THE ESCAPE
This night methinks is but the daylight sick,
It looks a little paler; ‘tis a day,
Such as the day is when the sun is hid. —Shakespeare.
The whole air whitens with a boundless tide,
Of silver radiance, trembling round the world. —Thomson.
We must now return to Kate, whom we left a prisoner with the outlaws,
and momentarily in dread that she would be compelled to sacrifice life
in order to avert dishonor.
The debauch of the refugees at last came to an end. Not being a witness
of the scene, Kate could judge as to the manner of its termination, only
from the laugh of derision with which it was said successively that
another “was under the table.” Gradually the voices of the speakers
became so thick as to be undistinguishable; the revelers apparently grew
fewer and fewer, and finally a heavy fall was heard, as of the last boon
companion, followed by silence.
For a long while Kate listened, dreading lest she should hear some one
stir, for she dared not hope that sleep had overpowered the whole gang.
But five minutes passed without any one moving, then ten, and then
finally a half an hour. When this latter period had elapsed she began to
breathe freely again. The thought of escape flashed upon her. She
reasoned that if she could pass the sleepers undetected, and gain the
forest, she might find some place of refuge, perhaps, before the outlaws
would awake. Ignorant as she was of the exact locality of the hut, she
yet had a general idea of the direction in which the Forks lay, and she
determined to make the attempt to reach that post.
But she resolved not to essay escape as yet. The night without was pitch
dark, so that it would have been impossible to find her way through the
woods; and as she knew the moon would rise in about an hour, she
determined to wait for that event; and accordingly threw herself on the
bed to watch for the propitious time.
Fatigued by physical exhaustion as well as by mental excitement,
however, she unwittingly fell asleep, and when at last she opened her
eyes, the moon was shining full in at the window, having attained a
considerable elevation above the horizon. For a moment she did not
recollect where she was. She started up, at first, with a look of
bewilderment, which changed to one of affright, however, and then of
despair, as the past came up again to her memory.
“What precious hours I have lost,” she mentally exclaimed.
“Perhaps now it is too late. Oh! how could I sleep!” And she wrung
her hands.
But directly she recovered the energy natural to her. In truth, her
slumbers had vastly recruited her strength and spirits; and of this she
began soon to be sensible. She sprang to her feel, saying to herself
with decision,
“But why do I waste precious moments? There may yet be hope—they
seem to sleep as soundly as ever—at the most I can but fail.”
As she pronounced these words, she began, though with hands trembling
with eagerness, to move the bedstead from the door sufficiently to allow
egress. With what intense anxiety she listened, during this proceeding,
lest the fabric should, by creaking, awaken the refugees! Even if one
should be aroused it would be fatal to her; and the slightest noise
might produce this result. She was almost breathless with suspense,
until the bedstead had been removed enough to allow her to pass. But
when this was effected, her heart was fluttering so wildly, that she had
to pause an instant, pressing her hand on it to still its throbbings,
for while it palpitated to such a degree she was too weak to proceed.
She now ventured to lift the latch, which at first resisted her efforts,
and which, when at last it yielded, gave forth a sudden, sharp click,
that, for a moment, made her fear it had awakened one or more of the
outlaws. She waited, therefore, to assure herself that no one was
stirring, before she ventured to draw the door towards her. In the
unnaturally excited state of her nerves, the almost imperceptible sound
of the hinges smote on her ear with alarming distinctness, so that she
felt confident that now at least some one of the outlaws must awake. In
fact a burly ruffian, in whom, to her horror, she recognized Arrison,
and who lay directly across the doorway, not a foot from her, actually
stirred, muttering incoherently, as if about to arouse from sleep; and
at this sight Kate, brave as she was, felt all her courage and strength
desert her, and was compelled to lean against the wall, in order to
support herself from falling.
The ruffian, however, proved to have been only dreaming. After mumbling
a few broken sentences, and tossing his arm over his head, as if to
relieve it by a change of posture, he sunk into slumber again. Never was
sound sweeter to Kate’s ears than the loud, almost stertorous
breathing of the inebriated sleeper. Reassured of this, the violent
beating of her heart ceased, and she recovered strength to renew her
attempt at escape.
The door of the outer apartment was fortunately open, and the moonlight,
streaming in, lit up a scene, such as the Flemish masters loved to
paint. Down the centre of the apartment ran a table, covered with
overturned drinking glasses, and empty bottles, amid which a huge black
jug, with a corn-stalk cork, stood, like a grim, giant warrior, of old,
in the centre of a troop of modern pigmies. A few square bits of wood,
in each of which a hole had been bored to insert a candle, were
scattered about the table; but the candles had long since guttered down,
the melted tallow flowing over and adhering to the board. On one side of
the table had been a row of split-bottomed chairs, but these were now
either pushed back against the wall, or had been kicked over; while on
the other side was a rude bench, made of the first plank that is cut
from a log, the convex part, to which the bark still adhered, being
downward. A broken clay pipe, black with smoke, lay on one end of this
bench, and by it slept its owner, a brawny, unshaven savage. Two of his
companions were stretched on the floor, on either side; another was
directly under the table; a fourth filled a shadowy corner, looking an
unsightly, mis-shapen mass in the obscurity; while a fifth, still
sitting in his chair, slept with his head leaning on his hands crossed
before him on the table. Across this central figure the moonlight poured
in a flood of intense brilliancy, and shot onwards to where Arrison lay
at the feet of Kate, leaving the rest of the room in comparative
darkness, as in a painting by Rembrandt.
Kate saw that it would require the utmost caution to pass the sleepers
without awakening them, for the room was so narrow, and they lay in such
positions, that it was almost impossible to reach the door without
treading upon more than one of them. Arrison himself lay close to the
door of her room, as if his last thought, before he succumbed to the
effects of his copious libations, had been to place himself there on
purpose to keep guard. She could not advance a single step, indeed,
without passing over his body; and if, in making the attempt, even her
skirt should brush him, all would be over. Perhaps, she reflected, he
would be aroused even by her shadow crossing him; she herself could
easily be woke in that way. These suggestions of an active brain would
have paralyzed many a female in Kate’s situation; but they only had
the effect of quickening her pulses, and increasing her caution.
Holding her breath, and gathering up her skirts firmly, she stepped
rapidly across Arrison’s body, and not pausing to look behind,
advanced stealthily but swiftly towards the door, keeping as much as
possible in the shadow. She was but a few seconds in crossing the
apartment, but it seemed to her almost an age. Every instant she
expected to hear Arrison spring to his feet, or to see one of the
ruffians in front rise to intercept her. At every footstep she trembled
with nervous apprehension. As she approached the door, she was compelled
to almost brush one of the outlaws extended on the floor: he stirred at
that crisis; and she thought that she was discovered. Instantaneously
she stopped and shrank into the shadow. The man was only turning in his
sleep, however, and the next moment was snoring as heavily as before.
Inexpressibly relieved, Kate drew her garments close to her figure, and
gliding lightly past him, gained the door in safety.
It was a magnificent night without; and what a contrast to the scene
within! Not a cloud was in the sky, not even a speck of fleecy vapor;
only the blue, starless heavens were seen above, and in their eastern
depths the silver moon. A vague, awe-struck feeling came over Kate as
she looked up, and saw the solemn pine-trees standing, dark and weird,
against the silent sky, and above them the calm, cold planet, looking
down on her as pitilessly as it had gazed on the suffering Job on the
plains of Mesopotamia, ages before. Not a breath of air stirred even the
topmost tassel of the tallest fir; not a sound broke the deep stillness:
it seemed, indeed, as if to breathe was to break some potent spell and
bring down ruin on her head.
The little clearing was everywhere as light as day, except where the
shadows of the rude fences checkered the ground, or where the gloom,
cast by the forest, fell like an ominous pall across the eastern edge.
Before our heroine was the little, tumble-down barn, which we have once
before described. One side of this, including the roof, was flooded with
the moonlight, while the other was black and vague, the deep shadows
effectually concealing its outline. Right opposite the glorious planet,
and therefore dazzlingly lit up by her radiance, a road opened into the
forest, which soon, however closed about it, sombre and awful, as some
unfathomable cave swallows up the ray of sunlight that streams through a
chink in the roof. It reminded Kate of a pathway into some land of
enchantment, at first beautiful to the eye, and light almost as day, but
soon darkening into the gloom of death, amid bogs, and torrents, and
labyrinths without end. A shudder came over her as she gazed, as if a
shadow of impending evil fell across her; but shaking off the feeling as
childish, she advanced into the open space, and directed her steps to
the road.
But scarcely had she emerged fairly into the moonlight, when a low, deep
growl startled her, proceeding apparently from the barn. Looking eagerly
in that direction, her heart sank, for she saw the ferocious
blood-hound, which she had observed on her arrival, slowly rising to his
feet from out of the shadow. His huge form, as he stalked into the
light, seemed, to the excited nerves of our heroine, to be of even more
colossal stature than it was in reality; and with a stifled groan,
clasping her hands, she stood transfixed in speechless horror.