CHAPTER VI.

The terrible scene, its singular conclusion, the extraordinary mental emotions of every kind which had accompanied and followed my vain researches in the wood, had made my brain whirl. Marie was still stupefied with the danger that she had so narrowly escaped, and some time elapsed before we could frame coherent words, or express ourselves otherwise than by looks and clasping of the hands.

At last I broke the silence.

“Come, Marie, let us leave this, some fatality seems attached to the place.”

She rose eagerly, as if she had only been waiting for my permission to do so, and, leaning upon my arm, we quitted the pavilion. I asked her how it had happened that succour had so opportunely arrived when the danger was so imminent, and if she knew who the slave was who had come to her assistance; for that it was a slave, was shown by his coarse linen trousers—a dress only worn by that unhappy class.

“The man,” replied Marie, “is no doubt one of my father’s negroes who was at work in the vicinity when the appearance of the alligator made me scream, and my cry must have warned him of my danger. All I know is, that he rushed out of the wood and came to my help.”

“From which side did he come?” asked I.

“From the opposite side from which the song came, and into which you had just gone.”

This statement upset the conclusion that I had been drawing from the Spanish words that the negro had addressed to me, and from the song in the same language by my unknown rival. But yet there was a crowd of other similarities. This negro of great height, and powerful muscular development, might well have been the adversary with whom I had struggled on the preceding night. In that case his half-clothed person would furnish a striking proof. The singer in the wood had said, “I am black”—a further proof.

He had declared himself to be a king, and this one was only a slave, but I recollected that in my brief examination I had been surprised at the noble appearance of his features, though of course accompanied by the characteristic signs of the African race.

The more that I thought of his appearance, the nobleness of his deportment, and his magnificent proportions, I felt that there might be some truth in his statement that he had been a king. But then came the crushing blow to my pride: if he had dared to gaze with an eye of affection upon Marie, if he had made her the object of his serenades, he, a negro and a slave, what punishment could be sufficiently severe for his presumption? With these thoughts all my indecision returned again, and again my anger increased against the mysterious unknown. But at the moment that these ideas filled my brain, Marie dissipated them entirely by exclaiming, in her gentle voice—

“My Leopold, we must seek out this brave negro, and pay him the debt of gratitude that we owe him, for without him I should have been lost, for you would have arrived too late.”

These few words had a decisive effect; it did not alter my determination to seek out the slave, but it entirely altered the design with which I sought him, for it was to recompense and not to punish him that I was now eager.

My uncle learned from me that he owed his daughter’s life to the courage of one of his slaves, and he promised me his liberty as soon as I could find him out.