The fleetest railway speed would have seemed slow to me as we hastened towards the scene of last night's outrage. It was soon reached, and as we hurried down the avenue of cabbage-trees we became sensible that the odour of burned wood, canes, and bamboo, predominated over all the fragrance of the herbs and flowers with which the morning air was laden. An exclamation of mingled rage and sorrow escaped me on beholding the site of the once pretty cottage or villa.
The verandah and porch, the wooden columns and cane trellis-work of which had been covered by luxuriant masses of lemon-water flowers and the ever blooming roses of Provence, had all disappeared; so had the white wooden walls and broad, green Venetian blinds. A few blackened stumps that stood among heaps of mouldering cinders were all that remained of the home of poor Eulalie.
And where was she?
The garden and avenue were strewn by broken pictures, music, volumes of Marivaux, Racine, Molière and Madame de Genlis, thrown out by the negro servants, a few of whom sat near the smoking ruin, crouching on their hams, and regarding us with such fear and doubt that some time elapsed before we could get any explanation from them.
At last Lieutenant Haystone contrived to glean from Quashi the Coromantee, who seemed less terrified than the rest, that they had been startled at nightfall by the shriek of a woman and the crashing of glass. On this they all trembled very much, believing it the white devil of the buccra men, who always comes when there is thunder, and the heavy wind that bends and uproots the big palms; but, gathering courage, after a time they hastened to the room of their mistress. It was empty! her bed was in disorder—the furniture overthrown—a Venetian window dashed to pieces, and portions of her night-dress adhering to the fragments evinced that she had been roughly dragged through it, and across the garden, footsteps being discernible on the trampled flower-beds. These led them towards the avenue, from searching which the sable domestics were recalled by an alarm of fire, and on returning found the whole villa in flames. It burned rapidly. Quashi could tell us no more—an Obeah nigger might, but there was no Obeah at Boscobelle just now.
Previous to our arrival, I related to Haystone and my comrades some of the circumstances connected with my visits to the villa, dwelling particularly on my two meetings with the supposed priest.
"You should have reported all this to head-quarters," said Haystone, "then perhaps this outrage might have been prevented."
"True," said I sadly; "I know not what impulse led me to conceal circumstances so full of suspicion; but 'tis useless to reproach me now."
"Our orders are to search the woods and sugar-plantations; you will extend from the right, and separate by files. The fallen palm on the high road shall be our point of rendezvous in half an hour hence. Make prisoner every suspicious-looking person——"
"But," said one of the fusiliers, "in case of resistance?"