Page:Anderson--Isle of seven moons.djvu/259

247 and blade of a corroded dagger, brown-red with what must have been only rust, though it seemed to the girl like stains of blood.

After a moment she recovered herself sufficiently to go on with her theory, though in a much lower key.

"Those that were left followed the trail here and they quarrelled on the way. Then the leader of the mutineers killed the one who lies down there, with that knife, as he stopped to drink."

A round white pebble, disturbed by her foot, rolled over the brink, stirring the placid surface. Another face, dark and mysterious and framed with great round earrings, was indistinctly reflected beside her own in the trembling waters.

She started back, violently this time, as if to escape a knife-thrust aimed at her own slender shoulder-blades. But it was only Spanish Dick. He withdrew quite as quickly as she, having no ingenious explanation for this new mystery.

There was a crash in the underbrush a few yards away, and all three stood transfixed as if expecting an attack from the spirits who haunted the island. And even Ben himself was more startled than he cared to confess.

Spanish Dick was unconsciously making, with clenched thumb, second, and third fingers, and uplifted first and fourth, the old sign of the horn with which the superstitious exorcise the evil one.

But it was only a wild boar who emerged from the thicket and trotted with lowered tusks and slavering jaws across the open.

There were three sighs of relief, of varying intensity, but