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"Thousand devils!" cried John Drillot. "Heavens an' earth!" gasped Evan Morgan. John Trevna gazed open-mouthed, for he had little breath left in him. And from the black mouth of the tunnel the strange and terrible figure of the dead man looked quietly down at them and filled them with amazement. Trevna's heavy charge had blown in the top of the skull.
"Either he's gone or he's under cover, though, ma fé, I don't know where he'd find it on L'Etat," and Nance's heart beat hopefully. "However, John Drillot and Peter Vaudin are stopping the night in case he is still there and ventures out of his hole," and her heart sank again, and kicked rebelliously that a man should be hunted thus, like a rabbit.
But we've wasted a day on this same fooling, and the man's not here; and for me, I doubt if he's ever been here." "And what of the things we found in the shelter?" said Drillot. "Think they came there of themselves?" "I don't care how they came there. It's not old cloaks and blankets we came after. Maybe he has been here. I don't know. But he's not here now, and I've had enough of it." "B'en!
For this poor thing, whatever it was, was not Stephen Gard and never had been. She wanted to sing and dance and scream her joy aloud. They had not found him. "What is this, John Drillot?" asked Julie, alongside her, black with anger, as she pointed to the body. "Ma fé a ghost, they say.
Peter Vaudin was at the base of the rock wall as he wriggled silently under the big slab, and it was only by a violent jerk that he got his foot clear of Peter's grip. And Peter, strung to the occasion, kept his hand on the spot where the foot had disappeared, and waited a moment for John Drillot to come up before he followed it. "Gone in here," he jerked, as he climbed cautiously up.
There they found Evan Morgan holding the approach to the landing-place against Peter, with a lump of rock, while Philip, in the boat below, stood shouting at them to know what was the matter. At sight of the others and their burden, however, he had no eyes for anything else. "What have you got there, John Drillot?" "A dead man." "Aw, then! That's not Gard." "It's the only man here, anyway.
"I don't know what it is," began John Drillot, "but " "It's the man I shot inside there," said Trevna. "That man hass peen det a hundert years," said Morgan. "All the same, he was running about last night," said Peter, "and I had hold of his leg" with another shiver. "He's dead enough now, anyway," said Drillot. "Eh b'en! leave him where he is, and let's get away.
"Yes, we'll get on by Les Lâches and wait there and make sure. Do you stop here, Phil, with Godfray and De Carteret and Jean Drillot, until you are sure they have gone on, then come on and join us. Best barricade the tunnel with some of that timber."
"Stop then, Peter," called John Drillot, in a low insistent voice, lest that dreadful thing below should hear him. "Not me! I've had enough, John Drillot. That is not what we came for ... and I had hold of its leg last night," and he shivered at the recollection, and the thought that it might have turned on him and gripped him with its grisly hands.
"Pardi, yes, mon gars! Shoot straight, and the Island will thank you," asserted John Drillot. "Ant for Heaven's sake, John Trevna, see you ton't shoot me behint by mistake," urged Evan Morgan; and they disappeared slowly into the tunnel, while the other two stood waiting expectantly in the well.
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