The Texan Star Part 10

Cos sank back in his chair and laughed. Santa Anna laughed. The two laughs were unlike, one heavy and angry, and the other light and gay, but their effect upon Ned was precisely the same. He felt a cold shiver at the roots of his hair, but he was yet silent, and stood before them waiting.

"You can go," said Santa Anna. "You have missed your opportunity and it will not come again."

Ned turned away without a word. The Tlascalans were waiting at the door of the marquee, and he went with them. Once more he slept under the stars.

CHAPTER VII

THE DUNGEON UNDER THE SEA

Ned, early the next morning, saw Santa Anna with his brilliant escort ride away toward the capital, while General Cos resumed his march to Vera Cruz. Almonte did not reappear at all, and the boy surmised that he was under orders to join the dictator.

Ned continued on foot among the Tlascalans. Cos offered him no kindness whatever, and his pride would not let him ask for it. But when he looked at his sore and bleeding feet he always thought of the patient burro that he had lost. They marched several more days, and the road dropped down into the lowlands, into the tierra caliente. The air grew thick and hot and Ned, already worn, felt an almost overpowering languor. The vegetation became that of the tropics. Then, pa.s.sing through marshes and sand dunes, they reached Vera Cruz, the chief port of Mexico, a small, unhealthy city, forming a semicircle about a mile in length about the bay.

Ned saw little of Vera Cruz, as they reached it at nightfall, but the approach through alternations of stagnant marsh and shifting sand affected him most unpleasantly. Offensive odors a.s.sailed him and he remembered that this was a stronghold of cholera and yellow fever. He ate rough food with the Tlascalans again, and then Cos sent for him.

"You have reached your home," said the General. "You will occupy the largest and most expensive house in the place, and my men will take you there at once. Do you not thank me?"

"I do not," replied Ned defiantly. Yet he knew that he had much to dread.

"You are an ungrateful young dog of a Texan," said Cos, laughing maliciously, "but I will confer my hospitality upon you, nevertheless.

You will go with these men and so I bid you farewell."

Four barefooted soldiers took Ned down through the dirty and evil-smelling streets of the city. He wondered where they were going, but he would not ask. They came presently to the sea and Ned saw before him, about a half mile away, a somber and ma.s.sive pile rising upon a rocky islet. He knew that it was the great and ancient Castle of San Juan de Ulua. In the night, with only the moon's rays falling upon its walls, it looked ma.s.sive and forbidding beyond all description. That cold shiver again appeared at the roots of the boy's hair. He knew now the meaning of all this talk of Santa Anna and Cos about their hospitality. He was to be buried in the gloomiest fortress of the New World. It was a fate that might well make one so young shudder many times. But he said not a word in protest. He got silently into a boat with the soldiers, and they were rowed to the rocky islet on which stood the huge castle.

Not much time was wasted on Ned. He was taken before the governor, his name and age were registered, and then two of the prison guards, one going before and the other behind, led him down a narrow and steep stairway. It reminded him of his descent into the pyramid, but here the air seemed damper. They went down many steps and came into a narrow corridor upon which a number of iron doors opened. The guards unlocked one of the doors, pushed Ned in, relocked the door on him, and went away.

Ned staggered from the rude thrust, but, recovering himself stood erect, and tried to accustom his eyes to the half darkness. He stood in a small, square room with walls of hard cement or plaster. The roof of the same material was high, and in the center of it was a round hole, through which came all the air that entered the cell. In a corner was a rude pallet of blankets spread upon gra.s.s. There was no window. The place was hideous and lonely beyond the telling. He had not felt this way in the pyramid.

Ned now had suffered more than any boy could stand. He threw himself upon the blanket, and only pride kept him from shedding tears. But he was nevertheless relaxed completely, and his body shook as if in a chill. He lay there a long time. Now and then, he looked up at the walls of his prison, but always their sodden gray looked more hideous than ever. He listened but heard nothing. The stillness was absolute and deadly. It oppressed him. He longed to hear anything that would break it; anything that would bring him into touch with human life and that would drive away the awful feeling of being shut up forever.

The air in the dungeon felt damp to Ned. He was glad of it, because damp meant a touch of freshness, but by and by it became chilly, too. The bed was of two blankets, and, lying on one and drawing the other over him, he sought sleep. He fell after a while into a troubled slumber which was half stupor, and from which he awakened at intervals. At the third awakening he heard a noise. Although his other faculties were deadened partially by mental and physical exhaustion, his hearing was uncommonly acute, concentrating in itself the strength lost by the rest. The sound was peculiar, half a swish and half a roll, and although not loud it remained steady. Ned listened a long time, and then, all at once, he recognized its cause.

He was under the sea, and it was the rolling of the waves over his head that he heard. He was in one of the famous submarine dungeons of the Castle of San Juan de Ulua. This was the hospitality of Cos and Santa Anna, and it was a hospitality that would hold him fast. Never would he take any word of warning to the Texans. Buried under the sea! He shivered all over and a cold sweat broke out upon him.

He lay a long time until some of the terror pa.s.sed. Then he sat up, and looked at the round hole in the cement ceiling. It was about eight inches in diameter and a considerable stream of fresh air entered there.

But the pipe or other channel through which it came must turn to one side, as the sea was directly over his head. He could not reach the hole, and even could he have reached it, he was too large to pa.s.s through it. He had merely looked at it in a kind of vague curiosity.

Feeling that every attempt to solve anything would be hopeless, he fell asleep again, and when he awoke a man with a lantern was standing beside him. It was a soldier with his food, the ordinary Mexican fare, and water. Another soldier with a musket stood at the door. There was no possible chance of a dash for liberty. Ned ate and drank hungrily, and asked the soldier questions, but the man replied only in monosyllables or not at all. The boy desisted and finished in silence the meal which might be either breakfast, dinner or supper for all he knew. Then the soldier took the tin dishes, withdrew with his comrade, and the door was locked again.

Ned was left to silence and solitude. But he felt that he must now move about, have action of some kind. He threw himself against the door in an effort to shake it, but it did not move a jot. Then he remembered that he had seen cell doors in a row, and that other prisoners might be on either side of him. He kicked the heavy cement walls, but they were not conductors of sound and no answer came.

He grew tired after a while, but the physical exertion had done him good. The languid blood flowed in a better tide in his veins and his mind became more keen. There must be some way out of this. Youth could not give up hope. It was incredible, impossible that he should remain always here, shut off from that wonderful free world outside. The roll of the sea over his head made reply.

After a while he began to walk around his cell, around and around and around, until his head grew dizzy, and he staggered. Then he would reverse and go around and around and around the other way. He kept this up until he could scarcely stand. He lay down and tried to sleep again.

But he must have slept a long time before, and sleep would not come. He lay there on the blankets, staring at the walls and not seeing them, until the soldiers came again with his food. Ned ate and drank in silence. He was resolved not to ask a question, and, when the soldiers departed, not a single word had been spoken.

The next day Ned had fever, the day after that he was worse, and on the third day he became unconscious. Then he pa.s.sed through a time, the length of which he could not guess, but it was a most singular period.

It was crowded with all sorts of strange and shifting scenes, some colored brilliantly, and vivid, others vague and fleeting as moonlight through a cloud. It was wonderful, too, that he should live again through things that he had lived already. He was back with Mr. Austin.

He saw the kind and generous face quite plainly and recognized his voice. He saw Benito and Juana, Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl; he was on the pyramid and in it, and he saw the silver cone of Orizaba. Then he shifted suddenly back to Texas and the wild border, the Comanche and the buffalo.

His life now appeared to have no order. Time turned backward. Scenes occurred out of their sequence. Often they would appear for a second or third time. It was the most marvelous jumble that ever ran through any kaleidoscope. His brain by and by grew dizzy with the swift interplay of action and color. Then everything floated away and blackness and silence came. Nor could he guess how long this period endured, but when he came out of it he felt an extraordinary weakness and a la.s.situde that was of both mind and body.

His eyes were only half open and he did not care to open them more. He took no interest in anything. But he became slowly conscious that he had emerged from somewhere out of a vast darkness, and that he had returned to his life in the dungeon under the sea.

His eyes opened fully by automatic process rather than by will, and the heavy dark of the dungeon was grateful then, because they, too, like all the rest of him, were very weak. Yet a little light came in as usual with the fresh air from above, and by and by he lifted one hand and looked at it. It was a strange hand, very white, very thin, with the blue veins standing out from the back.

It was almost the hand of a skeleton. He did not know it. Certainly it did not belong to him. He looked at it wondering, and then he did a strange thing. It was his left hand that he was holding before him. He put his right hand upon it, drew that hand slowly over the fingers, then the palm and along the wrist until he reached his shoulder. It was his hand after all. His languid curiosity satisfied he let the hand drop back by his body. It fell like a stone. After a while he touched his head, and found that his hair was cut closely. It seemed thin, too.

He realized that he had been ill, and very ill indeed he must have been to be so weak. He wondered a little how long it had been since he first lapsed into unconsciousness, and then the wonder ceased. Whether the time had been long or short it did not matter. But he shut his eyes and listened for the last thing that he remembered. He heard it presently, that low roll of the sea. He was quite sure of one thing. He was in the same submarine dungeon of the famous Castle of San Juan de Ulua.

His door was opened, and a man, not a soldier, came in with soup in a tin basin. He uttered a low exclamation, when he saw that Ned was conscious, but he made no explanations. Nor did Ned ask him anything.

But he ate the soup with a good appet.i.te, and felt very much stronger.

His mind, too, began to wake up. He knew that he was going to get well, but it occurred to him that it might be better for him to conceal his returning strength. With a relaxed watch he would have more chance to escape.

The soup had a soothing effect, and his mind shared with his body in the improvement. It was obvious that they had not intended for him to die or they would not have taken care of him in his illness. The shaven head was proof. But he saw nothing that he could do. He must wait upon the action of his jailers. Having come to this conclusion he lay upon his pallet, and let vague thoughts float through his head as they would.

About three hours after they had brought him his soup he heard a scratching at the keyhole of his door. He was not too languid to be surprised. He did not think it likely that any of his jailers would come back so soon, and heretofore the key had always turned in the lock without noise.

Ned sat up. The scratching continued for a few moments, and the door swung open. A tall, thin figure of a man entered, the door closed behind him, and with some further scratching he locked it. Then the man turned and stared at Ned. Ned stared with equal intentness at him.

The figure that he saw was thin and six feet four; the face that he saw was thin and long. The face was also bleached to an indescribable dead white, the effect of which was heightened by the thick and fiery red hair that crowned a head, broad and shaped finely. His hair even in the dark seemed to be vital, the most vital part of him. Ned fancied that his eyes were blue, although in the dimness he could not tell. But he knew that this was no Mexican. A member of his own race stood before him.

"Well," said Ned.

"Well?" replied the man in a singularly soft and pleasant voice.

"Who are you and what do you want?"

"To the first I am Obed White; to the second I want to talk to you, and I would append as a general observation that I am harmless. Evil to him that would evil do."

"The quotation is wrong," said Ned, smiling faintly. "It is 'evil to him who evil thinks.'"

"Perhaps, but I have improved upon it. I add, for your further information, that I am your nearest neighbor. I occupy the magnificent concrete parlor next door to you, where I live a life of undisturbed ease, but I have concluded at last to visit you, and here I am. How I came I will explain later. But I am glad I am with you. One crowded hour of glorious company is worth a hundred years in a solitary cell. I may have got that a little wrong, too, but it sounds well."

He sat down in Turkish fashion on the floor, folding a pair of extremely long legs beneath him, and regarded Ned with a slow, quizzical smile.

For the life of him the boy could not keep from smiling back. With the nearer view he could see now that the eyes were blue and honest.

"You may think I'm a Mexican," continued the man in his mellow, pleasant voice, "but I'm not. I'm a Texan--by the way of Maine. As I told you, I live in the next tomb, the one on the right. I'm a watch, clock and tool maker by trade and a bookworm by taste. Because of the former I've come into your cell, and because of the latter I use the ornate language that you hear. But of both those subjects more further on. Meanwhile, I suppose it's you who have been yelling in here at the top of your voice and disturbing a row of dungeons accustomed to peace and quiet."

"It was probably I, but I don't remember anything about it."

"It's not likely that you would, as I see you've had some one of the seven hundred fevers that are customary along this coast. Yours must have been of the shouting kind, as I heard you clean through the wall, and, once when I was listening at the keyhole, you made a noise like the yell of a charging army."

"You don't mean to say that you've been listening at the keyhole of my cell."