"Le bruit du gouffre!" said Lacelle, looking at the Bo's'n. "Le bruit du gouffre!"
"How can I tell what she means?" said the Bo's'n piteously. "I wish, Mrs. Jones, ma'm, you'd try to teach that savage a Christian tongue."
After looking about for some time, we at last pitched upon a little plateau or terrace with a gentle rise toward the eastward. This would hide our house from the sight of the cave. Below us ran a tiny brook of clear water. We were far enough from the cave to feel quite secluded, and yet so near that we could easily know what was going on there.
And now began the work of building our house. We cut young trees and saplings, we drove poles into the ground, and made what in this modern day we should call piles, and on this we laid our floor. We thatched our roof with branches—in short, we made a house much as the wild men of the forest have done from time immemorial, and the methods pursued need not be recounted here. We cleared a space about twelve feet each way round our house for better protection against insects. We built two rooms, one for Cynthia and Lacelle and the other for the rest of our party. A partition ran across the centre of this floor, and that some one might be able to get quickly to the next room, if one of its occupants called, we made a doorway between, and hung the opening thickly with leafy vines, so that a curtain impenetrable to the eye was thus formed.
We were tired when the day's work was done. I felt sorry to see my poor girl working as she did, aiding in gathering leaves for her bed and Lacelle's. But she laughed when her Uncle protested, and said that she should not be happy unless she gave what help she could.
We returned home over a way more direct than that by which we had come, and it was in a little hollow that Cynthia discovered that which gave an additional horror to our stay in the island. She and Lacelle had been walking ahead. Suddenly she stopped and dropped to her knees. She gave a strange sort of cry and called to her Uncle. Her tones expressed such a mixture of feelings that I wondered what further could have happened. There was horror in the sound of her voice, and I thought that some terrible insect or beast was in her path. But with that note was intermingled one of pity and tenderness. We ran to her assistance. We found her bending over something upon the ground. As I came close to the Bo's'n's heels I saw him leap aside, as if he had been stung, and strike into the wood with a howl as if in anguish. I came next, and there I saw, lying bound with ribbons of various colours and decorated as if for a festival, a little child of the same light shade as Lacelle herself. Lacelle had shrieked, and was holding her hands over her eyes one moment, looking fearfully over her shoulder the next, and pulling Cynthia by the wrist, as if imploring her to flee. Cynthia, however, refused to be hurried away from this novel and sad sight. Novel, because finding a baby decked with ribbons in the depths of the forest is not a common occurrence. Sad, because the tiny thing did not open its eyes and smile at us, nor did it move its hands and feet. Cynthia laid her fingers upon the little creature. She shook her head. The child was stone cold. She felt round the heart, but there was no sign of life.
The Skipper looked at the little thing and then shook his head sadly.
"The loup garou has been about," he whispered in my ear. I asked no questions. I knew all that I wanted to know of the loup garou with which the little children in Haïti have been frightened from time immemorial. This time the threat had come true. I wondered why the child had been dropped among the leaves in this way, and could only argue that either its mother had discovered the horrible theft and had restolen the child, and was afraid to take it home for fear of vengeance, or else that the murderers had been surprised and had sent some trusty person as bad as themselves to hide the body deep in the woods and away from discovery.
"What a strange thing," said Cynthia, "that a mother should leave her baby decked for burial alone in this deep forest!"
I knelt down and examined the babe, and now I discovered that it was so bound that it could not move. The contrast was so remarkable, the tiny corpse cold and stiff, bound with gay-coloured knots and bows, that I was struck dumb. The Bo's'n's behaviour had perplexed me, but I was beginning to think the Bo's'n somewhat out of his mind. I had also thought this of the Skipper, though for quite a different cause. I expected each moment to hear him express the wish to give the poor babe a Christian burial, so I took the child up in my arms and carried it hurriedly through the woods. I walked fast, the rest following at almost a running pace.