Suddenly Quarrel stopped, his face pointing like a gun-dog’s at the marshy ground in front of him. Two deep parallel grooves were cut into the mud, with a fainter groove in the centre. They were the tracks of something that had come down from the hill and gone across the marsh towards the lake.
The girl said indifferently, ‘That’s where the dragon’s been.’
Quarrel turned the whites of his eyes towards her.
Bond walked slowly along the tracks. The outside ones were quite smooth with an indented curve. They could have been made by wheels, but they were vast – at least two feet across. The centre track was of the same shape but only three inches across, about the width of a motor tyre. The tracks were without a trace of tread, and they were fairly fresh. They marched along in a dead straight line and the bushes they crossed were squashed flat as if a tank had gone over them.
Bond couldn’t imagine what kind of vehicle, if it was a vehicle, had made them. When the girl nudged him and whispered fiercely ‘I told you so’, he could only say thoughtfully, ‘Well, Honey, if it isn’t a dragon, it’s something else I’ve never seen before.’
Farther on, she tugged urgently at his sleeve. ‘Look,’ she whispered. She pointed forward to a big clump of bushes beside which the tracks ran. They were leafless and blackened. In the centre there showed the charred remains of birds’ nests. ‘He breathed on them,’ she said excitedly.
Bond walked up to the bushes and examined them. ‘He certainly did,’ he admitted. Why had this particular clump been burned? It was all very odd.
The tracks swerved out towards the lake and disappeared into the water. Bond would have liked to follow them but there was no question of leaving cover. They trudged on, wrapped in their different thoughts.
Slowly the day began to die behind the sugar-loaf, and at last the girl pointed ahead through the bushes and Bond could see a long spit of sand running out into the lake. There were thick bushes of sea-grape along its spine and, halfway, perhaps a hundred yards from the shore, the remains of a thatched hut. It looked a reasonably attractive place to spend the night and it was well protected by the water on both sides. The wind had died and the water was soft and inviting. How heavenly it was going to be to take off their filthy shirts and wash in the lake, and, after the hours of squelching through the mud and stench of the river and the marsh, be able to lie down on the hard dry sand!
The sun blazed yellowly and sank behind the mountain. The day was still alive at the eastern tip of the island, but the black shadow of the sugar-loaf was slowly marching across the lake and would soon reach out and kill that too. The frogs started up, louder than in Jamaica, until the thick dusk was shrill with them. Across the lake a giant bull frog began to drum. The eerie sound was something between a tom-tom and an ape’s roar. It sent out short messages that were suddenly throttled. Soon it fell silent. It had found what it had sent for.
They reached the neck of the sandspit and filed out along a narrow track. They came to the clearing with the smashed remains of the wattle hut. The big mysterious tracks led out of the water on both sides and through the clearing and over the nearby bushes as if the thing, whatever it was, had stampeded the place. Many of the bushes were burned or charred. There were the remains of a fireplace made of lumps of coral and a few scattered cooking pots and empty tins. They searched in the debris and Quarrel unearthed a couple of unopened tins of Heinz pork and beans. The girl found a crumpled sleeping-bag. Bond found a small leather purse containing five one-dollar notes, three Jamaica pounds and some silver. The two men had certainly left in a hurry.
They left the place and moved farther along to a small sandy clearing. Through the bushes they could see lights winking across the water from the mountain, perhaps two miles away. To the eastwards there was nothing but the soft black sheen of water under the darkening sky.
Bond said, ‘As long as we don’t show a light we should be fine here. The first thing is to have a good wash. Honey, you take the rest of the sandspit and we’ll have the landward end. See you for dinner in about half an hour.’
The girl laughed. ‘Will you be dressing?’
‘Certainly,’ said Bond. ‘Trousers.’
Quarrel said, ‘Cap’n, while dere’s henough light I’ll get dese tins open and get tings fixed for de night.’ He rummaged in the knapsack. ‘Here’s yo trousers and yo gun. De bread don’t feel so good but hit only wet. Hit eat okay an’ mebbe hit dry hout come de mornin’. Guess we’d better eat de tins tonight an’ keep de cheese an’ pork. Dose tins is heavy an’ we got plenty footin’ tomorrow.’
