CHAPTER LIV
ATTEMPT TO ESCAPE AGAIN.
On this night, for more than an hour, there was an unusual beating of tum-tums, and the chorus of some barbaric songs stole upon the wind at times from that quarter of the royal dwelling in which the wives of the late King Zabadie were enclosed.
During the past day the digging in the courtyard had ceased; and this circumstance, together with the sounds we heard (the adoration of some great fetish, or idol), made us tremble in our hearts lest the following day might see us placed in that more horrible prison, from whence there could be no release but by death.
We mutually expressed our fears of this; and so absorbed were we in this terrible surmise, that some time elapsed before we perceived that the blue of the sky and the light of the stars had disappeared; that a thick vapour had overspread both—that rain was pattering heavily on the flat roofs of the wooden city; and that thunder, the deep, hoarse thunder of the tropics, which sounds as if it would rend the earth in twain, was roaring athwart the darkened firmament.
The rain now poured down in such mighty torrents, that we listened to the din of its fall in silent wonder; for it seemed as if once again that "all the fountains of the great deep had broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened."
Ere long we felt the drops descending upon us, tepid and sulphureous, as the clay coating that covered the split canes, or lathing, which, formed the roof of our prison, soon became a puddle; while the straw and leaves on which we usually sat or reclined, were reduced to a mass of wetted mire.
For nearly an hour this continued, till our den became so thoroughly wet, that when the rain was over not a single dry spot could we find; and (as Hartly said) King Zabadie's trench in the courtyard would have the water some fathoms deep in it by this time.
On the rain ceasing, and the clouds dispersing, which they did as suddenly as the storm had come on, we saw the stars shining through a breach which the moisture had made in the roof, and something like a branch that was waving to and fro fell on my upturned face.
I grasped it.