In this extremity a groan was heard to proceed out of the darkness at a few paces’ distance. Slap-Jack, guided by the sound, and parting some shrubs that concealed her, discovered poor Fleurette, more dead than alive, bruised, exhausted, terrified, scarcely able to stand, and shot through the ankle by a chance bullet from the blue-jackets, yet conscious enough still to drag herself to the feet of Cerise and cover them with kisses, forgetting everything else in her joy to find her young mistress still alive.
“You would serve me, Fleurette, I know,” said Mademoiselle de Montmirail, in a cautious whisper; for, to her excited imagination, every shrub that glistened in the moonlight held a savage. “I can trust you; I feel it. Tell me, is there no way to the sea but through our enemies? Must we witness more cruelties—more bloodshed? Oh! have we not had fighting and horrors enough?”
The black girl twined herself upwards, like a creeper, till her head was laid against the other’s bosom; then she wept in silence for a few seconds ere she could command her voice to reply.
“Trust me, lilly ma’amselle,” said she, in a tone of intense feeling that vouched for her truth. “Trust poor Fleurette, give last drop of blood to help young missee safe. Go to Jumbo for lilly ma’amselle now. Show um path safe across Sulphur Mountain down to sea-shore. Fleurette walk pretty well tank you, now, if only buckra blue-jacket offer um hand. Not so, sar! Impudent tief!” she added, indignantly, as Slap-Jack, thoroughly equal to the occasion, at once put his arm round her waist. “Keep your distance, sar! You only poor foretopman. Dis good daddy help me along fust.”
Thus speaking, she clung stoutly to Bottle-Jack, and proceeded to guide the party up the mountain along a path that she assured them was known but to few of the negroes themselves, and avoided even by these, as being the resort of Jumbo and several other evil spirits much dreaded by the slaves. Of such supernatural terrors, she was good enough to inform them, they need have no fear, for that Jumbo and his satellites were fully occupied to-night in assisting the “bobbery” taking place all over the island; and that even were they at leisure they would never approach a party in the centre of which was walking such an angel of light as Ma’amselle Cerise.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
MÈRE AVANT TOUT
The path was steep and narrow, leading them, moreover, through the most tangled and inaccessible parts of the jungle. Their progress was necessarily tardy and laborious. Fleurette took the lead, supported by Bottle-Jack, whose sea-legs seemed to carry him uphill with difficulty, and who stopped to take breath more than once. The black girl’s wound was painful enough, but she possessed that savage spirit of endurance which successfully resists mere bodily suffering, and walked with an active and elastic, though limping step. Blood, however, was still oozing from her wound, and a sense of faintness, resisted by sheer force of will, threatened at every moment to overpower her. She might just reach the crest of the hill, she thought, and then it would be all over with poor Fleurette; but the rest would need no guide after that point was gained, and the faithful girl struggled on.
Next came Smoke-Jack, in attendance on the ladies, much exhilarated by the dignity of his position, yet ludicrously on his good behaviour, and afraid of committing himself, on the score of manners, by word or deed. The Marquise and her daughter walked hand in hand, wasting few words, and busied each with her own thoughts. They seemed to have exchanged characters with the events of the last few hours. Cerise, ever since her rescue, had displayed an amount of energy and resolution scarcely to be expected from her usual demeanour, making light of present fatigue and coming peril in a true military spirit of gaiety and good-humour; while her mother, on the contrary, betrayed in every word and gesture the languor of subdued emotion, and a certain softened, saddened preoccupation of manner, seldom to be remarked in the self-possessed and brilliant Marquise.
Captain George, with Slap-Jack and the rest of the blue-jackets, brought up the rear. His fighting experience warned him that in no previous campaign had he ever found himself in so critical a position as at present. He was completely surrounded by the enemy. His own force, though well-armed and full of confidence, was ridiculously weak in numbers. He was encumbered with baggage (not to speak it disrespectfully) that must be protected at any sacrifice, and he had to make a forced march, through ground of which he was ignorant, dependent on the guidance of a half-savage girl, who might after all turn out to be a traitress.