The Queen of the Pirate Isle | Page 8

encompassed her. Beyond the pleasant
shadows where she sat, she saw the great world of mountain and valley
through a dreamy haze that seemed to rise from the depths below and
occasionally hang before the cavern like a veil. Long waves of spicy
heat rolling up the mountain from the valley brought her the smell of
pine-trees and bay, and made the landscape swim before her eyes. She
could hear the far-off cry of teamsters on some unseen road; she could
see the far-off cloud of dust following the mountain stagecoach, whose
rattling wheels she could not hear. She felt very lonely, but was not
quite afraid; she felt very melancholy, but was not entirely sad; and she
could have easily awakened her sleeping companions if she wished.
No; she was a lone widow with nine children, six of whom were
already in the lone churchyard on the hill, and the others lying ill with
measles and scarlet fever beside her. She had just walked many weary
miles that day, and had often begged from door to door for a slice of
bread for the starving little ones. It was of no use now--they would die!
They would never see their dear mother again. This was a favorite
imaginative situation of Polly's, but only indulged when her
companions were asleep, partly because she could not trust
confederates with her more serious fancies, and partly because they
were at such times passive in her hands. She glanced timidly around.
Satisfied that no one could observe her, she softly visited the bedside of

each of her companions, and administered from a purely fictitious
bottle spoonfuls of invisible medicine. Physical correction in the form
of slight taps, which they always required, and in which Polly was
strong, was only withheld now from a sense of their weak condition.
But in vain; they succumbed to the fell disease,--they always died at
this juncture,--and Polly was left alone. She thought of the little church
where she had once seen a funeral, and remembered the nice smell of
the flowers; she dwelt with melancholy satisfaction of the nine little
tombstones in the graveyard, each with an inscription, and looked
forward with gentle anticipation to the long summer days when, with
Lady Mary in her lap, she would sit on those graves clad in the deepest
mourning. The fact that the unhappy victims at times moved as it were
uneasily in their graves, or snored, did not affect Polly's imaginative
contemplation, nor withhold the tears that gathered in her round eyes.
Presently, the lids of the round eyes began to droop, the landscape
beyond began to be more confused, and sometimes to disappear
entirely and reappear again with startling distinctness. Then a sound of
rippling water from the little stream that flowed from the mouth of the
tunnel soothed her and seemed to carry her away with it, and then
everything was dark.
The next thing that she remembered was that she was apparently being
carried along on some gliding object to the sound of rippling water. She
was not alone, for her three companions were lying beside her, rather
tightly packed and squeezed in the same mysterious vehicle. Even in
the profound darkness that surrounded her, Polly could feel and hear
that they were accompanied, and once or twice a faint streak of light
from the side of the tunnel showed her gigantic shadows walking
slowly on either side of the gliding car. She felt the little hands of her
associates seeking hers, and knew they were awake and conscious, and
she returned to each a reassuring pressure from the large protecting
instinct of her maternal little heart. Presently the car glided into an open
space of bright light, and stopped. The transition from the darkness of
the tunnel at first dazzled their eyes. It was like a dream.
They were in a circular cavern from which three other tunnels, like the
one they had passed through, diverged. The walls, lit up by fifty or
sixty candles stuck at irregular intervals in crevices of the rock, were of
glittering quartz and mica. But more remarkable than all were the

inmates of the cavern, who were ranged round the walls,--men who,
like their attendants, seemed to be of extra stature; who had blackened
faces, wore red bandana handkerchiefs round their heads and their
waists, and carried enormous knives and pistols stuck in their belts. On
a raised platform made of a packing-box on which was rudely painted a
skull and cross-bones, sat the chief or leader of the band covered with a
buffalo robe; on either side of him were two small barrels marked
"Grog" and "Gunpowder." The children stared and clung closer to Polly.
Yet, in spite of these desperate and warlike accessories, the strangers
bore a singular