Crab Reef/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."
"Not about ye knowin' where he buried the blunt?"
"No, for a certainty! He didn't catch me spying. I didn't tell him what I knew. I gave him the lie and ran for it. He had accused me just to break me—and to save himself if the stuff should be found by any chance. A double play, you see."
"Aye, double an' deep. Deep as hell. An' the blunt, mate? Where would it be now?"
"Where I saw it. He won't shift it till the danger's past."
Sailor Penny nodded reflectively, then went away and soon returned with another bowl of invigorating broth.