I asked him if he had not been afraid that some wild beast of prey might find him in the night. But he told me that he had never bothered himself about such matters, since both by day and night he had kept a fire alight. He had heard the report of the first shot, that which had brought about the death of Joshua Trust, though he had heard nothing of the other shots, upon the far side of the Wood, fired in the glade where Amos Baverstock had met his tragic end.
"I have lain here for days," said he, "wondering what was happening, and whether I would ever set eyes upon any one of you again."
When we told him the story of the death of Amos, he seemed little enough impressed; for he was a rough-and-ready seaman, without the gift of imagination, and he had not been there himself to behold with his own eyes the terror of that incident or to hear the wild laughter of the fugitive as he fled before us through the Wood.
"A fit end for such a man," said he. "He himself was as evil as any snake, though he had courage of a sort; for I remember him well, when he faced the mutineers on board the _Mary Greenfield_. And what of the map?" he asked, turning suddenly to Bannister, who shrugged his shoulders.
"We do not know," he answered; "but in default of certain evidence we must presume that that little fragment which we brought with us all the way from Sussex went down into the water when Amos was crushed to death."
"So then," said William Rushby, who was of a practical turn of mind, "no one is any the wiser, so far as the Big Fish is concerned?"
"No one," said Bannister, "save we five, and I do not suppose that any one of us will ever care again to undertake such an expedition."
I looked at Mr. Gilbert Forsyth; for I was inclined to think that he was the only member of our party who was likely to persevere upon the quest of the Greater Treasure in spite of any promise he had made.
I was surprised at the attitude he had assumed; for there was something in it that jogged my memory, that took me back to the day when I had first seen him and Baverstock and Joshua Trust. For he lay upon his back, with his hands clasped behind his head, and one knee thrown carelessly across the other. But how different was he now! He no longer wore his highly polished boots, his double-breasted waistcoat, and his hat tilted at a jaunty angle on his head. He was in rags and tatters, burnt and blistered by the sun, deprived of an ear where the skin was all white and scarred owing to his having burnt it. And yet he yawned in the same lazy fashion.