University of Virginia Library

Peru was fallen, and her king was dead;
And from its tower, plucked down with ruthless hand,
The golden image of the worshipped Sun
No longer blazed o'er Cuzco. Far and wide
The land was harried of its garnered wealth,
Stripped of its ornaments of dowried gold,
Its silver from the rock's reluctant grip
Wrung with relentless hand; and what remained
Was the slow promise of the laboured fields.
But not to them, these fiery youth of Spain,
The shepherd's even pulse, or the long hopes
That wait on tillage and the swelling seed
And fostering heat and rain: their veins were filled
With lust of conquest, and the gleam of gold
Was ever in each eye. Yet still they thronged
The narrow belt between the aerial hills
And the wide mystery of the Western seas;
And, finding nothing left of native growth
To fuel their ambitious wants, they turned
With envious glances on each other's gain.
Till the great Marquis, sitting at Quito,
And ruling with an ill-acknowledged sway
Subjects that hoped each one himself to rule,
Spoke to Gonzalo:

“Other realms there are
Beyond these giant hills or o'er those waves,
Haply in continent, at least in isle,
The bearer of whose destiny be thou
And these—take whom thou wilt—that cannot rest
Until it be delivered. Oh, my brother!
There comes not once again in after-time
To thee or any man such glorious hope
As beckons now: 'tis the last mystery
Of the round globe hid in yon ocean waste,
Or from yon snowy heights to be descried.
Rise equal to thy fortune. Be it thine
To finish what Columbus but began,
And make the name, our common name, Pizarro,
Wide as the water, lasting as the land!
See what a sacrifice of fame I make!
But thou or I, what matter? We are one;
And while I strengthen yet my foothold here
The freer thine for conquest.”

While he spake,
Down the steep flanks of the Sierra crept
The tell-tale breezes, bearing in their wings
Odours of cinnamon, and whispering low
Of wealth unguarded in the vales beyond.
The Spanish soldier, keeping nightly watch
Before the general's tent with idle pace,
Paused, and with upturned face inquiringly
Sniffed the cool odorous air: sweeter to him
Its soft caresses on his swarthy cheek
Than memories of Xenil, or the gush
Of Ebro's waters clear: nor kindlier less
Its freshness folding round his sunburnt neck
Than virgin's arm of snow. While thus he stood,
Gonzalo, issuing from the tent, remarked
His absent gaze upon the snowy ridge
Which cut into the sky, shearing the stars,
Past the low-floating moon. Familiarly
Upon his shoulder with broad hand he smote,
And to his look high thought attributing—
“What say'st thou, comrade? Will it yield to Spain?
Or is it sacred to the stars alone,
A higher Alp than Hannibal would dare?
Perchance there is a Hannibal at hand!
Only be ready thou, my valiant soldier,
Whom I elect my standard-bearer here
—What is thy name?”

Abrupt he stayed; and he,
That other,—“Hernan Sanchez am I called.”
“I know thee well: attend my trumpet-call
To-morrow morning; I have need of thee”—
And passed to his own tent, leaving the youth
With the warm blush of pride upon his face,
And a vague sense of praise.

At earliest dawn
Gonzalo's trumpet shrilling through the tents
Awoke the warrior conquering in his dreams.
Three hundred youths sprang joyful to the call.
These overnight, ere e'er he had retired,
And with his great idea burning clear
In its unclouded dawn, Gonzalo drew,
As flame draws flame, partakers of a faith
To light on hidden empire, win for Spain
Another Mexico, a new Peru!
Each brought a heart strengthened by hardy use,
And never yet contaminate with fear;
A sword, and each could wield it; and a band
Of dusky faces waiting on his nod,
And catching from his frown the fearlessness
Born of excessive or habitual fear.
With arms caught up in haste, and warlike stores,
And other needs resigned to Indian slaves
Enlackeyed with the baggage, forth at dawn,
With little words of parting,—forth they rode
While yet the ensanguined sun, like some vast bird
With flaming wings in a wide equipoise,
Stooped on the mountains ere he soared aloft
For a strong flight prepared: not otherwise
The soul of each, with vigorous thoughts elate,
Spurning the summits of attainèd hope,
Looked to a loftier goal.

Next day at noon
Their ranks were startled with a voice behind
As of a messenger who gallops hard,
Ere yet too late, with some neglected trust.
All turned; and lo! impelled by destiny,
Breathless he comes, the inimitable thief
Who stole the glory of the Amazon,
And wrote across a continent his name
As if on parchment with a running pen,—
Who, like a meteor flashing down the night,
That bursts full-blazed, and, blazing, is blown out,
That upsprings unannounced of tremulous dawn,
And sinks without a setting,—shot athwart
The width of the New World, and disappeared
Leaving the long lapse of the ocean stream
To syllable his name to all its shores
With repetitive murmur, Orellana!

On the fifth day
The sudden swoop of night descending prone
Surprised them in a hollow where the land
Sinks ere it reascends with daring slope
To end with snowy purity in Heaven.
Here, weary with their march of days, the task,
Though self-imposed, in all its magnitude
First seemed to tower with sudden increment
Beyond the flight of Hope. For, as they lay
Supine beside their camp-fires, and the moon,
Looking sheer down upon them from the ridge
With unexpected light, revealed the steeps
Which rose to where she seemed to sit enthroned,
And the vast bulk as of a natural wall
Which God with His own hands had built, the thought
Of their own littleness, as there they lay,
A handful hid in a forgotten valley,
While the great mountain towered and the broad sky
Spread placid and serene, and the vague fear
Of a presumptuous sin in such high presence
O'ercame them, wearied, and they would have fled,
But that they were ashamed even to speak
The coward thoughts which each man deemed his own.
But with the morn courage returned; and Hope
That, revelling in the Elysian fields beyond,
Forgetful of her office by the way,
Had winged by night her backward flight unseen,
Now settling on the summits overhead,
Shone with severer ray, commandingly
To the stern joys of danger ill to dare
And labour yielding slow. Under its light
(For hope too distant but fatigues the mind)
They braced them for the first encountered toil,
And were in wonder, past the point of shame,
Whence the distrust and awe of yesternight,—
Distrust of mind, the strongest power on earth,
And awe of senseless matter, dull and dead,
And would have laughed aloud in the clear air
Of early morning as they scaled the side
Of the huge innocent mountain, but the dread
Of a recurrence of the perilous spell
Moved them to sober thought and kept them mute.

Three days the ascent continued—three long days—
And on the fourth they came upon the snow;
And still the mountain towered till lost to view
In a dense whirl of cloud. Ah! then for thee,
Poor Indian slave, struggling beneath thy load,
With back low bent and shivering limbs thin clad,
On the bleak wintry heights, what woes in store
When wild and wide, with whirling wind and snow,
And crash of loosened rocks the storm came down,
And, clutching at thy heart with fingers cold,
Blew the sharp ice of death into thine eyes,
That never more should brighten at the glow
Of summer beauty in thy native plains!
Unseen the mute imploring look, unrecked
If seen, with which the sinking Indian turned
His human eyes, dim with the glaze of death,
Upon his resolute lord, the Spaniard drew
His mantle closer round him, set his teeth,
And without word toiled steadily up the steep,
Nor turned to right or left, nor paused, nor spoke
Even when his comrade, swaying to the blast,
Went headlong o'er the rocks, or disappeared
Where, walking fearless to his doom, he stepped
Upon a bridge of snow. For he would storm
The stronghold of the storm, and plant his foot
And flag victorious in the chiefest seat
And citadel of the tempest!

Yet at last
When they had reached the summit the wind dropped,
And the mist reeled and fled: the sun poured in,
And shivering on the naked top, they saw
Through the immaculate air the curving globe
Bend to the far horizon's utmost verge
From west to east unknown, a roomy width!
But not beyond the grasp of human will
To limit and explore: the mystery,
The impenetrable mystery was gone
Of magnitude: the big earth seemed to shrink
To conquerable compass; and the fear
That there was nothing further now to find,
Nor continent to conquer after this,
High-hovering o'er their minds, would have descended
To circumscribe their hope, but that the view
That eastward stretched beneath them filled their eyes,
And shut out from their hearts the after-pain,
Which yet, with furious mind swift to exhaust
Immediate expectation, some even then
In lust of conquest were anticipating!

It was a scene of Earth the grandest: far
As eye could pierce undimmed with utmost strain
The landscape spread in virgin loveliness
As if new-made, without the trace of man,
And waiting in the hush of afternoon
Expectant of possessors, a new race
Of sinless being, to admire its beauty
And live the life of happy worshippers
Amid its groves, and gratefully content.

Far other they that with fierce eyes looked down
From the high natural wall that guarded in
This later paradise: the wolvish joy
That snatches to destroy lay in their heart
Slumbering, while wonder gazed on tiptoe mute
Where wide savannahs rolled like a green sea
Of verdure decked with flowers, and forests waved
Their wealth of branches on the lower hills,
And in the lonely valleys brightly clear
Wound with a noble freedom lordly streams,
With here a wide expanse of silvery lake
Green-islanded with palm of stately droop,
And there the sheeny bend repeated oft
Of some more distant river sliding slow
To far-off waters. They forgat their toils,
Forgat that they had ever lived till now.
The past broke from them wholly, like a mantle
It slipped from them with all its care and grief,
Remembrance of inhospitable shores,
Hardship on hill and billow, sickness, want,
Thirst, the broad ocean, memories of home,
Country, and kin, and love's and friendship's claims.
They seemed new-wakened; and, the present pain
Of pinching cold unfelt, their souls leapt down
To taste existence in the under valleys.

On the sharp rocks meanwhile the Indians lay
Breathless with pallid lips moaning in pain
Their secret miseries to Mother Earth
That would not take them to the long embrace
Of her pain-lulling arms, but let them cling
Heedless of their complaints, the while she flung
Her favours at the feet of aliens.
Or if, though few, in shivering groups upheld
By force of sympathy, not native might,
Incuriously like timid sheep they turned
Their dumb pathetic eyes from the new scenes
That met their adverse gaze, arrived the top,
Backwards to whence they came: it was their home,
And this perchance the latest farewell look
Of happiness and hope!

Night caught them thus;
These on the new-found land gazing with hope,
And those with mind or eye despondingly
Upon the old. And now along the ridge
Glimmered the little camp-fires, scantily fed
With sapless twigs in handfuls, wintry moss,
And baggage-boxes, what they best could spare.
To sleep was death: the Spaniard in his cloak
Stalked out the weary hours from fire to fire
Under the chilling shadow of the dark,
Shadow of death to many! where they sat
Frozen to statues, stretching pulseless arms
To flames that but revealed the stony glare
Of eyes untenanted, and gave no heat;
Or ghastlier still when the cold beam of morn
Played on the features of the seated dead
Circling a heap of ashes!

Down the long slope
At break of day the straggling march began,
And ere the last, an Indian with his load,
Had left the night's encampment to the dead,
The hovering condor dropped upon its prey.
Snow fell in mantling flakes, but soon they dipped
Into a warmer air: the grass grew green,
And plants, just budding in the sheltered cleft,
And clumps of trees in social brotherhood,
And note of startled bird, and flash of plumes
Awoke unwonted pleasure in their minds
To see and hear at hand: in one day's march
They stepped from January into June.
And still 'twas January, the drear time
When universal death to other lands
Makes periodic visit to assert
Usurped dominion o'er the realms of life
Designed of old for governance of man,
An ill-kept birthright: but in this fair land,
A new-made world then first surveyed by eyes
Tired with the faded glories of the old,
Perpetual Spring and Summer hand in hand,
Inseparable sisters, make their home
Eternal in the valleys: wintry storms
Menace but come not, nor the bounteous year
Ends in a harvestry of withered leaves,
But leaf to leaf without a pause succeeds
Shooting off death, and bud to blossom grows,
And on the bough, whence falls the fruit mature,
Straight peering through the tender bark you see
The hastening buds gemming the immortal tree.

Arrived the lower slopes they pitched their camp
Under a lofty shade of forest boughs,
And wasted a long afternoon in doubt
Which way to turn, so wide the region lay,
In its immensity fit to maintain
The growth of ancient monarchies that might
In solitude be sitting far apart
And coexist, perchance in mutual peace
As being each to other quite unknown.
Ere early nightfall—for the western hills,
A high horizon, met the sinking sun
Before its full decline—their scouts returned
And made report of natural gardens fair,
And bird and beast that followed wildly tame
But fled them when approached, as half in fear
And half in wonder of the human form,
But nowhere trace of man or other race
Corporeal that betokened by their look
Or handiwork the godlike power of mind.
The gibbering of the ape rang through the woods
And from the rocks and o'er the rushing streams;
And on the lonely level river-shores
Where cities should have sat, or temple towered
On flowery hill, primeval quiet reigned:
The land was tenantless.

So on they rode with listless bridles ringing
Idly, and silence fell upon their march.
Through the clear air from boughs o'erarching high
In sunny radiance fragile blossoms fair,
The peaceful tribute of the unowned woods,
Descended lightly on their warlike arms,
As down the glade or by the forest's marge
In a strange pomp the short procession wound.
They moved as in a dream: the industrious bee
Hummed heedless by on its own task intent
As if they were not; on the distant glade
The indifferent herd was feeding as they passed;
The bird pursued its mate from tree to tree,
Forgetful of their presence; they were shunned
Or tolerated only in a land
Sacred to peaceful thoughts and beauteous forms:
The genius of the place viewed them askance,
Withholding all communion: they were awed
By the lone wealth and beauty of the land,
And felt like men of too presumptuous mind
Trespassing on the gardens of a god.
They longed for difficulties, dangers, foes,
Which yet they dreaded being yet unseen,
Yet everywhere suspected: and as oft
As to some flowery eminence they came
That rose unforested, a specular mount,
Commanding all the varied region round,
It was the sudden movement in the brake
Of panther half-revealed, or to the shore
The alligator shooting from the stream,
That sent the languor from their sated eyes,
O'erwearied with the spectral loveliness
And dulled by the excess of beauty,—if perchance
The distant figure might betoken man,
Savage or civilised, urging the chase
Afoot, or in canoe threading the maze
Of intertangling waters that unite
Haply some hidden settlement or hut
With the big bustle of a central town.

Strange choice of men, if choice it may be called,
Perverse that inappreciative turns
Or with suspicious eye from the green nooks
Of Eden that still gem the desolate earth
To fix on barren sands and snowy wastes
And rocks amid the sea: strange choice is theirs
Self-exiled in the wild to force by art,
And hardly force after long strife and pain,
A pittance from inhospitable shores
Among unlovely scenes, while nature wastes
Her richest and her fairest on the brute.
As lovely is the land, and still, alas!
As lonely to this day, as when they passed,
These mailèd strangers, like a threatening wing
That hurries through the sunshine of a dream.
Yet still the Briton to his barren rocks
Clings with convulsive hand! It seems as if,
Since the great nameless terror of the Flame
That round the umbrageous gates of Eden swung
Relentless to the expatriated pair,
The memory of the fear, an instinct grown
Transmitted with the blood, still drives the sons
Of Adam to the Desert, and despoils
With strange suspicions loveliness itself
Of more than half its natural yield of joy.
So through those beauteous realms, that seemed to them
The hallowed gardens of an absent god,
With fearful hearts they hastened. And ere long
Strange fitful airs of most divine perfume,
That come and go like wandered harmonies
Loosed from an angel's lyre, salute their sense
Inhaling Paradise;—the heralds these
Of a new marvel from the hidden East.
And lo! at last she comes, the fair Windqueen,
Riding the billowy air most gracefully!
The tall tree-tops in meek obeisance bow,
The lower forest claps its hands of leaves,
And the dim air is lightened with the flush
And glow of scattered blossoms, pink and pale,
Before her coming! She is come, is gone!
And the sweet thought of cedarn palaces
And bowers of cinnamon in far retreats
Amid the woodland gloom fills all the mind,
Dropped from her trailing garments as she passed,
Till growing faint and faint the charm dies out,
And to the hungering Spaniard leaves again
The common airs of earth, and memories
Eternal, though of momentary birth.

Now with the heavenly balm intoxicate
They turn their quest to whence the incense came,
If haply they may find the odorous shades
Of El Dorado: sudden hope is theirs
Expectant of fruition every hour,
But every hour the hope is lengthened out,
And fond exertion slackens; droopingly
They journey on as in a labyrinth
Whose every winding leads them towards an end,
Or leaves them more astray: forward they move,
Yet more like wearied soldiers to their camp
Listless returning after a defeat.

The vacant air transmits no messages,
Or, from perplexing quarters faintly blown,
The musky-pinioned couriers of the sky,
Viewless and vagrant, only mock their toil;
For everywhere the land is as before,
Beauteous but barren of immediate gain;
And the long calm eventless monotone
Of day succeeds to day with all the hues
That at the first flashed in their joyous eyes
Now faded, blanched, and colourless as glass
On which the shivered lance of level light,
Full aimed, no longer falls.

“A soldier I,”
At length impatiently the leader spoke:
'Twas midnight, and the restless Spaniards sat
Like statues, speaking none, beneath the shade
Of the mysterious wood, while overhead
Pulsed the large constellations in the heat
Of the high air most tranquilly: “A soldier I;
And this strange peace and utter loneliness,
They madden me: nor man nor town is here,
Nor laurels worthy of a warrior's brow;
And if the promised groves of cinnamon
Be here, we know not—the winds only know!
Nay! I will back—there's honour in Peru!”

None moved nor answered, when a distant voice
That seemed aerial from the listening wild
Rose syllabled above the forest hum
Articulated humanly, and thrice
In a strange tongue but sweetly kind to hear.
It startled all—save one, whom destiny
With most secure indifference lapped in sleep,
The unconscious owner of the Amazon,
Biding his time. And first the Father spoke,
Whose spirit, fired with Christian chivalry,
Yearned for adventure in the pagan mind
(And hither on that errand had he come):
“It is the voice of God, spoken by bird
I know not, but believe the omen true.
Inviting was the sound—nay! let us on!
Speak not of going back: trifles like this,
If it were but the cry of startled bird,
Are trifles only to the heedless ear;
To those that note them they are proved the call
Of Heaven to noble deeds: nay! let us on!
It needs must be that somewhere in these wilds
A remnant of the sundered race of man
In pagan isolation dwells apart
From the great brotherhood, with whom 'tis ours
To link them in fraternal bonds of love;
For not alone to us did God's dear Son
Leave the rich legacy of promised Heaven;
And they, the co-heirs with us of His grace,
Wait the announcement privileged to us,
Yea, and enjoined the ambassadors of God
Of His most blessèd embassy to them.
Lofty our mission and our warfare high,
Above the mean ambitions of the flesh,
With demons and the darkened mind: and if,
Pray Heaven it be! a bloodless victory
Won by the spiritual arm, let the spear rust,
Let Spain be silent of our soundless deeds:
We are the vassals of a higher lord
Of more imperial sway than Charles of Spain!”

They gave assent, cloaking their secret thoughts
Of earthly riches, temporal renown,
With a religious falsehood self-deceived;
For soon the fair white robe they seemed to wear
Of Christianity was splashed with blood,
When, with the fruitless toil renewed in vain,
Exasperate on an Indian tribe they fell
After long search, and, failing in their hopes
Of a sure guide, secured at length though late,
To point their march to El Dorado, used
Torture of steel and fire and hounded dog
On the poor timid wretches to extort
A knowledge from them which they did not know.
What knew they of the dreams in other lands,
Of fancy and unreasoning rumour bred,
That pointed to their own disastrously,
And met a naysay with vindictive rage
And further search infatuate of belief?
Dreams, idle dreams! that haunt the restless mind
With recollection of the primal loss
Of happiness and everlasting youth,
Transferred of old to Heaven's securer clime.
Dreams, idle dreams! worthy alone in this—
They fire the sluggish mind to energy,
Whence spring collateral deeds of lofty strain
That, blindly wrought, in benefits endure
When the false heat that moulded them is cold,
And the unconscious worker, faint and foiled,
Has perished in the flames himself had fanned.

To kindly nursing in the native tents,
Dumb with the sheer scverity of woe,
Gonzalo left his sick, loath to be left,
Not from a fear of vengeance, for their hopes
Swallowed all fear: a godlike fearlessness,
Responsible to none, was in their look,
Which, weakened though they were and numbering few,
Struck with paralysis the Indian mind:
But that their eyes should miss the first far glimpse
Of unknown empire rising with its towers
Amid the woods and waters onward still,
Whither their comrades with impatient steps
Were certainly advancing.

They, meanwhile,
Pushed on through dreary flats of marshy land;—
For the scene changed, and all was desolate:
The forest thinned, and even shrubs were few;
And, save the plashing of incessant rains
Among the stagnant pools, and the wild cry
Of passing bird lost in the misty air,
With distant winds that round the horizon sobbed
Like spirits imprisoned in a drear confine
Searching for freedom, other sound was none;
Nor did they seek to break the monotone
With show of cheerful talk where cheer was none.
And here amid the rainy solitude
A gaunt companion joined them—Famine stalked
With fleshless limbs and hollow-staring eyes
Silent beside them, full of brooding thought,
Or chewing bitter buds plucked from dank boughs,
Or yellow roots that only bred disease,
From the black soaking soil snatched greedily,
Yet with blue feverish lips mouthed in disgust.

Here sank amid these melancholy wastes,
Like worthless weed, full many an ardent life
Whose value had been left, a cherished hope,
Endeared by many and many a conscious fear
In some particular home, in some one heart,
Hopelessly far in Spain! And here, perhaps,
They all had perished in a nameless grave,
As some have perished daring deeds as great,
Of whom no record tells, and the stern hum
Of the big drowsy world had sounded on
Unbroken in regardless apathy,
But that the forest with its foodful palms
And medicinal stores opened once more
Its wide asylum to the wasted band;
And further on beside the Coca's banks
The friendly shelter of an Indian town,
Built underneath one patriarchal roof,
Offered the accepted welcome of a home.

Long time they tarried here—oh, rest was sweet!
And the most ardent of them could have sold
The dowried future, riches, power, renown,
And a salvation from the common blank
On History's glorious page, in glad exchange
For the torn blanket and the garlic meal
Of herdsman on the brownest hills in Spain.
Sickness, fatigue, and fasting, and the sense
Of utter homelessness so tamed their pride,
And they so yearned for human sympathy,
That all mean occupations, once despised,
And all the trammels of society
That gall the fiery spirit to endure,
Seen in their artificiality,
Seen from Brazilian woods afar in Spain,
Were coveted, yea! realised in dreams;
Which so subdued their thoughts to humble mood
That frankly, when awake, they fraternised
With the meek Indians marvelling much that men
Visaged so sadly should have dared so far.

But with returning health vigour returned,
And the old restlessness stirred in their veins,
And drove them forth a reunited band,
Recruited and with fresh access of hope
To penetrate the mystery of the wilds.
The Coca's turbid stream, swollen with the rains,
Seemed in their eyes a clew by which to thread
The wilderness: it babbled in their ears
Of distant empire in its lower course
Whither its waters hastened: nay! it seemed
By very force of sympathy like themselves,
A pioneer peering for hidden lands:
With what mad joy its current leapt along,
Reeling and swaying like a drunk Bacchante,
Startling the temple quiet of the woods
And revelling through their holiest adytum!
Not one of all the Spanish band but threw
A portion of his soul into the stream
And raced with it along: not one but chode
The slow delay, the halts, the tedious turnings
On the swift-rushing river's cumbered banks.
How enviously they saw sweep on before
The speeding fleck of froth, the brittle bell,
Borne on the river's back triumphantly,
Leaving them far behind! Eagerly now
They would have hurried, having put their hand
Upon the running clew-line of the stream
That promised a safe passage through the dark
Illimitable wild: nearer they seemed
With each day's farther march to friends and home,
For they had found a highway to the sea
On whose salt waves no Spaniard could be lost.
Yet, as they gazed upon the rolling flood
And with its pace compared their daily march,
Time seemed to stagnate; and their hopes were chilled
With the cold fear, deep-seated in their hearts,
That Fate had caught them in her iron clutch,
Restraining them to a funereal march
Timed to have ending in the desert, where
A sacrificial altar was prepared
On which their hopes should perish, and their lives.
Unspoken were their fears; they even sought,
As brave men will when Fate is at their neck,
To conquer by obedience, to annul
The despotism of dire necessity
By uncomplaining patience, and the show
Of liberty that wears as if in sport
And with a jaunty air a weight of chains.
So from the painful task they turned not back,
Nor paused, nor 'plained, but, though with joy-less lips
Flinging upon the air semblance of mirth
In songs that told the glory of the Cid
And ballads of the Moors, right steadfastly
They kept their pensive faces all the while
Fronting the great Unknown.

The storms were up
One evening when they pitched their wind-blown camp
Under the rocking trees beside the stream.
But as they slept o'erwearied with their toil
The tempest sank, and in the sudden calm
A muffled voice came booming up the stream,
Deepening and broadening, a continuous roll
As if of thunder breaking through the folds
Of cloud and night that wrap it seven times round,
Until the full-voiced terror drowned the ear
And wrought such horror in the realm of dreams
That some from ineffectual struggling woke
Screaming; and others started to their feet
Making the holy sign; and each looked wild
And strangely on his neighbour, gathering in
Slowly his personality of pain.
Never before had European ears
Been so bewildered by such awful noise.
Was Hell broke loose? Or had the keystone slipped
That binds the fabric of the bulging globe?
Not even Ordas could conjecture make;
Ordas! who dared the dark volcano's throat
Courting the horrible, what time the flame
Of Cortez' genius shot towards Mexico
Like a clear-burning tongue of arrowy fire
Scorching the dazzling halls of Montezume;
Even Ordas felt a shrinking of the soul,
The veteran Ordas! who in one dark night—
The Night of Sorrows—faced a thousand deaths,
Till the last trace of Fear's alloy was purged
From his whole heart for ever. Day by day
The awful sound with fascinating dread
That drew them towards it, loud and louder swelled
Till the wide air was one vast sea of sound,
And from sequestered chambers of the soul
Strange threatening echoes from their primal sleep
Rose like a new creation, horrible!
And scarcely was the terror reasoned down
When from the high bank of a river cape
They saw this vast immensity of waters,
Drawn by the Coca from a thousand caves
In the far-distant Andes, leap in mass
Most fearfully into a gulf of air
Two hundred fathoms down: the volumed foam,
That without halt makes everlasting plunge,
Whirled from its sphere of consciousness the soul
And left the body, emptied of all feeling,
Tranced in the dumb rigidity of awe.
Nor was their wonder less when farther on
The narrowing torrent with concentred strength
Poured all its length into the channelled rock,
And through the chasm that pent its thunders in,
A dreadful depth, unsounded of the sun,
Toiled in tumultuous agony: the rocks,
Irrevocably sundered, scowling flung
Defiance on each other front to front,
And heedless of the Hell that howled below.

On the sheer brink, grasping with knotted roots
The stable rock, a giant cedar leaned
Forward, who from the forest had advanced
More dauntless than the rest: him Horror seized,
Preventing all return: and on the verge,
Bound in eternal spell, he gazed below.
With ruthless axe assailed, his giant trunk
Fell crashing o'er the chasm from bank to bank,
The first beam of a bridge: beside him thrown
Lay lighter palm-trees, in the forest felled:
Gay flowering clusias bound the rolling logs;
And o'er the airy walk the Spaniards marched,
Horseman and foot, struggling and stumbling on,
Till all had passed, safe—to a hostile shore.
For here a shower of darts, blown from the woods
Through the long gravatana, sing i' the air,
And hiss and sting! Anon the ambuscade
With hideous yell advance, a martial race
Accustomed to aggression. But unknown
To them the sudden flash, the rattling peal
And fatal ravage of the Spanish arm.
Unknown the graceful terror of the steed
That speeds and fights and almost thinks for man.
The astonished Indians fled, or grovelling lay
As at the feet of centaurs suppliantly
Conceding all—possessions, children, life.
Under their conduct through a barren tract
The Spaniards journeyed, joyful with the hope
Of rumoured fortune in a distant realm.
And after weary days corn-fields appeared,
And cotton plantings, and the huts of men
Domesticated to a settled life
Arcadian, but with little store of gold.
Here fretting much at their enforced delay
By sickness, hunger, and the present rain—
For now unceasing torrents night and day
Poured from the inky sky, and from its bed
The rising river wandered in gapó,
Flooding the forest—deeming they had reached
The edge of empire where the arts of man
Wage desultory warfare with the wild,
They sent forth pioneers to make survey
For further action: these returning told
Of broken forests, marshes, pools, and ponds,
And squalid tribes inhabiting in trees,
Who yet confirmed, in terror, or in fraud,
The rumoured hints of empire, but remote.
With mingled feelings of despair and hope,
Impatient of suspense, Gonzalo's mind
Resolved a final throw with Fate, which failing,
Farewell the hope that lured him from Quito!
The river was their only highway—smooth
And swift its hurrying waters ran; it only
Could solve the secret that consumed their soul.
Thus musing in the doorway of his hut
With folded arms, and eyes of brooding gloom
Bent on the muddy flood that tumbled by
Scourged by the slanting rains, the while his men
Dozed out the weary moments—musing thus,
Suddenly to his mind a Vision rose,
A fair large vision of a River Ship
That idly lay moored to a bank, with sails
Full-spread and oars, the while the current raced
That should have borne the naiad freely on.
Starting, he looked again, and it was gone;
And th' inscrutable waters whence it rose,
Or seemed to rise, assumed their apathy:
But not less real seemed the gurgling stream
Than that aerial ship that sat the wave,
A moment seen full imaged in the rain,
Then without warning took mysterious flight!
“Saint Jago be my speed,” Gonzalo cried,
With spirit roused from her inactive mood,
“And I will make this glorious fiction fact!
Why was I blind to the fair dream till now?
Did not the whispering waters hint of this?
And I, dull schoolboy, understood them not!
Heaven sent me this to fire my flagging zeal
In mild reproach: Did not the lively mind
Of Vasco Nuñez on the mountain ridge
Provide a fleet for the yet distant sea?
Dull dreamer that I am! did not the mules
Of Cortez bear upon their sweltering backs,
O'er many a mile, to launch them in the lakes
Of Mexico, the keels of many a bark?
And I, with a great river in my eyes
Daily, and timber for a sea of ships
In these vast forests where each branching trunk
Sends seaward with the rushing winds and streams
Its wishes to be free—I saw, I heard it not,
And murmured at my own slow-paced delay!
No more of this! No longer on the banks,
Waiting for fortune, housed in idleness;
But on the river—that way lies my path—
To force her tardy coming!”—In his eyes
The light of genius shone, and where they darted
Among his listless followers, a new life
Shot through their veins, and cheerfully remembering
That they had set themselves the task of choice,
Like boys at play they went about the work,
Gonzalo guiding. In the sombrous woods
Screened from the incessant rain and gusty winds
That shook and pattered on the slim-built shed
Their workshop in the wild, they built a forge;
And soon the ruddy gleams, forth darting far
Into the cavernous forest, sent their glow
Upon the sinewy limbs and naked breasts
Of willing workers bending at their toil
Or passing to and fro: around the axe
Here thick the splinters flew whitening the ground;
There, as if wakening from its centuried trance
And wakening but to look around and choose
Ground for a resting-place, the stately tree,
Swaying with all its boughs in the high air,
Sank down majestic in its fall, as sinks
Some galleon in mid-ocean in a calm
With sails unfurled and all her bravery on.
Some lop the prostrate branches; on the stocks
Some stretch the keel, and prop the curving frame.
There, half concealed in smoke, a cheerful band
Of demons move, charring the flameless wood
For future fuel: others from the pine,
That stand like patient martyrs ringed with fire
Bleeding from many a wound, collect the drops
Of resin as they fall. One with a box
Makes circuit of the camp, collecting tax
Of ear-rings, finger-rings, crosses, and chains
Of ornamental gold, given willingly,
With armour-plates of silver framed in steel,
And helmets thought superfluous. In the furnace
These with the iron shoes wrenched from the feet
Of mules and horses, dead or yet alive,
Flung, in the blaze he stands with one arm stretched
To stir the glowing coal; the other plies
The groaning bellows. Like a Cyclops vast
His shadow on a background of green leaves,
Begrimed with smoke, yet glistening in the rain,
Toils like a phantom in the noiseless shades
To idle imitation damned. Anon
The obsidian anvil rings: chief at the work
With sleeves rolled up Gonzalo sweats and toils,
Now at the forge, now swinging the wide axe,
Or straining at a rope, knee touching knee
Familiar with his fellows, bating nought;
And men must follow when their captain bends
The crest of his nobility to toil.

So from their hands this Argo of the West
Took shape, and grew, and to their houseless hopes
Became a very fortress where they sang.
To songs that breathe of ancient chivalry
Opposed to Frank and Moor, in snatches sung,
The unforced product of a hopeful heart
Recalling the achievements of its race,
And in that memory strong—the fair renown
Bernardo heired from brave Orlando slain
At Roncesvalles, or when Gonsalez set
The first stone of Castile; of Vargas, too,
Surnamed the Bruiser, and Ramiro old;
But most of him Spain's matchless paladin
The brave knight of Bivár:—to songs, that made
These heroes live in them, the vessel rose,
The structure of their hearts no less than hands,
Endeared by mutual suffering cheerily borne,
For in its sides their hearts were built, and not
Alone their wealth in every driven nail,
Their very clothing steeped in bubbling pitch
Thrust in its seams, and hope of life and home.
Lo! as they toiled the river-god arose
Curious above his banks, and his great eyes
Gleamed through the trees upon them at their toil;
Then, as if found the object of his quest,
The virgin vessel, with tumultuous rush
He flung out his long arms, folding her round,
And like a bridegroom took her to his breast.

And now, their more immediate wishes met,
The dull reaction came with idle hands
Of labour wasted: what were one small bark
Where scarcely forty would suffice to bear
Their numerous band along? The greater part,
With futile efforts every hour renewed,
Hewed for themselves along the bosky banks
Their woodland way, while in the brigantine
A scanty complement of sickly men
Waited, with oars backed in the hurrying rush
Of the impetuous stream, the slow-paced march
Of their o'erwearied comrades on the shore.
So passed laborious weeks, till hunger-forced,
And tempted by fresh rumours of a land
Rich in all blessings—food, and towns, and gold,
Far down the river where a mightier stream
Engulfed the Coca, they made general halt
Arguing the folly of the bridled ship,
On the free element a captive log,
Bound to the sluggish measures of the land.

By this the happy season was returned
When to the texture of his cloud-built tent
Diaphanous the red-faced sun approached,
Peering into the shrouded world below
That languished in the rain: the curtains caught
The glory of his burning countenance
And went ablaze: this way and that they fled,
And lo! the lofty firmament serene
In a wide stretch of deep ethereal blue
Enroofed the laughing globe. There hung the sun;
And Nature stretched her praiseful arms aloft
In distant hills and towering trees and waves
And little humble flowers adoringly
Towards the benignant Sun, that smiled again!
Along the forest glades now might you see
The wavering flight of indolent butterflies
Whose blue metallic wings lit up the shades
Like fluttering patches of the fallen sky.
The yellow troupials whisked from bank to bank,
And hung their pendent nests on the high boughs
That swayed in graceful fringes down the sky.
While ever and anon the frigate-bird
With head thrown back came sailing down the air
That streamed above the stream, and disappeared.
Ah me! what wistful faces sad and wan
And wasted with disease met the red gaze
Of the returning sun! How with the heavens
Their prisoned hopes enlarged, defying bounds,
Yet chafing at the strange mysterious leash
That pulled them to the wingless body back.

Meanwhile as if from sudden ambush sprang
A lurking fever on the pallid frame
Of stout Gonzalo: from his restless couch
He turned his hungry eyes upon the priest:
—“O holy father, must I here abandon,
Here within promised access of renown,
The great hope of my days? And must I die,
Thus circumstanced with new-awaking life
In all around me? Water, earth, and air,
The winds, the sunbeams, insect, bird, and river
Rejoice unfettered: I am captive bound.
Oh for the pinions of yon passing bird,
That I at least might overfly the land,
And, if but with a transient glimpse, drink in
The wealth of my possessions! Hard it is
To be the heir of what I cannot hold;
Harder, indeed, if I have brought you all
Into this sylvan solitude, apart
From human ken, only to waste and die
In unrecorded pain! And therefore I
Would send at least, if that I may not go,
To claim my heritage: call Orellana!
I have marked him fit for noble deeds,
Approved him bold, ay, somewhat over-bold,
And think him true. What if the after-race
Ignoring or in ignorance credit him
With all the honour of the enterprise!
I shall not mind it, though it cut me now
Even to anticipate. Vain fear! 'tis mine;
Nor have I less the greatness that I feel
Wanting the confirmation of the crowd.”

“A noble deed,” gravely the priest replied,
“Done in obscurity or deepest night,
Needs not the shouting of the multitude
To make it fact,—yea! and if but conceived
When other hands receive it at the birth,
Stolen or adopted, none the less remains
In highest truth the author's. A brave mind,
Strong in the consciousness of native worth
As hero in his mail, will estimate
The praise of men as but a needless cloak
Thrown over armour: And yet true it is
The purple trappings and the nodding plume
Become the warrior well;—but they are less
His own delight than worn to pleasure friends.
Think you the great Columbus, when the light
First showed him where the long-lost hemisphere
Lay sleeping in the void—think you he felt
At that abandoned hour of soundless night
Less sure of his own greatness, as he stood
On the lone poop surrounded by the dark
While Europe far behind in her grey walls
Chaffered and gossiped through her daily rounds
Forgetful of him quite, or mindful only
As of a fond enthusiast pitiable—
Than when, after long months of secret greatness,
He told to courts his prophecy fulfilled,
And Europe, pausing in her mill-horse round,
Turned all her million eyes to the grey seas,
The riddle of whose mystery was read,
And hailed him Finder of a Second World?
And yet, when all is said, be sure his mind
Chose her seat well,—not on the unstable base
Of airy speech of men, which a side wind
Blowing sinister with capricious gust
Can sweep as swift away as castled clouds
Before an evening gale,—not on renown
As men translate the word, an empty sound,
Which themselves give and often give awry,
And then withhold, and with as little cause;
But on the steadfast rock, the immortal stance
Of consciousness of a great duty done.
In that one word all honest greatness hides,
And each may grasp it in his several sphere,
For that is duty that a man can do
And that beseems a man—all else is vain.”
He ended, but the germinating thought
Grew in Gonzalo's mind. Upon the priest
His large eyes gazed in silence till his mind,
Slow to appropriate the strength-giving truth,
Returned the dictum like a lingering echo—
“Yea! that is duty that a man can do,
And mine is now to send, not mine the event,
Since that I may not go: call Orellana!”—

A young man still, though in his auburn hair
Time's silvery threads were spreading, and his brow
Had gathered more than one long line of grey.
But in his eye the wandering light of youth
Still showed a mind unsettled in its aim,
Though powerful to achieve what others planned.
A dreamer was he in his hours of ease,
And careless of preferment undeserved
By action of his own. A volunteer,
He came from drowsing by the torpid banks
Of Guadiana to the Western world,
Smit with the hope of some great deed of fame,—
Which so absorbed his soul that lesser gain
For its own sake, or as a central germ
That tarries the slow-fostering of the years,
Was blown contemptuous to the passing winds;
For he would be at once i' the eye o' the world,
Or live and die among the shadows seen
By none. Yet think not he was idle all,
Waiting to strike and strike but once for fame:
His sword was ever at his chief's command,
And what he undertook his very daring
And utter recklessness, or rather say
Firm confidence of the event, made sure and fast
A fact in history. But mark his pride
Or self-neglect, or call it what you will
—After such enterprise he shunned to meet
His grateful leader; and his comrades' praise
Around the barrack-fire or in the tent,
In town or field, fell cold upon his ear:
Upon his heel he turned, and, listlessly
Reclining on his couch with half-shut eyes,
Or roaming vacantly in lonely places,
They found him, and gave up the thankless task.
Or if importunate the public voice
Threatened ovation—he would seize his cloak;
His sword was ever belted to his side;
And disappear. Thus had he joined the band
A day's march late that journeyed from Quito
Under Gonzalo. Thus he clipt the winglets
Of his own growing fame; for he would soar
At once i' the eye o' the world, or sink unseen
Among the shadows, known to none or all.
—“If I have sent for thee,” Gonzalo said,
“'Tis not to speak thy praise; for what thou hast
Deserving praise thou hast from Heaven, and there
The honour lies; and that thou knowest unmoved
By voice of man; and therefore praise is thine
In that I choose thee from among the rest,
Deeming thee loyal, who hast well approved
The motive of thy acts, to take my place
And duteously fulfil my vows to Spain
And to my brother: thou shalt take command
Of this our ark, the brigantine—that bears
The fortunes of our expedition: I
Commit them to thy charge. Do thou descend
Whither the Indians tell. Of some great stream
That rolls its ink and flings its yellow foam
Around some central capital they tell.
There glory waits thee, ripened to thy hook;
But bring me back a sheaf—a few stray ears
I surely well may claim! We tarry here.
Our hopes, our very life goes with thee! See
Thou prove no alien! Choose thy men, and go!”—

And Orellana knelt, and kissed the hand
Of great Gonzalo, rose, and nothing said
But turned in act to go. With searching eyes
Gonzalo gazed upon his soldier bearing
As wishful for some proof of loyalty;
Then, as it came not, turning to the priest—
“Thou, too,” he said, “wilt go.”—“Nay, here I stay,”
The father answered; “tempt me not, my son,
With the fruition of an earthly fame
Bought with a bartered conscience! Even now
The Devil is at mine elbow—I can feel
His fingers on my shoulder, in mine ear
His hot breath urging me to make a league
With him and thee and Heaven; take thine offer,
Abandon thee with all the show of friendship,
Compound with Heaven for a brief course of sin
By future sanctity—the greater saint
And more acceptable to heaven the more
I give my passions rein! ‘And what is he?
A sick man dying in the wilderness,
A withered stalk upon the tree of life
That will be green no more’—Satan, avaunt!
And thou, Gonzalo!—these are devil's words
That urge my going, put into thy mouth
By thy great enemy and mine and man's:
Speak them no more! For, grant I leave thee here
And go to what great glories who can doubt,
How shall I hear and see amid the glare
And blaze of triumph the dispassionate voice
And the white star of duty? till perchance
The tumult has sunk down and the time gone
For doing duty? Oh, the Devil ever
Wraps round a man the mantle of his praise
Spoke by the yelling multitudes, whene'er
He means to hide the irrevocable chance
Of a great duty offered by the Lord!—
So tempt me not!”

The words were vehement
And uttered as in anger—eyeballs starting,
And the full veins upon his beaded brow
Relieved like whipcord. From his pillow raised
Upon one elbow, breathless, pallid, fixed
As stares a statue with its marble eyes
Rounded with wonder, and with doubt congealed,
Gonzalo gazed upon the speaker. In
The hush that followed a cicala ran
Across the open doorway, on the roof
Outside the tapping of a woodpecker
Was heard, and one low distant moan subdued
Its anguish in the woods. The father's eye
Fell, and a chill ran through his frame: “For-give,”
He said, in a strange wearied tone
Altered and low: “Forgive the unwonted heat;
For thou know'st not, my son, the carnal heart
That beats beneath this mantle, as do I!”

Sudden, and at a bound, Gonzalo leapt
From his sick-bed, and with a strong man's voice—
“What guarantee have I, if thus the storms
Of wild ambition shake the Holy Church
Personified in thee—what proof have I
That Orellana will not play me false,
Self-duped in sending him? Go! call him back!
I, I myself—Here by sheer strength of will
I fling this fever from me!—It is mine;
The glory I have traced to this far haunt
No hand shall seize but mine! And bring my mail—
I, I myself will head the enterprise.
No proxy suits with me. This very hour—
Nay, on the instant—stand aside!”

For here
The father caught him staggering to the door,
And forced him back, panting and flushed and faint
Upon the couch. “Dost thou withstand me?” “I
Withstand thee not—it is the hand of Heaven!
Is this the resignation thou didst feel?
Such resignation is but the result
Of weakness to rebel. If thou wouldst live
And heir the honour Heaven intends for thee
Obey me!”—for he struggled yet to rise.
“I have hid nothing from thee. Therein lies
My error: but that I am true to thee
Believe, and let me show it by remaining.
Ask me no more to go: I will not go!
My duty is with thee—and with these others,
Our numerous sick, that must remain behind;
But chief with thee; for thou art marked by Heaven
For some great work, and I have charge of thee!
Only live thou to do it. It is thine
If one go at thy bidding though thy hand
Should never finger the dictated work;
And that a servant here relieve thy hand
The hand of God upon thee laid in sickness
Gives clear assurance 'tis the will of Heaven.
—As for this Orellana, let him go
Since one must go and thou hast chosen him!
And for those fierce temptations that in thought
Assailed my soul a short while since—of this
Be sure, no fiercer storm, no tempest half so fierce
Can Satan raise in Orellana: ‘I,’
(Thou say'st; for I can read thy inmost thoughts,
Knowing my own so well) ‘If I,’ thou say'st,
‘A son of Holy Church can be so tempted,—
If I a green branch burn so fiercely, what
Swift-tongued destruction must lick up the dry?’
—Am I a green branch? I have read my life
And studied my whole nature: that I am
A son of Holy Church I know, and boast,
Unworthy though I be; but Holy Church
Gives not a change of nature: I have here
Under these pious vestments the wild pulse
Of warrior, and—root out the infirmity,
O Heaven!—I feel a tigerish instinct stir
Even in the pastoral service of the Church
If bloodshed would but frighten to the fold
The heathen flocks that roam the wilderness!
To thee I make confession of my weakness
That this confession may be as a chain
To bind me closer to thee! I believe
That in our band no breast is visited
With half so fierce temptations, nor no heart
Half so susceptible of earthly fame!
And thou mightst but commission me to ruin,
To send me girt with equal power with him
This tool, this Orellana, whose dull heart,
Though stout to dare what others planned, was never
Stirred with the nobler passion to create
And carve self-confident for his own ends.
Fear not; this tool will do the work for thee
More faithfully than I thy truer friend,
And I shall yet be saved for thee and Heaven!”

More was there in his looks and in his tone
Than in the words, uttered impulsively
And wildly ordered, to assure Gonzalo
The revelation was indeed sincere.
He stretched him out his hand; quickly the priest
As catching at salvation caught the grasp
Ere yet half way, and held it tight and long.
Gonzalo's generous heart returned the pressure,
And “I have known thee long,” he said; “but never
Known truly till this hour. With reckless hand
Thou hast loosened for me a prop on which
I leaned as on a hill—nay! hear me out;
There need be now no secrets 'twixt us twain:
For I had thought thee steadfast as the Earth,
Infallible as Heaven: Thou art, instead,
Even in thy weaknesses, thy doubts of self,
Thy struggles with the flesh, and all thy fears,
A brother on whose breast I yet may lean,
If not with such security as once,
Surely with a new sympathy that both
Imparts and gathers strength. And so, I trust thee;
Go he, stay thou, thy will is wholly mine!”

While yet he spake Day fell; the sunset spilt
Its crimson on the waters; down the stream
With a great rush it sped, purpling the wood,
The river-banks, the brigantine, the air,
With the reflection of its sanguine glow.
It was a world of red—red leaves, red waves,
Red faces; e'en Gonzalo's pallid face
Took on the hue of health: all things were dyed
In the rich rubious translucent streams
Of the great fountain welling in the West!

The Father's eyes were on Gonzalo, his
Looked wistfully out through the open door
Of the rough wooden shed—his hospital—
Upon the evening glory of the world:
The brigantine lay moored within his gaze
Motionless, save where the eye might note
A certain rhythmic movement of her mast
Obedient to the lapping of the stream.
What thoughts were his, what longings or what fears,
He uttered not, save that unconsciously
By pressure of the hand fast locked in his
He intimated to the watchful priest
A spirit busy within him forcing up
The gateways of the future. Thus they sat,
The Father with his broad back towards the door
Shrouded in shadow. On Gonzalo's face
The red light died away, the air grew dim;
Wild dissonant cries answering to dissonant cries
Of birds and chattering apes, unearthly screams!
Ran like a desecration down the aisles
Of the wide-vaulted wood. Low in the shade,
Appearing here and reappearing there,
Tiny initial sparks of wavering fire
Twinkled about, till o'er the tufted trees
Diana raised her argent arc and shot
The first dart of her beauty through the gloom!

The solemn Night was hers: high o'er the woods
That underneath spread like a sea of leaves,
O'er which the night-wind moaned and made no stir
Among the billows and reposeful waves,
She walked serene in chosen loneliness
As if her meditations would outlast
Eternity. The wanderers were asleep
Wrapt in oblivious visions all, save one,
The holy Father: He, from where he sat,
Beside Gonzalo's couch, gently unclasped
The sleeper's feverish hand, and gathering up
The rustlings of his robe, stole from the shed
With more than woman's care. At the low door
Free from the shadow of the shed he stood
Full in the moonlight. First he glanced to heaven,
Then on the width of waters weltering by
Fixed his keen gaze as if he would enforce
Confession of the secret of their goal:
More stealthily the waters seemed to glide
Under his searching eye; and longer he,
Rapt in a reverie of human life,
The mystery of its birth and course and end,
Had stood, entranced under the mystic spell
Of moonlight on a river yet unnamed
Lying familiarly, but that a fish
Leapt up the stream and sank with peaceful plunge
Amid a spray of diamonds; whereat
The Father started, brushed the dreams away
With open hand across his troubled brow,
Then with uplifted face looked straight to heaven,
The silver moonlight on his moving lips
As if in prayer: from the pure deeps above
That from the feet of God flow down to earth
His spirit drank assurance, rest, and faith,
And was refreshed.

Along the river-bank
He passed to where the watch half leaned, half lay
Snoring against a tree: his head thrown back
Revealed his naked throat that glimmered white
Beneath a beard black-pointed toward the moon.
With angry hand he twitched the sleeper's beard—
“Rouse thee! but question not—where lies to-night
Young Sanchez?” And the sentinel abashed,
Awkward, and dazed, with spear-encumbered hand
Rubbing his chin, glanced wildly round the camp,
Then pointing with the other—“Near the bank
In the big tent beside the tall assaí:
'Tis he relieves me.” “Let him relieve thee now!
If I mistake not, thou art one of those
Impatient of preferment, and unfit
To fill the meanest post with the first want,
Fidelity: go, house thee in a sheet;
And when—for fate gives sloth a length of years—
They ask thee to recount at home in Spain
The achievements of thy youth, boast of thy deeds,
But in thy boasting, blush to recollect
This night's disgrace! Comrade! take this, and go—
A year of loyal service, borne with pain,
And left to speak its own reward, will scarce
Efface the blot upon thy name to-night!”

Came from beneath a tall paxinba's roots,
That as on tiptoe stood stretching its neck
Above its forest confrères, Hernan Sanchez,
Equipped for outpost duty. Straight he marched
And steady as a tower to where the priest
Waited his coming: “Art thou one,” said he,
“Of Orellana's band?” The soldier bowed—
“One of the fifty I.” “A volunteer?”
“Sought out,” replied the youth with modest pride,
“Ere yet I knew to intercede to go!”
“Thou art Gonzalo's standard-bearer?” “Yea;
By his own gift that honour do I bear!”
“And he has honoured thee! requite it, youth!
—Tell me, for youth has still a live ideal
By which to dress its conduct, who is thine?”
“The Marquis, ere we left Quitó; since then,
Oh, need'st thou ask? our noble chief Gonzalo.”
“Thou art not one of those who worship still
The rising star?” “Thou wouldst insult me, priest?
—Prove me, and then upbraid me!” “Nobly said;
'Tis for that end I come, to prove and—praise thee!
For when thy conscience, speaking in thy breast,
Shall praise thy conduct, hear in it the voice
Of honest men; among which rank am I,
And own no other. Thou wilt go to-morrow
Under the leadership of Orellana
To great discoveries, freedom, life, and fame.
Let not the whirl of fortune turn thy head:
Remember thou thy fealty to Gonzalo;
He goes with you—misunderstand me not—
For Orellana is but as thyself,
Nor more nor less, divested of the power
Lent him by great Gonzalo: honour it,
Be jealous of it in thy leader's charge;
But see thou make no transfer of thy faith
To him the man that wields it!—I had said
The same to Orellana following thee
Hadst thou been chosen to the chief command.
There is no treason in my counsel, then,
But truest loyalty to those that go
And those that stay: we constitute a State
Commissioning you with powers which you may use
Against the State that grants them. This he knows,
This Orellana; and I have no cause
To doubt his faithfulness: assist him, thou,
To keep his faith—but slay him if he fail!”

This said, abrupt he turned and disappeared
Back to his post in the low wooden shed
Where in delirious sleep Gonzalo lay
Tossing.

The camp next morning was astir
As dawn crept up the water: with the first
Long level lance of pioneering light
That struck the tall paxinba's topmost plume
Ten thousand voices woke, and the dim wood
And the grey air burst from the trance of Night;
And screams and shrieks and sharp dissevered notes
That intimated freedom rent the sky.
Flocks of white, green, and scarlet parroquets
Leapt from their perch; thousands of toucans flew
With outstretched bill seeking their morning meal:
Here on a heavy-podded inga's branch
Some twenty would alight with clumsy foot,
Shaking the ripe fruit ready for the drop
Into the stream a hundred feet below:
The nimble trogon with obedient wing
Skimming the mid-air, swerved with easy grace
And caught the falling fruit and disappeared.
Herons, and terns, and gulls innumerable
Followed the sinuous current, or made halt
Upon a floating tree, or on the marge
Searched for their food among the water-weeds.
While ever and again a kingfisher,
With back of glossy green, shot down the river
Like volant ball; and golden orioles,
And troupials, banded black and yellow, whisked
From nest to mid-air and from mid-air back
To slender purse-like nest depending fair
From the high branches all adown the sky.
Amid the lower shrubs that fringed the strip
Between the wood and water, bush-shrikes ran,
Their long loose silky feathers fluttering fierce
With joy, as they impaled with corneous beak
Their insect-victims on the hard-barked bough.
Meanwhile the golden disc of the new sun
Shone through the trees like a great shield of gold:
Whereat the moon grew faint, and stole away
Worn to transparent thinness in the West;
And as the round of red rejoicing Day
Rose free at last of forest-screen, she slipped
Ghost-like behind the shelter of the hills.

How do familiar scenes, daily beheld,
And daily held to be the stereotype
Of long-traditioned nature meaning nothing,
Grow suddenly significant! What power,
Ebbing and flowing in the speechless air,
And growing half-articulate in the cries
Of birds, and in the whispers of the woods,
And smiling in the sun, or in the cloud
Frowning, gives character and mood and mind
To dull or idle nature?—Nay, what power
In man informs the brutish earth with soul,
Shooting a meaning into clods and stones
To prop a hope or feed a cherished fear?
'Tis not in nature: but the God in man,
As man was God-created from the clay,
Breathes into nature mystery of meaning,
Then wrests her riddle to his own desire,
Strengthened and propped by natural sympathy.
So to the nobler of that hopeful band
Whom Orellana gathered to his cause
Came with a speedier course that morning's sun,
And larger life was on the water's marge
Pulsing with warmer flow in every wing.
Nature expectant of a famous deed
That day should see commence was earlier up.
In all they saw there was a harmony
Benevolent to their purpose, and the heavens
Smiled in consent of all their hopes and schemes.

Under the smiling morn the patient bark
Slept idly on the shallows: hasty feet
Struck heavily on the gangway—a slim plank
That swung from shore to ship; but still she dreamed
Rocked in the eddying waters: fruit sun-dried
And mandioc meal in bags and boxes borne
On willing backs were hurried up the plank
And tumbled in the vessel: with more heed
Guns, and gunpowder in a chest ill spared
From a diminished stock, were stored; and now
A hasty meal was snatched or from the stream
By flowering thorn-hook, or from sweet assaí
In clusters of small purple berries struck
By climber with his pole: then came the priest
And in the ears of all confirmed the charge
Of Orellana, limiting his power,
And asking his acceptance of the trust
In words which Orellana gave,—and gave
Besides fealty in clear well-ordered phrase
Both for himself and men to great Gonzalo.
Thus satisfied the Father caused advance
The leader and his fifty from the rest;
And while they knelt, dinting the forest spores
And choking many a weedy cassia's bells
And flowered convolvulus, around the priest,
He solemnised promise and enterprise
By special mass appointed by the Church
For mariners at sea, and shrived them all.

The ritual o'er, like schoolboys freed from school
They raced on board the galley, swung her round
Instinct with life into the middle channel
Churning the stream, ere scarce the tense-drawn rope
That kept her to her moorings snapt across
And curling sprayed the water. Then like bird
Hovering in mid-air on vibrating pens
Ere yet it flies a straight course down the gale,
She, quivering with the sudden keen delight
Of freedom, all her dreams shook to the air,
A moment with backed oars stood on the stream,
Then, thrusting out like one her twenty paddles,
Dipped with a thought in the thin element,
And bounded forth between her lines of foam,
That widened in her wake, and waned away
Amongst the tumbling river ere the cheer
Of God-speed! from their comrades on the bank
Ceased in the rowers' ears. Their answering hail
Came back as from another world, faint-voiced
And far and past recall. And long they gazed
Ranged on the bank like statues of despair
Staring with strained and film-o'erspreading eye
After a disappearing hope: they saw
Rise on the bark now dwindled to a bird
The white wing of her sail; and as the curve
Of wooded shore denied them farther view
It made partial amends by sending back
An echo of the boat-song sifted drear
Through the dim arches of the pillared palms.

Sank from the light and life of cheerful day
The lingering echoes falling restfully
Into the caves of silence,—as distil
Through chinks and cracks to intramontane wells
The drops which twinkled on the tempest's wing
In rainbow lustre ere the tumult rose
That dashed them with a myriad diamonds more
Into the surging heather! Sank the strain
From healthful morn: yet through the curtain door
Which severs dreamland and the drear abode
Of shadows from the light of open day
A thrice-enfeebled wail ran plaintively:
It crossed Gonzalo's spirit in the dark,
Labouring belated like a lonely bird
Above a moaning sea through cloud and storm
And falling stars and ruin and eclipse;
And in his sleep wrought on mysteriously
The patient tossed his arms in weak despair.

The bark shot onward into unknown scenes.
So shot the ray of new-created light
Into chaotic gloom: so bursts the dawn
Of knowledge on the wondering infant mind.
Chaos, surprised with happiness, looked grim,
Laughed, and danced into cosmic loveliness:
Even so the mind breaks into rapturous singing
And leaps with joy of an immortal pulse.
And did not the new scenes laugh and look glad,
And shape their gladness into dance and song,
To be thus visited and viewed of man,
Far wandering but arrived at last, though late,
To claim his due inheritance?

The river
Proud of the burden bore the heirs along
Of all the Amazons, sang at the prow
The songs of hope, and at the helm repeated
The achievements of the past in choral praise.
The little waves that sparkled in the sun,
And smiled, and ran hand linked in tiny hand,
Gay messengers transmitted from the bows,
Lisped to the crowded banks, and venturous reeds
Advanced to meet them in the shallow bays,
“The long-expected heirs are passing by.”
Whereat the rushes waved their bannerets
And the bright banks broke into brighter bloom.
The forest formed its ranks along the shores
And crowded forward, where the river bent,
With homage and oblation long delayed
But now extended in each laden bough.
The very airs, the wandering spies of heaven,
That roam from Alp to Andes, seeing all
Man's glories and the grandeur of the world,
Caught the contagious glow of sympathy
With wave and wood, and whispered flattering tales.

The homage and the tribute and the triumph
Were seen and felt by all as with one heart.
For as the hours fled and the distance grew
Between them and their comrades left behind
They gathered in, mutely, by slow degrees
Community of feeling, hopes and fears,
That merged at last incorporate in the bark
Into identity. Thus animate
Forward they sped with ever-joyful leaps
Along the reaches of the mighty stream.
Suns rose and set paving their level path
With robes of scarlet and with cloth of gold.
Night flung submissive at their fearless feet
Her gemmed tiaras and her strings of stars,
The dowry of old Time: the silver moon
From a full horn rained tribute down the sky
And widened nightly in admiring wonder,
While still the attendant winds buzzed flatteringly
Of marvels that should open on their view,
And willingly gave up their wonted freedom
To guide and retinue the sons of Spain
Through valley lands long centuries known to them.
On swept the brig borne on the river's back,
While hopes like cherubim flew on before,
Their white wings rustling ever round the bows
Or ever disappearing in a flash
Of dazzling plumes at every vista's end
Or shady turning! On—no need for pause:
The river gave them of its watery stores;
The trees held out their fruitage, and they plucked
With unstayed course, sparingly, as they passed
The offered bounty of the burdened bough.

It was the noon of Night: a far-off moon
Looked from the lofty firmament aslant
Down on the speeding brigantine through twists
Of stationary cloud. The winds blew soft,
Rocking the slumb'rous trees; and all was still,—
Save where the forest-hum for ever in
Incipient burst of speech deceived the listener;
And there was, too, the babble and the throb
Of lapsing waters felt along her keel
Lifting the vessel, as a cross is lifted
Gently upon the bosom of a nun
Inhaling and exhaling in her dreams
Regular breath. The helmsman at his post
Dreamt of Castile. High on the forward deck
Stood one whose brow the moon with cooling beams
Tiara'd,—while with sleepless glance he questioned
His future of the stars:

“Say ye who stand
A scriptured mystery on creation's wall,
Revealed by night, invisible in the sun,—
If in your radiance wrapt from human ken,
As ye are wrapt in all-unfolding Day,
The story of my destiny is traced!
And I may know but that I may fulfil
With firmer, bolder heart Heaven's hopes in me! . . .

“Faith in myself I have not: I am but
A waif upon the tide of human life,
Helmed and commanded by a higher power,
Whose fingers on my fate I seem to feel
Shaping my course, and leaving me,—as I
Shape for this passive brig its unknown way
At intervals upon the drifting stream. . . .

“Let me indulge the fancy: ships there are
That rule the waves awhile: there waits for them
A smiling surface and a hidden rock.
Some, with contemptuous gesture tossed to land
A broken wreck, waste publicly away.
Others the ocean slips from, leaving them
Upon a barren beach, their ventures o'er,
Henceforth to blister in the sun, and rot.
—Each has its various end.—But who would see
In all the necessary whirls and shifts
Of fortune that befall or floating logs
Or floating ships the hand of God, save him
Who gives his god indeed impossible power
But less of wisdom than himself to guide it?...

“Chance rules it all; or else the fool is right
Who, rather than seek out with patient search
The mighty Maker, makes one for himself
And worships his own idol—not less surely
Than blacks in Africa their wooden blocks;
—Worships a baby god who takes delight
In dropping nuts into a forest pool
To hear the lonely splash, in whirling logs
Along the barren seas, and puffing leaves
Rustling and red around an idle hill. . . .

“And may not man, superior though he be,
To whom with nuts and logs and leaves the same
Final decay succeeds an idle life,
Be equally the abandoned toy of chance
And orphaned of his Maker? . . .

“'Tis not so
With him: inferior nature, to itself
Left and the governance of man, repeats
Its patient function ordered from without
Incapable of will; but man is free,
Though, still partaking of the lumpishness
Of mortal earth, he be the slave of law
So far; and may be wholly; to the which
His grosser nature drags him, drugs his will,
And wraps the aspiring spirit flesh-encased
In most ignoble slothfulness and sleep.
But souls of noble possibility,
Though lapped in indolence, shall rouse at last
And will their liberty and laugh at law.
Among which rank am I; no more a boat
Beached among shells and shingle, or afloat
Upon a drifting current idly borne
Helmless, and having no far haven marked,
Its free-determined aim, beyond the roar
Of surges and cyclones, and past the maze
Of atoll, archipelago, and shoal.

“'Tis flow-tide with me, and I feel the chance
That has withdrawn its strong sustaining waves
From underneath Pizarro's stranded bows
Lapping my fortunes and upbearing me.
But here I ask no more, would trust no more
To idle chance, but, master of my will,
Wrest from the laws of gross inferior earth
My future, and contrive with strenuous care
Of my own choice a famous destiny. . . .

Would Heaven but give assurance of my wish
And of my hope, confirming them to faith
That I am free and master of myself,
How would the token I entreat in vain
Nerve me with triple strength to bend the laws
Of nature to my will! I have been long
A very tool to other men, with which
They smote to their own purposes the chains
Which nature would impose; then flung me by,
A disregarded and inglorious—fool.

“Enough of this! Hereafter for myself
I work—I plan, I live, I joy in freedom!
Chance favours me; Nature, already tamed,
Turns with obsequious smile her sympathy
Upon me; and the stars—if ever stars
Registered in their rubric on Heaven's door
A lofty deed, may have some trace of mine.
Never,—if in obedience to the priest
I, backward toiling, bear my own deserts
And fling them at the feet of a Pizarro
Disburdening me of glory all my own.
But verily if onward on this highway,
Which ends indeed at Charles's throne in Spain!
The question is—backward or forward, then:
Back to obscurity, to keep my faith
With one who robs me of the fame I win;
Onward to fame and freedom, life and power,
—And ignominy of a broken word
And an abandoned friend?”

He paused, and weighed
The question, while his hand balanced a sword
Mechanically mimicking his mind.
“Give sign, ye stars,
Ye voiceless keepers of Heaven's closed archives,
That hold his former and his latter will!
Say, is it Heaven's great will that having had
The reins of this behemoth-river thrust
Into my hands, I fling them in the air
To the wild hands of hundreds stretched to grasp them;
Or that I bridle him through all his bounds
And ride him to the sea?”

Just then a star
By unseen fingers lightly disengaged
Slid from the zenith in a line of light,
That was reflected in the river's course,
Eastward o'er hidden empire to the sea.
It fell into the scale-pan of the balance
That symbolled progress in the thoughtful mind
Of Orellana: doubt, distrust of self,
Loyalty, and danger, and delay and fear
Flew up and kicked the beam.

“Be this,” he cried
With arm upraised, “the signal that I seek!
It woos me down the water; in its flight
It sped like arrow from the bow of Heaven
Shot o'er the region that I yet shall rule
To guide me to my kingdom!—'Tis enough!
There is no wrong in following Heaven's decree,
There is no faltering fear: Heaven's eyes behold
Me, and my hopes are histories in Heaven!”

The steersman Sanchez, dreaming o'er the helm
Of tranquil ease and household joys obscure
Afar in fair Castile, roused by the words,
Looked up to see his leader on the poop
Transfigured in the moonlight, falling clear
Of cloud or bough around him, by resolve
To something more than seems in common man.

On o'er the olive pathway of the stream
Through solitudes lit up with radiant suns
Or steeped in mystic moonlight, joyfully
With song upon their lips or lapped in dream
Calmly they glided, trusting in the calm
Reliant face of their still-thoughted leader.

One day at noon, rounding a river cape
Clothed with a lofty forest, ere they knew
They slid into a black tumultuous stream
Of broken waves that hurrying from the West
Made sudden swerve to southward, drinking swift
In its fierce wrath the placid olive wave,
And swirling the frail bark caught in the rapids
Round in the yellow foam. By dexterous twist
Of rudder aided by auxiliar oar
They shot into still water, and lay to
Upon a sandy bottom on the lee
Of a large island where in former years
The rivers mingling met,—now far below.
And here they landing looked in vain for tower,
Temple, or teocalli o'er the waste
Of woodland stretching round—listened in vain
For cymbal or for drum where in far glades
Or on sequestered plains religious rites
Might then be celebrating, or great chiefs
Or borla'd monarch holding with his queen
Peaceful review or mustering troops for war.
And here they fell in passionate dispute
Of farther action, frequently renewed,
Yet ever ending in divisive taunt
And more divisive silence. To go back
Now that the goal was reached were to preserve
The faith of gentlemen. This was opposed,—
It were the work of months against the stream
Toiling, and even if the work were done
What could it bring Gonzalo or themselves
But disappointment of a fostered hope
Of fame to him; to them the mute reproach,
Loud-tongued perchance, of disappointed men?
Then to go forward—that were breach of faith,
Shameful desertion of confiding friends
And blindfold rush through danger;—or it were
Bravery, and reason, and a sure reward.
And so they strove, through the long hours of noon,
With the strange Stygian river's dismal hue,
That would receive no glory from the sun,
Reflected in their faces. In the gaps
And pauses of their talk, one heard the note
Of drowsy bell-bird, snow-white o'er the shade
Of mountain-forest faint and far away.

At length up sprang the leader: he had watched
With vigilant eye the varying tide of talk,
And now broke silence. “In this camp,” he said,
“There are two parties where there should be one.
—One in the brig, while I command her, one
And only one there must be!” Here he paused,
Then with his scabbard on the firm smooth sand
He drew a parting line: “You that believe
I should command that party, cross this line
And range yourselves beside me: here stand I!”
And stepped across with sword unsheathed. Many
With acclamation leapt across the line;
Some crossed in silence; and, with lingering step,
Others; till only one at last remained,
Young Sanchez. Him the sole inhabitant
And prisoner of a melancholy isle
They left, his brave face turned from them away
Proudly resentful of their mocks and prayers,
And loyal to Gonzalo. Off they fled
Like unreturning arrow swiftly loosed
From a strong bow new bent. Free was their course
Upon the hurrying rapids down the stream,
Yet aided still by twinkling oar, and sail
Hoised on the rattling yard. Their wish was now
Under their fresh-elected chief to unwind
The mystery of the river to the main,
Glance at the virgin glories of its coasts,
Unfold to Europe their discovery,
And claim its government, as Cortez claimed
The rule of Mexico.—What thrill was theirs
Of still-succeeding ecstasy to trace
The panorama of the Amazons
Throughout the mighty river's thousand links,
Past selva and savanna to the sea!
What joy to feel their unimpeded bark
Leap in responsive rapture light along
As if, like some new creature come to life
Upon congenial element, it shared
The sanguine hopes, the mad impatient pulse
And keen delight of motion swift and free
That made them demigods, body and mind!
O, in those days and fairy-visioned nights,
Feeding on manna hopes that come no more
To this old worn-out earth, they lived indeed,
Breathing heroic air, and lifted high
Above the sordid cares that creep within
The guarded ease of villa nests, and make
The peasant's term a pitiable strife
With Hunger sniffing wolf-like at the door!

Forest and forest passed them, whirling west
With all their unclaimed grandeur: hill on hill
In the far distance, capped with snow-white quartz
Thin-veined with gold, rose up and sank adown,
Doing them stately homage: shady alleys
And sunlit glades in the dim columned woods
Opened and closed their beauties as they came:
Islets and infant archipelagos
Thronging their wavy pathway grew in size,
And shrank again behind them: rivers poured
Their roaring tribute from imperial urns
Into the main of waters where they rode
Almost invisible in midmost channel;
For wide and wider grew the guarded banks,
As if the opening avenue must soon
With all its retinue of silent trees
End the long triumph of its thousand miles.
And here at last were towns and heathen fanes
Glittering with all the glory and the glow
Of occidental wealth; and tawny chiefs,
Hung round with rubies and with emeralds,
Welcomed them from the shores; and martial maids
Of Amazonian stature, breasted round
With plates of beaten gold, stood on the banks
And seemed to offer tribute, and entreat
The strangers' stay. Still on and on they sped
With all the glory of the Occident
Unrolling like a map before their eyes;
Until, at last, their river voyage o'er,
They came one sunset within earshot of
The sullen roar of Ocean swinging ever
His billowy strength against the stolid land.
All night they listened to the measured beat
Booming along the dark: and at the dawn,
Lo, the far banks receding north and south
Never again to meet! and the green sea
With all its millioned multitude of waves
Tumbling in chainless freedom! and the sun
Slow-rising as of old with welcoming smile
Out of the depths of the familiar sea!

The muffled boom of ocean far away
Is in mine ears again: but now no more
As in blue breakers whitening on the beach
Hear I the voice of cheerful energy,
Activity and change: it is the moan
Of baffled feebleness that flings in vain
A tangled waste of drenched and drownèd hopes
In final effort on the rocks of fate.

And sing ye may, ye mariners, who launch
Your gilded galleys in the freshening dawn
Upon a sunlit sea: to you the winds
Call joyous from the deep; to you the plain
Of ocean is a silver-fretten floor
Of sapphire luminous with the living gleams
Of the great crystal sky-dome over all.

And ye with faces brown that, homeward bound,
Press where the faded figurehead below
Looks towards the enlarging hills, and shout for joy
When on the far edge of the safe-crossed main
The old kirk-spire shoots up, the old round tower
At the pierhead, and on the concave shore
Houses and homes in social brotherhood
With open door waiting your late return
—Ye, too, may sing in heart, your labours o'er,
The quiet haven in your weary view,
And the calm lights of evening overhead
Steadily shining as the sun goes down.
But wonder not if on despondent lips
The voice of song has died, and querulous care
Breaking a silent grief draws nigh to them
Who on the ocean lost and far from home
Feel neither morning's flush of airy hopes
Nor evening's rest resigned—see neither sun
Nor lunar light nor stellar, wrapt in mist
And pelting rains that intermingle night
With dawnless day and unseen sea with land.

O dreary seas, your sullen leaden grey
Will ever sun enlace with gold again?
Will ever hope rise more in complete orb
Of brilliant song, Apollo with a crown
Of fresh-dug gold luting it o'er your sadness?

O many times in heedless ears shall sound
The solar melody, in heedless eyes
The solar blazon be outrolled above
Your leaden waters! But to one to whom
These were the joy which youthful monarchs feel
When first they grasp a sceptre, nay, were life,
Were very life throbbing through all the veins
And arteries as with eternal pulse
—To Orellana, never, never more!

On him the shadow of the Hand of Death
Descended darkening, as a falcon's wing
Falls on the snowy radiance of a dove.
Oh, how should he escape that closing Hand?
Would the imperial parchment in his gripe,
With the vain sanction of its dangling seals,
Its signatures, its pomp of Latin phrase
That gave the wealth and width of the Brazils
From seashore to sierra westward far,
To Don Francisco Orellana, bribe?
Would prayer, or tear, or impious sacrifice
For just a little summer's lease of life
Such as an insect has, persuade? Would love
Of wife new-married by vicarious pain
Avert?

But what were all the wish of life,
Now hope of life was gone, for that one stain
Of perjury that blackened all the past?
The stain sent rays of gloom even to the realm
Of sunny infancy: and forward far
It rushed into Eternity, a flood
Of widening blackness! Orellana groaned
And hid his face with both his hands: “The star!”
He muttered in his agony—“The star!
Oh, I mistook it for the will of Heaven!”

Beside him where he tossed in fever-pain
In the dim narrow cabin sat his wife
With ne'er a word of comfort in her heart.
His men dotted the deck like images
Of famine and despair—hating both him
Who with a lying story lured them forth
To chase a madman's fancy, and themselves
Who credited a dreamer. Vainly they
Had thrust through mist and rain, through creek and strait
And muddy shallow, searching for a channel
To inland El Dorado:—in despair
Now waited for the end. The rain-streams hissed
Along the deck, and all around the ship,
And on the sea, and all along the sea
To where the neighbour ships loomed through the mist
Like veilèd monuments; and at the window
Of the dim cabin where the leader lay
Hissed loudly; and in scornful hissings drowned,
Sank Orellana from the world of men.