for an instant until you rejoin me.’
‘Greyeyes, you can’t!’ Marie Lou protested. ‘It would be absolute madness. Even if the rest of us succeeded in getting to Kingston in twenty hours we should need at least four or five hours there to buy the things and get a plane. Then there’s the two-hours flight back. We couldn’t possibly rejoin you much under thirty hours, and you’ve been awake about twelve hours today already. No. We must all leave here as quickly as we can and keep one another from falling asleep until we’re able to erect a pentacle in Kingston.’
De Richleau gave a faint smile. ‘I think you ought to be able to make better speed than that. There must be boats here which do eighteen knots. If so, you could be in Kingston by one o’clock tomorrow. Four hours should be enough to get the things and two hours for your flight back. Allowing an extra hour for a slip-up somewhere, you’d still be able to rejoin me within twenty-four hours. I’m sorry, Princess; and I know the risk I’m running in taking on those extra few hours before you can return; but I’ve got to stay.’
‘In God’s name why?’ boomed Rex.
‘Because our enemy cannot be in two places at once, even on the astral. As I’m by far the most powerful among you, it’s certain that he will concentrate all his force against me. If I stay here you’ll have a free run to Jamaica and back and be able to sleep on the way; but if I went with you we should all have to remain awake and sustain another attack from him during the coming night. As he proved powerful enough to wreck our plane this morning, what is there to stop his performing a new magic to churn up the waters and wreck any boat in which the four of us attempted to make the trip?’
‘You’re right,’ admitted Richard. ‘If we all go the chances are we’ll all be sunk in one fell swoop, whereas, since you’re the king-pin of the whole party, if you stay here it’s a hundred to one that he won’t have any time to spare for us. But God Almighty! We can’t leave you here alone—it’s unthinkable!’
De Richleau laid a hand on his arm. ‘It’s got to be, Richard, and I’ll manage to hang out somehow.’
The others joined Richard in pleading with the Duke to let one of them remain with him, but he was adamant in his refusal and cut short their pleas by pointing out that the sooner they departed the better chance there would be of their getting back before he fell asleep on his feet from sheer exhaustion.
‘Don’t waste another moment arguing,’ he urged, ‘but start at once, and I’ll think up some excuse to make to Doctor Saturday for your sudden disappearance.’
They had no baggage to pack, nothing to collect; only the things they stood up in, Marie Lou’s dressing-case and Richard’s satchel. All of them now realised the imperative necessity for not losing a single instant. The Duke swiftly scribbled a list of the eleven items that he required and handed it to Richard. Then, hiding their forebodings for their beloved leader as well as they could, they said goodbye to him and, leaving the room by the wire-gauze doors that gave on to the verandah, set off on their quarter of an hour’s walk down to the town.
It was just on eight o’clock. Full night had come, and de Richleau stood there staring after them through the soft, velvety, tropical darkness. The tree-frogs had started their nightly chorus in the branches of a great banyan tree which stood before the house and fireflies were flitting through the bushes. There was not even a ripple of wind, and against the purple sky the black-etched palm-fronds hung in graceful tranquillity. The warm dusk was filled with the scent of the moonflowers which were opening in the garden and the stars were coming out in the heavens above the bay.
Below him in the distance the lights of Port-au-Prince twinkled, turning it from a squalid, evil-smelling dump into a fairy city. The night scene was one of calm, untroubled beauty, but de Richleau knew that it was fraught with deadly evil. Somewhere far away a drum was beating, swiftly, rhythmically, calling upon one of the cruel, lustful Voodoo gods in a ceremony that was as old as Time. The island seemed at peace but the Duke’s sensitiveness to spiritual atmospheres told him that the whole dark vista positively reeked of evil emanations and primitive, sensual urges.
A slight shiver ran through him and, pulling himself together, he turned away, feeling that he would need every ounce of resolution that he could muster for the ordeal which he was called upon to face. He knew that as long as he could keep awake he was safe from all except physical attack, and he did not think it likely that his adversary would attempt to murder him, at all events for the time being. But thirty-seven hours was a long time to keep not only awake but alert. He had already been through an exceptionally tiring day, yet that had carried him over less than a third of the period. He would have to remain on the physical plane, conscious and ready to cope with any emergency, until eight o’clock the following night. Worse: he had glibly announced that it would be easy for Rex to hire a plane in Kingston for the return journey—but would it?
The Jamaican capital was linked by air-routes with the other principal islands of the West Indies and with the United States, but all Rex’s dollars would not enable him to buy or hire any of the machines that were actually in service; and Kingston was not a very big place, where one could just drive up to the airport and charter a private plane at half an hour’s notice. To get a plane at all, he would probably have to find a private owner who was willing to hire or sell. That would mean time spent in locating such a man and persuading him to do a deal.
If they failed to secure a plane by six o’clock, at the latest, they would not be able to get back to Haiti before dark, and there were no night-landing facilities at Port-au-Prince. That would necessitate the postponement of their return until they could land by the early-morning light, and for the Duke it would mean nearly forty-eight consecutive hours without sleep. He had known that risk when he had sent them, but it was a grim thought to contemplate afresh now that he was alone.
Then again, it was not altogether certain that the enemy would allow the others to accomplish their journey without interference. The Duke had had to risk that; he had felt that it was better that they should take a chance than that all of them should remain helpless in Haiti, to be overwhelmed; and he was reasonably confident that the enemy would continue to lie in wait hour after hour ready to pounce upon him the second that he dropped asleep. But there was no guarantee that this would be so, and his fears as to what might happen to his friends out there on the dark waters, should he prove wrong, gave him even greater concern than his own desperate situation.
However, one of de Richleau’s greatest qualities was fortitude in adversity, and he tried to comfort himself with the thought that whatever ghastly trials might be in store for himself or his friends the Powers of Light are greater than the Powers of Darkness and that, therefore, if only they endured, without wavering, all that was sent to them, even though they lost their Earth lives in this grim, weaponless battle, their endeavours and defiance of Evil would be accounted to them in those true lives which they could not lose—because they are everlasting.
He would have given a lot to have been able to have a hot shower, both to cleanse himself from the dirt and dust of the day and to refresh himself mentally, but his burns were too bad for him to dare to do so; he knew from experience that nothing was better calculated to aggravate the pain of severe sunburn, so on going to the bathroom he had to content himself with washing his hands and gently dabbing at his red face.
When he returned to his room he paused in the doorway, in astonished consternation. Marie Lou was sitting on the edge of his bed.
His grey eyes bored into hers and he snapped in a tone which she had never before heard him use to her. ‘Why have you come back?’
She shook her head a little helplessly. ‘Don’t be angry with me, Greyeyes dear; I had to.’
‘Why have you come back?’ he repeated.
She spread out her small hands. ‘When one’s already been awake for thirteen hours, another twenty-four is a very long time, and we both know that it may be much longer than that before the trip to Kingston and back can be accomplished. One person alone would be almost certain to fall asleep, but two people might manage to keep each other awake. By tomorrow afternoon you’ll be feeling like death, and by the evening you would have been sitting on your own, hour after hour, in this room, absolutely aching to close your eyes; so—so I decided to come back and keep you company.’
‘What did Richard say to that?’ he asked sharply.
‘Naturally he loathed the idea of my being separated from him at such a time, but he said that I was right—and I am right—you know it, Greyeyes. We always have worked as a team; and to go on that way is our only chance of pulling through. I couldn’t be of the least help to the others; but I can be to you; and it’s too late to try to pack me off after them, because by now they’ll be preparing to leave the port. God knows what will happen to us, but whatever we have to face we’ll see this thing through together.’
De Richleau’s expression suddenly changed and his voice was very soft as he took her hand and kissed it. ‘Bless you, Princess, for your splendid courage. I owe a great debt to Richard, too, for his marvellous unselfishness in letting you leave him. You’re right, of course, about our being able to keep each other awake, and the very fact of my having you with me will redouble my determination not to give in.’
She stood up and kissed his cheek, then she said: ‘I wonder what’s happened to Simon and Philippa? I’ve been terribly worried about them all the afternoon.’
‘I don’t think we need worry overmuch,’ the Duke replied. ‘As I told you just before Doctor Saturday picked us up, I know that they reached the shore in safety. I don’t suppose that big island is very highly populated, and they probably had to walk some miles along the beach before they came to a village where they could get a fishing-boat to come out and look for us. If that happened it would have been extremely difficult for them to find the plane again, even if it was still floating, by the time they got out there. In consequence they’ve got much more cause to worry about us and by now they probably think that all four of us are drowned.’
‘D’you think the enemy is likely to attack them tonight, though?’
‘No. For one thing, as he probably doesn’t even know yet that they left our main party, he’d find it far from easy to locate them; and for another, it’s pretty certain that he’ll concentrate on us. Fortunately Philippa understands the language, so with her to write down what Simon has to say, the two of them ought to be able to secure food and shelter without much trouble. It may be some days before they hear that we were rescued, but they’re sure to learn of that in due course and manage to join us somehow.’
He refrained from adding: ‘If we are here to join,’ but Marie Lou was quite as conscious of that eventuality as he was, so she promptly changed the subject and asked:
‘What are we going to do about Doctor Saturday? He’ll soon be coming along to find out what has happened to us. How’re we going to explain the disappearance of Richard and Rex?’
‘I was thinking about that while I was washing just now— which reminds me to tell you that you mustn’t have a bath however much you may want one, as it would make the pain of your burns almost unendurable. Saturday seems a very decent sort of fellow, and as he’s an educated man it’s hardly likely that he indulges in the practice of Voodoo; but it’s all Lombard Street to a China orange that most of his house-boys are devotees of the cult.
‘Through one of them our enemy may already have been informed of our arrival here, and it’s important that we should prevent his learning—via any such human source, at least—that Richard and Rex have left the island. Fortunately we didn’t give the Doctor our right names or any particulars about ourselves so it didn’t transpire that you and Richard are married; so this is what I propose to tell him:
‘I shall say that although all four of us were travelling together, that was only a matter of convenience as actually we are two separate parties. We’ll adopt what Philippa told us of her uncle and herself. I am a scientist interested in native customs, and you are my niece. About the other two we don’t know very much, except that they’re engaged in some form of activity to do with the war—in connection, we think, with preventing German submarines from occupying bases in the West Indian islands. In any case, they asked us to make their excuses to the Doctor because it was important that they should see the British Consul here with the least possible delay, so they’ve gone down to the town to find him.
‘When they don’t turn up again it will be assumed that they’re spending the night with the Consul, and the fact that they’re not doing so can’t be checked up, because I noticed that there is no telephone here. When they fail to appear or to send a message it will look like very bad manners, but there won’t be anything that the Doctor can do about it, and when they do return we can put them up to making the right sort of explanations and apologies.’
‘Seeing how important it is that our enemy shouldn’t learn through the house-boys that they’ve gone off in a boat and spend any of his time attempting to find and destroy it, I think that’s an excellent story,’ declared Marie Lou.
‘Good.’ The Duke raised a smile. ‘Then my beautiful niece had better tidy herself up, and we’ll go along and tell our host that the number of his guests has unexpectedly been halved.’
Many of the things in Marie Lou’s dressing-case had been ruined by the salt water but others had dried stiff in the sunshine, so she was able to improve her appearance with them. All the same, she was sadly worried at the redness of her broad forehead and small nose, knowing that although she had done her utmost to protect them they had caught the sun to such an extent that they were certain to peel, and she would look a sight for at least a fortnight. Then she caught herself up and gave a grim little smile at her reflection in the mirror. If her true self was still connected with her present body in a fortnight’s time it was virtually certain that they would have succeeded in their mission and would be on their way back to England, but at the moment it seemed as though all the odds were that when she next left her body she would never be allowed to return to it and that within forty-eight hours it would be a rapidly corrupting piece of rubbish.
Such a possibility was not at all a frightening one for her, as she had no fear of death. It was, she knew, only a waking-up to a far fuller and more vivid existence, but the thought that her present incarnation might be within a few hours of its close saddened her greatly. Blessings and happiness in it had fallen to her far beyond the lot of most young women. She had derived great joy from her beautiful little body and was exceedingly loath to part with it. But far beyond this, there was Fleur, who would be left motherless in England; and her adored Richard, whom the Fates might decree should live on alone and be separated from her, except for very occasional meetings on the astral—since it is written that the departed shall not seek to occupy the minds of those who remain and that the bereaved shall not strive to call back those who have gone on.
Ten minutes later she rejoined de Richleau and together they went through to the big living-room. Doctor Saturday was waiting there for them and at once came forward to say that dinner would be ready at any moment. In the meantime he hoped that they would like the cocktail that he had just mixed.
As they accepted, the Duke explained the non-appearance of the other two. He was a superb liar and told his story with such artistry that the Doctor did not appear to doubt for an instant his account of what had happened. De Richleau added smoothly that the others would have gone to the British Consulate immediately on their arrival in the town, owing to the urgency of their work, had they not been so exhausted and half-bemused as a result of their terrible experience and narrow escape from death. It was only when they had recovered a little that they had realised the gravity of their responsibilities.
‘And,’ he concluded brazenly, ‘they hunted for you everywhere to excuse themselves but failed to find you.’
Doctor Saturday expressed mild surprise but said that he must have been in his bath at the time and that if the others returned they would still be most welcome; but, in view of the hour and the fact that they had lost all their luggage, he thought it probable that the British Consul would insist on putting them up for the night.
A few moments later the head house-boy appeared. He did not announce dinner but merely bowed in the doorway and ushered them into the dining-room, which was on the far side of the big hall. As Doctor Saturday begged them to be seated he casually mentioned that all his servants were mutes whom he had taken on and trained out of pity. He then apologised for the fare about to be offered to them, saying that had he had more notice he would have procured something more suitable, but that for dinner that night he hoped they would not mind the local dishes.
The repast consisted largely of fruits and vegetables, with one course of stewed meat, the strong flavour of which de Richleau recognised as goat; but it was so tender, and the island fruits so delicious, that both he and Marie Lou, who, having had no lunch, found themselves ravenously hungry, thoroughly enjoyed the meal.
Afterwards they sat in the semi-darkness on the wide verandah outside the big lounge-room, and the Duke, wishing to keep Marie Lou’s thoughts occupied as much as possible before they retired to their night-long vigil, encouraged the Doctor to tell them more about the island.
‘Haiti is like nowhere else in the world,’ said the Doctor, ‘and although its history extends over only four hundred years I doubt if any other country could rival it for tales of bloodshed, treachery and massacre. I could talk to you about it for hours, but I fear to bore you.’
‘No, no,’ said Marie Lou. ‘Do please tell us about some of the revolutions and other exciting things that have happened here.’
‘Very well, then.’ The Doctor’s teeth flashed in a smile, and he began: ‘It’s almost as though there has been a curse on the island from the very beginning. Even when Columbus discovered it, the five separate tribes of Carib Indians who inhabited it were perpetually at war with each other. The Spaniards forced Christianity upon them at the point of the sword and endeavoured to enslave them, but the Carib is a strange creature and very different from the Negro. He is primitive but strongly independent and in most cases the Aborigines preferred to die rather than work under foreign masters. Consequently the Europeans were compelled to import great numbers of African slaves to work on their plantations.
‘Haiti was the native name for the island—meaning mountainous—but Columbus rechristened it Hispaniola and later, under the French, it was changed again, to Saint Domingue; and the larger, western part of the island, as you doubtless know, is a separate Republic which is called Santo Domingo to this day. By the middle of the seventeenth century it had become a favourite haunt of the pirates who roamed the Spanish Main, particularly the small island of Tortuga, which lies off the northern cape, as that has many sandy beaches which served them well for laying up and careening their ships.
‘For the best part of two hundred years the French were the masters here, and in the days when Louis XV and Louis XVI reigned in France many noble and wealthy families had great estates in the island; but the French Revolution put an end to that. L’Ouverture, Christophe, Dessalines and Petion, whom we regard as our national heroes, led a series of revolts and by 1804 the Europeans were finally driven out.
‘But, unhappily, little good came to Haiti from having secured her independence. A new internal war developed between the Negroes and the Mulattoes. The Mulattoes were richer and, therefore, better educated so they were able to hold their own against the far greater number of Negroes, but the hatred between them still continues. This internal strife has been the downfall of our people. It meant that instead of working in amity together, and being able to enjoy the fine inheritance which the French had left us, we quarrelled and fought; so that nine-tenths of the cultivated land went back to virgin forest, and even the fine houses of the rich French Colonials became crowded tenements which it was nobody’s responsibility to keep in repair and therefore they gradually fell into decay.
‘An even worse curse has been the lack of honesty among our self-chosen rulers. Hardly one of them has ever given a thought to the welfare of the people. They have schemed and murdered to gain power, solely for the purpose of getting their hands on the exchequer. As each has succeeded in doing so he has found it empty, so for a few months he has sought to hold his rivals at bay by killing and imprisoning them until the meagre taxes that can be extracted from the people have amounted to a good round sum. They have then decamped overnight to Jamaica, en route for Paris, since the boulevards, with their bright lights and white women, are the Mecca of all Haitians.’
‘It’s surprising that none of them tried to make anything out of the place,’ remarked the Duke. ‘The soil is so rich that it could produce a huge profit with very little labour, and I’ve always understood that there is great mineral wealth in the island if only it were properly exploited.’
‘That is so,’ agreed the Doctor. ‘Gold, silver, copper, iron, antimony, tin, sulphur, coal, nickel, and many other things, are here for the taking, but such ventures require capital, and whenever a Haitian government has borrowed the money from one of the European Powers for such a purpose our Presidents have promptly decamped with it; leaving the unfortunate people that much worse off owing to the debt incurred.’
‘Surely your Government could have sold a concession to one of the big European or American mining syndicates?’ suggested the Duke.
The Doctor shook his head. ‘No. That they refused to do—and, according to their lights, they were wise in their refusal. The granting of any such concession would have meant giving a permanent status to white engineers and business men in the island. If that had happened an end would have been put to the abuses of our Haitian politicians long ago. The white business men would have made official reports to their Government that murder, graft and every form of licence were rife here, and a very good case could soon have been made for the Power concerned to send a battleship to take us over. Negroes and Mulattoes, rich and poor, were all determined that whatever else might happen they were not going to have that, and for many years white people were definitely barred from even landing in the island.’
‘Yet in the end the Americans took possession,’ commented the Duke. ‘What led up to that?’
‘That was in 1915, when Jean Vilbrun Guillaume Sam was President. General Bobo rose against him in the north that summer and marched upon the capital. According to convention, Sam should have emptied the Treasury and politely retired to Jamaica. No one would have attempted to stop him, because that had become the accepted end of all Presidents who escaped assassination. Perhaps there was not enough in the Treasury to satisfy his avarice—I do not know—but he refused to flee. When his army of Cacos— as they call the machete men—deserted to the enemy he sent his chief military officer, Charles Oscar Etienne, with the palace guard, to murder all his political rivals whom during his presidency he had been able to catch and throw into prison. It was the most revolting butchery that you can imagine; even worse than the famous massacres of September which are made so much of in the history of the French Revolution. The prisoners were shot and then gutted with knives as they huddled, chained, against the walls, until the street outside the prison was literally a river of blood. Only three out of nearly two hundred escaped alive.’
‘How utterly horrible!’ Marie Lou whispered. ‘What happened then?’
‘The whole city rose against President Sam and he took refuge in the French Consulate, but the mob dragged him from his hiding-place, cut off his hands and tore him to pieces. It was the news of this terrible massacre which caused the United States Government to send Admiral Caperton with his American marines to take control of the island.’
‘Another of your Presidents blew up the palace with himself and all the people in it—did he not?’ said the Duke.
Doctor Saturday inclined his snow-white head. ‘Yes. That was only a few years earlier—in 1912. It is President Lecomte of whom you speak, and it’s true that he is supposed to have been blown up; but I do not believe he was. There is considerable evidence to show that his successor, Tancred Auguste, lured him from his palace by a false message, and that he was murdered in his coach at night while crossing the Champ-de-Mars. But General Lecomte was a popular man and the conspirators feared the vengeance of his bosom friend, the Minister of the Interior, Sansarique. That was why, at the point of the pistol, they later that night compelled a young engineer to explode the great store of munitions which were kept in the cellars of the palace because no President of Haiti would trust the army—apart from his personal bodyguard—with live ammunition. The explosion rocked the whole city and as far as six miles away people were thrown out of their beds. Three hundred soldiers and officials were belched out by the terrific eruption, and very few of them survived.’
They were silent for a moment, then Doctor Saturday went on:
‘But perhaps our most fantastic story is that in this, the twentieth century, we were for a time ruled by a goat.’
‘How on earth did that happen?’ laughed the Duke.
‘It was in 1908 that General François Antoine Simon became President. He was a crude peasant soldier, and was engineered into office by dishonest politicians who wished to rule through him. There was, of course, the usual civil war before he succeeded to the presidency, and he was such a stupid man that I very much doubt if he would have defeated his opponent had it not been for his daughter, Celestina, and her goat, Simalo. She was a Mambo—that is, a Voodoo priestess—of exceptional powers and the goat was her familiar; she had actually been married to the animal in a formal Petro ceremony. But Celestina, whatever her dark deeds, was a woman of considerable courage and ability. The people termed her “Our Black Joan of Arc”, since it was she who led the campaign for her brutish father, and the Cacos of the enemy fled in terror before Celestina and her goat.
‘Simon, Celestina and Simalo then installed themselves in the palace, and the dishonest politicians found that they had got more than they bargained for, as without consulting Simalo General Simon would never do what they required of him; and Simalo’s views were often very different from those of the politicians.
‘Their regime frequently resulted in extraordinary and very horrible situations. Upstairs in the big apartments of the palace the leading families in the island and the Europeans from the Consulates had to attend state receptions as the guests of a President who ate with his fingers and got disgustingly drunk, while downstairs they knew quite well that in Simalo’s apartments the most revolting Voodoo ceremonies were being practised. At the banquets they had to make a show of eating the rich foods that were placed before them but they never knew what filth might be concealed in the thick sauces, and it is said that in this way they were sometimes made to consume human blood.’
‘How disgusting!’ exclaimed Marie Lou.
‘Yes. It is not a pretty story, but the father and daughter brought about their downfall by their own ambition. Having become President, it occurred to General Simon that he might marry Celestina off to a wealthy husband, so they actually went to the lengths of arranging a legal divorce for her from her goat. The story given out was that Simalo was so heartbroken at the loss of his wife that he died; but the probability is that by General Simon’s order the beast was killed. In any case, it was buried with almost regal honours, and through a disgraceful piece of trickery they even succeeded in getting a Catholic priest to read the Christian burial service over it in the cathedral. They pretended that the coffin contained the body of a man. But even the most despicable among the rich men of Haiti would not take Celestina for a wife afterwards. With the death of the goat the luck of the Simons changed, and people said it was because she had broken her oath before the Voodoo Loa that Celestina’s power had deserted her. Soon afterwards General Lecomte led a revolt against President Simon, who fled to Jamaica; but Celestina is still living in the island to this very day, as an old woman whom nobody any longer fears or troubles about.’
For another hour or more Doctor Saturday entertained his guests with other strange stories of the long tale of rapine and murder that make up Haiti’s troubled history. But he told them, too, that they must not form the impression that all Haitian politicians were murderous crooks or that the bulk of the population were ignorant, superstitious savages. Since the American occupation honest and enlightened Haitians had had a chance to better the lot of their countrymen and, though still in its initial stages, much good work was now being done. Health, agriculture, education, sanitation and welfare centres were all absorbing the energies of enthusiastic young men, most of whom had been to universities in the United States. He remarked modestly that owing to his own absorption in the scientific study of the island’s flora he was unable to give as much time as he would have liked to assisting the work of progress, but that as a small contribution he trained and found occupation for many dumb natives and had even succeeded in restoring to some their speech.
Soon after midnight, feeling that they could not reasonably keep him up any longer, the Duke suggested bed; upon which the Doctor saw them to their rooms, where clean white cotton pyjamas, and two bath-robes to serve as dressing-gowns, had been laid out for them.
When the Doctor had left them they undressed, finding it a great relief to get out of their clothes. In spite of their interest in their host’s stories, their burns had caused them so much pain during the whole evening that they had found it difficult to concentrate; but now that they were able to apply some more of the liniment which he had given them this slightly eased the constant smarting.
Having got into her pyjamas and dressing-gown, Marie Lou slipped out of her room along the verandah to the Duke’s as it was there that they had arranged to pass the night together.
She found that he had already pushed the furniture up against the walls and was sweeping clean the bare boards of the floor with the end of one of the woven-grass mats, which he had rolled into a bundle.
‘You’re going to attempt to make some sort of pentacle, then?’ she said in a whisper.
‘Yes. Anything’s better than nothing,’ he remarked, holding up a carafe of fresh water which he had just drawn from the bathroom tap. ‘I shall charge this, and providing that we remain awake it should prove sufficient to keep away from us any manifestation which may appear.’
They had no chalk but Marie Lou produced a gold pencil from her dressing-case, and using one side of a pillow-slip as a measure she made little marks on the floor until she had plotted a five-pointed star in which all the sides would be exactly the same length.
De Richleau meanwhile sat with the carafe of water before him and the first and second fingers of his right hand pointing at it from the level of his eye, while he drew down power which flowed invisibly from his mind, through his eye, along his fingers into the carafe. After a few moments he picked it up and, dipping his fingers into it, drew a broad, wet line from one to another of the small crosses that Marie Lou had marked on the floor.
As they put their pillows and clean bedding in the middle of the pentacle, he said: ‘It would be best if we did not discuss this business or make any mention of the others, so that when the enemy arrives—as he almost certainly will do when he thinks that we’ve had time to fall asleep—he will not gain any information through our conversation. I’ve never been in such a tricky position before, but I believe our best defence will be to endeavour absolutely to ignore as far as we possibly can anything that may happen. We’ll talk about the good old pre-war days, tell such amusing anecdotes as we can think of, and hold competitions like memory-tests to keep our minds occupied. The great thing is to keep on talking as though we’re completely unconscious that the enemy is trying to get at us.’
They sat down, cross-legged and facing each other, on the bedding, immediately under the hanging oil-lamp that lit the room. The house had now fallen silent and the only sound which disturbed the stillness was the croaking of the tree-frogs. The first serious stage of the long ordeal which they were called upon to sustain had begun.