“I tell you again, my boy, grief does not kill. I lived on, but I was a different creature now. My youth was gone, my beauty became terrible rather than attractive. I possessed certain powers that rendered me an object of dread more than love, and here, in this very hut, I devoted myself to the practice of Obi, and the study of that magic which has made the name of Célandine a word of fear to every negro in the island.
“One only aim, one only hope, kept me from going mad. Money I was resolved to possess, the more the better, for by the help of money alone, I thought, could I ever gain tidings of my boy. The slaves paid well in produce for the amulets and charms I sold them. That produce I converted into coin, but it came in too slow. In Europe I might calculate on better opportunities for gain, and to Europe I took the first opportunity of sailing, that I might join the mistress I had never seen, as attendant on her and her child. In their service I have remained to this day. The mother I have always respected for her indomitable courage; the daughter I loved from the first for her blue eyes, that reminded me of my boy.
“And now look at me once more, my child—my darling. I have found you when I had almost left off hoping; I have got you when I never expected to see you again; and I am rewarded at last!”
Slap-Jack, whose sentiments of filial affection came out the mellower for rum-and-water, accepted the Quadroon’s endearments with sufficient affability, and being naturally a good-hearted, easy-going fellow, gladly enacted the part of dutiful son to a mother who had suffered such long anxiety on his account.
“A-course,” said he, returning her embrace, “now you’ve got a son, you ain’t a-goin’ to keep him in this here round-house, laid up in lavender like, as precious as a Blue Mountain monkey pickled in rum. We’ll just wait here a bit, you and me, safe and snug, while the land-breeze holds, and then drop easily down into the town, rouse out my shipmates, able seamen every man of them, and go in for a regular spree. ’Tain’t every day as a chap finds his mother, you know, and such a start as this here didn’t ought to be passed over without a bobbery.”
She listened to him delighted. His queer phrases were sweet in her ears; to her they were no vulgar sea-slang, but the echo of a love-music that had charmed her heart, and drowned her senses half a lifetime ago; that rang with something of the old thrilling vibration still; but the wild look of terror that had scared him more than once gleamed again in her eyes, and she laid her hand on his shoulder as if to keep him down by force, while she whispered—“My child, not so! How rash, how reckless! Just like your father; but he, at least, had not your fate to fear. Do you not see your danger? Can you not guess why I concealed your birth, hid you up in your babyhood, and smuggled you out of the island as soon as you could run? Born of a slave, on a slave estate, do you not know, my boy, that you, too, are a slave?”
“Gammon! mother,” exclaimed Slap-Jack, nothing daunted. “What me?—captain of the foretop on board ‘The Bashful Maid,’—six guns on the main-deck, besides carronades—master and owner, Captain George! and talk to me as if I was one of them darkies what does mule’s work with monkey’s allowance! Who’s to come and take me, I should like to know? Let ’em heave ahead an’ do it, that’s all—a score at a spell if they can muster ’em. I’ll show ’em pretty quick what sort of a slave they can make out of an able seaman!”
“Hush, hush!” she exclaimed, listening earnestly, and with an expression of intense fear contracting her worn features; “I can hear them coming—negroes by the footfall, and a dozen at least. They will be at the door in five minutes. They have turned by the old hog-plum now. As you love your life, my boy; nay, as you love your mother, who has pined and longed for you all these years, let me hide you away in there. You will be safe. Trust me, you will be safe enough; they will never think of looking for you there!”
So speaking, and notwithstanding much good-humoured expostulation and resistance from Slap-Jack, who, treating the whole affair as a jest, was yet inclined to fight it out all the same, Célandine succeeded in pushing her son into an inner division of the hut, containing only a bed-place, shut off by a strong wooden door. This she closed hurriedly, at the very moment a dozen pattering footsteps halted outside, and a rough negro voice, in accents more imperative than respectful, demanded instant admission.