The words were scarcely uttered, when the crouching negro leaped, like a wild beast, at the Indian’s throat; but Antonio was agile, and evaded his grasp. The next instant the poor wretch had returned to his seat beside the dead. The negro could not endure a sneer at the potency of the gre-gre. Such is the hold of superstition on the human mind!
I tried to induce the negro to remove the body, and bury it in the sand; but he remained silent and impassible as a stone. So I returned with Antonio to the vessel, for the instincts of life had come back. We found, although the little schooner had been completely filled, that the water had escaped, and left the cargo damaged, but entire. Some of the provisions had been destroyed, and the remainder was much injured. Nevertheless they could be used, and for the time being, at least, we were safe from starvation. My spirits rose with the discovery, and I almost forgot my injuries in the joy of the moment. But Antonio betrayed no signs of interest. He lifted boxes and barrels, and placed them on the sands, as deliberately as if unloading the vessel at Kingston. I knew that it was not probable the wrecked schooner would suffer further damage from the sea, protected as it was by the outer reef, yet I sought to make assurance doubly sure, by removing what remained of the provisions to the hut by the palm-trees. Antonio suggested nothing, but implicitly followed my directions.
We had got out most of the stores, and carried them above the reach of the waters on the sands, when I went back to the hut, with the determination, by at once assuming a tone of authority, to have the negro remove and bury the body of the captain. I was surprised to find the hut empty, and a trail, like that which had attracted my notice in the morning, leading off in the direction of the bushes, at some distance from the hut. I followed it; and, in the centre of the clump, discovered the negro filling in the sand above the corpse. He mumbled constantly strange guttural words, and made many mysterious signs on the sand, as he proceeded. When the hole was entirely filled, he laid himself at length above it. I waited some minutes, but as he remained motionless, returned to the hut. We now commenced carrying to it, such articles of use as could be easily removed. But we had not accomplished much when Frank, the negro, presented himself; and, approaching me, inquired meekly what he should do. He was least injured of the three, and proved most serviceable in clearing the wreck of all of its useful and moveable contents.
By night I had bandaged my own wounds and those of my companions, and over a simple but profuse meal, forgot the horrors of the shipwreck, and gave myself up, with real zest, to the pleasures of a cast-away! I cannot well describe the sensation of mingled novelty and satisfaction, with which I looked out from the open hut upon the turbulent waters, whence we had so narrowly escaped. The sea still heaved from the effects of the storm, but the storm itself had passed, and the full tropical moon looked down calmly upon our island, which seemed silvery and fairy-like beneath its rays.
At first, all these things were quieting in their influences, but as the night advanced I must have become feverish, for notwithstanding the toils of the day, and the exhaustion of the previous night, I could not sleep. My thoughts were never so active. All that I had ever seen, heard, or done, flashed back upon my mind with the vividness of reality. But, owing to some curious psychical condition, my mind was only retrospectively active; I tried in vain to bring it to a contemplation of the present or the future. Incidents long forgotten jostled through my brain; the grave mingling strangely with the gay. Now I laughed outright over some freak of childhood, which came back with primitive freshness; and, next moment, wept again beside the bed of death, or found myself singing some hitherto unremembered nursery rhyme. I struggled against these thronging memories, and tried to ask myself if they might not be premonitions of delirium. I felt my own pulse, it beat rapidly; my own forehead, and it seemed to burn. In the vague hope of averting whatever this strange mental activity might portend, I rose and walked down to the edge of the water. I remember distinctly that the shore seemed black with turtles, and that I thought them creations of a disordered fancy, and became almost mad under the mere apprehension that the madness was upon me.
I might, and undoubtedly would, have become mad, had it not been for Antonio. He had missed me from the hut; and, in alarm, had come to seek me. I felt greatly relieved when he told me that there were real turtles on the shore, and not monsters of the imagination; and that it was now the season for laying their eggs, and therefore it could not be long before the fishers would come for their annual supply of shells. So I suffered him to lead me back to the hut. When I laid down he took my head between his hands, and pressed it steadily, but apparently with all his force. The effect was soothing, for in less than half an hour my ideas had recovered their equilibrium, and I fell into a slumber, and slept soundly until noon of the following day.
When I awoke, Antonio was sitting close by me, and intently watching every movement. He smiled when my eyes met his, and pointing to his forehead said significantly—
“It is all right now!”
And it was all right, but I felt weak and feverish still. A sound constitution, however, resisted all attacks, and it was not many days before I was able to move around our sandy prison, and join Antonio and Frank in catching turtles; for, with more foresight than I had supposed to belong to the Indian and negro character, they were laying in a stock of shells, against the time when we should find an opportunity of escape. Upon the side of our island, to which I have alluded as covered with bushes, the water was comparatively shoal, and the bottom overgrown with a species of sea-grass, which is a principal article of turtle-food. The surface of the water, also, was covered with a variety of small blubber fish, which Antonio called by the Spanish name of dedales, or thimbles—a name not inappropriate, since they closely resembled a lady’s thimble both in shape and size. These, at the spawning or egg-laying period of the year, constitute another article of turtle-food. During the night-time the turtles crawled up on the shore, and the females dug holes in the sand, each about two feet deep, in which they deposited from sixty to eighty eggs. These they contrived to cover so neatly, as to defy the curiosity of one unacquainted with their habits. Both Antonio and Frank, however, were familiar with turtle-craft, and got as many eggs as we desired. When roasted, they are really delicious. The Indians and people of the coasts never destroy them, being careful to promote the increase of this valuable shell-fish. But on the main land, wild animals, such for instance as the cougar, frequently come down to the shore, and dig them from their resting places. Occasionally they capture the turtles themselves, and dragging them into the forest, kill and devour them, in spite of their shelly armor.
