THE BATTALION.
17
many more might there not be, unknown to him? His sole
desire was to regain his horse, to mount, and away into the
night. But before he went, he took the precaution to tie the
woman’s feet also. Fortunately the horse was still in the
stable and seemed to be well cared for. He mounted and
rode away with all the speed he could make. What he fear
ed now more than the murderous robbers was the being de
tained in Charleston as witness. It was absolutely necessary
that he should sail away in the Lucifer that day.
So he contented himself with leaving in the room of his
brief lodgings in Charleston, a clear account of what had hap
pened the night before in the inn at Rantowles.
Years after he learned that an armed force had gone ere the
close of that day to the inn, had found Ahab the negro dead,
Mrs. Basmorne tied and almost bursting with rage, and Pas
cal Basmorne bleeding but not dead. The other inmates of
the inn, at sight of the bloody piazza the next morning after
the affray, had fled. The wretched pair had lain there in
agony until the coming of their captors. Basmorne had lived
to confess his crime, which he declared he had undertaken
through the urgency of his wife. They had only practised
their device upon solitary travelers. In the night, when the
wearied man was sound asleep, iron rods were drawn out of
the ceiling of the kitchen, which at once opened a trapdoor
under the bed and turned over the contents of the bed into
the boiling caldron below. Before day the murdered man
was buried far away in the woods, the horse was ridden off
and hidden in the swamp until all inquiry was over and he
could be safely sold, and the money the man had about him
was secureiy put away. The clothes were invariably burned
or buried. It is hard to say how many murders had been
committed in this way. Pascal Basmorne died of his wound
before he could be fully questioned. As for his horrible wife
Drusilla Basmorne, though she denied all, the infernal trap
was there to witness against her, and she was convicted of
the murder of one Josiah Felton, who had disappeared wholly
a month before, but whose body was found buried half a mile