CHAPTER XXV.
THE MOUSE THAT GNAWED THE NET.
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“There passed a weary time. Each throat Was parched, and glazed each eye. A weary time! a weary time! How glazed each weary eye! When, looking westward, I beheld A something in the sky.” |
As the powder vomited forth its dreadful thunder, and as the stones and timbers from the blasted den were hurled high in air, and scattered by the explosive whirlwind far and near, some of the splinters and fragments came down in dropping hail upon the red-tiled sheds and the doctor’s dwelling. At the first shock the lonely child started up in his little bed, and while the earth rocked and the stones came pelting and crashing on the roof, he screamed, “Mamma! mamma!” No loving echo came back to those innocent lips, and naught was heard save the crackling of the flame beyond, licking its tongue along the dry timber and roaring joyously as it was fed. “Mamma! chère mamma!”
Yet no answer, and still the savage flames came careering wildly on till the very stones of the court-yard cracked like slates, while the burning flakes and cinders loaded the air, and the eddying volumes of smoke reeled in dense clouds, and poured their suffocating breath into the room where the forsaken child was crying.
One more panting, helpless cry, and the little fellow instinctively flew through the open doorway, where, blinded and choking with the devastating element around him, he staggered feebly beyond its influence. Yet again a flurry of thick smoke lighted up the forked and vivid flames, and chased the child before it.
Oh, fond mother! in your poignant grief for the loss of your poor drowned boy, you were spared the agony of seeing him, even in imagination, struggling faintly before that tempest of fire and smoke, calling plaintively for her on whose tender bosom his head had rested, while his naked feet were cut and bruised by the sharp coral shingle beneath them. But onward and onward the boy wandered, and fortunately his footsteps took the path into a purer atmosphere which led toward the chapel. Here he looked timidly around at the lurid glare behind him, and then entered the church and sank down 161 exhausted, his feverish, smarting eyes closing in slumber on the hard pavement beneath the image of the Virgin Mary.
Then came the close and sultry night––no murmur of a land-wind to drive the smoky canopy away––the black cinders falling in burning rain on basin, thicket, and lagoon, till even the very lizards and scorpions hid themselves deep within the holes and crevices of the rocks. Midnight came. The dim and silent stars were obscured by a veil of heavy clouds, and with a low, muttering sound of thunder, the vapory masses unclosed their portals, and the rain fell in torrents. The flames, now nearly satisfied with their work, leaped out occasionally from the fallen ruins, but were quenched by the tropical deluge, and smouldered away amid the charred and saturated timbers. Then the thunder ceased, the lizards and scorpions came from their retreats, the teal fluttered over the lagoon, and the noise of the waves bursting over the reef came again to the ear. Still there was no breath of air; the atmosphere was thick and damp; and out from the mangrove thickets and wide expanse of cactus, swarms of insects, musquitoes, and sand-flies in myriads went buzzing and singing in the sultry, murky night.
So dragged on the weary hours until day broke again, and the sea-birds floated off seaward for their morning’s meal, and the flying-fish skipped with their silvery wings from wave to wave, as the dolphins glittered in gold and purple after them below the blue water. No bright and blazing sun came over the hills of Cuba to light up this picture, but all was blight and gloom, with murky masses of dead, still clouds hanging low down over the island.