The Middy and the Moors - Robert Michael Ballantyne (best ebook reader android .TXT) 📗

capable of self-restraint than the girl, for he could not resist whispering, "Hester!"

The poor girl turned towards him as if by an irresistible impulse, but her black guardian angel was equal to the emergency. Seizing Hester by the shoulder, she pushed her violently forward, storming at her loudly as on the former occasion.

"What, you black t'ing! Hab you neber seen slabes before? You no better'n de white folk, wastin' ob your purcious time. My! won't you get a whackin' fro' missis w'en you gits home!"

Recovering herself, Hester at once submitted.

At first the poor father was about to start up and run to embrace his child, as well as to rescue her from her rude companion, but, being what is termed a "sharp man of business," he received into his mind, as it were, a flash of light, and sat still. If this flash had been analysed it would probably have produced the following thoughts--"biscuits! kindness! companion a friend! ignorance impossible! violence unaccountable! a ruse, perhaps! sit still!"

Thought, they say, is swifter than light. At all events, it was swift enough on the present occasion to prevent the shadow of a suspicion arising in the minds either of slaves or guards, who seemed to be rather amused at what they fancied was the bad temper of Sally.

Next day the biscuit-dropping was repeated without the scene that had followed, and so wisely was this affair managed by all the parties concerned, that it was carried on for several weeks without a hitch. Under the influence of hope and improved fare, Hugh Sommers became so much brighter in spirits and better in health, and so much more tractable, that his guards at length removed his heavy fetters and allowed him to toil with free limbs, like the majority of the slaves. Hester also became almost cheerful under the wonderful influence of hope. But Hester and her father were each overwhelmed, more or less, by a wet blanket at that time, and, strange to say, their wet blankets happened to be their best friends.

In the case of Hester, it was Sally. The more hopeful and cheery Hester became, the more did her black friend shake her woolly head and look dismal.

"Why, Sally, dear, what's the matter with you?" asked the former one day, as they sat together in the bower on the roof, after returning from their visit to the slave-gang.

A shake of the girl's head and an unutterable expression in her magnificent black eyes made Hester quite uneasy.

"Do tell me, Sally. Is there anything the matter with you?"

"De matter wid me? Oh no! Not'ing's neber de matter wid me--'cept when I eats too much--but it's you an' your fadder I's t'inkin' ob."

"But we are both getting on very well, Sally, are we not? I am quite safe here, and darling father is growing stronger and fatter every day, thank God! and then our hope is very strong. Why should you be anxious?"

Sally prefaced her reply with one of the professional gasps wherewith she was wont to bring down the iron pestle.

"Well, now, you white folks am de greatest ijits eber was born. Do you t'ink you'll deliber your fadder from de Moors by feedin' him on biscuits an' _hope_? What's de end ob all dis to come to? das what I want to know. Ob course you can't go on for eber. You sure to be cotched at last, and de whole affair'll bust up. You'll be tooked away, an' your fadder'll be t'rowed on de hooks or whacked to deaf. Oh! I's most mis'rable!"

The poor creature seemed inclined to howl at this point, but she constrained herself and didn't.

In the gloom of the cheerless Bagnio, Hugh Sommers found his wet blanket in Edouard Laronde.

"But it is unwise to look only at the bright side of things," said the Frenchman, after sympathising with his friend's joy in having discovered his daughter so unexpectedly and in such a curious manner. "No doubt, from her disguise, she must, as you say, be in hiding, and in comparative safety with friends, else she could not be moving so freely about this accursed city, but what is to be the end of it all?"

Laronde unconsciously echoed Sally's question to Hester, but Hugh Sommers had not as much to say in reply as his daughter, for he was too well acquainted with the possibilities of life to suppose that biscuits and hope would do much towards the "end," although valuable auxiliaries in the meantime.

"I see not the end, Laronde," he said, after a pause; "but the end is in the hands of God, and I will trust Him."

"So is the middle, and so is the beginning, as well as the end," returned Laronde cynically; "why, then, are you so perplexed and anxious about these if the end is, as you seem to think, so sure? Why don't you trust God all through?"

"I do trust God all through, my friend, but there is this difference-- that with the end I have nothing to do save to wait patiently and trustfully, whereas with the beginning and middle it is my duty to act and energise hopefully."

"But why your anxiety if the whole matter is under safe guidance?" persisted the Frenchman.

"Because, while I am absolutely certain that God will do His part wisely and well, I am by no means sure that I shall do my part either well or wisely. You forget, Laronde, that we are free agents as well as sinful and foolish, more or less, so that there is legitimate room for anxiety, which only becomes evil when we give way to it, or when it goes the length of questioning the love, wisdom, and power of the Creator!"

"All mystery, all mystery, Sommers; you are only theorising about what you do not, cannot, know anything. You have no ground for what you hold."

"As you confess never to have studied, or even seriously contemplated, the ground on which I hold it, there is--don't you think?--a slight touch of presumption on your part in criticising so severely what you do not, cannot, understand? I profess to have _good_ reasons for what I hold; you profess merely to disbelieve it. Is there not a vast difference here?"

"Perhaps there is, but I'm too sleepy to see it. Would you oblige me by putting your foot on that centipede? He has made three ineffectual attempts to pass the night under my wing. Make sure work of him. Thanks. Now I will try to sleep. Oh! the weary, heart-sickness of hope deferred! Good-night, Sommers."

"Good-night."


CHAPTER FOURTEEN.


A BRAVE DASH FOR LIFE AND FREEDOM.

"Geo'ge, come wid me," said Peter the Great one afternoon, with face so solemn that the heart of the young midshipman beat faster as he followed his friend.

They were in Ben-Ahmed's garden at the time--for the middy had been returned to his owner after a night in the common prison, and a threat of much severer treatment if he should ever again venture to lay his infidel hands on one of the faithful.

Having led the middy to the familiar summer house, where most of their earnest or important confabulations were held, Peter sat down and groaned.

"What's wrong now?" asked the middy, with anxious looks.

"Oh! Geo'ge, eberyt'ing's wrong," he replied, flinging himself down on a rustic seat with a reckless air and rolling his eyes horribly. "Eberyt'ing's wrong. De world's all wrong togidder--upside down and inside out."

The middy might have laughed at Peter's expression if he had not been terribly alarmed.

"Come, Peter, tell me. Is Hester safe?"

"I don' know, Geo'ge."

"Don't know! Why d'you keep me in such anxiety? Speak, man, speak! What has happened?"

"How kin I speak, Geo'ge, w'en I's a'most busted wid runnin' out here to tell you?"

The perspiration that stood on Peter's sable brow, and the heaving of his mighty chest, told eloquently of the pace at which he had been running.

"Dis is de way ob it, Geo'ge. I had it all fro' de lips ob Sally herself, what saw de whole t'ing." As the narrative which Peter the Great had to tell is rather too long to be related in his own "lingo," we will set it down in ordinary language.

One day while Hester was, as usual, passing her father, and in the very act of dropping the customary supply of food, she observed that one of the slaves had drawn near and was watching her with keen interest. From the slave's garb and bearing any one at all acquainted with England could have seen at a glance that he was a British seaman, though hard service and severe treatment, with partial starvation, had changed him much. He was in truth the stout sailor-like man who had spoken a few words to Foster the day he landed in Algiers, and who had contemptuously asserted his utter ignorance of gardening.

The slaves, we need hardly say, were not permitted to hold intercourse with each other for fear of their combining to form plans of rebellion and escape, but it was beyond the power of their drivers to be perpetually on the alert, so that sometimes they did manage to exchange a word or two without being observed.

That afternoon it chanced that Sommers had to carry a stone to a certain part of the wall. It was too heavy for one man to lift, the sailor was therefore ordered to help him. While bearing the burden towards the wall, the following whispered conversation took place.

"I say, old man," observed the sailor, "the little girl that gives you biscuits every day is no more a nigger than I am."

"Right!" whispered the merchant anxiously, for he had supposed that no one had observed the daily gift; "she is my daughter."

"I guessed as much by the cut o' your jibs. But she's in danger, for I noticed that one o' the drivers looked at her suspiciously to-day, and once suspicion is roused the villains never rest. Is there no means of preventing her coming this way to-morrow?"

"None. I don't even know where she comes from or goes to. God help her! If suspected, she is lost, for she will be sure to come to-morrow."

"Don't break down, old man; they'll observe you. If she is taken are you willing to fight?"

"Yes," answered the merchant sternly.

"I am with you, then. Your name?"

"Sommers. Yours?"

"Brown."

A driver had been coming towards them, so that the last few words had been spoken in low whispers. A sharp cut of the whip on the shoulders of each showed that the driver had observed them talking. They received it in absolute silence and without any outward display of feeling. To that extent, at all events, they had both been "tamed."

But the stout seaman had been for many weeks acting a part. At first, like Sommers, he had been put in heavy irons on account of his violence and ferocity; but after many weeks of childlike submission on his part, the irons were removed. Despite the vigilance of the guards, a plot had been hatched by the gang