Cyrano was still cursing as he massaged his injured knee. With a malicious leer at Roger, he said: ‘I’d like to see him keelhauled. He’d not be so handsome after the barnacles on the ship’s bottom had scraped half the flesh off his face.’
The Vicomte shook his head. ‘Nay, we can do better than that. You know how the rope that draws them under is apt to get fouled. He might even drown during the very first trip.’
‘Why not have him flayed?’ suggested the elder Herault laconically.
‘No, no!’ cried the younger. ‘Have him die the death the Caribs used to inflict on their enemies. It was yourself who told me of it. I mean that where they stuck them full of thorns, each thorn having been slit to hold a piece of wadding soaked in oil; so that when these were lit the victim danced a death jig clothed in a garment of tiny torches.’
Nodding in turn to father and son, de Senlac muttered: ‘Both ideas have possibilities; but I somewhat favour smearing his stomach with honey and setting the fire-ants to eat their way into him.’
Amanda’s eye fluttered up and she fainted.
As Georgina caught and lowered her to a chair Clarissa shrilled at de Senlac: ‘You cannot do such things! You cannot! Even the Fiend himself would baulk at inflicting such torment.’
‘I can, Mademoiselle; and I will,’ came the harsh retort. ‘More; it now occurs to me to combine these punishments. I’ll have my pet crocodiles snap off his feet, make thorn-stuck torches of his arms, flay his back and let the ants have his innards.’
Clarissa snatched up a glass from the table and flung it at de Senlac’s face.
He dodged the glass but some drops of wine sprayed over his coat. As he flicked at them with his lace handkerchief, he snarled: The use to which you put that wine shall cost you dear. I’ll make you weep a bucket of tears for every drop that splashed me. Aye, you shall slobber and gibber till the colour is washed from those blue eyes of yours.’
Facing about, he cried to Roger: ‘You heard the sentence I impose. Tomorrow at sundown the first part of it shall be carried out. I’ll have you swung out over the pool where I keep my caymens, and they shall battle for which of them gets your toes.’
Amanda raised her head from her lap, then flung herself forward, clasped the Vicomte round the knees, and sobbed: ‘I implore you to have mercy. The affair that so distresses you is long past. Whatever the rights of it leave Our Father in Heaven, who is aware of all, to pass judgment. Oh I beg, I implore you, not to do this terrible thing.’
Still seething with almost apoplectic fury, de Senlac kicked her away from him, and shouted: ‘God can do as He will, Madame; but I am master here. For the murder of my uncle there is nothing that I would not make your husband suffer—nothing! Aye, and as I think on it I’ve the power to make him squirm mentally as well as physically.’
Again he swung on Roger, and with dilated eyes screamed like one possessed. ‘Since Madame la Comtesse could find fifty thousand pounds to ransom you all, she can find it to save herself. As you die by stages these next few days you may contemplate all that is in store for Madame your wife, and her young spitfire of a cousin. On the night of your death I’ll have them stripped of their clothes and flung to my men to make what sport they will with in the moonlight.’
Roger, goaded beyond endurance, hurled back insults, imprecations and defiance; but he might just as well have held his tongue. At an abrupt order from de Senlac the negro footmen dragged him from the room and through the hall to the back quarters of the premises. Herault pèrehad accompanied them and produced a big key. With it he unlocked a massive door studded with iron nails. Through it, Roger was thrust into pitch darkness. He stumbled down a few steps then fell heavily, measuring his length on a stoneflagged floor. A moment later the heavy door clanged to behind him.
The breath driven from his body, distraught with rage, misery and the bitter knowledge of his helplessness, he would have remained where he lay, had not there come a quick mutter of voices and groping hands that raised him until he was sitting up.
During the past two days the wound in his head had been mending nicely and he had not suffered greatly from it; but now, with every beat of his pulse, pain seared through it again. Temporarily, shock, agony, and the almost unbelievable change in his circumstances which had occurred in less than ten minutes bemused his mind.
After a brief respite he managed to pull himself together sufficiently to reply, in stammered sentences, to the questions with which his fellow prisoners were eagerly bombarding him. They were, he found, young Doctor Fergusson, Jennings, the Circe’s Second Mate, and Wells the Supercargo, all of whom had been condemned to death.
In halting phrases he told them what had happened to himself but without raising false hopes could find no word to comfort them in their equally desperate situation. They had already explored the dungeon and found escape from it impossible; but none of them was bound, so for a while they speculated on the chances of a breakout next time the door was opened. Yet even as they discussed it they knew that with so many armed men at call, they would be overcome before they could get out of the house. Despair reduced them temporarily to silence; then, at Fergusson’s suggestion, they prayed together earnestly for deliverance. Afterwards fatigue dulled their distraught minds and they lay face down on the hard stone, their heads pillowed on their arms, in an attempt to get some sleep.
The swift succession of questions and answers which had landed Roger in his present sorry pass ran again and again through his mind. He wondered now if by denying that he was the man who had killed de Caylus he could have saved himself, but doubted it. De Senlac had probably seen him a dozen times when he was working in the bureau of the Marquis at the Hotel de Rochambeau in Paris. In any case he would certainly have been one of the guests at the great ball given there for the King and Queen, at which they had sponsored the betrothal of Athénaïs to his uncle. A denial could have only postponed the evil hour when some chance phrase, or trick of movement, struck a spark in the Vicomte’s brain and illuminated in it the vivid memory of a past meeting.
As Roger mused upon the matter it struck him as peculiarly grim that for a second time de Caylus should have stretched up a hand out of the grave to drag him down into it. In ‘89 Roger had put down to ill-chance his arrest for the unorthodox duel he had fought two years earlier, but this seemed more in the nature of a lingering malignity exercised by the restless spirit of the dead Count. In that first case Roger had narrowly escaped execution but powerful friends and his own wits had saved him. He doubted if anything could save him now.
His one hope lay in Dan. He knew that Dan would willingly risk his own life in an attempt, if he thought it had the least possibility of succeeding; but there would be no chance of that unless he could get help and he could not be expected to make a martyr of himself to no purpose. His prospects of securing adequate aid seemed far from good, for as a new recruit among the pirates he had probably been accepted only on probation and was being watched. Even should he be unhampered by restrictions on his movements those whom he could risk asking to join him in a forlorn attempt were lamentably few. Tom was now free as also was Monsieur Pirouet; but apart from them there could be no more than half a dozen of the Circe’s crew who had joined the pirates with some reluctance whom he dare approach. Any of them might well betray him before the attempt could be made, and even if he succeeded in getting together a little band of stalwarts what hope could such a handful have against de Senlac’s men, who must number well over fifty?
In spite of all the obstacles with which Dan would be faced Roger had great confidence in the courage and resource of his henchman. In consequence he clung to this one ray of hope, and as he turned miserably from side to side on the hard stone, he kept listening for cautious footsteps outside which might herald his delivery.
Gradually the dark hours passed, but no sounds broke the stillness. High up in the wail on the opposite side of the dungeon to the door two patches of greyness appeared. Within ten minutes they ha
d taken on the sharp outlines of small heavily-barred windows. Dawn had come and with it Roger’s last hopes vanished. If Dan had found the odds too high against pulling off a coup during the night, it was a certainty that nothing he could attempt would succeed in daylight.
Although the floor of the dungeon was below ground, as Roger could now see, it was a lofty place and roomy enough to hold a score of prisoners without undue crowding; but its only furnishings were a crock of water and a big earthenware vessel half full of fruit. There were no sanitary arrangements and the place stank abominably.
The windows were closed, and except where one small pane had been knocked out, were encrusted with the grime of ages; so they let in little light and he could still see only imperfectly. To quench his thirst he stretched out a hand to take a paw-paw. As he did so something moved on the pile of fruit. Leaning nearer he saw that, half obscured by the rim of the vessel, a huge black spider was lurking there, Its body was as big as a duck’s egg, and its hairy legs as long as those of a good-sized crab. From its face protruded what appeared to be four large teeth, set like those of a rabbit.
At Roger’s quick movement of retreat the others roused, and saw the venomous-looking brute at which he was staring. Unbuckling his belt Jennings made a swipe at the spider but missed, and as it scuttled away into a dark corner, he said:
‘They’re not poisonous, but can give a chap a nasty bite. Lucky the fruit was there fer ‘im ter feed on, else ‘e might ha’ tried ter make a meal orf one of us.’
‘Oh, what’s a spider’s bite when we shall so soon have to face death,’ exclaimed the young Supercargo desperately, and burst into a flood of tears.
They did what they could to comfort him, but his nerve had gone and he quietened down only after a fit of hysterics had reduced him to exhaustion. Then for a long time they sat in silence, being unwilling to talk of what lay in store for them yet unable to think of anything else.
At an hour they judged to be about half-past eight, there came a trampling of footsteps in the passage, the key rasped in the lock and the door was flung open. Followed by five other men Cyrano came down the stone steps.
Roger noticed that his left knee was bandaged and that he grimaced with pain every time he put any weight on the leg. But that was small compensation for what followed.
With evident enjoyment he gave an appraising look at Jennings, Wells and Fergusson in turn, then said in a silky voice: ‘M. le Vicomte has now settled his programme. For the next three days one of you will provide an overture each morning for a vocal concert by the noble Governor of Martinique towards the latter part of the afternoon; and on the fourth day he will give us his final solo. As inducements to you to give full play to your lungs the first of you is to be keelhauled, the second rent apart from being tied by the hands and feet between two downward bent young palm trees, and the third fed to M. le Vicomte’s crocodiles.’
Neither Jennings nor the Supercargo knew enough French to understand fully what Cyrano had said, but Fergusson did and after a moment he gulped: ‘Which of us is to die today?’
Cyrano pointed at Jennings. ‘He goes first. As a mate of the Circe he knows well the feel of her deck beneath his feet, and now we mean to make him kiss her bottom.’ With a glance at his men he added: ‘Come! What are you waiting for. Get hold of him.’
Jenning had grasped enough to realise that when they got him outside they meant to kill him. His eyes staring from their sockets he backed against the wall. Then, mouthing a stream of profanity, he suddenly hurled himself upon the nearest pirate. The man went down under the attack but the others grabbed the mate and dragged him towards the steps. Cursing and kicking he was lugged up them. For minutes afterwards his shouts echoed down he passage, until they gradually died away in the distance.
Meanwhile one of the men had refilled the water jug and tipped a basket full of fresh fruit on to the remains of the old supply. Cyrano made a gesture towards his injured knee, bared his teeth at Roger, and said: ‘I shall take a special pleasure in watching you dance for M. le Vicomte’s crocodiles later in the day.’ Then he limped up the steps, the door was locked behind him and the three remaining prisoners were left to their terrifying reflections.
During the rest of the morning, except for short intervals of violent coughing caused by his tubercular lung, Wells lay semi-comatose, but the other two could not free their minds from a series of mental pictures in which the unfortunate Jennings was the central figure. They saw him stripped to the waist, and round his body the knotted bight of a long rope, one end of which had already been passed beneath the Circe amidships. They saw him, fighting and yelling, thrown over the side to splash with whirling arms and legs into the water. They saw the rope now taut and being hauled upon by a mob of running men, so that Jennings should be dragged under the hull and up the far side of the ship before he could drown. They saw him again on deck, dripping, gasping and bleeding from a score of lacerations to his flesh, while with brutal jests his tormentors revived him with neat rum to undergo the second scraping—and the third, the fourth, the fifth, until they could revive him no more.
Roger knew that there must be sharks in the bay and that they would be attracted by Jennings’s blood. He prayed that one of them might get him during the first plunge, and so put an end to his agony swiftly. Yet the thought conjured up sickening visions of the ordeal to which the vengeance-crazed Vicomte intended to inflict upon him later that very day. There seemed little to choose between having one’s feet gnawed off by sharks or crocodiles; and for him that would not be followed by a swift if painful end. Tomorrow that fiend in human form meant to burn his arms away, and the next to have the skin stripped from his back. Lastly there would corne the excruciating agony of lying pegged out on an ant heap while the fire-ants ate away his vitals.
If his torn legs were given prompt attention it seemed certain that he would survive the first day’s unholy sport, but there was a chance that the shock of the burns on the second day would kill him. After the third, at least, he might die from the loss of blood and nervous exhaustion, or have become a raving lunatic no longer capable of registering physical suffering with full consciousness. He could only pray that it would be so.
During the heat of the day the atmosphere became stifling and the stench almost unbearable. Mosquitoes plagued them and the itch of the bites drove them to a frenzy. But gradually the afternoon dragged through its awful length. At last the door was thrown open again.
Cyrano limped down the steps with his gang of butchers. They were carrying cords with which to tie the prisoners’ hands behind their backs. The Supercargo, now nearly off his head with fear, screamed and fought but was seized with a desperate fit of coughing and soon overcome. Fergusson was white to the lips but had the fortitude to allow his wrists to be tied without a struggle. So did Roger. He knew that to resist or attempt to get away in this confined space, was utterly hopeless. It could lead only to exhausting himself quite fruitlessly. He must husband every ounce of strength he had, just in case a chance offered for him to break away when he was in the open.
But his hands were bound and he would be one against fifty, or more probably a hundred, as the Vicomte meant the slaves also to witness his ruthless revenge. Even if he could drag the end of the cord that now bit into his wrists from the man who held it, what chance would he have? Before he had covered ten yards recapture was certain.
This was his third round with de Caylus. When he had set out upon the first he had expected to meet his death by a sword thrust. Bitterly, he wished now that he had. After all these years de Caylus had caught up with him. As he walked up the stone steps he faced the fact that this must be the end; but a lingering end, from which he could escape only after countless hours of torture.
11
The Crocodile Pool
As Roger was led across the main hall of the house the bright sunshine was still streaming through its rear windows, and he judged that there must be a good hour to go before brief twilight heralded
the tropic night. Out on the veranda Amanda sat hunched in a chair, her head bowed in her hands. The other women were grouped round her and behind them stood four pirates who had evidently been set to keep watch on them. The sound of feet caused Amanda to lift her head. Immediately she saw Roger she jumped up to run to him but one of the men roughly pulled her back. The three prisoners were pushed past the women and down the steps; then each of the pirates took one of the women by the arm and fell in with them behind Cyrano.
The foreshore presented an animated scene. Boatloads of men from the two ships were landing on the beach; others, and with them a score of slatternly looking women of mixed nationality, were emerging from the long low building which formed the south wing of the house, and little groups of slaves, ranging in colour from coal black to tanned whites, were leaving the lean-to’s roofed with banana palm. The pirates and their molls were gaily dressed in looted silks and cottons; whereas the slaves had on only scanty, ragged garments; but nearly all had coloured handkerchiefs knotted about their heads, and a festive atmosphere prevailed. All were making their way across the front of the house towards the northern arm of the bay and laughing and joking as though they were setting out on a bean-feast.
Cyrano now had water on the knee, but was evidently determined not to miss the fun. Muttering curses with every step he took, he led his seven captives and their escort along the strand to a path that wound up into the forest.
As they entered it they passed into a new, fantastic, twilight world. Trees of enormous girth reared up two hundred feet in height, but their upper boughs could not be seen because they became lost in a smother of other vegetation. Out of their hollows and every cranny in them sprang ferns, many themselves as large as medium-sized trees. From their branches tangles of lianas and creepers cascaded down like green waterfalls. Some of their stems were as thick as a man’s arm, and snaked upwards like green pythons, while countless others looped in all directions or hung down as straight as a weighted string. Between the giant acomas, candlewoods and palms, a vast variety of other trees struggled for room, their branches interlacing. Many were loaded with fruit: golden mangoes, green avocados, clusters of yellow paw-paws, prickly sour-sops looking like huge pears, custard apples, wild apricots, limes and citrons. Below them rioted bushes and big tufts of coarse grasses half submerged under more tangles of creeper with here and there the fallen limb of a great tree that, even as it rotted, was giving birth to ferns, mosses, and other forms of the teeming life that sprouted everywhere with almost incredible abundance.
The Dark Secret of Josephine Page 18