Volume 3 Chapter 38 - The Maroon by Mayne Reid
The Sleep-Spell
During all this time where was Chakra?
As soon as he had seen the mansion of Mount Welcome fairly given to the flames, the Coromantee, bearing its young mistress in his arms, hurried away from the spot. Outside the garden wicket he made stop: only for a moment, which was spent in a hasty consultation with the chief of the black bandits.
In the brief dialogue which there took place between them, Adam was enjoined to carry the whole of the booty to his mountain home, where Chakra promised in due time to join him. The Coromantee had no intention to resign his share of the spoils; but just then he was in no mood for making the division. He was at that moment under the influence of a passion stronger than the love of plunder.
Adam was only too eager to accede to these terms; and the confederates parted company—the robber and his followers at once shouldering their booty, and setting out for their forest dwelling among the far mountains of Trelawney.
Like the tiger who has killed his prey—and, not daring to devour it on the spot, bears it to his jungle covert—so Chakra, half dragging, half carrying Kate Vaughan, proceeded up the mountain path in the direction of the Duppy’s Hole.
Lifeless as the victim of the ferocious beast appeared the form of Lilly Quasheba, hanging supple and unconscious over the arm of the human monster—equally ferocious.
Her screams no longer fell upon the ear. Her terror had exhausted her strength. Syncope, resembling death, had succeeded.
It continued, happily for her, during the whole of the transit up the mountain. The wild forest path had no terrors for her: neither the descent into the dank solitudes of the Duppy’s Hole. In the traverse over that dark lagoon, she was not frightened by the scream of the startled night bird, nor the threatening roar of the close cataract. She knew no fear, from the moment she was earned away in the arms of a hideous monster, on a path lighted by the blaze of the roof under which she had been born and reared: she experienced no feeling of any kind, until she awoke to consciousness in a rude triangular hut, lit by a feeble lamp, whose glare fell upon a face hitherto well-known—the face of Chakra, the myal-man.
His mask had been removed. The Coromantee stood before her in all his deformity—of soul as of person.
Terror could go no further. It had already produced its ultimate effect. Under such circumstances reproach would have been idle; indignation would only have been answered by brutal scorn.
Though she might not clearly comprehend her situation, the young Creole did not think she was dreaming. No dream could be so horrid as that! And yet it was difficult to believe that such a fearful scene could be real!
O God! it was real. Chakra stood before her—his harsh voice was ringing in her ears. Its tone was mocking and exultant.
She was upon the bamboo bedstead, where the myal-man had placed her. She had lain there till, on her senses returning, she discovered who was her companion. Then had she started up—not to her feet, for the interposition of the Coromantee had hindered her from assuming an erect position, but to an attitude half reclining, half threatening escape. In this attitude was she held—partly through fear, partly by the hopelessness of any attempt to change it.
The Coromantee stood in front of her. His attitude? Was it one of menace? No! Not a threat threw out he—neither by word nor gesture. On the contrary, he was all softness, all suppliance—a wooer!
He was bending before her, repeating vows of love! Oh, heavens! more fearful than threats of vengeance!
It was a terrible tableau—this paraphrase of the Beast on his knees before Beauty.
The young girl was too terrified to make reply. She did not even listen to the disgusting speeches addressed to her. She was scarce more conscious than during the period of her syncope.
After a time, the Coromantee appeared to lose patience. His unnatural passion chafed against restraint. He began to perceive the hopelessness of his horrid suit. It was in vain to indulge in that delirious dream of love—in the hope of its being reciprocated—a hope with which even satyrs are said to have been inspired. The repellent attitude of her, the object of his demoniac adoration—the evident degoût too plainly expressed in her frightened features—showed Chakra how vain was his wooing.
With a sudden gesture he desisted, raising himself into an attitude of determination that bespoke some dreadful design—who knows what?
A shrill whistle pealing from without prevented its accomplishment, or, at all events, stayed it for the time.
“’Tam de signal ob dat ole Jew!” muttered he, evidently annoyed by the interruption. “Wha he want dis time ob de night? ’Pose it somethin’ ’bout dat ere loss book-keeper? Wa! a know nuffin ’bout him. Dere ’tam ’gain, and fo’ de tree time. Dat signify he am in a hurry. Wha’s dat? Foth time! Den da be some trouble, sa’tin. Muss go to him—muss go. He nebba sound de signal fo’ time ’less da be some desp’rate ’casion fo’ do so. Wonder what he want!”
“Nebba mind, Lilly Quasheba!” added he, once more addressing his speech to his mute companion. “Doan bex yaseff ’bout dis interupshun. De bisness ’tween you ’n me ’ll keep till a gets back, an’ den, p’raps, a no find you so ob’tinate. You come—you ’tay out hya—you muss no be seen in dis part ob de world.”
As he said this, he seized the unresisting girl by the wrist, and was about leading her out of the hut.
“Ha!” he exclaimed, suddenly stopping to reflect; “dat woan do, neider. De ole Jew mussn’t know she hya—no account. She mout run back in de shanty, darfur she muss be tied. An’ den she mout ’cream so he hear her, darfur she muss be gagged.”
Still holding her wrist in his grasp, he looked around the hut as if in search of the means to put this design into execution.
“Ha!” he ejaculated, as if inspired by some new thought, “what hab a been bodderin’ ma brains ’bout? Dar’s a better plan dan eider tyin’ or gaggin’—better dan boaf put togedder! De sleepin’ draff. Da’s de berry ting keep her quiet. Wha’s de bottle, a wonder? Dar um be.”
With this, he stretched forth his disengaged hand, and drew something out of a sort of pocket cut in the palm-leaf thatch. It appeared to be a long narrow phial, filled with a dark-coloured fluid, and tightly corked.
“Now, young missa!” said he, drawing out the cork with his teeth, and placing himself as if intending to administer a draught to his terrified patient; “you take a suck out ob dis hya bottle. Doan be ’feerd. He do no harm—he do you good—make you feel berry comf’able, I’se be boun’. Drink!”
The poor girl instinctively drew back; but the monster, letting go her wrist, caught hold of her by the hair, and, twisting her luxuriant tresses around his bony fingers, held her head as firmly as if in a vice. Then, with the other hand, he inserted the neck of the phial between her lips, and, forcing it through her teeth, poured a portion of the liquid down her throat.
There was no attempt to scream—scarce any at resistance—on the part of the young creole. Almost freely did she swallow the draught. So prostrate was her spirit at that moment, that she would scarce have cared to refuse it, even had she known it to be poison!
And not unlike to poison was the effect it produced—equally quick in subduing the senses—for what Chakra had thus administered was the juice of the calalue, the most powerful of narcotics.
In a few seconds after the fluid had passed her lips, the face of the young girl became overspread with a death-like pallor—all through her frame ran a gentle, tremulous quivering, that bespoke the sudden relaxation of the muscles. Her lithe limbs gave way beneath her; and she would have sunk down upon the floor, but for the supporting arm of the weird conjuror who had caused this singular collapse.
Into his arms she sank—evidently insensible—with the semblance rather of death than of sleep!
“Now, den!” muttered the myal-man, with no sign of astonishment at a phenomenon far from being strange to him—since it was to that same sleeping-spell he was indebted for his professional reputation—“now, den, ma sweet Lilly, you sleep quiet ’nuff ’till I want wake you ’gain. Not hya, howsomedever. You muss take you nap in de open air. A muss put you wha de ole Jew no see you, or maybe he want you fo’ himself. Come ’long, disaway!”
And thus idly apostrophising his unconscious victim, he lifted her in both arms, and carried her out of the hut.
Outside he paused, looking around, as if searching for some place in which to deposit his burden.
The moon was now above the horizon, and her beams were beginning to be reflected feebly, even through the sombre solitude of the Duppy’s Hole. A clump of low bushes, growing just outside the canopy of the cotton-tree, appeared to offer a place of concealment; and Chakra was proceeding towards them, when his eye fell upon the cascade; and, as if suddenly changing his design, he turned out of his former direction, and proceeded towards the waterfall.
On getting close up to the cliff over which the stream was precipitated, he paused for an instant on the edge of the seething cauldron; then, taking a fresh hold of the white, wan form that lay helpless over his arm, he glided behind the sheet of foaming water, and suddenly disappeared from the sight—like a river-demon of Eld, bearing off to his subaqueous cavern some beautiful victim, whom he had succeeded in enticing to his haunt, and entrancing into a slumber more fatal than death.
In a few seconds the hideous hunchback reappeared upon the bank, no longer embarrassed by his burden; and hearing the whistle once more skirling along the cliffs, he faced down stream, and walked rapidly in the direction of his canoe.