University of Virginia Library

THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH.

A Fantastic Tragedy IN FIVE ACTS.

Dramatis Personae.

• Ferdinand the Catholic.
• Marquis of Villarica, his chamberlain.
• Ponce de Leon.
• Rosita, his daughter.
• Maria, her maid.
• Juan de Alvareda, alias Florestan, lover to Rosita.
• Ezdrel, a learned Rabbi.
• Aben-Hamet, a Moorish scribe.
• A gipsy.
• Agrippa, chief captain to Ponce de Leon.
• Sanchez officers.
• Garcia officers
• Morasquez officers.
• Carpaza officers.
• Cucheres officers.
• Atalpa, King of Bimini.
• The High Priest.
• The Master of the Sacrifices.
• Othoxa, an Indian sorceress.
• Spanish sailors and soldiers, Indian warriors and priests, Indian demons, and spirits of Youth and Age, etc.

ACT I.

SCENE I.

(A room in the ancestral castle of Ponce de Leon, full of astrological instruments and alchemistic crucibles.)
Ponce de Leon.
(He takes down a heavy volume, and reads a passage to himself aloud.)
(He lies down in a large armchair and goes to sleep.—Enter Spirits of Youth and Age, who circle alternately round his chair, singing in a low voice.)

Ponce de Leon
(murmuring in his sleep).
Ay! but beyond the Wood of Ancients there is the
labyrinth; and in the middle of the labyrinth there is a
fountain, trickling and sparkling in waves of molten
diamond. The seven dragons circle round and round
it; I hear the clashing of their golden scales above the
ceaseless gurgling of the water.

(Enter a servant announcing a Jew, a Moor and a Gipsy. His entrance awakes Ponce de Leon, who orders that they be admitted.)
Ponce de Leon.
Approach ye three, who, differing from each other
In race and creed, all differ from myself;
I see suspicion darting in your eyes,
But cast your fears behind you and approach.
If I have summoned you within my doors,
Ye need not quake: it is not to extort
Apostasy or treasure, but for counsel.
Unlike and hostile as our races are,
Unlike as we may be in hue and feature,
In thought and act, in natural loves and hates,
Two things we have in common—youth and age.
The same hard winter strews our heads with frost,
The same invisible load weighs down our backs;
The same inexorable law is writ
Upon our brows in wrinkles year by year;
We pant with equal and unslakable thirst
For one same draught of youth. I therefore pray you
If all or any of you should possess,
In the traditions of your several peoples,
A knowledge of the ever-dazzling waters
Known as the Fount of Youth—of which one drop
Would make us hale for ever—to impart
Such knowledge to me now. Speak first, O Jew.

Rabbi Ezdrel.
My hoary head, O most magnificent sir,
Bears cruel witness that my steps have never
Approached the Fount you speak of; and my race,
Which wears the wrinkles of three thousand years
Upon the aching tablet of its brow,
And on whose back the cudgel of the world
Still falls from age to age, might say the same.
By many waters have we sat and wept,
Whether or not we ever shall sit down
Beside the gurgle of that magic water
I cannot tell; nor can I tell you whither
To turn your footsteps to attain its brink.
But I can tell you what strange thing befell
The great King Solomon when he yearned towards it;
Is it not written in the Book of Jashel
For all to read?
He was the mightiest king
Between the four far corners of the world;
All that the breadth and bowels of the earth,
All that the depth and surface of the sea
Could yield was his. The genii who obeyed
The circles of his royal wizard wand
Built him hareems of sandal wood and gold,
With ivory doors and courts of trellised silver.
In endless stream the countless caravans
Brought to his gate the spikenard and the myrrh,
The gold of Ophir and the Tyrian purple,
The leopard skins, the peacocks and the pearls
Of subject peoples. Every warlike tribe,
Famed for its slave-girls, sent its whitest tribute.
Glory he had and boundless subtle wisdom;
One gift alone, one unreplenished treasure,
Was dwindling day by day: his beard was whitening,
And cold and dearth were settling on his heart.
He called a great assembly of the genii:
They flocked from east and north, from west and south,
Darkening the sky; but none could give him youth.
Then Solomon bethought him of a Fountain
Whose waters made men young, which he had heard of,
Belonging to the queen of seven islands,
Beyond the Pillars of Eternal Storm;
And he resolved to send a ship to crave
A single gourdful. And he filled the ship
With costliest presents, with enormous rubies,
With gem-embroidered carpets, massive sceptres,
With eggs of ostrich in a golden setting,
With dwarf gazelles, begemmed of horn and hoof,
With frankincense in chiselled jasper vases,
And pictured targes of the hammered gold.
And fearing in the corners of his prudence
Lest any aged mariner should steal
The priceless draught of youth, he chose a crew
Of strong adventurous youths with life before them.
They were to sail for forty days and nights;
And looking on the whitening of his beard,
Counting the days, he waited their return.
Six months went by; but on the far horizon
The ship at last was seen, and young and old
Crowded the shore to meet it. But with wonder
Beyond all words, they found that it contained
A crew of wrinkled, tottering, white-haired men,
Toothless and blear of eye and curved of spine,
Whose palsied arms could scarcely pull the ropes—
The same, same men who, half a year before,
Had left exulting in their youth and strength.
They brought no draught of youth, nay, not one drop,
But gibbered in their dotage; all save one,
Less crazy than the rest, who, ere he died,
Imparted unto Solomon alone
A tale of mad, unwhisperable horror,
Which none can ever know.

Ponce de Leon.
I thank thee, Jew.
Thy spirit-crazing and abrupt narration
Would have thrown back my soul upon its haunches
Save for one thing: thou saidst thy Seven Islands
Lay past the Pillars of Eternal Storm,
Which can be none but those of Hercules,
And so thou, too, confirming all my clues,
Dost send me to the West. And so, O Moor,
If aught there lurketh in the ancient vellums
Or in the dreams and stories of thy race
Of what I seek, I pray thee keep it not
Within the inner chambers of thy breast,
But give it open wording.

Aben Hamet.
Many a book
Hath been composed, most lofty sir, to lighten
The sleeplessness of caliphs, and the wonders
Therein contained are not less great in number
Than are the stars and circling orbs of heaven;
For, as the poet excellently saith,
‘The ocean of the wondrous hath no shores,
And those who sail thereon may sail for ever.’
But one most marvellous and thrilling volume
Eclipses all the others ever written,
And he who hath not read the Yellow Book
Of Hassan of Aleppo knoweth not
What wonder means. In all that deals with magic,
With dreams, enchantments, philtres, transformations,
Afreets, ghouls, demons, and the world of genii,
There is no such authority on earth.
Know, therefore, that the ever-dazzling Fount,
Whose magic wave can wash the wrinkles off,
Lies in the Valley of the Seven Moons.

Ponce de Leon.
And where lies that?

Aben Hamet.
Behind the setting sun,
A thousand miles to westward of the West.

Ponce de Leon.
Ha! west of West? How all confirms my thought!
But tell me more about thy magic valley.

Aben Hamet.
A ring of black basaltic cloud-capped peaks
Surround it with eternal rock and chasm,
So dread and dizzy that no wingless thing
Has reached its lowest ridges, and the birds,
Scared by the lifeless horror, fly no higher.
Alone the shadowy genii, now and then,
Soar through the vapours on their demon wings,
And sit upon some livid shelf of rock,
Above a black intolerable abyss,
To rest their load of curse. There is no gap,
However narrow, in the monstrous rampart;
And he who seeks the valley has to pass
By subterranean paths through Nature's entrails,
Through endless caverns filled with ghosts, and snakes.
The snakes in the obscurity wind round
The adventurer's feet, or from the unseen roof
Let themselves down and grasp him by the throat;
And if he be not quick in disentangling
His pinioned limbs, they keep him there for ever.
The caverns of the ghosts are farther on,
And are less dark. The phantoms start
From out the rock, and whisper in his ear
Secrets so horrible that few are those
Who, hearing, go not mad. And here and there
Upon the ground there lies a shapeless shape,
Which might be human. These are those who perished,
And whom the drippings from the vault above
Have changed to petrifactions. Then, midway
Along the chain of caverns is the lake
Of Tidal Fire, which he who seeks for youth
Must cross upon a slippery reef of rocks,
Uncovered only when the fiery tarn
Is at low ebb. It is a doubtful race
Between the adventurer and the molten lava,
Which creeps and creeps in waves of silent fire,
And never ceases rising, lighting up
The whole huge cavern with a lurid glare,
Terrifically splendid. Further on
Are many other caverns, each one full
Of some new crazing horror, and described
With the minutest detail in the Book
Of Hassan of Aleppo—but whose name
I have forgot, save two—the cavern which is called
The Passage of the Ever Dropping Stones,
Where lumps of rock keep dropping from the roof,
To crush the wretch who runneth in the dark;
And one with deep, deep pools, all full of sharks,
Which from eternal darkness have no eyes,
And through the midst of which he has to swim.
The last of all the caverns opens out
Into the Valley of Eternal Moonlight.
The seven moons, eternally at the full,
Cast seven shadows, and display the Fountain
Leaping for ever in a tank of pearl
Towards them, as with vain, incessant longings;
Then falling back in folds of luminous spray
Into the pearly basin, like the tail
Of Omar's battle steed.

Ponce de Leon.
But does thy Hassan
Tell us where lies the entrance?

Aben Hamet.
Ay, he doth,
With uttermost precision.

Ponce de Leon.
Well?

Aben Hamet.
The years
Are many since I read it, and the details
Are blurred upon the tablets of my mind
Beyond recovery. Hassan's Yellow Book
Was kept in the Alhambra, and the Christians
Destroyed it with a thousand other treasures
When they besieged Grenada.

Ponce de Leon.
May the curse
Of Heaven consume them!

Aben Hamet.
What, you curse your own?

Ponce de Leon.
Nay, nay; I meant the Moslem, for not having
Placed it elsewhere in time. And so the Moor
Leaves me no little wiser than the Jew;
Now for the Gipsy. Why, the fellow's gone!

Rabbi Ezdrel.
He was in the room only a minute back; and drinking
in the Moor's description as if it had been the water of
youth itself.

Ponce de Leon.
And, by the Lord, the rascal has taken my gold
chain!

Aben Hamet.
I miss the jewelled brooch upon my girdle. Oh!
Allah! Allah! why did I ever enter the house of the
uncircumcised?

Rabbi Ezdrel.
Oh, my shekels! I had six doubloons in my purse.
Oh, my sweet little doubloons—he has taken my little
doubloons.

(A voice is heard singing in the garden below:)
Where the gipsy tinker tinkles,
On a kettle all of gold,
Is the fount that takes the wrinkles
From the forehead of the old.
The three run to the window, but can see no one.) [Exeunt omnes.

SCENE II.

(Rosita's chamber.)
Rosita.
What sounds are those, which, blending with my dreams,
Still charm, as echo, my awakened ear?

Maria.
I think you ought to know.

Rosita.
Perhaps I do,
In the small corner where we keep sweet thoughts.

Maria.
Hark! now the tinkling has begun again;
And if you listen, in another minute
He will repeat his song.——There, it begins.

Rosita.
Open the lattice, that the words may reach me.

Rosita.
Give me that yellow briar-rose from the vase,
That I may throw it.

Maria.
We have a saying in my native province
That when a woman bears a flower's name,
And throws a man that flower from a window,
She throws her own self with it.

Rosita (aside).
He has caught it!
If souls can nestle in a flower's petals,
Mine has been thrown in that one, and he has it.

Maria.
Your birthday, madam, opens well.

Rosita.
My birthday?
Ay, so it is. And I had quite forgotten.
Indeed, indeed, I would that it were not;
My heart is over heavy for a birthday.

Maria.
What, in despite of singer and of song?

Rosita.
Alas! because of singer and of song.
Juan de Alvareda is the son
Of our worst enemy, of one whose name
Few care to whisper in my father's presence;
What hope of ever getting his consent?
If he were caught—

Maria.
Your father is too busy
With his own schemes to interfere with yours.

Rosita.
My father's schemes? Ay, that is what is casting
The ugly cloud, and darkening my birthday.
Of late he has some project in his mind
Which bodes us little good; and every day
He drops some hint that fills my heart with fear!
He now has always round him, as thou knowest,
Adventurers and seekers from the Indies,
Whose sight I cannot bear: one above all,
His favourite, Agrippa, seems to throw
An evil shadow on the sunny path,
I scarce know why; perhaps it is the way
In which he stares at me whene'er we meet.

Maria.
I like the man as little as yourself,
Or any of the westward-sailing knaves.
Which dress will you put on upon your birthday,
The silver cloth, with stomacher of seed-pearl,
Or puce with gold pomegranates?

Rosita.
Which thou wilt:
It matters little in what silk or satin
I clothe my apprehensions: for myself,
I fain would wear my plain familiar frock
Of every day. But hark, what noise is that?
What women's voices sound beneath the window?

Maria.
It is a chorus of the reapers, madam;
A band of girls and women of the village
Who bring a wreath of cornflow'rs for your birthday,
As large as any cart-wheel; only look,
What motley streamers bind it!

Rosita.
Go thou down,
And take the harvest wreath, and give them largess. [Exit Maria.

Their gift is very welcome. Was it not
Amid the ruddy ripeness of the corn
That he and I first met, that day of days?
Would I were one of them, and he a peasant,
That with my shining sickle I might go,
And bathe at sunset in the sea of grain,
Free, without fear, and wait the great slow wave
Which evening sets in motion through the wheat—
The signal of his coming. Oh, how sweet
Would be the safety of a cottage hearth,
However humble, for the years to come,
Instead of this sad future of vague fear!
How sweet to meet in open, fearless love,
And not, as now, with danger and intrigue,
When every meeting is perhaps a parting—
A parting, and for ever! Though my brow
Would be less white than now, and the blue veins
Be tanned away upon my sunburnt arm,
Both Juan and the future would be mine.
But hush, my thoughts! I hear my father's step
Approaching slowly through the gallery.

(Enter Ponce de Leon.)
Ponce de Leon.
Come, let thy father kiss thy sweet young face,
The fairest thing on which his eyes can look,
Until they rest upon the radiant brow
Of youth that has no end. See here, Rosita;
I bring thee something dainty for thy birthday—
A necklace made of unfamiliar beads,
In far Hispaniola wrought by Indians,
Each bead unlike the rest. What! not content?
I thought the gift would make thee dance for joy.

Rosita.
I would they came from any other place.

Ponce de Leon.
Thou art a silly and fantastic child;
But I can well afford to miss thy thanks
For this small gew-gaw made by Indian cunning:
Have I not in reserve the gift of gifts,
The dazzling, potent, and ineffable drops
That shall preserve the sparkle of thine eye,
The dimple on thy cheek for evermore?
That which the daughters of magnificent kings
In vain have yearned for, shall it not be thine?
Thine, and for ever?
(Aside)
The unconscious child!
I see an omen in her very beauty:
If God hath given her such eyes as hers
And chiselled features of such rare perfection,
It is because they are marked out by Heaven
To last for ever and have no decay;
Because she shall be dowered with the glory
Of sharing my first draught.

Rosita.
I have no wish
For an eternal youth, an endless beauty;
My mother had it not, so why should I?
I wish to share the common lot of mortals;
I wish to be, when comes the natural time,
A little silver-haired great-grandmother,
All shrunk and bent, with little twinkling eyes,
Who sits and spins beside the blazing hearth,
And tells the children fairy-tales all day.

Ponce de Leon.
Oh, hideous blasphemy and monstrous vision!
Oh, most unnatural wish! But, thanks to Heaven,
Thy youth shall be preserved upon thy cheek
In all its rosiness and sunny charm,
Despite thyself. And now, Rosita, listen:
I brought thee this rare string of Indian beads,
That it might coax thy soul to greet with pleasure
A startling piece of news. I have resolved
To take thee to the Indies of the West.

Rosita.
Merciful Virgin! so my fear was true.

Ponce de Leon.
I have resolved to sell these lands and walls,
And stake my fortune on a venturous sail
Beyond Hispaniola.

Rosita.
Sell these walls!
Sell these broad, fertile lands! Your very fathers,
Dead in their graves, will shudder and turn round.

Ponce de Leon.
Poor buried fools! If they had had the wit
To do as I do, they would not to-day
Be dead and mouldering bones, but living men,
Quick with the breath of youth.

Rosita.
Sell these broad acres,
And hand them to the stranger; leave each thing
That is familiar and most dear to see!
You cannot mean it, nor can I believe it;
Oh, can you look on these ancestral portraits,
And harbour such a thought before their face?

Ponce de Leon.
Poor ghosts of paint and canvas, each of whom,
Had they not in their piteous dulness rooted
Their lives, like trees, to their inherited clods,
But sought the Fount of Youth, as their descendant,
Would now be flesh and blood; it is not they
Who shall arrest me in my life's great scheme,
Just as begins the sunrise of success.
And now no more discussion; I forbid it.
But what are those cracked voices that I hear
Rise from outside? What hideous, loathsome song
Of crazed decrepitude? Quick, shut the window!
It makes me sick, the cackling squalls are more
Than ears can bear.

Rosita.
It is the village elders,
Who come to wish me joy. [Exit Ponce de Leon.

Alas! alas!

Chorus of Village Elders.

[Re-enter Maria.
Maria.
Come, dry your tears; your father's mind may change.

Rosita.
Thou knowest him but little if thou thinkest
That he will turn upon the steps of purpose.
One drop of what he sails for to the Indies
Is dearer to his bosom than my life;
I felt it coming.

Maria.
Let me see the necklace
Of Indian beads.

Rosita.
Yes, take it from my neck;
Were every bead that runs beneath my finger
A pill of poison, full of silent peril,
It could not be more ominous of ill.

Maria.
Do you put credence in the Fount of Youth?

Rosita.
I know not if the Fount of Youth exists;
But well I know what does—the Fount of Sorrow;
And all who dangle on my father's pleasure
Sooner or later have to drink of that.

SCENE III.

(Dressing-room of Ferdinand the Catholic, at Valladolid.)
Ferdinand.
Hand me my dagger and my chain of gold;
And now my rings. I can recall the time
When my white bony fingers were so plump
That I could scarcely force these same rings on,
Or force them off; and now they trickle off
Each moment of themselves.

Villarica.
Your grace has thinned
From overmuch of thought, and not from years.
Believe me, 'tis not age, but care and study;
Your grace needs but repose to gain in flesh.

Ferdinand.
I would my ribs and fingers had remained
As plump as hath thy flattery; that continues
In all its fat exuberance. But now tell me
Who stands the first inscribed for private audience
Upon this morning's list?

Villarica.
He whom your grace
Vouchsafes to see to please the Duke of Arcos.

Ferdinand.
That Ponce de Leon? Save that I have given
Arcos my word, I would not waste my patience
In listening to his plan; and, as it is,
I mean he shall not have ten minutes' audience.
Another of those swindlers of the West!
As if I had not wasted thought enough,
And ships and money, on the irksome rogues
Who promise all such wonders: to begin
With that arch-knave Columbus, in whose dreams
My good lamented queen put such sweet faith.
Oh, we were so persuaded of the gains;
It was so clear and easy: you had only
To find the East by sailing to the West,
And reach the sun by flying to the moon,
And all the treasures of auriferous Ind
Would flow into your lap in streams of ingots.
We were to reach the ruby-rolling rivers
Beyond Bagdad, the porcelain-towered cities
Of the great Khan of Tartary, and what not,
In which the streets were paved with slabs of silver,
The houses roofed with tiles of solid gold,
The very beggars dressed in yellow silk,
With pearls upon the bonnets they extended
To beg for diamond pence. Much gold we got!
A little less than thou wouldst find to-day
In any goldsmith's shop in any street
Of Cordova or Burgos.

Villarica.
Yet, sweet lord,
That Genoese set up your royal standard
In many an island where it flutters still;
And I can keenly recollect the day
When he returned from his first venturous voyage,
Amid the wild ovations of the throng,
Bringing back Indians with him.

Ferdinand.
Bringing Indians?
A dozen red-skinned savages, wild scoundrels,
With nothing but a nose-ring for attire—
Fit raiment for the isles of swamp and ague
From which they came!—And while we lost our time
In crazy Western plans, the Portuguese,
By creeping patiently toward the East,
Round Taprobana and the Cape of Storms,
Have reached to Muscat and to Calicut,
Made treaties with the sultans, plundered cities,
And filled their ships with gold. No, no, my friend;
Talk not to me of farther Western schemes.

Villarica.
Will your grace see him?

Ferdinand.
Let the knave come in,
Since I have pledged my word to give him audience;
But bid him to be prudent in his speech.

(Enter Ponce de Leon.)
Ponce de Leon.
I bow in awestruck silence and obedience
Before the ample splendour of your grace.

Ferdinand.
And so thou, too, hast framed a wondrous scheme,
A Western expedition that shall pour
More red and virgin gold into my coffers
Than all the ships of Christendom can carry?

Ponce de Leon.
I crave the humblest pardon of my liege:
My liege is misinformed. I am not come
To offer to your grace new mines of gold,
But, with your gentle and most royal license,
To rid you of your silver.

Ferdinand.
Of my silver?
My friends and courtly flatterers do that
Most perfectly already.

Ponce de Leon.
I am come
To offer to your sovereignty the means
By which the clear white silver on your brow
Shall be transmuted back to youth's dark locks.

Ferdinand.
Art thou a merchant of Venetian hair-dye?

Ponce de Leon.
Your sovereignty hath made me bite my lip;
But could I have for half a score of minutes
The perfect patience of your royal ear,
Methinks that I could fetter your attention.

Ferdinand.
Speak on; but not in riddles. I will listen.

Ponce de Leon.
I know as well as any that the West,
The Indies of Columbus, have belied
Our dreams of gold and gems; but they contain
Another treasure of such wondrous value,
Of such extreme ineffable price to him
Who first shall make it his, that all the gold
Which men have clutched at in their wildest dreams
Would be but dross beside it.

Ferdinand.
What is that?

Ponce de Leon.
The Fount of Youth. We know from informations
Most certain and undoubtable that the spring
Which man has panted for through countless ages,
In every clime, with wistful, infinite thirst,
Lies in the Western Indies, in a realm
North of Hispaniola, named Bimini,
Whose king, the sole possessor of the secret,
And named the Ever-Beautiful, hath reigned
Six hundred years.

Villarica
(to himself)
Bad for the heir-apparent!

Ponce de Leon.
No shapes of magic guard the potent spring;
No circling dragons watch it night and day;
No evil angels sit beside its brink,
To mirror their dark wings within its waves.
It hath nor spell nor supernatural essence,
But is mere natural water, one slight rill,
Which in its bright limpidity hath flowed
Through subterranean channels, over beds
Of mineral ore, and salts unknown to man,
Or through a filter of medicinal mosses
Of such high potency and healing virtue
That they can stop the onward march of age,
Create anew the tissues of the body,
And fill with sap the withered roots of life.

Ferdinand.
What guards it, then?

Ponce de Leon.
The dreadful guard of Nature:
Inextricable forests and morasses,
Haunts of the panther and all clawed assassins,
In whose pestiferous depths and clueless tangle
No white man yet has ventured; where the twilight
In every tree awakes a vampire bat,
Who fans the sleeper with his leathery wings
Of monstrous span, and sucks his blood at night;
Where there are trees whose dark and silent leaves
Distil a subtle vapour that converts
Sleep into death, and strange and treacherous flowers,
Whose scent breeds madness, till the forest rings
With crazy laughter; where among the grasses
Lurk porcupines that shoot a venomed quill,
The wound whereof turns black like flesh of mushroom;
Where there are snakes that make a running noose
Around your throat and strangle you in sleep,
Ere you can feel their twist. Man-eating Indians,
Whose poisoned arrows, shot by unseen hand,
In every vein change blood to liquid fire,
Infest the dreadful zone.

Ferdinand.
And thou proposest
To ransack such a region for a rill,
A hidden trickling thread?

Ponce de Leon.
Were that my thought,
Your sovereign's splendour well might call me mad.
My plan is this: to land a small picked force,
Armed with three falconets and ample powder,
On the Biminian coast, and with the help
Of disaffected tribes to boldly march
Upon the capital and seize the king,
And then extort the secret as his ransom.
Part of the expedition I could pay
Out of my private fortune, if your grace
Would furnish me three caravels and sailors.
The conquest would be fruitful to the Church;
For, having made the monarch's body ours,
We should attack his soul, and win it back
From his unholy Gods. The Holy Office
Would find the means of teaching to his people
The greater sweetness of our kinder faith.

Ferdinand.
If he has reigned for these six hundred years,
I fear his errors must be deeply rooted.
What is the name of thy Biminian king?

Ponce de Leon.
Atalpa Ever-young, so please your grace.

Ferdinand.
North of Hispaniola didst thou say?
How far to north?

Ponce de Leon.
Three hundred leagues of water
Is what I reckon, but it is uncertain.

Ferdinand.
I cannot grant thee longer speech to-day,
But I will give thee in the coming week
Another ampler audience; and meanwhile
Write out thy scheme more fully. Kiss my hand.
[Exit Ponce de Leon.
Strange, strange, most strange. Is this a madman's dream,
Based on mere air, or hath it weight and substance?
What think'st thou, Villarica?

Villarica.
Like your grace,
I chew the cud of my perplexity.
It seems to me unnatural that the fount
Be natural water: supernatural liquid
Would be more natural far.

Ferdinand.
The fount exists,—
That much is certain and unquestioned fact,—
Upon some point or other of the world:
Then why not in the Indies? 'Twould be strange
Were I to live to bless that rogue Columbus
For finding those unprofitable islands.
Whether the draught would keep me as I am,
And merely keep all further years at bay,
Or place me back in manhood's strongest moment,
Such as I was on that triumphant morning,
When Isabel and I rode side by side
Into the trembling alleys of Granada,
At last made ours!—The wide and general use
Of such a cordial would be full of peril,
And soon would over-populate the earth.
'Twould have to be confined to my own self,
And to the finder, by most strict engagement,
Or all would drink and live: a pretty thing
If Gaffer Maximilian or the Pope
Were made eternal each upon his throne!
An endless King of France would never do:
But were the King of Aragon immortal
The case were somewhat different.—How time flies!
How white my hair has grown in this last year;
And my old hands, how thin and white and veiny!
A little more—and I shall have to bid
The goldsmith come to tighten all my rings.

ACT II.

SCENE I.

(Forepart of the vessel.)
First Sailor.
This is the nineteenth day. This white-hot sun
Has stewed the sea to syrup.

Second Sailor.
And so thick
That this swift ship, inclosed in sticky coils,
Stands like a spoon that stands of its own self.

First Sailor.
The water in the barrels ebbs away:
Death's hand is tightening round our parching throats;
The curse of God is on us.

Second Sailor.
That was clear,
Even before the skeletons, like sharks,
Swam in the sunset in the vessel's wake;
Was it not I who saw the first one raise
His long white arm above the livid water,
And gave the alarm? The sun—dost thou remember?—
Was almost on a level with the wave;
A bright-red glare was thrown upon the sea,
All of a sudden, 'neath its bloodshot ball,
Just like the flag of crimson in the bull-ring,
Beneath the bull's wild eye. The whole sea glowed
A pool of new-shed blood. Then, one by one,
The skulls and arm-bones crested each small wave
Behind the vessel far as eye could reach,
Until it seemed as if the countless dead,
Who lie unburied in the ocean's depths,
Had risen to the surface, and gave chase;
But we outsailed them.

Third Sailor.
Then the great white fog
Off Cape Cardozo, when we saw the giants
That towered o'er the mast by head and shoulders
And loomed like monstrous shadows through the vapour,
Now lighter and now darker as they waded
Further or nearer round us. I remember
How Sanchez cried, ‘By luck! the vapour thickens:
If one of them should see us, he will pluck
The ship from out the water by the mast,
And whirl it like a sling about his head.’
How we escaped I know not.

First Sailor.
Nor do I.
But worse, I take it, was the Wind of Whispers,
That blew for three whole days in spite of prayer,
Of exorcism, and of holy water,
And said to each a different thing of horror,
In his own mother's voice, as if from far.
I know not what it may have said to thee;
But unto me it said nine times distinctly:
‘I see thee sinking through a hundred fathoms,
And fish swim after thee.’

Third Sailor.
Anon the moon
Will have her stare at us, as here we stick,
And make a mirror of the fetid sea,
And then the water-witches rising up
Will swim around the vessel as last night,
And croak their song of death. They came so close
As I was standing in the middle watch,
That I could see the wrinkles on their cheeks,
And on their knotty fingers.

Fourth Sailor.
Aye, last night
The sea-hags swam a-dance in all their number:
There must have been a hundred in the reel.
Their hair is old gray seaweed, and they wear
A necklace fashioned out of drowned men's teeth.
Some say they once were beautiful and young—
The whitest of the mermaids; but their lips
Betrayed the secret of the ocean gold,
So they were stricken old, and cursed for ever;
And now they work the mischief of the sea,
And stir up tempests with their spellful songs.
Down in their green and slimy ocean-caves,
They spin the thread of every vessel's voyage,
And where they cut the thread the ship goes down;
It's they who have becalmed us.

Fifth Sailor.
Look, the moon
Is cropping up above the water-line,
Round as a silver plate. And, by the Lord!
There are the hags already. Dost thou see?
Out there, just in the moonshine, right ahead,
One of them swimming like a fish that rolls.
And now a second and a third joins in.
Ho, ho! the lewd old sea-maids! how they play!
Thou'lt hear their singing when they all are there.

First Sailor.
What art thou looking at so hard, now that the waterhags have disappeared? Answer; what art thou staring at?

Second Sailor.
Look just a little to the left of the moon, on the waterline. What dost thou see?

First Sailor.
Very strange! It was not there half an hour ago. It has three peaks, with the valleys clear between them.

Second Sailor.
It is not twenty miles off. We must have drifted with an unfelt current. Call Diego. Where is the commander?

Third Sailor.
In his cabin, deep in thought.

First Sailor.
Thinking how to get us a little water for our cracking throats!

Third Sailor.
Yes, from the Fountain of Youth.

SCENE II.

(Another part of the vessel.)
Juan.
Oh, hers is fairer than the white, still face
Which peeps between the fleeces of the sky,
And flashes silver from each dark wave's crest!
Out on the boasted power of the moon,
Who rules the tides of cold unconscious Ocean—
And only twice in every lazy day!
My lady sways the living tides that run
From heart to pulse, and throb in brow and limb—
The tides that ebb with fear, or flow with joy
A hundred times a day. Ay! hide thy face
Behind the screen of yonder sluggish cloud,
That she whose face is fairer than thy own
May meet me here more safely; for the peril
To both of us is great. Oh, how she started
When, looking vaguely round, her eyes met mine,
And recognised me under my disguise
Of Florestan, the mate. Agrippa's eye
Fastened upon her with a quick suspicion—
I thought that all was lost. Shall I be able
To keep my face, my gestures, and my tongue
In such obedience as my part exacts?
Shall I be able to coerce my passion
When I shall hear the officers and men
Speak rashly of her face, or see them fix
Their look of hungry insolence upon it!
Did I not hear, this very day, two sailors
Call her the destined trophy of Agrippa?
And did my knife not almost leap at once
Out of my sash? And she—can she control
Her glorious eyes and meet me twenty times,
And never even give me one quick look
For other eyes to catch? Oh, who shall measure
The danger of the part we have to play?
And yet how else, if I am to protect her
From still more threatening perils, which the folly
Of her mad, reckless dreamer of a father
Will plunge her into, in untrodden lands
In his great search for youth? How else, how else,
If I am ever to make mine for ever
That truer fount of loveliness and youth
Which sparkles in her eyes, and ripples over
In lightest waves of magic when she speaks,
That truer, brighter fount, from which my soul
Takes such delicious draughts? How old the world
Would grow for me without it; how decrepit
And cold and dull would grow all earthly things!
But hush! I see her, veiled in silver shadow.

(Enter Rosita.)
Rosita.
I cannot sleep for thinking of thy peril;
Thy life hangs on a thread.

Juan.
The thread of gold
That couples it to thine.

Rosita.
If thou wert found
In this disguise, no earthly help could save thee.

Juan.
We will control our eyes. Oh, I would wrap
The cloak of peril round me seven times,
So but I wore it as thy livery.

Rosita.
I would thou wert not here.

Juan.
Oh, didst thou think
That I could stay behind and let thee face
The wild and Protean treachery of ocean,
Towards the regions of fantastic fear,
And not watch over thee? Didst thou imagine
That I could stay in Spain while thou wert seeking
A frightful country, in whose virgin forests
The Indian and the tiger will make peace
To meet a white invader? Oh, not I!
Thy father takes thee to the lands of fever
Whose breath will kill the roses on thy cheeks,
Whose heat will scorch the dewdrops of thy gladness.
In his mad seeking for his own lost youth
He sacrifices thine.

Rosita.
Alas! I know it.

Juan.
I had a plan before we sailed from Spain
To save thee from the folly of his visions,
And carry thee away; but Fate prevented,
Putting the bar of accident between
The wheel-spokes of my purpose; but one day
I mean to do it still, when chance shall favour,
And bear thee back to Europe.

Rosita.
Oh, mine own,
It cannot be. Alas! I cannot do it.
Hast thou not said thyself, a minute since,
That we are sailing to the lands of fever?
Oh, who will nurse him if he sickens there?
I am the only being that he loves.

Juan.
He has no love except the Fount of Youth.

Rosita.
Yes; but of earthly loves he loves me most.

Juan.
And loving thee the lesser of the two,
He shall not step between thyself and me
And rob me of my love.

Rosita.
Another shadow
Than his may step between us.

Juan.
How, another?

Rosita.
Two nights ago I had a dream of death.

Juan.
Oh, love! my love!

Rosita.
I had a dream of death.
I stood alone in an immense cave-temple,
Whose thickset pillars, hewn in the live rock,
Sustained a heavy vault, which seemed to crush
The spirit out. The red and lurid flicker
Of countless torches danced upon the stone,
But all was empty. Suddenly a clash
As of a thousand cymbals shook the vault,
And, starting out of shadow, all about me,
A thousand dusky warriors locked me round
In the wild horror of a dizzy war-dance;
And ever louder grew their guttural cries,
And ever nearer closed the hideous circle
Of painted demons with their brandished arrows,
As I stood trembling in the frightful centre,
Until at last they reached and overwhelmed me,
Beneath their countless numbers. Then, blindfolded,
They led me through the endless echoing caves,
With ceaseless, measured chant of ‘Lo, the victim!
We bring her to the Goddess, the Destroyer,
We bring her to the ever-murdering Beauty,
The Flower of Cruelty, the Scented Throttler,
The wondrous Executioner of Nature.’
And as we wound along in slow procession,
With measured tramp, a strange narcotic odour,
Delicious, and yet horrible, grew stronger,
Until it grew intolerable as pain.
Then we stood still, and in a pealing voice
I heard them cry, ‘Now lay her in the lap
Of the Great Merciless.’ And then they raised me
As if on to an altar; round my throat,
Round limbs and body, strange and snake-like coils,
Which were not snakes, but felt like fleshy thongs,
Elastic and resistless, wound and wound.
I felt my body changing into pulp,
And in the monstrous agony I woke.

Juan.
Oh, hideous and most horrible of dreams!

Rosita.
What dost thou think the murdering goddess was?

Juan.
An empty fear, the strangling goddess, nightmare,
Born of this leaden heat.

Rosita.
Love, I think not;
I think it was a presage of the future,
A foresight of a fate that waits me there.

Juan.
Whate'er it is, it shall be kissed away—
But hush! I see the figure of Agrippa
There in the moonlight; and he must not find us
So near together—Every time I see
His bold unholy eyes upon thy beauty,
It sets my fingers playing with my knife.
Away, away, he must not find us here!

SCENE III.

(Officer's cabin.)
Sanchez.
What think'st thou the Biminians may be like?

Garcia.
I know not what to think or to expect.
Some say that they are dwarfs and others giants.
Some say they are amphibious men whose cities
Are built in lakes, and paved like oozy Venice
With dark-green water. They can stay for hours
Like otters at the bottom; then rise up
And shoot a flight of arrows; which, when done,
They dive once more.

Sanchez.
Pedrillo says they live
In subterranean labyrinths like rabbits,
With issues imperceptible to man;
And often, of a sudden in the desert,
From cities unsuspected under-foot,
Armies start up, or vanish all at once
Leaving the landscape bare.

Morasquez.
I know a man
Who says their cities stand on giant trees
High overhead: each forest is a city,
Up in the starry sky. They wear their hair
In one black rope that hangs along their back,
And, when their father dies, they dress in yellow.

Garcia.
No, those are the Chineses of Cathay
That mourn in yellow: the Biminians mourn
In black like Christians.

Carpaza.
What of their religion?

Sanchez.
Some say that they are worshippers of fire,
And others that they worship their own souls.
I know a monk who says they are Nestorians,
Worse than all Jews and Moslems.

Cucheres.
Thou art wrong.
I know an Indian at Hispaniola,
Whose brother once was wrecked upon their coast:
And so I know for certain what they worship.
They have as goddess a terrific flower,
A sort of Venus' fly-trap, so gigantic
That it can eat a man with as much ease
As ours can eat a fly, and once a month
They feed it with a slave.

Sanchez.
The thing may be,
For things as strange have been. But on the whole
It seems more likely that they be Nestorians,
Or heretics of some sort.—This is clear,
That whatsoever be their faith, its root
Must be outrooted, just as has been done
In Guatemala. They use bloodhounds there:
Balboa has them trained on wicker figures
In human shape, and filled with carrion flesh;
Each hound is entered on the army list,
And gets a soldier's pay. Balboa says
That if the Indians now can understand
The doctrine of the Trinity, 'tis thanks
To these same hounds; he calls them his confessors.

Carpaza.
It is a pity that we cannot use
His hounds at home to teach the Moors their prayers,
A year or two, and they would be good Christians.
What sayest thou, Sanchez?

(Enter Agrippa.)
Sanchez.
Aye, it is a pity
The king is overkind: he should have rooted
Their race and their religion out of Spain
After Granada.

Agrippa.
Talking of the Moslem?

Morasquez.
Yes, and how to treat them.

Agrippa.

Juan
(who has entered unnoticed, in time to hear the end of Agrippa's story).
Thou art a base coward.

Agrippa.
Ha, what's that? Say it again.

Juan.
Thou art a base, base coward.

Agrippa
(springing at him with his dagger).
Take that!

(Juan snatches his wrist and averts the blow. They roll on the ground together, over and over. Juan wrenches the dagger out of Agrippa's grasp and holds it to his throat.)
Juan.
Shall I stick it in thy throat? There, keep thy dog's
life—I make thee a present of it. But stick no more
handspikes in women's throats.

[The others separate them and exeunt.

SCENE IV.

(Cabin of Ponce de Leon.)
Ponce de Leon
(alone).
(Enter Agrippa.)
Well, there is a change.

Agrippa.
I know there is. Have I not had my eyes
Hard fixed for half the night upon the moon
And on the faint, faint vapours that have formed
Upon the horizon? Yes, there is a change.
I have already given all the orders:
The men are ready, and within twelve hours
We shall unfurl the sails and turn the helm
Back on Hispaniola.

Ponce de Leon.
Hell and thunder!
What dost thou mean?

Agrippa.
I mean that there is water
Sufficient in the cisterns (and that barely)
To reach Hispaniola, but not half
The quantity of water that is needed
To reach our destination.

Ponce de Leon.
Say it slower;
Say it again; say I have heard thee wrong;
It cannot be, O God, it cannot be!
Say that thou didst not say to me ‘Turn back!’

Agrippa.
It is not I who say it, but the cisterns;
Come and inspect the water for yourself.

Ponce de Leon.
Back to Hispaniola for the want
For some few paltry gallons of fresh water!
It cannot be; I say it cannot be;
The thought is mad and monstrous. Why, it means
At least a year of wasted plan and effort:
What am I saying? Why, it means the death
Of the whole enterprise. For who would get
This mutinous crew to sail the sea again?
It cannot be; I say it cannot be:
It is a passing nightmare of thy dreaming,
And while I turn my back upon the goal,
Fernandez with my other ship will reach it,
And cheat me of the object of my life.

Agrippa.
There is no arguing with parching throats:
'Tis not by talking of the Fount of Youth
That you can quench a sailor's raging thirst.
Come and inspect the cisterns.

Ponce de Leon.
It may rain:
The gathering clouds are near.

Agrippa.
I know these seas:
Have I not sailed them at this very season?
The wind is near, but not a drop of rain.

Ponce de Leon.
And to be cheated of the Fount of Founts,
Of that all-potent and ineffable draught,
For lack of some few gallons of such water
As any dog can lap in any street!
The thought will drive me mad. Rather than turn,
I will blow up the ship with all it holds,
And my own self.

Agrippa.

Ponce de Leon.
All that I have and love, save mine own life.

Agrippa.
Even the promise of your daughter's hand?

Ponce de Leon
(very slowly).
Yes, even that.

Agrippa.
Well, if you give me that,
And put me in possession for twelve hours
Of undisputed power on this vessel,
I take you to Bimini. Do you swear?

Ponce de Leon.
I swear it by the shrine of Compostella.

Agrippa.
We understand each other. I will leave you
To your own meditations for a little,
While I give orders.

[Exit Agrippa.
Ponce de Leon
(alone).
Is it a stagger that has left me dizzy,
Or is it only that my soul has stood
For half a score of black and icy minutes
A-shivering in the lobby of despair,
And still feels numb—and now that once again
I stand and warm me by the hearth of hope?
Why is it that I feel as if a part
Of my own self had been lopped off for ever?
O Youth Eternal, spirit that I serve,
Why hast thou asked me for my daughter's weal?
Why hast thou asked of me to break her heart?
Thou knowest that I can no more resist
The dazzling fascination of thy splendour
Than can the moth who flutters scorching circles
Around the perilous flame. O well thou knowest
That if thou needest victims for thy altar
It is not I, thy priest and devotee,
Who can refuse them. Have not other men,
In order to attain their baser goals
Of avarice, or ambition, to crush out
Love, conscience, mercy, happiness, health, and slumber
For a base god? And shall I dream that thou,
The ever-glorious and the ever-dazzling,
Will let me lave my wrinkles in thy Fount
At lesser price than that?
And must not she
Who is to share the incomparable boon
Consent to share its price? Must she not pay
In the red gold of happiness and peace,
She on whose cheek perennial youth will sit
For ever safe from ever-gnawing years?
Aye, she must pay her share. (Re-enter Agrippa.)

Already back?
What orders hast thou given in these five minutes
Of thine omnipotence?

Agrippa.
Now I will tell you.
For these two days the sailors have been watching
A phantom island on the faint horizon.
It is a thing of unsubstantial vapour,
A freak of light portending change of weather.
I have commanded thirty men in boats,
Under the charge of Florestan, the mate,
To leave the ship and to await us there.

Ponce de Leon.
What, in a phantom island! Art thou mad?

Agrippa.
Then, while they land upon it, we sail on.
The crew, diminished by so many men,
And put upon half-rations of fresh water,
Can reach Bimini safely.

Ponce de Leon.
But, good God!
Why, this is simply murder. What! Send out
In open boats upon this unsailed sea
These thirty men, to slowly die of thirst,
Or drink the maddening horror of the brine!

Agrippa.
If they but think sufficiently on sugar
The sea will not taste salt.

Ponce de Leon.
It cannot be,
I cannot let this monstrous thing be done.

Agrippa.
The thing is done already.

Ponce de Leon.
Christ of Heaven!

Agrippa.
The thing is done already: they have left,
And now are past recall. Did you not give me
The power of life and death upon this ship?

Ponce de Leon.
O Fount of Youth! what hast thou made me do!

Agrippa
(aside).
And so I turn his vanities to profit,
As I shall do a many times in future.
Upon the misty basis of his dreams
I will build up the structure of my house,
The solid edifice of real power.
While he is seeking for the Fount of Youth,
I will make mine the regions that we conquer.
He has a royal charter in his pocket;
But I, once made his son-in-law, shall be
The real viceroy, master of the substance,
Until such time as, feeling strength sufficient,
I shall deprive him even of the shadow.

Ponce de Leon.
O Fount! O Fount! What hast thou made me do?

ACT III.

SCENE I.

(A chamber in the great rock temple at Bimini.)
High Priest.
This is the Feast of Arrows, and the walls
Of this huge fane of beauty and destruction
Have disappeared, with all their painted demons,
Beneath the dewy tapestry of blossoms
Bright in their transient patterns, while the pillars
Conceal the scars of their forgotten ages
Beneath the garb of odoriferous palms,
And hold each other, like colossal captives,
With Spring's ephemeral chains. Upon the pavement
The stains of human sacrifice are hidden
With fresh-strewn litter of uncounted roses.
The troops of garland girls have done their work,
And all have left. And now for seven days
The countless warriors of this warlike nation,
In silent companies will bring their quivers,
To the slow booming of the gong of gongs,
That every long and copper-headed shaft
May be baptized with poison. Never yet,
Since these stupendous columns first were carved
Out of the living granite by our fathers,
Innumerable centuries ago,
Has venom of such potency been needed,
To stem the growing tide of an invasion;
And never has the yearly Feast of Arrows
Been full of such solemnity as now.
The white invaders, with the impious help
Of the rebellious tribes, have reached our gates
And battle nears. Is all prepared and ready?
Where rise the perilous vapours of thy cauldron?

Indian Sorceress.
The white invaders will not long be white
If they give battle; for the faintest scratch
With arrow or with javelin of my steeping
Will make their pale and leprous bodies blacken,
And fit them for the burial-ground of dogs.
Oh, trust my brew. Have I not worked in poison
Until the very flies that sting me drop
Dead on the floor? The art which we possess,
And have developed since primeval times,
Of feeding snakes on juice of deadly plants,
And then inoculating with their venom,
Increased in strength, the deadly plant itself,
And so augmenting, in a ceaseless circle
The potency of poision, has now reached
Incredible perfection. One black drop
Of our unmixed and last-developed death-juice.
Were it to fall into the mightiest river,
Would poison all the nations on its banks,
And curdle Ocean's self.

High Priest.
What demon shapes
Have risen in thy fumes?

Indian Sorceress.
Three gods of terror
Familiar to my visions, and one new.
First, Eyes-of-Madness, with the scarlet bat-wings;
Then Ice-of-Fear, the god with lidless eye-bails;
And Wince-of-Agony, the great tormentor.
The unknown spirit had a tiger's head,
With human limbs all of the fairest shape,
And ceaselessly he ate them—every limb
Growing again the while he ate the others.
It was a wondrous and terrific vision;
And never since the god of Silent Horror
Placed, years ago, upon my novice head
The cold and restless wreath of living vipers,
Which turned my black hair white, have I beheld
So dread a deity.

High Priest.
I know him well;
He is the great and all-pervading god
Of Cosmic Cruelty, named Ataflis;
And it is owing to his boundless power
That Nature preys for ever on herself,
And that the earth and air and sea are filled with millions
Who feed on others and themselves are eaten.
Is that the singing of thy venom-girls
Which echoes through these temple vaults?

Indian Sorceress.
It is;
And if thou listen, thou wilt hear the words
Of a new song, which I have taught them sing
For this our Feast of Arrows, while we mix
The perilous essence with the vitreous gums
Which serve to glue it to the arrow's head.

High Priest.
Thy maids sing well, and I approve the words.
Thy arrow song is worthy of the temple
Of that gigantic man-devouring Flower—
Goddess at once of Murder and of Beauty—
Whose ever-hungry tentacles can grasp
The living human limbs—whose awful bosom
Is even as ready to engulf a slave
As the small sun-dew to engulf an insect.
The Flower of Cruelty, the lonely Empress
Of virgin forests, whom our sires enshrined
In this rock temple, and who there has grown
In beauty and in appetite, is symbol
Of what pervades the universe itself.
The two great ruling principles of Nature
Are Cruelty and Beauty—Pain and Sunshine.
And even as her iron tendrils grasp
The monthly wretch we give her to devour,
So Nature in her placid beauty murders,
Through sea, and air, and earth. The world is like
The walls in which we stand: Above, the flowers;
And catacombs of dungeons underneath,
All choking full. But, hark! I hear the sound
Of steps approaching: doubtless they are coming
To tell me that the Monarch is in sight.
Atalpa comes to see how we have wreathed
Our walls and columns. Othoxa, get thee gone.

[Exit Indian Sorceress.
(Enter Atalpa, accompanied by two tame panthers and followed by an escort of warriors.)
High Priest.
Lord of the Panthers, ever-young Atalpa!
I bid thee welcome to these sacred caves,
To-day as ever.

Atalpa.
For a thousand years
Have these old columns, on the Feast of Arrows,
Put on their garb of aromatic green,
As regularly bursting into leaf
As if they teemed with sap; and never yet
Has the King failed to come and praise the flowers.
But I, for once, have neither eyes nor nostrils
For wreaths, however sweet; and I have come
With care-o'erclouded forehead, to consult
Upon the means which our religion offers
To stem the white invasion.

High Priest.
My own thoughts
Have not been idle since the news grew darker:
I have gone over all the great invasions
Which we have baffled in the course of ages;
And in each case I find that we have owed
Eventual triumph to one single cause—
Our policy of friendship with the gods.
The gods, remember, are destructive forces;
They act from appetite, and not from justice—
If they were just, there were no need of prayer.
Naught is so mercenary as a god
In man's necessity.

Atalpa.
The whites are few,
Compared with our great legions; but they carry
The bolt of Heaven with them, and their thunder
Shakes the great forest; every echoing peal
Means scores of dead. Their heads are capp'd with steel,
Their breasts with plates which not a shaft can pierce—
Their very fingers are encased in iron.
Had I not seen the corpses of their slain
I still should think them gods; besides, they have
The tribes as their allies.

High Priest.
Now, let me know
What presents thou art bringing to the temple.
Much will depend on that.

Atalpa.
Eleven targes
Of beaten gold, wrought round with figures showing
The war between the leopards and the gods.
Then I have brought thee, in a precious casket,
The famous ruby, called the Eye of Wrath,
And twelve great barrels full of minted gold.

High Priest.
I think the Goddess will accept the gift.

Atalpa.
In presence of the ever-growing peril
There is a thought which haunts me night and day.
Dost thou remember, from remotest ages
The prophecy which says: ‘The day will come
On which this prosperous and victorious state
Will wholly perish, if a white-skinned virgin
Shall not be offered up in sacrifice
To the great goddess?’

High Priest.
Yes, I recollect it;
But it has been interpreted to mean
That she would be miraculously born
With a white skin among us.

Atalpa.
Ay, and rightly;
So long we knew not that a white-skinn'd race
Existed in the world. But now we know it;
And seems it not as if the day were come
For the fulfilment, now that the invaders
Have raised the tribes against us and are marching
Straight on the capital?

High Priest.
Have the white invaders
Their women with them?

Atalpa.
That I cannot answer,
But I intend to ask them for a truce
And send an embassy, and so gain time
To get to know them better. Who comes here?

(Enter the Master of the Sacrifices.)
Master of the Sacrifices.
I come with consternation in my soul
And staggering feet, that scarce can bear my weight
To bring most monstrous news.

Atalpa.
Quick, speak, what is it?
Keep us not in suspense.

Master of the Sacrifices.
A fearful portent,
Big with catastrophe to king and people:
The ever-hungry Goddess of this temple
For the first time in history, has spurned
Her monthly victim.

High Priest.
Spurned her monthly victim?
It cannot be—the omen were too monstrous.

Master of the Sacrifices.
I have just seen it with these very eyes.
Scarce had we placed the gagged and writhing slave—
A virgin of the ebon race of Xu—
In the great Flower's lap, when a convulsion
Shook her prodigious petals. She relaxed
The feelers which had grasped the victim's body
And cast it out alive. We tried again
A second time: again she cast it out,
Alive just as before. And when we made
A third attempt, the miracle took place
Even again, except that then the slave
Was cast out dead.

High Priest.
No such tremendous portent
Has ever tuned man's spirit to disaster,
Since the great star, which trailed a fan of fire
Depopulating Heaven, and the earthquake
Which shook the figures of the gods to pieces,
Gave warning of the most disastrous battle
Which history records.

Atalpa.
Thou sayest well,
Priest of the Scented Murderess; such omen
Has not prepared the minds of men for evil
Since these three hundred years. But in this thing
I see not only presage of disaster,
But something more distinct. When I consider
The peril which surrounds us, and remember
The prophecy of old, the thing assumes
Another shape. I see a thought, a meaning,
A purpose, a command. The tongueless goddess,
In spurning thus the victim that we offer,
Means that she wants another—something new
For her terrific maw; and I can read
Her wish as clear as if she spoke in words.
She wants white flesh; and if we give it not,
The pillars of this state will split and stagger;
And with a crash which will outpeal the thunder
With which the white men's engines shake the air,
The edifice of ages will come down
Upon our heads, and bury us in its fall.

[Exeunt omnes.

SCENE II.

(The Virgin Forest near the Spanish Camp.)
Juan.
O love, look up! What wondrous depths of green,
Bough above bough, and yet more boughs above them.
See how the mossy columns of the trees
Soar and divide and over-curve the gloom
With ever lighter arches, tier on tier.
See how the yellow sunlight, filtering through,
Grows ever greener till it finds the moss
On which we lie. Might not this beryl dome
Which shrines our love be some rare ocean cave,
In whose green lights and shadows during noon
The scaly nereïds and enamoured Tritons
Seek refuge when the arrows of the sun
Strike ocean's heart! Or is it all a dream?
O tell me, love, that all these leaves are real,
And not a vision born of raging thirst
In the delirium of that open boat
Upon the leafless horror of the sea,
Among the dead and dying; and that thou,
Who seemest to be leaning over me,
Art not a phantom of that final hour
Before Fernandez' vessel picked us up,
When I was calling on thy name in vain,
But thy own sweet reality.

Rosita.
Dear love,
Dismiss thy fears. Beneath the soft green light,
Thou art no longer in the open boat,
Dying of thirst; nor yet art thou on earth.
These are the green and silent depths of ocean,
Far down below the surface of the storms,
And I a mermaid, bending over thee.
When some young comely sailor drowns at sea,
We catch his body as it slowly sinks
Through the green fathoms, and we wake him back
With spells and kisses to a deep-sea life.

Juan.
Wert thou a mermaid, as thou say'st thou art,
Thou wouldst be so much fairer than the others,
That the green ocean cave and sea-weed forests
Would grow yet greener with their jealousy;
Thou couldst be but their victim or their queen.

Rosita.
No, here we all are equal, and no discord
Nor spite nor envy mars the placid depths.
Sweet sailor, I will take thee by-and-by
And show thee through the treasuries of ocean,
The caves in which we keep the sunken gold,
And all the shipwrecked jewels of the world.

Juan.
I have a richer treasury, thy heart.

Rosita.
Here will we live together and for ever,
And see no more of earth, save some rare glimpse
When we swim up and sit upon some rock,
Where, while I sing unto my golden harp,
Or watch some lazy vessel in the sunset,
Thou wilt repeat thy vows of merman love.

Juan.
O love, O love! Would that thy words were true!
Oh, I would tell thee that the pale green light,
Which shines so softly in the happy depths,
Is less to me than thou; that the light stems,
Which wave for ever in the briny caves,
Are less divinely supple than thy form;
That the pale rose which lines the ocean shell
Is conquered by the freshness of thy cheek,
The coral by the crimson of thy lips.
Oh, I would tell thee that thy voice outrings
The ocean's summer breeze; and that thy kiss
Is softer than the kiss the seagull's wing
Gives to the panting wave.

Rosita.
Love, hark my song!
I would not be a child of earth,
Which is so full of care;
I would not leave my mermaid life
To be an empress there.

Juan.
But if I were a child of clay,
Wouldst thou not leave the sea,
To share the pain and care and woe,
And live on earth with me?

Rosita.
The ocean's caves are green and sweet,
They know nor sigh nor tear;
The sea-weed forests shed no leaves,
As ends each passing year.

Juan.
Oh, wouldst thou stay where sea-bells bloom,
And let me pine alone;
And give me, as the days go by,
No answer to my moan?

Rosita.
The streets of earth are paved with cares,
Its roofs are tiled with woes;
The bread it eats is made by grief,
From grain that sorrow sows.

Juan.
Oh, wouldst thou sit upon thy rock,
And watch the fading ships;
And never give a kiss to him
Who lives but by thy lips?

Rosita.
Love, I would leave a thousand seas—
A thousand caves that glow—
To share with thee the paths of earth,
And all the tears they know.

Juan.
And so we are together upon earth.
We are on earth—oh, cruelly on earth!
O sweetest, it is time for us to wake
Out of the day-dream that has wrapped us round;
Here, where the dreamy magic of thy voice,
Mixed with the whisper of the leaves above,
Had lulled my soul till I had half forgot
What brought me here. Awake, awake, Rosita!
Emergency is clamouring for an answer,
And peril girds us like a fiery belt!

Rosita.
O love, I was so happy in my dream.
Wilt thou not let us be a little longer
Merman and mermaid, in a cave of pearl—
Here, in the pale green sunlight, where the world,
With all its doubts and hates, and pangs and perils,
Has no existence for us?

Juan.
Would I could!
But danger presses; we must think and act.

Rosita.
Thou deemest the danger greater than it is.

Juan.
I am no craven soul, for whom each mole-hill
Projects the shadow of a toppling mountain.
A hideous danger threatens thee. Agrippa——

Rosita.
I fear him not.

Juan.
Thou little knowest him.
The most destructive and abhorred wild beast
That crouches in the tangles of these forests,
Compared with his ferocity, is kind,
And, measured with his treachery, is loyal.
He is thy father's favourite and tyrant;
His daily evil genius; and thy father,
For some mysterious service past or future,
Has given him the promise of thy hand,
And every day, with more intense insistence,
He presses for fulfilment of the bond.

Rosita.
He will find out that he but wastes his pains.

Juan.
And when he finds it out, and drops the mask
Of love and courtship which conceals his rage,
Woe to thyself and me. His dark soul writhes
Beneath thy scorn; and when fair means have failed
He will use foul.

Rosita.
I can defend myself.
I do not fear his violence.

Juan.
Oh, my love,
Thou knowest not the danger thou art in.
If he were not the mean and cruel coward,
The unrestricted tyrant that he is—
If I could cross his blade in open fight—
Oh, I would rid thee of him soon enough!
But if I gave him challenge, dost thou think
That he would take it? Ere the day was out
I should have got but throttled for my pains.
Oh love, now list. Agrippa's insolence
Has fostered discontent among the soldiers,
Whose lives are being wasted month by month
In a vain, empty enterprise. Fernandez
With Garcia, Morasquez, and some others,
Have formed a plan to suddenly desert,
Seize on a ship, and sail away to Spain.
Love, we must fly.

Rosita.
I cannot leave my father.

Juan.
Thy life depends upon it. As for me,
I owe thy father nothing. Did he not
Place me and others in an open boat,
To die of thirst upon an unsailed ocean?

Rosita.
But I—I owe him all—my very breath,
And many a kiss between the eyes of childhood,
When he would hold me long upon his knee,
And when the Fount of Youth was not as now—
The only thing he loved.

Juan.
For his mad thirst
For that enchanted water which he never
Will reach on earth, he plunges all in woe,
And drags thee into ruin with himself.

Rosita.
The greater need that I, who am the only
True friend he has to warn him of his fate,
Should not desert him. Love, it cannot be.

Juan.
It must, it must! There is no time to lose.
This single opportunity, once wasted,
Will ne'er recur.

Rosita.
I cannot leave my father!
I cannot leave him—even, love, for thee.
But, hark, I hear a faint and distant clarion
Come from the tents. Haste, haste, or thou'lt be missed!
We must return to camp by different ways.
Each kiss is but a danger. Oh, begone!

Juan.
I still shall break thy purposes—think it o'er.
Oh, love, another kiss!

Rosita.
Away! Away!

[Exit Juan.
Rosita
(alone).
Now love is putting duty to the torture,
But it must stand the test. Oh, it were sweet
To fly with him to Spain, and see no more
This wild and cruel Indian world of peril,
And with my hand in his once more to cross
The rippling cornfields, where we used to meet.
It cannot be; no, no, it cannot be;
I cannot leave my father to his fate,
And I must stay beside him to the end.
What figure is approaching through the trees?

(Enter Agrippa.)
Agrippa.
What, here alone—without thy Indian guard?
Not even thy Indian handmaid; in this forest
Which has no paths, and out of sight of camp!
Oh, this is rash!

Rosita.
Thou hast been dogging me!
I care not to be dogged.

Agrippa.
I saw thee leave
The camp alone, and, spurred by love and fear
For thy sweet safety, followed in thy steps
For thy protection.

Rosita.
Does the roe require
To be protected by the skulking wolf?

Agrippa.
The forest is unsafe, however near
The bugle sound. There are wild beasts about.

Rosita.
Thyself, for instance?

Agrippa.
Call me what thou wilt,
Thou art the fairest when thou call'st me names;
Love is the sweetest when he looks most fierce
And wears a mantle made of lion's hide.

Rosita.
And Hate most hideous when his wolfish bristles
Are seen through lambskins.

Agrippa.
Call me wolf again.
It is so sweet to hear thee call me wolf;
Thou hast accustomed me to taunts and insults;
They do no harm, I take them as pet names.

Rosita.
Oh, then I'll call thee courteously Agrippa,
Which is for me the most ill-omened name
Between the earth's two poles.

Agrippa.
I have already
Outstretched the usual patience of a courtship,
In wooing thee so long, and do not thou
Outstretch it further, till it snap in two.
I have thy father's promise; thou art mine.
To-day I woo, to-morrow I shall order.
Fight not too long with fate, and, most of all,
Call not the wolf too often by his name,
Or, if thou dost, wait till he cares to rip.

Rosita.
Ho, ho! the fleece is off; and better so,
It suited thee but little, and thy growl
Is sweeter in my ears than was thy bleat.

Agrippa.
What, did I growl? and yet I am no wolf,
At most a lamb, who happens to have fangs,
And who, in other woods and other seasons,
On one or two occasions in his life,
Has eaten up a woman for less cause
Than thou, young lady, givest him to-day.

Rosita.
I thank thee for the warning, though in truth
I did not need it. Now be pleased to take
Some other path than mine to reach the camp.

Agrippa.
I owe it as a duty to thy father
To see thee safely back.

Rosita.
What, dost thou force
Thy company upon me? Answer plainly.

Agrippa.
Force is an ugly word; it is my duty
To see thee through these brambles, and, besides,
I have a little tale I wish to tell,
About a woman, as we go along.
The story is instructive and pathetic,
And shows the latent goodness of my heart;
I wish to prove how kind a soul I have.

Rosita.
I shall not listen.

Agrippa.
The story is pathetic, is it not?

Rosita.
I have not been attending.

Agrippa.
Were't not wise
To make no more resistance, but accept
So tender-souled a suitor?

Rosita.
Never, never!
Until God's lightning falls upon thy head!
O Thou Omniscient and Omnipotent God,
Give me the strength to fight Thy battle out
Against this man! Oh, never, never!

Agrippa.
Thou wilt think better of it at thy leisure.

Rosita.
If all thy soldiers drag me to the altar,
They shall not force me to become thy wife.
For I will stab thee at the altar's foot,
And be the executioner for God.
The day that thou shalt have recourse to force
Shall be thy last, and mine.

Agrippa.
What, threat of dagger!
I love to see a beauty in her fury,
And know the value of a woman's threat.
It is a pretty bubble.

Rosita.
Look at this.
(She takes a small dagger from her bosom, bares her left arm, and passes the dagger slowly through it.)
Dost thou believe me now? It is for thee,
And not for me, to meditate at leisure,
And weigh the peril of thy scheme to-day.

[Exit.
Agrippa.
By all the fiends who crowd the devil's stair
I thought her not so strong; and for this once
I own that I have reckoned sans my host.
Yes, she is right; it is for me to ponder
And weigh the items of my scheme at leisure.
She is too dangerous, and I must change
My plan from top to bottom, and build up
On other ground the edifice of fortune.
And better so, perhaps. The wind has changed
Since last I viewed the compass, and it brings me
Strange tempting whispers from the Indian king.
She shall not be my wife, but she shall be
A something better than a wife—a victim!
Revenge is sweeter in the cup than love
For one like me; and now that I am free
To give a hearing to Atalpa's offer
And found my altered schemes upon his help.
I can prepare a network of destruction
To wrap around her father and herself.

ACT IV.

SCENE I.

(The Spanish Camp. Soldiers drinking and playing at dice between the tents.)
First Soldier.

Second Soldier.

Third Soldier.
Ay, faith, there's youth in this; and we had better
Enjoy it while we have it. Our small store
Of barrelled sunshine will have trickled dry
For many a day and many a month and year
Before we reach the fountain.

First Soldier.
That it will;
And every single drop of cellared wine
In Christendom as well. The magic Water
Seems ebbing ever further from our eyes
As every month goes by.

Third Soldier.
And yet they say
That the commander thinks success quite certain,
Now that the Indian king has sent the envoys.
This morning they were walking through the camp,
With their great golden armlets.

Second Soldier.
Yes, I saw them;
And they are all old men, which of itself
Is proof sufficient 'gainst the Fount of Youth;
For if the Indians had it in their kingdom,
Would the ambassadors that they have sent us
Have snow upon their heads?

Fourth Soldier.
Ay, so I thought
This very morning, as I saw them pass;
But Pedro says it is because their king
Keeps all the magic water for himself,
And takes good care his subjects shouldn't taste it,
That he alone may always be as young,
And always be as strong.

Second Soldier.
But some assert
That if he's got no wrinkles it's because
He's never twice the same.

Sourth Soldier.
What dost thou mean—
Not twice the same?

Second Soldier.
I mean that he's elected
Only for some few eyars, among the strongest
Of their young warriors, and then yields his place
To one as young; that's why he's never old,
And youth is always seated on the throne.
And if there's any truth in what I'm told,
Atalpa is a title, not a name;
And their young king, instead of having reigned
Six hundred years, has not reigned sixty months.

First Soldier.
If that's the case, the sooner we give up
This wild-goose chase, the better for us all.

Fourth Soldier.
For my part, I am getting every day
Less faith in this strange water.

Third Soldier.
So am I.

Fifth Soldier.
Why, if the Fount of Youth exists on earth,
Would not that God-cursed and eternal Hebrew,
Who ever trudges round and round the world,
Over the graves of those whose birth he saw,
Have found it out by now? His curse compels
The lonely horror of his dusty feet
To measure and re-measure every inch
Of hill and plain, of city and of desert;
And if the Fount of Youth were to be found
He would have drunk the draught.

Third Soldier.
Perhaps he has.

Fifth Soldier.
No, he is old as ever. On the day
Before we sailed from Spain, as I was thinking
About the Fount of Youth and all our hopes,
I met him in the street, just as the Dusk
Was putting Day to bed.

Second Soldier.
What was he like?

Fifth Soldier.
His great white beard, a yard in length and more,
Waved in the wind behind him. In his hand
He held a tall spiked staff on which were notched
The fifteen notches of his centuries.
His Syrian sandals, bound with dusty thongs,
Were made of hide of crocodile, to stand
The wear and tear of his eternal trudging;
His wrinkled gourd, less wrinkled than his face,
The minister of his eternal thirst,
Swung from his girdle, made of one great snake-skin,
With tail in mouth—the symbol of his life.
I barred his way; he started like a sleeper,
And shot a flame from out his sunken sockets.
‘Why stopp'st thou me, Ephemeral?' he asked;
‘Walk to thy grave, and let me go my way,
To make the earth another belt of steps.’
‘Tarry,’ I answered, ‘but to tell me this:
HAst ever lighted, in thy endless journey,
Upon the thing they call the Fount of Youth?’
He paused a moment, while a frown of pain
Convulsed his brow. ‘The Fount of Youth?’ he said
Like one who slowly mutters in a dream;
‘It bubbles up between the feet of Death,
In every land, in every plain and city,
And Death and I have nought that is in common.’
And he passed on and vanished in the twilight.

Fourth Soldier.
Strange, very strange. There's still a little wine
At bottom of the flagon; pass it round.
Can any of you tell me, is it true
That the commander's daughter wears her arm
Since Thursday in a sling?

Third Soldier.
Ay, true as gospel.
At first they said that she had had a fall,
But now they say one of her Indian women
Sprang at he with a knife. They're lithe as panthers,
And just as fell. They say she's pardoned her
And hushed it up.

Fourth Soldier.
Well, anyhow, she's hurt.
Here's her good health; she's been the soldier's friend
All through the expedition. Dost remember
How she took up our cause against Morasquez
The day he tried to cheat us of the salt;
And how she saved Pedrillo from the lashes,
When all was ready waiting?

Second Soldier.
And he's grateful;
He'd give his life to save her little finger.

Fourth Soldier.

SCENE II.

(The tent of Agrippa.)
Chief Indian Ambassador.
Success has risen with the dawn to-day:
The treaty seems concluded; and the spirits
Who shape the destiny of warlike states
Appear, indeed, to give us their support.

Second Indian Ambassador.
Yes, all seems going well; and Heaven itself
I sgiving us the omens which on earth
Precede its amplest favours. Late last night,
As I was fathoming the depths of sky
To find some sign amid the starry millions,
An unknown constellation, in the shape
Of a great panther, twinkled into sight,
With head erect, victorious.

Chief Ambassador.
Strange: this morning
I, too, beheld the panther, made of cloud.
It lasted but a minute and was gone.

Second Ambassador.
That matters little if it showed itself.

Chief Ambassador.
Now the white virgin, upon whose possession
The saving of our statedepends, is ours:
And the same pact which gives her to our goddess
Secures what we would have our goddess grant—
The invader's quick departure.

Second Ambassador.
Hast thou seen her?
No whiter victim could the mind of man
Conceive in day-dreams or in nightly visions.
White as the white invaders are, she seems
Of some yet whiter race: her pearly skin
Seems not of human texture, but seems made
Of the same white material which composes
The water-lily's petals, or the disc
Of the thin moon at daybreak, when it floats
Most wafery in the sky. As I beheld her
Among her handmaids of our swarthy race,
She seemed some pearl-faced spirit.

Chief Ambassador.
All is strange
And unlike earth among these white-browed warriors.
Hast thou remarked their lightning-spitting weapons?
Would'st thou not like to handle them?

Second Ambassador.
Not I.
As soon take up the thunderbolt itself
When it lies dumb in Heaven's armoury.
Hush! Here's Agrippa.

Enter Agrippa.)
Agrippa.
Well, have you received
The answer of your king? Does he agree?

Chief Ambassador.
His measenger has come and he agrees,
And, as a token of his satisfaction,
Atalpa sends thee over and above
Five of his largest rubies.

Agrippa.
Let me see them.
I have a taste for precious stones, and thank him.
Now let us recapitulate the terms
Of this most secret pact. First, I engage
That you shall have the daughter of our chief.

Chief Ambassador.
She must be given up to us in public
By her own father: this our creed exacts;
Else would she have no value for our goddess.

Agrippa.
Dismiss your fears; she shall be given up
Freely and openly. The glittering bait
With which I mean to lead him to the trap
Is bright enough for that. If you promise
To lay the stipulated ambuscade
Beside some solitary forest pool
Which I will tell him is the Fount of Youth,
I undertake to make him give her up
In presence of his soldiers as its price,
And then to send him thither to his dath.

Second Ambassador
We have a dozen magic springs, but none
That makes men young.

Agrippa.
Oh, any pool will do,
Provided you but kill him at its brink.

Chief Ambassador.
The ambush shall be laid and shall be fatal.

Agrippa.
Then, he once killed, and I once in possession
Of the supreme command, I undertake
To draw away our forces from this land
On payment of three hundred bags of gold,
Each of them of the stipulated weight.

Chief Ambassador.
All this Atalpa understands and swears to.

Agrippa.
Then naught remains to settle, save the details
Of time and place, which we can do to-night,
When I have worked on my commander's mind;
Till then, farewell.

[Exeunt Ambassadors.
Agrippa
(alone).
And so my scheme it prospers,
And everything is marching for the best.
But O, thou wondrous ever-young Atalpa,
Thy heart is young and innocent indeed.
I am an honest pirate and shall keep
Our secret stipulations to the letter;
And in return for thy three hundred bags
Of virgin gold—if all so far goes well—
I shall relieve thee of the white men's presence;
But have I pledged me never to return?
The country which has given me these rubies
Is not a country that one leaves for long,
And thou shalt see me on thy shores again.—
And now to manage that yet greater fool
Who daily counts his wrinkles in the mirror,
And here he is.

(Enter Ponce de Leon.)
Ponce de Leon.
How go negotiations?

Agrippa.
I think I told you, you would not repent
Of having left them wholly in my hands?
Prepare your soul for great and startling news.

Ponce de Leon.
Quick, tell me what it is.

Agrippa.
Prepare your soul
For what your thoughts have played with many a year.

Ponce de Leon.
Keep not my reason dangling on the string
Of thy vague phrases. Tell me what it is.
Have we the Fount of Youth? Quick, quick—oh,
answer!

Agrippa.
The Fount of Youth is yours.

Ponce de Leon
(aside).
O God in heaven,
This is too sudden! Kill me not with joy,
but help me to dissimulate emotion.

Agrippa.
The Indian king consents to let you reach
The Fountain of your dreams, with a small escort,
Provided you will bind yourself by all
That is most holy in your own religion
To leave the land at once with all your forces
As soon as you have tasted of the water.

Ponce de Leon.
My soul is drunk and dazzled: round about it
There seems to be too great a light for thought.
Yet I msut think and force my wild ideas,
Which press upon each other and impede
Each other's march, to keep their proper order.
The joy is like a blow, and it has stunned me.
I pray thee now to leave me for a little.
I fain would be alone for some few minutes
Until my staggered soul can walk again.

[Exit Agrippa.
Ponce de Leon
(alone).
(He draws a little mirror from his pocket and looks at himself in it.)

(Enter Spirits of Youth , who circle round about him.)
Ponce de Leon.
Yes, and the day has come; and we shall feast
As Jason and his demi-gods ne'er feasted,
And we shall lift life's golden cup yet higher
Than even the rejuvenated Æson.
Oh, we will lift it higher than we did
Upon the gayest day of adolescence,
In the expansion of mere natural youth
Which feels old age fast treading on its heels,
And plant our foot upon the neck of Death
Crowned with acanthus and with dewy roses.
We shall defy the cares and woes of earth,
And like a god who pants with boundless life,
Drink to the rising sun.

(Re-enter Agrippa . As he comes in, the Spirits of Youth take flight.)
Agrippa.
There is one other item in the treaty
Which I, perhaps, had better tell you now:
As you must pass to reach the Fount of Youth
By many of his shrines and of his temples,
The Indian king insists upon a hostage,
Whom he will keep as long as you be there,
that no offence be offered to his gods.

Ponce de Leon.
What hostage has he fixed upon?

Agrippa.
Your daughter.

Ponce de Leon.
My daughter? Never, never, he must take
Some other person.

Agrippa.
He will take no other.

Ponce de Leon.
What! place my daughter in Atalpa's hands,
Entrust her beauty to his ever-young
And ever-burning passions?

Agrippa.
If you stickle,
He breaks the pact. Farewell the Fount of Youth.

Ponce de Leon.
It cannot be that he will take no other.
What! place her in Atalpa's hands for days—
Perhaps for weeks—along! The only white?
Among the priesthood of his blood-stained gods?
Lost in the frightful cities of the Indians?

Agrippa.
Atalpa is inexorable; choose
'Twixt this conditon and the Fount of Youth.

Ponce de Leon.
Oh, thou must shake his purpose.

Agrippa.
Dost thou think
That I who am her lover, her betrothed,
To whom she is more dear than breath of life,
Have left one word untried?—although in truth
I think there is no peril, for Atalpa
Is bound by his self-interest to respect her.
He'll take no other hostage. Now I leave you.
You have until to-night to think it out:
And I meantime, if you will wait a little
Here in this tent, will send you one whose counsel
Will help your soul to come to a decision.

[Exit Agrippa.
Ponce de Leon
(alone).
O God, O God! Why dost thou dazzle me
With the effulgence of my life's great triumph,
And then remove the common light of Heaven?
Rosita as the hostage of Atalpa—
The only white among a million Indians,
Who never yet have seen a living white;
The single head round which their waves of hatred
May close at any moment? Who can tell
That one or other of their frightful gods
Will not all of a sudden feel a taste
For young white flesh? He said she was to serve
As guarantee that no offence be offered
To any of their deities or temples:
Why, any of the soldiers of my escort
May give in his imprudence such offence,
Or I myself by some mere careless gesture
May rouse the wrath of their suspicious priests,
And then her life is forfeit. O God! God!
It is too frightful, and I cannot do it.
It would be better to reject the treaty
And try and reach the Fount of Youth by force.
How can I place her life in such a peril,
And build success upon my own child's death?

(Enter Spirits of Age, who circle round about him)
Ponce de Leon.
How cold I feel! how numb my heart has grown,
As if Old Age had crept across my soul
In these few minutes, making it so dull
That now the very wish for Youth seems dead
Within my breast, which pants and throbs no more.
How quietly ebbs the tide of exultation!
Five minutes back it thundered at the flow
Victoriously advancing: now I feel
The heavy waters of the soul are sluggish
As lifeless Dead Sea brine. Five minutes back
My conquering hand was on the mighty prize,
About to clutch it; and my fear for her
Has stricken it with palsy. Who comes here?

(Enter Indian Sorceress.)
Indian Sorceress.
I am Othoxa, priestess of dark spirits,
And saturated charmer of curst snakes.
Agrippa sends me to impart such knowledge
As lies within my cobra-bitten breast
About the Spring of Youth. Thou needst not fear
This lazy rattlesnake; it has just spent
Its venom on my arm.

Ponce de Leon.
The Spring of Youth?
Ah, yes, I recollect; thou wast to come
To tell me of the road.—How far to reach it?

Indian Sorceress.
It lies in the great forests of the centre,
A twelve days' march from this, if speed be used,
In depths which man avoids, and where at most
Some wounded panther laps its healing wave.
None know the path except Atalpa's mutes,
Of whom one will be given thee as a guide.
They bear the shape and semblance of great youth,
But they are ages old: their tongues were cut
Six centuries ago, lest they should tell
The secret of the Fount. They and the king
Alone have ever tasted of its water.

Ponce de Leon.
What aspect has the Fountain?

Indian Sorceress.
There is nought
By which it could be told from any other.
It looks a simple, natural forest spring,
Save only this, that if you scan it closer,
Its depths are paved with pebbles of pure gold.
Where it wells up it is of little size—
A rippling diamond nestling in the moss;
Beyond it forms a pool with floating flowers,
And changes into emerald dark and deep.

Ponce de Leon.
How hath it got its virtue?

Indian Sorceress.
Some affirm
That it by chance has trickled through the caverns
In which the cunning subterranean powers
Prepare the germs of life and saps of Nature
For sunlight to mature; and others say
That the great panting god of generation,
The flame-tongued Atapootaa, passing by,
Cooled his dark limbs one morning in its ripples,
And gave it its virility for ever.

Ponce de Leon.
How many draughts must he who asks for youth
Take of this spring?

Indian Sorceress.
A single draught sufficeth,
If taken from the fountain head, to change
The most infirm and wrinkled tottering age
To manhood's fairest strength; though it is wise,
From time to time, as centuries go by,
To take the draught anew. But I will give thee
A small example of its potency:
This little phial contains a single drop
Of brightness from the Spring of Youth, diluted
With common water.

Ponce de Leon
(trying to snatch the phial out of her hands).
Give it!—let me drink it!

Indian Sorceress
(brandishing the rattlesnake round her head).
Back, back, rash man! This one diluted drop,
If drunk in violence in the teeth of heaven,
Would strike thee into everlasting dotage,
Not everlasting youth. Now wait and listen:
Hast thou perchance a dry and long dead flower?

Ponce de Leon.
I have a small dead rose here in this locket—
One of the roses that the mourners laid
Upon my mother's breast the day she died
Some forty years ago. You scarce can tell
What flower it was, it is so old and black—
Changed almost into dust.

Indian Sorceress.
Yes, this will do.
Now pour some water in this bowl and place
The crumbling relic in it, and observe
What happens when the phial's drop is added.
Now look! now look!—see how the dead rose quivers
See how its petals open one by one,
Grow soft and living, heal where they were injured,
And take the colour of the clouds at dawn.
Keep thy eyes fixed, and in another minute
'Twill be the rose of forty years ago,
As dewy as on the day that it was laid
Upon thy mother's breast.

Ponce de Leon.
A wondrous sight!
O dazzling transmutation!

Indian Sorceress.
If one drop
Can work this miracle upon a rose,
Think what a cupful from the spring will do
For him who quaffs. Now for to-day farewell.
Before thou startest we shall meet again,
For it is I who am to take thy daughter
To the great temple-city where Atalpa,
Lord of the panthers, rules in endless youth,
And place her as a hostage in his hands.
This rose is thine.

[Exit Indian Sorceress.
Ponce de Leon
(alone).
O wondrous transformation!
O most resistless and most glorious proof
That ever dazzled human eyes! What doubts,
What hesitations or compunctious instincts,
Could stand against a miracle like this?
A minute back, this sunrise-tinted flower,
Whose dewy breath delights the passing breeze,
Was crumbling dust—the wreck of former years.
Look at it now! in all its new-born beauty:
How soft, how sweet, how infinitely lovely—
The loveliest my hand has ever held!
O God of Youth, Aurora-pinioned Spirit!
Forgive thy devotee if, for one moment,
He wavered on the pathway of thy shrine.
Have I not ever offered up, O Youth,
Whatever thou hast claimed? The sleep of night,
Repose, health, friendship, country, home and fortune;
And shall an instinct of paternal love
Arrest me on the threshold of thy altar?
This wondrous and rejuvenated rose,
Which dazzles and intoxicates my soul,
Is dearer to my heart than fifty daughters.
This is the true Rosita; and I kiss her
As never human brow or human lips.

ACT V.

SCENE I.

(A hall in the rock temple of Bimini.)
Atalpa.
A month has scarcely passed. The countless flowers
Which clad this temple for the Feast of Arrows
Are hardly withered, and the sacred gardens
Have scarce had time to reach another crop,
And lo! the garland-girls again are busy,
Crouching by hundreds on the temple-pavement
For a far greater feast. No yearly pageant
Calls for their skill and fancy, but a rite
Unmatched in all the annals of our race:
The great fulfilment of a prophecy
Centuries old, which Heaven's heralds usher
With every portent, prodigy and sign.
Did not the northern sky, three days ago,
Assume the colour of the pale, thin blood
Which runs in white men's hearts, and did the earth
Not undulate and quiver under-foot?
The victim should arrive to-day at sunset,
And I am come to view thy preparations.
I see the garlanding makes rapid way—
Is all progressing for the great procession
And for the sacred dances?

High Priest.
Never fear;
All will be ready by the stated moment,
And all will be upon a scale befitting
The greatness of the day. A hundred virgins,
Selected from the darkest of the tribes,
With leopard skins, and anklets of red gold,
Will lead her to the altar of destruction.
The companies of warriors have been chosen
Among the very finest, and their targes
Are studded with the nails of virgin gold.
The companies of priests are also ready,
The new white robes of sacrificial linen,
The charmers of the snakes, and sacred jugglers
Are more in number than the oldest man
Can recollect. Innumerable flowers
Of every shape and hue have been collected,
To strew the victim's path. As for the dances,
The javelin-men are practising all day
A reel of death, on a gigantic scale,
To dance around the victim in the crypt
Of the three hundred columns. Then a dance
Of sorcerers and snakemen round about her,
With new varieties of dreadful movement.
The sorcerers will show us in their fumes
Spirits that none have seen as yet,
And demon shadows through a haze of fire.
Oh, trust me that the Flower of Destruction
Has never had so grand or dread a pageant
Since the first trembling slave was offered up
To the great Executioner and Goddess
Fresh from her boundless forests.

Atalpa.
And the chants?

High Priest.

Atalpa.
While thou hast been preparing all these flowers
And giving all thy thoughts to the procession
And chants and dances, I have not been idle,
But I have been maturing in the shade
The other half of this great work of death.
The ambuscade to which the great white chief,
Lured by the promise of a magic spring,
Is to be drawn amid the primal forest.
I have selected as the fittest spot
The dark and ever-memorable pool
Known as the Fountain of the Yellow Spirits,
Where sixty years ago the tribe of Hara
Was massacred to a man. The huge old trees
Which cluster round the solitary water
Are hollow one and all, and each can hold
A dozen silent warriors now as then,
And nought be lessened of the loneliness.
His escort will be small, and though they carry
The thunder-pealing arms which make each white
A match for twenty of our dusky bowmen,
Still we can hide within the hollow trunks
More warriors than the massacre requires.

High Priest.
The spot is well selected. May the ambush
Prove as successful as the one which ended
The thrice curst tribe of Hara.—Who comes here?

Atalpa.
It is a messenger.

(Enter Messenger.)
Messenger.
I come to tell you
That the white maiden will arrive at sunset
If all goes well, for I have speeded on
Faster than they could bear her in her litter.
The wounded will arrive to-morrow night
By slower stages.

Atalpa.
Wounded! Slower stages!
What dost thou mean? Explain.

Messenger.
As we were fording
The River of Green Snakes, the day we started,
A sudden and most desperate attempt
To rescue the white maiden on her way
Was made at set of sun. Twice did the whites
Surround her litter, wrested from our grasp,
And bear it off; and thrice we snatched it back,
Until at last, by dint of greater numbers,
And with the help of javelin-hurling spirits,
We saved her for the Goddess at the price
Of many killed. The leader of this onslaught,
One of their younger chiefs—with a great wound—
Is in our hands and three of his companions,
And we are bringing them to swell the show.

Atalpa.
The thought was wise to spare them for the torture.
They shall be carried in the great procession,
And then be handed over to the tormentors
In sight of all. Meanwhile it is for thee,
Great Pontiff of the ever-hungry Flower,
To keep them in thy prisons with the victim
Who will arrive at sunset. This attempt
To snatch her from our hold, though it has failed,
Makes me uneasy lest the ambuscade
For the destruction of the white commander
Should be upset by something unforeseen.
I must increase the number of the warriors
That I am sending to the lonely pool:
They must be six to one.

High Priest.
I think thee wise.
An ambush laid with insufficient forces
Is but a trap one lays against one's self.
But if thou wishest to behold the dances
Which now are being practised, come with me,
And thou shalt see the great wild reel of death
Which is beginning: I already hear,
Like the vague roaring of a distant whirlpool,
Its roar of horrors, rising from the crypts.

[Exeunt

SCENE II.

(A dungeon in the Rock Temple.)
Rosita.
How dark it is! how cold these temple crypts!
They might have given me a little light:
And yet it matters little; can a soul
Not grope its way to heaven in the dark?
Perhaps God sees us better in the blackness,
As we see fireflies. I am free to think
The agony is over; I am ready—
The martyrdom of spirit is gone through;
There waits me but the martyrdom of flesh.
But oh, the struggle has been passing keen:
I wonder if my hair has turned all white
In these three days: I hope to God it has.
I fain would go to Heaven with the badge
Of holy Age pure snowy on my brow,
Not in the livery of loathèd youth;
Since I must die before the time of wrinkles,
Oh, let me die white-headed.—I feel calm
As the most peaceful and contented eld
That ever died at ninety, and should smile
If but I knew that he is safe in Heaven
And waiting for me there.—Oh, if I knew
That he is out of reach of Indian torture!
For if he is not dead, they surely hold him,
And I shall never know it upon earth.
How nearly he succeeded in the rescue!
Why, in that frightful struggle round the litter,
There was a moment when he grasped my wrist,
Just as the javelin struck him.—O God, God,
Let me not think of it; it shakes my courage,
And I am bound to die with decent strength.
I must not flinch beneath this great black vault
That holds me like the concave hand of Fate.
This is the very temple of my dream—
The temple with the spirit-crushing columns
Hewn in the living rock. I know each step
I have to take; I know the hideous end,
And now the quicker that I die the better.
How rosy seem the summits of old age
From this dark gorge of young and violent death!
I who had thought to climb them hand in hand,
And sitting in the sunset—he and I—
To look upon the plain of life beneath,
And on the path that we had slowly climbed.
Strange; every now and then I seem to hear
A faint and distant echo of his voice:
Perhaps he calls me from the other world.
Oh love, I come!

Juan.
To drink.

Rosita.
O God, O God!
His earthly voice.—Uphold me, God—I stagger.

(She gropes her way in the direction of his voice, lays her and upon his face, and kisses it.)
Juan
(very faintly).
Each time I speak it makes the blood well up.
The wound is through the lung; my minutes run.

Rosita.
O God, again uphold me.

Juan.
Is this Hell?
And art thou come from Heaven?

Rosita.
No; this place
Is neither earth nor Hell, but Heaven's lobby;
Nor am I come from Heaven; but we go there.
The door of Death which is about to open
Has still to be passed through. I cannot see thee;
Oh for a little light to see his face!
Is this great pain, or is it boundless joy?

Juan.
There is a jug of water by my side:
I have not strength to lift it.

(She finds it, and gives him to drink.)
Rosita.
I have found it.
Where are thy lips? Drink; it is almost full.

Juan.
This is the Draught of Youth, for those who drink it
Ne'er reach old age.

Rosita.
And I am come to share it.
Is this the bitterest or the sweetest draught
That ever I have quaffed? I cannot tell.
But whether it be bitter or be sweet,
Better this brackish water here in common
Upon the border of the land of shadows
Than that great lonely draught for which he thirsts.

Juan.
If he were not thy father, I would curse him
From all the deep abysses of my soul
That he has brought thee here.

Rosita.
Oh, curse him not,
Oh, curse not what I love, upon death's brink;
He knows not what he does.

Juan.
O love, O love,
If only thou hadst suffered me to save thee
When all was ready planned!

Rosita.
It might not be.

Juan.
O God, to think that we should now be both
Half-way across the ocean, with the helm
Turned full on life.—It is too horrible.
And if Hell holds—

Rosita.

Juan.

[Dies.
Rosita
(crouching over his body, after assuring herself that he is dead, and after a long interval of silence).

Rosita.
The angel voices die away; the amber
Of the great seas of glory overhead
Dies back into the darkness of the dungeon.
But now my soul is strong again and peaceful;
The darkness is no longer one of iron,
But seems to hold me like the warm ripe gloom
Of summer woods at night; and as I kneel
And hold his heavy hand of clay in mine,
I half might fancy him asleep, not dead—
And that his head is lying softly resting
On some sweet mossy pillow of the forest.
I scarcely dare to breathe, lest I should wake him.
What trees are spreading over us? what flowers
Are scattered round us, waiting for the light
To open all their bells? what fairies circle
Around us on the grass to charm his sleep?
And he is dead—quite dead—and never more
Will he and I sit listening in the forest!
Dead, dead—quite dead for ever, ever more,
And I am waiting to be fetched for death.
Hark! hark! they come—I hear a tramp of feet
That echoes through the crypts. A glare of torches
Leaps red upon the arches of the valut.
They come to fetch me, and they find me ready.

(Enter Master of the Sacrifices, with many priests and Indians bearing torches. They proceed to bind Rosita with leather thongs.)
Master of the Sacrifices.
Are both her wrists well bound, and are we ready?

Rosita
(aside).
Where are the thongs to fasten down my soul?

Master of the Sacrifices.
I hear the Gong of Gongs begin to boom.
Now form yourselves in order of procession,
That we may gather as we go along
The hundred affluents of our human stream,
Until it rolls in sounding waves of men,
Like a great river rolling to the ocean.

Rosita
(aside).
Death's sea of gold is gleaming at my feet.

Master of the Sacrifices.
And as the great procession winds along
Intone a great, slow chant of `Lo, the victim!
We bring her to the Goddess—the Destroyer;
We bring her to the ever-murdering Beauty—
The Flower of Cruelty, the Scented Throttler—
The wondrous executioner of nature!’

[Exeunt.

SCENE III.

(The neighbourhood of a lonely forest pool.)
Ponce de Leon.
(He takes a golden cup from his bosom, fills it from the fount, and holds it up.)
(The soldiers of the escort run up at his cries. Two of them carry him away from the brink of the Fount in spite of his furious resistance, and lay him on the grass at a little distance; while the others engage with the Indians, one of the soldiers extracts the arrow from his hip.)

Ponce de Leon.
O God, what burning fire! Oh, water! water!
A single drop—a single, single drop!
The air is full of fire; each time I breathe
It shrivels up my lungs. Oh, water! water!
There is a broad red glare all round about me—
The Lake of Tidal Fire spreads all around;
For miles and miles there is but creeping fire.
The tide is rising, creeping ever up;
All round the small black reef on which I stand
I hear the lapping of the waves of fire.
The reef is disappearing, inch by inch,
Minute by minute. O my God, what torture!
A little water—oh, a little water!
A little water, for the sake of Christ!
Water from any well or any ditch!
Rosita—where's Rosita? Water! water!