Crab Reef

Front matter

By THEODORE GOODRIDGE ROBERTS Author of "Sea Change," "Where All Trails End," etc.

A NOVELETTE-COMPLETE IN THIS ISSUE

chapter 1

I.

THE governor had been robbed, and the consternation on Fort Royal Hill sent a ripple of excitement through the town, along the water front, and aboard the ships. Constables became alert, and the military marched here and there, arresting suspicious looking persons and smashing open cupboards and lockers with the butts of their muskets. The search grew in vigor. It ran like fire through the lower town and the anchored and moored shipping. Heads were broken and many arrests were made. Even the shops and houses of respectable tradesmen were searched. But the governor's jewel case and two bags of gold were not found.

Within forty-eight hours of the robbery on Fort Royal Hill, old Caleb Stave, the ship-chandler of Crabhole Alley, set up a horrid outcry. He could not have made a more piteous and distracting disturbance if he had lost his granddaughter Sally. He, too, had been robbed. His strong box was gone.

It was not until night that the ship-chandler accused his servant Griffon of the theft of the strong box. He and Griffon and a black slave named Big Tom were in the shop at the time. Griffon was not surprised at the accusation, for the term of his indenture was almost up, and he knew that Stave would go to any length of injustice to keep him from his freedom. He was not surprised, but anger rose in his throat like a choking hot coal. He knew the uselessness of denial. There was no justice for him and his kind. He was as much a slave as the black African.

"You verminous old liar!" he cried, and hurled a bag of yams at his master.

The main force of yams struck Stave and carried him to the floor, and one vegetable flew at a tangent and overturned and extinguished the lantern.

"Run out back," whispered Big Tom. "De constablers am in front."

Old Stave yelled murder, and as Griffon slipped from the sweltering and odoriferous shop to the foul yard in the rear, two constables and a soldier entered by the front door. The constables had cudgels in their hands and cutlasses on their hips, and one carried a lantern. The soldier had his musket.

"Thief! Thief!" cried the ship-chandler. "Griffon, the white man! The back door!"

The fellow with the lantern tripped over something and came to the floor with a crash which knocked all the wind out of him and doused the light. The soldier fell over the prostrate constable, the musket flew from his grasp and cracked old Stave's shins; and at that moment the back door closed. The second constable, believing himself in a trap—for the reputation of Crabhole Alley was not above suspicion—laid about him blindly with his cudgel and brought bolts of sailcloth toppling and sliding onto the confusion on the floor.

"The back door!" screamed Stave. "Who shut it? Pull it open, Tom! Where's that black?"

"The lantern!" cried the soldier, scrambling to his feet just in time to check a swing of the cudgel with his left ear. He collapsed with a grunt. Old Stave found the door, yanked it open, leaped forward, caught his foot in the shank of an anchor which some one had laid across the doorway, pitched head first into a strongly constructed hen coop, and forgot what the disturbance was about for a little while.

Peter Griffon ran for his freedom through starshine and shadow. He headed inland, scaling stone walls, dashing and scrambling from one narrow yard to another. But there were lanes to be crossed; and in one of these he dashed into the midst of a corporal's guard. He was challenged, but rushed on. The corporal made a blind prod at him, and sank an inch of iron in his left shoulder, but he broke away and burst open a little door in a wall. He crashed the door shut behind him and fled across the yard and over the farther wall. He was losing blood, but he continued to run at top speed. Presently he won clear of the lower town and ran through decent gardens and across lawns, in the dense black shade of bulky trees of mahogany, breadfruit and mango.

The corporal and his two subordinates followed on Griffon's course with a clatter of arms and an outcry of oaths and threats; and Big Tom trailed close upon the heels of the three soldiers, silent as a shadow, pausing now and again to touch his right shin tenderly with an inquiring finger. The thing which the constable with the lantern had fallen over back in Caleb Stave's shop had been the African's right leg; and it had not been an accident on Tom's part. He had given a patch of black hide cheerfully in a good cause.

The soldiers were soon winded. The cross-belts and high leather stocks of the military uniforms of that period were not conducive to prolonged bouts of physical exertion on a windless tropical night. One by one they crumpled and lay puffing; and Big Tom passed them, one by one, like a shadow.

Griffon cleared the last garden of the town, crossed a white road, and ducked into a great field of canes. Though suffering desperately from fatigue and loss of blood, he now forced his protesting legs and lungs to top speed, for he had glimpsed a pursuer among the shrubs of the last garden a few seconds ago. The rows of canes lay at right angles to the road; and the fugitive ran straight along one of these narrow green lanes. The town was stifling, but here among the tens of thousands of tall, close ranked canes it was strangling, like the air of an oven. And it was rank with the reek of the black, heavily manured, fortune bearing old soil. The fugitive gasped for breath, stumbled and fell, scrambled up, choking, and ran on, his scanty clothing sodden with sweat and blood.

Big Tom saw Griffon take to the canes, but he did not enter that airless swelter of vegetation himself. He knew that the white man would hold that line as straight and far into the hills as obstacles and fatigue would permit. He turned to the left and raced along the road at amazing speed for a distance of fifty yards or so, then leaped the ditch and slipped into the maze of shadows and starshine of a grove of limes. Here he had clean turf under his feet, and ran with undiminished speed.

Griffon staggered out of the canes at last and flopped in a patch of cassava. He lay still for a full minute, then again rallied his exhausted body and reeling brain, scrambled to his feet and moved on at a lurching jog. Beyond the cassava the ground began that upward slope which led eventually to the hanging jungles and deep ravines of the mountains.

He blundered through a thicket of bay trees and essayed the gentle slant of turf beyond, only to fall with a spinning of stars in his eyes and the thumping of his overforced heart in his ears. The spinning stars passed, and consciousness with them.… He felt a hand on his shoulder. Caught! And he was unarmed! Back to old Caleb Stave! Back to slavery of spirit and body! He groaned like a lost soul.

"Peter, Peter," said a voice he knew. "I's tied up yer shoulder. Sit ye up, Peter, an' try a sip ob dis yere brandy."

"Is it you, Tom? For God's sake, let me go!" whispered Griffon, without raising his head.

"Let ye go? Man alive, I'se goin' myself! Try a suck at dis yere bottle, boy, an' den git yer legs under yerself an' come along."

"Where to?"

"To the mountuns, Peter. To de blessed jungles."

Griffon gulped at the bottle which Big Tom held to his lips—a bottle stolen from Caleb Stave's best bin. He got his legs under him then and came slowly to his feet with the African's help. They went up the gradual slope together at a fair rate of speed, the black man's strong right arm about the white man's waist. Thus they passed Fort Royal Hill, well to the left of it. They skirted sloping crops—sugar cane, cassava, Guinea corn and tobacco—and beyond the cultivation got into a gully which climbed steeply between water-cut banks fringed with wild bush. In the time of rain this gully runs full with earth reddened water which stains the clear sea greens and sea blues hundreds of yards from shore; but now it was dry, save for a few still pools with finger wide trickles of water between.

"Let me rest a minute," said Griffon. "I'm spent—bled white—legs gone and lungs afire."

Big Tom eased him down to the ground and stood above him, hearkening with bowed head to the faint sounds of the night.

"I was afraid of you, Tom—but I trust you now," said Griffon.

"Trust me, dat's right!" returned Big Tom. "You an' me's in de same boat now, Peter. It 'll be de whip an' hot iron if dey catches us!"

"They'll never take me alive ! Damn Caleb Stave!"

They resumed their journey up the rugged gully. Griffon was still too weak to do much in the way of locomotion for himself. He leaned heavily back against Big Tom's brawny right arm, and his knees sagged at every step. But the African seemed tireless.

"I must rest again," said Griffon. "Must have lost quarts of blood."

"Nope, we best keep a-goin'," replied Tom, lifting the other easily in both arms and moving steadily onward.

After ten minutes, Griffon spoke again.

"There's no chance for us," he said. "They'll catch us in a day or a week, dead or alive. They'll hunt us with dogs—and every cursed planter in the island will join in the hunt. The masters and the soldiers will hunt us; and our own kind will help track us and drag us down—the white slaves and the black.

"Maybe we give 'em de slip, Peter. We am still alive, anyhow."

"Don't you feel a temptation to take me back to Stave? They'd not lay lash nor hot iron on you if you took me back, Tom."

The African halted at that, and set the white man on his feet before him.

"Ye don't trust me, Peter?"

"But—don't you see we haven't a chance! Don't you see your only chance?

"Maybe not much—but I take it with yerself, Peter—death or freedom!"

"Why?"

"Big Tom am yer friend, white boy!"

"I believe you—but you're mad to risk torture for my sake! Here's your knife."

"Where ye come by that knife, Peter?"

"I took it out of your belt when you held the bottle to my lips away back there down the hill. If you'd gone down instead of up, Tom—or so much as turned once in your tracks—well, I'm a desperate man."

"Trust Big Tom an' take anudder pull on dis yere bottle, white boy."

The bed of the vanished torrent became steeper and rougher and narrower, deeply pitted here and there and frequently barricaded with overhanging ledges of rock. Griffon struggled upward manfully, with Big Tom's arm behind him at the difficult places, for a sweltering half hour; and then he fell again. The African shouldered him like a sack of corn and continued the ascent.

Big Tom left the ravine an hour later, scrambling up the left bank with Peter Griffon still across his right shoulder. The jungle bulged against him as if it would roll him back into the gully; but he fastened upon its front of tough vines with his left hand, hung on, dragged forward, set his great feet securely, ripped an opening, and thrust himself and his burden in.

Here was no starshine nor moving air. The place was like the interior of a baker's oven for both blackness and heat. But the gigantic slave pressed forward, inward. He shifted and lowered poor Griffon from his shoulder to his arms, clasped him to his heaving breast, turned then and presented his back to the tangle. By sheer weight and strength he burst his way backward into the maze of vegetation for a distance of several yards. Vines snapped near and far, and lost their holds with rips and rendings to right and left and high and low, as if the whole wood were coming down. Big Tom was delighted with himself at these indications of his physical prowess.

"Bust 'im, boy! Bust 'im!" he muttered. "You am more powerfuller nor dis yere jungle, Big Tom Samson! Rip 'im down, black boy!"

But, after a few yards, the jungle held him. He was forced to drop Griffon and turn and cut thick cables of vine with his knife.

Even Big Tom's herculean limbs and lungs of leather succumbed at last, for a time, to the vast and continuous pressure of the jungle's resistance. He crumpled; and before he could regain his feet, sleep overcame him.

There was a twilight of filtered sunshine in the jungle when the runaways awoke. They were parched with thirst and hungry, and Griffon was faint and sore. The brandy bottle had been broken during the struggle inward from the gully. Big Tom searched about for food, slashing his way here and there, and in time found a mango tree. The fruit was ripe, the yellow pulp soppy with juice; and the fugitives sucked eagerly, fairly guzzled, despite the overwild turpentiny flavor. For hours after that they pushed along, higher into the mountains and deeper into the jungle, Big Tom cutting and bursting the way, and Peter Griffon following weakly.

Their track through the ropy browns and massed greens closed behind them and vanished like the wake of a diver in green water. They rested often. The air was sweltering and a cloud of insects hummed about them. Big Tom covered the blood-soaked rags on his companion's shoulder with a pad of wide green leaves.

"I been dis far once before," he said, as they lay gasping.

Griffon moved his head, as an indication that he had heard, but neither opened his eyes nor spoke.

"Come man huntin'," continued Big Tom. "Dat was before Stave take me from my old master for bad debt—three years ago, maybe. We chase runaway boy named Henry dat time—chase 'im with bloodhound dogs from Monkey Hill. I know Henry. Good boy, dat Henry—but he kick overseer in de belly one day an' run away. Dey figger to whip 'im to death for dat—for he was sickly—not worth much money. I get big start on dem dogs, outrun all hands, an' find Henry round yere somewheres. Den up come one big dog—an' I kill 'im. Up come t'other big dog—an' I kill dat one too, with ma hands. Den I give Henry some bread an' water I carry—an' go 'way back an' way over yonder an' holler an' bust about. Dey don't find dem dogs—never."

Griffon sat up and opened his eyes.

"And Henry?" he asked. "Did they find him—dead or alive?"

"Don't never find 'im, dead nor alive," replied the other.

"Dead, nevertheless—of starvation or fever—as we shall be dead in a few days."

"Nope. I see 'im one day—maybe one year ago—in Crabhole Alley. He looks like old, old woman, in white skirts an' big yaller handkerchief, with big basket, cryin' sweet cakes to sell. I know her for Henry by the look outen her eye an' a crook o' one finger she make to me—but a white man walk close behind me, so I don't stop. An' when I come back she wasn't to be spied nowhere in Crabhole Alley.

They resumed the struggle against the jungle. Thirst and hunger burned and gnawed them. Big Tom made blind strokes with his knife, fumbling strokes. Griffon babbled of other days, of apples and cider and old trees with mistletoe in their branches. He fell frequently and cursed Big Tom every time for picking him up. At last Big Tom let him lie, regarded him helplessly for a few seconds, and then lay down beside him. The knife that had slashed so far into the jungle's tough heart slipped unheeded from the black fingers.

Big Tom was not beaten, however. He got to his feet again hours later, picked up his knife and his unconscious companion, and renewed the unequal conflict. He bucked the jungle desperately, with his friend in his arms. He burst through a screen of vines.

chapter 2

II.

Peter Griffon was aware of being carried, but thought nothing of it. Later he felt a breath of wind on face and body. He was dully conscious of being lowered and tenderly deposited on something softer than the ground; but it was not until his head was raised and he felt the moist rim of a cup set against his lips that he paid much attention to what was happening. He drank deep of the cool water, and then opened his eyes.

He was in a rustic shelter which stood open to the front, open to an invigorating bustle of sea breeze in drooping foliage and flashes and glimmers of the sea beyond. He heard the roll and burst and welter of surf far below him. On his right sat Big Tom, an earthen bowl between his knees from which he scooped hot morsels of baked yam and baked fish with greedy fingers. On his left, still, with a supporting arm back of him, knelt the man who had given him water. He was white, but where sun and wind had worked on him he was tanned to the hue of an old belt. Blue eyes shone out of his weathered mask with startling pallor and fire. He was shaved clean, chin and cheek and lip.

He was not a young man, and yet even in repose he had not the air of an old one. His face was netted with fine wrinkles and the skin of his hands was also wrinkled and appeared to be too large for the flesh and bones within.

"Who are you?" asked Griffon.

"A friend," answered the other. "No slave owner nor magistrate nor man hunter. Ye played in luck, lad, when ye tumbled head first onto the rocks o' me own little water hole. Lay back now an' I'll fetch 'e some good broth."

He lowered Griffon's head and went nimbly from the shelter, light on his feet as a cat, but queerly stooped from the hips. Griffon felt an upflame of hope. He rolled over onto his sound shoulder and eyed Big Tom, who was now polishing the empty dish.

"Who is he, Tom?" he asked. "And where are we?"

"Dat the man we need most in dis whole island," replied the revived giant. "Sailor Penny am his name. Henry tell me. He find dat poor black boy Henry three years ago; an' Henry find us down by de water hole dis mornin', where we fall outer de jungle onto our heads."

"Henry? The runaway slave they were going to whip to death?"

Big Tom nodded.

"So it was him you saw in Crabhole Alley, rigged up like an old woman?"

The other nodded again; and at that moment Sailor Penny entered the shelter with a steaming bowl in his hands. Big Tom sniffed and rolled his eyes.

"No more for 'e yet a while," said the oldish man in the tone of a nurse to a greedy child. "Not quite enough be better nor a gorge for a flappin' belly—but I'll maybe give 'e a roasted fowl in an hour or two, or some such trifle."

He fed the hot broth to Griffon with a wooden spoon. It was masterly broth, comforting the stomach and tingling along the arteries like wine. After swallowing the last drop of it and licking the spoon, Griffon lay flat again and slept.

He awoke an hour later and found himself alone in the rustic shelter. He sat up. He was his own man again, save for the small matter of a soreness and stiffness in his bandaged shoulder. He looked at the thatched roof and the frail walls of woven palm leaves and wondered at the fragile character of the place. Two low pallets made up of dried grasses and folded pieces of old sailcloth comprised the furnishings. He was still wondering when Sailor Penny entered, slipping in from the sunshine with that queer stoop which gave him an appearance of eager haste.

"Feelin' brisker, mate?" he asked, squatting close in front of the fugitive.

"A thousand times better, in mind an' in body," replied Griffon. "You have saved my life. Nay, you have given me life! For there is no life in slavery."

"Handsomely spoke," returned the other. "Drink this."

Griffon drained the cup obediently. The draft was bitter, but cool and not unpleasant.

"Where is Big Tom?" he asked.

"Somewheres below ground, with Henry."

"A cave?"

"Aye, ye may say so. I trust ye, mate—by yer eyes. An' I trust Tom for what Henry tells of 'im. But ye hail from a bad quarter, lad—a tricky quarter."

"Meaning Crabhole Alley?"

"Meanin' the shop an' sarvice o' Caleb Stave."

"Tricky! Man, if you knew him as I do, ye'd lay a stronger word on him. Listen to me, Master Penny—an' make what you choose of it! If I saw old Caleb Stave staggering an' tottering on the edge of the red hot pit of everlasting damnation, yelling for help, and it was in my power to pluck him to safety—I'd push him in—so hear me God Almighty!"

For several seconds the two men stared at each other in silence.

"Hah!" breathed the elder, dimming the blue blaze of his eyes and relaxing the lines of mouth and jaw. "I believe 'e, mate. Ye know 'im! Tell me why ye hate 'im so."

Griffon, too, relaxed suddenly in attitude and manner and expression of face. He glanced around him.

"But are we safe here?" he whispered, "What if they've laid the hounds on our scent? We lie here defenseless."

The other smiled and shook his head.

"Ye be safe here, lad—safe as the governor in his great house on Fort Royal Hill," he said.

So Griffon told him. He had been in Caleb Stave's service, at Caleb Stave's mercy, these past three years. These were the last years of the term of ten for which he had been transported to the plantations. He said nothing just then of the seven preceding years of his slavery, beyond mentioning the fact that he had beeen sold into Stave's hands from the island of St. Kitt's. He told only of the bitter nightmare of his relations with the ship-chandler of Crabhole Alley.

It had speedily become evident to him that Stave was dissatisfied with his bargain. The truth of that matter had soon come to light. Stave had made a mistake. He had purchased three years of Griffon's indentured slavery under the misapprehension that he was acquiring the expert services of one Grissin, a cutpurse and housebreaker. Upon learning that his servant had never cut a purse or picked a lock, he had heaped indignities and cruelties on him, at the same time leading others to believe that the poor devil was in reality the ruffian whom he himself had thought and hoped him to be at the time of the purchase. Himself hating Griffon for his honesty, he had caused others to despise and distrust the unfortunate servant for the lack of it.

That was Caleb Stave. That was ever Caleb Stave's way. He had given the poor dog a bad name even while humiliating, overworking, starving and whipping him for being an honest dog.

Caleb Stave had a granddaughter in his house. She was an orphan. She was young and innocent and also beautiful and kind. For months she had looked upon Griffon with fear and distaste; but in the course of time with pity, despite his black reputation; and at last, after hearing something of the truth, she had looked upon him with kindness.

The ship-chandler had smelled out the situation and given it his close and crooked attention. He had seen in it an opportunity for the kind of double play in which his verminous soul delighted. So he had gone softly about it; and next morning the girl had run to him with the startling information that most of her trinkets were missing from her treasure box, the inadequate lock of which had been burst. Stave had called Griffon to him and, despite the girl's protests, had accused the outcast of the theft.

Griffon had stared dazedly, not knowing exactly what to deny; whereupon the old devil had plucked and torn at the unfortunate's scanty and ragged clothing and brought to light two or three of the missing trinkets. Griffon had flared out at that recklessly, denied the theft and any knowledge of it with curses, and named the old man for a rogue, a cheat, a liar, a coward, and a being so vile in himself and so low in his dirty gutter origin as to be scarcely human. And he had shaken his fist in his master's face and cried some foolishness about his own quality of blood and ancestry.

He had played the outraged gentleman for a minute or two, poor devil. His words and his scorn had succeeded in cutting Stave to the quick, and for his success he had been held by one negro and whipped by another until he fainted, while the old man forced the girl to look on.

Griffon's lot had been harder after that. He had been worked to the bone and underfed. He had been steadily worn down in body from strength to quivering weakness; and every effort had been made to wear down his spirit as well, and his mind, or break them utterly.

He had been set to the most humiliating, the most degrading tasks, thwacked and jeered at by his master and the Spanish mulatto foreman. So nearly had his courage been broken that he had once tried to take his own life. His shaking hand had saved him. He had been doctored for the wound, fed back to a degree of strength, and then whipped to unconsciousness. That had taught him a lesson—and his next effort with the knife had been directed against the Spanish mulatto. In this also he had failed; and for the attempt he had been beaten with a supplejack.

Things had improved for him soon after that, despite Stave's best efforts to break his manhood. The mulatto, who was a freeman, had been killed in a drunken brawl on the water front. Then the girl had discovered her lost trinkets one day in her grandfather's bedroom, at the bottom of a box in which he kept his private store of liquor. She had told Griffon and begged his forgiveness for ever having doubted his honesty—but she feared to tell the old man. Her sympathy had lightened Griffon's spiritual and mental darkness; and then Big Tom, who had been bought to replace the deceased free mulatto, had shown him surreptitious kindness.

Griffon leaned forward and grasped one of his attentive host's thin wrists with his clawlike right hand. His eyes glowed.

"Stave accused me of robbing him!" he exclaimed in a hate bitten whisper. "I was within a few days of my freedom. A lie, to save himself and damn me! Another double trick, to save himself and enslave me forever! But I was helpless. Who will believe a slave? So I struck him down and ran. I downed him with a bag of yams. Listen! I knew enough to hang him; but I ran for my freedom. For who would have believed what I could tell? Or even if one had believed, would he admit it? The slave against the master!

"The soldiers and constables were searching every house and shop for jewels and money robbed from Fort Royal. They had been at it night and day. They came to Crabhole Alley, smashing doors and ripping beds, poking everywhere, tearing up floors, prodding holes in yards and gardens—and they were at Caleb Stave's front door. D'ye see it? Listen to me! I knew the truth—the truth to hang him—but I was helpless!

"He had yelled of robbery that morning, as soon as the constables came into the alley—of the robbery of his strong box—and now he named me for the thief—and the soldiers at the door! D'ye see it So I ran—for I'd have been found twice guilty had I tried to show his guilt—for he had buried his own strong box in the earth under the floor of that stinking shop—along with the bags of jewels and gold which he had robbed from the governor's house! Now d'ye get it? D'ye understand?"

First, he had robbed the governor and hidden the stuff—but that I did not see. Next, when the search drew near, he was afraid and hid some of his own money, in his own strong box, with the other—and that I saw, spying on him through a crack. And then he yelled that he'd been robbed. That was to draw off the hunt from his shop. Then he brought the hunters to his door and named me for a thief. D'ye see it?"

"But if ye'd showed 'em—"

"If I'd shown them—man, don't you see it yet? Would magistrates believe my tale, think you?—that the old devil had robbed himself? No! I'd be punished for both robberies. Hanged. And the governor would reward Caleb Stave."

"I git it, mate. Now tell me this. Did Stave know that ye knew about 'im—that ye spied on him?"

"He didn't know it. He doesn't know it."