"_And his curly hair_..."
More chops with the hoe, and clinks of the fetters.
"_His pleasing voice_..."
A heavy thump with the back of the tool at an obstinate clod, which took
several more strokes before it crumbled up; and all the time the fetters
clinked and clanked loudly. Then the singer went on with the sweet old
minor air with its childish words.
"_Did my heart ensnare_..."
_Chop! chop! clink! clink! clank_!
"_Genteel he was_..."
"But no rake like you."
"Oh, I say, Abel, mate; don't, lad, don't."
"Don't what?" said Abel Dell, resting upon his hoe, and looking up at
big Bart Wrigley, clothed like himself, armed with a hoe, and also
decorated with fetters, as he stood wiping the perspiration from his
forehead.
"Don't sing that there old song. It do make me feel so unked."
"Unked, Bart! Well, what if it does? These are unked days."
"Ay; but each time you sings that I seem to see the rocks along by the
shore at home, with the ivy hanging down, and the sheep feeding, and the
sea rolling in, and the blue sky, with gulls a-flying; and it makes me
feel like a boy again, and, big as I am, as if I should cry."
"Always were like a big boy, Bart. Hoe away, lad; the overseer's
looking."
Bart went on chopping weeds, diligently following his friend's example,
as a sour-looking, yellow-faced man came by, in company with a soldier
loosely shouldering his musket. But they passed by without speaking,
and Abel continued--
"There's sea here, and blue sky and sunshine."
"Ay," said Bart; "there's sunshine hot enough to fry a mack'rel. Place
is right enough if you was free; but it ar'n't home, Abel, it ar'n't
home."
"Home! no," said the young man, savagely. "But we have no home. She
spoiled that."
There was an interval of weed-chopping and clod-breaking, the young
men's chains clanking loudly as they worked now so energetically that
the overseer noted their proceedings, and pointed them out as examples
to an idle hand.
"Ah! you're a hard 'un, Abel," remarked Bart, after a time.
"Yes; and you're a soft 'un, Bart. She could always turn you round her
little finger."
"Ay, bless her! and she didn't tell on us."
"Yes, she did," said Abel, sourly; and he turned his back upon his
companion, and toiled away to hide the working of his face.
The sun shone down as hotly as it can shine in the West Indies, and the
coarse shirts the young men wore showed patches of moisture where the
perspiration came through, but they worked on, for the labour deadened
the misery in their breasts.
And yet it was a very paradise, as far as nature was concerned. Man had
spoiled it as far as he could, his cultivation being but a poor
recompense for turning so lovely a spot into a plantation, worked by
convicts--by men who fouled the ambient air each moment they opened
their lips; while from time to time the earth was stained with blood.
In the distance shone the sea, and between the plantation and the silver
coral sands lay patches of virgin forest, where the richest and most
luxuriant of tropic growth revelled in the heat and moisture, while in
the sunny patches brilliant flowers blossomed. Then came wild tangle,
cane-brake, and in one place, where a creek indented the land,
weird-looking mangroves spread their leafage over their muddy scaffolds
of aerial roots.
"How long have we been here, mate?" said Bart, after a pause.
"Dunno," replied Abel, fiercely.
Here he began chopping more vigorously.
"How long will they keep us in this here place?" said Bart, after
another interval, and he looked from the beautiful shore at the bottom
of the slope on which they worked to the cluster of stone and wood-built
buildings, which formed the prison and the station farm, with factory
and mill, all worked by convict labour, while those in the neighbourhood
were managed by blacks.
Abel did not answer, only scowled fiercely; and Bart sighed, and
repeated his question.
"Till we die!" said Abel, savagely; "same as we've seen other fellows
die--of fever, and hard work, and the lash. Curse the captain!
Curse--"
Bart clapped one hand over his companion's lips, and he held the other
behind his head, dropping his hoe to leave full liberty to act.
"I never quarrels with you, Abel, lad," he said, shortly; "but if you
says words again that poor gell, I'm going to fight--and that won't do.
Is it easy?"
Abel seemed disposed to struggle; but he gave in, nodded his head, and
Bart loosed him and picked up his hoe, just as the overseer, who had
come softly up behind, brought down the whip he carried with stinging
violence across the shoulders of first one and then the other.
The young men sprang round savagely; but there was a sentry close
behind, musket-armed and with bayonet fixed, and they knew that fifty
soldiers were within call, and that if they struck their task-master
down and made for the jungle they would be hunted out with dogs, be shot
down like wild beasts, or die of starvation, as other unfortunates had
died before them.
There was nothing for it but to resume their labour and hoe to the
clanking of their fetters, while, after a promise of what was to follow,
in the shape of tying up to the triangles, and the cat, if they
quarrelled again, the overseer went on to see to the others of his
flock.
"It's worse than a dog's life!" said Abel, bitterly. "A dog does get
patted as well as kicked. Bart, lad, I'm sorry I got you that lash."
"Nay, lad, never mind," said Bart. "I'm sorry for you; but don't speak
hard things of Mary."
"I'll try not," said Abel, as he hoed away excitedly; "but I hope this
coffee we grow may poison those who drink it."
"What for? They can't help it," said Bart, smiling. "There, lad, take
it coolly. Some day we may make a run for it."
"And be shot!" said Abel, bitterly. "There, you're down to the end of
that row. I'll go this way. He's watching us."
Bart obeyed. He was one who always did obey; and by degrees the young
men were working right away from each other, till they were a good two
hundred yards apart.
Abel was at the end of his row first, and he stopped and turned to begin
again and go down, so as to pass Bart at about the middle of the
clearing; but Bart had another minute's chopping to do before turning.
He was close up to a dense patch of forest--one wild tangle of cane and
creeper, which literally tied the tall trees together and made the
forest impassable--when the shrieking of a kind of jay, which had been
flitting about excitedly, stopped, and was followed by the melodious
whistle of a white bird and the twittering of quite a flock of little
fellows of a gorgeous scarlet-crimson. Then the shrieking of several
parrots answering each other arose; while just above Bart's head, where
clusters of trumpet-shaped blossoms hung down from the edge of the
forest, scores of brilliantly-scaled humming-birds literally buzzed on
almost transparent wing, and then suspended themselves in mid-air as
they probed the nectaries of the flowers with their long bills.
"You're beauties, you are," said Bart, stopping to wipe his brow; "but
I'd give the hull lot on you for a sight of one good old sarcy sparrer
a-sitting on the cottage roof and saying _chisel chisel_. Ah! shall us
ever see old Devonshire again?"
The parrots hung upside-down, and the tiny humming-birds flitted here
and there, displaying, from time to time, the brilliancy of their
scale-like feathers, and Bart glanced at his fellow-convict and was
about to work back, when there came a sound from out of the dark forest
which made him stare wildly, and then the sound arose again.
Bart changed colour, and did not stop to hoe, but walked rapidly across
to Abel.
"What's the matter?" said the latter.
"Dunno, lad," said the other, rubbing his brow with his arm; "but
there's something wrong."
"What is it?"
"That's what I dunno; but just now something said quite plain, `Bart!
Bart!'"
"Nonsense! You were dreaming."
"Nay. I was wide awake as I am now, and as I turned and stared it said
it again."
"It said it?"
"Well, she said it."
"Poll parrot," said Abel, gruffly. "Go on with your work. Here's the
overseer."
The young men worked away, and their supervisor passed them, and,
apparently satisfied, continued his journey round.
"May have been a poll parrot," said Bart. "They do talk plain, Abel,
lad; but this sounded like something else."
"What else could it be?"
"Sounded like a ghost."
Abel burst into a hearty laugh--so hearty that Bart's face was slowly
overspread by a broad smile.
"Why, lud, that's better," he said, grimly. "I ar'n't seen you do that
for months. Work away."
The hint was given because of the overseer glancing in their direction,
and they now worked on together slowly, going down the row toward the
jungle, at which Bart kept on darting uneasy glances.
"Enough to make a man laugh to hear you talk of ghosts, Bart," said
Abel, after a time.
"What could it be, then?"
"Parrot some lady tamed," said Abel, shortly, as they worked on side by
side, "escaped to the woods again. Some of these birds talk just like a
Christian."
"Ay," said Bart, after a few moments' quiet thought, "I've heared 'em,
lad; but there's no poll parrot out here as knows me."
"Knows you?"
"Well, didn't I tell you as it called to me `Bart! Bart!'"
"Sounded like it," said Abel, laconically. "What does he want?"
For just then the overseer shouted, and signed to the gang-men to come
to him.
"To begin another job--log-rolling, I think," growled Bart, shouldering
his hoe.
At that moment, as Abel followed his example, there came in a low, eager
tone of voice from out of the jungle, twenty yards away--
"Bart!--Abel!--Abel!"
"Don't look," whispered Abel, who reeled as if struck, and recovered
himself to catch his companion by the arm. "All right!" he said aloud;
"we'll be here to-morrow. We must go."