Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 February 1893 — THE ESCAPE. [ARTICLE]

THE ESCAPE.

BY W. DELAPLAINE SCULL.

The last palisade—over! and limbs long stiffened felt lissom once more with the life of twenty-live. Now for a slow and cautious creep along the gully by which water came into the township; later on he would bethink him of that narrow escape at the third doorway. Whisht! a man’s bead in the road, and he bent down once more behind the earth-ridge and pushed his way upstream with difficulty, showing as little of himself as possible. It was an officer coming into the town late. Very silently; the moon was troublesome to one just escapiug, but, praise the Lord, who watches over bold Englishmen, the guard had not yet discovered their loss, and the water was bearably cold. Never return thuuks too soon! The officer reined his horse on a rising slope, and, turning in hissnddle, glauced back over the shadow-dappled land so that his eye, running up the shiny ribbon o[ stream, suddenly the black dot laboring tnvay against its current. Instincts of destruction ran along the nerves of his hand; he drew a pistol and fired, sending a splash of water over John’s head, while the echoes smote the fortress-walls and lost themselves in the woodlands behind. A low cla (or rose out of San Jago; John rose out of the stream and ran to the copses. The Spaniard spurred after him with drawn sword, eager for the pleasure of slicing him wheu caught up; in a few minutes he was alongside, but this being a shadowed spot he stayed his hand overhead till the stroke should be sure. In that moment John doubled like a hare and rushed desperately at the soldier, who reined up all at once and brought down his blade—vainly. For the cunning Englishman ducked under the horse’s body, then popped out, seized his foe’s leg and foot, and with a sudden tierce heave shot the soldier sideways out of his saddle and on to his head. There he lay brokennecked, while the victor grasped the bridle, bent to earth and snatched the sword, mounted the animal and stuck the weapon’s point into its haunch; off shot the horse with a snort of pain, while the clatter of pursuers arose behind, finally sinking away as the pine trees dew by. Then, as the moon entered a thick cloud bank, they came to an open prairie, and onward into darkness they went without more than the slightest of stumbles. Several miles; the horse began to breathe hard and sob, then settled into a slow trot.

More miles. The trot became a walk, and the walk more difficult; more miles jet, very long ones, and the earth went up and down as the darkness became gray—there were low hills and shallow ravines, then came rocks, and ledges, and cliffs; the gray speedily thinned, the horse stopped at a clill wall. To the right, to the left, John looked for an opening: there was none. He raised his hands, licked a finger of the cleanest, thought he felt a faint freshness on the left side of it, and so turned in that direction. After some hundred yards he came to a crack in the wall; he pushed into it. There was hardly room at first, then it widened into a chasm, and wound along in darkness with a band of light at the top —then came a sudden descent, and the wearied creature he rode stumbled and threw him into a pool of water. The shock of the plunge brought him together again. He struggled beneath the water, came up at last, half choked, and pulled himself upon a rocky ledge with the sword still hanging from his wrist. Looking for the horse, he saw nothing but a violent commotion on the water surface, which presently ceased; a few air bubbles came to the top and

broke, that was all; his rescuer had ended its life in the depths from which he had escaped. Then he sat for a space, and thought; he could not stay there, they would track him to the rock wall and cleft; was there another way to the other side? The cold, shut-in lake was quite still now, the cleft by which he had come in was dimly visible across the dark level; he stood up and looked behind him ; the cleft continued there like a narrow road upward. Then he knew that he had come to the hidden source of the stream that passed mysteriously underground, and came to daylight in the country where the Spaniards had placed Fort San Jago. He went along the chasm and after an hour or two stood on the platform; bare rock and nothing else; he went on higher still, with hunger asserting itself, miles and more miles yet. The sun came out and sent yellow rays across the pinnacles, casting purple shadows as queerly shaped as they. He climbed the highest of these rock-teeth and saw a vmstu pward plain, with an orange-tinted lim; bore and there gray twists, where a slight valley came, and a few lonely ■tones—really great boulders of a primeval -tea; he looked behind and only a faint green tinge on that horizon indicated the grass country of San Jago, but he felt that even now they might be at the cWt in tbe rock-wall, those SDan-

iards who treated captives so hardly, so there was no course but forward. Forward then he went, and the sand became thick and soft underfoot so that he had to use the long, Spanish blade to help him in walking. At last even that beeame an emeumbmnee and he would have cast it away, only the knot had become twisted and would only take a little time to undo, so he kept it out of indolence and ebbing wits. Here and there came a harder surface which was restful to the feet, and then he would sink for a space and try to liopo he might get across this place: then he went on and on. with the glare iu his eyes from below and ahot, gray sky overhead. The sun heated his wet rasrs; they became burning moist; they blistered bis back, sore already from the payment of yesterday’s forced labor in tbe fortress; he had to turn round at times and give his back a relief by being roasted in front. At last the whole place swam round him, there came moments when he seemed treading over a crimson waste under a vermilion skv, and with the first pains of thirst deadening the ache of huuger he lay down iu the shadow of the first rock lie reached. There he stayed till no shadow was left, shrinking away from the hot, encroaching yellow till lie was at last covered by it, then rose again and plodded along through the scorching hours with burnt feet in his crackling old shoes.

His wits were all ablur, but his bodily senses felt that the whole la' 1 lay on a vast upward slope, a continual gentle pressure back, as it were, to each toilsome step he took. In the late afternoon lie felt a slight pulling tendeuev, a sign that he was on an imperceptible descent; then came a delicate long pleat in the sand, the ascent began again, and he fell stupidly down, with some indistinct fancy of staying there till nothing was left of him but bones—baked, dusty bones. But when his face touched the hot sand he got up again and trod on. He had no fear of pursuit now, for he was in the Thirst Land no man entered to return. The Spaniards had spoken of it, and they had let him go into it, knowing it was but taking the labor of liis destruction off their own hands. lie could imagine them cousoliug themselves for the loss of the horse and officer by telling again the tales of the desert; how to go into it for an hour was to be lost, and to be lost was to wander round on one’s steps, which meant death finally. Then he resolved to lie down and bear his pains as a valiant man might, till night should come and he could follow one of the stars. By this time a little shadow lay at his feet, there was a rock not far away, and he went and lay down there, trying to be sensible and steadyheaded. He was glad he kept the sword now, because if his miseries became too .sore he had with it a way to cut them; sleep was denied him by the keen thirst that baked his tongue into wood, but it was much to escape the red-hot fingers of the sun.

As he lay therewith his battered old hat over his face the stillness came terribly on him at times. He thought he heard distant voices calling, and fancied Shiite foe had crept up to the other side of flic slone and was stealing round on him —then it seemed to him as if he was lying on English sand and the sea was foaming round Plymouth breakwater hard by—then he raised his hat for the fortieth time to think for the fortieth time of this great Thirst Land, before his lightheadedness began once more, together with the burning ache for water iu every flesh-atom. The shadow lengthened, the sand in it cooled, the relief was grateful, though small. Later on the sun went down, a red globe in a purple haze; the stars appeared. and he followed one for a long time till he got among rocks and bruised his body against them in the dark. It was of no use going on till moonrise; he lay there on the stony floor, aud his thirst kept him from feeling the hardness of it —for a while.

At last he could bear it no longer, but rose and ran on, then presently struck against one of the ’stones and fell, stunned, as he hud fallen before out in the sand tracks. Still the man was not beaten. When he had recovered he wiped his heavy eyes with the back of his hand and felt his way along through that rocky maze, tapping his sword on each side and following the passages, holding on to his star with all the bulldog instinct of his race. At last the moon came out and lit the plain, showing it mounting up and up in a long, slow slope till the eye lost it in darkness, hut covered so fur with stones, stones, stones, like the graveyard of the whole human race. So he went on, rattling his tongue about in iiis arid mouth, wondering why he did not lie down and die at once, why he did not at once fall down on his blade aird end his portion of life, yet persevering all the time, no unworthy man of his countryside and yoeman name. He had no visions now, in the night; they were reserved for the treacherous day, when the guiding stars should be hidden. So through the long hours he travelled, and at last sh (1 filed out iuto places where the stones, that dreadful multitude all exactly alike, stood in groups only. The moon sped on her course, and the ground underfoot sent a ring from his steel-stall —it was rock. Then the stones ceased altogether and a series of low ridges came; they taxed his shaky legs and arms to their full, low though they were, so that he lay down to rest on each as he got upon it. Then he clime to the long ridge, highest of all this huge inclined land, and saw its edge winding away to right, to left, for miles in the hard moonlight, and the rock floor sloping downward far below him, for miles and miles more.

Looking behind, the sight of the fearful maze of wilderness he had wonderfully come through tilled him with terror, and he fled away from it, down and on, only to fall again like a child. Then for awhile his tortured frame could carry him uo more; there he lay, deliriously mumbling about streams, and lakes, and fountains, till the sun came and struck his bare head with its hot rays. Still he lay there, now awake and, strange to say, not mad, though very Weak, sorely suffering, and hardly able to think it all. Indeed, he did not think, but merely followed up his instinct when he crawled up on to his feet and staggered along, swaying one way for many paces, then the other, hanging his hands and head, moaning in a dry, broken way, like a cut bellows, yet still going on. And then his dim eye received a refreshing momentary coolness—a plant growing green ai his feet 1 Down he sank \ipon it, seized it,chewed the dusty leaves; there were little driblets of earth here and there. Another bit of green caught his eye; he raised his heavy head, and saw that 100 paces away the plateau on which he stood broke off sheer. He had crossed the desert, for down there, 3,000 feet below, were green plains, palms, and a river, and beyond—the blue Pacific! The poor, wasted creature raised his bony, cracked claws and gurgled with triumph. He had cheated the Spaniards and the Thirst Lands; hurrah 1

And there were more plants nearer the edge; to them he hastened, with the blade still dragging from his wrist., to fall prone on a little group of them, and on a huge puff-adder lying almost invisible along an earth-grove. Instantly the beast drew back its head and struck him on the bare leg; then fled. A rage tilled him; he seized the sword in both shaking hands, brought it down nt the marked back, missed it, fell forward, and the steel bent and broke under him as the enemy glided awav. But after it he panted with the strength of revenge; caught it up as it twisted by a large stone, pushing the stone over its neck by an effort, aud, kneeling, cut its writhing body into long strips with the fragment of his blade. Then he got back somehow to the green tufts, and while the poison worked its way to his heart, sweetened his last moments of life with those leaves, till a stupor came over him and he slept with his destroyer the sleep of death on the border of the Sweet Palm Coast, as the Indians called it in their tongue. Such was the escape of John Tisden, whose bones have long become dust, the only man who ever crossed the Tierra dc Sed.—[Black and White.