THE PURSUIT
A stony adversary, an inhuman wretch
Incapable of pity, void and empty
From ev’ry drachm of mercy. —Shakespeare.
Spare not the babe,
Whose dimpled smiles from fools exhaust their mercy. —Shakespeare.
The astonishment of Arrison, when he discovered the escape of Kate, was
only equaled by his rage. He was not the first, however, to detect her
flight. Having resisted the influence of the last night’s potations
longer than the rest, he slept sounder than some of the others, and was
still lost in a deep stupefying slumber, when one of the gang waking,
and looking around, as he sat up on the floor, started to observe the
door of the inner chamber open.
“Hello!” he cried, rubbing his eyes, to be sure that he beheld
aright. “The bird’s flown.”
With the words, he sprang to his feet, and advancing hastily to the
chamber, leaned over Arrison’s recumbent body, and looked in. His
suspicions were immediately verified. Their prisoner was gone. The
discovery struck him in so ludicrous a light, that he burst into
uproarious laughter.
This loud mirth roused all the sleepers, Arrison among the rest.
“What do you mean?” cried the latter, leaping to his feet, and
collaring the laugher. “What are you doing here?”
Arrison, still confused in intellect, and not yet comprehending the
truth, had seized his comrade, by instinct, on finding the refugee so
near Kate’s chamber.
“Ha! ha!” continued the youth, unable to restrain his merriment,
“to think she’s flown, after I nailed fast her window too.”
“Who’s flown?” angrily cried Arrison, shaking the youth violently;
while, with an oath, he added, as he now first observed the open door,
“You don’t mean to say Miss Aylesford’s gone.”
The youth stopped laughing, and breaking loose by a sudden effort,
answered, with a flushed and angry face,
“Take care who you collar, Captain; I’m not a nigger.” And as
Arrison rushed into the chamber, he muttered, sulkily, “I’m not
sorry she’s gone; for he was goin’ to make all for himself there was
to be made; takin’ the oyster and leaving us the shell.”
A rapid glance satisfied Arrison that his prey had really escaped, and
he came back, perfectly white with rage, just in time to hear the
concluding murmurs of the youth, though without being able to make out
what was being said.
“What’s that you’re muttering, you mutinous rascal?” he shouted,
darting on the speaker. “I believe you had a hand in it. She
couldn’t have got off alone.”
The youth sprang nimbly to one side, just in time to elude the grasp of
his enraged leader, and interposing the table between himself and
Arrison, drew his knife.
“Keep off,” he cried, “or I’ll drive this into you, Captain or
no Captain. Say that again, if you dare. It was your own stupidity, in
getting drunk, not drawing the bolt on this side, and sleeping like a
log of wood, that let the girl off.”
He flourished his weapon as he spoke, and glared at Arrison with such
savageness, that the latter, heated as he was with passion, paused.
Before either could make any new movement, and while they watched each
other like two angry tigers, the lieutenant, whom we have seen so active
the preceding day, rushed between them.
“Captain, you’re too quick,” he cried; “Bill, put up your knife;
the Captain’s hardly awake. If the gal’s really gone,” he
continued, more composedly, “the best thing to do is to put after her;
she can’t have got far; and with that hound of yours,” and he turned
to Arrison, “we ought to be able to track her to hell itself.”
“I meant no offence,” said Bill, who was easily mollified, as men of
his disposition usually are. “But when I found she’d got off, by
walking right through this ‘ere room, I couldn’t help thinking it a
good joke. She’s a gal of mettle, anyhow.” And he laughed again, in
spite of Arrison’s scowling brow, and the lieutenant’s significant
winks.
Arrison, now that he had time to reflect, saw that Bill spoke the truth,
and though the youth’s laughter galled him, he could not resent it
further. The ties which held his followers to him, were wholly
voluntary, and he feared, if he persisted in wreaking his vengeance on
Bill, that a real mutiny might arise; for the lad was a general
favorite, as he always told the merriest tale, was continually joking to
beguile the time, and generally was the life of the gang, socially. So
the chief answered, smothering his rage, “I was but half awake,
that’s a fact. The jade’s had no one to help her but herself; and
Bill must forget what I said.” He held out his hand as he concluded,
which the youth took and shook in token of restored amity.
“That’s all I ask, Captain,” replied Bill. “I don’t wonder
you’re a little riled, for if she’d been mine, as she was yourn,
I’d have fell on the first feller I saw, when I woke and found her
gone, so infernally rampaging mad would I have been. She’ll be lucky
if she gets away; for them ere swamps ain’t so easy for a stranger.”
But the wrath which Arrison could not discharge on Bill, found vent on
the helpless child, his reputed niece. It suggested itself to him, at
this point, that the bloodhound must have been roused by Kate’s
escape; that the child must have interposed to quiet the dog; and that
thus his prey had succeeded in escaping. Scarcely had the speaker
ceased, therefore, before Arrison rushed out, and entering the barn,
where the child still lay asleep, grasped her rudely by the arm, and
jerked her to her feet.
Terrified, and as yet but half awake, the poor thing began to tremble
violently; and seeing Arrison’s face distorted with rage, burst into
tears, exclaiming,
“Oh! don’t—please don’t—”
But the ruffian, shaking her violently, she could not proceed; and so
remained sobbing and choaking, piteously supplicating him with her eyes.
“You jade,” he cried, “I’ll shake the breath out of you to some
purpose. You little liar, don’t dare to say you didn’t do it.”
“I didn’t say it,” gasped the child. “Please don’t,
ple-e-ase—”
But again he shook her, till it seemed that her little limbs would be
rent apart; and her touching words of pleading ended in inarticulate
murmurings. When he had fairly exhausted himself by this brutal
exhibition of passion, he stopped, and holding her before him, as in a
vice, said,
“Tell the truth, or I’ll break every bone in your body. You kept the
dog quiet while she went off.”
“Oh! please, don’t. You hurt me so,” answered the child,
endeavoring, with one of her little hands, to remove his iron grasp,
which was bruising her arm.
“Answer me,” yelled the monster, purple with rage, and shaking the
friendless orphan again.
The child would not reply falsely; she, therefore, said nothing.
“What! You won’t speak?” he cried, perfectly beside himself and;
he struck her a blow over the head, which brought the blood gushing from
her ears and nose. She fell, as if dead, at his feet.
His comrades had witnessed this scene, and though hardened to most
descriptions of crime, could not longer endure his brutality. Indeed,
Bill and another would have interfered before, if the lieutenant had not
held them back, telling them it was Arrison’s niece, and that “he
had a right to do as he pleased with her.” But now even this personage
overcame his scruples.
“Come, come, Captain,” he said, picking up the child, “we’d
better be off. What’s done can’t be helped. She’s but a poor, weak
thing, anyhow; and who knows that the dog gave the alarm at all?”
At first Arrison scowled at this interference, but the faces of his
followers showed him that the lieutenant had spoken the will of the
majority. So, resolving to punish her to his heart’s content at a
future period, he bade her “go and wash her face, and stop crying, or
he’d give her something to cry for,” and turned away.
It took but a few minutes longer to complete the preparations for the
pursuit. The refugees hastily swallowed some food, and drained each a
deep draught of Jamaica, after which, with the bloodhound for their
guide, they began the search. The dog struck the trail immediately, and
went off in full chorus: and in a little while the pursuers were out of
sight.
The child remained where she had been left, sobbing as if her heart
would break, and with her face buried in her hands; every bone in her
body aching from the violence she had suffered.
“Oh! I wish I was dead! I wish I was dead!” she cried, rocking her
little body to and fro. “Mother, mother, let me come to you;” and
she looked up piteously to the skies.
Gradually, however, the passion of her tears ceased. She had often
endured equally brutal treatment before; and she was, in a measure,
hardened to it. So her sobs grew less frequent; her thoughts dwelt less
on her own sufferings; and she began to recollect Kate.
“I hope she’ll get off,” she cried, jumping up and clapping her
hands. “If she only took the right road.”
But scarcely had she spoken, when she reflected that, if his prey wholly
escaped, Arrison would return more violently enraged than ever.
Experience warned her that, in such a case, he would wreak double
vengeance on her. She burst into tears again, in almost speechless
terror at the idea.
She could think of nothing in this extremity, but the little prayers her
mother had taught her, and which she still murmured nightly before
retiring, for lack of others more suited to her years. So she fell on
her knees, and, with her hands clasped before her, prayed. But, with the
almost infantile words went up earnest heart-petitions, which, more
eloquent than the most burning language, reached—who shall doubt
it?—the ear of the Father of all.
When Uncle Lawrence reached the hut, an hour or two later, the child,
who had heard the approach of the party, was nowhere to be seen; for she
had hidden herself in terror in the barn, thinking her persecutor was
coming back. But she was not long suffered to remain concealed. Alarmed
at the evidences of the debauch, Uncle Lawrence decided to search every
spot about; and thus the child was soon discovered. On finding that the
intruders were friends of Kate, the poor thing lost her terror, however,
and answered their questions eagerly, giving what information she could
as to the route the pursuers had taken.
The woodcraft of Uncle Lawrence now came into full play. No Indian could
have tracked the refugees more surely than he did. Occasionally, a few
moments were lost in hesitancy, but he invariably selected the right
crossing at last. Such minutes of delay, however, were almost
intolerable, especially to Major Gordon; for, now that the crisis of
Kate’s fate approached, he felt the agony of suspense increase
tenfold. His incessant cry to himself was, “we shall be too late.”
This terrible conviction deepened, as the hours wore on without
conducting them to our heroine, or apparently bringing them nearer to
the refugees, the bay of whose bloodhound they listened for in vain.
But when the way became more difficult, they began, though as yet
ignorant of it, to gain rapidly on Arrison; for, as the path had grown
more intricate, the bloodhound had been often at fault, and thus had
lost much time.
At last the cry of the hound was heard. What a thrill of joy it sent
through Major Gordon’s frame! Every nerve tingled, as he cried,
“She is yet safe. On, on, for the love of God—we may not be too late
after all.”
The pace of the pursuers was now accelerated to a run. Suddenly Uncle
Lawrence said,
“That dog is nearly up with her; I know it by the quick way in which
he cries. Follow the track as fast as you can. I’ll take a short cut
through the swamp; I think I can make something by it, though none of
the rest can. The cry of the hound will lead me to the right spot.”
He had never ceased running as he spoke; and it was wonderful to see how
he could run, with the weight of sixty winters on him; and he now
vanished from sight, the bushes crackling as he dashed right into the
undergrowth.
Following the trails made by the wild animals, and occasionally breaking
through a thicket; now wading in black, slimy water up to his knees, and
now plunging into blacker mud ankle-deep; and guiding himself, partly by
the cry of the hound, and partly by a woodman’s instinct of the course
which he knew Kate must have taken, he reached our heroine, as we have
seen, just in time to save her life by shooting the bloodhound that was
springing at her throat. Then pausing to reload, with a veteran
hunter’s precaution, he leaped into the open space, and confronted
Arrison.
Everything now depended on the length of time it would take Major Gordon
to come up with his companions. Minutes, at present, were worth hours at
any other crisis.