Under Sentence of Death

“I do,” I replied.

“Reflect,” he answered, with a sinister glance at the instruments of torture.

“It is because I have reflected that I refuse,” replied I. “You are alarmed for the safety of yourself and your men, and you count upon this letter to delay the just vengeance of the whites. I do not desire to retain a life which may perhaps have saved yours. Let my execution commence.”

“Ha, boy,” exclaimed Biassou, touching the instruments of torture with his foot, “you are growing familiar with these, are you? I am sorry, but I have not the time to try them on you. Our position is a dangerous one, and we must get out of it as soon as we can. And so you refuse to act as my secretary? Well, you are right, for it would not after all have saved your miserable life, which, by the way, I have promised to his reverence my chaplain. Do you think that I would permit any one to live who holds the secrets of Biassou?”

He turned to the Obi, who just then entered.

“Good father, is your guard ready?”

The latter made a sign in the affirmative.

“Have you taken it from amongst the negroes of Morne-Rouge? for they are the only ones who are not occupied in preparations for departure.”

Again the Obi bowed his head.

Then Biassou pointed out to me the black flag which I had before remarked in a corner of the grotto.

“That will show your friends when the time comes to give your place to your lieutenant. But I have no more time to lose, I must be off. By the way, you have been for a little excursion; how did you like the neighbourhood?”

“I noticed that there were enough trees upon which to hang you and all your band.”

“Ah,” retorted he, with his hideous laugh, “there is one place that you have not seen, but with which the good father will make you acquainted. Adieu, my young captain, and give my compliments to Leogri.”

He bade me farewell with a chuckle that reminded me of the hiss of the rattlesnake, and turned his back as the negroes dragged me away.

The veiled Obi followed us, his rosary in his hand.

CHAPTER XLVIII

I walked between my guards without offering any resistance, which would indeed have been hopeless; we ascended the shoulder of a hill on the western side of the plain, and then my escort sat down for a brief period of repose. As we did so I cast a last lingering look at the setting sun which would never rise again for me on this earth.

My guards rose to their feet, and I followed their example, and we descended into a little dell, the beauty of which under any other circumstances would have filled me with admiration. A mountain stream ran through the bottom of the dell, which by its refreshing coolness produced a thick and luxuriant growth of vegetation, and fell into one of those dark blue lakes with which the hills of St. Domingo abound. How often in happier days have I sat and dreamed on the borders of these beautiful lakes in the twilight hour, when beneath the influence of the moon their deep azure changed into a sheet of silver, or when the reflections of the stars sowed the surface with a thousand golden spangles! How lovely this valley appeared to me! There were magnificent plane-trees of gigantic growth, closely grown thickets of mauritias, a kind of palm, which allows no other vegetation to flourish beneath its shade, date-trees, and magnolias with the goblet-shaped flowers, the tall catalpa, with its polished and exquisitely chiselled blossoms, standing out in relief against the golden buds of the ebony-trees. The Canadian maple mingled its yellow flowers with the blue aureolas of that species of the wild honeysuckle which the negroes call coali. Thick curtains of luxurious creepers concealed the bare sides of the rocks, whilst from the virgin soil rose a soft perfume, such as the first man may have inhaled amidst Eden’s groves.

We continued our way along a footpath traced on the brink of the torrent. I was surprised to notice that this path closed abruptly at the foot of a tall peak, in which was a natural archway, from which flowed a rapid torrent.

A dull roar of falling waters, and an impetuous wind issued from this natural tunnel. The negroes who escorted me took a path to the left which led into a cavern and seemed to be the bed of a torrent that had long been dried up. Overhead I could see the rugged roof, half hidden by masses of vegetation, and the same sound of falling waters filled the whole of the vault. As I took the first step into the cavern, the Obi came to my side, and whispered in a hoarse voice, “Listen to what I have to predict: one of us two only shall leave by this path and issue again from the entrance of the cave.”

I disdained to make any reply, and we advanced further into the gloom.

The noise became louder, and drowned the sound of our footfalls. I fancied that there must be a waterfall near, and I was not deceived.

After moving through the darkness for nearly ten minutes, we found ourselves on a kind of internal platform caused by the central formation of the mountain. The larger portion of this platform, which was of a semicircular shape, was inundated by a torrent which burst from the interior of the mountain with a terrible din. Above this subterranean hall the roof rose into the shape of a dome, covered with moss of a yellowish hue. A large opening was formed in the dome through which the daylight penetrated, and the sides of the crevice were fringed with green trees, gilded just now by the last rays of the setting sun. At the northern extremity of the platform the torrent fell with a frightful noise into a deep abyss, over which appeared to float, without being able to illuminate its depths, a feeble portion of the light which came through the aperture in the roof. Over this terrible precipice hung the trunk of an old tree whose top-most branches were filled with the foam of the waterfall, and whose knotty roots pierced through the rock two or three feet below the brink.

This tree, whose top and roots were both swept by the torrent, hung over the abyss like a skeleton arm, and was so destitute of foliage that I could not distinguish its species. It had a strange and weird appearance; the humidity which saturated its roots prevented it from dying, whilst the force of the cataract tore off its new shoots, and only left it with the branches that had strength to resist the force of the water.

CHAPTER XLIX

In this terrible spot the negroes came to a halt, and I knew that my hour had come.

It was in this abyss, then, that was to be sunk all my hopes in this world. The image of the happiness which but a few hours before I had voluntarily renounced, brought to my heart a feeling of regret, almost one of remorse.

To pray for mercy was unworthy of me, but I could not refrain from giving utterance to my regrets.

“Friends,” said I to the negroes who surrounded me, “it is a sad thing to die at twenty years of age, full of life and strength, when one is loved by one whom in your turn you adore, and you leave behind you eyes that will even weep for your untimely end.”

A mocking burst of laughter hailed my expression of regret. It came from the little Obi. This species of evil spirit, this living mystery, approaches me roughly.

“Ha, ha, ha! you regret life then, Labadosca Dios. My only fear was that death would have no terrors for you.”

It was the same voice, the same laugh that had so often before baffled my conjectures.

“Wretch!” exclaimed I, “who are you?”

“You are going to learn,” replied he, in a voice of concentrated passion; and thrusting aside the silver sun that half concealed his brown chest, he exclaimed, “Look!” I bent forward.

Two names were written in white letters on the hairy chest of the Obi, showing but too clearly the hideous and ineffaceable brand of the heated iron. One of these names was Effingham, the other was that of my uncle and myself, D’Auverney!

I was struck dumb with surprise.

“Well, Leopold d’Auverney,” asked the Obi, “does not your name tell you mine?”

“No,” answered I, astonished to hear the man name me, and seeking to recall to my mind my thoughts. “These two names were only to be found thus united upon the chest of my uncle’s fool. But the poor dwarf is dead, and besides that, he was devotedly attached to us. You cannot be Habibrah.”

“No other,” shrieked he, and casting aside the blood-stained cap, he raised his veil and showed me the hideous features of the household fool; but a threatening and sinister expression had usurped the half-imbecile smile which was formerly eternally imprinted on his features.

“Great God!” exclaimed I, overwhelmed with surprise, “do all the dead, then, come back to life! It is Habibrah, my uncle’s fool.”

“His fool—and also his murderer.”

I recoiled from him in horror.

“His murderer, wretch—was it thus that you repaid his kindness?”

He interrupted me.

“His kindness! rather say his insults.”

“What!” I again cried, “was it you, villain, who struck the fatal blow?”

“It was,” he replied, with a terrible expression upon his face. “I plunged my knife so deeply into his heart that he had hardly time to cast aside sleep before death claimed him. He cried out feebly, ‘Habibrah, come to me,’ but I was with him already.”

The cold-blooded manner in which he narrated the murder disgusted me.

“Wretch! cowardly assassin! You forgot, then, all his kindness, that you ate at his table, and slept at the foot of his bed–”

“Like a dog,” interrupted Habibrah, roughly, “como un perro. I thought too much of what you call his kindness, but which I looked upon as insults. I took vengeance upon him, and I will do the same to you. Listen: do you think that because I am a mulatto and a deformed dwarf that I am not a man? Ah, I have a soul stronger, deeper, and bolder than the one that I am about to set free from your girlish frame. I was given to your uncle as if I had been a pet monkey. I was his butt, I amused him, whilst he despised me. He loved me, do you say—yes, forsooth, I had a place in his heart between his dog and his parrot, but I found a better place there with my dagger.” I shuddered.

“Yes,” continued the dwarf, “it was I, I that did it all. Look me well in the face, Leopold d’Auverney; you have often laughed at me, now you shall tremble before me. And you dare to speak of your uncle’s liking for me, a liking that carried degradation with it. If I entered the room a shout of contemptuous laughter was my greeting; my appearance, my deformities, my features, my costume—all furnished food for laughter to your accursed uncle and his accursed friends, whilst I was not allowed to remain silent, it was necessary for me to join in the laughter that was levelled at me; I foam with rage whilst I think of it.

“Answer me: do you think that after such humiliations I could feel anything but the deadliest hatred for the creature that inflicted them upon me? Do you not think that they were a thousand times harder to endure than the toil in the burning sun, the fetters, and the whip of the driver, which were the lot of the other slaves? Do you not think that they would cause ardent, implacable, and eternal hatred to spring up in the heart of man as lasting as the accursed brand which degrades my chest? Has not the vengeance that I have taken for my sufferings been short and insufficient. Why could I not make my tyrant suffer but a small portion of what I endured for so many years? Why could he not before his death know the bitterness of wounded pride, and feel what burning traces tears of shame leave upon a face condemned to wear a perpetual smile? Alas! it is too hard to have waited so long for the hour of vengeance, and then only to find it in a dagger thrust! Had he but only known the hand that struck him it would have been something; but I was too eager to hear his dying groan, and I drove the knife too quickly home; he died without having recognized me, and my eagerness baulked my vengeance. This time at least, however, it shall be more complete. You see me, do you not? though in point of fact you may be unable to recognize me in my new character. You have always been in the habit of seeing me laughing and joyous, but now nothing prevents me from letting my true nature appear on my face, and I do not greatly resemble my former self. You only knew my mask; look upon my real face!”

At that moment his appearance was truly terrible.

“Monster,” exclaimed I, “you deceive yourself; there is more of buffoonery than heroism in your face even now, and nothing in your heart but cruelty.”

“Do not speak of cruelty,” retorted he, “think of your uncle–”

“Wretch,” returned I, “if he were cruel it was at your instigation. You, to pretend to pity the position of the poor slaves—why, then, did you exert all your influence to make their master treat them less harshly? Why did you never intercede in their favour?”

“I would not have done so for the world. Would I ever attempt to hinder a white man from blackening his soul by an act of cruelty? No, no, I urged him to inflict more and more punishment upon them, so as to hurry on the revolt, and so draw down a surer vengeance upon the heads of our oppressors. In seeming to injure my brethren I was serving them.”

I was thunderstruck at such a cunning act of diplomacy carried out by such a man.

“Well,” continued the dwarf, “do you believe now that I had the brain to conceive and the hand to execute? What do you think of Habibrah the buffoon? what do you think of your uncle’s fool?”

“Finish what you have begun so well,” replied I. “Let me die, but let there be no more delay.”

“And suppose I wish for delay? Suppose that it does my heart good to watch you in the agonies of suspense? You see Biassou owed me my share in the last plunder. When I saw you in our camp I asked for your life as my share, and he granted it willingly, and now you are mine; I am amusing myself with you. Soon you will follow the stream of the cataract into the abyss beneath; but before doing so let me tell you that I have discovered the spot where your wife is concealed, and it was I that advised Biassou to set the forest on fire; and the work, I imagine, is already begun. Thus your family will be swept from the face of the earth. Your uncle fell by steel, you will perish by water, and your Marie by fire!”

“Villain! villain!” I exclaimed, and I made an effort to seize him by the throat, but a wave of his hand summoned my guards.

“Bind him!” cried he; “he precipitates his hour of doom!” In dead silence the negroes commenced to bind me with the cords that they had carried with them. Suddenly I fancied that I heard the distant barking of a dog, but this sound might be only an illusion caused by the noise of the cascade.

The negroes had finished binding me, and placed me on the brink of the abyss into which I was so soon to be hurled.

The dwarf with folded arms gazed upon the scene with a sinister expression of joy.

I lifted my eyes to the opening in the roof so as to avoid the triumphant expression of malice painted on his countenance, and to take one last look at the blue sky. At that instant the barking was more distinctly heard, and the enormous head of Rask appeared at the opening.

I trembled; the dwarf exclaimed, “Finish with him!” and the negroes, who had not noticed the dog, raised me in their arms to hurl me into the hell of waters which roared and foamed beneath me.

CHAPTER L

“Comrades!” cried a voice of thunder.

All looked at the spot from whence the sound proceeded: Bug-Jargal was standing on the edge of the opening, a crimson plume floating on his head.

“Comrades,” repeated he, “stay your hands!”

The negroes prostrated themselves upon the earth in token of submission.

“I am Bug-Jargal,” continued he.

The negroes struck the earth with their heads, uttering cries the meaning of which I could not comprehend.

“Unbind the prisoner,” commanded the chief.

But now the dwarf appeared to recover from the stupor into which the sudden appearance of Bug-Jargal had thrown him, and seized by the arm the negro who was preparing to cut the cords that bound me.

“What is the meaning of this? What are you doing?” cried he.

Then, raising his voice, he addressed Bug-Jargal: “Chief of Morne-Rouge,” cried he, “what are you doing here?”

“I have come to command my own men,” was the reply.

“Yes,” answered the dwarf, in tones of concentrated passion, “these negroes do certainly belong to your band; but,” added he, raising his voice again, “by what right do you interfere with my prisoner?”

The chief answered, “I am Bug-Jargal;” and again the negroes struck the ground with their foreheads.

“Bug-Jargal,” continued Habibrah, “cannot contravene the orders of Biassou; this white man was given to me by Biassou; I desire his death, and die he shall. Obey me,” he added, turning to the negroes, “and hurl him into the abyss.”

At the well-known voice of the Obi the negroes rose to their feet and took a step towards me. I thought all was lost.

“Unbind the prisoner!” cried Bug-Jargal again.

In an instant I was free. My surprise was equalled by the fury of the Obi. He attempted to throw himself upon me. The negroes interfered; then he burst out into imprecations and threats.

“ ‘Demonios! rabia! inferno de mi alma!’ How, wretches, you refuse to obey me! Do you not recognize my voice! Why did I lose time in talking to this accursed one? I ought to have had him hurled without delay to the fishes of the gulf. By wishing to make my vengeance more complete I have lost it all together. Orabia de Satan. Listen to me: if you do not obey me, and hurl him into the abyss, I will curse you; your hair shall grow white, the mosquitoes and sandflies shall eat you up alive, your legs and your arms shall bend like reeds, your breath shall burn your throat like red hot-sand, you shall die young, and after your death your spirits shall be compelled to turn a millstone as big as a mountain, in the moon where it is always cold.”

The scene was a strange one. The only one of my colour, in a damp and gloomy cavern surrounded by negroes with the aspect of demons, balanced as it were upon the edge of a bottomless gulf, and every now and then threatened by a deformed dwarf, by a hideous sorcerer upon whose striped garments and pointed cap the fading light shone faintly, yet protected by a tall negro who was standing at the only point from which daylight could be seen, it appeared to me that I was at the gates of hell, awaiting the conflict between my good and evil angels, to result in the salvation or the destruction of my soul. The negroes appeared to be terrified at the threats of the Obi, and he endeavoured to profit by their indecision.

“I desire the death of the white man, and he shall die; obey me.”

Bug-Jargal replied solemnly, “He shall live; I am Bug-Jargal, my father was the King of Kakongo, who dispensed justice at the gate of his palace.”

Again the negroes cast themselves upon the ground.

The chief continued.

“Brethren, go and tell Biassou not to unfurl the black banner upon the mountain-top which should announce to the whites the signal of this man’s death, for he was the saviour of Bug-Jargal’s life, and Bug-Jargal wills that he should live.”

They rose up. Bug-Jargal threw his red plume on the ground before them. The chief of the guard picked it up with every show of respect, and they left the cavern without a word; whilst the Obi, with a glance of rage, followed them down the subterranean avenue.

I will not attempt to describe my feelings at that moment. I fixed my eyes, wet with tears, upon Pierrot, who gazed upon me with a singular expression of love and tenderness. “God be praised,” said he, “you are saved. Brother, go back by the road by which you entered, you will meet me again in the valley.”

He waved his hand to me and disappeared from my sight.

CHAPTER LI

Eager to arrive at the appointed meeting-place, and to learn by what fortunate means my saviour had been enabled to make his appearance at so opportune a moment, I prepared to leave the cavern in which my nerves had been so severely tried; but as I prepared to enter the subterranean passage an unexpected obstacle presented itself in my path.

It was Habibrah!

The revengeful Obi had not in reality followed the negroes as I had believed, but had concealed himself behind a rocky projection of the cave, waiting for a propitious moment for his vengeance; and this moment had come. He laughed bitterly as he showed himself. A dagger, the same that he was in the habit of using for a crucifix, shone in his right hand: at the sight of it I recoiled a step.

“Ha, accursed one, did you think to escape me? But the fool is not such a fool after all! I have you, and this time there shall be no delay. Your friend Bug-Jargal shall not wait for you long, you shall soon be at the meeting-place, but it will be the wave of the cataract that shall bear you there.”

As he spoke he dashed at me with uplifted weapon.

“Monster,” cried I, retreating to the platform, “just now you were only an executioner, now you are a murderer.”

“I am an avenger,” returned he, grinding his teeth.

I was on the edge of the precipice; he endeavoured to hurl me over with a blow of his dagger. I avoided it. His foot slipped on the treacherous moss which covered the rocks, he rolled into the slope polished and rounded by the constant flow of water.

“A thousand devils!” roared he.

He had fallen into the abyss.

I have already mentioned that the roots of the old tree projected through the crevices of the rocks, a little below the edge of the precipice. In his fall the dwarf struck against these, his striped petticoat caught in them, he grasped at them as a last hope of safety, and clung to them with all the energy of despair.

His pointed bonnet fell from his head; to maintain his position he had to let go his dagger, and the two together disappeared in the depths of the abyss.

Habibrah, suspended over the terrible gulf, strove vainly to regain the platform, but his short arms could not reach the rocky edge, and he broke his nails in useless efforts to obtain a hold on the muddy surface of the rocks which sloped down into the terrible abyss.

He howled with rage.

The slightest push on my part would have been sufficient to hurl him to destruction, but it would have been an act of cowardice, and I made no movement. This moderation on my part seemed to surprise him.

Thanking heaven for its mercies, I determined to abandon him to his fate, and was about to leave the cave when, in a voice broken with fear, and which appeared to come from the depths of the abyss, he addressed me.

“Master,” cried he, “master, do not go, for pity’s sake! do not, in the name of heaven, leave a guilty creature to perish, that it is in your power to save. Alas, my strength is failing me; the roots bend, and slip through my fingers, the weight of my body drags me down—I must let go, or my arms will break! Alas, master, the fearful gulfs boils and seethes beneath me! Nombre santo de Dios! Have you no pity for the poor fool? He has been very guilty, but prove that the white men are better than the mulattoes, the masters than the slaves, by saving him.”

I approached the brink of the precipice, and the feeble light that broke through the aperture in the roof showed me, on the repulsive features of the dwarf, an expression which I had never noticed before, that of prayer and supplication.

“Señor Leopold,” continued he, encouraged by the movement of pity that I showed, “can you see a fellow-creature in so terrible a position of peril, without stretching out a hand to save him? Give me your hand, master; with very slight assistance from you I can save myself—I only ask for a little help. Help me then, and my gratitude shall be as great as my crimes.”

I interrupted him.

“Unhappy wretch, do not recall them to my memory.”

“It is because I repent of them that I do so. Oh, be generous to me! O heavens, my hand relaxes its grasp, and I fall! Ay desdichado! The hand, your hand; in the name of the mother who bore you, give me your hand!”

I cannot describe the tone of agony in which he pleaded for help. In this moment of peril I forgot all; it was no longer an enemy, a traitor, and an assassin, but an unhappy fellow-creature, whom a slight exertion upon my part could rescue from a frightful death. He implored me in heart-rending accents. Reproaches would have been fruitless, and out of place. The necessity for help was urgent and immediate. I stooped, knelt down on the brink of the precipice, and grasping the trunk of the tree with one hand, I extended the other to Habibrah.