At daybreak, of the morning following our entry into Heraclea, the
prætor and Correliana paid us a visit. After salutations of renewed
welcome the prætor addressed us, in substance, as follows:—
“You are already partially aware of the means of communication which
have been employed to advise us of your presence, and the deliverance of
our daughters’ rescuers from their extreme peril! Through the same
source we have been advised of your daily progress for our relief, now
happily consummated. When the health of our families shall have ceased
to tax your anxious care, we will then endeavor to make you sensible of
our gratitude through the warmth of affectionate reciprocation. For the
present we will ask you to assume the responsibility of your own
entertainment, for we are utterly powerless for the fulfillment of that
duty so inseparably imposed by our obligations. But with our energies
restored we shall claim the gratification of reassuming the privileges
of our natural charge. Until this sum total of our past indebtedness
shall have been fulfilled, please accept the keys of our city in token
of our submission to your direction?”
In reply to this tender, M. Hollydorf said, “We will accept the keys,
but only in the light of a necessary facility to render our sympathetic
aid more readily effectual, and will certainly feel more sincere
gratification when your own, and the health of your associate citizens,
will admit of their restoration. Until then we shall rely upon your
advice for direction, for we have already learned to prize its
transmitted agency beyond measure, as it exceeds the power of material
recompense.” Then taking the prætor’s hands, he continued with glowing
warmth and tearful emotions: “Indeed we feel assured, beyond the
possibility of selfish reflection, that in preserving your people, we
have acted as agents for the opening of a way through which the children
of our race may exalt themselves above the gregarious instincts of
animality. We have already realized premonitory emotions, which bespeak
an assured glimpse of immortality, albeit our habits and customs intrude
their practiced grossness to mar the beatific visions inspired from the
influence of your exampled reflection.”
Here the tremulous cadences of a pæan hymn caused the prætor to beckon
us beyond the threshold, and from thence we saw gathered in groups,
before the portals of each door, the residents uniting in the choral
anthem of thanksgiving to the Creator for blessings vouchsafed with
deliverance. At its close, we were apprised that it was their morning
and evening custom to offer grateful salutations of praise with the
rising and declining sun. Then, in the fullness of their grateful joy,
they left to engage in the nursing avocations of the day.
After their departure we engaged in preparation for our first hunting
expedition; when nearly ready the mayorong appeared accompanied by three
Indians whose bearing proclaimed them upland chiefs. With their
introduction, he stated that they had visited him while he was attending
the wounded of their tribe in the temple of the grove; and as they
evinced kindly emotions while endeavoring to make him understand the
chief object of their visit, he followed them to the margin of the
wooded growth, and he there beheld a train of horses loaded with
panniers containing a plentiful supply of grain, so much needed by the
famishing Heracleans. “Unable to withhold the elation of joyful surprise
I embraced them, and could not resist the pleasure of bringing them to
receive your personal acknowledgments for their timely supply of food.”
The prætor and tribunes, having been informed of the Betonges chiefs’
introduction into the city by the mayorong, with the supply of food they
had brought as a voluntary peace offering, hastened first to the
hospitium, and then to the quarters of the corps to give them a fitting
reception. To the surprise of all, Correliana, who accompanied her
father, addressed the chiefs in their own language, with expressions of
such grateful warmth that the eyes of the savages became tremulous with
tokens foreshadowing the impressions of a moisture as nourishing to
unselfish sympathy as dew to plants. When these exotic emotions had
subsided, the Indians in turn tersely expressed their regrets for the
unmerited sufferings their tribes had caused from the remote acts
committed by the old Heracleans, who paid the penalty of death for their
oppressions.
Correliana, in explication of what appeared mysterious in her ready use
of the Betongese idiom of the Quichua language, said that she had
learned it from children taken from the Indian villages, and adopted as
hostages to be educated with those of Heraclea. “You have been puzzled,”
she continued, “with many mysterious passages since our first
introduction, which have appeared more unaccountable to reasonable
suggestion than this, still in due time they will be as readily solved.”
After a lengthened conversation with the Indian deputation, Correliana
proposed that the gates of the cinctus wall should thereafter be left
open for the free ingress and egress of their Indian allies, in trustful
confidence as leal as though mutual faith had been kept from the
beginning.
Mr. Welson suggestingly asked, if the river Indians, or in more truthful
expression, the reptile savages, would not avail themselves of this open
invitation to wreak their poisonous vengeance? To which Correliana
smilingly replied: “Our benefactors have informed me that the river
Indians, when in dismayed flight from their repulse, met the old chief
who had been retained as a prisoner on board of the _Tortuga_. Holding
them in check while he described the power you had exercised over him,
and one of your own kind, he urged that any further attempt against the
city would result as in the battle they had just fought. His collar
investment was, in their panic, a sufficient verification of authority,
and although a victim to your sorceries they proclaimed him an
embogator, or prophet itinerator of the tribes. His description of the
effects you produced upon him, conjoined with the padre’s fears, has
established your reputation as a magician capable of filling their
bodies with tormenting scrouls, or demons; this increased their panic,
causing the tribe to disperse in all haste to their swamp feudalities.
We are fully assured from the Betongese recital,—and they are not
altogether free from the fear you have inspired,—that your presence will
prove ample security for their absence from the highland valleys, as
well as a protection to the _Tortuga_ on her downward passage. In pledge
of their fidelity, the Betongese have volunteered an escort for the
Kyronese remaining at the anchorage of the _Tortuga_.”
After the chiefs had partaken of food prepared by the Kyronese matrons,
they were escorted without the cinctus gates, by all within the city
able to walk. When the gate keepers, Jack and Bill, were notified that
from thenceforward the gates were to be left unclosed, they fired a
salvo of a single discharge, then limbering up the howitzer stowed it,
with munitions, in the keep of the gate tower; but asked permission to
retain their quarters, with the more than probable inducement of having
their rations brought and dispensed by two Kyronese maidens, with whom
they had been on “signal” terms from the day of their rescue.
Cleorita, after the Indians’ departure, expressed to Correliana the hope
that her grandfather had not been by her judged over-presuming in caring
for the wounded Indians, or bold in assuming the responsibility of
introducing the Indian chiefs into the city? “For with truth, he
says,”—she urged, “he would not have hazarded the venture, if he had not
felt certain that they were trustworthy. Indeed we have seen many worse
who have been grateful for kindness!”
“Say to your grandfather,” returned Correliana, “that we justly merit
the punishment he has inflicted, and I feel more sincerely indebted to
him for the last service than the first. I will own frankly in self-
reprobation, with the belief that the self-reproof includes all except
your own kindred, that my thoughts were altogether diverted from the
possible sufferings of our wounded foes; and I will not pretend to
assume even the merit of feeling sufficient solicitude to inquire
whether any were injured.”
The mayorong, who, with Mr. Welson, had overheard this plea of his
granddaughter in his behalf, and understood its import, said to
Cleorita, “you have spoken according to my desire, but you must not
forget that the members of the corps were fewer in numbers than
ourselves, and were expected as the sponsors of the expedition to
present themselves for the relief of the famished citizens, so we each
acted the parts of our allotment.”
But Mr. Welson expostulated: “You need not attempt to say anything in
our extenuation, for we turned a deaf ear to the groans of the wounded,
and passed them with as much indifference as we left the severed
serpent. Now that we have seen the effects of your unselfish sympathy,
we cannot withhold from ourselves the fact that you are the real
deliverer of Heraclea. You have merited and will receive the untutored
homage of the Indians.”
“You forget,” replied Cleorita, prompted by her grandfather, “the
eminent services of the most favored of the magicians, who has
controlled the savage ‘instincts’ of the river Indians?” With
Correliana’s asservation, that the Heracleans were so universally
indebted to the united members of the corps, and its adjuncts, the
personal distinction of preference was resolved into the grades of
adaptation for the parts enacted, they separated, with mutual
congratulations, to engage in the allotted avocations of the day.
In view of their peaceful prospects, enhanced with food bestowed by
their late foes, the Heracleans recovered rapidly from the pestilential
flux, so that in a few weeks they were able to enjoy the liberty of the
open country, and enter upon the reënjoyment of the boon of self
dependence. The households enlivened by their reappearance, assumed the
renovated impression of a happy vitality breathing outward for the
kindred invocation of reciprocal goodwill. Correliana, with renewed
vivacity and mysterious facility, had conjured the ability for
conducting her own correspondence with Captain Greenwood in English,
also for ready communication with the members of the corps. Her Kyronese
companions, Cleorita and Oviata, had with her revived a speaking
impression of the language derived from their father.
On the morning of the 7th of October, after the journey had been
prolonged far beyond the time set for its accomplishment, from the
grateful desire of the valley Indians to honor the people of the
mayorong, the Kyronese remainder arrived under the conduct of Abdul, his
grandson, and padre Simon. Their reunion and reception was joyful in the
extreme. The compendic ejaculation of the padre, in sanction of the
corps’ expressions of happy satisfaction, will prove ample for the
exposition of the prevailing impressions of renewed goodwill. “By my
soul’s salvation,” he exclaimed, “I have by the same tokens come to a
belike conclusion! For surely I would have as soon thought to see the
lion and lamb lay down peaceably together, as to have been entertained
as I have been by these same Indians. It was so unnatural, for you know
the delegations from the tribes brought on to Washington are exhibited
as specimens of wild beasts indigenous to the soil? But I can tell you,
I never was treated more kindly in my life, bating I could not speak
their language, nor they mine.”
Mr. Welson inquired, whether in the item schedule of good treatment they
asked him to take something, or smoke a weed? The padre happily averred,
with a blush, that he had neither tasted of spirit or tobacco since his
departure from the _Tortuga_. In testimony of the improvement from his
abstinence all bore witness.
“But,” asked Mr. Welson, “had you no fear of being bitten again?”
The padre smilingly expostulated, “I see that you have not left off all
your bad habits, yet, notwithstanding the good example of the
Heracleans! Why not let bygones be bygones? My own thoughts are a
sufficient torment, without having my friends poke fun at my lameness.”
“It is from no ill intention that we keep the crutch in view, but rather
to prevent the necessity of its future use,” suggested Mr. Welson. The
padre closed the sally port of banter, by quoting the saw, “Sufficient
for the day is the evil thereof.”