A REVELATION.
The fleetest railway speed would have seemed slow to me as we
hastened towards the scene of last night's outrage. It was soon
reached, and as we hurried down the avenue of cabbage-trees we became
sensible that the odour of burned wood, canes, and bamboo,
predominated over all the fragrance of the herbs and flowers with
which the morning air was laden. An exclamation of mingled rage and
sorrow escaped me on beholding the site of the once pretty cottage or
villa.
The verandah and porch, the wooden columns and cane trellis-work of
which had been covered by luxuriant masses of lemon-water flowers and
the ever blooming roses of Provence, had all disappeared; so had the
white wooden walls and broad, green Venetian blinds. A few blackened
stumps that stood among heaps of mouldering cinders were all that
remained of the home of poor Eulalie.
And where was she?
The garden and avenue were strewn by broken pictures, music, volumes
of Marivaux, Racine, Molière and Madame de Genlis, thrown out by the
negro servants, a few of whom sat near the smoking ruin, crouching on
their hams, and regarding us with such fear and doubt that some time
elapsed before we could get any explanation from them.
At last Lieutenant Haystone contrived to glean from Quashi the
Coromantee, who seemed less terrified than the rest, that they had
been startled at nightfall by the shriek of a woman and the crashing
of glass. On this they all trembled very much, believing it the
white devil of the buccra men, who always comes when there is
thunder, and the heavy wind that bends and uproots the big palms;
but, gathering courage, after a time they hastened to the room of
their mistress. It was empty! her bed was in disorder--the furniture
overthrown--a Venetian window dashed to pieces, and portions of her
night-dress adhering to the fragments evinced that she had been
roughly dragged through it, and across the garden, footsteps being
discernible on the trampled flower-beds. These led them towards the
avenue, from searching which the sable domestics were recalled by an
alarm of fire, and on returning found the whole villa in flames. It
burned rapidly. Quashi could tell us no more--an Obeah nigger might,
but there was no Obeah at Boscobelle just now.
Previous to our arrival, I related to Haystone and my comrades some
of the circumstances connected with my visits to the villa, dwelling
particularly on my two meetings with the supposed priest.
"You should have reported all this to head-quarters," said Haystone,
"then perhaps this outrage might have been prevented."
"True," said I sadly; "I know not what impulse led me to conceal
circumstances so full of suspicion; but 'tis useless to reproach me
now."
"Our orders are to search the woods and sugar-plantations; you will
extend from the right, and separate by files. The fallen palm on the
high road shall be our point of rendezvous in half an hour hence.
Make prisoner every suspicious-looking person----"
"But," said one of the fusiliers, "in case of resistance?"
"Give them a prick with your bayonet--we have no time to lose here.
Away, then."
We separated by twos, and while some dived at once into the long
green masses of waving sugar-canes, others into palm, orange, or
chestnut-groves, I, with the assistance of my Coromantee friend,
endeavoured to trace further the footsteps he had detected on the
flower-beds; but, alas! all vestiges of them disappeared on the
gravel of the avenue. We searched long without discovering any other
clue. My soul was heavy, and my heart sick to death. I heard my
comrades shouting and laughing as they met each other at intervals in
the bush, and envied their heedless fun as they pelted with stones or
fallen nuts the chattering monkeys which sprang from tree to tree,
and in turn mocked and jibed them, or swung by their claws and tails
from the branches.
Suddenly, the old Coromantee (some of whose former savage instincts
were here of service) detected among the long thick grass that grew
by the wayside, beyond the "cabbage-walk," traces of feet and of the
leaves being crushed, as if some one had been dragged over the ground
there, and keenly he followed this clue or trail. Here a bruised
blade of grass, there a broken twig of the wild tamarind, or a
crushed gourd-vine, served to lead him on; and from point to point he
traced them, with his gleaming eyes and his flat, red, dilated
nostrils close to the earth, as if he scented footsteps like a
Spanish blood-hound, till all clue vanished again at the deep gully
in the mangrove creek, where I had seen the piragua of the pretended
priest, guided under the luxuriant weeds and wild palm-branches to
its place of concealment.
The Coromantee pointed to the black weedy profundity of the water
below us, and was silent. The place and his action filled my mind
with vague but terrible suggestions.
I knew not what to decide upon, and stood by his side, leaning on my
musket, bewildered by grief for the mystery that overhung the fate of
Eulalie. Suddenly a shout above roused me! It was the cheerful
voice of Tom Telfer.
"Ahoy," cried he. "Hallo, Ellis,--look out--stop that fellow!"
Having descended far into the gully, I looked up, and saw a man
pursued by several of the Fusileers. He and they came plunging down
the steep and rocky side of the wooded chasm, through thick
mangroves, and a literal jungle of twisted creepers, of wild vines,
cucumbers, gourds, and ginger-roots, all flourishing in matted
masses, under a shade so dark, that the wild tamarinds kept their
leaves closed, as at night.
"Fire, Oliver, fire!" cried Tom, as the fugitive, who seemed like a
seaman, drew a pistol from his girdle and discharged it full at my
head; but I had already levelled my bayonet at him breast-high, and
in my bewilderment at the same time, discharged my musket, the bullet
of which whistled past his left ear. The two reports, as they rang
in that deep and narrow gorge, woke a thousand reverberations,
scaring from the trees the brown monkeys, the white sea-gulls who
were lured there by the solitude, and clouds of little humming-birds,
with their tiny pinions of crimson, gold, and emerald green.
Fortunately, the fugitive's bullet missed me, and before he could
cock a second pistol, I had knocked him down with my clubbed musket.
On his being collared and roughly dragged to his feet by Tom Telfer
and a few others, I found myself confronted by my old acquaintance
Mr. Richard Knuckleduster.
"We found him lurking under some broken palm-branches, a little way
up the gulley," said Tom, breathlessly; "he bolted as soon as he saw
us----"
"Ah, that looked suspicious."
"And so, Ellis, we gave chase."
"He is one of the very men we are in search of," said I; "and I know
him to be a murderer, a thief, and a deserter from the service.
Bring him to Mr. Haystone, and if he makes the slightest resistance,
bayonet him without mercy."
We soon dragged him to the highway, and at the fallen palm, found
Lieutenant Haystone seated, with his jacket unbuttoned, a cigar in
his mouth, and in his hand a large plaintain leaf, with which he was
fanning himself, as the atmosphere was now close and sultry.
"Hallo--a prisoner!" said he, starting up.
"We roused him in the gully, sir," said Telfer, as our party all came
rapidly in; "and Ellis says that he knows him well."
"Is this the case, sergeant?" asked the officer.
"It was he whom I saw in the piragua, accompanied by the Frenchman
and negro. I know him, moreover, to be a deserter, a robber, and
perhaps worse."
Knuckleduster bestowed on me a savage scowl, and then burst into a
fit of gruff and contemptuous laughter.
"Come, sirrah," said Haystone, "this insolent bearing will not better
your prospects; remember that a court-martial and the lash are before
you, so answer me in a straight-forward manner. Know you aught of
the persons who committed the outrage last night at Boscobelle?"
"Yes," replied the ruffian, grinding his fanglike teeth, "and may
every danger dog them in this world with damnation in that to
come--if so be, as the parsons say, there is another."
"A charitable wish!" said Haystone; "if this spirit animates you, we
may perhaps arrive at the truth."
"Perhaps," sneered the ruffian.
"Then who were they?"
"Well, I suppose I may as well make a clean breast of it. They were
Frenchmen from Martinique."
"And you served them?"
"Poor devils must do queer things sometimes."
"You--a deserter?" continued Haystone furiously.
"I defy you or any man to prove that I deserted," said the fellow
sullenly. "I was lying out on the foreyard-arm of the admiral's
ship, in a night when it was blowing a stiff breeze, and we were
ordered to reef topsails. I fell away to leeward and dropped into
the sea, when we were close to St. Lucia. The ship never lay-to, but
the lieutenant of the watch tossed a hen-coop over to me, and with
its aid I got ashore and was made prisoner by the Johnnie Crapauds,
as you might have been had the misfortune been yours. But I was a
pressed man, and no doubt may be marked as having run on the purser's
books. I was sent in irons to Martinique. There a French officer,
whose wife was a prisoner here, stated that he wished to set her
free, though, as I have since thought, it was to punish her, as an
enemy of the Republic and a spy of the British Government, for I had
heard she had become both."
"The Colonel de Rouvigny?" said I.
"Yes, that is his name. He promised to pay me handsomely, if I, with
a few others, would work a little schooner, _Les Droits de l'Homme_,
from St. Pierre to Barbadoes. I hoped to make my escape and
volunteered to serve him. She was a queer craft we manned; low in
the water, with raking masts, a fast sailer; painted white on one
side and black on the other, for she had been fitted out by some of
the pirates on the Spanish main. Howsoever, it seemed better to be
aboard o' her, than to work like a slave among French niggers at the
new batteries of St. Pierre. We reached Barbadoes. The schooner,
with American colours flying, came to an anchor in a lonely bight
about six miles off; but kept close in shore among the weeds and
dwarf mangroves; and then we--that is, Monsieur Rouvigny, three
negroes, and I--came off here, in a kind of punt, they call a piragua.
"Three negroes," said I; "there was but one with you---old Benoit le
Noir."
"The others were squatted under the plaintains at the mouth of the
gulley."
"Well--proceed."
"If the colonel got clear off with his pretty wife, I was to get a
hundred francs and my liberty; but I got mightily disgusted with his
French lingo--his parleyvooing and his hat-off nonsense, which we
Englishmen never like----"
"We--speak for yourself Mr. Knuckleduster," said Haystone.
"I wish to tell you all about it, just as it happened."
"How delightfully disengenuous!" said Haystone, with contempt;
"though we cannot place over-much reliance on what a scoundrel so
thorough-bred may tell, fire-away."
I was on thorns as it were, until the fellow with provoking slowness
continued his story. With all his ignorance and brutality of
disposition, he was sufficiently acute to perceive how his narrative
wrung my heart. He smiled and grimaced as he resumed, and this, in
the meantime, was his revenge on me for twice capturing him.
"For two or three days we hung about the villa, hiding in the
shrubberies and among the sugar-canes, without finding a good
opportunity for nabbing the lady, as she always kept close inside, or
if she did come out, was always attended by an old Coromantee nigger,
or by our friend the sergeant here--"
"What--by _you_, Ellis?" exclaimed Haystone, with such surprise that
he nearly dropped his cigar.
"Rascal!--you saw me then?" said I.
"Ay--morning, noon, and night. Pretty often Monsieur Rouvigny and I
have been within arm's length of you, when you and she used to sit in
the garden bower, with your arms round each other, reading books in
the French lingo, chattering like two monkeys on a cabbage-tree, or
caterwauling to the banjo--guitar I s'pose you call it; and it was as
much as I could do to keep him from pistolling you both outright,
while he swore and _sacréd_ like fury, for he is a desperate fierce
thief, that colonel. Last night, when his patience became exhausted,
and mine too for the matter o' that, he resolved to make a dash for
the prize! Mounseer knew where Madame's bedroom lay on the
ground-floor. He found her green blinds unfastened. We crept in and
found her snug in her berth asleep. I drew back the curtains, and
very pretty she looked with her black hair all braided smooth ways
round her head, under a dainty bit of nightcap--far too pretty to be
the wife of a Frenchman, say I. But now, the word was presto!
"We dragged her from bed--then she shrieked out; but I took the
bandanna from my neck, and tied it over her mouth. One of our
niggers stupidly smashed a window with his woolly head, and created
an alarm; so, to make a diversion, and enable us to get clear off,
the colonel threw the night lamp into the lady's bed, and, in a
twinkling, set the curtains, the room, and the house in a blaze! We
dragged her out of the window in her night-dress, across the flowers
and bushes, and carried her off bodily on our shoulders along the
highway, till we reached the gully, where the piragua lay moored
under the mangroves. The poor thing was silent now, and offered no
resistance, when she found _whose_ prisoner she was. My eyes! she
seemed to have a woeful terror of that man. He too, was silent, or
only _sacréd_, and twisted his thick upper lip where the hair was
shaven off, when he disguised himself as a French parson at St.
Pierre.
"We put her on board the piragua; the colonel and his three niggers
jumped in; I was about to follow, for, look you, I had not been paid
a stiver of the hundred francs, and began to fear that after this
affair the climate of Barbadoes might prove too hot for me; but what
think you the infernal treacherous frogeater did? He clubbed a
pistol and struck me down senseless among the mangroves. Then they
shoved off and pulled away to seaward to reach his schooner, which
was hull-down when I saw her this morning about daybreak, and bearing
away north-and-by-west. Here, among the mangroves I lay until you
fellows found me. This is all my story--a pretty one aint it, Master
Oliver Ellis?"
"For what purpose did the Frenchman carry off his wife in this
outrageous manner?" asked Mr. Haystone.
"To punish her for levanting from him and for becoming, as he said, a
spy."
"Punish," said I anxiously; "but how?"
"By heaving her overboard, with a cold shot at her heels, or by
marooning her on some rock--there are lots o' them among the Windward
Isles, where the bones of the marooned may lie for years, as white as
coral. I have seen them myself many times in these here Indian isles
and in others up the Gulf of Florida, where they have lain since the
days of the old Buccaneers, when Captain Kidd sailed in his frigate,
the _Vulture_--ay, damme, that I have! The colonel often spoke of
serving her so, if he found a bit of convenient rock far out at sea
with nothing on it but a coating of guano, seaweed, and barnacles,
and, mayhap, a petrel or two perching atop of it, and there leaving
her to die--for he swore she should have a terrible end--and he is
just the man to give her one. Now that I have payed out all my yarn,
hand over hand, without any rigmarole or nonsense, what do you mean
to do with me?"
"Send you on board the ship of Admiral Jervis," said Haystone, who
ordered him to be secured by a musket-sling.
We marched hastily back to the sea-beach, and delivered up our
prisoner to a party of marines from the admiral's ship.
After the dreadful story I had heard, how terrible were the thoughts
that crowded on me!
I pictured in fancy poor Eulalie in the power of this merciless
Frenchman and his callous negroes, flung, pinioned, into her watery
grave, and sinking without a hand to save her--sinking to sleep, far
down amid the oozy and mysterious depths of that hot sea, where
flourish a myriad of giant plants that almost reach its surface--and
as she sank perhaps becoming, ere dead, a prey to the horrid shark.
But even these ideas were less terrible and less agonizing than the
awful thought of her perishing miserably on a lonely
rock--marooned--to die alone, unseen, unwept-for--to die of hunger
and thirst--of horror and despair!
Thus wrath and just vengeance filled my heart, as the _Adder_ squared
her yards, and the whole of that crowded and magnificent fleet sailed
out of Carlisle Bay, and bore up for Martinique.