THE MARK OF THE WILDCAT
In vain did the soldiers ransack the empty huts of the village, and scour the island from end to end. Not a single human being or evidence of life did they discover, nor were they fired upon from the belt of timber surrounding the cleared fields. The hundreds of men, women, and children, Indians and negroes, who had been at home in this place less than an hour before, had vanished as mysteriously and completely as though the earth had opened and swallowed them. Even the secret place of exit through the swamp, provided for just such an emergency as the present, had not been discovered when darkness put an end to the search, and the troops camped in and about the Indian village for the night.
The officer commanding the expedition was furious. He had expected to destroy or capture the entire force of the enemy gathered at this point. Instead of so doing, he had not only failed to capture a single prisoner, but could not discover that his fire had resulted in the killing or even wounding of a single warrior. On the other hand, the dead of his own command numbered seven, while a score of others were more or less severely wounded. His anger was in nowise diminished by what he was pleased to term the culpable ignorance of Lieutenant Douglass concerning the strength and movements of the Indians.
When questioned on these points, the young officer, with a delicacy that forbade the part taken by Anstice Boyd in his rescue becoming common talk of the camp, would only say that, having been confined in a closed hut, he had no opportunity of knowing what was taking place outside.
"Were you bound, blind-folded, or in any other way deprived of the use of your faculties?" demanded the commander.
"No, sir, I was not."
"In that case it is incredible that you could not have found some opportunity for making observations of what was taking place about you; and that you failed to do so, must be regarded as a grave neglect of duty. The very fact that the savages, having you in their power, presented you with both life and liberty, would seem to argue a closer sympathy between you and them than is permissible between an officer of the United States army and the enemies of his Government. Therefore, sir, I shall take it upon myself to suspend you from duty, and shall prefer charges against you which you will be allowed to meet before a court martial. That is all, sir. You may go."
"Very good, sir," replied the younger officer, bowing, and retiring with a pale face, and a mind filled with bitter thoughts.
That night the island seemed a very abode of malicious spirits. Low-hanging clouds covered it with a veil of darkness so intense as to be oppressive. A strong wind moaned among the forest trees, and borne on it from the surrounding swamp came blood-chilling shrieks and yells, weird and foreboding, but whether produced by wild beasts or wild men, the shuddering listeners, gathered closely about flaring camp-fires, could not determine. So terrible were some of these wind-borne cries, that certain among those who listened declared them to be the despairing accents of lost souls; for which sentiment they were derided by the bolder of their comrades. But when the midnight relief went its round of the outposts, and found four of them guarded only by corpses, even the scoffers were willing to admit that in the rush of the night wind they had heard the wings of the angel of death.
As, one after another, the dead sentinels were brought in to the firelight, they were found to be without wounds, unless a scratch of five fine lines on each pallid forehead could be called such. In each case the cause of death was a broken neck. From this and the scratches, that looked as though they might have been made by the brushing of a mighty paw, it was at first thought that the unfortunate soldiers might have been done to death by one of the more powerful beasts of the forest.