Chapter XXXVIII: A Revelation

The fleetest railway speed would have seemed slow to me as we hastened towards the scene of last night's outrage. It was soon reached, and as we hurried down the avenue of cabbage-trees we became sensible that the odour of burned wood, canes, and bamboo, predominated over all the fragrance of the herbs and flowers with which the morning air was laden. An exclamation of mingled rage and sorrow escaped me on beholding the site of the once pretty cottage or villa.

The verandah and porch, the wooden columns and cane trellis-work of which had been covered by luxuriant masses of lemon-water flowers and the ever blooming roses of Provence, had all disappeared; so had the white wooden walls and broad, green Venetian blinds. A few blackened stumps that stood among heaps of mouldering cinders were all that remained of the home of poor Eulalie.

And where was she?

The garden and avenue were strewn by broken pictures, music, volumes of Marivaux, Racine, Molière and Madame de Genlis, thrown out by the negro servants, a few of whom sat near the smoking ruin, crouching on their hams, and regarding us with such fear and doubt that some time elapsed before we could get any explanation from them.

At last Lieutenant Haystone contrived to glean from Quashi the Coromantee, who seemed less terrified than the rest, that they had been startled at nightfall by the shriek of a woman and the crashing of glass. On this they all trembled very much, believing it the white devil of the buccra men, who always comes when there is thunder, and the heavy wind that bends and uproots the big palms; but, gathering courage, after a time they hastened to the room of their mistress. It was empty! her bed was in disorder--the furniture overthrown--a Venetian window dashed to pieces, and portions of her night-dress adhering to the fragments evinced that she had been roughly dragged through it, and across the garden, footsteps being discernible on the trampled flower-beds. These led them towards the avenue, from searching which the sable domestics were recalled by an alarm of fire, and on returning found the whole villa in flames. It burned rapidly. Quashi could tell us no more--an Obeah nigger might, but there was no Obeah at Boscobelle just now.

Previous to our arrival, I related to Haystone and my comrades some of the circumstances connected with my visits to the villa, dwelling particularly on my two meetings with the supposed priest.

"You should have reported all this to head-quarters," said Haystone, "then perhaps this outrage might have been prevented."

"True," said I sadly; "I know not what impulse led me to conceal circumstances so full of suspicion; but 'tis useless to reproach me now."

"Our orders are to search the woods and sugar-plantations; you will extend from the right, and separate by files. The fallen palm on the high road shall be our point of rendezvous in half an hour hence. Make prisoner every suspicious-looking person----"

"But," said one of the fusiliers, "in case of resistance?"

"Give them a prick with your bayonet--we have no time to lose here. Away, then."

We separated by twos, and while some dived at once into the long green masses of waving sugar-canes, others into palm, orange, or chestnut-groves, I, with the assistance of my Coromantee friend, endeavoured to trace further the footsteps he had detected on the flower-beds; but, alas! all vestiges of them disappeared on the gravel of the avenue. We searched long without discovering any other clue. My soul was heavy, and my heart sick to death. I heard my comrades shouting and laughing as they met each other at intervals in the bush, and envied their heedless fun as they pelted with stones or fallen nuts the chattering monkeys which sprang from tree to tree, and in turn mocked and jibed them, or swung by their claws and tails from the branches.

Suddenly, the old Coromantee (some of whose former savage instincts were here of service) detected among the long thick grass that grew by the wayside, beyond the "cabbage-walk," traces of feet and of the leaves being crushed, as if some one had been dragged over the ground there, and keenly he followed this clue or trail. Here a bruised blade of grass, there a broken twig of the wild tamarind, or a crushed gourd-vine, served to lead him on; and from point to point he traced them, with his gleaming eyes and his flat, red, dilated nostrils close to the earth, as if he scented footsteps like a Spanish blood-hound, till all clue vanished again at the deep gully in the mangrove creek, where I had seen the piragua of the pretended priest, guided under the luxuriant weeds and wild palm-branches to its place of concealment.

The Coromantee pointed to the black weedy profundity of the water below us, and was silent. The place and his action filled my mind with vague but terrible suggestions.

I knew not what to decide upon, and stood by his side, leaning on my musket, bewildered by grief for the mystery that overhung the fate of Eulalie. Suddenly a shout above roused me! It was the cheerful voice of Tom Telfer.

"Ahoy," cried he. "Hallo, Ellis,--look out--stop that fellow!"

Having descended far into the gully, I looked up, and saw a man pursued by several of the Fusileers. He and they came plunging down the steep and rocky side of the wooded chasm, through thick mangroves, and a literal jungle of twisted creepers, of wild vines, cucumbers, gourds, and ginger-roots, all flourishing in matted masses, under a shade so dark, that the wild tamarinds kept their leaves closed, as at night.

"Fire, Oliver, fire!" cried Tom, as the fugitive, who seemed like a seaman, drew a pistol from his girdle and discharged it full at my head; but I had already levelled my bayonet at him breast-high, and in my bewilderment at the same time, discharged my musket, the bullet of which whistled past his left ear. The two reports, as they rang in that deep and narrow gorge, woke a thousand reverberations, scaring from the trees the brown monkeys, the white sea-gulls who were lured there by the solitude, and clouds of little humming-birds, with their tiny pinions of crimson, gold, and emerald green. Fortunately, the fugitive's bullet missed me, and before he could cock a second pistol, I had knocked him down with my clubbed musket.

On his being collared and roughly dragged to his feet by Tom Telfer and a few others, I found myself confronted by my old acquaintance Mr. Richard Knuckleduster.

"We found him lurking under some broken palm-branches, a little way up the gulley," said Tom, breathlessly; "he bolted as soon as he saw us----"

"Ah, that looked suspicious."

"And so, Ellis, we gave chase."

"He is one of the very men we are in search of," said I; "and I know him to be a murderer, a thief, and a deserter from the service. Bring him to Mr. Haystone, and if he makes the slightest resistance, bayonet him without mercy."

We soon dragged him to the highway, and at the fallen palm, found Lieutenant Haystone seated, with his jacket unbuttoned, a cigar in his mouth, and in his hand a large plaintain leaf, with which he was fanning himself, as the atmosphere was now close and sultry.

"Hallo--a prisoner!" said he, starting up.

"We roused him in the gully, sir," said Telfer, as our party all came rapidly in; "and Ellis says that he knows him well."

"Is this the case, sergeant?" asked the officer.

"It was he whom I saw in the piragua, accompanied by the Frenchman and negro. I know him, moreover, to be a deserter, a robber, and perhaps worse."

Knuckleduster bestowed on me a savage scowl, and then burst into a fit of gruff and contemptuous laughter.

"Come, sirrah," said Haystone, "this insolent bearing will not better your prospects; remember that a court-martial and the lash are before you, so answer me in a straight-forward manner. Know you aught of the persons who committed the outrage last night at Boscobelle?"

"Yes," replied the ruffian, grinding his fanglike teeth, "and may every danger dog them in this world with damnation in that to come--if so be, as the parsons say, there is another."

"A charitable wish!" said Haystone; "if this spirit animates you, we may perhaps arrive at the truth."

"Perhaps," sneered the ruffian.

"Then who were they?"

"Well, I suppose I may as well make a clean breast of it. They were Frenchmen from Martinique."

"And you served them?"

"Poor devils must do queer things sometimes."

"You--a deserter?" continued Haystone furiously.

"I defy you or any man to prove that I deserted," said the fellow sullenly. "I was lying out on the foreyard-arm of the admiral's ship, in a night when it was blowing a stiff breeze, and we were ordered to reef topsails. I fell away to leeward and dropped into the sea, when we were close to St. Lucia. The ship never lay-to, but the lieutenant of the watch tossed a hen-coop over to me, and with its aid I got ashore and was made prisoner by the Johnnie Crapauds, as you might have been had the misfortune been yours. But I was a pressed man, and no doubt may be marked as having run on the purser's books. I was sent in irons to Martinique. There a French officer, whose wife was a prisoner here, stated that he wished to set her free, though, as I have since thought, it was to punish her, as an enemy of the Republic and a spy of the British Government, for I had heard she had become both."

"The Colonel de Rouvigny?" said I.

"Yes, that is his name. He promised to pay me handsomely, if I, with a few others, would work a little schooner, _Les Droits de l'Homme_, from St. Pierre to Barbadoes. I hoped to make my escape and volunteered to serve him. She was a queer craft we manned; low in the water, with raking masts, a fast sailer; painted white on one side and black on the other, for she had been fitted out by some of the pirates on the Spanish main. Howsoever, it seemed better to be aboard o' her, than to work like a slave among French niggers at the new batteries of St. Pierre. We reached Barbadoes. The schooner, with American colours flying, came to an anchor in a lonely bight about six miles off; but kept close in shore among the weeds and dwarf mangroves; and then we--that is, Monsieur Rouvigny, three negroes, and I--came off here, in a kind of punt, they call a piragua.

"Three negroes," said I; "there was but one with you---old Benoit le Noir."

"The others were squatted under the plaintains at the mouth of the gulley."

"Well--proceed."

"If the colonel got clear off with his pretty wife, I was to get a hundred francs and my liberty; but I got mightily disgusted with his French lingo--his parleyvooing and his hat-off nonsense, which we Englishmen never like----"

"We--speak for yourself Mr. Knuckleduster," said Haystone.

"I wish to tell you all about it, just as it happened."

"How delightfully disengenuous!" said Haystone, with contempt; "though we cannot place over-much reliance on what a scoundrel so thorough-bred may tell, fire-away."

I was on thorns as it were, until the fellow with provoking slowness continued his story. With all his ignorance and brutality of disposition, he was sufficiently acute to perceive how his narrative wrung my heart. He smiled and grimaced as he resumed, and this, in the meantime, was his revenge on me for twice capturing him.

"For two or three days we hung about the villa, hiding in the shrubberies and among the sugar-canes, without finding a good opportunity for nabbing the lady, as she always kept close inside, or if she did come out, was always attended by an old Coromantee nigger, or by our friend the sergeant here--"

"What--by _you_, Ellis?" exclaimed Haystone, with such surprise that he nearly dropped his cigar.

"Rascal!--you saw me then?" said I.

"Ay--morning, noon, and night. Pretty often Monsieur Rouvigny and I have been within arm's length of you, when you and she used to sit in the garden bower, with your arms round each other, reading books in the French lingo, chattering like two monkeys on a cabbage-tree, or caterwauling to the banjo--guitar I s'pose you call it; and it was as much as I could do to keep him from pistolling you both outright, while he swore and _sacréd_ like fury, for he is a desperate fierce thief, that colonel. Last night, when his patience became exhausted, and mine too for the matter o' that, he resolved to make a dash for the prize! Mounseer knew where Madame's bedroom lay on the ground-floor. He found her green blinds unfastened. We crept in and found her snug in her berth asleep. I drew back the curtains, and very pretty she looked with her black hair all braided smooth ways round her head, under a dainty bit of nightcap--far too pretty to be the wife of a Frenchman, say I. But now, the word was presto!

"We dragged her from bed--then she shrieked out; but I took the bandanna from my neck, and tied it over her mouth. One of our niggers stupidly smashed a window with his woolly head, and created an alarm; so, to make a diversion, and enable us to get clear off, the colonel threw the night lamp into the lady's bed, and, in a twinkling, set the curtains, the room, and the house in a blaze! We dragged her out of the window in her night-dress, across the flowers and bushes, and carried her off bodily on our shoulders along the highway, till we reached the gully, where the piragua lay moored under the mangroves. The poor thing was silent now, and offered no resistance, when she found _whose_ prisoner she was. My eyes! she seemed to have a woeful terror of that man. He too, was silent, or only _sacréd_, and twisted his thick upper lip where the hair was shaven off, when he disguised himself as a French parson at St. Pierre.

"We put her on board the piragua; the colonel and his three niggers jumped in; I was about to follow, for, look you, I had not been paid a stiver of the hundred francs, and began to fear that after this affair the climate of Barbadoes might prove too hot for me; but what think you the infernal treacherous frogeater did? He clubbed a pistol and struck me down senseless among the mangroves. Then they shoved off and pulled away to seaward to reach his schooner, which was hull-down when I saw her this morning about daybreak, and bearing away north-and-by-west. Here, among the mangroves I lay until you fellows found me. This is all my story--a pretty one aint it, Master Oliver Ellis?"

"For what purpose did the Frenchman carry off his wife in this outrageous manner?" asked Mr. Haystone.

"To punish her for levanting from him and for becoming, as he said, a spy."

"Punish," said I anxiously; "but how?"

"By heaving her overboard, with a cold shot at her heels, or by marooning her on some rock--there are lots o' them among the Windward Isles, where the bones of the marooned may lie for years, as white as coral. I have seen them myself many times in these here Indian isles and in others up the Gulf of Florida, where they have lain since the days of the old Buccaneers, when Captain Kidd sailed in his frigate, the _Vulture_--ay, damme, that I have! The colonel often spoke of serving her so, if he found a bit of convenient rock far out at sea with nothing on it but a coating of guano, seaweed, and barnacles, and, mayhap, a petrel or two perching atop of it, and there leaving her to die--for he swore she should have a terrible end--and he is just the man to give her one. Now that I have payed out all my yarn, hand over hand, without any rigmarole or nonsense, what do you mean to do with me?"

"Send you on board the ship of Admiral Jervis," said Haystone, who ordered him to be secured by a musket-sling.

We marched hastily back to the sea-beach, and delivered up our prisoner to a party of marines from the admiral's ship.

After the dreadful story I had heard, how terrible were the thoughts that crowded on me!

I pictured in fancy poor Eulalie in the power of this merciless Frenchman and his callous negroes, flung, pinioned, into her watery grave, and sinking without a hand to save her--sinking to sleep, far down amid the oozy and mysterious depths of that hot sea, where flourish a myriad of giant plants that almost reach its surface--and as she sank perhaps becoming, ere dead, a prey to the horrid shark. But even these ideas were less terrible and less agonizing than the awful thought of her perishing miserably on a lonely rock--marooned--to die alone, unseen, unwept-for--to die of hunger and thirst--of horror and despair!

Thus wrath and just vengeance filled my heart, as the _Adder_ squared her yards, and the whole of that crowded and magnificent fleet sailed out of Carlisle Bay, and bore up for Martinique.