"This island frightens me!" she said. "To think of that awful-looking image standing there gazing out across the valley for all these hundreds of years as if it were waiting for something. Somehow it reminds me of that club-footed man, so hard, so ruthless, so.... _patient_! Grundt makes my blood run cold!...."
He had not molested her, it appeared. When I had left her to enter our cave on the beach, men had suddenly surrounded her and carried her away to the sheds. There she had been handed to the custody of the mulatto who had locked her in the room behind the galley where I had found her.
"At meal-times," she added, "they brought me out to their open-air mess in the space between the huts. No one spoke to me. But they eyed me silently, especially Dr. Grundt. He always seems to be thinking, that man, and I'm sure his thoughts are wicked. And the man they call Black Pablo! He kept edging towards me and leering with his one eye. Oh! It was horrible...." She had seen nothing of Custrin since her encounter with him in the forest.
Clubfoot, she told me, had had some trouble with his men. They were grumbling at him for having let me go. The Germans, especially the blonde young officer, were particularly bitter. But Clubfoot had rounded on them and said that, as long as there were trees on the island to hang mutineers on, he would have no questioning of his authority.
Somewhere in the green tangle of woods far below us a single shot rang out sharply. The report went reverberating down the valley and from the tree-tops a cloud of birds swooped up affrighted. I did not hear the flight of the bullet so I could not see that the shot was meant for us. Yet there were only Clubfoot's men on the island now. Was Grundt asserting his authority?
The girl had dropped to her knees, and now seated herself cross-legged on the ground.
"If you and I are partners," said she, "don't you think the time has come to take me into your confidence?"
She invited me with a gesture to seat myself by her side. I glanced down at the valley. Below us and to the left the ascending path twice wound into view. From our coign of vantage one might infallibly pick off anyone who tried to push our position from the path. Though I was inclined to think that the gang had had their fill of fighting for the day, I was glad to be in a position from which their next move must be unerringly revealed to me.