The Sea-Witch, Maturin Murray Ballou [nonfiction book recommendations txt] 📗

Ratlin’s intercourse with Maud with much interest, which she did not attempt to disguise, while her daughter did so under the disguise of indifference, but with the most intense interest. Not a word, look, or sign between them betrayed the least token of any understanding or peculiar confidence as existing between the commander and the Quadroon.

Maud, on her part, began to change somewhat since the first day of the arrival of the strangers. Then she was as free and unconstrained as innocence itself—now she seemed to regard the new-comers with a jealous eye, for she saw the deep feeling evinced by the young commander towards the fairest of the two; she heard a strange charm in the tone of his voice when he addressed the daughter, and at such moments Mrs. Huntington more than once saw her bosom heave quickly, and her eye flash with a wild and startling fire that made her tremble. This was jealousy, plain and unmistakable, a fact that no woman would have been at a loss to understand.

It was not possible that the mother should be blind to the feeling evinced by Captain Ratlin towards her daughter, and she thought, so long as this sentiment maintained the respectful and solicitous character which it now bore, that it would redound to their security and future safety, as they were in one sense completely in his power. But as it regarded the idea of her daughter’s entertaining any affection for him, or seriously considering his advances, the idea could not for a moment enter her head. She did not at ill consider that there was any danger of her daughter’s losing her heart—no, no! Had not she been accustomed to attention from earliest girlhood, and from the most polished men? She did not even think it necessary to speak to her upon the subject; she might be as friendly as she pleased with him under the circumstances.

But the daughter herself, who to her mother’s eye was so indifferent, was at heart deeply and strangely impressed by the frank, chivalrous and devoted attention of the commander of the slaver. His attention was characterized by the most unquestioned delicacy and consideration; he had never uttered the first syllable to her that he might not properly have used before her mother—indeed, he had not the boldness or effrontery to urge a suit that he knew was out of the question, and yet he felt irresistibly drawn towards the English girl, and could not disguise from her the true sentiments that so plainly filled his inmost heart; she must have been less than woman not to have read his very soul, so bared to her scrutiny.

It was the first time that she had ever deceived her mother, because it was the first time that she had loved. Yes, loved, for though she would as soon have sacrificed her life as to have acknowledged it, yet she did love him, and the poor untutored Quadroon girl read the fact that the mother could not, with all her cultivation and knowledge of the world, detect. But jealousy is an apt teacher, and the spirit of Maud Leonardo was now thoroughly aroused; she sighed for revenge, and puzzled her brain how she might gain the longed-for end.

Captain Ratlin had eyes for only one object, and that was the young and beautiful English girl. He never gave a thought to Maud; he had never done so for one moment. As a friend of her father, or rather as a dealer intimately connected in a business point of view with him, he had given a present to his daughter, and had endeavored to make himself agreeable to her at all times, but never for one moment with a serious thought of any degree of intimacy, save of the most public and ordinary character. Probably Maud herself would have never thought seriously about the matter had she not felt how much the English girl surpassed her in beauty, in accomplishment, and in all that might attract the interest of one like Captain Ratlin.

Jealousy is a subtle poison, and the Quadroon was feeding upon it greedily, while its baleful effect was daily becoming more and more manifest in her behaviour.

 

CHAPTER IX.

THE ATTACK.

 

DON LEONARDO was no favorite among the tribes and chiefs of the region which was his immediate neighborhood, and he lived within the walls of his well-arranged residence, more like one in a fort than in his own domestic dwelling, maintaining himself, in fact, by a regular armament of his servants and a few countrymen whom he retained in his service. With the negroes he was, therefore, no friend, save so far as he purchased their prisoners of them, whom they secured in their marauding inroads upon the interior tribes. They feared Don Leonardo because he was a bold, bad man, and cared not for the spilling of blood at any time, for the furtherance of his immediate gain in the trade he pursued. It was for his interest to make them fear him, and this he contrived to do most effectually.

As Don Leonardo always paid for the slaves he purchased of the coast tribes in hard Spanish dollars, they believed him to possess an inexhaustible supply of specie, and the idea of robbing him had more than once been broached among them in their counsels; but feat and want of tact as to proper management in conducting an assault, they felt would insure the defeat of such a purpose, and thus the Spaniard had remained unmolested for years in his present position, but in no way relaxing the necessary degree of vigilance which should render safe his household, for he knew full well the treacherous character of the negroes, and that they were not for a moment to be trusted.

Maud, his daughter, was in no way ignorant of this state of affairs. She fully understood the entire matter. Perhaps the fact that some portion of the blood of that despised race ran in her own veins, led her to conceive a plan for revenge which should embrace not only the party who was the grave object of her hate, but even every person of white blood in her father’s household, not even excepting her father! No one, save a North American Indian, can hold and nourish a spirit of revenge like a Quadroon. It seems to be an innate trait of their nature, and ever ready to burst forth in a blaze at any moment.

It was impossible to understand exactly by what course of reasoning Maud had arrived at the purpose of attempting the destruction of the household as she did. One would have supposed that she would have been apt to adopt the easiest mode of arriving at the desired result, and that with even her simple knowledge of poison, she might, with a little adroitness, have taken the lives of all who were gathered under her father’s roof at a single meal; but the revengeful girl evidently had some secret feeling to gratify, in the employment of the agents whom she engaged for her purpose, and the blow she resolved should be struck, and decisively, too, by the negro enemies of her father, who were his near neighbors.

For this fell purpose, Maud held secret meetings with the chiefs, represented that her father’s strong-boxes were full of gold and silver coin, and that the negroes had only to effect an entrance at night, means for which she was herself prepared to furnish them, and at the same time representing to them that they would have it in their power to revenge themselves for all their past wrongs at her father’s hands, fancied or real. The negroes and their chiefs were only too intent upon the treasures their fancy depicted, to think or care for Maud herself, or to question the reason of her unnatural treachery. So they promised to enter the stockade under her direction, rob the house, and then screen the deed they had committed by burning the dwelling and all within its precincts.

While this diabolical plan had been thoroughly concocted, Captain Ratlin and the two English ladies had passed many pleasant hours together, all unconscious of there being any danger at hand, and even Maud, with subtle treachery, seemed more open and free than she had been in her intercourse with them at first. But when she thought herself unobserved, she would at times permit a reflex of her soul to steal over her dark, handsome features, and the fire of passion to flash from her eye. At such moments, the Quadroon became completely unsexed, and could herself scarcely contain her own anger and passion so far as not to spring, tiger-like, upon the object of her hatred. But the hour for the attempt upon the dwelling, and the destruction of its inhabitants, drew near. The negroes had sworn to stand by each other, and had sacrificed an infant to their deity, to propitiate him and insure success.

It was long past midnight that the blacks might have been seen pouring out of the adjacent jungle nearest to the house. They had selected the hour for their attack when they supposed the dwellers in the stockade-house would be soundest wrapped in sleep, and they had indeed chosen well, and all their plans had been carefully arranged. But just as Maud opened the secret entrance for them to pass in, and she herself passed out, to flee for the time being from the scene, Don Leonardo came out from his sleeping-apartment, followed by a trusty slave, and promptly shot down the two first figures that entered by the door, causing them to fall dead. This unexpected repulse caused those behind to retreat for a while to the jungle, where they might consult under cover as to what this unexpected opposition to their plans indicated.

The reader may as well be here informed that a faithful slave, who had been long with the Spanish trader, and who had been confided in by the robbers, at last could not keep the secret, but just at the opportune moment aroused her master, while he, by his promptness, for the moment stayed the attack, until the door could once more be fastened, and the people awakened and armed to repel the congregated mass of the enemy. The father did not for one moment suspect his child’s treachery, and was amazed and alarmed by her absence; but there was little time for speculations upon that or any other matter, since the large numbers of the negroes had rendered them bold, and they seemed determined, now they were partially foiled in their purpose as to entering the place by stratagem, to carry the house, at all hazards, by actual storm, while they rendered the air heavy with their yells.

Don Leonardo was not at all alarmed—he had fought too many battles with the negroes to fear them. He quietly prepared his fire-arms, and loaded to the muzzle a heavy swivel-gun he kept mounted at one of the main windows, while he gave arms to such of his slaves as he felt confidence in, and to his immediate retainers. The negroes had never seen nor heard the swivel fired, as it was a late importation. They had become somewhat accustomed to small arms, and though they had a dread of them, yet it was not sufficient to deter them from making the attack after having congregated in such numbers, and having become so wrought up by each other. But as they made a rush bodily towards the stockade, Don Leonardo fired the swivel, which had been loaded with shot, slugs, and bullets, into their very midst, every missile telling on the limb or body of one or more! The effect was electrical and the slaughter large.

The astonished savages rapidly gathered up their wounded companions and returned to the jungle once more. At first this