University of Virginia Library

4. CHAPTER IV.
THE CAVERN OF WANEONDA.

Mrs. Ellet.

In the hilly region of Schoharie county, where
the Onidegra ridge of the Helderburg mountains
extends its flanking battlements of perpendicular
rock along the lovely vale of the Schoharie kill,
there ran in former days an old Indian pathway.

The principal route between Schoharie court-house
and the hamlets to the east and west of that
settlement, as well as the great Indian trail between
Catskill and Canajoharie, had a course nearly parallel
with this path, and it had therefore been neglected
for so many years as to be nearly forgotten
by every one, save some roving Indian that now
and then straggled into the settlements, or the white
hunter, who, tired with traversing the forest thickets
and rocky defiles of the adjacent mountains, took
his homeward way along this secluded but well-beaten
path.

This trail, where Bradshawe was now travelling
it, was walled by huge buttresses of rock upon the
west, while its terraced edge commanded, through
the leafless trees, a complete view of the vale of the
Schoharie upon the east; and as a burst of sunshine

ever and anon lighted up with smiles that landscape
which even in winter is most lovely, even the heart
of so reckless an adventurer was touched with the
idea of carrying rapine and devastation into a scene
so exquisitely calm and rural; “yet such,” thought
he, with a sternness more in unison with his general
character, “such is our only policy, if the king's
party ever again get the ascendancy in the district.
We must take the hearthstones from under these
people, and then they'll bother us no longer about
their parchment privileges.”

Alas! did Bradshawe mean to prophesy that
Johnson and his bands should sweep, like the besom
of desolation, over this fated region within two
years afterward? Did he foresee the part which
men as ruthless as himself should play in those
dark days of monstrous violence?

But now, as he remembers the devious route that
he has travelled to avoid the settlements, and looks
back upon the road behind him, circling wide to the
east and south of his ultimate destination, the desperado
remembers again that Brant may have reached
it before him. He spurs his horse along the
narrow path, descends toward the valley, approaches
the village, wheels off, skirts the valley, and, ascending
once more, tracks his way through a forest
of walnut and maples, and arrives at last at the
yawning mouth of Waneonda.

A moment sufficed Bradshawe to secure his
horse, and then he impatiently hurried to descend.
The top of the pit, some twenty or thirty feet in diameter,
was wholly hidden from the eye by some
huge trees which had probably been felled across it
purposely to screen the opening. But their roots
were so grown around with thickets, and the trunks
lay tossed about in such disorder, that no design
was apparent in their arrangement; and they might

have been thought to be blown down by the wind,
or fallen from natural decay precisely where they
now lay.

Below this funnel-like cavity, which was not more
than ten feet in depth, there opened a narrow fissure
about half that breadth, but extending downward
into perfect darkness. The top of this black
chasm was likewise crossed by several sticks of
timber; and to the stoutest and longest of these
was attached a perpendicular ladder of rope fifty
feet in length, secured by the lower end to the rocks
below. The ladder was coated with ice, and Bradshawe
was compelled to clutch closely the frozen
rungs as his feet slipped repeatedly in descending.
A sloping declivity of rocks received him; and so
rough and precipitous was his pathway, now rendered
doubly perilous by the mud and half-frozen
slime from the dripping walls above, that he would
scarcely have dared to venture farther amid the
darkness that reigned below. But, groping about
for a few moments, he felt the broken limb of a tree,
and, passing his hand along it toward the trunk,
discovered that a new convenience had been provided
since last he visited the spot, and he readily
perceived that it must have been for the accommodation
of Alida that the ponderous piece of timber
had been plunged down and placed in its present
situation. Lowering himself down the tree in an
oblique direction, he soon entirely lost sight of the
opening above him; and the temperature of the cave
became so mild that traces of ice were no longer
discovered. A ladder of wood then gave him a
firmer foothold down the third descent; and a fourth
declivity of rough rocks brought him to the bottom
of the cavern.

The adventurer was now one hundred and fifty
feet beneath the surface of the soil; and no one, unless

as perfectly familiar with the cave as was Bradshawe,
could have safely effected the descent amid
the darkness which reigned around him. The horizontal
passage in which he now found himself was
about ten or twelve feet in breadth, nearly half of
which space was occupied by a rivulet running in a
southern direction; and, keeping as close to the wall
on his left as possible, Bradshawe followed it for a
few paces, until the roof of the cavern drooped so
low that he could feel it with his outstretched hands
as he placed them before him. Dropping now upon
his knees, he crawled along for several yards, until
his eyes were greeted by a stream of light which
came through a narrow aperture on the left. He
crawled through the opening, and entered an apartment
some thirty feet in diameter by a hundred or
more in height.

Had Bradshawe possessed a taste for the grand
and beautiful in nature, the appearance of this
chamber might have arrested his attention. The
ceiling was fretted with stalactites; the walls hung
with a rich tracery of spar, which likewise, in a
thousand fantastic forms, encumbered the floor upon
which, in the course of ages, its broken fragments
had fallen. But a solitary lamp, fed with bear's fat,
which stood upon a truncated column in the centre,
dimly revealing the glistening objects around, seemed
only to claim his attention as he eagerly advanced
toward it. A bugle lay by the side of the lamp;
and, taking the latter only in his hand, he repassed
through the fissure which had admitted him into
“the Warder's Room,” as it was called by his followers,
and regained the low-arched passage from which
he had temporarily digressed.

Crawling now cautiously a few paces in advance,
he paused and, placing the bugle to his lips, blew
a blast which resounded through the cavern. Several

minutes now elapsed; the last rumbling echoes
seemed to have traversed every chamber of the cavern
which could send back a sound, and died away
at last in some unfathomable abyss remote from them
all. At last a sound like the dip of an Indian paddle
was heard. A shred of light then seemed to flicker
upon the bottom of the cave, like a glow-worm
crawling along its floor toward him. A moment
after the feeble ray became stronger, and separated
itself into two dots of light, which were still approaching;
and then, again, from the brighter reflection
upon the water as the taper now neared
Bradshawe, it could be seen that he was standing
upon the brink of a subterranean lake, and that a
canoe, with one solitary voyager, was approaching
him.

“Valtmeyer, is he here, my good Charon?” asked
Bradshawe of the deformed half-breed that steered
the canoe, as the man turned a rocky promontory
on the left, and suddenly presented his features
in full view by the ruddy torchlight.

“He is here, captain,” replied the Hunchback,
respectfully.

“And the lady?”

“I know nothing of the lady since the first day
she came down among us, when I carried her
along the River of Ghosts to the chamber at the
north end of the cavern, which our men call the
`Chapel.”'

“And has no one else been here?”

“Not a soul but Red Wolfert, and he seems to
go near her as seldom as possible.”

“It is well. Shove off.”

There was a silence for a few moments as the
shallop kept her way over the deep and mysterious
flood; and Bradshawe, as he sat with folded arms
in the stern, seemed busied only in trying to pierce

with his eye the undiscoverable height of the black
vault above him.

“Who of my band are here?” he at length resumed,
abruptly.

“Not those whom you value most; and some,
perhaps, who should never have been trusted with
the secret of the cave. But Syl Stickney says that
things are going so badly above, that we must find
hiding-places for our friends if we'd have them stick
to the cause, and Wolfert therefore forgave him
for bringing them down.”

“Syl Stickney and be d—d to him! I must pistol
that officious rascal some cold morning,” muttered
Bradshawe; and then added aloud, “And have
these fellows seen the lady?”

“Neither they nor Syl. Syl only guesses that
there is some mystery shut up at the other end of
the cave; for Wolfert has forbidden that the newcomers
should be told there is such a place as the
Chapel; and he swears he'll cut Syl's throat if he
approaches it.”

“Admirable Wolfert!” said Bradshawe, mentally;
“thou hast thus far been the truest of ruffians,
and well earned thy reward.”

The boat had now reached the farther shore of
this “Black Acheron,” where a shelving indentation
among the steep rocks affords a landing-place
to the voyager, who, having passed the gulf, proposes
to penetrate the Cimmerian region beyond.
This enterprise, though unattended with danger, is
sufficiently awe-inspiring to any one who has been
ferried over that dark, still river, upon which no
beam of sunshine has ever fallen. But a man less
bold than Bradshawe might have shrunk from adventuring
farther, if unfamiliar with the sounds
which now met his ear as he scaled a rough ascent
leading up from the water side; for never from Tartarus

itself arose a wilder discord of horrid blasphemy,
intermingled with drunken laughter. The
strange, unearthly oaths, echoed from the hollow
depths around, seemed to tremble long in air, as if
it thickened with the damning sounds, and held them
there suspended as in their proper element. The
peals of eldrich merriment were first shrilly reverberated
as in mockery from the vaulted roof; and
then, as if flung back into some lower pit, some
burial-house of mirth, died away in a sullen moan
beneath his very feet.

This strange confusion of sounds, however, lost
its effect upon the ear the moment Bradshawe had
entered the outlaws' banqueting hall, where he suddenly
presented himself in the midst of his men,
who, in every variety of costume, were variously
grouped about the vast circular chamber. Some
were carousing deeply around a board well filled
with flagons; some, seated upon the ground, were
deep in a game of cards together; the rattling of
a dice-box betrayed the not dissimilar occupation
of two others; while some, more remote from the
rest, were amusing themselves with jumping for a
wager, and other feats of strength and agility. The
size of this apartment, which formed a rotunda forty
paces in diameter by fifty feet in height, afforded
ample room for all this diversity of occupation.

Syl Stickney and others of Bradshawe's Tory followers,
who were not willing to identify themselves
completely with Valtmeyer's especial band of outlaws,
though they had long consorted with them,
kept partially aloof; a herd of them being collected
around the worthy Sylla himself, who, with a
tankard by his side and a pipe in his mouth, sat
upon a ponderous fragment of fallen spar, discoursing
much to his own satisfaction, if not to that of
his hearers.

“Why, do tell!” he exclaimed, breaking off in
his discourse, “if there aint the capting now! Did
I ever! Why, capting, I was jist saying to my
brother Marius and these gentlemen—”

“Your brother Marius be d—d. Keep your seats,
gentlemen. Stickney, where's Valtmeyer?”

“I guess, if you follow the turning to the right,
you'll find him in one of the chambers to the north
o' this,” said the cool Syl, without ever moving from
his seat to salute or welcome his officer.

“Nay, my good fellows,” said Bradshawe, turning
to the others, who were beginning to explain how
they had become his guests in his absence, “the
king's friends are always welcome to any shelter I
can afford them; and I ought, perhaps, to thank our
friend Stickney here for gaining such valuable recruits
for my band in times like these.”

“Ought ye, raaly, capting? Well, now, that's
jist what I told Red Wolfert when he showed signs
of kicking up a muss, case, when I went up into
daylight one day to lift a rebel sheep or two, `Wolfert,'
says I—but, by darn, the capting's cleared out
without speaking to one of the company but ourselves.”
And, true enough, Bradshawe, seizing a
torch from a cleft in the rock, had glided out of the
apartment, unobserved by all save those who had
marked his entrance.

Taking now a northern direction, he soon encountered
the outlaw in a long narrow passage leading
from some secret chamber where arms and
munitions were said to be kept, but which Valtmeyer
probably appropriated to the stowage of
booty; a matter which Bradshawe, who did not
care to mix himself up with the predatory doings
of his lieutenant, never inquired into. Valtmeyer,
exchanging but few words with his leader for the
present, led him back to the Outlaws' Hall, where

every one seemed to be too much engaged in their
own pastime to notice them, as, passing along the
wall on one side, Bradshawe entered a narrow aperture
toward the south, leading to a distinct suite of
apartments. Here Valtmeyer soon brought him
the refreshment he so much needed after the toils
he had undergone.

In one of these chambers, where the air was ever
cooled and kept in motion by the dripping of water
from above, a thin plate of stone upon which it fell
emitted a sound not unlike that which proceeds
from the body of a guitar or other stringed instrument
when the wooden part is lightly tapped by the
finger. These monotonous tones, varying only at
times to a higher and wilder key, as if the cords of
the instrument were swept by some unseen hand,
mingled strangely with the low murmur of their
voices as the two adventurers conversed together;
while the huge Cyclopean frame of the freebooter,
and fiery eye and reckless features of the Tory captain—which
looked doubly wan by the blazing torch
that the other held before them while sitting in deep
shadow himself—formed one of those studies which
the old masters so loved to paint.

A few moments sufficed Bradshawe to despatch
his hasty meal, and possess himself of all the information
which his zealous coadjutor had to impart;
and, repassing again through the Outlaws'
Hall, without pausing to make himself known to the
half-drunken revellers who were still grouped about
it much in the same attitudes in which they were
first introduced to the reader, he motioned silently
to the wierd-looking ferryman who had brought him
into these gloomy realms, and once more regained
the shores of the subterranean lake.

The black pool was then again crossed; and,
passing by the Warder's Room on the right, the two

pursued the arched passage which Bradshawe had
before traversed, until they came to the open space
in the cave where he had first reached the bottom
in descending from the region of daylight to these
grim abodes.

The cloistered arches above rose so loftily that
the roof was shrouded in impenetrable darkness;
and here, through a small aperture in the wall on
the left, was again heard the sound of water. It
seemed not to be a still, sullen lake, like that he had
just crossed, but a flowing river, whose waves dashed
heavily and slowly against the cavernous rocks
which confined them on either side; and now, taking
a torch and paddle in his hands, and placing himself
in a recumbent posture in a boat barely large enough
to admit of its being pushed through the crevice,
Bradshawe, by the aid of the half-breed, entered
the opening in the curtain of rock, and launched
upon the stream beyond.

The subterranean voyager, who first pushed himself
along with his hands only, soon found the vault
to enlarge above him, so that he could sit erect in
the boat and use his paddle. The water, so clear
that his torchlight gleamed upon the bottom some
thirty feet below him, was only broken at long intervals
by a mimic cascade scarcely a foot in height,
over which he easily lifted his shallop, and proceeded
upon his errand to the distant chamber where
Alida was immured. In this spacious apartment
Valtmeyer had partitioned off a dry place by erecting
a bark shanty over it, and made other provisions
for the unhappy female, from whom, in the outlaw's
slang, it took its name of “The Lady's Chapel.” But
Bradshawe has now gained the threshold of that the
dreariest bower in which Beauty ever yet received
her suiter, and we must pause before venturing to
describe the strange and painful interview between
them.