Volume 1 Chapter 34 - The Maroon by Mayne Reid
A Sweetheart Expected
The departure of the young Englishman, under the conduct of Quaco, was a signal for the black band to disperse.
At a word from their chief, they broke up into knots of two or three individuals each; and went off in different directions—disappearing amid the underwood as silently as they had emerged from it.
Cubina alone remained in the glade, the captured runaway cowering upon a log beside him.
For some minutes, the Maroon captain stood resting upon his gun—which one of his followers had brought up—his eyes fixed upon the captive. He appeared to be meditating what course he should pursue in relation to the unfortunate slave; and the shadow upon his countenance told that some thought was troubling him.
The Maroon captain felt himself in a dilemma. His duty was in conflict with his desires. From the first, the face of the captive had interested him; and now that he had time to scan it more narrowly, and observe its noble features, the idea of delivering him up to such a cruel master, as he whose initials he bore upon his breast, became all the more repugnant.
Duty demanded him to do so. It was the law of the land—one of the terms of the treaty by which the Maroons were bound—and disobedience to that law would be certain to meet with punishment stringent and severe.
True, there was a time when a Maroon captain would have held obedience to this law more lightly; but that was before the conquest of Trelawney town—or rather its traitorous betrayal—followed by the basest banishment recorded among men.
That betrayal had brought about a change. The Maroons who had avoided the forced exile, and still remained in the mountain fastnesses, though preserving their independence, were no longer a powerful people—only a mere remnant, whose weakness rendered them amenable, not only to the laws of the island, but to the tyranny and caprice of such planter-justices as might choose to persecute them.
Such was the position of Cubina and his little band, who had established themselves in the mountains of Trelawney.
With the Maroon captain, therefore, it was a necessity as well as a duty, to deliver up the runaway captive. Failing to do so, he would place his own liberty in peril. He knew this, without the threat which Ravener had fulminated in such positive terms.
His interest also lay in the line of his duty. This also he could understand. The captive was a prize for which he would be entitled to claim a reward—the bounty.
Not for a moment was he detained by this last consideration. The prospect of the reward would have had no weight with him whatever; it would not even have cost him a reflection, but that, just then, and for a very singular purpose, Cubina required money.
This purpose was revealed in a soliloquy that at that moment escaped from his lips.
“Crambo!” he muttered, using an exclamation of the Spanish tongue, still found in a corrupted form among the Maroons; “if it wasn’t that I have to make up the purchase-money of Yola—Por Dios! he is as like to Yola as if he was her brother! I warrant he is of the same nation—perhaps of her tribe. Two or three times he has pronounced the word Foolah. Besides, his colour, his shape, his hair—all like hers. No doubt of it, he’s a Foolah.”
The last word was uttered so loud as to reach the ear of the runaway.
“Yah! Foolah, Foolah!” he exclaimed, turning his eyes appealingly upon his captor. “No slave—no slave!” added he, striking his hand upon his breast as he repeated the words.
“Slave! no slave!” echoed the Maroon, with a start of surprise; “that’s English enough. They’ve taught him the ugly word.”
“Foolah me—no slave!” again exclaimed the youth, with a similar gesture to that he had already made.
“Something curious in this,” muttered the Maroon, musingly. “What can he mean by saying he is no slave—for that is certainly what he is trying to say? Slave he must be; else how did he get here? I’ve heard that a cargo has been just landed, and that the old Jew got most or all of them. This young fellow must be one of that lot. Very likely he’s picked up the words aboard ship. Perhaps he is speaking of what he was in his own country. Ah, poor devil! he’ll soon find the difference here!
“Santos Dios!” continued the Maroon, after a pause, in which he had been silently regarding the countenance of the newly-arrived African. “It’s a shame to make a slave of such as he—a hundred times more like a freeman than his master. Poor fellow! it’s a hard row he’ll have to hoe. I feel more than half-tempted to risk it, and save him from such a fate.”
As this half-determination passed through the mind of the Maroon, a noble and proud expression came over his features.
“If they had not seen him in my possession;” he continued to reflect; “but the overseer and those Spanish poltroons know all, and will—Well, let them!—at all events I shall not take him back till I’ve seen Yola. No doubt she can talk to him. If he’s Foolah she can. We’ll hear what he’s got to say, and what this ‘no slave’ means.”
On saying this, the speaker turned his eyes upward; and appeared for some moments to scan the sun.
“Good,” he exclaimed. “It is near the hour. I may expect her at any moment. Oh! I must have him out of sight, and these dead dogs, too, or my timid pet will be frayed. There’s been so much doing about here—blood and fire—she will scarcely know the old trysting-place. Hark you, Foolah! Come this way, and squat yourself in here till I call you out again.”
To the runaway the gestures of his captor were more intelligible than his words. He understood by them that he was required to conceal himself between the buttresses of the ceiba; and, rising from the log, he readily obeyed the requisition.
The Maroon captain seized the tail of one of the dead bloodhounds; and, after trailing the carcase for some distance across the glade, flung it into a covert of bushes.
Returning to the ceiba, in a similar manner he removed the other; and then, once more cautioning the runaway to remain silent in his concealment, he awaited the approach of her who had given him assignation.