by Howard Pyle
I made no answer to this, but my heart sank within me; for I perceived, what I might have known before, that he had observed the object of my coming thither.
He soon became strong enough to move about the place a little, and from that time I noticed a great change in him, and that he seemed to regard me in a very evil way. One evening when I came into the hut, after an absence in the town, I saw that he had taken down one of his pistols from the wall, and was loading it and picking the flint. He kept that pistol by him for a couple of days, and was forever fingering it, cocking it, and then lowering the hammer again.
I do not know why he did not shoot me through the brains at this time; for I verily believe that he had it upon his mind to do so, and that more than once. And now, in looking back upon the business, it appears to me to be little less than a miracle that I came forth from this adventure with my life. Yet had I certainly known that death was waiting upon me, I doubt that I should have left that place; for in truth, now that I had escaped from the Lavinia, as above narrated, I had nowhere else to go, nor could I ever show my face in England or amongst my own people again. Thus matters stood until one morning the whole business came to an end so suddenly and so unexpectedly that for a long while I felt as though all might be a dream, from which I should soon awake.
We were sitting together silently, he in a very moody and bitter humor. He had his pistol lying across his knees, as he used to do at that time.
Suddenly he turned to me as though in a fit of rage. “Why do you stay about this accursed fever hole?” cried he; “what do you want here, with your saintly face and your godly airs?”
“I stay here,” said I, bitterly, “because I have nowhere else to go.”
“And what do you want?” said he.
“That you know,” said I, “as well as I myself.”
“And do you think,” said he, “that I will give it to you?”
“No,” said I, “that I do not.”
“Look ‘ee, Jack Mackra,” said he, very slowly, “you are the only man hereabouts who knows anything of that red pebble” (here he raised his pistol and aimed it directly at my bosom); “why shouldn’t I shoot you down like a dog, and be done with you forever? I’ve shot many a better man than you for less than this.”
I felt every nerve thrill as I beheld the pistol set against my breast, and his cruel, wicked eyes behind the barrel; but I steeled myself to stand steadily and to face it.
“You may shoot if you choose, Edward England,” said I, “for I have nothing more to live for. I have lost my honor and all except my life through you, and you might as well take that as the rest.”
He withdrew the pistol, and sat regarding me for a while with a most baleful look, and for a time I do believe that my life hung in the balance with the weight of a feather to move it either way. Suddenly he thrust his hand into his bosom and drew forth the ball of yarn which I had observed amongst other things in his pocket. He flung it at me with all his might, with a great cry as though of rage and of anguish. “Take it,” he roared, “and may the devil go with you! And now away from here, and be quick about it, or I will put a bullet through your head even yet.”
I knew as quick as lightning what it was that was wrapped in the ball of yarn, and leaping forward I snatched it up and ran as fast as I was able away from that place. I heard another roar, and at the same time the shot of a pistol and the whiz of a bullet, and my hat went spinning off before me as though twitched from off my head. I did not tarry to pick it up, but ran on without stopping: but even yet, to this day, I cannot tell whether Edward England missed me through purpose or through the trembling of weakness; for he was a dead-shot, and I myself once saw him snap the stem of a wineglass with a pistol bullet at an ordinary in Jamaica. As for me, the whole thing had happened so quickly and so unexpectedly that I had no time either for joy or exultation, but continued to run on bareheaded as though bereft of my wits; for I knew I held in my hand not only the great ruby, but also my honor and all that was dear to me in my life.
But although England had so freely given me the stone, I knew that I must remain in that place no longer. I still had between five and six guineas left of the money which I had brought ashore with me when I left the Lavinia. With this I hired a French fisherman to transport me to Madagascar, where I hoped to be able to work my passage either to Europe or back to the East Indies.
As fortune would have it, we fell in with an English bark, the Kensington, bound for Calcut, off the north coast of that land, and I secured a berth aboard of her, shipping as an ordinary seaman; for I had no mind to tell my name, and so be forced to disclose the secret of the great treasure which I had with me. After arriving at Calcut I was fortunate enough to be able to find a vessel ready to sail for Bombay, whereon I secured a berth, and so arrived safe at that place about the middle of March.
I had unrolled the ball of yarn and looked at the stone so soon as I had been able to do so after getting it into my possession. Then, finding that it was safe and unhurt, as I had seen it last, I had rolled it up again, for I could perceive that there was no better hiding-place for it than the one the cunning pirate had provided. So for all this last voyage I had carried a fortune of three hundred and fifty thousand pounds in my pocket, wrapped up in a ball of yarn.
It was early in the morning when we arrived at Bombay, and so soon as I was able I disclosed my name and condition to the captain under whom I had sailed, and contrived to impress him with the importance of my commission, without disclosing anything to him in regard to the stone. He was very complacent to me, and would have had me dress myself in a more fitting manner, and in some of his own clothes, for I was clad no better than the other seamen with whom I had consociated for all this time; but I was too impatient to delay my going ashore for one moment longer than was needful, so he kindly sent me off without any further stay.
I went straight to the Residency, and though the attendants would have stayed me, I so insisted, both with words and with force, that they were constrained to show me directly into the presence of the Governor.
I found him seated with Mistress Pamela at breakfast, beneath the shade of a wide veranda overlooking a beautiful and luxuriant garden. The Governor arose as I came forward, looking very much surprised at my boldness in so forcing my presence upon his privacy. As for Mistress Pamela, I beheld her eyes grow wide and her face as white as marble, and thereby knew that she had recognized me upon the instant.
I came direct to the table, and drawing forth the jewel, still wrapped in the yarn (for my agitation had been so great that I had not thought to unroll the covering from the stone), I laid it upon the table, with my hands trembling as though with an ague.
“What does all this mean?” cried the Governor. “Who are you, and what do you want?” For I was mightily changed in my appearance by the rough life through which I had passed, and he did not recognize me.
But I only pointed to the ball of yarn. “Open it,” I cried; “for God’s sake, open it!”
I saw a sudden light come into Mistress Pamela’s eyes. She clasped her hands, and repeated after me, “Open it, open it!” The Governor himself seemed to be impressed by our emotion; for, instead of troubling himself to unwind the yarn, he snatched up a bread-knife and cut through the strands, so that they fell apart, and the jewel rolled out upon the white linen table-cover.
The Governor gazed upon it as though thunderstruck. Presently he slowly raised his eyes and looked at me. “What is this?” said he.
In the mean time I had somewhat recovered from my excessive emotion. “Sir,” said I, “it is the Rose of Paradise.”
“And you?”
“I am Captain John Mackra.”
The Governor grasped my hand, and shook it most warmly. “Sir,” said he, “Captain Mackra, I am vastly delighted to find you such a man as my niece has always maintained you to be. The little rebel has led me a most disturbed and disquieted life ever since I was constrained to order you back to England under restrai
nt. I now leave you a captive in her hands, trusting to her to give you a famous dish of tea, whilst I go and consign this great treasure to some place of safe-keeping. I shall soon return, for I am most impatient to hear your narrative of those events which led to the recovery of this stone.”
So saying, he turned and left us, bearing the Rose of Paradise with him, and I sat down to a dish of tea with Mistress Pamela.
When the Governor returned he had first to listen to other matters than those concerning the Rose of Paradise; for, with his consent, Pamela Boon had promised to be my wife.
THE END
Otto of the Silver Hand (1888)
First published in November 1888, this novel tells of Otto, the son of a German warlord called Baron Conrad. His mother died in childbirth, so the Baron took his son to be raised in a nearby monastery. Otto is eleven years old when his father returns and takes him to live in the family home, Castle Drachenhausen (‘Dragon House’ in German). Otto is horrified to learn that his father is a robber baron and even more horrified to discover that his father killed a rival robber, Baron Frederick.
When Baron Conrad is called to the Imperial Court he takes his men with him leaving the castle practically undefended. Baron Henry, nephew and heir of Baron Frederick, takes the opportunity to attack the castle, burn it to the ground and capture Otto. His father returns to rescue him, but is forced to make the ultimate sacrifice... What will happen to Otto?
Reviewers declared it another success for Pyle; The Lance, from Topeka, Kansas called it “ a romantic and touching story…brisk in movement and winning and tender in sentiment” whilst the New York Tribune noted that “A thread of romantic and touching interest runs through this spirited tale…The trustful nature of the young hero, the motherless son of a valiant robber baron, is brought in to striking prominence in the stirring days of medieval Germany…the book is remarkable for its rich adornment from cover to cover.”
The first edition
CONTENTS
Foreword
The Dragon’s House
How the Baron Went Forth To Shear
How the Baron Came Home Shorn
The White Cross on the Hill
How Otto Dwelt at St. Michaelsburg
How Otto Lived in the Dragon’s House
The Red Cock Crows on Drachenhausen
In the House of the Dragon Scorner
How One-eyed Hans Came to Trutz-Drachen
How Hans Brought Terror to the Kitchen
How Otto Was Saved
A Ride for Life
How Baron Conrad Held the Bridge
How Otto Saw the Great Emperor
Afterword
The original frontispiece
Foreword
BETWEEN the far away past history of the world, and that which lies near to us; in the time when the wisdom of the ancient times was dead and had passed away, and our own days of light had not yet come, there lay a great black gulf in human history, a gulf of ignorance, of superstition, of cruelty, and of wickedness.
That time we call the dark or middle ages.
Few records remain to us of that dreadful period in our world’s history, and we only know of it through broken and disjointed fragments that have been handed down to us through the generations.
Yet, though the world’s life then was so wicked and black, there yet remained a few good men and women here and there (mostly in peaceful and quiet monasteries, far from the thunder and the glare of the world’s bloody battle), who knew the right and the truth and lived according to what they knew; who preserved and tenderly cared for the truths that the dear Christ taught, and lived and died for in Palestine so long ago.
This tale that I am about to tell is of a little boy who lived and suffered in those dark middle ages; of how he saw both the good and the bad of men, and of how, by gentleness and love and not by strife and hatred, he came at last to stand above other men and to be looked up to by all. And should you follow the story to the end, I hope you may find it a pleasure, as I have done, to ramble through those dark ancient castles, to lie with little Otto and Brother John in the high belfry-tower, or to sit with them in the peaceful quiet of the sunny old monastery garden, for, of all the story, I love best those early peaceful years that little Otto spent in the dear old White Cross on the Hill.
Poor little Otto’s life was a stony and a thorny pathway, and it is well for all of us nowadays that we walk it in fancy and not in truth.
The Dragon’s House
UP from the gray rocks, rising sheer and bald and bare, stood the walls and towers of Castle Drachenhausen. A great gate-way, with a heavy iron-pointed portcullis hanging suspended in the dim arch above, yawned blackly upon the bascule or falling drawbridge that spanned a chasm between the blank stone walls and the roadway that ran winding down the steep rocky slope to the little valley just beneath. There in the lap of the hills around stood clustered the wretched straw-thatched huts of the peasants belonging to the castle — miserable serfs who, half timid, half fierce, tilled their poor patches of ground, wrenching from the hard soil barely enough to keep body and soul together. Among those vile hovels played the little children like foxes about their dens, their wild, fierce eyes peering out from under a mat of tangled yellow hair.
Beyond these squalid huts lay the rushing, foaming river, spanned by a high, rude, stone bridge where the road from the castle crossed it, and beyond the river stretched the great, black forest, within whose gloomy depths the savage wild beasts made their lair, and where in winter time the howling wolves coursed their flying prey across the moonlit snow and under the net-work of the black shadows from the naked boughs above.
The watchman in the cold, windy bartizan or watch-tower that clung to the gray walls above the castle gateway, looked from his narrow window, where the wind piped and hummed, across the tree-tops that rolled in endless billows of green, over hill and over valley to the blue and distant slope of the Keiserberg, where, on the mountain side, glimmered far away the walls of Castle Trutz-Drachen.
Within the massive stone walls through which the gaping gateway led, three great cheerless brick buildings, so forbidding that even the yellow sunlight could not light them into brightness, looked down, with row upon row of windows, upon three sides of the bleak, stone courtyard. Back of and above them clustered a jumble of other buildings, tower and turret, one high peaked roof overtopping another.
“There they sat, just as little children in the town might sit upon their father’s door-step.”
The great house in the centre was the Baron’s Hall, the part to the left was called the Roderhausen; between the two stood a huge square pile, rising dizzily up into the clear air high above the rest — the great Melchior Tower.
At the top clustered a jumble of buildings hanging high aloft in the windy space; a crooked wooden belfry, a tall, narrow watch-tower, and a rude wooden house that clung partly to the roof of the great tower and partly to the walls.
From the chimney of this crazy hut a thin thread of smoke would now and then rise into the air, for there were folk living far up in that empty, airy desert, and oftentimes wild, uncouth little children were seen playing on the edge of the dizzy height, or sitting with their bare legs hanging down over the sheer depths, as they gazed below at what was going on in the court-yard. There they sat, just as little children in the town might sit upon their father’s door-step; and as the sparrows might fly around the feet of the little town children, so the circling flocks of rooks and daws flew around the feet of these air-born creatures.
It was Schwartz Carl and his wife and little ones who lived far up there in the Melchior Tower, for it overlooked the top of the hill behind the castle and so down into the valley upon the further side. There, day after day, Schwartz Carl kept watch upon the gray road that ran like a ribbon through the valley, from the rich town of Gruenstadt to the rich town of Staffenburgen, where passed merchant caravans from the one to the other — for the lord of Drachenhausen was a robber baron.
> Dong! Dong! The great alarm bell would suddenly ring out from the belfry high up upon the Melchior Tower. Dong! Dong! Till the rooks and daws whirled clamoring and screaming. Dong! Dong! Till the fierce wolf-hounds in the rocky kennels behind the castle stables howled dismally in answer. Dong! Dong! — Dong! Dong!
Then would follow a great noise and uproar and hurry in the castle court-yard below; men shouting and calling to one another, the ringing of armor, and the clatter of horses’ hoofs upon the hard stone. With the creaking and groaning of the windlass the iron-pointed portcullis would be slowly raised, and with a clank and rattle and clash of iron chains the drawbridge would fall crashing. Then over it would thunder horse and man, clattering away down the winding, stony pathway, until the great forest would swallow them, and they would be gone.
Then for a while peace would fall upon the castle court-yard, the cock would crow, the cook would scold a lazy maid, and Gretchen, leaning out of a window, would sing a snatch of a song, just as though it were a peaceful farm-house, instead of a den of robbers.
Maybe it would be evening before the men would return once more. Perhaps one would have a bloody cloth bound about his head, perhaps one would carry his arm in a sling; perhaps one — maybe more than one — would be left behind, never to return again, and soon forgotten by all excepting some poor woman who would weep silently in the loneliness of her daily work.
Nearly always the adventurers would bring back with them pack-horses laden with bales of goods. Sometimes, besides these, they would return with a poor soul, his hands tied behind his back and his feet beneath the horse’s body, his fur cloak and his flat cap woefully awry. A while he would disappear in some gloomy cell of the dungeon-keep, until an envoy would come from the town with a fat purse, when his ransom would be paid, the dungeon would disgorge him, and he would be allowed to go upon his way again.