Volume 1 Chapter 25 - The Maroon by Mayne Reid
The Runaway
Up to the moment that the boar was laid prostrate upon the ground, he in the toque had been kept too well employed with his fierce game to find time for looking at anything else. It was only after dealing the deathblow to his adversary that he was able to stand erect and take a survey around him.
In an instant his eye fell upon the gun of the young Englishman, and then the white pieces of palm-cabbage upon which the boar had been browsing.
“Hoh!” exclaimed he, still gasping for breath, but with a look that betrayed surprise; “A gun! Whose? Some runaway slave who has stolen his master’s fowling-piece? Nothing more likely. But why has he left the piece behind him? And what has started him away from here? Surely not the boar? He must have been gone before the animal got up? Crambo! a richer prize than the porker, if I could only have set eyes on him! I wonder in which direction he has tracked it? Hish! what do I see? The runaway! yes—yes, it is he! Coming back for his gun? Crambo! This is unexpected luck, so early in the morning—a slave capture—a bounty!”
As the hunter hurriedly muttered these concluding phrases, he glided with stealthy tread between the two buttresses; and, having placed himself in the extreme angle of their convergence, remained perfectly still—as if to await the approach of some one who was advancing towards the tree.
Herbert, from his perch, had a full view of the new comer thus announced.
A young man of a copper red colour, with straight black hair, shaggily tossed and pulled over his forehead, as if some one had been tearing it from his head! His face, too—a fine one, notwithstanding its mahogany colour—appeared freshly lacerated; and his whole body bore the marks of inhuman abuse. The coarse cotton shirt that covered his shoulders was blotched with blood; and long, crimson-coloured stripes running across his back, looked like the imprints of an ensanguined lash!
The attitude in which he was advancing was as peculiar as his costume. When Herbert first set eyes on him he was crawling upon his hands and knees, yet going with considerable speed. This led to the belief that his bent position was assumed rather with a view towards concealment, than from the inability to walk erect.
This belief was soon after confirmed: for on entering the glade the young man rose to his feet, and trotted on—but still with body bent—towards the ceiba.
What could he want there?
Was he making for the huge tree as a haven of safety from some deadly pursuers? Herbert fancied so.
The hunter believed he was coming back for his gun—having no suspicion that the real owner of the piece was just over his head.
Both remained silent; though from motives having no similitude to each other.
In a few seconds’ time, the fugitive—for his actions proved him one—had reached the bottom of the tree.
“Halt!” cried the hunter, showing himself round the buttress, and stepping in front of the new comer. “You are a runaway, and my prisoner!”
The fugitive dropped upon his knees, crossed his arms over his breast, and uttered some phrases in an unknown tongue—amongst which Herbert could distinguish the word “Allah.”
His captor appeared equally at fault about the meaning of the words; but neither the attitude of the speaker, nor the expression upon his countenance, could be mistaken: it was an appeal for mercy.
“Crambo!” exclaimed the hunter, bending forward, and gazing for a moment at the breast of the runaway—on which the letters “J.J.” were conspicuously branded—“with that tattoo on your skin, I don’t wonder you’ve given leg-bail to your master. Poor devil! they’ve tattooed you still more brutally upon the back.”
As he said this—speaking rather to himself than to the wretched creature that knelt before him—the hunter stretched forth his hand, raised the shirt from the shoulders of the runaway, and gazed for a while upon his naked back. The skin was covered with purple wales, crossing each other like the arteries in an anatomic plate!
“God of the Christian!” exclaimed the yellow hunter, with evident indignation at the sight, “if this be your decree, then give me the fetish of my African ancestors. But no,” added he, after a pause, “J.J. is not a Christian—he cares for no God.”
The soliloquy of the hunter was here interrupted by a second speech from the suppliant, spoken in the same unknown tongue.
This time the gesture signified that it was an appeal for protection against some enemy in the rear: for the sympathetic looks of his captor had evidently won the confidence of the fugitive.
“They are after you—no doubt of it,” said the hunter. “Well, let them come—whoever are your pursuers. This time they have lost their chance; and the bounty is mine, not theirs. Poor devil! it goes against my grain to deliver you up; and were it not for the law that binds me, I should scorn their paltry reward. Hark! yonder they come! Dogs, as I’m a man! Yes, it’s the bay of a bloodhound! Those villainous man-hunters of Batabano—I knew old Jessuron had them in his pay. Here, my poor fellow, in here!” and the hunter half-led, half-dragged the fugitive over the carcass of the wild boar, placing him between the buttresses of the ceiba. “Stand close in to the angle,” he continued. “Leave me to guard the front. Here’s your gun; I see it’s loaded. I hope you know how to use it? Don’t fire till you’re sure of hitting! We’ll need both blade and shot to save ourselves from these Spanish dogs, that will make no distinction between you and me. Not they! Crambo! there they come!”
The words had scarce issued from the speaker’s lips, when two large dogs broke, with a swishing noise, out of the bushes on the opposite side of the glade—evidently running on the trail of the fugitive.
The crimson colour of their muzzles showed that they had been baited with blood—which, darkening as it dried, rendered more conspicuous the white fang-like teeth within their jaws.
They were half-hound, half-mastiff; but ran as true-bred hounds on a fresh trail.
No trail could have been fresher than that of the flogged fugitive; and, in a few seconds after entering the glade, the hounds had got up to the ceiba, in front of the triangular chamber in which stood the runaway and his protector.
These dogs have no instinct of self-preservation—only an instinct to discover and destroy. Without stopping to bark or bay—without even slackening their pace—both dashed onward, bounding into the air as they launched themselves upon the supposed objects of their pursuit.
The first only impaled himself upon the outstretched macheté of the yellow hunter; and as the animal came down to the earth, it was to utter the last howl of his existence.
The other, springing towards the naked fugitive, received the contents of the fowling-piece, and, like the first, rolled lifeless upon the earth.