Near by, something white caught my eye attached to the lintel of the doorway.  It was a piece of paper held there with a sailor’s knife.  I tore it off in a frenzy, and—­the “King” striking another match—­we read it together.  It bore but a few words, written all in capital letters with a coarse pencil: 

“WILL RETURN THE LADY IN EXCHANGE FOR THE TREASURE,” and it was signed “H.P.T.”

CHAPTER XIV

In Which I Lose My Way.

I stood a full minute with the astonishing paper in my hand, too stunned to speak or move.  It seemed too incredible an outrage to realise.  Then a torrent of feelings swept over me—­wild fear for her I loved, and impotent fury against the miscreant who had dared even to conceive so foul a sacrilege.  To think of her beauty subject to such coarse ruffianism!  I pictured her bound and gagged and carried along through the brush in the bestial grasp of filthy negroes, and it seemed as though my brain would burst at the thought.

“The audacity of the fellow!” exclaimed the “King,” who was the first to recover.

“But Calypso!” I cried.

The “King” laid his hand on my shoulder, reassuringly.

“Don’t be afraid for her,” he said.  “I know my daughter.”

“But I love her!” I cried, thus blurting out in my anguish what I had designed to reveal in some tranquil chosen hour.

“I have loved her for twenty years,” said the “King,” exasperatingly calm. “‘Jack Harkaway’ can take care of himself.”

I was not even astonished at the time.

“But something must be done,” I cried.  “I will go to the commandant at once and rouse the settlement.  Give me a lantern,” I called to one of the negroes, who by this had come up to us, and were standing around in a terrified group.  I waited only for it to be lit, and then, without a word, dashed wildly into the forest.

“Hadn’t you better take some one with you?” I heard the “King” call after me, but I was too distraught to reply, plunging headforemost through the tangled darkness—­my brain boiling like a cauldron with anger and a thousand fears, and my heart stung too with wild unreasoning remorse.  After all, it was my doing.

“To think! to think! to think!” I cried aloud—­leaving the rest unspoken.

I meant that it had all come of my insensate pursuit of that filthy treasure, when all the time the only treasure I coveted was Calypso herself.  Poor old ignorant Tom had been right, after all.  Nothing good came of such enterprises.  There was a curse upon them from the beginning.  And then, as I thought of Tobias, my body shook so that I could hardly keep on walking, and, next minute, my hatred of him so nerved me up again that I ran on through the brush, like a madman, my clothes clutched at by the devilish vines and torn at every yard.