The Iron Game Part 38

That two-o'clock-in-the-morning courage, which is the secret of soldierly success, comes only from companions.h.i.+p. The night-wood is a world by itself, filled with its own atmosphere, as oppressive to valor as the electric reefs that drew the nails from the s.h.i.+ps of Sindbad.

Among familiar scenes and well-known shapes, it is all the delight the poets sing--so tranquillizing, inspiring, fecund, that in comparison the thought of day brings up garish hues, flaunting figures--the hardness, harshness and unlovely in life. But night in the goblin-land, where d.i.c.k found himself suddenly deserted, with fantastic forms swaying in the lazy wind, would have had terrors for the most constant mind; terrors such as filled the soul of MacBeth, when Birnam wood came marching to Dunsinane. In an instant, as it seemed to d.i.c.k's exalted and painfully impressionable sense, every separate leaf, branch, brier, copse, and jungle, was endowed with a voice of its own--hateful, irritating, mocking. Swarms of peering eyes hovered in the air, glowering uncanny menace into the boy's wild, dilating vision.

Brave, even to recklessness, d.i.c.k was, as you have seen; but no sooner had the glimmer of Jack's torch flickered and fluttered into the black distance, making place for the monstrous shapes, the luring shadows, and threatening forms encompa.s.sing him, than d.i.c.k threw himself, with a wailing shriek, into the mora.s.s in a wild attempt to follow.

In an instant he was up to his middle in mud and water. He seized the p.r.i.c.kly branches coiling about and above him; he gasped in prayerful pleading, the home teaching still strong in him; but there was no answer, save the crooning night-birds and the croaking frogs. Slimy things touched his torn flesh; whirring birds shot past him, disturbed in their night perches. The deadly odor, pungent and nauseous, of a thousand exhaling herbs, filled his nostrils. The darkness grew, instinct with threatening forms. He gasped, struggled, and in a fervent outburst of thanksgiving regained the dank mound. Ah, there was life on that! human life. Jones slept, the stertorous sleep of delirium. He murmured brokenly. d.i.c.k was too terrified to distinguish what he said.

The blaze of the pine knot flared from side to side as the sighing breeze arose from the brackish pools, protesting the vitality of even this moribund hades. Ah! if he could but lie down and bury his face. The horses? They were feeding tranquilly yonder, standing up to their knees in mosses and water. The lines that tied them were long. They could move about. This was some comfort. They were more human than the dreadful specters that filled the place.

Ah! the blessed, blessed light that flamed out from the merry pine-torch; he didn't wonder that half the Eastern world wors.h.i.+ped fire.

He adored it--blessed, blessed fire--the sign of G.o.d, the beacon of the human. Hark! What half-human--or rather wholly inhuman--sounds are these that alternate in unearthly measure? Surely animal nature has no voice so strident, vengeful, odious. Can it be animals of prey? No. The Virginia forests are dangerous only in snakes. Snakes? Ah, yes! He shrinks into shadow against the oak at this suggestion; snakes? the deadly moccasin, that prowls as well by night as day. Ugh! what's this at his feet--soft, clammy, s.h.i.+ning in the flaring light? He leaps upon the smooth tree-trunk, growing slantwise instead of perpendicular. What if the torch and the odor of flesh should draw the snakes to the sleeper? The flame flares in wide, lurid curves, revealing the outlines of the sleeping man. Heavens, what a terrible face! He moves in spasmodic contortions. He is smothering. The veins of his neck will break if he is not awakened.

"O my G.o.d! my G.o.d! have mercy!" d.i.c.k buries his face in his hands, as he clings desperately to the smooth white-oak trunk. A strange, wild strain, like a detached chord of a vesper melody, sounds above him! It is the whippoorwill--steadily, continuously, entrancingly the dulcet measure is taken up and echoed, until the slough of despond seems transformed into a varying diapason of melancholy minstrelsy. He dares not raise his head. It will vanish if he moves. He crouches, panting, almost exultant, in the sense of recovered faculties, or rather the suspension of numbing fear. How long will it last? He must move; his limbs are cramped and aching. He raises his head. Mortal powers! the torch is flickering into ashes! Another instant and he will be in the dark. Dare he move? Dare he seek the distant pine, between him and which the black surface of the murky sheet s.h.i.+nes, dotted with uncanny growth and reptilian things? Yes; anything is better than the hideous darkness of this hideous place.

The horse he rode has broken his leash and comes to him with a gentle whinny, as if asking why the delay in such a place. "Blessed, blessed G.o.d, that made a beast so human!" He caresses it, he clings to its neck and calls to it piteously. Ah, yes; the dying light. He must renew it.

He slips down upon the bare back and urges the patient beast across the brackish mora.s.s. Ah, this is life again! He is not alone. This n.o.ble beast is human. It crops the tender leaves confidingly, and swings its head as much as to say: "Don't fear, d.i.c.k; Fin here. I'll stand by you; I don't forget the pains you took to get me water, and that particularly toothsome measure of oats you cribbed in the rebel barn near Williamsburg!"

But the pine knot that will burn is not so easily found. d.i.c.k was forced to go a long way before he came upon the resinous sort. He brought back a supply, having taken the precaution to provide matches in order to secure his way back. The quest had to some extent lessened the morbid or supernatural forms of his terrors. They all returned, however, when, having dismounted, he forgot to tie the horse, and it wandered off in search of herbage. He called, but the beast made no sign of returning.

Alone again. Alone in the night; spectral forms about him; the sleeping man adding to the ghostliness of the scene by his incoherent mutterings, his hideous, gulping breath, his ghastly, blood-curdling outcries. Then through the gloom the s.h.i.+ning outlines of the white oak, like shreds of shrouds hung on funeral foliage. Ah! he would go mad--he must break the brutish sleep of the sick man.

"Mr. Jones," he wails--and his own voice--the comically commonplace name, "Mr. Jones," even in the agony of his terror, the humor of the conjuncture glimmered in the boy's crazed intelligence, and he laughed a wild, maniacal laugh. But the laugh died out in a pulseless horror. The sick man uprose on his elbow. d.i.c.k, above him on the white-oak trunk, could see his very eyes bloodshot and wandering. He uprose, almost sitting. He pa.s.sed his hand over his staring eyes, and began to murmur:

"Did you bring me here to do murder, Elisha Boone? You have bought my body, but you never bought my soul. No, no! I will not. I say I will not. Do you hear? I will not!"

He glared wildly; then, his eyes meeting the full flame of the torch, he laughed, a dreadful, marrow-freezing laugh, and broke out again in clearer tones: "I am yours, Elisha Boone, but my boy is not yours. He was born in my shape, but he has his mother's soul. He will be a man; he will be your vengeance; he will undo all his father has done. You've robbed me; you've made me rob others. But if you touch, if you look at my boy, my first-born, you might as well hold a pistol at your head. I'm no longer mad. You must treat with him. Ah! yes; I'll do your bidding with the others. I'll make young Jack as much trouble as you ask, but you must make a path of gold for my boy. You must give him what you have robbed from me. Felon? I'm no felon. It was you who plotted it. It was you that put the means in mad hands. I can face my family. I have no shame but that I was a coward. My son! He is no coward. He is a soldier.

He is the pride of the Caribees. He is the beloved of--of--"

The gibbering maniac, exhausted in body, still incoherently raving, sank back in piteous collapse, a terrifying gurgle breaking from his throat, while his tongue absolutely protruded from his jaws.

d.i.c.k, his terrors all forgotten in a new and overmastering horror, bethought him of Jack's admonition about the water. He slipped down from the tree, gathered the large moist leaves that cl.u.s.tered near the pool and held them to the burning lips, Jones swallowed the drops with a hideous gurgling avidity, clutching the boy's hand ravenously to secure a more copious flow. There was a tin cup in the holster under the invalid's head. Taking this, d.i.c.k dipped up water from the black pool between the green leaves; the hot lips sucked it in at one dreadful gulp.

"More, more; for G.o.d's sake, more!"

d.i.c.k filled it again, and again it was emptied.

"More--more--I'm burning--more!"

The boy was cruelly perplexed. He remembered vaguely hearing that fever should be starved; that the thing craved was the dangerous thing; and he moved away in a sort of compunctious terror.

"More--more! Oh, in the name of G.o.d, more!"

The words came gaspingly. d.i.c.k thought of the death-rattle he had heard in Acredale when old man Nagle, the madman, died. He dared not give more water, but he gathered leaves from the aromatic bushes and pressed them to the fevered lips. Before he could withdraw them, the eager jaws closed upon the balsamic shrub. They answered the purpose better than the most scientific remedy in the pharmacopoeia, for the patient called for no further drink, and presently fell into profound and undisturbed sleep. Again the boy was alone with the daunting forces of the dark in its grimmest and most terrifying mood. Alone! No; his mind was now taken from all thought of self. He was with a fellow-townsman. The man had mentioned Boone; had referred to deeds that he had heard all his life a.s.sociated with the father he had never seen. A wild thought flashed upon him. Was the collapsed body at his feet his father's? He could not see any resemblance in the dark, handsome face to the portrait at home, though all through the flight from Richmond something in the man's manner had seemed like a memory. He strove to recall the image his young mind had cherished, the personality he had heard whispered about in the gossiping groups of Acredale. This was not the gay, the brilliant, the fascinating _bon viveur_ who had been the life of society from Warchester to Bucephalo, from Pentica to New York. Ah! what were the mystic terrors of the night, what the oppressive surroundings of this charnel-house of Nature, to the awful spectacle of this unmanned mind, this delirious echo of past guilt, past cowardice, past shame?

To lessen the somber gloom, d.i.c.k had lighted many torches and set them about the high mound where the sleeper lay in a huddle. Taking little heed of where he set them, some of them, as the wind arose, flared out until their flames licked the decayed branches of the fallen white oak.

As the boy crouched, pensive and distraught, he was suddenly aroused by a vivacious cracking. He looked up. Lines of fire were darting thither and yon, where dry wood, the _debris_ of years of decay, had been caught in the thick clumps of underbrush and among the limbs of the trees. The fire had pushed briskly, and the uncanny glade was now an amphitheatre of crawling flames, stretching in many-colored banners in a vast circle about the point of refuge. d.i.c.k gazed fascinated, with no thought of danger. His spirits rose. It was something like life--this gorgeous decoration of fire. How beautiful it was! How it brought out the s.h.i.+ning lines of the white oak, the glistening green of the cypress! Why hadn't he thought of this before? Then, as the curling waves of fire pushed farther and farther up the steins of the trees, and farther and farther endlessly into the undergrowth, an unearthly outcry and stir began.

Birds, blinded by the light, whirred and fluttered into the open s.p.a.ce above the water, falling helplessly so near d.i.c.k that he could have caught and killed a score to surprise Jack with a game breakfast, when he returned. Then--ugh!--horror!--great, coiling ma.s.ses detached themselves from the tufts of sward, and splashed noisily into the putrid water, wriggling and convulsed. The invalid still slept--but, dreadful sight! the coiling monsters, upheaving themselves from the water, glided, dull eyed and sluggish, upon the mossy island, about the unconscious figure.

d.i.c.k, fascinated and inert, watched the snaky ma.s.s, squirming in hideous folds almost on the rec.u.mbent body. Then, aroused to the horror of their nearness, he seized a torch and made at the slimy heap. The fire conquered them. They slid off the ground, with forked tongues darting out in impotent malice. But others, squirming through the water, wriggled up; and the boy, maddened by the danger, stood his ground, torch in hand, defending the sleeper.

But now the fire had widened its path, and is enveloping the tiny island. The serpents, hedged in from the outer line, uproar in blood-curdling ma.s.ses, their dull eyes gleaming, and their tongues phosph.o.r.escent, darting out in their agony. d.i.c.k doesn't mind them now, for he has, for the first time, begun to realize that his illumination has destruction as the sequel of its delight. Great clouds of smoke settle a moment on the water and then rise, impelled by the cold surface. Even the green verdure begins to roll back where the crackling flames play into the more compact wall of incombustible timber. The sleeper murmurs in his dreams. d.i.c.k casts about despairingly. He hears the horses--they have broken their tethers--he can hear them whinnying, upbraidingly, far off. Wherever he casts his eye, volumes of fire dart and sway, always coming inward, first scorching the green limbs, then fastening on the tender stems and turning them to glowing lines of cordage; only the great sheet of water, inky, terrible, and threatening a few hours before, protects him and his charge. The hissing snakes have sunk into it.

Bevies of birds, supernaturally keen of sight, have dropped upon the twigs that lie on the glittering bosom of the water. d.i.c.k, in all the agonized uncertainty of that night of peril, thinks with wonder on the mysterious resources Nature provides its helpless outcasts. The hideous shallows, black, glistening, are now a belt of safety, not only for himself and the sleeper, but a refuge for all manner of whirring birds and crawling things, intimidated and harmless in the stifling breath of the fire. The flame, leaping from sedge to sedge, from trunk to trunk, seems to seek, with a human instinct, and more than human pertinacity, food for its ravening hunger; far upward, where festoons of moss hung from the sycamores in the day, airy banners of starry sparks, swayed, coiled, and flamed among the branches. But d.i.c.k was soon reminded that the scene was not for enjoyment, however fantastically fascinating.

The smoke, at first rising from the burning brakes, lodged among the tree-tops; then, meeting the humid night-air in the matted leaves, descended slowly. d.i.c.k found himself nearly smothered when he had partly recovered from the spell-bound wonder of the demoniac _fete_. The ground under his feet felt gratefully cool. He bent down, and shudderingly laved his burning face in the inky water. The sick man had slept more peacefully during the last half-hour. He no longer breathed in gasping efforts; his sleep was unbroken by muttering or outcry. But now he must be aroused. He must be taken out of the circle of fire, for, sooner or later, the curling waves would lick downward from the dry vines above and scorch the mound. How to get away? The horses were long since gone.

They might be miles from the spot! d.i.c.k touched the sleeping man, filled with a new suspense. He breathed so softly, or did he breathe at all?

"For G.o.d's sake, Mr. Jones, wake up! We must go from here; the swamp is burning!"

"Eh--who is it? Where am I? Was--I dreaming? I thought my boy was with me, and we were in the old home at Acredale."

He lay quite still, staring upward with unseeing eyes. d.i.c.k's heart gave a great throb of grateful, devout thanksgiving. The madness and fever were gone.

"You remember you were too worn out to go on, and Jack has gone to get food. But the swamp has caught fire, and we must move away."

Jones had risen to his elbow; then, with an exclamation that sounded like an oath, to his feet, gazing on the flaming specters rising and falling, enlarging and shrinking, among the black tracery of limbs and trunks.

"You ought to have waked me before," Jones said, when he had swept the scene, with sane realization in his eye. "I'm afraid we can never break through the fire. It reaches a mile or more all about us, and I--I am in no condition to move. I feel as if I had been down months with illness."

"But if you could eat something you would be able to move," d.i.c.k ventured, cruelly hurt at the implied delinquency.

"Eat!" Jones held up one of the luckless torches that Dirk had lighted in a circle about the mound, and began to examine the ground. "What is there to eat? Stay! By Heaven, I have it! The bushes are filled with fluttering game. There, see that! and that, and that!" As he spoke he had thrust the burning torch into a thick clump of bushes, dense and glistening as laurels, that looked like wild huckleberry. The branches were laden with birds, and in a moment be had seized three or four partridges.

"What better do we need? We have salt, water, and fire. I'll prepare them. Do you keep your face well bathed, and heap up embers at the foot of that ash."

Sure enough, sometimes hidden by billows of smoke, rising lazily among the burning bushes, Jones stripped the birds, spitted them on his bayonet, and, holding them in the hot coals, soon presented a well-browned portion to his companion.

"I have had a good deal worse fare than this, my young friend. I have been in the West, when fire, Indians, and hunger besieged us at the same time. But we should have a poor chance here if it were not for the wet gra.s.s and the everlasting water. If we can manage to keep clear of the smoke, we shall be all right, but the smoke seems to grow denser. Where can it come from?"

"Great Heavens! do you hear that? Shots--one--two! That's Jack's signal.

He--he is near. He is in danger. I must go to him." d.i.c.k cried. "Listen; more shots. No, that can't be the signal. There, do you hear that? A volley. The rebels are after them, or we are near the outposts, and the two armies are skirmis.h.i.+ng."

Yes; the shots now sounded more frequently, but they seemed to be fired not far away.

"It is Jack. I know it is Jack, and he is in peril. I must go to him. I can not stay here. Surely there is no danger in pus.h.i.+ng toward the firing?"

"There is every danger. In the first place, the smoke will smother us.

Then suppose we reached the spot? We might be nearer the rebels than our friends. They know where we are. If they are not taken, they will come back for us. If they are taken, we must do our best to get to our lines and send out a scouting party. Be guided by me, youngster. I am an older hand in business of this sort than you are."

The boy stood irresolute. Both listened intently. The firing had stopped. A great sough of rising storm came from the northwest, carrying a hot, blinding ma.s.s of smoke and flame into the little retreat. They flung themselves on the damp ferns to keep their breath. Still the breeze rose, until it became a wind--a spasm of hurricane. It was madness to linger, for the flames now licked the ground, driven down anew by the blast. Then Jones spoke decisively: "Strap a pine torch to your body. I will do the same. Take all you can carry and follow in my wake." Jones, as he spoke, seized a torch, extinguished it, and handed it to d.i.c.k. Equipped as he had directed, they set out, half crawling, half swimming, to avoid the volumes of smoke hovering in the thick, cactus-like leaves of the wild laurel. Presently they emerged, after toil and misery, that excitement alone enabled the boy to support, into what seemed a cleared s.p.a.ce. But as soon as their eyes could distinguish clearly, they found themselves on the edge of a wide pond. The fire was now behind them. They could stand erect and breathe the pure, cool air.

"Ah, now we are in luck!" Jones whispered. "We will walk to the right, on the edge of this lake, and keep it between us and the fire. We have got out of that purgatory; now if we could only signal our friends."

"Hist!" whispered d.i.c.k, "I hear some one moving behind us."

They crouched down in the thick reeds and waited. The sky above was darkly overcast; an occasional burst of lightning revealed the dimensions of the pond, and they could see high ground on the eastern sh.o.r.e, covered by enormous pines.

"If we can only reach the pines we shall be all right. There the ground will be dry and soft and you can get some rest. I'm afraid, my boy, it will go hard with you if you don't."

"I don't mind what happens if we can only come up with Jack. There, do you hear that?"

Yes, both could plainly hear voices ahead of them on the margin of the pond. They were talking in low tones, and the words were undistinguishable.