Chapter Eighteen.
Captured by the Negro Outlaws.
At length, about ten o’clock in the forenoon, the fire of the outlaws ceased, and for aught that we could tell to the contrary they might have abandoned the attack altogether and retired. But the situation was one of far too much peril to permit us to take anything for granted; while, therefore, the main body of our party, so to speak, seized the opportunity thus afforded to snatch a hasty but much-needed meal, a watcher, with loaded weapon, was stationed at each door and window of the house, with instructions to maintain a sharp lookout, and immediately to report any movement that he might detect on the part of the enemy.
But the minutes passed, the meal was concluded, and still everything remained tranquil; so perfectly tranquil, indeed, that at length we could come to but one of two conclusions—either the outlaws had withdrawn altogether, or they were elaborating some scheme for a renewed attack of a particularly deep and cunning character, of the nature of which it behoved us to secure some hint of information, by hook or by crook.
I suggested that I should go forth alone, and, keeping well in the open in order that I might be effectively covered by the guns of the others in the event of anything in the nature of treachery being attempted, take a look round in the immediate neighbourhood of the house, and endeavour to ascertain what the outlaws were doing, or, if they had gone, what had become of them. At first no one would listen to the suggestion; it was denounced as too utterly hazardous to be entertained for a moment; and when I pointed out that it could only be hazardous if the enemy still remained upon the ground, Don Silvio proposed, by way of amendment, that the men should all sally forth in a body, for mutual protection. But to this I would not agree, arguing—very reasonably, I think—that if the outlaws had departed it would be as safe for me to go forth as for the whole of us; while, if treachery happened to be afoot, the safety of the female portion of the party absolutely depended upon the men remaining in the house ready to defend it in the event of a renewed attack. These arguments of mine, coupled with the necessity, which everybody at length recognised, for us to make a move of some sort, finally prevailed; and about noon I left the house, armed with a musket and a brace of pistols, all loaded, and fortified by some item of advice from each of my companions.
My first act was to examine carefully the bodies that lay round about the house, taking those that lay nearest at hand, and then passing on to the others. The result of this examination was the discovery that the fallen numbered in all sixty-seven, fourteen of whom were still alive, but so seriously injured that they had been unable to withdraw to the safety of cover. I inquired of each of these men what had become of their companions, but they were unable to answer me; they could but groan—“Agua, agua, por amor de Dios!”
I informed them that they should be supplied with water, and otherwise looked after, as soon as I had satisfied myself that their friends had retired and that no further danger from them was to be apprehended; but I at the same time reminded them that they could scarcely expect much consideration from people whom they had so wantonly attacked. When at length I came to the body of Petion I found that life was extinct, the fellow having been shot clean through the heart I was somewhat surprised that his followers had made no attempt to carry off his body; and that they had not done so I took to be a sign of pretty thorough demoralisation on their part I conducted my examination of the ground with the utmost circumspection; for I knew not at what moment a volley might rattle out at me from one or another of the large clumps of ornamental shrubs that were scattered about here and there upon the lawns, or the still larger masses of bamboo, palmetto, and other wild vegetation that at one particular spot was still allowed to flourish almost within musket-shot of the house; but nothing happened, and no sign of the enemy was to be discovered; I, therefore, at length came to the conclusion that, finding the house was not to be captured except at the sacrifice of a very considerable number of lives, the outlaws had withdrawn, and were now on their way to attack some estate, the owners of which were incapable of making so resolute and effective a defence as ourselves.
I began to wonder in which direction our assailants had gone, remembering that much of the effectiveness of the defence of Bella Vista had been due to the early warning given by Don Esteban de Meñdouça, which had afforded us the time to make the necessary preparations; and it occurred to me that if the route taken by the outlaws could be determined, it might be possible to pass on the warning, and so enable somebody else to prepare a warm reception for them. I, therefore, proceeded to examine the ground carefully, quartering it now in this direction and now in the other, in search of some mark or sign which should furnish us with a clue. Nor was my search by any means barren of results, for after a time I came to a spot where the guinea grass had been well trampled, indicating, to my mind, that this was the point where the various divisions of the attacking party, including their wounded, had rallied, and from which they had begun their retreat. And in this belief I was fully confirmed, a little later, by finding that the footmarks led away in a direction that gradually trended round toward the back of the house, past the coffee plantation, and so back toward the mountains.
Now, if they had decided to retreat to their mountain fastnesses, there was no need to trouble further about them, at least for the moment. But in my walks in the same direction with Don Luis I had noticed several paths which, I had been informed, led to certain plantations in the neighbourhood; and it was of course quite possible that the brigands might be making for one of these; I, therefore, determined to follow up the trail while it was fresh, and endeavour to obtain some definite clue to their actual destination. My first idea was to return to the house, acquaint the occupants with the result of my investigations thus far, inform them as to my further plans, and then retrace my steps to the spot where I at that moment stood; but I reflected that to do all this meant the loss of some twenty minutes or more, which might make all the difference between success and failure to my plan, so I determined to push on at once, and immediately proceeded to do so.
I had not proceeded very far before I had conclusive evidence that I was on the right track by coming upon a wounded negro, who lay fair in the middle of the path, groaning piteously as he clasped his head, swathed in a blood-stained bandage, between his hands. I asked him if he was badly hurt.
“Si, señor,” he answered; “hurt to the death, I fear, unless I can obtain speedy help. I could walk no farther, and my companions have abandoned me. Take me to the house, I pray you, Señor, and let my hurt be attended to. It will be horrible to die here alone in the open; moreover, the ants will find me before long, and consider what my fate will then be.”
Dreadful enough, no doubt, if the man were as bad as he considered himself to be. But I did not believe he was; for though his voice seemed feeble enough when he began to speak it distinctly gained in strength as he went on, and I very speedily came to the conclusion that his weakness was more than half imaginary; also I was not very greatly disposed to be tender-hearted over the sufferings of such fiends as these negro outlaws had proved themselves to be; instead, therefore, of responding to his appeal I asked him curtly:
“Which way have your companions gone?”
“Straight up toward the mountains,” he answered, pointing upward along the path in which I was standing.
“Very well,” I said. “It is necessary that I should verify your statement; I am, therefore, going on a little farther. But I shall soon be back; and I will then help you to the house and have your wound attended to, although that will avail you little, for I warn you that you and the rest of the wounded will be handed over to the authorities forthwith. And that means for you, death upon the gallows.”
The fellow grunted. “Even that will be less disagreeable than being devoured alive by the ants,” he answered.
Without bandying further words with him I continued my way up the path, which took a rather sharp turn a few yards farther on. As I rounded the bend I was somewhat surprised to see two more men lying in the road: one of whom seemed to be either dead or in a swoon, while the other appeared to be almost in a state of collapse.
“The inhuman villains,” I thought, “to abandon their wounded in this heartless fashion! Surely they might have somehow made shift to carry off their injured comrades with them, for they must be fully aware that if the unfortunate wretches fall into the hands of the authorities they will meet with short shrift. Well, we seem to have punished them rather more severely than I had thought; I should not be very greatly surprised if I find a few more poor beggars in the same plight before I have finished my walk.”
With these thoughts uppermost in my mind I approached the prostrate figures, one of whom was moaning most piteously, while the other lay still, with half-closed eyes staring upward at the sky.
“Well, picaro,” I said to the man who was moaning, “what is the matter with you?”
“Oh, Señor,” he gasped, “for the love of God help me to get into the shadow of yonder bush. I am perishing of thirst, and this scorching sun is adding to my torments. If you will raise me to my knees perhaps I can manage to crawl to— Ah, good! I have him! Quick, José, help me! He is strong as a horse, and— So, that is right; now kneel upon him while I lash his wrists together. And Miguel,”—as the man I had left in the road a minute before came running up—“take the gun and those pistols, they will be safer in your hands than in his.”
The surprise was perfectly managed. Completely taken off my guard by the admirably assumed helplessness of the three scoundrels, I was easily captured. For as I incautiously laid down my gun for a moment to place my hands under the arms of the moaning hypocrite who had begged me to assist him, the rascal flung his arms and legs round me, pinning me in a grip that for the moment held me helpless, and dragged me to the ground, rolling over on top of me, while the other, springing with equal suddenness into vigorous life and activity, also flung himself upon me and held me face downward in the sandy soil while his comrade swiftly bound my hands behind my back with the long silken sash which he had rapidly unwound from his waist. While he was doing this up came the third man, who had been so dreadfully afraid of being devoured alive by the ants, and took possession of my weapons. Now, when it was too late, the truth dawned upon me; the villains, far from being seriously hurt, were as sound as I was, and had simply been left behind in feigned helplessness upon the off-chance that some one of the whites might incautiously venture out, as I had done, with the object of ascertaining where the retreating brigands were actually going, and thus be captured.
Oh! how I execrated my folly, now that it was too late, and I was being hurried along the rough path by the jubilant trio who had captured me and who were in a great hurry to rejoin the main body of outlaws. And how fervently I hoped and prayed that none of the rest of the whites at Bella Vista might be as foolish as I had been. My thoughts went back to the wounded men lying scattered here and there round the house and within musket-shot of it, and for a moment my soul sickened with dread as I thought of what might happen if they too were merely shamming. But the fear was only momentary; I remembered that the hurts of every one of them were visibly, indisputably real, serious enough to disable and render them harmless; and I hoped that my failure to return would put the whole household upon its guard and, by demonstrating to them my imprudence, open their eyes to the fact that all danger was not necessarily over because the brigands had withdrawn.
My companions were in high feather at having achieved my capture, and extolled the shrewdness of a certain Mateo—who, I gathered from their remarks, was their new chief, in place of the deceased Petion—in having devised so ingenious a trap as the one into which I had unsuspectingly fallen. Moreover, they endeavoured to beguile the way by drawing vivid word-pictures—presumably in the hope of frightening me and enjoying my terror—of the unspeakable torments that would be inflicted upon me by way of appeasing the manes of those of their comrades who had fallen in the attack upon the house. Truly I might very well have been excused had I blenched at the prospect which, according to them, lay before me; for if they were to be believed, it was not an hour or two, but several days of excruciating suffering which I might expect. However, I did not by any means believe all that they said. They might be clever enough actors, so far as shamming being wounded was concerned, but in the finer art of inflicting suffering in anticipation they were mere clumsy bunglers, for they lacked that finer sense of dissimulation which endows a man with the power of lying with conviction; they allowed their motive to become apparent; and, seeing this, I disappointed them by laughing in their faces. Besides, whether what they said was truth or falsehood, I was not going to afford a trio of sable outlaws the satisfaction of boasting that they had succeeded in frightening an Englishman.
Enlivening the way with such conversation as I have hinted at, we trudged along the upward path for a distance of about a mile and a half, when we suddenly came upon a wide-open space where the main body of the outlaws had halted to rest and refresh themselves, and also, as I soon became aware by the trend of the general conversation, to determine whether they should return to their head-quarters, or proceed to attack some other estate in the immediate neighbourhood.
My appearance, in the character of a prisoner, was the signal for a great yell of ferocious delight on the part of the outlaws, immediately followed by a brisk fusillade of scurrilous, ribald jests concerning the sport that they would have with me upon their return to their mountain stronghold; and so bloodcurdling were the suggestions thrown out by some of those fiends that I confess a qualm of fear surged over me for a second or two; for I saw at once that, unlike my captors, these ruffians were not endeavouring merely to frighten me, but were in deadly earnest. Not that I feared death; no man who ever knew me could dub me coward. In the heat of battle, or under most ordinary circumstances I can face death—ay, and have faced it a hundred times—without a tremor; but to be triced up, helpless, and to have one’s strength sapped and one’s life slowly drained away by a long drawn-out succession of unspeakable torments is a prospect that I venture to say few can bring themselves to face without some manifestation of discomposure. Although my cheeks and lips may have blanched for a moment, I permitted no further and greater sign of fear to escape me. I returned their glances of fiendish ferocity with an unquailing eye, and listened to their diabolical jests in apparently unruffled silence, as I was conducted through their ranks by my captors toward a small hillock, overshadowed by a gigantic bois immortelle, upon which sat a negro in solitary state, appeasing his hunger by wolfishly tearing, with his strong white teeth, the flesh from three or four roast ribs of goat which he grasped with both hands.
I do not think I ever encountered a lower, or more bestial type of humanity than was this man. He was a pure-blooded black, of almost herculean proportions, and evidently of enormous strength, as are many of the pure-blooded West African negroes; but one completely lost sight of his splendid physique in contemplation of the expression of low cunning and ferocious cruelty that blazed out of his small, narrow eyes and contorted his wide, flat nostrils, his thick, blubber lips, and his unnaturally prominent chin and jaws; he was the very embodiment and picture of all the most savage and debasing passions that characterise the worst specimens of humanity, and reminded me of nothing so much as a combination of snake, tiger, and monkey clothed in the outward semblance of a human form. “Heaven have mercy upon the unfortunate who stirs this brute to anger!” thought I. He was undoubtedly well aware of the feelings of horror and repulsion that he inspired in the breasts of others, and seemed rather to pride himself upon it, I thought; for as I was led forward into his presence he paused in his wolfish feeding and glared upon me with an expression of concentrated malignity that seemed to freeze the very marrow in my bones. But I believed that he was deliberately striving to frighten me, and horrified though I actually was, I was determined he should not have the satisfaction of feeling that he had succeeded. I, therefore, steadily returned his stare with all the coolness and nonchalance I could summon to my aid, and after the lapse of a full minute or more he turned his glance aside to one of the men who held me, and said:
“Well, Carlos, my ruse succeeded, it would appear. But it is a poor sort of capture that you have made; I hoped you would contrive to get hold of Don Luis, or at least of Don Esteban, or one of his sons; but who is this? He is a mere boy!”
“True, he is,” answered the man addressed as Carlos—the scoundrel who had taken advantage of an appeal to my humanity to catch me unawares. “But,” he continued, “boy though he is, he is as strong as a young lion, and will afford us sport for three or four days, if things are carefully managed; and after that—” He added a few words in some language that I did not understand.
“But who is he, and what is he?” snarled the other. “He does not look like a Spaniard.”
“He is not a Spaniard,” answered Carlos. “Pepe, one of the Bella Vista ‘boys’ who joined us last night, told me that there was a young Englishman in the house who had been found by old Tomasso, Don Luis’ fisherman, floating about on a piece of wreckage, nearly dead, and had been brought ashore by him and, at Don Luis’ orders, taken up to the house and nursed back to health by Mama Elisa; and without doubt this is he.”
“Is this so?” demanded the quintessence of ugliness, turning his gaze upon me.
“It is,” answered I. “And perhaps it may prevent misunderstanding and attachment of blame to the wrong people if I explain that it is I who am responsible for the defence of Bella Vista and the losses that you have sustained. It was I who supervised the erection of the barricades, and who also arranged the plan upon which we fought.”
“A–h!” he breathed, and the note of diabolical malignity with which he contrived to imbue that single word sent a shudder of fear through me, so intense was it. “Then, perhaps,” he continued, “you may be able to tell us whose hand it was who slew Petion, our late leader?”
“As well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb,” thought I, and answered at once “Yes. As a matter of fact I am responsible for that, too; and I am glad of it. It was my finger that pulled the trigger that sent the bullet through his heart; and my only regret is that you did not stay long enough to enable me to send a few more of you after him.”
Carlos, my captor, actually released my arm and stepped a pace away, the better to gaze upon me, so astounded was he at the unimaginable rashness of my speech. And, to speak truth, I was astounded at myself; I knew perfectly well that I was in all probability only adding fuel to the flame which would ultimately consume me, yet some perverse influence altogether beyond my control seemed to urge me to speak as I did, whether I would or no. And, strangest circumstance of all, my words, instead of evoking from my questioner the white-hot explosion of wrath that I fully expected, seemed to gratify the man rather than otherwise, for he grinned appreciation as he gazed into my flashing eyes. Then a thought seemed to suddenly strike him.
“You were picked up floating upon a piece of wreckage, you say?” he remarked. “Now, I wonder whether, by any chance, that piece of wreckage happened to belong to the British man-o’-war schooner that engaged a pirate schooner a few miles in the offing, about a month or two ago?”
“It did,” I answered. “It belonged to His Britannic Majesty’s schooner Wasp, which foundered in the gale that sprang up immediately after the engagement; and I, her commander, was, so far as I know, the only person saved.”
“You her commander!” he reiterated incredulously. “Why, you are only a boy!”
“Nevertheless, what I have told you is the truth,” I answered.
The fellow sat considering this statement for so long a time that I began to wonder whether perchance it was destined to affect my fate in any way. At length, however, he appeared to have arrived at a decision, for, drawing a greasy notebook from one pocket and a stub of pencil from another, he proceeded with much labour to indite a communication of some kind upon it, which, when completed, he folded in a peculiar way and handed to Carlos, at the same time giving him, in a tongue with which I had no acquaintance, what I took to be certain instructions. Whatever the nature of the communication may have been it appeared to meet with Carlos’ emphatic disapproval, for he began to argue strenuously with the other, the argument lasting some ten minutes and rapidly growing more heated, until finally something was said that apparently convinced him of the futility of further dispute on his part. Then he suddenly desisted and, seizing me by the arm, dragged me away to a spot where we were somewhat isolated from the rest of the camp, where he left me in charge of his companions José and Miguel while he went off elsewhere. His absence, however, was of but brief duration, for presently he returned, followed by two other negroes who bore in a large calabash an ample supply of boiled rice, roasted yams, and substantial portions of roast goat mutton, which they deposited on the ground within easy reach of us before they departed and left us to ourselves.
As soon as they had gone fairly out of ear-shot Carlos turned to me and, pointing to the provisions, said, as he released me from my bonds:
“Help yourself, and eat freely, Señor Englishman, for we have a long march before we are likely to again see a decent meal.”
“Indeed!” I exclaimed. “Is your camp, or head-quarters, or whatever you call it, so far off, then, as that would seem to imply?”
“We are not going to head-quarters,” he replied rather tartly; “and you may thank the good God that it is so; for, whatever may be your mode of death, you may accept my assurance that it will not be anything like so protracted or unpleasant as that which awaited you among the mountains yonder.”
“Well,” said I, “that at least is good hearing. But if we are not going to head-quarters, pray where are we going?”
“My orders from Mateo, our new chief—whose beauty doubtless impressed you,” he replied, with a grin, “are to conduct you down to the coast and deliver you over to his very good friend Manuel Garcia, the pirate, whose schooner Tiburon you and your crew punished so severely when—according to your own admission, mind—you engaged her some little time ago. Mateo is under the impression that Garcia would be peculiarly gratified to find in his power the officer who commanded the schooner which mauled the Tiburon so severely; so, as you have confessed that you are the man, he has decided to make a present of you to his friend, and to take the risk of the rumpus that will certainly arise when the band learns that it is not to have the pleasure of amusing itself with you.”
“And how far is your friend Garcia’s lair from here?” I demanded.
“Not very far,” was the answer. “But it will take us until close upon sunset to do the distance, because Mateo prefers that we should not start until the rest of the band are on the move. He fears that if you were seen going toward the sea, instead of up into the mountains, some of our ‘lambs’ might begin to ask awkward questions, and insist upon your accompanying them. Therefore, if you feel at all tired, you had better avail yourself of the present opportunity to snatch a little sleep.”
As a matter of fact I did not feel in the least tired, but I wanted an opportunity to think quietly over this change in my prospects; I, therefore, gladly accepted the suggestion made by Carlos and, stretching myself out beneath the shade of an adjacent clump of bush, closed my eyes and, before I knew it, was fast asleep.
I was awakened by the sound of many voices and the stir of many feet, and sat up to see that the whole band of marauders was in motion; and ten minutes later there was nothing to betray their presence save a cloud of dun-coloured dust rising into the air over the tops of the bushes. It appeared to me, however, that instead of wending their way toward the mountains they were bearing away in a westerly direction toward a spot where, at a distance of some eight or ten miles, I knew a group of extensive and prosperous plantations existed. As soon as the last of the stragglers had vanished, Carlos rose to his feet and said:
“Now, Señor Englishman, if you are sufficiently rested we will be moving; because, if it should be noticed that you are not among them, some of our people might return to look for you; and it would be very bad indeed for you if they should do that—and find you.”
“I am quite ready,” I answered, as I sprang to my feet; and in another minute our little party also—consisting of Carlos, José, Miguel, and myself—had disappeared from the scene.
Our way lay in precisely the opposite direction to that taken by the raiders; that is to say, while they marched toward the west, we followed a narrow, winding footpath that, if it could be said to have any definite direction at all, trended toward the east. For three hours we trudged steadily onward, Carlos, with one of my pistols in his belt, in addition to his own weapons, walking on one side of me, with José, similarly equipped, on the other, while Miguel, with my gun upon his shoulder, brought up the rear. For several miles we traversed the lower slopes of the range, winding hither and thither but steadily working our way eastward, now passing over sterile, rocky ground, sparsely dotted here and there with clumps of thorny scrub, and anon opening out a glorious prospect of gently undulating, fertile country, dotted with plantations,—the smoke-blackened roofless walls of some of the mansions built on them clearly suggesting a recent visit from the late Petion and his fellow-outlaws,—and, beyond all, the grand old ocean, blue, save where darkened by the drifting cloud shadows, and flecked here and there with white from the scourging of the trade-wind. At length, however, when the sun had declined to within a span’s length of the western horizon, we bore away sharply toward the north, and presently came in sight of an indentation in the coast which, at the first glimpse, had the appearance of being land-locked; but which, as we approached it more closely, I saw was really a nearly circular bay about a mile in diameter, the entrance of which was most effectively masked by a small islet stretching completely across it and leaving only two narrow passages, one to the east and the other to the west of it. A small felucca lay at anchor a cable’s length from the shore; and when at length we reached the lip of the basin-like depression, the bottom of which formed the bay, or cove rather, I perceived, to my amazement, that a sort of village of quite respectable extent had been built along its southern margin, some of the buildings being so large that I at once set them down as storehouses. A number of people were moving about the buildings; and quite a dozen boats were hauled up on the beach above high-water mark.
And now I noticed a very remarkable peculiarity in connection with the cove: the sides of the basin wherein it lay consisted everywhere of perfectly vertical cliffs, some two hundred feet high, so that, look where I would, I could at first discover no way down into it. Looking a little closer, however, I presently became aware of an exceedingly narrow and dangerous zigzag path traversing the cliff-face, about a quarter of a mile farther on, and toward this we at once made our way. A quarter of an hour later, having first encountered a sentry at the upper end of the path, to whom Carlos whispered some password which I could not catch, we found ourselves safely at the base of the cliff and at the extreme end of the village. Arrived here, we directed our steps toward the most important-looking house in the place, at the door of which Carlos knocked. An ancient, frosty-headed negro responded to the knock and, in reply to Carlos’ question, stated that Don Manuel Garcia was at the moment away in the schooner, but that Señor Fernandez was, as usual, in charge of the settlement, and possibly might do as well; to which suggestion Carlos assented, whereupon we were ushered into a large bare room, furnished in such a manner as to suggest the idea that it was chiefly used as a council chamber, and the door was shut upon us.