THE MOUSE THAT GNAWED THE NET.
"There passed a weary time. Each throat
Was parched, and glazed each eye.
A weary time! a weary time!
How glazed each weary eye!
When, looking westward, I beheld
A something in the sky."
As the powder vomited forth its dreadful thunder, and as the stones and
timbers from the blasted den were hurled high in air, and scattered by
the explosive whirlwind far and near, some of the splinters and
fragments came down in dropping hail upon the red-tiled sheds and the
doctor's dwelling. At the first shock the lonely child started up in his
little bed, and while the earth rocked and the stones came pelting and
crashing on the roof, he screamed, "Mamma! mamma!" No loving echo came
back to those innocent lips, and naught was heard save the crackling of
the flame beyond, licking its tongue along the dry timber and roaring
joyously as it was fed. "Mamma! _chere_ mamma!"
Yet no answer, and still the savage flames came careering wildly on till
the very stones of the court-yard cracked like slates, while the burning
flakes and cinders loaded the air, and the eddying volumes of smoke
reeled in dense clouds, and poured their suffocating breath into the
room where the forsaken child was crying.
One more panting, helpless cry, and the little fellow instinctively flew
through the open doorway, where, blinded and choking with the
devastating element around him, he staggered feebly beyond its
influence. Yet again a flurry of thick smoke lighted up the forked and
vivid flames, and chased the child before it.
Oh, fond mother! in your poignant grief for the loss of your poor
drowned boy, you were spared the agony of seeing him, even in
imagination, struggling faintly before that tempest of fire and smoke,
calling plaintively for her on whose tender bosom his head had rested,
while his naked feet were cut and bruised by the sharp coral shingle
beneath them. But onward and onward the boy wandered, and fortunately
his footsteps took the path into a purer atmosphere which led toward the
chapel. Here he looked timidly around at the lurid glare behind him, and
then entered the church and sank down exhausted, his feverish, smarting
eyes closing in slumber on the hard pavement beneath the image of the
Virgin Mary.
Then came the close and sultry night--no murmur of a land-wind to drive
the smoky canopy away--the black cinders falling in burning rain on
basin, thicket, and lagoon, till even the very lizards and scorpions hid
themselves deep within the holes and crevices of the rocks. Midnight
came. The dim and silent stars were obscured by a veil of heavy clouds,
and with a low, muttering sound of thunder, the vapory masses unclosed
their portals, and the rain fell in torrents. The flames, now nearly
satisfied with their work, leaped out occasionally from the fallen
ruins, but were quenched by the tropical deluge, and smouldered away
amid the charred and saturated timbers. Then the thunder ceased, the
lizards and scorpions came from their retreats, the teal fluttered over
the lagoon, and the noise of the waves bursting over the reef came again
to the ear. Still there was no breath of air; the atmosphere was thick
and damp; and out from the mangrove thickets and wide expanse of cactus,
swarms of insects, musquitoes, and sand-flies in myriads went buzzing
and singing in the sultry, murky night.
So dragged on the weary hours until day broke again, and the sea-birds
floated off seaward for their morning's meal, and the flying-fish
skipped with their silvery wings from wave to wave, as the dolphins
glittered in gold and purple after them below the blue water. No bright
and blazing sun came over the hills of Cuba to light up this picture,
but all was blight and gloom, with murky masses of dead, still clouds
hanging low down over the island.
The little suffering boy, lying there on the coral pavement, with his
head resting on the thin, delicate arm, with pale, sweet face turned
half upward toward the Virgin, gave a feeble cry and opened his eyes. He
rose to a sitting posture, with his little hands resting on his lap and
little ragged shirt. Then, with his dim hazel eyes fixed upon the
painting, while the tears coursed slowly down his pallid cheeks, he put
forth his hands in a childish movement of supplication, and murmured
again his tearful prayer, "Mamma! mamma!"
Presently rising, he turned his feeble footsteps toward the doorway, and
as his eye caught the stone bowl of holy water standing on its coral
pedestal near the portal, he bent down his feverish head and slaked his
parched lips. Revived by this, he timidly looked out from the chapel,
and shuddering as he beheld the gloomy wilderness around, he once more
screamed in a thin piercing cry, "Mamma! oh, _ma chere_ mamma!"
That was the last sad wail for help for many and many a long year that
those infant lips were destined to utter; and when he again called upon
that dear name, his manly arms would clasp a joyful mother to his
swelling heart.
"Henri!" came back like an echo in a clear shout to the shriek of the
boy. "Henri! Henri!" was reiterated again and again, each time in a
voice that seemed to split asunder the canopy of clouds above.
The boy started and listened.
"Henri! Henri! this way to your good friend the doctor! Quick, my little
boy!"
Now with the step of a fawn the child ran out upon the sharp sandy
esplanade, and following the voice as he tripped lightly through the
narrow pathway between the needle-pointed cactus, in a moment he
stopped, with a look of horror, beside the trestle on which the bound
and nearly naked man was stretched.
Ay, it was a sight to make a strong and stalwart man turn pale with
sickness and horror, much less a baby-boy of three or four years old.
There lay the man, all through the dreadful night, with swarms on swarms
and myriads upon myriads of stinging insects, biting and sipping, and
sucking his life-blood with distracting agony away. Ah! think of the
hellish torture often practiced by those bloody pirates upon their
victims in the West Indies! The bound man's eyes were closed, the lips
and cheeks puffed and swollen out of all human proportions, and the
inflamed body was one glowing red and angry surface. No needle could
have been stuck where the venomous stings of a thousand sand-flies or
musquitoes had not already sucked blood. Ay, well might the child start
back with horror!
"It is your friend the doctor, Henri," he said in French, still in a
strong but kindly voice. "I can not see you, but get me a knife. No, my
child, never mind--you can not find one; don't leave me."
Here the child timidly put his little hands out and brushed away the
poisonous insects, and then touched the doctor's face.
"Ah! Henri, see if you can not slip that pretty silk rope over my head;
yes, that is the way--_doucement_--easily, my child! Well, now, my
Henri, you are weak and sick, my poor little boy; but listen to me--yes,
I feel your little hands on my eyes. Well, bite upon that cord that goes
across my throat. Bite till it snaps asunder! I am nearly choking,
little one; but don't cry."
True, the strips of raw-hide, which had partially slackened in the rain
that had washed the body of the victim, now began to tauten again in the
sultry heat of the morning, and lay half hidden in the swollen throat,
stomach, and limbs of the tortured sufferer.
Henri's sharp little teeth fastened upon the strand, biting and gnawing,
until finally it was severed, and the doctor gave a great sigh of
relief.
[Illustration: "AH! HENRI, SEE IF YOU CAN NOT SLIP THAT PRETTY SILK ROPE
OVER MY HEAD."]
"Blessings on you, my poor boy!" he murmured, painfully. "Now bite away
on the strands which bind the arm. There! Don't! don't hurry! Rest a
little, my child! Ah! it is well!"
Again those sharp little teeth of a mouse had gnawed through the net
which bound the lion-hearted man; the ends of the raw-hide drew back and
twisted into spiral curls, and the right arm, though numbed and four
times its original size, was free.
"Thanks be to God for all His mercies!" exclaimed the doctor, as with
difficulty he raised his released arm to his face and pushed back the
swollen lids from his closed eyes--"and to you, my little friend, for
saving this wretched life!"
Waiting a few moments to recover his strength, the doctor made a mighty
effort, and some of the coils whose strands had been cut by those little
teeth yielded and gradually unrove, so as to leave the upper part of his
body free. Then, while the child was once more cutting the lashings of
his feet, he himself unfastened the knots of his left arm, and by a
vigorous effort he tore the net from off him and sat upright. Clasping
his numbed and swollen hands together, he turned his face and almost
sightless eyes to heaven.
"May this awful trial serve as a partial forgiveness of my sins, and
make me a better man!"
He paused, and laid his heavy arms around the child, while warm and
grateful tears trickled down his cheeks. Slowly, and like a drunken man,
his feet sought the sand, and then, weak, trembling, and faint, he
staggered along the path, the boy tripping lightly before him, till he
fell exhausted on the floor of the chapel.
"Water, my Henri! water!"
The child scooped it out from the stone bowl with his tiny hands and
sprinkled it on his friend's face.
"There, that will suffice, my brave boy! Lay your cheek to mine!"
What a sight it was--that dark, swollen, yet powerful frame lying on the
coral pavement, and the innocent child, like a dewdrop on the leaf of a
red tropical flower, nestling close beside it!