CHAPTER XLIV.

THE PURSUIT

A stony adversary, an inhuman wretch Incapable of pity, void and empty From ev’ry drachm of mercy. —Shakespeare.

Spare not the babe, Whose dimpled smiles from fools exhaust their mercy. —Shakespeare.

The astonishment of Arrison, when he discovered the escape of Kate, was only equaled by his rage. He was not the first, however, to detect her flight. Having resisted the influence of the last night’s potations longer than the rest, he slept sounder than some of the others, and was still lost in a deep stupefying slumber, when one of the gang waking, and looking around, as he sat up on the floor, started to observe the door of the inner chamber open.

“Hello!” he cried, rubbing his eyes, to be sure that he beheld aright. “The bird’s flown.”

With the words, he sprang to his feet, and advancing hastily to the chamber, leaned over Arrison’s recumbent body, and looked in. His suspicions were immediately verified. Their prisoner was gone. The discovery struck him in so ludicrous a light, that he burst into uproarious laughter.

This loud mirth roused all the sleepers, Arrison among the rest.

“What do you mean?” cried the latter, leaping to his feet, and collaring the laugher. “What are you doing here?”

Arrison, still confused in intellect, and not yet comprehending the truth, had seized his comrade, by instinct, on finding the refugee so near Kate’s chamber.

“Ha! ha!” continued the youth, unable to restrain his merriment, “to think she’s flown, after I nailed fast her window too.”

“Who’s flown?” angrily cried Arrison, shaking the youth violently; while, with an oath, he added, as he now first observed the open door, “You don’t mean to say Miss Aylesford’s gone.”

The youth stopped laughing, and breaking loose by a sudden effort, answered, with a flushed and angry face,

“Take care who you collar, Captain; I’m not a nigger.” And as Arrison rushed into the chamber, he muttered, sulkily, “I’m not sorry she’s gone; for he was goin’ to make all for himself there was to be made; takin’ the oyster and leaving us the shell.”

A rapid glance satisfied Arrison that his prey had really escaped, and he came back, perfectly white with rage, just in time to hear the concluding murmurs of the youth, though without being able to make out what was being said.

“What’s that you’re muttering, you mutinous rascal?” he shouted, darting on the speaker. “I believe you had a hand in it. She couldn’t have got off alone.”

The youth sprang nimbly to one side, just in time to elude the grasp of his enraged leader, and interposing the table between himself and Arrison, drew his knife.

“Keep off,” he cried, “or I’ll drive this into you, Captain or no Captain. Say that again, if you dare. It was your own stupidity, in getting drunk, not drawing the bolt on this side, and sleeping like a log of wood, that let the girl off.”

He flourished his weapon as he spoke, and glared at Arrison with such savageness, that the latter, heated as he was with passion, paused. Before either could make any new movement, and while they watched each other like two angry tigers, the lieutenant, whom we have seen so active the preceding day, rushed between them.

“Captain, you’re too quick,” he cried; “Bill, put up your knife; the Captain’s hardly awake. If the gal’s really gone,” he continued, more composedly, “the best thing to do is to put after her; she can’t have got far; and with that hound of yours,” and he turned to Arrison, “we ought to be able to track her to hell itself.”

“I meant no offence,” said Bill, who was easily mollified, as men of his disposition usually are. “But when I found she’d got off, by walking right through this ‘ere room, I couldn’t help thinking it a good joke. She’s a gal of mettle, anyhow.” And he laughed again, in spite of Arrison’s scowling brow, and the lieutenant’s significant winks.

Arrison, now that he had time to reflect, saw that Bill spoke the truth, and though the youth’s laughter galled him, he could not resent it further. The ties which held his followers to him, were wholly voluntary, and he feared, if he persisted in wreaking his vengeance on Bill, that a real mutiny might arise; for the lad was a general favorite, as he always told the merriest tale, was continually joking to beguile the time, and generally was the life of the gang, socially. So the chief answered, smothering his rage, “I was but half awake, that’s a fact. The jade’s had no one to help her but herself; and Bill must forget what I said.” He held out his hand as he concluded, which the youth took and shook in token of restored amity.

“That’s all I ask, Captain,” replied Bill. “I don’t wonder you’re a little riled, for if she’d been mine, as she was yourn, I’d have fell on the first feller I saw, when I woke and found her gone, so infernally rampaging mad would I have been. She’ll be lucky if she gets away; for them ere swamps ain’t so easy for a stranger.”

But the wrath which Arrison could not discharge on Bill, found vent on the helpless child, his reputed niece. It suggested itself to him, at this point, that the bloodhound must have been roused by Kate’s escape; that the child must have interposed to quiet the dog; and that thus his prey had succeeded in escaping. Scarcely had the speaker ceased, therefore, before Arrison rushed out, and entering the barn, where the child still lay asleep, grasped her rudely by the arm, and jerked her to her feet.

Terrified, and as yet but half awake, the poor thing began to tremble violently; and seeing Arrison’s face distorted with rage, burst into tears, exclaiming,

“Oh! don’t—please don’t—”

But the ruffian, shaking her violently, she could not proceed; and so remained sobbing and choaking, piteously supplicating him with her eyes.

“You jade,” he cried, “I’ll shake the breath out of you to some purpose. You little liar, don’t dare to say you didn’t do it.”

“I didn’t say it,” gasped the child. “Please don’t, ple-e-ase—”

But again he shook her, till it seemed that her little limbs would be rent apart; and her touching words of pleading ended in inarticulate murmurings. When he had fairly exhausted himself by this brutal exhibition of passion, he stopped, and holding her before him, as in a vice, said,

“Tell the truth, or I’ll break every bone in your body. You kept the dog quiet while she went off.”

“Oh! please, don’t. You hurt me so,” answered the child, endeavoring, with one of her little hands, to remove his iron grasp, which was bruising her arm.

“Answer me,” yelled the monster, purple with rage, and shaking the friendless orphan again.

The child would not reply falsely; she, therefore, said nothing.

“What! You won’t speak?” he cried, perfectly beside himself and; he struck her a blow over the head, which brought the blood gushing from her ears and nose. She fell, as if dead, at his feet.

His comrades had witnessed this scene, and though hardened to most descriptions of crime, could not longer endure his brutality. Indeed, Bill and another would have interfered before, if the lieutenant had not held them back, telling them it was Arrison’s niece, and that “he had a right to do as he pleased with her.” But now even this personage overcame his scruples.

“Come, come, Captain,” he said, picking up the child, “we’d better be off. What’s done can’t be helped. She’s but a poor, weak thing, anyhow; and who knows that the dog gave the alarm at all?”

At first Arrison scowled at this interference, but the faces of his followers showed him that the lieutenant had spoken the will of the majority. So, resolving to punish her to his heart’s content at a future period, he bade her “go and wash her face, and stop crying, or he’d give her something to cry for,” and turned away.

It took but a few minutes longer to complete the preparations for the pursuit. The refugees hastily swallowed some food, and drained each a deep draught of Jamaica, after which, with the bloodhound for their guide, they began the search. The dog struck the trail immediately, and went off in full chorus: and in a little while the pursuers were out of sight.

The child remained where she had been left, sobbing as if her heart would break, and with her face buried in her hands; every bone in her body aching from the violence she had suffered.

“Oh! I wish I was dead! I wish I was dead!” she cried, rocking her little body to and fro. “Mother, mother, let me come to you;” and she looked up piteously to the skies.

Gradually, however, the passion of her tears ceased. She had often endured equally brutal treatment before; and she was, in a measure, hardened to it. So her sobs grew less frequent; her thoughts dwelt less on her own sufferings; and she began to recollect Kate.

“I hope she’ll get off,” she cried, jumping up and clapping her hands. “If she only took the right road.”

But scarcely had she spoken, when she reflected that, if his prey wholly escaped, Arrison would return more violently enraged than ever. Experience warned her that, in such a case, he would wreak double vengeance on her. She burst into tears again, in almost speechless terror at the idea.

She could think of nothing in this extremity, but the little prayers her mother had taught her, and which she still murmured nightly before retiring, for lack of others more suited to her years. So she fell on her knees, and, with her hands clasped before her, prayed. But, with the almost infantile words went up earnest heart-petitions, which, more eloquent than the most burning language, reached—who shall doubt it?—the ear of the Father of all.

When Uncle Lawrence reached the hut, an hour or two later, the child, who had heard the approach of the party, was nowhere to be seen; for she had hidden herself in terror in the barn, thinking her persecutor was coming back. But she was not long suffered to remain concealed. Alarmed at the evidences of the debauch, Uncle Lawrence decided to search every spot about; and thus the child was soon discovered. On finding that the intruders were friends of Kate, the poor thing lost her terror, however, and answered their questions eagerly, giving what information she could as to the route the pursuers had taken.

The woodcraft of Uncle Lawrence now came into full play. No Indian could have tracked the refugees more surely than he did. Occasionally, a few moments were lost in hesitancy, but he invariably selected the right crossing at last. Such minutes of delay, however, were almost intolerable, especially to Major Gordon; for, now that the crisis of Kate’s fate approached, he felt the agony of suspense increase tenfold. His incessant cry to himself was, “we shall be too late.” This terrible conviction deepened, as the hours wore on without conducting them to our heroine, or apparently bringing them nearer to the refugees, the bay of whose bloodhound they listened for in vain.

But when the way became more difficult, they began, though as yet ignorant of it, to gain rapidly on Arrison; for, as the path had grown more intricate, the bloodhound had been often at fault, and thus had lost much time.

At last the cry of the hound was heard. What a thrill of joy it sent through Major Gordon’s frame! Every nerve tingled, as he cried,

“She is yet safe. On, on, for the love of God—we may not be too late after all.”

The pace of the pursuers was now accelerated to a run. Suddenly Uncle Lawrence said,

“That dog is nearly up with her; I know it by the quick way in which he cries. Follow the track as fast as you can. I’ll take a short cut through the swamp; I think I can make something by it, though none of the rest can. The cry of the hound will lead me to the right spot.”

He had never ceased running as he spoke; and it was wonderful to see how he could run, with the weight of sixty winters on him; and he now vanished from sight, the bushes crackling as he dashed right into the undergrowth.

Following the trails made by the wild animals, and occasionally breaking through a thicket; now wading in black, slimy water up to his knees, and now plunging into blacker mud ankle-deep; and guiding himself, partly by the cry of the hound, and partly by a woodman’s instinct of the course which he knew Kate must have taken, he reached our heroine, as we have seen, just in time to save her life by shooting the bloodhound that was springing at her throat. Then pausing to reload, with a veteran hunter’s precaution, he leaped into the open space, and confronted Arrison.

Everything now depended on the length of time it would take Major Gordon to come up with his companions. Minutes, at present, were worth hours at any other crisis.