Cudjo's Cave Part 14

"Who is boss here? Who ye goin' to mind? that old traitor, or me? I say, lick the n.i.g.g.e.r! We're a goin' to have our way now, and we're a goin' to have our way to the end of the 'arth, sure as I am a gentleman standing on this yer barrel!"

To emphasize his declaration, he stamped with his foot; the head of the cask flew in, and down went orator, cask, and all, in a fas.h.i.+on rendered all the more ridiculous by the climax of oratory it ill.u.s.trated.

"Just so sure will your hollow and inhuman schemes fail from under your feet!" exclaimed Mr. Villars, as soon as he learned what had happened.

"So surely and so suddenly will you fall."

This incident occurred as Toby's flogging was about to begin in earnest.

Virginia had instinctively covered her eyes to shut out the terrible sight, her ears to shut out the sounds of the beating and the poor old fellow's groans. Luckily, Silas had fallen partly in the barrel, and partly across the sharp edge of it, and being too tipsy to help himself, had been seriously hurt, and was now helpless. The ruffians hastened to extricate him, and raise him up. Carl, who, with an open knife concealed in his sleeve, had been waiting for an opportunity, darted at the tree, cut the negro's bonds in a twinkling, and set him free.

Both took to their heels without an instant's delay. But the trick was discovered. They were pursued immediately. Carl was lively on his legs, as we know; but poor old Toby, never a good runner, and now stiff and decrepit with age, was no match even for the slowest of their pursuers.

They ran straight into the orchard, hoping to lose themselves among the shadows. The glare of the burning wood-pile flickered but faintly and unsteadily among the trees. Carl might easily have escaped; but he thought only of Toby, and kept faithfully at his side, a.s.sisting him, urging him. A fence was near--if they could only reach that! But Toby was wheezing terribly, and the hand of the foremost ruffian was already extended to seize him.

"Jump the vence over!" was Carl's parting injunction to the old negro, who made a last desperate effort to accomplish the feat; while Carl, turning sharp about, tripped the foot of him of the extended hand, and sent him headlong. The second pursuer he grappled, and both rolled upon the ground together.

Favored by this diversion, Toby reached the fence, climbed it, and without looking how, he leaped, jumped down upon--a human figure, stretched there upon the ground!

Notwithstanding his own danger, Toby thought of his patient, and stopped.

"Is it you, ma.s.sa?"

The man rose slowly to his feet. It was not Penn; it was, on the contrary, the worst of Penn's enemies, who had stationed himself here, in order to observe, unseen, and from a safe distance, the operations of Silas Ropes and his band of patriots.

"O, Ma.s.sa Bythewood!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Toby, inspired with sudden joy and hope; "help a poor old n.i.g.g.ah! Help! De Villa.r.s.es will remember it ob ye de longest day you live, if you on'y will."

"Why, what's the matter, Toby?" said Augustus, full of rage at having been thus discovered, yet a.s.suming a gracious and patronizing manner.

Toby did not make a very coherent reply; but probably the young gentleman was already sufficiently aware of what was going on. He had no especial regard for Toby, yet his credit with Virginia and her father was to be sustained. And so Toby was saved.

Augustus met and rebuked his pursuers, released Carl, who was suffering at the hands of his antagonist, and led the way back to the house. There he expressed to Mr. Villars and his daughters the utmost regret and indignation for what had occurred, and took Mr. Ropes aside to remonstrate with him for such violent proceedings. His influence over that fallen orator was extraordinary. Ropes excused himself on the plea of his patriotic zeal, and called off his men.

"How fortunate," said Augustus, conducting the old man, with an excessive show of deference and politeness, back into the sitting-room,--"how extremely fortunate that I happened to be walking this way! I trust no serious harm has been done, my dear Virginia?"

Bythewood no doubt thought himself ent.i.tled to use this affectionate term, after the service he had rendered the family.

After he was gone, Toby, having recovered from his fright and the fatigue of running, and got his clothes on again, rushed into the presence of his master and the young ladies.

"I've seed Ma.s.s' Penn!" he said. "Arter Bythewood done got up from under de fence whar I jumped on him, I seed anoder man a crawlin' away on his hands and knees jest a little ways off. 'Twas Ma.s.s' Penn! I know 'twas Ma.s.s' Penn."

But Toby was mistaken. The second figure he had seen was Mr. Lysander Sprowl, now the confidential adviser and secret companion of Augustus.

XIII.

_THE OLD CLERGYMAN'S NIGHTGOWN HAS AN ADVENTURE._

Where, then, all this time, was Penn? He was himself almost as profoundly ignorant on that subject as anybody. For two or three hours he had been lost to himself no less than to his friends.

When he recovered his consciousness he found that he was lying on the ground, in the open air, in what seemed a barren field, covered with rocks and stunted shrubs.

How he came there he did not know. He had nothing on but his night-dress,--a loan from the old clergyman,--besides a blanket wrapped about him. His feet were bare, and he now perceived that they were painfully aching.

Almost too weak to lift a hand to his head, he yet tried to sit up and look around him. All was darkness; not a sign of human habitation, not a twinkling light was visible. The cold night wind swept over him, sighing drearily among the leafless bushes. Chilled, s.h.i.+vering, his temples throbbing, his brain sick and giddy, he sat down again upon the rocks, so ill and suffering that he could scarcely feel astonishment at his situation, or care whether he lived or died.

Where had he been during those hours of oblivion? He seemed to have slept, and to have had terrible dreams. Could he have remembered these dreams, it seemed to him that the whole mystery of his removal to this desolate spot would be explained. And he knew that it required but an effort of his will to remember them. But his soul was too weak: he could not make the effort.

To get upon his feet and walk was impossible. What, then, was left him but to perish here, alone, uncared for, unconsoled by a word of love from any human being? Death he would have welcomed as a relief from his sufferings. Yet when he thought of his home far away, in the peaceful community of Friends, of his parents and sisters now anxiously expecting his return,--and again when he remembered the hospitable roof under which he lay, so tenderly nursed, but a little while ago, and thought of the blind old clergyman, of Virginia fresh as a rose, of kind-hearted Carl, and the affectionate old negro,--he was stung with the desire to live, and he called feebly,--

"Toby! Toby!"

Was his cry heard? Surely, there were footsteps on the rocks! And was not that a human form moving dimly between him and the sky? It pa.s.sed on, and was lost in the shadows of the pines. Was it some animal, or only a phantom of his feverish brain?

"Toby!" he called again, exerting all his force. But only the wailing wind answered him, and, overcome by the effort, he sunk into a swoon. In that swoon it seemed to him that Toby had heard his voice, and that he came to him. Hands, gentle human hands, groped on him, felt the blanket, felt his bare feet, and his head, pillowed on stones. Then there seemed to be two Tobys, one good and the other evil, holding a strange consultation over him, which he heard as in a dream.

"We can't leave him dying here!" said the good Toby.

"What dat to me, if him die, or whar him die?" said the other Toby.

"Straight har!" He seemed to be feeling Penn's locks, in order to ascertain to which race he belonged. "Dat's nuff fur me! Lef him be, I tell ye, and come 'long!"

"Straight hair or curly, it's all the same," said Toby the Good. "Take hold here; we must save him!"

"Hyah-yah! ye don't cotch dis n.i.g.g.ah!" chuckled Toby the Bad, maliciously. "Nuff more ob his kind, in all conscience! Reckon we kin spar' much as one! Hyah-yah!"

Something like a quarrel ensued, the result of which was, that Toby the Good finally prevailed upon Toby the Malevolent to a.s.sist him. Then Penn was dreamily aware of being lifted in the strong arms of this double individual, and borne away, over rocks, and among thickets, along the mountain side; until even this misty ray of consciousness deserted him, and he fell into a stupor like death.

And what was this he saw on awaking? Had he really died, and was this unearthly place a vestibule of the infernal regions? Days and nights of anguish, burning, and delirium, relieved at intervals by the same death-like stupor, had pa.s.sed over him; and here he lay at length, exhausted, the terrible fever conquered, and his soul looking feebly forth and taking note of things.

And strange enough things appeared to him! He was in an apartment of prodigious and uncouth architecture, dimly lighted from one side by some opening invisible to him, and by a blazing fire in a little fireplace built on the broad stone floor. The fireplace was without chimney, but a steady draught of air, from the side where the opening seemed to be, swept the smoke away into sombre recesses, where it mingled with the shadows of the place, and was lost in gloom which even the glare of the flames failed to illumine.

Such a cavernous room Penn seemed to have seen in his dreams. The same irregular, rocky roof started up from the wall by his bed, and stretched away into vague and obscure distance. All was familiar to him, but all was somehow mixed up with frightful fantasies which had vanished with the fever that had so recently left him. The awful shapes, the struggles of demoniac men, the processions of strange and beautiful forms, which had visited him in his delirious visions,--all these were airy nothings; but the cave was real.

Here he lay, on a rude bed constructed of four logs, forming the ends and sides, with canvas stretched across them, and secured with nails.

Under him was a mattress of moss, over him a blanket like that which he remembered to have had wrapped about him last night in the field.

Last night! Poor Penn was deeply perplexed when he endeavored to remember whether his mysterious awaking in the open air occurred last night, or many nights ago. He moved his head feebly to look for Toby.

Which Toby? for all through his sufferings the same two Tobys, one good and the other evil, who had taken him from the field, had appeared still to attend him, and he now more than half expected to see the faithful old negro duplicated, and waiting upon him with two bodies and four hands.

But neither the better nor even the worse half of that double being was near him now. Penn was alone, in that subterranean solitude. There burned the fire, the shadows flickered, the smoke floated away into the depths of the dark cavern, in such loneliness and silence as he had never experienced before. He would have thought himself in some grotto of the gnomes, or some awful cell of enchantment, whose supernatural fire never went out, and whose smoke rolled away into darkness the same perpetually,--but for the sound of the crackling flames, and the sight of piles of wood on the floor, so strongly suggestive of human agency.

On one side was what appeared to be an artificial chamber built of stones, its door open towards the fire. Ranged about the cave, in something like regular order, were several ma.s.sy blocks of different sizes, like the stools of a family of giants. But where were the giants?

Ah, here came Toby at last, or, at any rate, the twin of him. He approached from the side where the daylight shone, bearing an armful of sticks, and whistling a low tune. With his broad back turned towards Penn, he crouched before the fire, which he poked and scolded with malicious energy, his grotesque and gigantic shadow projected on the wall of the cave.

"Burn, ye debil! K-r-r-r! sputter! snap! git mad, why don't ye?"

Then throwing himself back upon a heap of skins, with his heels at the fire, and his long arms swinging over his head, in a savage and picturesque att.i.tude, he burst into a shout, like the cry of a wild beast. This he repeated several times, appearing to take delight in hearing the echoes resound through the cavern. Then he began to sing, keeping time with his feet, and pausing after each strain of his wild melody to hear it die away in the hollow depths of the cave.