 | CHAPTER XI.
NEW AUGURIES—THE MALIGN ASPECT. The damsel of Darien |  |
11. CHAPTER XI.
NEW AUGURIES—THE MALIGN ASPECT.
But the conqueror did not sleep that night. How could
he sleep? The creature of his sleep,—the vision which
had haunted him so long, and kept him wakeful when he
would have slept—the vague but unvarying hope—the rich
expectancy of fancy—the dream, the shadow—the ambition
of a long life—were all realized at last. He could
now triumph over the scornful and the hostile. He could
now retort the sneer and despise the assailant; and oh!
who can describe the proud feeling in the heart of him
whose wholesome hope and vast design, have brought
upon him the epithet of the visionary and the dreamer,
when, by the resolute endeavour, and the calm, immovable,
yet active thought, he has made his fancy a form, and
given to the image in his mind the substantial attributes of
a thing in theirs. Much had his proud, yet sensitive heart,
suffered from the unfeeling malice of the vain and ignorant.
He had, though not always, borne patiently the
sneer and the sarcasm, in which the witless commonly seek
to revenge themselves upon the great for the consciousness
of inferiority. His plans were not canvassed ere they had
been denounced, and, if canvassed, his judges had been pert
pretension, and flippant, undiscriminating conceit. Even
the worthy had been blinded to his merits, by the judgments
of the vain; and with the inevitable fortune which
attends true genius every where, he had succeeded rather
against the spite of man, than by his support or countenance.
He stood no longer in need of either for the support
of that judgment—that genius—which had been the
mockery of all. He could forgive, in his crowning triumph,
the hostility which had denounced at first, and baffled his
strives to forget, the petty malice, and the witless sneer in the
consciousness that his mind and its aims were no longer
subject to the control of theirs—in the proud conviction
that it was now in charge of that highest human court
known to men and nations—posterity.
“I have written my deeds upon this rock—my name
must live so long as these waters roll.”
How easy for a man with such proud fancies to forget
all the toils, all the trials, the small troubles, though vexing,
and the jealous strifes and unfriendly wrongs which
formed so great a portion of all his previous endeavour.
He who is conscious that posterity has his deeds in keeping
may well smile at his own feeble generation—may well
forgive the little enmities of the vanishing crowds around
him. Vasco Nunez had forgiven all. He was not conscious
of one feeling in his bosom which did not declare
peace and good will to all mankind. But this benign consciousness
of soul did not make it the less sleepless. Virtue
itself may sometimes keep awake in the sweet consciousness
of a new conquest; and that ambition, which,
struggling for the good of man, is also virtue, kept our
hero wakeful. He went forth, when all slept, or seemed to
sleep, in that solemn stralight. Once more he ascended to
the eminence from which, at midday, the mighty ocean had
first met his eye. There it lay, glimmering in the imperfect
light, murmuring along among the tracts of reedy
forest upon its margin, and making a fitting midnight chorus
with the continual voice of the restless wind among the
distant woods. Never had the skies appeared to Vasco
Nunez so bright with stars. No cloud obscured the prospect
whether upon land or sea; but thin, gray mists, that
seemed transparent as the gleam of infant stars, rose from
the distant mountains, and floating away in spiral wreaths,
hung at last, like a pale white mantle above the ocean,
where, mingling as it were with immensity, it rolled on
far beyond the piercing gaze of the conqueror. There was
an awe-inspiring presence in the massive silence around
him; and the feelings in his soul amply corresponded with
the gentle melancholy of the scene, making it holy. Alone,
standing upon the shores of that new-found sea, vainly conjecturing
of the thousand empires and nations beyond—then,
with as rapid a flight of thought, winging his way to that
stood as it were in the presence of two worlds—of the past
and the future—his own being reduced to a point, but that
point a pinnacle, surveyed equally from the gigantic sister
seas, now for the first time revealed to the knowledge of
each other. The feeling of his own great eminence, destined
so soon to be as conspicuous to the world as it was
now to himself, possessed his heart with a sense of awe
and humility, and he was ready to exclaim with something
of the inspiration of the ancient prophet—“What am I,
Lord, that thou hast chosen me for this mighty work—
wherein am I worthy of this, thy crowning confidence?
Why hast thou saved me, over all others, for this great
service?” Who shall describe his sensations at such a
moment! A change of spirit—which years never could
have wrought nor the counsels of man, nor the fears of
enemies, nor the quest of wealth—suddenly came over him;
and, from the mere soldier, in the instant of his wonderful
discovery, he became the sage. He was no longer the creature
he had been, when, in his boyish mood, all things had
been things of promise, and every promise brought with it
delight—when, amid the throng at evening, his happiest
employment had been to bearken to the sweet melancholy
of the young maiden's song, or join with her in
the lively dance;—or, as the years followed in the unrelaxing
progress of the hours, which brought him the
strifes of manhood—to seek more fell employments in the
field of battle, ever rashly adventurous, grappling first with
the tawny Moor, then with the forest savage, a kingdom,
in either case, not unfrequently depending on his arm.
The light-hearted and the ruthless mood, so foreign to
each other, yet so nearly allied to the sanguine and sleepless
temper, had all departed from the warrior in the realization
of his great conquest; and in their stead came a
higher thought to his mind, a holier hope to his bosom,
which made him happy even with the sleeplessness which
they occasion. His adventurous spirit felt its own wing at
last, and knew its strength, and was prepared to soar into
the heavens. Eagle-like, brooding upon the verge of that
skiey pinnacle, he meditated with the first blush of morning,
to dart into the void—to descend into the region of
conjecture and farther conquest—to launch upon the strange
waters, gleaming and flashing in the dim distance at his
surely to empires which the sun, lingering last upon, must
love the longest, and endow with the richest treasures of
his smiles. The waking dreams of Vasco Nunez were not
yet over, and with thoughts and feelings, beneath the awful
majesty of which, his frame trembled, he sat down upon
the peak of the mountain, and drew unmeaning strokes
with his sword-point upon the ground. Micer Codro came
to his side unheard, while he was busied in this employment.
The hero became conscious of his presence only
with the sound of his voice.
“Thou here, my father?” said he, to the old man—“but
I should have known it was not for thee to sleep at this hour
any more than myself. Thou hast too deep a feeling with
me of the wondrous fortune which has crowned our enterprise,
not to grow watchful in its contemplation. Strange
and beautiful, indeed, is the scene before us,—so strange
that, ere thou camest, I had begun to question its reality,
and to persuade myself with fear and trembling that I was
deluded by a vision of sleep. Yet, thou art beside me;—I
hear thy voice, I see thy form—and there, below us, afar
—if it be not a delusion of water, such as wins and vexes
the wayfarer in the desert of the Arab,—there lies a mighty
ocean,—glimmering clearly beneath the starlight, and sending
up a voice which seemeth to reach me here. Of a truth,
Micer Codro, my soul is oppressed with its own convictions—there
is a pain that thrills my heart, in the very joy
of my spirit.”
“It is thine—it is thy triumph, my son—and glorious
indeed shall be the renown of thy name in this and all succeeding
ages. Thou hast wrought even beyond my own
faith in thee—thou hast won thy forune in despite of thy
enemies, and even against the fears of thy friends. I am
proud to look on thee, my son, and to think of thy past
strifes and sufferings!”
“Jesu! but they should now be over. Micer Codro, it
would scarce be in the power of Fonseca to harm me now.
Spain would cry aloud against the wrong—Europe herself
would speak with a single voice—and the whole world of
Christian man would upbraid, if Ferdinand suffered the
malice of a priest, or the hatred of a rival, to do harm to
the warrior who hath yielded him a new empire of the sea
and land, henceforward to be the care of Christ, and of his
the doubts which have vexed me in this matter.”
The astrologer answered with a sigh:
“So should it be, Vasco Nunez, and such might be the
confident hope in our hearts, were it not that we know the
blindness of royal favourites, and the madness of royalty,
which so often wounds itself through the bosom of its most
deserving subjects. There is danger to thee, my son—I
read it this very hour in the stars—there is danger to thee,
though it may not come from thy sovereign.”
The cavalier smiled as he replied in gentle language:
“Vex not, Micer Codro, if my faith in the stars hath
found some diminution. It is strange to me that thou art
still so firm in thy confidence. Should not my fortune, as
as it hath already gone against thy frequent predictions—
should it not teach thee to doubt also?”
“Sometimes I have doubted, my son,” replied the other
with humility. “There have been signs which seemed to
contradict themselves, and the doings of men on earth and
their fortunes have been at seasons far other than they have
seemed to me in the heavens—”
“As in the wreck of the Maragnon,—as in my weary
bondage in the cave of the iron mountains, hidden from the
pursuit of Obando, and threatened with death for a crime of
which I was no less innocent than the unborn babe,” replied
the other, interrupting the speaker.
“Yet never, perhaps, my son, spoke the stars more truly
than at those moments.”
“Ha! but thou speakest strangely.”
“Nay, let us reason upon their language, and thou wilt
find that the misjudgment lay in our minds, and not in
their voices. They said that the day of thy glory and thy
greatness was approaching—it was our weak imaginings
that declared the means of thy greatness to lie in the ship
that the seas swallowed. They promised thee the triumph
upon which thy soul was set, and which thy mind so nobly
counselled. But they said not that thou wert not to have
sorrows, and strifes, and many losses. They declared thy
approaching glory, but they said not that it should be this
day or the next; and that they have spoken truly, thou
seest, since here thou art, on the desired eminence, with
the mighty ocean before thee, in search of which thou hast
toiled so long. It was in our narrow judgment that we
man too much regards as fortune. What mattered it to
thee hadst thou lost ten thousand ships, yet still attained the
triumph for which thy ships were built, thy stores bought,
thy soldiers and mariners provided? Here, in truth, has
thy fortune been made ready to thy hands. Hadst thou
been left to thyself, had the Maragnon still survived the
hurricane, perchance, at this very hour, instead of standing
where thou dost, with thy great conquest at thy feet, thou
hadst been striving at dagger-point with the wrong-headed
Alonzo de Ojeda, or the vain but courtly Nicuesa. The
stars have driven them from thy path, fighting in thy behalf
and against them, even as they fought against Sisera, and
in behalf of God's chosen. Thou hast been God's chosen
in this great work. I have seen the golden writing from
the first, written with his eternal finger, where I now see
it, on the eternal walls of Heaven. Look up, my son.
Verily, there is that which deeply affects thee in those sad
but lovely characters which glitter overhead.”
“What dost thou see?” demanded Vasco Nunez, looking
up as he was bidden, and not unimpressed by the reasoning
which he had heard, and the solemn manner of the
speaker. The other paused for a brief space, and when
he again spoke, his voice had grown very tremulous with
its increasing solemnity.
“My son,” he continued, “when we last were at Moguer,
thou wilt remember how fondly thy old mother
sought of me to know thy fortunes. Thou wert already
known to fame, and she delighted to speak of thee in the
language of all around her. Full of the great successes,
which her heart, governed only by its hopes, assured her
should be thine, she prayed that from my art I should
confirm her fond predictions. This I could do safely; and
satisfied that thou wouldst grow even more famous than
her own warmest fancies had promised, she pressed me
nothing farther. I told her not of the evils, the sorrows,
and the dangers, which were before thee. It had been of
little use and most unkind to do so; but even then, I
beheld a sign which led me to tremble for thy safety, and
moved me to long and painful study of thy scheme of nativity.
On thy voyage out, when thy course was shaped
to Salvatierra, I traced thy fortunes more closely, and
gathered, amidst many conflicting mazes and doubts,
which thou hast since taken, whether in peace or war,
whether in court or camp, in peril or in ease, grew visible,
if not clear, before mine eyes. I saw thee trace thy journey
through the wilderness, though it was beyond my art
to speak of means and appliances, and those minor agents
of fortune, which help men to the consummation of their
ends. But the ends I saw, in thy final, full success, up to
this very moment, when the incessant waters at our feet
are given to thy sway, and murmur with a voice for the
first time audible to Europe, the glory of Vasco Nunez de
Balboa; giving thee the praise of that genius, whose piercing
eye sees the hidden ore in the rock, the fine spirit in the
cloud, the pure, pale blue jewel in the deep. Here then,
are we both now, and thy fortune, even as it has been
read nightly by these aged eyes, is all confirmed in this
thy wondrous conquest.”
“And now, now! What dost thou read now?” exclaimed
the warrior impatiently. “Let me know all, Micer
Codro. If I hold not thy art so certain as thyself, I do
yet esteem it. Let me hear then what thou hast to show
me. Fear not to speak—speak boldly—and think not
that thy words shall make my heart shake or my knees
tremble. There is no fate now—this secure—which I
cannot battle with a smile, and with a spirit long accustomed
to the conflict with wild seas and wilder men. Give
thy thought words, old man, and let the future stand before
me, though it wear only frowns upon its face and carry
nothing but a threatening terror in its hands.”
The reply of the magician was prompt in compliance
with the demand.
“When I read thy fate in the gathered stars, there was
one hostile aspect—one remote and solitary light—which
gleamed ever upon thy planet with a malignant eye. Of
this I have ever warned thee, though I read, that, while it
kept station after from the western heavens, it had no
power of harm upon thee. But when, with daring flight
it made its way to the gray circle, from which evening suspends
the golden lamp that hangs above the chambers of
night, then the hour should become dark to thee with a
bloody peril—nay, death itself was before thee with an
awful sign of the axe and scaffold.”
“Ha! sayst thou!—the axe! the scaffold! Well.”
“The axe and scaffold. Once, twice, already, have I
seen this malign planet posting on with hostile spirit to the
western mansion. Once, the night when Garabito fell by
strange hands, did I see it shake a hand of bloody augury
above thy breast—the sign of a dagger in its grasp. Thy
fortune triumphed and the baleful aspect fied back to its
foreign station. There it has hung, threatening, but motionless
until the day when thou met'st with Quarequa. In
the morning watch of the night before that battle, it rushed,
speeding onward to the west, and my soul trembled when
I saw it glaring upon thy star with all the malevolence of
hate, exulting in the hope that the hour of his blow had
come. The fight was won, and again was the evil eye
baffled—and again, though for a brief space only, did it recede
from thy path. It threatens thee once more—it is even
now within the rim of that halo which circles the star of
thy nativity; and though thy better fortune may once more
baffle its hostile rage, as it has baffled it already, it still
threatens thee with a danger which should task all thy
calm strength, and thy thoughtful, deliberate courage.”
“Let me look upon that hostile aspect,” said Vasco
Nunez. “I have never shrunk from the face of mortal
enemy, and shall gaze with spirit unawed upon this inhuman
one. Guide mine eyes, Micer Codro, to this evil
planet.”
“Look forth into the west,” said the astrologer, while,
with his finger, he strove to direct the eye of the cavalier
to the region, where, mingled with myriads of shining
dots, hung the small red orb that teemed with such malignant
fires. “Dost thou not see one light, keeping a place
as it were apart from all others, though immediately among
them? It seems single, as it gleams with hues which the
pure orbs of heaven never partake. Thou wilt know it
from the redness of its rays, and the subtle yellow fluid
that seems to environ it like a halo. Such it ever wears
when it seems most nigh to the destruction of its victim.”
“I see it,” said Vasco Nunez, “but I have no instinct
that tells me it is fearful. I look on it without apprehension.
I see nothing to warn me of an enemy. Surely,
Micer Codro, this is but a common star, one of the thousand,
all seemingly alike, which crowd together, as if
seeking communion when the night is dark.”
“It is more, yet less, than a star, my son. To thy
is no less than an evil spirit. Thousands float nightly
through the firmament, shining in places, not fixed, but
moving according to their hostile moods; sometimes
gliding upwards, audaciously, even into the highest mansions;
sometimes descending to rest upon pinnacles of
earth, misguiding the wayfaring mortal whom they hate,
till he falls among evil places, and miserably dies. Such
is this that thou lookest on now. They are not of the
class in the midst of which they yet shine—their lights
are unlike those among which they burn, nor have they
the same blessed and benign influence over the things of
earth, as it is appointed that such shall always have which
God hath made stationary in man's behalf. Yet hold
they a power scarcely less great, though for evil only, over
earthly things, over man and the creatures that follow and
obey him. Being ever at war with God, they seek for the
annoyance of his creatures—impede their fortunes, or encourage
them awhile, as this may have done with thee—so
that when they hurl them down to the abyss at last, they
may fall from a height most perilous. The gentler lights
of heavenly providence, shrink from them as from a most
foul contagion, so that they stand separate from all the rest.
Over some a power is given them—we know not wherefore,—but
we behold them, almost nightly, flung from their
high spheres by these malignant spirits; their pure lights
parting from them as they fall; losing themselves at last in
abysses of the deep, more fitting to their diminished lustre
than the pale brightness of the mansions they have lost.
In like manner, a power over men have these evil aspects,
as they, like the erring stars, shoot out from their destined
places. Over thee, my son, this malignant spirit now hangs
with a threatening brow, and hath marked thee for its victim.
Jesu be thy friend, my son, and keep thee still, as he
has kept thee ever, secure from the fearful presence.”
“Amen!” exclaimed Vasco Nunez, rising from the
spot, and speaking with a manner which, though solemn,
was any thing but apprehensive. “I have heard thee,
Micer Codro, and believe that there may be truth in what
thou hast said. But thou tell'st me of nothing worse than
death—a bloody death—and that I have confronted boldly
with the Moor of Grenada, and with the more tawny and
savage Carib of the west. It is no new terror which thou
him who has taken bond from fate, for a life which is eternal,
sealed on these impenetrable rocks, and witnessed by
yonder unfathomable and rising waters. Still,” he continued,
after a brief pause, “I confess to thee, Micer
Codro, though I fear not death, I yet love life. I would
not die—not yet—not, at least, till I have launched my
bark on yonder ocean, and sought the wondrous shores
which my prophetic spirit assures me lie beyond it. To-morrow
will I descend to those waters, and assure myself
by feeling, no less than sight, that they are real—that they
live and move—have breath and being, and, with each rising
and sinking of their billows, lave far-distant and rival continents.
That done, what matters it whether death approaches
me in the gentle guise of slumber, or with the
harsh visage and sharp stroke of the royal headsman?
Death must needs be welcome when the great work of life
is done.”
| CHAPTER XI.
NEW AUGURIES—THE MALIGN ASPECT. The damsel of Darien | |