University of Virginia Library

20. CHAPTER XX.
CAPTIVITY.

By short but difficult paths, only known to himself, the
rebel soon regained his hills. Once more he entered the
bohio, where the remains of his murdered child still lay,
in the charge of the humbled and wretched mother. She
was stretched at length, even as when he left her; her lips
at the feet of the corpse, and pressing upon the rushes
which strewed the cold earthy floor of the hovel. She rose
to her feet respectfully at his entrance, but his attitude and
appearance filled her with affright. His eyes glared with
the tiger's ferocity—his lips were half opened, and the
white teeth looked threatening and gleaming from below;
while his hands, stretched over the mangled head of the
boy, seemed to drop with the blood with which they were
completely dyed. His wild laugh of rage and satisfaction
was her first, and, for a few moments, her only salutation.

“Get thee in readiness,” he cried to her, after a brief
space, in the language of the Charaibee—“get thee ready
to depart. Let the cotton garments shroud the limbs of the
boy. He knows not,—but he shall share our flight. Better
that the seas swallow him, than that these accursed
Spaniards give him to feed the dog that barks.”

“Oh, Caonabo, father, chief!” cried the woman, in the
same language, “what hast thou done?”

“Dost thou ask?” he answered fiercely. “What should
I have done, woman, but dig deep with my knife into the
heart of the pale wretch who slew the boy? Should I
have slept ere this was done, or couldst thou? And the
spirit which his murderous hands made escape to the green
islands, should he have gone without a dog to follow, or

a pale slave to give him tendance? Peace, and bring forth
the garments—let his limbs be shrouded in the white
cotton.”

Thus saying, he sat down by the side of the boy, and
his bloody hand rested upon the mangled head of the innocent
victim, whom he had so soon and certainly avenged.
That he grieved, could only be known by the intense earnestness
of his gaze, fixed the while on vacancy; he shed
no tears, and uttered no lamentations. In the mean time, the
woman busied herself in drawing forth from some secret
hiding-place a few yards of the cotton cloth which was
manufactured in the island long before the coming of Columbus.
A portion of this she cut off, and was about to
restore the residue to the hiding-place, when the stern voice
of the cacique commanded her to bring it all.

“Would you lay up store for the Spaniard, Buru?—let
the boy have all the garment—he will ask no more at thy
hands.”

These words awakened her lamentations anew, and
while she lifted the stiffened limbs, and swathed them in
the stuff, her tears, accompanied by close, thick-crowding
sobs, literally streamed down upon the unconscious boy,
for whose untimely fate they fell. For a while her sorrows
were expressed without interruption from the chief, but
the keen ears of the rebel, quickened by the continual pursuit
of the bloodhound and the foe, were suddenly struck
with other sounds than those of his woman's lamentation.

“Stay, Buru,” he cried, while he thrust his ear to the
earth—“hearest thou nothing?”

“Nothing, father, chief, it was a bird that flew—it was
the little mona that jumped in the fig tree.”

In another instant the rebel had started to his feet. His
eye glared with fury upon her.

“Woman, thou liest! it is no bird, it is no mona,—it is
the Spaniard and the hound that are on the path of the chief;
it is thy forked tongue that has betrayed me to the hands
of my enemies. Thou!”

These dreadful words, which were uttered in low and
suppressed accents, sank deeply into the heart of the now
doubly wretched woman. She fell at the feet of the rebel,
who had naturally become suspicious of every thing and
every body, in the perils and the flights to which he had
been for so long a term subjected; and with upraised hands

clasped before her face, solemnly assured him of her fidelity
and truth. But he spurned her from his feet with indignation,
while he replied to her in words of accusation beneath
which she seemed to wither upon the ground.

“I see it now, Buru; it is by thy art that I am in this
strait. The Spaniard who has bought so many of my
people, has also bought the wife that lay upon my bosom
in the long night. Well didst thou know that to see the
boy Zemi, alone, would I have come into thy habitation;
and thou hadst him slain that I should not fail, like an
unwary beast when he hears the scream of the young one,
to go headlong into the same trap of the hunter. I will
not slay thee, though thou liest in my path and the sharp
knife is in my hand; but the blood of Caonabo be upon
thy head, woman, if he escape not now from the Spaniard.”

Her supplicating and assuring words were unheard and
lost to his ears by his own movement. Grasping his
knife firmly in his hand he threw open the door of the
hovel, in the hope that time might still be left him for
escape. To find himself out upon the hills was to find
himself, he well knew, in perfect safety. But his hope
was baffled when the door was unclosed. The two Spaniards
stood ready at the entrance, and the moment that he
made his appearance became the signal for strife. They
threw themselves at once with concentrated energy upon
him, and their united force precipitated him to the ground.
The dagger was wrested from his grasp in another instant
and he lay at the mercy of his enemies, and under
their persons, before Buru had arisen from the ground
where she had prostrated herself in deprecating the anger
and suspicions of her husband. When she recovered
from her surprise, she rushed upon the Spaniards with a
reckless disregard to her own safety and with all the fury
of a tigress. But the commands of Caonabo arrested her
rashness which, most probably, would otherwise have ended
only with her life. He bade her forbear all provocation,
and while the daggers of the two Spaniards were at his
throat, he calmly asked her one or two questions, which
as they were expressed in the language of the Charaibee,
were incomprehensible to his enemies.

“What does the infidel say, Pedro,” demanded his
companion, “in his heathen language. Should we not slit

his pipe and put a stop to such abominable sounds, as I
doubt whether it be altogether right for Christian ears to
hear. What do you stop for—why not put an end to the
business? Dead or alive, it is all the same to us, and the
head of a dead rebel is easier to carry than the heels of a
living one.”

“But there is the triumph, Sanchez,” replied the other,
with a deliberative air. “There is the grand entrance into
Santo Domingo, and the people turning out to look on the
rebel; and then comes the execution, and the display of
the troops, and the salute. I doubt not that his excellency
the Governor will give us a speech and public thanks before
the people, when we shall have taken by our own
strength of arm a rebel so powerful, and brought him without
hurt to the place of public execution.”

“And what does all that come to, Pedro. A fig for the
troops and the display; and, to speak truth, I do not care
so much for the execution either, since I have seen enough
of that sort of business to make it no strange thing. As
for the thanks of his Excellency, let them be words of the
purse, and I am satisfied.”

“We shall have both, Sanchez, both words of the purse
and of the lips; but as thou wilt. I see thou hast a fear
of so troublesome a charge as of a living infidel, and, though
I see not the danger, and but very little increase of trouble
in taking him to Santo Domingo, it shall be even as thou
sayest; so run thy poniard into his throat, which it already
threatens, while mine makes acquaintance with his ribs.
It is a business soon over.”

These cool resolutions which were well enough understood
both by Caonabo and his wife, renewed the desperate
fury of the latter, who threw herself upon one of the Spaniards
with a force which nearly cast him from his firm seat
upon the breast of the rebel, and clung to his weaponed
arm with a tenacity from which he could not set himself
free, without losing his advantage over Caonabo. But the
words of the latter, who fortunately maintained his coolness
all the while, again operated to compel the forbearance
of the woman.

“Stay!” he exclaimed in Spanish, and this word seemed
quite as much intended for his conquerors as for his
wife. A sentence addressed to her, however, made her
release her grasp upon the Spaniard, while the two enemies

seemed not unwilling to hear what he might have to say
to them. Caonabo had soon discovered from the brief
dialogue which they held together that their aim was money,
and knowing the price that had been set upon his head, he
conceived a hope of escape by practising upon that cupidity
which he perceived to be stronger than any hope of praise
or distinction in their minds.

“Hear me,” he said, in imperfect Spanish—“would you
not have gold—gold which shall make you chiefs and
lords like the governor Obando. You shall have it. You
shall have ten times the amount in gold which Obando hath
offered for my head, if you will only set me free. Give
my limbs freedom upon these hills and turn back your eyes
when I fly, that you may not see my course, and I will
seven times fill your hats with the best gold upon the
mountains.”

“Thou art but a shallow infidel if thou thinkest to beguile
us with such a cheat as this,” was the reply of Pedro.
“What should we see of thee, or of the gold which thou
promisest, if we were to suffer thee to have this start.
Thou wouldst dive down into thy sea-side hollows or
crawl up to thy bird-nest heights among the cliffs, and
laugh at us vainly trudging after thee from below.”

“The gold shall be in thy hands before I ask of thee
to set me free. Thou shalt put thy cords upon my limbs
while I guide thee to the secret hollow where it sleeps.”

“Ha! but that is a better story!” exclaimed the Spaniard
looking significantly upon his companion as he spake.
Their eyes met, and in the scornful and contemptuous
smile which settled upon the noble features of the rebel, it
could be seen that he had divined their mutual but unexpressed
thoughts of deceit, and readily understood their
plan of treachery and final murder. The poor single-hearted
woman, Buru, did not lack for understanding on the
subject also, but without marking the sinister expression of
their faces, she cried aloud to her husband in his native
tongue—

“Oh, father, chief, Caonabo, they will take from thee
thy gold, and slay thee after.”

“Peace, woman, do I not know it. Canst thou tell me
of a Spaniard, and of a Spaniard's promise, without telling
me of a traitor and a treachery. I know that they will do
this, and, I fear me, thou wouldst help them; but is

there other hope? It will be something gained, woman,
to be out upon the hills, where, though my hands be tied,
my feet are free, and one bound will place me in hollows,
and upon crags, where these dastard creatures dare not
come, or would fall and falter at each step. Trouble me
no more with thy artful speech, for I doubt, woman, that
thou playest me false, like all the rest.”

“Alas, father, Caonabo—thou dost me a cruel wrong.”

“Let me see this, as I will to-night, and by the bloody
head of the boy, Zemi, I will do thee right,” was the
reply.

“He speaks of his son,” said Pedro to his companion,
hearing him name the child—“What sayst thou, Sanchez?
the offer is fair enough. We bind his arms—thou hast
cords in thy pocket—thou wert always well provided—we
bind him, and he leads us to his gold. We set him not
free till it be sure in our grasp. Seven hat-fulls—thy hat
is the largest, Sanchez—there is more good in having a
large head than I was wont to think before—seven of thy
hat-fulls, Sanchez—why, man, the reward of his excellency
is a fool to it.”

“Ay, and we can have that also,” replied the other, in a
whisper.

“Humph,” said Pedro, also in a whisper, “but of that
say nothing yet. It is agreed that we take the offer of the
infidel.”

“Ay! canst thou scruple? It is our fortune, Pedro—
seven hat-fulls,—and I will take the nose of Señor Garabito
in my fingers to-morrow. The man's man shall be his
own master after that.”

“Keep thy exultation for the morrow,” replied the
other. “Hark ye, Caonabo, we take thy offer. Thou
shalt give us thy seven hat-fulls of gold, and as much more
as thou wilt, and we will set thee free. But we will bind
thy hands until the gold is before our eyes, and set thee
free when we have it measured, and in possession.”

“Will I be sure that thou wilt free me then?” demanded
the rebel, who could ill conceal the scornful tone of his
voice, and could not altogether hide the bitter smile of hatred
and contempt which gathered about his lips.

“Dost thou doubt what I tell thee, infidel? Dost thou
think I have no conscience? Have I not told thee?
Wouldst thou have me swear this thing?”

“The Spaniard will swear to Caonabo,” replied the rebel
quietly in Spanish—then looking to Buru, he said in the
tongue of the Charaibée—

“I will belie him to his own gods—he shall swear;”
and he watched with keen eyes and contemptuous scorn,
while the two Spaniards lifted the cross to their lips, but
by a mean and vulgar artifice interposing their thumbs between,
swore solemnly to free their prisoner when he
should have complied with his golden promise.

“It is well,” exclaimed the savage—“Now place your
cords upon my arms, and light torches, while I lead ye forth
to the spot where the gold lies hidden.”

This was soon done. The cords were placed securely
upon his limbs,—torches were lighted, each of the Spaniards
providing himself with one, and in a few moments
more, the chieftain stood erect upon his native hills, with a
heart growing more confident with every tread of his firm
feet upon the earth. A voice of hope and of a strong reliance
in his own good fortune, whispered in his bosom as
he went forward.

“I feel that I must be free. It cannot be, that I, who
have baffled the bands of the Spaniard and his dogs so long,
shall fall at last under the knives of such base creatures as
these. With the movement of my feet I feel my freedom
—to the right and to the left there are gorges—some deep
—deeper than the sea. Better that I should leap headlong
into these, than be tied to their stakes of fire. Ho! Spaniards—my
lords—the gold is on the path before us. Follow
me close—I will lead you to the spot. Fear nothing.
I have no weapons,—and see you not my hands are bound
with your cords—I cannot fly.”