The Gold Brick. Ann S. Stephens

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СКАЧАТЬ mate, so excited that his voice grew hoarse.

      "Hush," said Jube, glancing at the boy.

      "All?" whispered Thrasher.

      "All, master."

      "Where did you say the house stood?"

      "Yonder, on the edge of the town; you can see its white walls in the sunset behind the mango trees."

      "What, that house? I know it, I have passed its gardens a hundred times."

      "Oh, I shall never pass them again," said Jube, with tears in his eyes.

      "Oh yes; papa will come after us, don't say that, Jube," whispered the boy.

      The mate, who had taken so much interest in them both, now turned abruptly away, and began to pace the deck, with the quick, heavy tread of a man who thinks excitedly. At last he paused, stood looking over the bulwarks awhile, and then went below.

      The captain was in his cabin when the mate entered rather abruptly.

      "Captain Mason," he said, "you had the luck to do some good on shore last night, what if I take a turn with three or four of the men? The black rascals will be at their work again, no doubt."

      The captain looked up surprised. It was the first instance of humanity he had ever known in his mate.

       "Go by all means," he said; "pick your men and God speed you!"

      Thrasher did not start so promptly as his eagerness seemed to promise. He was a long time lowering the boat, and paused more than once to cross-question the slave and the little boy, always managing to gain some fresh knowledge with every innocent answer he received.

      At last, after the night had set fairly in, he descended to the boat, followed by four stout men, selected from the crew. The boy watched his movements with anxious eyes, and Jube seemed troubled as the boat glided off into the twilight.

      They reached the shore, Thrasher and his crew, without molestation; a broken attempt at riot had been made early in the evening, but the blacks were besotted with a carousal of blood which had now lasted forty-eight hours, and fell into sluggish inactivity; so the band of sailors, always popular men with the blacks, made their way safely enough up to the walls of the white villa, which Jube had pointed out from the ship. It was a vast pile, built low on the ground, but covering a spacious area, and enclosing a court, overrun with flowers, that filled the air with fragrance, trampled and torn as they had been.

      It was one vast scene of desolation. The broad gates were flung open, the trees that overhung them were broken, and their branches trailed on the ground; while a host of rude feet had trampled the luscious fruit upon the pavement of the court. Among the roses, and passion-flowers, and cape-jessamines that trailed along the court, a fountain flung up jets of pure water; but its basin of white marble was clouded with broad crimson stains, that all the crystal springs on earth would never wash out. Over the arched entrances that led to the separate apartments of the house, lamps of colored glass were swinging exactly as they had been lighted when the family were surprised by the murderers, fleeing from them only to meet a more terrible fate outside the walls. No one had cared to put the lamps out, so they burned on through the daytime, and into this second gloomy night.

      The mate and his men stood a moment in the court, not to breathe its delicious atmosphere, but to take their bearings, as he said, with unseemly spirit. Lights burned in a few of the windows, and he saw by the gossamer draperies, and silken gleam within—for the latter shone richly through a lattice-work of flowers which filled the verandas—that he was near that wing of the vast building usually occupied by the family, now utterly dispersed, save one little child and a single slave.

      "From these rooms there should be some passage leading to the cellars," reasoned the mate, as he mounted a flight of marble stairs that led to the first gallery, and was followed by his men, whose heavy footsteps broke the bell-like fall of the fountain with their coarse noise.

      The work of desolation was complete in those vast saloons. The broad silken divans were trampled over by the tracks of naked feet, left on the delicate fabric in long trails of soot. Chandeliers of frosted silver, and lamps of delicate alabaster, were torn down and overturned, with their wax candles, broken and trampled upon the floor, and perfumed oil dripping along the pure marble. Many of the lace window-curtains were torn to shreds; others were gathered up and twisted in soiled wisps over the cornices; some still floated in gossamer softness over the windows, through which orange branches, heavy with bloom and golden with fruit, looked in, rustling to the night wind with sweet, lulling sounds.

      The men passed through these saloons, trampling many a precious thing under their feet, which a delicate feminine taste had gathered to beautify the dwelling. They rushed through the broad saloons, and into the more private apartments—apartments in themselves so pure and spotless, that the insurgents had turned from them, as fiends might be supposed to shrink away from the resting-place of angels. The couches were untouched, and white as snow; flowers stood, but half withered, on the marble consoles; a few ornaments, dropped on the floor, bespoke some haste, but no violence. One of the sailors crushed a string of pearls under his foot, and ground it to powder upon the marble floor. Another tangled his boot in a web of costly lace, that had been hastily taken from a drawer and dropped in the terror of a sudden assault. The man tore it away from his boot with a smothered growl, and the party went on, looking cautiously back to be sure that no one followed.

      The mate had guessed well. He found a passage leading from one of the lower galleries into the cellar, which was now half flooded with wine that had been left to flow from the reeking casks without check. Here the blacks had held a grand carouse after the massacre under the palm trees. Bottles had been dashed against the walls, and the fragments were trodden into the earth, which sent up mingled fumes of wines and liquors, with a strength that almost stifled even those tough sailors.

      Plashing across the moist floor till his boots were red with wine, the mate found a pile of rubbish heaped against the wall. He held up a little silver lamp, which had burned its perfumed oil long after the fair hand was cold that filled it, and bade the men go to work. He spoke in a hoarse whisper, that almost startled himself.

      The bricks and loose stones flew right and left, revealing a low iron door. The foremost man swung the crowbar over his head to dash the door in, but that instant Thrasher seized him by the arm. The man turned angrily around. Then, struck by the dead whiteness of Thrasher's face, glanced over his shoulder, and the iron fell heavily from his grasp.

CHAPTER VI.

       THE FLOGGING.

       Table of Contents

      They were far out to sea, the New England brig which lay in the harbor of Port au Prince on that terrible night, with the unhappy and helpless creatures who had found protection under its flag. Thrasher, who was the commander now, sat in his cabin at breakfast. He held a cup of coffee in one hand which seemed to have excited his disfavor, for setting it on the table and dashing the spoon so angrily into the coffee that it scattered the drops all around, he called out,

       "Come here, you brat."

      Paul, the little boy whom Captain Mason had saved, came reluctantly forward, his black eyes heavy with fear, and his delicate limbs trembling, as you see those of an Italian greyhound when driven into the cold.

      "Why don't you move—what do you СКАЧАТЬ