Part 6 (1/2)
Not until the runagate had vanished into the scrub did the planter sufficiently recover froroes who followed at his heels like a brace of hounds It was a bodyguard without which he never moved in his plantations since a slave had led hio
”After him, you black swine!” he roared at them But as they started he checked them ”Wait! Get to heel, damn you!”
It occurred to him that to catch and deal with the fellow there was not the need to go after hi him in that cursed wood There was Pitt here ready to his hand, and Pitt should tell him the identity of his bashful friend, and also the subject of that close and secret talk he had disturbed Pitt ht, of course, be reluctant So enious Colonel Bishop knew a dozen ways - so stubbornness in these convict dogs
He turned now upon the slave a countenance that was inflamed by heat internal and external, and a pair of heady eyes that were alight with cruel intelligence He stepped forward swinging his light baate?” he asked with terrible suavity Leaning over on his spade, Jere his head a little, and shi+fted uncoroped for an answer in abut curse the idiocy of Mr James Nuttall
The planter's ba force
”Answer ! What's his name?”
Jeremy looked at the burly planter out of sullen, almost defiant eyes
”I don't know,” he said, and in his voice there was a faint note at least of the defiance aroused in him by a blohich he dared not, for his life's sake, return His body had re under it, but the spirit within writhed now in torment
”You don't know? Well, here's to quicken your wits” Again the cane descended ”Have you thought of his name yet?”
”I have not”
”Stubborn, eh?” For a moment the Colonel leered Then his passion ! D'you trifle with ed, shi+fted sideways on his feet again, and settled into dogged silence Few things are more provocative; and Colonel Bishop's temper was never one that required much provocation Brute fury nooke in him Fiercely now he lashed those defenceless shoulders, acco beyond endurance, the lingering e upon his tor the watchful blacks Muscular bronze arly about the frail white body, and in a moment the unfortunate slave stood powerless, his wrists pinioned behind hi hard, his face ,” he said
Down the long avenue between those golden walls of cane standing soh, the wretched Pitt was thrust by his black captors in the Colonel's wake, stared at with fearful eyes by his fellow-slaves at work there Despair ith hiht ih he knew they would be The real source of his uish lay in the conviction that the elaborately planned escape from this unutterable hell was frustrated now in the very reen plateau and headed for the stockade and the overseer's white house Pitt's eyes looked out over Carlisle Bay, of which this plateau co sheds of the wharf on the other Along this wharf a few shallow boats werewhich of these was the wherry in which with a little luck they edin for the shore before a gentle breeze that scarcely ruffled the sapphire surface of the Caribbean, can
Colonel Bishop halted to consider her, shading his eyes with his fleshly hand Light as was the breeze, the vessel spread no canvas to it beyond that of her foresail Furled was her every other sail, leaving a clear view of the ilded beakhead that was aflash in the dazzling sunshi+ne
So leisurely an advance argued a master indifferently acquainted with these waters, who preferred to creep forward cautiously, sounding his way At her present rate of progress it would be an hour, perhaps, before she cae within the harbour And whilst the Colonel viewed her, adracious beauty of her, Pitt was hurried forward into the stockade, and clapped into the stocks that stood there ready for slaves who required correction
Colonel Bishop followed hiait
”A ood manners at the cost of a striped hide,” was all he said before setting about his executioner's job
That with his own hands he should do that which ated to one of the negroes, gives you the measure of the ratifying some feral instinct of cruelty, that he now lashed his victim about head and shoulders Soon his cane was reduced, to splinters by his violence You know, perhaps, the sting of a flexible bamboo cane when it is whole But do you realize itslithe blades, each with an edge that is of the keenness of a knife?
When, at last, fro away the stus to which his cane had been reduced, the wretched slave's back was bleeding pulp fro as full sensibility remained, Jeremy Pitt had made no sound But in a measure as from pain his senses werethere now in a huddled heap, faintly
Colonel Bishop set his foot upon the crossbar, and leaned over his victim, a cruel smile on his full, coarse face
”Let that teach you a proper sub that shy friend of yours, you shall stay here without meat or drink - without meat or drink, d' ye hear me? - until you please to tell me his name and business” He took his foot froh of this, send -irons to you”
On that he swung on his heel, and strode out of the stockade, his negroes following
Pitt had heard his in our dreams At the moment so spent was he by his cruel punishment, and so deep was the despair into which he had fallen, that he no longer cared whether he lived or died
Soon, however, from the partial stupor which pain had mercifully induced, a new variety of pain aroused hilare of the tropical sun, and its blistering rays strea back until he felt as if fla it And, soon, to this was added a torment still more unspeakable Flies, the cruel flies of the Antilles, drawn by the scent of blood, descended in a cloud upon hienious Colonel Bishop, who so well understood the art of loosening stubborn tongues, had not deemed it necessary to have recourse to other means of torture Not all his fiendish cruelty could devise a torment more cruel, more unendurable than the torments Nature would here procure a man in Pitt's condition
The slave writhed in his stocks until he was in danger of breaking his liony
Thus was he found by Peter Blood, who seemed to his troubled vision to e pal whisked aith this the flies that were devouring Jere it by a strip of fibre from the lad's neck, so that it protected him from further attacks as well as fro down beside him, he drew the sufferer's head down on his own shoulder, and bathed his face from a pannikin of cold water Pitt shuddered and asped ”Drink, for the love of Christ!” The pannikin was held to his quivering lips He drank greedily, noisily, nor ceased until he had drained the vessel Cooled and revived by the draught, he attempted to sit up
”My back!” he screalint in Mr Blood's eyes; his lips were compressed But when he parted them to speak, his voice ca at a ti no harm at all for the present, since I've covered it up I' to knohat's happened to you D' ye think we can do without a navigator that ye go and provoke that beast Bishop until he all but kills you?”
Pitt sat up and groaned again But this tiuish was ator will be needed this time, Peter”
”What's that?” cried Mr Blood
Pitt explained the situation as briefly as he could, in a halting, gasping speech ”I'm to rot here until I tell him the identity ofin his throat ”Bad cess to the filthy slaver!” said he ”But it must be contrived, nevertheless To the devil with Nuttall! Whether he gives surety for the boat or not, whether he explains it or not, the boat re with us”
”You're drea this tiistrates will confiscate the boat since the surety's not paid, even if when they press hiet us all branded on the forehead”
Mr Blood turned away, and with agony in his eyes looked out to sea over the blue water by which he had so fondly hoped soon to be travelling back to freedoreat red shi+p had drawn considerably nearer shore by now Slowly,the bay Already one or therries were putting off from the wharf to board her Fro of the brass cannonsbeak-head, and he could ure of a sea out to heave the lead
An angry voice aroused hihts
”What the devil are you doing here?”
The returning Colonel Bishop ca ever
Mr Blood turned to face him, and over that swarthy countenance - which, indeed, by noas tanned to the golden brown of a half-caste Indian - a ?” said he blandly ”Why, the duties offuriously forward, observed two things The empty pannikin on the seat beside the prisoner, and the pal his back ”Have you dared to do this?” The veins on the planter's forehead stood out like cords
”Of course I have” Mr Blood's tone was one of faint surprise