Imatges de pàgina
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so;" still he was not so far gone, but he could manage to stagger homewards, with the help of a stout bamboo, and by leaning the other arm on the shoulder of the slave, who now made his appearance with the light.

The residence of Van Klomp was situated in Table Valley, about a mile from the precincts of Cape Town; the night was fine, and the firmament was studded with innumerable twinkling stars; but still it was dark, for the moon had not yet risen; the weather was sultry and oppressive, and Droogsloot (in whose composition fat was the most luxuriant commodity) felt the effects of it; for the perspiration had soaked entirely through his dress of white linen, and poured down his forehead in streams; his person was enormous; in height he exceeded six feet; in rotundity he exceeded the compass of a nine leaguer; one of those characters who think no sum too great to expend upon their own gluttonous appetite, but will not produce a stiver to deliver a friend from a dungeon; his sordid and selfish disposition was only to be equalled by the petty tyranny that he exercised at home towards his family; and the brutal cruelty with which he treated his slaves, one of whom had lately absconded, and was supposed to have joined a horde of runaway convicts and slaves, who had taken refuge among the mountains, and subsisted by plunder. This loss, obviously, occupied his attention; for, as he stumbled, he muttered a torrent of imprecations upon the head of the slave who had deserted from him.

"Oh, hagel!" he exclaimed, "an that scoundrel Joachim, that villainous Malay, who cost me five hundred good dollars, come again into my hands, I'll flay him alive-Pll

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"He, he, he," grinned Peter, inassa, gib him taste o' de sambuck, he, he, dis way massa," continued he, leading Gabriel out of the beaten path; had he not been blind as a bat from the liquor he had taken, he would have perceived that Peter was guiding him in a direction totally opposite to that of his destined course; the dusky outline of the Devil's Mountain might have been discerned straight before them; but he was unconscious of the error, and onwards they went, Peter's lantern just serving to make 'darkness visible.' They had not proceeded far, when Peter cautiously blew out the light, and judging from the disposition of the man whom he was conducting, what his re

ward for this unceremonious transaction would probably be, he very prodently hopped out of the jurisdiction of Mynheer's cane, and in another mo ment, he clapt his fingers into his mouth, and produced a peculiar whistle; immediately a confused sound of voices, and the noise of footsteps, were heard; Droogsloot coupled the name of his attendant with every description of execration that came to his assistance ; and lifting his cudgel above his head, dropped it at random; in its fall it encountered the skull of a man, who fell from the visitation.

His triumph lasted not long, however; he was seized, bound, and (elephantine as he was in bulk) whipped off his legs in an instant, placed on the back of a horse, and the whole party set off at a smart pace towards the foot of the Devil's Mountain. All this was transacted without words being exchanged on either side; neither could Droogsloot extract a syllable from his unknown assailants during their journey. After having travelled in this manner about two miles, the acclivity became too steep for the animal, and Gabriel was forced to dismount. They approached a deep ravine, up which they pursued their course: the sharp pointed rocks cut their way through Mynheer's thin slippers, and lacerated his feet dreadfully, though they had no effect upon those of his companions, which were harder than tanned bull's hide. They were now materially assisted on their way by the light of the moon, which was rising in cloudless majesty from behind the Hottentots' Holland mountains; illuminating with its splendour this scene of wildness. The breeze rustled among the silver trees which covered the hill's side; the harsh cry of the night bird was mingled with the thundering sound of the mountain stream, which, in consequence of heavy rains, had swelled to a torrent, and rushed impetuously downwards, sweeping away everything that impeded its course. They followed its tract a considerable distance, and their hands were often called to their aid in climbing over the rocky precipices that obstructed their progress. All this time was the miserable Dutchman driven on like an ox to the slaughter. The party now ascended the side of the hill, dragging their victim through a thick under wood of bush and brambles, which had well nigh deprived him of his nether garment. At length their career was stayed by a perpendicular mass of grey stone, rising more than

fifty feet in height: one of the men piped a shrill whistle, which was soon answered from above, and a glimmering light shewed several figures fitting to and fro on the brink of the precipice. A rope was lowered, to which a capacious basket was attached; the huge form of Droogsloot was with some difficulty stowed therein, and, on a signal being given, he was hoisted up to the top of the rock, as also the goodly company who escorted him thither.

When landed on terra firma, Gabriel found himself in the society of some twelve or fourteen men; and as far as he could judge from the imperfect light, they were all blacks, who conducted their prisoner round a prominent granite rock, and entered a tissure that was wide enough to permit the passage of the burly Hollander, when they entered a spacious cavern, glow, ing with the light of a sort of flambeau, composed of unravelled rope-yarns, dipped in melted fat, stuck in the midst of a heap of stones. In the centre of the cave an old Malay woman was discovered, seated on the ground, nearly enveloped in sinoke, by the side of a wood fire, in the employment of cooking some dried fish: her features were striking and prominent; the long, matted, grey hair fell over her back; her attire was tattered and ragged; a sheep's hide was drawn round her, in which she endeavoured to muffle herself as closely as possible, excepting when she occasionally stretched out her emaciated bony fingers to turn the fish upon the embers. Her wrinkled face assumed an expression of astonishment as Droog stool made his appearance; as well it might, for such a deplorable figure was rarely presented to human eyes before. He was pale, breathless, and woe-begone; his garments were torn, and the blood streamed down his legs, from the rude assaults of the brambles. He now for the first time encountered the piercing gaze of the Malay, Joachim, his runaway slave, who stood with his arms folded, and his eyes steadily fixed on his late master. Joachim was a tall, finely-formed man, possessed of features strikingly handsome; he was habited in a long dark green jacket, open in front, and which disclosed a red shawl neatly folded across his breast; his trousers were formed of dark cloth, his feet were bare, and his head was covered with a conical hat, composed of rushes. The dreadful conviction now flashed across the mind of Droogsloot that he was brought hither to be but

chered-for well he knew that the revenge of a Malay was deep and terrible. It also occurred to him that Peter must have been in league with the runaways, and had betrayed him into the hands of his enemy; this idea was soon confirmed, for casting his eyes round, he beheld the swarthy visage of Peter grinning from amidst the group.

"Thou wilt not murder me, good Joachim?" exclaimed the Dutchman, in a supplicating tone; "thou can'st not do it,-have mercy for"

"Do'st thou talk of mercy, Mynheer Droogsloot," said the Malay, "who had none for me when I was fiayed by thy orders, for attempting to defend that innocent boy from the lash, my own child," (pointing to an urchin sleeping on a rock.) "but I did not speak of murdering thee.-Joomak," added he, addressing one of his companions, "bind Mynheer's hands, and fasten him to yonder stone, so that he may not escape us."

This command wss obeyed with great alacrity by a man with a bloody pate, whose head and Droogsloot's cudgel had been intimately acquainted a shorter time since.

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"But hear me, Joachim; suffer me to depart, I will enrich ye,-I will give thee thy freedom, and”—

"And will discover my retreat," returned Joachim, catching up his words -" and will hang me; but not so, Mynheer, we will not part till I have settled accounts with thee."

Gabriel finding his entreaties of no avail, sank down doggedly by the side of a stone, to which he was tethered, and at length being exhausted by the mental and bodily exertion he had undergone, fell into a broken and restless slumber. In the morning he was aroused by the Malay, placed between two swarthy natives of Mosambique, and conducted out of the cavern. The scene that opened upon them was awfully grand; Cape Town was situated more than two thousand feet below the eminence upon which they stood, the shipping appeared but as small specks upon the deep blue waters of Table Bay; aad the Atlantic was visible over the top of the Lion's Head. Table Mountain rose frowningly on one hand, and on the other, the Peak of the Devil's Head, enveloped in clouds, towered high above them; the bright green of the vineyards, which were scattered in small patches below, contrasted strongly with the dusky brown of the mountains; on the opposite side of the Bay were to be

Seen Tiger Berg, and Groene Kloof, and the view was terminated by immense ridges of mountains.

"Hark ye, Mynheer," said Joachim; "old Hendrik, the boatman, will await us in Hout's Bay this night, and will convey all these wretched creatures, who have been driven hither by the tyranny of their masters along the coast to some place where they may rest from oppression. I have served thee faithfully, and truly, till by thy brutal usage I was driven from thy dwelling; now shalt thou be to me what I was to thee, my slave; thou art in my power, and no earthly price shall rob me of my just revenge. Contentedly would I bave toiled for thee until death eased me 'of my sufferings, had I been requited by kindness; but stripes were my only reward."

"Spare me," groaned Droogsloot, as he grovelled on the earth before the Malay ; Spare me, and I will enrich ye beyond the reach of want."

Ha, ha, ha,"laughed Joachim, with bitter irony," thinkest thou I have lived three years beneath thy roof, without knowing where to put my hand upon thy strong hold-bring forward the chest, Tumak Behold. Mynheer, the god thou worshippest !"

The man brought an oak chest, strongly bound with iron bars, and studded with large-headed nails. At the sight of the well known treasure, Gabriel uttered a cry of frenzy, "Strache mich helli!" he exclaimed, starting on his feet, "shall I bear with this?" and, for a moment seeming to forget his dastardly nature, he sprang on the Malay. The strength of Gabriel, when exerted, was immense; they closed, both fell reeling to the ground; they rolled in each other's grasp to the brink of the precipice; a fragment gave way, and they fell; a deep groan from the Dutchman, and a piercing cry from the Malay, told their fate. Their bodies were dreadfully mangled;Joachim was already dead, but the other still writhed in his agonies; they lasted not long, however, for an enormous stone rolled clanging down the steep, and falling directly on his head, crushed out his brains in an instant, and at once sealed the doom of Gabriel Droogsloot.

WILLIAM HENRY.

THE RED COATED GENTLEMAN.

A FEW evenings before, I had accompanied a friend to a coffee house, intending to read the newspapers whilst

he went up to the billiard room. I called for a glass of Dantzic and water, and the Moniteur, and while the waiter was bringing them, I looked round at my fellow-loungers. At a table near me sat two grave elderly gentlemen, with powdered heads, and long queus, deep in a gaine of chess. A knot of young men, most of whom their dress proclaimed to be students, occupied the window in earnest discourse respecting supernatural appearances, and the nature of the human soul; and a singular personage in a kind of scarlet surtout with long skirts, was pacing up and down the room; his hands behind his back, and a goldheaded cane under the left arm. Sometimes he stopped for a moment, and appeared to listen to the argument in the window, and sometimes he looked at the chess-players. The singularity of his figure and countenance completely diverted my attention from the events of the Spanish campaign; and I could think of nothing else. He was below the middle size, bony, and broadshouldered. By his face I should have judged him about fifty; but a considerable stoop, made him appear, at first, much older. Glossy, pitch-black hair, hung straight and thick about his sallow visage; a long hooked nose drooped over thin and firmly compressed lips; and large dark eyes, whose brilliancy and animation, unnaturally contrasted with the cold impassibility of the other features, glittered beneath shaggy projecting eye-brows. It was altogether a countenance worthy of a hangman, a grand inquisitor, or a captain of banditti.

"The owner of such a face," thought I, " would burn a city, or spike a score of infants. for pastime. For worlds I would not travel alone with him through a forest. Surely such a mouth can never have smiled, even in childhood."

In this conclusion, however, I was mistaken; for just then he stopped near the students, and laughed at what they were saying. But-God preserve us! what a laugh! It made my blood run cold. It was a grin of hellish malice-my eyes glanced involuntarily downwards, in expectation of seeing the cloven foot, and, true enough, the feet were not fellows. One, only, resembled a human foot; the other misshapen member was covered by a boot of peculiar form; and yet he did not limp; but, on the contrary, he glided along as gently as if he had been walking on egg-shells, and afraid of crushing them.

I had forgotten the anxiety for news with which I had entered the coffeehouse; but I still held the paper in my hand, and looked over it at the hideous being by whom I felt spell-bound.

"Presently, as he was passing the chess-players, one of them said to his adversary in a tone of exultation, 'You are done for at last, I think.' The Red-coat stood still-his dark eye glanced rapidly over the board, and he said, 'You will find yourself mistaken, Sir, you are checkmated at the third move.' His tones were low, sweet, and clear; the player, who had spoken, looked up with a supercilious smile, and the perplexed adversary shook his head incredulously as he moved his piece: he moved again-and 'checkmate.'

The combatants re-marshalled their men, and commenced a new game. The Red-coat pursued his walk, and presently, stopped again, and listened to the discussion in the window. One of the speakers addressed him abruptly, 'You seem interested in our argument, Sir. But your smile would imply that you entertain opposite opinions from mine respecting the divine and human natures. Have you read Schelling?"

"I have."

“And, may I ask, why you smiled just now?

"Schelling,' replied the Red-coat, 'is a sharp-witted, sagacious poet, who gives the dexterous flights of his imagination for truths, secure that he can only be answered by other dreams, which required still greater acuteness than his own to defend. Philosophers are still what they have ever been. The blind dispute about the theory of colours and the deaf about the laws of harmony. Just as Alexander would have thrown a bridge up to the moon to carry his conquests into another world -so philosophers, dissatisfied within the boundaries of reason, would carry their arguments beyond it.'

From Lights and Shadows of German Life.

A BELL-RINGER'S NARRATIVE. For the Olio.

For sorrow, custom, feasting, prize, or gay,
I could pursue the " tenor" of my way:
And I could lead, or follow every change,
In which the bells, delighted, seemed to range.

PREPATRONAGE and patrimony ushered me into this line of life, and the ropes were pulled with more than provincial

eloquence at my birth by my joy-feeling relations, that hoped, at least, if they did not leave me land to leave the free use of the "tufts" in the belfry, as long as I, like the bull in Cock Robin, could pull them, or let an unprunning eel-like rope slip out of my fingers, through the eyelet holes in the way to the tower loft. At my christening, which did not take place till i was many months old, in a sunny afternoon, when the revel was kept in the kindest spirit of hospitality, it is fanciedly said, I was rejoiced to hear the mounting chime of five silvery-tongued notes sounding softly, loud and louder, in the circumjacent sceneries; and the sweet echoes from a distant mill replied in gratulatory imitation and undulating melody. The first present I received was given me on this signal day, when the flag was hoisted; it was a set of coral bells, which, I am told since by those of my friends present in the church, when my face was sprinkled in the ceremony, I dashed passionately in the curate's arms, and struggled right and left with a hearty cry, to the full satisfaction of my parents and the attending goodies. "Ezekiel's one of the'old sort," said uncle Tobit, the best ringer of swine in the county. "Ay, that he is, to a dead certainty," uncle Simeon, the blacksmith, a famous ringer of iron-fastening, from ringing the bull to a bed-curtain, replied.

Simeon, or uncle Sim, as he was called, lived over against the churchyard, and his leisure was not unfrequently filled with the "town in danger" tradesmen, that sat and talked the news of weal and wail in the corners of the sign of the Five Bells, a courtyard from the road, or in the smithy.

As I was to be the adopted child, much discussion arose, whether I should follow the calling of my father-a wheelwright, or not; or take my post at the anvil with uncle Simeon; or visit the farmers professionally with uncle Tobit, to be a terror to the nasal organs of the pig-my race, whose "withers were unrung" Many conjectured as to my future greatness; and all agreed that I evinced acuteness of genius. The philoprogenitive prizes of hats and hose were laid by for me when my head and legs were grown large enough to wear them; and, after being taught to wander in a go-cart with tolerable assurance, I commenced and completed my education at the Ma'am's school, where I used to ring the bells under the forms by swinging my legs. No Sunday seminaries, or infant establishments, for finishing,

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being in propagation when I first fin-gered the Horn-book, and traced the Psalter.

As I grew older, and, I hope, wiser, it was proposed that I should endure a month's trial with each of my uncles. Only imagine the pleasing novelty I felt in principio. Arrived at a large farmer's range of Augean styes. I gloried in my strength, and my fingers itched, or rather tingled, like the pseudohero in the duel. "We shall have a rare peal to-day, Zekiel," said uncle Tobit. Each of us was arrayed in thick high boots, hedgers' gloves and blue frocks. To forward our operations, we dragged a sturdy spotted urchin forth from his family of the council of ́ten, squeaking most unmusically, most melancholly. The farmer's daughters and dame, by anticipation, were peeping through the dairy with imploring Ahands and beseeching looks. The old farmer, leaning calmly over the wicket, and his herdsman beating down the grunting and agitated mother of many generations, as she thrust her opening jaws and awful tusks through an aperture of her adjoining littered dwelling, disdainful of danger, anxious to rush on the foe. When uncle had secured his captive, and pressing the head between his knees, he performed the art, by forcing the sharp points of the ring through the snout-holding the leathers, the pincers and rings, I assisted him. He curled the ends to the nostrils, and with a jerk let off the frightened wight into the paddock, pleased to find the pinch in the nose no worse-the farmer remarking, as he threw a handful of peas, "Egad, thou may'st drill the ground at thy leisure now." One after the other, we treated in a similar way, till they were rung for better or for worse. By attention, at the expiration of the month, I imagined I was able to perform my uncle's art with credit, and he regretted the contract,-to “ try my liking" with ancle Sim.

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Attired in a Smith's costume, with shirt sleeves curled up to my shoulders, and an apron touching my feet, a badger skin cap and tight and ready for the sparks, I laid one hand on the bellows handle, and stirred the reddening iron in the small-coal, roaring fire with the other, pressing a long pair of forceps, then beating out the yielding metal with might and main on the shining and illuminated anvil. A little experience made me expert in the smithy, and there was no doubt I should make a good bell-hanger.

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But for an accident, bere necessary to relate, I should have fixed my choice in the penthouse, in preference to reforming the swinish multitude. Recollect it was within sight of the belfry, and I was learning to ring. In a dark winter night when the villagers had retired from the fire to rest, a stranger in knightly gear stopped and dismounted. He held the rein of a beautifully proportioned palfrey as white as snow, advancing with the larger one he rode, and gently lifted off a lady fair," partly veiled and habited in warm cloth and fur. The wind gushed mournfully by the penthouse, as they entered it. She leant on his shoulder and seemed faint. I called down aunt, half alarmed, who brought her a seat, for she would not go into the house, while uncle examined the palfrey's hoof that had been lamed. She sat down, the stranger requesting speed and clasping her hand to his quivering and whispering lips. As I held the lantern and tool-box to my uncle, I could see the silent tear-drop, chastened on her cheek. As I altered my position, I saw the tall terrific figure of a man, with his horse drawn parallel behind him, wrapped in a cloak, just peeping round the post at the eaves, with a dagger clutched in the fist that clenched his covering. I trembled in the glare of his eyes. As I held the lantern's open door towards the place, never before scared, by goblin grim, or demon shade, my heart almost chilled dead. The lantern dropped from my hold. A pistol was fired-but I knew not at whom-the ball passed my shoulder and stunned the stranger knight. A second report followed-the milk-white palfrey fell. A sudden rush was made by the stranger without at the lady. By the sparks of the forge I saw his arm round her waist, and he mounted quicker than lightning. The tramp of his horse's heels echoed against the walls. The intervals were filled by screams, and the stranger knight recovering his confusion, he drew a pistol from the holster, and with equal quickness mounted his horse, threw down a piece of money, and said—" Bury the poor creature decently-nor let a dog taste its flesh." We complied on the morrow,-gazing wildly through the dim discernment of the spheres.

I began to think a blacksmith's life rather too experimental. Besides, ere my month expired, I received many unfriendly kicks and treads; and pieces of flesh were twice bitten out of my arms by saucy racing fillies, one of

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