Marian was behind in the dining-room and bedrooms with Aunt Clemmy,
helping to nurse and tend the sick and wounded as well as she could, in
the midst of so much turmoil and danger. When she and Edward had been
roused by the sudden glare of the burning cane-houses, reddening the
horizon by Orange Grove, and casting weird and fitful shadows from all
the mango-trees in front of their little tangled garden, she had been
afraid to remain behind alone at Mulberry, and had preferred facing
the maddened rioters by her husband’s side, to stopping by herself
under such circumstances among the unfamiliar black servants in her own
house. So they had ridden across hurriedly to the Dupuys’ together,
especially as Marian was no less timid on Nora’s account than on her
own; and when they reached the little garden gate that led in by the
back path, she had slipped up alone, unperceived by the mob, while
Edward went round openly to the front door and tried to appease the
angry negroes.
The shouts and yells when she first arrived had proved indeed very
frightening and distracting; but after a time, she could guess, from
the comparative silence which ensued, that Edward had succeeded in
gaining a hearing: and then she and Aunt Clemmy turned with fast
beating hearts to look after the bleeding victims, one of whom at least
they gave up from the first as quite dead beyond the reach of hope or
recovery.
Nora was naturally the first to come to. She had fainted only; and
though, in the crush and press, she had been trampled upon and very
roughly handled by the barefooted negroes, she had got off, thanks to
their shoeless condition, with little worse than a few ugly cuts and
bruises. They laid her tenderly on her own bed, and bathed her brows
over and over again with Cologne water; till, after a few minutes, she
sat up again, pale and deathly to look at, but proud and haughty and
defiant as ever, with her eyes burning very brightly, and an angry
quiver playing unchecked about her bloodless lips.
‘Is he dead?’ she asked calmly—as calmly as if it were the most
ordinary question on earth, but yet with a curious tone of suppressed
emotion, that even in that terrible moment did not wholly escape
Marian’s quick womanly observation.
‘Your father?’ Marian answered, in a low voice.—‘Dear, dear, you
mustn’t excite yourself now. You must be quite quiet, perfectly quiet.
You’re not well enough to stand any talking or excitement yet. You must
wait to hear about it all, darling, until you’re a little better.’
Nora’s lip curled a trifle as she answered almost disdainfully: ‘I’m
not going to lie here and let myself be made an invalid of, while those
murderers are out yonder still on the piazza. Let me get up and see
what has happened.—No; I didn’t mean papa, Marian; I know he’s dead;
I saw him lying hacked all to pieces outside on the sofa. I meant Mr
Noel. Have they killed him? Have they killed him? He’s a brave man.
Have the wretches killed him?’
‘We think not,’ Marian answered dubiously. ‘He’s in the next room, and
two of the servants are there taking care of him.’
Nora rose from the bed with a sudden bound, and stood, pale and white,
all trembling before them. ‘What are you stopping here wasting your
care upon me for, then?’ she asked half angrily. ‘You think not—think
not, indeed! Is this a time to be thinking and hesitating! Why are
you looking after women who go into fainting-fits, like fools, at the
wrong moment? I’m ashamed of myself, almost, for giving way visibly
before the wretches—for letting them see I was half afraid of them.
But I wasn’t afraid of them for myself, though—not a bit of it,
Marian: it was only for—for Mr Noel.’ She said it after a moment’s
brief hesitation, but without the faintest touch of girlish timidity
or ill-timed reserve. Then she swept queen-like past Marian and Aunt
Clemmy, in her white dinner dress—the same dress that she had worn when
she was Marian’s bridesmaid—and walked quickly but composedly, as if
nothing had happened, into the next bedroom.
The two negresses had already taken off Harry’s coat and waistcoat,
and laid him on the bed with his shirt front all saturated with blood,
and his forehead still bleeding violently, in spite of their unskilful
efforts to stanch it with a wet towel. When Nora entered, he was lying
there, stretched out at full length, speechless and senseless, the
blood even then oozing slowly, by intermittent gurgling throbs, from
the open gash across his right temple. There was another deeper and
even worse wound gurgling similarly upon his left elbow.
‘They should have been here,’ Nora cried; ‘Marian and Clemmy should
have been here, instead of looking after me in yonder.—Is he dead,
Nita, is he dead? Tell me!’
‘No, missy,’ the girl answered, passively handing her the soaked towel.
‘Him doan’t dead yet; but him dyin’, him dyin’. De blood comin’ out
ob him, spurt, spurt, spurt, so him can’t lib long, not anyway. Him
bledded to death already, I tinkin’, a’most.’
Nora looked at the white face, and a few tears began at last to form
slowly in her brimming eyelids. But she brushed them away quickly,
before they had time to trickle down her blanched cheek, for her proud
West Indian blood was up now, as much as the negroes’ had been a few
minutes earlier; and she twisted her handkerchief round a pocket pencil
so as to form a hasty extemporised tourniquet, which she fastened
bravely and resolutely with intuitive skill above the open wound on the
left elbow. She had no idea that the little jets in which the blood
spurted out so rhythmically were indicative of that most dangerous
wound, a severed artery; but she felt instinctively, somehow, that this
was the right thing to do, and she did it without flinching, as if she
had been used to dealing familiarly with dangerous wounds for half her
lifetime. Then she twisted the hasty instrument tightly round till the
artery was securely stopped, and the little jets ceased entirely at
each pulsation of the now feeble and weakened heart.
‘Run for the doctor, somebody!’ she cried eagerly; ‘run for the doctor,
or he’ll die outright before we can get help for him!’
But Nita and Rose, on their knees beside the wounded man, only cowered
closer to the bedside, and shook with terror as another cry rose on
a sudden from outside from the excited negroes. It was the cry they
raised when they found Delgado was really struck dead before their very
eyes by the visible and immediate judgment of the Almighty.
Nora looked down at them with profound contempt, and merely said, in
her resolute, scornful voice: ‘What! afraid even of your own people?
Why, I’m not afraid of them; I, who am a white woman, and whom they’d
murder now and hack to pieces, as soon as they’d look at me, if once
they could catch me, when their blood’s up!—Marian, Marian! you’re a
white woman; will you come with me?’
Marian trembled a little—she wasn’t upheld through that terrible
scene by the ingrained hereditary pride of a superior race before the
blind wrath of the inferior, bequeathed to Nora by her slave-owning
ancestors; but she answered with hardly a moment’s hesitation: ‘Yes,
Nora. If you wish it, I’ll go with you.’
There is something in these conflicts of race with race which raises
the women of the higher blood for the time being into something braver
and stronger than women. In England, Marian would never have dared
to go out alone in the face of such a raging tumultuous mob, even of
white people; but in Trinidad, under the influence of that terrible
excitement, she found heart to put on her hat once more, and step
forth with Nora under the profound shade of the spreading mango-trees,
now hardly lighted up at all at fitful intervals by the dying glow
from the burnt-out embers of the smoking cane-houses. They went down
groping their way by the garden path, and came out at last upon the
main bridle-road at the foot of the garden. There Marian drew back Nora
timidly with a hand placed in quick warning upon her white shoulder.
‘Stand aside, dear,’ she whispered at her ear, pulling her back hastily
within the garden gate and under the dark shadow of the big star-apple
tree. ‘They’re coming down—they’re coming down! I hear them, I hear
them! O God, O God, I shouldn’t have come away! They’ve killed Edward!
My darling, my darling! They’ve killed him—they’ve killed him!’
‘I wouldn’t stand aside for myself,’ Nora answered half aloud, her eyes
flashing proudly even in the shadowy gloom of the garden. ‘But to save
Mr Noel’s life, to save his life, I’ll stand aside if you wish, Marian.’
As they drew back into the dark shadow, even Nora trembling and
shivering a little at the tramp of so many naked feet, some of the
negroes passed close beside them outside the fence on their way down
from the piazza, where they had just been electrified into sudden
quietness by the awful sight of Louis Delgado’s dead body. They were
talking earnestly and low among themselves, not, as before, shrieking
and yelling and gesticulating wildly, but conversing half below their
breath in a solemn, mysterious, awe-struck fashion.
‘De Lard be praise for Mr Hawtorn!’ one of them said as he passed
unseen close beside them. ‘Him de black man fren’. We got nobody like
him. I no’ would hurt Mr Hawtorn, de blessed man, not for de life ob
me.’
Marian’s heart beat fast within her, but she said never a word, and
only pressed Nora’s hand, which she held convulsively within her own,
harder and tighter than ever, in her mute suspense and agony.
Presently another group passed close by, and another voice said
tremulously: ‘Louis Delgado dead—Louis Delgado dead! Mr Hawtorn is
wonderful man for true! Who’d have tought it, me brudder, who’d have
tought it?’
‘That’s Martin Luther,’ Nora cried almost aloud, unable any longer to
restrain her curiosity. ‘I know him by his voice. He wouldn’t hurt
me.—Martin, Martin! what’s that you’re saying? Has Mr Hawthorn shot
Delgado?’ As she spoke, with a fierce anticipatory triumph in her
voice, she stepped out from the shadow of the gate on to the main
bridle-path, in her white dress and with her pale face, clearly visible
under the faint moonlight.
Martin flung up his arms like one stabbed to the heart, and shouted
wildly: ‘De missy, de missy! Dem done killed her on de piazza yonder,
and her duppy comin’ now already to scare us and trouble us!’
Even in that moment of awe and alarm, Nora laughed a little laugh
of haughty contempt for the strong, big-built, hulking negro’s
superstitious terror. ‘Martin!’ she cried, darting after him quickly,
as he ran away awe-struck, and catching him by the shoulder with her
light but palpable human grasp, ‘don’t you know me? I’m no duppy. It’s
me myself, Missy Nora, calling you. Here, feel my hand; you see I’m
alive still; you see your people haven’t killed me yet, even if you’ve
killed your poor old master.—Martin, tell me, what’s this you’re all
saying about Mr Hawthorn having shot Delgado?’
Martin, shaking violently in every limb, turned round and reassured
himself slowly that it was really Nora and not her ghost that stood
bodily before him. ‘Ha, missy,’ he answered good-humouredly, showing
his great row of big white teeth, though still quaking visibly with
terror, ‘don’t you be ’fraid; we wouldn’t hurt you, not a man of us.
But it doan’t Mr Hawtorn dat shot Delgado! It God Almighty! De Lard hab
smitten him!’
‘What!’ Nora cried in surprise. ‘He fell dead! Apoplexy or something, I
suppose. The old villain! he deserved it, Martin.—And Mr Hawthorn? How
about Mr Hawthorn? Have they hurt him? Have they killed him?’
‘Mr Hawtorn up to de house, missy, an’ all de niggers pray de Lard for
true him lib for ebber, de blessed creature.’
‘Why are you all coming away now, then?’ Nora asked anxiously. ‘Where
are you going to?’
‘Mr Hawtorn send us home,’ Martin answered submissively; ‘an’ we all
’fraid, if we doan’t go straight when him tell us, we drop down dead
wit Kora, Datan, an’ Abiram, an’ lyin’ Ananias, same like Delgado.’
‘Marian,’ Nora said decisively, ‘go back to your husband. You ought
to be with him.—Martin, you come along with me, sir. Mr Noel’s dying.
You’ve killed him, you people, as you’ve killed my father. I’ve got to
go and fetch the doctor now to save him; and you’ve got to come with me
and take care of me.’
‘Oh, darling,’ Marian interrupted nervously, ‘you mustn’t go alone
amongst all these angry, excited negroes with nobody but him. Don’t,
don’t; I’ll gladly go with you!’
‘Do as I tell you!’ Nora cried in a tone of authority, with a firm
stamp of her petulant little foot. ‘You ought to be with him. You
mustn’t leave him.—That’s right, dear.—Now, then, Martin!’
‘I ’fraid, missy.’
‘Afraid! Nonsense. You’re a pack of cowards. Am _I_ afraid? and I’m a
woman! You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Come along with me at once,
and do as I tell you.’
The terrified negro yielded grudgingly, and crept after her in the
true crouching African fashion, compelled against his will to follow
implicitly the mere bidding of the stronger and more imperious nature.
They wound down the zigzag path together, under the gaunt shadows
of the overhanging bamboo clumps, waving weirdly to and fro with
the breeze in the feeble moonlight—the strong man slouching along
timorously, shaking and starting with terror at every rustle of Nora’s
dress against the bracken and the tree ferns; the slight girl erect and
fearless, walking a pace or two in front of her faint-hearted escort
with proud self-reliance, and never pausing for a single second to cast
a cautious glance to right or left among the tangled brushwood. The
lights were now burning dimly in all the neighbouring negro cottages;
and far away down in the distance, the long rows of gas lamps at
Port-of-Spain gleamed double with elongated oblique reflections in the
calm water of the sleepy harbour.
They had got half-way down the lonely gully without meeting or passing
a single soul, when, at a turn of the road where the bridle-path swept
aside to avoid a rainy-season torrent, a horse came quickly upon them
from in front, and the rapid click of a cocked pistol warned Nora of
approaching danger.
‘Who goes there?’ cried a sharp voice with a marked Scotch accent from
the gloom before her. ‘Stop this minute, or I’ll fire at you, you
nigger!’
With a thrill of delight, Nora recognised the longed-for voice—the
very one she was seeking. It was Dr Macfarlane, from beyond the gully,
roused, like half the island, by the red glare from the Orange Grove
cane-houses, and spurring up as fast as his horse could carry him,
armed and on the alert, to the scene of the supposed insurrection.
‘Don’t shoot,’ Nora answered coolly, holding her hand up in
deprecation. ‘A friend!—It’s me, Dr Macfarlane—Nora Dupuy, coming to
meet you.’
‘Miss Dupuy!’ the doctor cried in astonishment. ‘Then they’ll not
have shot _you_, at anyrate, young leddy! But what are you doing out
here alone at this time of night, I’m wondering? Have you had to run
for your life from Orange Grove from these cowardly insurgent nigger
fellows?’
‘Run from _them_!’ Nora echoed contemptuously. ‘Dr Macfarlane, I’d like
to see it. No, no; I’m too much of a Dupuy ever to do that, I promise
you, doctor. They can murder me, but they can’t frighten me. I was
coming down to look for you, for poor Mr Noel, who’s lying dangerously
wounded up at our house, with a wound on the arm and a terrible cut
across the temple.’
‘Coming alone—just in the very midst of all this business—to fetch me
to look after a wounded fellow!’ the doctor ejaculated half to himself,
with mingled astonishment and admiration. He jumped down from his
horse with a quick movement, not ungallantly, and lifted Nora up in
his big arms without a word, seating her sideways, before she could
remonstrate, on the awkward saddle. ‘Sit you there, Miss Dupuy,’ he
said kindly. ‘You’re a brave lass, if ever there was one. I’ll hold his
head, and run alongside with you. We’ll be up at the house again in ten
minutes.’
‘They’ve killed my father,’ Nora said simply, beginning to break down
at last, after her unnatural exaltation of bravery and endurance, and
bursting into a sudden flood of tears. ‘He’s lying at home all hacked
to pieces with their dreadful cutlasses; and Mr Noel’s almost dead too;
perhaps he’ll be quite dead, doctor, before we can get there.’
(_To be continued._)
‘TELEGRAPHED.’
‘Have you seen the Purple Sandpiper at Mr Walton’s, telegraphed near
here?’ The above sentence in a friend’s letter, a keen ornithologist,
set me thinking. How many species of birds do I know of that have
been ‘telegraphed?’ or, in other words, killed by flying against the
telegraph wires? On looking up notes which extend over several years’
observations, I found the list not a long one, but somewhat varied. As
my own knowledge of this subject extends over only a small district,
yet one thickly set with wires, and taking into consideration the
destruction of birds by this peculiar means in this particular portion
of the kingdom, and the thousands of miles of wires which extend over
the rest of the British Islands, the thought crosses my mind that
there must be an immense death-rate among birds through this modern
invention, now a necessity of our present life.
But to return to our Purple Sandpiper (_Tringa maritima_). What
brought it so far inland?—above twenty miles from its usual haunts
by the shore, being purely a bird of the littoral. Was it merely a
straggler lost or blown out of its course? Or was it accompanied by
other Sandpipers, which escaped the fatal wires? on some line of
autumnal migration which is certainly new to us, or, rather, only
just suspected; and which will take some years of careful study and
note-taking before being fully established.
One of the birds most commonly ‘telegraphed’ with us, both in its
spring and autumn ‘flittings,’ is the Landrail (_Crex pratensis_), or
perhaps better known as the Corncrake; indeed, in the spring migration
I have known of its presence among us through this means, some time
before its well-known call-note was heard; although, occasionally,
individual birds stay all the winter with us. Lately, a new line of
wires has been put across a common near us, to join others on one of
the great north roads. These wires were put up to meet the increase
of work which was expected through the introduction of the sixpenny
telegrams. The first Sunday after these wires were stretched, I found
a Corncrake which had met its death by them. But it had suffered
considerably from the attentions, presumedly, paid to it by a pair of
Carrion Crows (_Corvus corone_), which flopped away from its immediate
neighbourhood on our approach. Shortly after, I picked up a fine cock
Blackbird (_Turdus merula_) alive, but in sore condition. The skin of
the breast, by the force of the blow, was rolled backward down to the
thighs, one of which was broken. The contrast between the blackness of
its plumage and the golden brown of the fallen beech-leaves on which
it lay was something startling. I stood looking at it some time before
attempting to lay hold of it, wondering what was the matter, as it lay
perfectly still, looking at me with its fearless black eyes. It made
no effort to get away when I laid hold of it, though it bit as well
as it could. Blackbirds are common victims to this form of death: I
have seen three in one week, and it is really difficult to explain
why. The habit they have, might account for it, of flying about and
alarming the neighbourhood by their warning note till nearly dark, long
after most light-loving birds have gone to roost. A rare stranger was
‘telegraphed’ among us, Leach’s or the Fork-tailed Petrel (_Procellaria
leucorrhoa_), just after the heavy gales near the end of last October.
Most of the British specimens of this bird have been obtained inland,
after heavy gales blown to us, I suppose, across the Atlantic, from the
Banks of Newfoundland. Snipes, both the Common and Jack, often come
into collision with the wires, thus showing that they also fly after
dark. A very beautiful specimen of the Common Snipe, in full breeding
plumage, was brought to a friend of mine on the last day of February
by a tramp, who had picked it up by the roadside, ‘telegraphed.’
That Owls should meet with this fate, seems very curious, as they
are so specially adapted for seeing in a dull light; but such is the
case. I know of several, both Barn (_Strix flammea_) and Wood (_Strix
stridula_) Owls, which have been picked up dead beneath the wires. One
can only account for it on the supposition that they are intent on
looking for prey beneath them, perhaps watching some particular mouse
or shrew at the moment the fatal contact takes place.
The Peewit or Green Plover (_Vanellus cristatus_) is another common
victim to this form of death, sometimes in great numbers. Three winters
ago, large flocks of plovers used to frequent particular fields at
night-time, flying to and from the coast morning and night. In these
daily migrations they had to pass, at one particular place, a perfect
network of wires; and though odd birds had been got from time to time,
yet great was the astonishment of the signalman at a box near at hand,
when daylight broke one morning after a stormy night, to see the ground
near his box strewn with Peewits. I should not like to say how many
there were, but it took him at least twice to carry them to the nearest
gamedealer’s. Golden Plovers (_Charadrius pluvialis_) occasionally
fall victims to the same means; and I have seen a young bird of this
species killed, while on its way to the coast, as early as the 9th
of July, and many miles from the nearest breeding-ground. The Missel
Thrush (_Turdus viscivorus_) in its short autumnal migrations often
shares the same fate; and at the same period I once saw that hideling
bird, the Spotted Crake (_Porzana maruetta_). I know of no instance
of any of the hawks being done to death in this manner, though other
observers may have been more fortunate as regards these birds. Instead,
the Kestrel (_Falco tinnunculus_) often makes use of the wires as a
post of observation, mice being very plentiful as a rule along railway
sides; and in winter they often come out of their holes to feed on the
horse-refuse on the highways. Wild-ducks also escape, as far as my
knowledge goes, and we might naturally expect to see them occasionally;
but that may be accounted for by their flying too high in their passage
from coast to coast or to inland feeding-grounds.
Of the orthodox bird, as Sydney Smith called the Pheasant, it is in
some places a very common victim. I think I could pick out one stretch
of railway which at certain seasons of the year produces for the
surfaceman who goes along it in early morning a never-failing supply of
wounded and dead birds. On one side of the railway is a long belt of
plantation, where the birds are turned into after being hand-reared,
on the other side a river with cornfields stretching down to it; and
it is in the passage from the covers to the cornfields, when the grain
is ripe or standing in stook, that the accidents occur. Partridges
also often fall victims to the wires, as also did the Red Grouse where
the telegraph crossed their native heaths. In more than one instance
have the wires been laid underground, where crossing grouse-moors, to
prevent the birds killing themselves; but even when crossing these
moors in the usual style from post to post, grouse after a time get to
beware of them, and deaths through this cause get fewer and fewer. One
instance of this peculiar adaptation of themselves to new circumstances
came very forcibly under the writer’s notice. A wire-fence was put
across a very good grouse-moor in Cumberland, dividing the fell into
two allotments. For some time after this was done, dead or dying birds
were picked up daily, until it was well known that whoever was first
along the fence was sure of a grouse-pie. It was amusing to see the
different stratagems employed by the shepherds and others to get along
the fence without seeming to do so. Indeed, I have seen two farmers
meet at the ‘Townfoot,’ and after a short gossip, separate, going in
different directions and away from the fell; and an hour after, I have
heard of them meeting about the middle of the fence, both intent on
dead or wounded birds. While for some time this slaughter of grouse
went on, another fellow put in his appearance, this time with four
legs, and made a track by the side of the fence to replenish his
larder; and Mr Stoat had even the temerity to dispute the claim in one
instance with the two-legged hunter. But the grouse in time got to know
the dangers of the fence, and now the victims, like angels’ visits, are
few and far between.
The ‘vermin,’ as weasels and stoats are generally called, have often a
regular track beneath the wires, for the purpose of looking for dead
and wounded birds. The other day I found beneath the new wires I have
already mentioned a lot of scattered feathers belonging to a Redwing
(_Turdus iliacus_), but no bird. Thinking it might only be wounded, I
set to look for it, and after some patient hunting, found a few more
feathers farther on the common. These traces I followed diligently,
finding them every four or five yards apart, till in a hedge-bank fifty
yards from the wires I found them thick about a small hole—no doubt
the burrow of a weasel, not an uncommon animal in that same old hedge.
One would have liked to have seen the weasel carrying or dragging its
prey, whichever it was, the former more likely, from the traces of the
feathers being left at such regular intervals. A friend informs me that
he has seen the Carrion Crow regularly hunting along the wires in his
district.
Another victim has just come to hand in the shape of a young Guillemot
(_Uria troile_) in its first year’s dress; and in the month of May I
saw a Sanderling (_Calidris arenaria_) which had partially put on its
nuptial garb, and was no doubt making north to the arctic regions as
fast as wings could carry it, when arrested by the stretched wire.
If it were possible to get authentic statistics of all the different
species and numbers of birds ‘telegraphed,’ we should have a mass of
information which no doubt would greatly assist our ornithologists
in their study of the migration of the feathered tribes. This, I
am afraid, is impossible, as birds mostly fall during the hours
of darkness or semi-light; and there are others, both quadrupeds
and birds, which have the advantage of the genus _homo_ in hunting
propensities, and who are at work before he is out of bed. They are not
in search of information; their hunting is prompted by something keener
than even a search for knowledge. The cravings of an empty stomach must
be satisfied if possible, and who can tell how many a rare bird—which
an ornithologist would have tramped miles to see—has formed a breakfast
dish for a lot of hungry young weasels, or swelled out the crop of some
gaunt carrion crow!
Any one living near a line of wires will find something to interest
him, if he is an early riser, by searching underneath the wires in his
morning walk. And when a specimen is found, a note should be taken of
its name, the date, direction of wind during night, and weather; and
thus in time a quantity of information would be gathered which would
materially assist our migration committees. The death-rate through
being ‘telegraphed’ is generally greatest during the spring and autumn
migrations.