CHAPTER IX.
I AM RESCUED.
How long I was dead I can not say. It seemed like death, and I shall ever feel that I have tasted of that other life which will be my portion now before many years have passed away. I will not weary you, Adoniah, with the experiences that seemed to be mine—the years in which I seemed to be floating through space. We will pass over the dreams and return to the stern reality.
My first return to consciousness was to feel a strange sensation in my fingers. I seemed to be in a cramp. I tried to stretch out my foot, but I had no power over my muscles. It seemed as if my extremities were swollen to twice their size. I tried to feel for the side of my bunk. If I were in the Yankee Blade, it seemed so strange that there was no motion. We were in port, then! If so, why had I not been on deck to take my place on the fo'c'sl? What was that gasping, sighing sound that fell on my ear? It must be the water sobbing against the sides of the old barco. I tried again to move my foot. Again there was no result, but a seasick motion of my body, a faint clink, as of metal. I endeavoured to open my eyes. The lids were closed as if glued together. If I could but get my hand up and pull at the lids. Suddenly it came back to me. I was shut up in the devil's cavern, and the tarantula and serpent were making in a straight line for my helpless body. I was one of that deathly row of counterfeits which hung against the damp wall of the cave. I was alone with the dead, myself a corpse, shut off from human kind forever.
As these thoughts jumbled chaotically through my mind, I turned my eyes to the floor beneath. The light had grown so dim, and the smoke of the oil so filled the cave, that it almost obscured my vision. I remember thinking if those fearful enemies were to strike, I hoped that they would not long delay. I was so tired, so tired. Let death come quickly and end it all. But would death end it soon? Would there not be suffering, the more intense from the poison of those denizens of the cavern than if my life were to slowly ebb away for want of food? I suddenly bore downward with all my weight. The band round my neck was tight. Perhaps I could choke myself. But beyond a sensation as of suffocation, there was no answer from the friend on whom I called. Death did not reply. Had those ruffians killed my friends, and was I to hang here as he had hung who had been removed to make room for me? Was I to be left to linger and rot, the flesh to drop from my bones, the threads of my clothing to fall in dust heaps around me? I tried to shout, but my tongue was swollen and filled my mouth. If I had been dead for so long, why had not the tarantula come closer to my helpless frame. Perhaps they would not touch the dead. I struggled, my cage swayed and struck against the walls of my open coffin. I tried to spring up or down to make my weight drop heavily on one side or the other. Perhaps the cage thus might fall. Even if it killed me in so falling, such death were welcome. The cage might burst asunder. Strange things of the kind had happened. I had heard many tales of adventure, but nothing more wonderful than this which had come to me. Why, then, should not this incredible tale be carried on to the end? Why should not my cage burst open and set me free, even if my friends were captured or dead? Oh, for life! Only life! That was all that I asked. Only that God would set me free. I have made many bargains with God and have seldom kept my contract. Man when in straits is prone to tempt his Creator into making a bargain with him, promising on his part the relinquishment of this sin, that weakness, the doing of that good or the other charity, if God will only surrender his plan and let man act the part of Providence for a while. I can not understand, with the doctrine of foreordination imbedded in the very fibres of my being, how God did really change any portion of his plans for me. But I wanted to be Providence for a little. So I prayed and promised, and it seemed that he heard me. He kept his side of the compact, and I have broken mine a hundred times.
The fitful gusts of wind blew through the cavern and rattled the dry forms hanging near, and blew the air from them to me. But they also brought to me the sound of voices. God bless them, whosever those voices might be! They meant human companionship and hope. The chamber was very dark, but I heard steps which groped and stumbled as they came. There was a shout. It was the Skipper's voice, but I could not answer him. "He is not here," I heard him say. O my God! would they go away and leave me? Thank Heaven, that was not their purpose. I heard a fumbling, and flashes of light shot out; then all was dark again. And then they had come to the centre of the cave and had lighted the lamp. At first, the Skipper did not discover where I hung. I heard an exclamation, and saw that he was regarding something almost beneath his foot. I turned my burning eyes to the spot from which he had sprung, and saw that my two enemies had met and had given battle. The serpent, swollen to three times its natural size, was coiled round its enemy, out of which it had crushed the life, receiving each one the death that it gave. And now that the tarantula and serpent were dead, and the Skipper had come, and the lamp was again lighted, I seemed to have nothing more to worry about, and so I fainted.
When I awoke I was lying on the ground, my head wet with water, my neck and collar soaked with the rum which the Minion had tried to pour between my clinched teeth. He was still endeavouring to reach my stomach by the outside passage. I certainly think that a gallon of rum had been poured down my neck—in fact, I was bathed in that potent liquor, which probably saved me from taking an ague.
"Suz! suz! suz!" growled the Captain. He clicked with his tongue like an old woman, as your Aunt Mary 'Zekel used to.
"You, Minion, run and tell the Bo's'n to come here at once!"
"Did," answered the Minion.
"Doesn't he intend to obey my orders any more?" asked the Captain. "He's in my pay."