The Rope of Gold

Night was settling down over the mountain side. Already the valleys far below were lost in darkness. The massive fortress which the dwellers on the island of Haiti have always called the Citadel hung like a mountain cliff above a boy who, hot from climbing, had thrown himself on a bed of moss at the foot of a gnarled mahogany tree.

"Whew!" he exclaimed softly to himself. "Even three thousand feet above the sea here in Haiti it's hot. Hot and dry. Fellow'd think-"

He broke short off to stare. A curious thing was happening. Out from a small dark opening some forty feet up the perpendicular wall of the massive abandoned fortification, something quite indistinct in the twilight had moved and was creeping slowly down the moss-grown wall.

"Like a snake," he told himself, "only, here in Haiti, there are no snakes to speak of and certainly not one as long as that. Only look! It's down to the window below; a full twenty feet.

"That window-" He caught his breath, then began to count. "One, two, three, four,-

"That's the window of Curlie's 'laburatory' as he calls it. It-why, it's a plot! I should warn him. It-"

He half rose, preparatory to a race up the mountain side. Then he settled back to his seat on the ground.

"Couldn't make it," he told himself. "Ground's too rough. Boulders there big as a house. Too far around, take a full hour to come in from the rear. By that time, if anything really serious is to happen, it will be over.

"Besides, if worst comes to worst,-" He put out his hand to grip a six foot bow. It was a good yew bow. The arrows at his side were tipped with triangles of steel sharp as razor blades. Down here in Haiti he had used these for hunting wild guinea hens and wild pigs.

"But if worst comes to worst," he told himself, settling back against the trunk of the tree, "it's an easy shot. I wouldn't miss. And the person, whoever it may be, would not go on."

You who have read our other book called "Johnny Longbow" will know that his thoughts were true when they assured him that he would not miss; for Johnny Thompson, by long and careful application to the task, had mastered the difficult art of archery. And this boy, resting here at the edge of a tropical forest in that mysterious island of Haiti, was none other than your old friend Johnny Thompson. How he came here; what strange stroke of fate it was that brought him into company with the slim and supple young inventor, Curlie Carson, does not, for the moment, matter.

For some time after that Johnny's mind was busied with many thoughts. The thing that dangled there from window to window, was, he thought, a rope. Later he decided it must be a ladder, a rope ladder of henequin. The natives of Haiti are expert spinners and rope makers. From the tough fibers of the henequin leaf they twist the finest cord and stoutest rope.

"But why is he there? And how did he get there?" He was thinking of the mysterious being whose invisible hand had let down the rope ladder. "We've been about the place for five days and have seen no one. It's been quiet here-too quiet. Ghostlike. Fellow can hardly sleep nights in such a monstrous bat roost with its hundred years of mystery and tragedy hanging over his head, and it so silent.

"And here," he told himself, flexing his arms that they might be fit for any emergency, "here we come upon someone who apparently has evil intentions against Curlie. Of course, it may be only curiosity. And who wouldn't be curious? Got me guessing. All that stuff-batteries, boxes, canvas bound packages. Three donkey loads. You'd think he was setting up a high-power wireless station. But he hasn't, as yet. Hasn't even erected an aerial."

Curlie was a queer chap, there was no getting round that. Tall, slim, with mysterious gray-green eyes and with no past he had thus far cared to mention, he had come into Johnny's life on the way down to Haiti from the States. From that time until now, save for the hours Curlie spent in the secret room he had rigged up in the old fort, the two boys had been inseparable.

"He may not have a past worth mentioning," Johnny had often told himself. "But he has a splendid present and fine ideals for the future. And that is all that counts."

For some time, as twilight turned to darkness, nothing further happened. Keeping his eye on the dangling ladder, Johnny allowed his mind to wander over the events that had led up to the present dramatic moment.

The whole affair had begun way back in freshman high school days. Johnny's science professor had become, in a way, his pal. His natural interest in all matters pertaining to science had made him a leader in that field.

Then too, like Johnny, the Professor was fond of travel. Together, at odd moments, they had traversed all of the New World and much of the Old. All of this, of course, on maps and charts. But always, in the end, they came back to one spot, the Island of Haiti.

"Johnny," the Professor had said over and over, "that is the most interesting island in the world, has the most absorbing history, and most tempting mountain jungles. Johnny," he had always pounded the table at this juncture, "I'll soon be sixty. Thirty-five years of teaching! That's enough for any man. When I am sixty we'll really go to Haiti!"

So here they were. In the meantime Johnny had done a little wandering on his own account, but as soon as he heard that his beloved Professor had gone to Haiti, he had followed.

He had found the Professor head over heels in work. For more than a hundred years this strange republic, not Spanish, not French, nor English, but pure native, red, black and brown, had struggled along without aid from her sister republic, Johnny's own beloved land. But now the United States had taken a hand and Professor Star had been given a share in the work. A splendid, kind-hearted humanitarian, he had accepted the challenge and, with no pay save his living expenses, had assumed responsibility for the comfort, happiness and well-being of more than ten thousand natives.

"It's a big task," he told Johnny. "An almost impossible task without money. See that mason-work?" he had said one day as they walked through a tangled mass of vines and bushes.

"What is it?" Johnny had asked.

"The old French aqueduct, Johnny!" He had gripped the boy's arm hard. "This narrow valley was once one of the richest in the world. Irrigated it was, by water from the mountain streams. And, Johnny, if we had money for cement, we'd rebuild that aqueduct and these half-starved and half-naked people would be happy and prosperous.

"And we, Johnny, you and I," his eyes had shone with high hope. "We would become rich, for more than half of the land is uninhabited waste that can be bought for an incredibly small sum. And with water for irrigation it can be reclaimed and sold-for who knows how much? Get an American planter interested in it. Then see! We'd be rich, my boy! Think of an old professor and a boy getting rich!" He had laughed a cackling sort of laugh.

But Johnny knew that he had meant what he said, every word of it. And he was for it from the start. But where was the money for repairing the aqueduct? That was the rub.

"All we need," Johnny had smiled back, "is to find the 'Rope of Gold'."

"Johnny," the old Professor had spoken again, his voice grown husky, "sometimes when one sees the need, he is tempted to believe in fables, even in pots of gold at the foot of the rainbow. Do you see that massive pile of stone way up yonder, built by the only real emperor the island ever knew?"

Johnny had looked away at the distant Citadel, the massive fortress which was so near now, down whose side the rope ladder dangled.

"Johnny," the Professor had grown quite excited, "this emperor of theirs, Christophe, was apprenticed as a boy to a stone mason. They say that as an old man, and a very rich emperor, who owned a third of the plantations, he went many times to work alone on those walls at night. And they say that he built boxes and boxes of gold into the twenty foot walls, together with mortar and stone. Men often have dug for it, but they never found the place. Possibly," he had ended rather wearily, "there was no gold. But there should be. We need it. Christophe, when at his best, had wonderful dreams regarding the future of his people. Those people need the gold as never before."

"I wonder," Johnny now thought to himself as he looked away at the massive wall where the rope ladder still dangled and where a pale light gleamed from the lower window, "I wonder how much of that ancient tale was true?"

As he looked up and up until his eye reached the very crest of the crumbling fortress, he fancied he saw a figure moving there. It suggested the ghost of the emperor still laying stones in the wall.

"But that," he told himself stoutly, "is pure fancy. So, too, are the tales the natives tell of the ghost emperor who returns from time to time to work once more at night repairing the walls to hide his treasure. I wonder-"

He broke short off. A dark figure had appeared at the upper opening from which the rope ladder dangled.

One breathless moment, as if looking for some movement far or near, listening for a sound, the figure of a native huddled there on the giant window ledge.

It was strange, Johnny thought. Crouching there in the shadow, one hand on the muzzle of a century old brass cannon that had once barked its defiance to the world, this native seemed a spirit come from out the past.

"He's not that," the boy told himself. "But who is he? When did he come?"

They had been at the ancient fortress. He and Curlie Carson had been prowling about its dungeons and secret passages for four days and had not so much as seen a sign of a living human being. The silence they had found oppressive by day and spooky by night.

"And here is a man. I wonder-" His wonderings came to a sudden end. A strange phenomena had broken in upon them. Just as the native, having cast fears aside, had swung out upon the slender rope ladder, one of those curious after-glows of a sunset drenched the Citadel with golden light.

The effect was magical. "As if it came from Arabian Nights," Johnny told himself, thrilled to the very center of his being. The figure of the native, quite naked save for a loin cloth, was transformed into a bronze statue.

"And the ladder seems our 'Rope of Gold'," Johnny breathed.

The after-glow endured through a space of ten seconds. Then all was dark as before. It lasted long enough for the boy to see that a machete, a great, long-bladed knife, hung at the native's side.

"And Curlie is alone, unsuspecting," he told himself, and a chill ran up his spine.

At once his mind was in a whirl. Should he shout, warning his pal and perhaps frightening the native away?

This, he thought, might be wise. Yet, nothing serious might be contemplated. Most natives wore machetes at their sides. Besides, there was his own bow and arrow, a very useful weapon. An arrow shattered against the wall would serve to drive the intruder away.

"And if worst comes to worst-"

He gripped his bow, nocked an arrow, then sat there breathless, waiting.

The thing that happened in the next sixty seconds was surprising and dramatic.

With astonishing speed the native glided down the ladder.

"He's there! He-he's looking in."

Gripping his bow hard, Johnny took a long breath. He felt that the time had come for sending the arrow of warning. And yet-he wanted to know more. So he waited. The bronze figure, faintly illumined by the pale light from within, hung there for a few moments, motionless.

Then with the speed of thought, things happened. From within there came a sudden flash of blinding red light. The next instant the wall was a blank of darkness.

The whole thing was over in a space of time not measured by seconds, yet Johnny had seen it all. The native, his eyes distorted by fright, had leaped backward and down. Turning a complete somersault, he had gone speeding to earth, twenty feet below.

"He'll be killed!" Johnny exclaimed aloud.

But no. The space at the foot of the wall was clear of brush. The next moment he saw the man plainly. He went skulking along the wall to at last lose himself in the shadows of some ancient palm trees.

"We've seen the last of him," Johnny told himself as he rose to take a long breath. "I must be getting back to camp. Dorn and old Pompee will think something has happened to me."

As he made his way rapidly over a narrow path, down a slope and up the other side, then through a dark and tangled forest, his thoughts were busy.

"Big piece of nonsense, this search for the 'Rope of Gold'," he told himself. "May never have existed. Anyway, we'll never find it. Fascinating though, and lots of fun, this search; and life can't be all work."

They had worked, he and Curlie Carson. For two months, under the Professor's direction, they had taught native children the simplest rudiments of learning, had assisted native planters at their work and had taught them new methods of tilling the soil.

It had been a short summer and now, only a few days more and he, Johnny, hoped to be going back to the States. And Curlie Carson, the strange lad with the wanderlust and a bent for inventions, would go elsewhere too.

They had heard many times of the 'Rope of Gold'; a very fancy rope it had been, hand-wrought with flowers of white gold and leaves of green gold woven through it, so the story ran.

When the native emperor, the magnificent Christophe, was at the height of his power, this rope of gold had been strung through loops of silver all the way down the sides of the massive steps that led up to his palace. A hundred feet long it was. When rolled up it required two men to carry it. When revolution threatened, so the story ran, the emperor had hidden the rope away in the Citadel and there it remained to this day. But where?

This was the question the two boys had tried to solve. Thus far they had made no headway. The ancient walls, the dungeons, and secret passages had yielded nothing more valuable than dust, bats, rats and general decay.

"It's something one's not likely soon to forget," the boy told himself.

He fell to musing on the life of that native emperor and the fortification he had built.

"He thought the French would come back," the Professor had said to him one day. "He had great dreams for the progress of his people. You can hardly blame him for wanting to defend them. In the end he forgot his great dreams for his people and began worshipping gold and that immense pile of brick and stone. Had he put his trust in God instead of in power and gold," the kindly old professor had rumbled on, "had he written his name on the hearts of men, his name would have lived forever. Now there is only that crumbling pile of masonry to remind the world that he lived at all."

"It's all very strange," Johnny thought. "If one could but have lived then. If he-"

He stopped short in his tracks. His eye had caught sight of something unusual, a white thing hanging from the lower branch of a large tree.

"Couldn't have been here when I came along an hour ago." His curiosity increased. "I'd have noticed it."

He took two steps forward, then put out a hand to touch it. The thing gave forth a hollow sound.

"How queer!" he thought. "A native drum, hanging here."

Without thinking much about what he was doing, he took down the drum, which was a three foot section of a hollowed-out log with a goat skin strung across one end, placed it between his knees and gave it two quick, sharp blows with his hand.

The result was two resounding roars that set the hills echoing.

The next instant, quite without warning, the boy was seized and thrown violently to the ground.