Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (407 page)

‘Master,’ said I, ‘you look pale, deathly pale; your pallor fills me with dread.  Your eyes are bloodshot; they are red like the rubies that we seek.’

‘Wench,’ he cried, ‘look before you; look at your steps.  I declare to Heaven, if you annoy me once again by looking back, I shall remind you of the change in your position.’

A little after, I observed a worm upon the ground, and told, in a whisper, that its touch was death.  Presently a great green serpent, vivid as the grass in spring, wound rapidly across the path; and once again I paused and looked back at my companion, with a horror in my eyes.  ‘The coffin snake,’ said I, ‘the snake that dogs its victim like a hound.’

But he was not to be dissuaded.  ‘I am an old traveller,’ said he.  ‘This is a foul jungle indeed; but we shall soon be at an end.’

‘Ay,’ said I, looking at him, with a strange smile, ‘what end?’

Thereupon he laughed again and again, but not very heartily; and then, perceiving that the path began to widen and grow higher, ‘There!’ said he.  ‘What did I tell you?  We are past the worst.’

Indeed, we had now come to the bayou, which was in that place very narrow and bridged across by a fallen trunk; but on either hand we could see it broaden out, under a cavern of great arms of trees and hanging creepers: sluggish, putrid, of a horrible and sickly stench, floated on by the flat heads of alligators, and its banks alive with scarlet crabs.

‘If we fall from that unsteady bridge,’ said I, ‘see, where the caiman lies ready to devour us!  If, by the least divergence from the path, we should be snared in a morass, see, where those myriads of scarlet vermin scour the border of the thicket!  Once helpless, how they would swarm together to the assault!  What could man do against a thousand of such mailed assailants?  And what a death were that, to perish alive under their claws.’

‘Are you mad, girl?’ he cried.  ‘I bid you be silent and lead on.’

Again I looked upon him, half relenting; and at that he raised the stick that was in his hand and cruelly struck me on the face.  ‘Lead on!’ he cried again.  ‘Must I be all day, catching my death in this vile slough, and all for a prating slave-girl?’

I took the blow in silence, I took it smiling; but the blood welled back upon my heart.  Something, I know not what, fell at that moment with a dull plunge in the waters of the lagoon, and I told myself it was my pity that had fallen.

On the farther side, to which we now hastily scrambled, the wood was not so dense, the web of creepers not so solidly convolved.  It was possible, here and there, to mark a patch of somewhat brighter daylight, or to distinguish, through the lighter web of parasites, the proportions of some soaring tree.  The cypress on the left stood very visibly forth, upon the edge of such a clearing; the path in that place widened broadly; and there was a patch of open ground, beset with horrible ant-heaps, thick with their artificers.  I laid down the tools and basket by the cypress root, where they were instantly blackened over with the crawling ants; and looked once more in the face of my unconscious victim.  Mosquitoes and foul flies wove so close a veil between us that his features were obscured; and the sound of their flight was like the turning of a mighty wheel.

‘Here,’ I said, ‘is the spot.  I cannot dig, for I have not learned to use such instruments; but, for your own sake, I beseech you to be swift in what you do.’

He had sunk once more upon the ground, panting like a fish; and I saw rising in his face the same dusky flush that had mantled on my father’s.  ‘I feel ill,’ he gasped, ‘horribly ill; the swamp turns around me; the drone of these carrion flies confounds me.  Have you not wine?’

I gave him a glass, and he drank greedily.  ‘It is for you to think,’ said I, ‘if you should further persevere.  The swamp has an ill name.’  And at the word I ominously nodded.

‘Give me the pick,’ said he.  ‘Where are the jewels buried?’

I told him vaguely; and in the sweltering heat and closeness, and dim twilight of the jungle, he began to wield the pickaxe, swinging it overhead with the vigour of a healthy man.  At first, there broke forth upon him a strong sweat, that made his face to shine, and in which the greedy insects settled thickly.

‘To sweat in such a place,’ said I.  ‘O master, is this wise?  Fever is drunk in through open pores.’

‘What do you mean?’ he screamed, pausing with the pick buried in the soil.  ‘Do you seek to drive me mad?  Do you think I do not understand the danger that I run?’

‘That is all I want,’ said I: ‘I only wish you to be swift.’  And then, my mind flitting to my father’s deathbed, I began to murmur, scarce above my breath, the same vain repetition of words, ‘Hurry, hurry, hurry.’

Presently, to my surprise, the treasure-seeker took them up; and while he still wielded the pick, but now with staggering and uncertain blows, repeated to himself, as it were the burthen of a song, ‘Hurry, hurry, hurry;’ and then again, ‘There is no time to lose; the marsh has an ill name, ill name;’ and then back to ‘Hurry, hurry, hurry,’ with a dreadful, mechanical, hurried, and yet wearied utterance, as a sick man rolls upon his pillow.  The sweat had disappeared; he was now dry, but all that I could see of him, of the same dull brick red.  Presently his pick unearthed the bag of jewels; but he did not observe it, and continued hewing at the soil.

‘Master,’ said I, ‘there is the treasure.’  He seemed to waken from a dream.  ‘Where?’ he cried; and then, seeing it before his eyes, ‘Can this be possible?’ he added.  ‘I must be light-headed.  Girl,’ he cried suddenly, with the same screaming tone of voice that I had once before observed, ‘what is wrong? is this swamp accursed?’

‘It is a grave,’ I answered.  ‘You will not go out alive; and as for me, my life is in God’s hands.’

He fell upon the ground like a man struck by a blow, but whether from the effect of my words, or from sudden seizure of the malady, I cannot tell.  Pretty soon, he raised his head.  ‘You have brought me here to die,’ he said; ‘at the risk of your own days, you have condemned me.  Why?’

‘To save my honour,’ I replied.  ‘Bear me out that I have warned you.  Greed of these pebbles, and not I, has been your undoer.’

He took out his revolver and handed it to me.  ‘You see,’ he said, ‘I could have killed you even yet.  But I am dying, as you say; nothing could save me; and my bill is long enough already.  Dear me, dear me,’ he said, looking in my face with a curious, puzzled, and pathetic look, like a dull child at school, ‘if there be a judgment afterwards, my bill is long enough.’

At that, I broke into a passion of weeping, crawled at his feet, kissed his hands, begged his forgiveness, put the pistol back into his grasp and besought him to avenge his death; for indeed, if with my life I could have bought back his, I had not balanced at the cost.  But he was determined, the poor soul, that I should yet more bitterly regret my act.

‘I have nothing to forgive,’ said he.  ‘Dear heaven, what a thing is an old fool!  I thought, upon my word, you had taken quite a fancy to me.’

He was seized, at the same time, with a dreadful, swimming dizziness, clung to me like a child, and called upon the name of some woman.  Presently this spasm, which I watched with choking tears, lessened and died away; and he came again to the full possession of his mind.  ‘I must write my will,’ he said.  ‘Get out my pocket-book.’  I did so, and he wrote hurriedly on one page with a pencil.  ‘Do not let my son know,’ he said; ‘he is a cruel dog, is my son Philip; do not let him know how you have paid me out;’ and then all of a sudden, ‘God,’ he cried, ‘I am blind,’ and clapped both hands before his eyes; and then again, and in a groaning whisper, ‘Don’t leave me to the crabs!’  I swore I would be true to him so long as a pulse stirred; and I redeemed my promise.  I sat there and watched him, as I had watched my father, but with what different, with what appalling thoughts!  Through the long afternoon, he gradually sank.  All that while, I fought an uphill battle to shield him from the swarms of ants and the clouds of mosquitoes: the prisoner of my crime.  The night fell, the roar of insects instantly redoubled in the dark arcades of the swamp; and still I was not sure that he had breathed his last.  At length, the flesh of his hand, which I yet held in mine, grew chill between my fingers, and I knew that I was free.

I took his pocket-book and the revolver, being resolved rather to die than to be captured, and laden besides with the basket and the bag of gems, set forward towards the north.  The swamp, at that hour of the night, was filled with a continuous din: animals and insects of all kinds, and all inimical to life, contributing their parts.  Yet in the midst of this turmoil of sound, I walked as though my eyes were bandaged, beholding nothing.  The soil sank under my foot, with a horrid, slippery consistence, as though I were walking among toads; the touch of the thick wall of foliage, by which alone I guided myself, affrighted me like the touch of serpents; the darkness checked my breathing like a gag; indeed, I have never suffered such extremes of fear as during that nocturnal walk, nor have I ever known a more sensible relief than when I found the path beginning to mount and to grow firmer under foot, and saw, although still some way in front of me, the silver brightness of the moon.

Presently, I had crossed the last of the jungle, and come forth amongst noble and lofty woods, clean rock, the clean, dry dust, the aromatic smell of mountain plants that had been baked all day in sunlight, and the expressive silence of the night.  My negro blood had carried me unhurt across that reeking and pestiferous morass; by mere good fortune, I had escaped the crawling and stinging vermin with which it was alive; and I had now before me the easier portion of my enterprise, to cross the isle and to make good my arrival at the haven and my acceptance on the English yacht.  It was impossible by night to follow such a track as my father had described; and I was casting about for any landmark, and, in my ignorance, vainly consulting the disposition of the stars, when there fell upon my ear, from somewhere far in front, the sound of many voices hurriedly singing.

I scarce knew upon what grounds I acted; but I shaped my steps in the direction of that sound; and in a quarter of an hour’s walking, came unperceived to the margin of an open glade.  It was lighted by the strong moon and by the flames of a fire.  In the midst, there stood a little low and rude building, surmounted by a cross: a chapel, as I then remembered to have heard, long since desecrated and given over to the rites of Hoodoo.  Hard by the steps of entrance was a black mass, continually agitated and stirring to and fro as if with inarticulate life; and this I presently perceived to be a heap of cocks, hares, dogs, and other birds and animals, still struggling, but helplessly tethered and cruelly tossed one upon another.  Both the fire and the chapel were surrounded by a ring of kneeling Africans, both men and women.  Now they would raise their palms half-closed to heaven, with a peculiar, passionate gesture of supplication; now they would bow their heads and spread their hands before them on the ground.  As the double movement passed and repassed along the line, the heads kept rising and falling, like waves upon the sea; and still, as if in time to these gesticulations, the hurried chant continued.  I stood spellbound, knowing that my life depended by a hair, knowing that I had stumbled on a celebration of the rites of Hoodoo.

Presently, the door of the chapel opened, and there came forth a tall negro, entirely nude, and bearing in his hand the sacrificial knife.  He was followed by an apparition still more strange and shocking: Madam Mendizabal, naked also, and carrying in both hands and raised to the level of her face, an open basket of wicker.  It was filled with coiling snakes; and these, as she stood there with the uplifted basket, shot through the osier grating and curled about her arms.  At the sight of this, the fervour of the crowd seemed to swell suddenly higher; and the chant rose in pitch and grew more irregular in time and accent.  Then, at a sign from the tall negro, where he stood, motionless and smiling, in the moon and firelight, the singing died away, and there began the second stage of this barbarous and bloody celebration.  From different parts of the ring, one after another, man or woman, ran forth into the midst; ducked, with that same gesture of the thrown-up hand, before the priestess and her snakes; and with various adjurations, uttered aloud the blackest wishes of the heart.  Death and disease were the favours usually invoked: the death or the disease of enemies or rivals; some calling down these plagues upon the nearest of their own blood, and one, to whom I swear I had been never less than kind, invoking them upon myself.  At each petition, the tall negro, still smiling, picked up some bird or animal from the heaving mass upon his left, slew it with the knife, and tossed its body on the ground.  At length, it seemed, it reached the turn of the high-priestess.  She set down the basket on the steps, moved into the centre of the ring, grovelled in the dust before the reptiles, and still grovelling lifted up her voice, between speech and singing, and with so great, with so insane a fervour of excitement, as struck a sort of horror through my blood.

‘Power,’ she began, ‘whose name we do not utter; power that is neither good nor evil, but below them both; stronger than good, greater than evil — all my life long I have adored and served thee.  Who has shed blood upon thine altars? whose voice is broken with the singing of thy praises? whose limbs are faint before their age with leaping in thy revels?  Who has slain the child of her body?  I,’ she cried, ‘I, Metamnbogu!  By my own name, I name myself.  I tear away the veil.  I would be served or perish.  Hear me, slime of the fat swamp, blackness of the thunder, venom of the serpent’s udder — hear or slay me!  I would have two things, O shapeless one, O horror of emptiness — two things, or die!  The blood of my white-faced husband; oh! give me that; he is the enemy of Hoodoo; give me his blood!  And yet another, O racer of the blind winds, O germinator in the ruins of the dead, O root of life, root of corruption!  I grow old, I grow hideous; I am known, I am hunted for my life: let thy servant then lay by this outworn body; let thy chief priestess turn again to the blossom of her days, and be a girl once more, and the desired of all men, even as in the past!  And, O lord and master, as I here ask a marvel not yet wrought since we were torn from the old land, have I not prepared the sacrifice in which thy soul delighteth — the kid without the horns?’