CHAPTER XIIINEZ CARRIED OFF.
In a public room of a tavern in Pacific street, we shall find Belcher Kay. It is night, and through the thick haze of cigar smoke which filled the room the candles glimmer like distant lights seen through a fog. The close atmosphere of the dirty room is laden with the odor of the said tobacco smoke, and with the fumes of rum and whiskey, and through the hum of noisy conversation and over the occasional bursts of laughter may be distinguished the ‘Hagel und donner’ of the Dutchman, the ‘sacre’ of the Frenchman, and the imprecations which the Englishman invokes upon his visual organs and the crimson tide that circulates through his veins.
At one table sat half a dozen sailors, bronzed by the tropical sun of Java, and smoking long pipes with enormous bowls. At another table sat a group of English, French, American and Portuguese, similarly engaged, while two other tables were surrounded by Lascars and Malays, who being worshippers of the one race of Brahma, the other of Boodha, choose to sit and drink apart. Mingled with the men at each table were a number of Kanaka and Chilean women, dark-eyed, seductive creatures; all well formed, lithe, and graceful, and of all ages varying from twelve to eighteen years, for beneath the scorching sun of the tropics woman advances towards maturity as quickly as the rich fruits are ripened and the gorgeous flowers expanded into beauty. These lost and degraded creatures sat by the side or on the knees of their lovers of the hour, their long, shining black hair falling in plaits or ringlets upon their dusky shoulders, and their bosoms very much exposed, and many of them smoked cigars with their male companions.
Kay sat apart from the revellers, smoking a cigar, with his arms folded across his breast, a moody and sombre expression upon his countenance, and his eyes bent upon the dirty floor. He was thinking of the past—thinking, amid the riotous din of jests and oaths, laughter and song, of all that he had been, and of what he might have been, of time misspent, and golden opportunities lost, of talents misapplied and energies misdirected. It was a mournful retrospect for the man not wholly lost, his heart was not entirely corroded, nor all indurated by vice and profligacy, the powers of his mind had not become sapped by the vicious excesses in which he had indulged; he was capable of forming a sound judgement of human actions, both his own and those of others; and to look back excited for these reasons, feelings, sombre and mournful. The past of his life was a dreary waste to look back upon; he was fully conscious of the fact, he was able to discriminate between the right and the wrong, and to perceive his errors, and he felt at that moment all the dreariness, the moral void, of the vista upon which he turned his mental vision. True, the desert was not entirely without its oases; there were green spots breaking the gloomy monotony of its arid and cheerless aspect, but these only deepened by the contrast the impression made by the general barrenness.
He was roused from his reverie by the words of a song sung, or rather shouted by one his countrymen—an Englishman—a sailor belonging to a vessel then lying in the harbor. There was nothing to interest him in the words themselves, but they seemed familiar to him, like a voice heard in our youth and half forgotten, which we hear again after a long interval of time, and they struck upon his mind by the force of association. In his boyhood he had heard that song, which had been a favorite chant with a schoolfellow, and the words now called up a thousand recollections of the time when he had first heard them, just as the remembered sound of the church-bells of our native place will recall such memories when we hear them after long absence from the scenes of our early existence. To the mind of the robber, predisposed to reflection, the words of the song recalled the school-room and the play-ground, with many a reminiscence of merry companions and boyish games; and from these his heart wandered to the home of his childhood, to the little garden into which he had transplanted primroses and cowslips from the woods to the rippling brook upon which he had launched his tiny ships, to the darkly shaded seat under the old elm tree on which he had rested when weary, to the innocent and smiling faces of his fair-haired sisters.
It was not for the first time that Belcher Kay thought of these things—it was not the first time that they had drawn a sigh from his breast; but, now at that distance of space from the scenes which he visited in thought, the tide of memory rolled over his brain with redoubled volume and force. A melancholy pleasure might have been experienced in travelling over in thought the scenes of his youth, but for the reflection that between the past and the present rose darkly and frowningly one of those barriers of crime and folly, which such men build up with far more perseverance than they would exert to acquire a fame that would endure as long as truth and virtue command respect and admiration. Such a barrier had Belcher Kay raised with a diligence and energy which he had never displayed in aught worthy of praise, and from it he now looked back upon the Eden which he had abandoned, with such feelings as may be imagined.
He was still sitting in the position which has been described when Blodget entered the room, and, coming up to him, clapped his hand upon his shoulder. Kay started, but looking up, he was reassured by the recognition of his fellow criminal, and extended his hand, which Blodget grasped with friendly fervor.
‘Come!’ exclaimed Blodget. ‘I have been seeking you everywhere. Let us get away from this.’
‘I am ready,’ responded Kay, rising.—‘What’s in the wind now, mate?’
Blodget made no reply, but led the way into the street, followed by Kay.
In a few minutes they had left the city behind them, and could hear the hoarse roar of the sea as its waves, after chasing one another over the wild expanse of the Pacific ocean, broke upon the shell strewn beach, and the sighing of the night wind among the bushes. The moon was sinking, and the shadows prevailed over the lights, but it was principally the land which lay in shade, while the ocean spread out like an illimitable sheet of silver.
After crossing the hills which surmount the city the two men gave a loud shrill whistle which in a few moments brought three more desperadoes to assist them in their scheme. This was no other than an attack upon the mansion of Senor de Castro with the intention of making themselves masters of the money and plate to be found on the premises, and for another purpose which will appear in the course of the narrative.
When the five robbers arrived in the vicinity of the house Blodget proceeded towards it, for the purpose of carrying their plot into execution, while the rest of the party lay closely concealed ready to hasten to the assistance of their associate the moment such service should be required.
‘Yes, there is the window; I wonder, now, if she will look out to night?’ said Blodget to himself as he cautiously drew near the house.
Blodget took a good look at the window and then slowly glided away under the shadow of a wall.
With great tact, Blodget as he did so glided along, kept the little window with the balcony in sight.
Now, the little window of the room in which Inez resided, was not very far from the ground.
That is to say, at all events, the lower portion of its balcony certainly was not above twelve feet from the green sward actually below it.
The idea struck Blodget, then, that through that window he must get, and through it again he must make his way out with his captive.
How he meant to overcome the very many difficulties that still stood in his way, it is impossible to conceive; but he had not come totally unprepared with the means of action.
Coiled up in the pockets of the clothes which he had worn all the latter part of the day, he had had a couple of ropes of silk, with a hook at the end of each of them.
He expected, and not without reason, too, that they would be to him of the very greatest possible assistance.
It took him some little consideration before he would venture to cross the bit of lawn that separated him yet from the house; and, strange to say, while he was so considering, another circumstance began to operate in his favor.
A soft, but rather thick and penetrating rain began to fall.
‘Aha’ he said, ‘this is capital. This will clear the ground of all loiterers. This is providential.’
Letting the rain continue for some five minutes or so until he considered it had had all its effect, Blodget crossed the lawn, and stood beneath the balcony of the window.
Blodget was very acute in his sense of hearing, and he now bent that faculty to the very utmost to listen if any one were moving in the rooms above.
All was as still as the very grave.
‘She has gone to bed,’ thought Blodget. ‘Well, I don’t care. I must take her away, and take her I will.’
A very dim light was close to the window.
‘I wonder,’ thought Blodget, ‘if she will scream before I can get a gag put into her mouth? If she does, I may have dangers to encounter; but I never yet abandoned an enterprise on that account, nor will I now.’
Truly dangerous was a climate in which such a man as Blodget lived.
He now looked carefully to the right and to the left of the place of which he was, so as to assure himself that no sentinel was close at hand, and then he boldly flung up the cords to which the hooks were attached, to the balcony.
It took him three or four efforts before he succeeded in getting the hooks to hold fast, and then he found that the cords easily suspended him.
This was rather a ticklish part of the business to climb up to the balcony now with the possibility, if not the probability, that some one might see him; but yet he meant either to do it or abandon the whole affair at once, so he set about it with a feeling that might be said to approach to recklessness.
He reached the top of the parapet of the balcony, and rather rolled over it than stepped over, so that he exposed himself to observation to as small an extent as, under the circumstances, it was at all possible so to do.
There he lay crouched up in the balcony, pretty well shaded by its stone work and parapet from any further observation from without.
He breathed in rather an agitated manner for a few moments, for he had undergone, to tell the truth, very great personal exertion.
Soon, however, he recovered sufficiently to assist him in going on in his enterprise; and accordingly, sidling along very carefully till he got quite close to the window, he cautiously tried if it were fast.
No. It yielded to a touch.
‘More good fortune,’ thought he.
Slowly, for it took a good five minutes to do, thinking that any noise now occasioned by precipitation would be fatal to him and his project, he got the window open about a couple of feet.
He put his hand into the room, and felt that there was a table close to the window.
By carefully moving his hand and arm horizontally from left to right and from right to left, he found there was nothing on the table but a glass of water, in which were some flowers.
In order to get it out of the way, he lifted the glass into the balcony, and placed it carefully in one corner out of the way.
Then it was that the audacious Blodget, like an oily snake, slid into the room through the partially open window, and was fairly within the apartment.
His next step was to remove the table from before the window, and to open the window itself very much wider—in fact, as wide as it would possibly go.
Then it was that he saw where the faint light had come from that was in the room.
A little oil night-light was on a bracket fixed to the wall of the room.
That light, although very small in itself, was yet sufficient to dissipate the darkness that was in the place, and by it Blodget with great satisfaction looked around him, and was quite convinced that he was in the suite of rooms in the occupation of Inez.
There was one circumstance that to him was quite convincing on that head, for on the chimney-piece was a small but finely painted miniature of Monteagle.
‘Yes,’ whispered Blodget, as he drew a long breath, ‘I am on the right scent now.’
Immediately opposite to the window there was a door that seemed to lead to the next apartment. It was a very ticklish thing indeed to open that door.
Before he could at all make up his mind to do so, he tried to peep through the key-hole of it, but, unfortunately, there was on the other side a piece of pendant brass that blocked it up, so he saw nothing.
Delay, though, to him now was something worse than danger—it might be fatal; so with a feeling almost of desperation, he turned the handle of the door and opened it.
It led into a room that was, like the last one, dimly lighted by a night-lamp in a niche in the wall.
‘She is fond of light,’ thought Blodget.
There was a door in the side wall of this room, and that door was a little way open.
Through it Blodget could see the bed-curtain.
The room in which she was, constituted the dressing-room to the bed-room further on.
Blodget, with eyes like a hyena, cast a glance round the room. A silk dress was upon a couch, and on the dressing-table were various articles of female apparel and jewelry.
He approached, on tip-toe, the door of the bedchamber, and listened most intently.
The sound of one breathing rather heavily in sleep, came upon his ears.
‘She sleeps,’ muttered Blodget, ‘and my task is consequently all the easier of performance. Yes, she sleeps, and soundly too.’
He now took from his pocket a gag made of cork and string, and so constructed that if once fixed in any one’s mouth it would be out of the question for them to utter an articulate sound.
This, with a silk handkerchief, which he intended to fix around the head and face of his prisoner, were the implements with which he hoped to capture Inez, and by the aid of which so to terrify her that he might get away in safety with her.
‘Now for it,’ he said.
He took another step towards the door of the bedchamber, and then he hesitated.
‘A good thought,’ he muttered. ‘I will put out both the lights, and then no curious eye will see me emerge from the window with my prize.’
He crept back and blew out each of the little oil lamps that were in the separate rooms.
All was darkness then; but it was evident there was another lamp in the actual bedchamber itself.
It was convenient for Blodget that there should be, at all events for a brief space, a light there.
‘Now courage and impudence assist me,’ he muttered.
As he spoke he on tiptoe glided into the bedchamber in which he would have wagered his life that Inez now slept.
The difficulty, though, he thought was really and truly at an end, when he, as he fancied, found himself so far successful as to be actually in the sleeping chamber of the young lady.
No wonder that even he, accustomed as he was to all sorts of escapades and strange eventful proceedings, felt a little affected at his own temerity when he set foot within the sacred precincts of that chamber.
The idea of what Monteagle would think and say when he heard of this evidence of unexampled audacity came across the mind of the unscrupulous villain, and for a moment he hesitated.
It struck him that, after all, such an outrage was of so diabolical and daring a character, that it would be difficult to say what might be the result of it.
But it was not for long that such a man as Blodget ever hesitated about the completion of an act of atrocity, or boldness or baseness.
‘Let him take it how he may,’ thought Blodget, ‘I’ll carry out my designs; and if danger should come to Inez in the carrying it out, that is her own fault.’
He listened intently.
The regular breathing of some one in a deep sleep still came upon his ears.
Now the chief difficulty was to get away with his captive without noise, and there was but one way of doing that. It was so to terrify Inez, that for her life’s sake and that of her father she would obey the directions he might give her.
But, then, upon the first impulse of finding some one in the room, he considered that she might utter some cry that to him, would be full of danger; and to guard against that was the first step he took.
There came through the window of the sleeping chamber a faint light, which just enabled him, after a few minutes, when his eyes had got accustomed to it, to look about him, and see the outlines of one object from another.
To be sure, these outlines were but dim ones, but still they served to enable him to avoid encountering any piece of furniture, and so making noise enough to awaken his victim from the sound sleep she was in.
To tie a silk handkerchief in such a manner around her mouth, and then another over her head, so that the possibility of uttering anything but a faint sound would be out of the question, was Blodget’s idea.
Indeed, he had prepared himself with the means, as will be recollected, of completely enveloping the head of his prisoner, so that if any attempted alarm was tried, the sound of it would not penetrate far enough to be successful in reaching the inmates of the house.
It was a very delicate and ticklish job, though, so suddenly to envelope the head and face of a sleeping person in a silken bandage as to prevent them from uttering a single cry until the operation was complete.
But that was just what had to be done, and so he did not shrink from it.
He only waited a few moments longer, in order that his eyes might be accustomed to the very dim light that found its way into the chamber.
During those few moments, too, he turned his head aside to listen if the whole attention of his faculty of hearing could detect the sound of any one stirring in the mansion; but all was as still and silent as the tomb.
‘Now for it,’ said he to himself.
In a half-crouching posture he approached the bed.
If what he was about to do was to be done at all, it was only by the very excess of boldness in the attempt to do it.
When he reached the side of the bed, he rose to his full height, and slipping adroitly his left arm right under the head of the sleeper, he in one moment lifted it from the pillow, and with his right hand he placed the silken envelope over the head and face, and drew it close round the neck.
‘Utter one sound of alarm,’ he said in a low, clear voice close to the ear of the bewildered occupant of the bed, ‘and it is your last upon earth. Be quiet and submissive, and no sort of harm is intended you. On the contrary, everything possible will be done to render your situation as agreeable as possible, and you’ll be treated with delicacy and with every consideration.’
A gasping sort of a sob was the only reply.
‘Hush!’ said Blodget. ‘Your fate is in your own hands. I am compelled for my own sake to remove you from the mansion; but you will be treated with all the respect and all the consideration becoming your sex and rank, unless you by your own conduct, force an opposite condition of things.’
Some muffled sounds, that might be considered to mean anything, came from beneath the covering of silk.
‘Am I to comprehend,’ said Blodget, ‘that your own good sense enables you to see the necessity of submitting to circumstances that are beyond your control entirely?’
A something was said; or attempted to be said.
‘Let me assure you,’ added he, ‘that I am well aware of the love your father has for you, and that he will spare no means to liberate you from me. It would be quite an insult to your understanding to attempt to deceive you for one moment with regard to the object of thus making you a prisoner. It is simply in order to get money from him who loves you beyond all the world beside. Do you hear me?’
‘Yes.’
The tone in which the yes was spoken was very consolatory to Blodget, for it let him think that Inez saw the inutility of attempting any resistance to him.
‘You are reasonable, I feel,’ he said, ‘and I can assure you upon my word, lightly as you may think of that word, that where I am trusted I know how to behave myself with honor. The readiness with which you succumb to circumstances that now surround you will have the greatest effect in inducing me to make this as agreeable to you as possible. Do you comprehend me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Will you, then,’ he said, ‘quietly come with me to a place of safety away from here?’
‘I will.’
‘You will?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then I have to compliment you upon your conduct in this affair, and I know that by saying that for your sake I will not contrive aught against the life of him who loves you, I shall be bestowing upon you the greatest recompense that’s in my power.’
‘Yes.’
‘Then we are equal. Allow me to hope that you will arise and follow me. Here are various articles of clothing about the room. You have the use of your hands, and if I hand the things to you, one by one, will you then put them on?’
‘Yes.’
‘I am very sorry to place you in such a position as this—very sorry indeed.’
Blodget was so pleased at the compliance of Inez with all his plans, that he really felt a kindness for her, and he was determined, therefore, to behave to her with all the delicacy that the transaction could possibly enable him to practice.
He caught up various articles of female apparel, and with his back towards the bed.
‘Be as quick as you can,’ he said, ‘for the fact is that I am in danger here, though you are in none.’
‘Yes, yes,’ said the voice.
‘Upon my life, she must be terribly frightened to give way to me in this manner.’
One by one he kept handing articles of clothing, and they were put on, till at last he said—
‘I should think you are ready to leave the house now, along with me, are you not?’
‘I am so.’
‘Then follow me, if you please; but let me again assure you before I go that I am only going to make a kind of hostage of you, and that as soon as I have you in safety I will send to your father and let him know; and upon his promise not to molest me for the future, I will release you.’
‘Yes.’
‘You are quite content with that arrangement, then, may I hope?’ said Blodget.
‘Oh, yes, quite.’
‘Then come on at once, if you please.’
Inez felt that resistance would be useless, and would probably put in peril the life of her father, without availing to save her. She, therefore, quietly yielded to circumstances, knowing that her father would cheerfully pay any ransom to rescue her.
As soon as Inez was dressed, Blodget led her to the window, and giving a low whistle was quickly joined by his confederates. By their aid Inez was swiftly and noiselessly conveyed from the house, carried into the adjacent shrubbery, and placed upon a horse, stolen, like those on which the robbers were now mounted, from a neighboring corral.
The whole party immediately dashed off at full speed, and never once halted until they arrived at a solitary rancho, some eight or nine miles distant from the home of Inez.
Monteagle, meanwhile, had started at full gallop for the Mission, in order to frustrate this villainous plot, but just as he was turning the sharp angle at the turnpike road, his horse stumbled, and Monteagle was violently thrown over the animal’s head. He remained insensible in the road, just where he had fallen, until daylight, when he was discovered and hospitably cared for by the inmates of a neighboring cottage.