BURNED BRIDGES
"By Heaven!" O'Hara gasped, "the voice has spoke."
"Aye, so it has," said Gleazen slowly.
"Neil, Molly, sure and we'd best put out to sea. This is no time for
us, surely. A month from now, say, we could slip in by night with a
boat--"
"O'Hara," said Matterson's light, almost silvery voice, "have _you_
turned coward?"
"No, not that, Molly! 'T is not I am scairt of any man that walks
the green earth, Molly, but spirits is different."
"Spirits!" Matterson was softly laughing. "I didn't think, O'Hara,
_you'd_ be one to turn black."
"Laugh, curse you!" O'Hara cried hotly. "If 'twas you had seen a
glimmer of the things I've seen with my own two eyes; if 't was you
had seen a man die because he went against taboo; if 't was you had
seen a witch doctor bring the yammering spirit back unwilling to a
cold body; if 't was you had seen a man three weeks dead get up and
dance; if 't was you had seen a strong man fall down without the
breath of life in him at all, and all for nothing else but a spell
was on him, maybe then you'd believe me. I swear by the blessed
saints in heaven, it's throwing our lives away to go up river now;
and all I've got to say for Bull is, God help him!"
The others were looking at O'Hara curiously. The lantern light on
their faces brought out every scar and wrinkle and showed that
strong passions were contending within each of them.
"It ain't spirits that worries me," said Gleazen, at last, "and it
ain't niggers. It's men." He now seemed quite to shake off the spell
of the strange voice. "What say, Seth?" He turned to my uncle.
To my surprise, Seth Upham rose manfully to the occasion. "Spirits?"
he cried. "Nonsense!"
O'Hara uneasily shifted his feet. "Ah, say what you like, men," he
very earnestly replied, "say what you like against spirits and
greegrees and jujus and all the rest. I'll never be one to say
there's nothing in them, nor would you, if you'd seen all that I
have seen. And I'll be telling you this, men: that voice we heard
then was speaking the thoughts of ten thousand fighting niggers up
and down this river."
"Pfaw!" said Gleazen, stretching his arms. "Niggers won't fight."
"That from you, Neil!"
I never learned just what lay behind O'Hara's simple thrust, but
there was no doubt that it struck a weak link in Gleazen's armor,
for he flushed so deeply that we could see it by lantern light.
"Well, now," said he, with a conciliatory inflection, "of course I
meant it in moderation."
All this time Arnold and Gideon North and I stood by and looked and
listened.
Now, with a glance at us, Matterson said shortly, "Come, come!
Enough of that. All hands lay to and load the boat."
"I've warned ye," said O'Hara.
"At midnight," said Matterson, "_we'll_ go _up_ the river, and
Gideon North'll take the brig _down_ the river. Come morning
there'll be no stick nor timber of us here. They'll bother no more
about us then."
"Ye'll never fool 'em," said O'Hara.
Matterson turned his back on him, and the work went forward, and for
an hour there was only the low murmur of voices. The boat, now
ready for the journey, rode at the end of her painter, where the
current made long ripples, which converged at her bow. Here and
there, lights shone in the clearing and set my imagination and my
memory hard at work, but elsewhere the impenetrable blackness of a
cloudy night blanketed the whole world. And meanwhile the others
were holding council in the cabin.
"I think," Arnold Lamont said, "that Matterson and Gleazen
underestimate the ingenuity and resources of that black yelling
devil."
"So they do," said Abe Guptil. "So they do, and I'd be glad enough
to be back home, I tell you."
What would I not have given to be sleeping once more in Abe's
low-studded house beside our wholesome northern sea!
Now the others came from the cabin. They walked eagerly. Their very
whispers were full of excitement. Even Uncle Seth seemed to have got
from somewhere a new confidence and a new hope, so smartly did he
step about and so sharply did he speak; and the faint odor of brandy
that came with them explained much.
We climbed down into the loaded boat and settled ourselves on the
thwarts, where Abe Guptil and I took oars.
"It's turn and turn about at the rowing," Matterson announced.
"We've a long way to go and a current dead against us."
I saw Gideon North looking down at us anxiously, and waved my hand.
Then someone cast off, and we pulled out into midstream and up above
the brig, where we held our place and watched and waited.
Soon we heard orders on board the brig. Sails fell from the gaskets
and shook free. The men began to heave at the windlass. The brig
first came up to the anchors, then, with anchors aweigh, she half
turned in the current.
Now orders followed in quick succession. We could hear them rigging
the fish tackle and catching the hooks on the flukes of the anchors.
Blocks rattled, braces creaked, the yards swung from side to side
according to the word of command. The sails filled with the light
breeze, and coming slowly about, the Adventure gathered steerage-way
and went down the river as if she were some gigantic water bird
lazily swimming between the mangroves. We watched her go and knew
that we seven were now irrevocably left to fend for ourselves.
When Gleazen whispered to us to give way, we bent to the oars with a
will. For better or for worse, we had embarked on the final stage of
our great quest.
The lights in the clearing fell astern. The tall trees seemed to
close in above us. Alone in the wilderness, we turned the bow of our
boat toward the heart of Africa.
That we had set forth in complete secrecy on our voyage up river we
were absolutely confident. What eyes were keen enough to tell at a
distance that the brig had left a boat behind her when she sailed?
Gleazen now laughed derisively at O'Hara. "You'd have had us sail
away, would you? And wait a month? Or a year, maybe, or maybe two.
Ha, ha!"
"Don't you laugh at me, Neil," O'Hara replied. "We're not yet out o'
the woods."
At the man's solemn manner Gleazen laughed again, louder than
before.
As if to reprove his rashness, as if to bear out every word O'Hara
had said, at that very moment the uncanny yell we had heard before
rose the second time, far off in the swamp. Three times we heard the
yell, then we heard the voice, faint and far away, "White man, I
come 'peak. White man boat him sink. White man him go Dead Land."
Three times more the wordless wailing yell drifted to us out of the
darkness; then we heard a great multitude of men wildly and savagely
laughing.
Never again did Cornelius Gleazen scoff at O'Hara. His face now, I
verily believe, was grayer than O'Hara's. He turned about and stared
downstream as if he could see beyond the black wall of mangroves.
"Now what'll we do?" he gasped, with a choking, profane ejaculation.
"Did you hear that?"
Had we heard it! There was not one of us whom it had not chilled to
the heart. Our own smallness under those vast trees, our few
resources,--we had only the goods that were piled in the boat,--our
unfathomable loneliness, combined to make us feel utterly without
help or strength. But it was now too late to return. So we bent to
our oars and rowed on, and on, and on, against the current of the
great river.
The only help that remained to us lay in our own right hands and in
the mercy of divine Providence. Would Providence, I wondered, help
such men as Gleazen and Matterson and O'Hara?
Nor was that the only doubt that beset us. Although the three
accepted us, and in actual fact trusted us, they made no attempt to
conceal their enmity; and I very well knew that, besides danger from
without our little band, Arnold, Abe, and I must guard against
treachery from within it.
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V
THE HOUSE ON THE HILL
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