Foul Play by Dion Boucicault (snow like ashes .TXT) 📖

one or two difficulties, the fissure opened wider to the sun, and they descended from the slimy rocks into a sloping hot-bed of exotic flowers, and those huge succulent leaves that are the glory of the tropics. The ground was carpeted a yard deep with their luxuriance, and others, more aspiring, climbed the warm sides of the diverging cliffs, just as creepers go up a wall, lining every crevice as they rose. In this blessed spot, warmed, but not scorched, by the tropical sun, and fed with trickling waters, was seen what marvels “boon Nature” can do. Here our vegetable dwarfs were giants and our flowers were trees. One lovely giantess of the jasmine tribe, but with flowers shaped like a marigold, and scented like a tube-rose, had a stem as thick as a poplar, and carried its thousand buds and amber-colored flowers up eighty feet of broken rock, and planted on every ledge suckers, that flowered again and filled the air with perfume. Another tree about half as high was covered with a cascade of snow-white tulips, each as big as a small flower-pot, and scented like honeysuckle. An aloe, ten feet high, blossomed in a corner, unheeded among loftier beauties. And at the very mouth of the fissure a huge banana leaned across, and flung out its vast leaves, that seemed translucent gold against the sun; under it shone a monstrous cactus in all her pink and crimson glory, and through the maze of color streamed the deep blue of the peaceful ocean, laughing, and catching sunbeams.

Helen leaned against the cliff and quivered with delight, and that deep sense of flowers that belongs to your true woman.

Hazel feared she was ill.

“Ill?” said she. “Who could be ill here? It is heaven upon earth. Oh, you dears! Oh, you loves! And they all seemed growing on the sea, and floating in the sun.”

“And it is only one of a dozen such,” said Hazel. “If you would like to inspect them at your leisure, I’ll just run to Palmtree Point; for my signal is all askew. I saw that as we came along.”

Helen assented readily, and he ran off, but left her the provisions. She was not to wait dinner for him.

Helen examined two or three of the flowery fissures, and found fresh beauties in each, and also some English leaves, that gave her pleasure of another kind; and, after she had reveled in the flowers, she examined the shore, and soon discovered that the rocks which abounded here (though there were also large patches of clear sand) were nearly all pure coral, in great variety. Red coral was abundant; and even the pink coral, to which fashion was just then giving a fictitious value, was there by the ton. This interested her, and so did some beautiful shells that lay sparkling. The time passed swiftly; and she was still busy in her researches, when suddenly it darkened a little, and, looking back, she saw a white vapor stealing over the cliff, and curling down.

Upon this she thought it prudent to return to the place where Hazel had left her; the more so as it was near sunset.

The vapor descended and spread and covered sea and land. Then the sun set; and it was darkness visible. Coming from the south, the sea-fret caught Hazel sooner and in a less favorable situation. Returning from the palmtree, he had taken the shortest cut through a small jungle, and been so impeded by the scrub, that, when he got clear, the fog was upon him. Between that and the river he lost his way several times, and did not hit the river till near midnight. He followed the river to the lake, and coasted the lake, and then groped his way toward the creek

But, after a while, every step he took was fraught with danger; and the night was far advanced when he at last hit off the creek, as he thought. He halloed; but there was no reply; halloed again, and, to his joy, her voice replied; but at a distance.

He had come to the wrong creek. She was farther westward. He groped his way westward, and came to another creek. He haloed to her, and she answered him. But to attempt the descent would have been mere suicide. She felt that herself, and almost ordered him to stay where he was.

“Why, we can talk all the same,” said she; “and it is not for long.”

It was a curious position, and one typical of the relation between them. So near together, yet the barrier so strong.

“I am afraid you must be very cold,” said he.

“Oh, no; I have my sealskin jacket on; and it is so sheltered here. I wish you were as well off.”

“You are not afraid to be alone down there?”

“I am not alone when your voice is near me. Now don’t you fidget yourself, dear friend. I like these little excitements. I have told you so before. Listen. How calm and silent it all is; the place; the night! The mind seems to fill with great ideas, and to feel its immortality.”

She spoke with solemnity, and he heard in silence.

Indeed it was a reverend time and place. The sea, whose loud and penetrating tongue had, in some former age, created the gully where they both sat apart, had of late years receded and kissed the sands gently that calm night; so gently, that its long, low murmur seemed but the echo of tranquillity.

The voices of that pair sounded supernatural, one speaking up, and the other down, the speakers quite invisible.

“Mr. Hazel,” said Helen, in a low, earnest voice; “they say that night gives wisdom even to the wise; think now, and tell me your true thoughts. Has the foot of man ever trod upon this island before?”

There was a silence due to a question so grave, and put with solemnity, at a solemn time, in a solemn place.

At last Hazel’s thoughtful voice came down. “The world is very, very, very old. So old, that the words ‘Ancient History’ are a falsehood, and Moses wrote but as yesterday. And man is a very old animal upon this old, old planet; and has been everywhere. I cannot doubt he has been here.”

Her voice went up. “But have you seen any signs?”

His voice came down. “I have not looked for them. The bones and the weapons of primeval man are all below earth’s surface at this time of day.”

There was a dead silence. Then Helen’s voice went up again. “But in modern times? Has no man landed here from far-off places, since ships were built?”

The voice came sadly down. “I do not know.”

The voice went up. “But think!”

The voice came down. “What calamity can be new in a world so old as this? Everything we can do, and suffer, others of our race have done, and suffered.”

The voice went up. “Hush! there’s something moving on the sand.”

 

CHAPTER XXXV.

 

HAZEL waited and listened. So did Helen, and her breath came fast; for in the stilly night she heard light but mysterious sounds. Something was moving on the sand very slowly and softly, but nearer and nearer. Her heart began to leap. She put out her hand instinctively to clutch Mr. Hazel; but he was too far off. She had the presence of mind and the self-denial to disguise her fears; for she knew he would come headlong to her assistance.

She said in a quavering whisper, “I’m not frightened; only v—very c—curious.”

And now she became conscious that not only one but several things were creeping about.

Presently the creeping ceased, and was followed by a louder and more mysterious noise. In that silent night it sounded like raking and digging. Three or four mysterious visitants seemed to be making graves.

This was too much; especially coming as it did after talk about the primeval dead. Her desire to scream was so strong, and she was so afraid Hazel would break his neck, if she relieved her mind in that way, that she actually took her handkerchief and bit it hard.

But this situation was cut short by a beneficent luminary. The sun rose with a magnificent bound—it was his way in that latitude—and everything unpleasant winced that moment; the fog shivered in its turn, and appeared to open in furrows as great javelins of golden light shot through it from the swiftly rising orb.

Soon those golden darts increased to streams of portable fire, that burst the fog and illumined the wet sands. And Helen burst out laughing like chanticleer, for this first break of day revealed the sextons that had scared her—three ponderous turtles, crawling, slow and clumsy, back to sea. Hazel joined her, and they soon found what these evil spirits of the island had been at, poor wretches. They had each buried a dozen eggs in the sand; one dozen of which were very soon set boiling. At first, indeed, Helen objected that they had no shells, but Hazel told her she might as well complain of a rose without a thorn. He assured her turtles’ eggs were a known delicacy, and very superior to birds’ eggs; and so she found them. They were eaten with the keenest relish.

“And now,” said Helen, “for my discoveries. First, here are my English leaves, only bigger. I found them on a large tree.”

“English leaves!” cried Hazel, with rapture. “Why, it is the caoutchouc!”

“Oh, dear,” said Helen, in a disappointed tone; “I took it for the India-rubber free.”

“It is the India-rubber tree; and I have been hunting for it all over the island in vain, and using wretchedly inferior gums for want of it.”

“I’m so glad,” said Helen. “And now I have something else to show you. Something that curdled my blood; but I dare say I was very foolish.” She then took him half across the sand and pointed out to him a number of stones dotted over the sand in a sort of oval. These stones, streaked with sea grass, and incrusted with small shells, were not at equal distances, but yet, allowing for gaps, they formed a decided figure. Their outline resembled a great fish, wanting the tail.

“Can this be chance?” asked Helen; oh, if it should be what I fear, and that is—savages!”

Hazel considered it attentively a long time. “Too far at sea for living savages,” said he. “And yet it cannot be chance. What on earth is it? It looks Druidical. But how can that be? The island was smaller when these were placed here than it is now.” He went nearer and examined one of the stones; then he scraped away the sand from its base, and found it was not shaped like a stone, but more like a whale’s rib. He became excited; went on his knees, and tore the sand up with his hands. Then he rose up agitated, and traced the outline again. “Great Heaven!” said he, “why, it is a ship.”

“A ship!”

“Ay,” said he, standing in the middle of it; “here, beneath our feet, lies man; with his work, and his treasures. This carcass has been here for many a long year; not so very long, either; she is too big for the sixteenth century, and yet she must have been sunk when the island was smaller. I take it to be a Spanish or Portuguese ship; probably one of those treasure-ships our commodores, and chartered pirates, and the American buccaneers, used to chase about these seas. Here lie her bones and the bones of her crew. Your question was soon answered. All that we can say has been said; can do has been done; can suffer has been suffered.”

They were silent, and the sunk ship’s bones moved them strangely. In