CHAPTER XV.

A STRANGE POWER.

With a quick, backward sweep of her long, young arm Beryl Corselas sent Andria staggering backward, but she never looked to see Salome catch her dexterously and drag her inside the room.

Without taking her eyes from the fierce ones outside the stout, wooden shutters, the girl began to croon again and the hungry scratching of the iron claws ceased. Monotonous, scarcely rising or falling, that queer chant went on, till through it there rose a purr like a great cat’s.

Closer, closer Beryl drew to the jalousy; the horrified watchers saw her all but touch it. She stopped and gazed through the slats, straight into the wonderful eyes. Very slowly the great animal relaxed, scraping against the wood. Something heavy, yet strangely light-footed, leaped softly to the ground. The thing was gone.

Exactly as if she walked in her sleep Beryl Corselas came straight to the other two.

“I want a drink of water,” she said, very low. “That was a jaguar.”

Salome struck a light and shut the door on the awful darkness of the veranda before she brought a tumbler from the wash-stand.

“How do you know? You never saw one.” Andria’s voice was thick with shame. She had been so grand about saving Beryl; and it was Beryl who had saved her! She threw her dagger down angrily; it would have been no use at all in a struggle with a beast like that.

“I don’t know.” Beryl gulped at the water. “But I do know, somehow,” she said in her natural, every-day voice.

Salome took the tumbler from her with a curious gesture of respect.

“My soul! You saved us! Oh! my glory!” she cried hysterically. “Glory, glory!” her voice rang out between sobs and laughter. “You’s one o’ dem.”

“What do you mean?” Andria had played a small part and hated herself.

“You knows much as I knows,” said Salome sullenly. “You seen! She was de beat of ’em. Dey’s some born like dat. Oh, missy, glory be dis night!” Her chest heaved as she turned to Beryl, but the girl only walked away.

“Salome,” Andria broke out angrily, “you don’t trust me! I tell you I love the child. I have nothing to do with Mr. Egerton’s plots against her. I’ve known her ever since she was a baby.”

“Don’t never hear o’ no plots,” said Salome sharply. But at the look on Andria’s face she buried her own in her hands. “I will trust you, missus,” she whispered. “Fo’ de Lawd, ole Salome couldn’t tell ’bout you. I’m sick o’ dis life and dis yer place, dat’s true.”

“Then tell me what it all means,” commanded Andria sternly. “Why are we besieged here every night by wild beasts and worse?”

Salome caught her by the arm.

“Listen!” she cried. “I can’t tell you nothin’. I took my Bible oath”--on Amelia Jane’s poor relic of religion!--“to hole my tongue. But I took another in my mind to take care of dat child.”

“Then tell me who I saw last night!” said Andria frantically. “Whose hateful face jabbered at me this morning, down the path----”

“You done see him! My soul!” said the woman, as if hell had opened under her feet. “Den we’s gone, sure enough. Dey’s more than jaguars.”

Beryl, as if she listened to something very far off, had drawn to the other end of the room. She stood, a tense white figure, deaf to all other sounds but those. Andria pointed to her dumbly.

“Don’t say anything,” she breathed. “She is afraid of people, never of animals. At the convent she once saved a sister from an ox that turned on her----”

“Dey’s born so, I tell you,” Salome returned, with a kind of pride.

“Salome, if you don’t speak out to me I’ll go mad,” Andria said desperately. “What can I do if I don’t know what it all means?”

“I can’t tell you nothin’,” answered Salome slowly. “I couldn’t get clear if I did. And you knows all I knows now. I don’t know no more. Black people in the house, no one comes--white women! You seen to-night.”

“Do you mean the place is safe for black people?”

“De white blood draws ’em,” she answered in a whisper that thrilled.

“But men; Mr. Egerton----”

“When he comes back you see. He ain’t going to stay long. He sleep up, up in de roof, last time he come.”

“And he brought two women here!” Every drop of Andria’s blood recoiled.

“Dat’s what I can’t understand,” said Salome eagerly. “He say, ‘Salome, you take care on ’em!’ And I seem to feel he don’t mean it.”

“He can’t,” said Andria simply. “Oh! Salome, can’t we get away? Isn’t there any one on all this island but us? Isn’t there a village--boats?”

“If dey is dey’s behind miles o’ bush and scrub dat we can’t scrape through,” Salome returned, very low. “Boats, if you means getting away by de sea, dey ain’t none, ’less we make ’em. I never see no living soul since I been here--but what you see to-night!”

“But why are you here?”

“’Cause he brought me. He tell me he take me to good place in Bermuda, and I came here. Oh, missus! I’m not old--but I’m wore out with misery.”

“But you’re not a slave! Why did you stay?”

“Niggers has no choice,” she answered darkly. And something told Andria there was a black story that Salome would not tell. “By and by he bring Chloe an’ Amelia Jane. He tell dem dis is Bermuda. And dey never fret, dey only caring to eat and save deir wages. De Lawd knows if we ever get away from here. Don’t you ’spose I never tried, ’cause dat’s what I did try. But--I ain’t gone yet!”

“I’ll make him let us go!”

Salome clutched her, really ashy with terror.

“You never say nothin’, or dey’s no more o’ dis world for me. You mind now. I never tell you nothin’; you never tell me nothin’; you see and I sees; and we beat them if we can. Dey’s here, dey’s always been here, but when dey ain’t no one but niggers in de house dey goes. Dey get master yet,” she said savagely, “for all he dares ’em.”

“But you told me there were no animals--where did that thing come from?”

“Sometimes I think dey spring out o’ de earth. I don’t know. But dey’s worse--you tell me he jabbers at you dis morning,” interrupting herself, “an’ she’s afraid of people! If he’s going round in de daylight like dat, an’ she’s afraid, he’ll get her sure!”

“But who is he?”

“Dat’s what I don’t know. But he climbs and--Miss Holbeach, it ain’t no jaguar dat chokes de life out o’ my lambs and don’t tear no flesh nor skin!”

Andria’s flesh crawled at the slow words. In the silence the storm outside was like the end of the world. The battering of the wind, the crash of falling trees, the roar of the rain covered the low voices of the two women. In the uproar Beryl, like a statue that lived and listened, drew her breath long and slow. Suddenly she spoke, without turning.

“There are more than that one, and they’re hunting and yapping like dogs. I wish I could see them! But it’s too dark.”

“Are they hunting us?” cried Andria, shuddering. Already she seemed to feel the ripping claws, the crunching teeth of the great beast outside.

“Not me!” said Beryl dreamily.

Salome watched her with awestruck eyes.

“If we dies, we dies,” she said hardly. “Better lie down on dem beds an’ rest. Dey ain’t got in yet. Pray de Lawd we ain’t going to be de meat at a jaguar wedding dis night!”

With the stoical courage born of long endurance of fear she lay down on a rug. Andria, in sheer despair, sat down silently. And in the midst of the storm she seemed to hear what Beryl was hearing--a wild snarling, a medley of quick cries--and set her teeth. Any minute, through any door, a square, savage head might show itself with death in its green eyes. She looked at Beryl.

The girl was curled up on her bed like a kitten, sound asleep.

Black woman and white looked at each other, then with one consent sat up and kept their useless, terrified watch till the lamp burned dim. The wind had fallen, the horrid outcry in the garden had ceased, and, lulled by the quiet, the two slept in their chairs, worn out.

As the dawn flushed in the east the girl on the bed sat up, looked at the two weary figures, the dying lamp, and like a ghost stole by them. When the clear sunlight at last roused them she had not come back.