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About Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922 | View Entire Issue (June 5, 1904)
in England and Jamaica By Joseph Kemp Copyrlght 1904, by MoClure, Phillip ft Co.) CHAPTER VIII Continued. m irE plain rang with furious shouts. TThey rushed at him from every side. He would throw himsell over. It waa a race for the pretl i in price. He won It. I suppose he found It not ao easy to die, to part with the warmth of sunshine, the taste of food; to break that material ervl tude to life, contemptible as a vice that binds us about like a chain on the limbs ef hopeless slaves. He showered blows upon his chest; sitting before us, he bat tered with hlo fist at the side of his head till I caught his arm. We could always ell our lives dearly. I said. Hs would have to dofend the entrance with me. We two could hold It till It was blocked with their corpses. . . He Jumped up with a derisive shriek; cloud of ' ashes flow from under bis ' Mumble, and he vanished In the darkness With mad gesticulations. "Their corpses their corpses their Hal . ba! ha!" The snarling sound died away, and Z wnderstood, then, what meant this Illusion f ghostly murmurs that once or twice Bad seemed to tremble In the narrow re ' glon of gray light around the arch. The sunshine of the earth and the voices of men expired on the threshold of the eter nal obscurity and stillness In which we were Imprisoned, ss t In a grave with In exorable death standing between us and the free spaces of the world. CHAPTER IX. For It meant that. Imprisoned! Castro's derisive shriek meant that. And I had known It before. He emerged back oat of ' the black depths, with livid, swollen fea tures, and foam about his mouth, to splut ter: "Their corpses, you soy. . , , Hal Our corpses," and retreated again, where I could only hear Incoherent mutters. Seraphlna clutched my arm. "Juan to gether no separation." I had known It, even as I spoke of selling our lives dearly. They could only be sur rendered. Surrendered miserably to those wretches, or to the everlasting darkness In which Castro muttered his despair. X needed not to hear this ominous and sinis ter sound nor yet Seraphlna's cry. She ndersiood, too. They would never com down unless to look upon us when we were dead. I need not have gone to the en trance of the cave to understand the hor ror of our fate. The Lugarenos had al ready lighted a fire. Very near the brink, too. It was burlng some thirty feet above my bead; and the sheer wall on the other elds aught up and sent across into my face the crackling of dry branches, the loud, ex cited talking, the arguments, the oaths, the laughter; now and then a very shriek f joy. Manuel was giving orders. Boms advanced the opinion that the cursed In gles, the spy who came from Jamaica to see whom he could get for a hanging with out A priest, was down there, too. So that waa It! O'Brien knew how 'to stir their bate. I should get a short shrift. "He was a fiend, the Ingles; look how many of us be has killed!" they cried; and Manuel would have loved to cut my flesh, in small pieces, off my bones only, alas I I was now beyond his vengeance, hs feared. How rer, somebody was left He must have thrown himself flat, with his head over the brink, for his yell of "Castrol exploded and rolled heavily be tween the rocks. "Castro! Cafltro! Castro!" he shouted twenty times, till hs set the whole ravine to an uproar. He waited, and when the clamor had quieted down amongst the bushes below, called out softly, "Do you bear me, Castro, my victim? Thou art rny victim, Castro." . Castro bad crept into the passage after Die. He pushed his head beyound my shoulder. "I defy thee, Manuel." hs screamed. A hubbub arose. "He's there! He Is there I "Bravo, Castro," Manuel shouted from Above. "I love thee because thou art my Victim. I shall sing a song for thee. Come tip. Hey I Castro! Castrol Come up. . , . NoT Then the dead to their grave, and the living to their feast" Sometimes "little earth, detached from the layer of soil covering the rock, would (all streaming from above. The men told mil to guard lbs cornice walked to and fro near the edge, and the confused murmur of voices hung subdued In the air of the cleft, like a modulated tremor. Castro, moaning gently, stumbled back Into the cave. Seraphlna had remained sitting on the stone seat The twilight rested on her knees, on her face, on the heap of cold ashes at her feet But Castro, who had stood stock-still, with a hand to his fore head, turned to me excitedly: "The peons, por Dlosl" Had I ever thought of the peons belonging to the sstandaT Well, that was a hops. I did not know exactly how matters stood between them and the Lugarenos. There was no love lost A tight was likely; but, even If no actual collision took place, they would bo sure, to visit the camp above in no very friendly spirit; a chance might offer to make our position known to these men, who had no reason to hate either me or Castro and would not be afraid of thwart ing the miserable band of ghouls sitting above our grave. How our presence could be made known I was not sure. Perhaps simply by shouting with all our might from the mouth of the cave. We could offer rewards say who we were, summon them for the service of their own senorita. But probably they had never heard of her. Mo matter. The news would soon reach ths hacienda, and Enrico had 200 slaves at his back. One of us must always remain at the mouth of ths cave listening to what went on above. There would be the tram- -pllng of horses' hoofs quarreling, no doubt anyway, much talk new voices some- "' thing to inform us. Only, how soon would they come? They were not likely to be riding where there were no cattle. Had Castro seen any signs of a herd on the up lands nearby T His face fell. Hs had not There were many savannas within ths belt of forests, and the herds might be miles away, stam peded Inland by ths storm. Sitting down, suddenly, as If overcome, hs averted his eyes and began to scratch the rock be tween his legs with the point of his blade. We were all silent. How long could we wait? How long could people live? . . , I looked at Seraphlna. How long could alio live? . . . The thought seared my heart llko a hot Iron. I wrung my bands stealth ily. "Hal my blade!" muttered Castro. "My sting. . . . Old scorpion! They did not take my sting away. . . . Only bah!" He, a man, had not risen to the fortitude of a venomous creature. He was defeated. He groaned profoundly. Life was too much. It clung to one. A scorpion an In sectwithin a ring of flames, would lift Its sting and stab venom lnU Its own head. Conrad And hs Castro a man a man, por Dlos bad 4ess firmness than a creeping thing. Why why, old he not stab this dishonored old heart? "Senorita," be cried agonisingly, "I swear I did shout to them to Pre so Into my breast and then. . . ." Seraphlna leaned over him pityingly. "Enough, Castro. One lives because of hope. And grieve not Tby death would have dons no good." Her face had a splendid pallor, the radi ant whiteness and majesty of marble; It had never before appeared to me more beautiful, and her hair unrolling Its dark undulations, ss If tinged deep with the funereal gloom of the background, covered her magnificently right down to her elbows. At night, trom the hot ravine full of shadows, came the cool, fretting of ths stream. Tho big blae they kept up above crackled distinctly, throwing a flery, rest less stain on the face of the rock In front of the cave, high up under the darkness and tho stars of the sky and a pair of feet would appear stamping, the shadow of a pair of ankles and feet, fantastic, enormous, tramping slowly, resembling two coffins leaping to a slow measure. I see them In my dreams now, sometimes. They disappeared. Next day there were silences up there, perfect, profound. No prowl of feet tfi HE CHALLENGED THEM TO COME DOWN ON THE LEDGE, AND THIS BLADE OF HIS MAIMED ARM WAVED TO AND KHO ETIKFLY, POINT UP, LIKE A RED HOT WEAPON IN THE LIGHT. (A