University of Virginia Library

15. CHAPTER XV.
THE LAST VOW OF THE CARIB.

“Well! There is no son of Caonabo! there is no
Zemi, and I have no loss!”

Such were the first words of the outlaw, after the fearful
revelation which the mother had made him.

“And now, Buru, thou canst speak! I would know.
The boy went forth with thee at morning to the bohio of
the Spaniard. He fell among the rocks, perchance?—the
hurricane smote him with its sudden wings?—”

He paused: there was something left unspoken:—he
evidently felt that there were other sources of apprehension
equally if not more serious than those indicated.

“He fell not from the rocks!—not the hurricane!”
shrieked the woman; “no, no! it was the sword of the
Spaniard—of the Lord Garabito!—”

“Is he lord of thine, woman, or of mine? Has the leg
of Caonabo an iron around it,—is there a heavy chain
upon his wrists! Shrinks the chief from the sword that
slew the boy, Zemi? and shalt thou, that art the wife of
Caonabo, call the Spaniard thy lord? I hear thee!—The
sword of Garabito slew the son of Caonabo!—Well! I
ask thee not wherefore—it was the mood of the Spaniard
—he would have the boy to bring him water when he
thirsts in the heaven which he slays for. May he be
ready for it when the teeth of Caonabo are in his shoulder.
Where lies the boy?”

“In the bohio of Buru.”

“And shall the chief go to thy dwelling, woman, when
the Spaniard hath put his dogs upon the track of a free
warrior, and hunts him day and night to slay? Art sure
that the murderer looks not for the father of the boy?—
Comes he not among the hills with his bloodhounds?”

“The peace is on the hills—the peace of death is in the
bohio of the woman, and our people come not forth because
of her sorrow. The rocks were silent as I came.
The bay of the bloodhound is not to-night. The Spaniard
keeps in his city, for the hurricane hath been over
his great bohio, and the big canoe—”

“No more,—I will see the boy. Let us to the bohio,
Buru; I would look upon his face for the last time. We
will not leave the boy to be food for the dog that barks.
He shall go with us, though he knows nothing of the
journey. His head shall rest in thy arms while my hand
plies the oar.”

“Alas! alas! The keen sword of the Spaniard smote
the neck of Zemi.”

“Ha! the neck, sayst thou?—Well, it matters not,
neck, or head, or heart—the life is gone—there is no life in
the boy, and there is no more sorrow. The sword of
Garabito smote the neck, thou sayst?”

“And the head of the poor Zemi fell down among the
rocks.”

The outlaw stopped, pushed the woman from him to
the full length of his arm, and gazed on her with looks of
mingled horror and aversion. The bearer of sad tidings
seems, in the moment of our suffering, very like their
cause.

“Kill not the woman with thy look, Caonabo! Would
not the mother have perished for the boy? Lo, you,
father-chief—Buru's neck lay thus for the keen sword of
the Spaniard, when his arm was raised to smite the boy.”

She threw herself once more at her husband's feet in
the same position which she kept at the feet of Garabito
in the moment of his dreadful crime. The look which
she had deprecated passed from the features of the chief
as he raised her tenderly from the ground.

“No more, Buru. There is no death for thee in the
hands of Caonabo! Thou hast done well, and the fault
is in the chief. He should have taken the boy from thee,
but that he feared pursuit, and dreaded to bring the
Spaniard upon thy steps. Yet, even thou mightst have
found safety in these wild places, and my arms should
have borne thee among the water crags lying by the sea,
where the scent of the hungry dog could not have followed
thee.”

“Thou couldst not, Caonabo. Thou hast not erred.
The Spaniard would have overtaken and overcome thee,
with the woman and the boy upon thy arm.”

“That were not easy; and yet it might have been as
thou sayst. But wherefore thy speech? Let us go forward
to the boy. I tell thee, Buru, thou shalt bear him
in thy arms until the water grows around us. Better that
he should sleep in the reedy sea, than fatten the fierce
hound of the Spaniard. Come!”

They proceeded together towards the cottage of the
woman, and, while they went, she related, in language
broken by her unsuppressed sorrows, the events of the
day, and supplied those particulars in the narrative of
her son's murder which her agitation had caused her to
omit before. Caonabo silenced his anguish, whatever it
might have been, as he listened to her story. The feelings
of the man had already found all the utterance that the
warrior deigned to bestow upon those sufferings, which
he felt not the less because he was able so completely to
restrain them. He was now the stern rebel only and
self-devoted to revenge.

When they reached the top of the rock which overlooked
the habitations of the tribe and from which the
woman had descended on hearing the signal, they paused
and prepared to advance with greater caution. The
hunted Caonabo had long since felt the necessity of the
utmost watchfulness and circumspection, and he now
bent his straining eyes along the valley, which might be
faintly scanned for a great distance beneath the soft,
bright lustre of the moon. No human object was visible,
no sound came up to his ears but the now faint murmur
of the chafing waters of the sea beneath the freshening
breeze of night. The cottages of the Indians, which dotted,
at long intervals, the entire circuit of the plain, were
all as silent as the grave. Their leafy roofs almost swinging
in the wind, and half obscured by the shadowy gigantic
trees which sometimes answered to the Haytian
all the purposes of a dwelling made with hands, seemed,
in the soft loveliness of that balmy atmosphere, as perfectly
the abodes of innocence, as they had been assuredly
the abodes of peace. Satisfied, from his narrow survey, that
he might go forward in safety, Caonabo at once proceeded
in the direction of his own cottage, to which as yet he

had scarcely ventured to look. It stood perched upon
a little eminence, and beside the rim of a chasm, made by
some throes of nature, and by which the rock seemed
partially divided. The aperture was inconsiderable, and
might be leapt readily by a vigorous man from side to
side; but the depth was beyond the reach of plummet,
and the eye vainly strained to penetrate to its bottom. It
was in a spot so lonely and so high, that the proud Caonabo,
the cassique of one of the most valorous of all the
Haytian tribes, under the dominion of the great Behechio,
who, at the landing of Columbus, was the supreme chief
of the island, had made, eagle-like, his cave among the
rocks, and for a long time found security from the incursions
of the Spaniards. But the use of the bloodhound
rendering escape more difficult, had made greater caution
necessary to his safety, and he deserted his habitation
when the encomienda of Ribiero, sustained by an armed
force, was established among his native mountains and
his people were partitioned off as slaves. Himself still
free, it had been his unrelaxing toil to rescue his wife
and child from the galling dominion from which he fled;
and, as we have seen, his progress had been such as to
enable him to make his preparations for departure on the
night of the very day when the wanton sword of Garabito
had deprived him of one of the beloved objects for
whom his toil was taken. But this event did not lessen
the necessity nor the desire of flight. He only lingered
now to look but the last upon the boy, and, with one of
those instincts in his heart for which the phlegmatic reasoner
would in vain discover some apology which it does
not need, to bear him away, unconscious as he was of
all future harm, from the destroying and defiling hands
of his murderer.

In silence as complete as that which prevailed over the
valley, the rebel and his wife descended to her desolate
habitation. Caonabo first entered, the woman following
slowly behind with a grief renewed as she approached its
object, and now expressing itself in quick broken sobs,
which became hysterical as the corpse appeared once
more before her eyes. But the father was silent in his
sorrows. Drawing nigh to the bloody remains which
were neatly laid out upon a sheet of bleached matting, the
work of the mother's hands, he lifted one of the arms

which had been thrown out from the body, and placed it
close by the side. His eyes calmly surveyed the features,
which were dreadfully distorted, and then, after a pause
of a few moments, he sat down beside the corpse upon
the matting, and covered his eyes with his hands. The
woman stretched herself upon the floor, with her face to
the feet of the murdered boy, and her moaning alone disturbed
the otherwise painful silence which filled the
apartment. But when reflection succeeded to sorrow in
the mind of Caonabo, the Carib spirit was awakened
within him in all its majesty and fire.

“It becomes you to weep, Buru, for you are the mother
of the boy, but it is for the father to avenge him. Keep
you here till I return. I tell thee, woman, when next you
look on Caonabo, the blood of Garabito shall be thick
upon his hands.”

“Whither go you, father—Caonabo?” she cried, seizing
him by his garment, as he was about to depart.

“Away, woman, and watch thy child; this is not thy
business. I go to the bohio of the Spaniard.”

“He will hunt thee with his barking dog—he will
slay thee with his thunder.”

“I fear him not, neither his thunder nor his dog. My
heart leaps and struggles within me, and calls upon me
for his blood. They look not to see me among them, and
sleep securely in their bohios. Sleeping or waking, I will
drink the blood of Garabito, and make my hands red
within his heart. Look to see me thus, Buru, when I
come to thee again. The ghost of the Spaniard shall
follow the son of the Charaibee to the smoky valleys of
his sleep.”

Thus saying, and without farther speech, the bold rebel
darted from the dwelling, leaving the afflicted woman to
new sorrows, arising from a natural apprehension for his
safety, in the daring enterprise which he meditated of revenge.