“No; I suppose not. Never mind, then,” was the easy answer, for the starting to-morrow had a soothing ring, beside which the loss was a mere trifle. But the speaker little thought how his listener had already made up his mind to have those notes in his own possession before the dawning of another day – incidentally, it might be, at the cost of a life or two.

The smoky rays of the sinking tropical sun shot in through the open doorway, illumining the gloomy interior. The stranger had brought a pen and ink with him – strange accessories of civilisation in that remote haunt of barbarous man-eaters. A wooden native stool did duty as a desk, and Wagram, squatted on the floor, proceeded to affix his signature: “Wagram Gerard Wagram.”

“Will that do?” he said, glancing up. Then he started in amazement, not undashed with alarm; for the other, who had been standing over him, emitted a sort of gasp. His face seemed to contract, then harden as he glared at the paper, then at the man who held it.

“That your name?” he said, and his voice took on a sort of growl.

“Yes; of course,” was the wondering answer.

“That’s your name – your real name?” repeated the stranger, and the growl in his voice and the stare of his eyes seemed full of menace and hate.

“Yes; that’s my name, and there it is,” answered Wagram firmly, yet not without a dire foreboding over the extraordinary effect it seemed to produce.

“Yes – of course. Ho-ho! That’s your name – Wagram Gerard Wagram! Of course it is – of course. Ho-ho!” And, snatching up the paper, the other went out of the hut, leaving behind him the echo of his mocking tones and savage, sneering laughter.

Chapter Thirty Three.
The Closed Door

The stranger walked slowly across to his own quarters in a frame of mind very unwonted with him. Something had moved him – moved him powerfully. A new vista opened before him, and what a promise of the good things of life did he behold. The past, too, came before him, but it he put aside with sneering and bitterness.

Two female slaves greeted him with subservient smiles. They were not of this race, but had been brought from much farther inland. They were much lighter in colour, physically fine symmetrical specimens, and not without good looks. Their smiles he returned with a frown that made them cower.

“No more of these,” he muttered in English, staring at them. “White – red and white – white and gold – golden hair – volumes of it – every kind. Aha! No more of this soot.”

They cowered still more before his stare, wondering which of their recent or further back delinquencies had come to his knowledge or what their fate would be. But now he ordered them to begone, and, while trying not to show their relief, they lost no time in obeying.

He got out a bottle of rum and poured out a strong, stiff measure. This he tossed off like water. The beginning of a debauch? Oh no. This man knew better than that. He was never seen intoxicated – he valued his influence too much – and were he once seen in a state of incapacity he knew full well that his influence would be gone; further, that it would not be long before his life followed. There were times, however, when he had taken enough liquor to have sent two ordinary hard-headed men to the ground, and at such times the black savages among whom he dwelt were careful to give this white savage a very wide berth indeed. That was all.

His private quarters were in no way ringed off from the rest of the town, in which was reason. No combination could thus be formed against him, or any hostile plan unknown to himself be carried out, as might be the case were he more shut away. But his huts were better and more spacious than the rest, that mostly occupied by himself attaining almost to the dignity of a bungalow – and, indeed, in such dread was this place held that his possessions were as sacred as though guarded by iron safes. For the acquisitive savage had found it unhealthy to pilfer from this his white brother. At first he had tried it. One attempt had been met by a wholly unlooked-for shot, killing the offender. On another occasion a large and heavy knife had fallen unexpectedly from nowhere, penetrating the brain of the would-be thief, with similar result. This was the more singular in that at the time of both attempts he whom they would have plundered was about fifty miles away, so that it needed not many recurrences of further disaster – in each case mysterious, and taking a varying form – to render this man’s goods absolutely safe.

The secret of the extraordinary ascendency of this white savage over the black, apart from the fact that he never interfered in the slightest degree with their manners and customs, especially when he had led them personally in some sanguinary and victorious raid, may have lain in the fact that he tolerated no opposition. If he considered his subordinate devils had a real grievance he would listen to it and redress it, and of this we have seen at least one gruesome instance. Otherwise he simply rose up and killed the offender – killed him with his own hand.

Now he went outside his house, called a name, and issued an order. In the result, about three quarters of an hour saw him in possession of Wagram’s pocket-book. This he proceeded to investigate with quite unwonted hurry. A few visiting cards and the notes Wagram had mentioned were all it contained. The latter he put aside. Cash was always – cash.

For Wagram himself another long, trying, well-nigh sleepless night was in store – a night of wearing suspense, and the certainty of a most dreadful disappointment. For he could not disguise from himself the consciousness that something had gone suddenly wrong – that the train of the negotiation had, at a certain point, left the rails – for what otherwise could be the meaning of the sudden change of tone and manner on the part of the stranger directly the agreement was completed? Had he merely been fooling him with promises of escape until he had put his name to a document binding him to pay down a very large sum? At first blush it looked like this, but further reflection served to show that, failing his own co-operation, the document was useless for the purpose of obtaining one single shilling – in a word, was utterly unnegotiable. Could it be that the man was touched in the brain, and subject to sudden and dangerous impulses – hence his unlooked-for change of manner – or was he a renegade, who had, perhaps, undergone the penalty of former crime and hated those of his own blood and colour in consequence? Anyway the whole affair was a mystery, which the morning might solve; and that it would solve it in a way that was speedily favourable to himself he devoutly hoped and prayed.

He fell into an uneasy sleep; and it seemed he had hardly done so when he was aroused by a touch. He opened his eyes, to meet those of a savage who was standing over him, and a shudder of loathing ran through him; and this not entirely due to the strong musky odour wherewith the new-comer seemed to be poisoning the air – the fact being that, since the scene he had yesterday witnessed, these were no longer human beings in his eyes but so many horrible ghouls. This one, however, beckoned him to get up and go with him.

Wagram obeyed. He had no immediate fears for his personal safety, in view of the presence of a fellow white man in that nest of demons; and as he followed his repulsive guide he glanced around upon the life of the place – the morose, evil-looking inhabitants, fiend-like with their long spikes of plaited wool sticking up from their heads, and their round, black progeny tumbling about like so many sooty imps. There was no trace of the light-hearted, careless good humour of the negro among these. He had never seen one of them laugh, for instance; and their grin had something malevolent about it – something that was more than half a snarl. Could it be that their awful unnatural appetite affected them mentally too, and that by feeding on the bodies of their fellow-demons the spirit of the latter entered into theirs? But his speculation on this head was cut short. He and his guide had arrived at a much larger hut than the others, and there, seated on a native stool in front of it, was the strange white man.

“Well, I’ve got back that pocket-book of yours,” began the latter unceremoniously. “Here it is; only I’m sorry to say the notes are no longer in it. Rum thing that these devils should have any idea of the value of money, especially paper money.”

He broke off, and emitted a shrill whistle. A slave girl appeared. A monosyllabic order, and she reappeared, bearing a bottle and two glasses.

“Have a tot,” he said. “You don’t look over-bobbish, and it’ll pick you up. None of your poisonous trade rum this, but real old Jamaica.”

“Thanks; it may. I’ve had another sleepless night, and can do with a little picking up.”

In fact, he felt the better for it. And what he was about to witness required some stimulating, for now the other uttered a loud, peremptory call.

It was answered with amazing and startling celerity. A number of spiky-haired blacks came crowding up in front of the place. Wagram, watching his strange host, saw the latter draw himself up to his full stature as, with a scowl that was perfectly demoniacal, he harangued them for some minutes, working himself up to a perfect paroxysm of fury. His eyes glared, and his deep tones took on the thunderous roar of an angry mastiff. Immediately a man was thrust to the forefront of the group. The white man walked down off his verandah and stood confronting this fellow, whose brutal face blenched and lowered before the scathing, stare. Then he seized a great spear from one of the lookers-on, and, half hurling, half stabbing, he drove the blade clean through the body of the ugly, cowering savage, who sank to the earth, pouring forth his life-blood in torrents.

Wagram felt himself growing pale. The slayer, not content with his swift and sudden vengeance, had withdrawn the formidable weapon, and, his eyes rolling and bloodshot, was brandishing it over the staring black crowd, literally foaming at the mouth as he roared forth his deep-toned imprecations. The assembly seemed turned to stone as those fierce eyes swept over it, lighting first on one and then on the other, while the great spear twirled and quivered in that sinewy grip. Each thought that he might be the next victim; and, indeed, it seemed so, for that towering form looked as though endowed with the strength and malevolence of a fiend. Then with a last fierce and frenzied shout he bade them begone, and they, for their part, did not wait to be told twice.

“What was it all about?” said Wagram, hardly able to conceal the disgust and horror which he felt.

The other turned on him his restless, bloodshot eyes. “Your lost pocket-book. It ought to have been brought to me, and wasn’t. See?”

“Good God! And you killed a man for that!” The tones of disgust and reproach seemed to sting the other.

“Killed a man for that!” he repeated with a beast-like growl. – “Rather! And I’ve killed a dozen men for far less – if you call these cannibal swine men. And I’ll do it again. No; you know, all these sickening old canting ideas you were raised in don’t count with me – not a straw. I’m God here, you understand – and I mean to be.”

“Steady. Don’t be blasphemous,” said Wagram. “Oh, it’s you who are going to give me orders, is it!” said the other, not loudly, but in a tone of deadly, quiet resentment. “Well, we shall see; and, by way of beginning, I may as well tell you I’ve changed my mind since yesterday. In a word, I’d like the pleasure of your company here a little longer.”

“But – our agreement?”

“Our agreement? Oh, here it is. That for it!” tearing in several fragments the paper he had just produced. “I don’t get the advantage of the improving society of such a good and holy man as you every day, and now I’ve got it I mean to profit by it – for a time. See?”

Wagram was simply nonplussed. What did it all mean? Was this a madman? It seemed like it. The document under which he stood to obtain a really splendid sum he had torn up in a fit of gusty rage. But the fearful look on the man’s face as he stood glaring down on him was something to reckon with – and the jeering tones. He began to conceive for him an even greater repulsion than for the black, cannibal savages themselves.

“We can easily rewrite it,” he said in a conciliatory tone. “Think again. It will be to both our interests; and if there is any service I can render you I will willingly do so.”

“Service be damned!” said the other roughly. “I rather think the boot’s on the other foot, since it entirely depends upon me, Wagram Gerard Wagram, whether you ever see home again, or furnish beefsteaks for the noble image of God you see around here. Upon me, do you hear? Upon me only.”

“Well, of course, it does,” answered Wagram, realising that the man was going through a sort of paroxysm of blind, well-nigh delirious rage. “But I should think you would hardly hand over a fellow-countryman to the mercy of a lot of cannibal savages. I have a better opinion of you than that.”

“Have you? Then keep your damned opinion for where it’s wanted. Now, come with me.”

Thinking it best to humour him Wagram did not hesitate. The other led the way through the outskirts of the town. One thing struck Wagram during their progress. The inhabitants hardly noticed them. All seemed to be hurrying towards one point. Soon the same acrid, horrible odour fell upon his nostrils as that which had sickened him on arriving at the human shambles. He stopped.

“I won’t go any further, thanks,” he said. “I don’t want to see that place again.”

“But you must,” replied the other in a tone that was perfectly fiendish in its menace. “You’ve no choice. I’m God here, remember.”

What could he do? He was unarmed; therefore, to that extent, at everybody’s mercy. He had others to think of beside himself – one other especially. So he steeled himself.

The dreadful place of slaughter was thronged, it seemed, with the whole population of the town. Through these a word from his guide cleared a prompt way. Several wooden blocks were let into the ground, and upon one of these a victim was being bound down in such wise that the body, turned face upwards, formed an arc, the head being fixed so as to draw the upturned throat to the fullest tension. And the horrified, blood-chilled spectator observed that the victim was a large stalwart black very much akin in aspect to the one he had seen struck down by the mysterious blow in that eerie temple of devil-worship within the heart of the forest.

“I’ve let them have a little compensation for killing one of themselves just now,” broke in his companion’s voice with hideous callousness. “It was a biggish man among them – as far as I allow any of them to be big. So I’ve stood them a feed. These belong to another breed, and they like them, and I can get plenty more. See?”

“But, you’ll never allow this?” cried Wagram. “Stop it, do you hear? Stop it, man – devil – or whatever you are. Stop it, or I will.”

Without waiting for any reply he sprang forward. A tall black fiend armed with a great curved knife had stepped to the side of the victim, whose agonised, livid, terror-stricken face was sufficient to haunt Wagram to his dying day. It was done in a moment. Quick as thought Wagram had snatched the murderous implement from the grasp of the savage, at the same time dealing him a straight-out blow behind the ear which sent him staggering, and had cut through the bonds which held the wretched victim, who rolled heavily to the ground. A howl, as of a pack of famished wolves balked of its prey, arose from the crowd. A rush was made. But somehow the sight of this man – who had never shed human blood in his life – standing there at bay, a new and entirely whole-hearted Berserk rage blazing from his eyes as he rolled them around, holding the formidable weapon ready, seemed to tell, and they hesitated, still mouthing and yelling like hell let loose. Then great, heavy-hafted spears were raised, ready for casting. But a word from the other white man checked the decisive throw, though still unwillingly. They growled and muttered like dogs, looking from one to the other.

“Give me your promise that he shall be spared,” cried Wagram. “Otherwise not a man comes near him while I am alive.”

“You fool. Are you prepared to stand there for the rest of the day?” was the answer. “After you are dead, will it be any the better for anybody else?”

“I shall die while doing my duty at any rate. As for you – why, the most loathsome savage here is not so loathsome as you.”

“Ha – ha! That’s all gas. Well, it doesn’t suit me that your life shall be taken, Wagram – at least not until I choose. So I’ll give you my promise. Like yourself, I’m not a liar, whatever I may be.”

He harangued the assembled fiends, and in the result the wretched man, still livid with the fears of death, was allowed to slip away, while the crowd sullenly dispersed – Wagram, of course, being totally unaware that he was promising them another victim, whom they might despatch and feast upon at their leisure, when there should be nobody present to interrupt. Thus his promise was kept – in the letter.

“I thought I’d just let you see where I come in,” he said as they walked away together. “Man, you think you have done something blasted heroic, don’t you? – but let me tell you that a word from me would have seen you strapped down to one of those blocks too. You don’t suppose you could have kept them off with that knife for many minutes, do you?”

Wagram did not answer. His disgust and repulsion for the other had reached such a pitch that he did not deem it advisable to speak, for fear of betraying it.

“You’d better hug your own quarters for a day or two after this,” went on the latter. “None too safe to be prowling around. You understand?”

“Yes; I understand.”

Hope, raised once more, had fallen to the ground. For some reason or other this white savage had seen fit to detain him prisoner – probably with the object of extracting more in the way of ransom. Indeed, now it dawned upon him that in forcing him to behold all the more horrible side of the life of these barbarians the other was working to bring his mind up to such a pitch that he would be glad to purchase emancipation at any price, however great.

Chapter Thirty Four.
The Alternative

“Well? And have you now come round to a sweet and reasonable frame of mind?”

Wagram looked his persecutor steadily in the face. He was not secured, but two stalwart blacks stood on each side, ready to anticipate any aggressive movement on his part.

“You’ve not, eh? That’ll come; only the longer you hold out the more personal inconvenience you’ll lay yourself open to. I give you fair warning.”

“You intend to murder me, I suppose,” answered Wagram. “Why not do it at once? I won’t agree to your perfectly outrageous proposal.”

“Outrageous?” sneered the white fiend. “Let’s go over the ground again. A month ago I invited you to make a protracted stay with me. I further asked you to send for your son, thinking that a little wild bush life would make a wholesome change for a schoolboy, and we would have been as jolly as sandboys together. You began to make excuses. Now, I don’t like excuses. I’m not accustomed to them, as you must have learnt since you’ve been here. Then you refused point-blank, saying this was no place to bring a boy to. You yourself couldn’t refuse my hospitality, which I’m afraid I shall have to extend to you for an indefinite time. But your son and heir – I’m dying to make his acquaintance. See?”

“Yes; I see. And I give you the answer straight: I have no intention that you should make his acquaintance or he yours. Now – is that straight enough?”

“Oh, quite. Only have you reflected that in that case you yourself will never set eyes on him again? Hasn’t that struck you?”

“As a possibility, not as a probability. Look here! you are a white man, not a savage. For some purpose you are trying to frighten me. What is it? Is it that you want a larger price? If so, name it.”

“Trying to frighten you? Why, I haven’t even begun to frighten you yet. You told me one day you thought I must be the devil. Well, I am – for all purposes as far as you are concerned. Make up your mind to that.”

There was no great eagerness in Wagram’s mind to dispute this statement. He had spent a month in the power of this fiend, and scarcely a day had passed without some proof that if he were not already within the infernal regions he was at any rate well within the antechamber thereto. Apart from the fact that the conditions of his captivity had been more and more those of every conceivable harshness, he had been compelled to witness the most ghastly and horrifying sights, of which the blood tragedies of the cannibal slaughter-yard were not the worst. Other fiendish rites, hideous and obscene – hardly imaginable, in fact – he had been thrust into the very midst of; and now within that brief month it seemed that he must have lived for years in hell, and all at the bidding of this devil – his fellow-countryman. His health had suffered, his mind and spirit alike were becoming broken, and every moment he besieged high Heaven with supplications that deliverance – even through the gate of death – might be granted him. So far his tormentor had confined his malice to tortures that were mainly mental. He had been careful, too, to afford him no clue whatever as to the locality in which he was, or even as to the very name of this savage race. His own identity, of course, was undivulged.

“You have the whole situation in your own hands,” went on the latter. “You have only to place in mine the necessary letters that will bring your son and heir here. I’ll take care of the way of doing it, never fear, once I have your indisputable authority. Now – are you going to give it me?”

Something of the martyr’s resolution shone in Wagram’s face. Even the brutal savages who guarded him were struck by it, and uneasily stirred. They thought to descry some strange resemblance at that moment between the faces of the two men, between their dreaded oppressor and his – and their – helpless captive.

“No; I am not – not now, nor ever,” came the steadfast answer. “I will die first.”

Then that glaring paroxysm of rage swept over the other’s features, and his eyes seemed to start from his purpling face as he bent down and hissed rather than whispered:

“Then you shall. By God, you shall!” At a sign the two savages pounced upon their prisoner, and flung him face downwards upon the ground. They were muscular ruffians, and he was weakened by ill-treatment and anxiety. Others flocked into the hut in obedience to a call, and in a moment he was pinioned with thongs, his feet being left free enough to enable him to walk with short steps. They dragged him forth into the open, and he found himself staggering along in their midst. Then he realised what his doom was to be. He had travelled this way before, to his horror and sorrow. They were taking him to the human slaughter-yard.

There was the palisade, the stunted trees, and the horrible heads impaled upon them. The effluvium was acrid, sickening. Many hands gripped him, and before he could offer the slightest resistance he was bound down upon one of the blood-stained blocks, with throat upturned, distended, ready for the murderous knife.

In that terrible moment, expecting death amid every circumstance of agony and ignominy, a vista of his past life opened to his brain – opened with a quick flash. This, then, was what his quest had brought him to – his quest which, following the strong voice of conscience, he had undertaken and had prosecuted to his own detriment. Well, what mattered it? His son – his only son – had been left in strong and careful hands. He would carry on his life duties as he himself would have had him do. Then more sacred thoughts succeeded. He trusted he was ready.

A black fiend stood over him, and had already raised the horrible crooked knife; already he seemed to feel it shearing through nerve and artery. But it was stayed.

“One more chance,” cried the voice of his arch-tormentor. “Will you do what you have no option but to do? Remember, this is no swift death – no beheading at one blow – as you have seen. A nasty sort of butchering death for a man of your birth and breeding to end up with, eh?”

“Do your butcher work; my mind is unchanged.”

At a sign the demon with the knife lowered it. Wagram felt a slash upon his throat, and the blood flowed. In reality it was but a skin cut. The black fiend, instructed by the white arch-fiend, was but playing with him; yet the mind acting upon the strained nerves rendered the torture actual, horrible. Except a quick gasp no sound escaped the sufferer. In the concentration of the suspense every detail was stamped upon the retina of his brain – the bestial, black faces, staring and bloodthirsty; the scarcely less repulsive countenance of his – fellow-countryman, and a strange, vivid scar round the outside of the right eye defacing this. Detail is curiously to the front in moments of extreme tensity. The willing executioner looked again at his superior for the final signal. After a moment of deathly silence – to the sufferer a very lifetime of suspense – it came.

But, what was this? He had been quickly unbound, and rolled to the ground, and as he lay there, dazed with the sudden revulsion, the voice of his arch-tormentor fell once more upon his ears.

“That’ll do for to-day, Wagram. You’ve gone through hell – yes, hell – in the last few minutes, but it’s nothing to what’s sticking out for you. You thought you’d have been in heaven by now, but, no fear. Moreover, you’ll never get there, for before I’ve done with you you’re going to blaspheme Heaven in such a manner that even it’ll have nothing to do with you at the end, in spite of your life of piety and sanctimoniousness. Wait a bit. You haven’t felt any real pain yet – don’t know what it is. To-morrow you shall begin. A little roasting, you understand; not too much – enough to keep you wriggling for an hour or so. You shall have the whole night to think of it.”

“You are wrong, devil,” was the answer. “Whatever might escape me through weakness under your hellish treatment will not count, rest assured. And the Heaven which you blaspheme has a longer arm than you think.”

“All right. It can’t reach as far as this,” returned the other, with a hideous laugh.

The sufferer was roughly seized, jerked to his feet, and dragged back to the hut; but even this gloomy prison-house was no longer to be his undisturbed, for now the two black horrors entered it with him, and disposed themselves in such wise as to render it evident they meant to spend the night there. He himself was secured by thongs in such wise as to render any attempt at escape impossible.

And there in the black darkness – with loathsome insects creeping over him, the close, stuffy air rendered absolutely poisonous by the rancid stench exhaling from the musky bodies of his guards – Wagram underwent to the full all the trials of the martyrs destined for the Coliseum of old. He had passed through, as it were, the very extremity of death that day, and had been put back that he might die many deaths. He knew that the words of the white savage had been no empty threat, for among the awful sights he had been forced to witness in that hell-centre had been that of a human being done to death over a slow fire in exactly the manner that had been promised for himself. Well, if that were so, and he were called upon to suffer the fiery ordeal, he trusted that strength might be given him as to the martyrs of old, the prayers of all of whom he fervently invoked, including those of his martyred relative – the recollection of whom turned back his thoughts to Hilversea, and those he had left there; and it was with deep thankfulness that he realised that no flaw existed in the provisions he had made before leaving in the event of accident to himself. These had been effected with business-like foresight and accuracy. All who had claims upon him had been remembered, and Gerard had been left under the joint guardianship of Haldane and the family solicitor. Even Delia Calmour he had not omitted to provide for, by reason of the interest he and his father had taken in the girl, and the disadvantages under which she was placed. Perhaps she would bless his memory and pray for him, and the recollection of her bright young beauty was pleasant now in the gloomy hour of his bondage and the horrible fate which impended. Yvonne, too – she would not forget him, and the prayers of the young and the pure seemed as though they must be tenfold precious and efficacious.

Hour by hour his thoughts ran on, interluded by snatches of sleep, begotten of sheer mental exhaustion, haunted, however, by gusty, disturbing dreams, in which the horrors he had witnessed and gone through would rise up to mock and distress him, as though instigated by the malice of the powers of hell. The same sun which would rise upon Hilversea, and its joyous, peaceful English life, would rise upon him and the drear abode of blood-stained heathendom; would witness his death amid horrible torment, and that not at the word of merciless, ruthless barbarians but at the bidding of a fellow-countryman – a white man. The situation seemed so impossible, so grotesque, as to wear the aspect of a veritable nightmare. It was incredible.

With the thought came another. Why had this devil in human shape laid such stress on getting Gerard into his power, even to the length of torturing him – Wagram – to induce him to send for the boy? Why had he repudiated his agreement to enlarge him for what was really a princely ransom, and that all in a moment? There was something behind it all – but what? And then upon the deepest darkness of his thoughts one thought flashed in. This man had known Everard – had possibly murdered him. He designed to personate him and claim Hilversea, but in order to do this he must first cut off the present occupant and his heir. That was why he had striven to get Gerard into his power. Yes; the whole thing now stood explained: the effect the name had had upon him – everything. He had got at Everard’s history, and now rejoiced that another Wagram – the reigning one – had fallen into his hands. Develin Hunt, too, had come from somewhere about this part. What if the adventurer had lied to him, had sent him off to South Africa on a fool’s errand when it should have been West Africa? What if his threat to produce Everard had referred to this spurious adventurer? And yet – and yet – how was Develin Hunt ever to guess that he himself should come to be wrecked and cast away on that identical coast? The puzzle was a tangled one, and at the moment beyond his unravelling. One thing, however, held his mind – a resolve that, come what might, he would defeat this ferocious villain’s schemes by the sacrifice of himself if need be.