We must return now to the residence of Ben-Ahmed at Mustapha.
When his son Osman—who had seen Hester only once and that for but a few minutes—discovered that the fair slave had fled, his rage knew no bounds. He immediately sent for Peter the Great and sternly asked him if he knew how the English girl had escaped. Their intercourse, we may remark, was carried on in the same curious manner as that referred to in connection with Ben-Ahmed. Osman spoke in Lingua Franca and Peter replied in his ordinary language.
“Oh yes, massa, I know,” said the latter, with intense earnestness; “she escaped ober de wall.”
“Blockhead!” exclaimed the irate Osman, who was a sturdy but ill-favoured specimen of Moslem humanity. “Of course I know that, but how did she escape over the wall?”
“Don’ know dat, massa. You see I’s not dere at de time, so can’t ’zactly say. Moreober, it was bery dark, an’ eben if I’s dar, I couldn’t see peepil in de dark.”
“You lie! you black scoundrel! and you know that you do. You could tell me much more about this if you chose.”
“No, indeed, I don’t lie—if a slabe may dar to counterdick his massa,” returned Peter humbly. “But you’s right when you say I could tell you much more. Oh! I could tell you heaps more! In de fuss place I was sotin’ wid de oder slabes in de kitchen, enjoyin’ ourselves arter supper, w’en we hear a cry! Oh my! how my heart jump! Den all our legs jump, and out we hoed wid lanterns an—”
“Fool! don’t I know all that? Now, tell me the truth, has the English slave, George Fos—Fos—I forget his name—”
“Geo’ge Foster,” suggested the negro, with an amiable look.
“Yes; has Foster had no hand in the matter?”
“Unpossible, I t’ink,” said Peter. “You see he was wid me and all de oder slabes when de girl hoed off, an’ I don’t t’ink eben a Englishman kin be in two places at one time. But you kin ax him; he’s in de gardin.”
“Go, fetch him,” growled the young Moor, “and tell four of my men to come here. They are waiting outside.”
The negro retired, and, soon after, four stout Moorish seamen entered. They seemed worthy of their gruff commander, who ordered them to stand at the inner end of the room. As he spoke he took up an iron instrument, somewhat like a poker, and thrust it into a brazier which contained a glowing charcoal fire.
Presently Peter the Great returned with young Foster. Osman did not condescend to speak directly to him, but held communication through the negro.
Of course our hero could throw no light on the subject, being utterly ignorant of everything—as Peter had wisely taken the precaution to ensure—except of the bare fact that Hester was gone.
“Now, it is my opinion,” said Osman, with a savage frown, “that you are both deceiving me, and if you don’t tell the truth I will take means to force it out of you.”
Saying this he turned to the brazier and pulled out the iron poker to see that it was becoming red-hot. The countenance of the negro became very grave as he observed this, and the midshipman’s heart sank within him.
“So you deliberately tell me,” said the Moor abruptly, as he wheeled round and confronted Peter the Great, “that you have no knowledge as to where, or with whom, this girl is?”
“No, massa,” answered the negro, with solemn sincerity. “If you was to skin me alive I not able to tell you whar she is or who she is wid.”
Peter said no more than this aloud, but he added, internally, that he would sooner die than give any further information, even if he had it to give.
Osman made a motion with his hand as a signal to the four seamen, who, advancing quickly, seized the negro, and held him fast. One of the men then stripped off the poor man’s shirt. At the same moment Osman drew the red-hot iron from the fire, and deliberately laid it on Peter’s back, the skin of which hissed and almost caught fire, while a cloud of smoke arose from it.
The hapless victim did not struggle. He was well aware that resistance would be useless. He merely clenched his teeth and hands. But when Osman removed the iron and applied it to another part of his broad back a deep groan of agony burst from the poor fellow, and beads of perspiration rolled from his brow.
At first George Foster could scarcely believe his eyes. He was almost paralysed by an intense feeling of horror. Then there came a tremendous rebound. Rage, astonishment, indignation, fury, and a host of cognate passions, met and exploded in his bosom. Uttering a yell that harmonised therewith, he sprang forward, hit Osman a straight English left-hander between the eyes, and followed it up with a right-hander in the gullet, which sent the cruel monster flat on the floor, and his head saluted the bricks with an effective bump. In his fall the Moor overturned the brazier, and brought the glowing fire upon his bosom, which it set alight—his garments being made of cotton.
To leap up with a roar of pain and shake off the glowing cinders was the work of a moment. In the same moment two of the stout seamen threw themselves on the roused midshipman, and overcame him—not, however, before one of them had received a black eye and the other a bloody nose, for Moors do not understand the art of self-defence with the fists.
“Down with him!” shouted Osman, when he had extinguished the flames.
He seized a supple cane, or wand, as the seamen threw Foster down, and held his feet in the air, after tearing off his shoes.
Wild with fury, Osman brought the cane down on the poor youth’s soles. It was his first taste of the bastinado. The agony took him by surprise, and extorted a sharp yell. Next moment his teeth were in the calf of one of the men’s legs, and his right hand grasped the baggy trousers of the other. A compound kick and plunge overturned them both, and as they all fell into a heap, the cheek of one seaman received a stinging blow that was meant for the middy’s soles.
Things had reached this crisis, and Peter the Great, having hurled aside his two assailants, was on the point of rushing to the rescue of his friend, when the door burst open, and Ben-Ahmed stood before them quivering with indignation.
“Is this your return for my forbearance? Be-gone!” he shouted to his son in a voice of thunder.
Osman knew his father too well to require a second bidding. He left the room angrily, and a look from Ben-Ahmed sent the four sailors after him.
The Moor was too well accustomed to his wild son’s ways to require any explanation of the cause of the fracas. Just giving one glance at his slaves, to make sure that neither was killed, he left the room as hastily as he had entered it.
“My poor friend,” exclaimed the middy, grasping the negro’s hand with a gush of mingled enthusiasm and pity, “I trust you have not been much injured by that inhuman brute?”
“Oh, bress you! no. It do smart a bit,” returned Peter, as he put on his shirt uneasily, “an’ I’s used to it, Geo’ge, you know. But how’s your poo’ feet?”
“Well, I’m not vary sure,” replied Foster, making a wry face as he sat down to examine them. “How it did sting, Peter! I owe a heavy debt of gratitude to old Ben-Ahmed for cutting it short. No, the skin’s not damaged, I see, but there are two or three most awful weals. D’you know, I never before this day felt sorry that I wasn’t born a dog!”
“Why’s dat, Geo’ge?”
Because then I should have been able to make my teeth meet in yon fellow’s leg, and would have held on! Yes, I don’t know what I would not have given just at that time to have been born a mastiff, or a huge Saint Bernard, or a thoroughbred British bull-dog, with double the usual allowance of canines and grinders!
The negro threw back his head and began one of his silent laughs, but suddenly stopped, opened his eyes wide, pursed his lips, and moved his broad shoulders uneasily.
“I mus’ laugh easy for some time to come,” he remarked.
“Poor fellow!” said Foster, “I fear you must. I say—how my soles do sting!”
“Oh yes, I knows,” returned Peter, with a remarkably intelligent nod. “But come. We mus’ go an’ see what massa’s a-goin’ to do, for you bery sure he won’t rest quiet till he’s turned ebery stone to find Missy Hester.”
Peter the Great left the room with a brave effort to suppress a groan; while our middy followed with an equally valorous determination not to limp. In both efforts they were but partially successful.
As Peter had prophesied, Ben-Ahmed did indeed leave no stone unturned to recover Hester Sommers, but there was one consideration which checked him a good deal, and prevented his undertaking the search as openly as he wished, and that was the fear that the Dey himself might get wind of what he was about, and so become inquisitive as to the cause of the stir which so noted a man was making about a runaway slave. For Ben-Ahmed feared—and so did Osman—that if the Dey saw Hester he might want to introduce her into his own household.
The caution which they had therefore to observe in prosecuting the search was all in favour of the runaway.
As time passed by, Hester, alias Geo’giana, began to feel more at ease in her poor abode and among her new friends, who, although unrefined in manners, were full to overflowing with the milk of human kindness, so that at last the unfortunate English girl began to entertain positive affection for Mrs Lilly and her black handmaiden.
She also began to feel more at ease in traversing the intricate streets of the city, for the crowds that passed her daily had evidently too much to do attending to their own business to bestow more than an indifferent glance at two negro girls. And if the features of one of the two was not according to the familiar negro type, it is probable that all the inhabitants of Algiers were aware of the fact that some of the tribes of black people in the interior of Africa possess the well-formed features and comparatively thin lips of Europeans.
As Hester’s anxieties about herself began to abate, however, her desire to find out where and how her father was became more and more intense. But the poor child was doomed to many months of hope deferred before that desire was gratified.
Peter the Great did indeed make a few efforts to meet with him again—sometimes in company with George Foster, more frequently alone, and occasionally he visited Hester—having been informed by his sister Dinah where to find her—in order to tell of his want of success, and to comfort her with earnest assurances that he would “neber forsake her,” but would keep up a constant look-out for her fadder an’ an eye on herself.
Consideration for the girl’s safety rendered it necessary that these visits should be few and far between, and, of course, owing to the same necessity, our middy was not permitted to visit her at all. Indeed, Peter refused to tell him even where she was hiding, all the information he condescended to give being that she was safe.
“You see, my dear,” said Peter to Hester, in a paternal tone, on the occasion of the first of these visits, “if I was to come yar oftin, massa—spec’ally Osman—would ’gin to wonder, an’ de moment a man ’gins to wonder he ’gins to suspec’, an’ den he ’gins to watch; an’ if it comes to dat it’s all up wid you an’ me. So you mus’ jest keep close an’ say nuffin till de tide ’gins to turn an’ de wind blow fair. De good Lord kin turn wind an’ tide when He likes, so keep your heart up, Geo’giana!”
As he uttered the last word the negro put his great hand on the girl’s shoulder and patted it.
“What a good name Geo’giana am,” he continued, bringing his eyes to bear on the slender little black creature before him; “an’ what a good nigger you would make if on’y you had an elegant flat nose an’ bootiful thick hips. Neber mind, you’s better lookin’ dan Sally, anyhow, an’ no mortal could guess who you was, eben if he was told to look hard at you!”
“But oh, Peter, this is such an anxious, weary life,” began Hester, with a trembling lip.
“Now, hold on dar!” interrupted the negro, almost sternly; “you mus’ not cry, whateber you do, for it washes off de black. You mus’ larn to cumtroul your feelin’s.”
“I will try,” returned Hester, attempting to smile. “But it is not that I am discontented with my lot, for they are as kind to me here as if they were my mother and sister, and I like doing the embroidery work very much—it’s not that. It is the weary waiting, and hoping for, and expecting news of my darling father—news which never comes.”
“Now, don’t you t’ink like dat, Geo’giana, but larn to submit—submit—das de word. De news’ll come all in good time. An’ news allers comes in a heap—suddently, so to speak. It neber comes slow. Now, look yar. I wants you to make me a solum promise.”
“What is that?” asked Hester, smiling in spite of herself at the intensity of her dark friend’s look and manner.
“It am dis. Dat you will neber look surprised, nor speak surprised, no matter howeber much you may feel surprised.”
“You impose a difficult task on me, Peter.”
“Ob course I do, Geo’giana, but as your life—an’ p’r’aps mine, but dat ain’t much—depends on it, you’ll see de needcessity.”
“I will certainly try—for your sake as well as my own,” returned Hester fervently.
“Well, I t’ink you will, but it ain’t easy, an’ I’ll test you some day.”
It was more than a month after that before Peter the Great paid her another visit, and, to the poor girl’s grief, he still came without news of her father. He had been all over the Kasba, he said, and many other places where the slaves worked, but he meant to persevere. The city was big, and it would take time, but “Geo’giana” was to cheer up, for he would neber gib in.
One morning Peter announced to Foster that he was going into town to make purchases, and he wanted his assistance to carry the basket.
“Are we going to make another search for poor Mr Sommers?” asked the middy, as he walked along the road holding one handle of the empty basket.
“No, we’s got no time for dat to-day. I mus’ be back early. Got time on’y for one call on a friend ob mine. Das all.”
As the negro did not seem inclined for conversation, Foster forebore to trouble him, but observed, without remarking on the circumstance, that, instead of taking their accustomed way to the market-place, they passed along many narrow, steep, and intricate streets until they reached what the midshipman conceived to be the very heart of the city.
“Dis am de house ob my friend,” said Peter, stopping in front of an opening which descended into a cellar. “Foller me, Geo’ge, an’ bring down de baskit wid you. Hallo, Missis Lilly! Is you widin?”
“Hi! Das you, Peter de Great?” came in shrill tones from below as they descended.
“Dumb!” exclaimed Peter, with peculiar emphasis on reaching the cellar. “How you do, Missis Lilly? Oberjoyed to see you lookin’ so fresh. Just looked in to ax how you’s gettin’ along.”
Need we say that Peter’s warning word was not thrown away on Hester Sommers, who was seated in her corner embroidering with gold thread a pair of red morocco slippers. But, forewarned though she was, her presence of mind was put to a tremendous test when, all unexpectedly, George Foster descended the steps and stood before her. Fortunately, while the youth was bestowing a hearty nautical greeting on Mrs Lilly—for his greeting was always hearty, as well to new acquaintances as to old friends—Hester had time to bend over her work and thus conceal the sudden pallor followed by an equally sudden flush which changed her complexion from a bluish grey to a burnt sienna. When George turned to glance carelessly at her she was totally absorbed in the slipper.
The negro watched the midshipman’s glance with keen interest. When he saw that only a passing look was bestowed on Hester, and that he then turned his eyes with some interest to the hole where Sally was pounding coffee and gasping away with her wonted energy, he said to himself mentally, “Ho, Dinah, but you am a cleber woman! Geo’ge don’t rignise her more’n if she was a rigler coloured gal! I do b’lieve her own fadder wouldn’t know her!”
He then proceeded to have a talk with Mrs Lilly, and while he was thus engaged the middy, who had an inquiring disposition, began to look round the cellar and take mental-artistic notes of its appearance. Then he went up to Hester, and, taking up one of the finished slippers, examined it.
“Most beautiful! Exquisite!” he said. “Does it take you long to do this sort of thing?”
The girl did not reply.
“She’s dumb!” said Peter quickly.
“Ah, poor thing!” returned Foster, in a voice of pity. “Deaf, too, I suppose?”
“Well, I don’t know as to dat, Geo’ge.”
“Is this one dumb too?” asked the middy, pointing to the coffee-hole.
“Oh dear no!” interposed Lilly. “Sally a’n’t dumb; she’s awrful sharp with ’er tongue!”
“She ought to be deaf anyhow, considering the row she kicks up down there!”
“Come now, Geo’ge, it’s time we was goin’. So pick up de baskit an’ go ahead.”
Bidding Mrs Lilly an affectionate adieu, the two shaves left the cellar, to the intense relief of poor Hester, who scarce knew whether to laugh or cry over the visit. She had been so eagerly anxious to speak to Foster, yet had managed to keep her promise in spite of the peculiarly trying circumstances.
“Peter,” said the middy, when they had got well out of the town on their way home, “what made you say ‘dumb’ so emphatically when you descended into that cellar?”
“Did I say ‘dumb?’” returned the negro, with an inquiring look at the clouds.
“You certainly did.”
“’Phatically, too?”
“Yes, most emphatically.”
“Well, now, das most remarkably strange!”
“Not so strange as my finding Hester Sommers in a coal-hole making golden slippers!”
At this Peter set down the basket, threw back his head, and took a prolonged silent laugh.
“Now dat is de strangest t’ing ob all. Didn’t I t’ink you not rignise her one bit!”
“Peter,” returned the midshipman gravely, “you ought to know from experience that true love pierces every disguise.”
“Das troo, Geo’ge,” said Peter, as he lifted his end of the basket and resumed the journey. “Lub is a wonderful t’ing, an’ I ain’t sure what might come ob it if I was took unawares to see my Angelica arter she’d bin painted white. But dere’s one t’ing as comforts me a leetle, an’ dat is, dat Peter de Great ain’t de biggest hyperkrite in de world arter all, for de way you purtended not to know dat gal, an’ de way she purtended not to know you, hab took de wind out ob my sails altogidder!”
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |