 | CHAPTER XXII.
THE FLIGHT TO FREEDOM. The damsel of Darien |  |
22. CHAPTER XXII.
THE FLIGHT TO FREEDOM.
He fled: heedless of the piteous cries of the woman which
pursued him, imploring mercy no less for the Spaniards
than for herself, he fled with a speed which enabled him to
overpass in a few minutes the painful surface of rock and
gully, which it had been the toil of a goodly hour for the
three to traverse but a little while before. Regarding her
as a traitress to his trusts,—as one who had betrayed him
through those miserable weaknesses which he well knew
were too common to her people, and had been the chief
cause of their degradation, he gave no ear to her entreaties,
and if he answered her at all, it was only to reply with accusation
and bitterness to her alternate language of pleading
and endearment. Her feeble limbs and less perfect knowledge
of the way soon placed her far behind him, and he
had penetrated his cottage, gathered up the mangled form
of his boy within the shroud of cotton which she had provided,
and was coming forth from the hut when she encountered
him at the entrance. She fell at his feet, she clasped
his knees with her arms, and bedewed the earth with her
tears.
“Slay me,” she cried, in her own language—“slay me
with thy keen knife, my father, but cast me not from thee
while I live—while I now see thine eyes and hear thy
voice, and know thee to be the father of the boy whose
bloody form thou bearest of the sea. Let me look on him
to the last, ere the waters swallow him. Let me bear him
on the bosom which has suckled him—let the arms clasp
him which clasped him nightly while he lived, and should
be suffered to clasp him still, even when neither of us live.
Oh, father—oh, chief, wherefore shouldst thou deny me
now, now, when thou art all that the cruel sword of the
Spaniard has left to me. I am at thy feet, Caonabo, and I
pray for death at thy hands. If I am false to thee, I am
not fit to live—if thou believest me so, whether I be false
or true, I do not wish to live. Let thy knife go quickly
into my heart, or sink the stone into my head, that I may
not see thee depart in anger, or hear thy bitter voice of injustice
and reproach.”
For a moment the strong man seemed moved. He
paused, and though he lifted the child high on his shoulder,
and above her reach, he yet looked down upon her with a
countenance, in which it was difficult to say whether anger
or sorrow was most predominant.
“Oh, woman, how hast thou deceived me! I believed
in thee over all thy people. When the bloodhound was on
my path, and his deep-mouthed bay went after me along
the narrow ledges of the mountain—with the Spaniard
goading him on with his spear, while the blood, dripping
from my own side, told him where to follow,—when all
my tribe fled from me, and some, the more base and timid,
led the foe to the cavern where I slept—and would have
sold me, for their own safety, to the tyrant whom they
should have torn asunder, even as the tiger rends the carcass
in his jungle—even then did I come to thee with confidence
and love, and had no fear that thou too wouldst
play me false!”
“I did not—father, chief, Caonabo—by the God of the
blessed Islands of the Charaibée, I swear I have been always
true to thee—I have kept the secret in my heart, and no
Spaniard ever plucked it thence. I am true to thee as ever,
and though thou slayest me with thy steel, which shall
seem to me less cruel than thy bitter words, even in the
last speech of death, I will declare to thee my truth. Believe
me, Caonabo, as thou art the father of the boy, I have
spoken nothing but the truth.”
“Peace, woman! if thou speakest thus, I will even fear
that this too is a falsehood, and cast the boy—doubtful of
its father—from the shoulders which maintain him now.”
The woman groaned and grovelled at his feet, burying
her broken words in the earth with which her lips now
mingled. He continued:
“I cannot doubt that thou hast betrayed me. None but
gone to the city of the Spaniard, and the son of a chief—
thy son—my son—is slain by his wanton sword. Then
thou comest to me and whisperest with the cunning of a
serpent but with the voice of a dove—there is peace on the
hills,—the peace of death! There is no enemy—no Spaniard—he
sleeps in his bohio, and his soldiers sleep around
him. When I enter thy cabin, lo! the murderer of the son
is there with a keen knife ready for the father. Away from
my foot, woman, lest I trample upon thee!”
“Let thy foot be heavy on my neck, Caonabo—heavy
to kill, but I will not leave thee—I will cling to thee though
thou slayest me. Nay—spare me not. I ask thee to slay
—I beg for death at thy hands. If thou slayest me, thou
givest me back the boy, though I lose all in thee;—but if
thou leavest me life, thou takest him from me with thyself,
and all the thoughts and things which might lift the heart
and lighten the burden of the slave. Thou wilt drive me
to beg death from the Spaniard, and deem it a lighter hurt
than that which my heart has had from thee.”
“Let him give thee what I deny. I will not slay thee.
If the Spaniard strikes thee, let it be a blow for me, and thy
treachery is fitly paid. Away from my feet!”
With a sudden grasp of the hand, he lifted her aside, and
with just sufficient violence to free himself from her grasp.
But the mountain fawn never leapt more lightly after the
footsteps of its bounding dam, than did the poor Indian
after the cassique. Once more she grasped his knees,—
once more she sank at his feet, and renewed her entreaties.
But now he yielded her no word. Breaking away with the
haste of one who flies from the embrace of a foe, the fierce
rebel hurled her down upon the path over which he fled,
and her face lay prone among the rough rocks, while
the blood gushed from her nostrils with the blow. Still
she cried as he went from sight—
“Go not, Caonabo—go not till thou hast given me
death. I have lived for thee and for the boy only, and if
these be gone, I would not live. Go not—go not!”
He heard not her supplications. He gave them no heed.
He was gone. The swift tread of his departing footsteps
touched her ears no longer; and then, starting from the
earth with a shriek that pierced the drowsy ears of night,
and awakened a thousand mournful echoes, she rushed after
sudden conviction forced itself upon her, that it was now
impossible to overtake him ere he reached the boat toward
which he flew. With this conviction came a new determination
to her mind—a determination that he should still
accord to her the death for which she had prayed, since
she might not be suffered to accompany his flight. Changing
her course, she ascended the hills down which her steps
had hitherto tended. She kept on a course which led to
heights hanging directly above the ocean. There was
one beetling rock under whose cavernous base the seas
chafed in constant violence—its sides rose up like a
mighty wall above the waters, and its top was crowned
with a peak that jutted out like a huge misshapen demon,
crouching, as if ready to spring, and keeping a perpetual
and far-piercing watch over the vast ocean-stretch
of gray that lay before it. Bare and bleak, this
narrow eminence, sharp and irregular, without barrier to
guard and scarce foothold to sustain, had probably never
been touched by any human footstep. But the danger of
such a pinnacle had no discouragement to one sick of life,
and hopeful only of its loss. A single bound placed the
broken-hearted but still agile woman upon its narrow edges,
and with a hand shading her eyes, she gazed down along
the huge dark sides of the rock, until her glance mingled
with the white foam that rose momently, fresh and curling
aloft among the crags, from the constant strife between the
billows and the steep. The night was bright with many
stars that made the now unvexed surface of the sea a perfect
mirror, and looked into it with faces of a tender brightness
that seemed to purify its turbulence, and, as it were,
aimed to impress its ever-restless bosom with a hallowed
calm like that which the romantic worshipper cannot but
believe the lasting possession of their own. Even where the
shadows of the rock darkened the surface of the ocean, their
chastened points of light were still visible; and, darting
among them, after a little space, the keen glances of the
woman beheld the frail bark of her husband, hollowed
out with his own hands from the spongy trunk of the
jarruma, glide from under the shelving mass where it
had lain concealed, in readiness for the moment when he
should be prepared to start upon his precarious voyage
in pursuit of liberty. The light dip of the paddle
was lost in the murmur of the waves that dashed up
fabric stole forth like a thing of fairy from the frowning embrasures
of the mountain. Already had the vigorous arm
of the rebel impelled his vessel from the shore. He had
parted from his Haytian home for ever. Its soft lights and
balmy skies, and golden fruits, were forsworn, and the
home or the grave before him was such only as the implacable
god of the Charaibée was willing to vouchsafe to one
who had defied the superior deities of the Christian, in defying
himself. He shook its dust from his feet in holy
indignation, and with the corpse of his son before him—to
be given to the sea, when he should have lost sight of the
scene of his murder—the proud and desolate rebel turned
his back from the mountain which had so long afforded
him a refuge, when all Hayti had denied him a home. A
sudden scream from the heights above him warned him
that his separation was not yet complete. Well did he
know the tones of that mournful voice, and the appealing
terror of that single shriek came to his soul in a language
of reproach, which it had failed to possess before. He
turned with involuntary haste as he heard it, and his eyes
were lifted with the earnestness of a sympathizing spirit to
the brooding eminence from which it came. He saw in
the dim starlight the slight and symmetrical outline of that
form which had borne the unconscious child at his feet.
Her hands were stretched forth at once to himself and heaven.
He heard the broken accents—the pleading prayer
that asked for pity—the bold assurance that insisted upon
her truth; but, of a sudden, his heart that had begun to
yield, grew hardened within him. He waved his hand
impatiently, as he cried aloud in answer to her prayer—
“To the Spaniards and their yellow god in the rock,—
I cannot believe thee, woman. Thou speakest with the
tongue of the serpent—the truth is not in thee!”
The action of his hands, the dip of his oar, and the forward
shooting of his boat, rather than the words he uttered,
too perfectly declared her doom. She saw that he consigned
her to forgetfulness, and to those foes who were quite
as much feared by her as they were hated by him. With a
single glance behind her to the shore, her hands naturally
lifted all the while to those heavens where the gods of
heathen and Christian are alike supposed to dwell, a single
involuntary prayer to the natural principle of good, in which
mercy which her husband had denied, and she bounded
from the steep—far as her light limbs could bear her—
forward—in the course of the little bark which had refused
to receive her. Involuntarily, with the sudden plash of
her descending body into the water, the motion of the
strong man's heart seemed almost utterly to cease—the oar
trembled in his hand above the billow which it failed to
reach, and, as if convulsively and without a thought, with
his next movement he brought the boat round from its
course, and his eye beheld, but a few paces before him, the
unstruggling form,—sustained briefly by her garments,—
her hands outstretched, still imploring for that indulgence
which he had so frequently denied.
“Father,—chief—let me clasp the boy once more!”
These were her only words. The fierce, proud, suspicious
savage was overcome. Her last act had convinced
him of his injustice. A single stroke of the oar brought
his bark beside her, and his arms lifted her into the frail
vessel which now carried all his fortunes. She sank down
beside the corpse of the child in a happy stupor which
knew nothing but that she was once more the trusted wife
—sharing the hopes and the perils of her lord, and not denied
that last look upon the dead and that last embrace to
the beloved one, which are, perhaps, the chief earthly consolations
which death suffers to the surviving. Without
chart or pilot—without guide, or book, or compass—with
nothing but those observing instincts which made the Caribbeans
the terror of the sea in that early period and
region, let us leave the rebel to his fate, assured as we are,
that his present danger, though involving the fear of storm
and shipwreck, were as nothing to those which had hunted
him for weary seasons with ferocity and hate, and threatened
him with the most savage forms of death, in the wanton
tortures of the auto da fe, the common agent of Spanish
bigotry and crime.
| CHAPTER XXII.
THE FLIGHT TO FREEDOM. The damsel of Darien | |