"Cudjo! Cudjo! what are you doing here?"
The negro made no reply, but, folding his arms above his head, spread them forth towards the fire, bowing himself again and again, until his forehead touched the stone.
Penn shuddered with awe. For the first time in his life he found himself in the presence of an idolater. Cudjo belonged to a tribe of African fire-worshippers, from whom he had been stolen in his youth; and, although the sentiment of the old barbarous religion had smouldered for years forgotten in his breast, this night it had burst forth again, kindled by the terrible splendors of the burning mountain.
Penn waited for him to rise, then grasped his arm. The negro, startled into a consciousness of his presence, stared at him wildly.
"That is not God, Cudjo!"
"No, no, not your God, massa! My God!" and the African smote his breast. "Me mos' forgit him; now me 'members! Him comin' fur burn up de white folks, and set de brack man free!"
Penn stood silent, thinking the negro might not be altogether wrong. No doubt the dim, dark soul of him saw vaguely, with that prophetic sense which is in all races of men, a great truth. A fire was indeed coming—was already kindled—which was to set the bondman free: and God was in the fire. But of that mightier conflagration, the combustion of the forests was but a feeble type.
Penn turned from Cudjo to watch the burning, and became aware of its threatening and rapidly increasing magnitude. The woods had been set in several places, but the different fires were fast growing into one, swept by a strong wind diagonally across and up the mountain. It seemed then as if nothing could prevent all the forest growths that lay to the southward and westward along the range from being consumed.
As he gazed, he became extremely alarmed for the safety of Stackridge and his friends: and where all this time was Carl? In vain he questioned Cudjo. He turned, and was hastening to the cave when he met Pomp coming towards him. Tall, majestic, naked to the waist, wearing a garment of panther-skins, with the red gleam of the fire on his dusky face and limbs, the negro looked like a native monarch of the hills.
"O Pomp! what a fire that is!"