The Voyage of the Aurora Part 18

Yet, in spite of all this, and notwithstanding the terrible example which had been made of the unhappy Pedro, George clung tenaciously to the idea, and never let slip an opportunity to do anything which in ever so slight a degree might contribute to his success when the time should come for the effort to be made. As time pa.s.sed on, and his knowledge of the Spanish language became perfected, his uniform industry and good conduct procured him many little indulgences; such as a few hours of release from field-labour now and then, in order that he might instead be despatched, duly provided with a "pa.s.s," on some errand or message, either to a neighbouring plantation or to Havana itself. These little journeys not only afforded him an opportunity--of which he made the most--of studying the physical geography of the island, but also of hunting for the precious plant by means of which he hoped to successfully hide his trail; and in this latter quest he was so far fortunate that he found at different times as many as eight of them, five of which he successfully transplanted to a favourable spot on the estate itself in such an out-of-the-way locality that he fervently hoped they would escape discovery.

The next task which he set himself--and Tom--was that of propitiating and making friends with the dogs which nightly guarded the estate; but in this they were wholly unsuccessful; the creatures had been too well trained, and they absolutely refused all overtures from men who wore the detested garb of slavery. The circ.u.mstance, however, that they were of white instead of negro blood was a point in our adventurers' favour, and George accidentally made the discovery that, probably in consequence of this circ.u.mstance, when he was able by any means to conceal the uniform he usually wore, the hounds, though still suspicious, were puzzled and undecided how to behave towards him.

In the meantime, whilst steadily cultivating the favour of the overseers by his unvarying industry and good conduct, he as sedulously cultivated the good-will and friendship of his fellow-slaves; and by the exercise of great tact and circ.u.mspection he gradually won from them, without exciting their slightest suspicion, such a ma.s.s of valuable information as quite decided him, when the time should come, to make his way inland and to the southward, rather than to the northward, the latter route, though that which would soonest enable him to reach the coast, being chiefly, in consequence of that circ.u.mstance, by far the most perilous one.

The next matter requiring attention, was the acquisition of arms of some description, with which the party could defend themselves in the event of their being pursued and overtaken. These, by a lucky chance, he was at length enabled to procure, in the shape of three cane-knives, weapons closely resembling a cutla.s.s as regards the length and curve of the blade, but provided merely with a wooden handle, instead of the metal guard usually fitted to the latter weapon. The same lucky chance which enabled him to secure these cane-knives--namely, the finding of a gold five-dollar piece on the road during one of his excursions into Havana-- also supplied him with the means of purchasing three coa.r.s.e canvas jackets, such as were commonly worn by the Cuban coasting seamen at that time, and with these he hoped to sufficiently disguise himself and his companions to avoid any inconvenient questioning on the road, when the time for the great attempt should arrive.

The auspicious moment arrived, as such moments frequently do, quite unexpectedly, and it came about in the following manner.

When George and his comrades had been in slavery a trifle over a year, a message reached the estate to the effect that a ship had that day arrived from Europe, in the cargo of which there were certain household articles that had been ordered expressly for the use of the planter's wife, and that, as they happened to be stowed on the top, and the ship had already begun to discharge, it was desirable that they should be sent for at once, in order that they might escape damage. This message reached the estate quite late in the evening, in fact it was within half an hour of the time for knocking off work for the night; but so impatient was the lady to see her new possessions, that she insisted upon their being sent for at once, and George, as the most trustworthy slave on the plantation, was ordered to take the mule-waggon and a couple of companions, and proceed into town forthwith to fetch them, so that they might be at the house and all ready for unloading by the first thing next morning. He was instructed that, as it would probably be very late, or rather, early next morning, before he returned, he was to drive the waggon down to the engine-house, and place it under the shed there for the remainder of the night, instead of driving up to the house, so that he might not disturb the occupants by the noise of his arrival.

Leicester at once saw that this errand would afford him probably the best opportunity he would ever have for the attempted escape; he therefore mentioned to the overseer that he thought Tom and Walford would be the most handy men he could take with him as helpers, and at once went off in an unconcerned manner, but with a well-a.s.sumed air of imperfectly concealed dissatisfaction at the prospect of his night journey, to harness up the mules. On his way to the stables he sought out Walford and the lad Tom, bidding them both be ready to go with him, and imparting to the latter his determination to take advantage of this opportunity to attempt their joint escape.

This done, he hurried away to the spot where he had concealed his treasured plants, and arrived there, only to find that they were gone.

Whether they had been discovered and destroyed by the overseers, or had been found and appropriated by some fellow-slave acquainted with their valuable properties, it was impossible to tell; the one indisputable fact was that the plants had vanished.

This was a most unfortunate circ.u.mstance, but George would not allow it to dishearten him; the fugitives would have several hours' start before the pursuit would commence, and then there was always the possibility that other specimens of the plant might be found.

Thinking thus, he slowly wended his way to the stable, where he harnessed up the mules, threw into the waggon a quant.i.ty of gra.s.s and cane-leaves, together with a canvas cover and rope, supposed to be required for packing and protecting the articles, and then drove to the hut, where Tom and Walford awaited him. The former, a very shrewd and intelligent young fellow, had immediately, upon being apprised by George of his intention, hurried off to prepare "supper," recognising the great importance of a good substantial meal before starting, especially in view of the uncertainty as to when they would be able to secure another; and when George reached the hut, this meal was just ready.

The trio partook of this, their last meal in slavery, as they hoped, with great deliberation, George being most anxious not to start until darkness should so far have settled down upon the scene as to allow of his smuggling the cane-knives and canvas jackets in under the gra.s.s in the waggon without detection.

This was at length successfully managed, and, first taking a careful look all round the hut, to see that they were leaving nothing behind them which might possibly prove useful, they clambered into the cart, and drove slowly off.

Night had by this time fairly set in; the stars were just beginning to peep out from the deepening blue of the cloudless vault above them, and the moon, in her first quarter, and hanging almost in the zenith, was already flooding the scene with her soft silvery radiance. It promised to be a magnificent night for their enterprise, though excessively close and hot; and as they turned into the main road leading into Havana, and left the estate fairly behind them, George and the lad Tom felt their spirits rising and their pulses bounding with joyous antic.i.p.ation of a speedy return to freedom.

Whilst harnessing the mules, Leicester had rapidly turned over in his mind the _pros_ and _cons_ of the situation, and had come to the conclusion that it would be necessary in the first instance to proceed some three or four miles on the road toward Havana. This necessity arose from the circ.u.mstance that the planter's house stood upon a slight eminence commanding a perfect view of the road for that distance, and as Leicester could not possibly be sure that some one might not be idly watching, from the verandah, the progress of the waggon as long as it remained in view, he deemed it only common prudence to keep to the road until he had pa.s.sed completely out of the range of any such chance watchers. This done, he intended to turn sharp off and make the best of his way southward, utilising the waggon and mules for as great a distance as possible, and then abandoning them and pressing forward on foot. The distance which they would have to travel was not very great, the island being, according to such information as had been available to him, only some twelve and a half Spanish leagues, or about thirty English miles wide at that part. Thus, if they were fortunate in their choice of a route, so as to be able to use the waggon for the whole distance, they might succeed in reaching the southern sh.o.r.e of the island before their escape was so much as suspected.

George explained all this to Tom as the mules trotted cheerily along the road, and by the time that the plan of escape had been fully elucidated, they had reached a point where they might with perfect safety branch off and make their way to the southward. This they did at once, branching square off to the westward in the first instance, until they were about a mile distant from the road, and completely hidden by the bush from the observation of any one upon it, and then turning in a southerly direction. A dense belt of forest then lay before them, at a distance of some six miles, with a lofty hill-top rising behind it, and toward this latter object George now headed the mules as straight as the scattered clumps of bush would permit.

The soil was very light and sandy, but it was covered with a thick growth of gra.s.s, which prevented the mules' feet or the waggon-wheels from sinking, so that the travelling was nearly, if not quite as rapid as it had been along the road. A sharp lookout was maintained for signs indicative of their approach to the neighbourhood of plantations, and two or three bridle-paths, evidently leading to such, were crossed; but at length they reached the welcome skirts of the forest without having had the least cause to suppose that they had been observed.

In the meantime, however, a heavy bank of thundercloud had been observed rapidly gathering on the southern horizon, and the runaways had scarcely plunged a mile into the forest before the heavens were obscured, and it at once became so pitch-dark that it was utterly impossible for them to proceed. The mules were consequently pulled up, and the three adventurers made what few preparations were possible for their protection from the coming storm.

Soon the low threatening rumble of the thunder was heard, and then, as it rapidly increased in volume of sound, bright flashes of light were seen blazing out beyond the interweaving branches of the trees. The storm, as in all tropical countries, quickly gathered force and intensity, and very soon it was raging in all its fury above and around them. The loud reverberating roll of the thunder was incessant, the lightning flashed with ever-increasing rapidity, and at last the entire atmosphere seemed to be in one continued tremulous glare of unearthly light.

The mules started and quivered, as the lightning-flashes grew more rapid and intense; and finally they became so terrified that George had as much as he could do to restrain them from bolting, and so dashing themselves, the waggon, and its occupants to pieces against the trees.

The storm was at its fiercest when suddenly the party found themselves enveloped in a blinding blaze of greenish-blue light; simultaneously there came a terrific rattling crash, as though the universe had burst asunder; the occupants of the waggon--blinded, and deafened by the dazzling brilliancy of the flash and the tremendous report which accompanied it--felt themselves hurled violently to the earth, and then followed oblivion.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

THE PURSUIT.

When George Leicester at last awoke from his stupor, and had sufficiently recovered his scattered senses to remember where he was, the strength and fury of the storm had pa.s.sed, the lightning-flashes being much less vivid, and coming at considerably longer intervals. But the rain was descending in a perfect deluge, and, notwithstanding the shelter of the thick overhanging foliage, the ground was already so completely flooded that George at first thought he was lying in the bed of some shallow watercourse. He staggered to his feet, chill and dripping wet, and, taking advantage of the intermittent light afforded by the lightning, looked around him to ascertain, if possible, what had actually happened; and he then saw that an immense tree close by had been shivered from top to bottom by the lightning, and, falling across their path, had killed both mules, and completely wrecked the waggon.

His own escape and that of his companions, if indeed they _had_ escaped, had been simply miraculous, a huge branch having struck the waggon only about one foot behind the seat upon which they had been sitting. The ground was littered with splinters, and enc.u.mbered with the spreading branches of the fallen tree, and among these he proceeded to search for Tom and Walford.

A low moaning sound some short distance on his right told him that in that direction he would probably find one of the missing, and, groping his way cautiously to the spot, he found the unfortunate Walford lying on his back, with the water surging round him like a mill-race, and a large branch of the fallen tree lying across his breast and pinning him down. By exerting his whole strength, George managed to bear up the branch sufficiently for Walford to work his way from underneath it, and then he helped the poor wretch to his feet, inquiring at the same time if he had received any serious hurt. Unfortunately one of the apathetic fits which occasionally seized Walford had come upon him, and George was quite unable to gain anything like an intelligible answer from him; but he was scarcely able to stand, and his continued moaning and the constant pressure of his hands upon his breast showed that he was evidently suffering great pain.

Seating the unfortunate man at the foot of a tree, where he would be beyond the reach of the water, and making him as comfortable as was possible, George then went in search of the lad Tom, whom he found standing bewildered over the wreck of the waggon, with a thin stream of blood slowly trickling down his face from a scalp-wound, probably inflicted by a blow from one of the branches of the tree as it fell.

"Ha! Tom, is that you?" exclaimed George joyously. "I was just coming to look for you. How have you fared in the general smash?"

"Is that you, cap'n?" answered Tom. "Well, I'm very glad to find you've turned up all right. It _has_ been a smash, and no mistake; a total wreck, and no insurance, I'll be bound. Well, it's unfort'nate; but it can't be helped; it might ha' been much worse. I got a whack on the skull that knocked the senses out of me for a while, but I don't feel very much the worse for it a'ter all. Where's poor Mr Walford, sir?

What's become of him?"

"He is close by," answered George; "but a big branch fell across his chest, and I am afraid he is very much hurt."

"Let's have a look at him," said Tom. And the two men groped and stumbled their way without more ado to the place where Walford was still seated, with his back resting against the giant bole of the tree.

A few trials were sufficient to establish the fact that the poor fellow was practically helpless, for the time at least; and it then became a question of what it would be best to do under the circ.u.mstances. The first idea was that George and Tom should each take an arm of the injured man over their shoulders, and so a.s.sist him along; but he moved with such great difficulty that it was soon apparent some other plan would have to be adopted.

"I have it!" exclaimed George, as a bright idea struck him; and hurrying away to the waggon, he secured the canvas and rope which had been thrown into it, together with the cane-knives, canvas jackets, and other trifling belongings, and hurried back to the tree.

"Now, Tom," he said, "look about you, my lad, and see if you can find a nice light handy branch, tolerably straight, and about ten feet long, and bring it here as quickly as you can."

"Ay, ay, sir," answered Tom, starting off on his errand at once.

Whilst he was gone, George spread out the canvas upon the ground, and, with the aid of a pocket-knife, which he had seen lying about in the stable that evening, and had taken the liberty of appropriating, proceeded to roughly shape a hammock out of the material, leaving enough canvas at each end to form, with the rope, an eye, through which to pa.s.s the branch from which he intended it to be slung.

He had hardly finished his preparations when Tom reappeared with the waggon-pole, which he had found fortunately unbroken.

"Will this do, sir?" asked Tom.

"The very thing," was George's delighted reply. "Now, Walford," he continued, "lie down on that canvas, old fellow, and we'll soon have you slung comfortably in your hammock between us, where you will travel without much pain to your poor chest. That's it; now, Tom, pa.s.s the end of the pole through this eye; capital! now through the other; that's your sort! Now I'll take the fore end of the pole and you the after end; lift handsomely; have you got your end on your shoulder? Then off we go. We have not such a very great distance to travel--only some twenty miles or so--but we must get over the ground as quickly as possible; for when once nine o'clock to-morrow morning has pa.s.sed, we may make certain that they'll be after us; so we must reach the coast by that time, or soon after it, if we wish to get clear off."

And in this manner, with Walford slung in his impromptu hammock between them, George and Tom set off upon the wearisome journey which lay before them, and which, they fondly hoped, was to end in the absolute recovery of their liberty.

_Tramp, tramp; splash, splash_; on they trudged,--stumbling over the roots of trees, tripping over the long, tough, straggling creepers which crossed their path, sometimes brought-up "all standing" and half-strangled by the cord-like _llianas_ which hung festooned from tree to tree, their naked feet and legs torn by thorns and stabbed by the spines of the wild cactus--in thick impenetrable darkness for a couple of hours, and then the clouds suddenly vanished away on the wings of the land-breeze, the stars reappeared, the soft silvery rays of the moon streamed down once more through the gaps in the foliage, and the weary fugitives flung themselves down upon the sodden ground for a short breathing-s.p.a.ce.

George was of opinion that, from the time they had been tramping through the forest, they ought to have very nearly reached its southern skirts; but as far as the eye could penetrate, in the uncertain moonlight, through the sylvan vistas, there was no sign of break or opening of any kind; nothing but an apparently endless succession of trees and dense undergrowth. Seeing this, Leicester began to feel uneasy. He knew that they had been travelling through the timber in anything but a straight line--indeed, to do so would have been simply a physical impossibility-- and he began to fear that, in spite of all his efforts to avoid such a misfortune, they had been journeying along the arc of a circle, instead of progressing steadily in a southerly direction.

The wanderers were beginning to feel thoroughly fatigued, what with their day's work in the fields, their exposure during the storm, and their painful tramp afterwards; but George felt that, fatigued or not, they must push on; liberty _must_ be secured first; when that was won, they could afford time to rest, but not until then.

The first thing to be done, however, was to get a definite idea of whereabouts they were; it was obviously useless to continue plodding on, they knew not whither; besides, it was frightfully fatiguing and painful work, this marching through the forest, and George felt that it would be a positive advantage even to deviate somewhat from their direct course, if by so doing they could earlier gain the open ground once more. So, looking around him, he picked out the most lofty tree he could find, and, leaving Tom to keep watch by Walford's side, nimbly scrambled up its trunk, and was soon among its topmost branches.

A single glance around sufficed to show him that his suspicions were correct; they were only about half a mile from the _northern_ edge of the timber; and, consequently, rather worse off than if they had never left the wrecked waggon at all. And, worse still, George found that, after all their travelling, they were little more than three miles from the estate, the whole of which was distinctly visible from his lofty stand-point. This was rather discouraging, but there was no help for it; he now knew exactly where they were, and how much greater than even he had imagined was the necessity for immediate action; so he turned his glances in a southerly direction, and sought to discover the most direct road out of their unpleasant predicament. Here he met with an ample reward for his trouble in climbing the tree, for he saw that, if they pursued their way due south--as they could now do, directing their course by the moon--they would have to travel through at least seven miles of forest; whilst by heading in a south-westerly direction, keeping the moon a little on their left hand, they would only have to traverse some two miles of forest, after which there seemed to be tolerably open ground as far as the eye could reach. About three miles East-South-East of him he detected the gleaming white walls of a number of buildings, which he judged to be a portion of the town of Santiago; beyond it rose a curiously-shaped, double-coned mountain; away on his right lay the table-land of Mariel; and--joyous sight--through a break in the rising ground to the southward he caught a glimpse of the sea, with, far away on the utmost verge of the horizon, an appearance of land, which he conjectured must be the Isle of Pines. Noting all these matters carefully, and making a rough mental sketch of "the lay of the land," George rapidly descended to where he had left Tom and Walford, and rapidly detailed to the former the result of his observations.

"We must be off at once," he explained, "for we have no time to spare; we have lost nearly three good hours blundering about here blindly in this wood; it must be now nearly or quite midnight; and, if so, it leaves us only ten hours at most to reach the sea, if we are to do so without being overtaken."

Accordingly, weary and stiff as they were, they again shouldered the pole from which Walford in his hammock was slung, and once more set out upon their journey, which, now that they were favoured by the light of the moon, they hoped would be of a somewhat more prosperous character than it had hitherto been.

Another painful and toilsome tramp of a couple of hours and they emerged, to their unbounded joy, from the southern side of the forest on to comparatively open ground. Trees and dense straggling clumps of bush were still abundant enough--far too much so, in fact--but there were wide patches of gra.s.s-land between, over which their progress was tolerably rapid. Once clear of the thick timber, George again shaped his course due south, intending to pa.s.s through the break in the rising ground which he had seen from his lofty lookout; but somehow they missed it, and this involved a great deal of toilsome climbing. At length they plunged once more into a belt of timber which stretched, seemingly for miles, across their path; and here exhausted nature gave out; Tom declared his utter inability to walk another yard, George felt scarcely better than his companion, and so, notwithstanding the terrible loss of precious time which it involved, they selected the first suitable spot they could find, and flinging themselves upon the ground, one on each side of Walford, gave themselves up to the sweetest sleep which had ever sealed their eyelids.

George was the first of the trio to awaken, and when he did so, he found, to his dismay, that the sun was already several hours high in the heavens. He immediately aroused the lad Tom, and, greatly refreshed by their sleep, the pair once more shouldered poor helpless Walford and his hammock, and resumed their flight. They were as hungry as healthy men usually are after great exertion and a fast of several hours' duration, but they had not a particle of food with them, so they were compelled to subsist for the present upon hope, the hope that ere long they would meet with something more substantial. They felt no particular anxiety upon this score, as George knew that wild fruits of several kinds were tolerably plentiful on the island, and about half an hour after they had started they were fortunate enough to fall in with a wild plantain, the fruit of which was just in the right condition for eating. No time was lost in securing a goodly bunch of this very nutritious fruit, upon which they feasted, as they went along, until their appet.i.tes were completely satisfied.