The Middy and the Moors by Robert Michael Ballantyne (good english books to read txt) 📖

Chapter Five. The Maiden’s Story—Peter the Great and the Middy go for a Holiday and see Awful Things.

During the conversation detailed in the last chapter the young English girl had spoken with her veil down. She now threw it carelessly back, and, sitting down on a bench opposite our midshipman, folded her hands in her lap and remained silent for a few seconds, during which George Foster said—not aloud, but very privately to himself, “Although your eyes are swelled and your little nose is red with crying, I never—no I never—did see such a dear, sweet, pretty little innocent face in all my life!”

All unconscious of his thoughts, and still giving vent now and then to an irresistible sob, the poor child—for she was little more—looked up and began her sad tale.

“About eight months ago my dear father, who is a merchant, resolved to take me with him on a voyage to some of the Mediterranean ports. My father’s name is Hugh Sommers—”

“And yours?” asked Foster.

“Is Hester. We had only just entered the Mediterranean when one of those dreadful Algerine pirates took our vessel and made slaves of us all. My darling father, being a very big, strong, and brave man, fought like a tiger. Oh! I never imagined that his dear kind face could have looked as it did that awful day. But although he knocked down and, I fear, killed many men, it was all of no use, they were so numerous and our men so few. The last I saw of my father was when they were lowering him into a boat in a state of insensibility, with an awful cut all down his brow and cheek, from which the blood was pouring in streams.

“I tried to get to him, but they held me back and took me down into the cabin. There I met our owner, who, when he saw me, threw a veil over my head and bade me sit still. I was too terrified and too despairing about my father to think of disobeying.

“I think Ben-Ahmed, our owner, must be a man of power, for everybody seemed to obey him that day as if he was the chief man, though he was not the captain of the ship. After a time he took my hand, put me into a small sailing boat, and took me ashore. I looked eagerly for my father on landing, but he was nowhere to be seen, and—I have not seen him since.”

“Nor heard of or from him?” asked Foster.

“No.”

At this point, as there were symptoms of another breakdown, our middy became anxious, and entreated Hester to go on. With a strong effort she controlled her feelings.

“Well, then, Ben-Ahmed brought me here, and, introducing me to his wives—he has four of them, only think!—said he had brought home a little wife for his son Osman. Of course I thought they were joking, for you know girls of my age are never allowed to marry in England; but after a time I began to see that they meant it, and, d’you know— By the way, what is your name?”

“Foster—George Foster.”

“Well, Mr Foster, I was going to say that I cannot help wishing and hoping that their son may never come home! Isn’t that sinful?”

“I don’t know much about the sin of it,” said Foster, “but I fervently hope the same thing from the very bottom of my heart.”

“And, oh!” continued Hester, whimpering a little, “you can’t think what a relief it is to be able to talk with you about it. It would have been a comfort to talk even to our big dog here about it, if it could only have understood English. But, now,” continued the poor little creature, while the troubled look returned to her eyebrows, “what is to be done?”

“Escape—somehow!” said Foster promptly.

“But nothing would induce me to even try to escape without my father,” said Hester.

This was a damper to our midshipman. To rescue a little girl seemed to him a mere nothing, in the glowing state of his heroic soul at that moment, but to rescue her “very big, strong, and brave” father at the same time did not appear so easy. Still, something must be attempted in that way.

“Tell me,” he said, “what is your father like?”

“Tall, handsome, sweet, ex—”

“Yes, yes. I know. But I mean colour of hair, kind of nose, etcetera; be more particular, and do be quick! I don’t like to hurry you, but remember the possible scourging to death that hangs over me!”

“Well, he is very broad and strong, a Roman nose, large sweet mouth always smiling, large grey eyes—such loving eyes, too—with iron-grey hair, moustache, and beard. You see, although it is not the fashion in England to wear beards, my dear father thinks it right to do so, for he is fond, he says, of doing only those things that he can give a good reason for, and as he can see no reason whatever for shaving off his moustachios and beard, any more than the hair of his head and eyebrows, he lets them grow. I’ve heard people say that my father is wild in his notions, and some used to say, as if it was very awful, that,” (she lowered her voice here), “he is a Radical! You know what a Radical is, I suppose?”

“Oh yes,” said Foster, with the first laugh he had indulged in during the interview, “a Radical is a man who wants to have everything his own way; to have all the property in the world equally divided among everybody; who wants all the power to be equally shared, and, in short, who wants everything turned upside down!”

“Hush! don’t laugh so loud!” said Hester, looking anxiously round, and holding up one of her pretty little fingers, “some one may hear you and find us! Strange,” she added pensively, “surely you must be under some mistake, for I heard my dear father try to explain it once to a friend, who seemed to me unwilling to understand. I remember so well the quiet motion of his large, firm but sweet mouth as he spoke, and the look of his great, earnest eyes—‘A Radical,’ he said, ‘is one who wishes and tries to go to the root of every matter, and put all wrong things right without delay.’”

What George Foster might have said to this definition of a Radical, coming, as it did, from such innocent lips, we cannot say, for the abrupt closing of a door at the other end of the garden caused Hester to jump up and run swiftly out of the bower. Foster followed her example, and, returning to the scene of his labours, threw off his coat and began to dig with an amount of zeal worthy of his friend the incorrigible “hyperkrite” himself.

A few minutes later and Ben-Ahmed approached, in close conversation with Peter the Great.

“Hallo!” exclaimed the latter, in stern tones, as they came up, “what you bin about, sar? what you bin doin’? Not’ing done since I was here more an hour past—eh, sar?”

The midshipman explained, with a somewhat guilty look and blush, that he had been resting in the bower, and that he had stayed much longer than he had intended.

“You just hab, you rascal! But I cure you ob dat,” said the negro, catching up a piece of cane that was lying on the ground, with which he was about to administer condign chastisement to the idle slave, when his master stopped him.

“Hurt him not,” he said, raising his hand; “is not this his first offence?”

“Yes, massa, de bery fust.”

“Well, tell him that the rod shall be applied next time he is found idling. Enough, follow me!”

With a stately step the amiable Moor passed on. With a much more stately port Peter the Great followed him, but as he did so he bestowed on Foster a momentary look so ineffably sly, yet solemn, that the latter was obliged to seize the spade and dig like a very sexton in order to check his tendency to laugh aloud.

Half an hour later the negro returned to him.

“What you bin do all dis time?” he asked in surprise. “I was more’n half t’ink you desarve a lickin’!”

“Perhaps I do, Peter,” answered the young slave, in a tone so hearty and cheerful that the negro’s great eyes increased considerably in size.

“Well, Geo’ge,” he said, with a sudden change in his expression, “I wouldn’t hab expeck it ob you; no, I wouldn’t, if my own mudder was to tell me! To t’ink dat one so young, too, would go on de sly to de rum-bottle! But where you kin find ’im’s more’n I kin tell.”

“I have not been at the rum-bottle at all,” returned the middy, resting on his spade, “but I have had something to raise my spirits and brace my energies, and take me out of myself. Come, let us go to the bower, and I will explain—that is, if we may safely go there.”

“Go whar?”

“To the bower.”

“Do you know, sar,” replied Peter, drawing himself up and expanding his great chest—“do you know, sar, dat I’s kimmander-in-chief ob de army in dis yar gardin, an’ kin order ’em about whar I please, an’ do what I like? Go up to de bower, you small Bri’sh officer, an’ look sharp if you don’t want a whackin’!”

The slave obeyed with alacrity, and when the two were seated he described his recent interview with Hester Sommers.

No words can do full justice to the varied expressions that flitted across the negro’s face as the midshipman’s narrative went on.

“So,” he said slowly, when it was concluded, “you’s bin an’ had a long privit convissation wid one ob Ben-Ahmed’s ladies! My! you know what dat means if it found out?”

“Well, Miss Sommers herself was good enough to tell me that it would probably mean flogging to death.”

“Floggin’ to deaf!” echoed Peter. “P’r’aps so wid massa, for he’s a kind man; but wid most any oder man it ’ud mean roastin’ alibe ober a slow fire! Geo’ge, you’s little better’n a dead man!”

“I hope it’s not so bad as that, for no one knows about it except the lady and yourself.”

“Das so; an’ you’re in luck, let me tell you. Now you go to work, an’ I’ll retire for some meditation—see what’s to come ob all dis.”

Truly the changes that take place in the feelings and mind of man are not less sudden and complete than the physical changes which sometimes occur in lands that are swept by the tornado and desolated by the earthquake. That morning George Foster had risen from his straw bed a miserable white slave, hopeless, heartless, and down at spiritual zero—or below it. That night he lay down on the same straw bed, a free man—in soul, if not in body—a hero of the most ardent character—up at fever-heat in the spiritual thermometer, or above it, and all because his heart throbbed with a noble purpose—because an object worthy of his efforts was placed before him, and because he had made up his mind to do or die in a good cause!

What that cause was he would have found it difficult to define clearly in detail. Sufficient for him that an unknown but stalwart father, with Radical tendencies, and a well-known and lovely daughter, were at the foundation of it, and that “Escape!” was the talismanic word which formed a battery, as it were, with which to supply his heart with electric energy.

He lived on this diet for a week, with the hope of again seeing Hester; but he did not see her again for many weeks.

One morning Peter the Great came to him as he was going out to work in the garden and said—

“You git ready and come wid me into town dis day.”

“Indeed,”