Tales of terror
Now if the vision that Signor Roderick saw, and which was conjured up
by the mystic power of the witch-woman, was an accurate representation
of the crime, it is easy to understand that some savage Indian, who had
seen Juliette and Joceline enter the forest and carry off the orchid
bloom, resented it. Moreover, he may have regarded Juliette as an
unnatural being, for probably he had never seen a white woman before.
No women--save Indian women, and they but rarely--ever entered those
deadly forests, the haunts and homes of the most venomous reptiles and
the most savage animals, where there are plants exuding so virulent a
poison that if but one drop falls on the flesh gangrene ensues; where
loathsome insects fall upon the intruder from the trees and eat their
way into his body; where the very air is deadly to those who breathe
it, other than the native born. Juliette’s presence, therefore, in such
a place must have filled the Indian with dire alarm, and inflamed him
with a desire to slay her. To him, no doubt, the crime would appear as
a justifiable one. Anyway, with the stealth and cunning of his kind
he crept after her, and his cruel knife drank her blood, and having
killed her, it followed as a matter of course that he should kill her
companion.
Now these Indians worship strange gods and sacrifice to them, and snake
sacrifice is common, not only in the interior of Brazil, but in Mexico.
The slaying of the coral snake was therefore a sacrifice on the part
of the murderer. How he met his own death must ever remain a mystery.
Probably he himself perished from snake-bite, for though these Indians
show an extraordinary fearlessness of poisonous reptiles, and will
catch them and handle them in a way that makes a stranger shudder,
they are not proof against their bites, although they boast that they
possess infallible antidotes against the venom of the serpent. This,
however, may be regarded as no more than a boast. In the forests of
Brazil are to be found some of the most horrible snakes the world
produces. Apart from the Cobra coral, or to give it its scientific
name, _Elaps maregravii_, rattle snakes of the most virulent kind are
found, and then there is the hideous Cascavel. It is said that death
follows the bite of this snake almost immediately. The victim goes
suddenly blind, and the flesh commences to peel off his bones through
gangrene even before the breath is out of his body. The annual death
roll from snake-bite in all parts of South America is appalling; and,
as might be supposed, the Indians who roam the forests and prairies,
either as animal or orchid hunters, furnish a large percentage of the
victims. It is a feasible theory, therefore, that the cruel murderer of
Juliette and Joceline lost his life through snake-bite, probably the
bite of the Cascavel.
As regards Anita, one can only suppose that she was possessed of some
strange mesmeric or hypnotic power; but even if that were so, one is
puzzled to understand how she was able to show her subjects the scene
and incidents of the crime unless she herself knew them. The theory
that suggests itself here is that during the three days’ interval
between Signor Roderick consulting her and his second visit, she had
learned the story of the crime from some of the wandering Indians. She
herself was an Indian and would be regarded by her tribe as ‘a wise
woman.’ But whatever theory one likes to accept, it is a well-known
fact attested over and over again by travellers that some of the
Indian women of South America, especially in the neighbourhood of the
Amazon, are gifted with the power of second sight and of forecasting
the future. Such women are held in veneration by their own people, but
Christians believe that they have an unholy alliance with the common
enemy of mankind.
XV
THE DOOMED MAN
FROM THE PAPERS OF THE LATE MR. RICHARD JOHN GIBLING, MERCHANT, OF THE
CITY OF LONDON
As to whether this story shall or shall not see the light of publicity
I leave to the discretion of my executor. I am resolved that in my
time it shall remain my own secret. I am partly actuated to this
course by a peculiar and constitutional sensitiveness to anything like
ridicule; while for a man in my position, a sober, prosaic merchant,
engaged in trade in London, to confess to belief in the supernatural,
would not only subject me to a good deal of chaff, but might possibly,
indeed I think it is highly probable that it would, do me a good deal
of injury in my business. City life is a hard, stern struggle for
existence. The City man is governed by immutable conventional laws,
and woe betide anyone who transgresses them. Men engaged in business
generally become slaves to custom. You must don a tall hat and frock
coat; you must assume a smug respectability; you must go to church
on Sunday; your name must appear occasionally in charitable lists;
you must speak deferentially of your mayor and corporation; you must
conform to all the traditions and customs of the City, as prescribed
by the unwritten laws; you must periodically be seen at Guild dinners;
your holidays must be taken at a fixed time, and be of a specified
duration. In a word, ‘must’ may be said to be the text of your life.
You must do this and mustn’t do that. And if you have the hardihood
and boldness to set your face against the stern and fast rules to which
you tacitly bind yourself when you become a City man, well then, all
the worse for you. Now with a knowledge of these facts, which cannot
be gainsaid, it will be understood why I have been so reluctant to
make known the extraordinary incidents which I here note down for the
interest of those who are curious in such things. But extraordinary as
they are, I set them forth as matter of hard, solid, undeniable truth.
Throughout my life I have taken ‘Truth’ as my watchword, as my father
and grandfather did before me. It has been my proud boast, warranted by
facts, that my word has been as good as my bond. And in all my dealings
with men of many complexions of mind, no one could or would have
thought of impugning my honour, my _bona fides_, or my veracity. The
business in which I was brought up, after a course at a public school,
and to which I succeeded on the death of my esteemed father, was a very
old-established one, having been founded by my paternal grandfather and
his brother at the beginning of the seventeenth century.
It was in the year 1847, as our business and trade were spreading, that
I opened a branch of our London house in Cuba, and placed a trusted
and experienced manager in charge. Unfortunately this gentleman died
in 1850, after a few days’ illness, of yellow fever, and it became
imperatively necessary that I should proceed at once to Cuba to look
into matters, and appoint a successor to the deceased manager. A City
friend recommended me to take passage in a rather noted sailing vessel
called the _Pride of the Ocean_, belonging to a Liverpool firm, and
then loading in the Liverpool docks, being chartered to proceed direct
to Cuba. I thereupon applied to the owners, and being informed by them
that the ship would be ready to sail in a week at the latest, I engaged
my passage in her. She was a full-rigged ship of about a thousand tons,
and was reputed to be able to sail with a fair wind seventeen knots an
hour, being clipper built.
I arrived in Liverpool on the very day that the ship was advertised to
sail. I was informed that she would warp out of the dock at midnight,
when it would be high-water, and that two tugs would at once take hold
of her and tow her beyond Holyhead. I did not reach Liverpool until
the evening, and drove at once from the railway station to the vessel
and went on board. Of course, everything was in the wildest confusion,
and the noise and hubbub deafening; so, on receiving an assurance from
the mate that I still had three or four hours at my disposal, I drove
to the Adelphi Hotel, dined, played a game of billiards with a London
gentleman with whom I had a passing acquaintance, and at eleven o’clock
once more drove down to the docks and got on board the ship as the dock
gates were being opened. Being very tired I went straight to bed, and
the next morning, as the sea was very rough, I could not get up, as
I am a poor sailor, and generally ill for three or four days at the
commencement of a voyage. On this occasion I was a full week before I
found my sea legs and sea stomach, and one morning I took my place at
the breakfast table for the first time, and was welcomed and greeted by
the captain, whom I had not seen before. We were a very small party,
as there were only three passengers beside myself, one being a Spanish
lady who had been transacting some business in England on behalf of her
husband, who was a Cuban planter.
The captain’s name was Jubal Tredegar, a native of Cornwall, as I
gathered. He was about fifty years of age, and had been at sea for
over thirty. He had a swarthy sunburnt face, very dark hair, and black
eyes, with a full, rounded beard, but clean-shaven upper lip. In
every respect he was a typical sailor, save in one thing--he was the
most melancholy seaman I have ever come across. It is proverbial of
sailors that they are a rollicking, jovial set; but this man was the
exception to the rule, and he at once gave me the impression that he
had something on his mind. My sympathies were in consequence of this
aroused, and I mentally resolved that I would endeavour to win his
confidence, in the hope that I might be of use to him.
At first, however, I found that he was inclined to be taciturn, and
resent any attempt to draw him out; but I learnt from the mate that
Tredegar had commanded the ship for three voyages, and was highly
respected by the owners. He was a thoroughly experienced navigator, and
studied his owners’ interests. There was one thing I could not fail
to note; he showed a disposition to talk more to me than to anyone
else, and discovering that he played a good game at cribbage--a game I
was particularly partial to--I got into closer touch with him, as one
evening he accepted my invitation to a game, and after that we played
whenever opportunity offered. But still he became neither communicative
nor talkative, and no subject I could start appeared to have any
interest for him.
We were playing, as was now our wont, one night in the cuddy after
supper, when I noticed that he seemed more than usually depressed, and
kept examining the barometer and casting an anxious eye up through the
skylight.
‘What does the glass say, captain?’ I asked at last.
‘Well,’ he answered, ‘I think we are going to have a blow. There is
dirty weather about somewhere.’
When four bells (ten o’clock) struck we finished our game and he
went into his cabin, while I mounted the companion-way to the poop,
intending to smoke my usual cigar before turning in. I had run short
of cigars, and the captain had promised to let me have a box of good
Havanas, but not until I reached the deck did I remember that I had not
a single weed in my case, so I went below again, and to the skipper’s
room, intending to ask him for the cigars. Getting no response to my
knock I pushed the door open and was surprised to see him seated at his
table, so absorbed in gazing at the photograph of a lady that he had
not heard my knock. On perceiving me, he hastily thrust the photograph
into a drawer and jumped up. I noticed him pass his hands over his eyes
and turn away as if ashamed, pretending to search for something on the
top of a chest of drawers. I thought it was an opportunity not to be
lost so I said to him:
‘Pray excuse my intrusion; I knocked but you didn’t hear me. I would
also take the liberty of saying I respect your emotion. A man need not
be ashamed of moist eyes when he gazes on the face of some loved one