Cudjo's Cave Part 61

So Pomp turned his attention to the Minnevich. But Penn and Stackridge remained with the dying patriot.

"Wish ye had a Union flag to wrap me in when I'm dead, boys! That's what I've fit fur; that's what I meant to die fur, if 'twas so ordered. It's all right, boys! Jest look arter my family a little, won't ye? And don't give up old Tennessee!"

These were his last words.

Penn and Stackridge rejoined their comrades in the fight.

"Shoot him! shoot him! shoot him!" cried Cudjo, in a frenzy of excitement, pointing at the rebel who had fallen from the tree upon the projection of the chasm wall. "Him dar! Dat Sile Ropes!"

"Ropes?" said Penn, looking up through the opening. "That he!"--raising his gun. "But he can do no harm there; and he can't get out."

"Don' ye see? Dey's got a rope to help him wif! Gib him a shot fust! O, gib him a shot!"

The projection to which the lieutenant clung was a broken shelf less than half a yard in breadth. There he cowered in abject terror betwixt two dangers, that of falling if he attempted to move, and that of being picked off if he remained stationary and in sight. To avoid both, he got upon his hands and knees, and hid his face in the angle of the ledge, leaving the posterior part of his person prominent, no doubt thinking, like an ostrich, that if his head was in a hole, he was safe. The very ludicrousness of his situation saved him. The patriots reserved him to laugh at, and fired over him at the rebels on the cliff. At each shot, Silas could be seen to root his nose still more industriously into the rock. At length, however, as Cudjo had declared, a rope was brought and let down to him.

"Take hold there!" shouted the rebels on the cliff. Ropes could feel the cord dangling on his back. "Tie it around your waist!"

Silas, without daring to look up, put out his hand, which groped awkwardly and blindly for the rope as it swung to and fro all around it.

Finally, he seized it, but ran imminent risk of falling as he drew it under his body. At length he seemed to have it secured; but in his hurry and trepidation he had fastened it considerably nearer his hips than his arms. The result, when the rebels above began to haul, can be imagined.

Hips and heels were hoisted, while arms and head hung down, causing him to resemble very strikingly a frog hooked on for bait at the end of a fish-line. The affrighted face drawn out of its hole, looked down ridiculously hideous into the rocky and bristling gulf over which he swung.

"Fire!" said Captain Grudd.

The volley was aimed, not at Silas, but at those who were hauling him up. Cudjo shrieked with frantic joy, expecting to see his old enemy plunge head foremost among the stones on the bank of the stream. Such, no doubt, would have been the result, but for one st.u.r.dy and brave fellow at the rope. The rest, struck either with bullets or terror, fell back, loosing their hold. But this man clung fast, imperturbable. Alone, slowly, hand over hand, he hauled and hauled; grim, unterrified, faithful. But it was a tedious and laborious task for one, even the stoutest. The man had but a precarious foothold, and the rope rubbed hard on the edge of the cliff. Cudjo shrieked again, this time with despair at seeing his former overseer about to escape.

"That's a plucky fellow!" said Stackridge, with stern admiration of the soldier's courage. "I like his grit; but he must stop that!"

He reached for a loaded gun. He took Carl's. The boy turned pale, but said never a word, setting his lips firmly as he looked up at the cliff.

Silas was swinging. The soldier was pulling in the rope, hitch by hitch, over the ledge. Stackridge took deliberate aim, and fired.

For a moment no very surprising effect was perceptible, only the man stopped hauling. Then he went down on one knee, paying out several inches of the rope, and letting the suspended Silas dip accordingly. It became evident that he was. .h.i.t; he still grasped the rope, but it began to glide through his hands. Silas set up a howl.

"Hold me! hold me!"--at the same time extending all his fingers to grasp the rocks.

The brave fellow made one last effort, and took a turn of the rope about his wrist. It did not slip through his hands any more. But soon _he_ began to slip--forward--forward--on both knees now--his head reeling like that of a drunken man, and at last pitching heavily over the cliff.

Some of the cowards who had deserted their post sprang to save him; but too late: the man was gone.

It was fortunate for Silas that he had been let down several feet thus gradually. He was near the ledge from which he had been lifted, and had just time to grasp it again and crawl upon it, when the man fell, turning a complete somerset over him, fearful to witness! revolving slowly in his swift descent through the air; still holding with tenacious grip the rope; plunging through the boughs like a mere log tumbled from the cliff, and striking the rocks below--dead.

He had taken the rope with him; and Silas had been preserved from sharing his fate only by a lucky accident. The knot at his hips loosened itself as he clutched the ledge, and let the coil fly off as the man shot down.

Not a gun was fired: rebels and patriots seemed struck dumb with horror at the brave fellow's fate. Then Carl whispered,--

"That vas my other cousin! That vas Hans!"

"Cudjo! Cudjo! what are you about?" cried Penn.

The black did not answer. Beside himself with excitement, he ran to the leaning tree and climbed it like an ape. The naked sword gleamed among the twigs. Reaching the trunk of the tall tree he ascended that as nimbly, never stopping until he had reached the upper limbs. There was one that branched towards the ledge where Silas clung. At a glance choosing that, Cudjo ran out upon it, until it bent beneath his weight.

There he tried in vain to reach his ancient enemy with the sword; the distance was too great, even for his long arms.

"Sile Ropes! ye ol' oberseer! g'e know Cudjo? Me Cudjo!" he yelled, slas.h.i.+ng the end of the branch as if it had been his victim's flesh.

"'Member de lickins? 'Member my gal ye got away? Now ye git yer pay!"

While he was raving thus, one of the soldiers above, sheltering himself from the fire of the patriots by lying almost flat on the ground, levelled his gun at the half-crazed negro's breast, and pulled the trigger.

A flash--a report--the sword fell, and went clattering down upon the rocks. Cudjo turned one wild look upward, clapping his hand to his breast. Then, with a terrible grimace, he cast his eyes down again at Ropes,--crept still farther out on the branch,--and leaped.

Silas had his nose in the angle of the ledge again, and scarcely knew what had happened until he felt the negro alight on his back and fling his arms about him.

"Cudjo shot! Cudjo die! But you go too, Sile Ropes!"

As he gibbered forth these words, his long hands found the lieutenant's throat, and tightened upon it. A fearfully quiet moment ensued; then living and dying rolled together from the ledge, and dropped into the chasm. They struck the body of the dead Hans; that broke the fall; and Cudjo was beneath his victim. Ropes, stunned only, struggled to rise; but, held in that deadly embrace, he only succeeded in rolling himself down the embankment, Cudjo accompanying. The stream flowed beneath, black, with scarce a murmur. Silas neither saw nor heard it; but, continuing to struggle, and so continuing to roll, he reached the verge of the rocks, and fell with a splash into the current.

Penn ran to the spot just in time to see the two bodies disappear together; the dying Cudjo and the drowning Silas sinking as one, and drifting away into the cavernous darkness of the subterranean river.

XLIV.

_HOW AUGUSTUS FINALLY PROPOSED._

After this there was a lull; and Penn, who had forgotten every thing else whilst the conflict was raging, remembered that he had seen Bythewood at the ravine, and hastened to inform Pomp of the circ.u.mstance.

The death of Cudjo had plunged Pomp into a fit of stern, sad reverie.

His surgical task performed, he stood leaning on his rifle, gazing abstractedly at the darkly gliding waves, when Penn's communication roused him.

"Ha!" said he, with a slight start. "We must look to that! The danger here is over for the present, and two or three of us can be spared."

"Shall I go, too?" said Carl. "It is time I vas seeing to my prisoner."

"Come," said Pomp. And the three set out to return.

Having but slight antic.i.p.ations of trouble from the side of the ravine, they came suddenly, wholly unprepared, upon a scene which filled them with horror and amazement.

The prisoner, as we know, had fled. We left him on his way back to the cave with a squad of men. Since which time, this is what had occurred.

The a.s.sailants had approached so stealthily over the ledges, below which Toby was stationed, looking intently for them in another direction, that he had no suspicions of their coming until they suddenly dropped upon him as from the clouds. He had no time to run for his axe; and he had scarcely given the alarm when he was overpowered, knocked down, and rolled out of the way off the rocks.

The a.s.sailants then, with Lysander at their head, rushed to the entrance of the cave. But there they encountered unexpected resistance: the two sisters--Salina with the pistol, Virginia with the axe.

"h.e.l.lo! Sal!" cried Lysander, recoiling into the arms of his men; "what the devil do you mean?"

"I mean to kill you, or any man that sets foot in this place! That is what I mean!"

There could be no doubt about it: her eyes, her att.i.tude, her whole form, from head to foot, looked what she said. She was flushed; a smile of wild and reckless scorn curved her mouth, and her countenance gleamed with a wicked light.