The beauty of the evening, the deep blue of the sky; and the deeper blue of the sea, caused me to deviate from the direct path for the garrison; and thus, leaving the road to Needham's Point, I wandered for some miles inland, through groves of yams, plaintains, and bananas, and frequently through deep, narrow dells rent and riven, by volcanic agency, where the sea found inlet and the brown tortoise crawled, and where the rocks were covered by those bearded figtrees from which this isle of hurricanes was named los Barbados by the Spaniards in the olden time.
In other places, the tracts of table-land were covered by the sugar-cane like a sea of wavy green, broken here and there by avenues of lofty cabbage-trees, which led to the villas of proprietors, or to their mills, where the slaves toiled for the production of wealth.
In one of these shady walks I sat for a time, to reflect on the wayward fortune which had cast me in this new land. The air was very still, and had now become oppressive. After a long train of negroes and asses, bearing the sugar of some wealthy planter to the Bridge, had passed me, no sound broke the stillness save the "drowsy hum" of the large black bees depositing their honey in the trunk of an old cotton-tree; the coo of the turtle-dove in the orange grove, or the rustle made by the keen and glancing eyed racoon, as it sprang from branch to branch of the cabbage-tree, or the palmetto-royal above me.
I felt all the lassitude of the passed day; a drowsiness was coming over me, but a dread of the scorpions that lurked among the luxuriant grass, and of those great beetle-like insects which are sure to bite sleepers till the blood comes, made me struggle to repress it; moreover, I knew all the dangers incident to sleeping under the descending dew,—fever, ague, and so forth. I arose, and was about to start on my return to garrison, from which I was now some miles distant, when a voice—a soft and sweet female voice—singing in French, and quite near, made me pause and listen with an undefinable emotion of pleasure; for it was long since I had heard a voice so seducing and so tenderly modulated; and it made me think of one whom I had now almost forgotten—my little Amy Lee.
The singer, though not twenty paces from me, was concealed by the luxuriant flowers and shrubbery that grew under the cabbage-trees. But the song ceased with singular abruptness, and then, after a brief pause, followed a half-stifled cry, ending in a heavy sob.
Alarmed by such a sound, and curious to see the singer, I hastened towards her, and beheld a very remarkable, if not a terrible scene.
A lady whose dark eyes and hair corroborated the idea which her song suggested, that she was French, was seated on the gnarled root of a cabbage-tree; but seemingly paralysed and frozen with terror, for her eyes were fixed on some object, which, at first sight, I was unable to discern. I addressed her, but she did not reply. I would have spoken again, but the power of utterance was denied me, on perceiving, not six feet distant from her, a huge rattlesnake, with its fiery eyes, that seemed lighted by sparks from hell, glaring into hers, while its wavy form glided forward by an almost imperceptible motion, and its tail was raised up—always significant of rage, for then the hollow horny substance with which that appendage is furnished rattles at every motion of the body.
The dark eyes of the French girl—she did not seem more than two-and-twenty—were dilated with horror, her face was deadly pale, her teeth were clenched, and her small white hands clutched the grass among which she was seated. On one side lay the broad round hat which had fallen from her head; on the other lay her parasol, and a book she had been reading when surprised by this terrible apparition. I glanced wildly round for some long weapon wherewith to arm me, but in vain.
An instant, and all would be over!
Wrath and hate, like those of a fiend, seemed to swell the flattened head, to fire the protruding orbs, and redden the flamelike tongue of this hideous and terrific reptile, the venom of which, when inserted in its victim by the two long fangs that protrude from the upper jaw, is more virulent and deadly than the poison of any other of its dreadful species.