A large and still more lovely butterfly suddenly rose from beneath where the snake had vanished, all glittering in the dazzling sunshine, and, after fluttering for a moment, floated steadily up into the air, and disappeared in the blue sky. My eye followed it as long as it was visible; and when it once more declined to where we had seen the snake, I saw a most splendid dragon-fly, about three inches long, like a golden bodkin, with its gauze-like wings moving so quickly, as it hung steadily poised in mid air, like a hawk preparing to stoop, that the body seemed to be surrounded by silver tissue, or a bright halo, while it glanced in the sunbeam.
“Can you not read it yet, Mr Cringle? can you not read my story in the fate of the first beautiful fly, and the miserable end of my Federico, in that of the lizard? And oh, may the last appearance of that ethereal thing, which but now rose, and melted into the lovely sky, be a true type of what I shall be! But that poor insect, that remains there suspended between heaven and earth—shall I say hell?—what am I to think of it?”
The dragon-fly was still there. She continued—”En purgatorio, ah Dios, tu quedas en purgatorio,” as if the fly had represented the unhappy young pirate’s soul in limbo. Oh, let no one smile at the quaintness of the dying fancy of the poor heart-crushed girl. The weather began to lower again, the wind came past us moaningly—the sun was obscured—large drops of rain fell heavily into the room—a sudden dazzling flash of lightning took place, and the dragon-fly was no longer there. A long low wild cry was heard. I started, and my flesh creeped. The cry was repeated. “Es el—el mismo, y ningun otro. Me venga, Frederico; me venga mi querido!” shrieked poor Maria, with a supernatural energy, and with such piercing distinctness, that it was heard shrill even above the rolling thunder.
I turned to look at Maria—another flash. It glanced on the crucifix which the old priest had elevated at the foot of the bed, full in her view. It was nearer, the thunder was louder. “Is that the rain-drops which are falling heavily on the floor through the open window?” O God! O God! it is her warm heart’s blood, which was bubbling from her mouth like a crimson fountain. Her pale fingers were clasped on her bosom in the attitude of prayer—a gentle quiver of her frame—and the poor brokenhearted girl, and her unborn babe, “sleeped the sleep that knows no waking.”
CHAPTER XIV.
SCENES IN CUBA.
Ariel. “Safely in harbour
Is the king’s ship; in the deep nook, where once
Thou calledst me up at midnight to fetch dew
From the still-vexed Bermoothes—there she’s bid.”
The Tempest.
THE SPIRIT had indeed fled—the ethereal essence had departed—and the poor wasted and blood-stained husk which lay before us, could no longer be moved by our sorrows, or gratified by our sympathy. Yet I stood riveted to the spot, until I was aroused by the deep-toned voice of Padre Carera, who, lifting up his hands towards heaven, addressed the Almighty in extempore prayer, beseeching his mercy to our erring sister who had just departed. The unusualness of this startled me.—”As the tree falls, so must it lie,” had been the creed of my forefathers, and was mine; but now for the first time I heard a clergyman wrestling in mental agony, and interceding with the God who hath said, “Repent before the night cometh, in which no man can work,” for a sinful creature, whose worn-out frame was now as a clod of the valley. But I had little time for consideration, as presently all the negro servants of the establishment set up a loud howl, as if they had lost their nearest and dearest. “Oh, our poor dear young mistress is dead!—She has gone to the bosom of the Virgin!—She is gone to be happy!”—”Then why the deuce make such a yelling?” quoth Bang in the other room, when this had been translated to him. Glad to leave the chamber of death, I entered the large hall, where I had left our friend.
“I say, Tom—awful work. Hear how the rain pours, and—murder—such a flash! Why, in Jamaica, we don’t startle greatly at lightning, but absolutely I heard it hiss—there again.” The noise of the thunder stopped farther colloquy, and the wind now burst down the valley with a loud roar.
Don Ricardo joined us. “My good friends, we are in a scrape here—what is to be done?—a melancholy affair altogether.”—Bang’s curiosity here fairly got the better of him.
“I say, Don Ricardibus, do—beg pardon, though—do give over this humbugging outlandish lingo of yours; speak like a Christian, in your mother tongue, and leave off your Spanish, which now, since I know it is all a bam, seems to sit as strangely on you as my grandmother’s toupée would on Tom Cringle’s Mary.”
“Now do, pray, Mr Bang,” said I, when Don Ricardo broke in—
“Why, Mr Bang, I am, as you now know, a Scotchman.”
“How do I know any such thing—that is, for a certainty—while you keep cruising amongst so many lingoes, as Tom there says?”
“The docken, man,” said I.—Don Ricardo smiled.
“I am a Scotchman, my dear sir; and the same person who, in his youth, was neither more nor less than wee Richy Cloche, in the long town of Kirkcaldy, is, in his old age, Don Ricardo Campana of St Jago de Cuba. But more of this anon; at present we are in the house of mourning, and alas the day that it should be so.”
By this time the storm had increased most fearfully, and as Don Ricardo, Aaron, and myself sat in the dark corner of the large gloomy hall, we could, scarcely see each other, for the lightning had now ceased, and the darkness was so thick that, had it not been for the light from the large funeral wax tapers which had been instantly lit upon poor Maria’s death in the room where she lay, that streamed through the open door, we should have been unable to see our very fingers before us.
“What is that?” said Campana; “heard you nothing, gentlemen?”
“By this the storm grew loud apace,
The water-wraith was shrieking;
And in the scowl of heaven each face
Grew dark as they were speaking.”
In the lulls of the rain and the blast the same long low cry was heard which had startled me by Maria’s bedside, and occasioned the sudden and fatal exertion which had been the cause of the bursting out afresh of the blood-vessel.
“Why,” said I, “it is little more than three o’clock in the afternoon yet, dark as it is; let us sally out, Mr Bang, for I verily believe that the hollo we have heard is my captain’s voice, and, if I conjecture rightly, he must have arrived at the other side of the river, probably with the doctor.”
“Why, Tom,” quoth Aaron, “it is only three in the afternoon as you say, although by the sky I could almost vouch for its being midnight; but I don’t like that shouting—Did you ever read of a water-kelpie, “Don Richy?”
“Poo, poo, nonsense,” said the Don; “Mr Cringle is, I fear, right enough.” At this moment the wind thundered at the door and window-shutters, and howled amongst the neighbouring trees and round the roof, as if it would have blown the house down upon our devoted heads. The cry was again heard during a momentary pause.
“Zounds!” said Bang, “it is the skipper’s voice, as sure as fate—he must be in danger—let us go and see, Tom.”
“Take me with you,” said Campana—the foremost always when any good deed was to be done; and, in place of clapping on his greatcoat to meet the storm, to our unutterable surprise, he began to disrobe himself, all to his trousers and large straw hat. He then called one of the servants, “Trae me un lasso.” The lasso, a long thong of plaited hide, was forthwith brought; he coiled it up in his left hand. “Now, Pedro,” said he to the negro servant who had fetched it—a tall, strapping fellow—”you and Gaspar, follow me.—Gentlemen, are you ready?” Gaspar appeared, properly accoutred, with a long pole in one hand and a thong similar to Don Ricardo’s in the other—he, as well as his comrade, being stark naked all to their waistcloths. “Ah, well done, my sons,” said Don Ricardo, as both the negroes prepared to follow him. So off we started to the door, although we heard the tormenta raging without with appalling fury. Bang undid the latch, and the next moment he was
flat on his back, the large leaf having flown open with tremendous violence, capsizing him like an infant.
The Padre, from the inner chamber, came to our assistance, and, by our joint exertions, we at length got the door to again and barricaded, after which we made our exit from the lee side of the house by a window. Under other circumstances it would have been difficult to refrain from laughing at the appearance we made. We were all drenched in an instant after we left the shelter of the house, and there was old Campana, naked to the waist, with his large sombrero and long pigtail hanging down his back, like a mandarin of twenty buttons. Next followed his two black assistants—naked as I have described them—all three with their coils of rope in their hands, like a hangman and his deputies; then advanced friend Bang and myself, without our coats or hats, with handkerchiefs tied round our heads, and our bodies bent down so as to stem the gale as strongly as we could.
But the planting attorney—a great schemer, a kind of Will Wimble in his way—had thought fit, of all things in the world, to bring his umbrella, which the wind, as might have been expected, reversed most unceremoniously the moment he attempted to hoist it, and tore it from the staff, so that, on the impulse of the moment, he had to clutch the flying red silk and thrust his head through the centre, where the stick had stood, as if he had been some curious flower. As we turned the corner of the house the full force of the storm met us right in the teeth, when flap flew Don Ricardo’s hat past us, but the two blackamoors had taken the precaution to strap each of theirs down with a strong grass lanyard. We continued to work to windward, while every now and then the hollo came past us on the gale louder and louder, until it guided us to the fording which we had crossed on our first arrival. We stopped there; the red torrent was rushing tumultuously past us, but we saw nothing save a few wet and shivering negroes on the opposite side, who had sheltered themselves under a cliff, and were busily employed in attempting to light a fire. The holloing continued.
“Why, what can be wrong?” at length said Don Ricardo, and he shouted to the people on the opposite side.
He might as well have spared his breath, for, although they saw his gestures and the motion of his lips, they no more heard him than we did them, as they very considerately in return made mouths at us, bellowing, no doubt, that they could not hear us.
“Don Ricardo—Don Ricardo!” at this crisis sang out Gaspar, who had clambered up the rocky to have a peep about him—”Ave Maria—Allá son dos pobres, que peresquen pronto, si nosotros no pueden ayudarlos.”
“Whereabouts?” said Campana—”whereabouts? speak, man, speak.”
“Down in the valley—about a quarter of a league, I see two men on a large rock, in the middle of the stream; the wind is in that direction, it must be them we heard.”
“God be gracious to us! true enough—true enough,—let us go to them then, my children.” And we again all cantered off after the excellent Don Ricardo. But before we could reach the spot we had to make a detour, and come down upon it from the precipitous brow of the beetling cliff above, for there was no beach nor shore to the swollen river, which was here very deep and surged, rushing under the hollow bank with comparatively little noise, which was the reason we heard the cries so distinctly.
The unfortunates who were in peril, whoever they might be, seemed to comprehend our motions, for one of them held out a white handkerchief, which I immediately answered by a similar signal, when the shouting ceased, until, guided by the negroes, we reached the verge of the cliff, and looked down from the red crumbling bank on the foaming water as it swept past beneath. It was here about thirty yards broad, divided by a rocky wedge-like islet, on which grew a profusion of dark bushes and one large tree, whose topmost branches were on a level with us where we stood. This tree was divided, about twelve feet from the root, into two limbs, in the fork of which sat, like a big monkey, no less a personage than Captain Transom himself, wet and dripping, with his clothes besmeared with mud, and shivering with cold. At the foot of the tree sat, in rueful mood, a small antique beau of an old man, in a coat which had once been blue silk, wearing breeches, the original colour of which no man could tell, and without his wig, his clear bald pate shining amidst the surrounding desolation like an ostrich’s egg. Besides these worthies stood two trembling way-worn mules with drooping heads, their long ears hanging down most disconsolately. The moment we came in sight, the skipper hailed us.
“Why, I am hoarse with bawling, Don Ricardo, but here am I and El Doctor Pavo Real in as sorry a plight as any two gentlemen need be. On attempting the ford two hours ago, blockheads as we were—beg pardon, Don Pavo”—the doctor bowed, and grinned like a baboon—”we had nearly been drowned; indeed, we should have been drowned entirely, had we not brought up on this island of Barataria here.—But how is the young lady? tell me that,” said the excellent-hearted fellow, even in the midst of his own danger.
“Mind yourself, my beautiful child,” cried Bang. “How are we to get you on terra firma?”
“Poo—in the easiest way possible,” rejoined he, with true seaman-like self-possession. “I see you have ropes—Tom Cringle, heave me the end of the line which Don Ricardo carries, will you?”
“No, no—I can do that myself,” said Don Ricardo, and with a swing he hove the leathern noose at the skipper, and whipped it over his neck in a twinkling. The Scotch Spaniard, I saw, was pluming himself on his skill, but Transom was up to him, for in an instant he dropped out of it, while, in slipping through, he let it fall over a broken limb of the tree.
“Such an eel—such an eel!” shouted the attendant negroes, both expert hands with the lasso themselves.
“Now, Don Ricardo, since I am not to be had, make your end of the thong fast round that large stone there.” Campana did so. “Ah, that will do.” And so saying, the skipper warped himself to the top of the cliff with great agility. He was no sooner in safety himself, however, than the idea of having left the poor doctor in peril flashed on him.
“I must return—I must return! If the river rises, the body will be drowned out and out.” And, notwithstanding our entreaties, he did return as he came, and, descending the tree, began apparently to argue with the little medico, and to endeavour to persuade him to ascend, and make his escape as he himself had done; but it would not do. Pavo Real—as brave a little man as ever was seen—made many salaams and obeisances, but move he would not. He shook his head repeatedly, in a very solemn way, as if he had said, “My very excellent friends, I am much obliged to you, but it is impossible; my dignity would be compromised by such a proceeding.”
Presently Transom appeared to wax very emphatic, and pointed to a pinnacle of limestone rock, which had stood out like a small steeple above the surface of the flashing, dark red eddies, when we first arrived on the spot, but—now only stopped the water with a loud gurgle, the top rising and disappearing as the stream surged past, like a buoy jaugling in a tideway. The small man still shook his head, but the water now rose so rapidly that there was scarcely dry standing-room for the two poor devils of mules, while the doctor and the skipper had the greatest difficulty in finding a footing for themselves.
Time and circumstances began to press, and Transom, after another unavailing attempt to persuade the doctor, began apparently to rouse himself and muster his energies. He first drove the mules forcibly into the stream at the side opposite where we stood, which was the deepest water, and least broken by rocks and stones, and we had the pleasure to see them scramble out safe and sound; he then put his hand to his mouth, and hailed us to throw him a rope—it was done—he caught it, and then by a significant gesture to Campana, gave him to understand that now was the time. The Don comprehending him, hove his noose with great precision, right over the little doctor’s head, and before he recovered from his surprise the captain slipped it under his arms and signed to haul tight, while the medico kicked and spurred and backed like a restive horse. At one and the same moment Transom made fast a guy round his waist, and we hoisted away while he hauled
on the other line, so that we landed the Lilliputian Esculapius safe on the top of the bank, with the wind nearly out of his body, however, from his violent exertions and the running of the noose.
It was now the work of a moment for the captain to ascend the tree and again warp himself ashore, when he set himself to apologise with all his might and main, pleading strong necessity; and, having succeeded in pacifying the offended dignity of the doctor, we turned towards the house.
“Look out, there,” sang out Campana sharply.
Time, indeed, thought I, for right ahead of us, as if an invisible gigantic ploughshare had passed over the woods, a valley or chasm was suddenly opened down the hill-side with a noise like thunder, and branches and whole limbs of trees were instantly torn away and tossed into the air like straws.
“Down on your noses, my fine fellows,” cried the skipper. We were all flat in an instant, except the medico—the stubborn little brute—who stood until the tornado reached him, when in a twinkling he was cut on his back, with a violence sufficient, as I thought, to have driven his breath for ever and aye out of his body. While we lay we heard all kinds of things hurtle past us through the air, pieces of timber, branches of trees, coffee-bushes, and even stones. Presently it lulled again, and we got on end to look round us.
“How will the old house stand all this, Don Ricardo?” said the drenched, skipper. He had to shout to be heard. The Don was too busy to answer, but once more strode on towards the dwelling, as if he expected something even worse than we had experienced to be still awaiting us. By the time we reached it it was full of negroes, men, women, and children, whose huts had already been destroyed—poor, drenched, miserable devils, with scarcely any clothing; and to crown our comfort, we found the roof leaking in many places. By this time the night began to fall, and our prospects were far from flattering. The rain had entirely ceased, nor was there any lightning, but the storm was most tremendous—blowing in gusts, and veering round from east to north with the speed of thought. The force of the gale, however, gradually declined, until the wind subsided altogether, and everything became quite still. The low murmured conversation of the poor negroes who environed us was heard distinctly; the hard breathing of the sleeping children could even be distinguished. But I was by no means sure that the hurricane was over, and Don Ricardo and the rest seemed to think as I did, for there was not a word interchanged between us for some time.