Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader, Robert Michael Ballantyne [english novels to improve english .TXT] 📗

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On reaching the highest ridge of the mountains, Keona suddenly stopped, placed Alice on a flat rock and went to the top of a peak not more than fifty yards off. Here he lay down and gazed long and earnestly over the country through which they had just passed, evidently for the purpose of discovering, if possible, the position and motions of his enemies.

Poopy, whose wits were sharpened by love, at once took advantage of her opportunity. She crept on all fours towards the rock on which Alice lay, in such a manner that it came between her person and the savage.

"Missy Alice! Oh! missy Alice! quick, look up, it's me--Poopy," said the girl, raising her head cautiously above the edge of the rock.

Alice started up on one elbow, and was about to utter a scream of delight and surprise, when her sable friend laid her black paw suddenly on the child's pretty mouth and effectually shut it up.

"Hush! Alice; no cry. Savage hear and come back--kill Poopy bery much quick. Listen. Me all alone. You bery clibber. Dry up eyes, no cry any more. Look happy. God will save you. Poopy nebber leave you as long as got her body in her soul."

Just at this point, Keona rose from his recumbent position, and the girl, who had not suffered her eyes to move from him for a single instant, at once sunk behind the rock and crept so silently away that Alice could scarcely persuade herself that she had not been dreaming.

The savage returned, took the child's hand, led her over the brow of the mountain, and began to descend by a steep rugged path to the valleys lying on the other side of the island. But before going a hundred yards down the dark gorge--which was rendered all the darker by the approach of night--he turned abruptly aside; entered the mouth of a cavern and disappeared.

Poopy was horrified at this unexpected and sudden change in the state of things. For a long time she lay closely hid among the rocks within twenty yards of the cave's mouth, expecting every moment to see the fugitives issue from its dark recesses. But they did not reappear. All at once it occurred to the girl that there might possibly be an exit from the cavern at the other end of it, and that, while she was idly waiting there, her little mistress and her savage captor might be hastening down the mountain far beyond her reach.

Rendered desperate by this idea, she quitted her place of concealment, and ran recklessly into the cavern. But the place was dark as Erebus, and the ground was so rugged that she tripped and fell before she had advanced into it more than fifty yards.

Bruised by the fall, and overawed by the gloom of her situation, the poor girl lay still for some time where she had fallen, with bated breath, and listening intently; but no sound struck her ear save the beating of her own heart, which appeared to her unnaturally loud. Under an impulse of terror, she rose and ran back into the open air.

Here it occurred to her that she might perhaps find the other outlet to the cave--supposing that one really existed--by going round the hill and carefully examining the ground on the other side. This, however, was a matter requiring considerable time, and it was not until a full hour had expired that she returned to the mouth of the cave, and sat down to rest and consider what should be done next.

To enter the dark recesses of the place without a light she knew would be impossible as well as useless, and she had no means of procuring a light. Besides, even if she had, what good could come of her exploration? The next impulse was to hasten back to the settlement at full speed and guide a party to the place; but, was it likely that the savage would remain long in the cave? This question suggested her former idea of the possible existence of another outlet; and as she thought upon Alice being now utterly beyond her reach, she covered her face with her hands and burst into tears. After a short time she began to pray. Then, as the minutes flew past, and her hopes sank lower and lower, she commenced--like many a child of Adam who thinks himself considerably wiser than a black girl--to murmur at her hard lot. This she did in an audible voice, having become forgetful of, as well as indifferent to, the chance of discovery.

"Oh! w'at for was me born?" she inquired, somewhat viciously, and, not being able apparently to answer this question, she proceeded to comment in a wildly sarcastic tone on the impropriety of her having been brought into existence at all.

"Me should be dead. W'at's de use o' life w'en ums nothin' to live for? Alice gone! Darling Alice! Oh! dear. Me wish I wasn't never had been born; yes me do. Don't care for meself! Wouldn't give nuffin for meself! Only fit to tend missy Alice! Not fit for nuffin else, and now Alice gone--whar' to, nobody nose an' nobody care, 'xcept Poopy, who's not worth a brass button!"

Having given utterance to this last expression, which she had acquired from her friend Corrie, the poor girl began to howl in order to relieve her insupportable feelings.

It was at this point in our story that Master Corrie, and his companion the Grampus, having traced the before-mentioned footprints for a considerable distance, became cognisant of sundry unearthly sounds, on hearing which, never having heard anything like them before, these wanderers stood still in attitudes of breathless attention and gazed at each other with looks of indescribable amazement, not altogether unmixed with a dash of consternation.


CHAPTER ELEVEN.


A GHOST--A TERRIBLE COMBAT ENDING IN A DREADFUL PLUNGE.

"Corrie," said Jo Bumpus, solemnly, with a troubled expression on his grave face: "I've heer'd a-many a cry in this life, both ashore and afloat; but, since I was half as long as a marline-spike, I've never heer'd the likes o' that there screech nowhere."

At any other time the boy would have expressed a doubt as to the possibility of the Grampus having, at any period of his existence, been so short as "half the length of a marline-spike;" but, being very imaginative by nature, and having been encouraged to believe in ghosts by education, he was too frightened to be funny. With a face that might very well have passed for that of a ghost, and a very pale ghost too, he said, in a tremulous voice--

"Oh! dear Bumpus, what _shall_ we do?"

"Dun know," replied Jo, very sternly; for the stout mariner also believed in ghosts, as a matter of course, (although he would not admit it), and, being a man of iron mould and powerful will, there was at that moment going on within his capacious breast, a terrific struggle between natural courage and supernatural cowardice.

"Let's go back," whispered Corrie. "I know another pass over the hills. It's a longer one, to be sure; but we can run, you know, to make for--"

He was struck dumb and motionless at this point by the recurrence of the dreadful howling, louder than ever, as poor Poopy's despair deepened.

"Don't speak to me, boy," said Bumpus, still more sternly, while a cold sweat stood in large beads on his pale forehead. "Here's wot I calls somethin' new, an' it becomes a man, specially a British seaman, d'ye see, to inquire into new things in a reasonable sort of way."

Jo caught his breath, and clutched the rock beside him powerfully, as he continued--

"It ain't a ghost, in course; it _can't_ be that. Cause why? there's no sich a thing as a ghost--"

"Ain't there?" whispered Corrie, hopefully.

The hideous yell that Poopy here set up, seemed to give the lie direct to the sceptical seaman; but he went on deliberately, though with a glazed eye, and a death-like pallor on his face--

"No; there ain't no ghosts--never wos, an' never will be. All ghosts is sciencrific dolusions, nothing more; and it's only the hignorant an' supercilious as b'lieves in 'em. _I_ don't; an', wots more," added Jo, with tremendous decision, "I _won't_!"

At this point, the "sciencrific dolusion" recurred to her former idea of alarming the settlement; and with this view began to retrace her steps, howling as she went.

Of course, as Jo and his small companion had been guided by her footsteps, it followed that Poopy, in retracing them, gradually drew near to the terrified pair. The short twilight of those regions had already deepened into the shades of night; so that the poor girl's form was not at first visible, as she advanced from among the dark shadows of the overhanging cliffs and the large masses of spattered rock that lay strewn about that wild mountain pass.

Now, although John Bumpus succeeded, by an almost supernatural effort, in calming the tumultuous agitation of his spirit, while the wild cries of the girl were at some distance, he found himself utterly bereft of speech when the dreadful sounds unmistakably approached him. Corrie, too, became livid, and both were rooted to the spot in unutterable horror; but when the ghost at length actually came into view, and, (owing to Poopy's body being dark, and her garments white), presented the appearance of a dimly luminous creature, without head, arms, or legs, the last spark of endurance of man and boy went out. The one gave a roar, the other a shriek, of horror, and both turned and fled like the wind over a stretch of country, which, in happier circumstances, they would have crossed with caution.

Poopy helped to accelerate their flight by giving vent to a cry of fear, and thereafter to a yell of delight, as, from her point of view, she recognised the well-known outline of Corrie's figure clearly defined against the sky. She ran after them in frantic haste; but she might as well have chased a couple of wild cats. Either terror is gifted with better wings than hope, or males are better runners than females. Perhaps both propositions are true; but certain it is that Poopy soon began to perceive that the succour which had appeared so suddenly, was about to vanish almost as quickly.

In this new dilemma, the girl once more availed herself of her slight knowledge of the place, and made a detour, which enabled her to shoot ahead of the fugitives and intercept them in one of the narrowest parts of the mountain-gorge. Here, instead of using her natural voice, she conceived that the likeliest way of making her terrified friends understand who she was, would be to shout with all the strength of her lungs. Accordingly, she planted herself suddenly in the centre of their path, just as the two came tearing blindly round a corner of rock, and set up a series of yells, the nature of which utterly beggars description.

The result was, that with one short wild cry of renewed horror, Bumpus and Corrie turned sharp round and fled in the opposite direction.

There is no doubt whatever that they would have succeeded in ultimately escaping from this pertinacious ghost, and poor Poopy would have had to make the best of her way to