 | CHAPTER XXIV.
REPININGS OF AMBITION IN FETTERS. The damsel of Darien |  |
24. CHAPTER XXIV.
REPININGS OF AMBITION IN FETTERS.
Meanwhile, the matador Ortado sped in silence and
swiftness towards the encomienda of Ribiero, from the bohio
of whom he had issued but a few hours before with the
most sanguine assurances of success given and entertained
by all parties. It was neither his wish nor policy to fly,
leaving his employer without succour in his danger. But
a moment's reflection convinced him that he had no alternative—that
his show of help would lead only to his own
exposure and consequent risk, and could be of no sort of
avail in behalf of the wounded man. The necessity was
indeed pressing, or so seemed to him at that moment, for
his own escape. At the first fearful shriek of the victim,
which drew his eyes away from the approaching cavalier
to fix them on his employer, he beheld the latter, already
down upon his knees, severely wounded, and completely
at the mercy of an enemy who yielded none, and who appeared,
and was himself, entirely unhurt. He saw that
Garabito offered no defence, and was only praying for his
life. Even his approach must have failed to stop the unscrupulous
blow—the second, and, perhaps, the third,—
which he saw descending; while the probability was, that,
in the very first, the dagger of Caonabo had already drawn
the life-blood from the bosom of the victim. The instant
conviction of Ortado persuaded him that the assailant from
behind was in the employ of Vasco Nunez who was rapidly
advancing in front—that the plans of Garabito and
himself for the assassination of the cavalier had been betrayed
or otherwise discovered; and that the blows which
had levelled his employer to the earth, were the result of a
for themselves. Nothing, indeed, could have scemed
more reasonable to the professional assassin than thoughts
like these. The simultaneous coming of Vasco Nunez
with that of the unknown assailant in his rear, seemed to
denote a co-operation of party which was utterly conclusive
of this conviction. He stood, under these circumstances,
between two enemies—both utterly unharmed—both strong
powerful men—one of them the most expert swordsman
beyond all odds in all San Domingo, and the other, most
probably, a chosen soldier—he, without any weapon but
his dagger, and without any inducement to a desperate
fight, excepting the engagement with his employer which
implied no struggle; and which, now that the latter was
most probably beyond all power of reproach, seemed to
the cool murderer a matter as foolish as gratuitous. Having
lost, in the single moment in which his eyes had been
averted from the approach of Vasco Nunez to the spot
where Garabito cried for mercy, the opportunity for striking
the cavalier; and as the latter had hurried, in that brief
space, beyond him, and in the direction of the strife going
on in front, leaving him unseen,—the cunning assassin, congratulating
himself on a degree of good fortune as unlooked
for as undeserved, quietly sunk back into the adjoining
thicket, and made his way out from the grounds in a direction
as far as possible from that where the danger seemed
to await him. Taking for granted the death of Garabito,
he did not loiter in the neighbourhood with any desire to
obtain assurance of the fact, but sped at once towards the
place where he well knew the friends of his employer were
still assembled,—as anxious, he well knew, as Garabito had
been himself, for those tidings of the death of a hated enemy
which they had little doubt that the murderer would bring
them. They heard his story with looks of stupid consternation,
and, for awhile, surprise and horror had complete
mastery over all their faculties. The Bachelor Enciso was
the first to recover himself.
“Had Jorge Garabito been but half a man,” he said,
“this never would have happened—if he had kept with you
or beside you, Ortado, and made good play for the one
while you did the business of the other. But he was in
truth no less a coward than a fool, and we should not
lament him for an instant, but that his death baffles the plan
bound, Ortado, by your pledge to Garabito, to make good
the stroke against his enemy?”
The question which Enciso only insinuated was quickly
answered by the matador.
“Jesu! No! How know I that the Señor Garabito hath
not forgiven all his enemies, and the Señor Vasco among
them?” replied the devout assassin.
“He had scarcely time for that, if your own account of
the affair be true,” returned the lawyer.
“And this may be his great sorrow now—even at this
very moment, my masters—in the world to which he hath
gone. If it were in pity for his soul only I should be
bound to take no life in his behalf. But this shall be a
question for the father Francisco; and the money which I
have taken from the Señor Garabito, for that part of our
business which is left undone shall be paid honestly into
the coffers of Holy Church. Besides, thou knowest,
Señor Hernando, that I strike no blow unless the party who
desires it look also on the performance. Now, if the
Señor Garabito will but signify by his presence such a desire—”
“Pshaw, man, no more of this. Thou shouldst have
been a lawyer, and I doubt not will yet be a shaven monk,
preparing heathen savages for the stake by fifties. It is
understood that the pledge is taken from thy dagger and,
so far as thou art willed, Vasco Nunez must go free.”
“Even so, señor,” was the reply. “I like not to seek
a second time when my first blow is baffled, and such a
penalty taken for the attempt as hath followed this venture.
Besides, I never strike men on my own account. That
were but a profligate squandering of my resource. If thou
wouldst have me try this cavalier a second time, thou shalt
pay the reckoning, señor. I say not that I will not do
what thou devisest for the customary charge.”
“Thou art but a sorry Jew, after all,” replied the Bachelor,
“and thou gettest not thirty pieces of mine for a matter
which the Governor Obando shall execute at cost of the
King.”
“How! the Governor?” demanded Ribiero.
“Ay, the Governor. Dost thou not hold Garabito to be
a dead man—a man slain by the stroke of the assassin?”
“Nay,—of this there can be little question.”
“And who hath slain him but Vasco Nunez of Balboa?
Is not that thy faith, Señor Ortado, thou of the Christian
conscience and the tender hand?”
“That he hath had it done, Señor Hernando I cannot
even doubt,” replied the assassin,—“but if the question be
asked of me, did Vasco Nunez strike the blow, I were
bound, as a lover of the truth, to answer nay.”
“Thou art over-scrupulous, Ortado, but thy distinction
availeth thee but little. The dagger reaches the heart, but
who thinks to make the keen steel liable for the blood it
draws? What alcalde mayor decrees the gallows to the
unconscious knife. It is he who sends the dagger home
to the heart—it is he who hath willed the deed, that the
law esteemeth guilty of its performance, and dost thou not
believe that this deed came of the will and the order of
Vasco Nunez, and was performed under his own countenance
and direction? Dost thou not think that if Vasco
Nunez had encountered with Jorge Garabito in the spot
where his emissary found him, that his own hand had
struck the blow which was given to the hand of another?
Speak, if such be not thy thought—nay, thy solemn conviction,
Ortado—I defy thee as a man of sense and of truth
to hold any other.”
“This surely is my thought, señor, and my solemn conviction.
I gainsay it not. Said I not this when I first
brought ye the tidings of this affair?”
“It is enough for thee to say, and enough to finish all
the business of this insolent pretender. This star of Vasco
Nunez shall sooner shine above his gory head upon the
block than behold him master of that fabled sea of the south
of which this dreamer Micer Codro points daily to the
money-lenders of Santo Domingo. Thou shalt say these
things to the alcalde mayor, and by noon to-morrow, the
alguazil shall be on the track of this flaunting cavalier. He
shall weep that he ever left his cabbage-garden at Salvatierra.”
The resolution of the conspirators, thus made at the suggestion
of Enciso, was proceeded in without delay; and,
as the astrologer had predicted to his friend, while persuading
him to a seasonable flight, with the announcement
of the business of the ensuing day, there was a hue and
cry in Santo Domingo after the supposed offender, and nothing
but his premature escape could possibly have saved
by whom he had always been disliked, as well because of
his sterling independence of character, which forbade that
he should truckle to power when unallied to native superiority
of mind and spirit, as because of his greater reputation
and popularity,—was glad of an opportunity, by
exercise of his legal station to degrade and bring to
punishment if he could, a person over whom he could
obtain advantage in no other manner. To the ordinary
process of the law in criminal cases, he added new terrors
and powers by construing the offence of Vasco Nunez—
even supposing him to have committed the murder—into
something of a treasonable character—resting this charge
on the strained assumption, that, as Garabito held an inferior
office directly from the appointment of a king's officer,
he had been slain while actually in the service of the sovereign,
and consequently in resistance to the crown. Special
agents drawn from the established military of the
place, were despatched in various quarters in his pursuit,
and for some nine days or more, the chief topic of interest
among all classes, was derived from the thousand rumours
of his flight and escape, which the garrulous always invent
for the wonder of the gossiping. But the interest gradually
died away as each new story proved unture, and other
circumstances of greater public importance soon superseded
the stirring business of the present. The two fleets of
Ojeda and Nicuesa set sail for the respective divisions
of that—to them—terra incognita,—which they had divided
without having seen, and to which they had attached boundaries,
when they yet lacked all knowledge of its character
and limits. The unfortunate cavalier, Vasco Nunez,
saw the tops of their distant vessels from a lonely cavern
that looked out upon the sea, and bitterly did he upbraid
his fortune as he felt those misgivings of their success in
his own projects, which even his knowledge of the deficiencies
of the two governors could not wholly overcome.
“Some favouring wind,—some happy accident!” he
murmured to the chafing billows at his feet, “will bring
them to that hidden sea. They will gather the spoils of
that unknown ocean which I gaze on even in the dreams
of night—their prows will break the stillness of those secret
waters and penetrate to that empire of the sun beyond,
which, I well know, touched by his latest smiles, must
of Marco Polo and Cathay were burdens of slightest profit.
The fierce, headlong, and rude-minded Ojeda will stumble
upon treasures of which he had no thought! The vain,
womanly Nicuesa—a gentler spirit, and a nobler man—will
glide into rivers that open on his sight when his heart
sinks in weariness, and when he lacks all purpose and design.
He will ascend with unconscious prows the deep
avenues that lead to worlds which I have long since traversed
with the wings of my thought; and the fortune
which strives to baffle the persevering effort and the bold
design, will, with a like hostility to desert, bestow her
crowns and her treasures upon those incapable, who yield
all the labour unto her and do nothing and are nothing of
themselves. What need have I of concealment? wherefore
should I fear the threatened death and the tortures of
Obando? I have nothing now to live for, and I should not
fear to die. Better, indeed, that the heart should cease to
beat with the anxious hope and the fine aspirings, when
the limbs are shackled by their own impotence, and the
arm may not be stretched for the proud conquest which
the eye beholds in the distance, which the mind only can
overcome. I would, Micer Codro, that thou hadst not
persuaded me to flight. It might have been that I had
found passage in the fleet of one or other of these captains,
and though I lacked all lead and command in their armament,
I had yet been suffered to look upon the empire
which it had been my thought to conquer and to sway.”
The promise of the astrologer, at such moments of despondency,
scarcely sufficed to console or soothe even for a
moment, the spirit which hope deferred had at length so
sickened of life.
“Thou tellest me that I shall conquer and shall sway
them yet. Alas! my father,—I can believe nothing now
but what promises new sorrow and disappointment. Canst
thou tell me of flight from these lonely rocks, and this accursed
city in which my heart has been crushed, and my
mind has been baffled, and all my purposes have been set
at naught? Help me to flight, I care not whither it tends,
so that I may rid me of the weight of wo and of despondency
with which the very air of Espanola seems oppressed
and burdened.”
“Be not impatient, my son. Know we not, that as
same tree, so there are no two hours the same, even in
the same day. The successive minutes grow with successive
changes, and the cloud which darkens the watery sky
at morning, becomes a glorious canopy under the glances
of the scorching sun at noon.”
“Ah, Micer Codro, these pictures of thy fancy move me
not. These ships of Ojeda, and of Nicuesa—their tall
masts are fading fast in the blue world of distance—their
passage fills my heart with bitterness. They glide to the
ocean and the realm which should have been mine—the
favouring breeze wraps itself in their bellying canvass, and
makes itself a home within them, as it impels them to that
which they seek in Veragua. The sun smiles on their progress
and guides them on their path. They go to renown
and conquest,—while I—I who have told them of the empire
which lay under that golden light, and have grown
confident of its achievement as my own—I grope among
the rocks, and howl at their departure, and curse the fortune
which has defrauded me of my right—bestowing it
upon a stranger. Look upon the stars, Micer Codro, and
say if thou canst tell me of worse fate than mine, in all
their capricious chronicles?”
“Ay—theirs!—the very leaders whose fate thou hast
but now envied, even theirs is a worse destiny than thine.
True, the favouring wind swells their canvass, and the sun
smiles along their path, and the applauding calmours of the
blind multitude follow them, with admiration little short of
that homage which is due only to Heaven. But the wind
will fall out of their sails, and strive against them—the sun
shall withdraw his light from their path—the fierce tornado
will strive with them in unknown waters, and this applauding
multitude shall hear of their disasters with groans and
hisses, and feel the pleasure of a base heart in the downfall
of the daring and the great. Cease thy complainings, Vasco
Nunez, they do thee harm, and take from thy otherwise
perfect nobleness. It is not for the resolute man to chafe
like the weak woman at the sudden storm which drives
him back from his course, or leaves him shipwrecked on
the shores of a heathen empire. He must buckle on his
armour, and awaken all his spirit, and gird up his loins for
an enduring struggle to the last, even though he be overcome
and lose the triumph. But other shall be thy fortune,
often before, I repeat to thee again. The cloud which
shows thee now but a face of gloom and threatening, will
turn upon thee its edges of golden light to-morrow. Fear
nothing, but give thyself to the hours which are yet to
come.”
“Look, Micer Codro—dost thou behold Leonchico?
how, perched on yonder rock, he too is watching the departing
vessels. Methinks, he regards them with an anxiety
not unlike that which fills the breast of his master. He,
too, has his dreams of strife, or at least employment. He
chafes at the inaction which eats like rust into the soul,
and leaves it worthless and without strength or motion.
Go forth, my father, and bring me tidings, if thou canst, of
better things. Help me to fly from this dreary dwelling,
lest, in my disquiet and despair, I fling myself into the
waters, glad to escape, even by death, from an existence
without life and maintained without desire.”
| CHAPTER XXIV.
REPININGS OF AMBITION IN FETTERS. The damsel of Darien | |