Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader by Robert Michael Ballantyne (top inspirational books .TXT) 📖

seemed to render the affrighted creatures incapable of action, for they came to a dead halt.

"_Well_ done, Mulroy," shouted Montague, "forward, boys--charge!"

A true British cheer burst from the tars and white settlers, which served farther to strike terror into the hearts of the enemy. In another moment they rushed up the hill, led on by Montague, Gascoyne, Henry, and Thorwald. But the savages did not await the shock. Seized with a complete panic, they turned and fled in utter confusion.

Just as this occurred, Mr Mason began to recover consciousness. Recollecting suddenly what had occurred, he started up and followed his friends, who were now in hot pursuit of the foe in the direction of his own cottage. Quickly though they ran, the anxious father overtook and passed them, but he soon perceived that his dwelling was wrapt in flames, from end to end.

Darting through the smoke and fire to his daughter's room he shouted her name, but no voice replied. He sprang to the bed--it was empty. With a cry of despair, and blinded by smoke, he dashed about the room, grasping wildly at objects in the hope that he might find his child. As he did so he stumbled over a prostrate form, which he instantly seized, raised in his arms, and bore out of the blazing house, round which a number of the people were now assembled.

The form he had thus plucked from destruction was that of the poor boy, who would willingly have given his life to rescue Alice, and who still lay in the state of insensibility into which he had been thrown by the blow from the savage's heavy club.

The missionary dropped his burden, turned wildly round, and was about to plunge once again into the heart of the blazing ruin, when he was seized in the strong arms of Henry Stuart, who, with the assistance of Ole Thorwald, forcibly prevented him from doing that which would have resulted in almost certain death.

The pastor's head sunk on his breast; the excitement of action and hope no longer sustained him; with a deep groan he fell to the earth insensible.


CHAPTER NINE.


BAFFLED AND PERPLEXED--PLANS FOR A RESCUE.

While the men assembled round the prostrate form of Mr Mason were attempting to rescue him from his state of stupor, poor Corrie began to shew symptoms of returning vitality. A can of water, poured over him by Henry, did much to restore him. But no sooner was he enabled to understand what was going on, and to recall what had happened, than he sprang up with a wild cry of despair, and rushed towards the blazing house. Again Henry's quick arm arrested a friend in his mad career.

"Oh! she's there! Alice is _there_!" shrieked the boy, as he struggled passionately to free himself.

"You can do nothing, Corrie," said Henry, trying to soothe him.

"Coward!" gasped the boy in a paroxysm of rage, as he clenched his fist and struck his captor on the chest with all his force.

"Hold him," said Henry, turning to John Bumpus, who at that moment came up.

Bumpus nodded intelligently, and seized the boy, who uttered a groan of anguish as he ceased a struggle which he felt was hopeless in such an iron gripe.

"Now, friends--all of you," shouted Henry, the moment he was relieved of his charge, "little Alice is in that house--we must pull it down! who will lend a hand?"

He did not pause for an answer, but seizing an axe, rushed through the smoke and began to cut down the door-posts. The whole party there assembled, numbering about fifty, rushed forward, as one man, to aid in the effort. The attempt was a wild one. Had Henry considered for a moment, he would have seen that, in the event of their succeeding in pulling down the blazing pile, they should in all probability smother the child in the ruins.

"The shell is in the out-house," said Corrie, eagerly, to the giant who held him.

"Wot shell?" inquired Bumpus.

"The shell that they blow like a horn to call the people to work with."

"Ah! you're sane again," said the sailor, releasing him; "go, find it, lad, and blow till yer cheeks crack."

Corrie was gone long before Jo had concluded even that short remark. In another second the harsh but loud sound of the shell rang over the hill-side. The settlers, black and white, immediately ceased their pursuit of the savages, and from every side they came trooping in by dozens. Without waiting to inquire the cause of what was being done, each man, as he arrived, fell to work on the blazing edifice, and, urged on by Henry's voice and example, toiled and moiled in the midst of fire and smoke, until the pastor's house was literally pulled to pieces.

Fortunately for little Alice, she had been carried out of that house long before by Keona, who, being subtle as well as revengeful, knew well how to strike at the tenderest part of the white man's heart.

While her friends were thus frantically endeavouring to deliver her from the burning house in which they supposed her to be, Alice was being hurried through the woods by a steep mountain path in the direction of the native village. Happily for the feelings of her father, the fact was made known, soon after the house had been pulled down, by the arrival of a small party of native settlers bearing one of the child's shoes. They had found it, they said, sticking in the mud, about a mile off, and had tracked the little footsteps a long way into the mountains by the side of the prints made by the naked feet of a savage. At length they had lost the tracks amid the hard lava rocks and had given up the chase.

"We must follow them up instantly," said Mr Mason, who had by this time recovered; "no time is to be lost."

"Ay, time is precious, who will go?" cried Henry, who, begrimed with fire and smoke, and panting vehemently from recent exertion, had just at that moment come towards the group.

"Take me! Oh! take me, Henry!" cried Corrie, in a beseeching tone, as he sprang promptly to his friend's side.

At any other time, Henry would have smiled at the enthusiastic offer of such a small arm to fight the savages; but fierce anger was in his breast at that moment;--he turned from the poor boy and looked round with a frown, as he observed that, although the natives crowded round him at once, neither Gascoyne, nor Thorwald, nor Captain Montague shewed any symptom of an intention to accompany him.

"Nay, be not angry, lad," said Gascoyne, observing the frown; "your blood is young and hot, as it should be; but it behoves us to have a council of war before we set out on this expedition, which, believe me, will be no trifling one, if I know anything of savage ways and doings."

"Mr Gascoyne is right," said Montague, turning to the missionary, who stood regarding the party with anxious looks, quite unable to offer advice on such an occasion, and clasping the little shoe firmly in both hands; "it seems to me that those who know the customs of savage warfare should give their advice first. You may depend on all the aid that it is in my power to give."

"Ole Thorwald is our leader when we are compelled to fight in self-defence," said Mr Mason; "would God that it were less frequently we were obliged to demand his services. He knows what is best to be done."

"I know what is best to do," said Thorwald, "when I have to lead men into action, or to shew them how to fight. But, to say truth, I don't plume myself on possessing more than an average share of the qualities of the terrier dog. When niggers are to be hunted out of holes in the mountains like rabbits, I will do what in me lies to aid in the work; but I would rather be led than lead if you can find a better man."

Thorwald said this with a rueful countenance, for he had hoped to have settled this war in a pitched battle; and there were few things the worthy man seemed to enjoy more than a stand-up fight on level ground. A fair field and no favour was his delight, but climbing the hills was his mortal aversion. He was somewhat too corpulent and short of wind for that.

"Come, Gascoyne," said Henry, "you know more about the savages than anybody here, and if I remember rightly, you have told me that you are acquainted with most of the mountain passes."

"With all of them, lad," interposed Gascoyne; "I know every pass and cavern on the island."

"What, then, would you advise?" asked Montague.

"If a British officer can put himself under a simple trading skipper," said Gascoyne, "I may perhaps shew what ought to be done in this emergency."

"I can co-operate with any one who proves himself worthy of confidence," retorted Montague, sharply.

"Well, then," continued the other, "it is in vain to think of doing any good by a disorderly chase into mountains like these. I would advise that our forces be divided into three. One band under Mr Thorwald should go round by the Goat's Pass, to which I will guide him, and cut off the retreat of the savages there. Another party under my friend Henry Stuart should give chase in the direction in which little Alice seems to have been taken, and a third party, consisting of his Majesty's vessel the _Talisman_, and crew, should proceed round to the north side of the island and bombard the native village."

"The Goat's Pass," growled Thorwald, "sounds unpleasantly rugged and steep in the ears of a man of my weight and years, Mister Gascoyne. But if there's no easier style of work to be done, I fancy I must be content with what falls to my lot?"

"And, truly," added Montague, "methinks you might have assigned me a more useful, as well as more congenial occupation than the bombardment of a mud village full of women and children--for I doubt not that every able-bodied man has left it, to go on this expedition."

"You will not find the Goat's Pass so bad as you think, good Thorwald," returned Gascoyne, "for I propose that the _Talisman_ or her boats should convey you and your men to the foot of it, after which your course will be indeed rugged, but it will be short;--merely to scale the face of a precipice that would frighten a goat to think of and then a plain descent into the valley where, I doubt not, these villains will be found in force; and where, certainly, they will not look for the appearance of a stout generalissimo of half savage troops. As for the bombarding of a mud village, Mr Montague, I should have expected a well-trained British officer ready to do his duty whether that duty were agreeable or otherwise."

"My _duty_, certainly," interrupted the young captain, hotly, "but I have yet to learn that _your_ orders constitute _my_ duty."

The bland smile with which Gascoyne listened to this tended rather to irritate than to soothe Montague's feelings; but he curbed the passion which stirred his breast, while the other went on--