Equally clear was it, that the plan was no other than an atrocious plot to murder the proprietor of Mount Welcome; and that poison was the safe, silent weapon to be used—for Cubina was not unacquainted with the signification of the death-spell of Obeah. Before that night he had reason to believe that his own father had fallen by that secret shaft, and reasons to suspect that Chakra had shot it. What he had just heard confirmed his belief; and but that he saw the necessity of hastening to the rescue of the threatened Custos—and knew, moreover, that he could now find Chakra at any time—he would, in all probability, have avenged his father’s death before leaving the Duppy’s Hole.
The young Maroon, however, was a man of mild character—combining prudence with an extreme sang froid—that hindered him from bringing any event to a hasty or ambiguous ending. Though leaving Chakra for the time, he had determined soon to return to him.
The resurrection of the myal-man, though it at first very naturally astonished him, had soon ceased to be a mystery to the mind of the Maroon. In fact, the presence of the Jew had at once explained the whole thing. Cubina conjectured, and correctly, that Jessuron had released the condemned criminal from his chains, and substituted the body of some dead negro—afterwards to become the representative of Chakra’s skeleton.
For this the Jew, well-known for wickedness, might have many motives.
The Maroon did not stay to speculate upon them. His thoughts were directed to the present and future rather than the past—to the rescue of the Custos, over whom a fearful fate seemed to impend.
It need not be denied that Cubina felt a certain friendship for the planter of Mount Welcome. Heretofore it had not been of a very ardent character; but the relations lately established between him and the Custos—in prospect of the process to be taken against their common enemy, the penn-keeper—had, of course, occasioned a fellow-feeling between them. The revelations of that night had strengthened the interest which the Maroon had begun to feel for Mr Vaughan; and it is not to be wondered at that he now felt an honest desire to save the father of her, whom he was henceforth to regard as his own sister. To this end, then, were his thoughts directed.
He stayed not long to speculate upon the motives either of Chakra or Jessuron. Those of the myal-man he could guess to a certainty. Revenge for the sentence that exposed him to that fearful fate on the Jumbé Rock.
The motives of the Jew were less transparent. His deepest did not appear in the confabulation Cubina had overheard. Even Chakra did not know it. It might be fear of the approaching trial: which by some means the Jew had become apprised of.
But no. On reflection, Cubina saw it could not be that: for the conversation of the conspirators betrayed that their plot had been anterior to any information which the Jew could have had of the design of the Custos. It could not be that.
No matter what. Mr Vaughan, the father of the generous young lady—she who had promised to make him a present of his beloved bride, and who now proved to be his own stepsister—her father was in danger!