Chapter XV
Grul's Hour
Though we were in a hot haste to get away, it was absolutely necessaryfirst to bury the dead Indian, lest a hue and cry should be raised thatmight involve and delay us. With my paddle, therefore, I dug him ashallow grave in the soft mud at the edge of the tide, which was thenon the ebb. This meagre inhumation completed, I smoothed the surfaceas best I could with my paddle; and then we set off, resting easy inthe knowledge that the next tide would smooth down all traces of thework.
It was by this close upon sunset, and I felt a little hesitation as towhat we had best do. I had no wish to run through the settlement tillafter dark, nor was I anxious to push on against the furious ebb of thedes Saumons, against which the strongest paddlers could make slowheadway. But it was necessary to get out of the creek before the watershould quite forsake us; and, moreover, Mizpah was in a fever of hasteto be gone. She kept gazing about as if she expected the savage torise from his muddy grave and point at her. We ran out of the creek,therefore, and were instantly caught in the great current of the river.I suffered it to sweep us down for half a mile, having noted on the wayup a cluster of haystacks in an angle of the dyke. Coming to these, Ipushed ashore at once, carried the canoe up, and found that the placewas one where we might rest secure. Here we ate our black bread anddrank new milk, for there were many cattle pasturing on the aftermath,and some of the cows had not yet gone home to milking. Then, hidingthe canoe behind the dyke, and ourselves between the stacks, in greatweariness we sought our sleep.
There was no hint of dawn in the sky when I awoke with a start; but theconstellations had swung so wide an arc that I knew morning was closeat hand. There was a hissing clamour in the river-bed which told methe tide was coming in. That, doubtless, was the change which had soswiftly aroused me. I went to the other side of the stack, whereMizpah lay with her cheek upon her arm, her hair fallen adorably abouther neck. Touching her forehead softly with my hand, I whispered:--
"Come, comrade, the tide has turned!" Whereupon she sat up quietly, asif this were for her the most usual of awakenings, and began to arrangeher hair. I went out upon the shadowy marsh and soon accomplished asecond theft of new milk, driving the tranquil cow which furnished itinto the corner behind the stacks, that our dairy might be the moreconveniently at hand. Our fast broken (and though I hinted nought ofit to Mizpah, I found black bread growing monotonous), I carried thecanoe down to the edge of the tide. But Mistress Mizpah's daintinessrevolted at the mud, whereupon she took off her moccasins and stockingsbefore she came to it, and I caught a gleam of slim white feet at thedewy edge of the grass. When I had carried down the paddles, pole, andbaggage, I found her standing in a quandary. She could not get intothe canoe with that sticky clay clinging to her feet, and there was noplace where she could sit down to wash them. Carelessly enough (thoughmy heart the while trembled within me), I stretched out my hand to her,saying:--
"Lean on me, comrade, and then you can manage it all right."
And so it was that she managed it; and so indifferently did I cast myeyes about, now at the breaking dawn, now at the swelling tide, that Iam sure she must have deemed that I saw not or cared not at all howwhite and slender and shapely were her feet!
In few minutes we were afloat, going swiftly on the tide. The sky wasall saffron as we slipped through the settlement, and a fairy glow layupon the white cottages. The banks on either hand took on theineffable hues of polished nacre. To the door of one cottage, close bythe water, came a man yawning, and hailed us. But I flung back a mere"_Bon jour_," and sped on. Not till the settlement was out of sightbehind us, not till the cross on the spire of the village was quite cutoff from view, did I drop to the even pace of our day-long journeying.When at length we got beyond the influence of the tide, des Saumons wasa shallow, sparkling, singing stream, its bed aglow with ruddy-colouredrocks. Here I laid aside my paddle and thrust the canoe onwards bymeans of my long pole of white spruce, while Mizpah had nought to dobut lean back and watch the shores creep by.
At the head of tide we had stopped to drink and to breathe a little.And there, seeing an old man working in front of a solitary cabin, Ihad deemed it safe to approach him and purchase a few eggs. After thiswe kept on till an hour past noon, when I stopped in a bend of theriver, at the foot of a perpendicular cliff of red rock some seventy oreighty feet in height. Here was a thicket wherein we might hide boththe canoe and ourselves if necessary. The canoe I hid at once,that--being a matter of the more time. Then we both set ourselves togathering dry sticks, for it seemed to me we might here risk the luxuryof a fire, with a dinner of roasted eggs.
We had gathered but a handful or two, when I heard a crashing in theunderbrush at the top of the cliff; and in a second, catching Mizpah bythe hand, I had dragged her into hiding. Through a screen of dark anddrooping hemlock boughs we gazed intently at the top of the cliff,--andI noted, without thinking worth while to remedy my oversight, that Ihad forgotten to release Mizpah's hand.
The crashing noise, mingled with some sharp outcries of rage and fear,continued for several minutes. Then there was silence; and I saw atthe brink a pointed cap stuck full of feathers, and the glare of ablack and yellow cloak.
"Grul!" I whispered, in astonishment; and I felt an answering surprisein the tightened clasp of Mizpah's hand.
A moment more and Grul peered over the brink, scrutinizing the upperand lower reaches of the river. He held a coil of rope, one end ofwhich he had made fast to a stout birch tree which leaned well out overthe edge.
"What is he going to do?" murmured Mizpah, with wide eyes.
"We'll soon see!" said I, marvelling mightily.
The apparition vanished for some minutes, then suddenly reappearedclose to the brink. He carried, as lightly as if it had been a bundleof straw, the body of a man, so bound about with many cords as toremind me of nothing so much as a fly in the death wrappings of someblack and yellow spider. To add to the semblance, the victim wasdressed in black,--and a closer scrutiny showed that he was a priest.
"It is the Black Abbe, none other," I murmured, in a kind of awe; whileMizpah shrank closer to my side with a sense of impending tragedies."Grul has come to his revenge!" I added.
In a business fashion Grul knotted the end of his coil of rope aboutthe prisoner's body, the feathers and flowers in his cap, meanwhile,nodding with a kind of satisfied rhythm. Then he lowered the swathedand helpless but silently writhing figure a little way from the brink,governing the rope with ease by means of a half-twist about a juttingstump. There was something indescribably terrifying in the sight ofthe fettered form swinging over the deep, with shudderings andtwistings, and the safe edge not a yard length above him. I pitied himin spite of myself; and I put a hand over Mizpah's eyes that she mightnot see what was coming. But she pushed my hand away, and stared in afascination.
For some moments Grul gazed down in silence upon his victim.
I fancied I caught the soul-piercing flame of his mad eyes; but thiswas doubtless due to my imagination rather than to the excellence of myvision. Suddenly the victim, his fortitude giving way with the senseof the deadly gulf beneath him, and with the pitiless inquisition ofthat gaze bent down upon him, broke out into wild pleadings, desperateentreaties, screams of anguished fear, till I myself trembled at it,and Mizpah covered her ears.
"Oh, stop it! save him!" she whispered to me, with white lips. But Ishook my head. I could not reach the top of the cliff. And moreover,I had small doubt that Grul's vengeance was just. Nevertheless, had Ibeen at the top of the cliff instead of the bottom, I had certainly puta stop to it.
After listening for some moments, with a sort of pleasant attention, tothe victim's ravings, Grul lay flat, thrust his head and shoulders farout over the brink, and reached down a long arm. I saw the gleam of aknife in his darting hand; and I drew a quick breath of relief.
Grul lay flat, thrust his head and shoulders far outover the brink, and reached down a long arm.]
"That ends it," said I; and I shifted my position, which I had notdone, as it seemed to me, for an eternity. The victim's screaming hadceased before the knife touched him.
But I was vastly mistaken in thinking it the end.
"He has not killed him," muttered Mizpah.
And then I saw that Grul had merely cut the cord which bound hiscaptive's hands. The Abbe was swiftly freeing himself; and Grul,meanwhile, was lowering him down the face of the cliff. When theunhappy captive had descended perhaps twenty feet, his tormentorsecured the rope, and again lay down with his head and shouldersleaning over the brink, his hands playing carelessly with the knife.
The Abbe, with many awkward gestures, presently got his limbs free, andthe cord which had enwound him fell trailing like a snake to the clifffoot. Then, with clawing hands and sprawling feet, he clutched at thesmooth, inexorable rock, in the vain hope of getting a foothold. Itwas pitiful to see his mad struggles, and the quiet of the face abovelooking down upon them with unimpassioned interest; till at last,exhausted, the poor wretch ceased to struggle, and looked up at hispersecutor with the silence of despair.
Presently Grul spoke,--for the first time, as far as we knew.
"You know me, Monsieur l'Abbe, I suppose," he remarked, in tone ofplacid courtesy.
"I know you, Francois de Grul," came the reply, gasped from a dry mouth.
"Then further explanation, I think you will allow, is not needed. Iwill bid you farewell, and a pleasant journey," went on the same civilmodulations of Grul's voice. At the same moment he reached down withhis shining blade as if to sever the rope.
"I did not do it! I did not do it!" screamed the Abbe, once moreclutching convulsively at the smooth rock. "I swear to you by all thesaints!"
Grul examined the edge of his knife. He tested it with his thumb. Isaw him glance along it critically. Then he touched it, ever solightly, to the rope, so that a single strand parted.
"Swear to me," he said, in the mildest voice, "swear to me, Monsieurl'Abbe, that you had no part in it. Swear by the Holy Ghost, Monsieurl'Abbe!"
But the Abbe was silent.
"Swear me that oath now, good Abbe," repeated the voice, with a kind ofcourteous insistence.
"I will not swear!" came the ghastly whisper in reply.
At this an astonishing change passed over the face that peered downfrom the brink. Its sane tranquillity became a very paroxysm of rage.The grotesque cap was dashed aside, and Grul sprang to his feet, wavinghis arms, stamping and leaping, his gaudy cloak a-flutter, his longwhite hair and beard twisting as if with a sentient fury of their own.He was so close upon the brink that I held my breath, expecting him tobe plunged headlong. But all at once the paroxysm died out as suddenlyas it had begun; and throwing himself down in his former position, Grulonce more touched the knife edge to the rope, severing fibre by fibre,slowly, slowly.
With the first touch upon the rope rose the Abbe's voice again, but nolonger in vain entreaty and coward wailings. I listened with a greatawe, and a sob broke from Mizpah's lips. It was the prayer for thepassing soul. We heard it poured forth in steady tones but swift,against the blank face of the cliff. And we waited to see the ropedivided at a stroke.
But to our astonishment, Grul sprang to his feet again, in anotherfury, and flung aside his knife. With twitching hands he loosened therope and began lowering his victim rapidly, till, within some twentyfeet of the bottom, the Abbe found a footing, and stopped. Then Grultossed the whole rope down upon him.
"Go!" he cried in his chanting, bell-like tones. "The cup of youriniquity is not yet full. You shall not die till your soul is so blackin every part that you will go down straight into hell!" And turningabruptly, he vanished.
The Black Abbe, as if seized with a faintness, leaned against the rockfor some minutes. Then, freeing himself from the rope, he climbed downto the foot of the cliff, and moved off slowly by the water's edgetoward Cobequid. We trembled lest he should see us, or the canoe,--Ihaving no stomach for an attack upon one who had just gone through sodreadful a torment. But his face, neck, ears, were like a sweatingcandle; and his contracted eyes seemed scarce to see the ground beforehis feet.
"Seemed," I say. Yet even in this supreme moment, he tricked me.
The Forge in the Forest Page 16
