Читать книгу Brethren of the Main - Рафаэль Сабатини - Страница 4

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With his armed negroes following at his heels, like a brace of hounds, Colonel Bishop came suddenly and softly round a corner of one of the avenues intersecting the great blocks of ripening amber sugar-canes. Thus, he disturbed a close and intimate colloquy between Jerry Pitt, the rebel convict, and another man, who plunged away incontinently into the woods that almost bordered the plantation at this point.

Colonel Bishop let him go unpursued and gave his attention to Jerry Pitt—an unfortunate who had been shipped to Barbados and there sold into a ten-years' slavery for having been out with Monmouth in the 'West Country. Under the planter's baleful glance the rebel convict turned cold and shivered, despite the sweltering heat.

The colonel, a massive fellow, lightly clad in biscuit-colored taffetas set off with certain gold-lace fripperies, stepped forward, swinging a slender bamboo cane.

"And what was the bashful Nuttall saying to you?" he asked, his voice thick and sneering.

The convict hung his head and shifted uncomfortably on his bare feet. A pair of cotton breeches, loose and ragged, clothed him from waist to knee. Above and below he was naked, save for a broad hat of plaited straw that sheltered his unkempt head of golden hair from the tropical sun.

The planter's bamboo cane descended with stinging force upon those naked shoulders.

"Answer me, scum! What is his commerce with you?"

The young man raised sullen eyes, set in a face that a year of slavery and degradation had almost stripped of its erstwhile comeliness. But still he made no answer.

"Stubborn, eh?" The colonel was sarcastically humorous. He knew a dozen ways—some of them quite diverting—of conquering stubbornness in these convict swine. "'Swounds, you impudent dog! Do you think I'm to be mocked? D'ye think I don't guess the business that brings him sneaking here?"

"Why weary yourself with asking, then?" said Jerry.

There was something in his voice of the bitter recklessness that is begotten of despair. If the planter really guessed the business that had brought Nuttall secretly to see the slave, death could matter little.

Brute fury awoke in Colonel Bishop and he fell to lashing those defenseless shoulders until, stung beyond endurance, the lingering embers of his manhood fanned into momentary flame, Pitt sprang toward him.

But as he sprang the watchful blacks sprang also. Muscular bronze arms coiled crushingly about the frail white body and in a moment the unfortunate slave stood powerless, his wrists pinioned behind him in a thong of hide.

"Fetch him along," said the planter, and he turned away.

Down the avenue between golden walls of cane the wretched Pitt was hurried to a plateau, smooth and green, before the roomy white house of the overseer. From here a view was commanded of Carlisle Bay, the fort, and the long sheds of the wharf, to which a few shallow boats were moored. Out in the roads, standing in for the shore, before a gentle breeze that scarcely ruffled the sapphire surface of the Caribbean, came a stately frigate flying the English ensign.

Colonel Bishop stood and gazed a moment, shading his eyes with his hand. Light as was the breeze, the vessel spread no canvas to it beyond her spritsail. Her every other sail was furled, leaving a clear view of the majestic lines of her hull from towering stern-castle to gilded beak-head aflash in the brilliant sunshine. So leisurely an advance argued a master indifferently acquainted with these waters cautiously sounding his way as he crept forward.

The planter turned from his survey of her to give his attention once more to Master Pitt. Within the stockade about the house of the overseer stood a pair of stocks for slaves who required correction. Into these at a word from the colonel the negroes had meanwhile clapped their prisoner.

"Mutinous curs that show their fangs to their master muse learn good manners at the cost of a striped hide," snarled Colonel Bishop and with that he went about his executioner's job.

That with his own hands he should have done what most men of his station would, out of self-respect, have relegated to a negro, gives the measure of the man's beastliness. It was almost with relish, as if gratifying some feral instinct of cruelty, that now he lashed his victim.

And by the time that from very weariness he flung away the broken remnants of his bamboo, the wretched slave's back was bleeding pulp from neck to waist. His body had sunk forward, and he was moaning faintly, his senses mercifully dulled by pain.

Colonel Bishop set a foot upon the crossbar, and bent over him.

"That will learn you a proper submission," said he. "And there you stay without meat or drink—without meat or drink, d'ye hear me?—until you are ready to confess the business on which Nuttall sought you." He took his foot from the bar, and stood up. "When you've had enough of this, send me word—and we'll have the branding-irons to you."

On that he laughed, swung on his heel and strode out of the stockade, his negroes following, and Pitt was left alone.