The Forge in the Forest Part 15

When at length we got beyond the influence of the tide, des Saumons was a shallow, sparkling, singing stream, its bed aglow with ruddy-coloured rocks. Here I laid aside my paddle and thrust the canoe onwards by means of my long pole of white spruce, while Mizpah had nought to do but lean back and watch the sh.o.r.es creep by.

At the head of tide we had stopped to drink and to breathe a little.

And there, seeing an old man working in front of a solitary cabin, I had deemed it safe to approach him and purchase a few eggs. After this we kept on till an hour past noon, when I stopped in a bend of the river, at the foot of a perpendicular cliff of red rock some seventy or eighty feet in height. Here was a thicket wherein we might hide both the canoe and ourselves if necessary. The canoe I hid at once, that--being a matter of the more time. Then we both set ourselves to gathering dry sticks, for it seemed to me we might here risk the luxury of a fire, with a dinner of roasted eggs.

We had gathered but a handful or two, when I heard a crashing in the underbrush at the top of the cliff; and in a second, catching Mizpah by the hand, I had dragged her into hiding. Through a screen of dark and drooping hemlock boughs we gazed intently at the top of the cliff,--and I noted, without thinking worth while to remedy my oversight, that I had forgotten to release Mizpah's hand.

The crashing noise, mingled with some sharp outcries of rage and fear, continued for several minutes. Then there was silence; and I saw at the brink a pointed cap stuck full of feathers, and the glare of a black and yellow cloak.

"Grul!" I whispered, in astonishment; and I felt an answering surprise in the tightened clasp of Mizpah's hand.

A moment more and Grul peered over the brink, scrutinizing the upper and lower reaches of the river. He held a coil of rope, one end of which he had made fast to a stout birch tree which leaned well out over the edge.

"What is he going to do?" murmured Mizpah, with wide eyes.

"We'll soon see!" said I, marvelling mightily.

The apparition vanished for some minutes, then suddenly reappeared close to the brink. He carried, as lightly as if it had been a bundle of straw, the body of a man, so bound about with many cords as to remind me of nothing so much as a fly in the death wrappings of some black and yellow spider. To add to the semblance, the victim was dressed in black,--and a closer scrutiny showed that he was a priest.

"It is the Black Abbe, none other," I murmured, in a kind of awe; while Mizpah shrank closer to my side with a sense of impending tragedies.

"Grul has come to his revenge!" I added.

In a business fashion Grul knotted the end of his coil of rope about the prisoner's body, the feathers and flowers in his cap, meanwhile, nodding with a kind of satisfied rhythm. Then he lowered the swathed and helpless but silently writhing figure a little way from the brink, governing the rope with ease by means of a half-twist about a jutting stump. There was something indescribably terrifying in the sight of the fettered form swinging over the deep, with shudderings and twistings, and the safe edge not a yard length above him. I pitied him in spite of myself; and I put a hand over Mizpah's eyes that she might not see what was coming. But she pushed my hand away, and stared in a fascination.

For some moments Grul gazed down in silence upon his victim.

I fancied I caught the soul-piercing flame of his mad eyes; but this was doubtless due to my imagination rather than to the excellence of my vision. Suddenly the victim, his fort.i.tude giving way with the sense of the deadly gulf beneath him, and with the pitiless inquisition of that gaze bent down upon him, broke out into wild pleadings, desperate entreaties, screams of anguished fear, till I myself trembled at it, and Mizpah covered her ears.

"Oh, stop it! save him!" she whispered to me, with white lips. But I shook my head. I could not reach the top of the cliff. And moreover, I had small doubt that Grul's vengeance was just. Nevertheless, had I been at the top of the cliff instead of the bottom, I had certainly put a stop to it.

After listening for some moments, with a sort of pleasant attention, to the victim's ravings, Grul lay flat, thrust his head and shoulders far out over the brink, and reached down a long arm. I saw the gleam of a knife in his darting hand; and I drew a quick breath of relief.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Grul lay flat, thrust his head and shoulders far out over the brink, and reached down a long arm.]

"That ends it," said I; and I shifted my position, which I had not done, as it seemed to me, for an eternity. The victim's screaming had ceased before the knife touched him.

But I was vastly mistaken in thinking it the end.

"He has not killed him," muttered Mizpah.

And then I saw that Grul had merely cut the cord which bound his captive's hands. The Abbe was swiftly freeing himself; and Grul, meanwhile, was lowering him down the face of the cliff. When the unhappy captive had descended perhaps twenty feet, his tormentor secured the rope, and again lay down with his head and shoulders leaning over the brink, his hands playing carelessly with the knife.

The Abbe, with many awkward gestures, presently got his limbs free, and the cord which had enwound him fell trailing like a snake to the cliff foot. Then, with clawing hands and sprawling feet, he clutched at the smooth, inexorable rock, in the vain hope of getting a foothold. It was pitiful to see his mad struggles, and the quiet of the face above looking down upon them with unimpa.s.sioned interest; till at last, exhausted, the poor wretch ceased to struggle, and looked up at his persecutor with the silence of despair.

Presently Grul spoke,--for the first time, as far as we knew.

"You know me, Monsieur l'Abbe, I suppose," he remarked, in tone of placid courtesy.

"I know you, Francois de Grul," came the reply, gasped from a dry mouth.

"Then further explanation, I think you will allow, is not needed. I will bid you farewell, and a pleasant journey," went on the same civil modulations of Grul's voice. At the same moment he reached down with his shining blade as if to sever the rope.

"I did not do it! I did not do it!" screamed the Abbe, once more clutching convulsively at the smooth rock. "I swear to you by all the saints!"

Grul examined the edge of his knife. He tested it with his thumb. I saw him glance along it critically. Then he touched it, ever so lightly, to the rope, so that a single strand parted.

"Swear to me," he said, in the mildest voice, "swear to me, Monsieur l'Abbe, that you had no part in it. Swear by the Holy Ghost, Monsieur l'Abbe!"

But the Abbe was silent.

"Swear me that oath now, good Abbe," repeated the voice, with a kind of courteous insistence.

"I will not swear!" came the ghastly whisper in reply.

At this an astonishing change pa.s.sed over the face that peered down from the brink. Its sane tranquillity became a very paroxysm of rage.

The grotesque cap was dashed aside, and Grul sprang to his feet, waving his arms, stamping and leaping, his gaudy cloak a-flutter, his long white hair and beard twisting as if with a sentient fury of their own.

He was so close upon the brink that I held my breath, expecting him to be plunged headlong. But all at once the paroxysm died out as suddenly as it had begun; and throwing himself down in his former position, Grul once more touched the knife edge to the rope, severing fibre by fibre, slowly, slowly.

With the first touch upon the rope rose the Abbe's voice again, but no longer in vain entreaty and coward wailings. I listened with a great awe, and a sob broke from Mizpah's lips. It was the prayer for the pa.s.sing soul. We heard it poured forth in steady tones but swift, against the blank face of the cliff. And we waited to see the rope divided at a stroke.

But to our astonishment, Grul sprang to his feet again, in another fury, and flung aside his knife. With twitching hands he loosened the rope and began lowering his victim rapidly, till, within some twenty feet of the bottom, the Abbe found a footing, and stopped. Then Grul tossed the whole rope down upon him.

"Go!" he cried in his chanting, bell-like tones. "The cup of your iniquity is not yet full. You shall not die till your soul is so black in every part that you will go down straight into h.e.l.l!" And turning abruptly, he vanished.

The Black Abbe, as if seized with a faintness, leaned against the rock for some minutes. Then, freeing himself from the rope, he climbed down to the foot of the cliff, and moved off slowly by the water's edge toward Cobequid. We trembled lest he should see us, or the canoe,--I having no stomach for an attack upon one who had just gone through so dreadful a torment. But his face, neck, ears, were like a sweating candle; and his contracted eyes seemed scarce to see the ground before his feet.

"Seemed," I say. Yet even in this supreme moment, he tricked me.

Chapter XVI

I Cool My Adversaries' Courage

We now, having been so long delayed, gave up our purpose of a fire, and contented ourselves with the eggs raw. I also cut some very thin slices of the smoked and salted bacon, to eat with our black bread, for I knew that, working as we did, we needed strong food. But Mizpah would not touch the uncooked bacon, though its savour, I a.s.sured her, was excellent. We had but well begun our meal, and I was stooping over the hard loaf, when a startled exclamation from Mizpah made me look up.

Close behind us stood Grul, impatiently twisting his little white rod with the scarlet head. His eyes were somewhat more piercing, more like blue flame, than ordinarily, but otherwise he looked as usual. So little mark remained upon him of the scene just enacted. Both wise and mad! I thought.

It struck me that he was pleased with the impression he so plainly made on us both, and for a moment he looked upon us in silence. Then swiftly pointing his stick at us, he said sharply:--

"Fools! Do you wait here? But the hound is on the trail. Do you dream he did not see you?"

Then he turned to go. But Mizpah was at his side instantly, catching him by the wrist, and imploring him to tell us which way her child had been carried.

Grul stopped and looked down upon her with austere dignity, but without replying. Pa.s.sionately Mizpah entreated him, not to be denied; and at last, lightly but swiftly removing her fingers from his wrist, he muttered oracularly:--

"They will take him to the sea that is within the heart of the land!

But go!" he repeated with energy, "or you will not go far!" and with steps so smooth that they seemed not to touch the ground, he went past the cliff foot. His gaudy mantle shone for a moment, and he was gone.

The ominous urgency of his warning rang in our ears, and we were not slow in making our own departure.