A Flight Urged by Despair.
“Now or never!” was the reflection that passed through Clara Blackadder’s mind; and she was in the act of springing up from her recumbent position, when a circumstance occurred seeming to say, “never!”
The mulatto had stepped out from the canvas screen, and stood in front of it; no longer robed in the costume of an Indian chief, but wearing the same dress he had worn as a slave on the Mississippi plantation. It was the same as on that morning when she had been a spectator of his punishment. He was the Blue Dick of bygone days, only taller and stouter. But the coarse jeans coat and cotton trousers, of copperas-stripe, had been ample enough not to be outgrown.
“You’ll know me better now, my old masters and fellow-slaves,” he shouted out, adding a derisive laugh. “And you, too, my young mistress,” he continued, turning toward the group of white women, and approaching it in a triumphant stride. “Ha, Miss Clara Blackadder! You little thought, when one fine day you stood in the porch of your father’s fine house, looking calmly on while I was in torture, that, some other fine day, your turn would come for being tortured too. It has come! The rest, including your beautiful brother, have had a taste—only a taste of what’s in store for them. I’ve kept you to the last, because you are the daintiest. That’s always the way in a feast of revenge. Ha, ha, ha!”
The young lady made no reply. In the fiendish glance cast upon her, she saw there was no hope for mercy, and that words would be thrown away. She only crouched cowering before him.
But even at that moment she did not lose presence of mind. She still contemplated springing up, and making toward her horse.
Alas! it seemed impossible. He stood right in the way, and could have caught her before she had taken three steps.
And he did catch her before she had made one—even before she had attempted to stand erect.
“Come!” cried he, roughly clasping her waist, and jerking her to her feet. “Come with me. You’ve been a looker-on long enough. It’s your turn now to afford sport for others.”
And, without waiting for a reply, he commenced dragging her in the direction of the waterfall.