The cliffside was damp and green with mosses, and the ground was moist and springy.  The cool of the place was grateful after the heat of our climb up the rocky bed of the creek, I was about to return and urge Captain Riggs to press on to this place when I heard the subdued murmur of voices away to the right and the swishing of foliage.

I was puzzled and alarmed to discover that the voices were in the direction I had come from, or back across the trail.  Fearing that the pirates were returning to the boats by some short route which might take them to where Riggs was hidden, I ran through the grass lane again, and, finding that the persons I was stalking were still farther away, I left the trail and sneaked some twenty yards into the foliage, anxious to see who they were and what they were about.

They were making slow progress, seemingly going a few yards, and then stopping to talk in low tones, when they would go on again, and, by moving ahead while they were pushing through the brush and proceeding with caution while they stopped, I rapidly overtook them, although they were a good distance off the trail.

“Keep over to port,” I heard Long Jim say.  “Mind them brambles, or ye’ll have the eyes of me bloomin’ well knocked out!  I’m all skinned about the neck from ‘eavin’ away at these poles.  Drop it a bit, Red.”

CHAPTER XV

TWO THIEVES AND A FIGHT

There was a metallic thud as they let down a burden, which I knew must be a sack of gold.  I lay quiet for a minute, and then began to wriggle through the brush to get a glimpse of them, and, in case it proved to be the camp, learn what might be the most advantageous method for our attack.

“My back is broke,” I heard Petrak whine.  “What with packin’ the whole blasted cargo into the hills and this jaunt now.  Why couldn’t he leave it close to the beach, I want to know?  Who wants to be packin’ it out again some day like a coolie?  Snug enough, I say, close down to the water, and who’s to know?  Think we was buryin’ of it for Kingdom Come!  Fine job he’s makin’ of it!”

“’E’s no bloody monkey, Thirkle ain’t,” said Long Jim.  “It’s us that’s the bloomink idiots!  ’My last ‘aul,’ says ’e.  ’Your last haul, ‘ell!’ says me to him.  I tells him to mind the rest of us ’as a ’and in the gold as well as in the gittin’ of it.  Ye think ‘e’s goin’ to let us in on this?  Not Thirkle, Reddy.

“It’s every bloody man for ’imself now, and the devil take the ’indmost, which he will, I say.  Thought ’e’d ’ave the whole of it all to himself, did he?  I knowed ’e’d give us dirt when it come to some big cut like this, and that’s why I’m for gittin’ mine and goin’ on with it this wise.  ’Eave up, Reddy, and skip for it.”

I crawled up and peered through the bushes just as they were shouldering a bamboo pole from which was slung the sack of gold.  They went on, and I followed them, confident that they would lead me to Thirkle’s camp, although the direction of their march puzzled me; and I could make no sense of their complaints other than that they disliked the labour of transporting the gold.