Tales from "Blackwood," Volume 2

by Various

Here a second and larger mouthful interrupted the criticism.

“It must be very near lunch-time,” said the Major, pausing, sword in hand, when he had swallowed it; then, pretending to look at his watch—“Bless me, it only wants half-an-hour of it. Do you think this business will take you long, Owen?”

“About a couple of hours,” said Owen.

“Ah, why, there you see,” returned the Major, “we shan’t get home till long past lunch-time. I really don’t see why we shouldn’t take a snack now. Nothing can be better than that pig. I only wish the woman had dressed my dinner half as well. Corporal Hodson, would you oblige me with a piece of that biscuit near you?” And, detaching a large fragment of pork, he placed it on the biscuit, and sprinkling it with pepper and salt, which condiments had not been forgotten in the gastronomic arrangements of Mr Bags, he proceeded to follow Owen into the interior of the cave, taking huge bites as he went.

The path slopes at first steeply downward from the mouth to the interior of the cavern, where it becomes more level. Light being admitted only at the entrance, the gloom of the interior is almost impenetrable to the eye. The men had brought torches to assist them in their work, and, a suitable spot having been selected, these were stuck on different points and abutments of the rocky wall, when the party proceeded to unload the mules at the entrance, conveying their burdens into the cave.

In the midst of the bustle and noise attending the operation, the little dog given by Esther to Carlota, which had that morning followed the Major, to whom it had speedily attached itself, began barking and howling dismally in a dark recess behind one of the great natural pillars before spoken of. As the noise continued, intermixed with piteous whinings, one of the men took a torch from the wall, and stepped forward into the darkness, to see what ailed the animal. Presently he cried out that “there was a man there.”

My grandfather, who was next him, immediately followed, and five paces brought him to the spot. The soldier who held the torch was stooping, and holding it over a figure that lay on the ground on its back. In the unshaven, blood-stained countenance, my grandfather, at first, had some difficulty in recognising Lazaro the Jew. Some fiery splashes of pitch from the torch dropping at the moment on his bare throat, produced no movement, though, had he been living, they must have scorched him to the quick.

On the body was nothing but the shirt he wore the night of his flight from the hospital, but his legs were wrapt in a woman’s dress. Across his breast, on her face, lay Esther, in her white undergarments—for the gown that wrapt the Jew’s legs was hers. The glare of the torch was bright and red on the two prostrate figures, and on the staring appalled countenance of the man who held it—the group forming a glowing spot in the vast, sombre, vaulted space, where dim gleams of light were caught and repeated on projecting masses of rock, more and more faintly, till all was bounded by darkness.

Years afterwards my grandfather would sometimes complain of having been revisited, in dreams of the night, by that ghastly piece of Rembrandt painting.

The rest quickly flocked to the spot, and Esther was lifted and found to breathe, though the Jew was stiff and cold. Some diluted spirit, from the cellar of Bags, being poured down her throat, she revived a little, when my grandfather caused two of the men to bear her carefully to his house; and the body of the Jew, being wrapt in a piece of canvass, was placed on a mule and conveyed to the hospital for interment.