The new African was sitting on the ground, as far back from the edge of the ledge1 as he could get, shivering and shaking, for the water was cold. He had apparently2 reached the culmination3 and termination of his fright. After his tumble into the water, which had happened because he had been unable to stop in his mad flight, he had not nerve enough left to do anything more, no matter what should appear to scare him, and there was really no reason why he should be afraid of this big white man, who did not even look at him or give him a thought.
Maka's tale, which he told so rapidly and incoherently that he was frequently obliged to repeat portions of it, was to the following effect: He had thought a great deal about the scarcity4 of water, and it had troubled him so that he could not sleep. What a dreadful thing it would be for those poor ladies and the captain and the boy to die because they had no water! His recollections of experiences in his native land made him well understand that streams of water are to be looked for between high ridges5, and the idea forced itself upon him very strongly that on the other side of the ridge6 to the south there might be a stream. He knew the captain would not allow him to leave the camp if he asked permission, and so he rose very early, even before it was light, and going down to the shore, made his way along the beach—on the same route, in fact, that the Englishman Davis had taken. He was a good deal frightened sometimes, he said, by the waves, which dashed up as if they would pull him into the water. When he reached the point of the rocky ridge, he had no difficulty whatever in getting round it, as he could easily keep away from the water by climbing over the rocks.
He found that the land on the other side began to recede7 from the ocean, and that there was a small sandy beach below him. This widened until it reached another and smaller point of rock, and beyond this Maka believed he would find the stream for which he was searching. And while he was considering whether he should climb over it or wade8 around it, suddenly a man jumped down from the rock, almost on top of him. This man fell down on his back, and was at first so frightened that he did not try to move. Maka's wits entirely9 deserted10 him, he said, and he did not know anything, except that most likely he was going to die.
But on looking at the man on the ground, he saw that he was an African like himself, and in a moment he recognized him as one of his fellow-slaves, with whom he had worked in Guiana, and also for a short time on the Panama Canal. This made him think that perhaps he was not going to die, and he went up to the other man and spoke11 to him. Then the other man thought perhaps he was not going to die, and he sat up and spoke.
When the other man told his tale, Maka agreed with him that it would be far better to die of thirst than to go on any farther to look for water, and, turning, he ran back, followed by the other, and they never stopped to speak to each other until they had rounded the great bluff12, and were making their way along the beach toward the camp. Then his fellow-African told Maka a great deal more, and Maka told everything to the captain.
The substance of the tale was this: A mile farther up the bay than Maka had gone, there was a little stream that ran down the ravine. About a quarter of a mile up this stream there was a spot where, it appeared from the account, there must be a little level ground suitable for habitations. Here were five or six huts, almost entirely surrounded by rocks, and in these lived a dozen of the most dreadful men in the whole world. This Maka assured the captain, his eyes wet with tears as he spoke. It must truly be so, because the other African had told him things which proved it.
A little farther up the stream, on the other side of the ravine, there was a cave, a very small one, and so high up in the face of the rock that it could only be reached by a ladder. In this lived five black men, members of the company of slaves who had gone from Guiana to the isthmus13, and who had been brought down there about a year before by two wicked men, who had promised them well-paid work in a lovely country. They had, however, been made actual slaves in this barren and doleful place, and had since worked for the cruel men who had beguiled14 them into a captivity15 worse than the slavery to which they had been originally destined16.
Eight of them had come down from the isthmus, but, at various times since, three of them had been killed by accident, or shot while trying to run away. The hardships of these poor fellows were very great, and Maka's voice shook as he spoke of them. They were kept in the cave all the time, except when they were wanted for some sort of work, when a ladder was put up by the side of the rock, and such as were required were called to come down. Without a ladder no one could get in or out of the cave. One man who had tried to slip down at night fell and broke his neck.
The Africans were employed in cooking and other rough domestic or menial services, and sometimes all of them were taken down to the shore of the bay, where they saw small vessels18, and they were employed in carrying goods from one of these to another, and were also obliged to carry provisions and heavy kegs up the ravine to the houses of the wicked men. The one whom he had brought with him, Maka said, had that day escaped from his captors. One of the Rackbirds, whom in some way the negro had offended, had sworn to kill him before night, and feeling sure that this threat would be carried out, the poor fellow had determined19 to run away, no matter what the consequences. He had chosen the way by the ocean, in order that he might jump in and drown himself if he found that he was likely to be overtaken, but apparently his escape had not yet been discovered.
Maka was going on to tell something more about the wicked men, when the captain interrupted him. "Can this friend of yours speak English?" he asked.
"Only one, two words," replied Maka.
"Ask him if he knows the name of that band of men."
"Yes," said Maka, presently, "he know, but he no can speak it."
"Are they called the Rackbirds?" asked Captain Horn.
The shivering negro had been listening attentively20, and now half rose and nodded his head violently, and then began to speak rapidly in African.
"Yes," said Maka, "he says that is name they are called."
At this moment Ralph appeared upon the scene, and the second African, whose name was something like Mok, sprang to his feet as if he were about to flee for his life. But as there was no place to flee to, except into the water or into the arms of Ralph, he stood still, trembling. A few feet to the left the shelf ended in a precipitous rock, and on the right, as has been said, it gradually descended21 into the water, the space on which the party stood not being more than twenty feet long and five or six feet wide. When he saw Ralph, the captain suddenly stopped the question he was about to ask, and said in an undertone to Maka:
"Not a word to the boy. I will tell."
"Oh," cried Ralph, "you do not know what a lively couple there is out there. I found that my sister and Mrs. Cliff had made up their minds that they would perish in about two days, and Mrs. Cliff had been making her will with a lead-pencil, and now they are just as high up as they were low down before. They would not let me come to get them some water, though I kept telling them they never tasted anything like it in their whole lives, because they wanted to hear everything about everything. My sister will be wild to come to this lake before long, even if Mrs. Cliff does not care to try it. And when you are ready to come to them, and bring Maka, they want to know who that other colored man is, and how Maka happened to find him. I truly believe their curiosity goes ahead of their thirst." And so saying he went down to the lake to fill a pail he had brought with him.
The captain told Ralph to hurry back to the ladies, and that he would be there in a few minutes. Captain Horn knew a great deal about the Rackbirds. They were a band of desperadoes, many of them outlaws22 and criminals. They had all come down from the isthmus, to which they had been attracted by the great canal works, and after committing various outrages23 and crimes, they had managed to get away without being shot or hung. Captain Horn had frequently heard of them in the past year or two, and it was generally supposed that they had some sort of rendezvous24 or refuge on this coast, but there had been no effort made to seek them out. He had frequently heard of crimes committed by them at points along the coast, which showed that they had in their possession some sort of vessel17. At one time, when he had stopped at Lima, he had heard that there was talk of the government's sending out a police or military expedition against these outlaws, but he had never known of anything of the sort being done.
Everything that, from time to time, had been told Captain Horn about the Rackbirds showed that they surpassed in cruelty and utter vileness25 any other bandits, or even savages26, of whom he had ever heard. Among other news, he had been told that the former leader of the band, which was supposed to be composed of men of many nationalities, was a French Canadian, who had been murdered by his companions because, while robbing a plantation27 in the interior,—they had frequently been known to cross the desert and the mountains,—he had forborne to kill an old man because as the trembling graybeard looked up at him he had reminded him of his father. Some of the leading demons28 of the band determined that they could not have such a fool as this for their leader, and he was killed while asleep.
Now the band was headed by a Spaniard, whose fiendishness was of a sufficiently29 high order to satisfy the most exacting30 of his fellows. These and other bits of news about the Rackbirds had been told by one of the band who had escaped to Panama after the murder of the captain, fearing that his own talents for baseness did not reach the average necessary for a Rackbird.
When he had made his landing from the wreck31, Captain Horn never gave a thought to the existence of this band of scoundrels. In fact, he had supposed, when he had thought of the matter, that their rendezvous must be far south of this point.
But now, standing32 on that shelf of rock, with his eyes fixed33 on the water without seeing it, he knew that the abode34 of this gang of wretches35 was within a comparatively short distance of this spot in which he and his companions had taken refuge, and he knew, too, that there was every reason to suppose that some of them would soon be in pursuit of the negro who had run away.
Suddenly another dreadful thought struck him. Wild beasts, indeed!
He turned quickly to Maka. "Does that man know anything about Davis and the two sailors? Were they killed?" he asked.
Maka shook his head and said that he had already asked his companion that question, but Mok had said that he did not know. All he knew was that those wicked men killed everybody they could kill.
The captain shut his teeth tightly together. "That was it," he said. "I could not see how it could be jaguars37, although I could think of nothing else. But these bloodthirsty human beasts! I see it now." He moved toward the passage. "If that dirty wretch36 had not run away," he thought, "we might have stayed undiscovered here until a vessel came. But they will track his footsteps upon the sand—they are bound to do that."
点击收听单词发音
1 ledge | |
n.壁架,架状突出物;岩架,岩礁 | |
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2 apparently | |
adv.显然地;表面上,似乎 | |
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3 culmination | |
n.顶点;最高潮 | |
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4 scarcity | |
n.缺乏,不足,萧条 | |
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5 ridges | |
n.脊( ridge的名词复数 );山脊;脊状突起;大气层的)高压脊 | |
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6 ridge | |
n.山脊;鼻梁;分水岭 | |
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7 recede | |
vi.退(去),渐渐远去;向后倾斜,缩进 | |
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8 wade | |
v.跋涉,涉水;n.跋涉 | |
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9 entirely | |
ad.全部地,完整地;完全地,彻底地 | |
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10 deserted | |
adj.荒芜的,荒废的,无人的,被遗弃的 | |
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11 spoke | |
n.(车轮的)辐条;轮辐;破坏某人的计划;阻挠某人的行动 v.讲,谈(speak的过去式);说;演说;从某种观点来说 | |
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12 bluff | |
v.虚张声势,用假象骗人;n.虚张声势,欺骗 | |
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13 isthmus | |
n.地峡 | |
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14 beguiled | |
v.欺骗( beguile的过去式和过去分词 );使陶醉;使高兴;消磨(时间等) | |
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15 captivity | |
n.囚禁;被俘;束缚 | |
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16 destined | |
adj.命中注定的;(for)以…为目的地的 | |
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17 vessel | |
n.船舶;容器,器皿;管,导管,血管 | |
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18 vessels | |
n.血管( vessel的名词复数 );船;容器;(具有特殊品质或接受特殊品质的)人 | |
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19 determined | |
adj.坚定的;有决心的 | |
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20 attentively | |
adv.聚精会神地;周到地;谛;凝神 | |
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21 descended | |
a.为...后裔的,出身于...的 | |
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22 outlaws | |
歹徒,亡命之徒( outlaw的名词复数 ); 逃犯 | |
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23 outrages | |
引起…的义愤,激怒( outrage的第三人称单数 ) | |
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24 rendezvous | |
n.约会,约会地点,汇合点;vi.汇合,集合;vt.使汇合,使在汇合地点相遇 | |
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25 vileness | |
n.讨厌,卑劣 | |
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26 savages | |
未开化的人,野蛮人( savage的名词复数 ) | |
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27 plantation | |
n.种植园,大农场 | |
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28 demons | |
n.恶人( demon的名词复数 );恶魔;精力过人的人;邪念 | |
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29 sufficiently | |
adv.足够地,充分地 | |
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30 exacting | |
adj.苛求的,要求严格的 | |
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31 wreck | |
n.失事,遇难;沉船;vt.(船等)失事,遇难 | |
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32 standing | |
n.持续,地位;adj.永久的,不动的,直立的,不流动的 | |
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33 fixed | |
adj.固定的,不变的,准备好的;(计算机)固定的 | |
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34 abode | |
n.住处,住所 | |
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35 wretches | |
n.不幸的人( wretch的名词复数 );可怜的人;恶棍;坏蛋 | |
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36 wretch | |
n.可怜的人,不幸的人;卑鄙的人 | |
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37 jaguars | |
n.(中、南美洲的)美洲虎( jaguar的名词复数 ) | |
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