Jack Harkaway and His Son's Escape from the Brigands of Greece Part 66

"It is water."

"A lake."

"Yes."

"How black--how dismal it looks."

It did, indeed.

Silent and gloomy, like a table of metal, spread the darkling waters of this strange lake.

Wild and desolate was it in the extreme.

On every side it was enclosed by towering heights, bare, treeless and solemn.

Both boys were plainly impressed with the dull solemnity of the scene.

"What does that look like?" said young Jack, in a low voice to his companion.

"I don't know--Lerna, the famous marsh, near Argos."

"No; it was there that Hercules killed the Hydra, wasn't it?"

"Yes."

"I should like to think that it was like that," he said, glancing around at the brigands about them.

"And that you or we might emulate the example of Hercules."

"Ah, yes."

"But our enemies are more than hydra-headed."

The other glanced eagerly about him before he spoke.

"It is a question; I should almost sooner run a good deal of risk than be marched quietly off."

Now at this present juncture there was a signal from the topmost hills, and upon a trumpet note being blown in answer by one of the brigands, dark, dusky forms appeared upon every side.

Men sprang up in the rocky hills all round the dark waters of the lake, as promptly as the kilted savages responded to the summons of their chieftain, Rob Roy Macgregor Campbell.

Whatever wild fancies the two boy prisoners might have had in their minds, this startling phenomenon effectually drove them away.

And fortunate it was, too, for them.

Hunston called a halt.

The men were nothing loth.

The road they had traversed was steep and rugged, and it had perhaps told less upon the two boy prisoners than upon any of the party.

The brigands sat and refreshed.

They made a hearty meal of cold meat and coa.r.s.e bread and herbs, and they drank of their wine from the skins until their swarthy faces flushed purple; and whilst they feasted and made merry, the captives were constrained to look on--in envy perhaps--but not to share the banquet.

Hunger fell upon them.

But the boys guessed that their sufferings would only give pleasure to their captors, and so they kept their troubles in this particular to themselves.

"Tighten your belt," said Harry Girdwood; "squeeze your stomach, Jack, and don't let these wolves see that we are peckish."

"Not me."

Taking the hint, Jack drew in a reef.

The two young comrades were, in reality, not much improved by this movement; but they thought they were, and imagination goes a great way.

But hunger is an intruder whose importunities there is no denying for any length of time, and so it fell out that, in spite of their brave and manful efforts at keeping up each other's pluck and spirit, he gnawed at their vitals in a way which reduced not only their stamina, but their spirits.

"This is to be our prison," said Harry Girdwood gloomily; "I feared it would be."

"It is rather like the Lethe than anything else," said young Jack, pointing to the silent water below. "If we remain here long, we shall forget all that has gone before, you may be sure. This is the place to drive us out of our wits more than any spot we could imagine."

"Rather the Styx than the Lethe," said Harry; "banish all hope who enter here."

It was indeed a spot to evoke gloomy reflections, and the boys were in a frame of mind to indulge in such.

This place, they found, was fixed upon as the camp of the brigands, who had felt it imperative to change their headquarters, since they had positive proof that their old stronghold was known to their enemies.

Here they were not in danger of surprise, for their men commanded every outlet, and it must be a rare chance to take them by surprise.

Within a couple of hours of the arrival there of the two boy prisoners and their captors, the whole of the band sauntered down in twos and threes, until the vast host that they formed fairly amazed young Jack and his companion.

"Let us fix a sum on them," said Toro, "so that their parents and friends may release them if they wish."

This was approved of by one and all of his hearers.

There was only a single dissentient voice.

This was Hunston's.

"If you attempt to temporise," he said, "you will be beaten, for sure."

"Why?"

"Beaten by whom?"

"Harkaway."