repellent in its appearance. The high fence around the adjacent ground
gave it the air of a prison. Several people were in front of it, most
of them sitting down. As Pat passed on he noticed that some of these had
their heads bound up; others had their arms in slings; others had faces
that were pale and emaciated. All of them watched him with wistful,
curious eyes; with such looks as prisoners give through their jail
windows at the passer-by. This strange look filled Pat with still
greater surprise.
“It must be a hospital,” he thought; “but what ‘ud they be wan tin of a
hospital in a scrap of a place like this?”
“Perhaps,” he thought again, “it’s a watherin place, an these are sick
people that have come here to be thraited wid the custhomary rimidies.”
Passing by this place, he at length reached the beach, and walked along
it for some distance before he found a place which appeared altogether
suitable for his swim. About a mile away there ran a long spit of land,
which seemed to shut out this piece of water from the outer sea, and
made it seem like a lake. The water was calm and deliciously warm. Pat
sprang in, and dived, and swam, and floundered about for a long time;
and when at length he returned to the shore, he felt reinvigorated in
every limb. All his fatigue seemed to have departed, and he felt almost
fresh enough to begin a new tramp through the woods.
The priest returned after a short absence, bringing two men with him.
They were both French, and spoke only broken English. They listened to
the story of Bart, and asked a number of particular questions about the
stream and the rock. They declared that they knew the place perfectly
well; that there was only one rock of that description in the country,
and that the place was about thirty miles away; by which Bart began
to understand more clearly the full magnitude of his tramp. The men
expressed a willingness to go whenever they were wanted, and it was
finally agreed that they should start at daybreak on the following
morning. With this understanding, the men took their departure.
It was dusk when Pat returned. He came towards the house whistling as
cheerily as a bird, and the moment he entered he began telling what a
delicious walk he had had. He then thought of the strange building near
the shore, and asked the priest what it was.
“That?” said the priest. “O, that’s the Lazaretto.”
“The Lazaretto?” repeated Pat, not understanding him.
“Yes,” said the priest; “have you not heard of it?”
“The Lazaretto--niver a word surely. An what is the Lazaretto, thin?”
“O, it’s a place where we keep lepers.”
“Lepers!” cried Pat, in a voice of horror; and his ruddy face changed to
a sickly pallor.
“Lepers?” said Bart. “Lepers? What, lepers here, in this country?”
“Yes,” said the priest. “It’s a miserable story. A great many years
ago a French ship was wrecked in the Miramichi River. There were some
clothing and bedding on board that came from the Levant, and the people
here used them; and it is said that from this clothing they caught this
terrible disease. It has continued here ever since, and the place has
been established here for the poor creatures.”
“Lepers!” groaned Pat again. “An me walkin by that place, and thinkin of
goin in.”
“It’s a terrible thing,” said the priest. “The patients who go there are
dead to their friends. They never can hope to see them again.”
“Och, murdher!” cried Pat, starting up. “What’ll iver become of me? Och,
murdher! Why didn’t somebody tell me?”
“What’s the matter?” asked the priest, in surprise.
“Och, everything’s the matther. Sure, an didn’t I go an swim for over
half an hour in the leper wather, down yondher?”
“Leper water?” said the priest. “What is that?”
“Sure, the lake down there, or the cove, or whatever ye call it. Don’t
they all go there an bathe?”
“I dare say they do; but what of that?”
“Och, murdher! The wather’s all fairly pisoned wid the leprosy, an I’m
lost and gone intirely.”
“Nonsense,” said the priest; “don’t be alarmed. It isn’t contagious.”
“Sure, an how do I know that it isn’t?”
The priest smiled.
“Why,” said he, “I’m a proof of that, I suppose. I’ve lived here a great
many years, and I’ve visited the poor creatures all that time regularly.
I’ve shaken hands with them, and attended to all the duties of religion
among them, but without any evil consequences.”
As the priest said this, Pat rose slowly to his feet, with a face of
perfect horror. Even Bart experienced a slight feeling of repugnance as
he thought that he was in familiar intercourse with one who had been so
much in contact with lepers. But the priest’s calm, good-natured face,
and his assurance that the disease was not contagious, quelled his
rising fears, and the thought of that priest’s self-sacrifice made him
feel ashamed of that cowardly feeling.
But with Pat it was different. The thought that the priest had touched
the lepers; that on this very day he may have been there shaking hands
with them; that he had been coming and going for years between his house
and the Lazaretto,--all this filled him with terror. If that disease had
been originally communicated by means of clothing, why should it not
yet communicate itself in the same way? The whole house might be reeking
with the insidious seeds of the deadly disease.
The thought was too horrible.
He murmured some inarticulate words, and went out of the house.
The priest went on talking with Bart, and for a long time no notice was
taken of Pat’s absence. But hours passed, and bedtime came, and still
there were no signs of him. Bart went out to call him.
Pat was not visible; but Bart saw a sight that drove all thoughts of Pat
out of his mind. Pat, in fact, had fled, determining to sleep anywhere
rather than in the priest’s house; and so Bart saw no signs of him. But
the sight that he did see was awful beyond description.
There, where his eyes first turned, he saw the gloomy shadow of the
forest. Overhead the sky was filled with rolling smoke clouds; and
immediately above the range of the forest trees there was a long line of
red,--dull, lurid, dark,--yet sustained and unintermittent, lying like a
foundation of fire under all the moving mass of smoke.
The priest had followed him out. He looked at it for some time in
silence.
“The fire is nearer,” he said, at last.
“And there is where we must go to-morrow,” said Bart; “and Phil is
there!”
The priest said nothing.
Where--where--O, where is Phil? Such was now the one thought of Bart’s
mind.
XI.
_Where? O where is Phil?--The Wanderer in the Woods.--Struggles
with Difficulties that always increase.--Approach of
Night.--Gloom.--Despair.--Climbing a Tree.--No Hope.--Rallying from the
Assault.--A Midnight Meal.--Overworn Nature seeks Repose._
WHERE, O, where was Phil?
Had he indeed fallen a victim to the vengeance of the Indian? or had he
wandered away through those terrible woods to encounter the fires, and
to perish by them?
While Bart is racking his mind with these anxious questions, and trying
in vain to answer them, let us leave him and follow the fortunes of the
wanderer.
The rock that had risen on the shore of the river extended for about a
hundred yards. Phil could have crossed the river and gone down on the
other side, but it seemed swampy over there, and he thought it would be
easier to pass over the rock. He also thought that there might be some
view from the top which would give him a general idea of the country.
He therefore started off, and clambered to the top of the rock. On
reaching it, however, he did not find any view in particular, for the
trees around it rose so high that they intercepted the prospect. He
therefore went on, intending to reach the river again lower down.
On traversing the rock and reaching its lower end, he found that it
terminated in an abrupt precipice. This precipice here ran back from the
river into the woods, and if Phil still wished to reach the lower part
of the stream, he saw that it would be necessary to go back into the
woods till he found a place where he could clamber down the side of the
rock. He therefore set off in that direction, expecting that he would
only have to go a short distance. But the rock ran on much farther than
he had supposed; and it was still too precipitous for him to descend.
Along the edge there was a dense growth of underbrush which prevented
his walking close to it, and forced him to go along at some distance
away from it, and penetrate from time to time to the edge, to see if he
had reached any place which offered a descent.
At length the rock subsided into the ground, and then Phil was able to
seek the river. He walked along for some time in that direction, keeping
the line of rock in sight as a guide; but at length the woods became so
exceedingly dense that it was quite impossible to keep the rock in sight
always. He therefore wandered off at times to avoid difficult places,
returning again as soon as convenient to seek the guidance of his
landmark. At length he plunged into a very dense and difficult part of
the forest, where he had to make so many turns and detours to avoid the
obstacles that rose in his way, that he soon lost all idea of the right
direction. He struggled onward, however, striving to get into the open
from which he might gain sight of his rock; but the farther he went
onward, the more difficult did it seem to grow, and the less prospect
was there of any open ground. Upon this he turned, and tried to retrace
his steps, anxious at all hazards to get free from this entanglement.
But to retrace his steps was not so easy. He had got in, but to get out
was a different matter altogether. His frequent turnings and twistings
had already bewildered him; and as he had still to keep up the same
crooked course, and turn and twist as much as ever, his bewilderment
increased. Still he was not at all alarmed as yet, for the thought of
any actual danger had not begun to occur. He was only perplexed, and at
the same time slightly vexed at the continuance of the jungle into which
he had tumbled. There was no help for it, however; and so he toiled
on as well as he could, and at length, to his satisfaction, found the
underbrush diminishing very perceptibly. This discovery encouraged him,
and he kept on in this direction, for now his chief desire was, first of
all, to get to some place where he could regain sight of the rock; and
so he walked on as rapidly as possible, until at length the woods became
sufficiently open to make his progress as easy as he could expect.
It seemed to him now that he had been a long time wandering, and he
began to be anxious to discover the rock. How to do so he did not know,
and could only think of climbing a tree so as to take a survey of
the country. Unfortunately none of the trees were very large; but he
selected the tallest one that he could find, and climbed up as high
as he could. He now looked all around. The prospect gave but little
satisfaction. On every side other trees arose above the level of his
outlook, and shut out from view the scene beyond. He therefore learned
nothing whatever from this survey, and was compelled to descend
disappointed. What now to do became a serious question. There was the
rock, and there was the river, either of which it would be equally
advisable to regain; but in what direction did they lie? It seemed to
him that the rock ought to be west of his present position, and the
river south. If he could go either westward, or southward, or in any
intermediate direction, he would regain his course. Yet that was the
very thing that he was unable to do. He had no compass, and now bitterly
regretted that he had not brought one. Overhead there was nothing that
could afford him any assistance, for the sky was all overspread with
that smoke which he had noticed all along, and the sun could not be
seen. There was nothing left, therefore, but bare conjecture.
He now tried, as far as possible, to recall his confused wanderings.
Although he could not, of course, recall the details of his journey,
yet, as he thought it over, it seemed to him that, on the whole, he had
been making progress in some one direction, and that, if he could but go
back, he would be more likely to reach the river or the rock than in any
other way. As he looked back over his course, it seemed to him that the
west lay there, and to the left of that was the south; so that if he
could now only effect some progress in that direction, all would be
well. He therefore made up his mind to go back again, as far as going
back over his lost track was possible; and as he could not think of
plunging again into that thicket, he thought that when he reached it he
would turn to the left, and avoid it if possible in that way.
Accordingly, he now set out in the endeavor to go back on his path. No
vestige of anything like a trail appeared to him, nor was there a single
thing that he remembered having seen before. He walked on now for a long
time, expecting every moment to reach that tangled thicket which he
had considered as the chief difficulty in his way back. To his utter
amazement, he came across no tangled thicket of any kind whatever. The
woods, instead of growing denser, seemed to grow more open, and his
progress grew easier. The woods now were precisely like what they had
been daring their walk early in the day.
At first he felt only surprise; but soon surprise deepened into
uneasiness, and uneasiness into anxiety. Where was he? In what direction
was he going? What should he do if he were going wrong? Such were the
thoughts that came to him. At length his anxiety grew so strong, and
he became so convinced that his course was altogether wrong, that he
stopped, and again tried to think how he might rectify his error. Once
more he climbed a tree, but with the same result as before. The tops
of other trees were all around. Nothing appeared which could act as a
guide. Overhead, the smoky covering which overspread the skies shut out
all traces of the sun; and when he descended to the ground, there began
to dawn upon him the conviction, which grew stronger and stronger every
moment, that he was actually lost! hopelessly and utterly lost! and
that, too, in a trackless and uninhabited forest.
His only hope was, that he had not gone very far away, but was still, if
not within sight of his friends, at least within hearing. So upon this
he began to do what he now knew he ought to have done before. He began
to call in a loud voice after Pat, and Bart, and Solomon. After each
call he stopped and listened for an answer. But no answer came, and his
own calls echoed far away through the forest aisles, and it was only the
mocking sound of these echoes that came to his ears. Still he thought
that if he persevered long enough, some response must finally come. He
thought they must be near enough to hear him, but were too intent upon
their fishing to think of him, or to notice his cries. Besides, he
took comfort in the thought that they had not yet missed him, and
consequently would not be on the alert. His cries might be faint in
their ears, and not excite any notice.
The time passed, and still he kept up his cries. He called in every
possible tone, and made use of every shout that his voice could compass,
sometimes calling their names, sometimes uttering shrieks, and howls,
and shrill yells. But all these were unavailing, and he was at last
compelled to desist, from utter weariness and loss of voice.
And now he noticed that it began to grow darker. At first this discovery
gave him an unpleasant shock, but immediately he began to find comfort
in this circumstance.
“When it grows dark,” he thought, “they’ll miss me, and they’ll come to
hunt me up. They’ll hear me if I call--or, better yet, they themselves
will now do the shouting, and I’ll hear them.”
With this thought he kept perfectly still. The darker it grew, the more
intently did he listen; for he was convinced that by this time they must
have discovered his absence, and must be searching after him. The only
thing that troubled him was the remembrance of his last words to Pat.
He had told Pat that he was going down the stream, and they might make
their first search after him in that direction, and this he did not
think would bring them within hearing; for though he had no idea where
he was, he still had every reason to believe that he was nowhere near
the river.
It now grew darker and darker; yet still to his strained ears there had
not come a single sound to tell him that his friends were near; not a
single cry, however faint, however remote, to make known to him that
they were on the search after him. As the time passed away, the long,
long suspense and the protracted disappointment began to fill him with
the deepest gloom--and he began to know to its fullest extent that
“agony of hope deferred that maketh the heart sick.” At length it grew
so dark, that even his hope, tenacious as it was, could no longer shut
out from his mind the conviction that whatever anxiety his friends might
feel, it was simply impossible for them at this time to make any search
whatever. If they had missed him, and had sought for him, they must have
gone in a direction different from that in which he had gone, and must
have been altogether out of hearing.
As soon as he fully recognized this fact, all his energies gave way,
and he sank down upon the ground. Not until this moment had he known how
exhausted he was, and how oppressive the sultry atmosphere. Thus far his
excitement, first to regain his lost path, and latterly to communicate
with his friends or hear from them, had so taken possession of him,
that heat or fatigue, or any other bodily sensation, was not noticed.
Anxiety, eager effort, pertinacious hope,--all these had by turns
influenced him; but now, as there seemed no further chance either for
action or for expectation, his strength collapsed, and he gave way
utterly. He lay upon the ground, his head resting upon some moss,
and yielded himself up both in mind and in body to the misery of his
situation. The severe exertions that he had made had utterly exhausted
him; the conflict of soul that he had endured, had intensified that
exhaustion; and for a long time he remained motionless, gasping for
breath, and in a state of utter despair.
Now, the night came down--sultry, torrid, oppressive, suffocating. Its
intense blackness covered everything in an impenetrable veil. Its effect
upon the others has already been described, and upon Phil it
produced results more fearful still. Had it not been for that unusual
oppressiveness and that Egyptian darkness, he might have roused himself;
but as it was, he gave up utterly, and remained sunk in the profoundest
despair for hours.
At length a change came over him. In spite of the heat of the night, the
long rest had been beneficial, and it was not in the nature of things
that emotions so strong should last very long. Phil’s mind was buoyant,
his temper cheerful, and hope was always strong in his soul. As he lay
there sleepless, his thoughts began to revolt against the gloom that had
overwhelmed him.
“What a fool I am!” he thought, rousing himself, and sitting up. “After
all, what is it? and why should I knock under this way? Me, too--of all
fellows! after that tremendous adventure at the Falls.”
The moment his thoughts reverted to that fearful adventure his gloom
vanished. He now recalled the incidents of that terrific event. He
thought of the frenzied struggle against the grip of the resistless
waters; he thought of the wild plunge into the seething flood, and of
that horrible moment when the rolling torrents overwhelmed him, and
hurled him downward into awful depths. Then he recalled the events of
their drift down the harbor, and out towards the bay, when there seemed
not the faintest chance of escape.
In comparison with this his present situation seemed trifling. To be
lost in the woods, what was that? Was it equal to being lost in the
terrible tide, and environed in impenetrable fogs? Could it under any
possibility be so bad as being swept out to sea, a helpless victim of the
pitiless waves? There was no comparison between the two cases.
And now his depression fled, and the buoyancy of his soul lifted him up
to hope. He began to think over his prospects cheerfully, and to make
plans about the following day. As soon as daylight came, his friends
would at once come in search of him. He would listen and hear their
calls. If he could not think of any direction in which to go, he could
wait. But as to that, he did not expect to be so puzzled as he had been.
The sun would surely shine, and that would give him an idea of east,
west, north, and south. He might then choose his route, and follow it
up. If his friends did not come, he could go off himself, and doubtless
he would reach some place eventually. He might find some stream, and
follow it to its mouth, where there would be sure to be a settlement;
or perhaps he might light upon some clearing in the woods where he might
obtain help, and perhaps regain his friends.
Thus Phil’s thoughts grew more and more cheerful; and he looked forward
most hopefully, and persisted in putting the best appearance on things.
At length he began to think that his long fast was not good for him,
especially as he might have some hard work to do on the morrow; so he
opened his basket, and taking out his sandwiches that he had carried
there all the day, he made a hearty meal. The effect was most
beneficial; the hollow, craving, gnawing feeling that had distressed him
passed away, and was succeeded by a sense of comfort.
And now drowsiness began to steal over him. He had satisfied his hunger;
he had overcome by his long rest the first painful exhaustion and
fatigue consequent upon his severe exertions; above all, his mind had
attained a pleasant state of cheerfulness and hope. There were no longer
any despairing thoughts or terrible fears to excite him and keep him
awake; and so at length he fell into a sound and refreshing sleep.
XII.
_The Wanderer on his winding Way.--The Bewilderment of the
Forest.--Swamps and Bogs.--? The friendly Brook.--Following the Flow
of the running Water.--A pleasant Course.--An encouraging
Discovery.--Astray once more.--He sinks to Rest.--The last Sandwich._
IT was very late when Phil fell asleep, and his fatigue and exhaustion
combined to make his sleep heavy and prolonged. As there were no sounds
to break in upon his slumbers, he continued sleeping until late on the
following day. On awaking he raised himself up, and looked around in
surprise, for in his dreams he had been wandering among familiar scenes,
and it was some time before he could comprehend his present situation.
But his mossy bed at the foot of a large maple tree, and the woods that
extended all around on every side, soon enabled him to recall the events
of the preceding day, and to understand how he came here.
These recollections were not cheerful, nor was it a pleasant change to
turn from happy dreams to such an awakening as this; yet Phil was not
cast down. He still felt the beneficial effect of those better thoughts
of the night before; and still retained that buoyancy of spirit and that
hopefulness which he had felt on going to sleep.
And now another day had dawned, with its possibilities for good and
evil. His watch told him, to his amazement, that it was after ten
o’clock. Ten o’clock! After ten o’clock, and yet no signs of Bart
and the others! What did this mean? Had they neglected him so long?
Neglected him? No. They could not do that; but was it not possible that
during his sleep they may have wandered about these woods near him, and
called to him while he could not hear them? This was a most distressing
thought, and if such a thing had happened, its result would bring a
twofold evil; for in the first place, he would have missed the chance of
deliverance, and in the second place, they would not be likely to pass
by here again. But these thoughts were not of a kind that he chose to
entertain. He was in no mood now to sink into despondent inaction.
He was tired of this place, and was anxious to leave it. He was also
wearied of inaction, and was eager to do something. Far better did
it seem to him to do anything, and go anywhere, even if he should be
unsuccessful, than to remain here waiting for those who might never
come. So he at once dismissed all idle thoughts and useless regrets, and
addressed himself to the task of arranging his own course of action.