 | Tales of the Spanish seas |  |
2. GUARICA, THE CHARIB BRIDE.
The heavy dew of the tropics was yet lying
bright and unexhaled on every herb and flower;
myriads of which, in most profuse variety of
odor and bloom, strewed, like one gorgeous
carpet, the beautiful savannahs, and wild
forest glades of the fair province of Cahay.
The sun had not fairly risen, although the
warm and rosy light which harbingered his
coming, was tinging, with its fairy dyes, the
small and fleecy clouds that floated, like the
isle of some enchanted sea, over the azure
skies. The faint sea-breeze, which murmured
still among the fresh green leaves, though it
was fast subsiding, was laden with perfumes
of such strange richness, that while they gratified
they almost cloyed the senses; birds of the
most superb and gorgeous plumage were
glancing, meteor-like, among the boughs; but
the innumerable insect tribes, which almost
rival them in beauty, had not as yet been
called forth to their life of a day, by the young
sunbeams. The loveliness of those sequestered
haunts, which had but recently been
opened to the untiring and insatiate avarice of
the Europeans, exceeded the most wild conceptions,
the most voluptuous dreams, of the romancer
or the poet. The solemn verdure of
the mighty woods, thick-set with trees, more
graceful than the shades of those ægean
Isles, where the Ionian muse was born to
witch the world for ages—the light and feathery
mimosas, the fan-like heads of the tall
palms, towering a hundred feet above their
humbler, yet still lofty brethren—the giant
oaks, their whole trunks overgrown with
thousands of bright parasites, and their vast
branches canopied with vines and creepers—
masses of tangled and impervious foliage—the
natural lawns, watered by rills of crystal—the
rocks, that reared themselves among the forests,
mantled not as the crags of the cold northern
climes, with dark and melancholy ivy, but
with festoons of fruits and flowers that might
have graced the gardens of the fabulous Hesperides.
It was upon such a scene, as is but
imperfectly and feebly shadowed forth in the
most glowing language, that the sweet dawn
was breaking, when, from a distance, through
the lovely woodlands, the mellow notes of a
horn, clearly and scientifically winded, came
floating on the gentle air; again it pealed forth
its wild cadences, nearer and louder than before
—and then the deep and ringing bay of a fullmouthed
hound succeeded. Scarcely had the
first echo of the woods replied to the unwonted
sounds, before a beautiful, slight hind, forcing
her way through a dense thicket of briers,
dashed with the speed of mortal terror into the
stole almost silently a broad bright rivulet of
very limpid water. Pausing for a second's
space upon the brink, the delicate creature
stood, with its swan-like neck curved backward,
its thin ear erect, its full black eye dilated,
and its expanded nostrils snuffing the tainted
breeze. It was but for a second that she
stood; for the next moment a louder and more
boisterous crash arose from the direction
whence she had first appeared—the blended
tongues of several hounds running together on
a hot and recent trail. Tossing her head aloft,
she gathered her slight limbs under her, sprang
at one vigorous and elastic bound over the
rivulet, and was lost instantly to view among
the thickets of the further side. A few minutes
elapsed, during which the fierce baying of the
hounds came quicker, and more sharply on the
ear; and then, from the same brake out of
which the hind had started, rushed, with his
eyes glowing like coals of fire, his head high
in the air, and his long feathery tail lashing
his tawny sides, a formidable blood-hound, of
that savage breed which was, in after times,
so brutally employed against the hapless Indians
by their Christian conquerors. Another,
and another, and a fourth succeeded, making
the vaulted woods to bellow with the deep cadences
of their continuous cry. Hard on the
blood-hounds, crashing through the tangled
branches with reckless and impetuous ardor, a
solitary huntsman followed splendidly mounted
on a fiery Andalusian charger, of a deep
chestnut color, with four white legs, and a
white blaze down his face, whose long thin
mane, and the large cord-like veins that might
be seen meandering over his muscular, sleek
limbs, attested, as surely as the longest pedigree,
the purity of his blood. The rider was a
young man of some four or five-and-twenty
years, well, and rather powerfully made than
otherwise, though not above the middle stature;
his long dark hair, black eye, and swarthy skin
told of a slight admixture of the Moorish
blood; while the expression of his features,
though now excited somewhat by the exhilaration
of the chase, grave, dignified, and noble, bespoke
him without a doubt a polished cavalier
of Spain. His dress, adapted to the occupation
which he so gallantly pursued, was a green
doublet belted close about his waist by a girdle
of Cordovan leather, from which swung, clinking
at every stride of his horse, against the
stirrup, a long and basket-hilted bilboa blade,
in a steel scabbard, which was the only weapon
that he wore, except a short two-edged
stiletto, thrust into the belt at the left side. A
broad sombrero hat, with a drooping feather,
breeches and gloves of chamois leather, laced
down the seams with silver, and russet buskins
drawn up to the knee, completed his attire.
He sat his horse gracefully and firmly; and the
ease with which he supported him, and
wheeled him to and fro among the fallen trees
and rocks, notwithstanding the fiery speed at
which he rode, bespoke him no less skilful
than intrepid as a horseman. The chase continued
for above an hour, during which every
species of scenery that the level portions of the
isle contained was traversed by the hunter;
the open forest, the dense swampy brake, the
wide luxuriant savannah—and each at such
hot speed, that though he turned aside neither
for bush nor bank, though he plunged headlong
down the steepest crags, and dashed his
charger, without hesitation, over every fallen
tree that barred his progress, and every brook
or gully that opposed him, still it was with no
little difficulty that he contrived to keep the
hounds in hearing. And now the hapless
hind, worn out by the sustained exertions
which had at first outstripped the utmost pace
of her pursuers, but which availed her nothing
to escape from foes against whose most sagacious
instinct and unerring scent she had but
fleetness to oppose—was sinking fast, and
must, as the rider judged by the redoubled
speed and shriller baying of his hounds, soon
turn to bay, or be run down without resistance.
Her graceful head was bowed low towards the
earth; big tears streamed down her hairy
cheeks; her arid tongue lolled from her frothing
jaws; her coat, of late so sleek and glossy,
was all embossed with sweat and foam, and
wounded at more points than one by the sharp
thorns and prickly underwood through which
she had toiled so fruitlessly. Still she strove
on, staggering and panting in a manner pitiful
to witness, when the deep bay of the bloodhounds
was changed suddenly into a series of
sharp and savage yells, as they caught view of
their destined prey.
Just at this moment the hind had reached
the verge of a piece of dense and tangled
woodland, through which she had toiled for
several miles, when the low range of hillocks
which it overspread sank suddenly by a steep
and craggy declivity of twelve or fourteen feet,
having at its base a rapid stream, brawling and
fretting over many a rocky ledge, down to a
wide and lovely meadow. Situated nearly in
the centre of this flower-sprinkled lawn, half
circled by a deep bight of the streamlet, and
perfectly embowered by the canopy which a
close group of waving palms spread over it,
there stood an Indian dwelling. It was of
larger size than were most of the native cottages,
thatched neatly with the broad leaves of
the palm, and ornamented in front by a portico
of wooden columns, quaintly, and not ungracefully
adorned by carvings wrought by the flint-edged
chisel of the yet unsophisticated savage.
A mat, woven with tasteful skill, from many-colored
and sweet-scented rushes, was spread
upon the floor; while several stools of ebony,
devices, were ranged along the walls.
On a projecting slab, which apparently supplied
the want of a table, stood several gourds, ingeniously
manufactured into cups and trenchers;
some bowls of hard wood, even more highly
finished than the other articles of furniture,
and many ornaments of gold and strings of
pearl scattered in rich profusion, lay among
the humbler vessels of the household. From
three columns were suspended large wicker
cages, beautifully interlaced with intricate and
quaint devices, containing paroquets and other
birds of rare and splendid plumage; while
from the others hung carved war-clubs of the
ponderous iron-wood, flint-headed javelins,
and several bows—not the short, ill-strung,
worthless weapons used by the Africans, but
long, tough, and admirably made, and scarcely,
if at all, inferior to the tremendous long
bow which had gained so much renown, and
wrought so much scathe to their foes, in the
hands of the English archery. Under the
shadow of the portico, sheltered by it from the
warm beams of the sun, there sat an Indian
youth, tall and slightly framed, and not above
sixteen or seventeen years of age at the utmost,
polishing with a chisel the shaft of a long
javelin. On the lawn in front of the cottage a
bright fire was blazing, and several native
females were collected round it, preparing their
morning meal, with cakes of the cassava baking
among the hot wood-embers, and fish
broiling on small spits of aromatic wood. But
at a little distance to the left of these, at the
extreme end of the building, nearest to the
steep bank which terminated the forest, outstretched
in a light grass hammock, which was
suspended at the height of two or three feet
from the ground, between two stately palm-trees,
and swaying gently to and fro in the
light currents of the morning breeze, there lay
the loveliest girl eyes ever looked upon; her
rich black hair, braided above her brow, and
fastened with one string of pearls, was passed
behind her ears, whence it fell in a profusion
of glossy curls, so wondrously luxuriant that
had she stood erect, it would have flowed
quite downward to her ankles; her eyes large,
dark, and liquid as those of a Syrian antelope,
were curtained by the longest and most silky
lashes that ever fringed a human eyelid; her
features classically regular and even, were redeemed
from the charge of insipidity by the sly
dimple at the angles of that exquisitely arched
and rosy mouth, which Aphrodite, fresh from
her ocean cradle, might have envied; and by
the voluptuous curve of the soft chin. Her
complexion was of a warm and sunny hue—
half brown and half golden—through which
the eloquent blood mantled at every motion,
like the last flush of sunset upon the darkening
sky. Beautiful, however, as was the
countenance, and enchanting the expression of
this Indian beauty, it yet was not until the
second or third glance that the eye could stray
from the matchless symmetry, the untaught
graces, and the voluptuous and wavy motions
of her form, to notice the less striking charms
of face and features. Her beautiful arms, bare
to the shoulder, were adorned with massy
rings of virgin gold, so flexible, from the purity
of the metal, that they were twisted and untwisted
with as much ease as though they had
been silken cords; the right hung over the
edge of the hammock, its small and graceful
hand resting upon a little stand or table at her
side—while the left, folded beneath her head,
was half veiled beneath her abundant hair.
Her dress, a single robe of soft, fine muslin,
was clasped on the right shoulder by a golden
stud, whence it passed under her left arm,
leaving her bosom half exposed, and was girt
around her slender waist by a cord of gaily-colored
cotton, covering the rest of her person
down to the tiny feet—although its slight folds
clung so closely to the rich contour of her
limbs that not a single charm but wooed the
eye of the observer.
Such was the scene, and such the occupants
of it, into which, darting with a momentary
energy, that gained convulsive strength from
the near presence of her dreaded foes, the
hunted hind leaped suddenly. The craggy
bank and stream were cleared by one tremendous
bound, the level lawn was traversed with
speed that seemed almost miraculous, yet scarce
two spears' length from her haunches the
furious blood-hounds followed. Whether it
was that her eyes were cast backward towards
her dreaded foes, and that every sense was engrossed
by agonizing terror, so that she marked
not anything before her, or whether a
strange instinct told her that no danger was to
be apprehended from that quarter, the shy,
timid creature dashed straight across the meadow,
passing within ten paces of the fire—
from the vicinity of which the women fled,
fearful of the savage hounds—and sank down
with a deep, heart-broken sob, close to the
hammock of the Indian beauty.
Roused suddenly from the half-dozing
dreamy languor in which she had been so
luxuriously indulging, the maiden started from
the couch, and, without thinking of the peril,
by an involuntary impulse stooped down, and
lifting up the head of the dying hind, wiped
away the foam from its sobbing lips, and
gazed with wistful pity upon its glazing eyes.
All this had passed with almost the speed of
light—for not ten seconds had intervened between
the first appearance of the trembling fugitive
and the compassionate movement of the
young girl. It happened, too, as will oftentimes
occur, when hounds are running at the
utmost of their speed, the blood-hounds, since
had given no tongue, chasing solely by the
eye—so that until his attention was called to
what was passing, by the flight of the terrified
and trembling menials, the youth had remained
quietly engaged at his occupation, unconscious
of the peril to which his sister—for such was
the relationship between them—was exposed.
Diverted, however, from his occupation, by
the tumultuous flight of the girls, he looked up
quickly, and at a glance beheld the hind fall
dying at his sister's feet, the fierce hounds
dashing forward to glut their savage instinct in
the life-blood of the quarry; and the girl, by
her own act, thrown, as it were, into the very
jaws of the literally blood-thirsty brutes—
which, with hair erect and bristling, as if instinct
with sentient life and fury, the white
foam flying from their tushes, and their eyes
glaring with the frantic light of their roused
natures, were bounding towards her, scarce
three paces distant.
At the same point of time the Spanish cavalier,
who had, while they were running mute
lost the direction of the chase, made his appearance
at the top of the abrupt descent; and
seeing, as if by intuition, all that was going on,
lifted his blooded horse hard with the Moorish
bit, on which he rode him, and pricking him
at the same time sharply with the spur, undismayed
by the sheer fall of the ground, compelled
him to take the fearful leap. The
horse sprang nobly at it, and, aided by the
great fall of the surface, landed his hind feet
well upon the level ground beyond the rivulet;
but even then he would have fallen, such was
the shock of so steep a drop leap, had he not
been met by the quick support of a master
hand; so that, recovering himself with a heavy
flounder, he dashed on after scarce a moment's
pause. Still, had there been no readier aid
than his, the maiden must have perished beneath
the fangs of the infuriate bloodhounds;
for though the hunter shouted in the loudest
tones of his clear, powerful voice, rating the
dogs, and calling them by name, their fierceness
was so thoroughly aroused that they paid
not the least regard to his commanding accents,
and probably would not have been restrained
had he been interposed himself between them
and the object of their stanch pursuit, from
springing on the master who had fed them,
and to whose slightest gesture, under more favorable
circumstances, they were implicitly
obedient. But as he saw them already well
nigh darting at her throat, that stripling leaped
upon his feet, and snatching from the nearest
pillar a bow which fortunately happened to be
strung, and two long arrows, in less time than
is needed to describe it, notched a shaft on the
sinew, drew the tough bow-string to his ear,
and drove the whirling missile with almost the
speed of light towards the leading dog.
It was not till the whistling shaft hurtled
close past her ear, that the maid was aware of
her own danger; for, engrossed by the faint
struggles and waning breath of the poor deer,
she had not raised her eyes, till startled by the
passing weapon; and now, as she lifted them,
and met the red glare shot from the angry orbs
of the foremost hound, and almost felt the
warmth of his quick panting breath against
her brow, hope left her; and her senses yielding
to the sudden terror, she sank down upon
the body of the dead hind, as helpless and as
innocent. But even as light left her eyes, the
well-aimed shaft reached its mark; directed at
the throat of the animal, it flew correctly, and
the keen flint-head, cutting a little way below
the ear, clove through and through the neck,
piercing the jugular vein. The blood gushed
in a torrent from the wound; nor from that
only, but from the throat and nostrils, likewise;
and with one savage yell he leaped
into the air, and fell quite dead within a yard
of the Indian girl, whose snow-white dress
was actually sprinkled with large gouts of the
crimson gore. Still she was far from safe;
for, unchecked and undaunted by their leader's
death, the others of the little pack, baying
tremendously, were close at hand.
Again the bow was raised, and the string
drawn to the utmost, but with a jerking and
irregular tension, which snapped the tendon of
which it was framed. With a sharp twang
the bow recoiled, and the shaft fell harmless,
close at the archer's feet; but, unarmed as he
was, he bounded forward, and grasping the
staff of the unstrung and useless bow, he gallantly
bestrode the body of the damsel, and
with a calm and resolute expression in his
clear eye and comely features, awaited fearlessly
the onset of the approaching savages.
And now the first was close upon him, and
with his bristles all erect, like quills upon the
porcupine, and a deep stifled growl, dashed at
his face. Still he blenched not, but made a
desperate lunge with the tough horn-tipped
bow, full at the open mouth and yawning
throat of his assailant. And well for him it
was that his eye was true, and his hand
steady, for nothing else could have availed,
even though now the cavalier was within three
strides of the spot, to save his life. The
thrust took effect, and though the weapon was
but ineffective, and the beast not materially
affected by the blow, it still had force enough
to check, in some degree, the violence of his
assault, and to hinder him from using his fangs
for a moment. Yet, notwithstanding, such was
the weight of his sinewy lithe body, and such
the terrible impetuosity of his attack, that
checked and foiled as he was, he still plunged
so violently against the breast of his young
antagonist, that he dashed him to the ground;
and, himself falling, they rolled over and over,
ensanguined green sward. But at this critical
moment a new and more important aider came
up in the young Spaniard; who, dashing his
spurs into the flanks of his Andalusian, with
his long two-edged sword unsheathed, and
brandished in the air, as he stood upright in
his stirrups, purposely galloped over one of the
hounds, sending it cowed and howling to a
respectful distance, then pulling up his horse
close to the confused group, well knowing the
tremendous fury of the animal with which he
had to deal, when it was thoroughly aroused,
he smote the other which was struggling with
the boy, and which had just got free from his
gripe, exactly at the junction of the neck and
skull. So true and steady was the blow, and
so keen was the temper of that thin two-edged
blade, that it shore right through muscle, bone,
and sinew, severing entirely the head, except
where a small portion of the skin remained
uninjured, at the further side. This done he
hastily dismounted, and striking the fourth and
last dog a heavy blow with the flat of his
sword, rating him at the same moment by his
name, succeeded in asserting his ascendency
over his crest-fallen vassal. The boy had, in
the meantime, risen from the ground, still
grasping in his hand the bow, which, during all
the progress of that tremendous struggle, he
had never let go—and gazed, half doubtful of
the stranger's purpose, into his eyes—till reassured
by the grave smile which played upon
the features of the Spaniard, and by perceiving
how effectual had been his aid, when earthly
aid seemed hopeless, he suffered the tense
muscles of his dark visage to relax, and stretching
out his hand to his preserver, uttered a few
words in the Spanish language, not strictly true
in the pronunciation, but in a voice of most
melodious richness, thanking him for his timely
aid.
But little heed did the young gallant pay to
his addresses, for he had thrown aside his
blood-stained weapon, and raising the slight
body of the maiden from the earth, for she had
not as yet recovered from her fainting fit, bore
her as easily as though she had been but a feather's
weight, with her head leaning upon his
shoulder, and her long tresses flowing in dark
luxuriance over his arms, into the sheltered
portico. Placing her on one of the low cotton
cushioned stools, and supporting her against his
breast, he called aloud in the Indian tongue,
which he spoke fluently and well, for water;
and having sprinkled her lovely face, he set
about restoring her with a degree of eagerness
that savored not a little of the gallantry of
knightly courtship. Nor was it long before
his efforts were crowned with complete success;
for in a moment or two the fringed lashes
partially arose, revealing the dark eyes, still
swimming in unconscious languor. Dazzled
by the full light, she once again suffered the
lids to fall, and remained for a few moments
perfectly passive in his arms; although he felt,
by the increased pulsation of her heart, which
throbbed almost against his own, that life and
sense were speedily returning. Again she
raised her eyes, and gazed for an instant with
an air of simple wonderment in his face; then,
while the warm blood rushed back in a crimson
flush to the pale features, she attemped to start
from the half embrace in which he held her.
“Fear nothing, gentle one,” he said, in her
own liquid tongue, with a calm placid smile,
which did more to reassure her than the words
which fell half unheard on her ear, yet confused
and giddy.
“Fear nothing, gentle one, from me. Not
for the wealth of the whole Indies—not to be
monarch of Castile, would I work aught of
harm to thee or thine!”
While he was speaking, her eye wandered
from his face, and falling on the blood-stained
group, which lay confusedly piled on each
other—the lifeless limbs of the dead hind and
fierce hounds, one transfixed by the unerring
arrow of the brother, the other slain by the
sharp rapier, which yet lay beside them on the
turf—the panting charger, which stood, although
unfastened, in the cool shade of the
palm trees; and the two dogs which had survived
their fellows crouched humbly on the
grass before the portico, their tongues lolling
from their jaws, their sides panting from their
late exertion, and their eyes closed listlessly,
she saw the truth intuitively, and, with a quiet
smile, sank back again upon his breast, unable
yet to rise, and lay there until her brother had
brought forth the females of the household to
attend her.
Leaning on these, the fair girl left them, with
a gesture of farewell as dignified, yet easy,
as though she had been the lineal scion of a
hundred European monarchs. She was not
absent long, however, for she had returned ere
the Spaniard learned from his host, while he
was busily employed in wiping and returning
to its scabbard his trusty rapier, in picketing
his charger, and securing his two hounds—that
the girl whom he had so bravely rescued from
a terrible and painful death, was in good truth
of royal birth—a Caribbean princess—the niece
of that peerless queen Anacaona, who, though
the sister of that most dauntless foeman of the
white invaders, the valiant Caonabo, lord of the
Golden House, had proved herself from first
to last the friend and patroness of the pale
stranger; who, in after days, returned her
kindness with ingratitude so base and barbarous.
In a short time, then, the Guarica returned,
and thanking her preserver with the most feminine
and easy grace, pressed him to stay and
share their morning meal; and he, half captivated
willingly—and lingered there, enchanting the
simple mind of the Indian beauty by all the
rich stores of his cultivated intellect; and listening,
in turn, to the sweet native ballads
which she sang to him, in her rich melodious
tongue, not till the morning meal alone was
ended, but through the heat of the high noon,
and even till the dewy twilight; and when he
said adieu, a tear swam in the dark eye of the
maiden, and her small band trembled in his
grasp; and he rode pensively away beneath the
broad light of a moon, a thousand times more
pure and brilliant than that which silvers the
skies of his own bright land, bearing along
with him, far in his heart of hearts, deep
thoughts and high warm feelings, blended with
doubts and cares, and the engrossing impulses
of interest conflicting with the wilder passions
of a hot and impetuous nature. Nor did he
leave behind him, in the breast of the young
Guarica, sentiments less novel, or feelings less
tumultuous. Truly, to them, that day was the
hinge whereon the doors revolved of future
happiness or misery! For, from that day, each
dated a new life, fraught with new wishes, and
regulated by new destinies—and to each was
it the harbinger of many strange adventures, of
many joys and many sorrows! and, whether
for evil or for good, of their doom here, and
it may be, hereafter.
2. CHAPTER II.
Days, months, and seasons held their course,
yet there was no change in the deep azure of
the glowing skies—no alteration in the green
luxuriance of the forest—no falling of the
woods “into the sear, the yellow leaf”—no
fast succeeding variation from the young
floweriness of spring-tide to the deep flush of
gorgeous summer, and thence to the mature
but melancholy autumn—to the grim tyrant,
winter. In that delicious island nature had lavished
on the earth, in her most generous
mood, the mingled attributes of every clime
and region. The tender greenery of the young
budding leaf was blent at one and the same
moment, and that moment, as it seemed, eternal,
with the broad verdant foliage; the smiling
bud, the odoriferous and full-blown flower, the
rich fruit might be seen side by side on the
same tree—on the same bough. Nothing was
there to mark the flight of time—the gradual
advance of the destroyer over the lovely land;
nothing to warn the charmed spectator, that
for him, too, as for the glowing landscape,
maturity but leads to decay—decay which ends
in death! Verily but it is a paradise for the
unthinking!
And who were more unthinking than the
young Spaniard and his Indian love? Who
were more happy? Morn after morn beheld
Hernando de Leon threading the pathless forest
—now with horse, horn, and hound, sweeping
the tangled thickets—now skirring in pursuit
of his falcon over the watery vegas; and now,
with keen observant eye, and cat-like pace,
wandering, arbalast in hand, in silent search
after the timid deer; but still in one direction,
and still with one intent to join the fair Guarica!
Day after day they loitered, side by side,
among the cool shades of the mighty woods,
while the fierce sun was scourging the clear
champaign with intolerable heat—or sat reclined
by the cold head of some streamlet, fuller
to them of inspiration and of love than were
those fabled founts of Gadura, whence Eros
rose of yore, twinborn with the dark Anteros,
to greet the rapt eyes of Iamblichus.
The powerful mind of the young soldier had
been cultured, from his earliest youth, to skill
in all those liberal arts and high accomplishments
by which the gallant cavaliers of Spain
had gained such honorable eminence above
the ruder aristocracy of every other land. To
his hands no less familiar were the harp and
gittern than the Toledo or the lance. To his
well-tutored voice, the high heroic ballads of
his native land, the plaintive elegies of Moorish
Spain, the wildly musical areytos of the
Indian tongue, were equally adapted. Nor
did its accents sound less joyously in the clear
hunting halloa, or less fearfully in the shrill
war shout, that it was oft attuned to the peaceful
cadence of a lady's lute. His foot, firm in
the stirrup, whether in the warlike tilt, in the
swift race, or in the perilous leap, was no less
graceful in the rapid dance, or agile in the
wrestler's struggle on the greensward. He
was, in short, a gentleman of singular accomplishment—of
a mind well and deeply trained;
shrewd, polished, courteous, yet keen and energetical
withal, and brave as his own trusty
weapon. Like every dweller of a mountain
land, he possessed that high and romantic adoration
of the charms of nature, that exquisite
appreciation of the picturesque and beautiful—
whether embodied in the mute creations of
wood, wild, and water, or in the animated
dwellers of earth's surface—which, in the
breasts of others, is rather an acquired taste,
nurtured by delicate and liberal education, than
an intuitive and innate sense. Handsome,
moreover, eloquent, and young, it would have
been no great marvel had the brightest lady of
the proudest European court selected Don Hernando
as the ennobled object of a fresh heart's
holiest aspirations. What wonder, then, that
the untutored Indian girl, princess although she
was, revered almost to adoration by her own
simple people, secluded, from her earliest childhood,
from aught of mean or low association,
influences of the corrupt and contaminating
world, secured from any need of grovelling and
sordid labor—voluptuous and luxurious as the
soft climate of her native isle, yet pure as the
bright skies that overhang it—romantic and poetical,
as it would seem by necessity, arising
from her lonely musing—what wonder that
Guarica should have surrendered, almost on
the instant, to one who seemed to her artless
fancy, not merely one of a superior mortal
race, but as a god in wisdom, worth, and beauty
—a heart which had been sought in vain by
the most valiant and most proud of her nation's
young nobility. His grace, his delicate
and courteous bearing, so different from the
coarse wooing of the Charib lovers, who seemed
to fancy that they were conferring, rather
than imploring an honor, when they sought
her hand; his eloquent and glowing conversation—these
would alone have been sufficient to
secure the wondering admiration of the forest
maiden; but when to these was added the
deep claim which he now possessed on her
gratitude, for the swift aid which he had borne
to her when in extremity of peril, and the respectful
earnestness of pure, self-denying love
which he displayed towards her, it wonld in
truth have been well nigh miraculous had she
resisted the impression of her youthful fancy.
Nor were such unions between the dusky
maidens of the west, and the hidalgos of Spain,
by any means unfrequent or surprising,
among the earliest of those bold adventurers
who had been sharers, in his first and second
voyages, of the great toils and mighty perils
which had been undergone by that wise navigator
who, in the quaint parlance of the day,
gave a new world to Leon and Castile. On
the contrary, it was rather the policy of that
great and good discoverer, who, in almost all his
dealings with the rude natives, showed higher
sentiments of justice and of honor than could
have been expected from the fierce and turbulent
age in which he lived, to encourage such
permanent and indissoluble alliances between
the best and bravest of his own followers, and
the daughters of the Caciques and nobles of the
land, as would assuredly tend, more than any
other means, to bind in real amity the jarring
races brought into close and intimate contact
by his discoveries and conquests.
There was not anything, therefore, to deter
Guarica from lavishing her heart's gem on the
handsome cavalier who had so singularly introduced
himself to her favor, and who so
eagerly—nay, devotedly—followed up that
chance-formed acquaintance. For several
months, despite the ancient adage, the course
of true love did, in their case, run smooth. No
day, however stormy—for heavy falls of rain,
accompanied by sudden gusts of wind, with
thunder claps, and the broad fearful lightning
of the tropics, were by no means unfrequent—
prevented the adventurous lover from threading
the tangled brake, scaling the steep, precipitous
ascent, fording the swollen river—straight as
the bird flies to his distant nest. No turn of duty
hindered him—the imposed task performed—
from hurrying through the hot glare of noon, or
through the moonless night, to visit his beloved.
At first, his well-known ardor in the
chase accounted to his comrades for his protracted
and continual absences from their assemblies,
whether convened for woodland
sports or wild adventure; but when it was observed
that, though he never went abroad, save
with the hawk and hound, or arbalast and the
bird bolts, he brooked no longer any comrade
in his sportive labors; that, though renowned
above his compeers for skill and courage
in the mimicry of war, he often now returned
jaded indeed, and overspent with toil,
but either altogether empty-handed, or at least so
ill-provided with the objects of his unwearying
pursuits, that it was utterly impossible to suppose
that a hunter so renowned could have indeed
spent so much toil and time, all to so little
a purpose. This, for a short space, was
the point of many a light jest—many a merry
surmise gradually grew to be the subject of
grave wonder and deliberation; for it was now
remarked by all, even by his superiors, that
Hernando—though he had been of yore the
keenest volunteer to offer, nay, to urge his services,
when any foray was proposed against
the daring tribe of Caonabo, the bold Cacique
of the Charibs, who now alone, of the five
hereditary monarchs that erst held sway in
Hispaniola, dared to wage war against the
white invaders of his native fastnesses—no
longer sought to be employed on such occasions—nay,
that he even had refused, as it appeared,
to those who had solicited aid, on slight
and feigned excuses, to join their perilous excursions.
Whispers increased among his comrades,
and ere long grew to be dark murmurs
—rumor said that no hunter ever saw the
form of Don Hernando backing his fiery Andalusian,
or heard the furious bay of his
stanch bloodhounds in any of those haunts
where strayed most frequently, and in the
greatest plenty, the quarry which he feigned to
chase; fame said, and for once truly, that
though the best scouts of the Spaniards had
been urged by curiosity to play the spy upon
his movements, their utmost skill had availed
nothing; that whether in broad day or in the
noon of night, they never could keep him in
view beyond the margin of one belt of forest
land, or track the foot-prints of his charger, although
the soil was deep and loamy, into its
dark recesses; that, in whatever course he
turned his horse's head, or bent his footsteps,
on departing from the fortress of his friends,
he ever reached by devious turns, and secret
and there vanished. It was an age of credulous
fear—of dark, fanatical superstitions. He
who, a few short months before, had been the
idol of his countrymen, the soul of their convivial
meetings, the foremost and the blithest
in their bold hunting matches, was now the
object of distrust, of doubt, of actual fear, and
almost actual hatred. Some said that he had
cast by his allegiance to his country and his
king—that he had wedded with an Indian girl,
and joined himself to her people, heart and
hand—that he kept up this hollow show of
amity with his betrayed forsaken countrymen
only that he might gain some sure and fatal
opportunity of yielding them, at once, to the
implacable resentment of the Charib Caonabo.
Others, more credulous still, averred, in secret,
that he had leagued himself, more desperately
yet, and yet more guiltily, with creatures of
another world! that mystic sounds, and voices
not of human beings, had been heard by the
neighbors of his barrack-chamber! and one,
he who had scouted him furthest and most
closely, swore that, on more than one occasion,
he had beheld a grim and dusky form rise suddenly,
as if from out the earth, and join him in
the wildest of those woodlands through which
he loved to wander.
Thus did the time pass onward—Hernando
and Guarica becoming every day more fond and
more confiding, and, if that could be, more inseparable;
and, at the same time, suspicion,
enmity, distrust, becoming more and more apparent
at every hour between him and his
Spanish kinsmen.
Thus did the time pass onward, without the
occurrence of anything of moment either to
disturb the blissful dreams of the young lovers,
or to awaken a suspicion in their breasts, that
they were themselves the objects of distrust or
of espial.
Yet every day closer and closer were the
toils contracting round them; strong enmities
were at work, weaponed by puissant energies
and quick intelligences; and, though they knew
it not, they were even now on the brink of an
abyss.
Thus did the time pass onward; till, on a
close and sultry afternoon, in the latter part of
autumn, when the thunder clouds were mustering
thick over the azure vault, and now and
then a pale flash on the far horizon, succeeded
by a distant rumble, told of the coming hurricane,
three or four horsemen, whose dress
and accoutrements proclaimed them at once to
be Spaniards from the fortress, were seen to
issue from the forest, and ride rapidly across
the little plain towards Guarica's dwelling.
At first a blithe smile lighted up the features
of the young princess, as the sound of the
hoofs came to her ears, while, occupied in
light feminine labor, she was standing in the
inner chamber of her cottage—for, horses being
as yet the exclusive property of the invaders,
and no other Spaniard than her own Hernando
having as yet visited that sequestered spot, she
doubted not that it was her lover, who, in the
eagerness of his unwaning passion, had thus
anticipated the hour of his coming.
Full of this sweet idea, her lovely features
gaining a deeper and more feeling charm, from
the inspiration which seemed to infuse them at
the mere thought of him she loved so passing
well, she bounded forth to meet him. But, before
even her foot had crossed the threshold,
she repented her precipitation: although it was
already too late to remedy it.
Her ear, quicker by nature than that of any
European, and sharpened now beyond its wonted
keenness by the strange powers of overruling
passion, had detected, even as she sprang forth
to meet the comers, first, that instead of one there
were several horses, and next, that her lover's
Andalusian was not of the number. Strange it
may seem that that lovely girl, who, perhaps,
never in her life had seen ten horses, nor listened
to the tread of any save Hernando's charger,
could have sworn to his springy tramp out of
ten thousand—strange it may seem, and incredible
to us, whose instincts are quenched by
dwelling amid the monotonous occurrences of a
life spent in the midst of busy crowds, whose
ears are deadened and eyes dimmed unto the
sounds and sights of nature; but it is true—she
knew it in an instant, and half paused upon
the door-sill, wondering what chance could
have brought strangers thither; and apprehending,
she knew not what, of coming evil.
And all of us know—at least all of us who
have known sorrow, or anxiety, or even
strong and overmastering passion—how rapidly
thought flits at times through the spirit—
how that, which to the body is but a point of
time, but a fleet second, may to the mind be an
age of ages.
In the mere instant that Guarica, bounding
forth towards the portico, paused half alarmed
upon the threshold, a hundred flitting fancies
passed through her brain—fancies of joy, and
hope, and agony, almost despair—but with the
instant which had given them birth they ended.
Knowing instinctively that she must have been
seen already, and having, though more than
a little frightened, no motive for concealment,
she stepped forth quietly; and found herself in
the presence of two persons, whom her quick
intelligence discovered instantly to be cavaliers
of rank and birth; and as many more whom
she recognised as servants, with hounds in
leashes, and hawks on their fists, who had
just pulled up their horses at the door.
He, who appeared the principal personage of
the two, was a tall, powerful, gaunt man, not
in reality above a year or two De Leon's
senior, but in exterior show far more advanced
of the hardships he had undergone, or
it might have arisen from the predominance of
those fierce and fiery passions which wear
away the body, even as a keen blade frets and
in time destroys its scabbard—but, whether
from one cause or the other, his brow, instead
of presenting the fair bread expanse which
was so striking in Hernando's noble countenance,
was furrowed by three wrinkles, as deep
as are usually seen in men of sixty years; and
these were again cut at right angles by the
strong indentation of an habitual frown. The
features were all in themselves well formed
and handsome, although the aquiline nose was
so thin as to seem almost fleshless, the cheeks
hollow, and the eyes sunken. The general
expression, too, was grave and dignified, and
far from unpleasing; although the heaviness
of the brow cast over it a sort of melancholy
gloom; and at times a dark sneering smile distorted
the thin lips, altering for the worse the
entire character of the face, and giving it, so
long as it lasted, a singular and intense air of
malignity and contempt.
The figure of this gentleman was, it is true,
gaunt and thin, almost to meagreness; but not
so much as to impair, in any degree, his muscular
and sinewy strength, which appeared to
be prodigious. His demeanor, though somewhat
formal and stately, was full of the grace
of dignity, if not of ease; and his whole aspect,
set off by his dark, rich hunting-dress and
his magnificent bay charger, was striking and
impressive.
His companion was an older man, yet bearing
in his round and jovial face, although his hair
and beard were grizzled, far fewer marks of
age than his fellow-hunter. This was a broad
and square-set person, with a quick merry eye,
a bronzed face, and a constant smile about his
full, arched lips; his countenance, too, was as
strongly marked with bold and daring frankness,
as was the other's with dark and suspicious
gloom; and his bearing as abrupt and
impulsive, as his friend's was self-restrained
and formal.
Any one at all used to judge of men's professions
by their aspect or their manners,
might have pronounced this gentleman a sailor,
without fear of contradiction—nor did his seat
or hand upon his horse, which were both artless
and ungainly, contradict the surmise. He,
too, was richly dressed, though far more gaudily
than his companion, and he bestrode a
strong and active horse, quite equal to his
weight, though lacking the high, blood-like
type, and spirited action, of the bay charger by
his side.
It was the former of the two cavaliers who,
with an air half-insolent, half-condescending,
addressed Guarica, as she came forth upon the
portico, in a few words, imperfectly pronounc
ed and ungrammatically put together, of the
Indian dialect of that province; requesting permission
to take shelter, until the storm, which
was threatening so nearly, should pass over,
and alleging, as a further cause for their intrusion,
that they had seen the building from the
edge of the forest, wherein they had been
hunting all the morning, just as they were deliberating
whither they should fly for refuge
from the tornado.
Guarica replied instantly, in pure Castilian,
to which the most critical ear could have taken
but slight objection; begging them to alight
from their horses, and accept such accommodation
as her poor dwelling could afford them.
“Stables,” she added, “we, of course, have
none to offer you; but there is a hut yonder,
which we use as a store-house, empty now,
wherein your serving-men can tie their horses.
I beseech you enter.”
Neither of the cavaliers, both of whom dismounted
instantly, showed the least surprise,
or made any comment on her speaking the
Spanish tongue so fluently; although the
younger cast a quick, keen glance, accompanied
by the peculiar smile which has been
mentioned, to his comrade, as they followed
her, after giving directions to their servants,
into the building. For she paused not to show
them the way humbly, but led them, with the
air and gesture of a princess, into her dwelling.
Again a look of intelligence was interchanged
between the Spaniards; and the sailor licked
his lips with the affectation of a liquorish
air, as she swept forward; but there was nothing
in the look that betokened astonishment,
though there was much that spoke of admiration,
and perhaps something of self-gratulation
at their own shrewdness.
Could they have read, however, all that was
passing in Guarica's mind, they would perhaps
have found less reason for the latter sentiment
than they imaginned; so accurately had
the wild Indian girl already judged the cause
and the motives which had brought them to
her lonely dwelling.
Her quick eye, running over the whole
group, even in the short time while the cavalier
was speaking to her, had taken in, without
seeming to note anything at all, the closest and
most minute details. Thus, among other things,
she observed that both the gentlemen and their
followers were armed far more heavily than
was usual for hunters; both the latter having
the short, heavy arquebuses of the day slung
at their backs, and both the former carrying
huge wheel-lock pistols at their holsters.
She saw, moreover, that although the horses
were somewhat heated, as must be the case in
a day so singularly sultry, they were not
splashed with mud, or embossed with foam—
that the hounds were as sleek as when they
had not been uncoupled—and that the dresses of
the riders were in too orderly array, with their
plumes trim and unbroken, and their spurs
bright and bloodless, to allow it to be imagined,
even by a novice, that they had been engaged,
for hours, in so rude a pastime as the chase,
and that, too, in so wild a forest region.
A slight smile of contempt flitted across her
lovely face, as she thought within herself—
“They are but poor deceivers, after all—perhaps,
in their self-opinion, they fancy that it
needs no exertion of their high European faculties
to dupe a savage. But this time they are
mistaken. They are no hunters, that is clear.
I wonder what has brought them hither?—No
good!—no good! I fancy. I do not like the
tall man's looks; but I will watch, I will find
out, before they go.” And even while she was
pondering these things with herself, she called
three or four Indian maidens from an inner
room, and having spoken a few words in a low
tone to one, who darted out of the house immediately,
and made her way, without being
seen by the Spaniards, into the forest, she gave
directions to the others to prepare refreshments
for the strangers; and though she spoke in
her own language, she used phrases so purposely
simple, that they were readily understood
by her unwelcome guests, who had just
entered. Their instructions to the servants
ended,
“It is fortunate,” she then said, quite naturally,
and as if she believed their story perfectly—“it
is very fortunate that you should
have seen our cottage, for there is no village
or house very near us; and I think we shall
have a heavy storm. I almost wonder you
should have ventured so far from Isabella.
We have seen the clouds gathering here all the
morning.”
“It is fortunate, indeed,” said the younger
cavalier, “and I believe we must confess ourselves
but artless woodmen, Sanchez and I—
for we had no suspicion of the storm at all, till
we heard the thunder. Yes, thanks to Heaven!
we are wondrous fortunate.”
“You will think so, should it prove such a
tornado as I look for,” she answered, simply,
looking out of the open door towards the storm-clouds,
which were gathering thicker every moment.
“I meant that we are fortunate in finding so
sweet and beautiful a hostess, here all alone,
in the wild forest, and speaking our own
tongue, too, like a Castilian princess! Are you
the lady of the castle, fair one? and do you
queen it here alone, without court, or guards,
or courtiers?”
“Oh!” she replied, with a light laugh, “I
have heard of your grand Spanish compliments,
which you cavaliers deem it right to bestow on
every woman, if she be old even, and wrinkled.
And, as for speaking your language, I must
have been dull indeed had I not learned it from
aunt Anacaona; and more—”
“Anaçaona! And have we indeed the happiness
to kiss the hands of a niece of that peerless
queen and lady, the friend and protectress
of our people?” exclaimed the same gentleman
who had spoken before; while his ruder companion
broke out into a loud whistle of astonishment,
which he expressed yet further by a
loud sea-faring oath, and a repetition of the
name, Anaçaona!
“The queen Anaçaona is my aunt, and has
ever been the Spaniards' friend—may they
prove grateful to her. But I was about to say
that I do not live alone; my brother, Orozimbo,
dwells with me, and will be here anon; he,
like yourselves, is hunting with his vassals.
I would he were here to receive you more befittingly.”
“That were impossible, most peerless flower,”
began the cavalier, but Guarica quietly interrupted
him.
“I pray you pardon me, Senor,” she said,
“but if we have learned your language in order
to converse the better with our masters,”
and she laid rather a bitter emphasis on the last
word, “we have not yet adopted, nor do we
wish to do so, your gallant modes of speech,
which seem to us mere falsehood and hypocrisy.
My name is Guarica, a simple Indian girl,
and neither flower nor pearl—as such I am
glad to shelter and to serve you. Will you not
walk into the inner chamber? you will find
seats there to repose you; and my maidens will
bring some wine of the palm and some fresh
water; you must be parched with thirst.
Pray enter—make no ceremony—and excuse
me.”
And with the words she raised a many-colored
mat of rushes, which hung across a
low doorway, and waving them towards the
large airy chamber wherein she was sitting
when their horses' tread apprised her of their
coming, she retired from the hall, where they
had as yet been standing, and left them alone
to their own devices.
“By Heaven! but this is a strange business,
Guzman,” exclaimed the sailor, now speaking
for the first time. “I do not wonder at Hernando
passing his time here, nor do I blame him
for it, by St. Jago! I would I were in his
shoes. She is the perfection of a bona roba.
I wonder has he married her, or does she love
him paramour? But what the devil are we to
do next?”
“You are to hold your tongue—that is to
say if you can, by any means, and not to spoil
everything by your absurd and ill-timed jesting;
and, above all, you are not to keep calling
me Guzman and Herreiro,” he added, sinking
last words. “I vow to God, if you do it again
I will put my dagger into you.”
“Your dagger, will you?” answered the
other, bursting into a rough laugh. “No you
won't! no you won't, Guz—plague on it! there
I go again. Who the devil can think of such
things? but you will put no dagger into me, I
can tell you.”
“And why not? why not, I pray you, when
you plague me so—when you would plague
the archangel Gabriel out of patience with
your buffoonery and folly? why should I not?”
“In the first place, because I would not let
you—why two can play at dagger-work as
well as one, man! and I think I am as good as
you, any day. But if I were not, I wear a
secret, when I ride with you—for I have heard
a thing or two, and I don't forget what I hear,
either—”
“What have you heard? what have you
heard?” exclaimed the other, furiously, but
turning very pale as he spoke. “Say on—I
insist on your saying on! You have said too
much, or not enough; speak! out with it, what
have you heard?”
“Nay,” said the sailor, “never mind—I do
not want to quarrel; and if I did, this is no
place for it. Let us go in, as the girl told us.
I would not have said aught, but you spoke of
stabbing me. Come, come—forget it! let us
go in.”
And, with the words, he stalked on with a
sturdy step, and a quiet fearless smile, into the
room Guarica had indicated; but the other
paused behind, and muttered through his teeth,
“He knows too much! he knows too much!
He is dangerous; but what a fool he was to let
me find it out. In one thing he is right, however,
this is no place, and no time, either;
and we have other cards to play, too, for the
nonce! but patience—patience!”
And, with a grim smile, he too walked in
after his companion, and throwing himself
down on a pile of soft cotton cushions,
smoothed his disordered features, and took a
careful observation of the room, and every article
which it contained. And there were many
things most unusual to behold in an Indian's
dwelling, and such as must naturally have excited
both comment and surprise in any persen
not prepared fully to encounter them. Upon a
centre table of some variegated wood, elaborately
carved and polished, lay several Spanish
books of romance and poetry, a mandolin of
exquisite workmanship, and several sheets of
music, marked with the rude notation of the
day. There was a standish, too, with several
pens, both of reed and quills, and several rolls
of parchment. Upon the walls were five or
six bold and masterly sketches of combats with
the Moors of Granada, and one or two views
and sea pieces. In one corner of the room
stood a long arquebuse, which both the
strangers recognised in a moment; while, from
the antlers of a stag, which adorned the wall,
there hung a powder-horn, a set of bandoleers,
a pair of gilt Spanish spurs, and a hunting-bugle.
Upon a long divan or couch under the
window was a black velvet cloak and a plumed
hat.
At these things, when Herreiro entered, the
man he had called Sanchez was gaping with a
fixed wondering stare, and when he perceived
that the other had come in, he pointed to them
with his finger, and was about to speak, when
Guzman cut him short in a quick whisper.
“I see, I see—it is just as I thought; but
do not seem to notice them—for God's sake do
not speak; I am sure that girl is watching us.
I do beseech you, do not seem to see, and yet
see everything.”
“Tush! you are always so suspicious;
now, I think—”
“Of course you do,” Herreiro again interrupted
him—“of course you think it is going
to rain; why it is raining over there already.”
Sanchez stared at him, but before he could
reply, Guarica, who had entered unperceived
by him, as he sat with his back towards the
door, though Herreiro had perceived her, invited
him to take some wine which a girl was
just bringing, with tropical fruits and cool
water.
In a few moments afterwards Orozimbo entered,
carrying in his hand a couple of long
javelins, the head of one of which was wet
with fresh blood; and followed by several Indians,
two of whom bore a deer, slung by its
legs to a pole resting on their shoulders.
These threw themselves down to rest under
the portico, but Orozimbo walked straight into
his sister's guest-chamber; and though he expressed
no surprise, but greeted his visitors
hospitably, it was evident to his sister that he
partook of her astonishment, if not of her
apprehension.
Meanwhile the storm burst with a degree of
intense and concentrated fury that cannot be
conceived till it is seen, and can be seen only
within the tropics; the thunder rolled in one
continuous and incessant roar—the whole expanse
of heaven was one broad glare of blue
and livid lightning—the wind raved horribly,
sweeping the largest trees away as if they
were mere straws in its path. At length the
rain poured down in torrents, the wind sank,
the thunder died away—the danger was at an
end; and, within two hours, the setting sun
beamed out again serenely, and not a token of
the storm was to be felt or seen, save in the
fallen trees, and in the freshness of the air,
cooled and reanimated by the thunder-gust.
During the storm the strangers had conversed
on many subjects, endeavoring, evidently,
and the younger man more particularly, to
above all, to appear perfectly at ease and offhanded.
But in neither one nor the other of
these ends were they at all successful; and
that, too, as it often happens, in consequence
of the very means they took to promote them.
In the first place, the courtly air, overstrained
compliments, and yet more than these, the
ominous and sneering smile of Guzman, impressed
Guarica with feelings of anything
rather than favorable; and, in the second, the
very care which the strangers took to avoid
all allusion to the articles betokening, as clearly
as spoken words, the habitual intercourse
of the inhabitants with some gentleman of
Spanish blood, convinced her—not that they
did not see them—for that would have argued
them blind, or at least stupidly unobservant—
but that they were prepared to see them there;
and that their visit was, in some sort, connected
with Hernando de Leon.
As the storm had now cleared off, and as
night was drawing near, they had no excuse
for remaining longer; and, with many courteous
speeches, and many formalities of thanks
and leave-taking, they mounted their horses
and departed—having declined Orozimbo's offer
to send a guide to show them the nearest way
to the fortress of Isabella.
Among the last words he uttered, Guzman
had, with great adroitness, as he thought, contrived
to let out very naturally that his own
name was Sylva de Fronteiro, while he continually
addressed the sailor as Juan Sanchez;
thereby convincing Guarica, beyond a peradventure,
that both these titles were unreal; for
she had overheard the latter call Herreiro Guzman,
and had caught some words of the rebuke
which the blunder had called forth.
In a word, neither the brother nor sister
was deceived, for scarcely had they ridden ten
yards from the door before Orozimbo said—
“Who are they, Guarica; who are they;
and what brought them hither?”
“Nay, brother,” answered the lovely girl,
“I never saw either of them before; they
said they were out hunting, but that is not
true, for they had never let their hounds loose,
nor even soiled their boots.”
“They are spies,” said the boy, “spies on
Hernando, and I fancy they gave us false
names.”
“I am sure they did,” answered Guarica,
“I heard the little man call the other `Guzman,'
when they thought me out of hearing;
but De Leon will be here anon, and then we
shall know all about it.”
“I will know all about it sooner. What
ho! give me my bow and arrows there.
What time comes Hernando?”
“Not till the moon is above the forest-tops;
he was on guard all day,” answered Guarica,
simply.
“And that they knew right well,” said Orozimbo,
“but I will find them out! And now
one word, Guarica—be thou sure that De Leon
means thee honor. These Spaniards—aye,
the best of them, are but false knaves and
liars; and by the sun and moon, and all the
hosts of heaven! if he be the villain to deceive
thee, and thou the dupe to be deceived, this
hand—this very hand of mine—dost understand,
Guarica? Girl! girl! I would rather
see thee dead—dead by my own hand, than
guilty with a Spaniard!”
“And I would rather be so dead,” replied
the girl, very firmly; “but you wrong both
him and me.”
“Look to it, thou, that it be so! Fare thee
well; remember who thou art, and who were
they before thee. Ere the moon set will I
learn something of these fellows.”
And snatching his long bow and four shafts
from the tall Indian who had brought them at
his bidding he waved a farewell to his sister,
bounded across the lawn, and entered the forest
at the point where, a little while before, the
cavaliers had struck it on their route for
Isabella.
3. CHAPTER III.
The strangers had not ridden many yards
across the meadow, before one of the servants
spurred his horse sharply forward, and riding
up alongside of his master, said—
“I do not know, my lord, what the girl
meant, when she said there was no stabling;
for I never laid my eyes, in all my life, on a
neater rack and manger than were in that shed
or outhouse—and a good steel chain with a
running billet, and a head-stall of Spanish
leather, fit for a count's charger. Good store
there was of bedding, too, and better maize
than we have at the fort for the troop horses.
Nor was that all, senor, for there had stood a
horse there within twelve hours—there was
fresh dung in the stall.”
“I know—I know, Pacheco, all about it,”
replied Guzman, “and thou shalt know, too,
one of these days—so thou wilt only hold thy
peace—one word blabbed at the guard-room or
canteen will spoil everything.”
“You may trust me, my lord—I never
talk!”
“I know you never do, Pacheco,” answered
Herreiro; “you are a faithful fellow, as
well as a stout soldier.”
The man touched his bonnet, and fell back
to his companion, highly gratified, and began
inculcating to him the necessity of silence.
“Well—I hope you are now satisfied,” said
yon runagate Charib dog informed you, Hernando
comes hither to court you Indian beauty
She is temptation enough, truly, without bringing
treason in to aid. Why, she would set
half Ferdinand's court afire with those eyes of
hers, half passionate lustre and half sleepy
languor!”
“Satisfied am I, right well, that thou art a
fool, Gomez,” said Herreiro; “I doubt not now
that you fancy I shall abandon it—”
“I don't see, for my part, what there is to
abandon, or to prosecute either. Here has
Hernando de Leon seduced a pretty Indian, and
passes all his spare time fondling her—well!
there is no sin against martial law in that, I
trow—or if there be, few of us here shall
escape the provost marshal. Or if you like
better, he is wooing her to honorable marriage
—and that the old admiral is like to consider
an especial service; particularly when the
wooer stands so high for prowess as Hernando;
and when the bride is the niece of the
unconquered Caonabo—why, he will deem it
a sure pledge of the pacification of the race.”
“I thought as much—just such an argument
as a thick-skulled, addle-brained sailor
like yourself would be sure to draw from it.
But I—I can see further. I will so plot it,
that I will brew from these ingredients—”
“Beware that your brewing,” interrupted
the other, “return not bitterly to your own
lips. For all that I can see, all you are like
to gain in this matter, is that Hernando will
knock your brains out, like a mad dog's, for
meddling with his inamorata.”
“Would God that he would try it—I ask
nothing better—anything, anything to give me
a chance of one fair thrust at his accursed
heart!”
“I' faith, you are a good hater—whatever
you may be beside,” answered the sailor Gomez;
“but, for my part, I cannot see why you
hate the lad so deadly. They tell me he has
saved your life some three or four times—”
“Thrice! thrice! curses be on his head!”
replied Don Guzman, gnashing his teeth with
deadly spite. “It is for that—for that I hate
him! From the first time I ever saw him, I felt
that in him was my bane. In everything he
has crossed my path—in everything outdone
me, foiled, defeated me—his praises are the
deadliest poison to my soul—and, from my
school-days upward, his praises have never for
a moment ceased to ring trumpet-like in my
ears. Then, as in veriest spite of Fortune, he
must make me the very butt whereon to prove
his valor, his magnanimity, his self-devotion—
he must force me, whom it well nigh choked
in the utterance, to swell the burden of his
glory. Death to his soul! how I hate him!—
and then, here, here is new cause for hatred, if
there were none before.”
“Here?—new cause here?—in what, I prithee?”
“Here!—art thou blind, Gomez? Here in
this girl, this angel, this Guarica!—but if I
call the fiend himself to aid, here I will outdo
him.”
Gomez looked long and steadily in his companion's
face, as if he would fain have read
something there, which he expected; but, disappointed,
he withdrew his eyes, and shook
his head doubtfully.
“What, in the name of all the fiends of hell!
dost thou stare so for? What seest thou in my
face, man, to fascinate thee?”
“Naught! Guzman—naught! I looked to
see utter madness—stark lunacy—sheer frenzy!
but I see none of these things—and yet so
surely as there is a God in heaven, thou must
be mad—”
“For what should I be mad—I pray thee?”
answered Herreiro, angrily! “my pulse is as
cool as thine, my brain a thousand times more
clear, and vivid in conception—for what should
I be mad?—for loving this most perfect of
heaven's creatures?”
“Aye! for that very thing—most vivldly
mad!” replied the sailor. “I knew you ever
for a fierce and voluptuous devil, but thy blood
must indeed be like Greek fire to blaze out thus
unquenchable at one spark from a brown
wench's eye!—most wildly mad in this—and
absolutely frenzied, when you would dream of
winning her from De Leon. Why he hath
had her heart, possessed her soul, these six
months—and think you that he is so weak a
rival, and that too, when so stabilished in her
favors? Why, if you and he were to start
fairly, he could give you his topsails and beat
you; as I have seen an Algerine felucca run
our best caravellas hull down in an hour.
Tush! man, think better of it—to judge by one
look I saw her give you, were you the only one
in the island, she would have none of you!”
“I will have her—or die for it!” answered
Don Guzman, fiercely. “So let that be the
end of it!”
“The end of it, then, let it be—as it will
sure enough! For Hernando will kill you
like a rat, as soon as he finds you meddling
with his Bonnibella. But we had better ride
on somewhat quickly now, and get out of his
track; for we are in the very path he always
rides; and he is off his guard by this time, and
is now flying hitherward, I warrant me, upon
the wings of hot anticipation!”
“That is the first word of sense you have
spoken to-night,” said Herreiro; “let us gallop.”
And with the word they put their horses to
their speed, and dashed along the sort of forest
path, which had been worn in the virgin soil
by the hoofs of De Leon's Andalusian, so constantly
during the last six months had he passed
and the Spanish fortress. After an hour's riding
they came to a spot where a broad shallow
rivulet, flowing upon a pebbly bed, rippled
across the path, and turning abruptly into its
channel to the left hand of Hernando's track,
they descended it slowly, the waters rarely
mounting above their horses' fetlocks, for
something better than a mile, where it flowed
out of the shadowy woods, into an open plain
or bega, wide of Hernando's route, across
which they sped rapidly towards Isabella.
It was not, probably, half an hour after the
time of their turning into the stream that the
tramp of a horse, had there been any one there
to listen, might have been heard coming up
from the settlements, and in a moment or two,
De Leon, followed by his trusty hounds, cantered
along the path; but as he reached the little
ford he pulled up suddenly, for there, in
the centre of the horse track, stooping down as
if to examine some late footprints in the mois!
soil, stood the Charib boy Orozimbo.
“Ha! Orozimbo—what hath brought thee
so far from home at this untimely hour!”
“Knavery, if not villany, Hernando,” answered
the youth, in Spanish, which he spoke
now with much more accuracy, both of pronunciation
and of syntax, than he had done at
his first meeting with De Leon; but still not
nearly with so correct an emphasis as his beautiful
sister—“and perchance treason!”
“Treason!” cried the young Spaniard, “by
whom, or whom against? what do you mean,
boy?”
“By whom, I know not,” answered Orozimbo,
“but against thee, if I err not.” And
he proceeded to relate to him the circumstances
of the visit Guarica had received that day; and
their reasons for suspecting that all was not
right, nor as it seemed to be. He described the
persons of the riders with a degree of minute
accuracy, extending to the smallest details of
their dress, to the fashion of their spurs, the
ornaments of their sword hilts, the marks and
colors of their horses, the very spots on their
hounds; such things as no mortal eye, save of
an Indian, could have observed in so short a
period, as had enabled him to take in and comprehend
the whole.
At first, Hernando de Leon listened half carelessly,
thinking in his own mind that the visit
must have been purely accidental, attaching
little consequence to the details, and half inclined
to smile at the habitual suspicion of the
Indian, so characteristically and needlessly displayed.
Soon, however, it appeared that his attention
was excited, for he now listened eagerly, asked
two or three quick and pertinent questions, to
which he received answers as intelligent and
clear—and, after the boy had ceased speaking,
pondered for a few moments deeply, and then
said—
“That is odd—it must have been Gomez
Aria, with Guzman de Herreiro—there are no
others in the fortress to whom this description
could apply—”
“Yes! yes!” interrupted Orozimbo, eagerly;
`I had forgotten that—Guarica heard the short
man call the other, `Guzman.' It was they, I
am sure of it. Are they friends of yours?—
are they true men?”
“Herreiro is: I would stake my soul's salvation
on it! I have saved his life thrice, at
the risk of my own. And as for Gomez, he
is a good blunt sailor—and I have never
wronged him. Yet it is passing strange. You
say they rode home by this path?”
“To this spot, and here they have turned off
down the rivulet's bed to avoid meeting you;
knew they the hour at which you would leave
Isabella?”
“Herreiro did, for he asked me to ride out
with him to-day, and I told him I was officer
of the guard until eight o'clock at night. I
wondered somewhat when he asked me; for
I have noted a shade of coolness in his manner
lately.”
“Beware of him!” said Orozimbo; “he
means you no good. They had not been
hunting; no! not they; they had not so much
as uncoupled their bloodhounds. And neither
one nor other of them noticed, or seemed to see,
the Spanish books or the music which you left
the other day; or even your gun and bugle
horn. Had they been honest, they would have
naturally inquired about those things, which are
not to be found, you know, in every Indian's
cabin.”
“He can mean me no evil,” said Hernando,
thoughtfully; “he never had a cause—”
“He has one now!” answered Orozimbo,
quickly.
“He has a cause now? a cause to mean me
ill? How so—what cause?”
“Guarica.”
“Guarica? how? a cause to injure me!
Guarica?”
“Yes! yes! Guarica; for he loves her.”
“Loves her? Why he has never seen her
but for an hour to-day—and do you say he
loves her?”
“Aye!” said the boy, drily, “loves her, as
much as you Spanish ever love Indian maidens.
He lusts after her young beauty—”
“Hold, Orozimbo!” said De Leon, looking
him steadily and sternly in the face, “was
that meant to me?”
“Perhaps!” answered the youth, gloomily,
“perhaps! and yet no! no! I believe thou art
honest, De Leon. Yet I doubt, sometimes,
even thee.”
“Mark me, Orozimbo,” replied Hernando,
naked shoulder of the Charib heavily with his
right hand, “mark me. For myself, I care
not for your suspicions; but if I deemed that
your rash tongue dared syllable one doubt of
Guarica's purity—that your brain had surmised,
even for a second's space, that she
would listen to a dishonorable suit—her brother
though you be—”
“What then, her brother though I be, what
then?” cried Orozimbo, under strong excitement.
“I would strike you to my feet!” the young
Spaniard answered, gravely, “to my feet! for calumniating,
in your sister, one of God's angels!”
“You would do well!” cried the boy, grasping
his hand; “I should deserve it! But I
doubt neither of you—least of all her! But
when I think of the wrongs you Spaniards
have done to us—of our hearths defiled, our
names disgraced, our wives and sisters torn
from our bosoms, wooed and caressed and
courted until your passions or your whims are
satisfied, and then sent back dishonored and
undone to be a blot upon the homes they once
adorned—when I think on those things, Hernando
de Leon, my soul grows black within
me, and I doubt all things! and I tell you—
you who love her—I marked you Guzman's
dark and snakelike eye dwell on Guarica's form,
as never man's eye dwelt on maiden whom he
hoped not to dishonor, whom he lusted not to
destroy. I tell you he gloated on every heave
of her swelling bosom, on every undulation of
her limbs—not a movement, not a turn of her
figure could escape him. By the God whom I
worship, my soul burned to slay him where he
sat. Let him come here again, and a shaft
from this bow that never misses, shall drown
the flames of his accursed lust in his black
heart's blood!”
“Nay! nay, my friend, and soon to be my
brother, be not rash, Orozimbo. I trust thou
art too hasty I trust that, in this at least, thou
art too suspicious. But if it were so, if it were
as thou thinkest, dost imagine that I—I, Hernando
de Leon—would leave to any other man
alive, were that other the Cid Ruy Diaz of Bivar,
the right of avenging a wrong offered to
my promised wife—the privilege of shedding
his life blood that dared but to look on her too
warmly? No! no! believe me, Orozimbo, if
it be so, he dies upon this blade which twice
has beaten death back from the gates of his existence!
But not a word of this—not a word, on
thy life, to Guarica! I will myself speak
with Don Guzman, when I return to-morrow.
I think he will not dare, even if he should
wish it, to show aught but respectful courtesy
to my promised bride.”
“It shall be done as you wish, Hernando,”
answered the youth, “but beware of him. Certain
am I, that he is no true man, or honest
friend; and for the rest, he knows even now,
as well as I do, that you daily visit Guarica;
though it may be he fancies her your paramour,
and not your destined wife. But, as I said, beware
of him, and let him beware of me; for as
surely as there is a God, who witnesses our
thoughts, as clearly as our actions, so surely
will I shoot him, like a dog, if I catch him
lurking about her. And now go on your way
to Guarica—she waits for you.”
“And you, Orozimbo?”
“I will pursue these men until I house them
fairly, that I may learn to a foot the path in
which they travel; for by that same path will
they return again.”
“No violence, my friend, promise me that
there shall be no violence.”
“I do,” replied the Charib, laying his tawny
hand on his bare bosom; “I do promise you.
Why should I harm them until I am certain?
I am not quite so mad as that, Senor Hernando.”
“Then go—it is as well thou shouldst—and
keep good watch; for I am ordered hence with
a detachment to the new fortress eastward, and
shall be absent seven days, or perhaps longer.
Watch over her while I am gone; for if he
dare attempt aught, it will be then—though I
think it not of him.”
“Ordered hence—ha! ordered away!” cried
the boy; “when was that? When did you
hear of that? Are you sure he had naught to
do with it?”
“The order was conveyed to me this morning
from my superiors. Don Guzman had no
voice in it, save as one of the council; besides
it is a high and honorable post! Farewell,
and be thou prudent; ere I set forth I will seek
occasion to hold converse with him. Good
night, and fare thee well, if thou return not to
the cottage ere I leave it.”
And shaking hands kindly with the young
and gallant Indian, he cantered forward, full of
high hopes and tender dreams, to join his beautiful
Guarica; while, with the patient and doglike
sagacity of his race, her brother set himself
to track out inch by inch, the route of those
strangers, from whose visit his suspicions
feared so much of evil.
But though Hernando, partly from a reluctance
to admit himself the possibility of such a
surmise, and still more from a prudent apprehension
of wakening the fiery soul of the Charib
boy to some deed of signal vengeance, the
consequence of which might be to cause a war
of extermination between the races; but though
Hernando had expressed his confidence so
strongly in the good faith of Herreiro, that confidence,
as he rode onward in deep self-communion,
began to wane; and if not quite extinguished,
was much weakened before he reached
the dwelling of his lady love, and in her
witching smile forgot all thought of peril.
As soon as Orozimbo left him, he began to
reflect within himself upon the altered conduct
of Don Guzman; for he could not deny to his
own heart that it was altered strangely. From
having been at one time his most constant and
familiar comrade, he now remembered that for
many weeks past Herreiro had avoided him;
and, if compelled by the routine of duty to exchange
a few words with him, had done so
hurriedly, and without any longer pause than
was necessary. When he thought upon this,
he began naturally enough to think upon the
reason why he, so late the idol of his friends
and fellow soldiers, should have now earned
their suspicion and dislike. Nor could he but
confess that in some sort the fault had been
his own—that he had been so utterly engrossed
by his passion for the princess, as to neglect
all else except his duty—and almost that
also! Nor could he wonder that his own
sudden alienation from the pastimes and pursuits
of his associates, should have given rise
in them not only to a like alienation, but to a
feeling of resentment and distrust, and perhaps
even of hatred, ever the child of irritated
vanity.
He struck his hand on his breast with a
gloomy feeling of self-condemnation “Alas!”
he muttered to himself—“Alas! how often do
even our best feelings lead us astray—how often
do we by our own first injustice towards
others beget that injustice towards ourselves of
which we afterwards so bitterly complain!
But I will speak with him to-morrow, ere I
start; I will speak with him openly and
frankly, and all shall be well. And now for
Guarica.”
By this time he had traversed the tract of
forest land, and reached the edge of the lone
savannah, whence he could mark the cottage
home of his beloved, o'ercanopied by its tall
palms and feathery mimosas; the moon was
hanging like a lamp of silver in the serene and
cloudless sky, wherein a thousand glorious
constellations unknown to our colder hemispheres
were burning with a clear and deathless
lustre, undimmed by any mist or earthly vapor.
Myriads of fire-flies were glancing in the
thick foliage of the trees, or flitting to and fro
over the dewy grass—perfumes were steaming
up from every herb and flower, and the
light air that fanned the face of the young
Spaniard was loaded with a rich and spicy fragrance,
almost too powerful for the senses.
There was a hum of melody upon the soft
night breeze, the blended voices of ten thousand
small nocturnal insects, but sweeter,
clearer, more melodious far than all swelled up
from the distant cottage, the pure voice of
young womanhood, rising in notes of sacred
song to the very throne of Holiness. The
young man paused to listen with a soul thrilling
with delight—it was the hymn to the Vir
gin, and though the intermediate words were
lost in distance, the burden Ave Purissim
pealed in her clear and silvery accents high as
the swell of a seraphic trumpet. While he
yet stood and listened, the light, which beamed
fair and uninterrupted from the casement of
Guarica's chamber, was suddenly obscured,
and he might see the slight and exquisite proportions
of the fair girl pencilled distinct and
sharp, against the glowing background, as she
stood looking out into the night awaiting his
approach, who, though unseen, was so nigh to
her.
He gave his horse the spur, and in five minutes
was beside her. It is not in the power
of words to describe such meetings. Those
who have loved, as did the young Hernando,
fervently, wildly, passionately (yet withal so
chastely and so purely that his most ardent
wish had called no blush to the chariest
maiden's cheek), can remember, can conceive.
To all beside, the high and holy aspirations,
the sweet blending of those kindred souls, is a
sealed book; and sealed it must remain, until
to them, too, love shall give the key.
Suffice it they were happy; as happy as
aught of mortal mould may be. No thought
of care or evil came nigh them: lapped in the
dreams of young romance—absorbed in their
unselfish, fond affection—they had no thoughts
but of the blissful present—no hopes but of a
blessed future.
Long they sat, hand in hand, in that serene
and tranquil happiness, which is too deep, too
full of thought, to find vent in many words;
and afterwards, long they conversed of their
future prospects, anticipating the arrival of the
great and good Columbus, who was soon
hourly expected to return from Old Spain, and
whose consent alone, and presence, they
awaited, in order to be made one in the sight
of man and God.
The night was wearing late, and the slight
meal of fruits, and cake, and sweet palm wine
had been tasted, yet not once had Guarica ever
thought of mentioning the visit of her lover's
countrymen; nor had Hernando found courage
yet to tell her that seven days must elapse before
he should again behold her.
But now, when the time had arrived to say
farewell, and he was forced reluctantly to tell
her all—reluctantly, not only that it was painful
to himsell to dwell even on his temporary
absence—but that he could not bear to see
those sweet eyes swim in tears, that charming
bosom swell with the sob of suppressed agony
—now, in the agitation and the anguish of
that parting moment, the fears, which she had
that day for the first time experienced, came
back upon her, dark and gloomy.
And, hanging on Hernando's shoulder, she
owned, even while she strove to smile at her
own weak and womanish dismay—she confessed
of Guzman, she knew not what, that had filled
her soul with harrowing dread; with forebodings
such as she never had entertained, or
thought of before; which had hung all the
evening like a heavy storm cloud darkening
her very soul; and which, though banished
for a space by his presence, had again returned,
sadder, and heavier, and darker than before.
It was in vain that Hernando argued with
her, as he had argued with her brother; that
he used every faculty of his powerful mind to
convince, to soothe, to reassure her—it was in
vain—she would not be consoled.
“I know it,” she said, in reply to all that he
could urge; “I feel it here, and I know it
will be so—I know that the time of my trial is
at hand. God grant me strength to pass
through it stainless and unscathed—but I foresee
my peril, and the quarter whence it cometh.
I know that you must leave me—I would not
have you stay, or loiter—no, not to save my
life: for what should you be, with your soldier's
honor tarnished—or what would be left
for me, if I should tempt you to dishonor?
No! my beloved, no!—You must begone, and
leave Guarica to her trials and her God! Pray
for me, my beloved, pray for me—and oh!
whatever shall fall out, be well assured of this
—that never will Guarica survive her honor,
or her love for De Leon. Farewell, then,
dear Hernando; but, ere you go, grant me one
boon—will you not, dearest?—the first boon
Guarica ever asked of her Hernando?”
“Can you ask if I will, Guarica? Take
anything—take all! my life, my very soul is
thine. What shall I give thee, dearest?
“This!” said the girl, laying her hand on
the hilt of a small, slight, though long stiletto,
with a square blade, scarce thicker than a
lady's bodkin, which he wore in a golden
scabbard at his girdle—“give me this only!”
“Nay! nay! this were an ominous gift,
Guarica; ask anything but this.”
“Will you refuse me my first prayer, Hernando?”
“I would not willingly refuse—but there
is an ancient saw about sharp-edged gifts. I
am not superstitious, and yet—and yet—I will
own the truth—I do not like to give it!”
“Then will I buy it of you: what shall I
give? See,” she confinued, smiling, “the
other day you asked me for a lock of hair:
give me the dagger quick, and you shall have
it!”
And with the words she drew it from the
sheath, and severed a long, silky ringlet.
“Give me the scabbard, now, and you shall
have this—and—”
“And what, Guarica?”
“And what you never would have dared
to ask of me.” And she cast down her eyes;
and a quick blush shot across her sunny features;
and a visible thrill shook her frame, as
if she half repented the words she had uttered.
“A kiss, Guarica?”
She raised her eyes again, timidly but unshrinkingly,
to meet her lover's ardent gaze:
“You will not think me overbold or unmaidenly,
Hernando?”
“You! you unmaidenly, Guarica!—the
saints in heaven as soon!”
And as he spoke, he unlinked the jewelled
scabbard from his girdle, and laying it in her
hand, folded her for one moment in his arms,
and printed one long, chaste kiss, on lips that
returned not the pressure.
“But for what can you want such a keepsake,
dearest?—what will you do with it?”
he asked, as he released her.
“Wear it next to my heart,” she answered,
her soft eye lightening with a bright, enthusiastic
inspiration, and her whole form appearing
to dilate with energy and soul. “Now I
am mistress of myself—now I am mistress of
my honor!”
“Lovely enthusiast!—and thinkest thou
thou couldst find the courage or the strength to
use it?”
“Think I—think I, Hernando? No! I
think not—I know it. Should that man dare
to wrong me, so surely as I hope to live in
heaven hereafter, where he stood, there should
he die by a girl's hand; or, if that should fail,
I have a heart myself, that lies not so deep but
this would reach it. Now, I am happy, love
—now I am strong and fearless. Fare thee
well—fare thee well, Hernando, and dread nothing.
Spotless you leave me now, and loving,
and spotless you shall find me, aye! and
loving, whether it be on earth or there!”
and she pointed with the gleaming dagger to
the calm, azure heavens, as she spoke, in a
voice so tranquilly harmonious, and with an
air of majesty so perfect, that Hernando almost
asked himself whether she were not a being of
nature too pure and ethereal to be the object of
mere mortal love, and fitter for man's adoration
as a guardian saint or angel.
“Beautiful, glorious creature!” he exclaimed,
almost involuntarily, “it will be needless
all; there lives no man on earth daring enough
to dream of harming thee; and if there were,
the Lord, who watches over all his virtuous
creatures, would surely send down legions of
thy kindred angels to defend thee!”
“Hernando!”
“Guarica! sweet Guarica! Farewell!”
And the young lovers parted. Sad word,
alas!—sad thought. For who that part can
dream when they shall meet again, or what
shall pass before that meeting?
4. CHAPTER IV.
Morning had dawned already, when Hernando
returned to the fortress of his countrymen,
and all was noise and bustle; two companies
were under arms without the gates, and
the whole esplanade between the walls and the
sea was alive with men rolling down casks of
ammunition or provisions to a tall caravella,
which lay in the little basin at the wharf, with
her foretopsail loose, in readiness to sail, as it
seemed, at a moment's notice.
As Hernando dismounted, two or three officers,
who were inspecting the arquebusers and
pikemen, stepped forward to salute him.
“How soon will the tide serve, Señor Gomez?”
asked the young cavalier, addressing
the personage who had accompanied Herreiro
on the previous day.
“Not for two hours, at the earliest, Don
Hernando,” replied the sailor; “but I am waiting
only to have the soldiers put on board, before
I shove off into the stream.”
“I will give orders—I will give orders.
How soon shall you want me on board?”
“My boat shall wait you in an hour at the
port stairs.”
“I will be ready, senor. Don Luis Mandragone,
get your men on board instantly.
Steadily, sir! steadily! no hurry! Forward,
march!”
And for a few moments he stood still, observing
the movements of the troops, who,
with that steadiness of severe discipline which
rendered the Spanish infantry the most famous
in the world, went through the requisite manœuvres
with equal speed and facility.
This done, Hernando turned to the sentinels
on duty, and inquired if Don Guzman de Herreiro
was within the walls, but, greatly to his
disappointment, he was answered in the negative;
and, on making further inquiries, still
more to his vexation, he was informed that,
although he had not returned home till a late
hour on the previous evening, he had set out,
alone, to hunt before daybreak.
Not a word did De Leon utter in reply, but
his brow grew as black as night, and he strode
away, hastily, to his own barrack, and locking
himself in, to avoid interruption, took pen and
paper, and addressed a long letter to his whilom
friend and comrade.
For he was not deceived in the least by the
pretext of hunting; knowing, as he did, that
Herreiro was by no means so ardent an admirer
of field sports, as to get up before the sun
two following mornings, to ride after the stanchest
hounds that ever opened upon game.
He doubted not, therefore, that, whatever the
pretence, his Guarica, his own betrothed, was
the true object of pursuit to a man, whom he
knew bold, resolute, voluptuous, unscrupulous,
and persevering. It was a moment of strange
agony! For though he never so much dreamed
of doubting Guarica's purity of soul, or
power to resist more potent fascinations than
were like to be brought against her—though he
imagined not that Herreiro would dare resort
to violence—still it was anguish to believe
that she, his soul's idol, would have to endure
the solicitations, to brook the insolent addresses
of this bold libertise.
It was now that he felt bitterly the folly of
his conduct, in so estranging himself from his
comrades: for he had no one to whom he
could confide his anxieties, of whom he could
ask comfort and advice. The rather that the
very man to whom it would have been most
natural that he should apply, was he against
whom he was now called upon to take counsel.
Short was the space which was left to him,
either for action or deliberation, and perhaps it
was well for him that it was so; for assuredly,
under the spur of instant necessity, he took a
course which, if the boldest, was the wisest he
could have adopted.
He sat down and wrote a long, frank letter
to Herreiro, as one devoted friend to another.
He apologized in some sort for his late strangeness
and allenation, by accounting for it;
which he did—ingenuously, frankly, truly.
He wrote to him of Guarica, as if he were ignorant
that Herreiro knew of her existence: he
told him of his first fascination, of his deep
love arising thence, of his intention to make
her his wife, immediately on the return of Columbus;
and then, touching on his compulsory
absence from Isabella, he commended his mistress
to the care of his friend, in all loyalty and
honor; conjuring him to watch over her, to
protect her in case of any peril, to be to her,
in short, if necessity should arise, as a brother.
This packet finished, and confided to the
charge of Don Guzman's confidential servant,
—which was not done until the hour of embarkation
was at hand,—Hernando's mind was
more composed and tranquillized than it had
been since his discovery of Herreiro's conduct.
“He cannot,” thought he, within himself,
“after receiving this—he cannot dream of prosecuting
any dishonorable suit towards my
destined wife First, I cannot believe his heart
so treacherously base and evil: second, he dare
not; for he knows that, did he so, within six
hours of my return, he would have ceased to
draw the breath of life: and third, as gentleman
and belted knight, he dare not meet the
obloquy and scorn of every honorable man,
which would burst on his head should he despise
this frank and loyal trust.”
And in this renewed confidence, he stepped
on board the boat that was to bear him to the
stately caravella; and as he climbed her castellated
prow, and stood upon her guarded
deck, with the free, fair breeze laughing in her
shrouds and halyards, and the blue waves of
round her bows, sorrow, and care, and sad
anticipation passed from his heart, as a cloud
is swept away by the autumnal wind from the
face of some rich champaign, and in their
place the sunshine of ambition, and blithe energetic
action, possessed the spirit of the adventurous
soldier.
So true it is, that for man, however deeply
and devotedly he love, that love is still but the
amusement, the luxury, if you will, of his
existence; while, on the contrary, to a woman
it is the necessity of life—nay, it is life itself.
It certainly is not possible that any man on
earth could have loved more sincerely, more
fervently, than Hernando; and yet, from the
instant when the brave frigate left her moorings,
spreading sheet after sheet of snowy canvas
to the favoring breeze, and dashing the
small seas asunder in jets of flashing spray,
not a thought of anxiety or sadness came to
disturb him, or, if it did, it was banished by an
effort of strong will, as being, if not unmanly,
at least inconsistent with his bolder duties.
Fair blew the breezes, and rapidly the good
ship sped before it, and the cheer of the stout
mariners, and the jest and song of the idle soldiery,
to whom this summer voyage was a gay
holiday of rest from the monotonous routine of
the garrison, made merry, though rough music
Action and bustle, and perhaps strife—enthusiastic,
thrilling strife before them—the walls of
Isabella ere long sunk on their lee, and they,
and all that they contained, were soon forgotten.
But in the forest-home of poor Guarica there
was no keen excitement, no hurried action, to
banish heavy shadows from the heart—no
change of scene to divert the weary eyes from
thoughts forgotten by the sight of familiar objects.
No new, strange sounds to distract the
ear, filled as it were with old memories, recalled
at every moment by old, accustomed noises.
There she sat in her wonted chamber, where
he had so lately sat beside her, gazing upon the
same sweet landscape which so often they had
admired together—now turning to the books
which he had given her, now trying to distract
her sorrows by singing, to his mandolin, the
Spanish airs which he had taught her. But
all would not do; the one dread thought, the
one dread terror, sat on her heart, haunted her
as with a real presence—the fixed presentiment
of evil—evil from that dark, terrible Don
Guzman.
And, as if to increase the weight of that
terror, it chanced that Orozimbo, who, fearful
as herself of some deep laid and treacherous
stratagem, had resolved to devote the whole
time of Hernando's absence to watching over
Guarica—was called away at dawn that very
morning, with every vassal he could muster, to
attend a general council of the tribe, convened
by Caonabo, whose mandate, as his uncle and
his chief, he neither dared dispute nor could
resist.
Again, therefore, was she left alone with
her maidens, to whom, knowing the inutility
of awakening their terrors fruitlessly, she had
confided nothing of her apprehensions.
The day, however, passed, until the sun had
buried his lower limb in the green summit of
the tall forest which encompassed the savanuah;
and no alarm had occurred, nor any
sound come from the neighboring woodlands,
to denote the vicinity of any stranger. The
lapse of time, as it ever will, bred something of
security, and she began to reprove herself with
cowardly and shameful weakness, and to endeavor
to convince herself that, as Hernando
had assured her, Don Guzman's visit must have
been purely accidental.
It wanted, perhaps, two hours, or nearly
three of the true sunset, although the shadows
of the woods were already cast in level lines of
purple over the smooth savannah, when her
girls came in to announce to her that they were
going down to bear the cotton cloths they had
been spinning to the bleach ground beside the
brook. Once, for a moment, it occurred to her
to retain one of the girls near her person, but
with a smile at her own cowardice, she changed
her mind, and suffered them to leave her all
alone, reflecting, as she did so, that if danger
should arise, they could afford her little or no
protection; and again, that should she be
alarmed, a moment would carry her to the spot
where they were assembled.
She sat still, therefore, for a space, listening
to the gay sound of their laughing voices, until
they wre lost in the distance: and then, although
she held a volume of some high Spanish
poet in her hand, she fell into a reverie,
which lasted till the purple hues of evening
were gradually stealing towards the zenith.
She had just, partially aroused from her meditation,
begun to marvel at the long tarrying of
the girls, when she felt, rather than saw, for
her eyes were lowered to the ground, that some
one had passed the window near which she
was sitting.
At the next moment a footstep, which her
quick Indian ear told her was a man's, and a
European's, fell heavily upon the portico.
Instinctively her hand glanced down to the
hilt of the stiletto which she wore, as she had
said she would, next to her heart, within her
muslin and robe, and as she loosened the keen
weapon in the sheath, a high and flashing smile
illuminated her dark features.
At the same moment, the tall form of Dou
Guzman de Herreiro stood on the threshold of
the door.
He was dressed in a full suit of black cloth,
with hat, plumes, mantle of the same color,
that he was heavily, almost, indeed, ostentatiously
armed—for in addition to the long Toledo
blade which hung at his left side, and the
heavy dagger which counterbalanced it, he
had a pair of horseman's pistols at his belt, so
large and cumbrous that they would appear
almost out of place in holsters at the saddle-bow.
He did not speak a word, but, removing the
hat from his high, pale brow, stood gazing at
her with an eye so fixed and baleful, that it
seemed almost as if he believed he could fascinate
her.
And she rose instantly, and faced him, tranquil
and calm, and, though paler than usual,
firm and untrembling.
Then stepping one pace forward, and extending
his hand, as if to take hers, which
hung by her side motionless, he said in tones
of affected softness—
“Well, my sweet princess of the forest,
happy am I, again, to find you all alone.”
“Don Guzman de Herreiro,” she replied,
still confronting him with a quiet eye, and rejecting
his hand, as though she bad not perceived
that he offered it—“Don Guzman de
Herreiro will perhaps condescend to explain
the motives that have led him to this intrusion.
There is no storm to-night, nor has the chase,
I think, this time led him hither?”
“You know me, then—you know me,” exclaimed
the Spaniard, a bright color for a moment
kindling his sallow features. “Fortunate that,
my sweet Guarica; for it will save the awkwardness
of introductions.”
“I do know you, senor,” the young girl answered
steadily, “and when you have answered
me my question, you shall know me,
which I now perceive you do not.”
“Your question,” said Herreiro, with an air
half forgetful and half supercilious; “Aye!
why I have come hither, is it not?—to see
you, then, my beauty. It is your grace, your
charms, that have brought me hither—”
“And for what end, I pray you, or to what
purpose?”
“These things, sweet one,” he answered,
carelessly, “are, perhaps, explained better by
deeds than by words; some little time, and a
few soft attentions, make all that clear and
simple, which, if told bluntly, might alarm
your sex's charming sensibility.”
“I prayed you yesterday, senor, to spare
yourself the trouble of paying me these fine
compliments, as they are merely thrown away
I will now add, that if they be meant as serious
gallantry, they are, if possible, more useless
than when regarded as mere figurative flourishes,
employed to keep your tongue in tune.”
“So scornful—ah! so young and beautiful,
and so contemptuous withal.”
“How should I be other than scornful?”
answered Guarica, still perfectly unmoved,
“when your addresses can be regarded only as
mockery or as insult.”
“Insult—you err—sweet Guarica. What
if I come to lay my heart in all honor at your
feet—to say to you frankly—”
“Were that the case—which it is not,” she
answered, “as frankly would I tell you, that
I cannot accept your heart, having none to bestow
on you in return.”
“Again, what if I were to say that it is not
your heart, but your beauty—”
“Senor!”
“That overlooking all past frailties, all
tenderness of the heart towards one—”
“To put a stop to all this matter at once,”
she interrupted him, speaking very rapidly,
and with a marked and thrilling emphasis, “I
will fill up your sentence. To one, you say—
to Don Hernando de Leon, say I, whose promised
bride I am. You will see now the propriety
of urging me no further. Don Guzman,
you are answered. If that you be a gentleman,
you will leave me.”
“And do you really think, my angel, that I
believe such nonsense—that I even suppose
you to believe it? De Leon's paramour, if you
love the title, and much honor you do to his
good taste—but his wife—his wife—ha! ha!
you make me laugh. By heavens! you make
me laugh, Guarica!”
And with the word he advanced a little way
towards her; but she exclaimed in a clear high
note, that pierced his ear like the blast of a
silver trumpet—
“Stand back! stand back! I say not if
you be a gentleman—you, who are recreant
to every law of Spanish chivalry or knightly
honor! You, who are false to your noble
comrade's trust! you, traitor and knave and
liar!—I say not, if you be a man, for nothing
worthy the name of man would so insult and
outrage a helpless solitary girl! But still, I
say, stand back! Back! not for shame, or
honesty, or honor! but for fear! Back! lest,
when he return, Hernando scourge you like a
vile cur as you are, scourge you before the
face of your chivalric countrymen!”
“A fair defiance, lovely Guarica, a fair but
dangerous defiance. Never, if you will be advised
by me, taunt a man on his personal courage.
You are a brave girl to defy me thus,
when you are at my mercy, when you are
alone.”
“I am not at your mercy. I am not alone!”
“Not at my mercy? not alone? But you
know not that I have watched my time—that
I am thoroughly aware, that, save we two,
there is no living creature within earshot!”
“I care not how you may have watched, I
care not what you know—I am not at your
mercy? I am not alone!”
“As how, sweet beauty? By heaven!
“I am the mistress of myself, and God is
with me.”
“See, then,” said Herreiro, sneeringly, “if
God will aid you. Come, girl, wilt grant to
love, what thou perforce must yield to violence?”
Her lips moved rapidly, but no sound reached
his ear. Her eyes were turned upward.
But her right hand was firmly clasped within
the bosom of her robe.
“Come, Guarica, be wise—resistance is in
vain—submit me—”
“Beware thou! I will not submit thee!”
And she stood pale and motionless as marble,
but as firm at the same time, and almost as
fearless. Maddened by passion, and excited
almost to frenzy by her scornful bearing, he
sprang to seize her; his right hand had already
clutched her left arm, as it hung by her side,
his left was flung about her waist, when, in an
instant, in the twinkling of an eye, the spell
was broken—the blood rushed in a torrent, to
brow, cheek, neck, and bosom of the pale
statue, her eye flashed fiery indignation, her
right hand sprang into the air, the keen blade
of Hernando's dagger glittering through the
dusky twilight.
“Die!” she cried; “ravisher and villain—
die in thy sin and shame!”
And with a quick and fiery energy that made
up for the want of strength, she smote him
three times in the bosom with the speed of
light, that the strong man let go his hold, and
staggered back a pace or two, like one who
has received a mortal wound.
Yet Guarica knew that the villain was unwounded,
for every blow that she dealt him
had jarred her slight arm to the shoulder, as the
point of her weapon glanced from the secret
chain mail which Herreiro wore beneath his
doublet. Had the blade been of less perfect
temper it had been shivered to the hilt. As it
was, it had not lost one iota of its trenchant
keenness, and, as she started back, she coolly
tried its point with her finger.
“Best leave me, senor!” she exclaimed.
“From me you can gain nothing, even on terms
more shameful to your manhood!”
“You are mistaken, girl!” he replied, fiercely,
for he was no coward, and his blood was
up. “Your God will no more aid you, than
will your foolish bodkin pierce my good Spanish
mail. Prepare yourself for the worst. It
is now pride and vengeance. Look to yourself—your
will find no mercy!”
“I expect none,” she answered, and as he
rushed towards her, his eyes glowing and his
cheeks flushed with fiendish passion, she added,
looking up towards heaven—“Yet I am mistress
of myself! come one step nearer, and by
the God whom thou dost not believe, and who
shall yet smite thee in thy unbelief—in my
own heart I plunge this dagger, and on thy
head be the blood and the curse!”
And with the word she tore away the cotton
robe that scarce restrained her panting bosom,
and raised the long keen blade aloft with proud
determination.
“My flesh will hardly turn the point, which
thy mail armor scarce resisted!”
He read it in her firm and compressed lip, he
noted it in the steadfast gaze of her earnest eye,
he heard it in every note of her clear, composed,
and unfaltering voice—that resolution,
fixed and sure as death. He knew by the concentrated
energy and force with which she had
stricken him, that no weakness of her woman
arm would mar her purpose in the execution.
He was foiled, and he knew it—foiled and defeated
by a girl—a savage!”
Unable to persist in his base intent, unwilling
to retreat, he stood infirm of purpose, speechless,
and vacillating. At length he faltered
forth—
“Bravely played! bravely played, on my
soul! Guarica, it could not have been done
better had we been both in earnest, which—ha!
ha! ha! it makes me laugh! ha! ha! it does,
by St. Jago! which I believe you really thought
I was. Come, confess—confess, noble Guarica,
didst thou not think that I was in earnest?”
“Didst thou think that I was?” replied
Guarica, with a smile of contempt and loathing.
“Well is it for thee that thou wearest a coat of
proof when thou playest these merry jests—
else had my dagger and thy heart's blood been
acquainted. Yes! senor,” she continued,
changing her tone of bitter scorn into an accent
of deliberate and firm assertion. “Yes, senor,
I do believe, or rather I do know that you were
in earnest, and on this night, seven days hence,
we will see what Hernando de Leon will believe
touching it. And now, senor, you offered
me some advice awhile since, which I
will repay by offering some to you in turn.
Betake yourself to your horse as quickly as
you may; I hear my maidens' voices coming
hitherward, it may be there are men with
them.”
“To hell with your counsel, minion!”
cried Herreiro, perceiving himself now thoroughly
detected, and yielding to his furious
hate and disappointed malice. “You think
yourself invincible, because this time you have
baffled me—but patience! patience! and the
time will come! and hark you, girl! on that
same day whereon Hernando learns what has
passed this night, on that same day he dies!
Ha! do I touch you? Tell him, fool, tell him,
and you seal his death-warrant!”
“Ha! ha!” shrilly laughed Guarica, and
sneeringly. “It is my time, now—my time to
laugh!” she cried. “Nay, 'twould make dumb
him!”
Enraged beyond endurance by her taunts, he
had half drawn a pistol from his belt—would
he have had the baseness to aim it at a woman's
life?—when the quick tread of many
men was heard without—then! then, for the
first time, when aid was close at hand, and
terror causeless, Guarica's courage failed her—
she uttered one long shriek—the revulsion of
her feelings was too much for her, she fell to
the ground fainting.
One bound carried Herreiro clear through
the open window—his horse stood close at
hand—he was upon his back, the spur in his
side, the bridle lifted, when the loud charib
war-cry pealed around him, and a long arrow,
shot in haste and aimlessly, whistled close by
his ear.
The good horse stretched into his gallop—
another and another shaft just grazed him harmless—he
was safe—safe by a few short yards
alone, so furiously did the revengeful Charibs,
headed by Orozimbo, press the chase. And so
long and so stanchly did they keep it up, that
when he crossed the echoing drawbridge, and
stood in safety within the battlemented walls
of Isabella, the dark forms of the Indian runners
were visible on the savannah, at a short
half mile's distance; and their loud yells and
whoops were heard fearfully distinct in the
quiet night.
5. CHAPTER V.
Day after day passed onward, but no more
did Guarica hear or see of Don Guzman de
Herreiro; for not only did he not again venture
to approach her forest home, but not once
did he quit the guarded precincts of the fortress.
And well was it for him he did not.
Perhaps, indeed, it was a secret instinct that
taught him to conceal himself within the barrack
square, a consciousness that wrong, so
deadly as he had mediated to the forest princess,
could not be offered with impunity. Bold
as he was, and daring in the battle field, perhaps
his heart failed him when he thought of
lurking foes concealed in every brake, waiting
with all the deadly patience of Indian revenge,
to wing the fatal arrow to his heart—and well
was it for him.
For from the very hour in which Orozimbo
had tracked him to the fortress, saved only by
the fleetness of his charger, from that very
hour not ten steps could he have made beyond
the drawbridge, without encountering death
beyond a peradventure. Day and night,
fair and foul, the wakeful Charibs lay concealed
around; never was there a moment
when one at least of Orozimbo's men was not
within easy arrow range of the castle gates.
One watching while another slept, one feeding
while another fasted, constantly, resolutely,
was the ward kept—the watch and ward of
vengeance.
Yet with such skilful subtilty, with such
deep craft was it all ordered, that though Herreiro
might have met his spies on the look
out, he could have learned or suspected nothing.
The watcher now would be a solitary fisherman
playing his scoop-net at the basin's
mouth; now a wild hunter offering his game
for sale to the officers; now a group of old Indians
with palm and wine and fruits, and now
a knot of striplings playing or wrestling on the
green before the esplanade; but each and all
with bow and quiver at his back, eyeing furtively
but keenly the form of every passer, each
and all ready and alert to avenge the insult
offered to their young princess.
Nor while the gates of Isabella were thus
formidably guarded and beset, was Guarica
again left unprotected or alone. Whenever
Orozimbo was abroad, and he was now abroad
more frequently than ever, for it appeared that
something new and strange was in the wind,
armed musters being held almost nightly of
Caonabo's vassals, whenever Orozimbo was
abroad, two or three stalwart Indians might be
seen at some point or other within sight and
earshot of the cottage, while others were on the
scout constantly among the woods, through
which a foe must pass to reach the dwelling
of Guarica.
That something was on foot among the
savages, as they were still termed by the
Spaniards, could not be doubted. The great
Lord of the Golden House had mustered all his
warriors; and many subjects of the four other
independent caciques of the Island, who, more
timid or less patriotic than the heroic Caonabo,
shrank from collision with the whites, were
gathered to the banners of the champion of his
people.
This was especially the case with the tribemen
of the queen Anacaona. Invariably the
friend of the white men herself, she had inculcated
the like pacific notions into the minds of
her kinsmen; so that Orozimbo and Guarica
had been scarce second to their aunt in good
will to the pale invaders.
The fiery blood of the young Indian had
been, however, so thoroughly aroused by the
atrocious outrage offered to his sister, that he
had joined heart and hand with his warlike
kinsman, who had determined on a simultaneous
onslaught upon every Spanish post, previous
to the return of the great Admiral. Not
a few of the best and boldest of his tribes were
united with him, but knowing well the predilection
of his aunt and sister for the European
them. While Orozimbo satisfied his conscience
as to the consequences of his conduct on his
sister's fate, by charging all his followers to respect
the person of Hernando, and preserve him
at all hazards, and by obtaining a pledge of his
safety from the great cacique.
Such was the state of things when De Leon
returned from his mission, late in the afternoon
of the seventh day from his parting with Guarica.
The plans of Caonabo were all laid and
determined; but the day and hour on which the
attack should be made he still kept buried in
his own bosom, lest once known to his people,
treason, or drunkenness—for, since the coming
of the white men this curse likewise was entailed
upon the Indian—or careless indiscretion
might betray it to the foe. Even Orozimbo
knew no more than the meanest of his tribes-men;
night after night every inferior chief was
ordered to hold all his men in readiness, though
none knew for what; and night after night, up
to the evening of Hernando's coming, each had
received a mandate instructing him to disband
his people until the following moon-rise.
Scarce had Hernando disembarked from his
caravella, ere he hurried to the quarters of Don
Guzman, expecting to receive a solution of all
his doubts and surmises. But when he reached
his door, he was, to his extreme astonishment,
refused admittance, on the pretence that
Herreiro had been very ill and confined to his
bed during the whole period of his, Hernando's
absence, and that the leech had forbidden
strictly that any person should have access to
him.
Frustrated thus, he inquired of the servant
whether the packet he had left on the morning
of his departure was delivered—to which question
the man answered promptly, as it afterwards
appeared truly, that it was—that he gave
it to his master, on his return from hunting, the
same day on which he received it; although,
he added, that he knew not whether Don Guz
man had read it, having been taken ill
within an hour or two of his return, in consequence,
it was supposed, of a sun-stroke.
Having exhausted thus every source of information
that was open to him, Hernando,
after making his report to the commandant,
and receiving his conge for the night, ordered
his horse to be prepared immediately, and rode
away into the forest, taking his bloodhounds
with him.
In the meantime the officers were revelling
in the mess-room, with cards, and dice, and
wine, and dark-haired Indian women; the sentinels
were slumbering or drinking at their
posts; the cannon were unloaded; the walls
almost unguarded. Riot and luxury within,
and relaxed discipline; and without armed
foes, thirsty for blood and vengeance.
So stood affairs when Hernando galloped
from the gates, fearless and free of heart, and
full of bright and gay anticipation. The very
news he had received from Herreiro's servant
resassured him—for it had not occurred to him
to doubt its truth. So that, secure in his imagination
that Guarica could have been troubled
by no fresh intrusion, he rode joyously along
the forest track, in all the confidence of happy
and successful love.
He was surprised a little, it is true, at meeting,
three times on his road, an armed Indian,
apparently on the scout; such a thing never
having previously happened in all the times
he had come and gone to and fro. But the
men, all of whom happened to be acquainted
with his person, spoke to him pleasantly, and
passed on their way; and Hernando, indeed,
almost forgot that he had seen them, until,
when he saw Guarica, and she related to him,
amid tears of gratitude and joy, all that had
happened, he perceived and appreciated the
object of the wise precaution.
Fierce and tremendous was his indignation,
as, without a touch of fear at the foul menace
of Herreiro, the fair girl related to him the
whole of that thrilling scene; but so much
more were his love and admiration kindled towards
the heroic maiden, that his ire smouldered
in his bosom as quietly as though he
had entertained no such feeling. So much so
that Guarica herself almost wondered that,
with so much cause for violent and quick resentment,
her lover's mood should be softer,
calmer, and more tranquil than its wont.
Little she knew that the current of fierce
wrath, when stillest, is ever deadliest and
deepest. Little she fancied that Hernando's
spirits were so gay and lightsome, his manner
soft and unconcerned, because he saw his
course of vengeance plain before him—because
he knew that on the morrow his enemy must
pay his debt even unto the uttermost farthing.
After a little while, as is sometimes the case
with all of us, when our spirits are enkindled
and our sensibilities aroused far beyond their
wont, the atmosphere of the airy room in which
the lovers sat appeared to them confined and
oppressive, their souls seemed to want scope to
expand—they panted for the free air of the
wide, starry heavens, and forth they strolled,
arm-in-arm, through the quiet moonlight, across
the beautiful savannah—across the little brook,
dry-shod upon the snow-white stepping-stones
—and thence along the forest's edge whence
first Hernando had beheld her.
That, since their loves had grown into maturity,
had been to them a hallowed place—
aud on the streamlet's bank, just the spot
where he had forced his Andalusian steed to
leap it, De Leon's hands had built a rustic seat,
beneath the shelter of a huge palm tree, and
close to the verge of the unbroken forest.
Thither they bent their steps, led by some secret
by side, in happiness too deep to find vent in
many words.
It was Guarica who spoke first, and when
she did, it was of the subject that was ever
foremost in her mind, the villany and treason
of Don Guzman. But she struck no responsive
string in Hernando's mind; and he spoke
wide of the mark, making some passing observation
touching the beauty of the night.
“But let us speak,” she said, “of this Herreiro:
think you that he will dare attempt his
menaced vengeance?”
“His vengeance, paltry knave!” said Hernando,
scornfully. “No! but let him dread
mine—for it shall find him out before he dream
of it; nor shall his feigned distemper save him!
But let us think of him no further. He is not
worth one instant's care. The viper is but
perilous so long as we suspect him not; once
seen, he is so harmless, that it is scarce worth
the while to crush him, and, for the rest, it will
be but a little space—a little space, which we
must bear with patience—scarcely a week, I
trust, my own and best beloved, before the
good and great Columbus shall return; and
then, then, sweet one, there will be an end to
all your doubts, anxieties, and fears. He is the
best, the noblest, the most just of men. He is
my friend, too, and a tried one. He once returned,
I will avow at once to him my love for
my Guarica; his consent it is meet that we
should have before our union, and of it I am
certain! Then—then, thou shalt be mine, for
ever mine, in the sight of men, as thou art now
in the sight of Heaven and all its angels!”
“My own Hernando!” was her sole answer,
for her heart swelled as she spoke, and
her passion was too strong for words, and two
large diamond tears collected slowly on the
long, silky fringes of her eyelids, and hanging
there like dew-drops on the violet's petal, slid
slowly down her soft, transparent cheeks.
“Tears—tears, Guarica!” cried the lover,
half reproachfully. “Can it be, can it be, that
thou shalt doubt me?—me, who have never
asked the slightest freedom—never essayed the
smallest and most innocent familiarity; me,
who would rather die—die, not on earth only,
but for all eternity, than call up one chaste
blush upon those maiden cheeks—than wake
one doubt in that pure heart—than print one
stain upon the whiteness of that virgin mind!
Can it be—”
“No! no!” exclaimed the girl, panting with
eagerness to interrupt him, for he had spoken,
hitherto, with such impetnous haste, that she
had vainly sought to answer him. “No! no!
Sooner would I doubt Heaven than thee. Hernando.
They were tears, not of sorrow, not
of doubt, but of pure, heart-felt joy! I know
thou art the very soul of honor—I know thou
wouldst ask nothing of thy Guarica that it
would not be her pride, her joy, her duty, to
bestow. It was but joy, dear, dear Hernando,
to think that we would so soon be united beyond
the power of man to part us.”
Even as she spoke, while her cheek almost
touched the face of her young lover,—for, in
the intense excitement of the moment, she had
leaned forward, clasping Hernando's hand in
both her own, and watering it with her tears,
—a sharp, keen twang, mixed with a clash, as
if of steel, was heard behind them; a long,
dark streak seemed to glare through the narrow
space between their heads, with a low,
whizzing sound, and on the instant a bolt, or
arrow, stood quivering in the stem of a palm-tree
opposite.
To spring upon his feet, to whirl his long,
two-edged Toledo from the scabbard, to dart,
with a loud shout, into the thicket, calling
upon his trusty hounds, which, quite unconscious
of any peril, were slumbering at Guarica's
feet, to whom they had become familiar
guardians, was but an instant's work to the
young and fiery Hidalgo. For at least ten
minutes' space, he was absent from the Indian
maiden; who, trembling with apprehension for
the safety of him whom she had learned to
love far more than life itself, with every tinge
of color banished by mortal terror from her
features, awaited his return. With every
sense on the alert, eye, ear, and spirit on the
watch, she stood in terrible excitement. She
heard him crashing through the tangled brake;
she heard his loud voice cheering the eager
blood-hounds to track out the footsteps of his
hidden foeman; but no bay of the sagacious
animals, no clash of steel or answering defiance,
fell on her anxious ear. His search was
vain—his anxious labor fruitless—no fraying
of the interlaced and thorny branches showed
where the dastardly assassin had forced a passage
for his retreating footsteps—no print in
the clayey soil revealed where he had trodden;
and, stranger yet, the keen scent of the sagacious
dogs detected not the slightest taint upon
the earth, or on the dewy herbage, although they
quested to and fro, three hundred yards, at
least, in circuit, around the tree wherein the
well-aimed arrow stood—sure evidence of the
murderer's intent. He returned, baulked and
disappointed, to Guarica; big drops of icy perspiration
standing, like bubbles, on his high,
clear forehead, and his whole frame trembling
with the agitatìon of strong excitement.
“By Him who made me,” he exclaimed, as
he returned to her, “this is most marvellous!
there is not, nor hath been, within two hundred
yards of us, a human being since we have sat
here—if I may trust the sight of mine own
eyes, or, what is truer far, the scent of my
good hounds! Yet here,” he added, as he tore
from the stem of the tall palm tree the short,
massive bolt, with its four-cornered barbed
and that, too, a Spaniard—hath been, or now
is, close beside us. Come, dearest, come, let
us leave this perilous spot. By Heaven! but
it is wondrous strange!”
In silence—for the girl was too full of terror,
the cavalier, of dark and anxious thought,
to enter into converse—he led her homeward.
Across the bright savannah, gleaming in the
moonlight, they reached, ere long, the portico
of her loved home, and there, after a tender
parting, Hernando vaulted into the saddle of
his fiery Andalusian, whistled his faithful
blood-hounds to his heel, and dashed away, at
a furious gallop, towards the fortress of his
unfriendly countrymen. Eager, still, to discover,
if so it might be, something of him who
had so ruthlessly aimed the murderer's shaft
that night, Hernando rode directly to the spot
where he had sat with Guarica when the fell
missile was discharged: he saw the grass betraying,
by its bruised and prostrate blades, the
very spot by which they had been sitting; but
all was still and lonely. Onward he went
across the very ground which he had searched
so carefully scarce half an hour before, and,
ere he had traversed fifty paces, both bloodhounds
challenged fiercely. Calling them instantly
to heel, the cavalier alighted, bound his
hot war-house to a tree, and eagerly scanned
the soil. At the first glance, deep printed in
the yielding mould, he found the clear print of
a Spanish buskin, furnished with a long,
knightly spur. To follow the trace backward
was his first impulse; and scarce three minutes
were consumed, before he tracked it to a tall
and shadowy oak, the bark of which, scarred
and defaced, showed that some person had,
not long before, both climbed it and descended.
“Ha!” he exclaimed, striking his breast
with his clinched hand, “ha! idiot that I was,
who thought not of this! It matters not, however;
by God! it matters not; for right soon
will I have him! Forward, good hounds,”
he added, “forward, hark, halloa, ho! hark,
forward!” And the vexed woodlands rang to
the deep-mouthed dogs, and the hard gallop of
the hunter. They reached the open ground, a
league of forest having been already passed,
and the hounds, for a moment, were at fault.
Springing again to the earth, Hernando easily
discovered, by the prints in the soil, that here
the fugitive had taken horse—having, it would
seem, left his charger under the keeping of a
menial, while prosecuting his foul enterprise;
for henceforth two broad horse-tracks might be
seen running distinctly over the bare savannah
homeward. Laying the hounds upon the
horse-track, the cavalier again re-mounted, and
the fresh dew aiding the scent, away they
drove, at a pace almost unexampled, through
brake and bush, over the open plain, athwart
the murky covert—hill and hollow vanished
beneath their fiery speed, rock and tree glanced
by and disappeared, so furious was their pace;
the deepest torrent turned him not, nor the
most perilous leap deterred him—for the most
fiery, the most constant, the most pervading of
all human passions—deadly revenge, was burning
his heart's core, turning the healthful currents
of his blood to streams of fiery lava.
The deadest hour of night had long been
passed already, when he dashed forth upon
that desperate race; the pale cold light of morning
was streaning, broad but still, over the
ramparts of the Spanish fortress, when Don
Hernando de Leon pulled up his foaming steed
before the drawbridge. Early, however, and
untimely as was the hour, men were abroad
already. A mounted servitor, in livery of
Isabel and silver, riding a coal-black jennet,
and leading by the bridle-rein a tall bay charger,
trapped and housed richly with the same colors,
was retiring from the gates, which were just
closing, toward the barrack stables. Towards
this steed, jaded and spent with toil, and all
embossed with sweat and foam-flakes, and
galled and bleeding at the flanks from cruel and
incessant spurring, the savage blood-hounds,
still in full cry, dashed without check or stint,
and would have pulled the bay horse down had
not the stern voice of their master checked
them. He rode up to the groom, and in a deep
voice, calm, slow, and perfectly unmoved, demanded,
“Whose charger?”
Without reply the servitor was hastening
away, when he asked once again, in fiercer
tones, drawing his dagger as he spoke—
“Whose charger, dog? Speak, or thou
diest! Whose charger? and who hath now
dismounted from him? Not that I need thy
voice to tell me what I already know, but that
I choose to hear my knowledge confirmed by
human words. Whose charger?
“Don Guzman de Herreiro's,” replied the faltering
menial; “he hath even now gone in—
the bridge is not yet lifted.”
“Excellent well!” replied the cavalier, “excellent
well! Mine ancient comrade; excellent
well! My fellow soldier, whose life I
have thrice saved—once from the Moors, amid
the mountain glens of Malaga, once from the
surf, among the dread Antilles, and once here
in this isle of Hispaniola, from the envenomed
arrow of the Charib. Excellent well, Don
Guzman!”
In the meantime dismounting at the gates, he
gave his charger and his hounds to the care of
a favourite domestic who awaited him; and,
with a firm, slow step, crossing the drawbridge,
stopped for a moment to address the
sentinel.
“So,” he said, “old Gaspar, thou keepest
good watch. When went Don Guzman
forth?”
“After we set the watch yestreen, fair sir,”
spoke, his partisan. “Now I bethink me, it
was scarce five minutes after thou didst ride
forth into the forest!”
“And he hath now returned?”
“But now.”
No further words were interchanged; the
young knight slowly passed across the courtyard,
entered the vaulted passage which led
towards the chambers of Don Guzman, paused
at the door, and without one word struck on
the panel one strong blow. A stern voice
from within cried “enter!” And he did enter,
and closed the door behind him, and locked and
double locked it; and though strange sounds
were heard, and fearful voices, about half an
hour passed ere be came forth; and when he
did so, his face, though very stern and calm,
was pale as death; and he retired to his own
quarters without a word to any one.
6. CHAPTER VI.
It was not until a late hour on the night following
that of Hernando's departure from the
presence of Guarica, who was now far more
seriously alarmed at what she never doubted
to be an attempt, on Herreiro's part, to execute
his deadly menace, than she had been at his
outrage towards herself, that Orozimbo returned
from Caonabo's council, heated, and out of
breath, as if he had run hard; and somewhat
fatigued, but with an air of high enthusiasm
and excitement, such as before she had never
seen in her brother's features. So much, however,
was she engrossed with the thoughts of
what had, the previous night, befallen her—
proving as it did, beyond a doubt, the implacable
and fiendish malice of Don Guzman, and filling
her with the wildest apprehensions for her beloved
Hernando's safety—that she paid fair less
attention to the manner or appearance of her
brother, than under any other circumstances she
would have done. Eagerly, and with a vehement
rapidity of speech, singularly at variance
with the calm and almost inanimate tranquillity
of her usual demeanor, she related to
Orozimbo, without remarking the absent and
distracted expression with which he listened to
her, the wondrous attempt on her life and that
of De Leon.
If she was not surprised, however, at the
vacancy of his look, as she began her narrative,
she was indeed astonished, although
she well knew the excitability of his nature,
at the tremendous burst of passion with
which he replied to her last words.
“I thank the Great Spirit,” he cried, springing
to his feet, and shaking his hand furious
ly aloft, “I thank the Great Spirit that it is
so! This, this alone was needful to banish
the last throb of compunection, to extinguish
the last spark of mercy or of friendship in
my soul. Ha! ha! It is well, very well!
He would have slain thee? Ha! let him
look to himself, now, dog and villain. Now
am I all the Charib; now am I all my country's!
Give me my arms, give me my arms,
Guarica, I am but wasting time, when time
is most precious. Give me my helm of tiger
skin—give me the golden buckler, the strong
war-club of my father; never yet was it
brandished in more just or holy cause; give
me—”
“Hold! Orozimbo,” exclaimed the lovely
girl, now terrified by his continued vehemence,
“what mean you, brother? For
what should I give you arms? Are you
mad, that you dream—you, you alone, of
seeking out this Spaniard in his guarded
fortress. Why, boy, the very sentinels
would spurn you from their gates!”
“Will they? ha! will they? Will the
two paltry sentinels who stand beside their
empty cannon, spurn back unconquered
Caonabo? Let them look, I say, let them
now look to themselves, these ravishing
and murderous Spaniards. By the great
gods! they shall learn, and that ere to-morrow's
dawn, that it is one thing to strain
in the hug of an Indian warrior, panting for
vengeance and arthirst for blood, and another
to dally in the soft arms of an Indian
maiden!”
“Brother, what mean you? Brother,
brother, what fearful words are these—
what frantic meaning do they bear!”
“Ask me not, ask me not, Guarica; these
are no times for foolish thoughts or girlish
councils. Give me my arms, I say; let me
begone; give me my arms!”
And with the words, he seized Hernando's
bugle from the wall, and, springing to
the window, blew a long thrilling blast,
which was answered on the instant by the
dull roar of a dozen conch-shells, sounding
the Indian war-note everywhere through the
mighty forest.
“There is your answer, Guarica—the
souls of a thousand warriors, the bravest
of the brave, are alive, are burning in those
war-notes. Give me my arms. I say before
to-morrow's day-break, there shall be
no more Isabella; by the gods! no more
Spaniards!”
But as he spoke she threw herself at his
feet, clung to his knees, watered his feet with
her tears; she called on him by every tenderest
pledge, invoked him by every dearest
name, reminded him of every fondest memory,
implored him by the soul of her gallant
father, by the love of their dead mother
whom that dying mother had confided to his
charge—if he would not see her die broken-hearted
at his knees, to forego, to forget his
fearful purpose, to desert the disastrous combination.
It was long, very long, ere she succeeded
in the least in bending him; he was intractable,
fierce, resolute. The last worst outrage
had maddened him. It was long ere
he would listen in the least to the voice of
nature, much less to the words of reason.
But at last nature did prevail, and old affection;
his heart melted, and he raised her
from the ground and kissed her, and mixed
his tears with hers. But even when this
step was gained, she had yet much to do,
ere she could win him to her wishes. Pride
now forbade him to desert the expedition in
which he had enlisted with such zealous
ardor—to forsake the comrades to whom
his faith was pledged, to prove disloyal to
the monarch to whom he insisted that he
owed allegiance. But Guarica's mind, although
a woman's, and a young lovely
woman's too, was of the firmer and the
sterner stuff, and in the end it conquered.
Reason and wisdom were on her side, and
for once reason and wisdom carried the day,
over passion and brute violence.
She showed him, in clear colors, the hopelessness,
the madness of the expedition; she
proved to him, beyond the power of paradox
to resist, that even if in the first their efforts
should be crowned with success, the end
would but be the more disastrous to the rash
patriots, and to their country.
“Even,” she said, “even if you should
carry Isabella—if you should, as you tell me
you have sworn to do, burn it with fire, and
raze it to the very earth, till not one stone
remain upon another—even if you should
drown the smoking embers of the last Spanish
dwelling with the life-blood of the last
Spanish soldier, what will all this avail you?
Is not the great, the God-like, the invincible
and irresistible Columbus, even now flying
hitherward on the wings of the very wind to
which you propose to fling your banners of
defiance? Does he not bring with him a
fleet, a whole fleet, freighted with steel-clad
men, invulnerable, and with no mimic thunderbolts?
And will not he avenge—merciful
as he is, and good, and gracious—will
not he exact awful retribution for the destruction
of his comrades? And who dare
hope to succeed, to strive even, against the
unconquered, the unconquerable admiral?
Spare them, my brother, spare—I will not
say your sister, but your king, your countrymen,
your country!”
“But how?” replied Orozimbo, mightily
moved both by her arguments and her pas
sion, “how shall I dare be a deserter—a
traitor to my tribe—a recreant to my honor?
How, if I do so, shall I ever dare again to
show my face before my tribemen?—to take
my seat in the council of the chiefs? No!
sister, no! it is too late—too late! and if
you be i' the right, as now I believe you are,
to-morrow will be a day fatal both to us and
to our invaders. I would—I would, indeed,
that I had told you of our plans heretofore,
while there was yet the time to listen to your
arguments—but it is now too late, and I must
on.”
“It is never too late to repent, brother,”
answered the eager and excited girl—“never
too late to exchange evil for good counsel,
madness for wisdom, crime for virtue. And
it is evil counsel, it is madness—yes! Orozimbo,
it is crime; knowingly to rush headlong
on destruction; nor to destroy yourself
alone, but to involve hundreds in one common,
hopeless, unnecessary ruin. Listen to
me, and believe me, brother. You may think
—you do think, doubtless, that I am but a
love-sick girl, pleading the cause of selfish
passion, terrified for her lover's safety, and
willing to give up all beside, friends, kinsmen,
country, so that my senseless love for
this stranger of a hostile race may be gratified.
No! by my Christian faith, no! by
the Christian's God, whom he has taught me
to adore! it is not so. Were there a reasonable
hope that permanent success could follow
your bold exploit—were there one chance in
the thousand that our country could be once
more free—that the invader's foot-prints
could be erased for ever from our virgin
shores—that no white face should ever more
be seen in our happy fields—then, Orozimbo,
then would I cry forward! forward! although
your first step should be planted on my breaking
heart, and the next on my Hernando's
prostrate head! Then would my voice be
the first and the loudest to cheer you to the
fray, as it is now the only one to warn you.”
“And why not,”—asked her brother,
gloomily, as he sat with his head buried
between his hands—“Why is it not so
now?”
“You know why not,” she answered,
firmly. “You know that, were every white
man swept, to-night, from the face of our
fair island, thousands and tens of thousands
would spring up in their places. When was
the Spaniard's footstep ever checked by the
fear of peril?—when was his lust of gold
every repressed by thoughts of the risk incurred
in snatching? Their race is as numerous
as the green leaves of the forest, or as
the sands on the sea-shore—in fierceness
they are the tiger's equals, in wisdom they
are almost gods! Look at the beasts which
they have trained to fight their battles: the
the trumpet; the dreadful blood-hound, more
wily and more savage than the jaguar; look
at their bright, impenetrable armor, from
which your strongest shafts rebound, as from
the earthfast rock; look at their cannon-shot,
more perilous to man than beaven's own
thunders. And then think—think if a few,
a mere handful of adventurers—for such
they were who first landed on our shores—
if they have subjugated half, aye! four-fifths
of our nation, and that for the mere love of
gold and of dominion, think what their nation
would effect in its majesty and might,
roused to revenge the blood of its slaughtered
sons—roused to uphold and vindicate the
honor of its name! No! brother, no! when
the first little band stepped forth from their
winged canoes upon our hospitable shores,
had our people then broken down upon them
with the spear and mace, the death-drum and
the battle-cry—had they all perished to a
man, and none returned across the wide,
wide sea, to tell their comrades' fate—then
might we have been saved from the white
man's dominion. But the very day that
saw the first caravella spread its wings to
the homeward breeze, that day, I tell you,
riveted on our necks a yoke that must endure
for ever. I tell you their mariners, their
very dumb and senseless galleys, know the
path to and fro the trackless deep, as surely
as you know the wood-tracks of our native
island. For every Spanish breath you quench,
a hundred, and a hundred times a hundred,
will be quenched, and for ever, of our own;
for every drop of Spanish blood you shed,
rivers shall flow of ours. The white man
has an eye that descries everything, though
seas may roll between; an arm that strikes
a thousand leagues aloof; a hand that, when
it once hath closed upon its prey, never fore-goes
its hold! I have spoken!—but I look
not that you will believe me! Go! pour
your naked hundreds against the mail clad
cavaliers; go! dash your bare breasts on
their walls of granite; go! and expose your
mortal flesh to the blasting breath of their
cannon: and then, when all is lost, when,
hunted to the last verge of the precipice,
bayed by their unrelenting hounds, cut down
by their resistless steel,—no longer even to
be saved as the remnant of a people—ye
call upon the earth to yawn and swallow ye,
upon the rocks to fall and cover ye—and
earth and rocks are pitiless as your avenging
foemen—then, I say, then remember the
words of her whom you murdered—of your
sister, your only and fond sister, who told
you all these things, how they should be,
and you heard not her warning, but laughed
her words to scorn, and murdered her—the
last of your unhappy race!”
“Murdered you!” he exclaimed, starting
to his feet—“murdered you, Guarica!” and
his dark features were convulsed, and his
limbs trembled with the violence of his contending
passions.
“Ay, Orozimbo! murdered; for think you
that I could, even if I would, survive him—
and that, too, knowing him slaughtered by a
brother!”
“But I have charged my warriors,” he exclaimed,
vehemently—“but I have drawn an
oath from Caonabo, to spare him in the
strife, and, the war ended, to treat him as a
friend and kinsman.”
“And how long would your charge be
heeded?—until the first frenzy of the strife
had turned their blood to liquid fire. And
how long would Caonabo's oath be kept, after
its end was answered? Tush! brother,
tush! If you can so deceive yourself, so
can you not deceive me; moreover, think you
Hernando de Leon is the man to be spared—
to spare himself in such a conflict? Think
you Hernando de Leon is the man to survive
the extermination of his comrades, and to
clasp in his own the reeking hands of their
butchers! If he were so, he might seek
some European girl to share his life, and his
infamy—an Indian maid would scorn him.
No! Orozimbo, follow out your plans, and
mark what I tell you: when the last blow is
stricken, when the last heroes die around the
flag-staff of their country's honor, there will
be found my slaughtered love, and there will
I die on his body. Go! boy; we meet on
earth no more. Go, brother, to your duty; I
have mine, likewise?”
She ended; but long before she ended, her
soul-fraught eloquence, the fire and pathos
that were blended in her words, and above
all, the truth of what she said, had won back
the ascendency which she had ever had over
her brother's spirit—the ascendency of moral
strength over physical power—of mind over
matter. It was now his turn to cast himself
at his sister's feet, but, ere he could
do so, she had caught him in her arms,
and clasped him to her heart, and covered
him with the chaste kisses of a sister's holy
love.
“Guarica!” he said, “dear, dear Guarica,
you have prevailed. Do with me as you
will; I am your slave—the creature of your
bidding. Only think for me, and say how I
shall save my honor!”
“Go to your uncle!” she cried impetuously.
“Go straight to the wise and noble
Caonabo, and say to him as I have said to
thee”—
“It would avail me nothing; he would
either strike me to the earth, or drive me in
scorn from his presence: he will endure no
opposition to his will, and hear no reason.
his course, as Caonabo from his project.”
“Then mark me, brother. This plot of
the great cacique depends, you tell me, on
his finding the fortress unprepared, and the
guards negligent and off their duty?”
“Aye!” he replied, “but what of that?”
“Ask me no further. Only observe what
I say: all shall go well yet. At what time
is your onslaught appointed to begin?”
“Soon after day-break”—
“Then go: join your leaders—take your
arms; lead your followers hence; but be sure
that you lead all of them: leave not a soul
behind you to play the spy on me. Where
do your warriors muster?”
“By the spring, which they call the `hunter's
rest,' in the woodlands, within a mile of
Isabella.”
“I know—I know,” replied Guarica;
“then go, brother, go: be of good cheer; all
shall go well yet. Ask me no questions;
but he sure that you send scouts to mark if
the Spaniards be so unprepared as you imagine,
ere you proceed to the attack.”
“So it is ordered, sister. But you mean
not”—
“Ask me no questions,” she replied,
smiling; “for I shall answer none. Whate'er
I do, that will I do honestly and wisely,
and it were better for all causes that you
should know naught else. Kiss me, dear
brother, and farewell; it is long, long past
midnight. Farewell, go to your duty, and
remember”—
“Never will I forget, Guarica—never will
I forget what you have said to me this night.
By all the gods! I swear to do, henceforth,
whatever you command me.”
And with the words, he seized the arms
which she gave him hastily, clasped her once
more in his arms, and, calling to his Indian
followers, who were collected under arms
already, at a short distance from the building,
to follow him at their speed, he set of at a
long, swinging run, over the open meadow,
and through the deep woodland, towards the
forest rendezvous.
Scarcely was her brother out of sight, before
the girl, who had eagerly watched his
departure, and satisfied herself that none of
his myrmidons remained behind, applied herself
hastily to collect some articles of clothing
more suitable, as it appeared, than those she
wore, for a long and toilsome walk through
the forest. She bound a pair of stronger
sandals on her feet; she girded up her dress
succinctly, in a form not unlike that of the
graceful Doric chiton, as represented in the
statues of Diana. She took in her hand a
long, light, reed javelin, with a flint head:
it may have been as a staff to support her
footsteps; it might have been as a weapon
of defence; and with no further preparation,
alone and unprotected, save by her own high
resolution—by that innate and noble daring
which springs from the consciousness of
chastity, and innocence, and truth—that
glorious confidence of incorrupt virginity,
concerning which
“It is said that a lion will turn and flee
From a maid, in the pride of her purity.”
her yet higher trust in God, forth she went
into the wild and midnight forest, upon her
errand of goodwill and mercy. The sky
was dim and clouded; not a star twinkled
through the murky gloom: not a moonbeam
checkered the dark shadows of the heavy
trees: yet on she went, unshrinking and
undaunted, although the howl of the wolf
and the prowling foot of the panther came
constantly to her ear; though the snake
coiled itself in her path, and the tangled
briers opposed her passage, still, all night
long, she travelled steadily onward, in the
intent to warn the garrison of Isabella of
the approaching peril, that they might be on
their guard in time, and that the attack might
be spared.
Full of her noble purpose, inspired by
high benevolence and immortal love with
strength beyond her powers, she struggled
insensible to fatigue, and superior to weak
terrors—but all would have been in vain, for
the day was beginning to show the first pale
tokens of its coming in the far east, while
she was yet many miles aloof from the
Spanish fortress, and cold apprehension near
akin to despair, was usurping rapidly the
place of high hope and confidence, when
suddenly, as she turned an angle of the
blind deer-path she was treading, her eye
was attracted and astonished by a clear light,
burning purely in the deepest part of the
forest.
Holding her very breath for fear its slightest
aspiration might betray her, and treading
stealthily upon the fallen leaves, she stole
towards it, and, ere she had gone many steps,
a strange sight met her eyes.
In a small sheltered glade of the forest,
stretched on the ground, with their watch
cloaks round them, in deep slumber, their
long lances planted erect by every sleeper's
head, and their bright burnished helmets at
their sides, lay ten Spanish cavaliers; their
tall chargers with their steel-plated demipiques,
champons upon their frontlets, and
iron poitrels on their breasts, stood round
them, linked by their chain bridles, each
horse hard by his lord.
But at a little distance from the rest one
man kept watch—but kept watch rather as
—for he knelt on both his knees, with his
hands clasped in earnest supplication before
an exquisitely painted picture of the virgin,
which he had hung, by a little chain attached
to it, from the hilt of his dagger driven deep
into the stem of a gigantic palm tree. It
was before this picture that burned, in a
small lamp of richly embossed silver, fed
with some odoriferous oil, the strange clear
light which she had seen through the dim
aisles of the forest. It was a wild and singular
scene, and worthy of the pencil of
Salvator. The sweet white silvery light
streaming upwards, and playing over the
heavenly features of the Madonna, which
seemed to smile in the focus of its consecrated
radiance, thence flashing on the dark
enthusiastic features of the kneeling warrior,
dancing upon his waving plume and
polished armor, and thence flickering less
distinctly over the figures of his sleeping
comrades, and over the large limbs of the
barbed chargers, which looked even larger
and more formidable when half seen in the
dim and hazy lustre of the distance.
The warrior who was kneeling at his
orisons in that wild place, and at that untimely
hour, was a man not above the middle
height, perhaps rather under it, but very
powerfully built, with broad shoulders and
thin flanks, and a chest singularly prominent
and deep; his arms were long and muscular,
and his legs, although slightly bowed outward,
perhaps from constant exercise on
horseback, were unusually strong and
sinewy.
From head to heel he was sheathed in a
full panoply of Spanish steel, richly wrought
with gold arabesques and bosses; his casque
with its tall crimson plume, which indeed
he rarely laid aside, was on his head, although
the avantaille was raised, displaying
his bold manly features. Gilt spurs of
knighthood was buckled on his heels over
his greaves and shoes of burnished steel,
and from a scarf of rich crimson silk hung
his long two-edged broadsword.
Such was Alonzo de Ojeda, the wildest
and most daring spirit, the most fiery warrior,
the most perfect knight of the bold
band which had left the gay courts of their
native land for the fierce forays and the wild
adventures of the new western world.
Fervently as he was praying to the especial
object of his chivalric and imaginative
worship, his ear, accustomed to every
sound, however slight or distant, of the forest,
caught instantly the light tread of the
Indian maiden, and recognised it as instantly
for a human footstep.
He started to his feet, and cried aloud—
“Ho! who goes there?”
And ere the last words had left his lips,
all his brave partisans were afoot, and on
the alert around him.
“If you be friendly,” he continued,
“draw near fearlessly; if foes, be on your
guard!” and then turning towards his nearest
comrade, “It was a woman's tread I
heard, if I mistake not—”
He had said but thus far, when Guarica
stepped forth modestly but firmly into the
circle of light which the lamp cast for a
little space around the armed group, saying—
“It is, Sir Knight, indeed a woman—but
as she is so fortunate as to recognise Alonzo
de Ojeda, she knows full well that she
is as safe in his presence in the wild forest,
alone, and unprotected, as she would be
surrounded by a hundred of her tribes-men!”
“Lady,” replied Alonzo, “for lady you
must needs be, to understand so truly the
spirit and devotion of a true cavalier, you
do me, I am proud to say, no more than
justice. But what are your commands at
this dead hour? or wherefore have you
sought me thus strangely, and how have you
found me?
“I sought you not, Don Alonzo,” answered
the Charib maiden; “I sought you not,
but right fortunate is it that without seeking
I have found you, for life and death is on
my haste, and the distance, which I cannot
accomplish even in hours, your coursers will
make good in minutes.”
“Your words are full of emphasis,” answered
Ojeda, gravely, “and you speak as
one used to authority, and accustomed to
command. May I know with whom I am
conversing?”
“My name will avail you little, senor.
It is, I think, unknown to you—I am called
Guarica; but if my name be strange, my
lineage is well known to you—I am the
niece and adopted daughter of queen Anacaona.”
“Of the good queen—the friend of the
Admiral? Say then, dear lady, what is your
errand? If done it may be at all, trust me it
shall be done right speedily.”
“It must be so done—if it be done at all.
But it must be said in your private ear. It
is too secret, too full of dread import, to be
spoken even before your chosen comrades.”
And with the words she motioned him to
move a little way apart, and he followed her
with an air of deep respect, which, however
different from the mode of treatment
most of his countrymen would have vouchsafed
to an Indian girl, was perfectly in
keeping with the grand though perhaps
exaggerated character of his knight errantry.
Although, therefore, he moved out of earshot
of his brother partisans, he did not
suffer her to go so far from them that any
by all; for with a delicate compunction,
most honorable to his feelings, he was
resolved that her reputation should in no
wise suffer by her noble confidence in his
integrity.
The other Spaniards, who awaited in
great wonder and some surprise the issue
of this strange conference, soon saw by the
extreme surprise which every gesture of
Alonzo indicated, that the girl's news must
be indeed important. They could perceive
that he asked two or three questions, which
were answered readily, and it seemed satisfactorily,
for after a minute or two, Alonzo
raised her hand to his lips, and kissed it respectfully—saying,
“Thanks—thanks! eternal thanks!—
This never shall be forgotten—never! and
be not alarmed, there is ample time!”
Then turning to his men, he cried in quick,
commanding tones—
“To horse! to horse, hastily!”
But even in the hurry and confusion which
succeeded, confusion tending unto order,
they could see that Guarica again spoke to
him even more urgently than before, and
they heard him answer,
“I promise you—I promise you, upon the
honor of a cavalier—upon my honor, it shall
be as you wish. Unless they return again,
there shall be no bloodshed.”
And again kissing her hand, he hastily put
up his picture of the virgin and his hallowed
lamp in his knapsack, where at all times
and in all expeditions he ever carried them,
mounted his war-horse, thundered his orders
in a voice meant by nature for command, and
spurring his horse to the gallop, rode furiously,
straight as the bird flies through the
forest, to the gates of Isabella.
Don Guzman de Herreiro had just ridden
out of sight, as Alonzo reached the drawbridge,
which he found actually lowered,
with but some three or four half drunken
soldiers lounging about the gate-house. But
ere he had been within the walls ten minutes,
the drums beat to arms, the great alarm bell
tolled, the gates were barricaded, and the
bridges raised; cannon were loaded, and extra
ammunition served to the cannoneers.
The Spanish flag was hoisted, and the whole
garrison was mustered in full war array upon
the guarded ramparts.
These preparations had been made about
an hour, when two or three Indians were
seen lurking about the edge of the nearest
woodland, and their appearance being hailed
by a flourish of trumpets, and a show of
soldiers manœuvering upon the esplanade
above the gates, they instantly retired, and
nothing was heard or seen that day from the
walls of Isabella to justify the suddenness
of Alonzo de Ojeda's arrival, and the alarm
he had occasioned.
7. CHAPTER VII.
The whole of the day on which Hernando
de Leon returned from his nocturnal chase,
passed gloomily; no eye of sentinel or
warder beheld Don Guzman de Herreiro, nor
was he at the hall wherein his comrades
feasted. Hernando, on the contrary, far
from his wonted temper, was there the gayest
of the gay; his repartee the keenest yet
most polished; his laugh the merriest; his
song the most entrancing. Men who had
known him for long years—who had fought
by his side in the wild forays with the Saracens
of bright Grenada, and in the scarce
less desperate encounters of the tameless
Charib—men who had borne all perils of the
sea, the wilderness, and worse than all, the
lazar-house, with him; men who had feasted
at the jovial board, and drained the wassail
cup for years with him, now marvelled; they
felt as though there were something in his
manner which they had never known before;
a melancholy in the merriment, yet
mingled with a recklessness which baffled
their sagacity; a deep romantic sentiment,
an all-pervading tone of profound thought
in his lightest converse, blent with an air of
strange abstraction—a breaking off from
graver subjects, and plunging into bursts of
wild and furious mirth; and then again a
softening of the mirth into the sweetest and
the saddest touches of imagination that poet
ever dreamed, or minstrel sang. Thus passed
the evening meal; and when the comrades
parted, the souls of many who had felt
estranged, they scarce knew why, from the
young cavalier, yearned to partake again his
high and generous friendship, grasped his
hand more warmly than they had done for
months, although their present mood of
kindliness was in no less degree unmeaning,
than had been their suspicion and distrust
Gaily they parted, with many merry comments
on the unwonted absence of Don
Guzman, and many a jocular conjecture as
to the cause of his feigned illness; for when
the trumpets had rung forth their gladsome
peals of invitation to the festive board, the
seneschal had borne to the presiding officer
his courteous greetings, and regrets that he
was ill at ease, and might not, for that day,
participate in their accustomed revelries.
They parted—and night fell dim and silent
over the Spanish fortress. Throughout that
long and weary night the lamp was still replenished
and still from hour to hour the solitary
inmate paced to and fro the floor, his long
spurs clanking with a dull and heavy sound
on the rude pavement; and now pausing to
mutter, with clenched hands and writhing
lip, fierce imprecations on his own head—on
the head of his detested comrade, and on the
weak hand which had failed to execute his
deadly purpose; now hurrying onward with
unequal but swift strides, as though he
would have fled the torture of his own
guilty thoughts. Thus did he pass that
night, in agony more bitter than the direst
tortures that ever tyrant wreaked on mortal
body; and when the first grey light of dawning
morn fell cold and chill through the uncurtained
casements of his barrack-room, it
found him haggard and feverish, yet pale
withal, shivering as though he were an
ague-stricken sufferer. The morning gun
pealed sharp and sudden from the ramparts,
and far and long its echoes were repeated
from the dark forests which girt in, on every
side, with their interminable walls of deathless
verdure, the battlements of Isabella.
At the sound Guzman started, as does the
miserable guilty wretch who hears the sullen
bell toll the dread signal for his execution!
Manning himself, however, with a
start, while the blood rushed, as though indignant
at his former weakness, to lip and
cheek and brow, he instantly resumed his
agitated walk, nor did he break it off, nor
give the smallest symptom of perception,
when a quick, hurried blow was struck upon
the panel of the door; a second and a third
time was that low tap repeated, but still Don
Guzman heard it not, or if he did hear,
heeded not; then the door slowly opened,
and a grey-headed veteran, clothed in the
liveries of that noble house to which, perchance,
his master was the first scion who
had brought no lustre, thrust in his time-blanched
locks and war-worn visage.
“Your charger waits, senor,” he whispered;
“the hour has long gone by.”
“Hurry, then, hurry,” shouted Herreiro,
fiercely, and belting on his long Toledo, and
casting his broad-leafed sombrero on his disordered
locks, he rushed out with wild haste,
no less to the dismay than the astonishment
of his stanch servitor, whom he had summoned,
almost savagely, to follow him.
Far otherwise had passed the hours of
darkness to Hernando de Leon. The banquet
ended, he had withdrawn to his chamber,
as though he had no further object than
to lie down upon a peaceful bed, that he
might thence arise with the succeeding morn
to go about his wonted avocations. He had
sat down before his little escrutoire, and,
having finished several letters, sealed and
directed them—cast off his vest and doublet,
and drawn from his feet his falling leathern
buskins—then throwing himself upon his
knees beside his pallet-bed, buried his head
between his hands, and for some time prayed,
as it would seem, in deep though silent
fervor. Rising at length erect, he spread his
arms abroad, and in a clear high voice, unconscious,
evidently, that he spoke aloud,
“and above all, bear witness Thou,” he
cried, “bear witness Thou who knowest and
seest all things, that not in any mortal wrath
—not in the mood of blind and senseless
anger, nor in that selfish strain of vengeance
which thinks of private injury, do I go forth
unto this strife, but as unto a high and
solemn duty! Not as mine own avenger—
for to Thee, and to Thee only, doth belong
the right of vengeance—but as the vindicator
of society, the punisher of crime,
which else must go unpunished—the righter
of the wronged—the champion of the weak
—the faithful, although frail defender of
thine holy law. If this be not so, forsake
me thou, oh Lord! Give me up to the mercies
of my direst foe—suffer me to fall unavenged,
unwept, and unhonored! But if
in truth and honor, and in right I do go forth,
strike Thou, as is thy wont, for the right,
likewise.”
This said, he lay down quietly upon his
couch, and, ere five minutes had passed over
him, slept peaceably and sweetly as an infant,
until the self-same gun which had
aroused Don Guzman from the perturbed
visions of his guilty conscience, broke his
refreshing slumbers. Arising instantly, he,
too, girt on his sword, buckled his mantle
over his broad chest, fixed his hat firmly on
his head, and strode forth, all unsummoned,
to the water-gate. There stood four noble
chargers; his own proud Andalusian, with a
less high-bred charger at his side, backed by
the page Alonzo, who, with a merlin on his
wrist, and the two powerful blood-hounds,
without which never did Hernando ride forth
into the wilderness, crouching before him,
sat patiently awaiting the arrival of his lord.
A little way aloof a menial, clad in the rich
liveries of Isabel and silver, held the bay
coursers of Herreiro and his old squire.
No foot did Don Hernando set in stirrup,
but seizing the reins firmly in his left hand,
while with his right he grasped the cantle
of his demi-pique, he swung himself at once
with a light leap to his charger's back. Flinging
the reins free to the impulse of the fiery
horse, while he stood yet erect, he curbed
him tightly up as his feet struck the sod, and
slightly pricking him with his long gilded
spurs, dashed off at a hand gallop into the
wild glades of the forest.
A short mile's distance from the walls of
there was a small savanna, scarcely a hundred
yards across, clothed with short mossy
grass, which, in that lovely climate, never,
at any season, lost the rich freshness of its
emerald verdure; for, in its furthest curve,
lurking beneath the shelter of a group of
tall and feathery palm-trees, where lay the
basin of a tiny crystal spring, whence welling
forth, in copious and perennial beauty,
a silver streamlet issued—and, compassing
two-thirds of that small plain with its refreshing
waters, stole away silently among
the devious wilds through which it flowed,
unmarked, into the neighboring sea. Here
it was—here, in this lovely and secluded
spot, far—far as it would seem removed from
the fierce turmoils, the stern bitterness, the
angry hatreds of the world, that the two foe-men
were to meet. For half an hour, at
least, Hernando had sat there, motionless as
a statue, upon his docile charger, awaiting,
in the centre of that sylvan solitude, the
coming of his antagonist.
Just as he had begun to marvel at the
protracted absence of his intended slayer,
the sharp and rattling clatter of a horse's
gallop, tearing his route through the dense
saplings of the tangled wood, was heard approaching;
and in another moment, his reins,
and neck, and chest embossed with flakes of
snow-white form, and his flanks bleeding
from incessant spurring, Herreiro's charger
bore him, at the top of his speed, into the
scene of action. As he approached, Hernando
raised his hat, with the stern courtesy
exacted by the strict punctilio of the duel
from every honorable cavalier; yet well
schooled as he was to suppress each outward
token of every inward sentiment, the noble
cavalier half started as he beheld the ravages
worked by a single night of anguish on the
proud mien and comely features of his antagonist.
His hair, which on the previous morning
had been as dark and glossy as the black
raven's wing, was now not merely tangled
most disorderly in hideous elf-locks, but actually
streaked with many a lock of grey;
while his whole visage, which, though swart
and somewhat stern, had yet been smooth and
seemly, was scored by many a line and furrow,
ploughed deep into the flesh during
those few fleet hours, by the hot plough-shares
of remorse and scorching anguish.
No salutation did he make in answer to the
bow of his brave young opponent; but whirling
his long rapier from its sheath—“Draw!”
he cried, “draw, sir! Look on the sun for
the last time and die!” and, as he spoke,
plunging his spurs even more furiously than
he had done before into the bleeding flanks
of his good horse, he dashed at once upon
him sword in hand, hoping, it was most evident,
to take him at advantage, and bear him,
unprepared, to earth. If such, however,
were his ungenerous and foul intent, most
grievously was he frustrated by the calm skill
and perfect resolution of Hernando; who
merely gathering his reins a little tighter,
unsheathed his keen Toledo; and—without
moving one yard from the spot whereon his
Andalusian stood, watching with fiery eye
and broad expanded nostrils, the motions of
the other charger, yet showing by no symptom,
save the quivering of his erected ears,
that he was conscious of the coming strife,
extended it with the point towards Herreiro's
face. On came the fierce assailant; on! with
the speed of light; his left hand clasping the
reins firmly; his right drawn back, in preparation
for the deadly thrust, far past his hip;
while the bright point of the long two edged
blade was ghttering in advance of the bay
charger's frontlet! Now they are within
half-sword's length—and now!—see! see
that quick, straight flash, bright as the stream
of the electric fluid, and scarce, if anything,
less rapid! it was the thrust of Guzman, well
aimed, and sped with strength, that, had it
reached the mark, must have propelled it
through the stoutest corslet that ever bucklered
breast; much more through the slight
silken jerkin which was the only armor that
would have opposed its brunt. Midway,
however, in its glancing course it was met
by the calm, firm parry of Hernando's sword;
and thus, diverted from its true direction,
passed harmless, slightly grazing the bridle
arm of the young cavalier. On came Herreiro
still; and for an instant's space it seemed
as though the shock of his charger at full
speed must have born down the slighter
Andalusian; but scarcely had he parried that
home thrust before, with a quick motion of
the bridle hand; so quick, indeed, that it was
scarce perceptible; and a slight corresponding
pressure of the spur on the flank opposite,
Hernando wheeled his charger to the
left; feinted a thrust at his foe's face; and,
circling quite around him, delivered a full
sweeping cut against the back part of his
neck. With perfect mastery of steed and
weapon, Don Guzman met this perilous and
unexpected movement. Pulling so hard on
his long Moorish curb, that his horse, checked
at once, stood upright and almost fell
backward on his haunches, he swung his
sword round to the guard so actively, that the
strong blow fell harmless. Then they closed
hand to hand; fragments of the short mossy
turf flew high into the air, spurned by the
iron heels of the excited chargers; sparks
flew from the collision of the well-tempered
blades; feathers were shorn, blood flowed
on either side! Yet neither failed nor faltered.
aimed by Don Guzman full at Hernando's
head, glanced from his guard, and falling on
the ear of the high-blooded Andalusian, almost
dissevered it! Maddened with torture,
the brave brute obeyed the bit no longer, but,
with a yell of agony, bolted, despite the utmost
efforts of the rider. Herreiro marked
his advantage, and as the horse uncontrollably
dashed by him, cut, by a second rapid
lunge, his adversary's rein asunder. Frantic
although his horse was with pain, and
freed from the direct restraint of the half useless
bridle, Hernando was not carried far
before he recovered mastery enough to wheel
him round once more to the encounter. Perceiving,
instantly, that all chance of success
by rapid turns or quick manœuvring was at
an end, he now, adopting his opponent's system,
dashed straight upon him, and when
within arm's length, throwing his own reins
loose, caught, with his left hand, the long
silver cheek-piece of Herreiro's bit, wheeling
his own horse counter to flank upon him, by
the mere dint of spur without the slightest
exercise of bit or bridle; and shortened, at
the same time, his sword to plunge it from
above into the throat of the assassin.
It seems as though no earthly power could
have availed to rescue Guzman from his desperate
situation. His horse, exhausted by
his own exertions, reeled visibly beneath the
shock; his rapier, far extended and abroad,
could by no means have parried the down.
thrust, which hung above him:—But in that
very point of time, that very second, long as
a thousand ages, in which he saw the dark
glance of his injured comrade's eye fixed
banefully upon him; in which he noted the
grim smile mantling upon his scornful lip; in
which he shuddered at the gleaming point of
the suspended rapier, which no effort of his
own could possibly avert; in that dread point
of time, a yelling shout arose from all the
circumjacent woodlands; a howl, as though
the fiends had all broken loose, to rend the
upper air with their discordant voices, and,
with the yell, a volley of flint-headed arrows
came hurtling through the air; another, and
another! but, with the first, Hernando's half-won
triumph ended! For, as he brandished
his avenging sword aloft, clear through his
elevated wrist drove the long Charib shaft;
a second grazed his plume; a third, most
fatal of the flight, pierced through the very
heart of his proud Andalusian, and hurled
him lifeless to the earth. Herreiro turned,
turned for base flight; but not long did his
forfeit life remain to him, for, with the second
volley, down went both horse and man,
transfixed by fifty shafts, gory and lifeless!
And the last words that smote upon his deafening
ear, among the yells and whoops of
the wild Charibs, were those shouted in his
own sonorous tongue—“This arrow for
Guarica!”
“And, in good truth, it was that arrow,
winged from the bow of Orozimbo, that did,
as he had sworn so deeply, drown the flames
of his lust in his heart's blackest blood.
“Mount! mount, Alonzo, mount, boy, and
fly,” shouted the dauntless cavalier, as he lay
wounded, and encumbered by his slaughtered
horse.
The bold boy heard, but obeyed him not!
Forth he rushed, sword in hand, forth to the
rescue of his lord; and forth, at the same instant,
from the forest, forth sped the Charib
Caonabo and his unconquered horde, with
spear, and mace, and bow, and barbarous
war-cry! “Down with your sword, 'tis
madness to resist,” cried the young Spaniard:
and the next second had not passed, before
the servant and the master were both the fettered
captives of the invincible cacique.
8. CHAPTER VIII.
After the death of Herreiro, and the capture
of De Leon, the Charibs, who had so
suddenly unmasked their ambuscade, in
which, with the wonted patience of an Indian,
they had lain during the occurrence of
events which to them must have seemed
strange and inexplicable, appeared, for some
short time, to be in confusion, hurrying to
and fro, like bees alarmed and swarming in
their hives, without any very distinct plan
or method.
After a little while, however, they were
brought into comparative order by the exertion
of their chieftain, and were arrayed in
five parallel columns, in the well-known Indian
file; each headed by a plumed cacique,
and containing, as nearly as Hernando could
conjecture, each, something better than a
hundred warriors.
In the meantime, Hernando, with the page,
was compelled to sit down at the foot of the
tree to which Alonzo's horse and the bloodhounds
were attached, and both were bound
firmly with their arms pinioned behind them
to the mossy trunk.
An interval of nearly half an hour followed,
the chiefs being continually on the look
out, as if they expected messengers; and as
these did not come, even more uncertainty
was displayed than before in the movements
of the savages, who broke their ranks, and
crowded round a little knoll at some distance,
on which Hernando could perceive a
tall, powerful Indian, with a plumed crown,
and about his neck and arms, whom he took
to be Caonabo, the great Charib chief; the
most resolute opponent and formidable foe
the Spaniards had encountered on the island.
Around this chief there was soon collected
a group of chiefs gesticulating violently, and
speaking very loud; so much so that Hernando
was well nigh convinced that, once or
twice, he heard his own name mentioned: an
idea in which he was confirmed by seeing
that many of the Indians looked towards him,
and two or three pointed with their hands, as
the sounds which he judged to be intended
for his name were repeated.
Looking more earnestly, as he now did, he
thought that one of the figures of the younger
chiefs resembled Orozimbo; and he was certain
that this person was arguing violently
with the great chief, and, as he believed,
concerning himself likewise.
While he was gazing with all his eyes, a
deep and sudden sound came down the wind,
from the direction of the Spanish town. It
was the heavy din of the alarm bell, followed,
almost immediately, by the faint rattle of
the drums, scarce audible at that distance,
calling the garrison to arms. This in an
instant, put an end, as if by magic, to the
confused debate.
The men hurried back into their files, the
chiefs took their places at the head of each;
and if it was indeed Orozimbo whom he had
seen, he could no more distinguish him among
the crowd: nor did he again see the person
whom he had fancied to be he, during the
whole course of the day.
Scarcely were the Charibs again steady in
their ranks, before three or four Indian scouts
came rushing up, breathless and black with
sweat, from the forest, with tidings, it would
seem, of great importance. For they flew
straight to the gigantic chieftain, and he,
after hearing their report, called out four or
five old caçiques, and held a short, grave
consultation. After this, Hernando and his
page were unbound from the tree, and, with
their arms still fettered, placed, each apart
from the other, in the centre of a file, between
two stout Indians.
A word was given; it was passed from
man to man, and then they began their march,
silent and slow, in one long, single file, towards
the dark and distant wilderness.
All day long did the wily savages retreat,
through the most wild and devious recesses
of the forest, toward their mountain fastnesses,
forcing their hapless captives, wounded
though they were, and faint and weary, to
strain every muscle to keep up with them.
At mid-day, for a short hour, they halted at
a bright, crystal spring, deep-bosomed in the
pathless wilderness, kindled their fires, and
applied themselves to the preparation of their
artless meal. Most picturesque and striking
was the aspect of that wild halt; and had it
been at any other time, no eye would
have dwelt on it with more earnest pleasure;
no fancy would have sported more
poetically with all its thousand accidents
of light and shade, repose contrasted with
swift motion, rare grouping, and bright
coloring, than that of the young Spaniard.
But as he lay beneath the canopy of a superb
mimosa, with his arms painfully lashed behind
his back with thongs, recently cut from
a raw deer-hide, his thoughts were all too
painfully absorbed, too vague, wandering,
and distracted, to suffer him to dwell upon,
or notice, that gay spectacle.
Conjecture was at work within his brain;
but, busy as it was, no clue presented itself
to his mind, whereby to solve the mystery.
All was dark, intricate, and gloomy! By
no means could he discover or divine what
could have been the cause of such an inroad;
or by what strange accident he should himself
have fixed the rendezvous for the precise
spot where the Charibs had laid their
ambuscade, for that they could have learned
the premeditated duel was, on the very face
of things, impossible. Why such a force of
Indians should have been mustered (for the
band was, at the very least reckoning, five
hundred strong), under their most redoubted
champion, merely to interrupt a combat between
two Spanish warriors; or why, supposing,
as it was far more natural to deem,
that the true object of the expedition had
contemplated some end widely different, after
the accidental capture of one soldier, had the
real purpose of the onslaught been laid by,
and overlooked, in the delight arising from a
success so slight and unimportant! Deeply,
however, as he pondered, he found not, heretofore,
the smallest clue whereby to reach
the termination of the maze in which his
thoughts were so mysteriously involved. At
times, a wild and anxious terror would possess
his mind with the idea that his capture
must be connected in some wise with his
repeated visits to the Charib maiden, whom
he had so devotedly enthroned within his
heart of hearts,—meet idol for that magic
shrine!—that the most distant surmise of
peril to which she should be exposed, shook
his strong nerves, even as an earthquake
agitates the rock-ribbed mountains. Anon,
as reason told him that such fancies were the
mere visionary workings of a self-tormenting
spirit, his features would array themselves
in a wan, sickly smile, and he would
deem, for a brief moment, that cheerfulness
and hope were re-established in his heart.
Thus passed the mid-day halt; the simple
preparations for the Indian meal were ended,
the natives ate in silence and in haste,
betokening the need of rare and, to their inert
and voluptuous characters, unwelcome toil
and exertion. Food and a calabash of water
were set before Hernando; and a significant,
although mute, gesture urged him to profit
by the opportunity thus offered—but, though
he was aware of the necessity of keeping up,
as far as possible, his physical, as well as
mental powers, in order to exert himself on
any chance occasion to effect his own escape,
and that of his loved page, from the fierce
savages, the fever of his wounds, enhanced
by the anxiety and burning bitterness of his
soul, had parched his throat and lips, and he
turned with irrepressible and painful loathing
from the viands, which, though rude
and simple, might well have satisfied the
palate of a soldier fasting since the preceding
night, and spent with toil and travel.
Deeply, however, did he drink of the cool
liquid crystal, with which his calabash was
often and again replemished by a bright eyed
youth of gentler mien, and milder features
than any other of the Charibs, who, from the
first, had hovered unremarked about the captives,
and who now smiled cheerily upon
Hernando, while ministering with something
of solicitude and tenderness to his most pressing
wants. After the Spaniard had exhausted
at a single draught the second gourd of
water, and had relapsed into the deep abstraction
of his own fevered thoughts, he
was half startled by the soothing pressure of
a cool soft hand upon his burning brow,
laving his temples with the same pure icy
element which had so gratefully relieved his
burning thirst—turning his eyes up with a
sudden impulse, he caught again the features
of the slight Indian boy, which several times
before had met his gaze that morning,
although unnoticed in the engrossing tumult
of his senses. Again a brilliant smile glanced
over the dark lineaments, and a quick flashing
light, as if of well-pleased recognition,
leaped from the lustrous eyes. Although his
face was strange, although to the best of the
young Spaniard's memory, never before had
those dusky features met his eyes, there was
yet something in their aspect which was
familiar, something which brought back—
Hernando knew not why—bright thoughts
of by-gone days, and kindled livelier hopes
of future welfare—something of indistinct
and vague similitude to some one he had seen
before, although he could not, on the instant,
bring to his mind, or time, or place, or person.
Thought was at work within him, to
make out wherein, and to whom, lay this
strange similitude, while still the gentle hand
steeped his hot forehead, and the mild eyes
gazed into his with almost female tender
ness. Sudden it flashed upon him—sudden
as the electric gleam! A radiant light shot
from his clouded eyes, his lips moved, and
the first syllables of an Indian word were
quivering on his tongue, when the boy, instantly
appreciating the meaning of that sudden
lustre, assuming a grave and warning
air—pressed his forefinger on his lip, and
waved his left hand with a gesture so slight,
as to be imperceptible except to him for whom
it was intended, towards the great chieftain
Caonabo, who lay at a short distance under
the overbowering shadow of a huge forest
tree, mantled with thousands of sweet parasites,
engaged in consulation—as it would
seem from their grave brows and quiet gestures—of
deep import with his superior warriors.
This done, he turned away and was
lost instantly to the sight of Hernando among
the Charib soldiery, who were now mustering
fast, their simple meal concluded, as for
their onward route. Another moment, and
the gigantic cacique up-started to his feet,
snatched from the branch, whence they hung,
his long tough bow and gaily decorated
quiver, slung them across his naked shoulders,
braced on his left arm a light buckler
covered with thin plates of the purest gold,
and grasping in his right a ponderous mace
of iron-wood, curiously carved, and toothed
at every angle with rows of jagged shells,
stalked with an air of native dignity—which
could not have been outdone, had it been
equalled, by the noblest potentate of Europe's
haughtiest court; across the green savannah,
and stood among his warrior subjects, the
mightiest and noblest of them all; the mightiest
and noblest, not in the vainer attributes
of rank and birth alone, not in the temporal
power only, which may be and oft is bestowed
upon the weak of limb and low of spirit,
but in the thews and sinews, the energies,
the daring, and the soul, the power to do and
suffer, the sublime and unmoved constancy
of purpose, the indomitable, irresistible resolve,
the all which makes one man superior
to his fellows. A moment he stood there,
gazing around him with a fearless and proud
glance upon the muster of his tribe's best
soldiery; then speaking a few words to a tall
savage, who throughout the day had been
the nighest to his person, he stalked off slowly,
followed by four at least of the five hundred
which composed his band, in a direction
nearly at right angles to the blind path
which they had hitherto pursued, and which
might be perceived beyond the little area
diving right onward between walls of impenetrable
verdure, into the far depths of the
forest.
Scarce had the last of this train vanished
from sight, before the same tall savage to
whose ear the parting words of Caonabo had
had been left, as it would seem, under his
sole command. Fifty of these, bearing their
long bows ready bent, with a flint-headed
arrow notched on the string of each, filed off
under the guidance of an old hoary-headed
Charib, whose wrinkled brow and lean attenuated
frame would have denoted him as
one unfit for deeds of toil or daring, had not
they been even more distinctly contradicted
by the light vigor of his every motion, by the
keen fire of his glaring eye-ball, and by the
sinewy grace with which he wielded his war
weapons. At the same cat-like pace, which
Hernando had marked in the warriors of the
larger band, these dark-skinned archers threaded
the defile of the umbrageous path, which
was so narrow as scarcely to admit one man,
and was so densely walled by brakes of cane
and prickly shrubs, that it would have been
a harder task to penetrate their leafy ram part,
than to carve out a path through the most
powerful bastions that mortal workmen ever
framed of eternal granite. A signal from the
chief directed him to follow, and conscious
of the entire hopelessness of any present opposition
to his will, recruited somewhat by
his brief repose, and cheered yet more by the
imagination that in the number of his captors
he had found at the least one friend, Hernando
entered with a quick and springy step the
dim pass, while, hard upon his heels, urging
him up close to the warrior who preceded
him, strode the tall figure of the Charib captain,
followed in turn by the remainder of his
train, with, in their midst, the frail and fettered
form of the young Alonzo. Onward
they marched, still onward, tracking the
windings of that narrow road, through the
deep matted swamp, over the rocky ledge,
among the giants of the forest! still walled
at every point by masses of luxuriant verdure,
so dense as to make twilight of the
scorching noonday, still so defined that a
blind man might have groped out his way
unerring, and still so straight that it was utterly
impossible for two to go abreast.
The only changes in the dark monotony
of this dim defile were when it forded some
wild torrent brawling along in gloomy discontent
among the tangled thickets, or when
it crossed, upheld on narrow causeways of
rude logs, some woodgirt pool, half lake and
half morass, where, for a little space, the
weary eye might strive to penetrate the
arch vista through which foamed the restless
streamlet, or dwell upon the dull and lead-like
surface of the small standing pool. Onward
they marched, still onward! The sun,
which all unmarked had climbed the height
of heaven, and all unseen descended to its
western verge, stooped like a giant bride-groom
to his bed, and a more dull and brown
er horror overspread the trackless forest.
The stars came out in the translucent skies,
spangling the firmament with their unnumbered
smiles, but not one mirthful glance
might penetrate the solid vault of greenery
which over-canopied their route—the broad,
bright moon soared up far over the tangled
tree-tops, and here and there a pencil of soft
lustre streamed downward through some verdant
crevice, and a mild, hazy light diffused
itself even in that murky avenue. Onward
they marched, still onward, at one unwearied,
even, silent pace. No halt was made at
even-tide, no halt at the deep midnight, and
the young Spaniard, proud though he was
of his capacity to bear, well trained in every
manly and martial exercise, felt that he was
but a child in strength, and in activity, among
the dark sons of the forest. The boy, Alonzo,
had long since given out, and had been
borne an unresisting and almost insensible
weight in the stout arms of two powerful
savages. Onward they went, still onward,
and it was only by the utmost and most resolute
exertion that Hernando could maintain
the steady, swift pace which his captors held,
without one pant disturbing the calm tenor of
their breathing, or one sweat-drop appearing
on their muscular, swart frames.
Daybreak was near at hand—a deeper
gloom had followed on the setting moon—
the stars had waned, and a chill freshness in
the air betokened the approach of morning,
although the skies were yet untinged by any
gleam of light, when a low whistle was heard
from the head of the long file; man by man
it passed rearward, and all halted. After a
second's space there was a forward movement;
and, after a few steps, Hernando might
perceive that the path opened somewhat, and
that the men who went before him, fell orderly
and steadily as they advanced, into a
column of three front; halting, however, as
they did so, in order that no interval might
be left in their line of march. Then scarcely
had he moved half a yard beyond the spot
whereat the wider road commenced, before
the tall chief mentioned heretofore, and the
man next behind, moved simultaneously, by
a quick, pard-like spring to either side of
him, and grasped his arms above the elbow
with a firm, though not painful pressure.
Meanwhile the heavens had brightened
somewhat, and he might see that a huge rocky
hill, or, as it might have been termed, not inaptly,
mountain, rose suddenly, an abrupt and
glant barrier, directly in their front. Rough
as it was, however, and difficult of access, an
hour of constant labor brought them in safety to
the summit, where a scene widely different
from the bleak herbless crags which with so
much of labor they had scaled, presented itself
to the Spaniard's eyes. A table of rich fertile
outspread upon the ledgy top of the huge hill,
which fell abruptly down on every side, a precipice
of several hundred feet in sheer descent,
accessible alone by steep and zigzag paths, like
that up which his weary feet had painfully surmounted
its ascent. Groves of the freshest verdure
towered high above the black and broken
rocks which walled them in on every side;
fields richly clothed with the tall maize, rustled
and twinkled in the morning air; streamlets of
crystal water meandered to and fro until they
reached the steep brink whence they plunged
in bright and foaming cataracts down to the
vale below—and here embosomed in the verdant
groves, circled with rich and fertile fields,
watered by rills of most translucent water; here,
on a summit never before trodden by the feet
of European, lay the secluded fastness of the
Charib Caonabo—a village larger and more
neatly built than any which Hernando had yet
seen in the fair island of Hispaniola. Some
two, or at the most three hundred cottages, of
the low Indian fashion, with roofs thatched by
the spreading palm-leaves, and pillared porticoes
scattered about in careless groups, irregularly
mixed with groves and gardens, were carefully
surrounded by a deep ditch, supplied with water
from a dam upon a neighboring streamlet;
and a stockade composed of massive timbers of
the already famous iron-wood, framed with
much skill and ingenuity, in imitation of Spanish
palisadoes. Columns of smoke were
curling gaily upward from every cottage roof,
and lights were glancing cheerily from every
open door and wide unlatticed casement; and
merry voices rang in friendly converse or unthinking
song, through the long village streets;
but none came forth to greet, or cheer the
wounded weary stranger, who was dragged on
—right on, wistfully eyeing the bright firesides,
and listening with envious ears to the gay
sounds of merriment, among which he stood
alone and almost hopeless. At length, when
he had passed every house—when the lights
and sounds had faded into distance, the hand
which might be said to bear, rather than now to
lead him onward, halted before a towering pile
of rock, upon the further verge of the small
area of table land contiguous to the stern precipice.
A light was procured instantly by one of
the inferiors of the tribe, and by it was revealed
a natural aperture in the dark rock, defended
by a grated wicket, composed, like the stock-side,
of massive beams of iron-wood, securely
fastened by a lock of Spanish manufacture. A
key was instantly produced from the tall chieftain's
girdle, and without any word of explanation
the gate was opened, the Spaniard's bonds
were loosened, a pile of cloaks of the rude native
cotton was flung down in a dark recess of
the cave—which, by the dim light of the flickering
torch, appeared to be of immense magnitude.
Hernando was thrust violently in, the
torch extinguished, and the gate closed on the
moment—locked and double-locked behind
him. For a short time he listened to the departing
footsteps of his captors, and then, outdone
with weariness and woe, muttered his
hasty prayers, and throwing himself down at
full length on the simple pallet, slept heavily
and soundly until the sun of the succeeding day
was high in the blue heavens, when he awoke
again to recollection of his griefs, and the feverish
torture of his wounds.
9. CHAPTER IX.
The sun was high in heaven, when Hernando
de Leon awoke from the deep but perturbed
and restless slumbers which, induced by
the fever of his wounds, and the toilsome journey
of the preceding day, had fallen on him almost
before his limbs were stretched upon their
temporary couch. The bright rays streaming
in between the massive beams that barred the
portal of his dungeon, full of ten thousand
dancing motes, had fallen full upon his face,
and uncurtained eyelids, dazzling the orbs
within; so that when he upstarted from his
dreamless sleep, it was a moment or two before
he could so far collect his thoughts as to discover
where he was, or what had been the circumstances
which placed him in that wild
abode. By slow degrees, however, the truth
dawned on his mind, and with the truth that
dull sense of oppression that dense and smothering
weight, which to souls of the highest order
and most delicate perceptions, seems ever to attend
the loss of liberty. For a while, therefore,
he brooded gloomily and darkly over the strange
events of the past day; the singular mode in
which he had been so unexpectedly entrapped,
the unexplained and unintelligible conduct of the
savages, and, above all, the motives which had
influenced them in their treatment of himself.
Thence his thoughts strayed, by no unnatural
transition, to the mild features and kind ministry
of the Charib boy; and when he probed
his memory, he clearly recollected him to be
one of the slaves of Orozimbo's household,
though from this he could draw no plausible
conjecture, either for good or evil. After a little
space, wandering again, his spirit began to
reflect upon the chances of his liberation; nor
did he meditate long on this topic, before he
came to the conclusion that for his present escape
from the hands of the fierce cacique, and
for his ultimate return to the settlements of his
countrymen, he must rely entirely on his own
energies. Hope of assistance from without
was evidently desperate. The speed and secresy
with which the Indians had conducted
their retreat—the ignorance of all his comrades
morning—the death, flight, or capture of all
those who had been privy to the time or place
of his encounter with Herreriro, and above all
the great and almost certain probability that
some ulterior object, involving inroads on the
Spanish posts, of magnitude sufficient to engage
their occupants exclusively in their own
self-preservation, had drawn the wily Caonabo
to such a distance from his usual fastnesses,
all these considerations led the young captive
to believe that on himself alone, on his own
often tried resources, on his own resolute will
and unflinching nerves, on his own deep sagacity
and dauntless courage, on his own hardihood
of heart and corresponding energy of
thews and sinews, depended all his hope of
extrication from an imprisonment which promised
to be long indeed, and painful, unless it
should be brought to a more speedy, though
no less unwished termination through the medium
of a violent and cruel death.
Stimulated, by reflections such as these, to
something of exertion, Hernando rose from his
lowly couch, with the intent of exploring, to
the utmost, the secrets of his prison house,
which, so far as the uncertain light, checkered
and broken by the gratings through which it
found its way, permitted him to judge, seemed
of considerable depth and magnitude, when,
to his great surprise, as he raised himself, he
perceived that, during his slumbers, his dungeon
had been visited by some one who had
left, hard by his pillow, a calabash of pure,
cold water, with a slight meal of fruits and the
cassava bread, which formed the principal article
of nutriment among the simple Indians.
So sound, however, had been his sleep, that the
noise of opening the heavy creaking gate had fallen
unheard and unheeded on his dulled senses
To lave his heated brow and hands, in the cool
element—to quaff a long, long draught, more
soothing, in his present temper, than the
most fragrant wines of Xenes, or the yet more
renowned and costly Val de Peñas—was his
first impulse; but when refreshed and reinvigorated
by the innocent cup, he turned to taste the
eatables before him, his very soul revolted
from the untouched morsel, the rising spasm of
the throat, the hysterica passio of poor Lear,
convulsed him; and, casting the food from him,
he buried his hot aching temples in his hands,
and remained for many minutes, plunged, as it
were, in a deep stupor—then, by a mighty effort,
shaking off the lethargic gloom, he drank
again more deeply than before, sprang to his
feet, and strode, with firm and rapid steps, several
times to and fro the area of his prison, immediately
within the wicket, where fell the
brightest glances of the half-interrupted sunlight.
“Shame, shame!” he cried, at length giving
articulate expression to his thoughts—
“shame, shame on thee. Hernando!—to
pine and give way thus beneath the pressure
of so slight an evil—for what is this to thy
hard soul-cankering captivity, among the
savage paynimry of Spain—where fettered
to the floor thou languishedst for nine long
months, unvisited by the fair light of
Heaven. Shame! it must not be!” and he
manned himself, upon the instant, by a single
effort, and, turning from the light, explored
with cautious scrutiny each nook and angle
of the cavern. It was of large extent, wide,
deep, and full of irregular recesses; and
seemed to have been used as a species of
magazine, or store-house; for piles of dried
fish, baskets of wicker-work heaped with the
golden ears of maize, or roots of the cassava,
cumbered the floor; while on rude shelves
were stowed away the simple fabric of the
Indian broom, mattings, and rolls of cotton
cloth, fantastically dyed, and in one—the
most secret—nook, protected by a wooden
door, a mass of glittering ornaments, some
wrought of the purest gold, and others of the
adulterated metal, which the savages termed
guanin, breast-plates, and crowns and bracelets,
enough to have satisfied the avarice insatiate
of a Pizarro or a Cortez. Nor were
these all; for visible amid the darkness, by
the rays which their own gorgeous substance
concentrated, lay bars, and ingots and huge
wedges, of the virgin metal, beside a pile of
unwrought ore, gleaming with massy veins,
of value utterly uncalculable. Slight was
the glance which the young Spaniard cast
upon these more than kingly treasures—a
single crevice opening to the outer air had
been to him a discovery more precious than
the concentrated wealth of all the mighty
mines of the new world—a single coat of
plate, with helm and buckler, and a good
Spanish blade to match them, he would have
clutched with hands that scorned the richer
metal—but these were not; and he turned
from the cacique's treasury with a heedless
air, to resume his hitherto unprofitable search.
Not far did he go, however, before another
wooden door presented itself, closed only by
an artificial latch, which yielded instantly
to his impatient fingers. It opened—and before
him extended a huge and stately hall, for
such it seemed, wide as the cloistered chancel
of some gothic pile, and loftier; walled,
paved and vaulted by the primeval hand of
nature, first and unrivalled architect, with the
eternal granite—not as the outer chamber,
obscure, or dimly seem by half-excluded daylight—but
flooded with pure, all-pervading
sunshine, which poured in unpolluted and
unveiled, through the vast natural arch which
terminated the superb arcade. His heart
leaped, as it seemed, with the vast joy of the
moment, into his very throat! All suffering,
all anxiety, all woe was instantly forgotten!
for he was free! free as the fresh summer
with the perfumes of a thousand flowing hills!
free as the glowing sunshine that streamed
through that broad portal! With a quick
step, and bounding pulse, he leaped towards
the opening! he reached!—he stood upon the
threshold! Wherefore that sudden start?
wherefore that ashy pallor pervading brow
and cheek and lip? One other step, and he
had been precipitated hundreds of feet from
the sheer verge of the huge rock, which fell
a perpendicular descent of ninety fathom,
down to the cultured plains below! His feet
were now tottering on the very brink, and it
required more than an ordinary effort of his
strong active frame to check the impulse of
his forward motion, which had been so impetuously
swift, that but a little more would
have sufficed to hurl him into the empty air.
With a dull leaden weight that sudden disappointment
crushed down the burning aspirations
of his soul—his heart fell sick within
him; he clasped his hands over his throbbing
temples—he was again a captive! It was,
however, but for a moment he was unmanned.
Before a second had elapsed, he was engaged
with all his energies, in the examination of
the smallest peculiarities of the place, hoping,
alas! in vain, that he should still discover
there some path whereby to quit his prison-house;
but not the faintest track—not the
most slight projection, whereon to plant a
foot, was there—above, below, to right and
left of that huge arch, the massy precipice
was smooth and hard and slippery as glass—
and, after a minute inspection, the Spaniard
was reluctantly compelled to own to his excited
hopes, which fain would have deceived
themselves, that nothing had been
gained by his discovery beyond the power
of gazing forth over the beauties of that boundless
scene, which stretched away, for miles
and miles, beneath his feet to the blue waters
of the ocean, which lost themselves in turn in
the illimitable azure of the cloudless skies.
Wistfully did he strain his eyes over the wide-spread
plain, which from that lofty eminence
showed, map-like and distinct, its every variation
of hill, or sloping upland, tangled ravine,
or broad and fertile valley, clearly delineated
by the undulations of those mighty shadows
which—thrown by the strong sunshine from a
hundred sweeping clouds—careered like giant
beings over the glittering landscape. Suddenly,
while he yet lingered over this distant
prospect, a faint sound burst on his ear—a
sound oft heard and unforgotten; though so
faint that now it scarcely rose above the whisper
of the breeze waving the myriad tree-tops
of that untrodden solitude; and the small voice
of the far river whose angry roar was mellowed,
by the influence of distance, into a soft and
soothing murmur. He started, and glanced
hurriedly around—again that sound—nearer
and clearer than before—the remote din of ordnance!
Towards the east he gazed, and there,
winding their way through the calm waters in
close propinquity to the green margin of the
isle, he saw four caravellas, with every snow-white
sail spread to the favoring gales, with
fluttering signals streaming from their mastheads,
and by their oft repeated salvos, soliciting
the notice of their countrymen. It was—
it was, past doubt, the squadron of Columbus—
long wished for, and arrived too late! Hopeless
although he was, he watched those caravellas
with a gaze as eagerly solicitous as that which
the benighted sailor keeps on the beacon of his
safety—while, one by one, they were lost to
his sight behind some towering promontory,
and re-appeared again, each after each, glittering
forth with all their white sails shimmering
in the meridian light. At length he might behold
them shortening sail, as though their
haven was at hand, and by and by they shot
into the shadow of a wide wood-crowned hill;
and, though the watcher kept his post until the
sun was bending down towards the western
verge of the horizon, they issued not again
upon the azure waters, beyond that mass of
frowning verdure. With a heart sicker than
before, he had already turned away, in order
to go back into the outer cavern, when a sharp
whizzing sound beside him attracted his attention,
and ere he could look around the long
shaft of a Charib arrow splintered itself against
the rocky archway, and fell in fragments at his
feet. The first glance of the dauntless Spaniard
was outward, to descry, if possible, the
archer who had launched that missile, and with
so true an aim! Nor was he long in doubt—
for perched on a projecting crag of the same
line of cliffs, wherein was perforated the wide
cave within the mouth of which he stood, a
hundred yards, at the least calculation, distant,
he saw the Charib Orozimbo. A quiver was
suspended from his shoulders, and a long Indian
bow was yet raised in his right hand, to
the level of his eye; but by the friendly wafture
of his left, he seemed to deprecate the
notion that he was hostilely inclined. Again
he waved his hand aloft, pointed towards the
broken arrow, and turning hastily away, was
out of sight before Hernando could reply to
his brief amicable gestures. As soon as he
had roused his scattered energies of mind, the
youthful Spaniard turned his attention to the
fragments of the splintered shaft, and instantly
discovered a small packet securely fastened to
the flint head. Tearing it hence with eager
haste—couched in the Spanish tongue, and
traced upon the scrap of parchment by a remembered
hand—he read the following sentences:—
“Be of good cheer—friends are about us.
When the moon sets to-night, watch at the cavern
mouth—a clue of thread shall be conveyed
to thee, by which thou shalt draw up a cord
shall wait thee at the cliff's foot. These,
through the Charib Orozimbo, from thine,
10. CHAPTER IX.
He tore the billet on the instant into the
smallest fragments, and lest some prying eyes
should fall on its contents, scattered it piecemal,
through the rocky porch to the free winds
of heaven. This done he looked about him
carefully for some projection of the rock
whereunto he might fix the rope, on which he
was to wing his flight down that precipitous
abyss, that no time might be wasted when the
appointed hour should come, for the adventure;
and soon discovered a tall stalactitic
pillar, close to the brink of the descent, the
strength of which he tested by the exertion of
his utmost power. Satisfied now, that he had
nothing more to do, but to avoid suspicion, and
to await the action of his friends without, he
returned instantly to the exterior cave—secured
the door with care, and dragging back the
cotton mattress on which he had slept the preceding
night into the darkest angle of the prison,
stretched himself on it to expect, as patiently
as might be, the approach of evening.
Not long had he lain there, before a grim-visaged
old wrinkled warrior entered with a
supply of food and water. Without a word,
this tawny jailor deposited his load on the
rocky floor, and then, with uncouth courtesy,
applied fresh bandages, besmeared with some
sweet-scented Indian salve, which acted almost
magically to the refreshment of the wound
upon the wrist, which had been pierced by the
Charib arrow. Having done this, he peered
about with silent scrutiny, into each angle and
recess of the cave-dungeon, and then, having
severely tested the strength of the wooden
barriers, swung to and locked the heavy lattice,
and departed. Slowly the hours of daylight
lagged away, but to the slowest and the
longest term its end must come, and gradually
the long shadows, which the setting sun threw
over that green landscape, melted into the
dimness of the universal gloom, and one by
one the stars came out in the dark azure firmament,
and all was still and sweet and breathless.
Anon, the moon came forth, climbing
the arch of heaven in her pure beauty, and
bathing all on earth in peaceful glory. It
seemed, to the excited spirits of Hernando, as
if she never would complete her transit over
the deep blue skies, and it was with no small
exertion that he compelled himself to wait the
time appointed. Well for him was it that he
did so! for when she attained her central
height, a band of dusky warriors, with the
great cacique Caonabo at their head, well
armed with spears and war-clubs, and equipped
with many and bright torches, paused at
the grated entrance, and summoned him to
show himself to them, his captors. After this
measure, evidently of precaution, he was left
quite alone, shortly after, he fell asleep for a
short space, although his slumbers were disturbed
and broken; and the moon had not set,
although her lower limb was sinking fast into
the forest when he awoke. Cautiously he
peered out through the dungeon gate to see
that all was still without, ere he should
seek his post, then, satisfied that no spies were
upon the watch, he noiselessly unclosed the
inner door, fastened it softly after him, and
stealing through the larger cavern, showed his
tall figure in the archway just as the last ray
of the moon glanced on the cliffs around him,
ere he should disappear. She sank, and all
was gloom. A moment—a shrill sharp whistle
rang on the night air, and again a shaft whizzed
by him and fell harmless. A slight thread
was attached to it, which, fathom after fathom,
drew in, until a stronger line supplied its place,
and next a stout cord, and at length, the promised
rope! With eager hands, he gathered
it link after link, coil after coil, fastened it to
the lofty stalactite, and, after having tried, by
a sudden jerk, the safety of the knot, leaned
forth over the rocky brink to see if thence he
might descry aught of his trusty friends. Diminished
by the distance into a twinkling
gleam, scarce larger than the fire-fly's spark,
at the crag's base, there blazed a single torch,
and, this slight glimmer seen, without one
word or doubt, the dauntless youth grasped
the stout cable, and launched himself over the
perilous brink into the viewless bosom of the
air. The rope had been prepared with knots
at each foot of its length, through every one
of which was thrust a tough bamboo, forming
a rude extempore step-ladder; yet, though
facilitated somewhat, the descent into that
black, and as it seemed, bottomless abyss, was
still perilous in the extreme, and yet less perilous
than fearful. Steadily, however, did
Hernando, grasping the short rungs with an
iron gripe, and planting his feet one by one,
descend that fearful ladder; nor, till he stood
unscathed on the firm soil below, did his brain
reel, or his stout nerves tremble; and there,
recovering from the transient tremor and bewilderment
that fell upon him, he found himself
clasped in the fond arms of the faithful
Guarica, while round them gathered the bold
page, Alonzo, and Orozimbo, the true Charib
boy, Guarica's youthful brother; who had
alone, designed with skill and with success,
accomplished this desperate adventure of escape.
11. CHAPTER X.
Brief time had the young Spaniard and his Indian
princess for explanation, or for converse,
for while she was yet clasped to his grateful
breast in the first sweet embrace of love, a
long, wild yell rang far into the bosom of
the broad glare of a hundred torches, tumultuously
brandished by as many strong and
savage hands, disclosed to the eyes of the astounded
fugitives the fierce cacique himself,
surrounded by the flower of his wild chivalry,
armed at all points, with bow and buckler,
war-club and javelin, and pike, thronging the
rocky threshold of that deserted dungeon.
Each swarthy figure stood out revealed on
that bold eminence like animated sculptures
of the far-famed Corinthian brass; the sinewy
frames, the well developed muscles, nay!
more, the very features of every stern cacique,
the plumy crowns, and pictured quivers, all
clearly visible and palpably defined against
the fierce red glow which formed the back
ground to that animated picture. Brief time
was there, indeed! for instantly discovering
the mode by which the fugitive had left his
place of confinement, and guessing that his
flight was but recent—for though the crimson
glare of their resinous torches rendered the
group above as visible as daylight could have
done, it lacked the power to penetrate the
gloom which veiled the little knot of beings
at the base of that huge precipice,—two of
the boldest of the great cacique's followers addressed
themselves to the pursuit by the same
fearful and precarious ladder; while many
others might be seen casting aside the heavier
portions of their dress and armature, and girding
up their loins for a similar purpose.
“Haste, haste, Hernando,” whispered
the Indian maiden, in a voice that fairly trembled
with agitation—“haste to yon thicket by
the stream—fly thou, Alonzo, and unbind the
horses! Come, Orozimbo—brother!”
And, as she spoke grasping her lover by the
arm, she hurried him away to a dense mass of
thorny brushwood, which, overcanopied with
many a vine and many a tangled creeper,
clothed the banks of a wide, brawling streamlet,
flowing with a loud incessant murmur, though
in a slender volume, over a bed of gravel, and
small rocky fragments, detached, in the lapse
of ages, from the tall crag that overhung it
H re, fastened to the branches, stood three
Spanish chargers, equipped with the lightest
housings then in use, except that one, in addition
to the saddle, was provided with a velvet
cushion attached to the cantle, and kept in
its place by a thong, securing it to the richly
plated crupper.
“Mount, mount, Alonzo,” cried the maiden;
“stay not to hold your master's stirrup;
mount, and delay not! Every minute now
is worth a human life!” While yet the words
were on her lips, the page had leaped into his
saddle, and swinging her slight form, with
scarce an effort, to the croup of the tall charger,
Hernando, without setting foot in stirrup, vaulted
into the saddle before her, grasped the reins
firmly with a practised hand, and stirring his
steed's mettle with the spur, rode a few paces
down the channel of the stream, till he had
reached a place clear from the overbowering
brushwood. The boy Alonzo followed hard
on his traces, leading the third horse by the
bridle at his side.
“Where—oh where tarries Orozimbo?”
whispered again the Charib maiden, in a sweet
low voice of her native tongue—“without
him, all is naught!”
Ere she had finished speaking, they cleared
the thicket, and by the strong illumination of
the lights above, a fearful scene was rendered
visible. The foremost two of the pursuers
were half way down the ladder, while three
of their followers had commenced their perilous
descent, and were now hanging to the
topmost rungs! Where—where was Orozimbo?
A sharp twang broke the silence which had
succeeded to the yell of the infuriate Indians.
A keen, sharp ringing twang! a hurtling sound
as of some missile in quick motion, followed
—a long, dark streak was seen almost immediately
glancing within the circling radiance of
the torches, towards the leading Charib—at the
next instant he relaxed his hold—a piercing
yell of anguish and despair pealed up to the
dark heavens—headforemost the tawny savage
plunged earthward—and the soft, heavy plashing
noise announced, as plainly as the clearest
words could tell, that not one bone remained
unbroken after that fearful fall! Another
twang—and yet another!—and almost simultaneously,
with the small, shrill voice of the
fatal cord, another, and another of the wretched
Indians, transfixed by the unerring shafts
of Orozimbo, were precipitated—one shrieking
hopelessly but incessantly through the deaf
air, until the awful crash finished his cries and
agonies together—one mute in his stern despair—from
their slight foothold; while daunted
by the deadly archery of their unseen enemy,
and ignorant how many foes were launching
death at every shot among them, the
survivors retreated up the ladder, with wild
haste, and when they reached the summit, a
long drawn yell, strangely expressive of malice
frustrated, and disappointed vengeance, told
those who heard it from below that they
abandoned that precarious method of pursuit.
Another moment, and the light passed from the
verge, and a loud burst of dissonant and angry
voices, receding rapidly, betokened that the
pursuers had turned off to seek some easier
exit from the hill-fortress.
Secured thus, by the bravery and foresight
of her stripling brother, from a pursuit so instantaneous
that escape would have been scarce
possible, Guarica called aloud, no longer fearing
to betray their proximity to the enemy by
her words:
“Hasten, good brother, hasten! We tarry
for thee, Orozimbo,” and guided by the accents
rapidity of his previous motions, and from agitation
in a scarcely less degree, with his full
quiver rattling on his naked shoulders, and the
long bow, which had of late done such good
service, swinging at his back, the Charib boy
darted down the slight declivity, and, wreathing
his hand lightly in the courser's mane, bounded
at once upon his back.
“Follow, Guarica; follow me close: there
is no time for words,” he exclaimed, as he
snatched the bridle, and dashing at once into a
gallop, drove down the pebbly channel of the
stream—the small stones and water flashing
high into the air at every stroke of the fleet
steed, and indicating to Hernando the direction
which his guide had taken. No easy task was
it, however, to ride down that wild water-course;
for though the streamlet was so shallow
that it barely reached the horses' knees,
the rugged inequalities of its bed—here thickly
interspersed with rough and craggy fragments,
here paved with slippery boulders, and
there with broad smooth ledges of hard slaty
rock, polished by the incressant rippling of the
current, till ice itself hardly would have afforded
a less treacherous foothold—rendered it
perilous indeed, save to a cavalier of the first
order to put a horse to his speed among its
numerous obstacles. At first, the youthful
Spaniard could not conceive the cause which
should have tempted Orozimbo to lead him by
so strange a path; but busy as he was in holding
up and guiding the stout charger which
nobly bore his double freight, his mind was actively
employed: and almost on the instant,
remembering the instinct, scarcely inferior to
the scent of the sagacious bloodhound, with
which the Charib tribes were wont to follow
on the track of any fugitive, he saw the wisdom
of this singular precaution. For something
more than two hours they dashed on unwearied,
though the sparkling waters, which,
driven far aloft, had draggled all their garments
from the buskin to the very plume—the stream
now wending in bold curves through rich and
fair savannahs, now driving into the most devious
shades of underwood and forest. Still on
dashed, rousing the wild fowl from their sedgy
haunts on the stream's margin, scaring the birds
of night from their almost impervious roosts,
till now the stars began to pale their ineffectual
fires, and a faint streak on the eastern sky
to tell of coming day. They reached a smooth
green vega, broader than any they had passed
or seen, and here, for the first time, Orozimbo
paused from his headlong race.
“All is well, now, Guarica—pursuit is far
behind; two leagues hence, just beyond that
fringe of wood which you may see glooming
dark against the opening morn, tarry your gallant
kinsmen, Don Hernando. Many will
blame us for the deeds which we have wrought
in thy behalf, young Spaniard. All our countrymen
must hate us, and if we 'scape this
'venture, our future home must be within the
scope of Spain's all-powerful protection. All
peril is over now for a space, and if thou art
weary, my sweet sister, here may we rest
awhile.”
“No, no!” Guarica interrupted him, breathless
from the wild speed at which they had
thus far journeyed. “No, no! no, no! we
will not pause till we have reached the cavaliers.”
“At least, however,” interposed Hernando,
using the Indian tongue, which was no less
familiar to him than his native language—“at
least, let us, if we be free from present danger,
ride somewhat gently, in order that our steeds
may so regain their wind, and be in ease again
to bear us stoutly, if aught should call for
fresh exertion of mettle.”
“Be it so,” answered Orozimbo, turning his
horse's head, and riding as he spoke up the
green margin of the rivulet, till he stood on the
level meadow, where he was joined by his
companions—“Be it so. Well I am assured
no foeman could have followed with such
speed as to be less than two leagues distant in
our rear—and on this open plain none can approach
us undetected. One hour's advance
will bring us to a band of horsemen, under the
bold Ojeda, that would contemn the might of
Caonabo's tribe.”
Taking the lead once more, he trotted gently
forward, the daylight brightening more and
more till the great sun burst from the cloudy
veil that curtained his bright orient chamber,
and filled the earth with lustre and rejoicing.
Love, which, oppressed by doubt, anxiety,
and care, had been remembered only to
aggravate their sorrows and increase their
apprehensions, resumed, beneath that gladsome
light, its more legitimate and wonted
functions, and, before many moments had
elapsed, Hernando was recounting to the attentive
ears of the sweet Indian girl his confident
and certain expectations of an immediate termination
to all the obstacles which had thus far
opposed their union, while he inquired eagerly
into the late mysterious history of his surprise,
imprisonment, and rescue. Few words sufficed
to make all clear. Chance, alone—blind
and sudden chance—had brought about his
capture—a chance which had in fact preserved
the Spanish settlements from certain peril—
probable destruction. Apprised, as has been
mentioned heretofore, of the relaxed discipline
and contemptuous negligence of military usages
which had crept on the garrison during the absence
of its great commander, the wily Charib
had assembled all his bold tributary hordes,
and was even then in full march to commence
an onslaught on walls which he most assuredly
would have found mounted with culverins unloaded
and watched—or unwatched rather—
by sentinels unarmed and sleeping. And despite
the exertions of Guarica, had the assailants
not been delayed by the arrival of the
the Charibs gazing in mute wonder, Ojeda's
tidings would have been all too late to save the
city from surprise. As it was, he arrived just
in time; and the report of Caonabo's scouts,
who reported the garrison to be so thoroughly
on the alert that it was clear they must have
received intelligence, determined the cacique to
retreat instantly, and wait a better opportunity.
Hernando's eyes had not deceived him; for
it was in truth Orozimbo, whom he had seen
disputing with Caonabo; and, as he surmised,
it was concerning himself that the argument
was maintained so angrily; the young man insisting
on his release, and his uncle, maddened
by his disappointment, refusing positively
to keep the word which he had plighted
for his safety.
This refusal perhaps it was which, awakening
a generous indignation on the boy's part,
determined him, yet more than his sympathy
in his beloved sister's affection, to effect by one
means or other the escape of the young Spaniard.
In this intent, he judged it best to accompany
the band on their march; and to carry
out his plans better he appeared to acquiesce
in his uncle's views, and avoided all communication
with, or apparent interest in the prisoner.
Within half an hour of the capture, however,
he contrived to send off news of what
had happened to his sister, by a messenger on
whom he could rely, desiring her to seek aid
from the very man to whom she was most
willing to apply, Alonzo de Ojeda; and to
meet him prepared with horses, and with Spanish
aid at hand, the next morning at a point
which he indicated.
Arrived at the hill fortress, he easily obtained
the release of Alonzo, on whom the
Charibs set no value, on condition that he
should be blindfolded until he was some miles
distant from the fort.
This once conceded, he seemingly gave up
all further interest in Hernando; and, on pretence
of conveying the boy homeward, had an
interview with his father and Ojeda, arranged
all the further particulars of the escape, and
conducted it with an energy and skill which
ensured its complete success.
The only danger that remained now to be
apprehended was that some roving band, several
of which Orozimbo knew to be out, might
discover the bivouac of Ojeda's horsemen, and,
suspecting an escape, attempt to ambush the
fugitives. Of this, however, there appeared to
be little risk, conducted, as their flight had
been, with so much craft and discretion.
And now the wide savannah was already
passed, and at the verge of the forest, within a
short half mile of the spot where Ojeda waited
their arrival, with ears and soul intent on every
sound that might betoken their approach, they
had to cross a narrow streamlet, running between
deep and wooded banks. Orozimbo, who
was their guide, still led the way, and was in
the middle of the ford, while Hernando with
the maiden was descending the steep path
which led to it, when the well known twang
of the Indian bow was heard, and an arrow
whizzed through the air, so truly aimed that it
passed through the Spaniard's high crowned
hat.
“Push on,” cried the quick-witted youth
upon the instant; “push on, boy, to close
quarters,” and, as he spoke, snatching a pistol
from his holster, he dashed his spurs into
his horse's flanks, and passing Orozimbo in
mid channel, drove up the opposite ascent,
followed by his page, sword in hand.
Then from the brushwood rose a loud,
wild yell, accompanied by a flight of long
Charib shafts—close to the head and breast of
De Leon they hurtled, but none took effect on
him, or on Alonzo. A sharp cry rang, however,
from the rear, followed almost immediately
by a splash in the shallow water, and
then, with bridle loose and bloodstained housings,
the steed of Orozimbo darted at a fierce
gallop onward. Scarce had Hernando reached
the brow of the ravine before, with levelled
pikes and brandished war-clubs, a dozen
Charibs rushed against him; and one, more
daring than his fellows, seized on his bridle
rein. Not half a second did he keep his hold,
for, levelled at a hand's breadth of his head,
Hernando's pistol flashed with unerring aim
—the bullet crashed through the Indian's temples,
and he fell without a word or a groan,
beneath the charger's feet. Rising upon the
instant in his stirrups, the bold cavalier hurled,
with a sure and steady hand, the discharged
weapon in the face of his next opponent.
Then, before he had seen the effect, although
it felled the savage stunned and headlong to
the earth, he unsheathed his trusty rapier with
one hand, while with the other, casting his
bridle loose, he drew and discharged fatally
his second pistol.
All this had passed with the speed of light,
and Alonzo, having at the same time cut
down the first of his assailants, the Indians
broke away on all sides, and it seemed as if
they might have effected their escape; and
so in fact they might have done, had the
young Spaniard chosen to abandon Orozimbo
to his fate; but such was not his nature.
Reining his charger sharply up, he turned his
head, and called aloud upon the faithful Indian.
At the same point of time the Charibs,
who had scattered diverse before his headlong
charge, began again to rally, and one, the
boldest of their number, fitting an arrow to
his bow-string, drew it with steady and swift
aim quite to the head, the cord twanged
sharply, and the shaft took effect right in the
his embroidered poitrel. Headlong he
fell to earth, and as he fell, the savages, gaining
fresh courage, made a simultaneous rush
upon the hapless rider.
So speedily, however, had the skilful soldier
regained his foothold, and so powerfully
did he wield his rapier, that they still feared
to close with him absolutely. Not so, however,
with the fair Guarica, for dislodged from
her seat by the shock of the charger's downfall,
she had been thrown to some yards distance
and seized, as soon as she had touched
the ground, by a gigantic savage, who all
athirst forvengeance and for blood, brandished
his ponderous war-club round his head in the
very act to smite, while hampered by their
numerous foemen, neither Hernando nor the
page could possibly assist her at this fearful
crisis. Just at this moment, the fast, thick-beating
tramp of many horses at full gallop
was heard by both parties, and the continuous
crashing of the brushwood, through which a
band of Europeans was, it was evident, advancing.
The near sound, it would seem, inspired
both parties with fresh vigor—the savages
trying to finish their fell work before
they should be interrupted—the Spaniards
gaining confidence and hope from the vicinity
of friends. Too late, however, would the
arrival of Ojeda on the scene of action have
proved to save Guarica, though now he might
be even within two hundred yards, plying his
bloody spurs, and brandishing aloft his formidable
rapier. Thrice did Hernando rush
upon the Indians in the vain hope of succoring
his promised bride, striking down at each
charge a Charib warrior; but each time he
was driven back by force of irresistible numbers;
and nothing could have saved her from
sure death, had not a bloody form, ghastly,
deathstricken, arisen like a spectre from the
channel of the stream—armed with a Spanish
blade—faithful in death itself, young Orozimbo!
Though faint and staggering, he plied
his keen sword with such mortal energy,
that all shrank back from its downright descent.
The chief who had seized Guarica,
and whose averted head beheld not the approach
of this new combatant, received the
full sway of its sheer edge on his bended
neck. Through muscle, spine, and marrow,
the trenchant blade drove unresisted. Loosing
his grasp upon his captive, he dropped
dead without a word or struggle; and carried
onward by his own impetus, the Charib boy
fell over him, and lay beside him in his
blood—motionless, although living still. A
second more, and with their battle cry,
“Saint Jago!” the fiery Spaniards were
upon them—with flash, and shot, and stab,
and stroke, till not an enemy remained alive
upon the bank of the small stream, which,
late so pure and lucid, flowed now all dark,
curdled, and thick with human gore. Ere yet
the mortal struggle was well over, Hernando
caught Guarica to his arms, and the page
Alonzo upraised the body of her faithful brother
from the earth, and wiped the foam and
gore from his pale lips, while the stern Spaniards
stood around, mute and awe-stricken,
leaning on the weapons which reeked yet
with the homicidal witness. One form was
there beside Alonzo de Ojeda, on whom Hernando's
eyes, engrossed by the sad spectacle
before him, had not yet fallen—a tall and noble
form, gorgeously clad in scarlet, with
much lace and embroidery of gold. But it
was not the gorgeous dress, scarlet, nor lace,
nor gold, but the long locks of snow shading
that broad and massive brow—the air of conscious
dignity and inborn worth, the impress
of unutterable thought united to invincible
resolve, that stamped upon that face and figure
a natural majesty exceeding that of princes—a
majesty becoming the discoverer of
worlds! Silent he stood, and sorrowful;
while the boy Orozimbo, placing the fair hand
of his sister, who, with her lover, knelt above
him in speechless agony of woe, in that of
the young Spaniard, strove hard but fruitlessly,
against the grasp of death, which wa
now grappling with his very soul, to give
his feelings sound—gasping forth something
of which naught could be heard but the
words—“Take her, love and protect”—his
eyes rolled wildly, as he struggled to fix them
on the beloved brow of her for whom he was
dying—his lips were fearfully convulsed, and
with one murmur—“Sister—sister!” he sank
upon the earth, as still and senseless as
its least valued clod. Then that great man
broke silence—
“This is the visible and present hand of
God! Take her, Hernando—she is yours—
yours in the face of man and before God!
Take her to be your wife, for ever and forever—and
as to her you do prove faithful,
true, and loving—so may it be with you and
yours, here and hereafter!”
And the wide forest aisles re-echoed to
the deep “Amen,” which burst impressively
from the stern lips of the Spanish warriors.
The tenderness of her espoused lord effaced,
in time, the cloud from the fair Indian's
brow; and if the source of their first early
love was troubled, so was it not in its meridian
tide! Happy they lived, and honored,
and when at length they paid the debt, which
all must pay to nature, it was among the
tears of children so numerous and noble, that
to this very day many, the grandest of Spain's
nobility, are proud to claim descent from Hernando
de Leon and his bright Charib Bride!
| Tales of the Spanish seas | |