CHAPTER XV
The next day we were early at work. Nuflo had already gathered, dried,and conveyed to a place of concealment the greater portion of his gardenproduce. He was determined to leave nothing to be taken by any wanderingparty of savages that might call at the house during our absence. He hadno fear of a visit from his neighbours; they would not know, he said,that he and Rima were out of the wood. A few large earthen pots, filledwith shelled maize, beans, and sun-dried strips of pumpkin, stillremained to be disposed of. Taking up one of these vessels and askingme to follow with another, he started off through the wood. We went adistance of five or six hundred yards, then made our way down a verysteep incline, close to the border of the forest on the western side.Arrived at the bottom, we followed the bank a little further, and I thenfound myself once more at the foot of the precipice over which I haddesperately thrown myself on the stormy evening after the snake hadbitten me. Nuflo, stealing silently and softly before me through thebushes, had observed a caution and secrecy in approaching this spotresembling that of a wise old hen when she visits her hidden nest to layan egg. And here was his nest, his most secret treasure-house, which hehad probably not revealed even to me without a sharp inward conflict,notwithstanding that our fates were now linked together. The lowerportion of the bank was of rock; and in it, about ten or twelve feetabove the ground, but easily reached from below, there was a naturalcavity large enough to contain all his portable property. Here, besidesthe food-stuff, he had already stored a quantity of dried tobacco leaf,his rude weapons, cooking utensils, ropes, mats, and other objects. Twoor three more journeys were made for the remaining pots, after whichwe adjusted a slab of sandstone to the opening, which was fortunatelynarrow, plastered up the crevices with clay, and covered them over withmoss to hide all traces of our work.
Towards evening, after we had refreshed ourselves with a long siesta,Nuflo brought out from some other hiding-place two sacks; one weighingabout twenty pounds and containing smoke-dried meat, also grease and gumfor lighting-purposes, and a few other small objects. This was his load;the other sack, which was smaller and contained parched corn and rawbeans, was for me to carry.
The old man, cautious in all his movements, always acting as ifsurrounded by invisible spies, delayed setting out until an hour afterdark. Then, skirting the forest on its west side, we left Ytaioa on ourright hand, and after travelling over rough, difficult ground, with onlythe stars to light us, we saw the waning moon rise not long before dawn.Our course had been a north-easterly one at first; now it was due east,with broad, dry savannahs and patches of open forest as far as we couldsee before us. It was weary walking on that first night, and wearywaiting on the first day when we sat in the shade during the long, hothours, persecuted by small stinging flies; but the days and nights thatsucceeded were far worse, when the weather became bad with intense heatand frequent heavy falls of rain. The one compensation I had looked for,which would have outweighed all the extreme discomforts we suffered,was denied me. Rima was no more to me or with me now than she had beenduring those wild days in her native woods, when every bush and bole andtangled creeper or fern frond had joined in a conspiracy to keep herout of my sight. It is true that at intervals in the daytime she wasvisible, sometimes within speaking distance, so that I could addressa few words to her, but there was no companionship, and we were fellowtravellers only like birds flying independently in the same direction,not so widely separated but that they can occasionally hear and see eachother. The pilgrim in the desert is sometimes attended by a bird, andthe bird, with its freer motions, will often leave him a league behindand seem lost to him, but only to return and show its form again; forit has never lost sight nor recollection of the traveller toiling slowlyover the surface. Rima kept us company in some such wild erratic way asthat. A word, a sign from Nuflo was enough for her to know the directionto take--the distant forest or still more distant mountain near which weshould have to pass. She would hasten on and be lost to our sight, andwhen there was a forest in the way she would explore it, resting in theshade and finding her own food; but invariably she was before us at eachresting- or camping-place.
Indian villages were seen during the journey, but only to be avoided;and in like manner, if we caught sight of Indians travelling or campingat a distance, we would alter our course, or conceal ourselves to escapeobservation. Only on one occasion, two days after setting out, were wecompelled to speak with strangers. We were going round a hill, and allat once came face to face with three persons travelling in an oppositedirection--two men and a woman, and, by a strange fatality, Rima at thatmoment happened to be with us. We stood for some time talking to thesepeople, who were evidently surprised at our appearance, and wishedto learn who we were; but Nuflo, who spoke their language like one ofthemselves, was too cunning to give any true answer. They, on theirside, told us that they had been to visit a relative at Chani, the nameof a river three days ahead of us, and were now returning to their ownvillage at Baila-baila, two days beyond Parahuari. After parting fromthem Nuflo was much troubled in his mind for the rest of that day. Thesepeople, he said, would probably rest at some Parahuari village,where they would be sure to give a description of us, and so it mighteventually come to the knowledge of our unneighbourly neighbour Runithat we had left Ytaioa.
Other incidents of our long and wearisome journey need not be related.Sitting under some shady tree during the sultry hours, with Rima onlytoo far out of earshot, or by the nightly fire, the old man told melittle by little and with much digression, chiefly on sacred subjects,the strange story of the girl's origin.
About seventeen years back--Nuflo had no sure method to compute timeby--when he was already verging on old age, he was one of a companyof nine men, living a kind of roving life in the very part of Guayanathrough which we were now travelling; the others, much younger thanhimself, were all equally offenders against the laws of Venezuela,and fugitives from justice. Nuflo was the leader of this gang, for ithappened that he had passed a great portion of his life outside the paleof civilization, and could talk the Indian language, and knew this partof Guayana intimately. But according to his own account he was not inharmony with them. They were bold, desperate men, whose evil appetiteshad so far only been whetted by the crimes they had committed; while he,with passions worn out, recalling his many bad acts, and with a vividconviction of the truth of all he had been taught in early life--forNuflo was nothing if not religious--was now grown timid and desirousonly of making his peace with Heaven. This difference of dispositionmade him morose and quarrelsome with his companions; and they would, hesaid, have murdered him without remorse if he had not been so useful tothem. Their favourite plan was to hang about the neighbourhood of somesmall isolated settlement, keeping a watch on it, and, when most of themale inhabitants were absent, to swoop down on it and work their will.Now, shortly after one of these raids it happened that a woman they hadcarried off, becoming a burden to them, was flung into a river to thealligators; but when being dragged down to the waterside she cast upher eyes, and in a loud voice cried to God to execute vengeance onher murderers. Nuflo affirmed that he took no part in this black deed;nevertheless, the woman's dying appeal to Heaven preyed on his mind;he feared that it might have won a hearing, and the "person" eventuallycommissioned to execute vengeance--after the usual days, of course mightact on the principle of the old proverb: Tell me whom you are with, andI will tell you what you are--and punish the innocent (himself towit) along with the guilty. But while thus anxious about his spiritualinterests, he was not yet prepared to break with his companions. Hethought it best to temporize, and succeeded in persuading them that itwould be unsafe to attack another Christian settlement for some time tocome; that in the interval they might find some pleasure, if no greatcredit, by turning their attention to the Indians. The infidels, hesaid, were God's natural enemies and fair game to the Christian. Tomake a long story short, Nuflo's Christian band, after some successfuladventures, met with a reverse which reduced their number from nineto five. Fl
ying from their enemies, they sought safety at Riolama, anuninhabited place, where they found it possible to exist for some weekson game, which was abundant, and wild fruits.
One day at noon, while ascending a mountain at the southern extremityof the Riolama range in order to get a view of the country beyond thesummit, Nuflo and his companions discovered a cave; and finding itdry, without animal occupants, and with a level floor, they at oncedetermined to make it their dwelling-place for a season. Wood for firingand water were to be had close by; they were also well provided withsmoked flesh of a tapir they had slaughtered a day or two before, sothat they could afford to rest for a time in so comfortable a shelter.At a short distance from the cave they made a fire on the rock to toastsome slices of meat for their dinner; and while thus engaged all at onceone of the men uttered a cry of astonishment, and casting up his eyesNuflo beheld, standing near and regarding them with surprise and fearin-her wide-open eyes, a woman of a most wonderful appearance. The oneslight garment she had on was silky and white as the snow on the summitof some great mountain, but of the snow when the sinking sun touches andgives it some delicate changing colour which is like fire. Her darkhair was like a cloud from which her face looked out, and her head wassurrounded by an aureole like that of a saint in a picture, only morebeautiful. For, said Nuflo, a picture is a picture, and the other wasa reality, which is finer. Seeing her he fell on his knees and crossedhimself; and all the time her eyes, full of amazement and shining withsuch a strange splendour that he could not meet them, were fixed on himand not on the others; and he felt that she had come to save his soul,in danger of perdition owing to his companionship with men who were atwar with God and wholly bad.
But at this moment his comrades, recovering from their astonishment,sprang to their feet, and the heavenly woman vanished. Just behind whereshe had stood, and not twelve yards from them, there was a huge chasm inthe mountain, its jagged precipitous sides clothed with thorny bushes;the men now cried out that she had made her escape that way, and downafter her they rushed, pell-mell.
Nuflo cried out after them that they had seen a saint and that somehorrible thing would befall them if they allowed any evil thought toenter their hearts; but they scoffed at his words, and were soon fardown out of hearing, while he, trembling with fear, remained prayingto the woman that had appeared to them and had looked with such strangeeyes at him, not to punish him for the sins of the others.
Before long the men returned, disappointed and sullen, for they hadfailed in their search for the woman; and perhaps Nuflo's warning wordshad made them give up the chase too soon. At all events, they seemed illat ease, and made up their minds to abandon the cave; in a short timethey left the place to camp that night at a considerable distance fromthe mountain. But they were not satisfied: they had now recovered fromtheir fear, but not from the excitement of an evil passion and finally,after comparing notes, they came to the conclusion that they had misseda great prize through Nuflo's cowardice; and when he reproved them theyblasphemed all the saints in the calendar and even threatened him withviolence. Fearing to remain longer in the company of such godless men,he only waited until they slept, then rose up cautiously, helped himselfto most of the provisions, and made his escape, devoutly hoping thatafter losing their guide they would all speedily perish.
Finding himself alone now and master of his own actions, Nuflo was interrible distress, for while his heart was in the utmost fear, it yeturged him imperiously to go back to the mountain, to seek again for thatsacred being who had appeared to him and had been driven away by hisbrutal companions. If he obeyed that inner voice, he would be saved;if he resisted it, then there would be no hope for him, and alongwith those who had cast the woman to the alligators he would be losteternally. Finally, on the following day, he went back, although notwithout fear and trembling, and sat down on a stone just where he hadsat toasting his tapir meat on the previous day. But he waited in vain,and at length that voice within him, which he had so far obeyed, beganurging him to descend into the valley-like chasm down which the womanhad escaped from his comrades, and to seek for her there. Accordinglyhe rose and began cautiously and slowly climbing down over the brokenjagged rocks and through a dense mass of thorny bushes and creepers. Atthe bottom of the chasm a clear, swift stream of water rushed with foamand noise along its rocky bed; but before reaching it, and when it wasstill twenty yards lower down, he was startled by hearing a lowmoan among the bushes, and looking about for the cause, he found thewonderful woman--his saviour, as he expressed it. She was not nowstanding nor able to stand, but half reclining among the rough stones,one foot, which she had sprained in that headlong flight down the raggedslope, wedged immovably between the rocks; and in this painful positionshe had remained a prisoner since noon on the previous day. She nowgazed on her visitor in silent consternation while he, casting himselfprostrate on the ground, implored her forgiveness and begged to knowher will. But she made no reply; and at length, finding that she waspowerless to move, he concluded that, though a saint and one of thebeings that men worship, she was also flesh and liable to accidentswhile sojourning on earth; and perhaps, he thought, that accident whichhad befallen her had been specially designed by the powers above toprove him. With great labour, and not without causing her much pain, hesucceeded in extricating her from her position and then finding thatthe injured foot was half crushed and blue and swollen, he took herup in his arms and carried her to the stream. There, making a cup of abroad green leaf, he offered her water, which she drank eagerly; andhe also laved her injured foot in the cold stream and bandaged it withfresh aquatic leaves; finally he made her a soft bed of moss and drygrass and placed her on it. That night he spent keeping watch overher, at intervals applying fresh wet leaves to her foot as the old onesbecame dry and wilted from the heat of the inflammation.
The effect of all he did was that the terror with which she regarded himgradually wore off; and next day, when she seemed to be recovering herstrength, he proposed by signs to remove her to the cave higher up,where she would be sheltered in case of rain. She appeared to understandhim, and allowed herself to be taken up in his arms and carried withmuch labour to the top of the chasm. In the cave he made her a secondcouch, and tended her assiduously. He made a fire on the floor and keptit burning night and day, and supplied her with water to drink and freshleaves for her foot. There was little more that he could do. From thechoicest and fattest bits of toasted tapir flesh he offered her sheturned away with disgust. A little cassava bread soaked in water shewould take, but seemed not to like it. After a time, fearing that shewould starve, he took to hunting after wild fruits, edible bulbs andgums, and on these small things she subsisted during the whole time oftheir sojourn together in the desert.
The woman, although lamed for life, was now so far recovered as to beable to limp about without assistance, and she spent a portion of eachday out among the rocks and trees on the mountains. Nuflo at firstfeared that she would now leave him, but before long he became convincedthat she had no such intentions. And yet she was profoundly unhappy.He was accustomed to see her seated on a rock, as if brooding over somesecret grief, her head bowed, and great tears falling from half-closedeyes.
From the first he had conceived the idea that she was in the way ofbecoming a mother at no distant date--an idea which seemed to accordbadly with the suppositions as to the nature of this heavenly beinghe was privileged to minister to and so win salvation but he was nowconvinced of its truth, and he imagined that in her condition he haddiscovered the cause of that sorrow and anxiety which preyed continuallyon her. By means of that dumb language of signs which enabled them toconverse together a little, he made it known to her that at a greatdistance from the mountains there existed a place where there werebeings like herself, women, and mothers of children, who would comfortand tenderly care for her. When she had understood, she seemed pleasedand willing to accompany him to that distant place; and so it came topass that they left their rocky shelter and the mountains of Riolama farbehind. But for sev
eral days, as they slowly journeyed over the plain,she would pause at intervals in her limping walk to gaze back on thoseblue summits, shedding abundant tears.
Fortunately the village Voa, on the river of the same name, which wasthe nearest Christian settlement to Riolama, whither his course wasdirected, was well known to him; he had lived there in former years,and, what was of great advantage, the inhabitants were ignorant ofhis worst crimes, or, to put it in his own subtle way, of the crimescommitted by the men he had acted with. Great was the astonishment andcuriosity of the people of Voa when, after many weeks' travelling, Nufloarrived at last with his companion. But he was not going to tell thetruth, nor even the least particle of the truth, to a gaping crowd ofinferior persons. For these, ingenious lies; only to the priest he toldthe whole story, dwelling minutely on all he had done to rescue andprotect her; all of which was approved by the holy man, whose first actwas to baptize the woman for fear that she was not a Christian. Let itbe said to Nuflo's credit that he objected to this ceremony, arguingthat she could not be a saint, with an aureole in token of hersainthood, yet stand in need of being baptized by a priest. A priest--headded, with a little chuckle of malicious pleasure--who was often seendrunk, who cheated at cards, and was sometimes suspected of puttingpoison on his fighting-cock's spur to make sure of the victory!Doubtless the priest had his faults; but he was not without humanity,and for the whole seven years of that unhappy stranger's sojourn at Voahe did everything in his power to make her existence tolerable. Someweeks after arriving she gave birth to a female child, and then thepriest insisted on naming it Riolama, in order, he said, to keep inremembrance the strange story of the mother's discovery at that place.
Rima's mother could not be taught to speak either Spanish or Indian; andwhen she found that the mysterious and melodious sounds that fell fromher own lips were understood by none, she ceased to utter them, andthereafter preserved an unbroken silence among the people she livedwith. But from the presence of others she shrank, as if in disgust orfear, excepting only Nuflo and the priest, whose kindly intentions sheappeared to understand and appreciate. So far her life in the villagewas silent and sorrowful. With her child it was different; and every daythat was not wet, taking the little thing by the hand, she would limppainfully out into the forest, and there, sitting on the ground, the twowould commune with each other by the hour in their wonderful language.
At length she began to grow perceptibly paler and feebler week by week,day by day, until she could no longer go out into the wood, but sat orreclined, panting for breath in the dull hot room, waiting for deathto release her. At the same time little Rima, who had always appearedfrail, as if from sympathy, now began to fade and look more shadowy,so that it was expected she would not long survive her parent. To themother death came slowly, but at last it seemed so near that Nuflo andthe priest were together at her side waiting to see the end. It was thenthat little Rima, who had learnt from infancy to speak in Spanish, rosefrom the couch where her mother had been whispering to her, and beganwith some difficulty to express what was in the dying woman's mind. Herchild, she had said, could not continue to live in that hot wet place,but if taken away to a distance where there were mountains and a coolerair she would survive and grow strong again.
Hearing this, old Nuflo declared that the child should not perish; thathe himself would take her away to Parahuari, a distant place where therewere mountains and dry plains and open woods; that he would watch overher and care for her there as he had cared for her mother at Riolama.
When the substance of this speech had been made known by Rima to thedying woman, she suddenly rose up from her couch, which she had notrisen from for many days, and stood erect on the floor, her wasted faceshining with joy. Then Nuflo knew that God's angels had come for her,and put out his arms to save her from falling; and even while he heldher that sudden glory went out from her face, now of a dead white likeburnt-out ashes; and murmuring something soft and melodious, her spiritpassed away.
Once more Nuflo became a wanderer, now with the fragile-looking littleRima for companion, the sacred child who had inherited the positionof his intercessor from a sacred mother. The priest, who had probablybecome infected with Nuflo's superstitions, did not allow them to leaveVoa empty-handed, but gave the old man as much calico as would serveto buy hospitality and whatsoever he might require from the Indians formany a day to come.
At Parahuari, where they arrived safely at last, they lived for somelittle time at one of the villages. But the child had an instinctiveaversion to all savages, or possibly the feeling was derived from hermother, for it had shown itself early at Voa, where she had refused tolearn their language; and this eventually led Nuflo to go away and liveapart from them, in the forest by Ytaioa, where he made himself ahouse and garden. The Indians, however, continued friendly with him andvisited him with frequency. But when Rima grew up, developing into thatmysterious woodland girl I found her, they became suspicious, and inthe end regarded her with dangerously hostile feeling. She, poor child,detested them because they were incessantly at war with the wild animalsshe loved, her companions; and having no fear of them, for she did notknow that they had it in their minds to turn their little poisonousarrows against herself, she was constantly in the woods frustratingthem; and the animals, in league with her, seemed to understand hernote of warning and hid themselves or took to flight at the approach ofdanger. At length their hatred and fear grew to such a degree that theydetermined to make away with her, and one day, having matured a plan,they went to the wood and spread themselves two and two about it. Thecouples did not keep together, but moved about or remained concealed ata distance of forty or fifty yards apart, lest she should be missed.Two of the savages, armed with blow-pipes, were near the border of theforest on the side nearest to the village, and one of them, observing amotion in the foliage of a tree, ran swiftly and cautiously towards itto try and catch a glimpse of the enemy. And he did see her no doubt, asshe was there watching both him and his companions, and blew an arrow ather, but even while in the act of blowing it he was himself struck bya dart that buried itself deep in his flesh just over the heart. Heran some distance with the fatal barbed point in his flesh and met hiscomrade, who had mistaken him for the girl and shot him. The wounded manthrew himself down to die, and dying related that he had fired at thegirl sitting up in a tree and that she had caught the arrow in her handonly to hurl it instantly back with such force and precision that itpierced his flesh just over the heart. He had seen it all with his owneyes, and his friend who had accidentally slain him believed his storyand repeated it to the others. Rima had seen one Indian shoot the other,and when she told her grandfather he explained to her that it was anaccident, but he guessed why the arrow had been fired.
From that day the Indians hunted no more in the wood; and at length oneday Nuflo, meeting an Indian who did not know him and with whom he hadsome talk, heard the strange story of the arrow, and that the mysteriousgirl who could not be shot was the offspring of an old man and a Didiwho had become enamoured of him; that, growing tired of her consort, theDidi had returned to her river, leaving her half-human child to play hermalicious pranks in the wood.
This, then, was Nuflo's story, told not in Nuflo's manner, which wasinfinitely prolix; and think not that it failed to move me--that Ifailed to bless him for what he had done, in spite of his selfishmotives.