Томас Майн Рид - Лучшие романы Томаса Майна Рида / The Best of Thomas Mayne Reid

Loftus Vaughan had not yet decided on the exact terms in which the accusation was to be made; but the assize town being not only the seat of justice, but the head-quarters of the legal knowledge of the county, he anticipated finding there the counsel he required.

This, then, was his chief reason for travelling to Spanish Town via Savanna-la-Mer.

For such a short distance – a journey that might be done in a day – a single attendant sufficed. Had he designed taking the land route to the capital, then it would have been different. Following the fashion of the Island, a troop of horses, with a numerous escort of servants, would have accompanied the great Custos.

The day turned out to be one of the hottest, especially after the hour of noon; and the concentrated rays of the sun, glaring down upon the white chalky road, over which the traveller was compelled to pass, rendered the journey not only disagreeable, but irksome.

Added to this, the Custos, not very well on leaving home, had been getting worse every hour. Notwithstanding the heat, he was twice attacked by a severe chill – each time succeeded by its opposite extreme of burning fever, accompanied by thirst that knew no quenching. These attacks had also for their concomitants bitter nausea, vomiting, and a tendency towards cramp, or tetanus .

Long before night, the traveller would have stopped – had he found a hospitable roof to shelter him. In the early part of the day he had passed through the more settled districts of the country, where plantations were numerous; but then, not being so ill, he had declined making halt – having called only at one or two places to obtain drink, and replenish the water canteen carried by his attendant.

It was only late in the afternoon that the symptoms of his disease became specially alarming; and then he was passing through an uninhabited portion of the country – a wild corner of Westmoreland parish, where not a house was to be met with for miles alone: the highway.

Beyond this tract, and a few miles further on the road, he would reach the grand sugar estate of Content. There he might anticipate a distinguished reception; since the proprietor of the plantation, besides being noted for his profuse hospitality, was his own personal friend.

It had been the design of the traveller, before starting out, to make Content the halfway house of his journey, by stopping there for the night. Still desirous of carrying out this design, he pushed on, notwithstanding the extreme debility that had seized upon his frame, and which rendered riding upon horseback an exceedingly painful operation. So painful did it become, that every now and then he was compelled to bring his horse to a halt, and remain at rest, till his nerves acquired strength for a fresh spell of exertion.

Thus delayed, it was sunset when he came in sight of Content. He did get sight of it from a hill, on the top of which he had arrived just as the sun was sinking into the Caribbean Sea, over the far headland of Point Negriee. In a broad valley below, filled with the purple haze of twilight, he could see the planter’s dwelling, surrounded by its extensive sugar-works, and picturesque rows of negro cabins, so near that he could distinguish the din of industry and the hum of cheerful voices, borne upward on the buoyant air; and could see the forms of men and women, clad in their light-coloured costumes, flitting in mazy movement about the precincts of the place.

The Custos gazed upon the sight with dizzy glance. The sounds fell confusedly on his ear. As the shipwrecked sailor who sees land without the hope of ever reaching it, so looked Loftus Vaughan upon the valley of Content. For any chance of his reaching it that night, without being carried thither, there was none: no more than if it had been a hundred miles distant – at the extreme end of the Island. He could ride no further. He could no longer keep the saddle; and, slipping out of it, he tottered into the arms of his attendant!

Close by the road-side, and half hidden by the trees, appeared a hut – surrounded by a kind of rude inclosure, that had once been the garden or “provision ground” of a negro. Both hut and garden were ruinate – the former deserted, the latter overgrown with that luxuriant vegetation which, in tropic soil, a single season suffices to bring forth.

Into this hovel the Custos was conducted; or rather carried: for he was now unable even to walk.

A sort of platform, or banquette , of bamboos – the usual couch of the negro cabin – stood in one corner: a fixture seldom or never removed on the abandonment of such a dwelling. Upon this the Custos was laid, with a horse-blanket spread beneath, and his camlet cloak thrown over him.

More drink was administered; and then the attendant, by command of the invalid himself, mounted one of the horses, and galloped off to Content.

Loftus Vaughan was alone!

Loftus Vaughan was not long alone, though the company that came first to intrude on the solitude that surrounded him was such as no man, either living or dying, would desire to see by his bedside.

The black groom had galloped off for help; and ere the sound of his horse’s hoofs had ceased to reverberate through the unclayed chinks of the cabin, the shadow of a human form, projected through the open doorway, was flung darkly upon the floor.

The sick man, stretched upon the cane couch, was suffering extreme pain, and giving way to it by incessant groaning. Nevertheless, he saw the shadow as it fell upon the floor; and this, with the sudden darkening of the door, admonished him that someone was outside, and about to enter.

It might be supposed that the presence of any living being would at that moment have pleased him – as a relief to that lugubrious loneliness that surrounded him; and perhaps the presence of a living being would have produced that effect. But in that shadow which had fallen across the floor, the sick man saw, or fancied he saw, the form of one who should have been long since dead – the form of Chakra the myal-man!

The shadow was defined and distinct. The hut faced westward. There were no trees before the door – nothing to intercept the rays of the now sinking sun, that covered the ground with a reddish glare – nothing save that sinister silhouette which certainly seemed to betray the presence of Chakra. Only the upper half of a body was seen – a head, shoulders, and arms. In the shadow, the head was of gigantic size – the mouth open, displaying a serrature of formidable teeth – the shoulders, surmounted by the hideous hump – the arms long and ape-like! Beyond doubt was it either the shadow of Chakra, or a duplication of his ghost – of late so often seen!

The sick man was too terrified to speak – too horrified to think. It scarce added to his agony when, instead of his shadow, the myal-man himself, in his own proper and hideous aspect, appeared within the doorway, and without pause stepped forward upon the floor!

Loftus Vaughan could no longer doubt the identity of the man who had made this ill-timed intrusion. Dizzy though his sight was, from a disordered brain, and dim as it had been rapidly becoming, it was yet clear enough to enable him to see that the form which stood before him was no phantasy – no spirit of the other world, but one of this – one as wicked as could well be found amid the phalanx of the fiends of darkness.

He had no longer either fancy or fear about Chakra’s ghost. It was Chakra’s self he saw – an apparition far more to be dreaded.

The scream that escaped from the lips of Loftus Vaughan announced the climax of his horror. On uttering it, he made an effort to rise to his feet, as if with the intention of escaping from the hut; but finally overpowered by his own feebleness, and partly yielding to a gesture of menace made by the myal-man – and which told him that his retreat was intercepted – he sank back upon the banquette [573]in a paralysis of despair.