By two of the afternoon we were running into the inlet of Rio Medio. I
had come on deck when Tomas Castro had started out of his doze. I wanted
to see. We went round violently as I emerged, and, clinging to the side,
I saw, in a whirl, tall, baked, brown hills dropping sheer down to a
strip of flat land and a belt of dark-green scrub at the water’s edge;
little pink squares of house-walls dropped here and there, mounting the
hillside among palms, like men standing in tall grass, running back,
hiding in a steep valley; silver-gray huts with ragged dun roofs, like
dishevelled shocks of hair; a great pink church-face, very tall and
narrow, pyramidal towards the top, and pierced for seven bells, but
having only three. It looked as if it had been hidden for centuries in
the folds of an ancient land, as it lay there asleep in the blighting
sunlight.
When we anchored, Tomas, beside me in saturnine silence, grunted and
spat into the water.
“Look here,” I said. “What is the meaning of it all? What is it? What is
at the bottom?”
He shrugged his shoulders gloomily. “If your worship does not know, who
should?” he said. “It is not for me to say why people should wish to
come here.”
“Then take me to Carlos,” I said. “I must get this settled.”
Castro looked at me suspiciously. “You will not excite him?” he said. “I
have known people die right out when they were like that.”
“Oh, I won’t excite him,” I said.
As we were rowed ashore, he began to point out the houses of the
notables. Rio Medio had been one of the principal ports of the Antilles
in the seventeenth century, but it had failed before the rivalry of
Havana because its harbour would not take the large vessels of modern
draft. Now it had no trade, no life, no anything except a bishop and a
great monastery, a few retired officials from Havana. A large settlement
of ragged thatched huts and clay hovels lay to the west of the
cathedral. The Casa Riego was an enormous palace, with windows like
loopholes, facing the shore. Don Balthasar practically owned the whole
town and all the surrounding country, and, except for his age and
feebleness, might have been an absolute monarch.
He had lived in Havana with great splendour, but now, in his failing
years, had retired to his palace, from which he had since only twice set
foot. This had only been when official ceremonies of extreme importance,
such as the international execution of pirates that I had witnessed,
demanded the presence of someone of his eminence and lustre. Otherwise
he had lived shut up in his palace. There was nowhere in Rio Medio for
him to go to.
He was said to regard his intendente O’Brien as the apple of his eye,
and had used his influence to get him made one of the judges of the
Marine Court. The old Don himself probably knew nothing about the
pirates. The inlet had been used by buccaneers ever since the days of
Columbus; but they were below his serious consideration, even if he had
ever seen them, which Tomas Castro doubted.
There was no doubting the sincerity of his tone.
“Oh, you thought _I_ was a pirate!” he muttered. “For a day--yes--to
oblige a Riego, my friend--yes! Moreover, I hate that familiar of the
priests, that soft-spoken Juez, intendente, intriguer--that O’Brien. A
sufferer for the faith! _Que picardia!_ Have I, too, not suffered for
the faith? I am the trusted humble friend of the Riegos. But, perhaps,
you think Don Balthasar is himself a pirate! He who has in his veins the
blood of the Cid Campeador; whose ancestors have owned half this island
since the days of Christopher himself....”
“Has he nothing whatever to do with it?” I asked. “After all, it goes on
in his own town.”
“Oh, you English,” he muttered; “you are all mad! Would one of your
great nobles be a pirate? Perhaps they would--God knows. Alas, alas!” he
suddenly broke off, “when I think that my Carlos shall leave his bones
in this ungodly place....”