‘And if you find him, Missy Liz—what den?’ inquired the yellow girl.
‘Ah, Rosa! that is where I shall want your assistance and your fidelity,’ replied her mistress. ‘If I find him, I must bring him here, and hide him from the police until I can get him safely away from the island.’
‘Dat berry dangerous work, Missy Liz.’
‘I know it, but how can I do otherwise? Could I let the man whom I once believed would be my husband, perish in the Alligator Swamp, without an attempt to rescue him; or deliver him up to die a murderer’s death upon the gallows, as long as I can keep him from it? Oh, Rosa, Rosa!’ cried Lizzie, weeping, ‘it is the same with all of us, white and black alike. Love—although a love that is dead and over—sanctifies everything, and claims a certain duty even for its ashes.’
The yellow girl did not understand her mistress’s words, but her tears appealed to her heart, and she cried with her.
‘Yes, Missy Liz, I understand. Dat’s jes’ same like me and de sailor fellow. But you must take great care of yourself, Missy Liz. You must be berry ’ticular where you step, and how you go, and keep a sharp look-out for de alligators. Dey berry cowardly, Missy Liz. Dey frightened of noise, and dey can’t run no ways; so if you don’t tread right on dem, you’se all right.’
‘Yes, yes, Rosa! I know that, and I will take every possible caution,’ replied Lizzie. And then she kissed the baby, and kissed Rosa, and walked bravely off, as though she had been going on her daily rounds.
The Alligator Swamp was situated in a deep gorge or valley between two high hills, and was simply a stagnant bog, thickly clothed with poisonous vegetation—indeed no healthy trees or bushes could have existed in such an atmosphere. The fatal upas tree spread its thick branches over the morass, sheltering deadly fungi of orange, and red, and white. Thorny bushes were matted and interlaced about it, so that had there been a solid foundation to the Alligator’s Swamp, it would have been impossible to force one’s way through, or find a path whereon to tread. The only resting-place for one’s feet consisted of the logs and trunks of decayed trees, which had dropped, rolling into the slime, and choked it up. But they were treacherous paths, as may be well imagined, and it was difficult, in the semi-darkness, to distinguish them from the caymen—the largest and fiercest breed of alligators—from which the swamp derived its name. These creatures lay on the top of the slimy deposit, just like rugged brown logs in appearance, until a sound or a touch caused the apparently inert mass to move, and a ferocious head, with two diamond bright eyes, and an enormous mouth, with cruel fangs, rose up suddenly and snapt its jaws over its unsuspecting prey. For there was no real daylight in the Alligator Swamp. The branches of the trees were so thickly interlaced overhead that the sun had no chance to penetrate them and cleanse the Augean Stable with his health-giving rays; and so the decaying vegetation and the slime had festered on together for years past, and the caymen had bred and flourished there, until the boldest negro of them all considered it certain death to breathe the air which they inhaled. If the foolhardy creature who attempted to traverse the swamp were not immersed in the stinking mud, or seized by the hungry alligators, he was bound after a little while to sink down, giddy and intoxicated from inhaling the various poisons around him, and so fall a prey to either one or the other. Lizzie Fellows was perfectly conscious of the terrible risk she ran,—more so, perhaps, than most women would have been, for her father had fully explained the dangers of the swamp to her, and warned her off its precincts. She knew that the reason runaway negroes and escaped prisoners took refuge in the Alligator Swamp was not because they sought safety in it, but because they preferred death by its horrors to giving themselves up to the law. They knew they went to their grave when they entered it, but they knew also that the police would refuse to follow them there, and that they would be left to die alone and unmolested. She had a long walk to take before she reached it. She was anxious to meet no one who should inquire her errand, or try to prevent it, and so she took a circuitous route to Sans Souci, and crept round the back of the plantation until she came to a clump of dense underwood, through which she knew a path led to the fatal spot. She tied a handkerchief steeped in some disinfectant across her mouth and nostrils as she entered it, and then, with a short prayer to God for protection and success, went bravely on. She carried a knife in her hand, with which she sliced the bark of the trees as she walked along, for she was afraid of losing her way altogether, and perhaps never finding the sunlight again; but for the first few minutes the Alligator Swamp seemed to be a harmless place enough. The grass beneath her feet was bright and green, from the humidity of the atmosphere and the shade of the trees, but the first indication of danger was given by her foot suddenly sinking in wet soil up to her ankle. She drew it back quickly, and commenced to walk more slowly, and tapping the ground before her with the stout stick she held in her hand, before she ventured to tread on it. Her heart beat fast at times as a rustle in the bushes betrayed the presence of a rattlesnake—about the only living thing that shared the swamp with the alligators—or a splash in the surrounding vegetation proved she was approaching the haunts of the caymen. Still she went on, picking her way over the morass, or skirting it by means of the rotten trunks that lay across it, and swayed and rolled as she mounted them, as if they would give way beneath her weight, and let her fall into the slimy pool they floated on. Soon she began to feel the effects of the mephitic vapours with which the place abounded, and had recourse to her smelling-salts, to prevent her becoming giddy. All this time Lizzie had kept up a continual note from a whistle she had hung about her neck, and at intervals she had called upon Henri de Courcelles by name. As she advanced to the centre of the swamp the daylight seemed to be entirely excluded, and she lighted a lantern which was tied at her girdle. With her staff in one hand and her revolver in the other she now began to pick her way step by step, her heart sinking with fear and disappointment as she went. For not a sound came in answer to her whistle or her call. The profoundest silence reigned in the Alligator Swamp. The stench of the decaying vegetation was more and more apparent, and the only light by which she walked was the feeble glimmer thrown in advance from the little lantern at her waist. It was a situation to appal the bravest spirit. Once she stepped forward almost confidently, and placed her foot on a broad bridge, formed, as she believed, of the corrugated trunk of a fallen tree, but as she touched it it sank beneath the slime, and rose again immediately with two fierce twinkling eyes and an open jaw full of pointed teeth, to confront her.
Lizzie flew backward with a scream of terror, and, clinging with one arm to the branch of a tree, discharged her revolver full in the reptile’s face. The bullet was probably battered against its impervious hide, but the shot had the desired effect of frightening the alligator back into its home of slime. It had another, and more unforeseen effect. It reached the senses of an almost unconscious man, who had slidden into a sitting position beside some bushes, but a few yards off, and roused him from his sleep of death. The sound of the shot conveyed but one idea to his mind, however,—that his pursuers had penetrated his asylum, and were close at hand to capture him; and with the intention to defy them to the last, he staggered to his feet, and set his back against a tree. The tall figure clothed in white became apparent in the surrounding twilight, and when Lizzie raised her eyes from the spot where the cayman had disappeared from view, it was to fix them on the form of Henri de Courcelles. She uttered a cry of pleasure at the discovery, which sounded to him like a note of victory.
‘Stand off!’ he exclaimed loudly; ‘shoot me like a man if you will, but don’t attempt to touch me with your accursed fingers, or I will dive into the swamp and escape you.’