"Hush!" said the kind-hearted sailor, pointing to his berth as they entered the cabin. "Hush! and tell me if that is your young master."
The negro drew in his breath with a sob, and scarcely seemed to respire after that. He crept close up to the berth, and looked down upon the boy with a glow in his black face that it is impossible to describe, for every ugly feature quivered with tenderness, while his eyes filled with light, like those of a Newfoundland dog when he has done brave work for his master.
"What will you do with us, strange master?" he said at last, addressing the captain in a humble whisper. "Not send us back yonder?"
He made a motion toward the town with his hand, and a slow horror crept over his face.
"No, my poor fellow, I will take the child to my own thrice-blessed land, if there is no one left to claim him."
"And Jube--let him go too. If the strange master wants a slave, Jube is strong, like a lion, and honest as a dog."
"Poor fellow!"
"See if Jube is not honest," he added, pressing the bronze box between his hands, and forcing some secret spring to recoil. "They told Jube to keep them, and he did. The master went back after mis--went after them.
Jube wanted to go with him, but the master said, "No, stay on the island, and guard that;" so Jube staid, waiting--waiting--waiting for master to come with mistress and the little boy. He never come--never--never will come again. The mistress sleeps! but where shall Jube go to find him, and give back the box?"
"My poor fellow, I fear your master is dead, from some words I gathered from the boy; I am almost sure of it."
"You will take the little boy and Jube away?" said the negro, anxiously, still holding the box half-shut between his hands.
"If no one comes to claim him or you, I will."
The lid of the box flew open, and a ray of sunshine from the cabin window flashed upon the jewels with which it was filled--diamond necklaces, bracelets flaming with rubies and emeralds, ropes of oriental pearls, and armlets flashing like rainbows, broke the sunshine into sparkles of fire.
Mason looked wonderingly on the eager face of the negro.
"And this treasure--did it belong to your master?" he questioned. "Was it to guard this, you hid in the chaparral at White Island?"
"All his; more, more, much more in the great house out there; but heavy gold--too heavy--we had to leave it and go back. He went--wouldn"t take Jube--master went, but never he comes to see if Jube is faithful!"
"And all this belongs to the little fellow yonder. G.o.d help him!"
"You take little boy--take the box, and take Jube; he gives you all!"
Jube closed the box, dropped on both knees, and held it up.
Captain Mason hesitated, looked at the sleeping child and its strange guardian, shrinking from the trust which chance had imposed upon him.
But he felt that a sacred duty was placed before him, from which no honest man should wish to retreat.
He took the box, but as his hands touched the metal a cold chill crept to his heart, and a mist floated before his eyes--an unstable, reddish mist, such as floods a room when the light is filtered through crimson drapery.
Perhaps the red curtain had fluttered before the cabin window; but if so, he felt the startling effect without knowing its cause, and the box shook in his hands, till the jewels within gave forth a faint sound.
"You will take us," pleaded the negro, frightened by the change in Captain Mason"s countenance.
"Yes," answered the brave man, casting off the feeling that had seized upon him; "I accept the trust; G.o.d has placed it in my hands. As I discharge it, may he prove merciful to me and mine."
The captain spoke to himself, and from the feelings that filled his heart, rather than in reply to the negro; but the expression of his face was full of grand resolve, which the slave could read better than language. So he looked on with a glow of satisfaction while the box was packed up among the most valuable property the captain possessed.
All this time the cabin door had been ajar, and but for the excitement consequent to the scene, Captain Mason might have heard cautious steps creeping down the stairs, and the suppressed breathing of a man who skulked on the lowest steps, with his greedy eyes fixed on the jewels, as they flashed that one minute in the negro"s hands. The listener waited until he saw the treasure put safely away, and heard the captain"s promise. Then he went up the steps, two at a time, with soft, cautious leaps, like those of a fox, and when the captain came on deck, his mate was busy superintending the boat, as it was hauled to its fastenings.
CHAPTER IV.
THE FAITHFUL SLAVE.
In France, the awful strife of the Revolution had sprung out of oppressions heaped by one cla.s.s upon another, from century to century, until the people began to comprehend the powers that lay in mere physical strength, and hurled themselves in a phrensy of hate on their oppressors. But even Paris, whose awful example had run like wildfire all over France and its dependencies, plunged into its carnival of blood with far less ferocity than marked this outbreak of Negroes in St.
Domingo. In Paris, it was an upheaving of cla.s.ses, marked and established by men of kindred blood, and born to the same soil. A struggle of men clamorous for their birthright of freedom, which they were determined to wrest from the strong hand of power.
Ages of oppression could not be hurled off thus suddenly, without horrible carnage. But there, it was the people against a government--white men struggling against white men. In a mighty effort to upheave the foundations of despotism, the people grew mad. In their ardor for liberty, and in the ignorance of her very visage, they trampled her in the dust, setting up red handed murder in her place, dealing death on every hand, as they hurled themselves with mighty force on their oppressors and trampled upon them with that ferocious hate continual wrongs will ever engender. But in the hot tropics, this struggle became a war of races, the most fierce, terrible, and relentless that humanity has yet known. It became a war of blacks against whites. Slaves against their masters. Where hate and ignorance hurled their ma.s.sive strength against luxurious refinement. The brightest features of this horrible struggle were the murders that gave Paris so many blood red pages in history, pages that all her after greatness and glory will never have power to wash white.
The ma.s.sacre of St. Domingo was one of intense hate. The black slave, brutalized by the chains he wore, stood on every hearthstone ready for revenge on his white master. That which followed was not merely a ma.s.sacre but a hurried carnival of ruin, a riot of awful pa.s.sions, of atrocities for which there is no language, and from which the imagination revolts with sickening inability of comprehension.
Of all the horrors perpetrated in the French Revolution, which was one great horror in itself, that of St. Domingo was the most brutal the most demoniac. And such a war of races--a war between white men and negroes must ever be. With the despotism of long established power, luxurious ease, and pampered intelligence, opposed to the hot blood of Africa, scarcely subdued from its first savage state, fired by the memory of slave ships, chains, starvation, barter, and above all, the wild freedom which preceded these wrongs, who can wonder at the scenes which made that lovely island a purgatory of crime.
But these scenes no human being can ever describe. It would require a pen of adamant and the heart of a fiend to depict a single act of that fearful outbreak.
All the night, and deep into the sweet rosiness of the morning the terrible strife raged on in that doomed city. But in the broad day these black savages began to retreat from their ghastly orgies, and, for a time, the delirium of murder waned from its climax. The thirst for rapine slackened to a degree, and the monsters who had found this ferocious pastime full of intoxication, grew sluggish like wild beasts satiated with blood.
Some of these wretches lay down in the public streets, and fell asleep in the hot sun; others huddled together in torpid ma.s.ses and sunk into stupor, dreaming of coming nights, which should give them a new riot of blood and fire. Stumbling over these, fierce crowds of untired demons kept on their work, stabbing right and left in brutal wantonness, for a lack of victims, and sickening the air with boasts of hideous acts performed in the night, and which another night should witness. Never on this earth had a scene more revolting presented itself to the beautiful sunshine.
But human nature is not all vile, and even among those ignorant, ill-used blacks, germs of compa.s.sion, tenderness, and good faith are found, redeeming, in a degree, the harrowing cruelties of the many.
Among these good men--good in spite of ignorance and wrong endured--was the black man Jube. If ever faithfulness, natural feeling, and a simple sense of honor, dwelt in a human being, these feelings throve in the broad, cloudy bosom of the slave, and many another household servant became a household saviour in that cruel time.
While his little master was wrapped in the deep slumber which follows exhaustion, the negro had besought permission to go on sh.o.r.e and search for his master. Captain Mason, in his generous pity of the poor fellow, sent the boat back to the place it had reached the night before, to lie in wait for the negro while he searched around the palm trees and the neighboring chaparral for some traces of the n.o.ble master who had won his whole savage heart by great kindness.
The men who waited in the boat saw him wandering along the sh.o.r.e in a dejected att.i.tude, for a long time. At last he came near a great spreading aloe, whose broad under leaves were half buried in the sand.
Those who watched, heard a low, wailing cry, and saw the negro fall upon his knees, and rock to and fro in an agony of grief over some object concealed behind the aloe.
"He"s found something that"s cut him down like grape shot," said one of the sailors, flinging a quid of tobacco, which he had just cut for himself, back into his box, and closing it softly.
"Such a scream as that is enough to take a man off his tobacco for a month," answered another tar, taking off his tarpaulin, and wiping his bald head with the sleeve of his jacket.
"Supposen we pull in and see what it is?" said Rice.
"No; the captain told us not to go ash.o.r.e. Some of them tarnal n.i.g.g.e.rs "ed get hold of the boat, spite of us," answered the old tar.
"But we"ll row up into shallow water, and one of us can go see what"s the matter, and the rest "ell take care of the cutter. Every thing seems to be still along there, not a n.i.g.g.e.r in sight," answered Rice, who commanded the boat.
The boat was urged into water so shallow that one of the sailors rolled up his duck trousers and stepped in, wading easily ash.o.r.e. With a long, rolling step he swung himself forward up the beach, and soon found Jube on his knees by the body of a dead man, who lay in the gaunt shadow of the aloe, pierced through the heart, with a spear broken short in the wound.
Jube looked up, his black face wet with tears, his great hands clasped and pressed downward in the sand.
"It is him. Me has found the master," he said in broken English. "Cold!
cold! oh, so dead!"