to be dutiful in the station to which it has pleased God to call you,
you will find me a very kind old fellow. I like your looks," he added,
calling me by my name, which he scandalously mispronounced. "Is your
hair all your own?" he then inquired with a certain sharpness, and
coming up to me, as though I were a horse, he grossly satisfied his
doubts. I was all one flame from head to foot, but I contained my
righteous anger and submitted. "That is very well," he continued,
chucking me good-humouredly under the chin. "You will have no cause to
regret coming to old Caulder, eh? But that is by the way. What is more
to the point is this: your late master was a most dishonest rogue and
levanted with some valuable property that belonged of rights to me. Now,
considering your relation to him, I regard you as the likeliest person
to know what has become of it; and I warn you, before you answer, that
my whole future kindness will depend upon your honesty. I am an honest
man myself, and expect the same in my servants."
"Do you mean the jewels?" said I, sinking my voice into a whisper.
"That is just precisely what I do," said he, and chuckled.
"Hush!" said I.
"Hush?" he repeated. "And why hush? I am on my own place, I would have
you to know, and surrounded by my own lawful servants."
"Are the officers gone?" I asked; and, oh! how my hopes hung upon the
answer!
"They are," said he, looking somewhat disconcerted. "Why do you ask?"
"I wish you had kept them," I answered, solemnly enough, although my
heart at that same moment leaped with exultation. "Master, I must not
conceal from you the truth. The servants on this estate are in a
dangerous condition, and mutiny has long been brewing."
"Why," he cried, "I never saw a milder-looking lot of niggers in my
life." But for all that he turned somewhat pale.
"Did they tell you," I continued, "that Madam Mendizabal is on the
island? that, since her coming, they obey none but her? that if, this
morning, they have received you with even decent civility, it was only
by her orders--issued with what after-thought I leave you to consider?"
"Madam Jezebel?" said he. "Well, she is a dangerous devil; the police
are after her, besides, for a whole series of murders; but after all,
what then? To be sure, she has a great influence with you coloured folk.
But what in fortune's name can be her errand here?"
"The jewels," I replied. "Ah, sir, had you seen that treasure, sapphire
and emerald and opal, and the golden topaz, and rubies, red as the
sunset--of what incalculable worth, of what unequalled beauty to the
eye!--had you seen it, as I have, and alas! as _she_ has--you would
understand and tremble at your danger."
"She has seen them!" he cried, and I could see by his face that my
audacity was justified by its success.
I caught his hand in mine. "My master," said I, "I am now yours; it is
my duty, it should be my pleasure, to defend your interests and life.
Hear my advice then; and, I conjure you, be guided by my prudence.
Follow me privily; let none see where we are going; I will lead you to
the place where the treasure has been buried; that once disinterred, let
us make straight for the boat, escape to the mainland, and not return to
this dangerous isle without the countenance of soldiers."
What free man in a free land would have credited so sudden a devotion?
But this oppressor, through the very arts and sophistries he had abused,
to quiet the rebellion of his conscience and to convince himself that
slavery was natural, fell like a child into the trap I laid for him. He
praised and thanked me; told me I had all the qualities he valued in a
servant; and when he had questioned me further as to the nature and
value of the treasure, and I had once more artfully inflamed his greed,
bade me, without delay, proceed to carry out my plan of action.
From a shed in the garden I took a pick and shovel; and thence, by
devious paths among the magnolias, led my master to the entrance of the
swamp. I walked first, carrying, as I was now in duty bound, the tools,
and glancing continually behind me, lest we should be spied upon and
followed. When we were come as far as the beginning of the path, it
flashed into my mind I had forgotten meat; and leaving Mr. Caulder in
the shadow of a tree, I returned alone to the house for a basket of
provisions. Were they for him? I asked myself. And a voice within me
answered, No. While we were face to face, while I still saw before my
eyes the man to whom I belonged as the hand belongs to the body, my
indignation held me bravely up. But now that I was alone, I conceived a
sickness at myself and my designs that I could scarce endure; I longed
to throw myself at his feet, avow my intended treachery, and warn him
from that pestilential swamp, to which I was decoying him to die; but my
vow to my dead father, my duty to my innocent youth, prevailed upon
these scruples; and though my face was pale and must have reflected the
horror that oppressed my spirits, it was with a firm step that I
returned to the borders of the swamp, and with smiling lips that I bade
him rise and follow me.
The path on which we now entered was cut, like a tunnel, through the
living jungle. On either hand and overhead, the mass of foliage was
continuously joined; the day sparingly filtered through the depth of
superimpending wood; and the air was hot like steam, and heady with
vegetable odours, and lay like a load upon the lungs and brain.
Underfoot, a great depth of mould received our silent footprints; on
each side, mimosas, as tall as a man, shrank from my passing skirts
with a continuous hissing rustle; and, but for these sentient
vegetables, all in that den of pestilence was motionless and noiseless.
We had gone but a little way in, when Mr. Caulder was seized with sudden
nausea, and must sit down a moment on the path. My heart yearned, as I
beheld him; and I seriously begged the doomed mortal to return upon his
steps. What were a few jewels in the scales with life? I asked. But no,
he said; that witch Madam Jezebel would find them out; he was an honest
man, and would not stand to be defrauded, and so forth, panting the
while, like a sick dog. Presently he got to his feet again, protesting
he had conquered his uneasiness; but as we again began to go forward, I
saw in his changed countenance the first approaches of death.
"Master," said I, "you look pale, deathly pale; your pallor fills me
with dread. Your eyes are bloodshot; they are red like the rubies that
we seek."
"Wench," he cried, "look before you; look at your steps. I declare to
Heaven, if you annoy me once again by looking back, I shall remind you
of the change in your position."
A little after, I observed a worm upon the ground, and told, in a
whisper, that its touch was death. Presently a great green serpent,
vivid as the grass in spring, wound rapidly across the path; and once
again I paused and looked back at my companion with a horror in my eyes.
"The coffin snake," said I, "the snake that dogs its victim like a
hound."
But he was not to be dissuaded. "I am an old traveller," said he. "This
is a foul jungle indeed; but we shall soon be at an end."
"Ay," said I, looking at him with a strange smile, "what end?"
Thereupon he laughed again and again, but not very heartily; and then,
perceiving that the path began to widen and grow higher, "There!" said
he. "What did I tell you? We are past the worst."
Indeed, we had now come to the bayou, which was in that place very
narrow and bridged across by a fallen trunk; but on either hand we could
see it broaden out, under a cavern of great arms of trees and hanging
creepers: sluggish, putrid, of a horrible and sickly stench, floated on
by the flat heads of alligators, and its banks alive with scarlet crabs.
"If we fall from that unsteady bridge," said I, "see, where the caiman
lies ready to devour us! If, by the least divergence from the path, we
should be snared in a morass, see, where those myriads of scarlet vermin
scour the border of the thicket! Once helpless, how they would swarm
together to the assault! What could man do against a thousand of such
mailed assailants? And what a death were that, to perish alive under
their claws!"
"Are you mad, girl?" he cried. "I bid you be silent and lead on."
Again I looked upon him, half relenting; and at that he raised the stick
that was in his hand and cruelly struck me on the face. "Lead on!" he
cried again. "Must I be all day, catching my death in this vile slough,
and all for a prating slave-girl?"
I took the blow in silence, I took it smiling; but the blood welled back
upon my heart. Something, I know not what, fell at that moment with a
dull plunge in the waters of the lagoon, and I told myself it was my
pity that had fallen.
On the farther side, to which we now hastily scrambled, the wood was not
so dense, the web of creepers not so solidly convolved. It was possible,
here and there, to mark a patch of somewhat brighter daylight, or to
distinguish, through the lighter web of parasites, the proportions of
some soaring tree. The cypress on the left stood very visibly forth,
upon the edge of such a clearing; the path in that place widened
broadly; and there was a patch of open ground, beset with horrible
ant-heaps, thick with their artificers. I laid down the tools and basket
by the cypress root, where they were instantly blackened over with the
crawling ants; and looked once more in the face of my unconscious
victim. Mosquitoes and foul flies wove so close a veil between us that
his features were obscured; and the sound of their flight was like the
turning of a mighty wheel.
"Here," I said, "is the spot. I cannot dig, for I have not learned to
use such instruments; but, for your own sake, I beseech you to be swift
in what you do."
He had sunk once more upon the ground, panting like a fish; and I saw
rising in his face the same dusky flush that had mantled on my father's.
"I feel ill," he gasped, "horribly ill; the swamp turns around me; the
drone of these carrion flies confounds me. Have you not wine?"
I gave him a glass, and he drank greedily. "It is for you to think,"
said I, "if you should further persevere. The swamp has an ill name."
And at the word I ominously nodded.
"Give me the pick," said he. "Where are the jewels buried?"
I told him vaguely; and in the sweltering heat and closeness, and dim
twilight of the jungle, he began to wield the pickaxe, swinging it
overhead with the vigour of a healthy man. At first, there broke forth
upon him a strong sweat, that made his face to shine, and in which the
greedy insects settled thickly.
"To sweat in such a place," said I. "O master, is this wise? Fever is
drunk in through open pores."
"What do you mean?" he screamed, pausing with the pick buried in the
soil. "Do you seek to drive me mad? Do you think I do not understand the
danger that I run?"
"That is all I want," said I: "I only wish you to be swift." And then,
my mind flitting to my father's deathbed, I began to murmur, scarce
above my breath, the same vain repetition of words, "Hurry, hurry,
hurry."
Presently, to my surprise, the treasure-seeker took them up; and while
he still wielded the pick, but now with staggering and uncertain blows,
repeated to himself, as it were the burthen of a song, "Hurry, hurry,
hurry"; and then again, "There is no time to lose; the marsh has an ill
name, ill name"; and then back to "Hurry, hurry, hurry," with a dreadful
mechanical, hurried, and yet wearied utterance, as a sick man rolls upon
his pillow. The sweat had disappeared; he was now dry, but, all that I
could see of him, of the same dull brick-red. Presently his pick
unearthed the bag of jewels; but he did not observe it, and continued
hewing at the soil.
"Master," said I, "there is the treasure."
He seemed to waken from a dream. "Where?" he cried; and then, seeing it
before his eyes, "Can this be possible?" he added. "I must be
light-headed. Girl," he cried suddenly, with the same screaming tone of
voice that I had once before observed, "what is wrong? is this swamp
accursed?"
"It is a grave," I answered. "You will not go out alive; and as for me,
my life is in God's hands."
He fell upon the ground like a man struck by a blow, but whether from
the effect of my words, or from sudden seizure of the malady, I cannot
tell. Pretty soon he raised his head. "You have brought me here to die,"
he said; "at the risk of your own days, you have condemned me. Why?"
"To save my honour," I replied. "Bear me out that I have warned you.
Greed of these pebbles, and not I, has been your undoer."
He took out his revolver and handed it to me. "You see," he said, "I
could have killed you even yet. But I am dying, as you say; nothing
could save me; and my bill is long enough already. Dear me, dear me," he
said, looking in my face with a curious, puzzled, and pathetic look,
like a dull child at school, "if there be a judgment afterwards, my bill
is long enough."
At that, I broke into a passion of weeping, crawled at his feet, kissed
his hands, begged his forgiveness, put the pistol back into his grasp,
and besought him to avenge his death; for indeed, if with my life I
could have bought back his, I had not balanced at the cost. But he was
determined, the poor soul, that I should yet more bitterly regret my
act.
"I have nothing to forgive," said he. "Dear Heaven, what a thing is an
old fool! I thought, upon my word, you had taken quite a fancy to me."
He was seized, at the same time, with a dreadful, swimming dizziness,
clung to me like a child, and called upon the name of some woman.
Presently this spasm, which I watched with choking tears, lessened and
died away; and he came again to the full possession of his mind. "I must
write my will," he said. "Get out my pocket-book." I did so, and he
wrote hurriedly on one page with a pencil. "Do not let my son know," he
said; "he is a cruel dog, is my son Philip; do not let him know how you
have paid me out"; and then all of a sudden, "God," he cried, "I am
blind," and clapped both hands before his eyes; and then again, and in a
groaning whisper, "Don't leave me to the crabs!" I swore I would be true
to him so long as a pulse stirred; and I redeemed my promise. I sat
there and watched him, as I had watched my father; but with what
different, with what appalling thoughts! Through the long afternoon, he
gradually sank. All that while, I fought an uphill battle to shield him
from the swarms of ants and the clouds of mosquitoes: the prisoner of my
crime. The night fell, the roar of insects instantly redoubled in the
dark arcades of the swamp; and still I was not sure that he had breathed
his last. At length, the flesh of his hand, which I yet held in mine,
grew chill between my fingers, and I knew that I was free.
I took his pocket-book and the revolver, being resolved rather to die
than to be captured, and, laden besides with the basket and the bag of
gems, set forward towards the north. The swamp, at that hour of the
night, was filled with a continuous din: animals and insects of all
kinds and all inimical to life, contributing their parts. Yet in the
midst of this turmoil of sound, I walked as though my eyes were
bandaged, beholding nothing. The soil sank under my foot, with a horrid,
slippery consistence, as though I were walking among toads; the touch of
the thick wall of foliage, by which alone I guided myself, affrighted me
like the touch of serpents; the darkness checked my breathing like a
gag; indeed, I have never suffered such extremes of fear as during that
nocturnal walk, nor have I ever known a more sensible relief than when I
found the path beginning to mount and to grow firmer under foot, and
saw, although still some way in front of me, the silver brightness of
the moon.
Presently I had crossed the last of the jungle, and come forth amongst
noble and lofty woods, clean rock, the clean, dry dust, the aromatic
smell of mountain plants that had been baked all day in sunlight, and
the expressive silence of the night. My negro blood had carried me
unhurt across that reeking and pestiferous morass; by mere good fortune,
I had escaped the crawling and stinging vermin with which it was alive;
and I had now before me the easier portion of my enterprise, to cross
the isle and to make good my arrival at the haven and my acceptance on
the English yacht. It was impossible by night to follow such a track as
my father had described; and I was casting about for any landmark and,
in my ignorance, vainly consulting the disposition of the stars, when
there fell upon my ear, from somewhere far in front, the sound of many
voices hurriedly singing.
I scarce knew upon what grounds I acted; but I shaped my steps in the
direction of that sound; and in a quarter of an hour's walking, came
unperceived to the margin of an open glade. It was lighted by the strong
moon and by the flames of a fire. In the midst there stood a little low
and rude building, surmounted by a cross: a chapel, as I then remembered
to have heard, long since desecrated and given over to the rites of
Hoodoo. Hard by the steps of entrance was a black mass, continually
agitated and stirring to and fro as if with inarticulate life; and this
I presently perceived to be a heap of cocks, hares, dogs, and other
birds and animals, still struggling, but helplessly tethered and cruelly
tossed one upon another. Both the fire and the chapel were surrounded by
a ring of kneeling Africans, both men and women. Now they would raise
their palms half closed to Heaven, with a peculiar, passionate gesture
of supplication; now they would bow their heads and spread their hands
before them on the ground. As the double movement passed and repassed
along the line, the heads kept rising and falling, like waves upon the
sea; and still, as if in time to these gesticulations, the hurried chant
continued. I stood spell-bound, knowing that my life depended by a hair,
knowing that I had stumbled on a celebration of the rites of Hoodoo.
Presently the door of the chapel opened and there came forth a tall
negro, entirely nude, and bearing in his hand the sacrificial knife. He
was followed by an apparition still more strange and shocking: Madam
Mendizabal, naked also, and carrying in both hands, and raised to the
level of her face, an open basket of wicker. It was filled with coiling
snakes; and these, as she stood there with the uplifted basket, shot
through the osier grating and curled about her arms. At the sight of
this, the fervour of the crowd seemed to swell suddenly higher; and the
chant rose in pitch and grew more irregular in time and accent. Then, at
a sign from the tall negro, where he stood, motionless and smiling, in
the moon- and fire-light, the singing died away, and there began the
second stage of this barbarous and bloody celebration. From different
parts of the ring, one after another, man or woman, ran forth into the
midst; ducked, with that same gesture of the thrown-up hand, before the
priestess and her snakes; and, with various adjurations, uttered aloud
the blackest wishes of the heart. Death and disease were the favours
usually invoked: the death or the disease of enemies or rivals; some
calling down these plagues upon the nearest of their own blood, and one,
to whom I swear I had been never less than kind, invoking them upon
myself. At each petition, the tall negro, still smiling, picked up some
bird or animal from the heaving mass upon his left, slew it with the
knife, and tossed its body on the ground. At length, it seemed, it
reached the turn of the high priestess. She set down the basket on the
steps, moved into the centre of the ring, grovelled in the dust before
the reptiles, and still grovelling lifted up her voice, between speech
and singing, and with so great, with so insane a fervour of excitement,
as struck a sort of horror through my blood.
"Power," she began, "whose name we do not utter; power that is neither
good nor evil, but below them both; stronger than good, greater than
evil--all my life long I have adored and served thee. Who has shed blood
upon thine altars? whose voice is broken with the singing of thy
praises? whose limbs are faint before their age with leaping in thy
revels? Who has slain the child of her body? I," she cried, "I,
Metamnbogu! By my own name, I name myself. I tear away the veil. I would
be served or perish. Hear me, slime of the fat swamp, blackness of the
thunder, venom of the serpent's udder--hear or slay me! I would have two
things, O shapeless one, O horror of emptiness--two things, or die! The
blood of my white-faced husband; oh! give me that; he is the enemy of
Hoodoo; give me blood! And yet another, O racer of the blind winds, O
germinator in the ruins of the dead, O root of life, root of corruption!
I grow old, I grow hideous; I am known, I am hunted for my life: let thy
servant then lay by this outworn body; let thy chief priestess turn
again to the blossom of her days, and be a girl once more, and the
desired of all men, even as in the past! And, O lord and master, as I
here ask a marvel not yet wrought since we were torn from the old land,
have I not prepared the sacrifice in which thy soul delighteth--the kid
without the horns?"
Even as she uttered the words, there was a great rumour of joy through
all the circle of worshippers; it rose, and fell, and rose again; and
swelled at last into rapture, when the tall negro, who had stepped an
instant into the chapel, reappeared before the door, carrying in his
arms the body of the slave-girl, Cora. I know not if I saw what
followed. When next my mind awoke to a clear knowledge, Cora was laid
upon the steps before the serpents; the negro with the knife stood over
her; the knife rose; and at this I screamed out in my great horror,
bidding them, in God's name, to pause.
A stillness fell upon the mob of cannibals. A moment more, and they must
have thrown off this stupor, and I infallibly have perished. But Heaven
had designed to save me. The silence of these wretched men was not yet
broken, when there arose, in the empty night, a sound louder than the
roar of any European tempest, swifter to travel than the wings of any
Eastern wind. Blackness engulfed the world: blackness, stabbed across
from every side by intricate and blinding lightning. Almost in the same
second, at one world-swallowing stride, the heart of the tornado reached
the clearing. I heard an agonising crash, and the light of my reason was
overwhelmed.
When I recovered consciousness, the day was come. I was unhurt; the
trees close about me had not lost a bough; and I might have thought at
first that the tornado was a feature in a dream. It was otherwise
indeed; for when I looked abroad, I perceived I had escaped destruction
by a hand's-breadth. Right through the forest, which here covered hill
and dale, the storm had ploughed a lane of ruin. On either hand, the
trees waved uninjured in the air of the morning; but in the forthright
course of its advance, the hurricane had left no trophy standing.
Everything in that line, tree, man, or animal, the desecrated chapel and
the votaries of Hoodoo, had been subverted and destroyed in that brief
spasm of anger of the powers of air. Everything but a yard or two beyond
the line of its passage, humble flower, lofty tree, and the poor
vulnerable maid who now knelt to pay her gratitude to Heaven, awoke
unharmed in the crystal purity and peace of the new day.
To move by the path of the tornado was a thing impossible to man, so
wildly were the wrecks of the tall forest piled together by that
fugitive convulsion. I crossed it indeed; with such labour and patience,
with so many dangerous slips and falls, as left me, at the farther side,
bankrupt alike of strength and courage. There I sat down awhile to
recruit my forces; and as I ate (how should I bless the kindliness of
Heaven!), my eye, flitting to and fro in the colonnade of the great
trees, alighted on a trunk that had been blazed. Yes, by the directing
hand of Providence, I had been conducted to the very track I was to
follow. With what a light heart I now set forth, and walking with how
glad a step traversed the uplands of the isle!