The Iron Game - Henry Francis Keenan
Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32
The four gathered together for counsel. The horses, faring better than
their masters, for they found abundance to allay hunger in the lush,
dank grass of the morass, were corralled in a clump of white ash, and
the jaded men, groping about, clambered upon the gnarled roots of the
trees to catch breath. They had been battling steadily for five hours
against all the forces of Nature. Their clothes were torn, their flesh
abraded, their strength exhausted. They could have slept, but the ground
offered no place, for wherever the foot rested an instant the weight of
the body pushed it down into the oozy soil until water gushed in over
the shoe-tops. Jones had found the struggle hardest because he had not
the youth of the others nor their light frames. The striplings were
spared many of his hardships and were still able to endure the ordeal,
if the end were sure relief. Jack struck a match, and with this lighted
a pine knot. He surveyed the gloomy brake carefully, and at last,
finding a mound where a thick growth of underbrush gave assurance of
less treacherous soil, he called to Barney to aid him. The little
hillock was made into a couch by means of the saddles, and the groaning
veteran carefully laid upon the by no means uncomfortable refuge. As
Jack held the light above him, Jones's eyes closed and he sank into a
lethargic sleep.
"He will be in a high fever when he awakes," Jack said, looking at
Barney. "We must see that he has food, or the fever will be his death.
Here is what I propose: you and I shall sally out from here, blazing the
path as we go. We must find some sign of life within a circuit of five
miles. That will take us say till daylight to go and come. We will leave
Dick here to guard Jones, and if we do not return by noon to-morrow Dick
will know that he must shift for himself."
"You command, Jack dear. What you say I'll do, as Molly Meginniss said
to the priest when he told her to repent of her sins."
"Dick, my boy, do you think you are equal to a vigil? You must stay here
with Jones. If he wakes and wants water, press the moisture of these
leaves to his lips, it's sassafras; and, stay--here is a sort of
plantain, filled with little globules of dew; pour these into his mouth,
and at a pinch give him a handful from the pool. In case of great danger
fire two shots, but if any one should come toward you or discover you it
will be better to surrender. In that event, you can make up a story to
suit the case, which may enable you to finally escape. This man's life
is in your hands. Remember that it is as glorious a deed as fighting in
line. Keep up a stout heart. We will soon be back, or you may take it
for granted all is up with us."
"Ah! Jack! Jack! To start so well and end so miserably, I can't bear
it--I can't stay here. You stay and let me go."
"No, Dick, it can't be; you are already so worn out that we should have
been obliged to halt for you if Jones hadn't broken down. It can't be
that you would think of leaving a fellow-soldier in such extremity as
this, Dick? I know you better."
"But I don't know him. I have no interest in him. With you I'll face any
danger--I'll die without a word; but to stay here in this awful place,
with the black pools of water, like great dead eyes, glaring in their
hideous light" (the pine-torch flaring in the wind filled the glade with
vast ogreish shadows, as the clustering bushes were swayed in the night
air) "and these hideous night-cries--O Jack, I can't--I can't--I
must go!"
"But the horses and the need of some one that can come back in case
anything befalls me. I am disappointed in you, Dick. I am shocked; you
are not the man of courage and honor I thought you."
"O my God, go--go--I will stay; but, Jack, if you find me dead,
tell--tell--Rosa--that--that--" He gasped and sank down sobbing against
the gnarled tree that crossed the mound above Jones's head.
"I will tell Rosa that you were the man she believed you were when the
trial came," and with this Jack and Barney, with a flaming torch, set
forward hastily through the fantastic curtain of foliage and night,
which shut in the glimmering vista of specters, dark, sinister,
and menacing.
CHAPTER XXV
PHANTASMAGORIA.
To say that night is a time of terror is a commonplace. Night is not
terrible of itself. It is like the ocean--peace and repose if there be
no storm. But of all terrors there are none, outside a guilty mind, so
benumbing as night in the unknown. It does not lessen the horror of
darkness that fear makes use of the imagination for its agencies. Fancy,
intuition, and the train that follows the inner vision, these make of
night a phantasmagoria, compared to which Milton's inferno is a place of
comparative repose.
If you would realize the wondrous necromancy of the sun, pass a night in
some primeval forest, untouched by the hand of man. Until he stands in
the awful silence of the midnight wood, or upon some vast waste of
nature, no man can figure to himself the varied shapes the mind can give
to terrors based upon the mysterious noises of nature, and the goblin
motions of inanimate things. The lover thinking of his lass welcomes the
night and the rapturous walks among well-known scenes and kindly
objects. With glimmering lamps in the foliage and the not distant sounds
of daily life, even the woods have nothing fearful to the meditative or
the distraught. But in flight, with fear as a garment that can not be
laid aside, the somber forms of the forest are more terrible than an
army with banners, as a haunted house is a more unnerving dread than
burglars or any form of night marauders. It was at night that the
mutinous sailors of Columbus broke into decisive revolt; it was at night
that the iron band of Cortes lost heart, and were routed on the lakes of
Mexico; it was at night that the resolution of Brutus failed before the
disaster at Philippi.
That two-o'clock-in-the-morning courage, which is the secret of
soldierly success, comes only from companionship. The night-wood is a
world by itself, filled with its own atmosphere, as oppressive to valor
as the electric reefs that drew the nails from the ships of Sindbad.
Among familiar scenes and well-known shapes, it is all the delight the
poets sing--so tranquillizing, inspiring, fecund, that in comparison the
thought of day brings up garish hues, flaunting figures--the hardness,
harshness and unlovely in life. But night in the goblin-land, where Dick
found himself suddenly deserted, with fantastic forms swaying in the
lazy wind, would have had terrors for the most constant mind; terrors
such as filled the soul of MacBeth, when Birnam wood came marching to
Dunsinane. In an instant, as it seemed to Dick's exalted and painfully
impressionable sense, every separate leaf, branch, brier, copse, and
jungle, was endowed with a voice of its own--hateful, irritating,
mocking. Swarms of peering eyes hovered in the air, glowering uncanny
menace into the boy's wild, dilating vision.
Brave, even to recklessness, Dick was, as you have seen; but no sooner
had the glimmer of Jack's torch flickered and fluttered into the black
distance, making place for the monstrous shapes, the luring shadows, and
threatening forms encompassing him, than Dick threw himself, with a
wailing shriek, into the morass in a wild attempt to follow.
In an instant he was up to his middle in mud and water. He seized the
prickly branches coiling about and above him; he gasped in prayerful
pleading, the home teaching still strong in him; but there was no
answer, save the crooning night-birds and the croaking frogs. Slimy
things touched his torn flesh; whirring birds shot past him, disturbed
in their night perches. The deadly odor, pungent and nauseous, of a
thousand exhaling herbs, filled his nostrils. The darkness grew,
instinct with threatening forms. He gasped, struggled, and in a fervent
outburst of thanksgiving regained the dank mound. Ah, there was life on
that! human life. Jones slept, the stertorous sleep of delirium. He
murmured brokenly. Dick was too terrified to distinguish what he said.
The blaze of the pine knot flared from side to side as the sighing
breeze arose from the brackish pools, protesting the vitality of even
this moribund hades. Ah! if he could but lie down and bury his face. The
horses? They were feeding tranquilly yonder, standing up to their knees
in mosses and water. The lines that tied them were long. They could move
about. This was some comfort. They were more human than the dreadful
specters that filled the place.
Ah! the blessed, blessed light that flamed out from the merry
pine-torch; he didn't wonder that half the Eastern world worshiped fire.
He adored it--blessed, blessed fire--the sign of God, the beacon of the
human. Hark! What half-human--or rather wholly inhuman--sounds are these
that alternate in unearthly measure? Surely animal nature has no voice
so strident, vengeful, odious. Can it be animals of prey? No. The
Virginia forests are dangerous only in snakes. Snakes? Ah, yes! He
shrinks into shadow against the oak at this suggestion; snakes? the
deadly moccasin, that prowls as well by night as day. Ugh! what's this
at his feet--soft, clammy, shining in the flaring light? He leaps upon
the smooth tree-trunk, growing slantwise instead of perpendicular. What
if the torch and the odor of flesh should draw the snakes to the
sleeper? The flame flares in wide, lurid curves, revealing the outlines
of the sleeping man. Heavens, what a terrible face! He moves in
spasmodic contortions. He is smothering. The veins of his neck will
break if he is not awakened.
"O my God! my God! have mercy!" Dick buries his face in his hands, as he
clings desperately to the smooth white-oak trunk. A strange, wild
strain, like a detached chord of a vesper melody, sounds above him! It
is the whippoorwill--steadily, continuously, entrancingly the dulcet
measure is taken up and echoed, until the slough of despond seems
transformed into a varying diapason of melancholy minstrelsy. He dares
not raise his head. It will vanish if he moves. He crouches, panting,
almost exultant, in the sense of recovered faculties, or rather the
suspension of numbing fear. How long will it last? He must move; his
limbs are cramped and aching. He raises his head. Mortal powers! the
torch is flickering into ashes! Another instant and he will be in the
dark. Dare he move? Dare he seek the distant pine, between him and which
the black surface of the murky sheet shines, dotted with uncanny growth
and reptilian things? Yes; anything is better than the hideous darkness
of this hideous place.
The horse he rode has broken his leash and comes to him with a gentle
whinny, as if asking why the delay in such a place. "Blessed, blessed
God, that made a beast so human!" He caresses it, he clings to its neck
and calls to it piteously. Ah, yes; the dying light. He must renew it.
He slips down upon the bare back and urges the patient beast across the
brackish morass. Ah, this is life again! He is not alone. This noble
beast is human. It crops the tender leaves confidingly, and swings its
head as much as to say: "Don't fear, Dick; Fin here. I'll stand by you;
I don't forget the pains you took to get me water, and that particularly
toothsome measure of oats you cribbed in the rebel barn near
Williamsburg!"
But the pine knot that will burn is not so easily found. Dick was forced
to go a long way before he came upon the resinous sort. He brought back
a supply, having taken the precaution to provide matches in order to
secure his way back. The quest had to some extent lessened the morbid or
supernatural forms of his terrors. They all returned, however, when,
having dismounted, he forgot to tie the horse, and it wandered off in
search of herbage. He called, but the beast made no sign of returning.
Alone again. Alone in the night; spectral forms about him; the sleeping
man adding to the ghostliness of the scene by his incoherent mutterings,
his hideous, gulping breath, his ghastly, blood-curdling outcries. Then
through the gloom the shining outlines of the white oak, like shreds of
shrouds hung on funeral foliage. Ah! he would go mad--he must break the
brutish sleep of the sick man.
"Mr. Jones," he wails--and his own voice--the comically commonplace
name, "Mr. Jones," even in the agony of his terror, the humor of the
conjuncture glimmered in the boy's crazed intelligence, and he laughed a
wild, maniacal laugh. But the laugh died out in a pulseless horror. The
sick man uprose on his elbow. Dick, above him on the white-oak trunk,
could see his very eyes bloodshot and wandering. He uprose, almost
sitting. He passed his hand over his staring eyes, and began to murmur:
"Did you bring me here to do murder, Elisha Boone? You have bought my
body, but you never bought my soul. No, no! I will not. I say I will
not. Do you hear? I will not!"
He glared wildly; then, his eyes meeting the full flame of the torch, he
laughed, a dreadful, marrow-freezing laugh, and broke out again in
clearer tones: "I am yours, Elisha Boone, but my boy is not yours. He
was born in my shape, but he has his mother's soul. He will be a man; he
will be your vengeance; he will undo all his father has done. You've
robbed me; you've made me rob others. But if you touch, if you look at
my boy, my first-born, you might as well hold a pistol at your head. I'm
no longer mad. You must treat with him. Ah! yes; I'll do your bidding
with the others. I'll make young Jack as much trouble as you ask, but
you must make a path of gold for my boy. You must give him what you have
robbed from me. Felon? I'm no felon. It was you who plotted it. It was
you that put the means in mad hands. I can face my family. I have no
shame but that I was a coward. My son! He is no coward. He is a soldier.
He is the pride of the Caribees. He is the beloved of--of--"
The gibbering maniac, exhausted in body, still incoherently raving, sank
back in piteous collapse, a terrifying gurgle breaking from his throat,
while his tongue absolutely protruded from his jaws.
Dick, his terrors all forgotten in a new and overmastering horror,
bethought him of Jack's admonition about the water. He slipped down from
the tree, gathered the large moist leaves that clustered near the pool
and held them to the burning lips, Jones swallowed the drops with a
hideous gurgling avidity, clutching the boy's hand ravenously to secure
a more copious flow. There was a tin cup in the holster under the
invalid's head. Taking this, Dick dipped up water from the black pool
between the green leaves; the hot lips sucked it in at one
dreadful gulp.
"More, more; for God's sake, more!"
Dick filled it again, and again it was emptied.
"More--more--I'm burning--more!"
The boy was cruelly perplexed. He remembered vaguely hearing that fever
should be starved; that the thing craved was the dangerous thing; and he
moved away in a sort of compunctious terror.
"More--more! Oh, in the name of God, more!"
The words came gaspingly. Dick thought of the death-rattle he had heard
in Acredale when old man Nagle, the madman, died. He dared not give more
water, but he gathered leaves from the aromatic bushes and pressed them
to the fevered lips. Before he could withdraw them, the eager jaws
closed upon the balsamic shrub. They answered the purpose better than
the most scientific remedy in the pharmacopoeia, for the patient called
for no further drink, and presently fell into profound and undisturbed
sleep. Again the boy was alone with the daunting forces of the dark in
its grimmest and most terrifying mood. Alone! No; his mind was now taken
from all thought of self. He was with a fellow-townsman. The man had
mentioned Boone; had referred to deeds that he had heard all his life
associated with the father he had never seen. A wild thought flashed
upon him. Was the collapsed body at his feet his father's? He could not
see any resemblance in the dark, handsome face to the portrait at home,
though all through the flight from Richmond something in the man's
manner had seemed like a memory. He strove to recall the image his young
mind had cherished, the personality he had heard whispered about in the
gossiping groups of Acredale. This was not the gay, the brilliant, the
fascinating _bon viveur_ who had been the life of society from
Warchester to Bucephalo, from Pentica to New York. Ah! what were the
mystic terrors of the night, what the oppressive surroundings of this
charnel-house of Nature, to the awful spectacle of this unmanned mind,
this delirious echo of past guilt, past cowardice, past shame?
To lessen the somber gloom, Dick had lighted many torches and set them
about the high mound where the sleeper lay in a huddle. Taking little
heed of where he set them, some of them, as the wind arose, flared out
until their flames licked the decayed branches of the fallen white oak.
As the boy crouched, pensive and distraught, he was suddenly aroused by
a vivacious cracking. He looked up. Lines of fire were darting thither
and yon, where dry wood, the _debris_ of years of decay, had been caught
in the thick clumps of underbrush and among the limbs of the trees. The
fire had pushed briskly, and the uncanny glade was now an amphitheatre
of crawling flames, stretching in many-colored banners in a vast circle
about the point of refuge. Dick gazed fascinated, with no thought of
danger. His spirits rose. It was something like life--this gorgeous
decoration of fire. How beautiful it was! How it brought out the shining
lines of the white oak, the glistening green of the cypress! Why hadn't
he thought of this before? Then, as the curling waves of fire pushed
farther and farther up the steins of the trees, and farther and farther
endlessly into the undergrowth, an unearthly outcry and stir began.
Birds, blinded by the light, whirred and fluttered into the open space
above the water, falling helplessly so near Dick that he could have
caught and killed a score to surprise Jack with a game breakfast, when
he returned. Then--ugh!--horror!--great, coiling masses detached
themselves from the tufts of sward, and splashed noisily into the putrid
water, wriggling and convulsed. The invalid still slept--but, dreadful
sight! the coiling monsters, upheaving themselves from the water,
glided, dull eyed and sluggish, upon the mossy island, about the
unconscious figure.
Dick, fascinated and inert, watched the snaky mass, squirming in hideous
folds almost on the recumbent body. Then, aroused to the horror of their
nearness, he seized a torch and made at the slimy heap. The fire
conquered them. They slid off the ground, with forked tongues darting
out in impotent malice. But others, squirming through the water,
wriggled up; and the boy, maddened by the danger, stood his ground,
torch in hand, defending the sleeper.
But now the fire had widened its path, and is enveloping the tiny
island. The serpents, hedged in from the outer line, uproar in
blood-curdling masses, their dull eyes gleaming, and their tongues
phosphorescent, darting out in their agony. Dick doesn't mind them now,
for he has, for the first time, begun to realize that his illumination
has destruction as the sequel of its delight. Great clouds of smoke
settle a moment on the water and then rise, impelled by the cold
surface. Even the green verdure begins to roll back where the crackling
flames play into the more compact wall of incombustible timber. The
sleeper murmurs in his dreams. Dick casts about despairingly. He hears
the horses--they have broken their tethers--he can hear them whinnying,
upbraidingly, far off. Wherever he casts his eye, volumes of fire dart
and sway, always coming inward, first scorching the green limbs, then
fastening on the tender stems and turning them to glowing lines of
cordage; only the great sheet of water, inky, terrible, and threatening
a few hours before, protects him and his charge. The hissing snakes have
sunk into it.
Bevies of birds, supernaturally keen of sight, have dropped upon the
twigs that lie on the glittering bosom of the water. Dick, in all the
agonized uncertainty of that night of peril, thinks with wonder on the
mysterious resources Nature provides its helpless outcasts. The hideous
shallows, black, glistening, are now a belt of safety, not only for
himself and the sleeper, but a refuge for all manner of whirring birds
and crawling things, intimidated and harmless in the stifling breath of
the fire. The flame, leaping from sedge to sedge, from trunk to trunk,
seems to seek, with a human instinct, and more than human pertinacity,
food for its ravening hunger; far upward, where festoons of moss hung
from the sycamores in the day, airy banners of starry sparks, swayed,
coiled, and flamed among the branches. But Dick was soon reminded that
the scene was not for enjoyment, however fantastically fascinating.
The smoke, at first rising from the burning brakes, lodged among the
tree-tops; then, meeting the humid night-air in the matted leaves,
descended slowly. Dick found himself nearly smothered when he had partly
recovered from the spell-bound wonder of the demoniac _fete_. The ground
under his feet felt gratefully cool. He bent down, and shudderingly
laved his burning face in the inky water. The sick man had slept more
peacefully during the last half-hour. He no longer breathed in gasping
efforts; his sleep was unbroken by muttering or outcry. But now he must
be aroused. He must be taken out of the circle of fire, for, sooner or
later, the curling waves would lick downward from the dry vines above
and scorch the mound. How to get away? The horses were long since gone.
They might be miles from the spot! Dick touched the sleeping man, filled
with a new suspense. He breathed so softly, or did he breathe at all?
"For God's sake, Mr. Jones, wake up! We must go from here; the swamp is
burning!"
"Eh--who is it? Where am I? Was--I dreaming? I thought my boy was with
me, and we were in the old home at Acredale."
He lay quite still, staring upward with unseeing eyes. Dick's heart gave
a great throb of grateful, devout thanksgiving. The madness and fever
were gone.
"You remember you were too worn out to go on, and Jack has gone to get
food. But the swamp has caught fire, and we must move away."
Jones had risen to his elbow; then, with an exclamation that sounded
like an oath, to his feet, gazing on the flaming specters rising and
falling, enlarging and shrinking, among the black tracery of limbs
and trunks.
"You ought to have waked me before," Jones said, when he had swept the
scene, with sane realization in his eye. "I'm afraid we can never break
through the fire. It reaches a mile or more all about us, and I--I am in
no condition to move. I feel as if I had been down months with illness."
"But if you could eat something you would be able to move," Dick
ventured, cruelly hurt at the implied delinquency.
"Eat!" Jones held up one of the luckless torches that Dirk had lighted
in a circle about the mound, and began to examine the ground. "What is
there to eat? Stay! By Heaven, I have it! The bushes are filled with
fluttering game. There, see that! and that, and that!" As he spoke he
had thrust the burning torch into a thick clump of bushes, dense and
glistening as laurels, that looked like wild huckleberry. The branches
were laden with birds, and in a moment be had seized three or four
partridges.
"What better do we need? We have salt, water, and fire. I'll prepare
them. Do you keep your face well bathed, and heap up embers at the foot
of that ash."
Sure enough, sometimes hidden by billows of smoke, rising lazily among
the burning bushes, Jones stripped the birds, spitted them on his
bayonet, and, holding them in the hot coals, soon presented a
well-browned portion to his companion.
"I have had a good deal worse fare than this, my young friend. I have
been in the West, when fire, Indians, and hunger besieged us at the same
time. But we should have a poor chance here if it were not for the wet
grass and the everlasting water. If we can manage to keep clear of the
smoke, we shall be all right, but the smoke seems to grow denser. Where
can it come from?"
"Great Heavens! do you hear that? Shots--one--two! That's Jack's signal.
He--he is near. He is in danger. I must go to him." Dick cried. "Listen;
more shots. No, that can't be the signal. There, do you hear that? A
volley. The rebels are after them, or we are near the outposts, and the
two armies are skirmishing."
Yes; the shots now sounded more frequently, but they seemed to be fired
not far away.
"It is Jack. I know it is Jack, and he is in peril. I must go to him. I
can not stay here. Surely there is no danger in pushing toward
the firing?"
"There is every danger. In the first place, the smoke will smother us.
Then suppose we reached the spot? We might be nearer the rebels than our
friends. They know where we are. If they are not taken, they will come
back for us. If they are taken, we must do our best to get to our lines
and send out a scouting party. Be guided by me, youngster. I am an older
hand in business of this sort than you are."