Prisoners of Hope Part 36

The master stepped to his side. "I swear," he cried, in his loud, manly voice, "by the faith of a Christian, by the honor of a gentleman, that not one of you whose names have been given by this man, shall in any way suffer by having been privy to this plot. I will so work with the Governor and Council that your bodies shall not be touched, nor your time of service increased. Bygones shall be bygones between us. This applies to all save this man, the head and front of the conspiracy. Him I cannot save. He must pay the penalty, but he shall be the scapegoat for the rest of you. You have my promise, the promise of a man who never breaks his word for good or evil."

"In the woods yonder are Indians," cried Landless. "They wait but for moonrise, for the appointed hour, to fall upon the plantation. You called me traitor! It is Luiz Sebastian and Trail who are the traitors, the betrayers! They are leagued with the Indians and with the slaves.

Look at them, and see that I speak truth!"

The look was sufficient. The dusky ma.s.s of slaves had swayed forward with one low, deep, b.e.s.t.i.a.l growl. Crouched for the spring, they were yet held in leash by the menace of the pistols, leveled upon them and gleaming in the torchlight, and by the restraining gesture and voice of Luiz Sebastian. In the crowd of servants, now quite separated from the slaves, was noise and confusion, and behind the Turk, standing midway between the parties, was forming a phalanx of villainous white faces--the dissolute, the convict, the refuse of the plantation,--and at his side, suddenly as though sprung from the earth, appeared the evil face and red hair of the murderer of Robert G.o.dwyn.

The silence of the Oliverians, stricken dumb by this new turn of affairs, was broken by Havisham's crying to Landless,--

"What are we to do, friend?"

"Make for the house and defend it and our lives," answered Landless, "but first I call upon all true men among you yonder to leave those murderers and join yourselves to us."

"In the name of the King!" cried the Colonel.

"In the name of G.o.d!" said Landless.

Some seven or eight broke from the opposite throng and with lowered heads ran to them across the open s.p.a.ce. Landless stooped, and lifting the senseless figure at his feet swung it over his shoulder.

"We are ready, Colonel Verney. Steady, men! Follow me!" He turned to the great house, rising vast and dark, two hundred yards away.

A gigantic, coal black Ashantee chief broke from the throng opposite and, uttering his war cry, bounded across the s.p.a.ce between them.

Another instant and he would have been upon them, and close after him a yelling pack of h.e.l.l hounds--the overseer's pistol cracked, and the black giant fell dead. A yell arose from the crowd, but they stood irresolute. For firearms, so strictly kept from servants and slaves, so preeminently pertaining to the dominant cla.s.s, they had a superst.i.tious dread. Four pistols meant four lives picked from the foremost to advance.

"Let them go," cried the mulatto, with a taunting laugh. "Let them go!

Let them go cage themselves in wooden walls where we will take them all together--rats in a trap. We will wait for the Chickahominies who have guns, senors, and for the Ricahecrians whose scalping knives are very bright. Until moonrise, senors from the great house, and you others who go with them! Mother of G.o.d! look well upon it, for it is the last you will ever see!"

Fifteen minutes later saw the house of Verney Manor garrisoned by some thirty desperate men. They had entered to find a scene of confusion--the hall and lower rooms filled with frightened women and crying children.

Patricia with white cheeks and brilliant eyes had come forward to meet her father, carrying a three days' child in her arms. Beyond her was Betty, bending her sweet, pale face over the mother, caught up from her pallet and carried to the house in the arms of the under overseer.

Mistress Lettice was alternately wailing that they were all undone and murdered, and wringing her hands over the obstinacy of Captain Laramore who, rapier in left hand, would stand guard at the door, instead of keeping quiet as the Doctor had said he must. The master's stern command for silence reduced the clamor of women and children to an undertone of lamentation. "We must to work at once," he said, "and apportion our forces. There are about thirty men, are there not, Woodson? I shall take the front with ten; Charles, thou shalt have one side, Woodson the other, and Haines the back. Laramore, thou must let us fight for thee, man, though I know thou findest it a bitter pill. Do you marshal the men, Woodson, and divide them into four parties, one for each face, and tell the women to leave off their whimpering and prepare to load the muskets. Haines, have the arms taken down from the racks and distribute them. Men and women, one and all, you are to remember that you are fighting for your lives and for more than your lives. You know what you have to expect if you are taken."

Sir Charles, followed by Landless, the Muggletonian and some three or four others, entered the great room, which, with the master's room, occupied that side of the house allotted to the baronet. The wax candles still burned upon the spinet, and upon the high mantel, and in the middle of the floor lay the overturned chess table. Three of the four windows were closely shuttered, but the fourth was open, and before it stood a graceful figure, looking out into the darkness.

Sir Charles strode hurriedly over to it. "Cousin! this is madness! You know not to what danger you may be exposing yourself. Come away!"

"I am watching for the moonrise," she said dreamily. "It is very near now. Look at the white glow above the water, and how pale the stars are!

How beautiful it is, and how cool the wind upon your forehead! Listen!

that was the cry of a jay, surely! and yet why should we hear it at night?"

"It is the cry of a jay, sure enough," said the overseer, pausing in his hurried pa.s.sage through the room, "but it was made by Indian lips."

"Come away, for G.o.d's sake!" cried the baronet.

"Look! there is the moon!" she answered.

Above the level of marsh and water appeared a thin line of silver. It thickened, rounded, became a glorious...o...b.. The marshes blanched from black to gray, and across the water, from the dim land to the great silver globe, stretched a long, bright, s.h.i.+mmering path.

A knot of women appeared in the doorway, laden with powder-flasks and platters filled with bullets. One, with only a stick wound with faded flowers in her hand, left them and glided to the open window.

"Margery!" said Patricia softly.

The mad woman, pressing in front of her mistress, looked out into the night and saw the white s.h.i.+ning road cutting through the darkness and stretching endlessly away. She threw up her arms with a cry of rapture.

"The road to Paradise! the road to Paradise!"

An arrow whistled through the window and struck into her bosom--into her heart--the staff dropped from her hand, and she swayed forward and fell at her mistress's feet.

The night, so placid, still and beautiful, was rent and in an instant made hideous by a sound so long, loud, and dreadful, that it might have been the shriek of a legion of exultant fiends. It rose to the stars, sunk to the earth and rose again, unearthly, menacing, curdling the blood and turning the heart to stone.

"The war-whoop," said Woodson. "Close the window, quick."

CHAPTER XXVI

NIGHT

That terrible cadence preluded pandemonium, the hush of horror that followed it being broken by one deep and awful roar of voices as the insurgents, red, white, and black, joined forces and swept down upon the devoted house.

"They will try the front first," quoth the master from his loophole.

"Steady, men, until I give the word! Now, let them have it with a wannion!"

The muskets cracked and a louder yell arose from without.

"Two," said the master composedly, receiving a fresh musket from his daughter's hand.

"They will try to dash in the door, your Honor!" cried the overseer from his post of observation. "They have the trunk of a pine with them."

"Let them come," said his master grimly. "They will find a warm welcome."

A double line of savages raised the great trunk from the ground and advanced with it at a run, yelling as they came. They had reached the steps leading up into the porch when from the loopholed door and window within there poured a deadly fire. Three fell, but the battering-ram came on and struck against the door with tremendous force. The door held, and but twelve of the twenty who had entered the porch returned to their fellows.

"They won't try that again," said the master with a short laugh.

"They are dividing," cried the overseer. "They will surround the house.

Every man to his post!"

Around the corner of the house to the moonlit sward beneath the great room windows swept a tide of Indians and negroes with Luiz Sebastian and the two Ricahecrian brothers at their head. A few of the Indians had guns; the slaves were armed with axes, scythes, knives--the plunder of the tool house--or with jagged pieces of old iron, or with oars taken from the boats and broken into dreadful clubs. They came on with a din that was terrific, the savages from the eastern hemisphere howling like the beasts within their native forests, those from the western uttering at intervals their sterner, more appalling cry.

Within the great room Sir Charles, languidly graceful as ever, stood beside the small square opening in the door that led down into the garden, and fired again and again into the mob without. He fought with an air as became the fine gentleman of the period, but underneath the elaborate carelessness of demeanor was a cool precision of action. The hand that so nonchalantly brushed away the grains of powder from his white ruffles, was steady enough at the trigger; the eye that turned from the red death without to cast languis.h.i.+ng glances at his mistress where she stood directing the women, was quick to note the minutest change in savage tactics. He jested as he fought--once he drew a tremulous wail of laughter from Mistress Lettice's lips.

A bullet sung through the aperture and grazed his arm. "The first blood," he said, with a laugh.

"There's a man killed in the master's room and two in the hall!" cried young Whittington, from his post at the far window.

"And Margery," said Patricia, coming forward with the kerchief from her neck in her hand. "Let me bind up your wound, cousin."

He held out his arm with a smile and a few low, caressing words, and she wound the lawn that was not whiter than her face about it; then moved back to where the women worked, loading and pa.s.sing the muskets to the men who kept up an incessant fire upon the a.s.sailants.