Latitude 19 degree Part 31

"Nor I. The last I saw of the little devil was when I told him to put out the lamp in the cave."

"He'll come soon enough to bother us," said I.

Just then there was a step upon the floor, and Cynthia again emerged from between the pillars. She walked as she had before.

"My baby chain," she said, "my baby chain?"

The Skipper arose at once and approached her.

"Why, Cynthy, Cynthy, girl," he said soothingly.

"Don't touch her, sir," whispered the Bo's'n.

"My baby chain, my baby chain," said Cynthia in a strangely unfamiliar voice, fumbling at her neck the while.

The Skipper stepped quickly out to the pa.s.sageway and felt in his pocket. He took something therefrom and returned some other thing to its keeping. While he was thus engaged, I noticed that the Bo's'n watched him with dilated eyes. He seemed to shrink backward, into himself, as it were. A look of horror overspread his features. He whispered to me: "If I didn't know positive, sir, that you threw that--that--you know, sir, into the water, far, far out into the water----"

"Don't be a fool, Bo's'n!" said I. "You say you saw me throw it out into the water, and, for my part, I don't think it has got legs to walk or arms to swim with. Just imagine it paddling ash.o.r.e and crawling up the bank----"

"Stop, sir, in G.o.d's name!"

"My chain, my baby chain," said Cynthia, still advancing.

The Skipper now turned and came our way. He had in his hand nothing more appalling than the chain and locket. He said, "Why, Cynthy girl, why, Cynthy girl, why, Cynthy!" He laid his hard old hand upon her arm as tenderly as her own mother could have done, and then he placed the chain round her neck and clasped it there. A satisfied look came over her features, she smiled, and laid her hand upon the locket. I wondered if she remembered that my face was there.

"Don't touch her, Cap'n, sir," urged the Bo's'n. But the deed was already done. The Skipper had turned her gently round and had led her back to the pillars, where Lacelle met her, and together they vanished in the gloom.

"That thing's hereabouts somewhere," whispered the Bo's'n in my ear.

"Well, if you will be a fool!" said I.

"She's all right now, I think," said the old man. "Hope she'll sleep and wake up all right."

I noticed that the Bo's'n shrank from the Skipper as he came near--in fact, I had noticed it many times of late, and I was convinced that there was something in the mere presence of the ring which affected this man's mental att.i.tude.

"Suppose we sleep now for a while?" suggested the Skipper.

He started to stretch himself near the Bo's'n, but the man jumped to his feet.

"I can't sleep," said he; "I'm wakeful. I will go out, sir, and take a stroll around."

"Look out for snakes!" murmured the Skipper sleepily, in a teasing voice. The Bo's'n shuddered and bounded from the cave. I wondered where between the Skipper and the wilds of the forest the Bo's'n would find rest for the sole of his foot.

The young Englishman, of whom we were taking care as we would of a baby, was lying on his couch of ferns in a remote corner. All that day one or the other of us played the part of nurse, and many a time I wished for the Minion, only that he might take his share of such work. The lad was delicate to begin with, and G.o.d knows what he had suffered on board the pirate craft before they triced him up and left him for dead. I found from his later account that he had suffered from an affection of the lungs, and that his mother had sent him on a sea voyage to Algiers, hoping that the change would benefit him. The s.h.i.+p had been captured off the coast of Portugal, and was never heard of more. The lad knew her fearful fate. The boy and the Smith, a servant from his mother's estate, were allowed to live, for what, G.o.d alone knows. They had been on board the pirate s.h.i.+p now for six months or more, and the lad had become weaker and more weak from the hards.h.i.+ps that he had undergone and the coa.r.s.e duties that he was obliged to perform. His being left to hang until he died in that devil's cavern was the final straw which broke his spirit. He knew of no possible succour from the cave of death. He could not hope for aid. He did not even know that I was to be left to bear him company. And what good that would have been, except that he could for a time have had some human companions.h.i.+p, I could not determine. I, on the contrary, knew that my friends were under the same roof with myself, and, though I did almost despair and become lost to living impressions through bodily terror of those horrid creatures which had been let loose upon me, still way down in my heart there was, I now know, a faint hope that some one would come to my rescue. Thinking these thoughts caused me to arise and go to the place where the lad lay and put some water to his lips. He drank gratefully, but did not raise his lids nor look at me.

And then, dead tired, I threw myself upon my couch of leaves.

I had slept probably many hours when I was awakened by a touch on my shoulder. It was the Bo's'n. He was kneeling beside me.

His finger was on his lips as he glanced toward the Skipper. He spoke to me in low tones.

"I have something to show you, sir. It is such a curious sight, sir. Do come."

I turned over sleepily:

"I'm tired of curious sights, Bo's'n," I said. "Where is it?"

The Bo's'n nodded toward the direction of the great hall.

"It's over that way, sir."

"Good Heavens! have you really awakened me to see more sights? I thought you were afraid to go there," said I.

"There's nothing to be afraid of now, sir," he said. "Do come, Mr.

Jones, sir."

"Very well, Bo's'n," said I, "but no farther than the gallery. I've had enough of the cave."

"That's just where I was going to take you, sir."

"Suppose we waken the Captain and take him along?" said I.

"No, sir, I couldn't go then. In fact, sir, the Captain has become so abhorrent to me, Mr. Jones, that sometimes I think I must separate from the party."

"What under heaven do you mean?"

"Can't tell, sir; there is something about----Are you sure, sir, that you _did_ throw that----"

"If your own eyes are not sufficient witness," I began; and then, looking him square in the eye, "But tell me, Bo's'n, why that simple ring----"

"I beg you, sir," he said.

"You do not fear the halls of death, the skeletons of what were living men, you do not fear----"

"That is death, Mr. Jones," he said. "Death--quiet, peaceful rest, without fear of a beyond. This is life--horrible, torturing life. That sickening, coiling body which will crush the very being out of one.

Those eyes with red flames of vision: they see the future. They know what will befall us, they gloat over our misery. As long as that thing, that dreadful presence, is even out there in the water, but so near, so near, we are fated! That it is which drew us upon the rocks! That it is which brought the pirates down upon us! That it was which put you in that cage of which you tell me! That it is which will hold us, and coil about us, and never let us go, man, woman, or child, until it has crushed the life from our bodies!"

"But if you do not mind death, Bo's'n, and you say not--if you do not mind leaving this world and----"

"Oh, sir, can not you see? It is the horror, the dread, the ever-recurring fear of evil, the tortured mind, looking forward to the torture of the body----"

"No," I said, "I can not understand you at all. Let us give it up, Bo's'n; but if you are not afraid of one death, I don't see----"

"My mother was a witness, was a witness----" The man's frame shook with some horror, I knew not what.

"A witness to what?" I asked. In the Bo's'n's eyes there began to appear a strange glare. All at once I began to feel that desire which overcomes most of us at times to possess another's secret. I fastened my eye upon the Bo's'n's, and began to speak in a low and mysterious tone.

"There was a serpent," I said, "a ghastly, writhing, coiling, deadly serpent. It crept out of the darkness, and began to move slowly. It came on, and on, and on----"

I was looking steadily at the Bo's'n as I said these words. Suddenly his eyes dilated and stared wildly at the cavern wall; some flecks of foam appeared upon his lips, he writhed like the beast that I had been describing, and dropped in a heap upon the floor. There he lay motionless.