University of Virginia Library

THE MAROON;
A LEGEND OF THE CARIBBEES.

1. CHAPTER I.

The waters of the Caribbean Sea, subject to some
of the wildest vicissitudes that ever sweep the billows
of the western hemisphere, were never more placid
and lovely to the eye than on the morning of the
26th of August, in the year of grace one thousand
five hundred and thirty-two. The exquisite calm of
heaven—that delicious serenity and repose of atmosphere
which seem never so lovely or so perfect as in
those latitudes where the capricious winds may, at any
moment, lash themselves and the ocean into immitigable
fury, and where nothing is long secure against
their violence—appeared to rest, with the bosom of
the halcyon, upon the mighty deeps of sea. The sky
was without a cloud—the breeze, soft and spicy as if
borne fresh, on the very instant, from the aromatic
islands of the east, was gentle without languor, and
just sufficed to waft along, under easy sail, the high-pooped
Spanish bark that might be seen to form, as
it were a natural and becoming portion of the vast

and beguiling picture. She alone stood up, careering
over the watery waste, relieving its monotonous revels,
and looming out, beyond her natural size, in comparison
with the uniform smoothness of the waters. A
swift and well-built vessel of the time, was the Diana
de Burgos, named after a favorite beauty of old
Spain. She had taxed all the genius of the architect
of that day in her modelling, to do honor to her name-sake.
And he had succeeded—so perfectly succeeded,
that the emulous little bark had already acquired a
peculiar reputation, such as that enjoyed by the Baltimore
clipper of modern periods, for exquisite grace of
air, and unparalleled fleetness of foot. She was the
pride of the waters, and cleft them, or passed over
them, as if endued with all the consciousness of the
young and haughty beauty whose name had not been
taken by her in vain. Of her deeds, of her peculiar
employment, in the western hemisphere, we shall say
nothing. At that wild period, we know very well
what was the usual history in the New World, as well
upon the ocean as the land. “No peace beyond the
line,” was the common proverb of license among the
rovers of all the European nations; and our Diana
de Burgos carried within her graceful girdle all the
requisite resources for deeds of strength and violence.
Her loveliness of model did not conflict with her capacity
for fight; and a single glance upon the swarthy
groups that covered her deck, would satisfy any skeptic,
without farther search, that she had already enjoyed
no inconsiderable experience in the trade of
war. Could her polished decks have spoken out,
what revelations of blood and terror might they not
have made! But her past history is nothing to us.
It is enough that she still possesses sufficient materials
of interest for a startling and a touching narrative.
At the moment when we ascend her sides—in that
calm and lovely day—in that serene and delicious
atmosphere—with that broad deep ocean, as smooth
as it could well appear, to comport with the necessary
degree of animation which, to form a picture, such a
prospect seems to require, and, at the same time to
disarm every sense of danger in the bosom of the
most apprehensive—we shall find that no such calm
and serenity prevail among her inmates. We discover
them grouped about in small parties along her
deck, here leaning against her masts, there crouched
among bulk and cordage—variously placed in different
attitudes—a hundred sturdy seamen and soldiers,
speaking little—an occasional word or sentence only—
but all looking as if thoroughly informed and anxious
in relation to some matter of evidently increasing interest.
The broken sentences to which we listen—
the half-uttered inquiry, the faltering suggestion have
no meaning for our ears, though clearly of ready comprehension
by all around. Happily, a stir takes
place among them; they rise to their feet—the group
separate; there is a sudden show of restraint, as from
the approach of authority. A word has gone forth
which leads to expectation, and the eagerness, but
partially suppressed, which now, in every visage, follows
prompt upon its former simple look of doubt and
anxiety, may well encourage us to hope for the gratification
of our own curiosity. Patience, the door of
the cabin is thrown open!

The group which appears within is one to add somewhat
to the interest of expectation. In the foreground
appears a person seated in a chair, one of those
ancient high-backed fabrics used, about that period,
in all European countries which had reached any degree
of civilization. This person is a man of countenance
more striking than impressive. He is, we may
be permitted to say at once, the captain of the Diana
—Don Velasquez de Tornel—a personage, short and
corpulent, with great hands and limbs, a neck thick
and short like that of a bull, and of a face plethoric
and fiery red. His features are dark and fierce, and
marked by the signs of an angry passion, the appearance
of which he seems laboring to suppress. His
eyes are small, intense, and catlike of expression,
keen, vigilant, and cunning. His nose is short and
sharp, his lips thick, and marked, at moments, by a
slight quiver, which betrays the secret emotion. A
thin, but grizzly beard overspreads his chin and cheeks.
He would seem to be a person about fifty years of age
—a man of strifes and violence, of quick and irritable
temper, and of restless, unforgiving moods. His feet
are wrapped in bandages of flannel, and suggest the
true reason why he remains seated at a time when his
thoughts and passions would seem disposed to goad
him into the most eager exercise. Thus seated, he is
wheeled out upon the deck by his attendants; while,
slowly following him, appears a female, whose highly
expressive features and wildly peculiar beauty, make

her less an object of interest than study. Her person
is small, but highly formed; commanding, from
its ease of carriage, its erectness, the bold defiance in
her eye, and the imperious curling of her lip. The
style of her beauty is not of the noblest order. It
possesses but little of the spiritual, but is of a kind
more likely to secure admiration during an age, and
in a region, where the passions learn to triumph and
command in the absence of the sentiments. She
takes her place at a little distance in front of the spot
occupied by Velasquez. Her arms folded across her
breast, she preserves an erect posture, while her eyes,
neither gazing upon, nor averted from him, seem to
be filled with a twofold expression of wounded pride
and lurking anxiety. His glance surveys her keenly
and unreservedly. There is a mixture of tenderness
and suspicion in his gaze, while the sinister smile
which now curls his lips, gives to his whole countenance
the air of a brooding and sleepless malignity.
This silent watch is so prolonged as to be painful;
but her features never swerve; nor does her expression
alter. She looks as she did when she took her
first position. There is evidently a motive for this
inflexibility, which she maintains without faltering, so
long as his eye is upon her. But when he turns
away and summons the pilot to his side, then it is
seen that her breast heaves as if to throw off the oppressive
burden of self-constraint—then it is that her
cheek pales and lip quivers, and all her countenance
betrays a fear which it has hitherto been its business
to suppress.

But a few words are spoken by the captain to his
pilot; a question is asked—a command is given; and
while the latter is retiring, he is reminded—to “see
that all things are in readiness, and to keep a bright
look-out.” The pilot withdrawn, the eyes of Velasquez
once more, but slowly, address themselves to the
lady. But she has recovered from the momentary
emotion which oppressed her. Her features are once
more inflexible; her look is steady; she has nerved
herself to a resolute endurance of his gaze; and the
muscles of her face, like the strings of her soul, are
rendered tenacious by a will which his would vainly
endeavor to overcome. Failing in this sort of examination,
he addressed her—seemingly resuming a dialogue
which the previous scene had interrupted.

“You have answered clearly, Maria! It is well
for us both that you did so. It would have been a
grief to me that I should visit your head with my
wrath, even though it should be shown—Madre de
Dios!—that you had merited it by such a crime as
this. For, did I not pluck you from the accursed
gypsy—have I not made you a lady, and bestowed
my love upon you? It were a crime against God, if
you had been false to me!”

“I have answered you, Don Velasquez!”

“So you have, my beauty—so you have! But it
is not enough to answer. Must one look angry because
one is virtuous—eh?”

“But to be wrongfully accused—to be wrongfully
threatened!—”

“Oh! oh! one gets used to such things, if all

other things go right. Of course, I know that you
are innocent. But how did I know it then? For
you will admit, my life, that the affair looked very
suspicious. There was I, groaning in my agony with
this accursed pain, and where were you? Ah! well!
you were not with this whelp of a musician? You
did not sit looking up into his face, while he was
stretching his throat against the wind, and singing
nonsense to his silly guitar? You did not prefer listening
to him to tending on me, and, of course, Juan
must have been mistaken in supposing that you suffered
him—that you were willing that he should—ah!
never mind! It is not easy to speak of such things
without choking—but when this whelp of a musician
did put his arms about you, it was only his impertinence,
and you properly repulsed him—”

“Has not Antonio already assured you of this?”
demanded the lady, coldly.

“True—true!—”

“And Perez?”

“Very true—and Juan, I say, must have been mistaken.”

“He is a wretch!—”

“Nay, nay, do not abuse the child—my own sister's
child—has good eyes, too; but, nevertheless, did not
see—was mistaken—saw this Lopez presume—this
guitar-player—but did not see, as Antonio and Perez
did, that you resented this presumption—that you
frowned and threatened! But what an atrocious impertinence,
that such a poor, puny, beardless beast of
a boy should thus behave himself. Is it not monstrous?

But he shall sweat for it! should he not?
Can such an outrage be excused? What think you,
my life—should not this wretch of a musician suffer?
—Say? answer me!”

The lady replied by a vacant stare.

“Ah! I see! You feel the enormity of his offence.
You have not words sufficient to declare it. Well!
you will be better able to acknowledge the propriety
of the punishment I will inflict upon him.”

These words were accompanied by a hideous grin.
The tyrant readily conceived all the torture which he
inflicted. He watched eagerly the features of the
person he addressed, anxious to extort from them
some acknowledgment of the heart's inward suffering;
and seemed chagrined to perceive the steadiness
of aspect with which the woman bore his scrutiny.

“Truly, my life,” he continued, with less than
usual of that catlike play of feature which declared
his peculiar malice, “truly, my life, it pleases me to
perceive that you have no sympathies for this monster
of a musician. I did fear, I confess, I did fear—
that, though you might not have erred with him,
you might have been foolish enough, through some
misplaced sentiment of feminine tenderness, to have
interposed and pleaded against his punishment. That
would have been a weakness, my beautiful Gitano.
We must punish such enormous guilt. We must punish
it as it deserves! We must so punish such an
offender as that he shall never so offend again!”

He paused—and gazed steadily upon the woman!
But she too well knew the cool malignity of the tyrant

—his peculiar and unrelenting nature—to suffer herself
to be deceived by the obvious lure which he threw
out that she should implore mercy for the criminal
of whom he spoke. She also felt the importance of
maintaining the same settled indifference and coldness
of aspect as before. He allowed some lengthened
moments to intervene, and resumed, but with evident
disappointment—

“And you have nothing to say, my life?”

“Nothing!”

“Madre de Dios? But it is so precious to me,
that you so thoroughly acknowledge my justice. Ho!
there—Juan!—bring forth this vile singer, this wretch
of a guitar-player—this audacious musician! He
shall vex no longer with his midnight strummings, the
sweet quiet of our lady of Burgos—our chaste Diana
—whom he makes unhappy by his presumption. See
to it Juan! bring him forth quickly!”

2. CHAPTER II.

There might have been seen, for a single moment,
while the eye of Don Velasquez was averted, a convulsive
quiver upon the lips of the woman. Her arms
somewhat sank in that moment, and were clasped together
with a spasmodic intensity; yet the action was
too gently performed—the movement quite too slight
—to fix the regards of the person whose glance she
chiefly feared. In that brief moment—in those

slightly expressed emotions—it could be seen that
she felt her worst struggle was at hand. But it could
be seen, also, that she was possessed of wondrous faculties
for endurance. In what school she had acquired
this capacity, it needs not that we should ask—it is
enough that passion, too, has its power of self-restraint,
as well as virtue—and is never so intense, perhaps, as
when it is subjected, by its own will, to the check of
denial and delay. In the heart of the woman, this
power of self-restraint, once acquired, is perhaps far
more complete than in the heart of the man—if for
no other reason than that of her habitual subjection
to the will of a superior, and the habitual exercise
of a policy in society which is not necessary to him
by whom society is controlled or commanded.

The individual named Juan now made his appearance.
He was what is called, ordinarily, a handsome
youth; with smooth features, long, oily, and somewhat
curling locks, which evidently demanded much of his
attention—and a person which, though very slightly,
was yet very symmetrically made. But the intelligence
of his countenance was that of cunning rather
than of thought; and in his small gray eyes, there might
be seen a something of the malignant and catlike
expression which made so conspicuous a feature in
those of his uncle. He was showily habited, with a
gay cloak of silk, falling gracefully from his shoulders,
in addition to the ordinary doublet, which he also
wore, of a rich description of cloth, with slashed
sleeves, and a great ruff at either wrist. A heavy
gold chain about his neck, with a shining agnus dei,

ostentatiously displayed, rather discovered his love of
ornament than any very decided religious feeling in
his breast. But without detailing the several parts
of his costume, it will suffice to say that he was a sort
of a sea-dandy, thought well of his person, and, for
reasons of his own, was disposed to make the most of
it. His manner was full of consequence and confidence,
and, as he approached his uncle, it might be
seen that he possessed no small share of influence in
determining the character of the latter's counsels.
He drew nigh to him, and whispered a few moments
in his ear.

“Be it so, my son! be it so!” said the other kindly,
and with a sudden brightening of the features. Had
the eye of Don Velasquez, at that moment, been
directed suddenly to the features of the lady, he would
have been somewhat gratified, as well as informed, by
their frequent and excessive changes. On the appearance
of the youth, Juan, she had addressed to
him a single glance of equal bitterness and scorn;
and, while he stooped and whispered in the ears of
his uncle, her look was that of a loathing such as one
would naturally feel at contact, suddenly, with a reptile
equally hideous and dangerous. But her features,
under the control of a most watchful will, resumed
their look of icy indifference before her tyrant could
detect their changes.

The whispered dialogue with Juan over, the latter
drew nigh to the lady, and proceeded to whisper in
her ear also. She recoiled from him with unqualified
disgust.

“Beware!” he exclaimed, but in subdued accents,
Beware, Maria; you are on the eve of the precipice,
and a single word may incur for you the fate of your
favorite.”

“Assure me of that and I welcome it,” she answered,
with a sudden resumption of all the vivacity
which could be made to gather in an eye of unexampled
brilliancy and beauty.

The youth smiled spitefully, but said, “You are
wild! That fate would realize no hopes for either of
you. It would be death, and something worse than
death—denial to the grave, and, of course, beyond it.
But I am not now speaking of your death. It is
through me, Maria, that you live. Nay, you live—
need I tell you that?—because I love!”

“What if I proclaim you, where you stand, the
villain that you are?” answered the lady, in accents
similarly subdued with his own.

“It would avail you nothing! He would regard
it only as a mode of escape, which, in your desperation,
you seek to adopt. Does it need still that I
should prove to you how completely I control his ear
and fashion his will.”

“Alas, no! But what is the purpose, as he understands
it, of this whispered conference with me!”

“Ah! that is my secret,” the other answered with
a smile—“enough, that I speak of anything but
that! My true purpose is with you, and for you,
and myself! I will save this favorite of yours—save
him unharmed aboard the vessel, with probably no
greater penalty than close imprisonment, and”—he

spoke this with a grin—“perhaps a denial of his
guitar. I will do this, Maria, if you will become wise
as I would have you—if—”

“I understand you—but that is impossible! I tell
you, Juan de Silva, I loathe you too much to keep
terms with you. You have gone too far—you have
shown me too vile an aspect—too serpent-like a tooth,
for me to suffer your near approach, save as a most
hateful and hated enemy. I will brave any fate before
I suffer this!”

“Beware! your words but doom your favorite.”

“Be it so! Had he been the man I thought him,
it had never come to this. It had been your fate, not
his, or mine! He deserves all that he finds, failing
himself, and failing me, at the proper moment. Hark
you, the dagger which his fingers clutched, when your
felon hand rested upon his shoulder, was put into them
by mine; and the name which my lips uttered when I
gave it him, was that of Juan de Silva. And yet he
struck not, but tamely submitted, sacrificing himself
and me. Now, that you have heard all, judge for
yourself what terms there can be between us!”

The lofty, if not noble scorn which filled her features
at this narrative, heightened wondrously the beauty
of her countenance. Her companion, though evidently
moved by her words, could not forbear betraying,
with open admiration of his gaze, how much it
stimulated his passion. He spoke, after a brief moment,
lost in the absorbing pleasure of his gaze.

“I can forgive you, Maria, and adore you still.
That this Lopez was thus base and insensible, should

surely satisfy you that he was not meant to enjoy, or
to deserve, a heart like yours. Be mine, and all is
yours! I am here the master. I can save this creature—will
save him, for I fear him not, but—I must
have your assurance.”

“Never! Juan de Silva! Never!”

“Beware!”

“Never!”

“Once again, beware! You precipitate his fate!”

“I should precipitate myself upon a worse, if I
sought to save him upon these conditions. I loathe
and hate you, Juan de Silva; too much to endure
your smiles, your favors, the snake-like and revolting
coil of your venomous embrace.”

“You have doomed him!” was the sullen answer
from the scarcely parted lips of the youth. “His
fate is sealed forever!”

He was about to turn away.

“Stay!” was the eager whisper of the woman.

“Well.”

“What is that fate?” was the faintly spoken inquiry
that reached his ears.

“You will know soon enough. His hour approaches.”

“And I too am prepared for mine! I too can
perish!” were the muttered accents which reached the
retreating ears of the scowling Juan. He turned, and
fixed a simple glance upon her pallid but proud features.
The glance was one of equal hate and
mockery. It helped to strengthen her, and her high
spirit prepared itself for the worst.

3. CHAPTER III.

“I was right, sir,” said Juan aloud, as he returned
to the seat of his uncle, who had been watching with
some curiosity the progress of this conference, of
which he heard not, of course, a single syllable. “She
is prudent and sensible. She will not interpose with
prayer or argument to balk the ends of justice. She
will not meddle with his fate.”

There was something like disappointment in the
dark, malignant features of Velasquez.

“Yet did she seem exceedingly slow in coming to
her resolution?”

“By no means, sir. She was prompt enough; but”
—here the sentence was concluded in a whisper
that reached only the ears of Velasquez—“but it was
my policy to persuade her, if possible, that her entreaties
might avert his fate. Could I have succeeded,
it might have served to confirm and strengthen our
suspicions. But she is firm—she may be guiltless!
But of the guilt of Lopez there can be no doubt. She
denies not that.”

Juan had his own motives for this statement. He
did not despair, yet, of finally overcoming the resolution
of the woman. His passion, in this, somewhat
baffled his judgment. But of this hereafter.

“Well, there is nothing left but to punish the one.
Bring him forth.”

Juan retired—the anxious soul of the lady followed

his parting footsteps, but her eyes maintained a steady
and unfaltering gaze, as before, neither resting upon
nor absolutely shrinking from the countenance of
Velasquez. The pilot was again summoned to the
side of the latter.

“Well?” was the brief but intelligible inquiry. It
was sufficiently understood.

“We approach, Señor.”

“Good! see to your ship.”

The pilot disappeared—a bustle announced new
parties to the scene, and, preceded by Juan, a youth
came forward under the conduct of two soldiers. He
was manacled hand and foot, and moved with difficulty.
The rattling of the chains was heard. It smote upon
the soul of the woman, but she turned not once her
head. The eyes of Velasquez were upon her. A
savage grin lighted up his dark, satanic countenance,
and left no doubt in the minds of those who beheld
that he meditated a purpose of the deadliest malice.
The youth in bonds was of graceful person and handsome
features, but they were not those of a man of
character or courage. The cheeks were of a deadly
paleness—the lips quivered with apprehension—the
whole air and expression were those of one totally
unequal to the trial that lay before him. His eye
wandered restlessly and apprehensively to the countenance
of one or the other of the three parties to whom
the reader has been introduced, without daring to
encounter the gaze of either. Velasquez watched his
movements with the exultation of a cat in possession
of her prey. The face of Juan bore a similar expression;

while in the fine masculine spirit which made
itself conspicuous in the face of the woman, in spite
of all her efforts to subdue it, there might be seen a
strange conflict between tenderness and scorn.

“Unbind him!” said Velasquez.

“Oh, thanks! thanks!” muttered the victim, looking
appealingly to his tyrant. The scorn deepened in its
shadows upon the face of the woman.

“You know not yet for what you have to be thankful,”
was the sneer of Juan, as he busied himself in
undoing the manacles.

“Speak to me, Juan. For what am I reserved?
what may this mean if it be not mercy?”

“It means freedom,” was the response, still in a
whisper.

“Well—and that —”

“May be mercy,” was the ironical return of Juan,
as he withdrew from between Velasquez and his prey.
The latter now looked with features in which hope
and doubt were still at a lively struggle, upon the face
of his tyrant. He made a step toward him. The
uplifted hand of Velasquez arrested his approach.

“Lopez de Levya, were I to have thee drawn up
by the neck to yon spar, as the heretic English do
those whom they would destroy, it were no more than
thou deservest. But I am of a more merciful temper
—I have taken the chains from thy limbs.”

A lively gratitude overspread the features of the
person addressed; but he still trembled with a natural
anxiety and doubt. He knew his tyrant.

“I mean to set thee free!”

“Thanks! thanks!”

“Nay, I will do more for thee than this. I will
elevate thee to rare dignities. I will make thee a chief,
a prince, a sovereign of land and sea. Thou shalt be
able to stand up in thine empire, and none will say
thee nay.”

A pause. The culprit looked wildly at this language.
It was something more than apprehension
that shone in his face. There was no mistaking the
hideous malice of the speaker; there was no doubting
the ironical grin upon the lips of Juan; and the experience
of the ship had seldom found mercy or forgiveness
or generosity in either. The eye of the
woman was now fixed fully upon that of Velasquez,
her intense interest in what she had to hear making
her somewhat relax in the stubborn vigilance of
thought which had impressed itself upon all her features.
Velasquez resumed:—

“The quiet of this part of the Caribbean Sea, as
thou well knowest, is seldom broken by the prows of
Europeans. The savage steers his bark in other
courses, dreading its wild currents and fearful whirlpools.
Here, he who shall make his abode will be a
sovereign beyond dispute. It may be ages before he
will see upon his horizon, driven by hostile tempests,
the white sails of a Christian vessel. No empire could
be more secure from challenge—no state more certainly
beyond the danger of overthrow.”

Another pause, and a conviction of what was intended
at once passed into the soul of the woman.
Her hands were griped convulsively together, and the

paleness of her cheek increased. The culprit, to whom
Velasquez addressed himself, simply appeared bewildered.
Chains, confinement, terror, and probably
want of food and sleep, had rendered his faculties obtuse.
But Velasquez proceeded rapidly to his complete
enlightenment.

“Look out upon the sea, good Lopez,” and his hand
waved in the direction of the object to which the ship
had been sensibly approaching. At a league's distance
a little island was distinctly perceptible, though
seeming to be scarcely upheaved above the billows
which encircled it. Trees in groups might be seen to
wave upon it, the earth rose into moderate hills and
elevations as the eye penetrated the interior. Numerous
wild-fowl sailed in swift gyrations above it, and
gigantic birds strode majestically along its white and
sandy shores.

“That island, Lopez de Levya, I discovered for the
first time when I last traversed this ocean. I made
the discovery against my own will, being driven hither
by stress of weather. I little dreamed at that time
of its future usefulness; but when our weather-beaten
pilot, old Gomez, in beholding its solitude, declared
that it would be the spot, of all the world, in which
love would be most likely to find security, we called
it, in a merry jest, `The Isle of Lovers,' and when I
remembered that it was farther said, `One might be
a sovereign here without paying his tenth to any
crown,' then did I conceive how fitly I might reward
merit, by bestowing this island upon the deserving—

upon one who would desire security for his love and a
sovereignty beyond dispute.”

The eyes of the culprit were gradually enlarging.
He had slowly begun to guess the terrible destiny
which was before him, and the first feeling of overwhelming
apprehension necessarily kept him dumb.
He looked at his tyrant with eyes full of vacant terror.
The latter gave him but few moments for meditation
or doubt, as he thus proceeded:—

“Thou hast done me great wrong, Lopez de Levya.
Thou hast audaciously presumed upon the lady of my
love. For this wrong will I reward thee! We are
commanded, as thou knowest, my son, to forgive
those who do us injury. I will go farther than the
commandment. I will honor thee with wealth and
territory, and the highest distinction. Henceforth
shalt thou be a prince, an absolute sovereign, Lopez
de Levya, and as thy suitable empire behold the `Isle
of Lovers,' which I now bestow upon thee. There
shalt thou make music to the night, with no constraint.
None shalt say nay to thy strumming. If thou
shalt please no damsel's ears with thy song, thou
shalt at least offend in nothing the rights of others.
Thou shalt sing thy areytos to the stars, and find
them more gentle in thy sight than such eyes as
thou hast but too frequently offended with thy wilful
fondness. Am I not right in this, lady mine?” and
with a smirk quite as full of sarcasm as of tenderness,
the persecutor of both parties turned his gaze
from the face of the wretched man to that of the
scarcely less wretched woman. But he gained nothing

by the scrutiny. Her glance was fixed and obdurate,
and conveyed no meaning in it, such as that which
his jealous suspicions might have looked to see. He
watched her features for a few moments with a dissatisfied
expression, then resuming his former tones
and aspect, he addressed himself to his nephew,
Juan.

“Juan, my son, we trust we have sufficiently said
to make this excellent prince understand what honors
are designed him in requital for his evil deeds. It is
for thee to do the rest. Take the prince, therefore,
conduct him to the boat, and do thou see him safely
placed within the limits of his empire. Give him
provision for a month, in which space of time doubtless
he will be able to bring his subjects to proper
subjection and take his tithes of the produce of the
land. Give him a crossbow and a spear, that he may
coerce them should they rebel or fly, and see that you
forget not to hang his guitar about his neck, that he
may regale his hours of recreation and repose with
the precious ditties he so much loves to sing in other
ears. So shall he have pleasing recollections of one,
at least, for whom he will scarcely ever touch guitar
again.”

4. CHAPTER IV.

The doom was pronounced; the hand of the executioner—the
hand of his most bitter enemy, Juan
de Silva—was laid upon the shoulder of the victim;
but he refused to yield his faith to his own fears. He

still hoped against conviction—still shrunk from a
belief in that punishment which, to the timid and dependent
nature, such as his, seemed to involve terrors
much more extreme than any threatened form of death.
But when he at last yielded to the conviction which
had long been entertained by all around—unless, perhaps,
by the woman, his supposed associate in crime
—then the whole strength of his soul, feeble in its
best moments, seemed to give way on the instant.
Every show of manhood was forgotten. There was
no pride to keep up appearances; no struggle to
maintain a decent show of fortitude and firmness;
but the miserable culprit sank down into the most
lamentable imbecility, to the shame of all around him.

“Mercy! mercy! For the sake of the Blessed
Virgin, have mercy upon me, Don Velasquez,” he
shrieked rather than pleaded, when the determined
aspects of the men appointed to convey him to the
boat, and the violent grasp of Juan upon his shoulder,
silenced all doubts as to the real intentions of his
tyrant to carry out his sentence, in full, as it had been
delivered. The hard-souled sailors, as much in scorn
as in pity, recoiled from the piercing feminine entreaty
of the victim, and left him free for the moment, as if
in doubt whether Velasquez might not yield to the
supplications which were urged with such a humiliating
disregard to manhood. Falling upon his knees,
he crawled toward the spot where sat the arbiter of
his fate, glowing in the enjoyment of that bitter-sweet
morsel of revenge which is so grateful to the malignant
nature. In his eyes—had those of the victim not

been blinded by his own tears—had he not been too
base to venture to accompany his entreaties by a resolute
look upon the face of him upon whose word his
fate rested—he might have seen how hopeless were
all his pleadings. But he saw nothing—as he crawled
along the deck to the feet of the tyrant—but the terrible
danger which he was anxious to escape. Could
he have seen the inexpressible scorn which dilated the
nostrils and curled the lips of the woman—could he
have heard her bitter and only half-suppressed accents
of loathing—muttered between her gnashing teeth!
But they could not have changed his nature!

“Can he not die! Can he not die! Anything
but this! And yet,” she continued—herself unconscious
that she spoke—“yet how should it be that
one who had not the soul to slay his enemy, in the
moment when all that made life precious lay in the
blow—how should it be that he should aim the weapon
at his own bloodless heart, though to escape this
most loathsome tyranny.”

“Beware!” was the single word whispered close
beside her ear, from the lips of Juan de Silva. “Beware!
lest a worst fate befall thee even than his!
Wouldst thou peril life for such a reptile!”

She was silent at the suggestion. Not that she
had any fears of death; but, just then, her quick
thought and resolute spirit suddenly conceived its own
method for escape and vengeance. Other emotions
than those of scorn filled her bosom, as the whisper
of Juan, like the hissing of a hateful serpent, filled
her ears; and in their sudden consciousness, she

trembled lest her feeling should declare itself aloud, in
spite of the resolute will which she invoked to curb
and keep it in. The emotion which her lips did not
declare, was conspicuous for the instant on her countenance,
and remained unseen only in consequence of
the absorbing nature of the event in progress at the
feet of Velasquez. To this spot the abject culprit
had continued to crawl, unrestrained by the stern
command of his tyrant not to approach him. To his
knees he clung, though the latter strove to shake him
off, and to spurn him away with the members which
were too heavily swathed and bandaged to suffer him
to use them with any efficiency for such a purpose.
His pleadings, which were of a sort to move loathing
rather than pity, produced no feeling of either kind
in the breast of Velasquez. They provoked his merriment
rather. He grinned as he beheld the writhings
of the wretched creature before him. He had a sorry
jest for all his contortions. Verily, the Spanish adventurers
of that day in America, were a terrible
banditti! Of these, Velasquez was a proper specimen.
When his victim appealed to him for the sake of his
widowed mother at Segovia, he answered—

“I shall tell her of thy possessions, Lopez; she
shall hear of thy elevation. She was always a woman
of rare ambition. Did I not know her in her younger
days? Knowest thou not that she once disposed her
mantilla so that she might make a captive of me?
Had she done so, verily, it might have been mine own
son, for whom this Isle of Lovers hath been found. I
shall tell her of thy fortune, Lopez. She shall rejoice

in thy principality; and it may be, will find her
way out to thee, seeking to share in the wealth of thy
dominions. Enough now—take him hence, I tell thee;
—Juan, son, wilt thou not see the prince bestowed
upon his empire! I begin to weary of this gratitude.”

Again the officers approached, and again they hesitated—all
but Juan—as the cries of the wretched
imbecile rang through the vessel. The sailors would
still have suffered him to urge his prayers for mercy;
but Juan had no such yielding nature, and he knew,
better than they, how profitless were all entreaties.
He had resolved, for his own purpose, that there
should be no relentings in the brutal spirit of Velasquez.
He left the side of Maria de Pacheco, at the
summons of his uncle, and with his own hand, grappled
the victim, while giving the word to the sailors
chosen to assist him. But, rising to his feet, Lopez
dashed away from the grasp of his assailant, and
once more rushed in supplication to Velasquez. His
terrors gave him wonderful strength, and a faculty of
speech scarcely less wonderful. He was positively
eloquent. Never was prayer for mercy more passionate
or more pregnant with the best argument in behalf
of mercy. They touched all hearts but the two
alone which it had been of any avail to move. These
were immovable. Again were his entreaties answered
by scurrile jest, mocking suggestion, and derisive
laughter. The taste for the sports of the tauridor who
tortures the bull to madness before he bestows the
coup de grace, could alone afford any likeness to the
sort of pleasure which this sea-despot enjoyed in the

fruitless agonies of his victim. It was in a sort of
defiance, produced by very shame and despair, that
the culprit rose at length to his feet, and, folding his
arms upon his breast, submitted to his fate, from which
it was evident that no degree of humiliation could
possibly suffice to save him. A smile softened the
features of Maria de Pacheco.

“It is well!” she murmured to herself. “A little
sooner and the shame would have been spared to both!”

The victim seemed to hear her accents, though not
to understand them. He turned a timid glance toward
her, but her eye no longer sought his own. She
was conscious that other eyes were then keenly fixed
on both.

The boat was declared to be in readiness. The
month's store of provisions, accorded by Velasquez,
were thrown into her;—the spear and the crossbow followed;
and the hands of the seamen, appointed to convey
“the Maroon,” were fastened firmly on his shoulder.
He was now subdued to submission, if not reconciled
to his fate. He no longer opposed himself
to their efforts, and though he still spoke the language
of entreaty, it was no longer addressed to his tyrant.

“Oh! my countrymen—Antonio, Pedro, it is you
who do me thus; it is you, my countrymen, who help
to give me up to such a dreadful doom!”

Such was the touching appeal, made to ancient
comrades, which the poor wretch uttered at the parting
moment. They looked downward in silence, but
did not relax their hold upon him.

“And I am to perish on that desolate island;

and the people of my own land leave me to this solitude!
They hear the voice of my prayer, and shut
their ears against it! I am never more to hear human
speech—never more to look upon Christian face—nor
call any man brother or friend. Oh! Spaniards,
brothers, friends, countrymen!—will you doom me
thus—will you desert me thus to the solitude of the
sea, which is worset han any death? Christians! help
me—speak for me—save me!”

There was a moisture in the eyes of the weather-beaten
seamen who stood around him. At this moment
the woman advanced suddenly and stood before
Velasquez. Juan beheld her purpose in her countenance,
and whispered as she passed him, “Beware!”
She heard, but did not heed the warning.

“Velasquez!”—she spoke with firmness—“surely,
you have carried this jest far enough. You cannot
mean really to devote this wretched man to this place
of desolation?”

“Jest!” exclaimed the other; “jest, call you it?
By my faith, but you have very merrily described a very
serious ceremonial. Yet, if there be a jest designed
at all, I see that it hath been omitted. Ho, Juan,
bring forth the guitar of our prince. See you that
it be slung about the neck of Don Lopez. It hath a
band of crimson—truly the fitting collar for a sovereign.
It will help him to remember his old songs
when in the enjoyment of his new seigniory. He
shall have his ditty and jest together. It were cruel,
lady mine, to deprive him of that which hath been so
much his nightly solace! Eh! what sayest thou?”

The person addressed recoiled as if from the tongue
of the viper. She was silent, unless the thought
which moved her lips, but did not escape in words,
might be construed into speech.

“At all events—it is but death—but death, after
all! He hath weapons, and the sea rolls at his
feet. He hath but to will, and his exile ends in a
moment!”

We shorten a scene which was only too painfully
protracted. The victim was hurried to the boat. His
feet pressed the lonely islet of which he was mockingly
declared the prince. He stood erect, but not in the
consciousness of sway. His eyes were fixed upon the
vessel from which he was torn, and in which he saw
nothing but the country, the friends, the familiar faces
from which he was forever sundered. He was unconscious
of the mocking performance, when Juan de
Silva hung the guitar about his neck. The awkward
appendage was no burden to him at such a moment.
The faces of those who had placed him upon the sands
were turned away. The sound of their parting voices
had died away upon his ears. The boat was pushed
from the shore—yet he still stood, with a stare of vacant
misery in his aspect, upon the spot where they
had placed him. Long after the prow of the boat
had been turned for the ship, he could be seen in the
same place, with the ludicrous decoration upon his
breast, while, with still uplifted hands, he seemed to
implore the sympathy of his comrades and the mercy
of his tyrant. But of neither was he vouchsafed any
proofs. Mercy was none—sympathy was powerless

to save. Even she! But of her he dared not think!
She had been his fate; and though, in his soul, he
dared not blame her, yet when she rose to recollection,
it was always to provoke a sentiment of bitterness which
a nobler spirit never could have felt. He saw the boat
rejoin the vessel. He saw once more her broad sails
spread forth to catch the breeze. Gradually they
lessened beneath his gaze. The world which held his
soul and his hope, grew smaller and smaller, contracting
to a speck, which, at length, faded utterly away
in the deepening haze which girdled the horizon. Then
when his eyes failed any longer to delude him with a
hope, did he fall prostrate upon the sands, in a swooning
condition, which, for the time, wholly and happily
obliterated the terrible sense of his desolation.

5. CHAPTER V.

It will not be difficult with many persons, to comprehend
how a condition of utter solitude should not
necessarily produce a sense of pain. To the man of
great mental resources, and of a habit contemplative
and thoughtful, such a condition would be apt rather
to suggest ideas of complete security and repose,
which would be friendly to the enjoyment of a favorite
indulgence. To spirits whom the world has soured—
whom the greedy strifes of men have offended—men
of nice sensibilities and jealous affections, whose friendships
have proved false and wounded—as so many

deceitful reeds which have broken and pierced their
sides; to the heart of deep and earnest passions,
robbed of those upon whom all the heart's affections
have been set; these, all, might rejoice in an abode
from which the trying services, and vexing necessities,
and disquieting obtrusions, of social life, were shut
out and excluded forever. But Lopez de Levya was
not one of these! He was young, and handsome, and
hopeful, and this was his first trouble. The world
still loomed out before his vision, the gay and songful
paradise which youthful fancies describe it still. There
were warm passions and eager sympathies in his soul
still to be gratified; and though we may not regard
him as a person to whom affections of any kind were
very necessary, yet had he a bosom filled with those
which grow from an intense appetite for praise—which
could have their gratification only in a world of beings
like himself. It would be impossible to describe the
utter desolation which possessed the bosom of the unhappy
wretch when he did finally awaken to realize
the fact that he was left alone—utterly abandoned by
his comrades—upon an obscure islet of the Caribbean
Sea! It was a long time, indeed, before he could
utterly conceive his own situation—a long time before
he could persuade himself that the stubborn and unrelenting
spirit of Velasquez had absolutely resolved
that such should be his doom. For hours—until the
midnight came with its sad and drooping stars, looking
down mournfully upon the billows of the ever-chiding
ocean—until the daylight dawned, and the red sun,
rushing up from the eastern waters, rose angry and
fiery, and blazing down upon the little islet with the
fiery glance of a destroying despot;—for the first dreary
interval, from sun to sun—he still cherished the hope
that this was but a trial of his strength—a cruel experiment
upon his youth and courage;—and, recovering
from the first feelings of consternation, when, at
sunset, the dusky white sails of the vessel finally disappeared
from sight, the unhappy wretch still flattered
himself that, with the morning, he should hail her
outline once more upon his horizon, and catch the
glitter of her foaming prow coming to his rescue. And
with this hope he clung to the beach all night. He
slept not—how could he sleep? Even for one night,
how intense was the desolation of that scene. There
was the eternal sighing and moaning of the sea, which,
toward the morning, subsided into calm and slept on,
as if still dreaming of future tempests. And there
were voices all around him of strange animals and
wild-fowl—sometimes a chirp, as of an insect, and
sometimes the scream of some passionate bird;—and,
anon, a great plunge in the waters, as if of some
mighty beast leaving its place of sleep upon the land.
It was among the misfortunes of Lopez de Levya that
he was no hero, and all these sounds inspired him with
terror. Not less terrible to him were those wild, deep
mysterious eyes of the stars, slowly passing over him,
and looking down, as if to see whether he slept, in
their passage to the deep. Never was night and situation
so full of charm, yet so full of the awful and the
terrible. Beautiful, indeed, surpassingly beautiful and
sweet, was the strange wild charm of that highly
spiritual mingling of land and ocean;—that small and
lovely islet, just rising above the deep, so thoroughly
environed by its rocking billows, shone upon by that
wilderness of stars; breathed over by that pure zephyr,
gilding it with perfume and blessing from the South;
and haunted by unknown sounds, from strange creatures
of the sea and sky, who, in a life of perpetual
freedom, could never know the feeling of desolation
or of exile.

But the wild romance and the wondrous beauty of
the scene were lost upon the man who had no higher
idea of the possession of the intellectual nature than
such as could be drawn from association with his fellow.
The region, unoccupied by man, however beautiful in
itself, could bring no joy, no peace to the bosom of the
exile. Velasquez knew the real nature of his victim.
He well knew that Lopez had no sympathy with the
mute existences of sea and sky, of earth and air; and
of those more exquisite essences, which, in such a
situation, the imaginative nature would have joyed to
conjure up from the spiritual world, he thought only
with terror and reluctance. He did fancy that voices
came to him upon the night air;—the voices of men,
and in a strange, unusual language;—and he instantly
trembled with fears of the cannibal—the anthropophagi,
who were supposed, at that period, to be the
only inhabitants of these regions.

But the night passed over in security. He opened
his eyes upon another day, in the solitude of that
wild abode, ere yet the sun had warmed with his gay
tints the gray mansions of the East. He opened his

eyes upon the sea and sky as before. The billows
were rolling slowly away at his feet, in long low
courses, but slightly lifted by the breezes of the
dawn. Vainly were his eyes stretched out over the
watery waste, in the pathway of the departed vessel.
The vast plain of ocean spread away before him unbroken
by a speck; and when the sun rushed up
visibly into the heavens, and laid bare the whole
bright circumference of the deep, for many a league,
undarkened by an object, then the conviction of his
utter loneliness—his life of future loneliness—forced
itself upon the heart of the wretched youth; and
flinging himself once more upon the earth, he thrust
his fingers into the sands, and cried aloud in the depth
of his agony—

“Jesu! it is true!—it is true!—and I am left—
left by my people—to perish here alone!”

We spare his lamentations—his entreaties—as if
there were still some human being at hand who might
afford him relief and consolation—to whom he might
appeal for succor and protection. Prayer he had
none. The name of the Deity, of the Saviour, and
the Virgin, were sometimes upon his lips; but the
utterance was habitual, as he had been accustomed to
employ them in mere idleness and indifference. Three
days passed, in which despair had full possession of
his faculties. In this time he lay crouching upon the
beach during the day, and gazing vacantly in the
direction in which the ship had gone. At night, he
retreated to higher ground, filled with apprehensions
of great monsters of the sea—of the seas themselves

—lest, rising suddenly, endued with a human or a
fiendish will, they might gather round him while he
slept, and hurry him off, beyond escape, to their
gloomy abysses. A small clump of trees afforded him
the semblance of a shelter. Here he lay, from nightfall
to dawn, only sleeping in the utter exhaustion of
nature, and suffering, at all other times, from every
sort of terror. The stars, looking down through the
palm-leaves overhead, with their mild, sad aspects,
seemed to him so many mocking and malignant angels
exulting in his condition. The moaning of the sea,
and the murmurs of the nightwind, were all so many
voices of terror appointed to deride him in his desolation,
and impress his heart with a sense of unknown
dangers. The rush of great wings occasionally along
the shore, or the rustle of smaller ones in the boughs
above him—perhaps of creatures as timid as himself
—kept him wakeful with constant apprehensions;
and, at moments of the midnight, a terrible bellowing,
as of some sea-beast rising to the shore, or leaving it
with a plunge that echoed throughout the islet—struck
a very palsy to his heart, that, for the time, seemed
to silence all its vibrations. Let us leave the miserable
outcast, thus suffering and apprehensive, while we
return to the inmates of the vessel by which he was
abandoned.

6. CHAPTER VI.

He was not wholly abandoned. Maria de Pacheco,
the woman, who, like himself, was in some degree a
victim also to the will, if not the tyranny, of Don
Velasquez, was not the creature tamely to submit to
injustice, however she might prudently seem to do so.
—We need not ask whether there was any real attachment
between herself and the poor creature whom we
have seen “marooned.” It is probable that the degree
of regard which she entertained for him was small.
He was not the man to fix the affections, to a very
large extent, of a woman of so proud and fearless a
soul. The feebleness which he had shown had, probably,
lessened the attachment of a heart, which, in
the possession of large natural courage of its own,
might well despise that of one who had displayed so
little. But as little did she love the man of whom she
had become the slave—we may add—almost without
her own consciousness, and at the will of another, by
whom she had been sold at a very early age. She
was still comparatively young; but with advanced
intellect, and an experience that left it no longer immature.
Born under the burning sky of Andalusia,
tutored in the camp of the Gitano, though not of
Zingaro race, she had soon acquired an intensity of
mood which was only surpassed by her capacity of
subduing it to quiet, under a rigid and controlling
will.—Loathing the sway of her tyrant, revolting at

his person, she was as little disposed to regard with
favor the affections which had been proffered her, of
his more subtle and malignant nephew. The person
of Juan de Silva, graceful and showy as it was, could
not blind her to his heartless vanities, and that dangerous
cunning of character, which so admirably
co-operated with the mocking and fiendish coldness of
his soul. If she loathed Velasquez, she feared, as
well as loathed, De Silva; and feared him the more,
as, in possession of the secret of his infidelity to his
uncle, she was yet made fully conscious of the truth
of his boast, that any revelation of it, which she
might make to the latter, would avail but little against
him. But, though anxious, she was not the woman to
despair! She revolted too greatly at her own condition
of restraint, bondage, and denial, to yield even
temporarily to despondency. In the moment that saw
her feeble and wretched lover consigned to the lonely
islet of the Caribbees, she made a secret resolve to
avenge his fate, or to peril her own person upon her
vengeance. She clearly had no absorbing passion for
the victim. It was evident that she could still maintain
a prudent restraint upon her feelings at the
moment of their greatest trial;—but the highest and
proudest heart needs something for affection—some
other one upon which to lean for sympathy—and
which, at least, makes a show of responsive interest
in its affections. It was thus that she had turned a
willing ear to the professed devotion of Lopez de
Levya—to his tastes and his gentleness, contrasting
as they did with the brutality of all around her, and
making her somewhat indifferent to his feebleness of
will and lack of courage. But she had not fancied
his imbecility to be so great as the hour of trial had
shown it. Though scorning his weakness, she sympathized
in his cruel destiny. The respite which had
been given him from death, by the capricious tyranny
of Velasquez, suggested to her mind a hope of his
future extrication. Food had been left with him sufficient
for a month. What might not be done, in that
space of time, by a subtle thought and a determined
spirit? In a moment, Maria de Pacheco had her
plans conceived, and her soul nerved to the prosecution
of a single purpose. But she had an opponent,
not less subtle than herself, in the person of Juan de
Silva; and the keen, scrutinizing eye which he fixed
upon her, as she turned from the spot upon which
Lopez had been left, seemed to denote an indistinct
conception of the purpose which had passed that very
instant through her soul. But she was not discouraged
by his fear.

“Well,” said he, in a whisper, “you see how hopeless
is the struggle!—What is left for you, but—”
and a smile of mixed fondness and significance closed
the sentence. The ready expression of the woman's
face was made to accord happily with the single word
with which she furnished an equally expressive conclusion—

“Death!”

“No, no!” said he. “You will not die; you shall
not! You shall live to be far more truly the mistress

of the Dian de Burgos, than she finds you now. Why
should we be enemies, Maria?”

“Beware! your uncle's eye is upon us!”

He turned away, and this single sentence, as it
seemed to denote a disposition to make a secret between
them, brought a fresh hope to the soul of the
young man. He smiled, and glided to his uncle.
Maria smiled also, but it was with a sterner feeling—
not a less hopeful one, perhaps, but one in which
bitterness was a much more positive ingredient than
delight.

“I must baffle his vigilance,” she muttered to herself.
“He only need be feared, and he must be met
and vanquished! Ay! but how! How! I must
manage this—and I will!”

Her eyes followed his retreating form as she spoke.
They noted quickly the jaunty air of self-conceit which
marked his movements; they scorned the showy and
quaintly-cut garments which he wore, and the profuse
decorations of his neck and breast—and the quick instincts
of the woman at once suggested an answer to
her doubts.

“How, but through his vanity! He would be
loved, as he would be admired and watched. Well!
—he shall be loved, loved as he desires! The task is
a hard one enough, truly—but it shall be done! Juan
de Silva, you shall be loved! You, at least, shall believe
it—you will believe it; and this will suffice!”

In this she expressed a portion of her policy. It
will be all that we need to show at present. How she
pursued this policy—by what constant, hourly practices—by

what adroit feminine arts—and with what
fixedness of purpose—need only be suggested. The
details would be too numerous. But she was encouraged
to perseverance by success. She had reason to
believe that she had succeeded in disarming the jealousies,
and in awakening the hopes, of her enemy.
They both maintained a judicious regard for the exactions
of Velasquez; but there were hours when he
slept, or when he suffered, when they might throw
aside their caution, and speak together without fear
or interruption. It is by no means strange that the
most artful should be imposed upon by arts such as he
himself employs. But what is so blind as vanity?
What creature so easily baited as the self-worshipper,
when the food tendered him is that which increases
his love of self. To make such a one satisfied with
himself, is most surely to gain his confidence in you
—to persuade him that he is as much an object of
your idolatry as of his own, is to obtain access to the
few open avenues which conduct to his affections.

Maria de Pacheco had not been vainly tutored in
the arts of the Gitano. Beautiful in person, graceful
in carriage, skilled equally in the song, the dance, and
the story, she put in exercise all her powers of attraction,
to bind more securely the spells which she aimed
to put upon the creature whom she yet loathed with
most complete aversion. In two weeks after “the
marooning” of her timid lover, she had succeeded in
possessing Juan de Silva with the notion that the victim
ceased to be remembered. So credulous do the

most vigilant and suspicious become, when blinded by
an absorbing passion.

The two were alone together on the vessel's deck,
as she swept, one gloomy night, along the waste of
sea in silence. Don Velasquez had but a little before
been conveyed below. He slept! Maria had ministered
to him in song and story as was her wont, with Juan
beside her. The departure of Velasquez had left them
free to resume a conversation which had been begun
before. He had been emboldened by the tenor of a
previous dialogue. His hand grasped that of the lady.
She suffered him to retain it. He carried it to his
lips. It was not withdrawn; but, could her features
have been seen, through the dim veil of night which
covered them, the infatuated youth beside her, blinded
by her charms, and beguiled by her arts, would
have shrunk with fear from the deep and vindictive
loathing which they betrayed, even while she submitted
so quietly to his caresses. The secret thought of
Juan de Silva was one of delighted vanity. Could
that thought but have found its way into speech, it
would have congratulated himself upon the admirable
address which he himself had shown, in subduing a
spirit which he had hitherto found invincible. He did
suffer some words to escape him which conveyed to
her mind this idea; and she compressed her lips more
closely together, with difficulty maintaining the
silence, which, if broken at that moment, would have
overwhelmed him with her loathing and her scorn.

“You have forgiven me all, Maria?” he whispered
tenderly, fully assured of her answer.

“What was there to be forgiven?”

“The fate of Lopez!”

A slight convulsive shiver passed over the form of
the woman, and it required a strong effort to keep
from withdrawing herself from his embrace, with a
show of horror such as one might express in detaching
himself from the folds of a serpent. He continued—

“But it was in my devotion that I sought to destroy.
It was because you were so loved, that he was so much
hated. I was well assured that, for so mean a spirit,
you could not long have suffered pain; and now—”

“You were right,” she said, interrupting him;
“right; but you—what is your spirit, Juan?”

“My spirit?”

“Yes, your spirit! your courage, your pride, your
character? Your person is pleasing to the eye—
your talents to the mind! You have grace, beauty,
and accomplishments, but—”

“But what?”

The vanity of the youth had taken the alarm. He
spoke eagerly and with anxiety. She hesitated to
reply, the better to increase this anxiety; and he
renewed his entreaties for explanation. She at length
gave it.

“Shall I always be loved by the subordinate? Shall
the person whom I love, be always the creature of another's
will?”

“You mistake, my Maria. You should know, by
this time, that I can do what I please with my uncle.”

“Why, so you may; but in what manner is it done?
By treachery—by falsehood—by meanness—by descending

to low arts and petty falsehoods. Let the
truth but reach the ears of Velasquez, and he will maroon
you as quickly as he did Lopez de Levya.”

“Perhaps so; but there's no reason that the truth
shall reach his ears?”

“That may be; but shall we live always in terror of
the truth—always in the base security of a lie. I tell
you, Juan de Silva, such is my spirit, that I demand,
in the object of my devotion, manliness of soul—the
courage of speech without fear—the spirit to act without
subterfuge—the will to command for himself, and
through himself, and not as the mere creature of another!
And, why should you, with your talents for command—why
should you be the lackey of your uncle?
—that feeble despot, who—but no, no!—what need?
You will not, you cannot understand the nature which
I feel—the spirit which sways sovereign in my soul!”

“Ay, Maria, but I do feel, I do understand you.”

“Impossible, Juan, or you would rather be with me
the sole possessor of some desolate isle, such as that
given to Lopez de Levya, than—”

“But how, if we be sole here—here, with the
lovely Dian de Burgos for our palace, and the seas of
the west for our empire?”

She laid her finger upon her wrist—but a single
finger—and lowly murmured in his ears—

“This were, indeed, something; but I tell you,
Juan de Silva, you are not the man for this. Your
uncle!—”

“And if I prove to you that I am, Maria; if I
show you that I can fling aside my scruples when it

will serve my purpose to do so; and that no ties
which deny me the gratification of my passions, have
the power to keep my affections; if in short, I can
say to you, Maria de Pacheco, the Dian de Burgos,
henceforward, is mine solely, wilt thou share with me
the sovereignty?”

“Alas! Juan, I should dread lest old age seize me,
ere I ascend my throne!”

“Demonios! but another week shall not pass ere
thou hast it all!”

“Were it so!—but—” The pause was full of
meaning.

“Wilt thou promise me, Maria!—”

“Will I not?”

“And thou wilt deny me no more, if I show thee
that no voice speaks in authority here but mine?”

“Show me that, Juan—make thyself supreme, and
thou shalt be as a sovereign over Maria de Pacheco,
as thou wilt then be over the Dian de Burgos. But
thy uncle?”

“Speak not of him! Enough!—Thinkest thou I
love this servitude any more than thou dost? Thinkest
thou it better pleases me than thee that I should minister
to one, brutal and bedridden, whose feebleness
checks our adventure and lessens our spoils?”

“But how wilt thou”—

“Nay, sweet, let not the manner of the thing disturb
thee. Better, indeed, that thou shouldst not
know. Thou shalt see if I lack manliness. Thou
shalt see if I fail when the moment needs. I am no
Lopez de Levya—no mere singer, my Maria. Ah!

if I prove not myself worthy of thy spirit—if I show
thee not! Thou didst not know me, Maria—thou
doubtest still—thou dost not know me yet. Yes, I
tell thee, for a love such as thou canst give me, thou
shalt see me do such deeds as were terrible as death
to other men!”

The unresisting hand of the woman was carried to
his lips as he spoke, as if he would affirm thereon the
resolution which he had expressed. Yet even as he
kissed them, her fingers, moved by the feeling in her
soul, could have grappled his throat in mortal struggle.
They separated for the night, and the exulting spirit
of Maria declared her conscious triumph in secret
soliloquy.

“Ay, ay! methinks I have thee. It is sure. I
do not mistake the blindness which is in this passion.
He will do! He will perform what he doth not yet
promise. The son of the sister shall do murder upon
the life of the brother that has murdered him. He
is mine! The Dian de Burgos shall be mine. Yet,
it will need that it be done quickly. The month is
nearly gone! Another week!—but one—one week!
Well! I must be patient. I must subdue my soul,
while I work with other weapons. Juan de Silva, I
shall take thee in my own snare, or I have never
used the snare of woman!”

7. CHAPTER VII.

With her whole soul set upon a favorite project,
Maria de Pacheco was not a person to slumber or
prove afraid. She was not less sure of herself than
of others. She knew the general character and temper
of the Spaniard. She knew the spirit which
prevailed among the crew of the Dian de Burgos.
Though young, and a woman, she had been by no means
an unobservant spectator of the various events which
had taken place on board since she had become an
inmate of the vessel. Besides, she was a sagacious
student of character, as are all women of any native
intelligence. She possessed the faculty, which seems
like an instinct, of seeing, as it were, at a single
glance, into the moods of those around her. She
knew that Velasquez, her master, was no longer the
master in his own ship. She as well knew that Juan
de Silva was not very popular as his successor. One
event, which had taken place a few months before,
now pressed upon her recollection, and suggested to
her a new auxiliary in working out her scheme.

One of the lieutenants, or as he might be called in
our time, a mate, was a Biscayan, named Diego
Linares. He was a stout and somewhat surly fellow,
habitually; and, in the exercise of his common
character, had given a rude or insolent reply to Juan
de Silva, who had rewarded him for it, very promptly,
with a blow upon the mouth. The dagger of the

Biscayan would have answered the indignity, and was
drawn for that purpose, when other parties interfered;
and Juan, after the first feeling of excitement had
passed over, sought in various ways, and by various
civilities—which he never made unnecessarily cheap
—to atone for the rashness and folly of his act. The
interposition of Velasquez, himself, was finally addressed
to the conciliation of the parties, since Diego
was a man not easily to be dispensed with. His
efforts were apparently successful. The anger of the
Biscayan was seemingly subdued, but it was in seeming
only. The wound still rankled, and might easily be
reopened. Maria de Pacheco saw more deeply into
the secret feelings of the injured person than either
Juan or Velasquez. She better knew the vindictive
temper of Biscayan blood, which is perhaps much more
tenacious of its resentments than that of almost all
other Spaniards, all of whom are vindictive.

With the first inception of her own resolution, she
at once conceived that this resentment might serve
her purpose hereafter, and had, accordingly, some
time before, addressed herself to the task of making
a friend of the discontent. She sought him at periods
when the eyes of Juan were withdrawn from her.
She sought him with an art which none possess in any
degree to compare with her who has been tutored in
the camp of the Zingali. She knew the habits of the
Biscayan, could rejoice his ear with songs and ballads
from the native province of Diego; and frequently,
even when she sang before Velasquez, she adroitly
chose for her themes such as were familiar to the ears

of the former. These still drew him, loitering nigh,
to listen as he traversed the deck upon his midnight
watch. Gradually, the parties came to speak together,
and, by degrees just as insensible as those by which
she had brought Juan de Silva to believe in her newly-born
affections for himself, she found her way into the
confidence of Linares for another purpose. She fomented
his hate for Juan; and, at length, when sure
of the future purpose of the latter, she kindled the
other's fears for the safety of Velasquez. It would
have been easy to arouse Linares to such a degree of
fury, as to prompt him to rush upon and slay Juan,
with the hope, subsequently, of justifying himself
before Velasquez; and such was the wish of Diego;
—but the more vigilant woman saw how futile such a
proceeding would be, knowing how completely Juan
was in the possession of his uncle's confidence. Besides,
of what use to her, in her desire to rescue
Lopez de Levya, that Velasquez should escape the
design of his nephew?

“No, no! good Diego,” she said to the excited
Biscayan; “this were only to destroy thyself. Would
Velasquez believe either thy testimony or mine
against Juan de Silva? Thou mightest slay the one,
but thou wouldst be sure to perish from the fury of
the other.”

“I know not—the crew!—”

“Soft! I understand thee! It is well that the men
love thee. They should! Thou, in truth, dost all the
business of the vessel—Velasquez incapable, and Juan
de Silva no seaman, and, I trow, but little of a

soldier. Let, then, the treachery advance which thou
canst not arrest, save at thy own peril. It may be
that Juan will repent—that he will not do the bloody
deed which he meditates. All then will be as before,
and our secret suspicions may sleep. But it will be
enough that we should keep proper watch, and if thou
hast friends in the vessel—”

She paused.

“They are all my friends; they care nothing for
Velasquez, now that he can do nothing; and they hate
the insolence of this Juan!”

“Good!—then there will only need, if thou hast
friends, that thou choose from among them, so that
two or three of them may be ready with thyself to
avenge thy captain should he meet foul play. Be
ready, and I will counsel thee, should I see farther
tokens of this conspiracy.

The Biscayan was not superior to the inducements
which she had adroitly insinuated rather than expressed.
He was made to behold, at the same glance, his revenge
obtained upon the man who had subjected him to indignity,
and the promotion of his selfish fortunes.

8. CHAPTER VIII.

Maria had thus secured a second agent, and
made a large step toward the attainment of her
object. But the days passed, and the nights followed,
and still nothing decisive, on the part of Juan, tended

to confirm the assurances which he had made to his
wily confederate. She became anxious and apprehensive,
particularly as the passion of the youth
seemed to be cooling toward her. He was no longer
communicative—no longer sought her as frequently as
before. His manner was now hesitating, his brow
clouded, and his whole appearance that of a man who
was brooding over wild suspicions. But Maria was
too much an adept to suffer her own anxieties to be
perceptible, while she watched his with apprehension.
Her doubts put on the appearance of womanly reserve,
of dignified pride, of feminine sensibility, solicitous to
avoid exposure. But she was equally studious not to forego
the exercise of any, the meanest of her attractions.
Her dress was carefully studied, and with the happiest
effect; and if her brow was clouded, it was with sadness,
the sweeter for the shade. She sang too—
never with more exquisite freedom, or with more voluptuous
sensibility, than when she sat alone, in the
darkness of night, upon the deck of the slowly moving
vessel. This was the third night after the last interview,
which we have described, with Linares. She
was suddenly joined by Juan de Silva. She knew of
his approach, but started with well-feigned surprise,
as his whisper reached her ears.

“Thou hast thought me a laggard, Maria?”

“Nay, I have suffered no disappointment. I had
no hopes of thee, Juan!”

He was piqued.

“That was because thou didst not know me. But

I have been busy in my task. It is not because I am
irresolute that I am slow. It is because I would be
sure. It is not known to thee, perhaps, that Velasquez
hath valuable possessions in Spain. These will serve
us hereafter, my Maria, when we shall tire of the sea.
I have secured the papers which conduct to these.
The key of his coffers is at my girdle. And now—
but, hark thee—continue thy ballad. It has beguiled
his fancies, and he is about to join us to be nearer
thee. There! His bell sounds. I will bring him
forth, and—dost thou heed me, Maria?”

His hand trembled with an icy chillness, as he laid
it upon her wrist. Her own grew chilled with a
sympathetic consciousness of what he designed.

“Thy song! Thy ballad!” he muttered convulsively
as he left her, and, almost unconscious of what
she did, she resumed, in accents that slightly faltered,
the ballad of `Belerma,' one of her favorite songs,
which she had probably learned from a purer source
than that of the Zingali camp.

Which may be thus freely rendered:—
The voice of Velasquez—a voice that had once been
equally rich and powerful—now feebly joined its
accents with hers, as he tottered forth from the cabin,
supported on the arm of his nephew, and sank into a
seat which had been prepared beside her. Her tones
subsided into silence as he approached.

“Nay, stop not,” said he; “let me hear thee—I
come out only to hear thee, for I feel not so well to-night—not
well, not happy, Maria, mine. Thy voice
will persuade me to a better spirit, though it sounds
more sadly than is thy wont to-night; and that ballad—methinks,
beauty, mine, thou wouldst never
grieve over my heart, as the lovely damsel, Belerma,
mourned over that of Durandarte.” And he sang
feebly—

She continued silent.

“Sing for me, Maria—deny me not;” he said entreatingly.
“I know not that I shall ever ask it of
thee again. I feel as if a sentence had gone forth
upon me. I feel as if I had done thee wrong! My
heart tells me that I have wronged thee. If thou
wilt sing for me now, I know that thou forgivest
me!”

“Thou shouldst not give way to such fancies,
uncle, mine,” said the nephew; “methinks, thou art
looking better to-day than thou hast done for months
past; and know I not that thou hast always been
fond of Donna Maria, even as the good knight, Durandarte,
was fond of the true maiden, Belerma.”

“Ah! Juan; but Velasquez is no Durandarte, to
find his way to the heart of a fair maiden. These
days bring forth no knighthood such as his. Who is
it walks behind us? Methought I heard a footstep!”

“It is none but the page, Gomez,” said the nephew,
in somewhat hurried accents.

A thrill ran through the veins of Maria, as she remembered
that the page, Gomez, was the creature of
Juan, and the person who, as a spy upon her actions,
first discovered the strong intimacy between herself
and Lopez de Levya. The tones of Juan betrayed
to her something of his purpose, and she gathered
from them the conclusion, that he meditated the performance
of his crime that very night. Her heart
smote her. She felt her own criminality; but she
loathed the tyranny of Velasquez, as much as she did
the cold and cruel selfishness of Juan; and it was
only in the death of both that she could possibly hope
to extricate from his desolate condition the unhappy
Lopez, whom, if she did not actually love, she did
not loathe, and for whom every sentiment of humanity
required that she should suffer the bloody game of
Juan to go on. But she looked round, at the inquiry
of Velasquez, and while she detected Gomez near
them, she was also enabled to discover another and a
taller form among the shadows beyond him. In this
person she fancied she saw Linares, and suddenly she
commenced the Hymn to the Virgin, plaintive and
touching, of the dying knight, Baldwin:—

Which in an English idiom we may render thus:—

9. CHAPTER IX.

She had two objects in choosing this hymn. It
was the appropriate chant of Velasquez—equally for
his lips and ears—at that moment of his impending
peril; and she cherished the humane hope that, as in
the previous song, he would join his voice with hers,

and thus utter the proper prayer to Heaven just when
it would most become his lips. Her quick instincts
led her also to believe that Linares would receive it
as an intimation that the time was approaching when
it would be necessary for him also to act. But Velasquez
took no part in the hymn. His head sank
upon his breast as she proceeded, and he seemed to
drowse.

“Dost thou sleep, uncle?” demanded Juan.

He looked up when addressed, and, in the imperfect
light, it could be seen that the eyes of the invalid
were full of tears.

“The hymn saddens though it soothes me, Maria.
Why didst thou choose it? Yet I blame thee not. I
would I could sing it with thee. I strove, but the
voice failed me, and my heart felt strange as if with a
sudden sinking. I remember me to have heard that
hymn, the last night that I slept in the dwelling of
my poor mother, Juanita. I was innocent then! I
was a lad! There was a woman who was blind—they
called her Dolores—she sang it often beneath our
windows, but I did not weep to hear it then as I do
now. Yet I remember it well. I knew the ballad all
by heart, and could have sang it with her; but I had
wilder fancies, and I mocked the tenderness of her
hymn with a gay ballad of some bolder spirit. I
could not mock her now. Thy voice hath soothed
me, Maria, but sing to me no more to-night, I feel as
I would sleep. Juan, give me thy arm.”

The nephew started to his feet. Maria would have
offered an arm also, but Juan repulsed her.

“Not thine!” he answered, in accents not so low
but that Velasquez heard them.

“And why not hers, Juan?”

“She lacks the strength! Here is Gomez.”

“Maria lack the strength! Is she not well, Juan?
or am I so much feebler than before? It must be so!
I feel it so! Well! Give me help! Gomez be
it, then.”

A cold sweat covered the face and forehead of
Maria de Pacheco, as she beheld the officious Gomez
start forward at the summons of Juan. She saw
Velasquez grasped by them, as if for support, on either
side. The words of the latter—

“It is very dark—goest thou rightly, Juan?—
rushed through her very brain with a dreadful import,
the more terrible and startling, as, having herself
receded toward the cabin, she did not see them approach.
Then she was conscious that some one stood
beside her. It was Linares, followed by another.
She grasped his arm.

“Now, now, Linares!—It is doing! Hence! Quick!
God have mercy!”

A plunge, and a most piercing shriek, were heard
while she was speaking. Linares started forward.
There was a sudden uproar in the ship. The alarm
was given, and the men were running to and fro, while
a crowd gathered on the side where the deed had been
done. Another scream from the waters—a scream of
agony—a cry for help—and then the stern accents of
Linares prevailed over all others.

“Murderer of thy uncle—bloody traitor—I have
caught thee in the act!”

“Away!” cried Juan de Silva — “and to thy
duties. Behold in me thy captain!”

“Never!” was the cry from the crew. “Diego
Linares!”

“The heavy hand of Linares was upon the shoulder
of the culprit. His confederate, Gomez, was in the
grasp of an equally powerful assailant. The proceeding
had been too well devised—the action too prompt—
to suffer the cunning Juan to escape by any subtleties;
and he was already given to understand that the fate
to which he was doomed, was that to which his uncle
had been already consigned. In the suddenly aroused
sense of danger which he felt, his impulse was to call
for Donna Maria.

“She is here!” cried Linares.

The proud woman had recovered all her strength
of soul and courage, and the conviction that the hateful
and malignant spirit whom she had once feared
was now wholly in her power; and she felt an exulting
sense of pleasure in being able to discard the veil of
hypocrisy which she had so successfully worn. She
steadily advanced towards the clamorous group.

“Speak for me, Maria!” exclaimed the captive—
“tell these men—say to Linares, that, in what I have
done, I have but obeyed thy wishes!”

“As if my wishes should suffice to move the loving
nephew to the murder of his first friend and most
loving uncle!”

“Demonios! do I hear thee, woman?”

He was grappled instantly and firmly by the vigorous
Linares. A dozen willing hands were nigh, to
help him in the fearful deed which he designed.

“Must I perish! Has my toil of blood been taken
for such as these! Maria, dost thou indeed desert
me? Speak!” cried the desperate man—“Speak!
thou knewest my purpose—thou didst not disclaim
my deed!”

“I know thee as a felon and a fiend; as one whom
I loathe and scorn! Linares, trust him not! He
who would keep no terms with one so confiding as his
mother's brother, will keep no terms with thee. What
said I to thee before? Do thy duty to thyself and
me! Revenge Velasquez, thy captain, recover the
wretched Lopez de Levya from the isle where he was
put to perish, and be the master of thy ship and
crew!”

“This, then, was thy scheme! Demonios! that I
should have been blinded by this woman's subtleties!”

“Thou wast the victim to thy own vanities—thy
own quickness to crime—thy own coldness of heart!”
said the proud Maria.

“Oh, tongue of the serpent! dost thou sting me
thus! But thou exultest too soon. Thinkest thou
that I have lived for such a fate as this! with this wealth
at my girdle—with so much of life in my possession
—shall I lose life? No! off there, ye base scum and
offal—off! Ye shall hang for this like dogs—I
will!—”

His own terrible struggles arrested his words, by
which they had been stimulated. He had much to

live for, and the unwilling spirit of youth was not to
be resigned so easily to the sacrifice of those delights,
for which he had paid such heavy price. His strength,
which was not ordinarily great, was that of desperation
at the moment. He fought with wonderful spirit
and address, and it tasked three stout seamen so to
recover the mastery over him, as to lift him to the
side of the vessel to which the feeble uncle had been
beguiled, and over which he had been suddenly thrown.
Brought to the verge of the precipice, he succeeded
in forcing himself back, so that his head only hung
over the bulwarks.—Suddenly, however, the weight of
the powerful Linares was thrown upon him; and the
crack of the neck, as it was thrust down upon the sharp
and narrow thwarts, could have been heard even above
the spasmodic gurgle and hoarse scream of the victim,
by which it was accompanied. The still quivering
carcass which they committed to the deep, was no
longer conscious of its fate. A second plunge declared
the doom of the page Gomez, whose cries had
been silenced by the stroke of a dagger, while his
master's death-struggles were most violent. Deep
and dreary was the silence which followed on board
the vessel. The rage of all parties was satisfied, and
a certain, but indescribable fear was upon every heart.
But none of the fruits of the struggle had been lost.
A single hour had in effect rendered Maria de Pacheco,
as had been promised by Juan de Silva, the mistress
of the Dian de Burgos. A single sentence to Diego
Linares declared the present destination of the vessel.

“The Maroon—Lopez de Levya!”

She was obeyed; the ship was brought about, and
her prow turned once more in the direction of the
desolate Isle of Lovers.

10. CHAPTER X.

Let us now return to our Maroon. Three days
upon his desolate island did not materially lessen its
terrors, or increase its attractions, in the eyes of
Lopez de Levya. He still shuddered, not less at its
fanciful and unknown dangers than at his isolation
among them. But the necessity of looking about
him—of looking upward, indeed—of feeling himself
in motion, and realizing, as thoroughly as he could,
the sense of life, as well as its consciousness of suffering—led
him, at the end of this period, to make an
effort, which, in his previous feeling of despair, he
had never thought it possible he should make again.
The nature, even of the constitutionally timid man,
does not easily succumb to fortune—does not usually
—except, perhaps, in the first moment of overthrow,
yield itself submissively to fate. The first moment of
weariness which succeeds the contest, is, perhaps, the
one of greatest prostration; and, after that, the recuperative
energies arouse themselves and the sufferer
together. The very sense of abandonment is usually
one of awakening and new resolve. This is one of
the marked characteristics of the human nature.
Indeed, the natural impulse of every free moral agent

is resistance. To oppose, to struggle farther—to
contend to the last, and even where consciousness of
the conflict itself fails—is one of the earliest, as it is
one of the most necessary developments of the moral
instinct. Combativeness, indeed, is one of the most
important of our moral qualities. It is one which—
arguing always the presence of a great and pressing
necessity—is, at the same time, continually counselling
the means by which to contend against it.

Lopez de Levya, though feeble, was not entirely
wanting in the natural instinct; and, armed with the
Spanish crossbow, and the shafts which had been accorded
him—a spear, a knife, and one or two other
implements of use and necessity, which might, in the
event of exigency, be converted into weapons—he
now proceeded to explore his empire. A sense of his
possessions was also rapidly beginning to make itself
felt in his reasonings. That delightful human instinct
which, in the consciousness of sway, reconciles us so
readily to all its dangers, was about to contribute its
assistance toward comforting our Maroon in his desolation.
He was, indeed, a sovereign, though he commanded
no subjects. Yet, the wild-fowl which sped
along the shore before his footsteps, or sprang aloft,
wheeling in slow gyrations overhead, as he drew nigh
their coverts, might be made to feel his authority as
well as to minister to his wants. He could persecute,
punish, and destroy them, quite as certainly, and certainly
with less danger to himself, than if they were
of his own species; and a sense of fierce delight at
this consciousness of his power to do mischief, was

grateful to his heart, as it always is to that of the
being who is himself peculiarly sensible to the influences
of fear. He was beginning to regard with
complacency a condition from which there was no
escape. A thousand years might elapse, as Velasquez
had malignantly assured him, without suffering the
prows of any European vessel to approach so nearly
to his islet as to discover the existence of its lone possessor.
He must make the most of that existence.
He must hoard, must economize his resources, as well
of thought and enjoyment, as of covering and food.
He must not destroy his subjects simply to exercise
his authority. His power must be sparingly indulged
for his own sake and safety. He laid aside his guitar
with care and tenderness, protecting it from hurt and
exposure, by hanging it beneath the friendly palm-trees
where he had passed the night. In the first
paroxysm of his despair and madness, conscious that
this dangerous but delightful instrument was connected
with his present sufferings, he was about to dash it
upon the bleak sands and trample it under foot, or
cast it from him into the engulfing and surrounding
sea. He knew not, himself, why he forbore to do so.
Some tender recollection in his thought procured its
safety;—some conviction that it might minister to
him in his wretched exile;—and the desperate passion
which might have destroyed it—was restrained. Yet
bitter were the tears that he shed over it, as, arousing
from the swoon that followed the departure of the
vessel from his eyes, he found the cruel memorial still
about his neck, where it had been hung by the mocking
hands of his enemy. With the subdued temper
that followed the first feeling of his despair, the instrument
became doubly precious, as it not only spoke
of future solace, but reminded him of former enjoyments.
It constituted one of the few moral links
which connected him still with the great family of
man. He lacked the courage to part with any of his
treasures, and the care with which he secreted his
favorite instrument beneath the palm-trees, was that
of the tender mother who leaves her infant for
awhile, solicitous of its comfort even while she has no
fears for its safety; and sometimes looking back, not
with any hope to see, but that her eyes involuntarily
yield themselves to the course indicated by her heart.

This charge disposed of, Lopez de Levya grasped
his spear with as much martial dignity as he could
command. He felt for his knife at his girdle, he
slung the crossbow over his shoulder, and, ready for
any event, he sallied forth to explore his empire.
But though his territory was a small one, such as an
adventurous spirit would have traversed wholly, and
surveyed thoroughly, in the course of a single day, our
Maroon was quite too timid, too cautious in his footsteps,
not to make it a work of longer time. Several
days were necessary to his examination. He proceeded
slowly, and winding heedfully about, and
probing every copse before he penetrated it, he first
assured himself against any possible danger from
secret foes, before he made his search satisfactory.
His domain was equally ample and compact; not
wanting in variety, but having its elevations of rock,

and its valley of verdure, and its long wastes and
stretches of sand, in a comparatively close compass.
The islet was not, as it had been thought by Velasquez,
a mere series of sand-hills, raised up by the
sea, the creation of its own contending billows. It
was a solid rock, whose gradual ascent, nowhere
rising into more than a very gentle elevation, admitted
of the easy accumulation of sand and soil, which, in
process of time, had in various places received a
covering of very green and beautiful vegetation. The
shrubbery was rather close than lofty. Among the
trees were the plantain, the cocoanut, the breadfruit,
and the banana. The pineapple grew in gold and
purple, unobserved by man; and slender vines, which
shot out from the knotted and ancient bulbs, from
crevices of the rock, ran wantonly over the sides of
sudden hillocks, which they garnished with blue clusters
of the grape. Verily, our musician had an empire
in truth. Velasquez little dreamed of the treasure
he had given away in his malice. The sterile
islet was a principality of fairy land, and Lopez de
Levya grew more and more reconciled to life as he
beheld the wealth which lay scattered around him.
His possessions were beyond his wants. Nature had
made ample provision, and millions might have been
found, among the needy and oppressed children of
Europe, to whom a life of exile and isolation in such
an abode, would have been the most acceptable boon
of Heaven. Nor were these vegetable possessions all
that came to Lopez with his empire. Tribes of small
wild animals wantoned before his footsteps, scarcely
seeming to fear his presence; and the nimble little
marmozet of the tropics, with a petty, playful mischief,
darting before him as he came, would fling the
nuts from the tree-tops, and chatter, in equal fun and
defiance, at his sovereign authority. Our Maroon
began to grow interested in his possessions, and fate
soon conducted him to other discoveries. His island,
stretching away from north to south, was exceedingly
long in proportion to its width. He had been landed
at the northern extremity, at which point it had been
impossible to conceive its dimensions, except from its
width, and this had led to conclusions which gave no
reason to suppose its extent to be half so great as
Lopez found it. At the close of the third day of his
explorations, he had nearly reached its southern extremity.
He had found the land gradually to rise as
he advanced, until, toward the close, taken in comparison
with the uniform level of the sand and sea
surrounding the spot to which he approached, and by
which the island was terminated in this quarter, he
discovered what might be considered a moderate mountain.
It was certainly a large and imposing hill, seen
from the low shores or the waters which surrounded
them. Here, too, the groves thickened into something
like a forest. Heated by his ramble, and somewhat
fatigued, as the day was wearing to its close, he
passed gladly for shelter into the shady recesses of its
heights. He soon found himself in one of the coolest
realms of shade which he had ever traversed. A
natural pathway, as it seemed, conducted him forward.
Gradually advancing, he at length emerged from the
thicket only to stand upon the brow of a rugged eminence,
which rose almost perpendicularly, overlooking
the sea. A small flat of sandy beach lay at his feet,
which was evidently subject to overflow at the rising
of the tide. Not half a mile beyond could be seen a
small cluster of little rocks, just peering above the
sea, scarcely bigger, it would seem, than so many
human heads, which the waves covered at high water.
Between them, he could distinguish the boiling and
striving of the billows, which sent up a sheeted
shower far above the rocks with which they strove.
Long lines, stretching from several points, and losing
themselves among these rocks, betrayed the course of
strong currents, which were caused by the capricious
whirlpools that lay within their embrace. The eye
of Lopez took in all these objects, but they did not
bound his survey. Stretching far beyond—did he
only fancy, or did he really behold a slender dark
speck, which might be the outline of a shore corresponding
with that on which he stood?—miles of
ocean lay between them, but in that unclouded realm
of sunshine and of calm, objects might be seen from
an eminence, such as that on which he stood, at a surprising
distance. It was only in glimpses now that he
beheld, or fancied, the object in his gaze. Sometimes
it would utterly disappear—but this might be from the
continued and eager tension of his vision;—again would
it grow out boldly beneath his eyes;—but this might be
in obedience only to the desires of his mind. Long and
feverishly did he watch, and many were his conjectures
as to the distant empire which his hope or his
sight had conjured up. He turned away, and his
glances rested upon the smooth plain of yellow sand
beneath his feet, which lay inviting to his tread, glistening
a thousand fires from bits of crystal, which reflected
the now waning sunlight. To this little esplanade,
which looked so exceedingly inviting, our Maroon
was persuaded to descend from his heights, by finding
a convenient series of rude steps, which wound below
—little gaps in the hill-side, or fractures in the naked
rock, which one might almost be tempted to imagine
—so admirable was the assistance which they gave to
the anxious footsteps—had been the work of art.
Following these, Lopez descended to the hard and
sandy floor, and standing in the shadow of the rock,
he once more looked forth eagerly upon the doubtful
waste of sea. There still lay the empire of his desire.
It was along, and over those billows that he was yet
to see the glimmer of a saving hope. Such was still
his dream, and, seating himself upon the sand, he inscribed
almost unconsciously the names of Spain, of
the Dian de Burgos, and of the lowly hamlet in his
own country, from which he had been persuaded regretfully
to wander. Then followed rude outlines of
the ship which had abandoned him, and then, naturally
enough, a portrait, something less rude, of the
fair but passionate woman, for whose fatal love he
was suffering the dreadful doom of exile and isolation.
His own name was written, but as quickly obliterated,
and musing over the melancholy record, his heart
failed him, and he sank forward, prone, upon the faint
memorials which the rising waters would soon wash
away forever. Thus he lay moaning for many weary
minutes, till all at once a coldness fell upon him
which chilled him to the heart, and aroused him to
more immediate apprehensions. The shadow of the
hill beneath which he lay was upon him. The sun
was slowly receding from the heights. Starting to
his feet, he turned to reascend the hill, and recoiled
with a feeling little short of horror, as he beheld the
huge mouth of a cavern yawning directly upon him.
This cavern was open to the sea. Its waters, at their
rising, passing the little stretch of sand upon which
he had lain, glided into the dim hollow, which now
looked grimly threatening upon the easily alarmed
spectator. The opening was not a very large one,
but would easily admit of the passage of three or more
persons at a time. Its lips were covered with a soft
and beautiful clothing of green moss, which made the
darkness within seem yet more dismal. Long grasses,
and thick shrubs and vines hanging over from above,
contributed to increase the solemnity of its aspect, as
showing the depth and certainty of its solitude; and
the deep silence which prevailed within, added still
more greatly to the impressive influence with which it
possessed the soul of the Maroon, while he timidly
yet eagerly gazed upon the opening. At the first
discovery of this domain of solemnity and silence, he
receded almost to the sea. He was not encouraged
by the stillness. A voice from within, the cry of a
beast, the rush of a bird's wing—had been more encouraging.
His advance was very gradual—but he
did advance, his doubts being much less easy of endurance
than the absolute presence of a real cause of
apprehension. With trembling nerves he presented
his spear, and got his knife in readiness. The spear
was thrust deep into the throat of the cavern, but it
provoked no disquiet within. Then, his hair erecting
itself, and his heart rising in his throat as he advanced,
he at length fairly made his way into the subterranean
dwelling. There he shouted, and the sounds
came rolling back upon him from so many hollow
voices within, that he once more recoiled from the
adventure, and hurried back in terror to the entrance.

11. CHAPTER XI.

But he gathered courage for a second trial. The
answering echoes were not followed by any evil,
though they seemed to mock his ears with a laughter
such as he had heard from the tyrant of the Dian de
Burgos, when he devoted him to his melancholy exile.
He passed again into the cavern, taking care, by his
own silence, to provoke no such fearful responses as
those which had driven him forth. A few feet brought
him to a small dark pool which lay directly in his pathway,
and which left but a narrow space between its
own margin and the walls of the cavern. This he
sounded with his spear, and found to be shallow. It
was a lakelet left by the waves of ocean, by which,
at its overflow, the cave was evidently penetrated.
Passing this pool, our Maroon found himself upon

a dry floor, the foundation of which was the solid
rock; but a slender coating of soil had formed upon it,
which was, in turn, clothed with a nice smooth covering
of green and velvet-like moss. Here he was
gladdened by a glimpse of the sun, which, breaking
through a chink in the rock, a slender crevice, glided
along the rugged vault-side, affording to the timid
adventurer a more perfect idea of an angel presence
than he had ever before possessed. Another opening
in the rock, almost immediately above, afforded sufficient
light for his examination of the whole interior.
The cave narrowed to a still slenderer gap, as he
advanced, than was the one by which he had entered.
This was the entrance to another apartment. It was
some time before he ventured to enter this, and not
until he had thrust his spear its full length into its
recesses. He then clambered up, for the elevation of
this inner chamber was greater than the first. Here
he was again refreshed with brief glimpses of the sunlight,
which, peeping in through two openings of the
rock, looked like two of the most natural and smiling
eyes in the world. This apartment, though of less
height, was of larger area than the other. It soon
afforded him new subjects of curiosity if not alarm.
In the centre of the chamber stood a rock, scarcely
larger than a blacksmith's anvil, and having something
of the appearance of one, on which lay the remains of
a fire. Brands lay half consumed, the fires of which
were now extinguished; but the ashes were there,
still undisturbed, as if the flame had only recently
gone out. Piles of an aromatic gum lay upon a shelf
of the rock, and other piles, in slender fragments of
wood, of which our Maroon knew nothing, lay contiguous
also. But what more than anything beside
arrested and confounded our Maroon, were certain
numerous shreds of dark hair, soft, fine, and very
long, like the hair of women, which hung neatly
tied in separate volumes from the tops of reeds, which
were stuck about the vaulted roof of the cavern, and
wherever a crevice could be found sufficiently large in
which to introduce their slender extremities. Examining
several of these shreds of hair, the wonder of
the explorer was increased to discover that the ends
of them were shrivelled as in the flame. There were
other objects to excite his surprise, if not to occasion
his alarm. Baskets of shells and pebbles, flowers
which had decayed, a bow and many arrows—all of
the latter being broken—and a heavy string of large
pearls which had been slightly injured in the fire, but
which Spanish cupidity readily conceived would still
possess considerable value in the Cuba market.

12. CHAPTER XII.

Here, then, was a curious discovery. The island
was not inhabited. He had traversed it for three days,
and had found no footstep but his own. Had it ever
been inhabited? Scarcely; the impunity with which
beast and bird enjoyed its securities, and of which he
had sufficient proofs in his three days' experience, was

conclusive of that question. But that it was visited
by human beings, the witnesses in the cavern were
numerous. Did they come frequently, for what purpose,
and from whence? These were the next questions.
That they came frequently might be inferred
from various circumstances. The brands which had
been swept from the altar, were in great heaps in one
corner of the cavern. The shreds of hair were equally
numerous and of different degrees of age. This difference
was very perceptible upon the slightest examination.
They came for a religious purpose. The
shreds of hair, the altar, the aromatic woods and gum
—were all significant of sacred rites. From whence?
Surely, was the thought of the Maroon, from that
isle, or continent, the dim outlines of which had fixed
his gaze but an hour before. A farther search led to
farther discoveries, but all of the same character.
Vast stores of these shreds of hair, seemingly the
accumulation of centuries, were found in remote
crannies and dark recesses of the vault. A thousand
little baskets of shells, and white and blue fragments
—pebbles that seemed like glass—and more precious
in the sight of Lopez, numerous strands of pearl, such
as he had already discovered—which, dark and dingy
with frequent smokes in the cavern, he found could
be made clean by a little water. In a recess of the
rock, the most obscure, he made the discovery of a
niche which had evidently been used for a couch. It
was softly lined with moss and leaves, and there were
flowers in bunches at the head and feet which might
have been grasped by the hands of youth and beauty.
The impression of the head was perceptible upon a
pillow of moss at one extremity, and suggested to our
Maroon the idea of a far more comfortable couch for
himself than any which he had yet found upon his
island. The sun had been rapidly sinking while he
had been urging his researches, and the cheerless dusk
of the horizon without, as he emerged from the cavern
determined him once more to return to its recesses.
He did so, and, ascending the mysterious recess in the
inner chamber, though with some hesitation, he soon
sunk into a deep slumber, in which, though he dreamed
of strange forms and aspects about him, he dreamed
of nothing to impair the virtue of his sleep.

13. CHAPTER XIII.

But, with his awakening thoughts, apprehension,
rather than pride or exultation, followed the consciousness
of his new discoveries. Had he not reason to
fear the return of the strange people by whom the isle
was visited, as it would seem, periodically? That
they were a barbarous people he could not doubt; that
they would resent his presence, and treat him as an
enemy, he had every reason to dread. He should be
a victim to some one of their cruel sacrifices. He
should be immolated on the altars of one of the bloody
deities of the Caribbean worship. The man brave by
nature, and in the situation of Lopez de Levya, might
well entertain such apprehensions. How much more

vividly would they occur to the imagination of one
so timid and feeble of soul as our Maroon. They
kept him—assuming various forms of terror—in a cold
sweat for several days; and though the impression
was naturally weakened and dissipated the more
familiar the images became, yet any immediately
impelling thought brought them back upon his spirit
with a ghastly and withering influence. Three days
elapsed after this discovery before he found himself
able to recur to it without a vague and overpowering
sense of terror. But the pearls shone in his eyes.
He had grown wealthy on a sudden. He drew forth
the numerous strings which he found suspended in the
cavern. Every Spaniard of that day had an instinctive
appreciation of treasure. Lopez had never seen
so much riches at a glance before. He examined his
pearls in the sunlight. He cleansed them of their
impurities by the ocean's side. And he was the
master of all this glitter. He had never dreamed of
such vast possessions. In Spain—but when he thought
of Spain, and felt the probability, in all its force, that
he should never again behold its shores, he was almost
moved in his desperation to fling his newly found
treasure into the deep. But the latent hope, which
dreamed of the possible approach of some future
mariner, forbade the sacrifice; and restoring his possessions
to the dark crevices from whence he had
taken them, he stretched himself out upon the eminence
which vaulted his possessions, and which had now become
with him a favorite place of watch, to gaze upon
the broad plain of ocean by which he was girded on
every hand.

14. CHAPTER XIV.

No sign of hope for the Maroon. The sun
shines with a red and scorching influence. There is
not a cloud in the sky to curtain the brazen terrors
of his countenance. The ocean sleeps, smooth as
glass, unbroken in its wilderness of range, spread out
like an endless mirror of steel, that fired the very
brain to gaze upon. And in the sky, on the return
of night, might be seen the moon, bright but placid,
nearly at her full, giving to the scene something of
an aspect melancholy, such as she habitually wears
herself. Not a speck upon the waters—not a speck—
and, while the lull continues, no possibility of a sail
in sight. He looks toward the faint uncertain line of
shore, which he has fancied to be beyond him on the
south. It is no fancy now. It is certain. The subdued
waves lessen the usual obstacles of vision. The
line of land, if it be land, and no mocking cloud, appears
to rise. It undulates. There are inequalities
which strike his eye, and which, seen at that distance,
cannot be subject to doubt or disbelief. He trembles
with mixed feelings of hope and terror as he comes to
this conclusion. Once more to behold the human
form—once more to look upon the friendly aspect of
man, and to say, “Brother!” But will the aspects

be friendly that shall look upon him from that shore?
Will they hearken to his cry of pleading? Will
they understand him when he uses the endearing title
of “brother,” to the savage chief who leads the marauding
party? These suggestions but fill our Maroon
with dismay.

Crouching in the shade, his eye fixed on the opposite
shores, as he believes them, he starts suddenly to
his feet. He passes his hand across his brows—his
fingers press his eyes, as if to remove some speck,
some foreign atom, from his vision. Can he believe
his eyes? Does he, indeed, behold an object upon
the waters approaching him from that doubtful and
hostile shore? He sees—but now it disappears. It
is gone! He looks in vain, his whole frame convulsed
and quivering with the emotions of his soul!
Again it rises into view. It disturbs the smooth surface
of the deep. The brightness of the mirror is
shaded by a speck, and that speck grows upon his
sight. He can doubt no longer. It is a boat which
he beholds—it brings with it a savage enemy—the
fierce cannibal of the Caribbean Sea! He drops his
spear and his crossbow—his hand grapples, not his
knife, but his rosary. He falls upon his knees—he
counts the beads with hurried hand and failing memory.
He clutches the agnus Dei—he strains it to
his lips, and with many a broken invocation to some
favorite saint, he hurries away to put himself in
shelter.

His search has fortunately enabled him to find
many places of temporary hiding, such as would

probably suffice for safety during the stay—which
was evidently brief always—of the savages by whom
the islet was visited. At first, he thought of occupying
a dense piece of copse, which lay at a little distance
in the rear of the elevation in which the cavern
was found. But a doubt whether this would not be
penetrated, in a desultory ramble of the intruders
after fruit, and a curious desire to be in some situation,
which would enable him to watch their proceedings,
led him to abandon this idea. The cave itself
was obviously one of their places of greatest resort.
It was here that their religious rites were performed.
The islet itself was unemployed. It was a place set
apart and sacred to some special and superior purpose.
The vaulted chamber was the place of their
mysteries. He determined that it should be the place
of his concealment. He had sought out all its secret
places. He had seen that certain of their remains—
their shreds of hair—their baskets of shell—their
broken arrows—had been undisturbed for a long season;
and behind these, in convenient fissures of the
rock, which were wholly unlighted by the day, he
prepared to bestow himself. The suggestions of the
naturally timid person, under a consciousness of approaching
danger, are usually prompt enough. Lopez
de Levya hurried to execute the plan he had conceived.
He entered the cave, ere yet the strangers could behold
any movement on the shore. His provisions—a
supply for several days, at least, had been already
transferred to the safe-keeping of the vaulted apartment.
These were all disposed of, conveniently to
his reach, in the crevice of the rock in which his
own person was to find security. And, all prepared,
he planted himself within the mouth of the cave,
anxiously looking forth—yet not so as to be seen—
for the unknown object of his apprehension.

15. CHAPTER XV.

The strange object is indeed a boat—a large canoe
with two banks of oars—one of those long and stately
barges in which the Caribbean was wont to
go forth for war or ceremonial. Its sides were
gaudily and richly painted. Its poop was raised with
a triumphal canopy of dyed cotton above it. Its prow
was lofty and sharp, and bore, for a figure-head, the
savage jaws of a cayman, or American crocodile.
The rowers of the boat were men, but all besides
were women. These were eight in number—seven
who sat forward, and near the prow, and one who sat
in the stern alone and under the canopy. The course
of the boat was regulated by the oarsmen. The
women at the prow were all richly clad in stained cotton
garments. Their heads were tressed with strands
of pearl—their necks, which were bare, were covered
with similar decorations. Each, in her hands, bore a
bunch of arrows and a basket. Beside them might be
seen other baskets of aromatic gums and bundles of wood
similarly aromatic. These females were all evidently
matrons, none of them being less than thirty years

of age, and all of them wearing the experience of
look and bearing which is common to those who have
been mothers. But she, who sat alone at the stern,
was evidently none of these. She could not have
been more than fifteen years old, and looked wild and
startled as a young fawn, for the first time venturing
forth without its dam in company. She was quite as
beautiful as she was young; her skin less dark than was
usual among the Caribbean Indians—not much more
dark, indeed, than was that of the Spaniard—and the
red blood coursing at moments from her heart into
her cheeks, suffusing it with the most exquisite tints
of innocence and youth. She was well formed and
tall. Her hair streamed down over her back and
shoulders. Her bosom was quite bare, without pearl
or any other ornament. Her dress was of white cotton,
purely white, without any of those rich and
gaudy dyes, which were so freely used by her people.
Before her was a small earthen vessel half covered,
from which a slight smoke continued to ascend, as if
from a hidden fire below. Into this, at intervals, the
maiden might be seen to fling a fine powder, which she
scooped out of a gourd that lay beside her. Numerous
baskets of flowers and shells lay at her feet, and
a bunch of arrows rested upon her lap. The oarsmen
were all habited as warriors. Their brows were
grave. No words passed among them or among the women,
until, as they drew nigh the shore, the latter suddenly
broke out into a wild, and not unmusical chant,
which made our Maroon recoil within his vaulted chamber,
with an indefinite sense of terror. At this sound
the rowers dropped their oars—the boat lay upon her
centre, and the women prepared to leave her, though
they were still more than thirty paces from the shore.
But the water was exceedingly shallow where the vessel
lay;—the beach which formed the esplanade of
the cave, stretching out boldly for some distance into
the sea. Availing themselves of their knowledge of
the bar, the women stepped forth upon a ridge, where
the ocean, disarmed of its billows, swept along gently
to the level of their knees. They brought forth their
billets of fragrant wood—their baskets of shell—
their sheaves of arrows—their vessels of odorous
gums and incense. Then, taking the damsel from
beneath the canopy at the stern, they bore her, with
anxious solicitude upon their shoulders from the
vessel to the shore—her feet and drapery being kept
sacred from the waves. One of their number seemed
to counsel and direct the rest, and it was with feelings
of new horror, that our Maroon beheld in her grasp,
as she led the way to the cavern, a sharp broad
instrument of stone, that greatly resembled a butcher's
cleaver. His apprehensions were not now for himself.
For what was the unhappy damsel destined? For
the sacrifice? For what crime—what penance—what
terrible superstition? To appease the malice of what
bloody god, was this poor child, so young, so beautiful
—so evidently innocent—to be made the victim? Her
sad and fearful looks—the tears which now gathered in
her eyes—the wild chant of the women, and the stern,
grave aspects of the men—these all seemed to denote
an occasion of woe and terror. The men did not leave
the boat; they drew no nearer to the land. The shore
seemed to be a consecrated one, which the masculine
footstep was not allowed to pollute. The girl, still borne
upon the arms of the women, and following her who
seemed to be the officiating priestess, was carried into
the cavern; the wild chorus of the women being resumed
as they entered the gloomy portals, and reverberating
from the walls within, with a sound at once sweet,
awful, and inspiring.

16. CHAPTER XVI.

Our Maroon was already crouched, close, in his
place of hiding. He beheld in silence and safety,
but with an awful beating at the heart, the whole of
the strange procession. He saw the women circling
the altar stone with wild contortions and a strange
unearthly song. He saw them, from several branches
of wood, draw forth the billets, with which they kindled
a flame upon the stone. The fire was drawn from
the vessel which had been supplied with fuel on the
voyage by the hand of the young damsel. She sat
apart, on a low projection of the wall, to which she
had been conducted, and but a few paces from the
cavity in which Lopez found retreat. She took no
part in the ceremony, though she seemed deeply interested
in its progress. At certain pauses in the
wild incantations, particularly when certain emphatic
sounds or words closed the chant, she clasped her

hands aloft, and her groan was audible, as if in supplication.
The fire began to blaze suddenly above the
stone, and its strange gleams played in lively tints
upon the gloomy walls of the cavern. Then the circling
dance and the chorus were renewed. Then at
certain sounds the women paused, and at such moments,
the maiden rose, and, approaching the flame,
threw into it fragments of wood or gum with which
she had been supplied. At all such additions, the
flame blazed up more brightly, and the chant was
more wild and vigorous than ever. At length it
ceased; and in an instant, every woman crouched
down around the stone where she stood, except the
one who seemed to act as priestess. She did not join
in the chorus of the others, but in a low chant of
her own performed some separate office. She now
approached the maiden, and conducted her toward
the altar. At her words, the damsel bent over the
heads of the kneeling women separately, and her
tears fell fast as she murmured in their several ears.
She took from the necks of each her strands of pearl.
They themselves unbound them from their own tresses,
which now hung down mournfully, of great length,
from every shoulder. The pearls were collected by
the priestess and laid apart. Our Maroon, from
his place of watch, followed with keen eyes, and saw
where she laid them. The women now receded.
The girl embraced them each, with a deep sobbing,
and they responded with mingling sighs and songs,
while passing out of the chamber in which they left
her with the officiating woman. When their voices
were heard only faintly from the sea-shore, where
they had now assembled, the maiden was conducted
to the altar-place by her matron-like companion.
Her mournful utterance announced some sadder ceremonial.
The girl answered her by a cry, and threw
herself at her feet before the altar. The woman knelt
upon one knee. The head of the maiden was supported
upon the other from which the long black hair
depended, half shrouding the drapery of the priestess.
Very tender were the few words which then passed
between the two. The girl clasped her hands together,
and her tearful eyes were full of the sweetest but saddest
resignation. The woman smoothed her tresses
out with her fingers, stooped and kissed affectionately
the lips of the child, and while everything betokened
nothing less than the truest sympathy, and the most
heartfelt and generous affection between them, what
was the horror of our Maroon—now deeply interested
in the event—to see the woman possess herself
of the broad knife of stone which lay on the foot of
the altar. Timid and feeble as he was of soul, his
fingers clutched his knife with a convulsive resolution,
which, in the case of a braver spirit, would have long
before declared itself in action!

17. CHAPTER XVII.

The moment in which the Indian damsel lay thus
prostrate, and at the mercy of one who seemed about
to complete the rites in which she had been engaged,
by the sacrifice of the innocent creature in her grasp,
was a moment of the most cruel humiliation to the
imbecile Spaniard. His sensibilities were violently
excited. Every sympathy of his heart was awakened.
His better nature, his human training, his Christian
teaching—such as it was possible for him to acquire
in that day of constant war and rapine—were all active
in urging him to adventure his own life in saving
her who seemed about to perish before him. She too,
so young, so resigned, and—not the least consideration—so
really beautiful. But the necessary nerve
was wanting to the Maroon. He who dared not
the single stroke, though prompted by the woman he
professed to love, when it would have saved her from
shame, and himself from the bitter exile which he
now endured, was not likely to exhibit any rashness,
any ordinary courage, though with such a threatening
spectacle of death before him.

Happily for humanity, his apprehensions were all
idle. The meditated sacrifice in which the priestess
was about to officiate, contemplated not the life, but
the long and flowing locks of the damsel. These
were severed at a stroke, and hung up in the chamber,
from an arrow, the shaft of which was made to penetrate

a crevice in the rock. Then the maiden rose,
and taking the bunch of arrows which she had brought,
she snapped them in twain before the altar, which the
matron still continued to supply with aromatic gums
and fuel. Some further ceremonies were performed—
there was a solemn imposition of hands, while the
virgin knelt before the priestess, and the lips of the
latter were glued to the forehead of the girl. A
brief dialogue, in subdued and murmuring tones,
passed between them, and then the voices of both
rose in a wild, sad chant, the burden of which was
caught up by the voices of the females without. One
embrace followed the subsidence of the strain, and
the matron and the virgin parted—the former hurrying
from the cavern, and the latter sinking down, in
an agony of fear and grief, before the fitful blaze
upon the altar.

Lopez de Levya drew a long breath. He began to
grow courageous. The voices of the women without
were dying away in the distance. Could they have
retired to the boat, and could they be returning to
the distant shore from whence they came, leaving the
maid alone, as he himself had been left. Her evident
sorrow and apprehension declared this to be the case.
But it was evident that no such feeling moved her
abandonment as had occasioned his. The proofs of a
deep and tender interest had been shown her to the
last. He had heard the sighs, the moans, the murmurs
of the officiating matron. He had witnessed
her fond caresses of the damsel. He had heard with
quivering sensibilities, the wild sad chant of the attending

women, whose song still feebly fell upon his
senses from without.

The scene which he had witnessed was a religious
ceremony. But what did it contemplate? Was the
maiden thus left to herself—and to him—destined for
a sacrifice—to perish at last, before the altars of
some strange and savage divinity? It might be so;
but certainly no such purpose was designed at present,
for he did not fail to perceive that an ample supply
of food was left with her, sufficient for a month's consumption.
Or, was she destined, herself, to become
a priestess, officiating, like the matron, who had
left her, in the same and other mysterious rites, hereafter?
This was the more probable conjecture. At
least, such was the thought to which, after a rapid
mental survey of probabilities, our Maroon arrived.
Perhaps a little more deliberation might have rendered
it doubtful whether the innumerable signs which the
walls of the chamber presented, of repeated ceremonials
like the present, were not proofs that the
proceeding could not regard any such appropriation
of the neophyte. It was a ceremonial evidently common
to the tribe or nation. It was one through which,
at a certain period, each virgin had to pass. It was
indeed, a dedicatory, but it was an invocatory service
also. We may, in this place, briefly declare the object
of the ceremonial.

Among the Caribbeans, as among the aborigines of
the New World in most quarters, both sexes were dedicated,
separately, and by different rites, to fortune.
The period in life when they were to emerge from the

salutary restraints of the parent, and to be left to the
assertion of their own wits, and the exercise of their
own intelligence, was that chosen in which to solicit
for them the protection of the gods, who should confer
upon them some especial spiritual guide and guardian.
To propitiate the gods for this favor—to move them
to an indulgent dispensation—to secure a friendly and
favoring protector, and to inspire the young with
wisdom, courage, and faithfulness, were the objects of
the ceremonial. In the case of males, they were thus
consecrated when able to commence the labors of the
chase. They were subjected to severer ordeals than
the other sex, since the leading desire, with them,
was their proper endowment with hardihood and courage.
Long abstinence from food, exposure to cold,
and frequent stratagems by which to alarm them and
try their courage, were resorted to by those having
charge of their initiate. The maidens were more
gently entreated. Isolation, rather than exposure,
was the influence employed upon their courage. Food
was provided them, but of a sort rather to inflame the
fancies than the blood. This was to be chastened
rather than exhilarated. Roots of rare efficacy, the
virtues of which they knew—herbs which assailed the
brain and the nervous system, were silently mingled
with the food which was left for their sustenance, and
the very fumes of the aromatic woods and gums with
which they were appointed to feed their daily and
nightly fires, possessed a partially intoxicating effect
upon those who continued to inhale them. It was
while under such influences that the visions of the
youth were to be observed with heed. The images
that were most frequent in their dreams—the scenes
which they witnessed—the voices that they heard—
the laws which were declared—these were to be the
oracles by which their whole succeeding lives were to
be regulated. By these the young warrior was to be
guided in the chase or the conflict, and the young
woman, in the keeping of her household, the training
of her young, and the exercise of her sympathies and
tastes. The favorite or leading aspect, or object, in
their visions, was to become their guiding spirit forever
after. It was customary in many tribes, perhaps
in most, to adopt this object as their mark or sign;
—and this was the totem, inscribed upon the arm or
breast—not dissimilar to those of knighthood in the
Middle Ages, drawn from favorite objects of sight, or
the events most conspicuous in their lives; with this
difference, that, in Europe, the totem was inscribed
upon the shield, the surcoat, or the pennon—among
the savages of the New World, upon the naked person.

18. CHAPTER XVIII.

Night came on in the vaulted chamber of the lovely
isle, occupied only by the Indian damsel and the
Maroon. Without all was silent, except, now and
then, the bark of the marmozet as he bounded among
the cocoanut-trees above. Several hours had elapsed
since the sounds of the wild chant of the women had

failed upon his ears, yet our Spaniard maintained his
place of hiding with religious quietude. Meanwhile,
the girl fed the fires upon her altar. She sat upon a
rude swelling of the rocky floor, her hands folded in
her lap, and the ends of her shortened hair resting
upon her shoulders. Her form was rather between
the Maroon and the fire, the blaze of which, as she
heightened it by occasional supplies of fuel, made
marvellously distinct, in his eyes, the exquisite outline
of her delicate but well-marked profile. And thus she
sat, and such was her only office, for several hours
more.

It must have been full midnight, when our Spaniard,
who had not slept an instant, discovered that sleep
had seized upon the senses of the Indian damsel.
Her form subsided into an attitude favorable to rest.
She sank upon one side, her head resting upon a sudden
elevation of the floor, which conducted to the niche
which seemed to have been employed as a couch on previous
occasions, and where, for the last two nights,
Lopez himself had taken his rest. Her breathing was
soft and regular. It denoted a calm and perfect
sleep. He was encouraged and gradually withdrew
from his place of concealment. His steps were cautiously
taken. He drew nigh to the sleeper—surveyed
her with a keen and pleasant interest;—then,
farther to be sure, he stole forth into the antechamber
of the vault, and gliding cautiously, maintaining a
vigilant watch all the while, he emerged from the
cavern, and stood upon the beach. The waters of the
sea had gone down. The gray sands were quite uncovered

for a long stretch, the spot being wholly bare
upon which the Indian bark had anchored during the
afternoon. The moon was high in heaven, and at her
full. No cloud obscured or sullied the blue serenity
of the skies. The scene was eminently and wholly
spiritual. There was nothing human visible in the
surrounding aspects of ocean, sky, and land. Satisfied
of this, our Maroon returned, with rather hurried
footsteps, to the cavern. He stole back cautiously,
however, so as not to disturb the damsel. She still
slept, her position being totally unchanged. But the
fire had grown faint upon her altars. He fed it with
a handful of the fuel that lay contiguous. He knelt
beside her, and in the reviving blaze, he examined
closely the innocent features, which he had thought
so very sweet and beautiful in the before imperfect
light. The nearer survey did not lessen her loveliness
in his sight. Her closed eyes, and her slightly
parted lips, were studies for the sculptor, they were
so delicate in their structure, yet so admirably defined.
The features might have been thought Castilian. The
forehead was high but narrow, the nose good, and the
neck moderately large and smooth, rising into the
gentle swell of a bosom which had not yet learned to
heave with other than happy childish emotions. One
of her hands, the fingers of which were long and taper,
had stolen to her breast, the partial drapery of which
it seemed to grasp. The other lay at her side, the
fingers closing upon a handful of wood intended for
the fire. Thus she slept.

The Maroon stooped and pressed his lips closely

upon hers, she sighed deeply, but moved not. Again
he repeated the kiss, and her eyes opened upon him.
They closed involuntarily. Again they opened, and
now with a wild, appealing expression. He had
slightly retreated, as he found her about to waken.
He had regained his feet. He stood somewhat apart,
the altar being in some degree between them.

We have spoken of the personal appearance of
Lopez de Levya as being pleasing to the eye of woman.
At this moment it looked manly as well as
pleasing; and, in the doubtful light of the cavern,
with his form erect, his features half shaded by the
gloom, his knife at his girdle, and a rich red scarf
about his waist, he might have served for the model of
one of those brigands, a compound of Orson and Adonis,
whom we see so commonly in Italian pictures.
The impression was not unfavorable upon the eyes of
the Indian damsel. But her senses had evidently
mingled the aspect before her with the object in her
dream—the purpose of her watch and ordeal—the
beneficent creature vouchsafed by her savage gods,
from whose guidance her future destiny was to be
shaped and governed. The instincts of the Spaniard
were sufficiently acute to see the impression that he
had made, and to conjecture, in some measure, its origin.
He was well aware that the first impression of the
European upon the aborigines was that of a superior
being. The devout appealing eyes of the damsel—her
hands crossed upon her breast—satisfied our Maroon
that she held him to be so. He advanced a single step,
he smiled on her kindly, he raised one hand upward to

heaven, while he placed the other on his heart. She
followed all his movements with others like them.
Her hand was lifted to heaven, and carried to her
breast. She too smiled—the smile of innocent hope,
that might have brought with it warmer assurances.
He spoke sweetly and tenderly, but the words were
lost upon incapable but not unheeding senses. She
shook her head with a mournfulness of look that told
him, plain as words could speak, how sorrowful she
was that she knew not what he said. But he smiled
encouragingly, and resorted once more to signs to
assure her of his affection. These she understood.

The language of the heart is a very universal one.
Charity and sympathy may speak and be understood,
though they have not a word in common with the
hearer, from the centre to the pole. She answered
his signs. She pointed to the fires before her. She
threw a fresh supply of fuel upon the blaze, then rising
to her knees, knelt before him, and crossed her
hands upon her bosom. He stooped, and took her in
his arms. She would have receded, but he held her
tenderly in his grasp, and once more pressed his lips
upon hers. She sank submissive in his embrace. She
spoke but a single sentence, but one of its words
smote his ear like a familiar accent. He had picked
up a few of the Caribbean phrases from Spaniards who
had been among this people. The girl had designated
him as “the good White Spirit.” The word
“spirit” had become a frequent one in the intercourse
of the Jesuit missionaries with the heathen. God,
and love, and heaven, good, bad, the sky, the sea, the

boat, Castile, white and red man—these, and several
other words had, from the communion of the Spaniards
with the tribes of the Caribbean Sea, grown to
be a tolerably common property with the two races.
Lopez rapidly ran over in the ears of the girl all of
this description which he found it easy to remember
on the instant. Some of these she repeated after him
with ready acquiescence. Again she described him as
the good white spirit—her good white spirit—and he
now understood her.

He did not disabuse her. He feared to forfeit her
reverence, in seeking to awake a humbler emotion;
and as the master of her destiny, a celestial visitant,
provided for her guidance, he proceeded to enforce
her affections. He placed himself beside her—together
they supplied the altar with fuel and incense, and
when he kissed her lips, she crossed her arms upon
her breast, and submitted with delighted reverence.

It was the benevolent spirit whose favor she implored,
who then, in his most gracious aspect, presented
himself in compliance with her invocations. She had
been taught to believe that he was difficult of approach
—slow to be won—reluctant to appear;—that it required
earnest and long-continued devotions, and a
painful and protracted vigil. How fortunate was she
among her sex, that, in her instance, he had departed
from his wonted severity!—that, instead of presenting
himself, as he was reported frequently to have done
—in harsh and ungenial aspects—in the shape of
bird, or beast, or reptile—he had assumed his
noblest attributes of form, and put on features not

only of the highest, but of the tenderest character.
Verily, she was the favored among women! The
tones of the Spaniard's voice were to her sounds of
the sweetest music from the Caribbean heaven. His
smile was that glance of the morning or of the evening,
when the brightness is equally rare and benignant;
and, when his hand rested upon her cheek or
neck, she felt the thrill of an emotion through all her
veins, such as she had been taught to believe was
vouchsafed only to the favored few, the select of the
Caribbean Elysium. Their eyes took part in their
constant intercourse, and never had Lopez looked or
spoken with so successful eloquence. Though she
comprehended but few of his words, yet nothing was
thrown away of all that fell from his lips. As at the
first, in the primal hour of creation, the speech which
Heaven bestowed upon its creatures was that of love,
so love constitutes the basis of that ancient language
which it is still so easy for the heart to comprehend.
Assisted by this heart-manual, it was easy for Lopez
to make his Spanish and her Indian words subservient
to their gradual use; and ere they sunk exhausted into
the mutual arms of sleep that night, they had commenced
a course of study quite as rapid as the Robertsonian
method, by which a modern or ancient dialect
is to be mastered in six lessons.

The bridal hour of the two exiles thus strangely
brought together, promised to be as happy in its progress,
as the destiny in which it had its origin was
solemn and peculiar. With the dawn, the two awakened
to neither repining nor repentance. Life had

suddenly put on her loveliest aspects to both. The
Spaniard was no longer lonesome in his solitude, and
the damsel was happy in the faith that she was
favored among women, by the very deity to whom her
sex devotes the most dutiful and earnest solicitations.

19. CHAPTER XIX.

The passion thus begun, and sanctioned, as it
would seem, by an especial Providence, was neither
slow to ripen nor of modified character. The very
isolation of their abode, separated from all the world
beside, tended to compel their affections eagerly, and
into the same channel. But it was not long before
the Indian damsel learned to comprehend the purely
human character of her companion. Her very love
produced this discovery, since it could only exist in
its natural intensity in the untutored mind, in the
comparative loss of its veneration. The young Spaniard
no longer repined at his desolate condition. The
fate to which he resigned himself had received its consolations,
and in the first few days of his happiness,
if he thought at all of his late comrades, it was with
something of fear and misgiving, lest they should
come and tear him away from an abode in which he
was equally free and happy.

The morning after their first meeting, he stole
from her side while she yet slept, and from the antechamber
of the cavern awakened her with a soft sweet

strain from his guitar. It was the first time he had
touched the strings since the instrument had been
hung about his neck in mockery. She started from the
mossy niche where she lay, and lighting anew the fire
upon her altars, sank before it in the attitude of
prayer. A delirious delight was visible upon her
countenance as the music reached her ears, and when
Lopez looked in upon her, she bore the expression of
one whose whole soul was lifted with a sense of the
Divine favor. He made the guitar the instrument for
her education. She had the sweetest voice herself,
and for his music, gave him wild ballads of her own
people, of which he could appreciate the music only.
But their words were rapidly interchanged. The
lessons were constant, and conveyed through numerous
media of which the teacher in civilized life can have
no notion. Life itself depended on their progress,
and when this is the case, the tuition must be marvellously
rapid—love as life—their daily sports, their
mutual progress—the exercise of their tastes—their
consultations upon sea, and sky, and grove, the passage
of the wild bird—the bound of the marmozet—
the gathering of fruit—the song, the dance, the sigh,
the smile—all these provoked their lessons and exercised
their industry in acquisition. It was not long
before they declared themselves in syllables that took
the place of simple sounds—not long before the teacher
could listen with delight to the childish prattler at his
side, whose accents would have seemed uncouth in the
ears of critics only. Day by day, teaching and taught,
the horizon of their hopes and affections sensibly expanded
before their minds, and the damsel did not
cease to be less innocent because she had learned not
only to understand her own emotions, but to comprehend
the real nature of the companion from whom she
had learned the first great lesson of the woman heart.
She was not less happy that, in losing a God, she had
found a lover and a Lord!

20. CHAPTER XX.

The world for a brief season seemed wholly surrendered
to them. They lived for each other only; and
as they saw no other forms, so they forgot for a time,
that they were to be disturbed by other beings of a
nature like their own. Lopez had no hopes—shall
we call them fears?—that the Dian de Burgos would
ever again appear to seek him out in his place of
exile. He knew how serious and how terrible always
were the jokes of his late tyrant, and never looked
for his repentance. Nor did the poor Amaya—such
was the name of the damsel—dream that her Caribbean
kindred would ever sunder a union so marvellously
wrought by Heaven. Her barbarous rites were
neglected in the prompt realization of her dreams.
This was due in great measure to the teachings of the
Maroon. Already had he begun to bestow upon
her some of his theology—crude and selfish as it was.
The Agnus Dei which he put into her hands, was
quite as frequently an object of her entreaty as it

was of his. Their supplications, at morning and at
evening, to the Virgin, were twined together; and it
must be confessed that, of the two, the poor pagan
damsel was much more earnest in her prayers than
the habitual Christian.

He taught her other lessons. Already had he
begun to conduct her fingers among the strings of his
guitar, and she, rejoicing at the merry tinkle which
she produced, soon promised to acquire its language.
The instrument was constantly in her keeping, except
when she summoned him to perform upon it. Then
she sat beside him, on the edge of the great ocean,
and while the waters rolled and tumbled toward their
feet, she listened to his chant—his fierce ballads of
Spanish chivalry—comprehending but little of the
story, but feeling all the sweetness of the music, the
more perhaps that the words were mysterious and
vague.

But their sports were not always of this subdued
order, though they were scarcely less romantic—such,
at least, as she now taught and encouraged him to
practise. The sea was scarcely an object of terror
to the practised swimmers of the Caribbean Isles.
Amaya, like all the damsels of her people, had been
accustomed to embrace its billows from her infancy.
She soon taught the more apprehensive Lopez to pursue
her in the waves. At the fall of the tide she led
him off among the rocks, whose heads at such periods
were distinctly visible. Here, resting on their dark
gray summits, he beheld her, with a terror in which
she did not share, leap down into the boiling black

abysses, and disappear wholly from his sight. Before
he had yet recovered from his alarm, she reappeared,
bringing up with her the peculiar oyster, whose
immedicable wounds give birth to the beautiful pearl
which is so much valued, though not in the same
degree, by Indian and European. After this discovery,
our Maroon encouraged the sport which had
first alarmed his fears. He, too, acquired courage
from cupidity, and, being no bad swimmer, he
learned to follow her into the grim recesses of the
rocks, when the seas were at repose. He reserved to
himself the opening of the valves, so that he extricated
the fruit from their embrace, without subjecting
it to injury. Great was the wealth which he thus
acquired, to say nothing of the ancient treasures of
the cavern.

But these treasures, which he had not sought, were
valueless where he was. His possessions, so unsuited
to his present condition, first taught him to repine.
When he looked upon his unprofitable stores, his
thoughts immediately yearned for the native land, in
which they had made him famous. With this recollection,
his heart saddened within him. He looked
earnestly along the ocean waste for some sign of his
countrymen. He looked with a momentary indifference
upon the sweet, wild, and artless creature, who
gambolled before his eyes, or crouched in confidence
beside him. Her keen glance beheld these changes.
No change in his aspect ever escaped her vigilance.
At such moments, she would incline herself timidly
toward him—would draw his attention by little artifices—would

appeal to him in awkward Castilian,
which insensibly glided into her native Caribbean
tongue;—the broken accents finally acquiring emphasis
as they concluded in some sweet and foreign ditty.
Sometimes, with a playful fondness, she would assail
his melancholy by sudden plunges into the billows,
striking out for the cluster of little rocks; hiding in
whose hollows, she would beguile him with a wild
strain of her people, or in appealing fancies of her
own, which might have found a fitting translation in
such a ballad as the following:—

THE LAY OF THE CARIB DAMSEL.

It was impossible even for a heart so selfish as that
of our Maroon, wholly to resist a confidence so sweet
and touching. The wild grace of her action, the
spiritual delicacy of her love, the delightful companionship
with which she cheered his solitude—all succeeded,
in the absence of any absolute temptations,
to secure his continued devotion to her charms.

But a change was destined to cast its shadow over
their otherwise happy dreams. Three weeks of delight,

with little interval and scarcely any respite, had
passed since they first knew each other. No doubt of
the security, as well as transport, of her condition,
assailed the heart of the Indian damsel; and if the
Spaniard ever thought of his home, it was only as
one of those vexing fancies, which, as he could
scarcely hope to realize it, it was but childish to encourage.
He made the most of his present happiness,
and resigned himself to the possession of Amaya,
with the more satisfaction, indeed, since, in a choice
among a thousand, she still would most probably have
been the object of his preference. But he did not
the less regard the dowry which she brought him.
He subjected his treasure to daily examination, and,
when the weather served, to daily increase. His
necessities made him a miser. He did not the less
enjoy the treasure, which it seemed he could never
spend.

21. CHAPTER XXI.

But a new prospect of freedom, in this respect,
was about to open upon him. One morning, whilst
our wealthy Maroon was still engaged in the cleansing
and assorting of his treasure, close in his cavern—
he was surprised by the sudden and unexpected entrance
of Amaya, with words of wonder on her
tongue, and looks of terror in her face. He hastily
put his pearls from sight, and hurried with her to the

entrance of the cavern. There, in the sea-monster
which alarmed her with a nameless fear, he beheld an
object of scarcely less terror to himself. This was
an European vessel. It might—it must be a Spaniard—but
it was still at too great a distance to enable
him to solve his doubts, or to relieve or increase
his apprehensions. It was evidently approaching his
islet; and for what visitor, other than Velasquez,
should he look?

In a secure cover, on the top of his cavern, our
Maroon, with the trembling Amaya beside him,
watched the course of the stranger. The Indian girl
beheld the anxiety of her companion—to describe the
feeling at his heart, embodied in his looks and actions,
by its gentlest name—and her own terrors increased
accordingly. In the brief space of time between the
first appearance of the vessel, and his discovery of
her true character, Lopez de Levya rapidly ran over
in his mind the prospects of his condition—the probable
object of the Dian de Burgos, and the effect of
this return, upon his fortunes. What had he to hope
from Velasquez, or the implacable Juan, his rival?
What motive, but that of mockery and a cruel curiosity,
would have brought either of them back to the
spot where they had marooned him? And should
they search for him, what was his hope of concealment?
He could hide from the Caribbeans, who had no suspicion
of any presence but their own—but from the
people of the Dian de Burgos there was no concealment.
They would search the island—they would
discover the cavern, and not one of its crevices could

be made safe against their penetrating eyes or their
probing lances.

A cold sweat covered the limbs of the miserable
creature, as his rapid thoughts coursed over the whole
ground of his condition. And yet, it will scarcely be
believed that, thus doubtful of his own fate, he could
yet think of concealing his newly-gotten treasure.
He hurried back into his cave, counselling Amaya still
to maintain her watch upon the stranger. In secret,
he toiled to place his pearls in security. The crevice
which let in the light on one side the vault, he busily
crammed with the soft moss and leaves taken from the
couch in which he had slept. The light being excluded,
he placed his baskets of treasure along the ledge,
and concealed them in like manner. Nothing but the
closest search, under the stimulating influence of a
suspicion that something was concealed, could have
led to the discovery of his possessions. There was
no way of hiding himself in the same manner; and,
full of the most horrible apprehensions, he joined
Amaya upon the eminence.

It was now necessary to think of her. Should Velasquez
suspect the treasure—should Juan obtain sight
of her, or any of the Spaniards—she would be torn
from his arms with unscrupulous violence. To conceal
her, it was necessary that the cave should be kept
from their knowledge. He conducted her into its recesses.
He showed her where he himself had been
hidden, and easily persuaded her to seek shelter in its
dusky recesses. She might hope to escape unnoticed,
even if the cave were penetrated; but her safety,

should the bark be the Dian de Burgos, lay only in
showing himself. Upon this policy, still trembling to
encounter the cruel Velasquez and insidious and hateful
Juan, the Maroon resolved. He continued his watch
in secrecy, though passing from copse to copse; he
left the neighborhood of his cavern, as the chewit flies
always from the spot where her young are hidden.

The vessel approached that part of the island where
he had been landed. This increased his fears that
she was that of his tyrant. If he came to mock, it
was the game of Lopez to implore and seem repentant.
If to pardon, it was his policy rather to appear surly,
and provoke his enemy to continued hostility;—for,
though anxious to reach Spain with his treasure, yet
our Maroon well knew that, with Juan or Velasquez
as a master, the very suspicion of his great possessions
would be fatal to his life. Better, then, to delay
the day of his restoration, than peril everything
on a hope so doubtful. But, in truth, Lopez de Levya
was not in a condition of mind to resolve on any
policy. He was now, as he had ever been before, the
creature of events!

22. CHAPTER XXII.

These, for once at least, proved favorable to his
fortunes. We have already detailed the fearful circumstances
which had changed the dynasty on board
the Dian de Burgos. Linares and Maria de Pacheco

were now the masters, but the former had no control
over the proud intelligent spirit by whom the whole
proceeding had been counselled. He was a mere
seaman—a bold, strong man—who, conscious of his
own deficiencies, was not unwilling to supply them
from the stores of one who had so much identified her
fortunes with his own. She asked for little in return,
and that he was disposed to accord. He was the
captain of the ship, but she was the guiding spirit.
He did not seek her affections. On this point—indulgent,
perhaps, on all others—she had shown herself
equally resentful and inflexible. But it will suffice
for us that they understood each other, and that
Linares lent himself to her project of rescuing Lopez.
The latter had but little esteem among the seamen,
but he had been harmless, was really gentle in his
nature in proportion as he was timid, and his cruel
punishment had won their pity and their sympathies.
The sailor of that day looked upon the maroon as
doomed to a much worse punishment than death!

Impatient on the prow of the Dian de Burgos, stood
the proud but anxious woman, as the ship approached
the shore. Concealed among a cluster of young
palms, Lopez beheld her; and, in the position which
she held, her eager attitude and outstretched hand,
he at once inferred some great change in her fortunes
and his own. His heart was instantly strengthened.
He came forth from his hiding-place, and the ship,
dropping her anchors, Maria de Pacheco was the first
to descend into the boat which now hurried to the
shore. We need not attempt to depict her raptures or

his own. In her case, they were those of a strong
impetuous nature—her very fondness being linked
with an arrogance of will, which rather compelled
and commanded, than solicited affection in return.
The submissive spirit of the Maroon did not dare to
withhold the expression of a joy, and the declaration
of an attachment, beyond any which he possibly could
feel. Perhaps, of the two persons, there was much
more in the gentle and dependent nature of Amaya,
to persuade him into love, than in that of the imperious
woman whom he had certainly learned to fear.
But she brought with her something more than the
poor Indian girl could offer. Her coming promised
him a restoration to his country, and the privilege of
growing famous in the use of his Caribbean treasures.
The very dowry of Amaya was hostile to her claims.
Of this dowry—of Amaya herself—he religiously
forbore to whisper aught to the proud woman who stood
beside him, and who naturally spoke and thought as
if she were as much the mistress of his heart as she
was of his fate. She soon told him all her story, and he
revealed such portions of his as might satisfy her inquiries
without provoking any doubts. He described
the beauties of his islet. He showed her where he
had often slept, beneath the palms. He gathered for
her his fresh and luscious fruits, and in the delight
and wonder with which she beheld this new paradise,
and in the happy consciousness of the attainment of
all for which she had striven, at such fearful sacrifice
of pride and feminine feeling, she yielded herself up
to the sweet and innocent attractions which gathered
around her. It was with a vague feeling of terror
that he heard her declare her purpose to explore his
empire, and to see, for herself, the beautiful retreats
and resources which had so singularly fallen to his
possession.

23. CHAPTER XXIII.

The situation of our Maroon was one of considerable
difficulty. There was no pretext by which he
could avoid the contemplated exploration of his islet
by the woman who was the mistress of his fate, and,
as she naturally enough assumed, of his affections also.
What had she not perilled for those affections? The
conviction of her own sacrifices—the belief that she
had saved him from a cruel destiny, and that he felt
the profoundest gratitude for her love—had rendered
her more subdued, and gentle of tone and carriage,
than he had ever before seen her. She had no longer
to contend with the brutal passions of Velasquez or
the subtle and insolent spirit of his nephew. There
was no influence now to combat her imperious will,
and to oppose itself to the exercise of her own passions.
She had won the fearful game for which she
had played, and she might well give herself a brief
respite after the contest. The sweet and balmy climate
of the islet, the picturesque beauty of its aspects
—its delicious fruits—the novelty of such an abode
—and, above all, that romantic passion for solitude—

with a companion—which accompanies the fresher
sensibilities of youth—all tended to excite in Maria
de Pacheco the desire which she expressed, at least, to
dream away a single night on the lonely domain of
the Maroon. Her early career in the haunts of
the gypsy, was recalled to memory; and she longed to
realize anew, the wild sense of pleasure which her
passionate childhood had felt, dreaming beneath the
arch of heaven, and gazing away long lapses of the
night, in mute communion with the sadly bright, down-looking
stars. Here, in a solitude which her lover
had maintained for near a month, she might surely
rest one night in safety. The boat might return to
the ship—nay, should return, and she should share,
for that night, with Lopez, the sovereignty of the
island.

“They shall maroon me also, Lopez.”

“They may!” was his suggestion.

“Nay, I fear not. Linares is faithful to me. He
cannot well do without me.”

“But he may be blown off with a tempest. They
are fierce and sudden in these latitudes, and terrible
in proportion to the beauty and serenity of the calmness
now.”

“Well, Linares will come back for us.”

“But, should he founder?”

“We, then, are safe, Lopez!”

The answer silenced him for awhile. But he renewed
the attempt—more cautiously, but with such
suggestions as might have influenced his own nature.
He described to her the unwonted terrors which had

assailed him in his first acquaintance with the island.
The lowing of strange beasts of the sea, which sometimes
came to sleep by night upon the shore;—the
screams of unknown birds of great expanse of wing
and power, glimpses of which he caught, rising and
descending, as from the stars, at midnight;—the awful
plunges of wild monsters, from the shore into the
sea, and the bellowing of whole tribes of strange animals,
whose uproar seemed to shake the islet itself.
But these rather provoked the curiosity than the alarm
of the fearless woman. The novelty of such sights
and sounds precluded the images of terror which he
sought to raise. She declared the very loneliness
which still made him shudder, to be a consciousness
highly desirable to her heart; and as for the great
birds and beasts—she had seen the elephant, and had
heard the lion roar in his own desert of Sahara; and
the very safety of her lover was a sufficient proof that
she could be in no peril. Her will proved superior
to his fears. The boat was filled with fruit, and sent
back to the ship, and Linares was entreated to lay his
vessel at anchor for the night, when the two would
come on board in the morning.

To keep Maria from the cave, was now the object
of the Maroon;—to prolong his ramble until nightfall,
among the groves, and along the sea-shore—and,
in the night, while she slept, to steal away from her side
—regain the cave, repossess himself of his treasure, and
soothe the fears and the suspicions of Amaya, so that
he might abandon her in safety, and without detection
by the woman whom he most feared;—this was the

notable scheme which he suddenly devised, when he
found that Maria was fixed in her purpose of remaining
on the islet. To leave his treasure was out of the
question. But for this treasure he had not cared to
leave the place. He was really very happy with the
Indian damsel—might have been completely happy
but for the dowry which she brought, and which filled
him with the proudest fancies of the figure that he
should make in Spain. To say that he had no compunctious
visitings of conscience at the thought of her
abused devotion—of his so soon and cruel abandonment
of one who so thoroughly confided to his affections—would
be to do him great injustice. But the
sympathies of the heart, unless sustained and strengthened
by a decisive will of the intellect, are never long
to be relied on. They are at the mercy of every
mind, who brings to its support a resolute and earnest
character. Lopez was humbled when he thought of
Amaya, but his remedy was to dismiss her from his
thoughts with all possible rapidity. He was compelled
to do so, for his companion required all his attentions.

We shall say nothing of her shows of fondness.
Maria de Pacheco was not feeble or childish—not
wanton, indeed—in the display of her attachments.
She was too proud for the exhibition of love in its
weakness and dependence. But she indulged the
mood somewhat after the fashion of the Sultana
of the East. She willed to love, and to be loved, and
she required obedience. It was necessary that Lopez
should prove that he was not ungrateful for the risks
which she had run, and the sacrifices which she had

made, in his behalf. It was needful that his attachment
should be as fond, and his behavior as dutiful, as it
had been before the unfortunate discovery which had
placed them both at the mercy of Juan. That he
was reluctant, or forgetful in any respect, Maria was
not suffered to perceive. Excited as she was by her
own emotions—the consciousness of a great battle
fought, and a triumph gained—the last trophies of
which were now in her hands—she, perhaps, would
have been slow to detect the wandering mood and the
indifferent manner of her companion, even if he had
betrayed either. But the timid nature is always solicitous
how it alarms or offends the bold one; and on
the score of his devotedness, Maria beheld nothing,
as yet, to occasion her jealousy. But his will, which
kept him observant of her moods, was not sufficient
to prescribe to her the course to be pursued, or to arrest
her eager progress. Her impetuous spirit hurried
her forward; and the ground which—feeling his way at
every step—it had taken Lopez several days to traverse,
when he first undertook to explore his territory
—was now overcome in a few hours. Vainly did he
seek to detain her gaze—to arrest her progress, and
inspire in her an admiration of objects which had never
once fixed his own. His artifices, though never suspected,
were always fruitless. She still made fearful
progress. The sea-shore was abandoned, the cool
groves received them, the plain rose beneath her footsteps—they
were already upon the slopes of that elevation,
at the extremity of which lay the secret and
the treasure of the Maroon. He looked back in
terror for the sun. His round red orb still shone
high and proudly in the heavens; and it was with
equal wonder and self-reproach that Lopez remembered
how long it was before his timid spirit had suffered
him to compass the same extent of territory. The
paths naturally opened for her footsteps. They had
often been traversed by his own; and it was with a
mortal fear that Lopez momently caught glimpses of
the small, naked footstep of Amaya, on the softer
sands, as she had wandered beside him in their rambles.
But these were never seen by Maria de Pacheco. The
earnest and intense nature seldom pauses for the small
details in progress. Her proud spirit was always
upward as well as onward—always above the earth.
She threw herself suddenly down beneath the thicket.
There was a pause. Our Maroon enjoyed a brief
respite from his terrors. He threw himself beside
her, and her eyes closed in his embrace. To a fierce
and intense nature such as hers, there is something
delicious in the pauses of the strife, but it is only because
they are momentary. The rest from conquest
is perhaps the only real luxury of enthusiasm;—but
the interval is brief, and is simply designed to afford
a renewal of the vitality necessary for continued action.

“How sweet, how beautiful, is the repose of sky,
and shore, and sea! What a delicious languor of atmosphere
is this!”—and a moment after speaking thus,
Maria de Pacheco shook off her own languor, and was
once more upon her feet.

“Will she now return to the shore—to the palms

where I told her I had slept?” Such was the secret
inquiry of his heart. She had no such purpose. Her
curiosity was still unsatisfied. Besides, to walk simply
upon the solid earth, after weeks on shipboard, is itself
a luxury. The sun was still high, and bright,
though sloping gradually to the sea. The step of
Maria was taken forward, and Lopez followed, like a
criminal, with reluctant footsteps, as if going to execution.
They stood at length on the brow of the hill,
which looked over to the Caribbean shore. The abrupt
precipice arrested her farther progress, and she stood
gazing with eager satisfaction upon the small, snug,
and lovely domain of the Maroon.

24. CHAPTER XXIV.

The thoughts coursed rapidly through the brain of
Lopez de Levya. He felt that she was on the brink
of his secret. Another step to the right or to the
left, and the descending pathway would lead to the
sandy esplanade at the mouth of the cave; and, with
her restless glances, what could keep her from discovering
its curious portal, and penetrating to its inmost
recesses. Were she to make this discovery without
his assistance, her suspicions might well be awakened!
He resolved with unaccustomed boldness. He
made a merit of necessity. He put his hand upon
her arm, and with a sweet significant smile looked
upon her face as she gazed upward.

“I have reserved, for the last, my greatest curiosity.
I have conducted you hither to surprise you.
Follow me now, and you will see how complete is my
establishment!”

She did not reflect that he had been guided by her
footsteps, and that his reluctance at her inspection of
his territories had been declared from the beginning.
She was sufficiently happy, and indulged in no recollections
or reflections which might occasion doubt or
suspicion. He led the way, and she descended to the
beach. He conducted her to the cave, and, with the
eager delight of a curious child, she darted into its recesses.
The antechamber was a wonder, but the interior
aroused all that was romantic in her nature.
It was just the sort of dwelling for one trained among
the gypsies of the Alpuxarras. The chamber was so
wild and snug! The stone, such a truly Egyptian
fireplace! She did not dream of its uses as an altar,
nor did he breathe a syllable on this subject. And
the couch in which he had slept, in which there still
remained a sufficient supply of moss and leaves, to
render it suitable for the same purpose, was one to
determine her instantly that it should be hers that
very night.

We need not describe the consternation of Lopez as
he listened to this resolve. It completed his disquiet
and annoyance. He had trembled at every step which
she had taken—at every glance of her eye when the
cave was entered. He feared her eager survey—her
penetrating scrutiny. His eyes stole frequently and
unconsciously to the remote corner of the cave in

which he had concealed Amaya; and while he trembled
at the possible discoveries of the Spanish woman, his
companion, his heart smote him for those which the
poor girl of Caribbee must have already made. For
Maria de Pacheco, assuming the duty and devotion of
her lover, had not spared her endearments. The
silence and the secrecy of the cavern seemed to invite
them. She had hung upon his neck with her caresses,
and he had been compelled to requite them, though
in fear and trembling. His conscience smote him
when he thought of the unselfish and confiding passion
of Amaya—her simple truth, her gentle nature, and
the artless sweetness of her affections. But to withstand
the imperious spirit of the woman at his side,
was not within his strength and courage. His fears,
and the new-born agonies of the Indian woman, may
be more easily imagined than described.

25. CHAPTER XXV.

Again did the two emerge from the cavern. The
sun had set! Night was falling rapidly, as is its wont
in those regions, where the day makes, as it were,
but a single transition, from meridian brightness to
the stillness and the dusk of midnight. An angry
flush lay in the region where the sun went down, to
the wary mariner denoting wind and tempest. But
neither Lopez nor his companion thought of storm;
nor did this fear impress the seamen on board the

Dian de Burgos. The fruits from the shore—the momentary
pause from the ordinary duties of the sea—
and a division of a portion of the treasures of Velasquez
and Juan among the crew, by way of hush-money
and bounty, called for something like indulgence.
The Dian de Burgos was not without her luxuries.
The stores of her late captain were fished up. Linares
was disposed to be liberal to his former comrades;
and wine and stronger beverages were not denied to
their enjoyment. It was among the infirmities of
Linares, that he himself was not wholly insensible to
the joys of the vine. As the heir of Velasquez, he
might certainly indulge his tastes. He did so; and
while Maria de Pacheco luxuriated in the delights of
love, he gratified his newly-gotten liberty by sacrifices
at the altars of a very different deity.

Ordinary precautions are soon forgotten in the acquisition
of extraordinary pleasures. No one thought
of tempest. The evening remained calm. There was
little wind stirring, just enough to break into irregular
but not threatening billows the vast surface of
the sea. The stars were out soon, large, bright, and
very numerous. A thin drift of clouds might be seen
to scud slowly away among them from the west to
the east. Lopez would have led his companion away
from the cavern—would have persuaded her to a couch
among the palms, where, as he showed her, his own
had first been made. But she had resolved upon the
chamber in the cavern, and he was compelled to submit.
They re-entered it with heedful footsteps. The
interior was wholly dark, except where, in the inner

apartment, the light of the stars made its way through
the two small apertures which the Maroon had left
unclosed. It was long before they slept. Much had
Maria de Pacheco to relate. She gave him the details
of the conspiracy against Velasquez. She suppressed
nothing of her own share in the proceedings,
and declared a very natural and feminine horror at
the catastrophe, which she yet insisted on as necessary
to her own safety and to his. The Maroon listened
to the narrative with conflicting feelings, and in
silence. The conduct of Maria established a new
claim upon his gratitude; but it did not contribute to
the strength of his former passion; and his thoughts,
fascinated by the terrible story to which he listened,
were sometimes startled from their propriety, as he
heard, more than once, what seemed to him a deep
sigh from the hiding-place of Amaya. It may have
been in his fancy only that this intrusive monitor was
heard, but it sufficed to keep him apprehensive. Fortunately,
Maria de Pacheco heard nothing. She had
no suspicions; and, in the death of Juan and Velasquez,
her fears were all ended. In the recovery of
the Maroon all her hopes seemed to be satisfied.

26. CHAPTER XXVI.

The night began to wane—the wind rose. It could
be heard shrilly to whistle through the crevices of the
rock, as if in threat and warning. But Maria slept

not deeply, and her head was on the arm of the Maroon.
When he sought to rise, which more than once
he did, she started from her sleep with disquietude.
If he but stirred she was conscious of it. Her sleep
was troubled. Her dreams revenged upon her conscience
the obtuseness which, by the force of her will,
she imposed upon it in her waking moments. It
enabled her to restrain, though unconsciously, the
movements of her companion. He made repeated
attempts to disengage himself from her grasp—and
rise. He wished to confer with Amaya. We may
conjecture what he would have said. But he strove
in vain. In watching for the moment when the sleep
of Maria should become sufficiently deep to afford him
the desired opportunity, he finally slept himself. Nature
yielded at last, and his slumbers were soon quite
as profound as those of his companion.

Without being well conscious that he slept at all,
he was suddenly awakened, as if by a death-cold hand
upon his wrist. He started, and was confounded
when he unclosed his eyes, to behold the cavern brightly
illuminated. The fire which had been suffered to
go out by the Caribbean damsel, in the sweet experience
of her first mortal passion, had been suddenly
revived, and by her hands. She stood between him
and the altar-place, her eyes wildly sad and staring
upon him and his companion. A torch was still
grasped in one of her uplifted hands. She had probably
been inspecting closely the sleeping features of
the woman who had first taught her to feel the agony
which belongs to a consciousness of the infidelity of

the beloved one. As, at his awakening, the head of
the Maroon was involuntarily uplifted, she cast the
brand which she held upon the altar, flung one of her
hands despairingly and reproachfully toward him, and
darted headlong from the chamber.

27. CHAPTER XXVII.

Maria de Pacheco still slept. It was now doubly
important to the Maroon that she should continue to
do so. To rise softly—which he now succeeded in
doing, without arousing her—to extinguish the brands,
and to steal forth and see what was the course and
what the purpose of Amaya, was the next natural
movement of Lopez. He soon smothered the flame
and quenched the burning embers; but the night had
grown dark, the stars were shrouded, and, when he
emerged from the cavern, he could see nothing. He
stole back, trembling with doubt and apprehension,
and wondering what next would follow. Maria had
awakened.

“Where are you?”—was her salutation as he drew
nigh—“Where have you been?”

“Hear you the wind, Maria? The night is very
dark and gusty. We shall have a storm to-morrow.”

“But we are safe, Lopez!” was the reply.

“I am not so sure of that,” was the secret whisper
of his guilty heart.

The night passed without farther interruptions. At

dawn, the Maroon arose before his companion. He
proceeded to his treasure, which he now prepared to
have in readiness to convey, without being suspected,
on board the vessel. The richer pearls were hidden
in his bosom and in the folds of his garments. The
rest were stored away carefully in the bottom of one
of the largest baskets which he had found in his cavern,
and which he pretended had been picked up on the
shore. A few bananas were laid upon the top, to
prevent inquiry. His arrangements were all complete
before Maria awakened. With the sunrise
they had both emerged upon the beach. But the sun
rose faintly, and struggled on his course against numerous
clouds. The wind came in sudden gusts, sweeping
the ocean into temporary anger. The lulls between
were not less unpromising; and, to the old
seamen, the signs were pregnant of one of those wild
and capricious changes of the weather, which so frequently
converted into a scene of wrath and horror the
otherwise sweet serene of these latitudes. But Maria
did not heed these signs, in the consciousness of the
attainment of her desires. Lopez was too anxious to
leave the neighborhood of the poor Caribbean damsel,
about whom his heart constantly reproached itself;
and those whom we left on shipboard were quite
too happy, in the enjoyment of their unfrequent saturnalia,
to disturb themselves with anticipations of the
future. It may have been a fancy only, but, looking
back at the moment ere he stepped into the boat which
was to convey him from the islet, did he catch a
glimpse of the slender form of Amaya among the
palms, with her arm outstretched, and pointing to the
cavern? A second and more earnest glance revealed
him nothing.

Safely within the ship, his treasures made secure,
and with the example of all around him persuading
him to licentiousness, Lopez de Levya soon gave way
to excesses which contributed to make him forgetful
of the damsel he had deserted. He was received with
half maudlin affection by Linares and the crew. The
coarser pleasures in which these were indulging were
transferred, with some qualifying refinements, to the
cabin of Velasquez. Here, from flagons of gold and
silver, did our Maroon quaff the intoxicating beverage
to the health of Maria de Pacheco and the prosperous
fortunes of the Dian de Burgos. The day
passed in prolonged indulgence. The excesses which
might have revolted Maria and her companion at
another time, were now only the outpourings of a
natural exultation, which was due to a sense of newly-acquired
freedom, and the acquisition of novel luxuries.
The gradual progress of the hours brought on
increase of wind which finally grew to storm. But
this occasioned no disquiet, and did not lessen the
enjoyments of any of the parties. Linares, like a
veteran seaman, full of wine as he was, first took care
to see that his vessel was secure. He was in a good
anchorage. His ship was stripped to the storm, and
he had no reason to apprehend that she would drag
her anchor under any pressure of the gale. A good
watch was set, and, wishing for more freedom in his
revels, he withdrew from the cabin to the more genial,
if more rough association of the crew.

28. CHAPTER XXVIII.

Night came on—a night of storm and many terrors.
Maria de Pacheco and our Maroon were not
wholly insensible to its dangers. At moments, when
the pressure of the wind was most severely felt, they
would pause in the midst of their delights, and think
of the solid security of the chamber in the rock.
But the revel went on without reserve. The rich
flagon stood before them in the cabin. They were
alone with each other. They lived for each other, and
there was no tyrannic power at hand to arrest them as
they carried the intoxicating draught of rapture to
their lips. No longer conscious of the proximity of
other eyes, Lopez de Levya requited the caresses of
his companion with an ardency quite equal to her own.
They spoke of their mutual delights. They declared
their mutual hopes of home, and, in the increasing
exultation which he felt in his security, and the increasing
influence of the wine which he had quaffed,
the Maroon revealed to Maria the wealth of pearl
which was contained in his bosom and his baskets.
He poured forth his milk-white but transparent treasures
into her lap, and wound the lengthened strands
about her neck. His form resting upon one knee
before her, her head stooping to his embrace, neither
of them perceived, for several moments, that, while
they were most drunk with delight, they had a visitor.
The door of the cabin had opened silently upon them,

and the deserted damsel of the Caribbees, standing
erect, with hands drooping at her side, and eyes staring
intently, but vacantly and wildly upon them, now
stood, beholding, herself for a while unseen, their
almost infantile caresses. Stern and mournful did
she stand, surveying this scene of tenderness, which
every pulse of her passionate young heart taught her
was indulged at her expense. She neither sighed, nor
spoke, nor moved, after her first entrance. Was it
an instinct of their own souls which taught them that
another and a hostile spirit was at hand, and which
made the proud Spanish woman start to her feet, with
a sudden terror; while the Maroon, sinking lower,
upon both knees, looked round him in shame and
trepidation at the unexpected presence? To him
the deserted woman gave but a single glance, but that
declared everything in their mutual histories. Advancing
toward Maria de Pacheco, before her purpose
could be divined, she suddenly tore the strands
of pearl from the bared neck and bosom to which
they seemed beautifully kindred, then, dashing them
to the floor, trampled them under foot, and fled from
the cabin with a shriek which sounded like that of
doom in the ears of the Maroon. He had apprehended
a worse danger when he saw her so suddenly
approach Maria. He had seen in the grasp of the
Indian damsel, the same broad and heavy cleaver of
stone with which he had beheld the priestess, on the
night of her first entrance to the cave, sever the long
sable tresses from her neck, and devote them, in sacrifice,
on behalf of her future destinies. That she
would use this fearful instrument on the forehead of
the Spanish woman, was the spontaneous fear in the
heart of Lopez; but, at that moment, so suddenly had
he been surprised by her presence, and so greatly
was he confounded by his guilt and terror, she might
have safely executed the deed of death, had murder
been her purpose.

Inflamed with wine, stung by the indignity to which
she had been subjected, Maria de Pacheco recovered
from her astonishment much sooner than her paramour
from his fears. Confronting him with a fierce
and flashing glance from her dark imperial eye, she
demanded, in choking accents, the explanation of the
scene. But, filled with terror, partly intoxicated,
and wholly confused and bewildered by the condition
in which he found himself, the unmeaning mutterings
from his lips gave no satisfaction to the eager and
heated inquirer. With a speech full of equal scorn
and suspicion, she flung away from his approach, and
darted out upon the deck of the vessel in pursuit of
the stranger. There, all was storm and darkness.
The black masses of night seemed to crowd and accumulate
before her path, filling up the passages, and
preventing her progress. The vessel pitched awfully.
The woman could scarcely keep her feet, though quite
as much accustomed to the motion of the ship as any
of the seamen. She felt her way along the bulwarks.
She saw nothing, heard nothing—nothing but the
awful roaring of the winds as they fell upon the
waves in the fury of a mortal conflict. She made her
way to the prow. The excellent look-out of veteran

seamen whom Linares had provided for the watch was
nowhere to be seen. She called to them below, and
a couple of drunken sailors scrambled up and tottered
toward her. They had seen nothing. She could
see nothing. Nothing was to be heard. Yet, more
vigilant, more sober, and less passionate faculties might
have detected, even while she made her inquiries, certain
dull and heavy strokes, which, at pauses in the
storm, seemed to rise from the deep, and to run along
the cable. Little did Lopez de Levya divine the fatal
purpose for which the Caribbean damsel carried with
her that hatchet of stone.

Impatient, with a brain full of suspicions, and a
heart severed by disappointment, Maria de Pacheco
returned to the cabin, leaving the two half drunken
sailors in possession of the watch. They might have
been, and probably were, famous watchers at all other
times. But the liquors of Velasquez had been equally
potent and tempting, and they were still provided with
a flask of the delicious beverage. They drank and
sang together in defiance of the storm. What was
the storm to them? The Dian de Burgos was as tight
a creature as ever swan the seas, and hard and firm
were the sands, in which their anchors found their
rest. Besides, since they came on deck, the storm
seemed somewhat to have subsided. The seas were
not so high. The ship no longer plunged with that
peevish and cumbersome motion, like a high-mettled
horse under the discipline of a cruel curb, but rose
easily and gently with the play of the billows, as if
she were smoothly posting, with a fair gale, along

accustomed pathways of the sea. The observations
of our watch were of this satisfactory complexion. It
never occurred to them as possible that the ship
really was in motion—that she no longer opposed the
resistance of her mighty bulk to the winds and waters,
but obeyed placidly the impulses which their united
powers gave. They little dreamed, how much of their
consolation was drawn from causes of their greatest
danger.

29. CHAPTER XXIX.

Meanwhile, in the cabin of the Dian de Burgos,
the tempest raged as fiercely as it did without, and
entirely excluded the terrors of wind and sea. The
ready instincts of Maria de Pacheco had conducted
her to much of the secret of her paramour. She now
recalled his reluctance to conduct her over the island
—the art, which, when on the eve of discovery, had
made a merit of necessity, and led her into the
recesses of the cavern—the uneasiness which seemed
heedless of her endearments—the disquiet which they
seemed to occasion—his disappearance at midnight—
and the pearl, the treasure, of which he was so unaccountably
possessed. The sudden appearance of the
Indian damsel revealed the whole secret, and led to
conjectures which made the course of the Maroon
seem more odious to Maria than it possibly could have
been under a frank and honest statement of the facts.

To have made this statement required nothing more
than common courage. But this was the very faculty
which Lopez wanted most. When his secret was extorted
from him, as it finally was, and the whole of
its details surrendered, the vexation of the Spanish
woman was not so much because of the events, as because
of his withholding them. It betrayed a want
of confidence in her, and this was proof of deficient
sympathy. Upon this sympathy she had staked her
life—had perilled all that was feminine in her nature;
and the appalling terror, lest she should have perilled
all in vain, might well justify the fearful aspect, and
the stern and keen reproaches, with which she encountered
him.

She was at last pacified. It was her policy to be
so. When the heart has made its last investment, it
is slow to doubt its own securities. His declarations
of attachment, when he had somewhat recovered his
confidence, began to reassure her. She yielded to his
persuasions—to his blandishments and caresses, rather
than to his reasons, or such as he urged in his justification.
It was in the midst of these endearments
that a voice was heard faintly singing at the cabin
entrance—a voice which the Maroon but too painfully
remembered. The tones, though faint, were distinct.
The song was in the dialect of the Caribbee, and it was
one of which a feeble translation has been already
given;—a ballad which the poor Amaya had been
wont to sing him, when she would beguile him to join
her in her sports of ocean. It rehearsed the delights
and the treasures of the deep—its cool crystalline
chambers, always secure from the shafts of the sun—

its couches of moss and sea-weed—and of the sweet
devotion of the sea maid who implored him to her embraces.
The pathetic tenderness of her tone—the
wild, but pleading earnestness of her plaint—the
solemn sweetness and mysterious force of that invocation
with which the separate verses were burdened—
startled the guilty Maroon with a new and nameless
terror. He started to his feet, but remained stationary,
incapable of motion. But the angry spirit of
Maria de Pacheco was aroused once more. She put
him aside, and darted to the entrance of the cabin.
As she threw it open, a white form flashed upon the
darkness. It seemed as if a spirit had shot away
from her grasp, and darting high in air, had disappeared
in the black waste of sky and sea beyond. A
shriek, rather in exultation than grief, was heard amid
the roar of wind and water. It was followed by the
human scream of Maria. “Madre de Dios! the ship
is moving. We are at the mercy of the seas! Ho!
there, Lopez!—Linares! Awake! arouse ye—or we
perish!”

Her cries were cut short by her terrors. The prow
of the ship was lifted—fearfully lifted, as if by some
unseen power from below. The water surged awfully
beneath, and a terrible roar followed, as if from a herd
of wild animals deep in the hollows of the sea.

“What is that, Lopez?—what is this?—whispered
the woman to the faint-hearted paramour who had
crept beside her. A terrible shock followed—another

and another!—and the whole dreadful danger was
apparent in an instant to both. They were among the
rocks. The ship had struck—and the ready memory
of the Maroon, well conceived the fearful condition
in which they stood, borne by the irresistible and
treacherous currents upon those silent and terrible
masses of rock, where, in moments of the sea's serene,
he had so frequently shared in the wild sports of his
Caribbean beauty. Well might he remember those
rude and sullen masses. Often had he remarked, with
a shudder, the dark and fearful abysses which settled,
still and gloomy, in their dark mysterious chambers.
But he had now no time to recall the periods of their
grim repose. Another moment, and the ship, awfully
plunging under the constant impulsions of the sea,
buried her sharp bow, with a deep groan, in the black
and seething waters. The breakers rushed over them
with a fall like that of a cataract. For a single instant,
the Dian de Burgos hung suspended as it were,
upon a pinnacle. Then, even as the still besotted,
and only half-awakened sailors, were rushing out on
deck, she divided in the middle—one part falling over
into the reservoir among the rocks, the other tumbling
back upon the seas, to be driven forward, by successive
shocks, and in smaller fragments, to a like destiny.

In this fearful moment, Maria de Pacheco was
separated, by the numerous waves, from the side of
the Maroon. He heard her voice through the awful
roar.

“Where are you, Lopez?—O! let me not lose you

now!” But he could make no answer. He heard no
more. Her cries ceased with that single one. He
had not strength to cry, for he was struggling himself
with the seas, and with another peril. While the
fierce currents bore him forward—while the wild
billows tore him away from the fragment of wreck
which he had grasped spasmodically, in the moment
when the ship went to pieces—he was conscious of a
sudden plunge beside him—of an arm fondly wrapped
about his neck, and of a voice that sung in tones the
most mournful and pathetic in his ears, even as he
sank, and sinking with him, that fond ballad of the
Caribbean damsel. It was a heart-broken chant,
which had some exultation in it. The last human
words of which the feeble and perfidious Maroon was
conscious, were those of the entreating sea-nymph—