"Well? And have you now come round to a sweet and reasonable frame of
mind?"
Wagram looked his persecutor steadily in the face. He was not secured,
but two stalwart blacks stood on each side, ready to anticipate any
aggressive movement on his part.
"You've not, eh? That'll come; only the longer you hold out the more
personal inconvenience you'll lay yourself open to. I give you fair
warning."
"You intend to murder me, I suppose," answered Wagram. "Why not do it
at once? I won't agree to your perfectly outrageous proposal."
"Outrageous?" sneered the white fiend. "Let's go over the ground again.
A month ago I invited you to make a protracted stay with me. I further
asked you to send for your son, thinking that a little wild bush life
would make a wholesome change for a schoolboy, and we would have been as
jolly as sandboys together. You began to make excuses. Now, I don't
like excuses. I'm not accustomed to them, as you must have learnt since
you've been here. Then you refused point-blank, saying this was no
place to bring a boy to. You yourself couldn't refuse my hospitality,
which I'm afraid I shall have to extend to you for an indefinite time.
But your son and heir--I'm dying to make his acquaintance. See?"
"Yes; I see. And I give you the answer straight: I have no intention
that you should make his acquaintance or he yours. Now--is that
straight enough?"
"Oh, quite. Only have you reflected that in that case you yourself will
never set eyes on him again? Hasn't that struck you?"
"As a possibility, not as a probability. Look here! you are a white
man, not a savage. For some purpose you are trying to frighten me.
What is it? Is it that you want a larger price? If so, name it."
"Trying to frighten you? Why, I haven't even begun to frighten you yet.
You told me one day you thought I must be the devil. Well, I am--for
all purposes as far as you are concerned. Make up your mind to that."
There was no great eagerness in Wagram's mind to dispute this statement.
He had spent a month in the power of this fiend, and scarcely a day had
passed without some proof that if he were not already within the
infernal regions he was at any rate well within the antechamber thereto.
Apart from the fact that the conditions of his captivity had been more
and more those of every conceivable harshness, he had been compelled to
witness the most ghastly and horrifying sights, of which the blood
tragedies of the cannibal slaughter-yard were not the worst. Other
fiendish rites, hideous and obscene--hardly imaginable, in fact--he had
been thrust into the very midst of; and now within that brief month it
seemed that he must have lived for years in hell, and all at the bidding
of this devil--his fellow-countryman. His health had suffered, his mind
and spirit alike were becoming broken, and every moment he besieged high
Heaven with supplications that deliverance--even through the gate of
death--might be granted him. So far his tormentor had confined his
malice to tortures that were mainly mental. He had been careful, too,
to afford him no clue whatever as to the locality in which he was, or
even as to the very name of this savage race. His own identity, of
course, was undivulged.
"You have the whole situation in your own hands," went on the latter.
"You have only to place in mine the necessary letters that will bring
your son and heir here. I'll take care of the way of doing it, never
fear, once I have your indisputable authority. Now--are you going to
give it me?"
Something of the martyr's resolution shone in Wagram's face. Even the
brutal savages who guarded him were struck by it, and uneasily stirred.
They thought to descry some strange resemblance at that moment between
the faces of the two men, between their dreaded oppressor and his--and
their--helpless captive.
"No; I am not--not now, nor ever," came the steadfast answer. "I will
die first."
Then that glaring paroxysm of rage swept over the other's features, and
his eyes seemed to start from his purpling face as he bent down and
hissed rather than whispered:
"Then you shall. By God, you shall!" At a sign the two savages pounced
upon their prisoner, and flung him face downwards upon the ground. They
were muscular ruffians, and he was weakened by ill-treatment and
anxiety. Others flocked into the hut in obedience to a call, and in a
moment he was pinioned with thongs, his feet being left free enough to
enable him to walk with short steps. They dragged him forth into the
open, and he found himself staggering along in their midst. Then he
realised what his doom was to be. He had travelled this way before, to
his horror and sorrow. They were taking him to the human
slaughter-yard.
There was the palisade, the stunted trees, and the horrible heads
impaled upon them. The effluvium was acrid, sickening. Many hands
gripped him, and before he could offer the slightest resistance he was
bound down upon one of the blood-stained blocks, with throat upturned,
distended, ready for the murderous knife.
In that terrible moment, expecting death amid every circumstance of
agony and ignominy, a vista of his past life opened to his brain--opened
with a quick flash. This, then, was what his quest had brought him to--
his quest which, following the strong voice of conscience, he had
undertaken and had prosecuted to his own detriment. Well, what mattered
it? His son--his only son--had been left in strong and careful hands.
He would carry on his life duties as he himself would have had him do.
Then more sacred thoughts succeeded. He trusted he was ready.
A black fiend stood over him, and had already raised the horrible
crooked knife; already he seemed to feel it shearing through nerve and
artery. But it was stayed.
"One more chance," cried the voice of his arch-tormentor. "Will you do
what you have no option but to do? Remember, this is no swift death--no
beheading at one blow--as you have seen. A nasty sort of butchering
death for a man of your birth and breeding to end up with, eh?"
"Do your butcher work; my mind is unchanged."
At a sign the demon with the knife lowered it. Wagram felt a slash upon
his throat, and the blood flowed. In reality it was but a skin cut.
The black fiend, instructed by the white arch-fiend, was but playing
with him; yet the mind acting upon the strained nerves rendered the
torture actual, horrible. Except a quick gasp no sound escaped the
sufferer. In the concentration of the suspense every detail was stamped
upon the retina of his brain--the bestial, black faces, staring and
bloodthirsty; the scarcely less repulsive countenance of his--
fellow-countryman, and a strange, vivid scar round the outside of the
right eye defacing this. Detail is curiously to the front in moments of
extreme tensity. The willing executioner looked again at his superior
for the final signal. After a moment of deathly silence--to the
sufferer a very lifetime of suspense--it came.
But, what was this? He had been quickly unbound, and rolled to the
ground, and as he lay there, dazed with the sudden revulsion, the voice
of his arch-tormentor fell once more upon his ears.
"That'll do for to-day, Wagram. You've gone through hell--yes, hell--in
the last few minutes, but it's nothing to what's sticking out for you.
You thought you'd have been in heaven by now, but, no fear. Moreover,
you'll never get there, for before I've done with you you're going to
blaspheme Heaven in such a manner that even it'll have nothing to do
with you at the end, in spite of your life of piety and
sanctimoniousness. Wait a bit. You haven't felt any real pain yet--
don't know what it is. To-morrow you shall begin. A little roasting,
you understand; not too much--enough to keep you wriggling for an hour
or so. You shall have the whole night to think of it."
"You are wrong, devil," was the answer. "Whatever might escape me
through weakness under your hellish treatment will not count, rest
assured. And the Heaven which you blaspheme has a longer arm than you
think."
"All right. It can't reach as far as this," returned the other, with a
hideous laugh.
The sufferer was roughly seized, jerked to his feet, and dragged back to
the hut; but even this gloomy prison-house was no longer to be his
undisturbed, for now the two black horrors entered it with him, and
disposed themselves in such wise as to render it evident they meant to
spend the night there. He himself was secured by thongs in such wise as
to render any attempt at escape impossible.
And there in the black darkness--with loathsome insects creeping over
him, the close, stuffy air rendered absolutely poisonous by the rancid
stench exhaling from the musky bodies of his guards--Wagram underwent to
the full all the trials of the martyrs destined for the Coliseum of old.
He had passed through, as it were, the very extremity of death that
day, and had been put back that he might die many deaths. He knew that
the words of the white savage had been no empty threat, for among the
awful sights he had been forced to witness in that hell-centre had been
that of a human being done to death over a slow fire in exactly the
manner that had been promised for himself. Well, if that were so, and
he were called upon to suffer the fiery ordeal, he trusted that strength
might be given him as to the martyrs of old, the prayers of all of whom
he fervently invoked, including those of his martyred relative--the
recollection of whom turned back his thoughts to Hilversea, and those he
had left there; and it was with deep thankfulness that he realised that
no flaw existed in the provisions he had made before leaving in the
event of accident to himself. These had been effected with
business-like foresight and accuracy. All who had claims upon him had
been remembered, and Gerard had been left under the joint guardianship
of Haldane and the family solicitor. Even Delia Calmour he had not
omitted to provide for, by reason of the interest he and his father had
taken in the girl, and the disadvantages under which she was placed.
Perhaps she would bless his memory and pray for him, and the
recollection of her bright young beauty was pleasant now in the gloomy
hour of his bondage and the horrible fate which impended. Yvonne, too--
she would not forget him, and the prayers of the young and the pure
seemed as though they must be tenfold precious and efficacious.
Hour by hour his thoughts ran on, interluded by snatches of sleep,
begotten of sheer mental exhaustion, haunted, however, by gusty,
disturbing dreams, in which the horrors he had witnessed and gone
through would rise up to mock and distress him, as though instigated by
the malice of the powers of hell. The same sun which would rise upon
Hilversea, and its joyous, peaceful English life, would rise upon him
and the drear abode of blood-stained heathendom; would witness his death
amid horrible torment, and that not at the word of merciless, ruthless
barbarians but at the bidding of a fellow-countryman--a white man. The
situation seemed so impossible, so grotesque, as to wear the aspect of a
veritable nightmare. It was incredible.
With the thought came another. Why had this devil in human shape laid
such stress on getting Gerard into his power, even to the length of
torturing him--Wagram--to induce him to send for the boy? Why had he
repudiated his agreement to enlarge him for what was really a princely
ransom, and that all in a moment? There was something behind it all--
but what? And then upon the deepest darkness of his thoughts one
thought flashed in. This man had known Everard--had possibly murdered
him. He designed to personate him and claim Hilversea, but in order to
do this he must first cut off the present occupant and his heir. That
was why he had striven to get Gerard into his power. Yes; the whole
thing now stood explained: the _effect_ the name had had upon him--
everything. He had got at Everard's history, and now rejoiced that
another Wagram--the reigning one--had fallen into his hands. Develin
Hunt, too, had come from somewhere about this part. What if the
adventurer had lied to him, had sent him off to South Africa on a fool's
errand when it should have been West Africa? What if his threat to
produce Everard had referred to this spurious adventurer? And yet--and
yet--how was Develin Hunt ever to guess that he himself should come to
be wrecked and cast away on that identical coast? The puzzle was a
tangled one, and at the moment beyond his unravelling. One thing,
however, held his mind--a resolve that, come what might, he would defeat
this ferocious villain's schemes by the sacrifice of himself if need be.
Hour followed hour, and that dread, suffocating, tropical night seemed
to embody a lifetime of haunting fear. Yes; fear, for all the human in
this man shrank from the fearful ordeal he would be called upon to
undergo. There was no escape--no, none--for did he succeed even in
breaking away into the wilderness he had not the remotest notion what
direction to take in his flight, or of any aim or objective on which to
direct that flight. He recalled the rough, brutal treatment he had
already undergone; and what made it worse was his absolute inability to
offer any resistance whatever to such indignity as his proud, sensitive
nature could never have conceived it possible he should be called upon
to undergo. Then, once more, that uneasy slumber came upon him--for how
long he knew not--until it was broken in upon by strange, muffled sounds
and mysterious vibrations--together with something that sounded like a
smothered groan. He started up, and instinctively put forth a hand. It
encountered something warm and wet and clammy--in the black darkness
causing him to shudder. The ground was soaked with it; and he detected
that acrid odour he had learnt to know only too well of late.