- end_line
- 7713
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T07:57:55.413Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 7652
- text
- sticks into a tree, contrives to free himself from his handcuffs.
Brooding among the ruins of his hut, and the desolate clinkers and
extinct volcanoes of this outcast isle, the insulted misanthrope now
meditates a signal revenge upon humanity, but conceals his purposes.
Vessels still touch the Landing at times; and by-and-by Oberlus is
enabled to supply them with some vegetables.
Warned by his former failure in kidnapping strangers, he now pursues a
quite different plan. When seamen come ashore, he makes up to them like
a free-and-easy comrade, invites them to his hut, and with whatever
affability his red-haired grimness may assume, entreats them to drink
his liquor and be merry. But his guests need little pressing; and so,
soon as rendered insensible, are tied hand and foot, and pitched among
the clinkers, are there concealed till the ship departs, when, finding
themselves entirely dependent upon Oberlus, alarmed at his changed
demeanor, his savage threats, and above all, that shocking blunderbuss,
they willingly enlist under him, becoming his humble slaves, and
Oberlus the most incredible of tyrants. So much so, that two or three
perish beneath his initiating process. He sets the remainder—four of
them—to breaking the caked soil; transporting upon their backs loads of
loamy earth, scooped up in moist clefts among the mountains; keeps them
on the roughest fare; presents his piece at the slightest hint of
insurrection; and in all respects converts them into reptiles at his
feet—plebeian garter-snakes to this Lord Anaconda.
At last, Oberlus contrives to stock his arsenal with four rusty
cutlasses, and an added supply of powder and ball intended for his
blunderbuss. Remitting in good part the labor of his slaves, he now
approves himself a man, or rather devil, of great abilities in the way
of cajoling or coercing others into acquiescence with his own ulterior
designs, however at first abhorrent to them. But indeed, prepared for
almost any eventual evil by their previous lawless life, as a sort of
ranging Cow-Boys of the sea, which had dissolved within them the whole
moral man, so that they were ready to concrete in the first offered
mould of baseness now; rotted down from manhood by their hopeless
misery on the isle; wonted to cringe in all things to their lord,
himself the worst of slaves; these wretches were now become wholly
corrupted to his hands. He used them as creatures of an inferior race;
in short, he gaffles his four animals, and makes murderers of them; out
of cowards fitly manufacturing bravos.
Now, sword or dagger, human arms are but artificial claws and fangs,
tied on like false spurs to the fighting cock. So, we repeat, Oberlus,
czar of the isle, gaffles his four subjects; that is, with intent of
glory, puts four rusty cutlasses into their hands. Like any other
autocrat, he had a noble army now.
It might be thought a servile war would hereupon ensue. Arms in the
hands of trodden slaves? how indiscreet of Emperor Oberlus! Nay, they
had but cutlasses—sad old scythes enough—he a blunderbuss, which by its
blind scatterings of all sorts of boulders, clinkers, and other scoria
would annihilate all four mutineers, like four pigeons at one shot.
Besides, at first he did not sleep in his accustomed hut; every lurid
sunset, for a time, he might have been seen wending his way among the
riven mountains, there to secrete himself till dawn in some sulphurous
pitfall, undiscoverable to his gang; but finding this at last too
troublesome, he now each evening tied his slaves hand and foot, hid the
cutlasses, and thrusting them into his barracks, shut to the door, and
lying down before it, beneath a rude shed lately added, slept out the
night, blunderbuss in hand.
- title
- Chunk 4