Chapter Sixteen.
The Pursuit.
When George Leicester at last awoke from his stupor, and had sufficiently recovered his scattered senses to remember where he was, the strength and fury of the storm had passed, the lightning-flashes being much less vivid, and coming at considerably longer intervals. But the rain was descending in a perfect deluge, and, notwithstanding the shelter of the thick overhanging foliage, the ground was already so completely flooded that George at first thought he was lying in the bed of some shallow watercourse. He staggered to his feet, chill and dripping wet, and, taking advantage of the intermittent light afforded by the lightning, looked around him to ascertain, if possible, what had actually happened; and he then saw that an immense tree close by had been shivered from top to bottom by the lightning, and, falling across their path, had killed both mules, and completely wrecked the waggon.
His own escape and that of his companions, if indeed they had escaped, had been simply miraculous, a huge branch having struck the waggon only about one foot behind the seat upon which they had been sitting. The ground was littered with splinters, and encumbered with the spreading branches of the fallen tree, and among these he proceeded to search for Tom and Walford.
A low moaning sound some short distance on his right told him that in that direction he would probably find one of the missing, and, groping his way cautiously to the spot, he found the unfortunate Walford lying on his back, with the water surging round him like a mill-race, and a large branch of the fallen tree lying across his breast and pinning him down. By exerting his whole strength, George managed to bear up the branch sufficiently for Walford to work his way from underneath it, and then he helped the poor wretch to his feet, inquiring at the same time if he had received any serious hurt. Unfortunately one of the apathetic fits which occasionally seized Walford had come upon him, and George was quite unable to gain anything like an intelligible answer from him; but he was scarcely able to stand, and his continued moaning and the constant pressure of his hands upon his breast showed that he was evidently suffering great pain.
Seating the unfortunate man at the foot of a tree, where he would be beyond the reach of the water, and making him as comfortable as was possible, George then went in search of the lad Tom, whom he found standing bewildered over the wreck of the waggon, with a thin stream of blood slowly trickling down his face from a scalp-wound, probably inflicted by a blow from one of the branches of the tree as it fell.
“Ha! Tom, is that you?” exclaimed George joyously. “I was just coming to look for you. How have you fared in the general smash?”
“Is that you, cap’n?” answered Tom. “Well, I’m very glad to find you’ve turned up all right. It has been a smash, and no mistake; a total wreck, and no insurance, I’ll be bound. Well, it’s unfort’nate; but it can’t be helped; it might ha’ been much worse. I got a whack on the skull that knocked the senses out of me for a while, but I don’t feel very much the worse for it a’ter all. Where’s poor Mr Walford, sir? What’s become of him?”
“He is close by,” answered George; “but a big branch fell across his chest, and I am afraid he is very much hurt.”
“Let’s have a look at him,” said Tom. And the two men groped and stumbled their way without more ado to the place where Walford was still seated, with his back resting against the giant bole of the tree.
A few trials were sufficient to establish the fact that the poor fellow was practically helpless, for the time at least; and it then became a question of what it would be best to do under the circumstances. The first idea was that George and Tom should each take an arm of the injured man over their shoulders, and so assist him along; but he moved with such great difficulty that it was soon apparent some other plan would have to be adopted.
“I have it!” exclaimed George, as a bright idea struck him; and hurrying away to the waggon, he secured the canvas and rope which had been thrown into it, together with the cane-knives, canvas jackets, and other trifling belongings, and hurried back to the tree.
“Now, Tom,” he said, “look about you, my lad, and see if you can find a nice light handy branch, tolerably straight, and about ten feet long, and bring it here as quickly as you can.”
“Ay, ay, sir,” answered Tom, starting off on his errand at once.
Whilst he was gone, George spread out the canvas upon the ground, and, with the aid of a pocket-knife, which he had seen lying about in the stable that evening, and had taken the liberty of appropriating, proceeded to roughly shape a hammock out of the material, leaving enough canvas at each end to form, with the rope, an eye, through which to pass the branch from which he intended it to be slung.
He had hardly finished his preparations when Tom reappeared with the waggon-pole, which he had found fortunately unbroken.
“Will this do, sir?” asked Tom.
“The very thing,” was George’s delighted reply. “Now, Walford,” he continued, “lie down on that canvas, old fellow, and we’ll soon have you slung comfortably in your hammock between us, where you will travel without much pain to your poor chest. That’s it; now, Tom, pass the end of the pole through this eye; capital! now through the other; that’s your sort! Now I’ll take the fore end of the pole and you the after end; lift handsomely; have you got your end on your shoulder? Then off we go. We have not such a very great distance to travel—only some twenty miles or so—but we must get over the ground as quickly as possible; for when once nine o’clock to-morrow morning has passed, we may make certain that they’ll be after us; so we must reach the coast by that time, or soon after it, if we wish to get clear off.”
And in this manner, with Walford slung in his impromptu hammock between them, George and Tom set off upon the wearisome journey which lay before them, and which, they fondly hoped, was to end in the absolute recovery of their liberty.
Tramp, tramp; splash, splash; on they trudged,—stumbling over the roots of trees, tripping over the long, tough, straggling creepers which crossed their path, sometimes brought-up “all standing” and half-strangled by the cord-like llianas which hung festooned from tree to tree, their naked feet and legs torn by thorns and stabbed by the spines of the wild cactus—in thick impenetrable darkness for a couple of hours, and then the clouds suddenly vanished away on the wings of the land-breeze, the stars reappeared, the soft silvery rays of the moon streamed down once more through the gaps in the foliage, and the weary fugitives flung themselves down upon the sodden ground for a short breathing-space.
George was of opinion that, from the time they had been tramping through the forest, they ought to have very nearly reached its southern skirts; but as far as the eye could penetrate, in the uncertain moonlight, through the sylvan vistas, there was no sign of break or opening of any kind; nothing but an apparently endless succession of trees and dense undergrowth. Seeing this, Leicester began to feel uneasy. He knew that they had been travelling through the timber in anything but a straight line—indeed, to do so would have been simply a physical impossibility—and he began to fear that, in spite of all his efforts to avoid such a misfortune, they had been journeying along the arc of a circle, instead of progressing steadily in a southerly direction.
The wanderers were beginning to feel thoroughly fatigued, what with their day’s work in the fields, their exposure during the storm, and their painful tramp afterwards; but George felt that, fatigued or not, they must push on; liberty must be secured first; when that was won, they could afford time to rest, but not until then.
The first thing to be done, however, was to get a definite idea of whereabouts they were; it was obviously useless to continue plodding on, they knew not whither; besides, it was frightfully fatiguing and painful work, this marching through the forest, and George felt that it would be a positive advantage even to deviate somewhat from their direct course, if by so doing they could earlier gain the open ground once more. So, looking around him, he picked out the most lofty tree he could find, and, leaving Tom to keep watch by Walford’s side, nimbly scrambled up its trunk, and was soon among its topmost branches.
A single glance around sufficed to show him that his suspicions were correct; they were only about half a mile from the northern edge of the timber; and, consequently, rather worse off than if they had never left the wrecked waggon at all. And, worse still, George found that, after all their travelling, they were little more than three miles from the estate, the whole of which was distinctly visible from his lofty stand-point. This was rather discouraging, but there was no help for it; he now knew exactly where they were, and how much greater than even he had imagined was the necessity for immediate action; so he turned his glances in a southerly direction, and sought to discover the most direct road out of their unpleasant predicament. Here he met with an ample reward for his trouble in climbing the tree, for he saw that, if they pursued their way due south—as they could now do, directing their course by the moon—they would have to travel through at least seven miles of forest; whilst by heading in a south-westerly direction, keeping the moon a little on their left hand, they would only have to traverse some two miles of forest, after which there seemed to be tolerably open ground as far as the eye could reach. About three miles East-South-East of him he detected the gleaming white walls of a number of buildings, which he judged to be a portion of the town of Santiago; beyond it rose a curiously-shaped, double-coned mountain; away on his right lay the table-land of Mariel; and—joyous sight—through a break in the rising ground to the southward he caught a glimpse of the sea, with, far away on the utmost verge of the horizon, an appearance of land, which he conjectured must be the Isle of Pines. Noting all these matters carefully, and making a rough mental sketch of “the lay of the land,” George rapidly descended to where he had left Tom and Walford, and rapidly detailed to the former the result of his observations.
“We must be off at once,” he explained, “for we have no time to spare; we have lost nearly three good hours blundering about here blindly in this wood; it must be now nearly or quite midnight; and, if so, it leaves us only ten hours at most to reach the sea, if we are to do so without being overtaken.”
Accordingly, weary and stiff as they were, they again shouldered the pole from which Walford in his hammock was slung, and once more set out upon their journey, which, now that they were favoured by the light of the moon, they hoped would be of a somewhat more prosperous character than it had hitherto been.
Another painful and toilsome tramp of a couple of hours and they emerged, to their unbounded joy, from the southern side of the forest on to comparatively open ground. Trees and dense straggling clumps of bush were still abundant enough—far too much so, in fact—but there were wide patches of grass-land between, over which their progress was tolerably rapid. Once clear of the thick timber, George again shaped his course due south, intending to pass through the break in the rising ground which he had seen from his lofty lookout; but somehow they missed it, and this involved a great deal of toilsome climbing. At length they plunged once more into a belt of timber which stretched, seemingly for miles, across their path; and here exhausted nature gave out; Tom declared his utter inability to walk another yard, George felt scarcely better than his companion, and so, notwithstanding the terrible loss of precious time which it involved, they selected the first suitable spot they could find, and flinging themselves upon the ground, one on each side of Walford, gave themselves up to the sweetest sleep which had ever sealed their eyelids.
George was the first of the trio to awaken, and when he did so, he found, to his dismay, that the sun was already several hours high in the heavens. He immediately aroused the lad Tom, and, greatly refreshed by their sleep, the pair once more shouldered poor helpless Walford and his hammock, and resumed their flight. They were as hungry as healthy men usually are after great exertion and a fast of several hours’ duration, but they had not a particle of food with them, so they were compelled to subsist for the present upon hope, the hope that ere long they would meet with something more substantial. They felt no particular anxiety upon this score, as George knew that wild fruits of several kinds were tolerably plentiful on the island, and about half an hour after they had started they were fortunate enough to fall in with a wild plantain, the fruit of which was just in the right condition for eating. No time was lost in securing a goodly bunch of this very nutritious fruit, upon which they feasted, as they went along, until their appetites were completely satisfied.
After trudging manfully along for about a couple of hours, they found themselves upon the crest of a range of low hills, from which they caught, through a break in the scrub, a glimpse of the sea, sparkling invitingly under the noonday sun. They also caught a glimpse of something, by no means so pleasant—namely, a town of considerable dimensions immediately before them and only about two miles distant.
To avoid this they were compelled to make a wide detour, and much valuable time was lost in this way and in reconnoitring; for they knew there would be several plantations in immediate proximity to so important a place, and through these they would have, as it were, to run the gauntlet. And, notwithstanding all their caution, they failed to effect their passage entirely unobserved through this dangerous district; it unfortunately happening that, just as they emerged from the bush, and were about to cross a high-road, which they had been watching for nearly half an hour, a vehicle appeared in sight, suddenly wheeling into the road close to them from a bush-path which they had failed to observe. This vehicle was occupied by two persons, a white man and a negro driver; and as it was utterly impossible to avoid the observation of these two persons, George told Tom, in a few low hasty words, to continue moving, to carefully conceal all appearance of chagrin, and to leave him to answer any questions which might be put to them. As the vehicle approached the fugitives, its owner signed to his driver to pull up, but he immediately changed his mind and passed on, contenting himself with a careful and prolonged scrutiny of the travellers. This disagreeable incident caused George and his companion to push on with renewed vigour, and it was with sincerely thankful hearts that they at last plunged into a shallow ravine, which promised to lead them directly down to the sea, then not more, in Leicester’s opinion, than some four or five miles distant.
The sun was by this time sinking low in the heavens and the travellers, unutterably weary as they were, pressed eagerly forward, hoping to reach the coast before nightfall, and to discover a craft of some kind which they could appropriate, and in which, later on, when the night was well advanced, and they could hope to do so unobserved, they might venture to put to sea. This was the only effectual method of escape which George could devise—to put to sea upon the chance of being picked up by some passing vessel. He knew that, when once the fact of their escape became established, the news would travel faster than they possibly could; the whole country for many miles round, would be apprised of their number and appearance, and recapture would be certain. To get afloat, therefore, as speedily as possible was their first object; after that they must trust to chance—or Providence, rather—for their ultimate rescue.
As they advanced along the ravine, it grew deeper, whilst its sides became steeper and more rugged, until at last the place assumed quite the appearance of a mountain-gorge or defile, with rocky, precipitous sides, to which a few scattered shrubs clung here and there. At length, in the deep silence of the breathless evening, the thrice welcome sound of the sea breaking upon the shore came faintly to their ears. It was the merest, faintest murmur, it is true, but their experienced ears told them in a moment what it was; they were within the sound of the sea, and in a few short hours at most, please God, they would be safe from pursuit.
A bend in the defile was before them, about a quarter of a mile distant, and toward this they eagerly pressed believing that when they had passed it they would find themselves face to face with the sea. In their eagerness they broke into a run, notwithstanding their terrible state of fatigue, and soon rounded the bend—to find themselves in a cul-de-sac, with a perpendicular wall of cliff in front of them nearly two hundred feet high. With a groan of bitter anguish and disappointment they deposited Walford in his hammock on the ground, and turned to ask each other what should be done in the face of this new difficulty. As they did so, the deep bay of a dog smote upon their ears from the higher end of the ravine. The sound was instantly repeated again and again, in a slightly different key, proving that the cries were uttered not by one, but by several animals.
“The dogs! The dogs!” exclaimed Tom. “They are after us, by Jove; and here we are, caught like rats in a trap.”
George glanced eagerly about him, up and down the ravine. To go back was simply to throw themselves into the arms of their pursuers, for that they were pursued he did not for an instant doubt; to hide, even if a hiding-place could be found, was impossible, with those keen-scented brutes upon their tracks; and to remain where they were was to await inevitable capture. Could they go forward? That meant scaling that terrible wall of rock. As George glanced despairingly up the lofty perpendicular cliff, he thought that an active man, unencumbered, might possibly accomplish the feat; at all events, were he so circumstanced, he would try it. And what he could do, he knew the lad Tom could do also; but there was Walford, unable to walk, much less to scale that awful precipice. As he stood thus, the baying of the dogs again came floating down the ravine; and how much nearer and clearer were now the sounds! The brutes must be coming down after them at a run, as of course they easily could upon a red-hot scent. The sounds decided George to make one more desperate effort for freedom.
“Look here, Tom,” said he; “after coming thus far, we must not be taken for want of a little extra effort. If we are, you may be sure we shall never be allowed to make a second attempt. Now our only chance is to scale that cliff; we must do it, and we can do it, if we only go resolutely to work. It will be difficult, fatiguing, and awfully dangerous, for we must take poor Walford with us; but liberty awaits us at the top; the sea is not half a mile off, I know, by the sound of it; and we can reach it before those fellows can ride round to intercept us; so let us set to with a will, my lad, and we shall scrape clear yet, you take my word for it. Now out with your cane-knife, and cut away at the grass; we must well pad poor Walford all round with it, so that he may not be hurt by bumping against those rocks; then we’ll lash him hard and fast in the canvas, lash ourselves one to each end of him, and away aloft we go.”