Read Online Selected Prose of Heinrich Von Kleist by Heinrich von Kleist - Free Book Online Page B

women, and children surrounded her, “Which one is Monsieur Strömli?” he cheerfully introduced her to the aging head of the family. “Noble Sir,” she said, with a firm voice interrupting the latter’s warm greeting, “the Negro Hoango unexpectedly returned home with his entire force. You cannot now find refuge here without risk to your life; indeed, your nephew, who, alas, was duped by the ploy, is lost if you don’t immediately take up arms and follow me to rescue him from the plantation where the Negro Hoango is holding him captive!” “God in Heaven!” all the members of the terror-stricken family cried out in unison; and the mother, who was ill and drained by the difficult journey, fell unconscious from the pack animal to the ground. While the maids leapt forward, on Monsieur Strömli’s orders, to help his wife, Toni, fearing Nanky’s inquisitive ears and all the while showered with questions from the sons, took Monsieur Strömli and the other men aside. And making no attempt to hold back her tears of shame and compunction, she told them everything that had happened; how matters stood at the moment the young man arrived at the house; how the intimate conversation she had with him unexpectedly changed everything;what she had done, half-crazy with terror, upon the Negro’s arrival, and how she was now resolved to risk her life to save him from the trap she herself had led him into. “My weapons!” cried Monsieur Strömli, rushing to his wife’s mule and pulling out his musket. And while his brave sons Adelbert and Gottfried and the three stout-hearted servants likewise reached for their arms, he said: “Our nephew Gustav saved more than one of our lives, now it’s up to us to do the same for him.” Whereupon he hoisted his wife, who had meanwhile regained consciousness, back onto the mule; as an added precaution, he had Nanky taken as a sort of hostage with his hands bound; sent his wife and little children and the maids, under the armed guard of his thirteen-year-old son Ferdinand back to the seagull pond; and after sounding out Toni, who had herself taken up helmet and sword, as to the strength of the Negro’s force and their positioning in the courtyard, and having assured her that he would do his best to spare Hoango as well as her mother, bravely putting himself in the hands of God, taking the lead of his little troop, he set off after Toni back to the plantation.
    As soon as the group slipped through the rear gate, Toni pointed out to Monsieur Strömli the room in which Hoango and Babekan slept; and while Strömli and his people entered the house without making a sound and seized all of the Negroes’ guns, Toni slunk off to the stable in which Nanky’s five-year-old half-brother Seppy slept. For Nanky and Seppy, bastard sons of old Hoango, were both very dear to him, particularly the latter, whose mother had recently died; and since, if they succeeded in freeing the young captive, the return to the seagull pond and their escape from there to Port au Prince – as she resolved to join them – would still involve considerablerisk, she reasoned, not incorrectly, that the two boys would come in very handy as hostages in their likely pursuit by the Negroes. She succeeded, unseen, in lifting the boy out of his bed and carrying him in her arms, half-asleep, half-awake, back to the main house. Meanwhile, Monsieur Strömli and his men managed as stealthily as possible to enter Hoango’s quarters; but instead of finding him and Babekan in bed, as Strömli expected, the two, roused by the sound, stood there, albeit half-naked and helpless, in the middle of the room. Musket raised, Monsieur Strömli cried out: “Yield or you’re dead!” But in lieu of a reply, Hoango tore a pistol from off the wall and fired, strafing Monsieur Strömli’s head. Hereupon, Strömli’s men fell upon the