I had shouted for hours, as it seemed to me, in the frail hope of
guiding some wandering Indian to my prison, until my throat went
dry, and my swollen tongue filled my mouth. The loneliness remained
unbroken. My wild voice broke against the stone roof, to fall back upon
me in fragments of wasted echoes. All this effort was unprofitable; I
was doomed. I was a missing man; my little course was to run out in
that mysterious ruin, and my bones were to be added to its antiquities.
That which tormented me more than the desire for vengeance, more even
than the fear of death, was my utter helplessness--liberty was so near
to me. In my normal state I could so easily have jumped to catch the
square hole, and so dragged myself out to the roof; but I was pinioned,
and my arms, with all their muscle that I had learnt to be proud of,
were the first part of me to die.
I sank slowly into a sleep which was not sleep, until a time came when
the pale moon lit and stabbed one shivering ray into my prison. I
writhed along the ground like some poor beast which has been shot in
the hinder part, and bathed my fevered face in that light. Anything for
the world again! My eyes were sore, my half-bandaged wounds stabbed
me, red spots spun confusedly wherever I looked. I was afraid of the
great loneliness, which suggested the more fearful silence I was about
to enter. As I sank towards oblivion I prayed for the sound of a voice,
even the growl of a beast or a bird-call, even a sad voice from the
grave.
I shook off the stupor, and called aloud once more. It was not a shout
for help, but a shout of fear. The horror of the great shadow was over
me.
The echoes had hardly settled down into the dust before my nerves,
strung to a terrible tension, thrilled and started with the shock of a
voice, and my ears caught the answering sound of a feeble cry out of
the night.
“Rupe! Boy Rupe!”
“MacCaskill,” I muttered in a delirium.
Animal-like scrapings came against the outer wall; a beating upon
the stones, a great groan, and then a mad burst of laughter. Soon an
unearthly voice began to sing the song of joy, called the National
Anthem of the English. The wild sounds made the night tumultuous:
“_Kitche milweletuk Kinwaish
Pimetesit. O Pimache!_”
How had this native singer found me? How did he know my name?
It was a bright night, and the wind was in the south. On such a night
the spirits of the dead are abroad, singing their songs of gladness. I
was about to die. I was able to hear, as I came near to join them.
“God save the Queen!” wailed the voice, but now in English. Whether
this Queen were a living personage or a tutelary spirit, I did not
know. A scream made the air start, and then the sounds made words--“Me
son Rupe! Me son!”
Now it dawned upon my failing brain that my father had come back, and
because I was not yet dead, I feared to meet him. Cry after cry pierced
the moonlight, with some weird laughter, and the sounds of an old man’s
trouble. The tumult seemed to me so great that I turned and weakly
muttered, “There must be a multitude, and they are all dead.” I tried
to turn my voice upward in the call, “Father!”
The wandering voice spoke and answered clearly:
“Comin’, Rupe. Have patience wi’ me, boy. I’ve ben a-lookin’ ev’ry
night. Ay, ay, ev’ry night a-lookin’, an’ a-watchin’, an’ a-callin’.
Ole father’s found ye.”
I could make nothing of this. My father had only been dead a short
time. There was a scuffling upon the roof, and the old spirit went on
yelling the National Hymn, and danced to his own mad music. I then
heard the angry scratching of his nails upon the roof of my prison.
“They hid the boy away here!” screamed the voice, shrill and cunning.
“I tried to stop ’em, but they wouldn’t have it. They said, ‘Git, ole
man!’ He was jest tired wi’ fightin’, was the boy. I could tell he’d
wake after a while. Rupe!”