"You hear what the Admiral orders? Bring the blacksmith!"
"He is here, Captain; he came with the cage."
"The coffin, you mean!" roared the Captain, with an ugly laugh which froze the blood in my veins. "The coffin! the sepulchre! the sarcophagus! the catafalque! Where is the Smith?"
A stout, fair man stepped forward from the group. His face was gentle, and his kind blue eye contradicted the suspicion that he gloried in his ghastly profession. He gave a pitying glance at the lad--a friendly glance, I thought--then walked round behind the table where the Admiral sat, and raised on end the ma.s.s of steel which I had seen brought into the cave when I was in the gallery. Ah me! How long ago that seemed to me now! Then, nothing was further from my thoughts than that I should ever become a nearer spectator of this fearful scene.
The Smith dragged the frame to the close proximity of one of the empty niches and spread it upon the ground. He pulled and pushed and coaxed the thing into shape until, as I looked, I saw that it a.s.sumed somewhat the figure of a human being. There was the skeleton cage for the head, the band for the throat, the rounding slope to encase the shoulders, the form of the trunk, the arms, the legs and feet--all, all were comprised in this instrument of confinement. I cast my eyes toward the skeletons hanging in the other niches, and discovered on nearer view that they, too, had each one his confining cage, and I knew now, for the first time, why the figures remained upright in these places hollowed out for them, and why they swayed with the gusts of fierce wind, never losing their balance and never falling from their terrible upright positions.
There was a ring in the top of the mask, and to it was fastened a chain.
It seemed to be a strong chain. The cage which the blacksmith was handling was almost bright in places, but those upon the figures in the niches were rusted and dull, which told me why I had not understood how these grim remains of men had remained for so long a time in their original att.i.tudes.
"Is that about the size of the Lord George Trevelyan?" squeaked the Admiral of the Red. I looked at the lad. His eyes were glued with horror to the dreadful machine. They seemed to grow large and dilate. His eyelids opened and closed rapidly; he seemed on the verge of insanity.
"And what about the ransom, Lord George Trevelyan?" the brutal villain added. "Will you ask it now?" But while I looked the lad sank down in a heap upon the floor.
"No time to dilly-dally with dead lords. Shut him in! shut him in!"
shouted Captain Jonas.
I stood petrified with horror. I may truly say that all thought of self had flown. To see this boy, little more than a child, inclosed in this devilish contrivance, fastened there and left to die and rot piecemeal, was more than I could bear. My tongue, which has got me into so much trouble, as usual added to it in this instance.
"Admiral! Captain Jonas! you don"t mean to leave that poor lad here to die alone?"
The Smith, who was slowly fastening the clasps of the cage around the unconscious form of the boy, looked up at me quickly with a warning glance, and I saw that I might have better kept quiet; but impulse has always been my bane.
"Oh, no! oh, no!" sneered the Admiral. "He will have company--perhaps not the company that he has been accustomed to, but the company of--What did you tell me was your rating aboard the----"
"Yankee Blade," said I haltingly. "I was the First Mate, sir. I have friends at home and friends at Christophe"s court." I did not stick at a lie, since I had heard his tone. "They will----"
"Ah! will they? I fear not. Unworthy as your position is, Mr.--Mr.
Jones--ah, yes, Mr. Hiram Jones--you shall have the honour of bearing the Lord George Trevelyan company. Thanks to me, Mr. Hiram Jones, you will a.s.sociate with a more exalted personage than it has yet been your lot to meet. Another cage! another cage! Bring another cage!" called out the Admiral in excited tones. "We will see whether Mr. Hiram Jones, late First Mate of the Yankee ship----"
The Smith left the unconscious boy, whom he had fastened in his living tomb, and approached the Admiral respectfully. He glanced at me, hardly perceptibly.
"There is no other cage, Admiral. You ordered only one brought ash.o.r.e."
"No other cage? No other cage? Hereafter, always bring two. One never knows what may turn up, what spies may be about----"
I broke in.
"I am no spy, Admiral. I happened to be in your neighbourhood and met the lad running, and I----"
"How about the death of The Rogue? Answer me that, Mr. Jones. You have shed the blood of----"
I saw that my case was hopeless.
The Admiral could hardly wait now to give his orders. He interrupted himself, he was in such haste.
"String him up! string him up! If you have no cage, put a rope round his throat and leave him hanging. String him up! string him up!"
A wild shriek rang out through the lofty apartment. I knew the voice. It was Cynthia"s. Then all was still. In an instant fifty torches were alight.
"Some one has discovered us!" cried the hoa.r.s.e voice of Captain Jonas.
"Sarch the place! Sarch the place! A thousand louis for the man who finds the spy!"
Ah! she would be found! She would be found! They would seize her and carry her away with them on their floating h.e.l.l!
"String him up! string him up!" shouted the Admiral, excitedly, pointing fiercely at me.
I saw, as if in a dream, that they had lifted the lad from the ground and had placed him in the niche, and that the blacksmith was engaged in riveting the chain at the top of the headpiece to a ring bolt in the roofing of the arch. Truly these devils took much pains to be revenged upon their enemies, the world at large! I saw the Smith"s lips move, as if he were whispering something to the lad. His face had a pitiful expression, as if he would fain tender some help; but young Trevelyan himself hung like a dead weight, and seemed unconscious of what was befalling him.
At the Admiral"s order of "String him up!" one man had gone quickly for a rope which had been unbound from a coffer, and a noose was made and placed round my throat. The men ran, urging me along with them, looking overhead, as if to find a place where they could fasten their diabolical instrument of death.
Then the Smith spoke, leaving the lad where he had placed him. He came forward, trying, it seemed to me, to appear as bloodthirsty as the rest.
"The Chief Justice has hung for a long time, Admiral," he said. "A hanging is quickly over. The other is a pleasant reminder of one"s failings for some days to come. The agony of the Chief Justice has been finished now for some time. What do you say to taking his cage for this fellow who shoots our brave sailors as if they were dogs?"
"Well thought of! well thought of!" roared Captain Jonas, not waiting for the Admiral to speak.
"Yes, it"s well thought of!" chimed in the arbiter of my fate.
"It is a tremenjous compliment," rejoined Captain Jonas, "I can tell you that, Mr. Hiram Jones. Any man can die by scragging. You can scrag yourself. But to be placed in an elegant house, which no less a person than a Chief Justice of England has occupied before you, to be in the distinguished company of the Lord George Trevelyan----"
"Come! come! stop this nonsense!" snarled the Admiral. "Fasten the fellow up, and let us be off! That Frenchman will be along some time between this and dawn. Put him in! put him in! Where is Mauresco? How long he lingers! He should be here to read the burial service. Where is handsome Mauresco?"
"Where he will never need service more!" shouted I, but at a nudge from the Smith I did not repeat my scarce heeded words. The Smith then laid me down upon the ground, and two great hulking fellows stood over me with pistols ready c.o.c.ked. The Smith left my side, and I heard a hammering and prying, and soon there was a fall and the rattle of something which caused a shudder to creep through my frame.
I watched them, fascinated, as they unhooked the chain and removed the bolts with which the Chief Justice was fastened to the top and sides of his peculiar niche. I saw them open the rusty clasps and remove the skull and musty remains from the house that was to be mine. I heard the bones rattle, as if in protest, as the men threw the Chief Justice carelessly into a corner. I saw them remove a few bits of cloth and mould from the metal before they dragged the ghastly thing across the floor to where I lay. I saw them lay the cage upon the ground and open its clever mechanism, the trunk, the head, the legs, the arms, to make room for my wretched trembling body. I turned sick and faint as the wires which had pressed those mouldering bones were bound against my face and head. I smelled the charnel house upon that rusted frame; corruption was in the cage which inclosed me and in the air that I breathed.
Little time had been occupied in dispossessing the Chief Justice of his last home. I forgot myself long enough to turn my eyes upon the poor lad to see how he bore his dread ordeal. But he still hung limp and lifeless. Perhaps he would awake later to the full horror of his living death. For me, I intended to retain my senses to the last. The Smith knelt down beside me. He bent over my head, as if to arrange more properly the cage in which they had now laid me.
"The ring at the top is weak," he whispered; and then, "Forgive me; it is your life or mine."
"I forgive you," I said aloud.
The Admiral and Captain Jonas set up a hearty roar, in which the others joined.
"He forgives the Smith," said Captain Jonas. "How very polite of Mr.
Jones! Of course, you feel better, Smith?"
"I want none of him or of his d.a.m.ned forgiveness!" said the Smith, leaning again close to my ear. "The fastening is a little weak." Aloud, "Where is that other pincers?"
There were shouts and a rush to find the pincers, during which he said in a whisper, his lips scarce moving:
"A friend could release you. I will drop the tools." And then aloud:
"It is meat and drink to me to trice up a Yankee!"
And now, as I was raised to my feet--rather to a standing posture, for I was so closely confined that I could move naught but my eyeb.a.l.l.s--and as I was being carried to the remaining niche, the villains began their burial service.