"So those two voices met; so Joy and Death
Mingled their accents; and, amidst the rush
Of many thoughts, the listening poet cried,
O! thou art mighty, thou art wonderful,
Mysterious Nature! Not in thy free range
Of woods and wilds alone, thou blendest thus
The dirge note and the song of festival;
But in one _heart_, one changeful human heart,--
Ay, and within one hour of that strange world,--
Thou call'st their music forth, with all its tones
To startle and to pierce!--the dying Swan's,
And the glad Sky-lark's,--Triumph and Despair!"
Our tale is running rapidly to a close, and we must no more loiter to
gather flowers by the wayside, but depict the events which now come thickly
crowding together to make up the mingled catastrophe.
When the sheriff and his scores of exulting assistants reached the village
with their prisoner,--the desperate villain, whom they had, with so much
difficulty and danger, dislodged and seized in his rocky den in the
mountains,--the latter requested a postponement of his examination till the
afternoon of the next day, that he might have time to send for, and obtain,
his lawyer. This request was the more readily granted, as the party sent up
the lakes with Moose-killer, for more evidence, had not yet returned, and
as their expected discoveries, or at least their presence with those
already made, might and would be required to fasten the crime, in law, on
the undoubted criminal. The court, therefore, was adjourned to an
indefinite hour the next afternoon; and the crowd, except the court, its
officers, and those from a distance, dispersed to assemble, the next day,
with increased numbers, to witness the final disposal of one who had now
become, in the minds of all, the monster outlaw of the settlement. The
prisoner was then taken to an adjoining old and empty log-house, a
straw-bed laid on the floor for him, and a strong guard placed over him,
both within and around the house without; so that, being constantly under
the eyes of vigilant, well-armed men, there should be no possibility of his
escape, either by his own exertions, or by the aid of secret accomplices.
And these precautions being faithfully observed, the night wore away
without alarm, or any kind of disturbance. The fore part of the succeeding
day also passed, though people soon began to pour into the village from all
quarters, with singular quietness,--all seeming to be oppressed with that
deep feeling of hushed expectation which may often be seen to predispose
men to a sort of restless silence, on the known eve of an exciting event.
And, through the whole of it, no incident or circumstance transpired
affecting the great interest of the occasion, till about noon; when the
news spread that the anxiously-awaited party from the upper lakes were
approaching. As they came up to the tavern, the now excited crowd quickly
closed around them, and eagerly listened to their report. Of Claud Elwood,
whom they had unknowingly passed and repassed, on their way up and down the
lakes, while he was lying helpless in the secluded retreat to which his
fair and devoted preserver had conveyed him, they had heard nothing, seen
nothing, and discovered no clues by which his locality or fate could be
traced or conjectured. But they had visited, and carefully examined, the
place pointed out by Moose-killer as the one where Mark Elwood was supposed
to have been slain; and, although they had failed to find the body on the
land, or in the lake, with the best means they could command for dragging
it, and although time had measurably effaced the traces by which the
sagacious Indian had judged of the suspected deed, yet every appearance
went to confirm the strict accuracy of his previous account. And, in
addition, they at last found, slightly imbedded in the bark of a tree, in
the range of the path, and a short distance to the south of the spot, a
rifle bullet, which had evidently been, before striking the tree, smeared
with a bloody substance, and also slightly flattened, as it might naturally
have been, in striking a bone, on its way through a man's body. This seemed
to establish, as a fact, the commission of a murder; but on whom committed
was still left a debatable question. The movers of the prosecution had
hoped, through this mission up the lakes, to obtain evidence which would
conclusively establish the guilt of the prisoner. But, to effect this, and
thus insure his conviction, something more conclusive was still obviously
wanting. And it was then that the indefatigable hunter made, as the reader
has already been apprised, his last rapid but fruitless journey to the
chief's residence, in the hope that his mysteriously absent daughter might
have returned with discoveries that would complete the chain of evidence.
He having come back, however, without accomplishing any part of his object,
and the prisoner's counsel having arrived, and, after a consultation with
his client, become strangely clamorous to proceed at once to the
examination, they finally concluded to go into the hearing with the
presumptive evidence in possession, and, backing it with the showing of
Gaut's previously suspicious character, for which they were now well
prepared, call themselves willing to abide the result. All this being now
settled, the court was declared open, and the counsel for the prosecution
was requested to proceed with the case.
After the attorney for the prosecution had read the papers on which it was
founded, and made a statement of what was expected to be proved in its
support, the witnesses in that behalf were called and sworn. The first
testimony introduced was that of Codman and others, to show the deep malice
and implied threats of revenge which the prisoner had so clearly exhibited
towards the supposed murdered man, in the prosecution of which the latter
was a principal mover, the winter before. But this evidence, when sifted by
the long and severe cross-examination that followed, and found to consist,
instead of definite words, almost wholly of menacing looks and other silent
demonstrations of rage, which are ever extremely difficult to bring out in
words with their original effect, amounted to so little that the prisoner's
counsel attempted to turn it into ridicule with considerable show of
success. Testimony in relation to the canoe of the Elwoods, recently found
washed up among the rapids, which was next introduced, was found, when
tested in the same way, in despite of the opinions of the practical boatmen
who were the witnesses, to be almost equally inconclusive of the prisoner's
guilt; so much so, indeed, that his counsel seemed greatly inclined to
appropriate it, as showing the probable manner in which the Elwoods, if
they were not still both alive, had come to their end.
By this time,--as the court of inquiry was not opened till nearly sunset,
and as the examinations, cross-examinations, and preliminary speeches of
the opposing counsel, on disputed points of evidence, had been drawn out to
seemingly almost interminable lengths,--by this time, it was nearly
midnight; and the prosecuting party now proposed an adjournment till
morning. But this was strenuously opposed by Gaut's lawyer, who, affecting
to believe that the whole affair was a malicious prosecution growing out of
the suit last winter, and got up by certain men who had banded together to
revenge their defeat on that occasion, and ruin his client, boldly demanded
that the prisoner should be discharged, or his conspiring enemies be
compelled to proceed at once with "their sham prosecution," as he put on
the face to call it.
This stand, which was obviously instigated by the prisoner himself, who
narrowly watched the proceedings, and, from time to time, was seen
whispering in the ear of his counsel, produced the desired effect: the
motion was overruled, and the counsel for the prosecution told to go on
with his evidence.
Moose-killer was then called on to the witnesses' stand, when, for the
first time, Gaut exhibited evident feigns of uneasiness, and whispered
something in the ear of his counsel, who thereupon rose and went into a
labored argument against the admissibility of the evidence of an Indian,
who was a pagan, and knew nothing about the God whose invocation
constituted the sacred effect of the oath he had taken. But, on the
questioning of the court, Moose-killer declared his full belief in the
white Christian's God and Bible, and this objection was overruled, and the
witness requested to proceed with his story.
The demure Indian, unmoved by the burning and vengeful eye of Gaut, which
was kept constantly riveted upon him, then succinctly but clearly related
all the facts, of which the reader has been apprised in the preceeding
pages, in relation to the atrocious deed under investigation. And at the
conclusion of his story he produced the bullet found imbedded in the tree,
called attention to its smeared and flattened appearance, and then asked
for the prisoner's rifle, to see whether it would fit in the bore. The
rifle in question was then brought into court, the bullet applied to the
muzzle, and pronounced an exact fit! A shout of exultation burst from the
crowd, and in a tone so significant of the public feeling, and of their
unanimous opinion on this point, that for a moment both the prisoner and
his counsel were completely disconcerted. But, soon rallying, the latter
started to his feet, and, having summoned back to its place his usual
quantum of brass, demanded "the privilege of just looking at that rifle
they were all making such a fuss about." It was accordingly handed to him;
when, after noticing the size of the bore, which was a common one, and then
glancing at some other rifles held in the hands of different spectators, he
confidently requested that the first half-dozen rifles to be found among
the crowd should be brought on to the stand. Five of the designated number
were soon gathered and brought forward; and it was found, in the
comparison, that three of them were of the same bore as that of Gaut, and
that the ball in question would fit one as well as another.
"There! what has become of your bullet evidence now?" sneeringly exclaimed
the exulting attorney. "Wondrous conclusive, a'n't it? But, as weak as the
whole story is, I will make it still weaker. It is my turn with you now, my
foxy red friend," he added, settling back in his seat to commence his
cross-examination.
His vaunted cross-examination, however, resulted in giving him no
advantage. The Indian could not be made, in the whole hour the brow-beating
inquisitor devoted to him, either to cross himself or vary a single
statement of his direct testimony, and he was petulantly ordered to leave
the stand.
"Not done talk yet," said Moose-killer, lingering, and glancing inquiringly
to the court and the counsel for the prosecution. "More story me tell yet."
Gaut's lawyer looked up doubtfully to the witness; but, thinking he must
have told all he could to implicate the prisoner, and that any thing now
added might show discrepancies, of which some advantage could be taken,
remained silent, and, for once, interposed no objection to letting the
Indian take his own course; when the latter, on receiving an encouraging
intimation to speak from the other attorney, proceeded, in his peculiarly
broken but graphic manner, to make in substance the following extraordinary
revelation:
About ten years ago (he said), there came, from what part nobody knew, a
strange, questionable personage, into the neighborhood of a few families of
St. Francois Indians, encamping for the hunting season around the
head-water lakes of the Long River, as he termed the Connecticut, and went
to trapping for sable and beaver. But he soon fell into difficulties with
the Indians, who believed he robbed their traps; and with one family in
particular he had a fierce and bitter altercation. This family had a small
child, that began to ramble from the wigwam out into the woods, and that,
one night, failed to come home. They suspected who had got it, and next day
followed the trail to the man's camp; when they soon found where the child
had been butchered, cut up, and used to bait his sable-traps! But the
monster, becoming alarmed, had fled, and never afterwards could be found.
With this, Moose-killer, who had evidently put his story in this shape to
avoid interruption, suddenly paused, and then, with one hand raised
imploringly towards the court and the other stretched out menacingly
towards the prisoner, wildly exclaimed:
"O, that was _my_ child! and this was the man who murdered it!"
A thrill of horror ran through the crowd as the witness came to the
conclusion of his revolting story. And so completely were all taken by
surprise by the startling, and as most of them believed truthful,
revelation, and so great was the sensation produced by the appalling
atrocities it disclosed, that the proceedings of the court were for some
moments brought to a dead stand. But soon the shrill, harsh voice of Gaut's
lawyer was heard rising above the buzz of the excited crowd, and bursting
in a storm of denunciation and abuse on the witness, and all those who had
a hand in bringing him forward, to thrust in, against all rule, such a
story,--which, if true, had no more to do with the prosecution now in
progress than the first chapter of the Alcoran. But it was not true. It was
a monstrous fabrication. It represented as a fact what never occurred in
all Christendom. It was stamped with falsehood on the face of it; and not
only spoke for itself as such, but was a virtual self-impeachment of the
witness, whose whole testimony the court should now throw to the winds. And
so, for the next half-hour, he went on, ranting and raving, till the court,
interposing, assured him that the witness' last story would not be treated
as testimony in the case; when he became pacified, and took his seat.
The counsel on the other side, who, during his opponent's explosive display
of rhetorical gas and brimstone, had been holding an earnest consultation
with Phillips (now also at hand with a disclosure which had been reserved
for the present moment), then calmly rose, and said he had a statement to
make, which he stood ready to substantiate, and to which he respectfully
asked the attention of the court, as a matter that should be taken into the
account in considering the prisoner's guilt in the present case, it being
one of the many offences that appeared to have marked his career of almost
unvarying crime and iniquity. He was well aware of the _general_ rule of
evidence, which excludes matters not directly connected with the point at
issue; but there _were_ cases in which that rule often had, and necessarily
ever must be, materially varied,--as in the _crim. con._ cases reported in
the books, where previous like acts were admitted, to show the probability
of the commission of the one charged, and also in cases like the present,
resting, as he admitted it thus far did, on presumptive evidence. In this
view, notwithstanding all that had been said or intimated, he believed the
concluding testimony of the last witness proper to be considered in
balancing the presumptions of the prisoner's guilt or innocence. And
especially relevant did he deem the statement, and the introduction of the
evidence he had at hand to substantiate it, which he had now risen to
offer. But, even were it otherwise, it would soon be seen that the step he
was about to take would be particularly suitable to be taken while the
court and the officers of justice were together, and the prisoner under
their control. With these preliminary remarks, he would now proceed with
the statement he had proposed.
"This man," continued the attorney (whom we will now report in the first
person), "the man who stands here charged, and, in the minds of nine out of
ten of all present, I fearlessly affirm, _justly_ charged, with a murder,
to the deliberate atrocity of which scarce a parallel can be found in the
world's black catalogue of crime,--this man, I say, is a felon-refugee from
British justice.
"Many years ago,--as some here present may know, as a matter of history,--a
secret and somewhat extended conspiracy to subvert the government of Lower
Canada was seasonably discovered and crushed at Quebec, which was its
principal seat, and which, according to the plan of the conspirators, was
to be the first object of assault and seizure. This was to be effected by
the contemporaneous rising of a strong force within the city, headed by a
bold adventurer, a bankrupt merchant from Rhode Island, and of an army of
raftsmen, collected from the rivers, without, led on by a reckless and
daring, half-Scotch, half-Indian Canadian, who had acquired great influence
over that restless and ruffian class of men. The former had been in the
province in the year before, and, from witnessing the popular disaffection
then rampant from the enforcement of an odious act of their Parliament to
compel the building of roads, had, with the instigation of such desperate
fellows as the latter, his Canadian accomplice, conceived this plot, and
had now come on, with a small band of recruits, to carry it into execution;
when, as all was nearly ripe for the outbreak, the whole plot was
discovered. The poor Yankee leader was seized, tried for high treason,
condemned to death, and strung up by the neck from the walls of Quebec.
[Footnote: See Christie's History of Lower Canada] But the more wary and
fortunate Canadian leader, though tenfold more guilty, escaped into the
wilderness, this side of the British line; lingered a year or two in this
region, trapping and robbing the Indians; then took to smuggling; engaged
in the service of the man whose murder we are now investigating, followed
him to the city, nearly ruined him there, and then dogged him to this
settlement to complete his destruction."
"Who do you mean?" thundered Gaut Gurley.
"Ask your own conscience," replied the attorney, fearlessly confronting the
prisoner.
"'Tis false as hell!" rejoined Gaut, with a countenance convulsed with
rage.
"No, you mistake,--it is as true as hell," promptly retorted the other;
"or, rather, as true as there is one for such wretches as you. Mr.
Phillips," he added, turning to the hunter, who stood a little in the
background, with his rifle poised on his left arm, with an air of
carelessness, but, as a close inspection would have shown, so grasped by
his right hand, held down out of sight, as to enable him to bring it to an
instant aim,--"Mr. Phillips, were you in the habit of going to Quebec, fall
and spring, to dispose of your peltries, about the time of this plotted
insurrection?"
"I was."
"Did you ever have the Canada leader I have spoken of pointed out to you,
previous to the outbreak?"
"Often, on going down the Chaudiere river, often; why, I knew him by sight
as well as the devil knows his hogs!"
"Did you afterwards see and identify him in this region?"
"I did."
"Is not, then, all I have stated true; and is not the prisoner, here, the
man?"
"All as true as the Gospel of St. Mark; and that _is_ the man, the very
man; under the oath of God, I swear it!"
During this brief but terribly pointed dialogue, Gaut Gurley,--whose
handcuffs, on his complaint that they galled his wrists, had been removed
after he came into court,--sat watching Phillips with that same singularly
sinister expression which we have, on one or two previous occasions, tried
to describe him as exhibiting. It was a certain indescribable, whitish,
lurid light, flashing and quivering over his countenance, that made the
beholder involuntarily recoil. And, as the last words were uttered, his
hand was seen covertly stealing up under the lapel of his coat; but it was
instantly arrested and dropped, at the sharp click of the cocking of the
hunter's rifle, which was also seen stealing up to his shoulder.
"Nonsense!" half audibly said the sheriff, to something which, during the
bustle and sensation following these manifestations, the hunter had been
whispering in his ear; "nonsense! I searched him myself, and _know_ there
is nothing of the kind about him."
"I am not so sure about that," responded the hunter, edging along through
the crowd, with his eye still on the prisoner, and soon disappearing out of
the door.
This little judicial interlude in the remarks of the attorney being over,
he resumed:
"My statement having been thus corroborated, and, as I am most happy to
find, without any of the expected interruptions, it now only remains for me
to say, that this indefatigable Mr. Phillips, becoming perfectly convinced
that the prisoner was a man of whom it was a patriotic duty to rid the
settlement, has, within the last two months, made a journey into Canada;
obtained a written official request from the governor-general, addressed to
the governor of New Hampshire, for the delivery of Gaut Gurley, at the time
when, on notice, the proper officers would be in waiting to receive him;
that our governor has responded by issuing his warrant; which," he
continued, drawing out a document, "I now, in this presence, deliver to the
sheriff, to be served, but only served, in case we fail--as I do not at all
anticipate--to secure the commitment and final conviction of the prisoner,
on the flagitious offence now under investigation, and loudly demanding
expiation under our own violated laws, in preference to delivering him up
for the punishment of other and less crying felonies."
The prisoner and his counsel, on this new and unexpected development, held
an earnest whispered consultation. The latter had supposed, till almost the
last moment, that his opponent was intending only to bring in another piece
of what he deemed wholly irrelevant testimony, in the shape of another
gone-by transaction; and he was preparing another storm of wrath for the
judicial outrage. But, when he found that the statement was a preliminary
to a different and more alarming movement, and especially when he saw
placed in the sheriff's hands a warrant for delivering up his client to the
British, to be tried for a former felony, from the punishment of which, he
feared, from what he had just heard, there would be no escape, he was sadly
nonplussed, and knew not which way to turn himself. And it was not until
Gaut, who, though thus suddenly brought into a dilemma which he was little
expecting, was yet at no loss to decide on his course,--that of making
every possible effort to escape the more immediate pending danger, and then
of trusting to chance for eluding the more remote one just brought to
view,--it was not till Gaut, with assurances of the last being but a
miserable, trumped-up affair, had pushed and goaded him up to action, that
the dumbfounded attorney recovered his old confidence. He then straightened
back in his seat, and, with the air of one who has meekly borne some
imposition, or breach of privilege, till it can be borne no longer, turned
gruffly to his opponent, and said:
"Well, sir, having dragged every thing into this case except what
legitimately belongs to it, I want to know if you are through, _now_? We,
on our side, have no need of introducing testimony to meet any thing you
have yet been able to show. Why, you have not even established the first
essential fact to be settled in prosecutions for homicide. You have
arraigned my client for killing a man, and yet have shown nobody killed!
No, _we_ shall introduce no witnesses till the body of the alleged murdered
man is produced; for, till then, no court on earth--But I am not making a
speech, and will not anticipate. All I intended was, to ask, as I do again,
are you through with your evidence _now_?"
The attorney for the prosecution then admitted--rather prematurely, as it
was soon seen--that he thought of nothing more which he wished to
introduce.
"Go on with your opening speech, then," resumed the former.
"No," said the other, "I waive my privilege of the opening and close, and
will only claim the closing speech."
"O, very well, sir," said Gaut's lawyer, throwing a surprised and
suspicious look around, as if to see whether some trap was not involved in
this unexpected waiver of the usually claimed privilege. "Very well; don't
blame you; shouldn't think you could find honest materials even for one
speech."
The hard-faced attorney, who was reputed one of the best of what are
sometimes termed _devil's lawyers_, in all that part of the country, then
consequentially gathered up his minutes of the testimony, glanced over
them, and, clearing his throat, commenced his great final speech, which was
to annihilate his opponent, and quash the whole proceedings of the
prosecution. But he had scarcely spoken ten words, before a tremendous
shout, rising somewhere in the direction of the bridge,--to which their
attention had been before called, when a part of it had been swept away
during the first hours of the night,--broke and reverberated into the room,
bringing him to an instant stand. Feeling that something extraordinary had
occurred, the startled court, parties and spectators, alike paused, and
eagerly listened for something further to explain the sudden outbreak. But,
for several minutes, all was still, or hushed down to the low hum of
mingling voices, and not a distinct, intelligible sound reached their
expectant senses. Soon, however, the noise of trampling feet and the rush
of crowds was heard, and perceived to be rapidly approaching the door of
the court-room. And the next moment the clear, loud voice of the now
evidently excited hunter was heard exultantly ringing out the announcement:
"A witness, a new witness! A witness that saw the very deed!"
This sudden and exciting announcement of an occurrence which had been hoped
for, in some shape, on one side, and feared on the other, but, at this late
hour of the night, little expected by either, at once threw all within the
crowded courtroom into bustle and commotion. Both parties to the
prosecution were consequently taken by surprise; and both, though neither
of them were yet apprised of the character of the witness, were aroused and
agitated by the significant announcement. But, of all present, none seemed
so much stirred as the obdurate prisoner, who had, thus far in the
examination, scarcely once wholly lost his usual look of bold assurance,
but who now was seen casting rapid, uneasy, and evidently troubled glances
towards the door; doubtless expecting, each moment, to see the fear which
had haunted him from the first--that Claud Elwood would turn up alive, and
appear in court against him--realized in the person of the new witness. His
lawyer also, appeared to be seized with similar apprehensions; and, the
next moment, he was heard loudly demanding the attention of the court. He
objected, he _pointedly_ objected, he _protested_, in advance, against the
admission of further testimony. He had borne _every thing_ during the
hearing, but could not bear _this_. The pleas were closed, and the case
concluded against the introduction of new evidence; and that, too, by the
express notice and agreement of the counsel for the prosecution. And now to
open it would be in glaring violation of all rule, all law, and all
precedent. In short, it would be an outrage too gross to be tolerated
anywhere but in a land of despotism. And, if the court would not at once
decide to exclude the threatened testimony, he must be heard at length on
the subject.
But the court declining so to decide, and intimating that they were willing
to hear an argument on the point, of any reasonable length, he spread
himself for the wordy onset. The sheriff--who, in the mean time, had
started for the door to make an opening in the crowd for the expected
entrance,--seeing that a long speech was in prospect, now went out,
conducted the proffered witness, in waiting near by, to another room in the
house to remain there till called; and then returned, and, in a low tone,
made some communication to the court.
The pertinacious lawyer then went on with his heated protest, as it might
be called far more properly than an argument, to the length of nearly an
hour. The calm, manly, and cogent reply of his opponent occupied far less
time, but obtained far more favor with the sitting magistrates; who, after
a short consultation among themselves, unanimously decided to hear the
proposed evidence, and thereupon ordered the sheriff to conduct the witness
at once into court.
A breathless silence now ensued in the court-room, and every eye was
involuntarily turned towards the door. In a few minutes the sheriff closely
followed, by two females, made his appearance and cleared his way up to the
stand that had been occupied by the witnesses. No names had been announced,
and both the ladies were veiled, so that their faces could not be seen in
the dusky apartment, lighted only by two dim candles, made dimmer,
seemingly, by the morning twilight, then beginning to steal through the
windows, and to produce that dismal and almost sickening hue peculiar to
the equal mingling of the natural light of day with the artificial light of
lamp or taper. And it was not consequently known, except to one or two
individuals, who they were; but enough was seen, in the enlarged form and
sober tread of the one, and in the rounded, trim figure and elastic step of
the other, to show the former to be a middle-aged matron, and the latter a
youthful maiden. Each was garbed in rich black silk, to which were added,
in the one case, some of the usual emblems of mourning, and in the other, a
few simple, tastily contrasted, light trimmings.
"What are these ladies' names? or rather, first, I will ask, which of them
is the witness?" said the leading magistrate.
"I am, I suppose," said the maiden, in tones as soft and tremulous as the
lightly-touched chord of some musical instrument, as she threw back her
veil, and disclosed a beauty of features and sweetness of countenance that
at once raised a buzz of admiration through the room.
"Your name, young lady?"
"Fluella, sir; and this lady at my side is Mrs. Mark Elwood, who comes only
as my friend."
"You understand the usages of courts, I conclude; and, if so, will now
receive the oath, and go on to tell what you know relative to the crime for
which, you have doubtless heard, the prisoner here is arraigned."
At once raising her hand, she was sworn, and proceeded directly to state
that part of the transaction she had witnessed on the lake, which the
hunter, in the conversation she found means to have with him while waiting
to be taken into court, had advised her was all that would be important as
evidence in the case.
Gaut Gurley, the alarmed prisoner, who at first had appeared greatly
relieved on finding that the announced witness was not the reanimated young
Elwood, as he had feared, now seemed utterly at fault to conjecture what
either of these women could know of his crime. But the moment the maiden,
whom he had seen the previous year, and regarded with jealous dislike, as
the possible rival of his daughter, revealed herself to his view, his looks
grew dark and suspicious; and when she commenced by mentioning, as she did
at the outset, that she was on a boat excursion along the western shore of
the Maguntic, on the well-remembered day when he consummated his long
cherished atrocity, he seemed to comprehend the drift of what was coming,
and his eyes fastened on her with the livid glare of a tiger; while those
demoniac flashes, before noted as the usual percursor of hellish intent
with him, began to burn up and play over his contracting countenance.
But these suspicious indications had escaped the notice of all,--even of
the watchful hunter, whose looks, with those of the rest, were for the
moment hanging, with intense interest, on the speaking lips of the fair
witness. And she proceeded uninterrupted, till, having described the
position in the thicket on shore, in which she was standing, as Mark
Elwood, followed by Gaut Gurley, both of whom she recognized, came along,
she, nerving herself for the task, raised her voice, and said:
"I distinctly saw Mr. Elwood fall, convulsed in death,--heard the fatal
shot, and instantly traced it to Gaut, before he had taken his smoking
rifle from his shoulder,--this same man who now--"
When, as she was uttering the last words, and turning to the prisoner, she
stopped short, recoiled, and uttered a loud shriek of terror. And, the next
instant, the deafening report of a pistol burst from the corner where the
prisoner was sitting, filling the room with smoke, and bringing every man
to his feet, in the amazement and alarm that seized all at the sudden
outbreak.
There was a dead pause for a moment; and then was heard the sudden rush of
men, the sharp, brief struggle, and the heavy fall of the grappled
prisoner, as he was borne overpowered to the floor.
"Thank God!" exclaimed the hunter, the first to reach the bewildered
maiden, and ascertain what had befell from this fiendish attempt to take
her life simply because she was instrumental in bringing a wretch to
justice,--"thank God, she is unhurt! The bullet has only cut the dress on
her side, and passed into the wall beyond."
"Order in court!" sternly cried the head magistrate. "It is enough! Mr.
Phillips, conduct these ladies to some more suitable apartment. We wish for
no more proof. The prisoner's guilt is already piled mountain-high. We
commit him to your hands, Mr. Sheriff. Within one hour, let him be on his
way to Lancaster jail, there to await his final trial and doom, for one of
the foulest murders that ever blasted the character of human kind!"
We will not attempt to describe, in detail, the lively and bustling scene,
which, for the next hour or two, now ensued in and around the tavern, that
had lately been the unaccustomed theatre of so many new and startling
developments. The running to and fro of the excited and jubilant throng of
men, women, and children, who, in their anxiety to witness and know the
result of the trial, had passed the whole night in the place,--the
partaking of the hastily snatched breakfast, in the tavern, by some, or on
logs or bunches of shingles in the yard, by others, from provisions brought
along with them, from home,--the hurried harnessing of horses and running
out of wagons, preparatory to the departure of those here with the usual
vehicles of travel,--the resounding blows and lumbering sounds of the score
of lusty men who had volunteered to replace and repair the bridge from the
old materials luckily thrown on the bank a short distance down the stream,
so as to permit the departing teams, going in that direction, to pass
safely over,--and, lastly, the bringing out, the placing on his bed of
straw in the bottom of a wagon, and the moving off of the caged lion, with
his cavalcade of guards before and behind,--the fiercely exultant hurrahing
of the execrating crowd, as he disappeared up the road to the west,
together with the crowning, extra loud and triumphant _kuk-kuk-ke-o-ho!_ of
Comical Codman, who had mounted a tall stump for the purpose, and made the
preliminary declaration that, if he was _ever_ to have another crow, it
should be now, on seeing the Devil's unaccountable and first cousin, to say
the least, in relationship, so handsomely cornered, and, at last so
securely put in limbo,--these, all these combined to form a scene as
stirring to the view, as it was replete with moral picturesque to the mind.
But we must content ourself with this meagre outline; another and a
different, quickly succeeding scene in the shifting panorama, now demands
our attention.
Among the crowd who had arranged themselves in rows, to witness the
departure of the court officials and the prisoner, were the two now
inseparable friends, Mrs. Elwood and Fluella; who, on turning from the
spectacle, had strolled, arm-in-arm, to a green, shaded grass-plot at the
farther end of the tavern building, and were now, with pensive but
interested looks, bending over the garden fence, and inspecting a small
parterre of budding flowers, which female taste had, even in a place so
lately redeemed from the forest as this, found means to introduce. They
were lingering here, while others were departing, for the arrival of
expected friends, though evidently not conscious of their very near
approach. But even then, as they stood listlessly gazing over upon the mute
objects of their interest, those friends were coming across the bridge, in
the singularly contrasted forms of an aged man, walking without any staff,
and with a firm elastic tread, and quite a youngerly one, walking
_with_ a cane, and with careful steps and a restrained gait, betokening
some lingering soreness of body or limb. On reaching the nearest part of
the tavern-yard, the young man gazed eagerly round among the still numerous
crowd, when, his eye falling on those of whom he seemed to be in search, he
turned to his companion and said:
"There they are, Chief, I will go forward and take them by surprise."
The next moment he was standing closely behind the unconscious objects of
his attention; when, with a smiling lip but silent tongue, he gently laid a
hand on a shoulder of each.
"Claud!" burst from the lips of the surprised and reddening maiden, the
first to turn to the welcome intruder.
"Claud! Claud!" exclaimed the agitated matron, as she also turned, in
grateful surprise, to greet, for the first time since his return, her
heart's idol. "My son! my son!" she continued, with gathering emotion,
"are you indeed restored alive to my arms, and, but for you, my now
doubly desolate home? Thank Heaven! O thank Heaven! for the happy, happy
restoration!"
"That is right, dear mother!" at length responded the visibly touched young
man, gently disengaging himself from the long maternal embrace; "that is
all right. But," he added, turning to the maiden, whose sympathetic tears
were coursing down her fair cheeks, "if you would thank any _earthly_
being for the preservation of my life, it should be this good and lovely
girl at your side."
"I know it," said the mother, after a thoughtful pause, "I know it; and,
Claud, I would that she were _indeed_ my daughter."
There was an embarrassing pause. But the embarrassment was not perceived
and felt by these two young persons alone. Another, unknown to them, had
silently witnessed the whole interview from an open, loosely-curtained
window of the chamber above; and perceived, and felt, and appreciated, all
that had transpired, in word and look, no less keenly than the young
couple, whose beating hearts, only, were measuring the moments of their
silent perplexity. That other was Gaut Gurley's lovely and luckless but
strong-hearted daughter. Having instinctively read her father's guilt, she
had come to his trial with a sinking heart; shut herself up alone in this
small chamber; so arranged the screening curtains that she could sit by the
open window unseen, and kept her post through that long night of her silent
woe, hearing all that was said by the crowd below, and, through their
comments, becoming apprised of all that was going on in the court-room, in
the order it transpired. She had known of Fluella's arrival,--her perilous
passage over the river,--of the report she then made to the hunter of her
discoveries,--of her bringing back the wounded Claud in safety,--of the
dastardly attempt of the prisoner to take that heroic girl's life,--of his
sentence, and, finally, of his departure for prison, amidst the execrations
of a justly indignant people. She had known all this, and felt it, to the
inmost core of her rent heart, with the twofold anguish of a broken-hearted
lover and a fate-smitten daughter. She had wrestled terribly with her own
heart, and she had conquered. She had determined her destiny; and now, on
witnessing the last part of the tender scene enacting under her window, she
suddenly formed the high resolve of crowning her self-immolation by a
public sacrifice.
Accordingly she hastily rose from her seat, and, without thought or care of
toilet, descended rapidly to the yard, and, with hurrying step and looks
indicative of settled purpose, moved directly towards the deeply surprised
actors in the little scene, of which she had thus been made the involuntary
witness.
"No ceremony!" she said, in tones of unnatural calmness, with a forbidding
gesture to Claud, who, while Fluella was instinctively shrinking to the
side of the more unmoved but still evidently disturbed Mrs. Elwood, had
advanced a step for a respectful greeting. "No ceremony--it is needless;
and no fears, fair girl, and anxious mother--they are without cause. I come
not to mar, but to make, happiness. Claud Elwood, my heart once opened and
turned to you, as the sunflower to its god; and our paths of love met, and,
for a while, ran on pleasantly together as one. But, even then, something
whispered me they would soon again diverge, and lead off to separate
destinies. The boded divergence, as I feared, began with the fatal family
feud of last winter, and has now resulted, as I still more feared, in
plunging us, respectively, in degradation and sorrow, and also in placing
our destinies as wide as the poles asunder. Claud, Claud Elwood,--can you
love this beautiful girl at your side? You speak not. I _know_ that you
can. I relinquish, then, whatever I may have possessed of your heart, to
her, if _she_ wills. And why should she not? Why reject one whose life she
would peril her own to save? She will not. Be you two, then, one; and may
all the earthly happiness _I_ once dreamed of, with none of the bitter
alloy it has been my lot to experience, be henceforth yours. You will know
me no more. With to-morrow's sun, I travel to a distant cloister, where the
world, with its tantalizing loves and dazzling ambitions, will be nothing
more to me forever. Farewell, Claud! farewell, gentle, heroic maiden!
farewell, afflicted, happy mother! If the prayers of Avis Gurley have
virtue, their first incense shall rise for the healing of all the
heart-wounds one of her family has inflicted."
As the fair speaker ceased, and turned away from this doubtless unspeakably
painful performance of what she deemed her last worldly duty, as well as an
acceptable opening act in the life of penance to which she had resolved now
to devote herself, an audible murmur of applause ran through the throng,
who, in spite of their wish not to appear intrusive, had paused at a little
distance, to listen to and witness the unexpected and singular scene. Among
the voices which had been thus more distinctly raised was that of a
stranger, who, having arrived a few minutes before, given his horse to the
waiter, shook hands with the hunter and the chief, to whom he appeared well
known, had joined the crowd to see what was going on, and who had been
particularly emphatic in the open expression of his admiration. The
remembered tones of his voice, though attracting no attention from others,
instantly reached the quick ears of one of the more silent actors of the
little scene we have been describing. She threw a quick, eager glance
around her; and, having soon singled out from the now scattering crowd, the
person of whom her sparkling eye seemed in search, she flew forward towards
him, with the joyful cry:
"My father! my white father! I am glad, O, so glad you have come!" and she
eagerly grasped his outstretched hand, shook it, kissed him, and, being now
relieved from the embarrassment she had keenly felt in the position in
which she had just been so unexpectedly placed, appeared to be all joy and
animation.
"Come, come, Fluella, don't shake my arm off, nor bother me now with
questions," laughingly said the gentleman, thus affectionately beset, as he
pulled the joyous girl along towards the spot where the wondering Mrs.
Elwood and her son were standing. "You must not quite monopolize me; here
are others who may wish to see me."
"Arthur!" exclaimed Mrs. Elwood, with a look of astonishment, after once or
twice parting her lips to speak, and then pausing, as if in doubt, as the
other was coming up with his face too much averted to be fairly seen by
her; "it is--it is--Arthur Elwood!"
"Yes, you are right, sister Alice," responded the hard-visaged little man
thus addressed, extending his hand. "It is the same odd stick of an old
bachelor that he always was. But who is this?" he added, with an
inclination of the head towards Claud. "Your son, I suppose?"
The formal introduction to each other of the (till then) personally
unacquainted uncle and nephew; the full developing to the astonished mother
and son of the fact, already inferred from what they had just witnessed,
that this, their eccentric kinsman, was no other than the foster-father of
Fluella,--that he was the owner of large tracts of the most valuable wild
lands around these lakes, the oversight of which, together with the
unexpected tutelary care of the Elwood family since their removal to the
settlement, he had intrusted to the prudent and faithful Phillips,--and,
finally, the melancholy mingling of sorrows for the untimely death of the
fated brother, husband, and father of these deeply-sympathizing
co-relatives, now, like chasing lights and shadows from alternating
sunshine and cloud on a landscape, followed in rapid succession, in
unfolding to the mournfully happy circle their mutual positions and bonds
of common interest.
"Evil has its antidotes," remarked Arthur Elwood, as the conversation on
these subjects began to flag and give room for other thoughts growing out
of the association; "evil has its antidotes, and sorrow its alleviating
joys. And especially shall we realize this, if the suggestions of that
self-sacrificing girl, who has just addressed you so feelingly, be now
followed. What say you, Claud?"
"They will be," promptly responded the young man, at once comprehending all
which the significant question involved; "they will be, on my part, uncle
Arthur, joyfully,--proudly."
"And you, Fluella?" persisted the saucy querist, turning to the blushing
girl.
"He has not asked me yet," she quickly replied, with a look in which maiden
pride, archness, and unuttered happiness, were charmingly blended. "If he
should, and _you_ should command me"--
"Command? _command_! Now, that is a good one, Fluella," returned the
laughing foster-father. "Well, well, a woman will be a woman still, any way
you can fix it. All right, however, I presume. But, chief," he added,
turning to the natural father, who stood with the hunter a little in the
background, "what has been going on here cannot have escaped your keen
observation; and you ought to have a voice in this matter. What do
_you_ say?"
"The chief," replied the other, with his usual dignity, "the chief has had
one staff, one light of his lodge; he will now have two. Wenongonet is
content."
"It is settled, then," rejoined the former, whose usually passionless
countenance was now beaming with pleasure; "all right, all round. Now,
sister Alice, let us all adjourn to your house, where you and Fluella, from
some of those splendid lake trout which I and Mr. Phillips, who, as well as
the chief, must be of the party, will first go out and catch for you,--you
and Fluella, I say, must cook us up a nice family dinner, over which we
will discuss matters at large, and have a good time generally."
In a few minutes more the happy group were on their way to the Elwood
cottage.
The principal interest of our story is at an end; and with it, also, the
story itself should speedily terminate. A few words more, however, seem
necessary, to anticipate the inquiries which will very naturally arise in
the mind of the reader, respecting what might be expected soon to follow
the _eclaircissement_ of the few last pages; and, accordingly, as far as
can be done without marring the unity of time, we will proceed, briefly, to
answer the inquiries thus arising.
The body of the fated Mark Elwood, perforated through the breast by the
bullet of his cold-blooded murderer, having broken from the sinking weights
attached to it, and risen to the surface of the lake, was found in about a
fortnight, brought home, and buried on his farm.
Not far from the same time the faithful hunter received, from the hands of
a gentleman passing through the settlement, a deed of gift of three hundred
acres of valuable timber-land, adjoining his own little patch of a lot, all
duly drawn, signed, and executed by Arthur Elwood; who, after a pleasant
sojourn of a week at the Elwood cottage, apprising its inmates of what he
had in store for them, in the line of property, had departed for his home,
a happier man than he had been, since, for secret griefs, he had dissolved
partnership with his brother Mark, and left the little interior village
where the pair first made their humble beginning in life.
Codman, the trapper, continued to trap it still, and, as all the settlers
within a circuit of many miles around them were often unmistakably made
aware, to crow as usual on all extra occasions.
Tomah, the college-learned Indian, immediately left, with the escort of the
prisoner, and, kept away by the force of some associations connected with
the settlement as disagreeable to him as they were conjecturable to others,
was never again seen in the settlement; against which, on leaving, he
seemed to have kicked off the dust of his feet behind him.
Carvil, the cultivated amateur hunter, had also immediately departed, with
the court party, on his way to his pleasant home in the Green Mountains;
not wholly to relinquish, however, his yearly sojourns in the forests, to
regain health impaired for the want of a more full supply of his coveted,
life-giving oxygen.
And, lastly, Gaut Gurley, whose infernal scheming and revolting atrocities
have been so inseparably interwoven with the main incidents of our story,
broke jail, on the night preceding the day set for his final trial, by
digging through the thick stone wall of his prison, with implements
evidently furnished from without, leaving bloody traces of his difficult
egress through the hardly sufficient hole he had effected for the purpose;
and, though instant search was everywhere made for him, he was not, to the
sad disappointment of the thousands intending to be in at the hanging,
anywhere to be found or heard of in the country. And the mystery of his
retreat, and the still unexplained mystery of his strange and ruinous
influence over the man whom he at last so flagitiously murdered, were not
cleared up until years afterwards.
SEQUEL.
It was a terrible storm. The wind, with all the awful accompaniments of
rain, hail, rattling thunders, and fiercely glaring lightnings, had burst
down upon the liquid plains of the startled deep, in all the fury of a
tropical tornado. The black heavens were in terrific commotion above; and
the smitten and resilient waters, as if to escape the impending wrath of
the aroused sister elements, were fleeing in galloping mountains athwart
the surface of the boiling ocean, beneath.
Could aught human, or aught of human construction, be here, now, and
survive? It would seem an utter impossibility; and yet it was so. Amidst
all this deafening din of battling elements, that were filling the heavens
with their uproar and lashing the darkened ocean into wild fury and
commotion, a staunch-built West India merchant-ship was seen, now madly
plunging into the troughs of the sea, and now quivering like a feather on
the towering waves, or scudding through the flying spray with fearful
velocity before the howling blast.
On her flush deck, and lashed to the helm, with the breaking waves dashing
around his feet, and the water dripping from the close cap and
tightly-buttoned pea-jacket in which he was garbed, stood her gallant
master, in the performance of a duty which he, true to his responsibility,
would intrust to no other, in such an hour as this,--that of guiding his
storm-tossed bark among the frightful billows that were threatening every
instant, to engulf her. Thus swiftly onward drove the seemingly devoted
ship, strained, shivering, and groaning beneath the terrible power of the
gale, like an over-ridden steed, as she dashed, yet unharmed, through the
mist and spray and constantly-breaking white caps of the wildly-rolling
deep; thus onward sped she, for the full space of two hours, when the wind
gradually lulled, and with it the deafening uproar subsided. Presently a
young, well-dressed gentleman made his appearance on deck, amidships, and,
having noted a while the now evident subsidence of the tempest, slowly and
carefully, from one grasped rope to another, made his way to the side of
the captain, at the wheel.
"A frightful blow, Mr. Elwood," said the latter; "for the twenty years I
have been a seaman, I have never seen the like."
"It certainly has exceeded all my conceptions of a sea-storm," said the
other. "But do you know where we are, and where driving at this tremendous
speed?"
"Yes, I think I do, both. When we were struck by the gale, which I saw was
going to be a terrible norther, and saw it, too, very luckily, at a
distance that enabled me to become well prepared for it, look at my
reckoning, and make all my calculations,--when we were struck, we were
three hundred and fifty miles out of Havana, north'ard, and about forty
from the American coast. I at once put the ship before the wind, and set
her course southeast, which, being perfectly familiar with these seas, I
knew would give her a safe run, and, in about sixty miles, carry her by the
southern point of the Little Bahama Bank, where, rounding this great
breakwater against northers, we should be in a comparatively smooth sea,
that would admit of either laying to or anchoring. It is now over two hours
since we started on this fearful race, which has kept my heart in my mouth
the whole time; and I am expecting, every minute, to get sight of that
rocky headland."
"But that," rejoined Elwood (for the gentleman was no other than Claud
Elwood, as the reader has doubtless already inferred), "that will bring us,
according to the late rumor, into one of the principal haunts of the
pirates, will it not?"
"Yes, partly, perhaps," replied the captain; "but I hear that Commodore
Porter has arrived, with the American squadron, in these seas, to break up
these pests, and I presume _has_ done it, or frightened them away, so that
we sha'n't be molested. At any rate, I saw no safer course to outlive such
a tempest. You are the owner of ship and cargo, to be sure; but you put on
me the responsibility of her safety."
"Certainly," rejoined the other, "for my guidance would be a poor one; and,
instead of any disposition to criticise your course, Captain Golding, I
feel but too grateful, with the life of a beloved wife at stake, to say
nothing of my own, and so much property, that your skill has enabled us to
outride the storm--now nearly over, I think--so unexpectedly well. But what
is that, a little to the left of the ship's course, in the distance ahead?"
"Ah, that is it!" cheerily exclaimed the captain, casting an eager look in
the indicated direction. "Why, how like a race-horse the ship must be
driving ahead! I looked not ten minutes ago, and nothing was to be seen;
and now there is the headland, in full view, but two or three leagues
distant! And stay,--what is that dark object around and a little beyond the
point? A ship? Yes, it grows distinct now,--a large, black ship. That, sir,
is an American frigate. Hurra to you, Elwood! We will now soon be safe, and
in safe company."
It was about sunset. The merchantman, having passed the protecting
promontory, and swept around the tall ship of war, had gained an offing,
about a half mile beyond, under the lee of a thickly-wooded, long, narrow
island; and was now lying snugly at anchor, riding out the heavy
ground-swell occasioned by the abated storm; while all on board,
unsuspicious of molestation, were making preparations to turn in for the
night.
"A sail to the leeward!" shouted a sailor, just sent aloft to make some
alteration in the rigging.
The word was passed below; and the captain, mates, and Elwood, were
instantly on deck, and on the lookout. They at once descried a large black
schooner, creeping out from behind the farther end of the island against
which they were anchored, about a mile distant, and tacking and beating her
way towards them. She carried no colors by which her character could be
determined; but the very absence of all such insignia, together with the
sinister appearance of her long, low sides, which exhibited the aspect of
masked port-holes, and also the peculiar stir of her evidently large and
strange-looking crew, at once marked her as an object of suspicion.
"Elwood, your fears were prophetic," said the captain, lowering his glass
from a long, intent observation. "That craft is a pirate, with scarce a
shadow of doubt. But don't the mad creature see the frigate, and the
frigate her?"
With this, they all turned towards the ship of war; but she was no longer
visible. A narrow vein of land fog, put in motion by some local current in
shore, had been wafted out on to the water, and completely enshrouded her
from their view.
"I see it all," exclaimed Elwood. "That pirate has been lying, all the
afternoon, concealed behind this island; and his spies, sent into the woods
on the island, and to this end of it, probably, saw both our ship and the
frigate take their positions, and this intervening fog coming on, and
reported all to their master; who at once conceived the bold design which
he has now started out to execute,--that of snatching us, as its prize,
from under the very guns of the frigate!"
A brief, earnest consultation was then held; when, knowing the uselessness
of trying to signalize the frigate, they first thought to weigh anchor and
try to escape to her protection; but a little reflection told them the
enemy would be down upon them before this could be effected, and they would
be taken, unprepared for defence. The only other alternative left them was,
therefore, quickly adopted; and, in pursuance, the second mate and two
seamen were lowered in the life-boat, with orders to keep the ship between
themselves and the schooner till they got into the screening fog, and then
make their way, with all speed, to the frigate, to invoke her aid and
protection; while all the rest should arm themselves with the muskets,
swords, and pistols on board, and, if possible, hold the enemy at bay till
succor arrived. And scarcely had these hasty preparations been made, before
the piratical schooner, which had made a wide tack outward to catch the
wind, came swiftly sweeping round to their side, like a towering falcon on
his prey. But, by some miscalculation of her helmsman, she went twenty
yards wide of them--not, however, without betraying the full extent of her
bloody purposes; for as, under the impulse of a speed she found herself
unable instantly to check, she swept by on the long, rolling billows, a
score or two of desperate ruffians, headed by their burly and still more
fierce-looking captain, stood on her deck, armed to the teeth, and holding
their hooks and hawsers, ready to grapple and board their intended prey.
But, still forbearing to unmask their batteries or fire a gun, lest they
should thus bring down the frigate upon them, her grim and silent crew
sprang to their posts, to tack ship and come round again, with the
narrowest sweep, to repair their former mischance. And, with surprising
quickness, their well-worked craft was again, and this time with no
uncertain guidance, shooting alongside of the devoted merchantman. Still
the crew of the latter quailed not; but, well knowing there was no longer
any hope of escaping a struggle in which death or victory were the only
alternatives, stood, with knitted brows and fire-arms cocked and levelled,
silently awaiting the onset. It came. With the shock of the partial
collision as the assailing craft raked along the sides of their ship, and
the sudden jerk as she was brought up by the quickly-thrown grapples, the
pirate captain, with a fierce shout of defiance, cleared, at a single
bound, the intervening rails, and landed, with brandished sword, upon their
fore-deck. A dozen more, with a wild yell, were in the act of following,
when they were met by a full volley from the guns of the defenders, poured
into their very faces. There was a pause,--a lurch,--a crack of breaking
fixtures; and the next moment the schooner, torn away from her fastenings
by the force of a monstrous upheaving wave, and thrown around at right
angles to the unharmed prey so nearly within her clutches, was seen rolling
and reeling on the top of a billow, fifty yards distant. At that instant,
twenty jets of blinding flame fiercely burst from the edge of the
fog-cloud, almost within pistol-shot to the windward, and, with the
startling flash, rent sky and ocean leaped as with the concussion of a
closely-breaking volley of linked thunder-peals. There was another and
still more awful pause; when, through the cloud of sulphurous smoke that
was rolling over them, the astounded defenders heard the gurgling rush, as
of waters breaking into newly opened chasms, in the direction of the enemy;
and they comprehended all. The frigate, unperceived by the eager pirates,
had dropped down, rounded to, and sent a whole broadside directly into the
uprolled hull of the devoted craft, which had been reduced to a sinking
wreck by that one tremendously heavy discharge of terrible missiles. Within
two minutes the lifting smoke disclosed her, reeling and lurching for the
final plunge. Within one more, she rose upright, like some mortally-smitten
giant, quivered an instant, and, with all her grim and hideously-screeching
crew, went down, stern foremost, amid the parting waves of the boiling
deep.
These startling scenes had transpired so rapidly that the amazed crew of
the merchantman had taken no thought of the pirate captain whom they had
seen leaping on their deck; but they now turned to look for him, and,
whether dead or alive, to take charge of him, to crown the fortunate result
of this fearful encounter. There he stood at bay, with back turned to the
foremast, facing his virtual captors, with a brandished sword in one hand
and a pistol in the other, as if daring them to approach or fire on him.
But they were spared the necessity of attempting either. A boat's crew of
armed men from the frigate were already mounting the deck, to claim whoever
of the pirates they found alive, as their trophies. The formidable
desperado was pointed out to them; when, firing a volley over his head, to
confuse without killing him, they rushed forward in the smoke, disarmed,
bound, and dragged him along, to pass him down to their boat. As he was
being urged across the deck, his eyes met those of Elwood. The recognition
was mutual. It was Gaut Gurley!
It was morning, and the bright sun was looking down upon an ocean as calm
and peaceful as if its passive bosom had never been disturbed by the
ensanguined tumults of warring men, or the commotions of battling elements.
A youthful couple were standing by the rail, on the deck of the still
anchored merchantman, and glancing up admiringly at the towering masts of
the ship-of-war, which had also anchored for the night on the very spot
from which she had dealt such destruction to the pirates, whose awful fate
and the connected circumstances had been with them the topic of
conversation.
"This has been such a fearful ordeal to you, dear Fluella," said the young
man, smilingly, "that I shall probably never be able again to induce you to
leave home to cross the ocean, either for health or pleasure, shall I?"
"For pleasure, no, my dear husband," affectionately responded the other;
"no, with my happy New England home, never, for pleasure, Claud."
"But this was for _health_," rejoined Elwood. "I have never told you how
much I was concerned about you last summer, or that your physician warned
me, as cold weather approached, he could not answer for your life through
another winter at the North. It was this only that led me to urge you to
accompany me to Cuba, to remain there till I came back for you in the
spring, as I have now done. And, to say nothing of the gains which my two
trips will add to the estate of which I am heir in expectation,--or rather,
as my good uncle will have it, in possession with him,--to say nothing of
this, I shall always be thankful for your coming, for it has so evidently
restored you, I had almost said, to more of health and beauty than I have
seen you exhibiting for the whole two and a half happy years of our married
life."
"Thank you, Claud, for the beautiful part of it," said the happy wife,
snapping her handkerchief in his face, with an air of mock resentment; "but
I am thinking of home. When shall we reach there?"
"Well, let us calculate," replied the husband, beginning to catch the
affectionate animation of the other: "this is the 22d of April; and I think
I can promise you the enjoyment of a May-day in New England."
"I hold you to that, sir," playfully rejoined the wife, "for I wish to be
preparing for our summer residence at your cottage on my native lakes. My
illness deprived me of that pleasure last summer, you know, husband mine."
"Yes," said he, with kindling enthusiasm, "we will go, Fluella. I want to
see the good old chief; I want to enjoy the visit I have promised me from
my friend Carvil; I want to hear Phillips discourse on woodcraft, and
Chanticleer Codman wake the echoes of the lakes by his marvellous crowing.
Yes, yes, we will go, and make uncle and mother go with us, this time."
"Uncle and mother!" cried Fluella, laughingly; "how odd that is getting to
sound, Suppose I call your mother aunt? Have they not now been married long
enough to be both entitled to the more endearing names of father and
mother? and are they not happy enough and good enough to merit the dearest
names?"
"Yes," answered Elwood, "I will correct the habit, if you really wish it.
Yes, yes; the once-styled crusty old bachelor, Arthur Elwood, and my
mother, are indeed a happy couple. Did you ever know a happier?"
"Yes, one," replied the hesitating, blushing wife, drawing down her
husband's head, and slyly imprinting a kiss on his cheek.
The conversation between the happy pair was here interrupted by the
appearance of a boat putting off from the frigate, under the charge of a
midshipman; who, having come on board and inquired out Elwood, now
approached and presented him a letter, saying, as he departed, it was from
the pirate prisoner, and would doubtless require no answer.
The greatly surprised young man tore open the letter, and, in company with
his wife, read, with mingled emotions of pain and indignation, the
following singular but characteristic compound of malicious vaunt and
shameless confession:
"To CLAUD ELWOOD:--My career is ended, at last. Well, I have the
satisfaction of knowing that I have been nobody's fool nor nobody's tool.
Early perceiving that nine out of ten were only the stupid instruments of
the tenth man, the world over, I resolved to go into the system, and did,
and improved on it so as to make _nineteen_ out of _twenty_ tools to
_me_,--that is all. I have no great fault to find with men generally,
though I always despised the whole herd; for I knew that, if they used me
well, it was only because they dared not do otherwise. I don't write this,
however, to preach upon that, but to let you know another thing, to chew
upon.
"You call me a murderer; and I want to tell you that _you_ are the _son_ of
a murderer, and therefore stand on a par with my family, even at that. Your
father, when we used to operate together in smuggling, being once hard
chased, on an out-of-the-way road, by one of the custom-house crew, knocked
him down with a club, and finished with the blow, to save a thousand
dollars' worth of silk. But I sacredly kept his secret; yes, even to this
day, besides making one good fortune for him, and being on the point of
making him another. And yet he betrayed and turned against me. Yes, in that
affair about the missing peltries, he betrayed me, out and out, and spoilt
every thing. That was his unpardonable sin, with me. I resolved he should
die for it; and he _did_. I didn't want to kill you, but couldn't suffer
you to become a witness. No, I never had any thing against you, except for
allowing matters to take the turn that drove my daughter to anticipate you
in breaking off the match. But it was just as well, as it turned out. Avis,
in the position of _lady abbess_ of a convent in one of your eastern
cities, which it is settled she will have, will stand quite as high, I
guess, as in the position of lady Elwood.
"I have done, now, except to ask one favor,--the only one I will ever ask
of _any_ man,--and that is, that you won't publish my name, and couple it
with the unlucky miss-go of last night; so that my wife and daughter, who
know I am in this region, but not my business, may never learn that the
captain of the _Black Rover_ and I are one. As my brave boys are all gone
down, and as _I_ shall have no trial to bring it out, it rests with you to
say whether it is ever to be known or not; for, as I have said, I have no
notion of being either tried or hung, any more than I had at the
North. GAUT."
On finishing this singular and remorseless missive, with its strange,
painful, but as he feared too true disclosure of the secret of that fatal
influence which had proved the ruin and final destruction of his father,
Claud Elwood was too much troubled and overcome to utter a word of comment;
and, with his pained and shuddering wife, he stood mute and thoughtful,
until aroused by the stir on board, in preparations for weighing anchor,
and the cheering announcement of the captain that a favoring breeze was
springing up, and that within twenty minutes they would be, under the
fairest of auspices, on their rejoicing way to their own beloved New
England.
But the cheering thought was not to be enjoyed without the drawback of
being compelled to witness one more and a concluding horror.
As Elwood and his beautiful companion were on the point of retiring from
deck, their attention was suddenly arrested by a light, crashing sound,
high up the tall side of the frigate. They looked, and caught sight of
broken pieces of board or panelling flying out, as if beat or kicked from
what appeared to have been a closed port-hole. Presently the body of a man,
whom they at once recognized, was protruded through the ample aperture he
had evidently thus effected, till he brought himself to a balance on the
outer edge. Then came the sharp cry from some one of the frigate's
officers:
"Look out, there, for the pirate prisoner!"
There was at once a lively stir on board, but too late. The next moment the
heavily-manacled object of the alarm descended, like a swiftly-falling
weight, to the water; and, with a dull plunge, the recoiling waves rolled
back, forever closing over the _traitor_, the _robber_, the _murderer_, and
the _pirate_, GAUT GURLEY!