Cudjo's Cave Part 34

Clasping the burden more precious to him than life, resolved in his soul to part with it only with life, he toiled heavily up the bank, down which he had descended with such tremendous swiftness a few minutes before.

But it was not in Virginia's nature to remain long a helpless enc.u.mbrance. Seeing the labor and peril still before them, her will returned, and with it her strength. She grasped a branch by which he was trying in vain with one hand, holding her with the other, to draw them both up a steep place. Her prompt action enabled him to seize the trunk of a young tree: she a.s.sisted still, and slipping from his hands, clung to it until he had reached the next tree above. He pulled her up after him, and then pushed her on still farther, until Pepperill could reach her from where he stood. A minute later the three were together on the summit of the slope.

But now they had above them the ten feet of sheer perpendicularity down which Dan had indiscreetly jumped, following Penn's lead. A single hand above them would now be worth several hands below.

"What a fool I war! durned if I warn't!" said Dan, endeavoring unsuccessfully to find a place by which he could reascend.

"Get on my shoulders!" And Penn braced himself against the ledge.

Dan made the attempt, but fell, and rolled down the bank.

Just then a grinning black face appeared above.

"Gib me de gal! gib me de gal!" and a prodigiously long arm reached down.

"O Cudjo! you are an angel!" cried Penn, "Daniel! Here!"

Pepperill was up the bank again in a minute, at Penn's side. They lifted Virginia above their heads. Holding on by a sapling with one hand, the negro extended the other far down over the ledge. Those miraculous arms of his seemed to have been made expressly for this service. He grasped a wrist of the girl; with the other hand she clung to his arm until he had drawn her up to the sapling; this she seized, and helped herself out.

Then once more Penn gave Daniel his shoulder, while Cudjo gave him a hand from above; and Daniel was safe. Last of all, Penn remained.

"Cotch holt hyar!" said Cudjo, extending towards him the end of a branch he had broken from a tree.

To this Penn held fast, a.s.sisting himself with his feet against the ledge, while Cudjo and Dan hauled him up.

"Good Cudjo! how came you here?"

"Me see you and Pepperill a gwine inter de fire. So me foller."

"This is the old man's daughter, Cudjo."

Cudjo regarded the beautiful young girl with a look of vague wonder and admiration.

"He remembers me," said Virginia. "I saw him the night he climbed in at Toby's window." She gave him her hand; it trembled with emotion. "I thank you, Cudjo, for what you have done for my father--and for me."

"Now, Cudjo! show us the nearest and easiest path. We must take her to the cave--there is no other way."

"You must be right spry, den!" said Cudjo. "De fire am a runnin' ober dat way powerful!"

Indeed, it had already crossed the upper end of the gorge, where the forest brook fell into it; and, getting into some beds of leaves, and thence into dense and inflammable thickets, it was now blazing directly across their line of retreat.

Penn would have carried Virginia in his arms, but she would not suffer him.

"I can go where you can!" she cried, once more full of spirit and daring. "Just give me your hand--you shall see!"

Penn took one of her hands, Pepperill the other, and with their aid, supporting her, lifting her, she sprang lightly up the ledges, and from rock to rock.

Cudjo, carrying Dan's gun, ran on before, leading the way through hollows and among bushes, by a route known only to himself. So they reached a piece of woods, by the thin skirts of which he hoped to head off the fire. Too late--it was there before them. It ran swiftly among the fallen leaves and twigs, and spread far into the woods.

The negro turned back. There was a wild grimace in his face, and a glitter in his eyes, as he threw up his hand, by way of signal that their flight in that direction was cut off.

"Cudjo! what is to be done!" And Penn drew Virginia towards him with a look that showed his fears were all for her.

"We can't git off down the mountain, nuther!" said Dan. "It's gittin'

into the woods down thar. It'll be all around us in no time!"

"You let Cudjo do what him pleases?" said the black.

"I can trust you! Can you, Virginia?"

"He should know what is best. Yes, I will trust him."

"Take dat 'ar!" Pepperill received his gun. "Now you look out fur youselves. Me tote de gal."

And catching up Virginia, before Penn could stop him, or question him, he rushed with her into the fire.

Penn ran after him, perceiving at once the meaning of this bold act. The woods were not yet fairly kindled; only now and then the loose bark of a dry trunk was beginning to blaze. Cudjo leaped over the line of flame that was running along the ground, and bore Virginia high above it to the other side. Penn followed, and Dan came close behind. They then had before them a tract of blackened ground which the flames had swept, leaving here and there a dead limb or mat of leaves still burning.

These little fires were easily avoided. But they soon came to another line of flame raging on the upper side of the burnt tract. They were almost out of the woods: only that red, crackling hedge fenced them in; but that they could not pa.s.s: the underbrush all along the forest edge was burning. And there they were, brought to a halt, half-stifled with smoke, in the midst of woods kindling and blazing all around them.

"May as well pull up hyar, and take a bref," remarked Cudjo, grimly, placing Virginia on a log too dank with decay and moss to catch fire easily. "Den we's try 'em agin."

A horrible suspicion crossed Penn's mind; the fanatical fire-wors.h.i.+pper had brought them there to destroy them--to sacrifice them to his G.o.d!

"Virginia!"--eagerly laying hold of her arm,--"we must retreat! It will soon be too late! We can get out of the woods where we came in, if we go at once!"

"Beg pardon, sar," said Cudjo, stamping out fire in the leaves by the end of the log,--and he looked up through the smoke at Penn, with the old malignant grin on his apish face.

"What do you mean, Cudjo?" said Penn, in an agony of doubt.

"Can't get back dat way, sar!"

"Then you have led us here to destroy us!"

"You's no longer trust Cudjo!" was the negro's only reply.

"Didn't we trust you? Haven't we come through fire, following you? O Cudjo! more than once you have helped to save my life! You have helped to save this life, dearer than mine! Why do you desert us now?"

"'Sert you? Cudjo no 'sert you." But the negro spoke sullenly, and there was still a sparkle of malignancy in his look.

"Then why do you stop here?"

"Hugh! tink we's go trough dat fire like we done trough tudder?"

"What then are we to do?"

"You's no longer trust Cudjo!" was once more the sullen response.

Virginia, with her quick perceptions, saw at once what Penn was either too dull or too much excited to see. Cudjo felt himself aggrieved; but he was not unfaithful.