Chapter Thirty-Five
Gregoire followed the crew of the rowboat at a distance, keeping them visible in shafts of moonlight. The group moved slowly, the members picking their way through the underbrush as if each were drunk or encumbered in some way. None of the members moved with any natural skill across the landscape; their movements were jerky. Gregoire considered this a factor in his favor, should it come to anything: he was perfectly at ease in the jungle.
The group stopped in a small clearing and gathered around a man with a wide-brimmed hat with a feather in it. Gregoire thought this odd - the feather - and dropped to a knee. All of the men were curiously attired, as if they were extras from a movie about pirates. Gregoire resisted a smile and lifted his rifle so that he could stare through the scope at the men. Even in the moonlight, though, he could make nothing out to identify any of the men: all had on some sort of headwear that obscured their faces and none were facing him.
Gregoire allowed his attention to shift to the jungle, his eyes and ears searching for new clues about what the men’s purpose might be, keeping the group in his peripheral vision. The group had to be going somewhere at this hour, and the island couldn’t be that large, so Gregoire reckoned they were close to whatever it was they were looking for. But there was only jungle and preternatural silence; a lone cloud passed through the disk of the moon above. Gregoire sighted back through the scope at the group, which had now come to a decision and begun moving off.
A burst of light suddenly glowed in the distance, a bubble of revolving colors flickering through the trees of the jungle. A large crackle filled the air, a sound resembling the collapse of a large building or the snapping of trees in a sudden avalanche. Gregoire froze in place, keeping his eyes on the group of men ahead of him. They stopped, too, and through the rifle’s scope Gregoire could see one of them consulting something in his hand, which he then held up as if he were using it to scan his surroundings. Gregoire expected something to happen next although he was now entirely uncertain as to what that could be, as it was clear that the group he was following was just as surprised as he was at the sudden turn of events. Gregoire crouched in the underbrush and watched the strange crewmen, now suddenly animated and gesticulating both to the lights and to where the ship was moored. Something strange was afoot.