Cudjo's Cave

by J. T. Trowbridge

"Toby!" he called again, exerting all his force. But only the wailing wind answered him, and, overcome by the effort, he sunk into a swoon. In that swoon it seemed to him that Toby had heard his voice, and that he came to him. Hands, gentle human hands, groped on him, felt the blanket, felt his bare feet, and his head, pillowed on stones. Then there seemed to be two Tobys, one good and the other evil, holding a strange consultation over him, which he heard as in a dream.

"We can't leave him dying here!" said the good Toby.

"What dat to me, if him die, or whar him die?" said the other Toby. "Straight har!" He seemed to be feeling Penn's locks, in order to ascertain to which race he belonged. "Dat's nuff fur me! Lef him be, I tell ye, and come 'long!"

"Straight hair or curly, it's all the same," said Toby the Good. "Take hold here; we must save him!"

"Hyah-yah! ye don't cotch dis niggah!" chuckled Toby the Bad, maliciously. "Nuff more ob his kind, in all conscience! Reckon we kin spar' much as one! Hyah-yah!"

Something like a quarrel ensued, the result of which was, that Toby the Good finally prevailed upon Toby the Malevolent to assist him. Then Penn was dreamily aware of being lifted in the strong arms of this double individual, and borne away, over rocks, and among thickets, along the mountain side; until even this misty ray of consciousness deserted him, and he fell into a stupor like death.

And what was this he saw on awaking? Had he really died, and was this unearthly place a vestibule of the infernal regions? Days and nights of anguish, burning, and delirium, relieved at intervals by the same death-like stupor, had passed over him; and here he lay at length, exhausted, the terrible fever conquered, and his soul looking feebly forth and taking note of things.

And strange enough things appeared to him! He was in an apartment of prodigious and uncouth architecture, dimly lighted from one side by some opening invisible to him, and by a blazing fire in a little fireplace built on the broad stone floor. The fireplace was without chimney, but a steady draught of air, from the side where the opening seemed to be, swept the smoke away into sombre recesses, where it mingled with the shadows of the place, and was lost in gloom which even the glare of the flames failed to illumine.

Such a cavernous room Penn seemed to have seen in his dreams. The same irregular, rocky roof started up from the wall by his bed, and stretched away into vague and obscure distance. All was familiar to him, but all was somehow mixed up with frightful fantasies which had vanished with the fever that had so recently left him. The awful shapes, the struggles of demoniac men, the processions of strange and beautiful forms, which had visited him in his delirious visions,—all these were airy nothings; but the cave was real.

Here he lay, on a rude bed constructed of four logs, forming the ends and sides, with canvas stretched across them, and secured with nails. Under him was a mattress of moss, over him a blanket like that which he remembered to have had wrapped about him last night in the field.