AFTER THE EXPLOSION.
| Horror wide extends |
| Her desolate domain!—Thompson. |
The thunder of the explosion, when the old Haunted Chapel was blown up, was heard for many miles around.
It burst upon the unsheltered wayfarers like the crack of doom!
It stunned the plantation negroes gathered around their cabin fires!
It startled the planters' families at their elegant tea-tables!
Travellers paused panic-stricken on the road!
Home-dwellers, high and low, rushed with one accord to doors and windows to see what the dreadful matter might be!
Was it an earthquake?
Had some unsuspected volcano suddenly burst forth in the mountain? Indeed it seemed so!
Volumes of black smoke ascended from a certain point of rocks, filling all the evening air with the suffocating smell of sulphur.
There was a pause of astonishment among the people for about one minute only; and then commenced a general stampede of all the able-bodied men and boys from a circle of several miles in circumference to the centre of attraction; while the women and girls waited at home in dread suspense!
But the very first on the scene of the catastrophe was a lamed negro.
Poor Joe! Just as his master had surmised, he had met with an accident. He had, indeed, reached Black Hall in safety, near the dawn of that day; but being quite exhausted with twenty-four hours of watching, working, and fasting, he succumbed to drowsiness, fatigue, and famine. In short, he ate and drank and slept.
He did not mean, poor faithful creature, to do more than just recruit sufficient strength to take him back, with the tools, to his master.
But when one, under such circumstances, surrenders to sleep, he loses all control over himself for an indefinite period of time. Joe slept fast and long, and never waked until he was rudely kicked up by a fellow-servant, who demanded to know how he came to be sleeping on the hay in the barn, and if he meant to sleep forever.
Joe started up, at first confused and delirious, but afterwards, when he came to his senses and found that it was past noon, he was utterly wretched and inconsolable. He did not even resent the rudeness of his comrade, in kicking him up; but, on the contrary, meekly thanked him for his kindness in arousing him.
And then he went and gathered his tools together, and saddled his horse, and without waiting for bite or sup, he told his mate that he had work to do at a distance, and mounted and rode off towards the ferry, which he had to cross to reach the river road on the other side, because, with, the weight of iron tools he carried, he could not possibly get over the ford.
All this contributed so to delay Joe's journey, that the sun set while he was still upon the river road, and "the shades of night were falling fast" when he reached the entrance of the thicket path leading to the Haunted Chapel.
He had not ridden more than a hundred yards up this path, before the thunder of the explosion burst upon his appalled ears. And at the same instant his affrighted horse, with a violent bound, threw him to the earth, jumped forward and fled away.
Amazed, stunned, bewildered as he was, Joe did not entirely lose his senses. When recovered a little from the shock, he felt himself all over to see what bones were broken; and found to his great relief that all were sound.
Then he got upon his feet, and looked about him; but a dense, heavy, black vapor was settling down upon the thicket, hiding all things from his view, while the stifling fumes of brimstone took his breath away.
"I'm——!"—Joe in his consternation swore a very profane oath, which it is not necessary here to repeat—"ef I don't b'leibe as de Debbil has blowed de old Haunted Chapel! And oh! my Hebbenly Marster! ef so, what have become o' Miss Sybil and Marse Lyon, and Nelly?" he cried in a sudden pang of terror and sorrow, as he tried to hurry towards the scene of the tragedy. He set off in a run, but was brought up short by a sharp severe pain in his right ancle.
"It's sprained! Bress de Lord, ef it an't sprained!" he cried, drawing up and caressing his injured limb.
"It an't no use! I can't put it to the ground no more!" he groaned.
Then standing upon his left foot and holding the other in his hand, he looked around and saw the pick lying among the scattered tools, that had fallen from his hold when the horse threw him. He cautiously bent down and took up the pick, and reversed it, and using it as a crutch, he hobbled on through the thicket towards the ruins of the old chapel. But his progress was so slow and painful that it took him nearly an hour to reach the place.
When at length he emerged from the thicket and entered the old churchyard, a scene of devastation met his view that appalled his soul.
"Oh, my Lord!" he said, stopping and leaning upon his pick-crutch, as he gazed around, "what an awful sight! Joe, you are like—somebody among the ruins of something," he added, as a vague classic similitude about Scipio and Carthage flitted through his half-dazed brain.
It was indeed a scene of horror deep enough to dismay the stoutest heart! Nor was that horror less overwhelming for the obscurity that enveloped it. The Haunted Chapel was gone; and in its place was a heap of blackened, burning, and smoking ruins, with here and there the arm or leg of some crushed and mutilated victim protruding from the mass. And in strange contrast to this appalling scene, was a poor little Skye terrier, preserved from destruction, Heaven only knows how, that ran snuffing and whining piteously around and around the wreck.
"Come, Nelly! pretty Nelly! good Nelly!" called Joe.
The Skye terrier left off circling around the smouldering ruins, and bounded towards her dusky friend, and leaped upon him with a yelp of welcome and a whine of sorrow.
"Oh, Nelly! Nelly! what has happened?" cried Joe.
The little dog howled dismally in answer.
"Yes, I know what you would say. I understand. The devil has blown up the Haunted Chapel," said Joe.
She lifted up her nose and her voice in a woe-begone howl of assent.
"Just so; but oh! Nelly! Nelly Brown! where is the master and the mistress?"
She answered by a cry of agony, and ran back to the ruins, and re-commenced her pawing and whining.
"Ah, yes! just so; buried under all that there," groaned Joe.
But Nelly ran back to him, barking emphatically, and then forward to the ruins, and then, seeing that he still stood there, back to him again, with the most eloquent barks, that seemed to assure him that her master and mistress were under the mass, and at length to ask him what was the use of his being a man, if he could not dig them out.
Never did man and dog understand each other better. Joe replied to Nelly as if she had spoken in the best approved English.
"I know it, honey! I know they are; they are there!" he sobbed, "but you see I'm crippled, and can't do nothing."
But the little Skye terrier could not comprehend such incompetency in a human creature, and so she very irrationally and irritatingly continued her appeals and her reproaches, until Joe hobbled up to the heap of smoking ruins to take a nearer view.
The first thing that met his sight was the sole of a man's boot, belonging to a leg protruding from the mass.
"If it should be hizzen! Oh, good gracious! if it should be marster's! But no," he continued, on a closer examination of the limb. "No! there is a spur on the heel. It isn't hizzen. No! thank goodness, it is Master Sheriff Benthwick's, and sarve him right too."
While Joe was exulting, either wickedly over the destruction of the sheriff, or piously over the possible preservation of his master, there was a sound of crackling footsteps through the thicket, and the forerunners of the approaching crowd appeared upon the scene.
Among them was Captain Pendleton, who, recognizing the figure of Joe even in the obscure light, strode towards him, eagerly demanding:
"What is all this? How did it happen? Do you know?"
"Oh, marse Capping Pendulum, sir, I's so glad you'se come!" cried Joe, on the verge of tears.
"But how did this happen?" impatiently repeated the captain.
"Oh, sir, don't you see as the debbil has blowed up the Haunted Chapel and my young mistess and marster into it all this time," sobbed the man.
"Good Heaven! You don't mean that, Joe!" exclaimed Captain Pendleton.
"Yes, I do, sir; worse luck! which you can see for yourself, as even poor little ignorant Nelly knows it," wept Joe.
And the little Skye terrier, as if to confirm the negro's words, ran and leaped upon the captain, whining pathetically, and then ran backward and forward between him and the heap of ruins, as if to impress upon his mind that her dear master and mistress were really buried there, and to implore him to come to their assistance.
But other people were now pouring rapidly in upon the scene of the catastrophe.
Exclamations of horror and dismay were uttered; then pine knots were sought and lighted, and everybody crowded around the ruins.
"There are human beings buried beneath this pile; for Heaven's sake, friends, lose no time; but disperse and find tools to dig this away!" exclaimed Captain Pendleton, energetically.
Several of the by-standers started at once for the nearest farm-houses to procure the needful tools.
Captain Pendleton turned to Joe.
"Tell me now," he said; "how came Mr. and Mrs. Berners in this place?"
Joe related all that he knew of their escape from the sheriff's officers, their accidental meeting with him, their arrival at the Haunted Chapel, the mysterious disappearance of Sybil, the visit of the constables and militia-men in search of the burglars; the means that his master and himself took to discover traces of Sybil through the instinct of her little dog; the reasons they had, through the behavior of the little Skye terrier, to believe that the lady had been taken down into the vault and robbed and murdered; his own departure in search of tools to take up the flagstones over the vault, and finally his return to the scene of action to find the Haunted Chapel one mass of ruins.
"When I left marster he was sitting at the door of the vault, where we thought the dead body of my poor murdered young mistess was hid; and when I comed back I found this here!" sobbed Joe, pointing to the wreck.
"Good heaven! my man, this is a frightful story that you tell me! Sit yourself down on the ground, and give me that pick which you are using for a crutch! I must go to work here," exclaimed Captain Pendleton, taking the pick from the negro and beginning to dig vigorously at the mass of fallen stone and mortar.
The men and boys who had gone after implements now came hurrying back, with picks, spades, hoes, rakes, etc., over their shoulders.
They immediately fell to work with a zeal and energy inspired by curiosity and terror; and while the boys held the lighted pine knots high above their heads, the men dug away at the mass with all their might and main.
It was a wild scene, that deep glen; the heap of smoking ruins in the midst, the affrighted crowd of workers around it, the flaming torches held on high, the spectral gravestones gleaming here and there; the whole encircled by dark, towering mountains, and canopied by a murky, midnight sky!
In almost dead silence the fearful work went on.
The first body exhumed was that of the unfortunate Sheriff Benthwick, quite dead. It was borne tenderly off to some distance, and laid down on a bed of dried leaves beneath the shelter of an oak-tree.
Then four other bodies were dug out from the mass, among them that of the bailiff Purley. And these were carried and laid beside that of the sheriff.
And now, though the workmen dug away at the ruins as vigorously as ever, they found nothing but broken timbers, stone, and mortar. No sign of Lyon or Sybil Berners was to be seen. A wild hope sprang up in the heart of Joe—a hope that in some miraculous manner his young master and mistress had escaped this terrible destruction—a hope that the little Skye terrier would by no means encourage, for she continued to run around the ruins, and in and out among the legs of the workmen, to the serious danger of her own life and limbs, and to bark and whine and paw, and assert in every emphatic manner a little brute could use, that her master and mistress were really under there and nowhere else.
"You'll drive me to despair, you little devil of a dog! You'd make 'em there, whether they're there or not, and I tell you they an't there!" cried Joe in desperation.
But Nelly held to her own opinion, and clamorously maintained it.
She was soon justified. The workmen, in course of their digging, removed quite a hill of plaster, stone, and broken timbers, and came upon a leaning fragment of the back wall, inclined at an angle of about forty-five degrees, and supported in its place by a portion of the altar and the iron door of the vault, which had stood the shock of the explosion.
Under this leaning wall, and completely protected by it, lay two men, scorched, bruised, stunned, insensible, but still living.
They were Lyon Berners and Robert Munson. Amid the surprise and satisfaction of the crowd, they were carefully lifted out and laid upon the ground, while every simple means at hand were used for their restoration, while the little Skye terrier ran round and round with yelps of joy and triumph, which seemed to say:
"I told you so! and next time you'll believe me!"
"Friends," said Captain Pendleton, addressing some of the men who were still working away at the ruins, "there is no use in your digging longer! You may see from the very position of that wall and the aspect of everything else here, that there can be no more bodies among the ruins. You can do nothing to bring the dead to life; but you can do much to save the living from death. Hurry some of you to the nearest house and bring a couple of shutters, and narrow mattresses also, if possible! These men must be taken to my house, which is nearest, to receive medical attention."
As the captain spoke, a dozen workmen threw down their tools and started on the errand.
Old Joe hobbled up to the spot, where Captain Pendleton sat supporting the head of Mr. Berners on his knee, while little Nelly jumped around, now in a hysterical state between joy and fear; for she saw at last, that though her master was rescued, he was not yet safe. On seeing Joe come up, she jumped upon him with an eager bark which seemed to say:
"You see I was right! Here he is, sure enough!"
"Yes, Nelly, that's all very well as far as it goes. But where's the young mistess, Nelly; where's Miss Sybil?" sorrowfully inquired Joe.
The little dog looked up in his face with a bark of intelligence and distress, and then broke away and ran in among the ruins.
"There still is she!" exclaimed Joe, and he hobbled after the little Skye terrier to the place where the leaning fragment of the wall was supported by the iron door of the vault.
"They must dig into that vault. I'll never be contented until they dig into that vault; and I'll speak to Capping Pendulum about it," said Joe, and he hobbled back to the spot where that gentleman still sat supporting the head of his wounded friend.
"Sir, Marse Capping," said Joe, respectfully taking off his hat, "you heerd what I tell you 'bout marster and me having of good reasons to s'pose as my young mistress was robbed and murdered and hid into that vault?"
"Yes," gravely assented the captain.
"Well, sir, Marse Capping, Nelly do stick to it as she is down there. And, sir, I shall neber feel satisfied into my own mind, till the men dig away all the rubbish and lay open 'the secrets of that there prisin house.'"
"Joe, it shall be done, if only for the satisfaction of your faithful heart," said the captain.
"And for Nelly's too, sir. See how she stands and looks up into your face, waiting for you to 'cide, just as if she understood all that I was a axing of you, which of course she do."
"Not a doubt of it," assented the captain.
At that moment the messengers who had been dispatched for shutters and mattresses, returned with the articles, and set them down before Captain Pendleton.
"Now, my men," said the captain, "arrange one of the mattresses upon the shutter, and assist me to lay my wounded friend upon it."
Ready hands obeyed this direction, and the faintly breathing body of Lyon Berners was laid down in comparative ease.
The same service was performed for poor young Munson, who was badly injured, and also quite unconscious.
"Now, my men, this poor negro has reason to believe that the body of his mistress may be found in the bottom of that vault; I want you therefore to go to work as fast as you can, and remove all the rubbish that has fallen into it, even down to the floor," was the next order given by the captain.
And the men seized their picks and resumed their digging with renewed energy.
"Joe, stay here by your master and this poor fellow; and occasionally wet their lips with this brandy and water, while I go and see to the clearing out of the vault," said Captain Pendleton; and leaving Joe in charge of the wounded men, he followed the workmen to the ruins to urge them to the greatest expedition, adding as a reason for haste:
"It is time that Mr. Berners and Munson should be taken to my house, and placed in bed, to receive proper medical attention. But I cannot consent to leave this spot even to attend to them, until I find out whether the body of Mrs. Berners is really under the ruins."
Thus exhorted, the men worked with tremendous energy, and soon dug away all the pile of rubbish, and laid the depths of the vault open to the torch light. But there was nothing to be seen but the damp and slimy walls and floor, and the little heaps of broken stones and fallen plaster in the corners.
"Not there! Well, then, I didn't know whether I was a-hoping or a fearing to find her there, or whether I'm glad or sorry now at not finding her there," said Joe, who in his excessive anxiety had at length deserted his post beside the wounded men, and hobbled up to the opened vault.
"You should be glad, for now you have no evidence of her death; but, on the other hand, good reason to hope that she is somewhere alive and well," said Captain Pendleton.
"That's so too, Marster Capping. But only see what a little story-teller Nelly is!"
"It was her master she scented, and she found him."
"Yes, but she tried to make me believe as her mistess was down there also. And look how she sticks to the story! There she is down there still running round and round like she was crazy, and a snuffing at all the corners!"
"Never mind Nelly, Joe. Come along now. We must take your master and the other poor fellow on to my house. It should have been done before this. I am sorry for this delay, which has been so fruitless," said Captain Pendleton, as he led the way back to the spot where he had left the injured victims of the explosion.
"Marster Capping," said Joe, as he hobbled after Pendleton, "I have got two horses tied up there into the woods, ef they haven't been frighted at the blowing up, and done broke loose; and I have got a wagon down by the roadside, if so be as you would like to convey my wounded marster and the t'other gemplan that a way."
"No, Joe; the jolting of a wagon might be fatal to them in their present condition. They must be carried carefully on shutters. But the wagon will be just the thing to convey the dead bodies to Blackville, where an inquest must be held upon them," answered the captain.
And he requested some of the men present to go in search of the horses, and to harness them to the wagon for the required services to the dead, while others he detained to help in care of the wounded.
When the shutters upon which Lyon Berners and Robert Munson lay were each carefully lifted by the hands of four men, and the little procession was about to start, Captain Pendleton called to Joe, saying:
"You must go with me to have your limb looked to, and also to be with your master, who will need familiar faces near him when he comes to himself."
"Yes, sir; Marse Capping Pendulum, I will go. But oh, my Hebbenly Lord, what will I have to tell my poor marster, when he opens his eyes and looks at me?" cried Joe, bursting into tears.
"Come, come, be a man! Stop howling, and do your duty—which is now to follow your master," expostulated the captain.
"Yes, sir, I'll do it; but I must get Nelly fust. I couldn't leave her, poor little dog, here to pine away and die in the vault," sighed Joe, who then lifting his voice, cried, "Nelly! Nelly!"
But no dog answered. So Joe hobbled his way back to the opening of the vault, and looking down into it, exclaimed:
"Bless my two eyes! ef there she an't a-whinin and a-pawin' and a-sarchin' as persemoniously as ever!—Nelly! Nelly!"
At the sound of his voice the little terrier ran up from the vault, and leaped upon him.
Joe stooped and picked her up in his arms, and hugged her affectionately to his bosom, as he said:
"You see it's no use stayin' here, my poor little dog. Our mistess an't nowheres about here."
Nelly was however of a different opinion, and she whined and struggled to be released; and when Joe held her faster, she growled and threatened him with her teeth.
"Can't help it, my little darling. Our mistess an't nowhere round, and it an't no use your staying here to grieve yourself to death among the ruins. You've got to go along with me—Owtch! you little devil, you!" exclaimed Joe, suddenly breaking off in his discourse, and dropping the dog; who, having found that all her efforts to release herself had been in vain, had made her little teeth meet in the fleshy part of the negro's hand.
"Was there ever sich a vicious little beast?" cried Joe, as he hobbled away, sucking the blood from his wounded member. "Now she may stay there for me. I don't care ef she do pine herself to death, agrawatin' little brute!"
And so, grumbling and growling, he hobbled after the little procession that was now well on its way through the thicket.
Meanwhile little Nelly ran back into the vault, and re-commenced her irrational investigations.
The hours of the night wore on. The men who had been sent in search of the horses, with great difficulty found and caught them, and brought them back to the scene of the explosion. The dead bodies were bound upon their backs, and they were led through the thicket to the road, where the empty wagon was waiting. As there were five bodies and but two horses, and as only one body could be bound upon one horse at a time, it was necessary to make three trips through the thicket, before they could all be got upon the wagon. So it was a work of time and trouble to remove all the dead from the scene of the catastrophe. At length, however, the last body was bound upon the last horse and led away by the last man that left the spot.
And of all the living crowd that had filled the churchyard and surrounded the ruin, none was left but the little Skye terrier Nelly, who was still at work in the vault.
What was she doing?
She had concentrated her attention and her energies upon one spot—a moderate sized heap of densely packed rubbish in one corner. She was scratching away at this heap; she had already burrowed a hole of some depth; and still she scratched away, with all her might and main, until her strength failed; and then she sat down on her hind quarters and panted until she recovered her breath; and then she re-commenced and scratched away for dear life until something fell on the other side, and with a bark and bound of joy, she leaped through the aperture and ran snuffing along the damp ground.
Eureka!! the little Skye terrier had discovered what human intelligence had failed to do! She had found the secret subterranean passage, and now be sure she will find her mistress.