Volume Two—Chapter Seven.
Quashie in a Quandary.
During all this time, where was Quashie?
Mr Smythje did not know, and no longer did he care. Too glad to get away from the scene of his unpleasant adventure, he made no inquiry about his negligent squire; nor did he even think of going back to the place where he had left him. His deliverer had offered himself as a guide; and the road by which he conducted the sportsman from the dead-wood led in quite another direction. As to the empty game-bag left with Quashie, it made no difference what became of that; and, for the hunting-knife and brandy-flask, no doubt the darkey would see to them.
In this conjecture Mr Smythje hit the nail upon the head—at least so far as regarded the brandy-flask. It was by seeing too well to it, that Quashie had lost all sight of everything else—not only of the duties he had been appointed to perform, but of the whole earth and everything upon it. The buckra had not been twenty minutes out of his presence, when Quashie, by repeated application of the brandy-flask to his lips, brought his optical organs into such a condition, that he could not have told the difference between a turkey and a turkey-buzzard any more than Mr Smythje himself.
The drinking of the eau de vie had an effect upon the negro the very reverse of what it would have had upon an Irishman. Instead of making him noisy and quarrelsome, it produced a tendency towards tranquillity—so much so, that Quashie, in less than five minutes after his last suck at the flask, coggled over upon the grass, and fell fast asleep.
So soundly slept he, that not only did he fail to hear the report of Smythje’s gun, but the discharge of a whole battery of field-pieces close to his ear would not, at that moment, have awakened him.
It is scarce possible to say how long Quashie would have continued in this state of half-sleep, half-inebriety, had he been left undisturbed; nor was he restored to consciousness by human agency or living creature of any kind. That which brought him to himself—waking and, at the same time, partially sobering him—was the rain; which, descending like a cold shower-bath on his semi-naked skin, caused him to start to his feet.
Quashie, however, had enjoyed more than an hour’s sleep, before the rain began to fall; and this may account for the eau de vie having in some measure lost its influence when he awoke.
He was sensible that he had done wrong in drinking the buckra’s brandy; and as the temporary courage with which it had inspired him was now quite gone, he dreaded an encounter with the white “gemman.” He would have shunned it, had he known how; but he knew very well that to slink home by himself would bring down upon him the wrath of massa at Mount Welcome—pretty sure to be accompanied by a couple of dozen from the cart-whip.