Humphrey Bold Part 33

"For G.o.d's sake, loose him!" I cried, turning to the negro.

G.o.d knows Cludde had done me harm enough; but for the working of a gracious Providence he had ruined my life; but all remembrance of this fled from me as I beheld his pitiful plight and mortal terror, and heard his altered voice screaming for mercy.

"I know him; he was once a friend of mine," I cried, and G.o.d forgive me the lie. "Let him go; don't torture him any longer."

Noah laughed in my face.

"What for me let him go?" he said. "'Cos he is a white man? He is a white debbil; he shall hab his lesson."

"But it is murder. You would not murder him?"

"And he murder me! De whip cut me twenty times, and if I die, what den? Noah is only a black man: it is not murder to kill a black man! Dey kill me: I lib for teach him lesson."

"Let him go," I cried, "and I will give you money--twenty dollars."

"No!"

"Thirty--forty dollars!"

"No!"

"Forty dollars is a great big lot," said Uncle Moses, who had joined us and saw my desperate eagerness to save the man.

"No!" said Noah again, his mouth tightening with inflexible determination.

"Uncle Moses," I said, "can't you bend him? I will give anything if he will but spare the man. I am a king's officer; you know that what I promise I will do; and he is your mistress' cousin."

"Noah, my son," said the old negro, "listen to Ma.s.sa. S'pose you burn de white man, what good to you? He die, oh course, and nebber can do nuffin' to black mans no mo'; but you will only be pleased a lill tiny while, and if you let him go you gwine hab dollars what will last long, long time."

"No!" returned Noah. "I will teach him lesson, and be pleased for ebber and ebber."

And he walked away and began to gather up some sticks and carry them to the tree where Cludde, utterly exhausted, seemed to have fainted away.

I asked Moses what sum would purchase Noah's freedom, ready to spend my last penny to prevent the hideous scene for which preparation was being made. He told me five hundred dollars, and I bade him go to Noah and promise that the money should be his as soon as I got back to Spanish Town. He returned downcast from his mission.

"He say dat is all talk," he said. "It is for bimeby, but he want rebenge now; black man don't fink nuffin' ob bimeby."

"But can't we give him something now as earnest of what is to come?

There are our muskets; they will be useful to him, and are worth some dollars; offer them to him, and a.s.sure him on the word of an Englishman that he shall have the price of his freedom as soon as ever I can get back to my friends."

He went away with this message, but came back again unsuccessful.

"He say hab plenty guns, and what good guns widout any powder and shots? He hain't got no powder; de guns hain't worth more'n old sticks. Hain't Ma.s.sa got no money? If he seed de look of silver, now, dat would be somet'ing 'spectable."

But my pockets were empty; all my money had been taken by the buccaneers. And then, with a start of recollection, I remembered the crown piece that hung by a riband about my neck, and with the thought a flash of inspiration shot through my mind. I ran forward to the spot where Noah was already heaping the sticks for the fire, and, tearing open my shirt, I displayed the silver coin.

"Look, Noah," I cried, "you shall have this, and five hundred dollars beside by and by. Listen while I tell you about it."

And then I told how, ever since I had worn that coin about my neck, I had had the best of good fortune. It had brought me friends, and raised me from a lowly position. I had been imprisoned and escaped; I had been shot at, without scathe. I had gained what I prized most in all the world. I fear I exaggerated; certainly I had never before ascribed any talismanic power to the coin which I had kept for no other purpose than to humiliate the man who had humiliated me. But in this extremity I saw the possibility of working on the negro's superst.i.tious mind, and I would have racked my invention to give the piece the most marvelous virtues under heaven.

But I had said enough. With a stare of wonderment Noah took the coin in his hand, turned it over, examined it, handled it as though it was a sacred object. I lifted the string from my neck.

"There, take it; 'tis yours," I said, handing it to him, and then, by a happy afterthought, I myself slipped it over the negro's head.

He saw the white coin lying on his dusky breast, a smile overspread his face, most wondrously obliterating all the lines of malice and hate; and then, turning swiftly, he went to the tree, with me at his heels, and cut the cords.

Cludde fell fainting into my arms, and as I laid him on the ground and begged for water (not a drop had pa.s.sed his lips for thirty-six hours), I wondered whether he would ever know how I had paid the stored-up interest I had vowed to pay.

Chapter 26: We Hold A Council Of War.

For some time I was in doubt whether the agonies Cludde had suffered would not prove fatal. He lay long unconscious, and when his eyes at last opened he shrieked aloud, with so wild a look in his eyes that I feared his reason was gone. But I, who had not left his side since he was loosed from the tree, spoke to him quietly, a.s.suring him that he was safe, and gave him water to drink, and by and by he was soothed to quietude and slept like a tired child. And then I lay beside him, worn out with the stress and agitations of this long day, and together (strange chance!) we who had been mortal enemies found repose on the bosom of mother earth.

Night came down upon us, and the stars were blinking in the dark vault above when we awoke. Uncle Moses brought us food--birds the negroes had snared and roasted, and root plants they had grubbed up; and as we ate we talked.

"Bold," said Cludde huskily, "you've returned good for evil. You don't want my thanks; you hate me."

"I wonder if I do," I said, and pondering the matter, I came to the conclusion that I rather despised than hated him; but I did not tell him so. "How did you come to this strait?" I asked him.

"I came up to see Lucy, and happened to arrive just after that n.i.g.g.e.r had been caught. Vetch was flogging him, told me he was an insolent and lazy scoundrel, and I agreed he ought to be taught a lesson--"

"Even if it killed him," I interrupted.

"Why, he's only a black fellow," said Cludde.

"And black fellows are flesh and blood, like you and me."

"But they haven't our feelings; come now, you won't say that?"

I would not argue with: him, and he went on--"I came to the house, and Lucy refused to see me. I hated you then, Bold; Vetch told me that you had been up, and I guessed you had put a spoke in my wheel."

"I never saw Mistress Lucy," I said.

"What? Why, Vetch told me that you had proposed to her, and been sent away with a flea in your ear."

"That was a lie. But go on: I will tell you about myself presently."

"Well, I plucked up courage to go to the house again, and this time I was admitted and saw Lucy, and by heaven, Bold, I had no inkling of what had been going on."

"You might have guessed, knowing Vetch, whom your own father had sent out here," I said.

"But not for this," he said eagerly. "I beg you to believe me, Bold. I know there is much against me, but after that business at the turnpike I told Vetch I would countenance no more tricks of that sort--though I own I helped to arrange your kidnapping at Bristowe."

"'Twas an insult to Mistress Lucy to send Vetch out here," I said, refusing to compromise on this matter. "But go on, let me hear how you came to this."

"Lucy told me what tricks Vetch had been playing, and begged me to help her to get away from him, and burst into tears, and I can't stand a woman's tears. I sought Vetch, and I told him that he had gone too far, and bade him remember that, whether she married me or not, she is my cousin, and I wouldn't have her worried.

"'You've got my father's power of attorney,' I said to him, 'but that don't authorize you to do what you are doing.'