1492

CHAPTER XXVI

WE turned from the sea. Thick forest came between us and it. We were going with Caonabo to the mountains. Beltran and I thought that it had been in question whether he should kill us at once, or hold us in life until we had been shown as trophies in Maguana, and that the pride and vanity of the latter course prevailed. After two days in this ruined place, during which we saw no Guarico Indian, we departed. The raid was over. All their war is by raid. They carried everything from the fort save the fort itself and the two lombards. In the narrow paths that are this world’s roads, one man must walk after another, and their column seems endless where it winds and is lost and appears again. Beltran and I were no longer bound. Nor were we treated unkindly, starved nor hurt in any way. All that waited until we should reach Caonabo’s town.

Caonabo was a most handsome barbarian, strong and fierce and intelligent, more fierce, more intelligent than Guacanagari. All had been painted, but the heat of the lowland and their great exertion had made the coloring run and mix most unseemly. When they left Guarico they plunged into the river and washed the whole away, coming out clear red-brown, shining and better to look upon. Caonabo washed, but then he would renew his marking with the paint which he carried with him in a little calabash.

A pool, still and reflecting as any polished shield, made his mirror. He painted in a terrific pattern what seemed meant for lightning and serpent. It was armor and plume and banner to him. I thought of our own devices, comforting or discomforting kinships! He had black, lustrous hair, no beard—they pluck out all body hair save the head thatch—high features, a studied look of settled and cold fierceness. Such was this Carib in Hispaniola.

Presently they put a watch and the rest all lay down and slept, Beltran beside me. The day had been clear, and now a great moon made silver, silver, the land around. It shone upon the Spanish sailor and upon the Carib chief and all the naked Manguana men. I thought of Europe, and of how all this or its like had been going on hundred years by hundred years, while perished Rome and quickened our kingdoms, while Charlemagne governed, while the Church rose until she towered and covered like the sky, while we went crusades and pilgrimages, while Venice and Genoa and Lisbon rose and flourished, while letters went on and we studied Aristotle, while question arose, and wider knowledge. At last Juan Lepe, too, went to sleep.

Next day we traveled among and over mountains. Our path, so narrow, climbed by rock and tree. Now it overhung deep, tree-crammed vales, now it bore through just-parted cliffs. Beltran and Juan Lepe had need for all their strength of body.

The worst was that that old tremor and weakness of one leg and side, left after some sea fight, which had made Beltran the cook from Beltran the mariner, came back. I saw his step begin to halt and drag. This increased. An hour later, the path going over tree roots knotted like serpents, he stumbled and fell. He picked himself up. “Hard to keep deck in this gale!”

When he went down there had been an exclamation from those Indians nearest us. “Aiya!” It was their word for rotten, no good, spoiled, disappointing, crippled or diseased, for a misformed child or an old man or woman arrived at helplessness. Such, I had learned from Guarin, they almost invariably killed. It was why, from the first, we hardly saw dwarfed or humped or crippled among them.

We had to cross a torrent upon a tree that falling had made from side to side a rounded bridge. Again that old hurt betrayed him. He slipped, would have fallen into the torrent below, but that I, turning, caught him and the Indian behind us helped. We managed across. “My ship,” said Beltran, “is going to pieces on the rocks.”

The path became ladder steep. Now Beltran delayed all, for it was a lame man climbing. I helped him all I could.

The sun was near its setting. We were aloft in these mountains. Green heads still rose over us, but we were aloft, far above the sea. And now we were going through a ravine or pass where the walking was better. Here, too, a wind reached us and it was cooler. Cool eve of the heights drew on. We came to a bubbling well of coldest water and drank to our great refreshment. Veritable pine trees, which we never saw in the lowlands, towered above and sang. The path was easier, but hardly, hardly, could Beltran drag himself along it. His arm was over my shoulder.

Out of the dark pass we came upon a table almost bare of trees and covered with a fine soft grass. The mountains of Cibao, five leagues—maybe more—away, hung in emerald purple and gold under the sinking sun. The highest rocky peaks rose pale gold. Below us and between those mountains on which we stood and the golden mountains of Cibao, spread that plain, so beautiful, so wide and long, so fertile and smiling and vast, that afterwards was called the Royal Plain! East and west one might not see the end; south only the golden mountains stopped it. And rivers shone, one great river and many lesser streams. And we saw afar many plumes of smoke from many villages, and we made out maize fields, for the plain was populous. Vega Real! So lovely was it in that bright eve! The very pain of the day made it lovelier.

The high grassy space ran upon one side to sheer precipice, dropping clear two hundred feet. But there was camping ground enough—and the sun almost touched the far, violet earth.

The Indians threw themselves down. When they had supper they would eat it, when they had it not they would wait for breakfast. But Caonabo with twenty young men came to us. He said something, and my arms were caught from behind and held. He faced Beltran seated against a pine. “Aiya!” he said. His voice was deep and harsh, and he made a gesture of repugnance. There was a powerfully made Indian beside him, and I saw the last gleam of the sun strike the long, sharp, stone knife. “Kill!” said the cacique.

A dozen flung themselves upon Beltran, but there was no need, for he sat quite still with a steady face. He had time to cry to Juan Lepe, who cried to him, “That’s what I say! Good cheer and courage and meet again!”

He had no long suffering. The knife was driven quickly to his heart. They drew the shell to the edge of the precipice and dropped it over.

It was early night, it was middle night, it was late night. They had set no watch, for where and what was the danger here on this mountain top?

One side went down in a precipice, one sloping less steeply we had climbed from the pine trees and the well, one of a like descent we would take to-morrow down to the plain, but the fourth was mountain head hanging above us and thick wood,—dark, entangled, pathless. And it chanced or it was that Juan Lepe lay upon the side toward the peak, close to forest. The Indians had no thought to guard me. We lay down under the moon, and that bronze host slept, naked beautiful statues, in every attitude of rest.

The moon shone until there was silver day. Juan Lepe was not sleeping.

There was no wind, but he watched a branch move. It looked like a man’s arm, then it moved farther and was a full man,—an Indian, noiseless, out clear in the moon, from the wood. I knew him. It was the priest Guarin, priest and physician, for they are the same here. Palm against earth, I half rose. He nodded, made a sign to rise wholly and come. I did so. I stood and saw under the moon no waking face nor upspringing form. I stepped across an Indian, another, a third. Then was clear space, the wood, Guarin. There was no sound save only the constant sound of this forest by night when a million million insects waken.

He took my hand and drew me into the brake and wilderness. There was no path. I followed him over I know not what of twined root and thick ancient soil, a powder and flake that gave under foot, to a hidden, rocky shelf that broke and came again and broke and came again. Now we were a hundred feet above that camp and going over mountain brow, going to the north again. Gone were Caonabo and his Indians; gone the view of the plain and the mountains of Cibao. Again we met low cliff, long stony ledges sunk in the forest, invisible from below. I began to see that they would not know how to follow. Caonabo might know well the mountains of Cibao, but this sierra that was straight behind Guarico, Guarico knew. It is a blessed habit of their priests to go wandering in the forest, making their medicine, learning the country, discovering, using certain haunts for meditation. Sometimes they are gone from their villages for days and weeks. None indeed of these wild peoples fear reasonable solitude. Out of all which comes the fact that Guarin knew this mountain. We were not far, as flies the bird, from the burned town of Guarico, from the sea without sail, from the ruined La Navidad. When the dawn broke we saw ocean.

He took me straight to a cavern, such another as that in which Jerez and Luis Torres and I had harbored in Cuba. But this had fine sand for floor, and a row of calabashes, and wood laid for fire.

Here Juan Lepe dropped, for all his head was swimming with weariness.

The sun was up, the place glistered. Guarin showed how it was hidden. “I found it when I was a boy, and none but Guarin hath ever come here until you come, Juan Lepe!” He had no fear, it was evident, of Caonabo’s coming. “They will think your idol helped you away. If they look for you, it will be in the cloud. They will say, ‘See that dark mark moving round edge of cloud mountain! That is he!’” I asked him, “Where are Guacanagari and the rest?”

“Guacanagari had an arrow through his thigh and a deep cut upon the head. He was bleeding and in a swoon. His brother and the Guarico men and I with them took him, and the women took the children, and we went away, save a few that were killed, upon the path that we used when in my father’s time, the Caribs came in canoes. After a while we will go down to Guacanagari. But now rest!”

He looked at me, and then from a little trickling spring he took water in a calabash no larger than an orange and from another vessel a white dust which he stirred into it, and made me drink. I did not know what it was, but I went to sleep.

But that sleep did not refresh. It was filled with heavy and dreadful dreams, and I woke with an aching head and a burning skin. Juan Lepe who had nursed the sick down there in La Navidad knew feebly what it was. He saw in a mist the naked priest, his friend and rescuer, seated upon the sandy floor regarding him with a wrinkled brow and compressed lips, and then he sank into fever visions uncouth and dreadful, or mirage-pleasing with a mirage-ecstasy.

Juan Lepe did not die, but he lay ill and like to die for two months. It was deep in October, that day at dawn when I came quietly, evenly, to myself again, and lay most weak, but with seeing eyes. At first I thought I was alone in the cavern, but then I saw Guarin where he lay asleep.

That day I strengthened, and the next day and the next. But I had lain long at the very feet of death, and full strength was a tortoise in returning. So good to Juan Lepe was Guarin!

Now he was with me, and now he went away to that village where was Guacanagari. He had done this from the first coming here, nursing me, then going down through the forest to see that all was well with his wounded cacique and the folk whose butio he was. They knew his ways and did not try to keep him when he would return to the mountain, to “make medicine.” So none knew of the cavern or that there was one Spaniard left alive in all Hayti.

I strengthened. At last I could draw myself out of cave and lie, in the now so pleasant weather, upon the ledge before it. All the vast heat and moisture was gone by; now again was weather of last year when we found San Salvador.

I could see ocean. No sail, and were he returning, surely it should have been before this! He might never return.

When Guarin was away I sat or lay or moved about a small demesne and still prospered. There were clean rock, the water, the marvelous forest. He brought cassava cake, fruit, fish from the sea. He brought me for entertainment a talking parrot, and there lived in a seam of the rock a beautiful lizard with whom I made friends. The air was balm, balm! A steady soft wind made cataract sound in the forest. Sunrise, noon, sunset, midnight, were great glories.

It was November; it was mid-November and after.

Now I was strong and wandered in the forest, though never far from that cliff and cavern. It was settled between us that in five days I should go down with Guarin to Guacanagari. He proposed that I should be taken formally into the tribe. They had a ceremony of adoption, and after that Juan Lepe would be Guarico. He would live with and teach the Guaricos, becoming butio—he and Guarin butios together. I pondered it. If the Admiral came not again it was the one thing to do.

I remember the very odor and exquisite touch of the morning. Guarin was away. I had to myself cave and ledge and little waterfall and great trees that now I was telling one from another. I had parrot and lizard and spoke now to the one and now to the other. I remember the butterflies and the humming birds.

I looked out to sea and saw a sail!

It was afar, a white point. I leaned against the rock for I was suddenly weak who the moment before had felt strong. The white point swelled. It would be a goodly large ship. Over blue rim slipped another flake. A little off I saw a third, then a fourth. Juan Lepe rubbed his eyes. Before there came no more he had counted seventeen sail. They grew; they were so beauteous. Toward the harbor sailed a fleet. Now I made out the flagship.

O Life, thou wondrous goddess of happenings!

An hour I sat on cliff edge and watched. They were making in, the lovely white swans. When they were fairly near, when in little time the foremost would bring to, down sail and drop anchor, Juan Lepe, gathering his belongings together, bidding the lizard farewell and taking the parrot with him on shoulder, left cavern and cliff and took Guarin’s path down through the forest.

Halfway to level land he met Guarin coming up; the two met beneath a tree huge and spreading, curtained with a vine, starred with flowers. “He has come!” cried the Indian. “They have come!” In his voice was marveling, awe, perturbation.

The sun in the sky shone, and in the bay hung that wonder of return, the many ships for the Nina. Juan Lepe and Guarin went on down through wood to a narrow silver beach, out upon which had cast itself an Indian village.

Guacanagari was not here. He waited within his house for the Admiral. But his brother, and others of Guarico, saw me and there rose a clamor and excitement that for the moment took them from the ships. Guarin explained and Juan Lepe explained, but still this miraculous day dyed also for them my presence here. I had been slain, and had come to life to greet the Great Cacique! It grew to a legend. I met it so, long afterwards in Hispaniola.