Latitude 19 degree Part 61

I found myself in a plain sort of room, which contained little more than the furniture needed for absolute use; but when I discerned among the articles upon the table a primitive sort of arrangement for heating, a blow pipe, some small tools, and some bits of darkish ore, which had been rudely twisted into some semblance of the ring, I recognised the fact that I was in the room of that unhappy workman who had left it that morning never to return, and that this was the workshop where I was to try my hand at fas.h.i.+oning a ring like the one that the black King wore upon his thumb.

CHAPTER XXI.

I OFFEND THE KING'S FOSTER BROTHER, AND AM FORCED TO TAKE THE CONSEQUENCES.

When the door was closed upon me the first thing that I did was to feel for my precious ring. It was safe. I took it out and looked at it long and curiously. It had never seemed so hideous, so wonderful, so fascinating, or so absorbing to me as it did at that moment. I apostrophised it. I almost wors.h.i.+pped it.

"You are some good, after all," said I. "There you lie in my hand, too big for anything but the thumb of a giant, looking at me with those great s.h.i.+ning devil's eyes of yours, and hoping to get me into trouble; but I'll get you into trouble while you get me out of it, for I'll leave you with the greatest rapscallion of modern times."

The red and glowing pupils gleamed with a long-reaching ray of light, thrown right into the centre of my blinking eyes, and, was I mistaken, or did I see one of them wink at me? I put the ring back under the breast of my s.h.i.+rt and got up and tried the door. It was, as I supposed, fastened. There was a couch in the room, and in the s.p.a.ce outside I saw a hammock. It swung from corner to corner of the short veranda.

"Ah!" you may say, "why didn't you just go out on that veranda, and if it was on the first floor step out into the garden and so escape?"

In the first place, if I could have escaped from this place, what had I to gain? I should leave Cynthia behind. In the second place, I was not on the ground floor, but two flights from the ground, which is an unusual thing in a tropic-built house. From the picture which I made of the palace as it looked in those days, you can see that above the terrace itself there were two other stories. This brought my room on the third floor. I suppose you think that I might have risked dropping down into the garden, but of what use? However, there was no question as to that. I could not get out if I would. The veranda was surrounded by a lattice work of iron. I was inclosed in a cage, and, though not as confining a one as that in which the pirates had placed me, it was a cage all the same.

I entered the veranda from the long French window of the room and lay down in the hammock. I had nothing with which to while away my time, and I lay thinking what the upshot of all this business was to be. As I reclined I heard voices. They came from the garden below me. I peered downward as well as I could through my wire lattice, and there I saw Cynthia with the two dusky maidens hovering near. They overwhelmed her with their attentions, each one seeming to vie with the other in striving to show how much affection she could lavish on the white girl.

As I watched them, they seemed to get angry with each other. I saw that it was jealousy, and I also saw that if Cynthia was clever she could do more for herself than I could do for her. So I called as if I were singing. I sang an old-fas.h.i.+oned tune which my mother used to play on the ancient spinnet in summer evenings at home when the farm work was done. I sang these words, or words to this effect:

"Be careful what you do, dear one. You can work on their feelings. Do not make one jealous of the other. Find out who is the King's favourite, and, if you must anger either, let it be the other. I am here just above you. Where are you lodged? Can you send Solomon with a line under his wing, or can you, in pa.s.sing, tie a note to the thread which I shall lower close to the jasmine vine? Do not answer, but do what you can to tell me where you are lodged."

I saw Cynthia start and look all around and above her at the rooms of the palace. The two princesses were quarrelling, and nearly coming to blows, so that Cynthia could raise her eyes to my place of detention without being observed. I repeated my words. I added to them. I went further. I told her how much I loved her, and a.s.sured her that nothing but the most insuperable difficulties should part us. I saw that she understood me. She waited until I had finished, and then she walked to where one of the black belles had pushed the other into a flowering bank, and, approaching them with gentle step, she held out a hand to each, speaking sweetly and softly, as I knew that Cynthia could do, though I had had little experience of it myself. Her manner and words seemed to subdue them, and finally they were reconciled with each other and with her. As I lounged in my hammock after they had left the garden, the door of my room softly opened, and I found that a boy had entered.

He had in his hand a tray, and on it were some sweets and a gla.s.s of a pale-coloured decoction, also a gla.s.s of water. He looked strangely familiar to me, and when he raised his liquid eyes to me I recognised Lacelle. I found later that the torch bearer was an old friend of Lacelle's and Zalee's. That his mother was one of the women employed about the kitchens, and that he had taken the girl directly to her, and that she had disguised her in the clothes of one of the serving lads.

Christophe cared nothing about making a prisoner of the Hatienne; all that he wanted was the party of white people, whom he thought might be fomenting a revolution, or might be connected with the pirates who infested the Isle of Pines, and made those terrible dashes upon the unprotected coast. I often wonder what he would have thought had he known that his favourite Mauresco had deserted him for the buccaneers themselves. But it was not within my province to tell of this, or, in fact, to talk of Mauresco at all. So long as I was to reproduce the ring and thus get our freedom, it would be well for me to remain silent about Mauresco, whose ring would be recognised at once should I own that I had ever even seen him. For Christophe to know that Mauresco had been killed by any of our party, would insure instant death for every one of us.

I sat looking at Lacelle while these thoughts ran through my mind. She was in no hurry to leave me, and seemed puzzling her brains as to how she should communicate with me. Finally she stretched her hand toward the gla.s.s of yellow liquid, and, pointing to her mouth, she shook her head. I stretched my hand toward the gla.s.s with the pretended intention of drinking the liquid, when she bounded to the table and, with a look of horror, seized the gla.s.s and carried it out to the veranda. I watched her as she poured it down the stem of the vine which grew from the ground below.

"A-ha!" I thought, "trying to poison or drug me. Now, what for, I wonder? If Lacelle can always bring my food, I shall feel safe," Lacelle now handed me the dulces and the gla.s.s of water, and bade me eat and drink. This I did gratefully. Then she pointed to the empty gla.s.s. There were two dead flies in the bottom of the gla.s.s and another one was just tumbling in, and several were strewn around upon the table. I nodded comprehendingly. She then, by signs, made me understand that I should eat nothing but what she brought me. I responded understandingly, and she took her tray and departed. After she had left the room, I found a piece of paper on the table. I opened it. A few lines from Cynthia were there, written hurriedly, as if she had s.n.a.t.c.hed a moment in secret.

They ran thus:

"Do meet me in the garden, under the mahogany tree, at ten this evening. I have some thing to tell you."

Truth to tell, I had never seen Cynthia's handwriting, but I was sure that it was a lady's hand, and that neither of my friends could form the letters so well or so delicately. Also I flattered myself that Cynthia really wanted to see me at last. I put the paper in my mouth and reduced it to pulp. Not a very romantic thing to do with one's first approach to a love letter, but all things are fair in love or war, and this was a combination of both, I feared.

I now went out into the veranda and lay down in the hammock, preparatory to taking a short sleep. The breeze blew softly through the vines, and soon I became drowsy, but not so soon as my captors had imagined that I should. I was still quite wide awake, though in a few moments I should have succ.u.mbed to the soothing nature of my surroundings, when I heard a faint click. It was at my door; of that I was certain. I watched the door through my almost closed eyelids, but to no end. No one approached me from my room. I feigned sleep and began to breathe regularly, and had almost begun to think my idea but fancy. Still, my eyes were opened a tiny crack, and they happened, from my position, to rest upon the wire screen which separated mine from the veranda beyond. And as I looked, the netting separated, a square of it the size of a small door was pushed toward me, and through the opening thus made a short person entered. I had thought that a solid wall of wire inclosed and shut me in.

It was a boy who approached the hammock where I lay. He was darker than Lacelle, and was clothed as boys of the palace dressed, except that the body was much more covered than I remember to have noticed in the dress of the pages. The feet of the boy were covered with some sort of light shoe; the legs and arms were hidden from view, and only the head and the very woolly hair were visible. I caught a glimpse of this as he was turning to close the door as softly as might be. When he turned again, I was breathing as regularly as a little child. My hands were crossed upon my breast. I was at peace apparently with the world. The boy came near me and stood still and listened. Nothing but my regular breathing broke the silence, except now and then the note of a mocking bird, than which no music on earth is sweeter, always excepting your mother's voice, Adoniah. For a moment all was quiet, and then the boy stooped toward me. He took one of my hands in his and, removing it from my breast, laid it by my side. I suffered the hand to hang listless in his.

Then he took the other hand and as slowly and quietly laid that also by my side. He then laid his hand on my chest, feeling here and there. Then I felt the b.u.t.ton which closed my loose garment pulled gently, as if to detach it from the b.u.t.tonhole, and--quick as thought I was out of my hammock and upon him! I seized him in my arms, and together we rolled over and over upon the floor. He was no match for me, and in a moment I had him between my knees. As I sat astride his helpless young body, I gazed and gazed, and then I began to laugh. I laughed long and heartily, for the black was rubbed off in streaks, and there was enough of the original colour showing forth for me to recognise the Minion. As I tore the mat of wool from his head, the Minion's well-shaved poll stood out red and s.h.i.+ning.

"So it is you!" said I. "I thought you had been eaten cold long ago."

The Minion grinned, but did not speak.

"I've a great mind to throttle you," said I. "On second thoughts, I will, unless you tell me the truth about how you came here and what you want of me." By way of emphasizing my words, I gave the Minion's thorax a vicious squeeze. He gagged and choked and struggled to get free.

"Not until you tell me how you came here and who sent you," said I threateningly. The Minion made me understand, in his laconic speech, that if I would allow him to rise he would explain his actions. I got up and stood, as a precautionary measure, against the door through which he had entered my part of the veranda. I did not trust the young villain in the very slightest degree, but he was helpless, and so I waited until he spoke. By urging and prodding and threatening to choke him, and partly succeeding, I discovered that he had escaped from the vaudoux sect on the night of the fight. That he, unlike the rest of us, had sought the court. That Christophe was so pleased with this that he took him into his service. That he had told Christophe's spies that he hated the Bo's'n and myself, and only wanted to get rid of us, and that he would aid our double taking off in any way most agreeable to the King. That he had always suspected the Bo's'n and myself of having some of his jewels about our persons, and that the King had told him that if he found that we had some of them he would believe his story of his discovery in the cave, and that he would send a platoon of soldiers down to the coast to find the jewels and restore them to him.

"I suppose you think he would give them to you," said I. "But your jewels are gone." And then I told him how the Bo's'n had hidden them, and how the Skipper and I had buried them in the sea. "And you will never see them again," said I. "But what enrages me against you is that you were willing to try to come upon me unawares. Did the King order that drink for me?" The Minion, by short and jerky sentences, conveyed to me the idea that he did not know that I had had a drink of anything, but that a grand officer had taken him aside and told him he would find me in a sound sleep, and that he could get the jewels that I wore concealed about me if he came in at once. The Minion also told me that the liquor had probably been given to me that I might be taken to another place, away from all my friends, and that he had heard the King say that unless I completed the ring within four or five days I was to be thrown from the Grand Boucan, that my bones might bleach with those of the other unfortunates who lay by the thousands in that valley of horror. Then I took the Minion in my two hands and I shook him. I shook him until I thought that I should shake the teeth out of his head.

"Do you feel that, and that, and that?" asked I, as I gave him an extra shake. "Now, the very first time that I catch you meddling with my affairs I shall not only shake the breath out of your lungs, but I'll beat the wind out of your spying little carca.s.s. Now go!" I opened the wire door and kicked the Minion through into the next section of the veranda. He put up his black fists and began to cry, smearing the colouring matter all over his face until he looked so absurd that I could not refrain from laughing, angry as I was. While I stood there laughing at him, the farther door of the next compartment was opened and an arm in uniformed sleeve drew the lad in and closed the door and locked it. I returned to my own veranda, and soon I heard the wire door fasten with a click. I tried it, and found that I could not again open it. Then upon my ear broke the sound of wails. Sobs, groans, shrieks, and howls rent the air, and I laughed with fiendish glee.

"You see what a nice time you'll have between them and me," I called as loudly as I could. "Don't try it again, for there will be nothing to beat when I have got through with you."

And now I turned over in my hammock and went to sleep. I argued, that if they really intended to kill me I had better get some sleep when and how I could, to be ready for--I knew not what.

I awoke much refreshed. I saw from the long shadows in the garden below me that it must be later than I thought. I sprang from my hammock, determined to show some interest in the making of the ring, and thus deceive those who came to my chamber. I knew less than nothing about work such as this that I had offered to perform, but I decided to set about my fraudulent exhibit at once. I went to the door and tried to open it; as I had suspected, it was fastened on the outside. I then began to pound upon it. After making a tremendous noise, I heard the shuffling of feet, and an undersized negro turned the key and opened the door a crack. I jumped upon him and hurled him from the door, pus.h.i.+ng it wide, whereupon I confronted three of Christophe's famed body guard. So this was the way that they proceeded! I saw that they simply wanted to discover if I was one of the docile kind. I proved the contrary very quickly. I began to storm and rage. I pointed to the table within my room, and asked how I could follow the commands of the King if I were not allowed fire to ignite the wick of my lamp. I said that I had been pounding on the door for hours. What was the matter with their ears that they could not hear me? The men looked at me with astonishment. Then they gave an order to the old negro, who quickly disappeared. While he was gone I worked myself into such a state of rage that my guard stood gazing open-mouthed. It was very exhausting, as when the person whom the old negro had been despatched to bring returned with him I was forced to repeat the entire performance, for this was the interpreter.

After my rage was quite exhausted, and my arms ached painfully from my having thrashed them round my head like the arms of a windmill, the interpreter turned to the guard and told them what I desired. The old negro was sent for a light, and I closed my door with a bang in the face of the guard, and settled down to my work. I felt confident that I should be able to produce nothing, but I held the metal before the flame, put the pipe in my mouth, and began to blow. I did not dare take my ring from beneath my clothes, for I feared that in the corner of some adjacent room there was a spy set to watch me, and it was not part of my plan that Christophe should know that I carried a ready-made symbol about with me. I found that the metal melted easily under the pipe. I allowed it to get partly cool, and then began to fas.h.i.+on it with my pincers into somewhat near the size and shape of the ring. I was much pleased with myself, and, after about an hour's work, I came to the conclusion that I had done pretty well for a novice. However creditable it was, I knew that that was not the sort of work that Christophe wanted. He required the smooth polish, the delicate arabesque, the exquisite symmetry, the perfect setting of those wonderful eyes, the expression of the face half human, half grotesque, and with a beastliness of vision that I can not describe, but which seemed to permeate the whole. Remembering Lacelle's horror of the ring as a symbol, I covered it with my handkerchief, thinking that if she saw it when she came to serve me she would be so terrified that she might never come to my aid again. I wondered why Christophe should care so much for the original ring--whether it was that blind devotion which every one who had ever come in contact with Mauresco had shared for that hypnotic personality, or whether Christophe himself was tainted with the love of fetish wors.h.i.+p. This latter idea, however, was contradicted by the fact of his having built within his palace an Anglican church. This much I surmised: The King evidently thought that the ring held some occult power, and I could account for his anxiety to possess one, the counterpart of Mauresco's own, only on the supposition that he felt a.s.sured of its supernatural qualities.

My stay in this delightful spot would have been satisfactory enough had I not been anxious about our future, and had I been able to see Cynthia.

Each day when my guard came into my room he cast a scrutinizing glance at the table where the lamp and the metal lay, but I had always the handkerchief thrown over them, so that his curiosity was never rewarded. Four days had now pa.s.sed, and I had done little more than heat the metal and try to bend it into the shape of a circle, which bore no more resemblance to the original design than would any bit of carelessly twisted iron.

This, as I have said, was the fourth day. I did not wish the task to seem too easily accomplished, as I might be suspected of producing a ring that I had stolen and not made. Each morning when the old servant came in to bring me my breakfast I arose from the table, hurriedly blew out the lamp, threw my handkerchief over the awkward attempt at ring making, and seated myself on the balcony to sip my coffee and eat my bread. On this last morning I had grown a little careless, and had lost myself in speculations as to what a pleasure it would be to return once more to G.o.d's country, when I heard a chuckle. I jumped to my feet, but it was too late. The old man had twitched the handkerchief from the materials which I was pretending to use toward gaining my liberty. He held the ring in his grimy paw, and examined it as if he had every right in the world to do so. I sprang upon him and kicked him all across the chamber, and out into the pa.s.sage, down which he ran howling with pain.

The interpreter came to see me later, and explained to me in low tones that he was sorry that I had used such harsh measures, for the old man was a favourite with Christophe--his half brother, in fact--and he feared for the result.

"Very well, then," said I. "Let the result be what it will. I do not intend to be spied upon any longer. It is quite easy to make such a ring as the King wants, and that I will show you to-morrow morning if I may be taken before him."

"If he lets you remain so long," said the good interpreter, sighing. In that sigh I thought that I read my doom.

He looked with curiosity at my work, but shook his head.

"They have all of them got as far as that," he said. "Many much further.

As an evidence, recall the ring which Christophe wears upon his thumb.

There has never been so good a one made, and yet it is as far from being the strange, mysterious thing that Mauresco gave the King, as sunlight is different from starlight. That symbol which Mauresco gave to the great Christophe contained eyes of jewels, the like of which I believe have never been seen in this world. The symbol is said to have come from the far East, and to possess the power of magic. I hear that the King can not understand its failure to protect him since his favourite Mauresco left him. I remember the day that Mauresco took it from his finger and gave it to the King. Mauresco's fingers were thin and bony.

The ring was a mile too large. He wore it on his thumb, with a smaller and thicker ring to keep the symbol in place. He told the King that it would preserve him from all harm. That he would be successful so long as he should wear it or keep it near his person. Mauresco had free entrance to the King's chambers at all times. Sometimes he slept in the room adjoining that of the King. He often talked mysteriously of his being called hence at some near day, but he impressed Christophe with the fact of the power of protection, even if he was forced to leave him, which the ring would possess for him. And there is undoubtedly that power in the ring of Mauresco, wherever it may be at this day. After Mauresco presented the King with the ring his successes began to be phenomenal.

He was the victor in every battle that he fought, but since he awoke one morning to find Mauresco gone, and to discover later, in looking at it closely, that his ring was not the symbol which Mauresco had given him, he has been less successful. Its effect upon his character has shown itself in a hundred different ways. He is more irritable. Where formerly he threw one or two men from the Grand Boucan in the week, now there is rarely a day when some life does not pay the penalty."

"Irritable" I thought a rather modest word for the temper which induced this wholesale slaughter.

I wondered why the interpreter should talk so familiarly with me, but I argued that he was glad to speak his native tongue once more. I discovered that he had been born in America of African parents. That in going to sea with his master, an old sea captain, the s.h.i.+p had been set upon by one of Dessalines' vessels of war and sunk, the whites being drowned and killed. This one man swam ash.o.r.e and had drifted into the army, and then, after various vicissitudes which it would require too long a time to recount, to Christophe's palace. Here he had been for ten years or more. His value as an interpreter was fully recognised, and he had been kept by Christophe for this purpose.

I had not seen anything of the Queen in the short time that I was honoured by the King's hospitality. She was away, I heard from the interpreter, at a place called the "Queen's Delight." The King had many beautiful places among his possessions. They were cotton plantations, sugar estates, and the like. Sometimes the black Queen longed to escape from the magnificence which must have overwhelmed her, not to mention the presence of certain ladies whose neighbourhood made her life uncomfortable, if not unendurable. At such times she would go to "The Victory," "The Glory," "The King's Beautiful View," "The Queen's Delight," or "The Conquest." These places were at some distance from Sans Souci, but they were all situated in the "Artibonite," one of the most beautiful and fertile valleys in the world. Here the poor woman, whose devotion to the famous, as well as infamous, King was phenomenal (I judge from what I saw later), could live in peace, and, if she were alone, her solitude was at least undisturbed by jealousies, friction, or the sounds of misery which the black King caused each day by imperative orders, whose right was never questioned.

The interpreter told me that the people were growing restless, that already there had been some revolutions about "Le Cap," and there was news of uprisings to the south of us. I looked to this as a means of rescue, but then, I argued, we may fall into hands as bad as, if not worse than, Christophe's, and I dared not pray for a change.

"I wonder why they allow you to talk so freely with me!" said I. "I seem to be a prisoner, and I can not understand why they should let you come in and talk with me in a language which they do not speak themselves."

The interpreter shook his head.

"I do not know," said he, "unless they want you to feel secure, and that they are friendly to you."

It was growing dusk now, and the room and veranda were dark, but I could not help seeing that there was a slight movement on the porch outside. I found that it was a black servant who was engaged in raising the jalousies. His back was toward me, but I paid some attention to him.

"Do you think he intends to let me go," asked I, "or is the ring making only a pretense to kill me?"

"I think----"