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Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - "His Last Bow"

William T. Tilden, 2D - "Project Gutenberg surfs with a modem donated by Supra."

Anna Katharine Green - "A Strange Disappearance"

E. Nesbit - "Many Voices"

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FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

The Master of Ballantrae

R >> Robert Louis Stevenson >> The Master of Ballantrae




I heard Mountain whisper to Sir William, "Good God! it's the grave!
He's digging him up!" It was what we had all guessed, and yet to
hear it put in language thrilled me. Sir William violently
started.

"You damned sacrilegious hound!" he cried. "What's this?"

Secundra leaped in the air, a little breathless cry escaped him,
the tool flew from his grasp, and he stood one instant staring at
the speaker. The next, swift as an arrow, he sped for the woods
upon the farther side; and the next again, throwing up his hands
with a violent gesture of resolution, he had begun already to
retrace his steps.

"Well, then, you come, you help - " he was saying. But by now my
lord had stepped beside Sir William; the moon shone fair upon his
face, and the words were still upon Secundra's lips, when he beheld
and recognised his master's enemy. "Him!" he screamed, clasping
his hands, and shrinking on himself.

"Come, come!" said Sir William. "There is none here to do you
harm, if you be innocent; and if you be guilty, your escape is
quite cut off. Speak, what do you here among the graves of the
dead and the remains of the unburied?"

"You no murderer?" inquired Secundra. "You true man? you see me
safe?"

"I will see you safe, if you be innocent," returned Sir William.
"I have said the thing, and I see not wherefore you should doubt
it."

"There all murderers," cried Secundra, "that is why! He kill -
murderer," pointing to Mountain; "there two hire-murderers,"
pointing to my lord and myself - "all gallows - murderers! Ah! I
see you all swing in a rope. Now I go save the sahib; he see you
swing in a rope. The sahib," he continued, pointing to the grave,
"he not dead. He bury, he not dead."

My lord uttered a little noise, moved nearer to the grave, and
stood and stared in it.

"Buried and not dead?" exclaimed Sir William. "What kind of rant
is this?"

"See, sahib," said Secundra. "The sahib and I alone with
murderers; try all way to escape, no way good. Then try this way:
good way in warm climate, good way in India; here, in this dam cold
place, who can tell? I tell you pretty good hurry: you help, you
light a fire, help rub."

"What is the creature talking of?" cried Sir William. "My head
goes round."

"I tell you I bury him alive," said Secundra. "I teach him swallow
his tongue. Now dig him up pretty good hurry, and he not much
worse. You light a fire."

Sir William turned to the nearest of his men. "Light a fire," said
he. "My lot seems to be cast with the insane."

"You good man," returned Secundra. "Now I go dig the sahib up."

He returned as he spoke to the grave, and resumed his former toil.
My lord stood rooted, and I at my lord's side, fearing I knew not
what.

The frost was not yet very deep, and presently the Indian threw
aside his tool, and began to scoop the dirt by handfuls. Then he
disengaged a corner of a buffalo robe; and then I saw hair catch
among his fingers: yet, a moment more, and the moon shone on
something white. Awhile Secundra crouched upon his knees, scraping
with delicate fingers, breathing with puffed lips; and when he
moved aside, I beheld the face of the Master wholly disengaged. It
was deadly white, the eyes closed, the ears and nostrils plugged,
the cheeks fallen, the nose sharp as if in death; but for all he
had lain so many days under the sod, corruption had not approached
him, and (what strangely affected all of us) his lips and chin were
mantled with a swarthy beard.

"My God!" cried Mountain, "he was as smooth as a baby when we laid
him there!"

"They say hair grows upon the dead," observed Sir William; but his
voice was thick and weak.

Secundra paid no heed to our remarks, digging swift as a terrier in
the loose earth. Every moment the form of the Master, swathed in
his buffalo robe, grew more distinct in the bottom of that shallow
trough; the moon shining strong, and the shadows of the standers-
by, as they drew forward and back, falling and flitting over his
emergent countenance. The sight held us with a horror not before
experienced. I dared not look my lord in the face; but for as long
as it lasted, I never observed him to draw breath; and a little in
the background one of the men (I know not whom) burst into a kind
of sobbing.

"Now," said Secundra, "you help me lift him out."

Of the flight of time, I have no idea; it may have been three
hours, and it may have been five, that the Indian laboured to
reanimate his master's body. One thing only I know, that it was
still night, and the moon was not yet set, although it had sunk
low, and now barred the plateau with long shadows, when Secundra
uttered a small cry of satisfaction; and, leaning swiftly forth, I
thought I could myself perceive a change upon that icy countenance
of the unburied. The next moment I beheld his eyelids flutter; the
next they rose entirely, and the week-old corpse looked me for a
moment in the face.

So much display of life I can myself swear to. I have heard from
others that he visibly strove to speak, that his teeth showed in
his beard, and that his brow was contorted as with an agony of pain
and effort. And this may have been; I know not, I was otherwise
engaged. For at that first disclosure of the dead man's eyes, my
Lord Durrisdeer fell to the ground, and when I raised him up, he
was a corpse.

Day came, and still Secundra could not be persuaded to desist from
his unavailing efforts. Sir William, leaving a small party under
my command, proceeded on his embassy with the first light; and
still the Indian rubbed the limbs and breathed in the mouth of the
dead body. You would think such labours might have vitalised a
stone; but, except for that one moment (which was my lord's death),
the black spirit of the Master held aloof from its discarded clay;
and by about the hour of noon, even the faithful servant was at
length convinced. He took it with unshaken quietude.

"Too cold," said he, "good way in India, no good here." And,
asking for some food, which he ravenously devoured as soon as it
was set before him, he drew near to the fire and took his place at
my elbow. In the same spot, as soon as he had eaten, he stretched
himself out, and fell into a childlike slumber, from which I must
arouse him, some hours afterwards, to take his part as one of the
mourners at the double funeral. It was the same throughout; he
seemed to have outlived at once and with the same effort, his grief
for his master and his terror of myself and Mountain.

One of the men left with me was skilled in stone-cutting; and
before Sir William returned to pick us up, I had chiselled on a
boulder this inscription, with a copy of which I may fitly bring my
narrative to a close:


J. D.,

HEIR TO A SCOTTISH TITLE,

A MASTER OF THE ARTS AND GRACES,

ADMIRED IN EUROPE, ASIA, AMERICA,

IN WAR AND PEACE,

IN THE TENTS OF SAVAGE HUNTERS AND THE

CITADELS OF KINGS, AFTER SO MUCH

ACQUIRED, ACCOMPLISHED, AND

ENDURED, LIES HERE FORGOTTEN.

* * * * *

H. D.,

HIS BROTHER,

AFTER A LIFE OF UNMERITED DISTRESS,

BRAVELY SUPPORTED,

DIED ALMOST IN THE SAME HOUR,

AND SLEEPS IN THE SAME GRAVE

WITH HIS FRATERNAL ENEMY.

* * * * *

THE PIETY OF HIS WIFE AND ONE OLD

SERVANT RAISED THIS STONE

TO BOTH.




Footnotes:

(1) A kind of firework made with damp powder.

(2) "NOTE BY MR. MACKELLAR. Should not this be Alan BRECK Stewart,
afterwards notorious as the Appin murderer? The Chevalier is
sometimes very weak on names.

(3) NOTE BY MR. MACKELLAR. This Teach of the SARAH must not be
confused with the celebrated Blackbeard. The dates and facts by no
means tally. It is possible the second Teach may have at once
borrowed the name and imitated the more excessive part of his
manners from the first. Even the Master of Ballantrae could make
admirers.

(4) NOTE BY MR. MACKELLAR. And is not this the whole explanation?
since this Dutton, exactly like the officers, enjoyed the stimulus
of some responsibility.

(5) NOTE BY MR. MACKELLAR: A complete blunder: there was at this
date no word of the marriage: see above in my own narration.

(6) Note by Mr. Mackellar. - Plainly Secundra Dass. - E. McK.

(7) Ordered.

(8) Land steward.

(9) Fooling.

(10) Tear-marked.

(11) Unwilling.

(12) Ring.

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