The Land of Bondage: A Romance

by John Bloundelle-Burton

"What I can't fathom," remarked another, "is how the white girls never found him out. They should have known their own kind."

"It may be," Gregory said, "that he kept himself ever apart. His squaw was Indian, and, for his knowledge of our tongue, why! that he would attribute to a gift from his precious Sun God. Doubtless he told them he knew all tongues."

"And the girls," said Mr. Byrd, "were stolen when they were children. They could never have known--my God!" he exclaimed, breaking off, "what is that?" while, with his finger, he pointed to a sight that froze all our blood with horror.

We had reached the bend of a small river which joined, later on, the James, and were passing one side of it, a flat, muddy shore. On the other side there arose a stiff, almost perpendicular, bank, beneath which the river flowed; a bank that rose some seventy to eighty feet above the water's level. And here it was that we saw that which was so terrible to look upon.

Fixed into the earth was a long pole, or spar, of Virginian pine; attached to that pole was the naked body of a man--or was it the body of what had once been a man? It was bound to the staff by a cord of wampum, the arms were bound to it above the head by yet a second cord; plunged into the heart was an Indian knife, the hilt glistening in the rays of the evening sun. But worse, far worse to see than this--which we could do with ease since the stream was but a narrow one--was that the body was already nearly consumed with swarms nay, myriads--of huge ants that had crept up to it by the pole, and were already feeding on it so ravenously that, in a few more hours, there could be nothing left but the skeleton. Indeed, already our dilated eyes could see that the flesh of the lower limbs was gone--devoured; of the feet and legs there was naught left but the bones, while the body and the face were black with the host of venomous ants preying on them, so that the features could not be distinguished.

The women shrieked and hid their faces while the men sat appalled on their horses. Then with, as it seemed, one impulse, all but one of the latter dismounted and, wading through the stream that now, after the long drought, was but knee-deep, rushed at the steep bank and endeavoured to ascend it.

The impulse that so prompted all of us, except Kinchella, who remained with Joice and Miss Mills, was that we guessed who and what that awful figure had once been.

At first we could find no foothold by which to ascend; we strived in vain, we even endeavoured to dig out steps with our swords and hands; it was all unavailing. We should, indeed, have returned, desisting from our labour, had not at this moment one of the trappers espied, lower down, a slight path leading to the summit, a path doubtless used by the Indians when in the neighbourhood. And so, gaining that path, we reached the level above and drew near the horrid thing.

No need to ask who the creature had once been; all was answered by one quick glance. At the foot of the pole, at the foot of the thing itself, there lay a fawn-skin tunic and a silken cloak on which were wrought stars and moons and snakes, and a great blazing Sun, the insignia, or totems, of the false medicine man.

Yet, how had the deed been done? The Indians whom he had outraged and deceived lay far behind us in the mountains; they, therefore, could not have been his executioners. We had not far to seek ere this was discovered too. The crest of the bank was higher than the level behind it, which sloped downwards away from the river, and thus, when we stood on the other side, we could not see all that lay below that crest.