I knew that her remaining would make no difference to the Skipper, who, if he had not made a meal for some vaudoux chief, might be languishing in durance until they decided what to do with him.
"We will do as Zalee says," said I. "When does he purpose starting?"
"As soon as he gets food enough collected to be able to leave us for three or four days," answered Cynthia.
The next few days we spent in collecting what food we could, and making it ready against the time when Zalee should be gone. Lacelle told us that he must make a slight détour, as he intended taking the little boy back to his mother. Lacelle looked wistful when she told Cynthia this, and I gathered that it was because her home was near that of the child; but at a cheering word from Zalee she smiled again. She told Cynthia that Zalee had said that they must be wanderers until the island was more settled. That now no one knew which side to be on. That Dessalines and Regaud had been as bad as Pétion, and that Boyer was now warring against Christophe, and if one could not decide which would prove the winning side, he had better secrete himself until these unhappy days were over. I had been curious, I must confess, as to where Cynthia and Lacelle were housed, but motives of delicacy kept me from asking. Now Cynthia turned to Lacelle, and told her that she might show me the rooms which they occupied.
Upon the right side of the terrace a narrow path ran under an arch, and, passing this, one walked along the cliff for a few feet. The path crossed a broad crack in the rock and came to a small opening, which led to two natural caves. They were very small, one beyond the other, both facing the ocean, as did the terrace. One looked out from them as one does from an Italian loggia. I did not more than glance at the entrance to the first one, but I saw that if our position was inaccessible, Cynthia's was even more so.
I have not told of the trickling stream that ran down outside of the terrace from the mountain heights above. Certainly Zalee would not have chosen a place of refuge where there was not a plentiful supply of water.
And now came the time for Zalee to start. I must confess that I saw him prepare to go with a heart full of forebodings. I wondered when he would return, if ever. But he turned to me with his sweet smile, showing his white even teeth, and taking Lacelle's hand, laid it in mine with a bow that would have done honour to a courtier. It was if he had said: "I leave my all with you. I trust her with you. You can trust me to return."
We had food prepared to last for five days at least. We should not starve. And we sat ourselves down to wait as well as we could for Zalee's return. I had given him a note to the consul, written on a scrap of paper which Cynthia had torn from the little note-book, and he started off with it, in its double case of paper, tied round his neck with a piece of Cynthia's silk, and the little lad held safely in his arms. The child had frightened eyes, and I wondered if his reason was intact. He must have suffered terribly during the time that he was confined under the altar of the temple. He told Lacelle that he was in a box with a serpent. That the creature coiled itself round his body. That he was there for three days and nights; that he saw the light come and go three separate times. I could hardly believe this, but Zalee seemed to think it quite true.
When I asked why the serpent did not injure the child Zalee told me, through the string of interpreters, that the large serpents that are chosen as the gods of the vaudoux rites are harmless. This was at least one redeeming feature amid all the horrors of that dreadful practice.
The Bo's'n and I put the stone up against the opening after Zalee's departure, and I must confess that I wondered who would remove it.